Archive for February 2011
Of People and Agendas
February 28, 2011 | 
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How do we balance people and agendas?
Some tend to emphasize agendas—if you do things this certain way, this result will happen. Others emphasize people or individuals—the needs of the one outweigh the need of the many. (Thanks, Star Trek, for that phrase!)
In church, the agenda emphasis can result in people following rules and procedures more than following Christ. As Reggie McNeal puts it: “We have operated off the faulty assumption that if people participate in our church programs, they will grow and develop personally.”
Emphasis on the individual can, ironically, hurt individuals. For example, giving money to panhandlers makes us feel good, but does not help them become healthier people—not spiritually, emotionally, or physically.
In church, over emphasis on agendas sets up crazy math: Attendance = Faithfulness; Giving = Generosity. This reduces down to behavior modification.
But on the other hand, over emphasis on individuals reduces down to a salve of the conscience: I feel good helping people. It is very difficult to distinguish between kingdom work that is good and good work that makes me feel good. This reduces down to me being a do-gooder, rather than doing good in the Kingdom of God.
Jesus came preaching the Kingdom and healing the afflicted.
He had an agenda and cared for people. It is not that his agenda was to care for people. And it wasn’t that he cared for people in order to advertise his kingdom (in the Gospel of Mark he didn’t let people advertise).
Jesus had an agenda: the kingdom of God. And that agenda has ramifications: the blind see, the lame walk, the prisoners set free.
In what ways are we aligning ourselves with God’s kingdom agenda? In what ways do we see the ramifications of that agenda in the transformation of those around us?
Posted in Church Leadership | 
Tags: Jesus, leadership, ministry, pastoral care, Reggie McNeal, spiritual transformation | 
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The Daily Ministry
In true German fashion, Bonhoeffer sweats the small stuff because the small stuff is what the big stuff is made of. This focus is not legalism, he asserts, but “discipline and faithfulness.” This lesson is timeless. And timely for anyone in or seeking to be in ministry.
“Because consideration of the Scriptures, prayer, and intercession involve a service that is our duty, and because the grace of God can be found in this service, we should train ourselves to set a regular time during the day for them, just as we do for every other service we perform. . . . For the pastor, it is an indispensable duty on which the whole practice of ministry will depend. Who can really be faithful in great things, if they have not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Posted in Church Leadership | Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, discipline, faithfulness, Life Together, ministry, prayer | No Comments »
McChristian
A Big Mac tastes the same in Memphis as it does in Zagreb or Seoul. That’s intentional: no matter where you go in the world, the Big Mac is safe, consistent, stable. (Nutritional info is another issue!)
Christians often have the same logic, but rarely intentionally.
I remember several times in the mission field when Americans would visit. Sometimes they would make a comment like: “It was just like home.” They meant that there were no surprises. American church, but in a different language. Then they could go to McDonald’s around the corner for a Big Mac!
This really bothered me as a missionary. Why would you expect to walk into a foreign church and not feel like a foreigner? Can we really expect to grow a church in a new community if we are simply replicating the burger recipe from the church back home?
Happily, I think our mission work was more culturally relevant than those people recognized.
But the issue remains: is an unspoken value in our Christian consciousness that the tried-and-true trumps seeking the kingdom in our particular context?
I’m a pretty stable guy, and I like knowing what’s going on around me. But more than that, I want to be faithful. I want my focus and values shaped by God and his kingdom. A kingdom where billions and billions are truly served and truly serving.
Posted in Church Leadership | Tags: Church, faithfulness, Kingdom of God, McDonald's, missions | 1 Comment »
Adjusting to the Kingdom
In Reggie McNeal’s book Missional Renaissance, he talks about three areas of adjustment that churches will need to make to avoid ministry stagnation:
- Ministry Focus: From internal to external
- Core Activity: From program development to people development
- Leadership Agenda: From church-based to kingdom-based
These three adjustments may seem obvious. I don’t know of a church that would think of itself as not ministering to others to reach people for the kingdom.
In application, though, these three adjustments can be huge. I have friends who “shop” for churches where they feel comfortable, not where they feel useful.
Churches tend to measure growth by participation in programs. Rarely have I heard of measuring growth by number of future leaders mentored.
As leaders we tend to ask what we need to do to get our organization on solid footing, rather than asking what God is doing around us and how we can get on board.
May God give us a vision for the world! May we seek to build up people more than programs! May we have a vision of Kingdom greater than our own turf!
“Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven!”
Posted in Church Leadership | Tags: Church, Kingdom, Missional renaissance, Reggie McNeal | 1 Comment »
Teachability
I recently read about the spiritual discipline of teachability. It was a surprising find! I had never really thought about the ability of someone to be taught as a spiritual discipline. Personality trait or disposition, yes, but not a discipline.
But if spiritual (trans)formation is a goal, then we must be teachable.
