During the week I was reading a blog from MIT which I thought I'd share. Called How to start a revolution it demonstrates mathematically the ability of a small amount of people to influence a larger group.

One way to model leadership (or flocking, as ornithologists call it) is to create a computer-based swarm of individuals who follow the average movement of those around them. When you introduce a small number of leaders who all move in a certain direction--to the right, say--the swarm tends to follow the leaders.

While the rest of the article is interesting in itself and well worth reading I could not shake Jesus' illustration of the yeast leavening bread.

To my mind this works on two levels.

Firstly, as a church leader we have the ability to influence the direction and thinking of our congregations towards holiness and the Kingdom of God but our task is so much easier when we identify those natural leaders within our congregations and pastor them directly, bringing them on board with the vision and more importantly the mission of the church.

I have seen churches that ignore (natural) leaders within their congregation and they do so at their peril. While they may be a troublemaker from your point of view, perhaps God is providing you with an opportunity to influence a large group of people through one person.

Secondly, I think about the church as ambassadors for the Kingdom of God and how we may influence the world. Jesus called us yeast, something that is massaged into the greater whole to lift it all up and help it to reach it's potential. Each and every Christian, each of those people in your congregation are one of these leaders that has the potential to shape opinion and direction in the worlds affairs.

I dream of a church that does not lobby politicians to legislate morality but a church that influences their neighbors towards righteousness.

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.

As I mentioned in the last post, the Pastoral sized church is really in my sights at the moment because that is where the church I am serving is heading. This is not the "best" method of leading a church, rather it's an appropriate method for a church of this size, 50-150 active members.

The Pastoral sized church places the clergy at the center along with a small team of leaders (typically Elders depending on your denomination). This group displaces the patriarch/matriarch of the Family sized church and requires a degree of discipline and good communication with the church to accomplish it's leadership goals.

The pastor who sits at the center of a circle of leadership must be able to delegate authority in such a way that releases them from the burden of doing it all. If too greater hand is left on the reigns, the pastor will burn out, conversely, too loose a grip will weaken the entire structure of the leadership.

The central difference between a Family sized church and a Pastoral sized church is not only the leadership structure but the role of the pastor in meeting the spiritual needs of the congregation. The Pastoral sized church is expecting a called and trained pastor to minister too them directly rather that being a Chaplin style support to the church.

The pastor takes on an important and pivotal role in the congregation, you would not expect the pastor to be absent from any part of the church life such as bible studies and prayer groups. The pastor is also seen as on-call and the first call for people who are experiencing times of personal crisis. When a member of the congregation called the pastor, their expectation is that they would visit that day or very soon afterwards and it would be the pastor, not a designated pastoral care person.

This availability proposes an increased risk of burnout on the pastor and pressure on their family life and must be managed with a good degree of wisdom. Boundaries are key issue here, they must be publicly expressed, consistently applied and supported by the leadership team. The upside of this relationship with the congregation is that they will be fiercely loyal to the pastor and hopefully be attentive to their guidance.

The Pastoral sized church is similar to the Family sized church in that everyone still knows everyone else. They will at least know them by sight if not by name. When the congregation butts against the upper limit of this church size, say 130-150 people attending each Sunday an interesting dynamic occurs. As Carl Dudley put it in Unique Dynamics of the Small Church,(see footnote) they begin to feel "stuffed." Members wonder about the new faces that they don't know-people who don't know them. Are they beginning to lose the intimate fellowship they prize so highly?

At 150 members the pastor will feel like they are being drawn and quartered by the pressure and demands of 150 people trying to know them intimately, this is a key reason for a church to make the next leap to a Program sized church.

This is a key barrier to growth. It is at this point that the pastor and congregation need to make a conscious choice, either maintain an intimate relationship with the pastor or loose the grip and grow as a church.

I am not making a value call here, the context of many churches may be that a smaller more intimate congregation will be one that honors God. But this must be understood lest the church numbers drift ever upward and put extreme demand of the pastor.

