here’s some notes from another of the sessions that we experienced at the 1-day conference…

craig’s session was addressing how we think in relation to what we do. some good mental gymnastics on why we do what we do & how to get our “thinking” to the next level so that our “doing” truly matters & has impact.

5 places we need to “re-think”
think differently about…
…your church CULTURE
…PROGRAMMING
…the MISSION
…people LEAVING the church
…LIMITATIONS

…the church CULTURE
if we’re always putting the blame of what’s going on in the church we’re serving we’re simply not doing our job. to some degree people are stubborn & will have difficulty moving into new directions. however, some of the cultural issues are yours as the leader.
LEADERSHIP QUESTION: what am i doing as a leader to change & redirect the culture?

…PROGRAMMING
so much of what we do in life [work, school, family, church] is built around what we’re “doing”. are we making the grade, producing enough, meeting quotas, providing the right programs?
is it possible that we need to scale back all the ‘suff’ that we’re doing [& doing half-way] & focus on a couple of things that we can do well; i mean really well?
the axiom says “if we do more, we can reach more”
i’m becoming less & less convinced that it’s not true.

…the MISSION & people LEAVING the church
so many times the mind-set is that we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings because they might just get up & go to another church. anyone felt this way or heard this said?? yes, i see that hand.
the biggest problem here is that when we begin to become so focused/concerned on those who are considering leaving because the music isn’t just right, or they didn’t get to have a leading role in something & or they just don’t like the way that another is leading – when they become the focus of the leaders we’ve lost sight of the mission.
it almost seems like we’ve become focused on the pharisees & have forgotten about the tax collectors & prostitutes.
Jesus seems pretty clear on this issue. he says, in 21century language, “I’m going this way. if you want to be with Me come on.” he doesn’t seem real concerned with trying to chase down those who don’t want to be involved.
the other thing that pops up here is this notion that if people leave our church we can’t possibly grow. that is a soiled notion!
i heard, quite while ago now, that who is ON the team is as important as who is NOT on the team.
that is to say that there are some that simply are not going to help the cause reach it’s potential & are going to drag their feet at every turn.
help them find a place that they’re going to be happy & productive.

…LIMITATIONS
we often see the possibilities around us as hurdles & impossibilities instead of places that God can move. the churches we serve will often cast a dream as “we can’t do ______, because we don’t have ______”
our job in changing the mindset is to get them to say “we can do _____, because we don’t have _____ obstacles to overcome.”

so, loads of good stuff. too much to put into just a couple of postings here.

is anyone considering catalyst in the ATL for next fall? i’m definitely on-board & would be interested in sharing hotel or vehicle costs. let me know!

Labels: catalyst, change, mindset changes

You've probably heard of the Catalyst Conference.  In true trail blazing fashoin as you'd expect from Catalyst comes Catalyst One Day.  A paired down "accoustic" version.  The venue I and some other ChOGers went to [5 others from Saint Joseph, Dave and Nate from Ithica, Lynette from Muskegun, and a few other familar faces that I don't recall at the moment] was Granger Community Church.    I guess there were around 1100 there, which is paired down from The Gwinnett Center in ATL.  Which holds about 10,000.  

Labels: catalyst, change

Reggie McNeal, who spoke at the National Convention a couple years ago, continues to talk about our view of church. Here's some videos of him. Here's Hamo of Backyard Missionary's take on it.

HT: Hamo

Labels: change, missional, shifting

So I finished this book back in December, and started this post soon after that. I'd forgotten that is was there, sorry about that guys. Things have been really busy in the new year. (I've been without an assistant or an intern since then and I'm not good at handling all of it alone. Plus, when you work out of your niche it takes more time and energy than things that come natural to you.) I've meant to come back out here and respond to some comments, and post some more but I've needed deep breathing and silence more than one more thing to do.

It will be really hard for me to hone this into a small to medium size post. I underlined or bracketed large sections of the book.

Kester Brewin really got my mind going. He really has helped me get my mind around change and development as it pertains to the church. Kester brings in Fowler's Stages of Faith. Something I studied at AU, fairly reluctantly. I had a sense I would come back to Fowler. It's really ringing bells with me now. Thanks former prof Randy Litchfield. These stages are talked about throughout the book. He applies the stages to church and proposes that the Western Church overall is in stage 3 "synthetic-conventional." Loyalty to a "tribe" is key. It is often blind loyalty. I'm sure you've used the term blind faith. Brewin suggests that this is where most of us in the West are when it comes to faith and church. A large theme of the book is how a grassroots, decentralized, networked church, is a better shape for promoting growth in the flock then what we have currently. Like I said he references Flowers stages a lot.

