Category: Church Leadership

  • A Favorite Thing About Harbor

    Each Sunday, during the worship service, our church invites all the children to come up and play instruments during one of the songs.

    Too often we push the children of the church away from the adults and I think that’s a real mistake that accidentally sanitizes intergenerational worship. This small action each week is symbolic of a place that provides voice and value to all equally. I love it! The leaders are crazy enough to think that they can change City Heights.


    Pint-Size Jam Session from Kristen McLane on Vimeo.

    HT to Kristen

  • More than a web guy, a lesson for church staff

    There are times when I realize that I’m not showing a ton of depth. Or maybe, it is that I get so pigeon-holed into being the person someone needs that I don’t get to exhibit depth.

    I feel that way right now.

    I’ve gotten ingrained here in San Diego as a social media geek. Within my world that may be true. But I recognize that within that skill is a tie to lifelong passion. But the passion itself is much more important than the method I’m trying to master. At work this is perfectly natural. I have no doubt that people there value me beyond my skills because I know that, in turn, I value their friendship beyond their skills or positions.

    Let me restate what I’m saying. I care a lot about building community online. I care deeply about networking people and ideas. I have learned best practices, nuance, and supporting skills to make it easier to convey my passion in more effective ways. Ultimately, that’s a skill set that could be applied to a lot of genres and businesses. But my passion is for working with middle and high schoolers and encouraging/networking/sharing life with those who do the same thing.

    Take the passion out of what I do and I don’t want to do it. I may be able to give some sage advice or share a few things about what works… but if you’re out there trying to network with me so I can help you build a social networking strategy, I’m probably not going to be that useful to you. I know you are just using me.

    At the end of the day, I’m good at social media only because I care so much about the message I’m trying to convey.

    The frustrating thing is that I think I am only interesting to some of the new people I’ve been getting to know in San Diego because of those auxiliary skills and not because of what I’m passionate about. It’s as if my only value is tied into some skills I’ve learned and that feels really, really shallow. It’s a slight that I see right through. Asking me about my kids or my hobbies to try to get me to share some tricks of the trade is lame. I don’t ever want to tie my value as a human being into the fact that I can build a website, or develop a brand, or tie that into a social media strategy. Lame. Lame. Lame!

    I don’t think this is unlike people who become fake friends when you work at a church. You kind of know they are fake but you’re so desperate for friendship that a fake friend is better than no friend at all. When we worked at churches there were plenty of people who valued our friendship because of a socialogical positional thing. 24 months ago if I had written down a list of people who would be our friends if we stopped being their pastor and I would have have been 100% correct. Not to sound emo, but the shocking thing is how sincere people pretended to be all those years. You’d be surprised by how few people we hear from after nearly 10 years of full time ministry friendships. 10? 15? 20 tops.

    For church staff, this is one shallow nature of relationship that makes the job so hard.

    But, now that we aren’t there anymore we have no value to them and we’ll never hear from them again.

    The flip side for church staff is simple. Open your lives up to those who are legitimately sincere in their friendship. Trust your gut. Just like Kristen and I have found real friendship over the years… a couple of bad apples shouldn’t catapult you into a life of keeping people at a distance.

  • Put up or shut up

    Growing up we played a lot of basketball. A core component of playing basketball, especially the driveway versions, is learning to talk a good game. There are people who can’t play but can talk a good game. And then there are the best players who don’t really talk much but just flat our put up numbers.

    Eventually, it comes down to this simple phrase in pick-up basketball: Put up or shut up.

    I think that phrase explains why so many people get fed up with church: They talk a good game about the poor, mercy, seeking justice, living out Acts 2, exemplifying Matthew 5, or preaching the truth. But at the end of the day they don’t “put up.”

    Church leaders, if your church talks game it doesn’t have… please stopped talking like you have game. At the end of the day, allow your game to speak for itself.

    That’s the best marketing advice I could ever give to a church: Put up or shut up.

    Wanna grow your church? Put up or shut up.

    Wanna have the best youth group in town? Put up or shut up.

    Wanna help people losing their houses? Put up or shut up.