A pastor with a strong personality, outgoing, expressive and rich interpersonal skills will fare will in the Pastoral sized church. They must be a person who can feed into the highs and lows of peoples lives as well as preach, teach and lead worship. This pastor will be the primary focus of the church.

---
Dudley, Carl. Unique Dynamics of the Small Church. Bethesda, MD: Alban Institute. Another helpful book is Lyle Schaller's Looking in the Mirror (Abingdon Press 1984).

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.

Following up from my last post, On the market I want to reflect for a moment on what I believe God's motivations are for moving me on from one church to the next (wherever that is).

We were reading through James chapter one in my bible study last night and a passage that really hooked into people was:

 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.

Mature and complete, not lacking anything, that really resonates with me. In my mind it links to a Scriptural principal that I live my life by. It is the lesson from the parable of the talents: "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!"

Our maturity and completeness is borne out of our faithfulness to God in the small things that he has given us. When we show faithful with that He gives us more. This is no "Prayer of Jabez" increase my borders nonsense but a call to Christ likeness.

I believe that over the past 10 years of my Christian life God has been calling me to ministry. This wasn't something I was able or prepared to do in the beginning. It started with a call and in faith I answered and that began a journey.

In just answering the call of God he began to add more to me. I found myself leading a bible study, leading the congregation in worship and other things that I will label small, not to belittle them but to put them in context.

Being faithful with those things came more responsibility, soon God opened the door to bible college so I could further learn and grow. Along with it came the role of Student Pastor at my church. The role stretched me, made me think differently and brought me to a higher place in my relationship with God.

From there God has placed more responsibility on me with a pastoral position and the position of Elder in his church.

At each turn God has taught me something, entrusted me with something and allowed my care of that something to stretch, grow and test me. After every instance of faithfully dealing with that something, he has given me more.

Leaving my current church is a real stretching time for my faith. I have been ministering in the same place for the past 8 years, the church that I was brought to faith in and with people I have known for up to a decade. But in many ways these circumstances make it difficult for me to reach a new level with my relationship with God.

It's not that I am complacent, or totally unchallenged, but God wants to finish a work in me, to make me more mature and complete and I can not do that where I am.

I want to challenge you, it doesn't matter if you are a pastor or not. Where are you in your relationship with God? Is your faith complete? What is the last thing he entrusted to you? Where you faithful or has your faith stagnated?

My observation is that when we fail at the task at hand most people just plain give up. They say "I've failed God" and cease to look for the opportunities he is bringing their way.

Is that you? You can continue to grow even after failure if you repent. When you admit your failure to God, I can almost guarantee that he will find another way for you to grow and mature in him.

Over the past three days I've been attending the Higher conference, which is the annual Churches of Christ NSW Youth Ministry event for training and refreshing youth group leaders and youth pastors.

I have in fact no desire, compulsion (or ability) to be a youth pastor. My 2 years as a youth worker has shown me that it is not my gifting that I should never again entertain the idea :)

So why was I there you ask? No? I'll tell you anyway. I went to learn.

I consider learning as one of the most valuable activities you can apply yourself to. In this case I wanted to learn more about Youth Ministry in general and how best to support any such ministry that may one day be under my responsibility as the leader of a church.

In the past I've had some disagreements with people about the best way a certain ministry should or shouldn't be run. It's a sad thing to say, but sometimes the leadership of a church doesn't have a clue about what a particular ministry needs by way of support and can impose unfair boundaries or unreachable goals because they simple don't get it.

I don't want to be one of those people who simple speak from ignorance or from my own self-importance or my own gut feel on how I think something should run, and I also don't want the wool pulled over my eyes when someone says that to be successful, ministry X needs Y.

When I was first appointed an Elder in my church one of the first things I did was to contact several of ministry leaders and ask "So what do you do and why?" It wasn't for critique of their practices (although an outside set of eyes is often good for that sort of thing), but an exercise that helped me to gain a holistic view of the church I was asked to help lead.

