ideas shaping the future of the church From the makers of Relevant | Summer 2010
is there a third way between emergent AND TraditionaL? p. 32
Mark Driscoll wants to be
“less shock jock & more jesus-centered” p. 28
N.T. Wright
The theologian takes on the U.S. church, sloppy ministry, and character formation p. 60
Pete Wilson
On what to do when ministry isn’t going as planned p. 56
What Would Happen if the Church Left the Building?
“This book contains the information and “This book is pure gold. ... There is insight that will resource my preaching, simply no better way to reach, teach, refine my strategy and reignite my train and send out disciples than passion as a pastor.” through churches that are planted with the intentionality of planting others.”
—Dr. Joel C. Hunter, Senior Pastor, Northland Church
—Rick Warren, Saddleback Church
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Q&A with Mark Driscoll, pg 28
conTents departments
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4 Neues
22 Stewarding Your Influence | by Richard Stearns
10 Neue Info
24 A Better Social Justice | by Brandon O’Brien
14 Neue Church
32 Finding the Third Way | by Jim Belcher
Soul City Church Trade as One
36 The End of Management? | by Gary Hamel
16 Neue Thought
Is the Church Responsible to Find People Friends? by Tony Morgan Your Story Must Be Told by Shauna Niequist
20 Neue Conversation
Author Bill McKibben talks about climate change, his organization, 350, and what he learned from watching 24 consecutive hours of TV
40 The New Local Church | by Glenn Packiam 44 Rebuilding the Church in Haiti | by Roxanne Wieman 48 The Imperative of Imagination | by Nanette Sawyer 52 Walking the Fine Line | by Craig Groeschel
62 Neue Recommends
56 Back to the Drawing Board | by Pete Wilson
64 Last Word
60 The Theology of Virtue | by Josh Loveless
My Issues in This Issue by Josh Loveless
Q&A with N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, England
ACT. THINK. DISCUSS. In the following pages, we invite you to interact with the content we’ve assembled by acting, thinking and discussing. The prompts we offer at the bottom of each page are meant for both you and your team as you wrestle with the ideas shaping the future of the Church.
ideas shaping the future of the church From the makers of Relevant | Summer 2010 | Issue 03
Editor & PUBLISHER
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TechnoChurch The Church has always been on the “cutting-edge” of technology. Here are highlights from years past. Stained Glass
If you want to tell stories from the Bible but no one can read, what do you do? Simple: make colored glass to show narratives.
Flannelgraphs
This bit of technology is responsible for the “Jesus always wears a white robe and blue sash” movement of the 1980s.
Puppets
Terrifying hand-operated animals were a big part of evangelism for a while. Kids were scared but intrigued. Plus: Gerbert.
Transparencies
These clear sheets made singing praise choruses even easier. The only bad part was when people moved them the wrong way.
PowerPoint
For some reason, pastors and bad clip art go together like peas and carrots. So in the ‘90s, this was the logical endpoint.
apocalypse now: holographic pastors take the stage
3D technology is changing the face of Church—but are we really OK with that? Long gone are the days of the slide projector and the flannelgraph. Today, ministers can reach their multi-site campuses via hologram. While this 3D technology has been seen before in award shows and concerts, only recently has it made its way onto the church platform. A company called Musion is at the forefront of 3D and has previously used it for the likes of Madonna and Prince Charles. Clark, a media company in Alpharetta, Ga., is one of the first to market Musion’s 3D in churches. Innovative pastors such as Andy Stanley have been early adopters, and now it’s becoming widely available for ministry use. Despite the benefits, many question if 3D has a place in church. While a video feed can expand the influence
of a minister, some argue it limits their relationship with the congregation. How can a pastor set an example of community when physically absent? Others think it caters to a particular preaching style and gives a select few the ability to dominate time and space on Sunday mornings. Still, many feel strongly that churches should embrace any medium that can enhance the Gospel. If a church is focused on growth of the body and not the teaching of a specific minister, they may not be as particular about the medium. Then, 3D could be used for growing crowds and foreign missions, like podcasts, TV and video streaming. It remains to be seen whether this new dimension is a danger, or merely a new frontier for the virtual church.
THINK: We knew Princess Leia’s hologram from R2D2 in Stars Wars had divine ramifications for the Church—we were just too young then for anyone to listen to us. Now we predict Avatar people preaching in 2035. Try that, Andy Stanley!
4
Vermont Fail Every year, Gallup’s “State of the States” series gives a profile of each state, ranging from economics, to health, to church attendance. Does the latter have any influence over the rest? Does church attendance make for happier, more overall “well” people? Not in Hawaii apparently, where church attendance is only 30%, but people boast a 70% wellbeing score. But it’s Hawaii. They have an ocean. And mountains. And hulas. It’s hard to count them, really. Here are a few other facts about the states most or least likely to regularly attend a church service.
b Top 10 States
Church attendance > 50%
overall Well-being
*
MS AL SC LA UT TN AK NC GA TX
64% 36.9% 64.9% 64.2% 56% 64% 62.8% 53% 66.1% 66.2%
ECONOMIC CONFIDENCE
**
-30 -36 -34 -31 -26 -36 -37 -32 -34 -27
b Bottom 10 States
Church attendance < 32%
overall Well-being
*
*The Well-Being Index score for the nation and for each state is an average of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors and access to basic necessities. **Based on respondents’ view of current economic conditions as well as assessment of whether economy is getting better or worse. The Index has a theoretical range of -100 to +100, with negative scores indicating respondents are more negative than positive about the economy.
VT NH ME MA NV HI OR AK WA RI
37.4 66.9 66.7 66.6 63.8 70.2 66 67.3 66.8 64.2
ECONOMIC CONFIDENCE
**
-29 -36 -37 -32 -43 -34 -37 -31 -32 -41
DISCUSS: Hmm, the state with “Sin City” is among the bottom 10 in church attendance. That’s such a, um, surprise. But, really, any surprises here? What do you think causes low church attendance in certain states?
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have kids, go to church A nationwide survey conducted by Barna Group and Orange studied if having children impacts church involvement. Here is the current status of parents in the pews.
20
%
increased involvement
17%
began attending for the first time
involved 4% less in church
began attending again
2% not sure
“It is important to shape young people’s beliefs, attitudes, habits and aspirations before they become parents.”
50%
b Science Beats Religion?
no influence
Suicide
Divorce
The death penalty
Stem cell research
Sex outside of marriage
Morally Wrong
Having a baby outside of marriage
Morally Acceptable
Abortion
Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey compiles a list of controversial issues of morality and determines how many fall on either side of the debates. It comes as no surprise that people were most divided over political hot-button subjects.
Gay and lesbian relations
The Modern Moral compass
Married men and women having an affair
—David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group
Doctor-assisted suicide
In a recent interview with Diane Sawyer, famed physicist Stephen Hawking talked about how he views the relationship between science and religion. He told Sawyer the question he’s most interested in answering is that of the origin of the universe and existence, but that “there is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.” Hawking also said he thinks God should be defined as “the embodiment of the laws of nature” and that a personal relationship with God seems impossible when confronted with the reality of humankind’s relative insignificance in relation to the scope of the universe.
5%
Pastor Pleas for … Alice Cooper | The rocker plays Mr. Nice Guy If Mark Wilkins was surprised to win Good Morning America’s “Living the Dream” contest, viewers were perhaps just as surprised by what the Methodist minister wished for. The Indiana native saw this as the perfect opportunity to realize his childhood dream of rocking out with his musical hero, Alice Cooper. When GMA contacted Cooper, the metal legend
THINK: Does this mark the end or the beginning for the Gospel Music Association? Somewhere, the guys from Stryper are trying to fit back into their leotards.
6
not only agreed to meet Wilkins but pulled him onstage, covered him in fake blood and even let him play a little bass. The gory scene proved to be one of the pastor’s fondest memories. “There’s going to be a lot of cold afternoons in my future when I’m just going to stop and smile all of a sudden, remembering this moment,” Wilkins said.
THINK: Chances that the spouses of those who voted in the 6 percent have no idea their spouse feels this way: 100 percent.
Spiritual, Minus the “Ritual”
it’s mine! it’s all mine!
New research shows who is keeping the Golden Rule Imagine you and a stranger are playing a game called Dictator. You are in the role of dictator, so you get to choose whether to keep or share the equivalent of one day’s wages with your opponent, whom you will never meet or speak to throughout the game. This tempting scenario was presented to 15 different people groups worldwide by a team of
psychologists, anthropologists and economists. Primitive communities of hunters and farmers were more likely to keep the prize, but places like rural Hamilton, Mo., were most generous, sharing an average of 45 percent. The goal of the game was to determine what makes a society fair-minded. While they believe some conscientious tendencies
are innate, studies found people who claim a world religion and live in an area with high market integration are more likely to be trusted and trusting. Participation in such large-scale systems also increases the odds of punishing selfishness. So basically, if you want to play for keeps, we hear the Serengeti is nice these days.
In a recent LifeWay survey, 72 percent of Millennials identified themselves as “spiritual,” but not “religious.” While some would say there is a slim difference, the practices of this young generation indicate apathy. Sixty-seven percent don’t read the Bible or other sacred texts, and 65 percent rarely or never pray with others. Though 65 percent claimed Christianity, half of them do not attend church regularly, 36 percent rarely read their Bible and only 40 percent felt a personal call to spread the Gospel. Yet despite this group’s lack of connection with a specific faith or church, they are as prone to prayer and belief in God as their elders were at this age.
“The Millennial generation will see churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships.” — Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources
Preparing for the Internet Crunch | Are we running out of cyberspace? Experts are predicting that by September 2011, the last of IP addresses will be assigned and the World Wide Web as we know it will come to an end. For the digitally illiterate, each device that connects to the Internet is identified by its own Internet Protocol address. Once the 4 billion available codes run out, new devices will be unable to access the Web, a disaster known as the
THINK: So what will become of all our church buildings? They’ll probably become dealerships for Smart cars.
“Internet crunch.” Before you start stocking up on canned goods, rest assured—there is a new system with trillions of addresses available. Businesses that provide content or create devices will need to adopt this technology within the next 18 months in order to escape the crunch. Have no fear, though—you’ll still be able to YouTube that smoking monkey.
THINK: Is this Y2K’s younger brother—you, know the one who was a “surprise” to Mommy and Daddy?
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Dear Steve … Apple CEO Steve Jobs keeps in touch with customers Next time you have an unexpected problem with your Apple products, think twice about sending any heated complaints. You just may receive some curt feedback from Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs recently made headlines when he took to email to put various consumers and select journalists in their place. The casual replies came during mixed media buzz over the iPad and the App Store, perhaps in an attempt to assure the public that the influential company is still accessible and customer-driven. Knowing Jobs’ reputation for setting trends, more leaders may be prompted to embrace informal contact with their sphere of influence. Though hopefully they won’t begin with, “Are you nuts?”
Supreme Court Could be Protestant-Free In May, President Obama nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace Justice John Paul Stevens upon his retirement. If confirmed, Kagan, who is Jewish, would round out the first Supreme Court to contain no Protestant members, but six Catholic and three Jewish. All are graduates of Harvard or Yale, law schools with a Protestant past that has been watered-down over time. In a nation where roughly half of citizens claim to be Protestant, the nomination could indicate a lack of qualified evangelical leaders in the legal realm, and presents some interesting questions about the separation of church and state.
Trent Sheppard Tony Campolo “Many people in a church don’t get the opportunity to exercise their gifts because the power is in the hands of the minister [who] wants to do everything and control everything. These kinds of practices are destroying us as Christians.”
“One of the great misunderstandings in church history is that the calling of a pastor is somehow more holy than a flight attendant or a plumber or a professor. We want to see those worlds merge, that there would be no divide between the sacred and the secular calls in our mind.”
“It sounds like you’re just looking for someone else to get mad at other than yourself.” — Steve Jobs, in an email to a customer
David Platt Gungor “We make the message so prevalent, we can forget the music is the message. We’ve forgotten how important beauty is, how important aesthetics are. Art is sacred within itself because it’s beauty coming into the world. It’s part of the Kingdom of God.”
“There are some ways we have unknowingly and blindly and subtly taken the Gospel and made it far more American than it is biblical, and in the process missed out on the true joy that is found in following Christ, as well as what it means to follow Him, the cost of following Him, the risk that’s involved in following Him.”
from the Neue Podcast Jonathan Acuff “Satire is humor with a purpose. My hope is to create a mirror for Christianity to look at and go, ‘Wow, that is whack,’ or: ‘Wow, that is beautiful. We need to do more of that.’”
The Neue Podcast is a weekly conversation with ministers and thinkers shaping the future of the Church. Subscribe at iTunes. Search keyword “Neue.”
DISCUSS: How can you make it clear to those you pastor that their “secular” jobs are sacred? How can you equip them to lead sacred lives within those jobs?
8
THINK: Cue pastors all over America replicating this idea for a day ... only to give the job to their assistants to forward to other pastors who are “less busy.”
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[How To…] … Find the Perfect Nonprofit Partner for Your Church 01
Determine Your Philosophy Empower someone from your church to develop an educated philosophy of service to the poor. Align with an organization that subscribes to the same philosophy.
02
Look for History and Results Partner with someone who has something to teach you. Look for organizations working outside your area of expertise, and a group that can point to how they are succeeding.
03
Don’t Make It About Your Church Fruitful, dignified service is not about how many people volunteer—it’s about long-term change in the lives of those you’re serving.
04
Don’t Diversify Your Portfolio Every church has attendees who will push an organization they believe in. Communicate to your people why you partner with specific groups and seek to build momentum around a few rather than many.
... Be More Productive |
Start by reading this
Stewardship is a Kingdom value, and we have a responsibility to God for our time and to our churches for our salaries. So, becoming more productive is one of the most valuable assets you can bring to your team. Start each week knowing what must get done. This will help you prioritize what can and cannot wait. Clean up communication. Schedule time each day to do large quantities of email and return phone calls. Doing this randomly will slow you down. Know your most productive time of day. Whether you do better work in the morning or late at night, work accordingly. Identify where you’re procrastinating. Over time, you need to know why you procrastinate on some tasks so you can eliminate those aspects of your work ethic.
... Lead an Effective Staff Meeting | Making the most of your time—and that of your team Have Fewer
Know the Purpose
Tell Stories
Be Discerning
Most people who enjoy staff meetings are either leading them or they’re new to the organization. Everyone else has work to do. If you’re leading these meetings, ensure there’s a pressing reason to gather—one everyone is feeling.
Some staff meetings are administrative and operational, while others are visionary. Get everyone on the same page about what you’re gathering to accomplish. Both the leader and attendee need to know the goal of the meeting prior to it.
Every meeting needs to be centered around the people and the mission of your church. Empowering every person and encouraging people to tell stories of their ministries is the strongest way to remind yourselves why your meeting matters.
Use relational intelligence to discern conflict and synergy. Be aware of how people are perceiving one another, who is holding back and if there’s unity around goals. Don’t be so focused on the agenda that you overlook your team.
ACT: For one example of an effective approach to service, check out our article on community development on page 24.
10
ACT: The next time you don’t have pressing issues to discuss, take your team to a movie. Get out of the office and use your meeting time to remind people why you enjoy working together.
... Handle a Financial Crisis Be upfront and honest with your church community about the church’s financial state. Repent for any mishandling of money you’ve done, both to God and to your team.
… Read for More Retention | Has your church gotten its money’s worth out of your books? Most pastors spend hundreds and often thousands of dollars on books and resources. This can be a valuable investment, but only if you remember what you read and actually put it to good use. The financial investment a church makes in your education needs to be reflected beyond the aesthetic of a packed bookshelf. Here are a few tips for remembering what you read:
04 01
03
Always read with a pen and paper.
Make your own “CliffsNotes” version.
Whether you choose to write in the margins of the book or in a journal, write down your questions and ideas. At the end of each chapter, continue to write in your book or journal what you were challenged by.
02 Talk to people about what you’re learning. Inviting people to walk with you on a journey of ideas is a powerful experience. Conversation will drive home quality content into your memory.
Write a to-do list.
Once you’ve finished your book, compile all of the big ideas and thoughts you had while reading it. Instead of having to dig through the book in the future, you can just pick up the journal you’ve created.
Identify the conversations, meetings and prayer time you want to have as a result of what you’ve read. Make note of what you can do now and what can be done later. Knowing when to execute good ideas is as important as the ideas themselves. Now put those action items in your calendar.
Put together a financial crisis team. The team that manages money in times of “plenty” may not be the team you need to manage your money in times of “famine.” Before you make cuts to all salaries or execute layoffs, offer paid staff the opportunity to pray about how much they’d be willing to cut their own salary for the next six months. Outside of building and staff costs, cut all operational expenses for three months as a way of discerning frivolous spending. Don’t just patch the hole in the boat. Identify what your church needs to thrive rather than just survive in the next 12-24 months, including how much giving needs to increase, the amount of debt that must be paid down and how much you’d like to have in savings. Create a vision for your church’s financial future that includes a more substantial commitment to living generously in your city and around the world.
… ReceIve someone’s confession Though receiving someone’s confession is typically something done by our Catholic friends, every pastor from every denominational and non-denominational stream does their fair share of this—if in a more informal setting. Though it’s far easier to offer quick solutions to fix patterns of behavior, begin with empathy. Listen closely. Avoid the desire to always have a solution. Open up about your own sin nature.
DISCUSS: Think of the last five books you purchased with your church budget money. What value have those books added to your church as a result of what you changed or implemented after reading them?
Help people recognize their need to choose another way of life, but also help them recognize change can be a process. Identify next steps and people they can go to for more counsel. Do everything you can to stay in touch. Whether it’s you or someone else, follow up with them to see how their journey of freedom is going. Confession may be triggered by conviction, but its best friend is accountability.
DISCUSS: This is often difficult for leaders to do because they don’t want to lose their team’s trust. Ironically, though, admitting your mistakes is one of the strongest ways to build trust with those you need it from most.
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Info
[How To…] ... Preach at a Funeral Officiating at a funeral is one of a pastor’s heaviest experiences, and many are not prepared for it. Determining how to pastor grieving communities through a meaningful message is essential.
What To Do
What Not To Do
Collaborate. Ask fellow pastors to think about what they would say at the kind of funeral you’ve been asked to speak at. Meet with the family and use their stories and memories throughout your message.
Don’t overemphasize an evangelism message.
Craft the message for the specific audience. Talk to the family about the people who will be at the funeral and how they are processing the person’s death. Develop your talk based on how people are responding to this painful experience. Share the workload. Because you’re giving time and energy to this additional role, give some of your day-today tasks to other team members. Whether it’s teaching responsibilities or meetings, identify people who can help carry some of your weekly duties.
