Category: Church Leadership

  • Resetting Priorities

    I’ve been thinking about this concept of priorities for my life in ministry.

    Here’s the list I see all the time:

    1. God
    2. Family
    3. Our vocational ministry

    I actually think that’s entirely jacked up and unhealthy.

    Here’s the priorities I think God is calling those of us in vocational ministry to:

    1. God
    2. Family
    3. Community (a fellowship of friends)
    4. Loving your neighbors
    5. Our vocational ministry

    I know that for folks in vocational ministry… this is almost heresy. And in some ministries that’s almost like resigning your position.

    But I’m left to wonder. If all that people in my community see of me is busy, busy, busy… Maybe I’m not living a life worth following?

    Jesus said, “Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest.” In a world which seems to spin faster and faster in every moment… that’s a promise most people need.

    The question for me is simple:

    “What do I have to change in my life to show that a life with Jesus provides rest for the weary?”

  • Economy of Words

    Good communicators are aware of an economy of words.

    Whether its blogging or public speaking or preaching– you must have a constant awareness of how many words your audience is capable of processing in the amount of space/time you have.

    Too many words and people get overloaded and tune you out. (or navigate to another website) Sloppy word usage or a lack of creativity? You’ve lost them. They may be present, but their minds are gone.

    Have you ever wondered why people can recount exactly what happened during an episode of their favorite show but can’t remember the three main points of your last sermon?

    The secret? Editing.

    Television shows, movies, magazine articles and even songs are all edited to maximize your retention of the words.

    They go through a process. Someone writes it. It gets edited. It gets rehearsed. It gets edited again. Then it gets performed. (If its recorded then it gets edited one more time.)

    Let’s review:

    1. Unimportant messages, things flowing from the entertainment industry, are edited to maximize impact with an understanding that the audience can only handle so many words before they stop taking it in. (Entertainment is passive in response, by nature. But looks at it’s impact in moving people!)

    2. Important messages, let’s say… things that are taught in youth group or Sunday morning at church… are almost never edited, rehearsed, or vetted in any way. (The Gospel message is active in response, by nature. But look at it’s impact in moving people!)

    And we wonder why the message doesn’t get through?

  • The God of My Neighborhood

    We want to change the world!

    We want our church to reach this whole community!

    God is the God of this city!

    [The crowd raises to its feet and cheers as the band begins to play…]

    These are guaranteed anthems to bring a church to its feet.

    But I’m left wondering if our ecclesiology is a little too big?

    “It looks like your eyes were bigger than your stomach.” That’s what my mom used to say when I put too much food on my plate at dinner.

    And I think that’s the strategic error of many churches.

    I know it’s the strategic error of most believers.

    Most churches mission statements tell the people the goal is to reach the world… and when we aim at that we get nearly nothing because it’s too big.

    Isn’t our job to love our neighbors as ourselves and put God first? (Mark 12:28-31)

    Isn’t my job, then, to love my neighbors? Like the ones who live next door? Or down the block? Or maybe as far as around the corner? Isn’t that why God, in His infinite wisdom, placed me in my neighborhood?

    Yes, it is. That is the business God has clearly called you to. He has called you to be good news to your neighborhood.

    Every other type of ministry you do is secondary to that. To take it a step further… every other ministry you have which gets in the way of what Jesus calls the second most important command, is unnecessary. Until you can love your neighbors as yourself you have no business doing anything else. (Yeah, including those who work in churches. I’m looking at you.)

    Step 1: Get to know your neighbors

    Loving your neighbors isn’t hard. You were created in Christ Jesus to do it. It takes no training. And it takes no special skills. This is what you need to do.