There was a lot of great learning to be had at the conference and a lot that can be applied outside youth ministry. I particularly liked this idea.

 One youth pastor with a rather large youth group in the opening minutes of the night gets everybody to ask three questions of the person beside them. The first two don't matter, they are icebreakers the third question is "Is this your first time here tonight?" He then asks if anyone has a new person next to them and sends someone over with a drink bottle full of lollies, a letter home to the parents about what the youth group is about and a voucher (valid for two weeks) to have a free can of drink or chocolate the next time they come.

It's a great welcome idea, but in a youth group of 500 kids it also makes it easy to spot the new ones (their the ones holding the bottle) and get beside them and tell them about Jesus.

You could easily modify something similar in your church services, and I think it's an exciting idea :)

I've just published another article / deep thought which takes a look at missional communities in history and tries to draw out of their experience something that we can take forward for today's missional/emerging church.

Comparion of Missional movements in history attempts to deconstruct the Piest movement of early Protestantism as well as the monastic movement from it's 3rd century roots and compares their distinctive characteristics, features, strengths and weaknesses in their historical contexts. By looking at how each was caused, shaped and affected we can learn more about missional living and leadership today.

I hope you learn something from reading it because I did writing it. There is truly nothing new under the sun as far as "doing church" goes and we have a lot to learn about community and involvement in the lives of others from these movements in the past.

Last night we called a special meeting of the church to discuss the re-appointment of a pastor. What made this different to previous meetings of this kind is that this pastor's appointment comes with a list of duty restrictions because of a breach of our denominations code of conduct.

He was in fact our pastor previously and was stood down for the last two years because of this breach and has now been allowed to reapply for a ministry position.

Obviously this was a meeting that required great care in how we approached it and there were questions going back and forth along the lines of "should we mention this", "should we mention that", and in the end we decided that the best way we could approach this was with complete transparency. Transparency to the process, transparency to the sanctions and transparency to the person.

Why is this important and why wouldn't you be transparent? From my observations there is a tendency of an organizations leadership (be it a church or secular) to gloss over the more messy details of failure. About 8 years ago my church asked the then current pastor to resign due to performance reasons. That time it was handled terribly. There was little transparency to the reasons, the pastor resigned mid Sunday service without notice, the leadership closed ranks and were reluctant to talk about it at all.

In that instance around half the congregation left the church.

The effect of transparency in these very difficult dealing with the current pastor have been a most satisfying and healthy contrast.

In the meeting last night we laid it all out there: why we were offering re-appointment, what the restrictions were and why they were there. At every point we allowed time for the hard questions to be asked and did not shy away from the answers no matter how difficult they were.

I know it sounds like I'm just giving us a big pat on the back but I'm trying to highlight a critical issue in church governance. Be as open as possible as much as possible to as many people as possible. Do your dealings in the light and you will be resilient to gossip and false testimony about your dealings.

A lecturer once had us perform an exercise were we enumerated our core values and provided a short explanation of each of the values.
His reasoning was that if you do not have something by which to measure your tasks and activities you will end up doing everything and be satisfied with none of them.

I developed my core values and afterwards I found I was able to say no to things that I previously felt unable to. It was liberating the first time, I was asked to take up a position of youth pastor and I said with complete confidence that the role was completely outside of what I consider my strengths and values, therefore, no.

The most profound lesson I learnt from the process is are my values really values or are they just preferences.

Preferences are those things we would like to value, or think we value but we do not show by our lives. If I say I value honesty but have no qualms with not handing back that extra $20 note the check out chick then what I have is not a true value but a preference for honesty.

Besides being completely hypocritical it's one of those things that cause us to go around seeking the spec in our neighbours eye. (I can't help but think of those people who legislate against homosexuality and find themselves with their pants down in an airport toilet).

There isn't a problem having a preference on something as long as we are honest with ourselves and acknowledge that it's aspirational and not core to our behaviour and lives.

