Bandits No More

August 26, 2010

Mission Field Appointments

Filed under: Ministry,Missions,Texas Annual Conference,United Methodism — rheyduck @ 2:48 am

The Texas Annual Conference is now implementing a policy of making “mission field appointments (document is a pdf).” Here’s a key part of the document:

In a series of conversations around the question “who is our
client,” the cabinet (center directors and superintendents) and bishop finally experienced one of those “a-ha” moments. We realized that our client was neither the pastor nor the congregation, but rather the mission field.

God was leading us to deploy pastors, not to make people
who were already living a life of faith happy, but rather to
reach persons living in our neighborhoods, communities and
cities that were not a part of a community of faith. God was
inviting us to appoint pastors who would lead congregations to reach out to people who had not yet heard the gospel, many of whom are young, of different racial/ethnic backgrounds, poor and/or underserved. Understanding the mission field as our primary client was a dramatic shift in our approach.

No one on the cabinet, including the bishop, knew how to make
appointments with the mission field as the primary client. The old mental frameworks in our heads and the expectations of pastors and congregations were major obstacles to change. We knew we needed to learn. Our reading, writing and conversation with outside people and groups intensified….

The mission field is understood as the overall context for ministry. It may be the setting within which a local church ministers. The mission field may be a population in and around
the local church’s community which is not being reached. It may be also be a population that does not have a United Methodist congregation in the vicinity. This perception challenges pastors and congregations to be outward focused, not inward. It encourages risktaking on behalf of mission.

Today an email from MissionInsite was forwarded to me (and to other church leaders around the district) from the district office. The Annual Conference signed up with this company that provides demographic research for churches last year. Today’s message told of their latest offerings. I’d gotten their basic demographic info for our area last year. One of the most potentially useful tools maps areas for lifestyle types (using Mosaic categories). Even more practically, they offered some ideas on how to use the Mosaic data.

So I ran a map of our county. No big surprises. Our area is considered primarily “Rugged Rural Style” and “Lower Income Essentials,” meaning most of the people in the county are counted in one of these two psychographic groups.

Curious how that compared with the rest of the Conference, I expanded the map view. Here’s a what a picture of most of the Conference (East Texas) looks like:

Perhaps you notice there is a lot of light blue areas. Those are where the “Rugged Rural Style” dominates. The yellow/gold color is also pretty common. That’s the “Hardy Rural Families.” From the description given by MissionInsite, these folks sound like a step up the economic ladder from the “Rugged Rural Style.” It’s in areas like this that “Cowboy Churches” seem to be thriving. “Simple Churches worshiping a mighty God in a simple way,” is the slogan of one of these churches in our area.

If we are doing Mission Field appointments within these fields, we face some challenges. First, it seems that a fair percentage of people now headed into ordained ministry are coming from other demographic groups. Many are coming out of the churches in larger cities and suburbia. Second, the normal route to ordination includes a pathway through academia the enculturates its inhabitants away from blue collar, rural living. Doing things rural style is real cross-cultural mission for many college educated, seminary educated pastors.

Are psychographics useful in shaping church ministry, leadership, and mission? Are they being taken into account in our identification of the mission field? Are pastors profiled along these lines?

June 24, 2010

The Best Measure

Filed under: Discipleship,Local church,Ministry — rheyduck @ 4:15 pm

What’s the best measure of effective ministry? What do we look for if we want to figure out whether effective ministry is happening or not?

Our first tendency is to look at the numbers. The bigger the numbers, the higher the effectiveness. Makes sense, doesn’t it? If I take over leadership of a church that has 100 in attendance and after a year there are 200 in attendance, I must be an effective leader, right? Or if I were a youth pastor and all my events were full of excited youth, surely it is a sign of effectiveness. These signs of effectiveness sure look attractive to me. But is my attraction to these bare signs of effectiveness right?

Suppose I am on a road trip. I manage to drive 650 miles a day. Have I been effective? Well, the numbers are there. High mileage, long hours, lots of gas burned. If my purpose is simply to stay on the road, then it looks like I’m being effective. But what if my purpose isn’t merely to be on the road but to arrive at a particular location? If I begin in Houston and intend to drive to Fort Worth and in the course of my journey drive 650 miles a day for a week and end up in Toronto, I may be busy, but I am anything but effective.