Proselytizing at a funeral feels manipulative. Talk about the person’s faith and Jesus’ influence on his or her life, but be careful not to abuse the situation. Don’t use one typical funeral message. Though these events happen on short notice, give yourself space to prepare a unique, authentic talk. Find a new way that empathizes honestly but still offers comfort and hope. Don’t give a talk longer than 20 minutes. People haven’t gathered to hear you speak. They have gathered to remember, mourn and celebrate someone’s life. Facilitate an experience that honors both the Creator and His creation.
... Officiate a wedding Determine your wedding philosophy. Decide whether you’ll marry anyone, or only those who do premarital counseling, or only those you’re in relationship with, etc. You need to have a clear idea of what you want the process of preparation to be before someone stands at the altar with you. Give the couple your creativity. Most couples don’t know some of the ceremonial experiences that can enhance the spiritual moment of matrimony—such as communion or corporate worship. Discover the kind of wedding they want and give the couple options for how they can symbolically
communicate their covenant. Preach a real message. Share what moves you and inspires you when it comes to God’s dream for marriages. Be honest about the challenge the couple is facing. Teach from a perspective that doesn’t feel routine and typical. People crave hope when it comes to marriage and you are the voice of that—show people why they should still believe in marriage. Inspire others. Couples in attendance often reminisce about their own weddings and are reminded of the significance of their relationship. Lean into these feelings and help people embrace them.
“Healthy marriages bring life and hope into the world, challenging the despair and cynicism of our day. … We must see marriages as a city on a hill, the light in the dark of which Jesus spoke.” —Chad Karger
THINK: If this is our hope for marriages, then the marriage ceremonies we officiate need to reflect this value as well.
12
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2010 Young Adult Conference
December 28–31 Kansas City Convention Center
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church
Trade as One
A Look at Unique Types of Community
Fremont, CA Sometimes missions can take on untraditional forms—like Nathan George’s unique vision for Trade as One, a fair trade online retailer. About six years ago, George fused his experiences as a missionary’s kid and a business developer. “I was completely captivated by this notion that I don’t have to go cutting down the jungle and preaching to people to do missions.”
g Trade as One Metal workers in India create fair trade products for Trade as One.
“The absence of work, particularly among the poorest of the poor, is a missions issue.”
a Soul City Church The Soul City Church team meets for study and planning.
—Nathan George
soul city Church Chicago, IL Chicagoland is home to “da Bears,” Oprah and nearly 3 million people. Now, it’s also home to Soul City Church—a new church plant near Humboldt Park on the west side of Chicago. Founded and co-pastored by husband and wife, Jarrett and Jeanne Stevens, Soul City is centered on the transformational love found in Christ. “We believe through the power of the Gospel, God changes every element of our lives. We want to join God in His transformational love of the soul, in the city, so we can change the world,” Jeanne says. The Stevens are not new to the Chicago area—having both worked on staff at Willow Creek Community Church—and are moving back after living in Atlanta and serving at North Point Church.
The couple chose to return to the Windy City for several reasons—including its people. “Chicago is unique in that it has all the grit, grime and glory of a major metropolitan city, yet is set within the cordial context of the Midwest,” Jeanne says. “This creates a very driven yet open culture. One where most people in the city may not attend church but are not closed to the idea and importance of the role of church personally and culturally.” The Stevens and their team plan to focus on transformation, unique “moments that lead to movement” and an awareness that church needs to be seven days a week—and not just about a physical building. “Far too many people describe church as a service they attend or a building they visit,” Jeanne says.
“We long for the church to have an incarnational impact on our community every day of the week. Our hope is that the city rejoices over our presence and partnership in bringing renewal and restoration.” Soul City Church’s mission of sharing the transformational love of Christ has, in turn, transformed its founders. “I jokingly told a friend the other day that starting this church has actually turned me into a real follower of Jesus,” Jeanne says. “I have faith in Jesus because I have no other option. I trust God for everything because I do not have all the answers. I am actually enjoying the sacrifice because I look back on how much I lived from a place of safety and comfort, and I don’t ever want to return.”
ACT: You can follow Jeanne and Jarrett Stevens’ church planting journey via Twitter @jeannemstevens and @jarrettstevens.
14
The fair trade movement is gaining momentum by helping the impoverished produce, market and sell their goods and services. Trade as One has adopted this ethical business model, attempting to bring about change while making a profit. “I often talk about there being two crises: one is the crisis brought about by extreme poverty, and the other crisis is brought about by the absence of meaning,” George says. “Fair trade can work in both of those worlds to restore meaning to our vacuous consumption, and to also create jobs for the most marginalized people in the world.” George believes the Church should engage fair trade more, as it is an expression of the values foundational to our faith: “The absence of work, particularly among the poorest of the poor, is a missions issue.” For Trade as One, George developed symbiotic relationships with worthy organizations around the world that now drive the company. Producers come from three groups: women rescued from sex trafficking or abuse, those living with HIV/AIDS and people living on less than $1 a day. Each producer must have a fair trade certification, produce highquality products and provide evidence of having exported for the last couple of years. Roughly half of each dollar supports their partners around the world, a typical retail margin. To become a conscientious consumer, George says, one must be conscious of financial choices. “Rather than rational self-interest being the basis upon which your microeconomical decisions were made, start to say, ‘What if the golden rule was the basis for our microeconomic decisions?’”
ACT: Check out Trade as One’s video series to find out more about what they do: TradeAsOne.com.
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IS THE CHURCH RESPONSIBLE TO FIND PEOPLE FRIENDS? TONY MORGAN
Growing up, I had friends who I liked being with. In elementary school, it was Mitch, who shared my passion for sports. When I was in middle school, I hung out with my basketball team. In high school, I dated Emily, who is now my wife. When I was in college, it was the guys in my dorm. After college, I built friendships with people I either worked with or volunteered with. And later, my friends were the people on my staff team. I’m sharing these life snippets to prove I’m capable of making friends without the church’s help. Because of that, I’ve always been intrigued by the church’s apparent need to organize friendships. In every other area of our lives, we find friends just fine. But when it comes to church, we think the church needs to find us a friend. Churches organize Sunday school classes, small groups and various ministries. We create events and gatherings to help Christians meet fellow Christians. In the end, people eat, sleep, parent, work and meet with other Christians multiple times each week. That becomes the model for living out our faith, but we’ve unintentionally made people reliant on the church for putting them in relationships and for “growing them” in their faith. We’ve also pulled people into relationships with other Christians at the expense of their friends who need Jesus. Isn’t it odd? Most people are very capable of finding friends outside the church. If the church created the right framework for relationships to happen, would people find their own friends? If we create the right environments, will people take that step on their own? What would happen if we put less attention on organizing relationships and more attention on something people will organize around? For example, what if we focused on serving opportunities? Would people naturally gather around those initiatives to serve others? What if we focused on the content we were generating to help people better understand the Bible and its life-application? Would people naturally organize around that content for conversations together?
And what if we embraced social networking to encourage people to find their own friends … like they’re already doing? Would people initiate their own relational connections? I’m not recommending churches completely eliminate small groups. There are times when small groups can provide a healthy environment for spiritual growth, particularly for new believers. And there are instances when people gather around a topic for growth or support in a particular season of life. Generally speaking, Christ-followers (and therefore churches) may be healthier if people were connected in serving roles rather than in small groups. People would still get into relationships with other believers, but it would be in the context of serving others. People would have a built-in affinity by serving on the same team with other believers who share their gifts and passions. Additionally, serving groups would provide a natural leadership and accountability structure since most churches already have the leadership structure to support serving teams. Finally, they offer a place for people who are more mature in their faith to encourage others. The push-back is that, for many churches, small groups are the primary way churches care for their people. When tragedy strikes or challenges arise, the small group is the first place people turn to for support. However, I’ve seen the same thing happen with serving teams. If ministry teams are effective in both carrying out tasks and building relationships, then those teammates will be the first to respond.
DISCUSS: Can you think of any other organization you’d join and expect them to be responsible for making sure you meet people and find friends?
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Another argument for small groups is that they’re a critical environment for helping people study the Bible. This could be true for new believers. Generally speaking, though, people tend to rely on Sunday’s teaching when they really need encouragement and training to study the Bible on their own. Then, beyond that, people should implement the principles they’re reading about in Scripture. Rather than just absorbing knowledge, people need to be impacting the lives of others. Part of that may be in serving and part of that may be in discipling other believers. That means the church must be intentional about helping people fulfill the Great Commission. Rather than the church organizing people into discipleship relationships, people need to embrace their calling to disciple other believers. Whether it’s encouraging people to move into serving roles or discipling other believers, it’s our calling as pastors and teachers. Paul said, “our responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12, NLT). What if we focused more on equipping people to fulfill that purpose? We must decentralize the way people connect relationally while keeping the Gospel and a biblical leadership structure central to how we organize as churches. When people have the freedom to gather in community without relying on the church to place them, that’s when the Gospel will spread like a virus. When people can focus less on the church serving them and more on being the Church, then transformation will take place. It’s clear God designed us for community. We need the encouragement, accountability and support of other people in our lives. We need to share life with others. The question isn’t whether we need community—it’s whether the church needs to help people find community.
Tony Morgan
is a strategist and coach for the local church. You can find him online at TonyMorganLive.com or on Twitter @tonymorganlive.
THINK: Maybe we’d be better off thinking of serving groups and small groups as the same entity altogether rather than two separate ideas.
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Your Story must be told Shauna niequist When my friend Doug told me the pattern of death and rebirth is the central metaphor of the Christian life, he was giving me the currency he earned through his own brokenness. He was telling me something God had written on his life as a part of his story. The reason I didn’t understand it at that point was because I didn’t need to, but then several years later, I did. You tell what you know, what you’ve earned, what you’ve learned the hard way. You watch it fall on what seem to be deaf ears, and you mutter something under your breath, something about pearls before swine. But then 10 years later, you realize one fragment of your story has now been woven into someone else’s, a very necessary thing, a bridge to a new way of understanding and living. I didn’t need proof from a theologian or a tip from a church practitioner. I needed a piece of a story, something real and full of life and blood and breath and heartache, something way more than an idea, something that someone had lived through, a piece of wisdom earned the hard way. That’s why telling our stories is so important. There are two myths we tend to believe about our stories: the first is that they’re about us, and the second is that because they’re about us, they don’t matter. But they’re not only about us, and they matter more than ever right now. When we, any of us who have been transformed by Christ, tell our own stories, we’re telling the story of who God is. Preaching is important, certainly. But it can’t be the only way we allow God’s story to be told in our midst. I’m less and less interested in the ruminations of a scholar and more and more compelled by stories with grit and texture and blood and guts and humanity. I’m compelled by stories from everyday people whose lives sound a lot more like mine than the stories of superstars and high achievers. I’m compelled by stories that are ugly at the beginning and then oddly beautiful, stories from around the world, stories that laugh in the faces of gender and racial and socioeconomic boundaries.
I’m not interested in talking heads discussing war and poverty from behind a desk or from behind a pulpit. I want someone to look me in the eye and tell me they’re scared too, sometimes, about the mess we’ve made around the world and the violence both around us and within us. And then I want that person to invite me down on my knees right next to them, shoulders brushing, listening to one another breathing in and breathing out. The biggest, most beautiful story in the world deserves better than to be told by the same voices over and over again. The story really is actually being told through our little stories, and by sharing our lives, not just our sermons, we’re telling God’s story in as reverent and divine ways as it has ever been told. When I worked at a church a few years ago, it was my job to help people tell their stories on Sunday mornings at our gatherings. And a funny thing happened. When we were at the coffee shop, when it was just me and them and their story, their story came out in fits and starts, unvarnished and raw. We cried and laughed, and every time I was amazed at what God had done in this person’s life. And then almost every time, when they arrived on Sunday, they looked a little less like themselves. They were kind of a distant, polished, fancy version of themselves, and more remarkably, when they walked up on that stage, they sounded a lot less like themselves. They stopped believing their story was enough, and they started saying all the phrases and quoting all the verses we’ve all heard a thousand times, turning them from sacred songs into platitudes and cliches. They did it because we as a community have trained them and have been trained ourselves to believe a story isn’t enough.
THINK: The Scriptures reflect the raw and unedited characteristics of humanity, and yet somehow those same characteristics have become largely absent in the Church. Why have we made church a reflection of Christian radio—“safe for the little ears”?
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I could not disagree more. Let’s resist the temptation to hide behind theology the way a bad professor hides behind theorems and formulas. We dilute the beauty of the Gospel story when we divorce it from our lives, our worlds, the words and images God is writing right now on our souls. And let’s stop acting as if religious professionals are the only ones who have a right and a responsibility to tell God’s story. If you are a person of faith, it is your responsibility to tell God’s story, in every way you can, every form, every medium, every moment. Tell the stories of love and redemption and forgiveness every time you experience them. Tell the stories of reconciliation and surprise and new life wherever you find them. My life is not a story about me. And your life’s not a story about you. My life is a story about who God is and what He does in a human heart. There’s nothing small or inconsequential about our stories. There is, in fact, nothing bigger. And when we tell the truth about our lives—the broken parts, the secret parts, the beautiful parts—then the Gospel comes to life, an actual story about redemption, instead of abstraction and theory and things you learn in Sunday school. If I could ask you to do just one thing, it’s this: consider that your own silence may be a part of the problem. If you want your community to be marked by radical honesty, by risky, terrifying, ultimately redemptive truth-telling, you must start telling your truth first. If we allow the Gospel to be told only on Sundays, only in sanctuaries, that life-changing story will lose its ability to change lives. When Christ walked among us, He entrusted the Gospel to regular people—not religious professionals. If you have been transformed by the grace of God, then you have within you all you need to write your manifesto, your poem, your song, your battle cry, your love letter to a beautiful and broken world.
Shauna Niequist
is an author and speaker. She has written Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet (Zondervan © 2010), from which this is adapted. Used with permission.
ACT: Meet with your team to discuss how you can retrain your church community and redefine their expectations of contribution, specifically at weekend worship gatherings.
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conversation themselves. But our culture teaches us to think about ourselves in units of one, not anything bigger than ourselves.
Bill McKibben
A Sunday school teacher and one of the foremost writers on environmental issues, Bill McKibben looks at how we can live more responsibly on a planet that is becoming unbalanced.
BY DEAN NELSON
In your first book, The End of Nature, you said things 20 years ago about climate change that no one else seemed to be saying. Is it gratifying that people are finally paying attention to this? It would have been nice had it happened more quickly. I wrote that when I was 27. And, contrary to what I thought would happen, it didn’t change the trajectory of the world’s economic system! Your book The Age of Missing Information chronicled your experiment to watch 24 hours of cable television in your city—all 100 channels, so 2,400 hours of TV. What did that teach you? The most powerful message that came through the television all the time, and it’s the message of a consumer society, is that: “You’re the most important thing on earth. You’re the center of the universe.” We’ve come to describe this idea as human nature. But throughout most of human history, other things have been at the center of peoples’ lives. The relationship with nature, with God, the tribe, has been how people defined
You’ve been accused of being a doom and gloom guy about the environment. The claims of environmental damage are a hoax, according to critics. Who is right? Most Americans are clear that climate change is real. The overwhelming majority of those around the world think so, too. The fossil fuel industry is the single most profitable industry on the planet. Exxon Mobil made more money last year—$40 billion—than any company in the history of money. There are at least 40 billion reasons for them to resist why we need to get off of our dependence on fossil fuel.
Why did you decide to go from being a journalist to being an activist? I saw that writing by itself wasn’t changing things that much. When I was in Bangladesh I got dengue fever, which is a mosquito-borne disease that is up 200 percent in Asia and South America because mosquitoes like the warm, wet world we’re building for them. I got sick and went to the hospital, and thought it was unbelievably unfair that these people were suffering because of how countries like the U.S. were changing the climate. The 4 percent of the world’s population, which is the U.S., produces 25 percent of the world’s CO2, which is making the planet warmer, raising the water level, melting the glaciers. That made it harder to shut up and easier to do something beyond writing and speaking. Out of that drive came your organization, 350. What have you learned about leading people and rallying around a cause? There wasn’t any movement about climate change. There was Al Gore, and scientists and economists, but nothing that gave it any heft or power. So, with trial and error, I tried to organize something. We went on a long walk from Robert
DISCUSS: What activities in your life tell you you’re at the center? What activities remind you that you’re small—only a small part of a larger story?
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Frost’s cabin in the Green Mountains and walked for five days, slept in farm fields, had Methodists provide potlucks, and by the time we got to Burlington we had 1,000 people. Politicians met us there and signed a declaration to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. It was the largest demonstration against climate change in the U.S. That was 2006. We tried to organize more events and had 1,400 rallies simultaneously in the U.S. But later that year, the Arctic began to rapidly melt and showed our target was out of date and we’d need to organize around the world. What is the significance of the number 350? And what’s the plan from here? Three hundred and fifty is the number of parts per million of CO2 where, if the number is higher than that, it’s not compatible with the planet’s ability to sustain life. We’re already past that now, which is why the Arctic is melting, why Australia is on fire. We need to get the world’s number under 350. We recently had 5,200 demonstrations simultaneously in 181 countries, the most widespread day of political action in history. One hundred and seventeen nations endorsed the target—a true citizen effort. On October 10, 2010, we’re having a global work party. Not because we’re going to solve the problem one project at a time, but it’s a chance to say to our leaders, “If we can get on the roof of a school and put in a solar panel, why can’t you get up on the floor of the Senate and do the work you’re paid to do, which is to pass legislation about important things?” That’s the message we have to get across.
Eaarth Bill McKibben Times Books
The End of Nature Bill McKibben Random House
In Eaarth, McKibben writes that our planet is forever changed. He contends that this isn’t just our children’s and our grandchildren’s problem—it’s our problem now.
First published in 1989, The End of Nature is considered the first consumer book on global warming. McKibben urges a philosophical shift in how we relate to nature.
THINK: Did you know Australia was on fire? We didn’t either. Better call Joel Houston and tell him.