The reason this has all come up for me is not because I've been operating outside of my core values but I've come to question the published core values of my church. This isn't a bad thing, more of a review. In the past 5 years we have moved more towards welfare and social justice but we do not reflect that in our stated values. Likewise some of our stated values look to be more aspirational which again isn't an issue, it's good to seek out different ways of looking at life but if it isn't who you are then don't state it as a value state it as a development goal. Doing this should help to make us mindful of our aspiration and remove the charge of hypocrisy.

Look at it this way. At the moment I have strong tape holding back both of my shoulders. It's part of my treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome. When my shoulders are pulled back it promotes proper posture and reduces the strain on my carpal nerve. I aspire to have those shoulders pulled back at all times but in the mean time I need the tape to gently remind me of my goal. If I told my physio that there is nothing wrong with my posture and I'm only slumping at the moment because of the chair I'm sitting in (something I nearly did yesterday because of pride) then I am clearly lying to her, myself and everyone around me.

If your wondering, my core values are:

• Teaching: Through small groups and preaching to challenge groups of both Christians and non-Christians in their journey of faith.
• Mentoring:  Investing my time and my experience with the individual to help grow and deepen their commitment to Jesus.
• Family: Commitment of my time and attention to strengthen the bond between my wife and I as well as my extended family.
• Relevant:  Understanding the context of my ministry and shaping both myself and my approach to it.
• Authenticity: Showing my true self to those I meet and encouraging them to do the same.
• Leadership: Seeking to understand God’s purpose for His people and guiding them in the parts they play.
  

I've had cause in recent months to ponder inactivity. Not inactivity due to laziness, nor inactivity due to invalidity but rather the paralyzing inactivity that comes from seeking perfection in what we do.

I have a *cough* friend *cough* who is a perfectionist that falls into bouts of procrastination because of the compounding nature of time and tasks. For example, say we have a job to do but we want to do it properly so we wait until we have enough time to give it's due attention. A week or so later the task is still there but it will now take 3 days instead of 1 to complete because we didn't start on it earlier. Now we need to find 3 days in our busy schedule and on it goes. (Housework is a prime example of this.)

Sometimes our quest for perfection gets in the way of getting the job done and this compounds the original task and can potentially send us into a reactive depression which colors our view of all the other little things that need doing. I am certainly not an advocate of "close enough is good enough" but I believe that we need to take a step back and examine our motives in how we perform our ministry.

Just before I started my training for ministry (around 10 years ago) I had a conversation with someone who helped to confirm my calling. This great godly man who later mentored me had fallen into what I like to call the Cult of Perfectionism. He contended that what God truly seeks are "men of excellence" (excuse the gender bias) who will take God's Word out into the world.

This sounds great on paper, I resonated deeply with this phrase "men of excellence" and made it somewhat of a personal goal to do everything I can to the level of excellence. Perhaps it was pride that resonated with the statement but what I didn't realize at the time is the enormous pressure that it puts me under to succeed.

When we hold church leaders up to the unerring standard of "excellence" we are doing them a great disservice. Granted that leaders live in the fish bowl and Scripture says that leaders will be held to a higher standard but if we don't give leaders room to fail in the small things how are they to learn in the big things?

My first taste of ministry was in youth work, a wonderful place to start. It teaches you patience, endurance and above all gives you a place to fail gracefully. I learnt more about ministry by failing here than succeeding elsewhere. What I mean by failure in this context is that I didn't always get things right, didn't always say the right things, lead by example at all times but those teens would always respect you in your repentance and admitting you were wrong.

I put it to us all that our churches need to change our culture from one of excellence to grace, especially in the case of the new leader. Let us support them through their faltering steps into ministry and reap the harvest of a ministry in balance, not one under pressure and paralyzed by perfectionism.

Recently Pastor Mark Driscoll (a hero of mine) was out in Australia as part of his speaking tour. Unfortunately I didn't get to hear him speak but a friend pointed out this interesting discourse on what he sees as issues facing the church in Australia, particularly the Anglican denomination.

