buck-naked

When I see that word describing faith, I have to explore further.

authentic Christianity is faith that is absent of pretense, full of substance, and able to support the weight of a real life

It's not offen that you find a "Senior Pastor" who is also the goalie for the city league soccer team.

We live in a culture that offers a full buffet of alternatives to bow down to. It’s not like we wake up one day and decide to “cheat” on God.

These words are not for comfortable Christians:

Many Christians today don’t know how to speak the language of the culture, thus don’t know how to live missional lives in the real world... few have taken time to honor and listen...

Read more of the interview with Eric Sandras...

their community or ours

found this quote in the reviews of The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community, and Small Groups by Joseph R. Myers:

PEOPLE NATURALLY CRAVE COMMUNITY BUT ON THEIR TERMS NOT OURS

I found the book very thought provoking and I recommend it to anyone willing to think outside the box of "Church growth."

re-runs

I've been reading through some old entries and wanted to think about this again:

1. I've met hundreds of people who used to attend church but are currently disconnected or disenfranchised or disinterested.

Usually someone said something or did something that offended them. Sometimes it was the result of poor choices that were unwelcome and they felt unwanted and unloved. Others just didn’t find their experience relevant.

2. Many institutional churches are over-programmed and primarily centralized in their approach to ministry.

In those cases, the prime directive appears to be survival. Institutions require organization and structured leadership. When a vacancy occurs, the priority becomes recruiting new leadership instead of evaluating the program’s effectiveness and life-cycle. There seems to be a perpetual re-tooling, re-naming, and re-running of old, tired, ineffective ideas.

Over-programming also leads to over-scheduling. This takes the believers and their voice out of the community.

3. Many institutional churches are focused on member services.

This is the result of marketing special programs to targeted demographics and has created a sub-culture of religious consumers. It has become all about “us”. Non-members are viewed as prospects and recruited by special programs (member services). Non-believers, or better pre-believers, are encouraged to become like us (i.e. talk like us, think like us, embrace our values, speak our insider language), behave like us (i.e. learn and practice the do’s and don’ts), and belong to us (membership has its responsibilities).

4. Those who would follow Jesus need to follow Him back into the communities of our lives. We need to explore our passions and create relationships where the stories of Jesus are not known.

I doubt that we’ll fulfill the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) until we improve our practice of the Greatest Commandments (Mark 12:29-31).

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

i thought it was fun to watch

Idenity 2.0 (I chose "play small" mode)

subversive community

JESUS THE EMERGENT PASTOR--PART 1: WORLDVIEW These quotes were taken from the article or comments:

subversive communities that reveal the kingdom of God

We are so entrenched in the world, in it's politics, its marketing, its consumerism, its exploitation of the environment...

We must announce the banruptcy of seeking to bring about the Kingdom via human means.

We only know that the gospel as American dream (thankfully) has failed and is failing miserably in introducing people to Jesus the Messiah, shrivelling in the desert of the megachurches. The result? A generation and more who long for encounter more than experience, good news more than good stuff.

Thanks to John Frye.

Fraternity of Faith?

My senior year in college I began to consider joining a fraternity. I spoke with several friends that had done so about the rewards and responsibilities. Word got out and several organizations showed interest at the prospect of a new member. Soon several invitations to "Greek Coffee" packed my campus mailbox.

During the exploratory meetings there were three topics of discussion: benefits, activities, and pledging. That experience was not unpleasant. I survived the pledging phase and enjoyed membership and participation in many worthwhile service projects.

Fast forward. I've recently visited a small congregation on a variety of occasions. A friend has been helping the church through an intentional interim period. He and I discussed the church's journey and some of the hurdles they faced. I have been considering volunteering with some training events and coaching with their small group leaders. Suddenly, the wheels went flat (and may yet come off).

What happened?