    Wanna start a killer small group ministry? Put up or shut up.

    At the end of the day you need to allow your church game to speak for you. People are tired of the hype. They are tired of hearing what you want to do. They don’t want to know your vision statement.

    They want to see it.

    So stop talking smack and get to work!

  • Christmas in the City

    Yesterday our church hosted an event called Christmas in the City. It was one of the most unique expressions of God’s love I’ve ever witnessed.

    We are an unashamedly urban ministry. Situated in City Heights, a diverse working poor community, we reach out to the neighborhood in ways that just wouldn’t work in the suburbs. This is a great example.

    How it works

    The organization that actually presents Christmas in the City [er, I forgot what it’s called!] encourages church, schools, and businesses to give toys in a way that is very similar to Toys for Tots or Operation Christmas Child. Additionally, previous year’s proceeds go to purchase more toys.

    On the day of the event volunteers from all over come to to create a store, checkout areas, and wrapping stations for the presents. Additionally, our church set-up some play areas, snacks, live music and activities for shoppers and their kids to enjoy while parents shopped.

    This is where the line comes in. Since they’ve done this event for a few years people in the city know and depend on the sale to buy gifts for their kids. So think of this line a lot like a Black Friday line. People literally showed up at 7:00 AM for this event… which started at 12:30 PM. Thankfully, this was more civilized than a typically line at Wal*Mart.

    When the store opens, gifts are sold at 10-20% of retail prices. ($2, $5, or $10) The idea behind Christmas in the City is that they don’t just want to hand parents a random gift to give to their children for free. While that is nice and many organizations do that, this is different in that they allow parents to choose some gifts for each of their children and also give them the ability to buy presents for their kids. The hope is that by doing it this way they can help the working poor while helping the recipents maintain their pride and dignity. They chose the gift. They bought it with their own money.

    How did it go?

    I had read about this type of event in community development books. So I had some idea that there would be a big line, that there would be a lot of toys, that there would be a lot of smiles.

    I guess I wasn’t prepared for the volume. On a typical Sunday our church has 150-200 attendees. (About half non-English speaking, the other half English speaking.) There were at least that many who were in line to come to the Christmas shop. Tons of different ethnic background, tons of different stories, tons of people helped.

    Another thing I wasn’t prepared for was that we’d have to turn people away. I know the need is great out there… but I never presumed that we wouldn’t have enough gifts for those who would come. We could have easily sold twice as much stuff! Now that I know how it goes I think I’ll have to do a better job promoting how people can get involved.

    I’m still getting the pictures and video together. I will share that when I have it all ready.

  • Alpha Male Pastors

    I long to see this as a caveat for ministry job openings: Dominant alpha males need not apply. Dear Lord, let it come soon!

    I had three different conversations with or about lead pastors Thursday. Two were horrible and one was exhilarating. All three encounters lead me to express my frustration with alpha male senior pastors. How do these people stay in ministry? Oh yeah, they are allowed to fire people…

    “Define term alpha male pastor please.” I’d love to. Obviously, they are male. And they are the big dogs at a church. They lord their power over everyone. (Mostly behind closed doors.) One word description, dominant. They lay in bed and dream of themselves as Mufasa over their church kingdoms. They would like to think that everyone shudders at their brilliance when they hear their name. Every single one of them thinks they are brilliant and that they will one day write a book that sells more copies than Purpose Driven Life.

    Situation #1 I exchanged emails yesterday with a church staff member sharing his frustration with his AMP. Well, he wasn’t really sharing frustration with me, because that sort of disloyalty isn’t allowed in Mufasa’s pride. He contacted me about a very practical problem but within a couple of short exchanges the truth came out that his AMP wouldn’t let him lead the youth group. So let me get this right, a church hires a man… calls him a pastor, grades him on his ability to lead the youth group… then is hamstrung by an insecure AMP from doing his job they called and paid him to do? Brilliant. I’m sure that the AMP will feel completely justified when that guy quits, his life devastated. I wish it weren’t true… but I think I have this same conversation with one church staff member per week.

