I've Been Thinking About This…

Here are the supporting Scriptures from the message on ‘A Father’s Heart’, June 20, 2010. The audio message will be posted here: A Father’s Heart

… and the slides are here:

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Further readings on ‘A Father’s Heart’:

Want to know what your teenage kids are up against? This is an eye-opener:

… and here’s another …

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Wrapping up thoughts:

1. An excellent conference and opportunity – worth a lot more than the price of admission. You sometimes do get more than you pay for.
2. There wasn’t a whole lot of new information for me – its value to me was in what was repeated and confirmed. Sometimes you need to hear something over and again for it to sink in (well, I do anyway).
3. The single most frequent repetition was – “Spend less time ministering to your congregation and more time ministering to your family.” (Perhaps a third of the speakers said this, either in the form of regretting they hadn’t or glad that they had.)
4. I was deeply impressed by the honesty of the speakers. Many of these people had made mistakes that they were sharing – that was gold they were mining and handing out.
5. I was also struck by how many speakers there are out there – people I’ve never heard of – who are excellent teachers.
6. One note hit a chord in me: the speaker (and I’m afraid I don’t remember which) said that people – including pastors – think that the most important job a pastor has is to lead the congregation. Not true. With every pastor, the thing God is building is the pastor, not the congregation. (That is: The most important relationship is the one a person has with God, not with the people God has called us to work with – and this applies as much to pastors as to anyone else.) This was a heavy thought, since we have always heard that the shepherd must be willing to sacrifice everything for the sheep.
7. Sound quality has been improved a little over the original “The Nines” conference, where the level was not balanced across the videos. This time it was – for the most part. However, the sound control for the live portions was very poor, and between that and the 4 or 5 videos that were not recorded at the same level as the rest we were running back to the sound board more than a dozen times during the session.
8. There were also some transmission issues that surfaced, which – considering the complexity of the project, and that it was pretty much a one-off – were understandable; they also gave us a chance to catch up, so they weren’t as frustrating as the sound issues.

My one wish for future conferences: Youse guys run all the videos through level-balancing software to limit the sound levels to one range (an easy step to improve the quality of the presentation). I’ll set up closer to the sound board. Next time will be even sweeter!

All in all, an experience that I (and others at Praise Christian Fellowship) really appreciated. Thanks, Leadership Network.

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Bruce Wesley

• do you want speed to reproduce or strength in generating leaders?
• Develop 2 bars of leadership – a speed bar & a strength bar.
• Have yearly increments to move speed people to strength.

Tammy Kelley

• Ask more questions; make fewer declarations
• good things can become intoxicating; intoxicating can become toxic
• live a life more ‘fool for Christ’ and less ‘impress’.

Jason Barr

• I wish I’d never compromised
• I hired people too fast; should have done more due diligence; wish I’d hired on chemistry more than credentials
• noone can teach to be good stewards better than lead pastor – Don’t delegate this.
• I would rather do things for people than with people; I wish I’d been a better shepherd. “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Craig Strickland

• church plants tend to be a magnet for dysfunctional people
• I seriously underestimated the importance of generous giving
• It takes 3-5 years to change the DNA of the church

Matt Hannan

• Avoid unnecessary wars
• lead from the middle not the edge, even though the edge is attractional because it looks ‘edgy’
• Don’t think that spiritual leadership is distinct from strategic leadership
• God’s core agenda is ‘YOU’
• People who model false values instill false values in their disciples (if you teach that prayer is important without actually being a prayer warrier yourself, people will learn to say prayer is important without actually being prayer warriers themselves.)

Jeff Jones

• Wish I hadn’t tried to do it all. Missed out on a lot of things, so did my family.
• Wish I’d tried to do only the things no one else could do, instead.

Kevin Harney

• Having people keep sending money and prayers is fine, but not enough.
• Having committees that plan outreach is fine, but not enough.
• Organic Outreach is the target lifestyle.
• Elders should be held accountable for outreach themselves.
• Budget needs to reflect giving and outreach – what God’s call us to do.
• Train and equip all people – youth, men & women.

