In my last post I said this about the road ahead for (Western) churches:

Step 1: Christian unity!
Step 2: See step 1.

Our Savior Jesus once said "A house divided against itself can not stand" and later went on to say "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:20-23)

If we resolve to be Christians, one body, one faith, one baptism, one together and open to the transformation of our lives by the Holy Spirit of God I believe that church form and structure will flow naturally into our current contexts. In some places it will look the same as before and in other places radically different but we have a God big enough to handle it.

Over the past few weeks I've been discussing these concepts with people with different denominational and traditional backgrounds with a great deal of enthusiasm but for the most part all conversations start and end with "my theology is right".

I belong to a church tradition that developed out of the Stone-Campbell movement, sometimes known as the Restoration movement. Just saying that brings baggage alone with it but I have to say, the more I study it and the intent of it's founders I can not help but resonate with them.

In the essentials, unity. In the non-essentials, liberty. And in all thing, charity.

    
So how do we get past the "my theology is right" mind set that throws up road blocks? I had one discussion about Baptism with a Roman Catholic which ended quite poorly. He insisted on a doctrinal trajectory that I simply could not accept, that baptism of the infant is a regenerating act that saves the child where as I hold to the believe that Jesus instigated baptism as a conscious act of the believer to demonstrate their faith.

Finding a theological common ground is tough, this is just one example so it begs the question "Is it worth it?" Is trying to uncover that which we have in common worth the stress, distress and pain?

Yes.

Why?

Because Jesus said to.

Is that enough?

Yes!

I want to be Christ-like. I believe that to be the goal of our faith, to become like Jesus, to share in his mission and to demonstrate his love to a lost and hopeless world. How can I do this without seeking unity with other believers?

Can I leave you with this challenge? Find someone of a different denomination, a different theological tradition and find our what you have in common.

I plan for this to be the last post about church growth as it relates to structures. I started the series because I have a deep seated belief that the local church is ultimately a force for good in this world and that the pastor at the helm needs to have a fuller understanding of his position within the church.

Just as God has ordained some to be teachers, apostles, prophets and healers, there is a variety within each of these groups that needs to be recognized. The giftings of one pastor may be to a small congregation where as another imbued by with gifting to lead a large church.

I still believe that the local church is the ultimate force for good but the curtain need to be pulled open and the church needs to see the little man called Christendom who has been calling our shots for far too long.

Christendom is a concept borne out of a close connection of church and state, not necessarily a theocracy but a symbiotic relationship where one feeds the other to their own ends. And Christendom thinking is destroying the church.

We live for the most part in a post-modern, post-Christian, post-denominational world. A world that has lost automatic respect for the church and it's teaching because of how we have represented Christ and His teachings. Witness what clerical abuse of children, institutional thinking, denominationalism, political manipulation by refusing communion to those who expouse Heterodoxy in their thinking. These things and Christians who exhibit little to no Christ-likeness has stolen away the good will of the church universal and must be examined and where appropriate repented of and where appropriate rejected or redeemed.

Christendom has ended but we are still behaving as if it's alive and well.

The net effect over the entire Christendom epoch was that Christianity moved from being a revolutionary, social and spiritual movement to being a static religious institution with its attendant structures, priesthood, and sacraments. Taken as a sociological reality, Christendom has been in decline for 250 years so much so, that contemporary Western culture has been called by many historians (secular and Christian) the "post-Christendom" culture.
    -Michael Frost, Exiles, p.4

    
I'll go out on a very short limb and say this, the decline of the (at least Western) church is because of a failure to see it's place in the world clearly.

So how do we begin to turn this around? It's not what you might think.

Step 1: Christian unity!
Step 2: See step 1.

Our Savior Jesus once said "A house divided against itself can not stand" and later went on to say "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:20-23)

If we resolve to be Christians, one body, one faith, one baptism, one together and open to the transformation of our lives by the Holy Spirit of God I believe that church form and structure will flow naturally into our current contexts. In some places it will look the same as before and in other places radically different but we have a God big enough to handle it.

This is the call of an Emerging Pastor and their leadership of Gods church.

