• All my Christian, church and faith-related entries will go here;
• posts related to software design and development, hardware and other technology will go here, and
• other stuff into a catchall here.

New blog entries will still be announced via twitter & facebook.

Several reasons, but the precipitator was that this blog has been around for about 3 years and I’ve messed with it so much it was starting to do some very weird things – pieces of admin pages going walkabout; cache acting strangely; stuff like that. So I started fresh, exported everything to the appropriate new blog, and away we go…

Happy reading!

• 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

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.

Many years ago my experience in China taught me that if our object was to establish in that country a church which might spread over the six provinces which then formed the diocese of North China, that object could only be attained if the first Christians who were converted by our labors understood clearly that they could by themselves, without any further assistance from us, not only convert their neighbors, but establish churches. That meant that the very first groups of converts must be so fully equipped with all spiritual authority that they could multiply themselves without any necessary reference to us…

(my bold)

These are words that could as readily be applied to the church today – and 1,500 years ago. The book The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West…Again… documents the way in which St Patrick was able to reach the Irish by adapting evangelistic methods to the indigenous people in Ireland and it spread like wildfire – and leapt back through Scotland and England and was starting back on the Continent when the Roman-based church put a stop to it – “That’s not the way we do it”.

We’re in the midst of a new way of ‘doing’ church that didn’t really get underway until the 1980s. For the first time since the first century, we are encouraging people to begin new churches without going through seminary first, and – by golly – they are! And we’ve got lots of ways of doing it. There are liturgical churches and anti-liturgical ones. There’s hippie radical worship (a VERY old congregation there!), and there’s churches that meet in pubs. It’s so terribly easy to criticize the way one group of people does church – so easy to promote the idea that REAL worship means getting dressed up in your best clothes out of respect for the Lord, and do not even think about bringing coffee into the service!

Don’t confuse method with message. As long as the message is true – let the method evolve, say I. What say you?

The people I like, I like. But there are people I find it hard to like. The EGRs. The rough. The cynics. The cruel. The selfish. The bitter. The whiners. The broken.

People who are broken are sharp and prickly. They’re difficult. They interrupt conversations, or are opinionated or worse – they disagree with me.

The thing is, though: People who are broken were broken by others who were broken. Broken people break people.

So if broken people break people, who heals people? Healed people do, of course. You didn’t see Jesus going around breaking people – He went in the other direction and healed them (if they’d let Him).

I spoke about this last week in church (shameless self-promotional plug! – To Speak of Grace) as part of our stewardship series, and used a hospital analogy: If I break my arm, I don’t go to the bowling alley, I go where I know I can get help to get better – to a hospital. I don’t go to a philosopher or a witch-doctor, because they can’t help in this situation. Healing comes from a doctor. Similarly, when I need spiritual healing, I go to a spiritual hospital – which the Church is designed to be. The problem is, we’re sick of churches. We keep hearing about how they’re run by people who have not acted in a Godly manner – pastors or priests who have been abusive, or adulterous, or greedy. It’s hard to separate the institution from those who make themselves its figureheads.

But the Church has always been God’s sole design for the spiritual hospital, and it always will be. Pursuing this analogy further, the medical staff is headed up by Jesus, and – for those who can only say, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” – there are ambulances. We are the ambulance. When someone is so lost and broken that they can’t (or won’t or even daren’t) get to church, we are sent out into the world to rescue those broken souls.

Which brings me back to the broken and to my comfort zone.

There are certain people that fit very readily into my comfort zone. Nice people. It’s true for each of us – you too! We’re very good at inviting the people we like to church; in fact, we quite comfortably invite friends who are already going to other churches to come to ours instead, because ours is ‘more alive’, or ‘has better worship music’, or ‘great preaching’. We’re actively pushing them to join us.

If you’re wealthy, or good-looking, or charismatic, or popular then – just like high school – you make the in-crowd. We want you. If you’re not one of those, but you’re useful, or hard-working, or clever then well, OK, we’ll tolerate you.

But if you’re noisy, or over-emotional, or have bad breath, or wear the same clothes all the time, or exhibit some other social lack; if you’re homeless, or an addict, or abusive, or a hooker then would you please stay away? You’ll mess it up for the rest of us. You don’t fit in our comfort zone.

I might expand my comfort zone for old people, or – up to a point – even for noisy tots, but not for you. You’re broken.

The problem is: The ones I don’t want in my comfort zone … are the very people Jesus does want.

The people I think will totally mess up my church … are the ones Jesus says it’s there for.