Steve Stroope

• Wish I’d guided the church to live that ‘family’ is the spiritual formation driver
• Church must remind, resource & equip the family to do it
• Developed kiosk & online to resource the family
• Ensure that no ministry unintentially left the parents out

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Evidently I like the books that are part of the Leadership Network Innovation Series. Dave & Jon Ferguson’s The Big Idea ¹ which I reviewed here and Larry Osborne’s Sticky Church ² reviewed here were both significant reads for me, and now Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon & Warren Bird’s A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip: Exploring the New Normal (Leadership Network Innovation Series) ³ dropped in wanting to be read and I’ve dog-eared many of the pages, just as I did their previous book, The Multi-Site Church Revolution ⁴.

The authors seem to enjoy drifting around the country visiting other multi-site churches – and they must have done it a lot in preparing this book. It’s a great scam! I only wish I’d thought of it first – but it’s always such a big deal for me to get organized for travel. However, I think they should take me with them for the next book.

‘Roadtrip’ is not an obvious book. Obvious would have been to write a chapter on each church visited, list the goods and bads of their implementation, then perhaps the history of the transition and a bunch of facts. And they do that, to a certain extent. But they also use each chapter to open up a sort of discussion on other areas of the multi-site challenges: technology, for instance (chapters 6 & 7) or international campuses in chapter 9. The end result is that they cover different approaches to multi-site – Do we want to open a new campus locally, in another state, in another country, on another continent, even on another world (the internet (not Mars (yet)))? Does the preaching happen live because the other campus has its own teacher? Or does the preacher drive from one campus to the next to preach? Or is a message transmitted by satellite or the internet or mailed or driven around? All these have their discussions. Then again, what triggers the church to open the new site? Is it a deliberate spin-off, or did the second site start as a church in its own right and merge in (and why)? How do you go about doing this? What are the hard-and-fast rules, and what are the guidelines? (See IPOD for instance, chapter 1.)

(As an aside: Not so sure about the (somewhat difficult to read) infographic on p. 17 that has 6 milestones of multi-site history; number 1 is the birth of the Church and number 5 is the publication of their previous book. Seems like the relative importance of things went adrift somewhere there – not sure I’d put my book on quite the same level as the birth of the Church!)

Their definition of ‘Multi-site’ is “one church meeting in multiple locations, sharing a common vision, budget, leadership and board” (p. 10).

• You don’t have to be a mega-church to go multi-site.
• 10% of all Protestant Christians in the US and Canada worship in a multi-site church. (This seems high to me, but I’m convinced that multi-site is a trend that God is using – read ‘Is God Dismantling Denominations?’ for more on that.)

I appreciated the summary facts about each church at the front of the chapter. As it happens, many of the churches they visited are the same ones that get me excited about church innovation, and so I get this extra low-down on them. Cool.

Other points of interest:

• What kind of madman launches multiple new campuses at the same time? I mean, why would it even cross your mind? (See chapter 12 for how well it worked.)
• What’s the difference between being a church with multiple sites and a church of multi-sites (See chapter 3.)
• Think a long-established liturgical church made up of parents and grandparents can’t go multi-site? Wrong. (See chapter 3.)
• Do not overlook the appendices. They’ve got some great summary information – resources, job descriptions and pitfalls to avoid.

There is one page in the book that I think is very wrong (sorry guys!), and I realize that the authors may have been more carried away with the idea than considering the ramifications: Chapter 6 has the story of the woman who lives in Texas but every Sunday turns to her old church (in Florida) on the internet for her time of worship. True, some weeks she invites friends and family over to watch with her. But we’re specifically told that she is not connecting to a local church. Usually when you move to a new town you put down new roots; you find a new church; you make new friends and enjoy and grow from their fellowship. It’s not all perfect, but it’s important. Sad to say, at this point the book lionizes the fact that this woman ‘and a growing community of people’ have used the internet to remove themselves from fellowship. This self-isolation – or clinging to the past – is emphatically NOT what we are called to do as Christians.