    • Get to know your neighbors names. If your yard touches theirs get to know their names. If they are across the street they are your neighbors, too. Each neighborhood is a bit different. But just start with the people immediately around your residence.
    • When you see them… stop and say hello. Talk to your neighbors. These are people God foreknew you to know. You don’t need an agenda, just be friendly.
    • Keep your eyes open and your ears open. When you can see they need help, do what you can.
    • When you need help, ask your neighbors. Sometimes exhibiting some dependency is the perfect open door to getting to know someone.
    • Over time, learn to depend on one another. Maybe your neighbor is a little older and you have a snow blower. Start shoveling the walk. When you go out of town, ask them to pick up the mail.

    As you do this process, the Holy Spirit will begin to reveal to you next steps. Maybe it’ll be to host a neighborhood BBQ? Or maybe it’ll be to help find a lost dog? It could be any number of things… but it probably isn’t to invite them to church or to give them a flyer. God didn’t ask you to bring people to hear the Gospel at your church. He empowered you to bring the Gospel to your neighbors through your love for them.

    What are you waiting for? The power of the Gospel will prevail when you set out to be Good News in your neighborhood.

  • Your Ministry of Discouragement

    Having just spent a week with Christian leaders I came home with a raw heart.

    Surely, I came home tired.

    But I also came home perplexed by our unique ability to discourage one another.

    Speaker shoes

    When I went to my first convention in 2002– the whole thing was weird for me. It all seemed larger than life. The speakers, bands, seminar leaders, and myriad of volunteers all seemed bulletproof. I’d never seen anything like it and…

    They are not. They are no different than you or I.

    Now that I sit in different rooms during NYWC I see the event through their eyes as much as the eyes of those who have driven from all over the country to attend.

    Imagine their perspective. For most, coming to convention is the highlight of their year. They are eager to present. But they are also eager to reconnect with lifelong compatriots, catch a friends seminar, or even to just be with people who remind them that they aren’t crazy. For many first-time speakers and artists it is actually an affirmation of years of hard work to be invited to speak. It’s a really big deal.

    And so they do their thing. (Teach, lead worship, or even perform their talent) They are all the way into it. Their heart is there. They’ve given themselves to countless hours of preparation. They bought a new shirt. They got their nails done. And for a good chunk of them this is the largest audience they’ve ever spoken to. They are feeling big time because it’s one of the few places in youth ministry where we gather to acknowledge big time people.

    And when they complete their task– most are both eager for feedback and too raw to receive feedback constructively. That’s why we’ve created spaces for them to just come and relax. For most, their hearts are just too raw and they need some time before and after.

    This really isn’t any different than when I’ve taught or preached. (Thankfully, I’ve never been in a band!) You leave the platform feeling exposed, you seek out feedback, you want to know that what you did or said moved people or helped somehow or was just good and not bad.

    It’s a raw state that anyone who speaks or performs experiences.

    Inevitably, as folks bump into me, they want to know what people were saying online while they presented. If I’m on my A-game, I’ll have selected and saved a few tweets to share. I’m careful to show them things that will affirm. But folks are savvy and they know that if I’m showing them 1-2 things that there are likely a lot more. So when they ask, I suck at lying, so we look at them all.

    And it’s depressing. You can feel the shoulders slump as they are shown a mirror they weren’t quite ready to look into.

    There are lots of tweets quoting people. Awesome.

    There are lots of tweets about how people feel as a person is singing or speaking. Awesome.

    And there are lots of tweets about flippant things as people try to say something smart so that they can get re-tweeted. Not awesome.

    It’s not awesome. It hurts. It sticks. And it bitters the entire experience. No one wants to read that someone thinks their hairstyle sucks. Or the color of their shirt is wrong for the color of their skin. Or that they look kind of like a celebrity.

    It’s as if we get so caught up trying to out smart-aleck one another that we forget that these are real people who will likely read about themselves on Twitter, or Facebook, or Google. Yeah, when you @reply a person on Twitter it is very likely they are going to see it! Geez, you think?

    That’s the problem. We don’t think. We forget that people are not objects. We forget that this is real life. And we forget that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ.

    This isn’t about convention, it’s about you

    In the same breathe lets acknowledge some truth. Anyone who speaks at convention knows that criticism, even over silly things, is part of the game. It shouldn’t be but it is. And they all get over it.

