Emerging Pastor

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?

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!

No, food poisoning isn't a clever theological metaphore, it's a horrid statement of fact.

I seem to be on the mend now but this weekend was pretty much a wipe-out for me. I was supposed to be leading the church in worship this weekend but I realised at 3am Sunday morning this wasn't going to happen. I wont go into any details, you all know what food poisoning does to the body, I'm just thankful to God for my wife who has nursed me through this time (even now as I blog ill lying on the couch) and for those in my church family who picked up the slack for my absence.

Someone once said "Don't make yourself irreplaceable or you will never be promoted", I believe something similar applies to the life of the minister. Not being promoted but rather having people being able to step into your shoes when life takes an unexpected turn.

One of the most frustrating issues in ministry is waiting at the well for people to drink and drink deeply. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Ministry is about leading horses, I mean people, to the water and waiting patiently as they discover that they need to drink the water to be sustained.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?"  Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:7-14 slightly abridged)

In ministry there seems to be a great deal of waiting at the well with people. We speak to people about the water, try and sell them on it's benefits, tell them how the water has sustained us in all times but ultimately we are required to wait patiently as they make the decision to drink for themselves.

It's just painfull to see people...

Those that sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. (Ps 126:5) I've always enjoyed that Psalm, it brings an amount of comfort to me when ministering to those in pain because it points me towards the hope that they have in future and that the pain not matter how much it hurts will be redeemed. Twice this weekend I fell into some accidental ministry where this verse resonates deeply within me. The first happened in my lounge room...

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.

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.

On the train this morning I was finishing off one of my ethics assignments, this one is about the validity of cohabitation as a pathway to marriage.

It's a very difficult question to answer because of the crossover between sacred and secular views of marriage. The Catholic church insist that marriage has to be performed by a member of the clergy in from to at least two witnesses (the council of Trent) while Martin Luther said that marriage is a secular issue and the church should just stay out of it.

The underlying question for me is how much say can the church have in a secular society. We can not be legislators of all morality (mostly because we abdicated the moral high ground long ago) but at the same time we can be a positive influence on our society guiding them towards a Godly way of living.

After all the foundation of our societies laws are based in Judeo-Christian thought and no one argues that "don't kill" and "don't steal", while going somewhat against our nature are beneficial to society.

That's not the path I went down in my assignment though, I think once people cohabitate they have entered into marriage with each other. Australian law at least recognizes that after a certain amount of time living together you are in a de facto marriage. What we can add to society and people who are considering cohabitating is give them access to pre-marital counseling! And encourage them to make a public commitment of their relationship to their friends and family so they can feel invited to support their relationship together.

When Sally and I were married we could have eloped, had the minimum witnesses and excluded our friends, but by inviting everyone to our wedding ceremony we were saying, join with us on this journey and I think that is something that the cohabitating couples I know are missing out on, the society of friends and family invited to help strengthen a relationship.

This weekend past my wife and I (along with a whole lot of others from my church) attended my denominations state conference. This is the second year I've been and the second year I have walked away refreshed and energized with new ideas for ministry.

The conference typically grabs a ring in from the U.S. to deliver a series of messages and this year it was Dr Peter Steinke, a fairly unimpressive man to look at but one who has a real heart to see churches moving past conflict and into new life.

I want to share a few of the thoughts and ideas he shared with us because they really can impact your ministry.

Peter set the scene for the church and it's ministry as being something like the state of the Jewish nation in exile to Babylon. As the influence of the church declines (I guess I mean politically and socially) we are increasingly finding ourselves as strangers in a strange land. We are living in a land of believers not belongers and the challenge for us today is to communicate our story, the Christian meta-narrative, to this world that holds us in exile.

Barak Obama recently caught flack for saying that some people in the U.S. were bitter and as a result, cling to guns and religion. As ineloquent as his words are, he is fundamentally right. When people do not embrace change they turn to the tried and true. If the church fails to embrace the enormous change of the world around us we will sink into fundamentalism so fast your head will spin.

That's enough for one post, I'll keep going tomorrow.

I guess what we can take out of this is this is not the world of our parents, it has fundamentally changed and if we do not change along with it we will become fundamentalist in our thinking. And that's no way to remove ourselves from exile.

Some exciting news!!!

My grandmother, who has been coming to our church for a little over a year now has, after doing a Christianity Explained course, given her life to Jesus!!!

I am going to be baptising her next month! If then, she is born-again, that means I will be older than her :P

Although I haven't blogged about it in detail I've been putting a lot of time into contemplating the life cycle of small groups in out church.

One blog I have read suggests three phases of group life being
 1) Starting / Open to all
 2) Covenented / Closed to new people
 3) Concluded

While each church has different needs and goals with their small group life and it wont fit with everyone, but I particularly like this view of small group life because it plans for the conclusion of the group. And in my mind, the conclusion of a group brings oportunities for growth.