OK, flame off – I’ve just written about the only bit I disagree with. Not bad for 3 paragraphs of an entire book.

In summary and in the main, I found it a tremendously helpful book. Questions that have been surfacing as my church plays with the ideas involved in expansion – such as planting, moving to a second service or going multi-site – are finding answers here. And between it and its predecessor, The Multi-site Church Revolution, a good ‘roadmap’ of options and their costs has been laid out.

Give it a read – it’s a tremendous resource and documents the early days of what I am convinced is one of God’s next steps for His Church.

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Going through some old blogs in Bloglines, I bumped into one by Tony Morgan that pointed to a site that evaluates spiritual giftedness. That site starts with the passages in the New Testament that refer to spiritual gifts (Romans 12:3-8; 1 Corinthians 12:1-31; 1 Corinthians 14:1-40; Ephesians 4:7-16; 1 Peter 4:7-11) and builds a list of those gifts, then asks a lot of questions (125 in all) designed to draw out your gifts. It’s all a bit Myers-Briggs-ish (not a bad thing – INTJ here three times in a row). I don’t see it as the complete be-all and end-all, because I think that neither Paul nor Peter was doing anything more than giving a list of examples of giftedness – those listed weren’t God’s full list; if they were, they’d all be listed every time.

However, it does give an indication of inclination to certain ministries based on the gifts it draws out. My church uses a list similar to this in the SHAPE class that we have everyone take when they become a member. So just for griggles and gins, I took it again. It only takes about 10-15 minutes.

Unsurprisingly, the areas that take no major physical effort were my high scores – Wisdom, Apostle, Leadership, Shepherd, Administration, Knowledge & Teaching. Mid-range were the more physical gifts – Missionary, Voluntary Poverty, Giving, Evangelism, Service, Hospitality & Helps (Service was dead center!), and the purely spiritual were mostly and pathetically waaay down at the bottom – although I was surprised that Prophecy, Exhortation and Faith fell above the physical gifts.

Give it a go – what are your high points? Spill the beans in the comments below.

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List of books I’m reading now (or RSN):

• Andrew Murray. With Christ in the School of Prayer: A 31-Day Course in Christian Prayer, with Note on George Muller. Spire Books. Paperback, 1972 – with my small group.
• Various commentaries on the book of Revelation for adult Bible fellowship at church
• Mark L. Waltz. Lasting Impressions: From Visiting to Belonging. Paperback. Group, Dec. 8, 2008
• Dan B. Allender. To Be Told: God Invites You to Coauthor Your Future. Paperback. WalterBrook Press, Nov. 7, 2006
• Bob Kauflin. Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God. Paperback. Crossway, Mar. 31, 2008
• Dan Kimball. They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations. Paperback. Zondervan, Mar. 1, 2007
• Jack Stack. A Stake in the Outcome: Building a Culture of Ownership for the Long-Term Success of Your Business. Hardcover. Currency/Doubleday, Mar. 19, 2002
• Francis Chan. Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God. Paperback. David C Cook, May 1, 2008
• Ronald Rolheiser. The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering a Felt Presence of God. Paperback. Crossroad, Feb. 1, 2005
• Terry Nance. God’s Armor Bearer Volumes 1 & 2: Serving God’s Leaders. Paperback. Focus on the Harvest, Dec. 2003
• Tony Morgan. Killing Cockroaches: And Other Scattered Musings on Leadership. Paperback. B&H Books, Mar. 1, 2009
• Geoff Surratt. A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip: Exploring the New Normal (Leadership Network Innovation Series). Paperback. Zondervan, Oct. 1, 2009

I’m just finishing off the last one, Multi-site Roadtrip, and will be writing a review in a couple of days.

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