I know all the reasons for not getting “sidetracked” by the abortion issue. I used them myself for many years. Like the priest and the Levite, I had plenty of justification for passing my unborn neighbors by on the other side of the street. But I was wrong. Abort73 exists to demonstrate that abortion is not primarily about politics. It’s about people. Every day in the U.S., mor e than 3,000 o f the most in n ocent and helpless members of the human comm unity are vio lently destroyed by abortion. Don’t let ano ther day go b y without cons idering their plight. And don’t let another day g o by without gett ing involved . Michael Spie lman Founder/Dir ector of Abor t73.com ATTN : MIN ISTRY Get a LEAD free A ERS! bort7 copy 3 shir of “A Biblic t Some al Ma , poster, o thing r n d A a you r egiste bout Abor te to Do tion” r at: when Abort 73
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Stewarding your influence how to act when you’re the most powerful person in the room by Richard Stearns
I’ve been a CEO since age 33—more than 26 years. That means I’ve had to get used to the phenomenon of being “the most powerful person in the room,” in a manner of speaking. At first, I didn’t think of myself as “that person.” At 33, most of the people reporting to me were in their 50s; I thought of them as being more knowledgeable and experienced than me. I underestimated the impact my presence and my title had on others because I didn’t think of myself as being all that important or powerful. But over the years, I have come to understand the power of one’s title, position and reputation profoundly distorts the dynamic of every relational encounter—and not always in a good way. Let me explain. World Vision’s head of human resources often comes to me with personnel issues—problems
with certain employees who may be challenging as leaders or managers, difficult to collaborate with or even downright abusive to their staff and co-workers. I often express shock, and say: “You’re kidding. I can’t believe that. Fred is always nice to me and I’ve never seen that behavior from him.” She will then give me that knowing look and reply: “Duh! Fred’s on his best behavior with the CEO. Of course he’s going to be nice to you. It’s what happens when you’re not in the room that’s the problem.” She’s right. The CEO—or the vice president, department leader, whoever is the most powerful person in the room—will tend to see things
through rose-colored glasses, not realizing that to some degree, most people will change their typical behavior in the leader’s presence. The powerful person can have the effect of “sucking all the air out of the room.” And even though a leader may think he or she is the world’s most benevolent and approachable individual, their title alone will affect the dynamic in the room. Now, this actually can be quite pleasant. I’ve noticed people always listen to what I have to say with keen and earnest faces. They nod their heads at every one of my ideas and assertions; they always laugh at my jokes. Even my own kids have seen through this, telling me: “Dad, of course
THINK: One of the most difficult skills to develop as a leader is the discernment to know what happens with personnel and strategy outside your office door. Are you confident you really know what’s going on beneath the surface of your ministry?
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they laugh at your jokes—they’re paid to. But you’re not that funny.” So what relevance does this have for leaders— not just CEOs or senior staff in an organization or a church, but for anyone who sometimes finds themselves the most powerful person in the room? In the office, all of this has the potential to create an unhealthy and even dangerous level of self-confidence. Leaders can easily become that character from the children’s fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes. The severity of the problem grows in direct correlation with the level of an individual’s power and influence. It is a phenomenon everyone experiences at one time or another, and to one degree or another. And it can affect communication and decision making in detrimental ways: • People will tend to agree with leaders even when they are wrong. • Criticisms, even though spoken mildly, will sound like deafening condemnations. • Praises will be received like bouquets of beautiful flowers. • Staff will be reluctant to speak their mind openly because they will fear being embarrassed, or being perceived as a “kiss-up.” • People will overreact to a leader’s suggestions—sometimes running off to invest hours following up on something mentioned merely in passing. • All the political dynamics in the room can shift, based on the hierarchy of those present in relation to the leader. • The best ideas may never get articulated. • Decisions will be made without full and open vetting and challenge. • Leaders may come away from the meeting feeling much more confident than they should. They may have distorted views of the situation–effectively walking out of the meeting “wearing no clothes.” And everyone but the leader knows. Reflecting on these realities will enable a leader to grasp how crippling this can be to his or her effectiveness. It will result in bad advice, bad decisions and often intimidated employees whose gifts and creativity will never be realized. Over the
years, I’ve learned some strategies that help me overcome this challenge:
Create a culture of “permission” I constantly strive to give people the space and permission to speak the truth without negative consequences. Make “speaking the truth” a cultural imperative and an organizational value. Explain— and model—that the only thing employees will get blamed for is failing to speak their minds openly and clearly.
Leaders who ask the right questions and trust others will find answers that strengthen their decisions and recommendations. Cut the tension I have found that putting people at ease may be one of the most important things a leader can do. Start a meeting by sharing something personal, or asking someone in the room something about their personal lives: “Hey, how was your vacation last week?” Or, “You guys have to hear about the dumb thing I did last night at my kid’s little league game.” Using personal stories and humor can put people at ease and set the stage for communicating as equals. Talk about the most powerful person in the room? In my first meeting with President Obama as a member of a White House council, he put all of us at ease by telling a story about how his wife, Michelle, had to get up an hour earlier than he did every day because she needed to do her hair and makeup, but that he had no hair to “do.” We all immediately felt at ease.
“Conduct” meetings I try to lead meetings like an orchestra conductor, recognizing the unique contributions of each person in the room and seeking to bring the best out of each one by asking for their opinions and ideas, affirming them openly and listening carefully to what they say. Isn’t it true God has gifted each person in amazing ways? Leaders must not come
into the meeting determined to “play all of the instruments” themselves while others sit around and listen. It results in really bad music—and really bad decisions.
Ask the right questions Instead of always dictating the answers, ask the right questions. Nothing is more demoralizing than a leader who always tells you what to do and how to do it. Nobody really likes “the smartest kid in the class.” Jesus almost always responded to His followers and critics by asking the right questions, not dictating answers. Leaders who ask the right questions and trust others will find answers that strengthen their decisions and recommendations.
Surround yourself with Nathans Too many leaders surround themselves with people who agree with every word that comes forth from their mouths. Instead of telling the truth to the leader, these people pat him or her on the back and affirm every idea and suggestion, regardless of how lame that idea may be. Nothing hobbles a leader and an organization more than a leader who “believes his/her own press clippings” because there is no one close to him or her empowered to challenge or point out shortcomings. King David was a great but flawed leader. And when he sinned with Bathsheba, his close advisor, Nathan, had the courage to point out his sin and led David to repent before God. Ultimately, this restored David’s effectiveness as a leader. Each of us is sometimes the most powerful person in the room, and with that comes the responsibility to use power and influence in positive ways. When we recognize how our presence alters the dynamic in meetings and relationships, we can use that “power” for the greater good for our organizations and, ultimately, God’s Kingdom.
Richard Stearns is the president and CEO of the U.S. offices of World Vision, the international Christian humanitarian organization. His first book, The Hole in Our Gospel, was named “Christian Book of the Year” for 2010.
THINK: Every leader needs a prophet—someone who can speak the truth without fear of what the leader will say or do in reply. Who is your prophet?
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a better Social Justice
Is Community development the right way for your church to serve locally?
by brandon oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;brien
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At a ministry conference a little more than a year ago, I noticed for the first time a major emphasis on social justice— something I hadn’t seen in that context before, or at least not to the degree I was seeing it here. The events of the weekend were laced with an awareness that we, as Christians, should be doing something about systemic injustice, both at home and abroad. There were breakout sessions dedicated to justice ministries in the local church, fairly traded coffee served between plenary sessions and a panel to discuss the Church’s role in ending the new global slave trade. And yet there was a hint of trendiness to our conversations, as if we knew we should be talking about them but didn’t know exactly what to say—much less what to do—about these issues. That seems to be a trend in many churches: We want to help, but we’re really afraid of messing it up. So we often either give up and hope no one notices, or we just continue with what we’ve “always done” without giving much thought to it. The challenge is to find a sustainable way to “act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with ... God” (Micah 6:8, NIV). How can we be sure what we’re doing is really helping people— and not just making us feel good for addressing justice issues? The good news is there are some existing ways to “do” social justice that are both helpful and sustainable. One approach gaining traction among those in local urban justice ministry is Christian community development.
What is Christian community development?
The philosophy known today as Christian community development was first formulated by John Perkins, a Mississippi native who returned to his home state from California in 1960 to help combat poverty and social injustice. At its most basic, community development is a process by which people or organizations work to revitalize depressed or deteriorating urban neighborhoods by encouraging economic growth, improving education and otherwise elevating the quality of life in the community. Perkins’ original philosophy had three central components: relocation (concerned persons moving into needy neighborhoods), reconciliation (working to restore relationships between people and God and between people of different socioeconomic classes) and redistribution (ensuring resources are available to people regardless of race and class). It is helpful to think of Christian community development in contrast to what have become the traditional means by which churches typically serve the under-resourced. Development
THINK: Figuring out what you need to do is far easier than figuring out how you need to do it.
efforts differ significantly from what might be called betterment, relief or compassion ministries. Compassion ministries include soup kitchens, food pantries, clothes closets where clothing is distributed free of charge or toy drive programs that provide free gifts for children around the holidays. These efforts meet genuine needs—the hungry are fed, the cold are clothed and poor children get to open presents on Christmas morning. There is certainly scriptural warrant for compassion ministries. Jesus tells His disciples in the final judgment that He will say to His faithful followers, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink … I needed clothes and you clothed me” and so on (Matthew 25:35-36). By and large, Christians have interpreted this passage as an instruction to care for “the least of these” simply by meeting their basic needs for food, water and shelter free of charge. As well-intentioned as this traditional approach is, Robert Lupton fears it actually does more harm than good. Lupton, a long-time proponent of community development, author of Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life and president of FCS Urban Ministries, believes that rather than work lasting change in impoverished communities, these programs create dependency and foster distrust between givers and recipients. “What typically happens,” Lupton explains, “is that a church sets up a betterment program for people outside the church. The whole basis of the relationship is to establish guidelines that keep people from abusing the ministry. Recipients are usually given a set of rules that limit the amount or frequency of aid.” The major problem with this approach, Lupton argues, is that instead of fostering trust, it encourages half-truth and deceit. “In practice, it works out as the opposite of community.”
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“if you give [a] coat away, there is no economic benefit to the community at all. we have to think about development at every step.” —robert Lupton
Back to the Bible
Lupton looks further back in the Bible for the foundations of community development. “In the Old Testament, gleaning was one of the major ways the poor were cared for,” he says. Consider Leviticus 19:9-10: “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God.” This Old Testament passage hints at two of the primary goals of development ministries. The first is promoting human dignity. The Law does not command that landowners harvest all of the crops and then distribute the excess to the
ACT: If you want to know more about community development, this is the book to read.
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to become givers? Will this initiative eventually become economically viable? The economic aspect of the initiative is important. Compassion ministries that give aid for free can have a negative economic impact. A one-time gift is terminal; once it is given, the benefit ends. Providing goods and services through economic systems, on the other hand, can stimulate the local economy. Consider this example from Lupton: Your church decides that instead of giving out clothes or toys for free during the holidays, you are going to operate a Christmas store where needy members of the community can buy donated items at low prices. A coat is sold to a community member for $5. That $5 goes into the cash register and comes out in the paycheck of someone working in the store, who takes that $5 to a daycare center the church is operating. That $5 once again comes out in the paycheck of a community member working in the daycare, who takes it to a health clinic the church is supporting. That $5 comes out in the paycheck of a nurse living in the community. And so on. “Every time it changes hands, that $5 adds just a little bit of economic life,” Lupton explains. “If you give that coat away, there is no economic benefit to the community at all. We have to think about development at every step.”
THE GLOBAL EFFECTS OF LOCAL DEVELOPMENT While focused primarily at the local level, community development can have implications on how we approach global ministries and aid as well. One example being microfinance programs in other countries, which encourage and empower citizens to start their own businesses.
poor. Instead, it invites those who did not plant to participate in the harvest nonetheless. It provides a means by which the underprivileged can improve their own situation without depending on a handout. Simple giving puts the giver in a position of power and the recipient in a position of unhealthy dependency, eroding human dignity. Allowing people to work, on the other hand, restores human dignity. A second concern is economic stimulation. Allowing the poor to collect crops at the margins of the field invites them to participate, however modestly, within the local economy. Allowing them to work makes them part of the system. In a similar way, Lupton encourages churches to find ways to ensure their justice initiatives invite those who are being served to participate in the local economy. In the local church, for example, this might mean replacing the food pantry program with a co-op program. “A co-op allows the poor to maximize the amount of food they can buy with their few dollars,” Lupton says, “but it allows them to contribute financially.” The difference between betterment ministries and development ministries has primarily to do with the process by which they are carried out. “I’m not suggesting that we don’t give,” Lupton insists. “I’m talking about moving away from oneway giving, so the process is dignity-enhancing.” Making this transition, then, requires asking an additional set of questions. Typically we might ask, What are the needs in my area and how can I meet them? Then we set programs in place that address those needs. Lupton recommends asking the following questions as well: Does our initiative enable people to become self-sufficient? Does it increase a sense of community, which is, by definition, trust-based? Does it empower recipients
DISCUSS: What does your church give away for free and why?
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Bridging the gap
Some proponents of community development draw a clear line between betterment and development ministries, while others work to find a meeting place. Phil Hissom, executive director of the Polis Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving overall community health by training others, does not see the two approaches as working at cross purposes. In fact, his mission—the mission of the Polis Institute—is to try to bridge them, to help churches turn their traditional compassion ministries into development efforts. Hissom is a fourth-generation urban missionary whose parents and grandparents were involved in more traditional compassion ministries. Hissom saw firsthand the damage this sort of ministry can do to both the ministry families providing aid and the people receiving it. “It was a never-ending treadmill of folks coming through,” he says. “The needs really never end. And that takes a toll on a ministry family.” According to Hissom, traditional compassion ministries result in two types of people: the burned out and the left out. It is usually the givers who become burned out. “People will let you do as much as you’re willing to do,” Hissom says. Over time, givers can become weary of helping and incapable of accepting help from others. At the same time, recipients can be left out. They keep receiving aid, but they are not invited to give. They become dependent on aid and convinced they do not have talents to contribute. To avoid either extreme, Hissom promotes ministry that works toward “dignified interdependence” between givers and recipients. The goal is not to make recipients self-sufficient, for, in Hissom’s words, “only God is self-sufficient.” Rather, the goal
THINK: This is what sets Christian community development apart from community development. Our theology shapes our ecclesiology.
is partnership, reciprocal service, with a godly purpose. This includes, first, getting the recipients of aid involved in the giving of aid. Hissom’s ideal is the 50/50 rule: for any given justice effort, 50 percent of the volunteers should be church members and the other 50 percent members of the community receiving the benefit. In November 2009, Hissom helped Summit Church of Orlando, Fla., rethink ways to move their Thanksgiving outreach in the direction of development ministry. The year before, the church hosted a canned food drive to support a local food pantry. This time, they invited needy families from a neighborhood near the church to partner with more affluent church members to help prepare baskets of canned foods appropriate to Thanksgiving dinner and deliver them to area people in need. A little more than 100 people participated— around 50 church members and 50 community members. The first time through the line, recipient families prepared a basket for themselves. Then they were encouraged to go through a second and third time to prepare baskets for neighbors they knew to be in need. Twenty families from the community participated. Five of those families now attend Summit regularly. Hissom believes this is because the event afforded those families dignity. “I think their experience with the Thanksgiving basket event convinced them Summit is somewhere they could see themselves going to church. The event communicated the church believed each of these families had something to contribute.” Summit Church is finding other ways to get their members involved in community development throughout the year. Three Saturday mornings a year, Summit hosts niceSERVE, an event connecting Summit volunteers with local community agencies for several hours of service. Rene Vazquez, Summit Church’s local service manager, organizes the event. “We call local nonprofits and ask them how we can help them with what they are already doing but may not have the volunteers to accomplish on their own,” he explains. What distinguishes niceSERVE from a one-time relief ministry event is that Summit regularly works with the same agencies. Vazquez hopes the niceSERVE event will give congregants an opportunity to get to know community organizations, learn their values and become involved longerterm. This has happened in some cases. One local organization utilizes 100 volunteers a month, and 25 of them are Summit members. For Vazquez, as for Hissom, developing a spirit of service in a community is as important, if not more so, than simply working for that community’s economic revitalization. “We want people to serve God and serve other people,” Hissom says, “not just get a need met.” The reason for this is that community development may not lead to an economic lift—but that doesn’t mean efforts have been unsuccessful. “A developing community may stay poor,” Hissom explains. “But fostering in people a sense of ownership and active participation in their future is genuine community development.”
Gentrification with justice
Right now, Christian community development is primarily an urban movement. Consequently, one of the main systemic issues community developers face today is the challenge of urban gentrification. Gentrification refers to the changes that take place when people of a higher socioeconomic class move into a depressed community. An influx of wealthier citizens often causes property costs to rise, which drives out poorer neighbors who cannot keep up with a spike in their rent or mortgage payment. Lupton says gentrification is a new national norm. “It is not a question of if or whether it is going to happen; it’s a question of when.” The goal for urban Christians, then, is to work for gentrification with justice. “The question is, how does a church participate redemptively in the gentrification process?” Lupton says. “It takes people with wisdom and connections to manage property so that a good percentage of people can stay in the city as it gentrifies. It takes Christians advocating for legislation that requires a mix of income in gentrifying areas.” A proper Christian response, Lupton suggests, is “to harness the process for righteousness, so that the poor become beneficiaries of a reviving community, instead of being displaced.” While gentrification and Christian community development are primarily urban issues now, the reality of gentrification means suburban churches will soon be dealing with issues of poverty and injustice to an unprecedented degree. “Gentrification will eventually eliminate the inner city as the ghetto,” Lupton says. “The process will displace poor people to suburban edge cities. Wealth and power will be downtown; poverty will be suburbanized.” In other words, while suburban churches may not yet face the challenges of poverty in their communities, they are advised to prepare for the inevitable influx of the displaced urban poor. Regardless if they’re urban, suburban or even rural churches, all churches can begin the transition from compassion ministries toward development ministries. Lupton explains the need for this maturation in the Church’s thinking about outreach in terms of Jewish wisdom. “The Jewish Talmud instructs in levels of charity,” he says. “The highest level is to provide a job for someone without them knowing it. The next highest level is to provide a job with their knowledge. Third is to provide an anonymous gift. The lowest level of charity is when the recipient knows who gave them the gift.” The Christian community development movement reveals that many American churches are stuck in the lowest level of charity. But with a little creativity and perspective, any church can make a move toward relief ministry that respects the dignity of the recipient and contributes to the eventual development of the local community.
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“We want people to serve God and serve other people, not just get a need met.” —Phil Hissom
BRANDON O’BRIEN is the author of The Strategically Small Church (Bethany House).
DISCUSS: What are the pros and cons to having a more relaxed corporate serving calendar that allows individuals to choose how and where they spend their time?