Most of the existing groups at my church have been running for many many years. They are full (I call a group full at 12 people) and stagnant. There is no room for anyone else, no thought of splitting and no thought about concluding. They are happy in their rutt. That sounds harsh, after all they are faithfully studying the Word of God and growing from the experience but they are missing something because of their familiarity with each other. They have lost the boldness to grow.

Most strategies for small group growth in a church is to help groups get to a certain size and then split them in twain. I'm not a fan of that strategy at all! To my mind it is an unnecessarily violent act and only serves to damage both halves.

To combat the contradiction in these two areas I've been experimenting with a sort of middle of the road strategy that I call "Small Group Plants". I'm sure it's not unique or original although I have not heard anyone else articlate it, not in any books or confrences.

The idea behind small group plants is for the leader (who has been mentoring group leadership with others in the group) to support and commission two to three people in their group (I think three is the most ideal number) to go out and find at least one other person that is not in a small group and start one on their own.

The old group leader is allowed to come to the new group for a limited time period but after that they are on their own (although supported by the small group pastor, me :)

In this way, both groups move back to the starting / open to all phase and begin again recruiting members. The old group because their is now three spots freed up and the new group, well, because it's new.

Thoughts?

I've been studying one subject for nearly a whole year now. It's called the ministers personal growth and it's about understanding the psychological issues facing pastors as well as their congregations. The culmination of the subject is a thesis length report on your own personal growth as a pastor, the challenges your facing and developing strategies to combat issues like burn out, fatigue and moral failure.

It has been perhaps the best subject I have every studied and I'd commend it to anyone in ministry.

I've been reading and re-reading as well as tweeking the last parts of my thesis to make it as full possible and as I re-read it I'm reminded of the lessons I have learned and have taken on board which have made a huge difference in my life and ministry.

While I'm not going to publish it online, over the next few weeks I'm going to share some of the insights I've learned along the way starting with Triangulation. Bet you can't wait :)

To my great surprise I recieved a phone call from my friendly local Fedex Kinkos yesterday asking me to pick up my box of studies. I wasn't expecting them until Friday so it was a pleasent surprise get them early. I took a photo of the box but I used the wrong phone and I can't get the images  off it so your just going to have to imagine the depressing browness of the box and it lovely bible study center.

I'm thinking about turning it into a pinata and smashing the box open with a big stick on Sunday morning during church but I dont know how well that will go :)

Besides getting the studies underway, the biggest issue I still face is getting all of the group leaders together for our intital meeting. I've had three false starts so far because of Mothers Day and other ministry and college obligations. I'm going to try one last time on the Sunday the studies start and hope for the best.

On Friday I recieved a proof copy of the new bible study from the printers, I must say it looks great! The only thing I would change is adding a table of contents. I know, I know, how could you and every other person miss a TOC?!?! well I did so I have to live with it.

Sunday morning I got up to spruke the study and also tell people the cost. As a church we could probably absorb the production costs without much hassle but I believe that people take a greater ownership of something when they shell out for it. So I've pinned the price at $5 a study which is the printed book plus a small exercise book to keep study notes as well as sermon notes. I didn't really see the point of paying for lots of blank pages in the study book to write down answers when the exercise book is cheaper and a lot more flexible!

After the service I was praying with a young couple about some big things they are going through, what a privellege that is to pray for someone, and after I was done someone was there with $10 to buy two studies! That was so encouraging, it's one of the first signs I've seen of people not directly involved with the production of the study wanting to be a part of it.

On a slightly different note, I've had to move the training day back a week (to the day before we start) because some people are being totally unreasonable about the timing. Apparently Mothers Day isn't a good time to get a big group of people together, who knew? :)

As a young and naive small group leader I used to believe that you could do things in your group like, pick the next study, by canvasing the opinions of the whole group, garnering a consensus and then together going down to the local Christian book store and picking one out that meets all the agreed upon conversation.

This in fact did work for a while, when the group was very small, 3-4 people finding such consensus was easy because the group was traveling very closely together in their discovery process with God. When the group grew bigger, say 6-8 people, it became much harder to reach an agreement on who would bring supper next week let alone what we should be studying.

I put these kinds of issues into the subject of Shared Leadership vs Leading by Consensus. When we lead by consensus one could make an argument that we are showing no leadership at all, I don't agree with that. It does however put an unnecessary strain on the group when people start to engage their opinions only to be upset when the group doesn't move the way they suggested.

Shared leadership on the other hand is in line with the model of mentoring new leaders from within the group to become group leaders themselves. Let's take the example of choosing a study again. In a shared leadership scenario, the group leader would pull aside the person (or people) they are mentoring and ask them what they believe the group should study next and either go with it or put it to the group. Doing this gets people to think not just about themselves but of the Spiritual needs of others in the group and that is the best training I can give them.

There is one other benefit from shared leadership, it keeps the leader accountable. It gives people permission to speak into the leaders life about where they think the group is and helps prevent leader ego trips.