Back in my days of doing youth ministry I yearned for the big, exciting youth groups I saw other youth leaders creating. Part of it was that I really wanted to reach people for Christ. My desire for personal glory was also a part of it. I am blessed with a low-key personality that doesn’t lend itself to the extravagant excitement of some ministries. Since our numbers never got much higher than the mid 20s, how could I have ever accounted myself “effective?” Well, it depends on how and what you measure.

Early in my work in youth ministry (and carried over into later ministry roles) I decided that the best measure of effectiveness would be to see how my people were walking with Christ five years down the road. If I had hundreds brimming with excitement at one point and yet all had fallen by the wayside in five years, that’s not effectiveness.

Our main activities in my youth ministry years were bible study and prayer. I take joy in the fact that many of those youth are now, fifteen years later, still walking with Christ, several even in ministry of some sort.

When we think looking at numbers is the best way to measure effectiveness, we can come to the logical conclusion that the one we claim to follow was much less effective than we are. Just look at Jesus – at several points he had huge crowds following him. Sometimes they were so enthusiastic about him they were ready to make him king, then and there. But with his prickly, demanding personality, he managed repeatedly to run off the crowds, leaving only twelve shaky guys and a few women. I’m better than Jesus, aren’t I? I’ve never managed to run off so many people. I’ve never been so troublesome as to inspire the people around me to react in murderous hatred.

But what if numbers are only of intermediate value? Go back to my trip from Houston to Fort Worth. If I drive only 15 miles, I’ve missed my goal. But if I drive 280 miles (you can drive 280 miles from someplace in Houston and reach someplace in Fort Worth) but end up far from Fort Worth, I’ve also missed my goal.

Jesus was about what we call “life change.” He was out to seek and to save the lost. Sure he scattered his seed recklessly. Sometimes even the stony ground looked full of life. But it didn’t last there.

As I lead my church I’m looking for life change. Numbers are great, but they are easily deceptive. Having beautiful, useful, and well maintained buildings and grounds are useful. But they’re not the point. Making the budget without strain and paying our apportionments with ease would be nice, but if there’s no life change, we’re missing the point.

I want to see people fall in love with Jesus to such a degree that their relationship with Jesus becomes the center of their lives. I want to see people devoting their lives to Jesus’ kingdom and its purposes. I want to see people taking up Jesus’ mission as their own.

I don’t want people to only take up a Jesus life for a single instance. But if they never do it for a single instance, they’ll never do it for multiple instances. I want to see people take the first step – and then the next step and the next – with Jesus.

May 25, 2010

The problem of technology

Filed under: Albert Borgmann,Max Weber,Ministry,United Methodism,church growth — rheyduck @ 8:21 pm

I read a fair number of books. When they grab me, I’ll apply myself and read them quickly. When they don’t,  I’ll work more slowly. Albert Borgman’s Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology is one of the latter. I received it as a Christmas gift in 2008 (don’t you wish your presents were as good as mine!), and am still reading it.

In chapter 4, “Contingency and Grace,” Borgmann talks about our perception that our culture is unfriendly to the Christian faith, though he takes what we perceive as “unfriendliness” (or outright hostility) is better described as indifference. The root of this indifference is a culture closed off to grace, and the root of that closure to grace is our rejection of contingency.  He says:

Grace is always undeserved and often unforethinkable, and a culture of transparency and control systematically reduces, if it does not occlude, the precinct of grace. A technical term for what lies beyond prediction and control is contingency. What we need is to recover then as a condition of receiving grace is the realm of significant contingency. (p. 65)

You can tell right away that Borgmann is one of those philosophers comfortable with neo-logisms – “unforethinkable.” At least I’ve never seen it before, though its meaning is fairly clear. We don’t like the unexpected. We want to be able to control and predict our world. We think we ought to be able to understand everything.

