Like any person who comes up with a lot of ideas… I’m used to getting shot down. The pill of reality I swallow every day is that only about 1 in 20 of my ideas are worth seeing to fruition. Thankfully, God has put people with the gift of discernment in my path so I don’t go insane.
Knowing that– I know this phrase to be true: A vision unfunded is merely a dream.
A lot of people in my life are learning that their vision is merely a dream. Tough economic times mean that their ministry, their business, their job, or even their early retirement dreams are now unfunded. Grandiose plans usurped by a new need for freelance or part-time work. The people they trusted/hoped/prayed to fund their vision disappointed them.
Kristen and I are chosing which visions to fund and its hard! We have to look inside ourselves and ask which are dreams (the big house, living abroad) and which are visions worth funding. (our local church, building short/long term savings) Hard choices which reveal what’s really important. As you think of that with a wider lens of millions of people doing the same thing you see why the people in my life are struggling when families like ours our choosing one vision over another. It’s painful to witness.
What does this all mean? I don’t know for sure. But I do know that even when the funding isn’t there vision, dreams, and big ideas are still worth having. The world won’t change without visionaries and dreamers. Even unfunded ones.
I’ve been wrestling with the concepts of Marko’s book, Youth Ministry 3.0 for a long time. Actually, before I worked a YS I had been going through a prolonged set of discussions at Romeo saying in a thousand different ways… What I’m doing isn’t working anymore.
The problem was simple. I was trained and experienced at how to do youth ministry a certain way. The entire ministry was built around a youth group night of games, worship, small groups, and a talk. I had seen it work and do incredible things! Even in Romeo we had seen this ministry model draw 40+ students to a church of 120. Lives were changed, kids were discipled, volunteers loved it, on and on. We ran that thing and worked that model like a well-oiled machine. I was well-versed in all the terminology of all the other well-oiled youth ministry systems and had written tons comparing and contrasting the strength of one model over the other. But in the last few years the model tanked. Kids stopped coming. The whole thing became kind of toxic. Instead of re-arranging their schedule to make in on Wednesday night all of a sudden kids were trying to find things to do on Wednesday night so they could politely bow out. Frustration mounted and I kept saying, “What I’m doing isn’t working anymore.”
The crazy thing was my reaction to a YM 2.0 model. My response was always, even to the last day, “I know this works, something is just missing, that’s all.” I would tweak things here, re-emphasize this or that. It was never that the concept was broken. The problem was always either the kids not getting the vision of the model or my model not having the funding/support it needed to succeed. It never really dawned on me that my solution to fixing things was to kill the model and search for a better way to minister to students. My reaction was always to just work harder and to keep trying.
Pray more, blame the parents. Pray more, blame the money. Pray more, blame myself. Pray more, blame the kids busyness. In the end I was royally frustrated and a little angry at God that He had me in a place where I couldn’t fix things.
But as Marko’s book shows, there is a massive shift from what he calls “Youth Ministry 2.0″ built around programs and models, towards “Youth Ministry 3.0″ where the programmatic approach is, probably though not necessarily, foregone for a draw towards ministries built around affinity. (A super over-simplified analysis, right there!)
My wrestling point right now is pretty simple… how do I help ministries kill what has worked for a generation and open their eyes to a way to reach this generation. My experience in YM 2.0 environments is that they’d be happy running an un-attended YM 2.0 model if that means they don’t have to change things. Youth workers may not like the sacred cows of big church but they have certainly built some sacred cows themselves. (Remember the fury over my articles, “I Kissed Retreats Goodbye?“)
From a national perspective I’m seeing one trend that is scaring me and I don’t want it to be the solution: Killing youth ministry budgets, staffs, and programs. Please tell me that we’re not going to throw the baby out with the bath water? Simply because a model isn’t working doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t minister to adolescents!
What is a more productive outcome than that?
Here are some more thoughts on the medium-sized church crisis. My post the other day attracted a fair amount of comments and attention… and I was pretty frustrated that people jump to the issue of money.
I only think that the money problems of current are bringing the Medium-sized church crisis to the forefront. At the end of the day I’m meeting two types of churchoers. Once you cut past the nice fluff they say about their churches and preacher they are really either small church people or megachurch people.
What does this mean for medium-sized church? My experience in medium-sized churches is that there is a tension between these two types of people. One is resistant of anything “small church” so stuff that is appealing to the small church is annoying to them and visa versa. Eventually, misguided and unaccepted tension results in hurt feelings, bitterness, disappointment, and a range of other typical medium-church angst.
And that angst is why I’m saying the medium church is in crisis… Eventually, church leaders must chose to lead their church one direction or the other: Lead towards smaller environments or toward becoming a megachurch. The cultural division is causing this squeeze. The financial crisis merely accelerates the trend.
A Personal Example
In Romeo, we mislabeled these cultural issues as a “personal preference issue” instead of a cultural issue. Big mistake! Our small church folks didn’t mind if the worship team wasn’t professional sounding or if the church basement was a bit too homey for potlucks. Small church people find those things endearing… maybe even spiritual.
Meanwhile, the megachurch people wanted everything to be like the megachurch they used to go to and they wanted the church to become. Everything was compared to the megachurch down the road or the stuff they saw on TV or enjoyed at a conference or read about online. To the megachurch people, the failure of the small church people to realize all that Romeo could become was an abomination… a spiritual failure at worse and a lack of vision at best.
See… this isn’t about money at all. Maybe I’ll be called a heretic for this? But, I will tell you what 10 years of church ministry has taught me about giving. Giving has 0% to do with what people are taught from the Bible and 100% to do with whether or not they feel that their money will further a cause they believe in. People are just sophisticated like that. They see right through the pleas for cash to your motivation. When motivations converge they give. When they disagree they give somewhere else. Christians are extremely generous… but they won’t give to a church simply because they go there.
Next, let’s talk about money. I’ve only hinted at it, lets hit it straight away next time.
Then, I want to talk about the superiority of small church and megachurch missions in our culture. This is the core reason for the crisis.
Yesterday’s message got me thinking about the mistake many people, even church people, make in regards to grace. Here’s what those two terms mean and why they are opposites.
Grace is receiving unmerited favor. In other words, you get what you don’t deserve.
Karma is the effects of your past deeds is your future experience. In other words, you get what you pay for.
The Karma Conspiracy. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Most people in ministry believe in grace but practice and perpetuate karma in their ministry. Not all, but nearly all.
1. I missed my kids soccer game because I was preparing for my message on Sunday.
2. Come be a part of God’s vision and serve at the spaghetti dinner.
3. Partner with God in the vision of our church by tithing.
4. Join a small group this fall and be a part of what we’re doing.
Now, you’ll see those statements and not see the karma connection. Since I’ve been guilty of all four of those let me translate into what most (nearly all) pastors are thinking when they say these things.
1. If I work hard good things will happen in my church.
2. I am capitalizing on your false belief that working in the church will merit favor in order to fill a job roster.
3. I am exploiting on your belief that if you give to God He will give more back to you.
4. By asking you to do something you don’t want to do, I am perpetuating your false belief in karma with the hope that you’ll discover grace.
See, this is a tricky thing. And I don’t think any pastor does it intentionally. Yet I think that karma is so engrained in our culture that we perpetuate it unknowingly.
Question: How do we stop this? How do we allow grace, true unmerited favor from God, to permeate everything we do in ministry and in life?
Hint: I think both the problem and the solution are found here.