Following on from The church with no programs. I concluded with the following challenge:

    What would your church look like if you stopped every single program? What would rise up and fill their space? Some of the old which was valuable may well reappear but I would bet next weeks collection it would emerge totally different, and something that honours God where you are, with what you have and blesses the community around you.

Over a period of many years I have read at least 50 books on church leadership, management and growth. They all had great ideas, some could even be used in a context apart from the one they originated. (aside: don't dig into that point, I have a big problem with church leadership books and the people who read them and try to make them work in absurdly different circumstances.)

However none of it really hit home until somebody asked be the question: "If you church disappeared tomorrow, would anyone notice?"

Well, would anyone miss yours? Most of the congregation would probably be happy with a free Sunday. Now that's not a joke, I was talking to the leader of a nearby church this morning and he told me how great it was since they closed their night service. He get's to spend a lot more time with friends and family. Long lunches with friends turn into long evenings. He doesn't want to start going back to the night services.

That single question used to drive how I approached ministry (I think I blogged about it a while ago but I can't remember) until the question was redefined for me by Rob Bell.

This is not a direct quote but it's  pretty close. Rob asked: "If your church was forced to close down tomorrow, who would protest?"

I'll give you a pass on the church members (their a given except for my friend above). This question puts a beautiful spin on the original, it opens us up to consider our wider community and their needs. Would our neighbors notice that the church had been closed? Will our community miss our impact as far as social justice and helping the poor is concerned?

What are we doing in our church that will be protested if we are forced to move on?

I recently finished a short book called "Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile" by Rob Bell.

I have to say, it left me both hungry and satisfied. For over a year I have had the thought that the church today is something akin to the nation of Israel in exile. In a macro way it has swapped natural for unnatural and become not just of the world but worldly in everything it does.

Now that's a big call and I guess what I'm saying is that the church (not specifically Christians) has become something that it was not supposed to be. It has swapped it's dynamicism of the past for something tried and true and in most churches I have been associated with, the majority of the energy goes into maintenance. maintenance of the buildings, the mortgage, the programs, the rosters. All of the things that should be peripheral have become central which pushes the important things from our grasp.

Such thoughts will not be new to you if you have been reading this blog over the past year, but reading the book helped bring some of my thoughts into focus and I'll be writing about these over the coming months.

Today I am going to start at the outcome. What does a church in exile look like? The correct answer is whatever shape God ordains for where and when you are. Whatever shape, structure and resources make sense in your context but not simply shape, structure and resources maintained from the past.

Although it was quite a rough ride to be expelled from their homeland and into captivity (more than once), exile for the Jewish nation help to sharpen their focus as well as build their reliance on God. I wonder what would happen to most churches I know of if they were physically exiled from where they stood, not just exiled from the mainline of society? How would that sharpen their focus, would it?

When I heard the call of God to move from the church I was serving and to go to another church I considered a nearby congregation whose pastor had also just moved on. This was (and still remains) a troubled church. Most of their 50 strong congregation is over 70, there is one young family, but what they do have is their building, and they work hard to keep it.

I had a very informal chat with this church and put it to them that if I was to be called to serve there, the first thing I would do would be to shut down every single program they have and keep them shut down for at least 3 years. Its a radical idea, but my feeling at the time for them was that they needed to rediscover who they were at a church now and not perpetuation who they were as a church 30 years ago. (Who knows, they might even sell the building and give the money to the poor).

What would your church look like if you stopped every single program? What would rise up and fill their space? Some of the old which was valuable may well reappear but I would bet next weeks collection it would emerge totally different, and something that honours God where you are, with what you have and blesses the community around you.

This morning I dusted off the new mountain bike that my wife bought me for my birthday. its a great present but because of the extremes of Australian weather of late I haven't had much opportunity to ride it. In one week it was consistently over 40 degrees (that's Celsius, 104F), it peaked at 47 C for my birthday (117 F). The next week it hasn't stopped raining.

So I resolved last night, no matter what the weather, I was riding my bike! You see I'm trying to regain my fitness so with good intentions and a liberal salting of guilt over my health I set out this morning to set a bench mark for improvement. Basically I set out to ride as far as I felt I could until I was too tired to return.

At the apex of my journey I felt like just giving up and taking the next shortcut home instead of pushing through the pain of the ride. Then all of a sudden a shortcut opened up to my left, it was a little side street that would cut right across the U bend of the cul-de-sac I was peddling down. It was literally Grace Street.

