And now for something completely different…
May 29, 2009
May 13, 2009
What does it take to Grow a Great Church?
Many things have been suggested over the years. Here’s my list – these are the things I pray for:
The Manifest Presence of God. The bible tells us God is omnipresent (everywhere). We believe God is with us every time we gather. So what is this “manifest presence of God?” By that I mean that we are aware of God’s presence – that God is changing lives in such a way that there is no other explanation but God. We can do the best preaching, music, programs, architecture, and friendliness in the world. But without God it won’t amount to anything in the long run.
A Willingness to Do Hard Things. Going with the crowd is easy. Living a life indistinguishable from the world is easy. Rationalizing our own righteousness and refusing to forgive those who have hurt us? Perfectly normal. But we’re not called to be normal, we’re called to follow Jesus. Because Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to those who believe we are equipped to do awesome and amazing things. But most of those things aren’t easy. Many won’t be popular.
Openness to Failure. I learned a long time ago to ask a key question of each person seeking employment: ‘Tell me about some of your failures in ministry.” If they’ve never tried anything that didn’t work they don’t get the job. People matter so much to God that it is worth our while to be willing to fail if it means some might come to faith. I pray for a church full of people who are not only willing to fail, but willing to extend grace to others when they fail, so they’ll have the courage to get up and try again.
Jesus-Like Love to Rule. Jesus said, “By this will all people know that you are my disciples, by your love for one another.” He clarified this by telling us our love is to be modeled on his love. I pray for a church where people genuinely love each other, a church where when we have problems – and we will! – we have a deep enough commitment to Jesus and to each other that we are willing to work things out.
A Greater Concern to Serve than to be Served. Jesus said, “The Son of Man has not come to be served, but to serve, and to lay down his life as a ransom for many.” I pray for a church that is passionate to reach out to and draw in those who are on the outside. I want a church that attracts sinners—to be a place where they see a hope for deliverance.
May 5, 2009
Relevant or Dissonant
I’m better at asking questions than I am answering them. Today’s poll at Christianity Today asks us to decide whether the church is doing its job when it’s (a) culturally relevant or (b) culturally dissonant. My answer is, “Yes.”
We are called to be culturally relevant enough that people in the world can get some idea what we’re saying. We’re called to be culturally dissonant enough that people in the world can get the idea that we’re not just an echo chamber for what everyone else is saying.
Unlike Islam, Christianity is committed to translation. We believe the bible can be translated into every language, and that the reality of the gospel can be incarnated in every culture.
I like the way Michael Slaughter put it years ago (I paraphrase): “We want to speak clearly enough so people can understand enough so they can know when to be offended.” we’re not called to go sit in our little spiritual fortresses and do our own little spiritual things. We’re not called to go out there and dance to the world’s tune. We’re called to represent Jesus in a world of lost, broken and hurting people. Some will rejoice in what we do and find life. Some will be scandalized and seek to restrain us. Some will find us boring and ignore us. Some will be curious and want to know more.
So which is it: relevant or dissonant? Yes – though with both qualities defined in terms of the gospel.
“Let them eat cake”
The last couple of issues of the United Methodist Reporter have featured articles on GracePoint UMC, a recent church plant in Wichita, Kansas, that grew quickly, but let the denomination this spring. It’s depressing to invest so much money, energy and excitement only to lose the fruit. But it shouldn’t be surprising to people familiar with the way the UMC tends to operate. With few exceptions, we don’t know what to do with high energy innovate leaders. High energy leaders who excel at working within the system, yes, we have plenty of places for them. But people who push hard and are non-conformists? Our system pretty much pushes them elsewhere.
The Reporter spoke with Dan Dick, a UM leader (soon to be on staff at the Wisconsin Annual Conference):
He feels the denomination got off track in the 1990s “when we veered off and started pursuing the church-growth movement” so popular among nondenominational churches. He likens that model to a new business start: Select a location in a growth area, get a dynamic CEO-type leader and find “two or three very deep pockets to draw from, to be able to launch a really nice facility, good parking, good equipment and technology.”
While that formula may work in a congregational setting, he said, it’s not especially beneficial to a connectional system like the United Methodist Church, which seeks to create communities of faith that are accountable within a denominational structure.
Focusing on numerical growth and expansion isn’t really central to the Methodist identity, Dr. Dick argues. And while United Methodist churches want to reach as many people as possible, the Wesleyan focus is instead on building communities that equip people to live as Christian disciples.
“That’s a very different thing,” Dr. Dick said. “It’s one of the reasons why we are traditionally and still are fundamentally a small-membership denomination.”
Most successful United Methodist church starts, he said, tend to have three things in common: They are a satellite of an existing congregation, they have a committed core group of leaders and they are designed to meet a specific need, such as a different racial or ethnic demographic.
GracePoint was a fairly good model, but its expansion was “poorly executed,” Dr. Dick said. Though the church plant sought to launch satellite campuses to reach different audiences, he said “they operated congregationally in a vacuum” and weren’t as concerned about where other United Methodist congregations were present. “They were going into a head-to-head competition rather than seeking ways to be collaborative and connectional.”
I read this and hear that (1) we need to keep our churches mono-cultural and (2) work hard to make sure everyone is happy. If Dr. Dick’s theory is correct that would explain why our denominational membership and evangelistic efforts boomed through the 1970s and 1980s, only to crater in the 1990s when we started to pay attention to the Church Growth Movement. But if that’s the case, why have we had so many books and articles before the 1990s decrying our lack of evangelism and our failure to reach people and grow churches?