    Situation #2 I had a conversation with a church staff member sharing a complete lack of human decency by his AMP. Of course, this staff member couldn’t tell his AMP that he was being a jerk because that was ultimately questioning the virility of the AMP. Questioning an AMP about any of his habits, practices, and especially blatant sins is a challenge that is always met with snarled teeth and threats of being expelled from the pride. At the end of our conversation I was left with the impression that this staff member’s boss thinks he is a more important person than the rest of his staff. It’s as if Jesus’ words didn’t apply to him. Matthew 23 says, “Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” Nope, that only applies to lowly associate level pastors and other non-AMPs who make the day-to-day stuff happen when the AMP isn’t bestowing his 30 minute message from the mountaintop. When heaven opened and Mr. AMP appeared on the scene… Jesus didn’t call that guy to servant-leadership. He’s better, bigger, more powerful than his staff members. You know, because he’s the preacher.

    Situation #3 (For those skimming –> This is the good one) I had lunch with my new friend and pastor. As a parenthesis to this– I was so relieved that the lunch meeting came with no agenda. We had lunch and shared life, a novel concept that more church leaders should consider. Stephen has all the skills and background to be an AMP. And what I love about him is that he intentionally chooses not to for the sake of the Kingdom. Something that blew me away about our conversation was this, he’s perfectly fine not getting his way in a theological discussion. (Something an AMP would see as a weakness is really a strength!) The mere fact of the various staff backgrounds proves that out. They are a hodgepodge group of denominations completely sold out to the concept that personal preferences don’t really matter. I’d say he and I see eye to eye on “high 90s” of things. But those few percentage points of difference don’t matter at all.

    What should AMPs do instead of dominating local churches? Fix the auto industry! Go get a job at a car dealership and bully people into a gas guzzler.

    Want to know the secret to defeating an AMP? Hint, you don’t have to commit a felony even though you want to.

  • Open Ended Discipleship

    I’d love your feedback on this video post, please leave a comment below or post a video response on YouTube to the video.

  • Longsuffering in the church

    A key component to the personal preference sin so prevalent in the United States evangelical church is a lack of respect for the word, longsuffering.

    Now, there are plenty of proponents of the idea of short-suffering. In other words, if a church or ministry or job or anything in your life doesn’t meet your exacting specifications you need to bail on it immediately. Their argument is that life is too short to longsuffer and the church shouldn’t be patient enough to pay you while you longsuffer. They somehow tie personal preferences into integrity… so if you stick it out at a job or a church because you believe you need to stay, you are somehow violating your integrity because you are not working or attending that church with a 100% joyful heart. They deny that there is anything spiritual in enduring something unpleasant if there is a pleasant alternative.

    An Example for Relationships

    Friends, this lack of longsuffering as a spiritual discipline is also a major lie that has led to the elongation of adolescence in America. If you’ve done student ministry in the last decade you’ve seen it first hand. God gives Christians a single requirement for getting married, that person must be a believer in Jesus.

    Yet, over and over, I see perfectly eligible men and women elongate singleness (and in many cases adolescent dependency on parents) because they don’t trust God beyond their personal preferences. They need someone a certain height, weight, and cultural background. They need someone driven towards certain goals or career aspirations, who want a certain number of children, and want to live in a certain location.

    In fact, we’ve all seen our friends bend God’s single requirement for us in order to get what we want! So they will find “Mr. Right” and completely decimate their walk with Christ in the process only to later discover that he was “Mr. Wrong.” Or, they let their personal preferences get in the way of finding the man or woman God has made for them or allowing that relationship to get to the altar. It’s sad to see personal preferences get in the way of fulfillment in finding a spouse. Kristen and I have joked about this for a long time, but I think it is true. If we just randomly assigned people to one another based solely on “Do you love Jesus more than anything else” we think we could pair up about anyone. We are all imperfect. We are all unloveable. None of us are ideal. When we chose to love someone because they love Jesus… then you will experience what true love and romance really are. Surfacey stuff is ultimately just crap that won’t lead to happiness, anyway. Learning to love someone despite your own personal preferences is what leads to true love!