He hung out with the homeless, the beggars, the prostitutes, the adulterers, the maimed, the forgotten, the side-lined.

The keys to His church were carried by smelly wet lower-class fishermen and by reformed Quisling-style tax-collectors. He accepted water from an adulterous woman and foot washing from a prostitute. He healed lepers and sent them to the temple. He healed blind people, lame people, crippled people, unclean people, demon-possessed people. His admiration was spent on the sacrifice of a widow who gave her last farthing to the temple; on the faith of a soldier of the occupation forces, and on the importunity of a gentile Syro-Phoenician mother.

These aren’t the people who should be getting into the church, right?

Wrong.

They need hospital. They’re broken. And when we deny them access – either actively by saying, “You’re not invited” when they show up at the hospital, or passively by failing to send the ambulance out to invite them – we’re not healing them. And if we’re not healing, we’re allowing the breaking to continue. And if we allow it to continue, we’re one of the breakers. And if we’re one of the breakers, we must still be broken ourselves.

What if we went out to the broken people and urged them to come to church with us – to sit beside us in church – with the same enthusiasm with which we urge our friends to come?

There are so many reasons for a church’s death – occasionally, people in a rural setting simply aren’t there anymore when the whole town shuts down; in an urban setting, sometimes the neighborhood becomes commercial or industrial and houses are pulled down and replaced with a mall or a factory. But mostly, I suspect, the church simply fails to listen, obey and fulfill its mission – to go into the world and make disciples. When it doesn’t do that, it lets Christ down; He pulls the plug.

A couple of days ago, I was thinking about the parable of the talents ¹. We always think of it being applied to individuals, but I started wondering if it could be applied to a church. Do churches fit into this pattern? I think so.

Here’s the précis: Some fit the 1-talent mold: they’re holding a great gift, but they’re clueless about what to do with it. They don’t want to risk losing what they have, so they bury the chance for success. Some fit the 2-talent mold: they take the risk and they find expansion happens, even though their situation isn’t ideal – they used what they were given to great effect. Then there are some that are 5-talent churches: they’re in an ideal position – they have the geography and the population, the leadership is just right and they act on it. They experience tremendous growth – in evangelism, in discipleship, in missions, in spiritual vitality.

Let me flesh that out after the Scripture:

There are churches that have been ‘doing church’ for so long it has become a habit, rather than a mission. New people aren’t searched for, or even delighted in when they arrive – they’re tolerated, and that only if they stay inside the boundaries that the church currently maintains. But the most terrifying thing of all is change. For these institutions, any change at all is anathema – someone in the congregation will object: “It’s not the way we do things here!” – so if change is suggested by anyone foolish enough to risk it, the suggestion is quickly squashed. Things that annoy people may cause them to leave, and 1-talent churches are too small and frail to be able to afford someone leaving. However, people must leave in the end, and as the oldest of the congregation are carried out, the congregation dwindles slowly into dust…and their talent is taken from them – they buried it, quite literally, in their coffins.

Then there are the 2-talent churches that really ‘get’ their mission, but may be positioned away from the big population centers and so don’t get the huge numbers of people that the mega-churches do. But they get to work anyway, and they apply creativity to their situation where they are; they embrace change as not just inevitable but also useful. They listen to the Word and the Spirit; they do some things with future growth in mind; they steal ideas and look at how ‘big’ churches model innovation – and they connect to the culture around themselves and in so doing reach others…and their 2 talents become 4.

Finally there are the 5-talent churches. Mega-churches have gotten a bad rap these days, but I have to wonder how much of this is fueled by jealousy or belief that it happened by some sleight-of-hand. Ministry shouldn’t be a competition; it should be a partnership. This is a race we’re all in, not as competitors but as a relay team. God forbid we should decide that other churches are ‘the enemy’ – hasn’t Satan won then? Isn’t that exactly what he wants? Get us to fighting against each other and we won’t have time to bring people to Christ.

The 5-talent church has the highest strengths, but also the greatest responsibilities. So many of these churches are in high-population areas, and for them, the following holds true:

• Big business thrives in the big cities; big business seeks out and draws in high-performers and makes them live in proximity.
• High performers (Christian or not) want to excel – at maximizing income, fame, influence or anything else they see as their target. So they move to the cities.
• Some high-performers are great leaders; all great leaders are high-performers. The city holds many great leaders.
• Some great leaders are Christians, go to church, and become involved in their church’s missions.
• A church, like every other endeavor, grows fastest under great leadership.
• A church can only grow when it reaches out.
• Churches can grow fastest and largest where there is the highest population to reach out to – in the cities.
• Cities hold the densest population of broken people – some on the streets, some going there, some lost in other ways.
• Christ seeks to heal, to comfort, to meet needs and to draw others to Himself.
• Christ uses the church to do this.
• The Spirit will guide the obedient church into developing ministries to fulfill Christ’s desire.
• Big lostness requires a big response, which in turn requires big resources. The Spirit (an infinite resource Himself!) can marshal those resources through organizations willing to obey sacrificially.