Today is pretty exciting for me, I'm off to go visit the printers and get the ball rolling with the new church-wide bible study. It's due to kickoff on the 19th of May so I'm cutting it a little fine as far as production is concerned but it all seems to be going to plan.

I'm also going to send out a PDF copy to the small group leaders today so they can have some time to absorb the infromation. As a church we have performed 40 days of Purpose and 40 days of Community. The biggest problem with both of those studies was there was no formal equipping for the leaders, we just had to feel our way around.

I'm a firm believer that the group leader should lead. Be it by reading on ahead and nutting out the answers themselves or just being further down the road of Christian experience than those in their group. If the leader is stumbling for answers then the rest of the group will stumble along with them.

Along with sending out the advanced copy, I'm also setting aside two training days for group leaders where we will go through the study as a small group ourselves and learn and grow. Because the study is 8 weeks long, I'm planning to have one day just before the commencement and one day three weeks in both covering the following 4 weeks.

Theological training today prepares you for many things. It prepares you as a critical thinker. It prepares you meet peoples Spiritual and emotional needs. It prepares you for understanding the whole person and their welfare. What a good theological education doesn't prepare you for is the fear in peoples eyes when you want to involve them in a ministry.

We joke around our church saying if you visit two weeks in a row you will be on a roster, I'm not trying to get people onto a roster, I'm trying to get them into a small group.

At our vision casting confrence (VCC) we (by that I mean the church leadership) commited to developing three areas in 2008, number two with a bullet is small groups as a means for personal spiritual growth and development. It's the reason I'm employed by the church, to create this small group culture. Also at the VCC we promised to undertake a church-wide study to kickstart our small group program.

So I've been spruking this for some weeks, I have sign up sheets, new leaders ready to take up the reigns, training planned but so far it's a little like pulling teeth to get people to sign up. This Sunday again I made an announcement during the service about what this is all about (them and God) and said I'd be at the back of the church after the service to help people find a group that's good for them.

As people filed out of church a few wouldn't meet my gaze, some rushed past and others made excuses. But the worst were the ones that had fear in their eyes that I might talk to them and display some interest in their spiritual well-being.

I've decided that the best way to overcome this is to use rule number 1. My rule number 1 for all ministry situations is to have people personally invite others. We can put up a hundred sign-up sheets and not get a single commitment to come but a leader extending a sincere personal invitation is in my estimation 90% effective in growing a ministry be it a small group, welfare or worship.

I've been trying to get a new small group up and running for a couple of months now but I've just been running into barrier after barrier. I've got people lined up, a study area and some exciting ideas to experiment on them with but the venue had been elusive.

The small group I run at the moment used to meet out of our house but recently we have been meeting at another couples place because they have a lovely new little boy and he needs to get some sleep! It's been quite good not having the group at our house every week, not because we don't want people around, we love having people around, but because after 4 years it's good to share the load a little.

So with that and another reason in mind I didn't want to start this new group out of our place. The other reason is I want it to be closer to part of the community we are focusing on at the moment and since a lot of them don't have transport our place would be a little too far.

I chose to meet in the cottage at our church. We have a main church building, a large hall, a manse as well as an old fibro building we call the cottage which houses the office and some space for Sunday school etc.

The cottage is on the same street that we are reaching out to with our soup kitchen so it seemed like a good idea go there and be close to the action. That way anyone curious about the Christian faith and wanted to know more can come along easily.

I've taken a brave step with this group, although I'm the one who started it up and recruited people to come (it is my job after all), I decided that I do not want to be it's leader. Last week I called up someone I have been mentoring in my home group to come and take over the reigns of this group.

If a church is going to develop a healthy small group community then it needs to be able to grow, and if it want's to grow it needs new leaders. I firmly belive that these leaders should come from apprenticing group members in existing groups so I thought I really should model that myself instead of just taking control.

So now I have a leader, a venue (and the keys!!!), and people to start with and I'm really looking forward to where God is going to lead us!

I guess it happens in all churches, some sort of emergency comes up with a key person and that creates a cascading effect in a ministry.

Two Sundays ago I was asked to swap my rostered week for worship leading, I was supposed to be in the 27th but the leader for the 20th couldn't make it so they wanted swap. This worship leader however didn't just want to swap with me, they wanted to swap their entire team. So with a good deal of effort the entire worship team I was rostered on with swapped to this week. So how did it go? It was brilliant!

Not to overstate it, but I usually take a bit of time getting the song selection right for a service. There are many considerations, service length, special events etc but this one had to be actioned with economy of time. So on Tuesday morning I was on the train with a friend who had the "Presenter" software we use for our powerpoints and we just riffed right through a song list.

I know some places like Hillsong put a great deal of production into their services, taking quite deliberate actiosn to make sure the music and message are connected, I believe the term is "building a platform of praise for the speaker". I agree with the approach in general that the two (well all elements of the service) should complement each other but there comes a fine line sometimes between architecting a service and emotional manipulation (not that I'm accusing anyone of that!)

Why do I mention that? Because God really had his hand on the song selection. This weeks and the n