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Mark Driscoll on doctrine, dogma and what keeps him up at night By Roxanne Wieman
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ontroversy has never been far behind Mark Driscoll, the founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Most notably, his outspoken support of a complementarian view has sparked debates anew around gender roles within the Church. And his infamous comments on Jesus’ masculinity—he has written that the mainstream church has transformed Jesus into a “Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,” a “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that ... would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell”—certainly pitted many against him. However, the reformed pastor has only risen in popularity and his loyal following has grown to include a large number of churches through his Acts 29 network, an average of 84,000 weekly podcast listeners and more than 61,000 Twitter followers. We talked to Driscoll recently about his new focus on doctrine, what keeps him up at night and why he believes immature men are the Church’s most urgent crisis. You are focusing on doctrine quite a bit right now in your writings and teachings. Doctrine seems like a word we should all agree on the meaning of, but that isn’t always the case. What’s your definition? Doctrine is found, actually, in the Bible. Paul says, for example, at one point to watch your life and doctrine closely. So he connects how you behave and what you believe—that you need to pay careful attention to both because what you believe determines how you behave. So for me, doctrine are those core, essential, necessary truths of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation that help us understand who God is, and how the world was made, and our role in the world, and what went wrong, and how Jesus is our Savior and what God’s big plan is in the end. So it’s the big ideas that anchor the world, and God and our place in relation to God and the world.
What would you say is the difference between doctrine and dogma? When I hear the word “dogma,” I think of the taking of secondary issues and making them primary issues. I always use the language that there are “open-handed issues” and “closedhanded issues.” Open-handed issues are those issues which Bible-believing Christians can debate over, disagree over, even discuss over, but not divide over. The closed-handed issues are those issues we really have to remain committed to, to remain Christian. So for me, in the doctrine book [Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe], I had to really work hard along with my co-author, Gerry Breshears, on those issues that should be in the closed hand, and also talk about the various issues that need to remain in the open hand. I think dogma is putting everything in the closed hand—being absolutely dogmatic and contentious about things that, quite frankly, aren’t as clear in Scripture as other
ACT: We wonder if Richard Simmons would view this as a compliment?
things. So there are issues in the Bible, like eschatology issues surrounding Jesus’ return, speaking in tongues, some things like that where you can love Jesus, and believe the Bible, and disagree on and still be a faithful Christian. There are other issues, like the Trinity or the resurrection of Jesus, you have to be very clear on to remain Christian. Why talk about doctrine now? Why do you think focusing on doctrine is a key need for our churches and leaders today? For me, it came out of actually being a pastor in a church. I founded Mars Hill Church in the fall of 1996, and have been preaching and teaching there ever since. God has been really, really, really gracious to us. We were in the least churched city in America when we started. It’s no longer the least churched city in America. We’ve seen the church grow to up to 13,000 in a week. We baptized, last year, I think, almost 900 people, new Christians. So for me it’s a necessity to explain: “OK, here’s what Christianity is. Here’s what Christianity is not. And here’s how it plays out in your life—your life with Jesus together as God’s people.” So the doctrine book came out of pastoral ministry. We use it for the membership class at our church, we use it to teach and train those who are new Christians and aspiring to become members of the church. We found it was really helpful. There are other theologies, not to be negative on them at all, but some or most are very large and filled with technological jargon. Others tend to be good, but they’re small and simple and short and don’t cover quite enough. So we tried to go for a medium-sized book that was really easy to read and took out a lot of the hard theological jargon. We’ve found everybody from non-Christians all the way up to seminary professors seem to be enjoying the book, so it’s written in such a way that it’s accessible. Is a focus on doctrine or understanding of doctrine missing in the Church right now? What’s interesting among younger evangelicals is we’re seeing a real uptick in Bible teaching, a real love for theology, a real commitment to certain theologians, conferences built around teaching. And probably a lot of that is because you’re looking at a younger generation of evangelicals who grew up with the Internet, and they’re just used to having access to a lot more teaching than previous generations. If there is something you like or something you want to know, it’s pretty easy to download it, listen to it and learn it. With a lot of churches that are getting younger people, younger evangelicals—teens, 20s, 30s in particular—there are just a lot more theological questions being asked. Also, there are a lot more practical questions being asked about sexual behavior, homosexuality, creation versus evolution, women’s roles in Christian ministry, all of the cultural issues as well are being asked in the Church. So there are just a lot of people with a lot of questions right now. I think a lot of pastors, they do answer questions, they do meet with people, they do teach classes. But
DISCUSS: What are the open-handed issues for your church? What are the closed-handed issues for your church? Do you teach your church community about those issues?
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are younger and reformed, we’re also charismatic. We love the Holy Spirit, prayer, worship, the full use of all the spiritual gifts, so it’s not just mental gymnastics, but it’s also a real, passionate, heartfelt, active life with God.
mars hill’s evolving doctrine Mars Hill’s doctrinal statement can be found on their website, and Driscoll explains it was written before the church went public and when he was a new Christian—and a new pastor. According to the site, an updated doctrinal statement will be posted to reflect that they have become “more devoted to some doctrines.” Driscoll explains: “Our doctrinal convictions have not changed but rather have matured
at some point, it just, quite frankly, gets overwhelming. So many people have so many questions that it’s good to have a resource to say, “Go ahead and read this, and see if this doesn’t answer some of those questions for you.”
When you think about today’s church, especially in the West, what keeps you up at night? I’m always concerned for the Church and heavily involved in church planting. I think a couple things are going on. I think when an older generation that is in the middle of retiring and dying has fully run their cycle, you’re going to see some real financial problems for the Church. Tom Brokaw called those in their 70s and 80s now “the greatest generation.” These are the people who have really built a lot of the evangelistic institutions. And with young people, we’re just not seeing that kind of generosity. It tends to be a more materialistic culture. People tend to be more selfish. They can tend to treat the Church more like a community of friends, but not really a place to be generous and be on mission. So that is concerning, maybe a lot of people using the Church, but not a lot of people loving the Church. I think there is going to be a continued hemorrhaging in the mainline denominations over things like homosexuality and universalism. Can you have sex outside of heterosexual marriage, and do you really need Jesus to go to heaven? I think you’re going to see the mainline denominations continue to fragment and crumble around those issues, and they’ll spin off some more conservative versions, but I think there is going to be a lot of bloodbath and it’s going to be pretty ugly in the media.
Why do you think we’re seeing a surge in growth in reformed churches? What is it about the reformed movement that you believe is attracting people—especially younger people? I think there are a number of issues. In September 2006, Christianity Today had a cover story saying the two big hot theologies were emergent and new Calvinism. And then I think it was last year, Time magazine named new Calvinism the number three biggest idea changing the world, which is kind of shocking to read in Time magazine. So you’re right, there is a real uptick in reformed theology. Usually every week, top 10 on iTunes is me, Francis Chan, John Piper, Matt Chandler—people who are a little more theologically reformed. I think part of that is younger people tend to come from broken homes, and I think sociologically they like the idea of being connected to a theological family history that goes back because they don’t really have much of an intact family. I think also, in a day when the world is big, and there is terrorism, and chaos and confusion, to know that God is sovereign—that God is in control, that God is good—I think is practically and pastorally really helpful. I think, as well, that a lot of the access to education—at least in the U.S. and online teaching—reformed theology tends to be more academic, more reflective—sometimes to a fault, which is why you’re seeing an uptick in charismatic theology, as well. Because most of us who
Do you think it’s that the younger generations are less generous, or is it that they don’t trust the Church as much with their money? The truth is, even some of the worst churches are better stewards of their money than most Christians. Hypocrisy is really curious. A lot of younger evangelicals are massively into debt, lots of toys, living at a lifestyle beyond their means, and then saying, “I don’t trust the church with my money.” Sadly, tragically, even some of the bad prosperity churches are probably living at about the same level of wisdom as the average Christian. Atlantic Magazine during the financial crisis had an interesting cover story: Did evangelicalism cause the financial crash? I thought that was a very interesting cover story, saying, does western Christian greed, materialism and selfishness contribute to debt, overspending and economic crisis? That was an interesting question. I think most young people, to be honest, they’re spoiled. They want to live at the level of their parents as soon as they move out of their parents’ home. If you just look at things like the size of the average home, the size of the average car, the amount of disposable income the average 25-year-old has versus two generations ago, it’s absolutely staggering. I think you’re looking in large part at a really spoiled and materialistic generation that doesn’t understand hard work and delayed gratification. When you turn 18, the first thing you get is a credit card application, and then off you go.
DISCUSS: When you think of the demographic breakdown of your church, would you say your young people generally fit this description?
DISCUSS: What keeps you up at night when you think about today’s church?
by God’s grace.”
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You’ve talked a lot about younger people today living in a sort of extended adolescence. Why do you think that is? I think, in particular, it’s young men. Perhaps to some degree it is young women as well, but we’re finding more women are getting better grades, more women are graduating high school, more women are graduating college, more women are buying homes, more women are doing things that are more adult and responsible. We’ve created this. It’s a sociological category. It used to be you go from “boy” to “man,” and now you go from “boy” to “guy” to “man.” There is this whole new creation of a “guy.” It’s just extended adolescence, where 20s, 30s, sometimes even in his 40s, he doesn’t really want to get married, doesn’t really want to have kids, doesn’t really want to pursue a career. He has a lot of hobbies, got a lot of buddies, watches a lot of porn, gambles, has a lot of fun, maybe plays in some band or is in a guild of World of Warcraft, or something ridiculous like that. And they’ve even got little [mottos] like, “It’s all good” and, “Bros before hos.” It’s just this whole adolescent, juvenile culture. Kind of the Adam Sandler-esque view of life, and there is this whole genre of comedy movies built around these kind of inept, irresponsible, immature guys, and I think part of the problem is, as well, that the Church in large part has accommodated that. Those guys tend not to go to church. If those guys do show up at church, it’s usually just to find a couple of gals to break the commandments with. And the Church doesn’t really know what to do with them, so the least likely person in America to go to church is a guy in his 20s who is single. Without knowing what to do with those guys, they commit crimes, they get women pregnant, they’re a drain on social services, they don’t raise their kids, they don’t contribute to church, they’re not getting ready to lead the next generation. I’d say it’s nothing short of a crisis, it’s a real problem.
So what can the Church do to help these extended adolescents “grow up”? Part of it is back to the big ideas of this conversation. The Church needs to take ownership of this and say, “What in the world are we going to do?” And part of that is doctrine and theology. There is a God. You’re not God. You’re here for a reason, it’s not just to screw around. There is sin in the world, and you’re part of it. There is a hero and a savior and a rescuer, but if you don’t know Him, you’re part of the problem and not the solution. Stewardship—what are you going to do with your money? What are you going to do with your life? What’s your plan? Most systematic theology, you don’t deal with anything practical. It’s just you believe in certain doctrines, and then go to heaven when you die. In the meantime, what are you doing with your life? Try to hit those practical issues as well.
What do you think has created this “guy” phenomenon? Part of it is the unintended consequences of divorce. Forty percent of kids go to bed at night without a father. Not to be disparaging toward single moms, but if you’re a single mom and you’re working 60 hours a week, and you’ve got a boy, and he’s home all by himself with no parents and no dad, he’s just going to be hanging out with his buddies, feeding himself pizza rolls. The number one consumer of online pornography is 12- to 17-year-old boys. What that means is he’s home eating junk food, drinking Monster energy drinks, downloading porn, masturbating and screwing around with his friends. That really doesn’t prepare you for responsible adulthood. That’s a really sad picture, especially if you’re a single gal hoping to get married someday. You’re like: “Seriously, that’s the candidate pool? You’ve got to be kidding me.” That’s why 41 percent of births right now are to unmarried women. A lot of women have decided: “I’m never going to find a guy who is actually dependable and responsible to have a life with. So I’ll just get a career and have a baby and just intentionally be a single mother because there are no guys worth spending life with.”
Do you regret any of those statements about gender roles and Jesus’ masculinity? Oh my gosh. I have been preaching and teaching now for 13, 14 years. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, he says it takes 10,000 hours of something to become an expert. Preaching and teaching, I’ve gotten in about 10,000 hours. I’ve published I don’t even know how many books, blogs—it’s a crazy amount of content. If I could hit control-alt-delete and go back and do like they used to in Men in Black and just hit a button to make certain people forget certain things, that would be awesome. My hope, my prayer, my goal is to do better, by God’s grace, to learn, to grow, to be sanctified and mature—to be less shockjock and more Jesus-centered. I’m turning 40 this fall, so I can’t get away with, “Oh, he’s young.” I’ve got five kids, I’m not young anymore, I’m a tired old man. But I’m hoping God gives me enough years, maybe 30, 40 more years of service, that when it’s all said and done, I will have had enough time to correct some mistakes I’ve made and learn how to more clearly articulate some things I believe. So I’m trying to learn as I go.
THINK: How many of these things Driscoll lists here would you say are biblically wrong to believe or do with your time?
THINK: Is there something specific in your life you’d love to control-altdelete? Have you sought forgiveness for that action?
Several years ago, you were regularly in the press for your controversial statements on gender roles, but now it seems like you’re steering away from those conversations. Was that intentional? I don’t know, I’m always getting in trouble for something. I’m just really focused on, at this point, men and women. It’s really interesting because if you took all the women in my church who were sexually abused, raped, molested, assaulted in some way, I’d still have a megachurch. I’d have a couple thousand victims. So a lot of my time is spent with women who are abuse victims, it’s a huge part of what we do, and guys who are totally responsible and part of the problem. That’s where my focus has gone in part because of the demand that’s in our church and because of the people who I’m dealing with.
<<<<<< driscoll’s Recent books
Doctrine co-written with Gerry Breshears Crossway Books Driscoll and Breshears explore what all of us believe (or should), based on God’s actions.
Vintage Church co-written with Gerry Breshears Crossway Books Picking up where Vintage Jesus left off, this book explores combining timeless truths from Scripture with modern-day church concepts.
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Finding the third way Why we must fight for unity and common ground in the Church, even while we disagree
by Jim Belcher
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Before Roberta joined our church, she had one final question. Years before, she and her husband had been part of a small Reformed denomination that was very sectarian and inward-focused. It was not a happy experience. She had also grown up in a fundamentalist church and had the scars to show for it. “Is Redeemer ecumenical or sectarian?” she asked. “Because I grew up deep in the fundamentalist world where every kind of church or believer who was not in our denomination was a heretic and needed to be shunned, and I don’t want to be part of a church like that again.” I had gotten to know Roberta and her family well over the preceding months, so I knew of their wide-ranging contacts with Christians of all traditions and denominations around the world. Although they had differences with these people, what they shared in common was more important. They rallied around orthodoxy, a belief in the historic creeds and deep passion for Jesus. So when she used the word “ecumenical,” I knew what she meant. In essence, she was asking, “Can Redeemer remain faithful to its theological traditions rooted in the history of the early church and Reformation, and at the same time remain passionately committed to unity with all genuine believers?”
Trust No real dialogue or learning can take place between the traditional and emerging churches without them listening to and fairly representing each other. What is missing from the dialogue, what would help us move from accusation to mutual learning, from innuendo to honesty, is trust. Trust is confidence that the other person’s intentions are good and we have no reason to be protective or careful around them. When one party feels disrespected or feels their ideas have been summarily dismissed, trust is broken and communication is disrupted. Both sides are locked in a cycle of distrust and self-protection. Of course, many traditional churches aren’t seeking unity with the emerging church, which, after all, is theologically liberal in their eyes. A
serious charge, no doubt. If they are theologically liberal, that is, they reject orthodoxy, then ecclesial unity may be neither possible nor desirable. I hope this is obvious. If someone denies the deity of Christ or the incarnation, for example, unity would not be possible. Nevertheless, on a personal level, love, civility and kindness would still guide us. Dialogue is always a good thing even with those outside the bounds of orthodoxy. But what if the emerging church is not theologically liberal? What if those within it are nonetheless distrusted and made to feel as if they are the enemy? They would feel insecure, on guard and threatened. They might even return the favor by dismissing the traditional church. This makes real dialogue nearly impossible. Is there a way forward? How do we get to the point where both sides can talk about their differences and learn from each other without being accused of heresy? By first agreeing what binds Christians together. We have to arrive at what John Stott calls the “unity of the Gospel.”
This is a commitment to both the purity of biblical teaching and the peace of togetherness. The problem for evangelicals, Stott contends, is that we have a “pathological tendency to fragment.” We place doctrinal purity over unity, or we stress relational unity over sound doctrine. The reality is Jesus wants us to be equally committed to both— the peace and purity of the Church. When this is not the case, our disunity is a major hindrance to our evangelism and witness to the world. We fail at the “final apologetic,” our love for one another. If we can agree on the essential matters, the “unity of the Gospel,” then we have a shot at rebuilding trust and moving forward. What Stott calls the “unity of the Gospel,” Tom Oden calls the “new ecumenism.” This “new ecumenism is above all committed unapologetically to ancient ecumenical teaching.” It is committed to God’s Word, “a long-term view of a cumulative, historical consensus and a classic ecumenical view of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.” It also holds, he continues, “to the classic consensual doctrines of incarnation,
No unity is possible without boundaries of thought and belief around something. There is always a limit to what any group can tolerate without being torn apart. All unity has a doctrinal aspect. No unity is possible without boundaries of thought and belief around something. There is always a limit to what any group can tolerate without being torn apart. In his book Evangelical Truth, Stott argues that the apostle Paul “begs his readers to ‘stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel’ (Phil 1:27 [NIV]). He goes on to urge them: ‘make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose’ (2:2).” Stott argues that Paul is not calling for unity at any price, for example, being willing to compromise fundamental truths in order to maintain relational unity, or splitting from those who are not in total agreement on every theology point. “It is rather unity in the Gospel, in evangelical essentials, ‘standing ... side by side in the struggle to advance the Gospel faith’ (Phil 1:27 REB).”
THINK: Our inability to find friendship with people inside the faith who live outside our theological framework makes any effort toward evangelism hypocritical.
atonement and resurrection, and the return of the Lord.” As Oden makes clear: “These are fixed boundary stones in the ancient ecumenical tradition—stones we are commanded not to move or attempt to refashion.” The core of this doctrine is found in the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed and the so-called Athanasian Creed, all of which have bound Christians together for centuries.
Two tiers In the hypercharged world of polemics and rhetoric, we feel we have the right to suspect anyone who does not hold our positions. This is especially true if we occupy a far-right or far-left position. Anyone to the right of a radical liberal or to the left of a radical conservative looks like a heretic. There is no room for even the slightest difference or change. The two sides become
THINK: Once again, the Church needs to ask if His cause will become our cause.
