Bandits No More

April 29, 2007

Churches that “Get it”

Filed under: Evangelism,Leadership,Local church,church growth — rheyduck @ 8:23 pm

Todd Rhoades at Monday Morning Insight did a post early in April on “10 Observations from Churches Who ‘Get It.’” As a pastor who would like to describe my congregation’s as “getting it,” I’m afraid we don’t always measure up very well. Here are his observations with my commentary

“Each church has a pastor with a vision.” The vision of the church starts with the vision of the pastor. The pastor models attentiveness to God for the congregation. The congregation desires nothing more than connecting with what God is doing.

I like this. I’ve found that the biggest thing that drags me away from this is the large amount of institutional stuff I have to be concerned with. As a 150 year old congregation with a hundred year old sanctuary, our old buildings and church plant require constant maintenance and finances. Our trustees have worked hard over the years and deserve far more credit than I do in making that aspect of what we do go well thus far. I do worry that our need to take care of the buildings has, through sheer necessity (at least our traditional church perceives it as necessity), let maintenance become part of our vision. And this kind of vision, however good it is, will always crowd out the scarier parts – like evangelism. I have to work hard to stay fresh and clear on the vision for the sake of my people.

“Each church hires almost exclusively from within.” I like the sound of this idea. We hire from within our own membership because these people have come to Christ and been discipled and equipped for ministry here. We’ve seen them at work and know they are a fit with our ministry style and vision.

But that’s not the case in most of our old traditional churches. The prevailing vision in most traditional churches is to “do the same thing we’ve always done.” In the effort to transform a church from a status quo church to a missional church that impacts its community and draws people to Christ, this kind of church will often have to hire from without. That is, they will need someone to stir the pot and bring new ideas and new ways of doing things. Of course, they will need to have particular strengths – including the ability to be stubborn in the face of opposition from the old vision. If the pastor has a strong enough vision – and enough toughness – to seek to change the congregational culture, chances are good that at least some hiring will need to be from outside. (But then in small traditional churches there’s not too much hiring to worry about.)

“Speaking of staff, the staff of these churches ‘get it’ too.” Well, yeah. Staff unity is great. An essential. Too few traditional churches have it – or value it.

“A larger percentage of their staff (or staff wives) are pregnant.” Here we’re seeing that the churches Todd saw that were getting it are predominantly young, newly established churches.

“These churches and pastors don’t have a clue what they’re doing.” I’m not quite that ignorant, but nearly so. Pray for me to make the final progress to this goal.

Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But we moderns severely overrate knowledge. What we need more than knowledge (especially knowledge of method) is trust in God and obedience to him.

“Since they don’t have it all figured out, these pastors all shared with me their desire to connect with other leaders who can help mentor them.” It’d be nice to find more pastors in small town traditional churches to connect with and share with and learn from.

“These churches are not shy about sharing resources.” Sounds good to me. Some folks think that since we’re a small church with huge needs (remember those old buildings?), we can’t afford to be generous. I think we need to be generous whether we can afford it or not. If we’re trying to attract people, that is. If I were looking for a church to attend I’d much rather attend a generous church than one known for it’s financial soundness.

“Most all of these pastors are bloggers.” Yep. We like to through our ideas out there.

“These churches are not afraid to make tough calls.” This is my biggest weakness. I’m too nice. Of course, I feel the need to balance “making the tough call” (church speak for”firing people”) with the Christian notion of helping weaker brothers & sisters. But we don’t yet have excellence as one of our core values – or if we do, it’s still way behind niceness.

“Numbers are important to them.” Absolutely. There are an awful lot of numbers in the bible. They count people over and over again. Check the Book of Acts sometimes. It pains me on days like today when the worship attendance is down. It pains me that people aren’t coming to Christ. It pains me that there’s people out there that we’re (I’m) not connecting with. I’m not happy with “good enough” – or “better than many other churches.”

April 25, 2007

Wesley Fellowship at NTCC

Filed under: Current events,Higher Education,United Methodism — rheyduck @ 2:04 pm

I’m certainly not as good a movie maker as my son, but here’s a short promotional video I made for the campus ministry at Northeast Texas Community College.

April 18, 2007

Spiritual Maturity

Filed under: Spirituality — rheyduck @ 8:20 pm

Some folks think maturity is a simple function of age: the older you are, the more mature you are. A quick read of any newspaper would disabuse us of that notion. We find countless accounts of people of all ages acting in a manner easily characterizable as immature.

When it comes to spiritual maturity, it’s easy to proceed in the same (mistaken) way we do in other areas. Has a person been a church member for a good while? Has he or she held offices or positions of influence in the church? Is he or she a pastor or teacher? If the answer to these questions is Yes, then we assume he or she must be spiritually mature. But if the bible is our guide, we’ll have to set aside this way of thinking.

If tenure and office aren’t the best clues, what might we look for? While it might not be best to go around judging the spiritual maturity of others (though this is useful when we figure out who we can learn the most from), such criteria will have their greatest usefulness in our own quest for spiritual maturity.