Christians are not immune to this attitude. In fact, I wonder if what we see in our broader culture isn’t a secularization of a Christian desire to eliminate contingency. The Christians who aspire to this may not look to science, technology and human control of all things, but they do look to God as the One who controls everything. If this is the way God operates then there is no contingency. Everything that happens has been determined by the active willing of God to so happen. There is nothing that happens that is not in accordance with God’s will. What our current society has done is take this desire for non-contingency and brought it fully into the human realm. We humans ought to know and understand everything. If we understand the initial conditions of the system, we ought to be able both to predict the future of the system and to bring about our desired state of affairs. A perfect Newtonian worldview.

Borgmann identifies this aversion to grace and contingency and its love of control with “modern technology.” (p. 66) I’m spurred by this to not think only of our common understanding of technology, that which deals with physics, chemistry and other physical sciences, but our social technology. My beef isn’t so much with computers, cell phones, and the like (at least not right now), but with Max Weber’s routinization of charisma and rationalization of social processes.

I agree with Borgmann: our culture’s infatuation with “transparency and control” has been an expression of closure to grace and the contingency that would make room for it. Inasmuch as I am an inhabitant of this culture, I share that concern. But my greater concern is that the church has completely bought into Weberian social technology, whether implicitly or explicitly, leading to the church disallowing contingency – and grace – in favor of command and control.

Some of our churches express our dedication to Weber with our command and control bureaucracies, our commitment to systems of rational administration, management and accountability. Other churches turn away from mid-twentieth century bureaucratic forms, embracing instead a pursuit of “leadership.” Books, videos, conferences and courses in this “leadership” have been multiplying over the past decade or so. Once upon a time pastors flocked to Evangelism or Prophecy conferences. Now we flock to Leadership conferences. We need to hear the latest digest of leadership “principles” that we can take home and apply to our churches. Once we master these principles, we will be able to assure the right results.

You may notice the problem with both these approaches, the bureaucratic (my own denomination’s favorite) and the cult of leadership. Who needs grace? Sure, we can look back on people who had charisma, the founders of our movements. They did awesome and amazing things. But now we have their “principles” and “systems” to go on. If we work the system, apply the principles, things will turn out right.

But I’m an anti-Weberian on this. I think our commitments to bureaucratic rationality and the cult of leadership are forms of institutional atheism. Who needs God, when we have the right methods, the right principles? I’d argue instead that the need in our churches is not a more efficient bureaucracy, a more effective system, or better crafted principles. While none of these are evil – or even bad – in themselves, they have become for us a substitute for the Holy Spirit. We will not be the church we want to be – or need to be – apart from a fresh filling and empowerment by the Spirit. I say this knowing full well that one of the problems of the Spirit is unpredictability. When the Spirit leads, we don’t know what will happen next. Our penchant for planning is marginalized. But I’d still rather have the Spirit.

Some will say, “That’s all very nice. But Weber was just describing the way things are. Organizations do start with charismatic leaders. When the next generation lacks the charisma of the founder, they rationalize and routinize what they see in the founder. That’s just the way it is.” Maybe so. Maybe what Weber says is an accurate description of the way organizations have worked. So what? Must they be that way? Must we reject grace in favor of a completely naturalized rationality? I’d rather not.

Changing the Covenant

Filed under: Ministry,United Methodism — rheyduck @ 5:18 pm

Some of the latest big news in the UMC is from the study committee that is suggesting that we do away with the “guaranteed appointment” for ordained Elders. It is “a promise the church can no longer keep.” For those who are not familiar with the current system, here’s how things are now (very much abbreviated).  First, you spend tens of thousands of dollars and at least seven years getting college and seminary degrees. Second, you go through rounds of paper work, interviews, and psychological tests to be approved for ordination. Third, when you are ordained you agree to go anywhere within the conference that the bishop might send you. There are no promises regarding housing (in many places you’ll likely have a parsonage, that may or may not be up to official standards) or location. Currently each conference sets a minimum salary for pastors, so you’ll be paid at least that much.  There is no guarantee that you’ll fit the place, that your family needs will be met (you’re better off not having a family if all you consider is the appointment system – just ask JW or FA). There’s no guarantee how long you’ll be there, though the standard appointment is for a year, and the trend is toward longer appointments. So as the “covenant” now stands, it’s something like, “Do what we tell you, and you’ll be guaranteed a job.” The alternative is something like, “Do what we tell you, and you might have a job.”