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ever more polarized, stuck in their polemics and rhetoric. Is there a way to move beyond this calcification? Yes, at least in part, if we agree on what binds us together. I have been helped in my thinking on this topic by Robert Greer’s Mapping Postmodernism. Greer posits the need to develop a two-tiered system that divides the essentials of orthodoxy from the particularities of differing traditions within the boundaries of orthodoxy. The top tier matches the creeds of the early church that have historically and universally defined orthodoxy. The bottom tier corresponds to the distinctives of each individual church body. This two-tiered system has a number of practical benefits. First, Greer says, it minimizes triumphalism or denominational chauvinism. When the top tier is agreed upon, the various parties mutually trust and respect each other as orthodox. Then discussions that deal with bottom-tier teachings become opportunities to
congregation each week in historic liturgy that draws from the best of Christian history. Our sermons and our weekly school of discipleship are rooted in a commitment to teach the full counsel of God in a way that is culturally relevant, timely and informed by the Reformed tradition. We teach the Bible. But our understanding of the Bible has been wonderfully shaped by the tradition we are part of. But we also celebrate our commonality with other Christians. For example, there is no “safe” book list at Redeemer. We allow and encourage our people to read widely from the other traditions of Christianity. Our book table contains—right alongside Luther, Calvin and the Puritan divines— Miroslav Volf, Vigen Guroian, N.T. Wright, Glen Stassen and Dallas Willard. All of them affirm the classical consensus, even though our bottomtier views differ. We train our members to read discerningly, to think for themselves and to be enriched by other traditions even as they dig deep in the soil of their own tradition.
WE GIVE OTHERS THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT, READING THEM IN THE BEST POSSIBLE LIGHT TO PRESERVE UNITY AND FOSTER MUTUAL DIALOGUE. learn and grow, and not tests of orthodoxy. This sense of unity plus diversity offers the Church an opportunity to love one another, as Christ prayed in His high priestly prayer, and thereby be an effective witness to an unbelieving world (John 17:20-23). Any who affirm the top tier are orthodox—even if they hold different views on the bottom tier. However, if they are unwilling to affirm that these core doctrines are based on Scripture and have been and are accepted “everywhere, always and by all,” then they are not part of the new ecumenism.
Deep unity at Redeemer These conversations got me thinking. What kind of church do I want Redeemer Church to be? What does the deep church look like in the area of unity? How does Redeemer hold faithfully to the tension of plurality and particularity, that is, being deeply rooted in a historic tradition and at the same time open to dialogue with our differences? Let me give some examples. First, we root our
Second, we don’t merely preach deep church distinctives; we practice them. In other words, we spend our time and energy joyfully living in our Christian commitments; we don’t spend a lot of time pointing out our differences from other denominations, churches or Christians. Third, we watch our attitude. Sinful attitudes divide Christians. Though we strive to be discerning, we don’t dwell on the faults of other traditions or Christian thinkers. Even when we disagree with others, we try to find their strengths and don’t blow their weaknesses out of proportion. This is divisive. We give others the benefit of the doubt, reading them in the best possible light to preserve unity and foster mutual dialogue in order to learn from and exhort one another. Fourth, we watch our assumptions. We reject the temptation to think nothing can be learned from those outside our tradition. We don’t believe God has only given His wisdom to us, a small segment of the Christian church. This does not
mean we lack confidence in our tradition, but we are humble in what we believe and willing to learn from others. We reject the idea that our tradition’s distinctives are more important than the doctrines and practices we share with other traditions. Fifth, we have a low bar for membership. We don’t require a member to subscribe to anything outside the bounds of Nicene Christianity and other evangelical churches. Prospective members don’t need to agree with every aspect of our theology. We rally around the unity of the Gospel, and tolerate differences, particularly on matters like eschatology, baptism and covenant theology, even as we look to teach, deepen and mature our people, growing them in the Scriptures and in appreciation for our creeds and confessions. Sixth, we recognize that growth takes time. Each believer or new convert comes to us at a different stage of growth. Even church leaders, myself included, have some growing to do. Growth is a process; we can’t expect members to be spiritually mature from the start. Certainly, God calls us to guard all His truth, “once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3). But there are some areas where the church has to admit it does not know everything. We are not infallible and neither is our tradition. This is why differences remain among Christians. We accept this reality, working together to grow in our understanding and maturity. We need to be patient with people and hope they are patient with us. At Redeemer, we try to cultivate patience. This creates a safe environment to learn and grow. And we have seen tremendous growth in knowledge and grace among our people. My dream is that this kind of unity would take place between the traditional and emerging churches. I hope both sides would work hard to understand each other, finding agreement on classic orthodoxy and striving to maintain unity even though there are second-tier differences. Jim Belcher is founding church planter and lead pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA. He is the author of Deep Church (IVP © 2009), from which this article is adapted. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com.
THINK: The challenge in all of this is that pastors are inherently wired to try to change people’s opinions and beliefs. It takes trust and vulnerability to dialogue—you can’t show up with a closed mind and heart.
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the end of management? Why Our Approach to management has to be the next big revolution By Gary Hamel
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What does the future of management look like to you? Given how little the practice of management has changed over the past several decades, it’s hardly surprising that most people have a hard time imagining how management might be reinvented in the decades to come. When compared with the momentous changes we’ve witnessed over the past half century in technology, lifestyles and geopolitics, the practice of management seems to have evolved at a snail’s pace. While a suddenly resurrected 1960s-era CEO would undoubtedly be amazed by the flexibility of today’s real-time supply chains, and the ability to provide 24/7 customer service, he or she would find a great many of today’s management rituals little changed from those that governed corporate life a generation or two ago. Hierarchies may have gotten flatter, but they haven’t disappeared. Frontline employees may be smarter and better trained, but they’re still expected to line up obediently behind executive decisions. Strategy still gets set at the top. And the big calls are still made by people with big titles and even bigger salaries. There may be fewer middle managers on the payroll, but those who remain are doing what managers have always done—setting budgets, assigning tasks, reviewing performance and cajoling their subordinates to do better. Why does management seem stuck in a time warp? Perhaps it’s because we’ve reached the end of management—in the sense that Francis Fukuyama argues we’ve reached the end of history. If liberal democracy is the final answer to humankind’s long quest for political selfdetermination, maybe modern management, as it has evolved over the last century, is the final answer to the age-old question of how to most effectively aggregate human effort. Perhaps we have more or less mastered the science of organizing human beings, allocating resources, defining objectives, laying out plans and minimizing deviations. Maybe most of the really tough management problems have already been solved.
Or maybe not. What if modern management hasn’t reached the apogee of effectiveness and, given the challenges that lie ahead, isn’t even climbing the right hill? Indeed, one could argue the machinery of modern management—which encompasses analysis, capital budgeting, project management, pay-for-performance, strategic planning and the like amounts to one of humanity’s greatest inventions—right up there with fire, written language and democracy. Consider the vacation-bound college student who spends less on an airline ticket to Fort Lauderdale than he’ll spend on booze over spring break; the twitchy-thumbed gamer who shells out a few hundred bucks for a PC and expects to get a machine that will outperform yesterday’s supercomputers; the dedicated foodie who is unimpressed by the fact that her upscale supermarket offers more than 20 varieties of Balsamic vinegar; or the Chinese factory worker who will soon be able to afford his first motorbike— all these souls, and a couple billion more, should prostrate themselves in front of shrines to Daniel McCallum, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Max Weber, Chester Barnard, W. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker and all the other apostles and prophets of modern management. But it would be arrogant to assume after a mere century of progress, modern management has exhausted its own evolutionary potential—just as it would be foolish to assume a technology that served us so admirably during the 20th century will turn out to be equally well-suited to the demands of the 21st. The fact is, despite its indisputable accomplishments to date, modern management has bequeathed to us a set of perplexing
DISCUSS: How has the management style at your church changed over the years? What has been the most innovative change?
conundrums, troubling trade-offs that cry out for bold thinking and fresh approaches. Over the course of its development, modern management has wrestled a lot of burly problems to the ground—it has succeeded in breaking complex tasks into small, repeatable steps, in enforcing adherence to standard operating procedures, in measuring costs and profits to the penny, in coordinating the efforts of tens of thousands of employees and in synchronizing operations on a global scale. Yet these successes have come at a heavy price. The machinery of modern management gets free-spirited human beings to conform to standards and rules, but in so doing it squanders prodigious quantities of human imagination and initiative. It brings discipline to operations, but imperils organizational adaptability. It multiplies the purchasing power of consumers the world over, but also enslaves millions in quasifeudal, top-down organizations. And while modern management has helped to make businesses dramatically more efficient, there’s little evidence it has made them more ethical. Modern management has given much, but it has taken much in return, and it continues to take. Perhaps it’s time to renegotiate the bargain. We must learn how to coordinate the efforts of thousands of individuals without creating a burdensome hierarchy of overseers; to keep a tight rein on costs without strangling human imagination; and to build organizations where discipline and freedom aren’t mutually exclusive. In this new century, we must strive to transcend the seemingly unavoidable trade-offs that have been the unhappy legacy of modern management. To thrive in an increasingly disruptive world, companies must become as strategically adaptable as they are operationally efficient. To safeguard their margins, they must become gushers of rule-breaking innovation. And if they’re going to out-invent and outthink a growing mob of upstarts, they must learn how to inspire their employees to give the very best of themselves every day. These are the challenges that must be addressed by 21stcentury management innovators.
ACT: If this is going to happen on your watch, at your church, who has the skills and abilities on your team to lead this charge? Take this person or group of people out for a meal and challenge them to lead this way—not from a place of position but from a posture of ideas.
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We are all prisoners of our paradigms. And as managers, we are captives of a paradigm that places the pursuit of efficiency ahead of every other goal. This is hardly surprising, since modern management was invented to solve inefficiency. While it’s impossible to precisely date the genesis of modern management, most historians locate Frederick Winslow Taylor near the beginning of the epic. Taylor believed an empirical, datadriven approach to the design of work would yield big productivity gains. As the father of “scientific management,” Taylor battled against wasted motion, poorly designed tasks, lax or unrealistic performance standards, misfits between job requirements and worker capabilities, and incentive systems that discouraged best efforts—adversaries any 21st-century manager would instantly recognize. Taylor maintained that efficiency came from “knowing exactly what you want men to do, and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way.” He believed management could be made a “true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules and principles as a foundation.” For Taylor, as for every economy-minded CEO and efficiency-peddling consultant since, the secret to increased productivity lay in “systematic management.” Max Weber, the renowned German sociologist and a contemporary of Taylor, viewed bureaucracy as the pinnacle of social organization. Weber’s ideal organization had several distinguishing features: • The division of labor and responsibilities were clearly delineated for every member of the organization. • Positions were organized into a hierarchy resulting in a scale of authority. • Members were selected for positions based on their technical competence or education. • Managers worked for the owners of the enterprise, but they were not the primary owners themselves. • Everyone in the organization was subject to strict rules and controls relevant to their job. The rules were impersonal and uniformly applied. There is little here that would surprise a 21stcentury manager. And though Weber has been dead for nearly 90 years, control, precision, stability, discipline and reliability—the traits he saluted in his anthem to bureaucracy—are still the canonical virtues of modern management. While we may deplore “bureaucracy,” it still constitutes the organizing principle for virtually every commercial and public-sector organization in the world.
So here we are: still working on Taylor-type puzzles and living in Weber-type organizations. To be fair, many of the 21st century’s new management challenges have been acknowledged in boardrooms and executive suites, and here and there one finds a truly serious attempt at management innovation. Yet our progress to date has been constrained by our efficiency-centric, bureaucracy-based managerial paradigm.
more than a couple of hundred workers. Had you been alive at the time, it would have been hard to imagine a company could ever grow to the scale of U.S. Steel, which, after its acquisition of Carnegie Steel in 1901, became the world’s first company with a billion-dollar market value. It would have been nearly impossible to believe a business founded in 1903—the Ford Motor Company— would be turning out more than half a million
We are all prisoners of our paradigms. And as managers, we are captives of a paradigm that places the pursuit of efficiency ahead of every other goal. So we improvise and we patch and we retrofit. We create innovation projects and units, instead of organizations that are innovative from top to bottom. We call our employees “associates” and “team members,” but don’t dramatically enlarge the scope of their discretionary authority. We encourage people to welcome change, but resist embracing the principles of grassroots activism. We talk about a meritocracy, but balk at the notion of a 360-degree compensation process. Truth is, most of us are partisans of the old paradigm. We’re members of the bureaucratic class. As executives, managers and supervisors, we’ve learned how to use the technology of management—the planning conferences, the budget meetings and the performance measurement systems—to get things done. More importantly, we’ve learned how to leverage our positional prerogatives, our access to power and our polished professionalism, to get ahead. Who, one wonders, will come out on top if the rules and roles of management get turned upside down? Yet despite our reservations, we know Kuhn’s central thesis is incontestable: Real progress demands a revolution. You can’t shuffle your way onto the next S-curve. You have to leap. You have to vault over your preconceived notions, over everyone else’s best practices, over the advice of all the experts and over your own doubts. You don’t have to leap with no sense of where you’re going to land. But you do have to leap—at least with your imagination. Consider: In 1890, the average company in the United States had four employees, and few had
cars per year a decade later. And it would have been equally hard to foresee all of the underlying management breakthroughs that would come together to make all this possible. Could the practice of management change as radically over the first two or three decades of this century as it did during the early years of the 20th century? I believe so. More than that, I believe we must make it so. The challenges facing 21st-century business leaders are at least as intimidating, exciting and unprecedented as those that confronted the world’s industrial pioneers a hundred years ago. Sure, we’re bound by precedent, and most of us have a vested interest in the management status quo. But if human beings could invent the modern industrial organization, then they can reinvent it. Admittedly, there’s not much in the average MBA curriculum, management best-seller or leadership development program that would suggest there are radical alternatives to the way we lead, plan, organize, motivate and manage right now. But true innovators are never bound by what is; instead, they dream of what could be.
GARY HAMEL is Visiting Professor of Strategic and International Management at the London Business School, cofounder of Strategos and director of the Management Innovation Lab. Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. From The Future of Management by Gary Hamel with Bill Breen. Boston, MA 2007, pp 3-17. Copyright 2007 by the Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, all rights reserved.
THINK: In other words, things won’t change unless those in charge, who are stuck in older ways, lay down their ego for the sake of the future. If this can happen anywhere it should happen in the Church, with pastors who easily embrace the humble qualities of the one they follow, right?
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by Glenn packiam
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hen I was Younger, I didn’t want to be a pastor when I grew up. My father is a pastor. He knows the people in his congregation. Many of them have been there since the church began 15 years ago. He and my mom have talked and eaten and prayed and wept and laughed with these people. They don’t use software with pictures that pop up under each name to keep track of their members. They don’t need a fancy online database with barcode keycards to remember which child goes with which parent; they know those families. They’ve been in each other’s homes. I didn’t want to be a pastor because I didn’t think I could do that. Or maybe it was because I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to achieve, to accomplish, to make my mark, to be known, to be significant, to do “great things for God.” Yes, I had led small groups and met with people and enjoyed regular one-on-one moments with people helping them learn what it means to follow Jesus. But could I spend every day doing that? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to be a pastor when I grew up. Later I learned I had to grow up in order to be a pastor. I had to put away adolescent obsessions with success and the spectacular; I had to stop being fixated on efficiency and numbers, programs and systems. The lessons came as I paid attention to two men—a farmer and a pastor—who spent the majority of their lives on the margins of society.
Feedlots and farmers Joel Salatin is a prophet. Technically he’s a farmer. But for the people who are troubled by the modern food industry, he is a voice crying in the wilderness. Salatin is featured in Michael Pollan’s landmark work Omnivore’s Dilemma, a book that explains how consumer demands over the last 40 years have changed the food industry. This “food revolution” has given rise to “big box” food stores
and led to the demise of the local grocer. Now, whether you eat fast food or not, most of your meat comes from the same few places. But in order to get that much beef and chicken to big box stores and food chains, the process for raising cows and chickens changed. There was no time to wait for a chicken to fully mature; it needed to be genetically modified to grow faster. Cattle couldn’t freely graze on grass. That’s far too costly and time-consuming. It’s more efficient to pen them in crowded feedlots with manure rising up to their hindquarters and feed them corn. Turns out there are downsides to such methods. Chickens are collapsing under the weight of artificially enlarged bodies that their bones can’t hold up. They’re getting sick from being treated like sardines. No problem. Bathe the meat in ammonia. When a cow eats grass, its digestive system naturally sheds most of the harmful bacteria it acquires. When a cow eats corn, the odds of retaining harmful bacteria skyrocket. The feedlots’ solution: inject them preemptively with antibiotics. So we have genetically modified meat, bathed in ammonia and injected with antibiotics, neither of which would be needed if the animals were raised in the right way. If the corporations that run feedlots are the villains, Salatin is the savior. Salatin runs a “family-owned, multi-generational, pasture-based, beyond organic, local market” 550-acre farm in Virginia. Salatin’s philosophy is to let animals thrive in a “symbiotic cycle of chemical-free feeding.” This means his cows feed on healthy grass, and are moved from pasture to pasture rather than corn-fed in one central location. The chickens are brought in behind the cattle in portable coops, not kept in enormous, dark enclosures like the chicken houses run by the big companies. Salatin also refuses to sell to anyone outside of a four-hour drive of his farm in an effort to help people keep
DISCUSS: Why is it so many pastors grew up not wanting to be pastors?
their money in their community. “We think there is strength in decentralization and spreading out rather than in being concentrated and centralized,” he said in an interview a few years ago. For Salatin, being a farmer is about being personal and local.