    Those of us who have been married a few years know that long suffering and marriage go hand in hand. (Heard an Amen! coming from Kristen‘s direction when I wrote that.) In other words, if what you like about your spouse is that they meet your personal preferences, your marriage is doomed! Here’s a hint, the more you trust God that He provided a spouse who completes your weaknesses the happier you’ll be in marriage. (It’s about trusting God more than you trust yourself.) When I see couples whose sole connection is wrapped around a personal preference... I can only hope that their marriage will last beyond that. One of the most powerful and loving things a spouse can ever do for the other is to love you despite your inability to meet their personal preferences.

    If we think of ourselves as the Bride of Christ, we immediately see the stupidity of personal preferences in the church dividing us. We, singular and corporately, are the Bride. In our towns there is a sole bride, not brides. And yet Jesus has to love us all how we want to be loved? Who is long suffering now? Who is having 2,000 communions on Sunday morning instead of one? Whose name is lifted up in a thousand styles instead of one?

    I look at belonging to a church a lot like a marriage.

    1. Let’s say, right now, you go to a church which is fine doctrinally but you hate the music. If this were a marriage would you leave? You would feel pretty childish telling a divorce attorney that you can’t stay married to your husband because he likes rap music. Now, country music, I’ll give you that… But no one would leave a spouse because of a musical preference. But people do it in church every day.

    2. Let’s say you go to a church who killed a program you loved. If this were a marriage and your spouse changed date night from Wednesday to Sunday, would you leave him? I doubt it. But people leave churches for stupid stuff like that every day.

    3. Let’s say you go to a church who mismanaged some money. If every marriage in America were in divorce court because of this, we’d be a in a heap of mess.

    4. Let’s say you go to a church where you didn’t like the liturgy. Would you divorce a person because they didn’t read the same Bible translation as you?

    5. One commenter said she couldn’t go to a church because she disagreed with how the church practiced communion. If that were a marriage and your spouse wanted “communion” in a way you didn’t like… you’d probably head to counseling before divorce court.

    Think of all the personal preference reasons people leave a church! There are hundreds of them. Church leaders are going bald trying to figure out how to keep everyone happy instead of trying to lead people in worship! I’ve been in dozens of staff meetings where the leaders were more worried about keeping congregants pleased than taking the worship service a direction we felt God was calling it to. In other words, we repeatedly compromised our convictions for the High Holy Calling of the personal preference god so many worship on Sunday mornings.

    What am I asking “the evangelical church” to do?

    Time to cut to the chase. I’m not naive. I know that there are divisions in place today and it is silly to say we should all come together as a single body. I know it is insane to dream of a united church community who worships together on Sunday mornings, in Spirit and Truth, despite the fact that some like rock music and some like choir. I know it is impossible to dream of a church who worshiped together despite the fact that some are white or black or Hispanic. I know it is ludicrous to think that churches could bundle their buildings together for Kingdom work beyond the realm of what they want their buildings to be used for. I know it is preposterous to think that churches could start talking about reaching communities instead of birthing more baptists or presenting more Presbyterians. I know it is arrogant to think that one church leader should willfully submit his congregation to another. I know it is crazy to dream of one church in one city reaching the 95% of lost souls despite tiny doctrinal differences.

    But my hope is that it can happen.

    And I dream and think these things because followers of Jesus are overpowered with a silly, insane, impossible, ludicrous, preposterous, arrogant, and crazy love that comes from a Risen Savior. He came to unite. He came to break down barriers. And he wants us to long suffer with one another as an act of worship of Him.

    That’s my hope. That’s my dream. And that’s what I think the evangelical church should be about in America.

    I’m nailing this thesis to my wall. Thoughts?

  • The Personal Preference Sin

    I’d like to talk to some people about a rabid sin running rampant and unchecked throughout the American Evangelical church. Maybe if you’re reading this today I’m meant to talk to you. This is, I believe, one of Satan’s most powerful devices for separating our people. And yet, this sin runs so deep and is so approved that it carries back to some things we hold sacred such as denominations… probably 50% of non-denominational churches founded in the past century are the result of this sin.

    That sin is personal preference.