The commission has observed that some pastors are ineffective and mediocre. This is an accurate perception. (Of course, whether my definition and application of “ineffective” and “mediocre” matches any one else’s is where things start getting dicey.)

Some things that would clear the air before the “covenant” is changed:

  1. Increase trust in the church. As it is, there is deep distrust between pastors and the church hierarchy, congregations and the hierarchy, and pastors and churches. This fundamental pathology is part of what is dragging us down. As long as we are fundamentally a top-down authoritarian system – which the current proposal regarding elders exacerbates – trust will continue to be lacking.
  2. Find a shared vision for ministry and a shared theological vision. We have the Book of Discipline with our “official doctrine,” but this is “official” more than it is operational (to use George Lindbeck’s helpful terms), or “not to be taken literally and juridically” (in the Discipline’s language). We have Bishop Schnase’s 5 practices, but these are flexible and institutional enough that they can be interpreted so many ways that they allow too much wiggle room. We have our mission statement – “To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” but lacking a shared understanding of who Jesus is and what transformation he seeks, “disciple” remains a fuzzy, feel-good term for many. We have our marketing mantra, “Open hearts, Open minds, Open doors,” but that is the gospel of inclusivism, not the gospel of Jesus.
  3. We need to address the theological and ecclesial vision being inculcated in our seminaries. Is what they teach our future elders compatible with our vision for reaching people? If not, are we willing to hold them accountable, or do we bow before the gods of “academic freedom,” “theological pluralism,” and “we’ve always done it this way?”
  4. Be open and honest about incentives and God-talk. When most pastors are responsible for raising families, they find themselves in a situation where it can be useful to have (a) salaries that enable them to care for their families, and (b) housing that fits their families. This sometimes happens. But sometimes it doesn’t. At least in some conferences there are some churches that pay larger salaries than others, and some that have different configurations of housing. Being appointed to a church with a larger salary (or a larger house) looks like an incentive to some people. Some people internalize the notion, “I have an incentive to do well in this appointment. If I do well (i.e., if I am effective) in this appointment this incentive will work for me.” Boy, that sounds pretty crass and materialistic, doesn’t it? That’s why we prefer to only talk about “God” and “calling” in this regard. Those things that look like incentives, really aren’t. In each and every case, whether you get huge raises with every move or move from small church to small church, you are pursuing the call of God. Doubtless. But the appearance of these “incentives” sure does skew perception and morale. Especially when the folks who run the system tend to consistently receive so many more “incentives” than those who don’t. If we could talk about these things openly, I think it’d help.

March 25, 2010

Non-Fans?

Filed under: Discipleship,Ministry — rheyduck @ 6:58 pm

One of the books I’m reading now is Neil Cole’s Organic Leadership: Leading Naturally Right Where You  Are. If you’re a committed proponent of traditional ways of doing, structuring and leading church, don’t read this book. Keep it far away. In fact, you’d better do that with all Cole’s books. If you’re open to improving your leadership and becoming more effective for the Kingdom, check it out.

In the first chapter Cole says,

The church in the West functions in a pattern similar to that of a dysfunctional relationship. It is locked up in an unhealthy cycle in which the Christian leaders and the regular Christians are codependents. The Christians who are not the church leaders prefer not to take responsibility for the kingdom of God. They want to be free to invest in their own plans rather than Gods. They are the irresponsible party [like the alcoholic or drug addict] in the dysfunctional relationship.

The Christian leaders [that's us pastors], on the other hand, want to be responsible – to a fault. They continue to do all the work of the church, when enables other Christians to be irresponsible. Leaders need to be needed and admired, and often this is the result when they take all the responsibility for kingdom work.

Pastors do all the work of the church? No way! We have Finance and Trustee people that do tons of work. They handle the money, manage the property, make big, important decisions all the time. Surely my theory that Cole is speaking to pastors here is misguided, surely the church has many more leaders.

My reading is that in traditional churches we have too often reduced “church work” to finances, property and management of other resources. We then pass that work off to the non-pastors while we do what we call Kingdom work, the work that seeks to directly influence people for Jesus. Pastors do the ministry, while the laity do the ADministry. Surely you have seen that pattern if you’ve been around traditional churches any length of time.