Although some points are skewed toward the Anglicans there is some gold in there for all of us like point 13:

There is a lack of missiologists A missiologist evaluates the culture and uses discernment to find the idols, "so missionaries can be employed and churches can be missional". "Theologians defend the truth of the gospel and missiologists then take it to the streets." When you stack the team with theologians and not missiologists" lots of people still don’t know Jesus.

Check out the whole list.

I had the pleasure of catching the train with a friend this morning. This friend and I debate and solve all the worlds problems every time we get together, it's a great iron sharpens iron time.

Out conversation momentarily touched on exclusivity and how it affects us. Consider this...

One day I bought the Serenity DVD box set, my wife and I watched it, enjoyed it and loved it. We lent the box set to this same friend and his wife, they watched it, enjoyed it, loved it and became fanatical about it :)
Not long after they ordered their own copy which didn't come in a cardboard box, rather it had a fancy smancy tin box.
Well I felt ripped off and envious of my friend because I didn't have the fancy tin box. So annoyed was I that I planned to go out and buy it.

Stop, hammer time!

What's going on here? I soon came to my senses and realized that my friend didn't really have anything more than I had, and even if he did, what does it matter?

There seems to be something wired into us that quests for the biggest, newest and shiniest objects. The tin box, the larger house, the best looking wife (I win there suckers! :)

I believe that this is part of our sinful nature that we can redeem. Instead of lusting after the better house or car or XBox, how about we redirect our desire into seeing God's will be done for the poor in our community. Let us boast about how there is no one in need in our community and spur the next town over to do the same.

I've been reading a lot about monastic orders recently and I think that they had something going for them, let's spurn the desire to accumulate treasures on earth and instead build up our heavenly storehouse!

It's about credibility, would you follow a pastor who built up his house instead of the church? The call to be an emerging pastor is in this detail, being counter to the consumer driven culture of this world.

Personally, I'm still trying to get the balance right but that's a step in the right direction.

I can't go into specifics because of confidentiality but a recent situation that comes partially under my authority has me contemplating the line between the public and private life of the pastor and whether such a division actually exists.

It has always been my belief that leaders in the church are to be held much more accountable for their actions because of their position. It's certainly a Scriptural concept and one that makes me shudder a little. How that will work in heaven I'm not sure but it's something that God keeps placing in my head, especially as I grapple with sin in my own life.

The pastor will never be perfect, will have their failings. The Apostle Paul had a thorn in his side that continually bugged him and God deliberately didn't remove it. I may exegete that this is because it kept Paul humble but that is speculation.

In my own life I deal with sin, with patterns from the past that keep raising up to try and grab me back into their bondage once more and as much and has hard as I've prayed and as much and as hard as I've fasted and as fervent and as honest and as real I have been with myself God has refused so far to take it away from me.

What are we to surmise from this, how do we reconcile God leaving us vulnerable to temptation while holding us to a higher standard? Is he just mean or is there a higher reason for it?

Someone once said that "Character is who you are in the dark". The real you is the version of yourself who no one meets, no one sees, no one witnesses. If this is the real me, the one in the dark place, then my vulnerability to certain sin is my check and balance and the method of God to help me grow and overcome.

That is the private life of the pastor, the place where we struggle.

The post is really a short treatment of the issue, I can see that it needs more fleshing out over the next few weeks. What are your thoughts about it?

These thoughts have been circling my head for a little while, it's about our ambition.

I consider myself a very ambitious person, I look for opportunities to develop, grow, excel and climb higher in my corporate position. I've had to do a lot of thinking about how ambition reconciles with ministry because the drivers are not the same.

Sure if I was (still) a Catholic I could seek opportunities to become a bishop (although being able to only move diagonally doesn't really appeal to me) or a cardinal. But as a run of the mill protestant there are not many opportunities to climb the ladder.

There is a school of thought that suggests that we subliminate (push down, bury) our thoughts and feelings such as ambition in the context of ministry but I don't really like that idea much. I feel that God has made me this way for a reason and it can be used for his kingdom if only I could figure out how.