    And just like when a student comes into our office and rips on us for 20 minutes… we all know that flippant negative remarks aren’t about us. They tend to be about what’s in the heart of the critic rather than style of the critiqued clothing.

    Think about this for half a second: Who called you to a ministry of discouragement?

    Planks

    As I was thinking about this yesterday, I wondered how many people would like the same treatment this week? How would they like it if they taught a Bible lesson on Wednesday night in full knowledge that while they were sharing all of their pupils were having a dialog about their words and trying to one-up one another on Twitter or Facebook.

    What would it be like to teach on Sunday morning, have people shake your hand as they left, and then read that there was a rowdy debate about whether or not you’ve gained some weight.

    You would feel horrible. You would cry out to God, “Why have you called me to minister to these people? Why do I deserve this? I share the message you’ve laid on my heart and all they care about is where I bought my shoes!”

    And yet we do it all the time. Not just at events like NYWC, we do it all the time… all the time! We post some smarty-pants comment about a person not knowing or caring that this same person is going to see our tweet, click on our profile, and think… “Youth pastor at First Baptist, eh? What a jerk!”

    My plank is just as big and as weighty as anyone else. But being common doesn’t make something correct.

    You are entitled to your opinion

    I think there is an important distinction to mention here. There is a distinction to be made between a flippant remark, something sarcastic or a dagger about someone’s attire, and comments made about content. I’ve never known a person to not appreciate feedback on content. Even if it’s in strong opposition to what’s been presented. That’s on-topic and relevant. And I’ve also witnessed some incredible dialog as the result of comments made on content.

    On top of that, when you pay to attend something you feel empowered to judge it. You watch television for free and when something isn’t to your liking you just change the channel and get over it. But when you pay to see a movie that you don’t like and you feel a responsibility to tell other people.

    I get that. And I affirm that. You’re entitled to like or not like something. But you aren’t at liberty to tear down for the sake of making yourself look good. It is one thing to not like a movie. It’s an entirely different thing to make fun of someone who came to encourage you.

    Change is needed

    As I sat and thought about this phenomenon while coming home yesterday, I just couldn’t get two things out my mind.

    First, a passage of Scripture I memorized long ago.

    Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them. Ephesians 5:1-7

    Second, a song we sing with children.

    O be careful little mouth what you say

    O be careful little mouth what you say

    There’s a Father up above

    And He’s looking down in love

    So, be careful little mouth what you say

    O, that we would be a people known for lifting people up instead of tearing them down.

  • Sabbath Breakers

    “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

    Exodus 20:8-11

    Kristen and I are drawing more and more clear lines around Sunday– the culturally accepted Sabbath day.

    Our new family rule is:

    Church activities on Sunday are limited to the worship service and children’s church only. No meetings. No nothing.

    There have been two general reactions to mentioning this new rule on my Facebook profile.

    1. People who don’t work at a church applaud. They feel the same pressure to get involved with everything at church and want to reclaim Sunday morning as a time of worship-only as well.
    2. People who work at churches don’t appreciate my sentiment quite the same. (Staff at my church get it.) The over all impression I’ve gotten from church staff is that they wish they could make Sunday a Sabbath for themselves, but they have too much work to do and try to turn either Saturday or Monday as a Sabbath.

    Now… let me be fundamentalist for a second.

    Under what circumstances is it OK to willfully break the 4th commandment?

    None. The principle of Sabbath is just as clear and relevant today as all of the other commandments. It’s not OK to covet my neighbors wife if it grows the congregation, is it? It’s not OK to steal if I do good, is it? It’s not OK to create an idol for the sake of expanding a ministry, is it?

    So why is it OK to willfully break the Sabbath by doing a million things on Sunday morning in the name of church?

    I don’t think it is. Hence, we’ve drawn a line. (Here is a good time to mention we’re not asking anyone else to do this, it’s our personal conviction.)