As long as churches have buildings, property and employees – and the money to maintain them – we’ll need people gifted in management. I don’t want to sell those gifts and callings short. But I don’t want to be part of a system that presupposes that that kind of work is all non-pastors can do.

In my church I have the role of pastor. In that role I have certain responsibilities. Those responsibilities do not include doing all the

  • Preaching
  • Teaching
  • Visiting
  • Encouraging
  • Praying
  • Evangelizing
  • Spiritual Stuff

The more of these things we give away, the more we equip or allow our people to do, the better. It’s better for the Kingdom since there are more workers in the harvest field. It’s better for the people since they get to experience the joy of seeing God at work in their lives. It’s better for the pastors since they are relieved from the burden of doing (or feeling like they need to do) everything.

If you’ve tried giving the ministry away, you’ve experienced the resistance Cole mentions. If you’re like me, you’ve felt it in yourself. Little phrases like, “If you want it done right, do it yourself,” or “I’m the one being held accountable here” may have flitted through your mind.

Perhaps you’ve also experienced resistance from church people who expect you to do everything. “That’s why we pay you! We have busy lives. You have the education and the calling, so go do it. You can give us a report when you’re done, if you like. When we hear complaints we’ll be sure and let you know.” If we don’t really hear phrases like those, we imagine that we do.

It at this point that we need to break free of our co-dependency, our need to be needed, our need for everyone to like us. We can learn from Ben Arment’s comment on allowing a “non-fan” base. Not everyone is going to like us our our ways of doing things. We can kill ourselves over their disapproval, whether real or perceived, whether passive or aggressive, or we can become apathetic. There’s no way we can make everyone happy. Jesus surely didn’t, and if he didn’t, why do we expect to do better? Jesus was so in love with the Father, so committed to the mission of seeking and saving the lost, that that passion (that pathy) made room for apathy in other areas.

“Jesus, Jesus! The Pharisees were upset by what you said?” Did Jesus care? check out Matthew 23 sometime.

“Jesus, your mother and brothers and sisters are outside. They want you to come out to them. ” Did Jesus care? “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters? The ones who do the will of my Father, that’s who.”

Can’t you hear the passionate, love-driven, apathy?

I know my own weaknesses in this area. I have a lot still to learn, plenty of room for improvement. But I’m choosing the Jesus way, whether it generates a fan base or not. I want his Kingdom purposes to prevail in my life and ministry.

August 29, 2009

Success in ministry

Filed under: Leadership,Local church,Ministry,church growth — rheyduck @ 8:35 pm

Several years ago we had an after-school ministry for upper elementary aged children. By the time we stopped it, it looked like a whopping success. Our little small town church would have 40-50 kids, mostly not from our church, show up on Wednesday afternoons. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

But there at the end, it was mostly chaos. Our few volunteers lacked the energy to keep up with the kids. We felt a day was a success if no one had been seriously injured or broken anything. Did the kids learn anything? Hard to tell, since most of our time was spent working on behavior issues.

Our current after school ministries are much smaller. But they are also orderly enough that the kids can get something out of them.

The mistake we made earlier – and are still prone to make – is to think our primary focus should be on ministry to children and youth. In a declining church full of old people, it’s really easy to argue for that position. Despite our lack of younger folks, both locally and denominationally, I think seeing our ministry to children and youth as primary is a mistake. What we should see as primary is a discipling ministry with adults so that these adults will then be the doers of ministry with children and youth. Why?

A first reason to focus on adults is that parents have the primary responsibility to disciple their kids. Sure, it’s rare for parents to do that. We’ll teach them to hunt, fish, cook, drive, and other things of life. But do we teach them them to pray? To read and understand the bible? To share their faith with others? To interpret their lives and encounters with the world in terms of the Kingdom of God? Usually not. At least in many UM churches, many of the adults are too spiritually introverted to feel “comfortable” doing these things. Better leave these really important things to the professionals, i.e., the Sunday School teachers and church staff.