In the sermon on Sunday morning, the pastor likened the Christian faith to a knife edge that we walk between faith and works. He highlighted the perils of straying to far to either side as if both are cliff faces that we can fall over and hurt ourselves on. For my mind he was spot on.

I didn't take the turn down Grace Street this morning, but it did prompt my thoughts away from the pain in my legs and towards my relationship with God.

My observation of Christian living is that there are those who certainly cheapen God's grace by continuing in their sin. They see faith in Christ as a free ride to heaven as if they are on a tandem bike and Jesus is doing all the peddling. Grace is the shortcut to heaven and a means of living.

Others, and I include myself in this lot at times seem to think it's all about them. It's their effort that will get them to their destination, it's their peddling, their sweat and their muscles that move them into the Kingdom of God. It's almost like they are punishing themselves into the Kingdom.

James the brother of Jesus asked the question "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?" and concludes (rightly) that "faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead".

That's a hard thought to swallow sometimes. God's grace is a means to living faithfully. It draws us in, shows us how valuable we are in God's eyes and the lengths that God will go to in order for us to call him Father. But God's grace is not an end in itself, works are a part of faithful living, they are an outpouring of our obedience and response to God's love.

Ephesians 2:10 tell us "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

What we do for God has been planned by God to bring about His glory. Let's not rest to long or struggle to hard but find our place in Him.

I spent the majority of last week on retreat with college undertaking the third year of the subject "Personal Formation". It was simultaneously completely invigorating and completely draining.

I've written about personal formation and the process before but I'll briefly recap. Basically you are put into a group with about 6 other people (there were 9 in my group this year) and you each have a turn telling your story. Afterwards, the group gives you feedback on connections with your story and theirs, they probe you to understand the forming moments of your life or to provoke you (both good things), and then they give you affirmation and prayer.
After the retreat we all meet formally (about 4 or 5 times during the year) to discuss how life has gone since the last meeting and help each other process any issues.

This year was exactly like the year before, in that it was completely different from the year before. I was challenged by both God and my wife (a most potent combination) to take a sideways look at my life and de-emphasis the BIG experiences of my life and see what flavor God would reveal to me.

My discussion circled around the theme of my last post about being faithful in the small things which turned out to be very insightful to me. It's interesting what you can see in your life if you look beyond the obvious.

In my (secular) employment, we use a financial methodology called "Value At Risk" or "VaR" to determine the overall risk associated with the firms investments in equity markets. (Don't worry if that didn't mean much to you :)  In the VaR methodology you are trying to predict how much a particular stock will rise or fall based on past performance. The problem with this however is there are several large events that happen in the life of a stock that can skew the data. Say you are looking back at the past year and on one particular day the stock went up 500% but every other day it moved up or down around 1%. That 500% isn't the real indicator of the stock, it's the slow and steady 1%.

If your a math nerd (I'm looking at you Andrew) in the VaR model we fit all the years observation onto a log normal distribution and chop the top and bottom 2.5% off (this is the tail). What remains is the story of 95% of the stocks life and what is typically the most indicative of how it reacts.
 
Here is my challenge to you, think about your life and the moments that form and shape you. Now knock out the tail end of the extremes of your life and see if God can show you something new about your character.

A great deal of my time recently has been given over to the contemplation of church as an activity. In the last month on three seperate occasions, people (all couples but I don't think that's causal) have told me that they have given up going to church because to varying degrees they do not see a point in it.

These are all people who love God wholeheartedly but have been disenfranchised in congregations that see their value as their abilities and not as fellow children of God.

It gives me reason to pause when I hear something like this and it should cause you to pause as well.

Why does a congregation exist? That seems to be the root of all of this. I know that many people are not fans of the institutional church and are looking to the emerging and missional movements to find something new and exciting, I count myself among them, but surely the institutional church as we know it is not evil.

If it were evil (as defined by actively opposing peoples relationship with God) then I would be the first with the flamethrower and pitch fork calling for them to be closed down. I do not believe the institutional church to be inherently evil but they have in many cases become misguided.