Rethinking the Kingdom Eugene Peterson is the Joel Salatin of pastoral ministry. He refuses to let churches become feedlots. No matter how many conferences promise new techniques for church growth and new programs for mass discipleship, he doesn’t buy it. For him it’s not about efficiency or production. It’s about being personal and local. Those words echo through all of Peterson’s writings, from the series he did on pastoral ministry in the 1990s to his newer volumes of spiritual theology. Jesus, Peterson argues, was always personal and local. He stayed in the closeknit fishing villages and taught in small towns instead of heading for the cities and utilizing the large theaters Herod had built. The early apostles were always personal and local. Paul was not an itinerant in the way we think of itinerants. He spent long stretches in the cities he visited. He knew the believers there. He wasn’t broadcasting to the masses; he was shepherding a flock that, for the most part, he actually knew. Peppered through his letters are names of particular people with particular situations. Is our tendency to skip over those passages an indicator we have deemphasized the personal in our day? It’s not hard to see the parallels between the “food revolution” and the so-called triumph of the modern church. We get excited about our large churches and gatherings of believers but ignore the fact that while there are more megachurches in America today, there are fewer people going to church and fewer churches in total (David Olson, The American Church in Crisis). These facts seem
DISCUSS: If you want to see this played out rather than read about it, check out the documentary Food, Inc. You won’t eat the same again.
neuemagazine.com 41
to suggest we aren’t necessarily reaching more people; we might just be putting small, community churches out of business the way Wal-Mart has shut down local grocers. Maybe in our attempts to “feed” more people at once—with video campuses and arena-sized venues—we have created spiritual feedlots, where people are herded in to a central location and at times stand waist-deep in their own manure. Maybe, like the cattle in the feedlots and the chickens in the large “houses,” we’re making our people sicker in the process. Maybe our programs and methods are attempts to bathe them in ammonia and inject them with antibiotics. This is not first an issue of size. Many large churches do a great job of being personal and local by
they were reclaiming a title Caesar had used of himself. They were saying to the Roman colonies and non-Jewish communities that Jesus is the real hope of the nations, the one who will bring true peace in the end. This is all “Kingdom” language. What does this mean for a pastor of a local church? It means you’re part of a massive undertaking, an effort that began when God made covenant with the first humans and asked them to bring His “wise, glad and fruitful order” to the world (N.T. Wright’s phrase). It means the Kingdom is His and it comes through the covenant people of God wherever they are. It might be a little myopic (and a touch arrogant) to assume that unless your church is growing, the Kingdom is suffering. Hasn’t God been advancing His Kingdom from the
This is the soul of pastoral work. It is shepherd work done with the care and attention of a small, local farmer. helping people connect in small and mid-size environments. And many small churches are led by impersonal pastors whose congregations are not paragons of health. The question is: Have we prioritized volume and efficiency over being personal and local? Many pastors object to this way of thinking by appealing to “the Kingdom.” What about building the Kingdom? Don’t we need to worry about all the people going to hell? Interestingly, nowhere in the Scriptures are we told to “build the Kingdom” or to “expand it.” We are invited into it. We are to learn how to live now that we are in it. And we are to announce its arrival in Jesus. Which is precisely what the early apostles did. They didn’t have a frenetic “Do you know where you’re going if you die tonight?” approach to evangelism. They boldly announced Jesus as the true King of the world. When they called Him Jesus Christ, they were saying to the Jewish communities that Jesus is the Messiah they’ve been waiting for, the one who has swallowed up death and will set the world right, as Isaiah had said. When they called Jesus the Lord and Savior,
beginning through centuries both glorious and embarrassing? The Kingdom of God was here long before your church; it will endure long after. To quote one of last century’s best expositors of the Kingdom, “Man cannot build the Kingdom of God; Christ will bring it” (Dr. George Eldon Ladd in The Gospel of the Kingdom). The priority in the New Testament is always how we are to live out as the people of God, not how we are to reach out to others. If we get this wrong, we may be adding to our numbers but missing what we are supposed to become, gaining the world but losing our ecclesiastical souls.
Recovering a lost art Helping people live out as the people of God is the primary task of a pastor, a task that can only be done in ways both personal and local. Culled from the writings of the church fathers and mothers throughout the centuries, Peterson summarizes the pastoral vocation in three main activities: prayer, study and spiritual direction. There isn’t space here to comment on prayer and study, except to say that while most of us know what it
ACT: This is worth talking about with your team, but even more valuable to answer with a focus group of your church’s congregation. They’ll give you an honest answer. Have you read your email lately?
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means to pray and to study, few of us carve out time for either. I have taken Peterson’s advice to simply write into my schedule “appointments” for prayer and study and have found mornings to be best. Additionally, I reserve one day a week with no other meetings or appointments so I can have a relatively uninterrupted flow of solitude and study. But what is spiritual direction? “Spiritual Direction takes place when two people agree to give their full attention to what God is doing in one (or both) of their lives and seek to respond in faith” (Peterson). It is the belief that God is always at work in a person’s life no matter what may be going on. It is the art of looking for the signs of grace, the clues of God’s activity, the practice of paying attention to what God is doing in that person’s life. It is willingness to call attention to that work and to challenge the person to see it and to respond to it. This is the soul of pastoral work. It is shepherd work done with the care and attention of a small, local farmer. This kind of spiritual direction cannot happen from a pulpit or on a mass scale, though teaching and preaching is part of the pastoral vocation. It can’t come from a program or curriculum, as good and necessary as those things are. Spiritual direction is one-on-one work that is deeply personal and unmistakably local. It cannot be hurried or systematized. It is inefficient and messy, like cattle grazing from pasture to pasture. About a year ago, I became the pastor of a new service at my church. It was an effort to create a mid-size community within our massive congregation. We have a few hundred people who I am learning to truly know. When we see each other at our gatherings, we recognize one another. I have sat leisurely with some of them over coffee. I have wept with one over the phone. I have called or emailed or texted many of them just to say I’m thinking about them and praying for them during the week. Which is all to say, I am beginning to learn what it means to be a pastor. And that might mean I’m growing up.
Glenn packiam is an associate pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, CO, and the author of Secondhand Jesus (David C. Cook).
THINK: Go back through your last seven days of ministry and evaluate your schedule through the filter of these three elements. How well did you honor the pastoral office you occupy?
FROM THE HOUSE STUDIO: In this five-week study, explore what the patterns of God’s kingdom look like compared to the patterns of our world. What is the value of enough, and how do we become more like the God who is close to the poor, the hungry, the meek, and the merciful? Economy of Love will challenge individuals to join in community, journeying together as they begin to consider a new standard of living—a personal economic threshold oriented not around the size of a monthly paycheck but around the value of enough.
Economy of Love Creating a Community of Enough A Resource of Relational Tithe Video Sessions with Shane Claiborne Book + DVD (Book available separately)
Other small group resources for intentional living:
The Kingdom Experiment A Community Practice on Intentional Living
thehousestudio.com
The Kingdom Experiment: Youth Edition A Community Practice on Intentional Living
The Mosaic Experiment Bringing Old Testament Practices Out of Retirement
The Sinai Experiment Ten Words for God’s Chosen People
Rebuilding the church in haiti a c o n v e r s at i o n w i t h P o r t - a u -p r i nce pa s t o r J a c q u e s L o u i s by r o x a n n e w i e m a n
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In the aftermath of the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, the church of Haiti has seen great physical and spiritual damage. But while their roofs are collapsed and their people are grieving, the faith of this resilient people still shows signs of life. Churches Helping Churches, founded by James MacDonald and Mark Driscoll, is one organization devoted to repairing buildings and restoring hope for the pastors of Haiti, as well as their people. In both May and July, CHC held free conferences to train and counsel pastors from all over Haiti. Even the infamous summer rains held off as ministers came from all over the nation, gathering to listen to speakers from both the U.S. and Haiti. We spoke with CHC field liaison and coordinator Jacques Louis, a Haitian pastor himself and a faculty member of Port-au-Prince’s Seminary of Evangelical Theology, about the state of the Haitian church before and after the quake, and what it will take to strengthen the faith of this fragile nation. What is the goal of Churches Helping Churches? At first, they were only looking at churches, buildings and things like that. Then they realized, “OK, before we can build a church building, we need to build the pastors first.” So we are working on that. They also sent medication and other things through other organizations and pastors, but we haven’t built anything yet because we’ll do the conferences first. So we are working on that. We will be clearing this site [at the seminary’s campus where several buildings were destroyed] to get a big tent so we can house the pastors, and we will have a meeting up here in small groups in the shade under the trees. There will be training in counseling and church planting. Then we’ll think about churches who don’t have any place to worship, and maybe have a temporary thing for them. We are not focusing on helping any one church. We’ll have some counselors from the States, and we have guys here in Haiti who will be talking also. I am excited, but very busy! What do you think pastors need most at this point? Right now, we think it is counseling. When the
are fleeing the city and saying they won’t come back anymore. The churches in the country, they were not hit by the earthquake, but people that were hurt went to them. So this is why we don’t do the conferences only for pastors in Port-auPrince. It’s a free event, they don’t have to pay anything. We will cover all the expenses.
earthquake hit, everybody was hurt. But the pastors have to take care of the people, so they do not even take care of themselves. So right now, we’re giving them a chance to cry, and to share and to be rebuilt so they can continue on. Did a lot of people come to church after the earthquake? Many people came to church after the earthquake. I would say there were more converts after the earthquake than maybe one or two years of evangelism because people were rushing to church. After the earthquake, we had about 4,000 people here. There were tents everywhere, and we had our first service right here, and I was the one to preach in that service. I wasn’t trying to preach evangelism, I was trying to just comfort the people. We had worship service every night when they were here. Before they left the first week of April, we had more than 300 people come to know the Lord. Right in front of the gate, there is a big church that was not hit, and we have some small churches in this area. Some people, they’ll go to the country. Most of the churches in the country, they have more people now than before because some people
Jacques Louis What is the spiritual climate like in the country? Is voodoo still a big part of the culture and of people’s faith? [Spirituality] is significant in Haiti. After the earthquake, you could see some kind of spiritual fervor here in Haiti. There were three days for national fasting, things like that. Some people were just trying to tell God, “OK, what after that?” You saw people doing their own businesses. What I can say is the positive side for the churches in this, you see more people getting more sensitive spiritually, and some that were in the Church, they’re starting to understand God. They saw that event and were like, “OK, it is by the grace of God that I am alive.” I know most of the time people will think, “Where
DISCUSS: Interesting how an earthquake exposed a need that was already underneath the surface of ministry. What will it take for you to develop a counseling outlet for pastors on your team?
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Haiti By the Numbers The earthquake that struck Haiti caused damage on a scale never before seen. Here are some stats: • 1.2 million people were displaced.
Tent cities popped up across Port-au-Prince to house these newly homeless.
• 400,000 children were orphaned by the quake. Organizations like World Vision and Compassion have set up child-friendly spaces to give the children a safe place to spend time.
• 4,000-6,000 amputees were instantly created when the earth shook. Adding in the loss of limbs due to lack of treatment, the number is closer to 100,000.
• $14 billion in estimated damages to the country—which equals 117 percent of Haiti’s annual economic output.
• 50% of those affected are younger than 20 years old. • 35 seconds is how long the earthquake lasted. It took about half a minute to create damage that will take decades to fix.
Helping Haiti Partner with one of these organizations to see how your church can help in recovery efforts. • churches helping churches churcheshelpingchurches.com
• convoy of hope Nutrition and disaster response convoyofhope.org
• world vision Child sponsorship and community development worldvision.org
• Compassion international Child advocacy and development compassion.com
is God in this?” But I don’t hear that much in Haiti. I hear many people saying more, “I’m thankful to the Lord because I’m still alive.” But the voodoo stuff is still here. You don’t see it as much as you used to see it, but it’s still here because people still do those things. Do some people practice both the Christian faith and voodoo? Some do. Especially people in the Catholic church, it’s like a big syncretism thing. We can say 70 to 80 percent of people in Haiti are Catholic, but I would say maybe we have 85 percent of Haitians who are doing voodoo stuff because some people are also in the Protestant churches. Is it because voodoo has been ingrained in the culture for so long? I would not say that. I would say it’s basically one way the devil is trying to do his own thing. Talking about voodoo as being part of a culture, I would say it’s our religion.
Are you able to convince converts to stop practicing voodoo? This is what practically all the preachers do. Only the Holy Spirit can change people’s hearts or minds. We do what we’re supposed to do, and say, “This is the way it really is.” Do you feel like people in Haiti are moving on after the tragedy of the earthquake, or are they still very much in mourning? We see both. Even the kids that go back to school, with a big noise, everyone runs outside. They try their best to start over, but it’s very difficult because some people lost their jobs, and others lost their breadwinner and their kids. It won’t go that fast. It
“Right now, we’re preaching that God is involved, that God can take care of you and it’s OK to grieve. God can comfort you because He is powerful enough.” What does it mean to practice voodoo—in a day-to-day sense? If I’m sick, I would go to the voodoo priest, which means I’m looking for health. Some people who are poor, they would go to the voodoo priest to ask for a chance to do business, so that means they are looking for wealth. If you do something to me, I’ll go to the voodoo priest so I can do something to you, too. I will say I’m looking for justice. And if I’m afraid of you and I don’t want you to do something to me, I will go to the voodoo priest because I’m looking for power. If I’m also a candidate for elections, I go to the voodoo priest because I need the power of the spirits to help me. So people use voodoo stuff for practically everything, looking for justice, health, wealth, power, whatever they can think of. Usually, when you look at films, you see people putting needles into dolls. There is something like that, but it’s not really like that. It’s
ACT: Pretty much everyone you talk to in Haiti says education is the key to long-term recovery. That’s why we’ve partnered with Convoy of Hope to rebuild three schools severely damaged by the earthquake. Find out how you can help at www.relevantmagazine.com/haitischools.
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more serious. You call the spirit of somebody, and you have a bowl full of water, and you see a face, and you use a knife and the person at home, he dies or she dies. But I don’t know because I haven’t practiced voodoo because I was born in the Church.
will take some time. But usually Haitians are so used to difficult times that sometimes you won’t see it easily, but it’s there. What kind of messages are you preaching now? At first, people were thinking, “Maybe this is the end of the world.” You have to tell them the earthquake is a natural disaster; it’s not the end of times. Although the end of times will have earthquakes, it won’t be the same. It will be practically everywhere, so nobody will be able to come and help you. But right now, we’re preaching that God is involved, that God can take care of you and it’s OK to grieve. God can comfort you because He is powerful enough. This is the message we are preaching right now, trying to tell people: “It’s OK. You have to move on because this is part of life.”
THINK: Knowing what God is responsible for and what you are responsible for as a pastor will help you sleep better at night.
We Can End Hunger
“
… In Exodus from Hunger, David notes the progress that has been made against poverty and hunger, but convincingly points to the potential for far greater progress if individual Christians and churches will continue to offer grassroots compassionate care to those in need, while also boldly challenging our government to more generously and wisely participate with us in the battle against poverty and hunger. It was a message I needed to hear.” – Lynne Hybels Willow Creek Community Church
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… Economics makes the problem of hunger intractable, but the active purpose of God makes its resolution possible and compelling. Beckmann tells the truth in ways that empower!” – Walter Brueggemann Columbia Theological Seminary
Order your copies of Exodus from Hunger, by David Beckmann, Bread for the World president and 2010 World Food Prize Laureate, from www.exodusfromhunger.com. Available October 2010. www.bread.org
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T h e I m p e r a ti v e o f I m a g i n a ti o n We need to rethink how we present the Gospel By nanette Sawyer
When I was invited to begin my ministry as founding pastor of Wicker Park Grace in Chicago, I had no idea what to do. Everyone knew it, since no one knew exactly what they were asking me to do. “Do something different” was the charge; go outside the church and into the neighborhood; drink chai lattes with people from the area; engage young adults not engaging the church. I had a passion to convey the truth, depth and breadth of God’s love to people who had experienced rejection, injustice or narrowness in the church into which they could not fit. Yet here I was, with no roadmap, no tried and true method to guide the way. I had to imagine it; I had to create it. And that was scary. Thrilling, but scary. Imagination can help us understand in new ways, helping us to approach the perfection, the mature development of our unique gifts. It can help us learn from the past, by imagining into the experience of those who have come before us, seeking after their passion, their struggles and their successes. Imagination helps us connect with others and become more compassionate toward those whose experiences have differed from ours. And imagination can help us heal. Through it we can connect with places in us that are not logical or rational but are shaped by images and symbols. We can tap into these places and draw them out into the light through music, art, poetry, movement and story. Imagination can help us remember/retell/heal our own story, often by bringing it into contact with other stories. As Christians, we look to the story of Christ as a shaping and healing story. But how might we receive its transformative power into our hearts, minds and throughout our lives?
New ways of being a church How we imagine God affects how we act in daily life, how we form community and how we function as “church.” When I was fresh out of seminary, I was called into my current role as a reimaginer of the church—ordained into the role of evangelist to engage young adults who were not engaging church. Not only was I called to use my imagination to create new ways of being church, I had to reimagine myself and my role as pastor. There was no Sunday bulletin to prepare, no liturgy to write at that point. My work was all about relationships and the contents of our imaginations as they related to God, Christ, the Church and our multi-religious world. Although new to the role of pastor, I did have some experience with community organizing in my first career working on a college campus in the student life department. To start a church, though? We weren’t even sure it was going to be a church, per se. We wanted to be in relationship with people who wouldn’t come to church, people who had negative experiences of church in the past or who just couldn’t connect with a traditional church. Whatever was to be developed here needed to come out of the people themselves. My task as leader was to get to know the people, but also to get to know myself and God better. I was pushed outside my comfort zone, never knowing what the next step would be until I took it. And sometimes it was a misstep. I really questioned myself and my capacity to create something new when I didn’t know where we were going. I had been trained to “be” a pastor, a preacher, a liturgist, a theologian, a historian, a caregiver—all in the generalist
THINK: Church planting seems to have a way of taking all your years of experience and turning it on its head from day one. You think you know, but you really have no idea what you’re made of until you plant a church.
sense. Do a bit of all these things weekly, show up in church on Sunday morning, preach the word “rightly” and voila. Pastor. But I had none of that structure. I showed up in a pre-selected neighborhood with a day planner, an introverted personality and a desire to share God’s love with people in the transforming way it had been shared with me. I began by meeting people in coffee shops and telling and listening to stories. It wasn’t long before I realized our stories are what help us connect. Creativity is grounded in the authentic self, in the deepest parts of ourselves, where God knows us by name and calls us out into the world. It’s vitally important to tell the truth about who we are at that level and how we got where we are today in each of our faith journeys. One day, early in my ministry, someone asked me, “Why are you Christian?” On that same night I was asked about the Resurrection, the Bible, women’s roles in the church, and the controversy over gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender people being fully included in the church (they were for it). It was my authenticity and honesty, my wrestling openly with language to convey my thoughts and feelings about all these things that really made a difference. That night, I had an email in my inbox. In part it read: “Before our discussions, I naively thought Christianity was a one-dimensional theology with minor shifts in beliefs across denominations; and I definitely thought it did not coincide with my own worldview. However, after each discussion I feel a deeper connection to Christianity as a dynamic faith and feel an overwhelming sense of wellbeing and connection.”
THINK: This remains one of the largest questions for church planters to wrestle with. How much church do you build, strategize and create for the purpose of raising money and casting vision before you have people who will be a part of your community speak into it with you?
