I could have been a contender...

I've never seen that movie, but I love that line. Sometimes we willfully throw away an opportunity to make a mark on the world. Sometimes we don't even realize we've missed it. Sometimes still we have been great and let it all slide away while we think about that past glory.

Comeback Churches is a book for pastors who front up a church each Sunday and see a little less each week. Less people. Less enthusiasm. Less life and vitality.

Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson provide a vital analysis of 324 American churches who have had pastors in the pulpit that have said "Enough!" it's time to turn this around, it's time not keep glorifying the past, it's time to glorify God with his church. These 324 churches have turned from steady decline (often over decades) into steady growth of healthy churches.

The book isn't prescriptive. I picked it up looking for some pointers on how to address a specific church in decline (they are reaching out to me to take a pastoral role) but it's not an ABC of turning your church around in 30 days kind of book.

What you will get out of it is a little carrot and stick. The carrot is the success stories and a great deal of motivation to be a better, more tuned in pastor. The stick is giving you a big whack to stand up and be the leader of the church God has called you to be.

There is practical advice from the ho-hum of moving from "traditional" to contemorary and blended worship, to how to journey people into recognizing that they need to change and setting the vision for a comeback.

Complaints? There is way too much prefacing to anything the authors might think is slightly controversial. I know why they do it but I wish they wouldn't. It's just annoying. Apart from that, it would have been good if they published the raw data in an appendix. Some of us are nerds and like to dig into the numbers even if it isn't really all that important.

Density

I worked through it in about a week of train travel to work. The writing is relate-able. The only thing that slows you down is the constant reflection on what your reading and the excitement you get over a new concept or idea that you know will boost your ministry.

Who should read it?

Anyone in church leadership that is experiencing decline. No, make that everyone not anyone. Although not all of it is relevant to non-pastors, it will kick you in the pants to do the work of Jesus in your community.

What impact did it have on me?

No other book has energized my thinking so much in the last 3 years. I kept reading it, getting excited, and texting my ministry team about an exciting idea that will help us love people better and slow the amount of people who might slip through the cracks.

Buy it :)

I find exploring the family sized church particularly relevant to me at the moment. I have just come from a Program sized church that has shrunk to a Pastoral sized church (and still acts Pastoral sized) to a Family sized church that is starting to break through to Pastoral sized.

A family sized church has fewer than 50 active members. Lets focus on ACTIVE for a minute. That doesn't mean count the heads of all the adults, it means count all those people that contribute to the live and vibrancy of the church.

Family sized church earns it moniker because it (dis)functions much like a family with appropriate parental figures. The matriarch, patriarch or both control all of the churches leadership needs and looks to the pastor to provide pastoral care, that's it.

The key to pastoring this church is to know your place. You will not be the source of authority, direction or leadership. You are there as a Chaplin of a small family and will come into conflict with this family if you do not understand this.

"It is generally suicide for clergy to get caught in a showdown with the patriarchs and matriarchs within the first five years of their ministry in that place"

This doesn't mean that you have a limited role here, just that your approach needs to be on a carefully calculated vector. You are there to pastor the parental figures as well as the "children" and your vision and giftings can play an important role in providing consultancy to the parents and working alongside them for the betterment of the congregation. But once they decide against an idea, drop it, it's finished.

The pastor should be aware of issues of triangulation. When people complain to you about the patriarch/matriarch and encourage you to lead a mutiny you need to redirect this energy into strengthening the relationship between the congregation and the parents. The dynamics of the family is such that most members will consider it too risky to be caught siding with the pastor against the parents when the issues involved are publicly exposed.

That is mostly the negative aspects of the role. On the positive the family sized church will provide someone with strong pastoral care skills an opportunity to work within their giftings and (God willing) be on the ground floor of the growth of a congregation into a much larger faith community.
With regard to tenure, typically the longer the pastor stays with the church the more influence the pastor will build with the congregation, especially if you stick with the congregation through difficult times.

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.

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.

I just love this quote.

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
 - Theodor Seuss Geisel

To me it is a reminder to be fearless in speaking the truth into peoples lives and not shying away if I think that be saying something I may ruin the relationship.

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...

One of my favorite college subjects is one called "Personal Formation". It is 3 years long and works to grow the individual in themselves. It's run as a small group (typically about 8 people) who get together over regular periods during the year to reflect on themselves, life and ministry and how God is forming them. I had my third session this year on Monday and we were introduced to the term, Missionalism. This is the tipping point from being a sucessful leader and drawing yourself into a cult of personality and sucess. And I'm prone for it!

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...

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.

This was a very exciting weekend for me, I had the honour of performing two baptism's. The first was my grandmother who I've mentioned previously. It was a very emotional experience for the both of us, and I will admit I was a little nervous in doing it. I'm not exactly sure why I was nervous, public speaking isn't an issue for me, but I did use an unfortunate word, I announced that we had three "victims" who were being baptized, definitely poor phrasing and a couple of people mentioned it to me afterwards.  

Here's an action shot of Gran going into the drink :)

There were three people being baptized, the second was John, a man who has come into our church through the soup kitchen (well it's really a BBQ) that we run every fortnight in a block of housing commission flats. Although I wasn't doing the baptizing I had an indirect hand in it. My dad was the one to baptize John! I had the pleasure of baptizing my dad a couple of years back and to see him growing in God like this is just amazing!!!

Here is the two of them before it happened. (Dad's on the left :)

Just over a year ago Sally and I made some new friends, Gary and Rhiannon. They started coming to our church and soon after to our bible study. We have been blessed to know them and travel with them in their Spiritual journeys as well as seeing their family begin to grow with a beautiful little boy. I'm usually someone who has a lot of acquaintances but not many close friends, Gary and Rhiannon were fast friends and we love them a lot.

Rhiannon expressed her desire for baptism some time ago and after a little electronic cajoling (I love email) she hopped in to be buried with Christ and identify publicly with his resurrection.

Here's some before and afters.

Join with me in praying for all three of them as they continue their Spiritual journey in Christ.

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 marks a momentous occasion. Ready for it?

We have added a new addition to our family, his name is Denny Crane! (yes, with the exclaimation mark!)

Named after one of my favorite T.V. characters (played by... the brilliant... Will...iam... Shatner), little Denny, the Shetland sheepdog is bumming around our appartment scratching at everything in a desperate search for food. Not that he needs anymore food, he's a little porker.

As a rule I have chosen not to use this blog as a forum for non-ministry related things so here comes a really tenuous segue.

Denny is a sheepdog, and pastors are called to be shephards. Told you it was tenuous :)

As a pastor, you are called to be a shepard, literally someone who guides a bunch of often clueless people around life and into safe pastures for the next life. It is truly one of the greatest responsibilities a person can have. If by chance you are an athiest reading this or someone who just generally disagrees, you can not disagree with the fact that when someone who has a degree of authority in your life abuses the trust you have given them, it can have quite serious repercussions.

To take the biblical sheparding analogy to it's logical conclusion, if the shepard fails to watch over his sheep then the wolves get in and hurt and kill. They seek to get in and devour.

Now I'm not saying that the pastor needs to be coddling people, holding their hand through every trivial decision or signing off on whether they should get that car loan or not, but they have a responsibility to guide, guard and protect the spiritual well being of those God has blessed them with.

Denny Crane!