This sounds a little contradictory but I'm both a supporter and detractor of the institutional church. Actually, I just don't like the institutional part. Let me unpack that a little with some more definitions.

We call pretty much any church with 4 walls and people institutional. I believe that is unfair. An institutional church in my mind is one that has become institutionalized. One that exists purely to perpetuate it's existence.

IBM, one of the worlds biggest computer companies and largest employers had this problem not that long ago. They were BIG BLUE, everyone came to them to have their problems fixed. After a while they just seemed to stagnate. Their products were no longer innovative, they did not take the industry lead and as a consequence they were overtaken by smaller rivals. IBM it seems existed just to be IBM, they were no longer a business to help people.

Sound familiar? Institutionalized churches are like IBM, they were once vibrant communities of faith and healing but somewhere along the line they looked inwards and started to plan for maintenance and not growth.

IBM seems to be back on a growth trajectory but it took many years, a lot of pain and introspection and real LEADERSHIP to turn things around.

The same is needed for the church.

One of my favorite pieces of Scripture is "Without a vision, the people perish". It is our responsibility as leaders of God's church to be focused on his mission and share with our congregation how we are going to accomplish that in our context. That is vision. All else is secondary to the Fathers mission. The building, lobbying government, the music everything is secondary to the mission. They are often important, but I will say it one more time. They are secondary to the mission.

Here are some hard questions for you church leader:

 * What is your churches number one focus?
 * Do you have a vision statement?
 * Does it fulfill the great commission?
 * Are you able to measure if it's working?
 * Are you making an idol out of anything secondary?

 

Happy new year!

While my wife and I rang in the New Year in the style we have become accustomed to over the years, surrounded by friends. This new year has given me a great deal to pause and reflect on.

For some time now someone very close to me has been suffering from several persistent and painful illnesses that is causing them much distress. While the doctors have offered little to no explanations to what ails them they have been asking me the question "Why wont God heal me".

My own story of coming to faith begins with receiving healing from God. Others I know have received healing for physical, psychological and spiritual issues. The niece of an elder in my church had one leg shorter that the other and it grew an inch after she received prayer. I'm not talking over time, but visibly growing.

Such talk unfortunately puts me in a camp that some people label "religious nut job" but I can only speak of my experiences and I can not attribute them to the natural.

So why wont God heal this person close to me? It's a horrible question to be asked. When we are the one in pain we generally attribute it to malice, God is being vindictive of punishing a person. If we have never suffered pain we tend to be a little more philosophical, God's ways are above our ways (or God works in mysterious ways).

The answer that I give a person is different to an answer someone else gives because our theology is challenged and shaped by our experiences. The more we get to know God, the more we experience in life and the more we actively reflect on our experiences the better placed we are to contribute to the conversation.

My answer is often wholly unsatisfactory to the person who is suffering because it requires trust.

For my mind, the question isn't, why wont God heal me or even is it God's will for miraculous healing. The question we should be asking is have I surrendered by heart and will to God? Can I truly say "Your will be done"?

I do not believe for a minute that God wants us to be suffering and that it is his will for us to suffer but I can say that those times he allowed me to stay in the pain of my circumstance, I grew.

This does not mean that we should cease praying for healing of the sick and otherwise afflicted but we should also be mindful that God often uses our circumstances to draw us closer to him. I don't believe that makes him capricious, I think that he knows best.

I will continue to pray for healing for the person close to me but I will also continue to pray that their relationship with God grow tighter and stronger through this experience.

On my way into work this morning I played one song about 12 times, hearing God speak in the lyrics although what I heard is not what was sung. Ever happen to you? The song was by the Australian band George and the song Bastard Son. It sent my mind into a spin hearing from God over and over about this one that he has sent into the world, despised by it, hated by it.

The word bastard is cruel, heartless, it put's on a child this sin of the parents. Those around him muttered it behind closed doors in an attempt to rob him of his identity but it is not stolen from him. The world calls him a bastard because they can not comprehend his Father.

From the most despised township in his country, from a family the subject of rumors and ridicule. With a mad cousin wondering the countryside ranting about the end of the world and eating bugs.

Loved by few.

Deserted by all.

The one who came humbled and left humbled.

One man, alone in this world and glorified in the next.