    This is where the grey area comes in

    The command of Sabbath is a trust issue. You work the fields six days a week and you trust God to provide for you and your family on the 7th. Generations of God followers have taken that literally. But we’ve entered into an age where that is seen as a figurative command.

    Jesus talked about the Sabbath a few times and he seemed to have a non-legalist perspective on the Sabbath. (See Mark 3:1-6)

    In fact, Jesus gave 11 examples of when it was lawful to break the Sabbath. (source)

    1. Pulling an ox out of a ditch on the Sabbath was permitted.
    2. Circumcision is permitted on the Sabbath.
    3. It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.
    4. The precedent of David and his men eating the shewbread.
    5. Priests work on the Sabbath and are blameless.
    6. The ministry of the Messiah is greater than the ministry of the Temple.
    7. God desires mercy from His people and not sacrifice.
    8. The son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.
    9. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
    10. It is lawful to lead animals to water on the Sabbath.
    11. The Father works on the Sabbath.

    Back to my house, bring this home

    The principle of Sabbath is abundantly clear. All throughout the Old Testament we see that God’s people struggled to maintain the Sabbath (trust issue) and God punished His people as a result. (Numbers 15 is the most extreme example for habitual individual Sabbath breakers, for an en masse examples, just look at the exiles.)

    I’m audacious enough to believe that God still cares about the Sabbath. I can’t lead my family to sin by working seven days a week and in turn expect God to bless my family. (Just like I couldn’t expect God to bless me financially if I didn’t manage my money well. Or other areas of clear trust/sin issues. You can’t expect God to bless areas of your life in which you exhibit willful sin.)

    As I talk with church leaders– we all treat Sunday morning as our big day. It’s the day we try to cram as much as we possibly could into the service as well as the opportunity people’s attention and presence afforded us. Sunday morning is anything but Sabbath.

    And for people in the pews its inborn hypocrisy. We say, “Put God and His ways above the ways of the world.” And yet, by our actions as leaders, we put the ways of the world ahead of the 4th commandment. By our desire to cram as much into Sunday as possible, we exhibit willful disobedience.

    Our words say, “Run to the Lord of the Sabbath and He will give you rest.”

    Our actions say, “Flee these crazy church people who want to make your Sunday even crazier!”

    As I think of the hundreds of staff meetings I’ve attended, planning hundreds of worship services, I want to go back and ask myself this simple question: “Instead of trying to maximize what we can do on Sunday morning, why don’t we talk about how little we can do? What would happen if we modeled Sabbath on Sunday’s by doing the maximum 6 days a week and called our people to a minimalist experience of worship?”

    There is another way

    This is where our family is headed. We want to trust God with our church life. We trust Him with our money. We trust Him with our children. We trust Him with our marriage. We trust Him for safety, security, and most importantly… our salvation.

    So now we’re going to trust Him with our church. We trust that as we turn Sunday into a Sabbath day for our family and willfully skip the busyness our church provides… that God will bless our church.

  • Inverse Relationship Between Church Attendance and Business Models

    Yesterday Tim Schmoyer was kind enough to mention a recent blog post in his weekly round-up video.

    I thought some of the questions that the original post raised warranted a video response to Tim.

    What do you think?

    Is there anything to this inverse relationship between churches acting like businesses and a decline in attendance nationwide?

  • Freedom to Doubt

    There is great integrity in a leader who fosters doubt in his congregation

    Humans possess curious natural instincts. Of all of creation, no creature is more curious than humans.

    God created us with this natural instinct. It’s as evident in the Garden as it is in your heart today.

    Great faith is produced within an ecosystem where question is a free fulcrum between doubting God and having great trust.

    Doubt is not the enemy of faith.

    Indoctrination is.

    Doubt is normal, it lives in a persons heart from his first breath to his last.

    Fear of questioning inhibits faith development.

    Doubt is not the enemy of the church.

    Fear of doubt is.