In Mark 4:21-25, Jesus says that those who do not listen to him will lose what understanding they already have. If we think we understand fully, we close ourselves to what God may yet do that is completely unknown to us.
What can we do to be more teachable
We must trust more those who would teach us. We are people who seriously doubt others. We doubt their agendas and perspectives. Find trustworthy people and listen to them.
We must trust more our own story and ability to see God’s work in our lives. If we trust God is working in our lives, we must seek the points where his story intersects ours. Those intersections are treasures hidden in a field!
We must continually re-understand what we know. At what point will any of us exhaust all learning opportunities?
Since I work with people both older than me and younger than me, I’ve learned to learn from both groups. Teachers are all around us!
See Adele Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook.
Posted in Spiritual Formation | Tags: Adele Calhoun, Jesus, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, spiritual formation, teaching | No Comments »
When is spirituality bad?
There are many cases when things “spiritual” may be used counter to the work of God in the world (abuse, legalism, antinomianism, etc.). One particular kind of problem is when we hyper-privatize spirituality at the expense of both Christian community and Christian mission.
Alan Hirsch describes the second form: “On the odd occasion we have actually managed to engage in some form of discipleship, we have tended to limit it to issues of personal spirituality (prayer times, Bible study, God’s leading, tithing, etc.) and not conceived of it as something that has direct ramifications beyond the individual’s privatized religious sensibilities.” (Untamed, 12.)
In other words, we can be so focused on our spirituality, that we twist the focus back onto ourselves.
Here’s a quick test: When you feel you are most spiritual, what impact does your spirituality have in the Kingdom of God?
Personal spiritual disciples and growth are vital, but they are not the goal. As Christians, our spirituality is for the glory of God and the growth of his kingdom.
“If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.” –Jesus
Notes from Croatia – Injustice
Injustice has many faces, and I became aware of one in Croatia through the story of a sister in Christ. She works in a factory that makes grincajgs (a set of vegetables for soup). They get the vegetables, cut them to the appropriate size, and then assemble a one-pot-of-soup sized pack of them.
Her work schedule is eight hours on, eight hours off throughout the week. The factory works around the clock. She is never off of work for more than eight hours at a time during the week. That means she, and her co-workers, never get a full night rest, and their “nights” are never consistent. They are not paid overtime for their work.
To make it worse, they have additional shifts over the weekend that are not paid. They have to volunteer work time.
Why doesn’t she quit? Her choice is this job or unemployment, as far as she and those around her can tell. No one is hiring; many people are out of work. So she works.
Don’t they have a work-place code and inspection from the government? Yes, but the workers are told to give the “right” answers: no more than 40-hours in a week; weekends off; joy everywhere. If they tell the truth, they will clearly lose their jobs. Besides, the factory owner will simply bribe the inspector. So they would have lost their jobs for nothing.
“Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him.” Proverbs 14:31
I feel for this sister, her family, and her coworkers. I pray that God will raise up honest business owners and government officials whose actions honor God. I pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.
Notes from Croatia
While in Zagreb in January a man pulled me aside after I preached and said that this was his first time in a Protestant church. He and his fiancée were disowned by their families when she became pregnant and refused to have an abortion. They have no faith as we would understand it, and so have no basis for how to live godly lives. “I have never been in a place where they actually study the Bible,” he told me. They were brought by another couple who just came to the congregation. I was able to connect them with one of the evangelists, so I pray that God continue to work in their lives to His glory.
It is very exciting to see God work in the lives of people who are lost in every sense of the word. There are so many people here seeking something real in their lives (yes, in Europe!) that the church is really a blessing in amazing ways. Praise God!
Thanks T&S Web Design!
Many thanks to the folks at T&S Web Design for their work in designing and developing this website! They even worked through the blizzard of 2011 to launch it! Thanks so much Tim, Emily, and Chris!
Happy Death
Today at our church’s prayer vigil, I went through all of the prayer cards that had been turned in. My favorite was the boy who is so grateful for chicken nuggets!
But as I read through them, it was clear that many dealt with death. Our congregation has a good spread of ages, but these requests were not limited to the aged. What I realized is that we do not have a good language for death.One member of my Bible class lost his wife recently, an experience for her that he call “going home to glory.” For her it was a release, but as she struggled with illness and suffered the last few weeks, how were we to pray?
One card at the prayer vigil was from a man closer to 100 than to 90. His card asked for us to pray that the doctors would find out what is ailing him.
No one wants to give up on life, but can we have a language that admits both realities we live in: Death stinks; Death is inevitable short of the Lord’s coming. Death is an enemy, but death can also be a merciful release.
I once heard that Catholics, when praying for a very sick person, ask for a happy death or a speedy recovery. (Are those two mutually exclusive?) I’m not sure I like the language of “happy death,” but it is headed in the right direction.
Perhaps having a language that accepts death without capitulating to it will help us live both soberly knowing what lies ahead and joyfully knowing that Christ has overcome this final foe.