Sublimination also seems to be a counterproductive exercise because that suppressed ambition may express itself in a more unhelpful way down the road.

I've thought that I could apply my ambition to a goal such as winning as many souls as possible but on the face it that always seems so contrived an answer. We should all showing the gospel to people but if I base my ambition on it I will be falsely disappointed if someone does not come into God's family. It's a dangerous thing to base your ambition on something out of your control, after all it is the Holy Spirit that convicts.

The working draft of my thinking lately places ambition as motivation towards effectiveness in the broader sense.

Being effective in ministry to paraphrase Paul (2 Timothy 2ff) is to be a soldier of Christ, to be an athlete striving and to be a farmer working hard each day.

If my ambition is to be redeemed it has to be towards these goals, to be an effective soldier of Christ by listening to my commanding officer at all times, not being distracted by fleeting fads and thoughts. To be an effective athlete I need to be in training each day and to be an effective farmer I need to get up each day and do what needs to be done, not putting off the planting, sowing or reaping until another day.

(Source)

God has been teaching me a big lesson lately and it's not one I think I'm ready to learn. It's all about time.

A few weeks ago our preaching pastor and I were talking about his workload. He is about to finish up his work with our church and has ramped up his ministry in other areas. At the moment there is an overlap and he asked me the question "How do you fit it all in". I stood their and answered him honestly, "You take the time you would devote to your number 1 priority and divide it over all the lower priorities". By that I meant you steal time from your family and spend it on the other jobs we must do.

Doing this is ok in for a short time because there will be times when we must simply finish a task or put food on the table. Doing this for the long haul is not ok, and I've being doing it for the long haul.

These past few weeks, since answering that question honestly I have been physically, mentally and Spiritually exhausted. I need to take a break but every time I find time something else pops up to fill the newly created gap.

I guess I'm asking you quazi-anonymous people to pray for me. For strength, for wisdom and for endurance.

When I was worship leading this Sunday morning it was a real struggle to do it. There was a mini-revolt from some singers because they didn't like the songs, others were pressuring me to make changes. I prayed for God to lead me as I lead the church but midway during the service I lost my grip on Him and never quite recovered.

I feel empty inside, the tank is dry.

At the moment there are two things keeping me going. The love of my wife and Jesus' promise that the well of living water he has caused to spring up inside me doesn't not diminish but rather overflows from me into the lives of others.

The truth is, I'm still seeing that overflow into other peoples lives. I still see God effectively ministering through me to those who He brings across my path even though I am broken and empty inside.

I am a cracked pot still leaking out his love.

This is the third part in the unintentional series on business following on from Confronting busyness with vision and Overburdening our congregations. Burn out, drop out or drop dead.

I say unintentional because initially I was really just ranting about something I see as a problem for the church and pastors, getting those people in the pews committed to the vision of the church (universal) and growing Spiritually.

Something that has been keeping me awake at night, and I do actually mean that it has been keeping me awake, is the questions

1) Are we making disciples of Jesus or just a crowd of followers,
2) If our church was to disappear tomorrow, would anybody notice?

The questions have popped up so many times recently that I know that it is God asking me to explore them in my own life and own church and ministry.

This is the third part in the unintentional series on business following on from Confronting busyness with vision and Overburdening our congregations. Burn out, drop out or drop dead.

I say unintentional because initially I was really just ranting about something I see as a problem for the church and pastors, getting those people in the pews committed to the vision of the church (universal) and growing Spiritually.

Something that has been keeping me awake at night, and I do actually mean that it has been keeping me awake, is the questions

1) Are we making disciples of Jesus or just a crowd of followers,
2) If our church was to disappear tomorrow, would anybody notice?

The questions have popped up so many times recently that I know that it is God asking me to explore them in my own life and own church and ministry.

My studies recently have caused me to seriously reflect on the differences between the modern and post-modern mind, here is the beginning of my thoughts.