To the end that we might grow in our spiritual maturity, here are some things to look for in yourselves or in others:

  1. Do I pursue growth in my relationship with God in an active way or merely in a passive way? If all I do is sit in church on Sunday morning, I’m being pretty passive. The crowd is big enough (more than 15-20 is a crowd!) that I can be functionally anonymous. I don’t need to be challenged by anything I see or hear. I don’t even have to pay attention – just appear to be paying attention. I speak as one with experience. I’ve tuned out many times and resorted to counting light bulbs or looking for patterns in ceiling tiles. If I were truly hungry for spiritual maturity, I would get into a smaller group – where hiding is more difficult – and allow myself to be subjected to challenges from the people around me. If I depend on myself for the evaluation of my spiritual condition I am likely to get it wrong – to be deceived. I need the insights and provocation of the people around me to waken me from my lethargy and sin. I would also engage with the bible and Christian literature on my own throughout the week as I hungered to know more of God.

  2. Do I live as a practical atheist or do I look for opportunities to trust God? When we talk about atheism we usually have theoretical atheism in mind: the belief that there is no god. Practical atheism is the stance we take when we live as if there is no God. I might believe in God all day long, but if I structure my life in such a way that I never actually trust him, or continually engineer my life so I don’t need him, I’m living like a practical atheist. When I pursue spiritual maturity I allow myself to get into situations where I have to trust God – or I will fail. Quite frequently these occasions come when God calls us to obey in some way that differs from our natural propensities, or when he takes us out of our comfort zones. You don’t have to read much bible to know that God does that habitually.

  3. Do I seek to be a blessing to the people around me, to be and agent of God’s kingdom in their lives? You’ve probably heard me quote Jean Paul Sartre to the effect that “Hell is other people.” Ignorant of Jesus, and without God in your life, you might easily come to such a conclusion. But that’s not God’s plan. God puts us together with people for our mutual benefit. Whether our spouses, children, parents, friends, fellow church members, or total strangers are in view, God gifts us with each other for our mutual good. When I pursue spiritual maturity, I come to the place where I not only take responsibility for myself, but also for the people around me. Cain’s answer, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” will no longer occur to us as a possible response. The questions boils down to, “Do I love people?” Not, “Do I love the people who love me?” or ‘Do I love the undemanding people?” but simply, “Do I love people?”

  4. A final (for the sake of brevity) thought: How do I handle things? Are things my reason for existing? Do I hang on to stuff with a death grip? Or am I generous – with my things and my resources? As I pursue spiritual maturity, I will increasingly entrust myself to God rely on his provision. I will share with people in need. I will invest my time, money and skills in advancing God’s kingdom.

Do you want to be spiritually mature? Do you recognize that there’s a gap between where you are and where God wants yo to be? Do you want to do something about that gap? If so, do you have an idea what your next step might be? If not, let’s talk about it.

April 13, 2007

Humility

Filed under: Bible,Spirituality — rheyduck @ 9:22 pm

Humility is a Christian virtue. One good way to know what humility looks like is to look at Jesus.

When we look at Jesus we see someone who was confident and sure of himself. He did not wallow in self-doubt or pity. He did not count himself as a nobody. What he did was,

 though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death– even death on a cross.

He knew he was chosen by God to achieve the salvation of the world. He knew he was divine. Yet he set aside his privileges. He counted himself nothing for our sakes.

If we had walked up to Jesus and asked, “Are you humble?” how would he have answered? I think he would have answered, “Yes.” How about us? If we are humble can we know it? If we can know it, can we say it? There is a common belief that anyone who says, “I am humble” immediately proves otherwise. Saying, “I am humble” is taken as an act of pride. What ought we to make of this?

When I look at my own life, my perception is that I appear more humble to other people than I do to myself. I’m too aware of my own pride and arrogance to count myself as very humble. Sure I do some humble things from time to time, but I have a long way to go.

If we want to improve our humility, i.e., become more humble, it would be good for us to be in a group of people who are close to us over an extended period time to whom we can tell the truth and from whom we can hear the truth. Most of us are good at deceiving ourselves. If we’re professional Christians, we may also be skilled at deceiving others. But since humility is a virtue worth pursuing, we need some way to do it. Doing it in the company of other sinners who are seeking to follow in the way of Jesus seems to be the best approach.

Brinksmanship

Filed under: Current events — rheyduck @ 9:12 pm

How close to the edge of the cliff can I get before I fall off? That seems to be a popular attitude today. As one who has spent many years in youth ministry, I’ve heard many youth ask something like about their dating relationships, “How far can I go?” Or, “How close can I get to doing the wrong thing without quite doing it?”

Don Imus discovered this week that some of the guard rails on the cliff weren’t as secure has he had been led to believe. Previously his reputation for raunchiness had only increased his fame and wealth. Not only did he earn a job on the radio, but some cable station even decided to televise his radio show. (You know there’s a serious lack of imagination when they start televising radio shows.) The rich and famous flocked to him. I never listened to the fellow, but many seem to think that what he said this time wasn’t radically different from things he’d said before.