    An unfortunate consequence of Modernism as a life philosophy is this concept that you cannot worship in a place you disagree with on some levels. Adopting modernistic thinking as a religious way of thinking has lead to nothing but personal preference sin disguised as “acting on theological conviction.” Whether that preference is musical instruments during worship vs. no musical instruments in worship or modern music vs. traditional hymns or small groups vs. Sunday School or even Arminian vs. Calvinist, forms of church governance, women in ministry, preaching styles, baptism, on and on.

    One day, either today or yesterday, a person decided that they simply could not live with that compromise to their integrity or vision or desire and decided to leave a church to start their own. I am convinced that many of today’s churches were founded because someone got ticked off enough to take their friends and start a “new and more pure expression of worship.” If you’ve ever had a meeting with a wide-eyed green church planter you often hear this notion as their primary justification for planting a church.

    You may be uncomfortable with how I’ve phrased that. So let’s give some examples:

    – John Wesley started a methodist reform movement within the Church of England. As time went on, they couldn’t reconcile that tension and the Methodist Movement was born.

    – Meanwhile in Scandinavia, disenfranchised Lutherans (commoners) who were persecuted by the King’s people over tons of issues separated and started meeting outside of official worship services sanctioned by the King. Eventually, they could not reconcile and the Free church movement was born in Scandinavia.

    – The Brethren church movement is born out of a personal preference issue on baptism in the early 18th century. That groups has fractured further ever since… it’s in their DNA! Some of them have split of theological interpretations of things like eternal security, or whether baptisms indoors counted, or to start Sunday schools.

    – There so much independence bred into the Baptist church movement that no one can even agree on what makes a baptist a baptist or where the Baptist movement originated. Many of my students in Romeo will remember how we read an 80 year old tract in my office called, “What real old regular baptists really believe.”

    – These are the tribes, and decedents and fractures of those tribes, that form modern Evangelicalism in America. In other words… we are a people divided for centuries on an unspoken belief that our personal preferences should divide the Bride of Christ. Division over personal preference is our unfortunate heritage.

    Let’s state the problem more clearly in your front yard. Modernism has long hated contradictions and mystery. While that is a noble hatred in science and has led to the greatest innovations of our day, it has decimated the church. People presume that their personal preferences are more significant than the church doctrine of unity.

    As believers, every one of us would agree with this statement: The church body is a unit. (Singular) And yet, we divide over non-essentials all the time.

    – Style of baptism.

    – How a person is labeled a member.

    – How a person is labeled a believer.

    – What types of sin a person can be involved in and still lead and/or be a member.

    – Who can vote and for what.

    – How we learn best.

    – Worship best.

    – Give best.

    – Serve best.

    – Read our Bible.

    – How we dress.

    – How we act.

    – How we pray.

    Rather than live in those tensions, struggles that fully represent the “the body of Christ,” we chose to divide and group with who we feel most comfortable with.

    Largely, on Sunday morning we go to churches who are lead by people we feel comfortable with, who preach to us things we want to hear, who say things to our kids we agree with, who look like us, sing like us, dress like us, and serve in ways we approve of. When I hear complaints of my friends or when I complain about my church it is almost exclusively about crap that doesn’t even matter!

    We have been lead to believe that tension in church is bad. I believe that it’s time to call the church back together. I believe that when we chose to take our flocks and submit them to one another in submission to Jesus, who longs to break down walls that separate, that we will see God do amazing things.

    I hear a lot of friends openly wonder why the American Evangelical church is not gaining more ground in our society. And yet we, as American Evangelicals, refuse to deal with our personal and institutional sins.

    I’ll quiet this rant by proposing a question. Friend, I covet your response.

    If there were a young friar in a monestary today composing 95 charges of sin against the Evangelical Church, what would he nail to the Wittenberg Door?

  • How Should Church Staff Be Treated?

    One of the fascinating aspects of senior church leaders blogging is that you get an opportunity to see inside their minds a little. Sometimes it is encouraging and sometimes it is not. Recently, I’ve been disappointed by some comments and principles that would be considered unethical or illegal in the professional world in relation to their non-executive staff.