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Her use of “dynamic” struck me, and I realized she, like many people, had never been given permission to bring her whole self into engagement with Christian ideas. What we were doing in the coffee shops was engaging our imaginations, groping around for language that might tell a meaningful story that heals and opens hearts. Christianity has always been a dynamic conversation. Theological libraries document the diversity of language applied to the search for meaning. What has led to this reputation that Christianity is “one-dimensional”?
Power and danger Perhaps fear of imagination has played a role in this reputation. Imagination’s power can make it dangerous. Imagination can lead us away from truth and into falseness. It can be used to create suffering, to delude the self and others. It can be used to create more inhumanity and to develop greater cruelty. Imagination is very dangerous, yes. Once twisted upon itself in these ways, it can destroy the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). Our fear of imagination’s power can cause us to shut it down, to stop dreaming or to demand that others limit their creativity. If we do this, we risk destroying our own future, destroying possibility, hope and human hearts. And yet the power of imagination can be directed toward beauty and goodness. God has given us this power—the power to imagine; the power to create real change, tangible transformation. The power of imagination is what makes it both scary and exhilarating. Human will and how we direct our imaginations play a tremendous role in how its power will be wielded in the world.
engaging that moment of the Jesus story. The remaining Stations were deemed community art projects, bringing larger numbers of people into the process in ways that would be welcoming to non-artists. For example, Station 5 represents Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus carry His cross. We invited people to make plaster casts of their hands and placed these hands into the sculpture. And we asked, “How do we help to relieve injustice and suffering in the world?” On Good Friday, we arranged the Stations throughout the art gallery where we regularly worship and went on a prayer pilgrimage through the series, reading Scripture and reflecting on related questions at each Station. Afterward, I asked one writer to reflect on his experience. He wrote: “The music, light and contemplative quiet of the exhibit impacted me in a way no religion ever had before. As I walked and looked at the Stations, I let my atheism simmer as the highly metaphorical artwork made me think, for the first time, about how Jesus must have felt. I wondered how painful a crucifixion must have been, and about the crushing anger and sorrow Jesus’ friends must have endured. … For a short span of time, I was not an atheist. I was a Jew who had borne witness to every lash of the whip, every hit on the nail’s head. I had seen the death of a man who I thought would rid my people of the Romans. I choked up. I was speechless.” In that moment, he set aside his prior perspective and entered the depth of the heart-wrenching story of Jesus’ death. Good Friday was no longer just an idea; it became an experience that changed his connection to Jesus. The story was no longer a fairy tale with a moral—it opened new perceptions in his being.
Using imagination to tell the Story
Fostering imagination and creativity
A couple years ago, we gathered artists in our community to retell the story of Good Friday using the Stations of the Cross. A small group of artists discussed the spiritual and theological significance of the Stations, each representing one of 14 significant moments on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion. Each artist selected one or two Stations and agreed to create a piece of visual art
Transformation happens when we engage creativity and imagination. People ask me: “What can I do? I’m not an artist.” One thing that might help is expanding our idea of what it is to be an artist. We limit ourselves when we think art is the creation of a product for consumption. Maybe an artist is someone who authentically tells the truth about their experience, someone
DISCUSS: How is imagination harnessed at your church? In what ways could you be more imaginative?
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who shares their hopes and dreams as well as their uncertainties and fears. Directing our imaginations and expressing what we find there requires courage because expressing what is true for us makes us more vulnerable. What we are expressing may be judged unworthy, or the way we are expressing it might be criticized as unskilled. In the face of such possibilities, many people don’t take the risk and imagination becomes stifled, creativity becomes stunted. To counteract this requires creating a culture within our communities that sees art in a different light. We can give it its own name, call it spiritual art, to distinguish it from art as product. Spiritual art is about the process, not the product. Practicing it is a way to engage the imagination and to encounter the holy. It could be practiced with writing, visual arts, music or movement. It is true we have different gifts, skills and tendencies. We “speak” in different “languages.” Some people are gifted in teaching, others in creating a “safe” space for self-expression. Some artists are good at sharing the techniques of art. All these gifts can be used to develop processes to engage the imagination of a variety of people, no matter their level of comfort with “art.” Imagination opens up possibility, but sometimes we do not dare to imagine something as beautiful as God. Sometimes we deaden our hopes and dreams. We judge ourselves and one another. Perhaps a way to change this is by getting in touch with your greatest hopes and dreams, the ones you are afraid to dare to dream. Be bold because God and God’s love are dreams of that magnitude. God’s love for us is something bigger than our minds can grasp. Albert Einstein once said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” All there ever will be … perhaps it will be big enough to help us catch a glimpse of the glory of God. nanette sawyer is the founding pastor of Wicker Park Grace, an emerging faith community that gathers in an art gallery on the west side of Chicago. She is the author of Hospitality: The Sacred Art (Skylight Paths).
THINK: This is why it’s going to take churches in your city that are completely different from yours to reach the diversity of demographics that exist. We must become champions of churches around us so every atheist has a chance to connect to the Jesus story in completely different ways.
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craig groeschel admits sometimes it’s easier to preach it than it is to live it— but it’s the living god requires of us by Craig groeschel Charles Blondin was a world-renowned tightrope artist and acrobat. On June 30, 1859, before a stunned crowd of 100,000 excited onlookers, Blondin was the first person to cross Niagara Falls by tightrope. He crossed 1,100 feet on a single three-inch hemp cord, strung from 160 feet above the falls on one side to a spot 270 feet above the falls on the other. The breathless assembly watched him accomplish, step by slow step, a feat most believed impossible. But Blondin was just getting started. In the years to come, the daring entertainer crossed again and again: on stilts, in a sack, even pushing a wheelbarrow! The story goes that an exuberant onlooker called out, “You could cross with a man in that wheelbarrow!” Blondin agreed and invited the man to climb in. The spectator nervously declined. My dysfunctional relationship with God was often like that. I’ve always believed in God, just not enough to trust Him with my whole life in His wheelbarrow. I knew God could fulfill His promises, but I was never sure He’d do it for me. My selfish Christian Atheist view was that God existed for me, rather than I for Him. If He’d do what I thought He should, I’d trust Him more. If He’d come through for me, I’d give Him more of my life. If He made my life better and pain-free, I’d believe Him more passionately. But anytime God didn’t meet my expectations, we had a problem. God created me in His image. I returned the favor and created Him in mine. The kind of God I wanted to believe in was this: If He’s not what I want, then He can’t have my whole life.
Whatever it takes Several years ago, I increasingly recognized inconsistencies between what I claimed to
believe and the way I actually lived. I preached that people without Christ go to hell, but my life showed I wasn’t equally passionate to reach those people. Though I believed God wanted my life to be different, I found comparing myself to others easier than measuring my life against Christ’s. I preached that prayer is critical. But my prayer life was virtually nonexistent. God’s Word said my treasure shouldn’t be in this world, yet material things continued to grab my attention. Jesus said, “Don’t worry about tomorrow.” But worry came as naturally to me as breathing. If I truly belonged to Christ, I should surrender my whole life to Him. I just gave Him parts instead, and took them back whenever He didn’t do what I wanted. I called myself a Christian, but I lived like an atheist. The more honest I became, the more I hated living faithlessly and the more I craved intimacy with God. “Whatever it takes” became my heart’s cry. Whatever it takes to know Him. Whatever it takes to live like I truly love God. Whatever it takes to love eternity more than this world. Even if I have to fight, scrape and crawl away from my Christian Atheism into a genuine, crucified life of faith and radical obedience to Christ, I’ll do whatever it takes.
Crossing the third line One day I was at home working out on my elliptical machine, listening to a sermon on my iPod. Suddenly I just had to stop. Surrounded by God’s presence, I knelt down on the floor and started crying out to God. If you had seen me, you would have thought I was falling apart. But God was putting me back together. I cried for all of God, and His presence became immediately real. Although I’d unquestionably been
spiritually reborn a decade and a half ago, it was like I was being born again. I’ve always believed in spiritual visions; I’d just never had one. Not anymore. I saw a picture as clear as the words on this page. I stood before three lines in the sand. Somehow I knew what each line represented. Line 1: I believe in God and the Gospel of Christ enough to benefit from it. Like so many others, crossing that first line was easy. Sadly, many who call themselves Christians live here. If there is a God, I want to be on His good side. I want to go to heaven. I want Him to bless me with good health, good relationships and a happy life. Like the nine ungrateful lepers in Luke 17, once God had helped me, I forgot about Him. Most wouldn’t admit this is all the faith they can manage. We want God’s benefits, without changing how we live. We want His best, without our sacrifices. At the first line, we don’t fear God or share our faith. We still love this world. We’ll pursue happiness at any cost. The list goes on and on. We first-line believers get what we can from God without giving much, if anything, back. Is first-line faith real Christianity? Is believing in Jesus enough? Although God is the only true judge, I’m not sure simply believing in Christ makes a person a Christian. Honestly, I’m tempted to say, “No, I sincerely don’t think it is real Christianity.” Even demons believe in Christ. I worry how many people might be deceived. Instead of truly living as followers of Christ, many lull themselves into a sense of false comfort. What if they’re really “cultural Christians,” false believers? I don’t point my finger at others, only at myself. For way too long, I’ve claimed a belief in God, but my life didn’t reflect it.
DISCUSS: What have you preached or talked about with someone recently that isn’t reflected in who you are right now?
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Line 2: I believe in God and Christ’s Gospel enough to contribute comfortably. Past the first line are people who believe in God not only enough to benefit but also enough to give back—as long as it doesn’t cost too much. Many first-line Christians eventually cross the second line. If I don’t have to change too much, I’ll do some of what God asks. If it doesn’t hurt too much, I’ll get more serious about God. But everyone has their limits, right? Like the rich young ruler in Matthew 19, I was willing to go along with the religious rules as long as it didn’t hurt too much.
“However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24). What would it take to make my life nothing to me, existing only to do what Christ wants me to? “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). Could I count all my earthly possessions a loss, making Christ my treasure?
I increasingly recognized inconsistencies between what I claimed to believe and the way I actually lived. There, on the floor next to my elliptical, still crying, I realized: I was a second-line believer. I’d serve Jesus in ministry, but I didn’t want too many critics. I’d give up some things for Christ, but being away from my family often was too much. I’d follow Jesus anywhere as long as the job included insurance for my family. The third line was just inches in front of me. It might as well have been miles. Line 3: I believe in God and Christ’s Gospel enough to give my life to it. Although most people I knew were line-one and line-two believers, suddenly anything less than line three didn’t seem like real Christianity to me. Could I give my whole life to Christ? Not only in words but in my daily life? Verses I’d read dozens of times suddenly flooded to mind: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:25-26, NIV) Am I willing to lose my life? “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Could I sacrifice my desires, my hopes, my dreams?
Christ or nothing I knew in the deepest part of myself: I have to be a third-line believer. With unquenchable thirst, I pursued living water above all substitutes. I started praying like never before. I started pursuing God in the morning and continued throughout the day. Jesus was on my mind when I fell asleep and when I awoke. Scripture started becoming my bread of life, nourishing my soul. I surrendered one thing after another, until just one major hurdle stood between where I was and where God wanted me. I can’t tell you what that thing was. It’s simply too personal. Only two people in the world know it. My battle to cross the third line lasted almost two years. I prayed about it daily. I quoted Scripture. Though spiritually exhausted, I wouldn’t give up. Spiritual warfare raged around me. Finally, on one very normal Saturday afternoon, by faith, I gave this last part of my life totally to God. I sacrificed a fear that had held me hostage since I was a child and made a promise to God that I’d never take it back. I crossed the third line. I believe in God and Christ’s Gospel so much that I’m willing to give my whole life to His cause. Nothing in this world is more important to me than my treasure in heaven. No fear in my heart is
DISCUSS: What’s your guess as to the percentage of your church who has crossed each of these lines? Keep in mind the goal isn’t to have a church where 100 percent of people have crossed the third line. You want people crossing all three lines, all the time.
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greater than my fear of God. I desire nothing more than I desire all of God. Tears are filling my eyes as I type this. I cannot put into words what God has done in my heart. I am a different person. You can be, too. Don’t forget, the world will try to pull us back across the third line, the second line and even across the first line. But we won’t retreat or back down. Every day, we’ll choose to live out our belief in God instead of believing in the world or ourselves. When we truly know God, rather than living ashamed of our past of doubting God’s love for us, we can daily enjoy His grace and unconditional love and acceptance. As our faith and prayer life grows, we’ll see His goodness—even in our trials—and grow to forgive as He has freely forgiven us. Instead of believing we can never change, we can let His unlimited power transform us and lead us out of a life paralyzed by fear and worry. Because God isn’t just someone we believe in but is our life, we won’t seek security and happiness in the things of the world but will find them in His presence and will. As He consumes us, strengthened by His church, we’ll seize opportunities to share His love with people daily. The choice is ours. Every day, I choose the third line.
Your turn Are you a Christian Atheist? Do you believe in God but live as if He doesn’t exist? Consider the third line. Ask what separates you from a wholly surrendered, Spirit-filled, Kingdom-driven life. Weigh your options. Life as it is ... or as it could be. Consider the costs. Do whatever it takes. Step across the line. Welcome to true Christianity. CRAIG GROESCHEL is the founding and senior pastor of LifeChurch.tv. He is the author of several books, including The Christian Atheist. Craig, his wife, Amy, and their six children live in the Edmond, OK area. Adapted from The Christian Atheist by Craig Groeschel © 2010. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com
THINK: As Craig discovered, just because you’re a pastor doesn’t mean you’re living this way. Evaluate these rhythms in your own life. Are you living as a third-line believer?
Are you called to serve? In a troubled and uncertain world, hope is often left by the wayside. How can you share God’s love and care? At Fuller, you’ll find the preparation and resources you need to fulfill your call to serve the hurting and hopeless. You’ll study with faculty, who are renowned scholars, authors, and practitioners, engaged in leading-edge research in theology, intercultural studies, and psychology. Consider becoming part of our richly diverse learning community – committed to Jesus Christ and passionate to serve.
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Back to the Drawing Board
What do you do when ministry isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t going how you thought? By pete Wilson
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I remember it like it was yesterday, even though it was 2005 and I was 31 years old. Cross Point, the church I pastor, was three years old, and from the outside it looked like I was having the time of my life. The church was growing like crazy. My wife, Brandi, and I had just had our second child. But on that warm June night, I pulled my truck into the garage after a long and somewhat volatile elders meeting and just sat there crying. I didn’t have the energy to get out of my truck, and I was too embarrassed to allow my wife to see me like that.
The pressures of ministry were quickly catching up with me. I had a group of leaders in the church who were challenging me at every corner. I was out of balance and had become addicted to work while ignoring my family. I’d allowed my relationship with Christ to become defined by what I was “doing” for Christ instead of just “being” with Christ. I had become obsessed with the critics who I felt were out to get me. As I sat in my truck with tears rolling down my face, I knew I was trying desperately to cling to the illusion I was in control. I thought I could control my church leaders with savvy leadership skills. I thought I could control attendance by preaching home-run messages. I thought I could control the offering by convincingly teaching on generosity. I thought I could control our congregation’s spiritual growth with cookie-cutter programs. Somewhere along the line, I had started to believe I controlled outcomes in my life and ministry. But it was an illusion quickly collapsing. What do you do as a pastor when it seems like you’re stuck in the middle of a plan B? What do you do when it feels like God isn’t showing up in the
way you thought He was going to? What do you do … ... when your church isn’t growing? ... when you’re casting vision, but nobody seems to be inspired? ... when the criticism seems almost too much to bear? ... when you feel like everyone has abandoned you—including God?
“The Lord was with Joseph” I remember reading through the Old Testament story of Joseph during one of my many low points. I felt like I could really identify with him. He was beat up and thrown into a pit by his brothers. He was sold into slavery. He was falsely accused of rape and imprisoned. While he was in prison, he was forgotten and spent an extra two years there. Joseph was a man doing everything he was supposed to do, yet nothing seemed to be going right for him. He was being faithful to God even when it seemed God hadn’t been faithful to him. And yet there’s this interesting phrase that shows up in the story over and over and over: and the Lord was with Joseph. Really? The Lord was with Joseph? I thought if the Lord was with you,
ACT: It’s worth your time to take an hour and journal the answers to these questions and whether or not any of this resonates with what you’re feeling right now.
things were supposed to be going well. I thought if the Lord was with you, your church was always growing. That people would stand up and applaud after a sermon. That financial charts of your church would always be going up and to the right. I thought if the Lord was with you, your leadership team would carry you up and down the aisles on their shoulders—or, you know, at least agree with you most of the time. Isn’t it interesting that, even in ministry, when life isn’t turning out the way we hoped, we almost always default to feeling as if God has abandoned us? And yet the truth in Joseph’s story—and the truth in my story and yours—is that God is most powerfully present even when it seems He is most apparently absent. Any way you look at it, ministry is full of shattered dreams. And we don’t get to choose if we have shattered dreams. But we do get to choose how we respond. And in that choice lies an amazing amount of hope.
Puppet strings Do you remember those marionette puppets—the ones controlled by all the strings? I remember as a kid picking up one of those puppets and getting so frustrated because I couldn’t control it like some of the professionals I’d seen. Well, that’s how I was picturing life. I thought there was a string running to my church. I thought there was a string running to my wife. I thought there was a string running to my finances. I thought I could yank on a string at will and get the desired results in my life. The choice I was being forced to make in the middle of my meltdown was a choice of surrender. My desire to control and manipulate what I could not control and manipulate was slowly destroying me. I was learning that we get ourselves into all
THINK: In the last five years there’s been more public honesty about the breakdowns and meltdowns pastors have had and are having behind the scenes. This is becoming the new rite of passage for pastors to pass through toward a healthier life.
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kinds of trouble when we mistakenly assume God thinks and feels as we do. That night sitting in my truck was a breaking point. I took my first step toward truly surrendering my ministry and its outcomes. I began to discover there is a beautiful gift that comes with surrender, and it’s called peace. Surrender is not just letting go of my will—it’s also giving up the idea that I’m in charge of my outcomes. What a relief! There is a God and it’s not me. I discovered my primary responsibility was not to lead, to fix, to speak or to brainstorm. My primary responsibility was to simply be present with God.
The truth in Joseph’s story—and the truth in my story and yours— is that God is most powerfully present even when it seems He is most apparently absent. The words of Jesus in John 15—words I was so familiar with—became refreshingly real to me in that moment. “I am the vine, and you are the branches. If any remain in me and I remain in them, they produce much fruit. But without me they can do nothing” (verse 5, NCV). Nothing.