He alone sits in power and says to me "Strip!" and in the authority of his voice the stain of my sin falls away. With a sword that cleaves flesh from bone, he cuts away to my heart and soul and gives me his freedom.

This one has done me over, turned me over, I who came from the dust of the earth, he has turned me over to his Father and said "Behold I am making you new! I am giving you a new name, a new identity. You are hidden in my now and now you can come and meet your Father in person."

This bastard son, he sit's enthroned over my life.

Thank God.

A few months ago a woman came into our church and made the pronouncement that she would never return to our church, would never again grace us with her presence unless we took all the flags down off the walls. To keep us continually focused on missions we have flags from all the nations that we support missionaries or orphanages or churches (or whatever else) in hanging from the walls.

For me, it was one of the first tests of leadership in the church, what should we do? Did we listen to this woman who spent most of that morning getting in peoples ears about how the flags were evil and signs of Satan or did we stay the course and leave it as a focus?

We decided to leave the flags there because we believed that the opinion of one should not dictate to the majority (that is of course unless they are right, but that wasn't the case here).

Today I was confronted with a similar situation, before our night service tonight I was confronted by an older member of our congregation who proclaimed that I should never lead worship unless I was wearing shoes. Her argument was that as a leader I should do whatever it takes to remove and all barriers for people in our church, so even if one person complains we should do what they say.

Do you think this is reasonable? Let's put aside what you think about the actual issue here, I don't wear shoes because I don't like wearing shoes, I wear thongs (or flip-flops depending of where you live) and slip them off whenever I can. (That and the fact I have nerve damage in my hands and feet and shoes hurt.)

Do you think it is reasonable for the objection of one person to set the policy and standards of the church? The Apostle Paul did say that he endeavored to become all things to all men in order to save a few but there are obvious problems with this when you become a Jew to save some and a Gentile to save others.

Situations such as this need to be measured firstly against Scripture, does God care about this matter and if not, against a reasonableness test. Is it reasonable to hold an entire group of people to the standards of one person in this case? If they are a reflection of a larger opinion in the church and it doesn't hurt to do it then just do it. If however it is the opinion of just one person or a small group of people, why put ourselves in bondage to their whims? This week it's making sure your wearing shoes, next week it's wearing a suit when you preach even in 40 degree heat!

It's easy to laugh at these things but these things no matter how trivial do matter to people so when you are dealing with situations such as this make sure you do it in love. If you treat these situations flippantly or with disdain or the person without respect these imaginary emergencies and worries can turn into real hurt and pain.

When I found the following test it was billed as the world's easiest having a pass mark of just 4 out of 10. What I have since discovered is that 4 was setting my sights a little too high :)

There are some things in life that we just take for granted. For some of us it's our faith in God, faith in being able to keep our job, that are parents will always be there for us and one especially for those emerging pastors, that God works the way we think he does.

Nothing is more confronting than challenging our expectations especially about the fundamentals of life, those questions we thought we had put to bed years ago. What I continue to learn is that I have to unlearn and discover freshly what it means to be in a relationship with the God of the universe. I have to continually unlearn and discover again what my doctrine is, that's not simply throwing away everything I've learned but rather allowing new knowledge, new understanding and discoveries to be synthesized into my greater understanding of things.

So I encourage you to take this test (don't cheat, the answers are just below) and after you grade yourself take a few moments and pray to our Heavenly Father to reveal to you an area of your life or thinking (or both) where you have become stubborn or refuse to accept change and allow the Holy Spirit to challenge your expectations and grow you even more like Christ.

Let us live in the wisdom of John Maynard Keynes "When the facts change, I change my mind".


Here are the questions, be sure to write down your answers:

1. How long did the Hundred Years War last?
2. Which country makes Panama hats?
3. From which animal do we get catgut?
4. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
5. What is a camel's hair brush made of?
6. The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
7. What was King George VI's first name?
8. What color is a purple finch?
9. Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
10. What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?

 

Now that was easy wasn't it? Check your answers below AND GOOD LUCK!

 

1. 116 years
2. Ecuador
3. Sheep and Horses
4. November
5. Squirrel fur
6. Dogs
7. Albert
8. Crimson
9. New Zealand
10. Orange, of course.