Christ has always put a premium on healing the lost and broken – unfortunately His church has often felt they were a nuisance. 2-talent churches – and 5-talent churches even more – must and do put themselves in the role of the Samaritan rather than the priest or the Levite².

The only real difference in our parable between the servant who got 2 talents and the one that was given 5 talents is that their master favored the latter – presumably because he recognized higher potential – there was something greater that the 5-talent servant was capable of. The only difference between a 2-talent church and a 5-talent church is that the 5-talent church has similarly been granted access to greater resources – planted in a city, perhaps, rather than a rural area. There is no difference in the effort each put in – both doubled the original talents entrusted to them.

And the reward for each was identical. The master said, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”

We may not be called to be a 5-talent church – but that better not stop us from being a 2-talent church. When the Master in question is God, entering into His joy is beyond understanding!

Now imagine sitting down with some of the best leaders in today’s church and hear what their “9 minutes” were. That’s the idea behind THE NINES. THE NINES is a free one-day conference that will take place totally on-line. It is designed for all current and potential pastors, church staff members and ministry leaders who want to be motivated and stretched in their leadership.

Over 6 dozen of the country’s best evangelical Christian leaders and communicators have each been given the opportunity to speak for a maximum of 9 minutes. At 9 minutes, you know each talk will be both intense and very specific.

THE NINES is an internet broadcast to be held on 9/9/09 at 9:09 Central (that’s 10:09am Eastern). These messages will help you and your church navigate into the future; each one will last a maximum of 9 minutes. Find out more at their web site here, and see their list of over 70 speakers – there’s the names of some impressive people whose books, blogs and tweets I read:

• Alan Hirsch (Forge Mission Training Network)
• Anne Jackson (FlowerDust.net)
• Dan Kimball (Vintage Faith Church)
• Dave Ferguson (Community Christian Church)
• Dino Rizzo (Healing Place Church)
• Ed Stetzer (Lifeway Research)
• Eric Bryant (Mosaic)
• Geoff Surratt (Seacoast Church)
• Greg Surratt (Seacoast Church)
• John Ortberg (Menlo Park Presbyterian)
• Larry Osborne (North Coast Church)
• Mark Batterson (National Community Church)
• Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill Church)
• Neil Cole (Church Multiplication Associates)
• Perry Noble (NewSpring Church)
• Pete Wilson (Cross Point Church)
• Scott Hodge (Orchard Valley Church)
• Scott Williams (LifeChurch.tv)
• Steven Furtick (Elevation Church)
• Troy Gramling (Flamingo Road Church)
  … along with 54 others that I’m looking forward to finding out about for the first time.

Praise Christian Fellowship is hosting THE NINES at 52 New Hartford Road, Barkhamsted, via internet feed. We’ll bring in lunch (bring a $5 donation to help cover costs) since the conference goes straight though the day. We’ve only just heard about this a few days ago, so unfortunately it’s pretty short notice. If you’d like to attend, please let us know in the comments .

Thanks – hope you can join us!

Now companies, they have mission statements. These talk about the intent behind the over-arching strategy for the organization … here’s where we’re going and why we’re doing it; our raison d’être. Corporations would like to inspire utter dedication in their employees, and the first step is to give them a clear vision to go after. The highest priority. And they come up with the ‘mission statement’.

So churches have started jumping onto the bandwagon and writing ‘mission statements’ too. If big organizations do it, it must be the right thing to do, right? Maybe I’m missing something, but where did the corporate world’s concept of a ‘mission statement’ come from in the first place? It’s really a page out of Christianity’s notebook. When we use the phrase, “He’s a man on a mission,” we hark back to those people who are totally, single-focusedly and with absolutely no heed to themselves committed to spreading the Christian message – in fact, we’re thinking of missionaries.

The church was given its mission statement some 2000 years ago:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, …” (Matt. 28:19, ESV)

and

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8, ESV)

Two different occasions; two different ‘dispensation eras’; same Mission Statement.

Seems to me you might get yourself into a peck of trouble if you go around redefining the Mission Statement given to you 2,000 years ago by God. Redundant? Definitely. Maybe even arrogant and blasphemous too!