    It got me thinking about how churches treat their staff. Wouldn’t it be logical to think that a place which represent Jesus, the King of Justice and Mercy, would be generous to their staff? One would hope so yet we see over and over again that churches abuse the provisions of their charity status to avoid labor laws.

    Instead what I see is that non-executive staff are seen as expendable commodities. They are asked to have absolute dedication. They are asked to do their jobs plus “other duties as assigned.” They are asked to work long hours for less than market value. They are told that if they aren’t 10,000% sold out, they should quit. Worse yet, they are hired at low levels and told that higher education is a waste of time and money, thus locking them into that role until the leader tires of them. If they question leadership they are fired. If they try to move up in the world they are fired. If they do anything except what the leaders say, they are fired.

    Here’s why I am repulsed by this concept. This represents the very worst of business culture exemplified by the church as a best practice. This is aimed at short term gain instead of what studies consistently say… long term relationships matter in ministry. This leadership style says, “We have the right to hire and fire you at will, but you… as a low level employee… have no power to chose what you want.” This leadership style is confusing and hurtful to staff members and I can provide examples of hundreds of people who have been threatened, mistreated, fired, and manipulated into following a pastor’s will above God’s will.

    I promise you this. Mark my words.

    – The churches who will endure and endear this generation will be great places to work.

    – The churches who prevail into the next generation will invest in staff members through thick and thin.

    – They will pay for them to get higher education.

    – They will create opportunities for advancement.

    – They will constantly remind staff that the most important people are not the up-front speakers and performers but the front line servants.

    – They will give staff members time to find freedom from the grind and encourage staff members to love their families above all else.

    – They will work less that 50 hours consistently.

    – They will reward for things other than numeric growth.

    – They will facilitate innovation outside of the executive leaders.

    – They will be known in their communities as great employers.

    – They will pay a living wage and encourage staff to live within walking distance of the church.

    What do you think? Where do you see injustices as a staff member? What do you think churches of the future will do with the staff that they have? Will they even need staff?

  • The church is shifting

    Last weekend I had the opportunity to meet a ton of people for the first time. Convention attendees, authors, speakers, and ministry leaders from across the US. And it was interesting because there was a phenomenon among the conversations that I found fascinating.

    Somewhere in the conversation there would always be this thread of “do you see what is working in youth ministry?” In other words… “what’s worked for me in the past is presently not working.”

    Here’s how I described what I’m seeing in my work.

    There is a shift towards the small. While I see large ministries getting larger, more organized, and reaching more masses of people than ever their successes come via the small and intimate settings of community, micro-community, and stuff that happens outside of programs. But outside of churches in the 3,000-5,000 range I see tons of head scratching frustration. Leaders are sensing the shift, they are seeing numbers change, yet they aren’t coping with it well. Their response to the shift towards the small is to create a program that appeals to that. In other words… their people want something small and not programmatic but ministry leaders desire to create a program of ultra-small groups. And they wonder why it isn’t working.

    Here’s a problem to be overcome. As soon as I say “the church is shifting” many people’s brain automatically label “shift” as “emergent church.” And that includes a whole slew of people the church at large seeks to ignore and marginalize. I really think they would rather fail than admit that some of those people were right.

    Here’s what I am not saying. I’m not proposing that the church should change. (future tense) I am recognizing that society has shifted (past tense) and that the church is shifting to respond. (present tense)

    Here’s what I am saying. This isn’t about theology. It is about the church, the timeless truths of God’s Word, and it’s leaders responding to a seismic shift in how culture works in our society. Society is shifting and many church leaders are clinging to programs as if they were the Gospel!

    Instead of purpose-driven churches we need to see mission-driven churches. Instead of copying what we see at conferences and mega-churches, we need church leaders to spend serious time studying their communities doing the hard work of ethnography. (This isn’t new, A.B. Simpson said the same thing 120 years ago!) We need to see churches working within their communities instead of asking the community to come to their buildings.

    Let’s make it even simpler.

    Churches who build their ministry around their community are succeeding.

    Church who build their ministry around the short cuts of copying megachurches are failing.