I know the temptation here. We on staff reason that if the parents aren’t doing it, we ought to. It’s too good a thing to leave undone. True. But we’re displacing the parent’s responsibility. They will still have to answer to God.

A second reason to have a primary focus on adults is pragmatic. Parents are the ones who have control over their lives. Sure, their control is relative, but compared to children and youth, their control is immense. If they want to go to worship on Sunday morning, for instance, all an adult has to do is get up on time, get ready and go. In this age when you get to church gatherings in a car, children are at the mercy of their parents. Parents have more power to bring children along than children have to bring parents along.

The major consequence for those of us who are in leadership is that our primary job is not performing functions. We don’t hire people to do what we currently think of as our primary ministries (even if we can’t find anyone who is willing). We hire people to invest in the lives of others who will then become the doers of those ministries. Perhaps once upon a time churches could afford to hire people to do all the ministry that needs to be done. Not any more. The people we hire need to be leaders, catalytic people, who develop others to do ministry.

August 3, 2009

Perfection

Filed under: Discipleship,Ministry,Perfectionism — rheyduck @ 2:08 am

I’m a perfectionist. But I’m not a perfectionist in every area. I’m also not a perfectionist with everyone. I insist on perfection from myself much more often (or so I think – if you know better, let me know) than from other people. Perfectionism has it’s advantages. When we aim to be perfect, the effects we seek to bring about might be more likely – we get better results. But not always.

Sometimes I need to take up the attitude Dave Browning describes in Deliberate Simplicity: How the Church Does More by Doing Less.  Browning speaks of “excellence” instead of perfection. In his life in ministry he has seen an emphasis on excellence work to exclude people from ministry. He choose instead to push a sense of “good enough.” I like the idea of good enough. “Good enough” leaves room for grace. It allows more people to step up and try something.

The “Good enough” principles fits with the idea that “if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly” (Chesterton?). More often we hear the opposite – “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”

Actually, I think both principles are true. First, if we never try something for the first time – and quite often when we first try something we’re rather poor at it – then are guaranteed to never be good at it. Second, if something is worth doing, if it is an act that truly produces good and blessing for people, then that act is not only worth doing, but it’s worth doing in a way that maximizes the goodness. Sometimes the “doing poorly” will happen in a context that allows for preparation for a different setting where excellence matters more.

As a preacher, I want my speaking to accomplish something in the lives of my hearers. I cannot be lackadaisical  about my preparation, therefore. I need to put all my effort into doing the best that I can. But I don’t come anywhere near perfection (by my own standards, at least). I’ve noticed over the years, though, that God chooses to work through me in spite of my failure to reach my own standards. I’d guess that the more imperfect I am – and the wider the audience that recognizes my imperfection – the more necessity I have for God to step in. That’s why I want to be sort of perfection-adverse. I don’t want to get to the place where I perceive myself to no longer need God. I also don’t think God wants me to get to the place where I do nothing.

So with Browning, I want to lift up the idea of “good enough.” I want to extend grace to people to try new things, to reach out in new forms of ministry. But I also want them to take the ministry seriously enough that they pour their best into, while they trust God to fill in the necessarily remaining gaps.

June 28, 2009

Listening to John Ortberg

Filed under: John Ortberg,Ministry,Renovare,Spirituality — rheyduck @ 1:37 am

The last workshop I went to at the Renovare Conference in San Antonio this past week was a conversation with John Ortberg. I first heard of Ortberg when he was on staff at Willowcreek church. He’s now served as pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian for a number of years.

Two questions in particular interested me. One person asked how you hold Willowcreek and Renovare together, that is, how do you hold together a hard-charging emphasis on leadership and evangelizing seekers with a deep commitment to spiritual formation? The ethos seems to be very different.

I agree with Ortberg that both emphases are valuable. We need to lead change in organizations: quantitative change that brings people to faith, and qualitative change that leads to holiness and mission. We also need personal growth – in holiness and obedience to Jesus. It’s the feeling broadly associated with each that is most different. We think spiritual formation is nice, emphasizing grace and faithfulness, while leadership is tough, emphasizing effectiveness and results. If our spiritual formation is merely nice, it’s not spiritual formation in the way of Jesus. If our leadership is merely tough, it’s not Kingdom style leadership.