Modern society (modernist thinking) placed it's faith in science and rational / empirical thinking with the belief that the pursuit of science and technological advancement would bring us a better world in which to live.

Modernity is the Apollo space program, taking us all to the stars and leaving microwave ovens, unicorns, sunshine and rainbows in it's trail.

Post-modernism is the Apollo 13. People floating adrift in space, our technology not providing us any answers and leaving us marooned and fighting to survive.

I want to share with you this Scripture from 2 Timothy 2:1-7. This Scripture is the text I'm required to base my message on for my subject on advanced preaching subject techniques.

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs he wants to please his commanding officer. Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.

When I read this I see Paul profiling the life of an emerging pastor. So lets dissect it!

Since I'm a small group pastor and this is a ministry blog, I think I should probably do a bit more talking about small groups :) One of the most impacting moments in my early Christian life was when in the middle of a small group study the leader turned to Ben* and said, "are you ready to make that commitment?" and Ben said "Yes". The study was very evangelical and focused on what it means to be a Christian. Ben had been in the group for some months and in his 40+ years, only when to church for weddings and funerals. So what happened?...

I've been trying to make the "Sunday Life" entries as regular as possible, reflecting on ministry experiences from the weekend. My Sunday's are usually quite busy, if I'm not worship leading, I'm praying and talking with people. If I'm not talking or praying with people I'm preparing for something else. I sat down this morning thinking, I've got nothing to say. Sure I went to both services, was blessed by the messages and was challenged to draw closer to God, I had the opportunity to minister to people one on one, pray for healing in their lives and encourage them on. But sometimes it doesn't seem like enough.

As I mentioned earlier, we are now in the third week of our eight week bible study series on the beatitudes and I don't think things could be going better. There is a lot of conversation being generated by the participants and even new groups coming on board since it kicked off. We now have close to 100% adult participation which I believe is a testimony to how God is working in the lives of our church at the moment. Besides running my own group, I'm attending one of the new groups that were formed for the study (and I believe will continue to progress afterwards). It's been a strange experience for me to not be in the drivers seat but God is certainly working through the new leader (who had a great mentor :) to bring out His agenda for the group. It's this group leaders first time of leading "full time" and I've been encouraging him along the journey but I thought I should share some of the insights I've had with him.

I want to spend a little time talking about a practical problem with all those involved in ministry (although it can be applied to anyone). This is the power of triangulation.

 

It’s important for a pastor to be aware of triangulation because of the impact it can have on their relationship with the congregation, it’s also pretty important that the pastors wife gets to understand it as well because people will certainly try to put her in one.

 

Basically, triangulation is when someone tries to influence the relationship of two other parties be it two people or a person and an object.

 

Triangles are formed when any two parts of the system become uncomfortable with the third.

 

Try this on for size. A wife has an alcoholic husband and after years of worry she decides to do something about it, she tips all his alcohol out! When she does this, she is trying to affect the relationship between the husband and alcohol as seen in this nifty diagram.

 

 

 

Like stop signs and reindeers, red means bad!!!

 

You could change the labels to read something like Pastor, Pastors wife and congregant. Does this sound familiar, a congregant doesn’t like something the pastor has done so they tell the wife in order to make a change.

 

In both of these situations all that’s going to happen is somebody will get hurt.

 

So what do we do with all of this? Learn that you can only change the part of the relationship that you are apart of.

 

In our pretty picture, the wife is not in the relationship between the husband and alcohol but she is in a relationship with the husband. If she wants to affect the alcoholism she needs to strengthen the relationship with her husband. Or she can strengthen her relationship with the alcohol by joining a spouse support group and understanding more about alcoholism.

 

There is a difference between triangulation and mediation. If Y comes to you saying that X owes him money, don’t go to X but offer to go with Y to X. This is empowering Y to confront X. Don’t go to X on Y’s behalf!

 

Remember, if you try to change the other two parts of the triangle you will not only be ineffective, but will end up with the stress of the conflict.