Some of the values the key leaders adopted during the last pastor's tenure make it difficult to recover to a healthy state to fulfill their mission. This phrase from their website offers some insight, "If you want to know more about our church or are ready to join our membership, we invite you to attend our Newcomers' orientation the next time it is offered." The key is one hasn't been offered since the former pastor left and there is not one on the schedule. Having read every page of their website I'm left with the impression that while strangers may be welcome, membership has many qualifications before real belonging can be achieved. When leaders fear granting influence to new and unproven members, the church becomes a place where anyone can leave but no one can join.

Many issues must be addressed. They must embrace new members and be willing to trust new leadership including the next pastor.

Better days ahead...

I've been sorting out a few things in my head over the last 10 days or so. I've go over that in the coming posts.

Also finished reading The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community, and Small Groups by Joseph R. Myers. Depending on how far you want to take the application of his principles, there could be huge implications for church community as we understand it.

I can't help but wonder...

I've been wondering if my thoughts and comments here have offended some of my friends in the "conventional, typical, traditional, institutional, etc." church.

It was never my intention to criticize God's servants or their work. Frankly, that's not my place. However, I felt led to take a new path. The more people that I verbalize my frustrations and vision with, the more confirmation I receive about the choice that I've made.

Most of the ideas are not really new though they may be new to me. They have been explored for more than 15 years and maybe even longer. Perhaps this analogy will help us continue to appreciate and relate to each other:

If you think about the journey as if it were a train en route to an unknown destination. We cluster in groups or communities in different cars on the train based on our comfort with change and the context of our ministry. Naturally some are in cars closer to the destination than others. Regardless of which car we are in, there are people who need ministry in that setting. Each of us has our plate full.

I occasionally look out the window and try to describe the landscape from my point of view as it speeds by. The view from your window may look very different. We can, in fact, both be correct if we are merely describing what we see and not making assumptions about where we are heading based only on what we see out of our windows. It may be your opinion that we are on separate trains and mine is on the wrong track. Or you may think that the view out of my window is some elaborate hoax and it does not reflect the actual landscape of where we really are. I admit that either of those are possible, but possible for either of us. But my point remains that there are others that share our view who are in need of our ministry.

For all who bear a cup of water in Jesus' name, I pray God speed you on the journey.

just my view from here...

how funny... how true...

These quotes are from Bob Hyatt of evergreen community and nextChurch network:

"You look familiar... am I your pastor?"

I think a lot of sheep are tired of being processed through the system. I think they are crying out for someone to bring some individualized spiritual nurture to their lives.

Stop trying to find the program that will help your people grow and give them what they really need- your attention.

Also in the November Issue

In addition to the Coverstory, there is an excerpt from Neil Cole's book entitled, Organic Church. I particularly like this statement:

We want to lower the bar of how church is done and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple...

The conventional church has become so complicated and difficult to pull off that only a rare person who is a professional can do it every week. Many people feel that to lower the bar of how church is done is close to blasphemous because the Church is Jesus’ expression of the Kingdom on earth. Because church is not a once-a-week service but the people of God’s family, what they have actually done is the opposite of their intention. When church is so complicated, its function is taken out of the hands of the common Christian and placed in the hands of a few talented professionals. This results in a passive church whose members come and act more like spectators than empowered agents of God’s Kingdom.

Read more of the excerpt...

it is easy to count quantity but harder to measure quality?

The lead article in Next-wave is asking the right questions.

Neil Cole shares some great insight from his new book. The article ends with this quote:

I think we are making a shift from the day of the ordained to the day of the ordinary. A day when common Christians are empowered to do extraordinary things for God and they are no longer going to wait for their pastors to say, “Go.”

I think the layers and layers of decision-makers between God’s people and God will be removed, so that God can have direct communication with His people without any filters, without any middlemen to interpret. When we reach that state we will see massive global implications.

I think God is setting us up that way. Some of the trends that are happening today are global in scale. They are not just regional or national, but all across the world people are saying and discovering these things. That has never happened in history, except maybe in the first century. We are on the verge of seeing something akin to the Book of Acts happening in our day, if we are faithful to God’s voice.