A second, a related question came to Ortberg: “What do you know now that you wish you knew thirty years ago?”  The main point he emphasized in his answer was a freedom to not be primarily a leader. Though his gifts lie elsewhere, he’d been taught that if he’s a pastor, he’s supposed to be a (if not the) leader. But he lacked leadership gifting. Looking back he would have honored and employed his wife’s leadership gifts much sooner.

It seems like a luxury of larger church environments to be able to allow job specialization along lines of gifting. As pastor of a small church, I have to do many things – some I’m good (gifted) at, some I’m not. Otherwise essential functions won’t get done. Perhaps as our smaller churches migrate from the engrained clergy/laity dichotomy to a spiritual gifts understanding of ministry, we’ll be able to do more specialization.

March 5, 2009

Discipleship Goals #5

Filed under: Evangelism,Five Practices,Ministry,Salvation — rheyduck @ 9:56 pm

Evangelism, the apparent traditional equivalent of what we now call “Radical Hospitality” closes out this series on the characteristics we try to build into the lives of disciples in our work of disciple making. This equation may be my least favorite item in our current lingo. It blurs the distinction between two important aspects of our life together as Christians. This blurring may not be so serious since “evangelism” itself has become blurred over the past century or so. Because of these blurrings and the resulting confusion (and conflict), I’d prefer to talk here about our work of helping people who are not followers of Jesus become followers of Jesus.

In ideal circumstances (sticking to the bible), becoming a follower of Jesus would happen at roughly the same time as becoming a part of the institution known as church. We lack those ideal circumstances today. Talking about “Radical Hospitality” seems to lend itself to the latter (becoming a part of the church) more than to the former (becoming a follower of Jesus). While having greeters,  clean restrooms, plenty of parking, a tidy nursery, and plenty of signage are signs of hospitality and can be conducive to people sticking around long enough to hear the gospel and become followers of Jesus, they have no necessary connection to this goal. In other words, if all we have is a friendly, well directed, clean church (maybe even with coffee and donuts), we can fail to win a single person to Christ.

In another area of blurring, we can engage in “social action” all day long, every day of the year, and never win a single person to Christ. Jesus clearly calls us to live out his Kingdom reality. He clearly calls us to give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, to visit the infirm and imprisoned, and to heal the sick. But if we never call people to repentance and faith in Jesus, we’re missing something essential.

We aim to produce disciples who through their daily living demonstrate the reality and goodness of God in such a way that  people will ask questions. These disciples when then boldly open their mouths and tell of Jesus and how to put faith in him.

  1. Disciples share a conviction that they have a central role in evangelism. Since many of us in the mainline church are mortally afraid to speak to others – unless the subject is anything but Jesus – we really wish God would just do the work without us. God almost never does the work without us. People will not come to faith in Jesus unless we obey God and go to them.
  2. Disciples have a passion to reach those who don’t know Jesus. Some of the people we connect with Jesus will be our friends and relatives. Others will begin as total strangers. Jesus’ passionate love for us brought him into the world – a world that usually wanted nothing to do with him, a world that, in the end, killed him. As followers of Jesus, we have that same passionate love for people. We’re not content to see them missing out on the life Jesus offers. While there are arguments for universalism – the notion that all will be saved regardless of their desire to be saved, their faith (or lack thereof), or anything else – we realize that when we act as if universalism is true we are not betting our lives (we’re already followers of Jesus, after all) but the lives of others. Universalism could be wrong.
  3. Disciples understand evangelism as the work of the church, not merely (or even primarily) of individuals. When we think of helping others become followers of Jesus we think of people like Billy Graham. We know we’re not Billy Graham. We then dismiss the possibility that we might have a role in the process. We aim to make disciples who recognize not only their essential role in the process, but also that no one can do the work alone. Because people are different and have different life stories, they will come to faith in different contexts. We need the whole body working together, demonstrating the grace and mercy of Jesus together, so that people might believe.
  4. Disciples want there to be ample opportunity for pre-Christians to see for themselves the power of Christ in our lives: transformed lives, healings (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual), quality of relationships, etc., so that when they hear the Gospel they can understand it in terms of what they’ve seen. Words are essential for people coming to faith in Christ. Words alone, however, are almost never enough. As we let God live in us and through us (individually and corporately), people see for themselves what God is like and what God has done. Our words are merely the captions for those pictures.
  5. Disciples want the church to be aware of the needs of the community God has set us in, and have a desire to glorify God by meeting those needs.  Christianity gets part of the credit/blame for what we call modern individualism. Jesus calls us each to respond individually to him. But all of us are embedded in some community, usually a set of overlapping and interlocking communities. As messengers of the Good News, we seek to demonstrate God’s reality not only to individuals but to our communities: to families, neighborhoods, cities, towns, tribes and nations. One way we do that is by allowing God to meet their needs through us.