Whiplash Learning this process of surrender has been supremely important as God has expanded my ministry. The act of surrendering in the midst of my shattered dreams was essential because it forced me to trust God like never before. Trust is crucial when you live in the whiplash world of ministry. “Whiplash” is a word I often use when describing the emotions you go through as a pastor. Ministry can be the best and worst of times.
Over the course of the past two years, Brandi and I have had two sets of friends who have experienced the loss of a baby. Todd and Angie Smith, who lost their baby after two hours of life, and Mike and Holly Phelps, who lost their baby late in their first pregnancy. I can’t even begin to imagine the heavy heartache and deep loss they went through. And while getting pregnant again doesn’t take away that pain, you can imagine how excited I was to hear both couples were once again expecting. While each couple faced their own unique challenges, they were both on track to have healthy babies. I couldn’t help but think of what a bittersweet experience it would be for both of them. A glimmer of hope in the midst of the darkness they’d been walking through. On Wednesday night, May 19, I received a phone call saying both couples had gone to the hospital to give birth to their babies. Very early the next morning, I went to visit them in their hospitals, just two blocks away from each other. Both couples had given birth overnight. I walked into two different hospital rooms. Both scenes could not have been more similar and yet more different. Both rooms had moms who were lying in hospital beds. Both rooms had dads who were right by the bed holding and rocking a tiny infant. However, the similarities ended there. One baby was breathing and the other was not. Todd and Angie’s room was full of prayers, crying and pure joy. There was life. Mike and Holly’s room was full of prayers and crying, but no joy. No life. The whole way to the Phelps’ room, I cried. I knew the situation I was walking into. I cried out to God ... How could this happen to them again? Why, God, would you allow this family to endure this pain yet again? Haven’t they been through enough? Why God?
Trust vs. Understanding I’ve been criticized for writing a book called Plan B, which is about God, crisis and pain. A book that clearly states I don’t think there are answers to all of life’s questions and complexities.
I dare any one of those critics to stand in the room with this young couple and even try to answer all of the questions they had that morning as they sat there holding their lifeless child. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this as a pastor, but I’m going to anyway. ... Isn’t it amazing how in a moment like that, you so desperately want God near, but at the same time you also feel secretly mad at Him? Reality for Christians often means we have more questions than we do answers. Reality is sometimes lacking the faith that will give us a sustained hope. Reality is, even though we know God is with us, sometimes we feel completely alone. Reality is even though we truly believe, we also often doubt. There’s a big difference between trust and understanding. They say trust is what we need when we don’t have understanding. So these days I’m praying for trust. A big, huge helping of trust. It’s funny, but the final paragraph of Plan B says: “I’m asking you to trust that one day faith will win over doubt, that light will win over darkness, love will win over hate, and all things will one day be redeemed. I’m asking you, right in the middle of your Plan B pain, to trust this process that is going on in your life.” They were words I wrote. But I didn’t know— even as I wrote them—how much I would need them in the days to come. On days like the one I sat in my truck crying, wondering if God was really using me. Or on days like the other day when I walked out of a hospital room with a lot more questions than answers. I’m learning the secret to withstanding a ministry that is full of hidden pressures, shattered dreams and unanswerable questions is truly found in those two words: surrender and trust. So simple and yet so difficult.
Pete wilson is the senior pastor of Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN. He is also the author of Plan B (Thomas Nelson). You can follow him at Twitter.com/pwilson.
THINK: What have you said when faced with pain in others’ lives? How do you honestly answer their questions about God?
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the theology of virtue with
n.t. wright by Josh Loveless The former Bishop of Durham, England, N.T. Wright, is a leading New Testament scholar and the current Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the author of several books, including Surprised by Hope and After You Believe. We spoke with Wright about the differences between the U.S. and the European church, why character and virtue matter, and how he first came to love Scripture.
What do you think the American Church can learn from the Church in the U.K.? I think the American church is very much formed by the Americans’ particular history. Particularly in the 18th century, when your Constitution was devised, there was this massive deism which wanted to split completely church and state. In most other parts of the world and in most periods of history, the church and the state have had to get along somehow. Doesn’t mean that one is in the other’s pocket. That certainly isn’t the case here. We have an established church, but the church and the state retain a robust independence, as well as interdependence. I think
when Americans think about political theology, they lurch to and fro a little bit between saying the Church has got nothing whatever to do with politics, and then in fact coming around the back and doing quite a lot of very severely political things. How can the Church in the U.S. move beyond just the conservative and liberal debate? Part of the answer must be for church leaders to do lots more fresh study of Scripture and the Christian tradition in relation to the key issues because God has yet more light to break out of His early Word. I think as that happens, you will find some issues
THINK: As you read, please imagine the most royal, British accent speaking these words. If you haven’t heard Wright speak before, just picture an older, English grandfather sitting in front of a fireplace in a small cottage, talking to you about the Church.
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which normally are pigeonholed as being either on the right or on the left may well turn out not to be like that, and you may want to revise where you place certain markers. When our children and their children look back on this time in Church history, how do you think they will judge those of us who lived during it? I think future generations will say the late 20th century and the early 21st century was a time of great convulsions and upheavals. And post-9/11, the huge standoff between fundamentalism and secularism. But also the shift from modernity to postmodernity and all that goes with that. What I would like my children and grandchildren to remember is that I tried to keep—and we tried to keep—a cool head and steer the ship through some very choppy waters, and perhaps through some tidal waves. We may not always keep it absolutely upright, but we have a responsibility for trying to keep it going in the right direction even though the winds and waves are against us. As a biblical scholar, what do you consider your role to play in that story? My first role is to try to spend quality time every day in the Scriptures, and to make sure I am listening, and thinking, and open to new things which are there in Scripture but which haven’t impinged on my consciousness yet. And that’s a daily delight and challenge for me. But then my role is to translate that as quickly as I can, whether into an academic article or book or into a little sermon. I do have to think about the larger contribution I hope to make over the next 10 or 20 (hopefully) years—to sum up the fruits of my own life’s work, really. In your latest book, After You Believe, you talk about the importance of virtue and character. Why the emphasis on these older terms? When people start to live as Christians, there are all sorts of things God really wants them to do and the Holy Spirit will help them to do. But we tend to lurch from thinking, “Well, there are the rules and you just have to grit your teeth and keep them through,” to thinking on the other side, “No, you’ve just got to do what comes naturally, and if the Holy Spirit is at work in you, it will come naturally and you won’t have to try.” And the answer is, you do have to try, and the Holy Spirit comes not to stop
you having to try, but in order to help you and give you directions so your moral effort will be rightly directed. ... If you wait until you feel like loving your neighbor, until you feel generous, until you feel like doing all the things Christians are supposed to do— love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control—you will wait a very long time. And it’s interesting that the final one in the list of the fruit of the Spirit is self-control because if it was all just happening naturally, we wouldn’t need self-control. It would just happen naturally. ... You’ve got to practice the skills ahead of time, so when it really counts, you’ll be able to do automatically what you wouldn’t have been able to do before. What role do you see the institutional church playing in the personal responsibility of developing character? I think one of the ways in which we can help—and I say “we” speaking as part of an institutional church, as it were—is to make sure our basic practices are in good repair. It’s very easy for a church just to slide along from week to week, taking it for granted that we do our services like this and that, and we celebrate the sacraments like this and that. ... It’s very interesting how even a little bit of casualness or slackness in preparation and execution can have quite a negative effect, and we need to watch out for that. At the same time, the church does have a responsibility to be looking out for and praying for the fresh mission opportunities. What is God calling us to do that’s different in this community, right now? And sometimes it may take years before the answer to that prayer comes, but unless the church leadership are doing that, then people may well feel a sense of, “We’re not quite sure what’s going on here.” Whereas, if something is going ahead, they may have a sense of, “I’m glad I belong to this church because we’re doing this and this.” How did your love affair with the study of Scripture begin? On the day the Queen was crowned, which was June 2, 1953, I was 4-and-a-half years old and my sister was 5-and-a-half, and my parents gave us a Bible each to commemorate the coronation. We’d not had our own Bibles before, and this was a King James Version Bible, quite small print, but with a crown and the Queen’s insignia on the front. I remember my sister and me sitting down on the
THINK: It takes great maturity to pull back and know we’re not going to get everything right. Keeping the ship afloat and headed in the right direction is such a worthy and noble goal.
floor in the bedroom, looking at this extraordinary book and thinking, “We should actually try and read some of this.” We chose the letter to Philemon, which is a single page, and we read Philemon out loud to ourselves. I’ve got a clear picture of me at age 4, thinking, “Ooh, well, now here’s a little bit of Scripture I can actually maybe start to think about.” And I’ve never lost that sort of a sense of a love for Philemon. Then, when I was 12, somebody gave me a set of Scripture union notes, which were for daily Bible reading. I found them extraordinarily helpful in just making the Bible come alive, day by day, as part of a daily devotion. And I would spend, I don’t know, a quarter of an hour, 20 minutes every morning, right through my teens, just reading the next bit of Scripture, and reading the notes on it, and praying about it and then gradually starting to be able to, in youth groups and so on, to expound little bits of it myself. Then that was just extremely exciting, to feel I could get inside a bit of Scripture and help others to get inside it as well. So that’s how it began, and it’s been a lifelong thing, really. How would you encourage others who are trying to engage the Scriptures in that kind of way? I think I want to say, surprise yourself. Get a different translation from time to time. Go away somewhere where you’re not going to be phoned or emailed. Sit down and read right through 1 and 2 Chronicles in a sitting, or read right through all of Paul’s letters at a sitting. The first book other than Philemon I actually read straight through, the first long book, was the book of Revelation when I was, I think, 14 or 13. I’d just been given the New English Bible translation, and I knew nothing about Revelation. I just opened it and read it from cover to cover. And I didn’t understand more than a tiny bit of it, but it’s like watching a thunderstorm. You think: “Oh my goodness, something’s going on here. I have no idea what it is, and it’s very exciting.” I think people need to be able to be surprised by Scripture. Read Genesis at a run or Job at a run. Then to go down into the single verse, into the two- or three-verse short passage, and say, “What is this all about?” Get a piece of paper and write down what you think this verse is about, and what you think this phrase is about, and what you think this word is about. The thing is inexhaustible. It’s just a gold mine, and an everything-else mine, as well. You’ll never tire of it.
DISCUSS: How would you have answered this question?
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Recommends
Here are a few of the things we’re enjoying these days for inspiration, motivation—and an occasional moment of amusement.
BROWSE
UncoverTheColor.com | Home to an artist collective creating highquality elements (visual, auditory and live media) for church communities, this site features a combination of pieces for use in your gatherings— all to help you be more effective. WeFeelFine.org | We Feel Fine is a hub of human emotion. Their system searches the world’s blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling.” It then records what the person is feeling, creating a worldwide database of emotion. Allelon.org | This multigenerational network of missional church leaders, schools and parachurch organizations envisions, resources and trains leaders for the work of the Church. If you’re looking for a site to stretch your paradigm, this is it.
READ
Rework | The guys from 37signals, the company behind the Basecamp program, have written a book worth your time. If we’re honest, we are all looking for a new way to approach work. Rework offers new insight on everything from social media to networking to hiring. Open | Though it isn’t new, it’s probably new to you. This is one of the best-written autobiographies of the last three years—and it’s not just for tennis fans. Agassi compellingly writes about his childhood and his personal match with fame and insecurity. Great vacation read. The Intimate Mystery: Creating Strength and Beauty in Your Marriage | Is your marriage due for some TLC? Read this with your spouse. Beautiful, scriptural insights into what it means to “leave, weave and cleave.”
USE
12-week course on creativity | If you’re looking to get more from your creative process, the people behind Accidental Creative have developed an online resource to challenge and inspire what you do. Get more info at www.accidentalcreative.com/brilliance. Your own personal switchboard | We’ve all waited on the phone for customer care. But now Lucy has come to save the day! Make customer service calls through Lucy, and once you get put on hold, hit **. Lucy will call you back when the rep is on the phone. Find out more: LucyPhone.com Staff retreat/sabbatical cabin in the Georgia mountains | We have no personal stake in whether or not you stay here. Our job is to recommend things we’d want you to tell us about. For the price, you won’t find a nicer place for your study retreat or to take your team away: http://bit.ly/bIwCN5.
THINK: Now if they could only create a resource that waits for the cable guy at your house between the hours of 7 a.m. and 2 p.m., our world would be complete.
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WATCH
LISTEN
http://bit.ly/a1pHqV | In case you’ve been hiding under a rock and have missed out on the Pomplamoose phenomenon: They’re a boyfriend-girlfriend musical force that re-records hit songs into their own vibe and films music videos for them. Very entertaining. Check out their version of “Beat it.”
Peter Broderick — Home | Peter Broderick paints a gorgeous picture of lo-fi layering on Home. An unassuming, predominantly analog ambient work that’s perfect for quiet reflection. His vibe makes you wish you were at a live show watching his musical genius at work.
http://bit.ly/awHPrN | A short documentary from John Mark McMillan chronicling the story behind his song “How He Loves Us.” It captures the intimate and vulnerable aspects of the songwriter and lets us into his world in an inspirational way.
http://bit.ly/dBYjNd | Northpoint Community Church has created a video spoofing the way contemporary churches program their worship gatherings. It’s also a bit of a jab at the way they create their own worship gatherings. Use this video at the start of your next worship planning meeting to help you evaluate what’s broken and what’s beautiful about your approach to worship services.
Foals | If you’ve seen the latest preview for this season’s Entourage, then you’ve heard the sound of Foals. Straight out of the U.K., they bring a unique ambient soundscape. It’s great walk-in music for worship gatherings, too.
Hammock — Chasing after Shadows ... Living With the Ghosts | For those trying to find that perfect album to play in the background while you surf the Web at your favorite coffee shop, this is it. Comparisons have been made to Sigur Rós and Album Leaf for their ethereal atmospheric sound that evokes emotion and inspiration. A rare album that’s consistently beautiful from beginning to end.
FOLLOW
Justin Dillon - @justindillon | The musician/director/activist extraordinaire will move you with his Bob Marley covers, intelligent perspective on human trafficking issues and passion for justice. Pete Greig - @petegreig | The leader of the 24/7 prayer movement is your direct link to what God is doing around the world. Shauna Niequist - @sniequist | Following Niequist’s mini-blog is like hearing from a poet on a daily basis. The author and speaker offers eloquent perspectives on her life and inspires you to rethink the way you’re approaching your day.
ACT: Follow Neue magazine at @neuemag for interviews, social commentary and ministry ideas.
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thought
My Issues In this issue JoSH LOVELESS I met the only best friend I’ve ever had when I was 6 years old. Like a scene out of a movie, I’ll never forget Matthew walking toward me after church on a hot Sunday afternoon in Florida in 1984. He was wearing a three piece suit and looking like a three-foot-tall John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever. We immediately bonded over video games and college football. Eventually our families moved into the same neighborhood together where we spent our days building BMX tracks (thanks to the movie Rad) and starting karate clubs (thanks to the movie Karate Kid). For one of his birthdays, I wanted to sacrifice something sacred I owned and offer it to him as a present. I took out my collection of baseball cards and told him to choose any one of the cards I had as his birthday gift. He chose my 1977 Topps Andre Dawson rookie card, which happened to be my favorite. But it didn’t matter because I felt true joy in being able to share something with my closest friend that was valuable to me. When we were 10, one of our friends let Matthew borrow a tape from a band we had never heard of called Metallica. I don’t think either of us will ever forget the feeling of being reborn the moment I hit play on the tape deck in his room. I had to turn the volume all the way down so his parents wouldn’t hear what we were listening to. We both crouched close to the speakers, where our ears were pressed up against the foam of the cabinet while we quietly made our first attempts at air guitar. The music stirred something in us. Even though we were young, I think we both realized that day we’d stumbled on a friendship we wanted forever. But as we all know, at some point life turns the page. Before either of us knew it, the long summer days of neighborhood baseball in the streets till 9 p.m. and all-night slumber parties playing Surf or Die became nothing more than a childhood memory. By the end of middle school, we were headed to different schools and slowly our lives drifted apart as we began to explore other relational circles.
I wish someone had told me that would be the last time I’d have a best friend for 20 years. Something changed about how I approached relationship when I entered high school. I developed walls. I created a persona. I learned to ask good questions so people would be consumed with answering about themselves rather than investigating my secrets. I became the me people wanted me to be rather than the me I was supposed to become on my own. Whether it was with my family or my friends, I was losing my sense of self and center. Though I made friends rather easily, I began moving through adolescence alone. I found a way to allow people to feel as though we were close without ever fully opening up to them about who I really was. Carrying this issue and countless others, I became a pastor. Lucky for me, pastoring within our culture meant being good at teaching and coming up with an inspiring strategy. All things I felt comfortable with and that could safely hide my relational paralysis. Eight years into full-time ministry, a fellow pastor sat me down in a corner booth at a Chili’s restaurant and told me that out of everyone he worked with on our team, I was the most disconnected and distant. I was shocked. I felt defensive. I thought I had been the person everyone could talk to about their problems. The truth of his words cut me to the core because I came face to face with the fact
THINK: Who has been your longest friend? How do you approach friendship differently now than you did before you were a pastor? Would you say your friendships are in a healthy place?
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that I had been faking friendship. Someone had finally called my bluff. Friendship has been my Promised Land. This distant land flowing with character and chemistry. With all the books I’ve read, messages I’ve heard and even messages I’ve taught, I have wandered around in the desert, hoping somewhere on the horizon I might become the kind of friend I was made to be. Each of us carries our own set of issues that directly affects the kind of ministry we do dayto-day. Because of this, I believe it would be an invaluable experience for you to read this collection of articles through the lens of your own story. For example, I wish someone had given me Glenn Packiam’s article on redefining the pastoral office years ago. I desperately needed someone to tell me to center my role as pastor on the study of Scripture, prayer and offering people spiritual direction. Because of my own inability to lead well when ministries I’ve led are falling apart, I wish I had been able to pick up Pete Wilson’s article on going back to the drawing board. His honesty cuts to the heart of what I’ve needed to do when I haven’t known what to do. And because I’ve always wanted to look like I knew what I was doing, I never stopped to ask if how I approached compassion ministry was right or wrong. I needed to discover what Brandon O’Brien wrote related to a philosophy of serving called community development. Every scar tells a story. This issue is loaded with honest men and women pointing at their own scars and letting them speak. Rather than just reading this magazine like you typically do, I ask that you allow this issue to read you. Allow each article to act as an MRI scan revealing the condition of yourself and your church body.
Josh Loveless is the senior editor of Neue and the director of strategic development at RELEVANT Media Group. Josh has been a pastor for the past 14 years and is currently trying to finish a movie script.
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