I am in a position of no authority in the denomination. I pastor a small church in a small town. I am not charismatic in any sense of the word. My gifts are more in teaching and academia than in growing organizations. But I do know a few things.
1. We need to repent of our compulsion to keep people happy. In our local churches we work so hard to keep the long time members happy that we’re unwilling to make changes that might reach new people – even if those “new people”are our own children and grand children.
2. We need to be more concerned about people becoming followers of Jesus than we are concerned about them becoming OUR followers of Jesus.
3. We need to not only say we want young people in our churches, but we need to stop making them act like retired folks before we allow them to have a say in what we do.
May 4, 2009
Three Lines
One of the illustrations I use when I teach on discipleship is the image of three lines. The first line we cross is the line of commitment to Christ. We come to a point where we become followers of Jesus. Crossing the second line is the act of taking responsibility for our own spiritual growth, not expecting it to happen automatically. The third line signifies a commitment to the spiritual well-being of others. That’s the general picture. Now for some more detail.
First, these three lines are ideal. Though they represent a hypothetical normal order of Christian maturity, some people differ. God’s grace works in the life of all people before they come to faith. While it might be most logical or most common for a person to begin by crossing the first line – commitment to Christ – I have seen people who were brought to cross this line by means of taking up spiritual disciplines, the normal way a person takes responsibility for his or her spiritual life. BY grace a person catches a vision for a life with God, and, finding that vision attractive, develops (again by grace) the intention to pursue that vision, and takes up practices through which God then draws him or her to faith.
Likewise, in others God graciously imparts a deep love for people. This love is more than just a feeling of warm affection, but a deep and genuine desire to see another (or others) flourish. At this point there is need for another clarification. When I teach on the third line, taking up a commitment to the spiritual well-being of others, I am taking “spiritual” more broadly than some others. When I seek the spiritual well-being of another person, I am seeking to do my part to help them flourish in God’s Kingdom. This attentiveness seeks to help them experience the fullness of salvation, a healing not only in their relationship with God, but also their relationships with others, with themselves, and with creation. When someone who has not crossed the first or second line begins with this commitment, chances are that such a person will lack the full vision of human flourishing within Kingdom dimensions. Nevertheless, their commitment to the well-being of others (perhaps not even yet conceived as spiritual well-being), is pleasing to God. Once such a person crosses the first line of commitment, the addition of more specifically spiritual dimensions will be a natural addition.
While all three of these types of commitment are necessary steps in Christian maturity, it is not uncommon to find individuals (or even movements) that focus on only one of the three. Some individuals (and some traditions) focus solely on crossing the line of commitment to Christ. It is supposed that getting people to heaven (or into the resurrection life of the future) is the sole goal. Once a person crosses this line, he or she can then move on to the rest of life. Perhaps one’s faith is viewed as a sort of eternal fire insurance, a get into heaven free card, or an expression of personal choice. Crossing the line of faith is a good thing. But I’ve seen too many examples of people who settle for only crossing this line who later appear to give it all up, and lapse into nominal Christianity or even fall away altogether. In crossing the first line they have grasped that Jesus calls us to life. But in neglecting the other two lines they miss that he also calls us to a life, a way of living. A mere decision for Christ simply isn’t enough to sustain people in their faith over the long haul.
The three commitments represented by the three lines are so intertwined in the fullness of the salvation wrought in Jesus, that resting on any one commitment alone, not only causes one to miss the blessing of the others, but also produces a distortion of the one which one has crossed. If I settle for only crossing the first line, coming to faith in Jesus, I miss the true nature of that faith if I fail to take responsibility for living a life with Jesus or fail to recognize that that life with Jesus includes his invitation to become a willing participant in what he is doing in the world and the lives of its inhabitants.
John Wesley claimed that there is “no holiness but social holiness, no religion but social religion.” The context of this claim was an argument with people he termed “mystics.” The mystics taught that the best way to reach maturity in Christ was to go inward and go alone. Wesley, however, noticed in scripture that Jesus’ call, while directed at individuals, was not to a solitary life. He called Peter, James, John, Andrew, Thomas and the others to follow him together. Necessarily, therefore, when we cross the second line, there is a tie to a community, to an actual group of people (actual as opposed to theoretical, a visible fellowship of disciples, not merely an invisible church of true believers). Thus while crossing the second line entails personal practices and disciplines (worship, prayer, immersion in scripture, etc.), these disciplines are also best done when a living connection to other believers is sustained. This salvation we access by faith is something we live out together.
When we cross the third line, the step of taking responsibility for others, we are expressing a lack of willingness to hold the blessings of God for ourselves. We are acting on the recognition that part of what it means to be a Jesus person is to join in his mission (“as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you”). As God produces love in our hearts for our neighbors, we find a passion to see them come to know Jesus and experience the same life and love we have found.
Merit does not come into the picture – it is not the case that when we cross the third line we become worthy, either in advance or retroactively – of God’s grace experienced in crossing the first line. We cross the third line, not to earn God’s favor, but simply because living a life of active intentional blessing to others is part of our salvation. God has called us to much more than just going to heaven when we die – to more than living with Jesus for eternity.
A final observation. From one perspective it might look like crossing the line is understood as something we do. Here I am, I see the line, and in my wisdom decide to cross it. The New Testament perspective, however, compels us to see that the truer understanding recognizes the necessary action of grace throughout the process of recognizing there is a line, coming to the line, deciding the line can be crossed and that I ought to cross it, and then taking the step of crossing it. Every step of the way God is drawing me. Every step of the way God is enabling me to respond, yet at no step compelling me to take that next step. God’s loving grace is invitational more than compulsory.