Discipleship Goals #5

Filed under: Five Practices,Local church,Ministry — rheyduck @ 9:22 pm

Our conference talks about Risk Taking Ministry. As a pastor I’d be happy if all my people were involved in any kind of ministry. In my life the genre of literature that has most spurred me to risk taking ministry is missionary biography. When I compare their lives of faith with my own I see two things. First, I give thanks that my life is so easy and comfortable. Second, I see that I’ve risked hardly anything.

Why bother taking a risk? Why bother trying something that might fail? When I read the bible I see that God habitually calls people to do things they can’t do by themselves. If God doesn’t come through, they’re sunk. And here we are engineering our lives so that we don’t need God – so that we have all the resources we need to get by without any help at all. In the process of living independently, we miss God. Our faith stays weak, just as muscles that never encounter resistance stay weak. We want strong disciples, thus we see being in ministry not as a characteristic of a certain class of Christian (like the ordained), but of all who are disciples.

  1. Disciples are in ministry. Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” As followers of Jesus, we do what he did.
  2. Disciples understand they are part of what God is doing in the world and that their obedience will make an eternal difference in the lives of others. Our culture says, “If you want it done right, do it yourself.” God doesn’t think that way. God invites us to join in the Kingdom work. It isn’t make-work or hoop jumping. The work God calls us to make a real and lasting difference in the lives of people. If I were a Calvinist, I’d take comfort in the belief that my lack of obedience would never prevent God’s will from being done for another person. I’m not a Calvinist (at least not in that aspect). Real loss is possible – for me and the people around me – when I fail to respond to God’s call.
  3. Disciples know what their spiritual gifts are and use them with joy and faithfulness. God equips us for ministry. While our “natural” talents are put at God’s disposal also, the Holy Spirit gives us abilities we never would have had apart from divine intervention. Some of these gifts make us look good. Some will never be known by another person. Either way we take joy in joining God.
  4. Disciples work together as teams in ministry. Most of the ministry God calls us to cannot be done or sustained by our efforts alone. God arranges gifted people in the Body just as the organs of the human body are arranged in each individual. We need each other.
  5. Disciples respond to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the execution of their ministries and in the development of new ministries. We need not only the Spirit’s equipping but also the Spirit’s guidance in our ministry. We need the Spirit to sharpen and aid our perceptual and interpretive faculties. Sometimes the ministry to which God calls us will make good sense to just about everyone. Sometimes we won’t have a clue what’s happening: We’ll simply be obeying.
  6. Disciples with more experience seek out new people to train in ministry. The normal way to pick up new skills or to develop facility with new abilities is to watch those more gifted than ourselves. Ministry is multiplied as we draw in people who are less experienced than we are and help them join in. Jesus’ model of discipleship is a form of apprenticeship. As his disciples, we are each apprentices of those who are farther along than we are, and take apprentices who aren’t as far along as we are.
  7. Disciples have the ability and confidence to respond to new needs and situations as they arise.  As we follow Jesus, taking up his agenda for our lives, we employ our creativity and innovation. We know the world is changing and that the people we need to reach today are likely culturally different from the people we used to reach. Followers of Jesus are willing to do new things to connect new generations and populations with Jesus.
  8. All ministry leads to demonstrating the love of God so that people might know Him and become faithful disciples. We can get tired just thinking of all the things that need to be done. The end we pursue, however, isn’t mere busyness or task completion. We do what we do so that God’s love might be manifest through us so that people might become disciples also.
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