"The concern of this book is to try to show that not only is another model possible but essential. While it is not right to force people from statge to stage, I do believe it is vital that we strongly encourage our institutions to move on from the Stage 3 in which many of them are caught. Like Fowler, I believe that if we are to impact the post-Enlightenment cultural consciousness, then we must be modeling a conjunctive faith in a conjunctive church, for it is only in such a place people for all stages can experience community and growth together. " (p33)

Part 1 comprises chapters Advent/Incarnation/Emergence. In Advent he suggest that there needs to be a pause before growth happens. That's how it happens in nature. "Shaped, not crushed; guided, not dragged."(p41) We're looking for a shaa-zam [my word] moment. In our history we have witnessed change by revolution. Kester doesn't reference this, he's English, but our country started that way. We want change and change now. He suggests that a lasting change, the kind that the church needs is by evolution not revolution. "Before the church can change, before I can change, before things change--before change, we must wait." (p45) Incarnation suggests that God himself waited, pausing still for 400ish years between the old and new testament. Only to reemerge as a baby. A new form. A new order. Not a revolutionary Messiah, a evolutionary Messiah. We like Christ must be reborn into specific times, places and cultures to be affective. (p69) Here's a great quote: "Becoming incarnate will mean the same for us as it did Christ. We will have to experience being small and defenseless, requiring nurture from our host world just as Christ needed Mary's milk. We cannot and must not remain rootless people or rootless churches. Christ needed water from the earth, food from the ground, education from his elders; yet we too often experience church as an organization that has absolutely no need for it surrounding community or area...To admit our need as a church, our dependence on our host culture, is a risk. yet like Christ we must take this risk of interdependence, this risk of being born, this risk of life." (p73-74)

Interlude: The Character of the Emergent Church. Backing up: Kester clarifies his use of emergent, emergence and Emergent. He is using it as an adjective rather than a brand name, or what we think of in the US. To his UK audience, they don't have the hang ups we have as Americans. Brewin suggest that the emerging church system is: open, learning, shared/communal information, model servant leadership, and it must be on the edge of chaos. Hirsch and Frost in The Shaping of Things to Come call this state "chaordic." Just enough scturcutre to hold it together. Hmmm, this sounds like Priddy's bell curve I learned about in the Institute for Servant Leadership (ISL). There's a great table at the end of this section that makes it all clear.

Part 2 Cites/Gift/Dirt. In Cities Brewin talks about urbanization of the world and the changes that encompasses. He also links, Cain to cities, and then to how Jesus approached the city. Cain, because of his sin began to insulate himself from nature, began commerce because he couldn't work the ground anymore. We do the same things today in our cites, we take nature, and make it into things unnatural, to insulate us from nature. [Steel, concrete, asphalt, etc, etc.] Jesus lived his life in small towns, yet he returned to "city" not to overthrow it[revolution], but change it through evolution, person to person. Networked, communal, grassroots, not top down, power broker, hierarchy. Growing cities are on the brink of chaos. Over legislated cities are dying cities. Gift is about reclaiming the art of gift. Kester points out that commodity has entered our church systems. In some places worse than others. The danger isn't when churches offer products or services to their congregations, its when they say they want nothing in return, but they get mad and brow beat when people don't give enough money or time. Dirt hit on the fact that we don't get dirty in the church much. We ask people to clean up first. There are defined lines between church people and unchurched. Have you ever heard someone say "But that's a church thing, why would I go? I'm not a church person." I don't know where I heard this first, but I've been saying for years "The church should be more like a hospital than a museum." I will amend that thought, that it should be more like a MASH tent then a hospital. Field hospitals are out there in the the mix. [Incarnate.] Jesus blurred and redefined the dirt line for us by eating and hanging out with sinners.

Here are my takeaways:
I'm getting my volume of Fowler back out that I bought and "read" in college.

I'm considering making more room in my ministry for more grassroots events to happen. I want my ministry to act and look more like a web than a line, or blocks on a calendar. Maybe something that looks more like a party, and than a youth event. Space where God can naturally use our relationships to do ministry to the broken. I am adopting the same grassroots approach for CONNECT/Small Groups and COACH/mentoring. Volunteers connect with students and they form small groups or start a mentoring relationship. In this respect I just try to play "match-maker," I don't demand or command I just suggest and pray.

You can also find more Kester at his blog: http://kester.typepad.com/signs/

[I could have blogged way more than that.]

Labels: books, change, migration