I've Been Thinking About This…

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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I was reading through the blogs that I follow this morning and came upon this one from a friend in England – Mike Kendall, pastor of St Neots Evangelical Church in Cambridge – follow him here.

Poetry speaks in ways that prose doesn’t. Why is that? Is it the use of extravagant imagery? Is it the rhythm that strikes some chord? Is it the word-form that makes us focus more intently in a search for meaning? I have no idea – possibly all of them combined.

But this poem Mike quoted by Amy Carmichael spoke to me:

Amy Carmichael

Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned.
Hast thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who hast no wound or scar?
- Amy Carmichael, “No Scar?”

How many people grow to fame within the church and act as if they are perfect? We want to follow people who have no flaws – flaws are a sign of weakness; they tell us that you have problems, so who are you to lead us? So some leaders work hard to overcome any such limitations, while others simply try to cover them up. But the greatest of the leaders acknowledge them, shame or no shame; get help if they need it and get on with a life of obedience.

Having flaws as a leader is a two-fold gift: First, it forces you to realize that you are not perfect, no matter what your follows may say. Secondly, it forces you to remember that you must rely on Jesus for your victory. Thirdly, you are not alone – the Master Himself took on flaws in His desire to make us whole. (OK, that’s three-folds there. You’ll have to deal with it.)

But this doesn’t just apply to our church leaders. It applies to us and also to our fellow travelers. If He can bear and acknowledge that brokenness, then we must do no less. As people walk through the church doors and stay a while, we begin to assume that they are now all perfect.

“He’s been in church for 2 years,” we say. “How come he still gets drunk? He’s supposed to be ‘one of us’. Hasn’t he learned anything while he’s been here?”

We need to stop thinking about ourselves as healed and rather think of ourselves as healing. God isn’t finished with us yet.

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I was reading Dave Ferguson’s blog yesterday – he quoted some great words from a book by Roland Allen titled The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church. There are several quotes, but here’s the one that caught my eye:

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?

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I’m becoming convinced that God has started to dismantle denominations. They served a purpose at one time – they fostered unity among a congregation and between like-minded congregations, but more than that, they helped to make concrete those aspects of faith that were essential. Formularizing faith has an advantage when people need to understand what their faith is all about – doing so comes at the risk of worshipping the formula rather than the faith. When we get too passionate about KJV versus NASB versus NIV, or about choir versus worship team – then we’ve lost the point of it all.

Again:

Tradition and Institutionalization are the enemies of Creativity; their weapons are comfort and safety – and they foster sloth, conformity, acquisition and control.… and you can quote me on that.

What seems to be taking the place of the relative permanence of denominations are the multisite churches. These

• spread the Gospel and they have a focused approach – a unity – that is stable for a while. They can be dispersed across one or more states – even countries.
• are innovative, creative and malleable – something that denominations cannot be.
• are sustaining tremendous growth because they are young, dynamic and driven.
• often have a very charismatic leader at the helm, who provides energy and vision.

Any single multisite church will die off or dissipate after a few decades as the leader slows down, moves on or passes away; its footprint can be picked up by another multisite, or by some completely new form of church that God may already be moving into place.

Another way that God seems to be working today is in combining efforts across congregations. Traditionally, churches that are already established have been at odds with a new church coming to town. They resent the potential loss of congregants, and I’m sorry to say that the minister is usually leading the way in this thought process. But we are called to unity, not jealousy…

So it was refreshing to see this tweet from Geoff Surratt in late Jaunuary –

Heard through Twitter that NewSpring is coming to Charleston. Glad to hear it, we can use the help reaching the lost in the Low Country.

(@GeoffSurratt is a pastor in a large multistate multisite church called Seacoast based in Charleston, SC; @PerryNoble is the lead pastor of rapidly-growing NewSpring based out of Anderson, SC). This is out of the ordinary – even though it shouldn’t be. We are all in the Body of Christ; we have the same mission in Matt 28; we were all saved by the same Savior.

Different churches reach different people. They’re in different parts of town or the state; they have different leaders who have different skills in reaching out, in speaking, in connecting to others. One church might be blue-collar, another mostly white-collar. One church loves a liturgical service, another a contemporary one.

Could it be – just possibly – that God wants to treat churches as He does people? That he has given them different gifts with the specific intention that those gifts be used to compliment each other?

• A church in a poor part of town provides the opportunity for a (financially) wealthier church to come beside it and receive Grace through sharing finances and also hard work – and thereby to recognize that financial and social privilege is not always the boon that the world makes it out to be (sometimes it can be a terrible impediment).
• A church in India is in a tremendous position to do good for all those around it – it’s at ‘ground zero’, so to speak. It’s poor financially, but what it can buy (food, clothes, buildings) it can obtain locally at a very low cost compared to an American church. A church in the US can’t easily help physically, but it can afford to send money and perhaps a few people to give support and guidance to the fledgling church. The effect on the Indian church could be enormous, and the backwash is pure Grace.

(Interestingly, it’s the multisite church leaders that seem to be setting the pace here – we rarely if ever hear of leaders of denominations traveling overseas to work on ground-setting for church planting. Yet Pete Wilson ( @PeteWilson ), the lead pastor of CrossPoint Church in Nashville, TN is in India as I write this; Perry Noble (@PerryNoble) was in Kenya last year.)

So I see this as part of God’s way forward for us. The missionary part we’ve been doing for a while – but the connection of multiple disparate churches in the same town – that’s so rare it can be thought of as new, and I see that aspect growing in the coming decade.

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The pastor usually does a worship service recap on his blog, but he’s away today – so I’ll drop my thoughts off instead.

Praise Christian Fellowship

• Only 2/3rds of last week’s number in the sanctuary today because of the long weekend – a shame, because they missed a great service.
• Some glorious worship through music – our worship leaders are completely awesome – Lindsey was up today.
• Jenn has a real passion for the situation in Haiti and gave a great impromptu talk before we took up a collection.
• $2,500 – Un. Be. Lievable!
• The usually ‘got-it-all-together’ worship leader had a complete melt-down between the impact of the collection for Haiti and the anticipation of the song she was about to lead (“I See the Lord”). Which started the congregation wondering “why?”; which led to softer hearts and paying way more attention to the pain in Haiti and the worship we were in the middle of. A totally God-induced moment that resulted in (a) the other worship singers reaching out to support her and stepping up to help lead worship; (b) the congregation empathizing and singing with more of a heart for worship than ever and (c) a lot of damp faces, including one or two of the teens.
• It took Tom a while to compose himself after the music worship before he could begin his sermon. He filled in a lot of the questions on the fast that we were about to start, then went on to talk about the sanctity of Life. Good stuff.
• Lots of people took hour-long slots for prayer this coming week during the fast. Too bad the fast started on a Sunday with so few people there – I’d have loved to see the whole week covered in prayer. Maybe next year!
• Great post-service huddle – more ministry leaders joining us today to review the service – lots of warm support for Lindsey.
• I absolutely loved watching God detonate in the middle of the worship like that. My eyeballs are still leaking a bit!
• And totally love the people who pulled it all together. This place is awesome.

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I’ve been giving this some thought recently. I’m reading so many blogs and touching so many sites and reading so many books about church and leadership and so on, that I started wondering what my perfect church would be. So here it is, all out in the open…

(more…)

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