    Great faith does not come through eliminating doubt.

    Great faith comes when a person has measured doubt’s full weight and chosen faith.

    Consider Thomas

    Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

    A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

    Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

    Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

    John 20:24-29

    What’s the point?

    Often times, the biggest doubter among you– given the freedom to doubt, will develop the deepest faith.

    We are not called to eliminate doubt.

    How did Jesus deal with Thomas’ doubt? He chastised him a little, but allowed Thomas to express his doubt. Jesus didn’t look down on Thomas because of his doubt. Instead he knew that by allowing Thomas the freedom to doubt, a faith weighed and tested, would generate great faith.

    And as a result Jesus knew Thomas would become a rock solid believer and took the Gospel to India.

  • Table Project moves to private beta


    I’m pretty excited to see my friends at the Table Project have gone to the next step in their application development process, private beta.

    What the heck is the Table Project? It’s hard for me to describe, exactly. At first blush it’s easy to call it a social networking site for churches. But  it’s more than that. To label it as that would cheapen it.  I’d called it a social networking utility for churches.

    Most churches have an assortment of inter-connected people. There are people in the pews, an email list, a Facebook page, a website, a youth group list, a group of knitters who meet at the church but no one is sure why, and some sort of database for tracking member information.

    These are all separate things that the Table tries to bring together to make life a bit simpler for churches.

    Since the Table is a ministry launched from YouthWorks, I’ve gotten a chance to spend time with the developers… poke holes in their theories… and share Coke’s over head-spinning “what if” sessions.

    Over the months, in my skepticism, we’ve tossed quips back and forth. I’ve said, “Are you guys just another Jesus-flavored Facebook rip-off?” And they’ll fire back, “What’s your solution? Create a forum and charge people to join?”

    Zoinks. Touche`.

    With this big milestone, I want to point out a few things about the Table and invite you to check it out.

    1. They have a stellar philosophy… they call it a manifesto. (The Unibomber would be proud)
    2. This service is free and open to others building apps on top of it to make it better. (Free and open… two of my favorite words.)
    3. They are a non-profit ministry. Some have said that the ownership thing doesn’t really matter. I think it does, and something tells me churches will think so too. (If money didn’t matter, how come all those investors invested?)
    4. They’ve got a great video explaining what the Table is all about.
    5. This phase of private beta is open to 50 churches, they have a fun little contest going if you’d like to join now.

    My disclaimer: Youth Specialties and The Table Project are both parts of the same organization. But no one has asked me to blog about their project. I’m just doing it because they are friends of mine and I’m excited about it going to the beta test.

  • Business Models in the Church

    We celebrate businesses acting more like ministries.

    • We love TOMS Shoes buy one give one mantra.
    • We adore that Chic-fil-A is closed on Sunday in observance of the sabbath.
    • We show all our friends that In-N-Out has bible verses stamped on the bottom of their cups.
    • We got teary eyed watching Undercover Boss when the CEO of Frontier got involved in a co-workers homeless ministry.
    • We love when businesses embrace a holy inefficiency for Kingdom impact.

    If you hang out with ministry types, you’ll discover that they celebrate ministries who make their churches more like businesses.

    • Churches hire HR professionals.
    • Churches lay people off.
    • Churches acquire other churches.
    • Churches hire MBAs to be “Executive Pastors.”
    • Churches hire CPA’s to run their finance departments.
    • Churches hire advertising executives to run their marketing departments.
    • Churches have departments!
    • Churches have board rooms, safe rooms, and even war rooms.
    • We love when churches a mantra of efficiency.

    The Problem

    Churches acting more like businesses has lead to reaching less of the population. (Read more here and here.)

    Businesses acting more like ministries has lead to those companies growing in a down economy. (Read more here and here.)

    Statement of the Obvious

    Why don’t we celebrate ministry leaders who just want their ministries more and more like a ministry?

    Let’s embrace some holy inefficiency and grow the Kingdom!