For a while some folks thought the Duke lacrosse guys had gone too far and fallen off the cliff. But then it turns out those Methodist boys hadn’t raped the stripper. They’d only thrown a party and wanted some harmess entertainment. What? Not everyone that attends a Methodist school is Methodist? Or even a Christian? Oh. Well, no wonder they pushed so close to the edge.

Our culture values being edgy. I even hear of church leaders that like being known as edgy. They want to get as close to the edge as they can without falling off – without running off the people they’re trying to win.

What would happen if we lost our fascination with the edge? What if, instead, we became fascinated with Jesus? Instead of asking, “How close to the cliff can I get without falling off?” we asked, “How can I get closer to Jesus?” or “What can I do that will bring me closer to Jesus?”

April 7, 2007

Teaching Religion in Public School

Filed under: Current events,Politics,Public Schools — rheyduck @ 7:47 pm

How can our public schools teach about religion? Stephen Prothero has just written a book (Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn’t) examining our failure at educating people in religion and proposing some ways we can correct the deficiency. A brief summary of his case appears in today’s Dallas Morning News. Time Magazine has also covered the issue recently in David Van Biema’s, “The Case for Teaching the Bible.”

I’ve had to think about this issue because of my participation in a group faced with the possibility of developing standards for the teaching of religion. Here are some of my thoughts on the issue:

1. Increased knowledge and understanding is a good thing. Religion will intrude into the curriculum whether people like it or not. Not only has it been a major feature of human life in the past, but it remains so today. If it will be in the curriculum, it is better that it be there in the most accurate way possible. When you think of seeking accuracy in a given subject, one is inclined to look for experts. From one point of view, the scholars that inhabit the religion departments of the most highly respected universities would necessarily be the experts. From another point of view, however, those who inhabit a given religion, whether they have academic qualifications or not, would be the experts.

2. Unlike other areas of the curriculum, many students (and parents) perceive religion not merely as something “out there,” something to be dealt with objectively, but as something in which the individual (as well as the family and community) ought to be involved. As scholars, we have been trained to treat religion objectively – we can set our subjective involvement to the side if need be. A fair percentage of the US population would find this extremely difficult. While thinking of English, History, Math and Science objectively – as something “out there” – is common, practitioners of religion are used to thinking of religion foremost as something “in here” in addition to being “out there.” So while teachers work to create subjective involvement with areas of study students treat objectively, when it comes to religion we will be asking them to do the opposite. We all know religion is contested in more ways and by more people than any other academic subject. Since it’s difficult to teach it well and have it well received, it’s often easier to just avoid it.

3. But perhaps I’m wrong and teaching students to treat religion objectively will be much easier than I imagine. But if the majority of students can treat religion objectively during study hours, will those who are practitioners be able to hold on to their subjective involvement? A few might be uninfluenced. More will find their subjective involvement changed. Some will even find their subjective involvement ebbing away. In this final instance, the imposition of the religious studies model can be a force for secularization. While attitudes toward the desirability and extent of secularization vary, I think there is a significant segment of the population that would view an increase in secularization as a bad thing.

4. Standardization is frequently an act of power from above. While we live in a society that profits from standardization (it’s convenient that gas stations in all parts of the country sell a product my car can burn), students, schools and communities are not standardized. It would require excessive exercise of state power to standardize on these levels. While scholars – or practitioners – may be qualified to identify standards for the study of religion, we are doing so in a field that is prone to widely divergent evaluation with regard to appropriateness by communities and parents.

Religion often goes along with truth claims. While different religions, different communities, and different practitioners, envision and enact truth claims in different ways, those truth claims cannot be simply set aside as irrelevant. Stanley Fish has a good discussion of the inevitable truth dimension when it comes to religion (you might also be interested in Albert Mohler’s interview with Fish).

I’m afraid this is problem because we’ve decided that schools should be a arm of state power, with a uniform curriculum for a (supposedly) uniform student population. If true diversity were allowed in our communities schools, then our difficulty here would be much lessened. But I don’t see this changing any time soon. What else can we do?

Stop and think about Prothero’s claim for a moment.  He observes that “only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the four Gospels.” If national religious statistics are correct, more than 1 in 3 US citizens identify themselves as Christians. While we may be justified in complaining about the educational establishment for its failure to produce students knowledgeable about religion, the bigger difficulty – dare I use the word scandal? – that the church has failed to teach anything much more than “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so?” Church teachers, whether we consider Sunday school teachers, pastors, or parents, don’t seem to expect their students to learn anything.  We repeat the same thing over and over again. And few learn anything.

We lack the power to enforce our view of the proper teaching of religion on the public schools – whether we be speaking as Christians or religion scholars.  And that’s ok. We do have the power, however, to raise our sights and our expectations in our churches.

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