Category: Church Leadership

  • Off to Pittsburgh

    As I write this I am in the San Diego airport on my way to my second NYWC as a YS staffer. It’s still pretty cool! Yes, I am going to NYWC as a YS staff person… how cool is that? Yes, the travel away from family end of things stinks… but I still count myself as one of the luckiest men alive to have this job.

    For the next 5 days I get to do what my soul aches to do… tell youth workers from all over that their work is important to the Kingdom. Here on my blog you’ve witnessed my recent deconstruction of some of the things I don’t like about church. This is because I love the church enough to want to see her adapt to the world we live in to reach the people of this day.

    I’ve got a lot to do so I can make no promises about keeping up on my blog. As I write this I’m working on about 4 other hot projects. Everything from booking future episodes of the YS podcast to trying to figure out why Bluehost bricked our websites earlier today. Of course, once things kick off on Friday you’ll be able to catch all the action at our live blog page… but that’s not really the same, is it?

    So, if I miss a few posts it’s only because God is doing amazing things in my midst. To sound extra important, “I’m busy doing the King’s business.”

    I’m fully aware of what I’ve given up in order to do this gig. For some reason hanging out with thousands of youth workers reminds me that I’m not a full time youth pastor any more. And so I invite your questions. Those of you who gave up their “Pastor Adam” for this… what do you want to know about my work in Pittsburgh this weekend? Ask anything and I’ll be as transparent as I’ve always been.

  • Cutting Edge Amish

    This morning I was reading a little of Marko’s upcoming book, Youth Ministry 3.0, and one of the early chapters made me think of the Amish. Maybe the Amish have had the solution for a long time?

    My hypothesis is simple. Since adolescence is a cultural phenomenon and the church is called to create culture for redemptive purposes, maybe the church can turn the tide on adolescence elongation in our society over the next generation?

    Factor #1 Sociologically the window of time known as adolescence is continuing to widen. Culture simply gives children a longer time to mature to adulthood. This creates a need for adolescent ministry to stretch from about 10 years old to about 25 years old. Fifteen months ago I posted some solutions to fight the elongation of adolescence. At the current pace, if nothing is done, adolescence may last 25 years by the time next week gets here.

    Factor #2 The church is largely unprepared to help kids walk through the stages of adolescent development faster. With the roles of identity, autonomomy, and affinity to be accomplished before an adolescent is seen as an adult in our culture coupled with churches completely in denial that they can do anything about these tasks… and Christian parents completely whipped by professional adolescents who demand to be cared for deep into their 20s… we can see how the church has become part of the problem of elongation of adolesence in our culture with no real solutions.

    The Amish solution. The Amish do one thing really well. They maintain adult members like crazy! Rather than having young children get baptized and join the church before they are ready to make an independent decision… the Amish encourage a period of running around and jumping… Rumspringa. When an Amish child enters Rumspringa the parents literally allow (encourage?) them to run around and do whatever they want. Explore the world, however they define that. Parents hope that their kids will come back to the faith… and many do… but they also reliquish control over that process, allowing the child to chose the faith themselves. Later, when they come back to the faith they come back in full knowledge of what they are walking away from and in full knowledge of what they are committing to.

    Oh! We evangelicals do much the opposite, don’t we? We would never want our kids to sin! And strangely, some of the most committed followers of Christ I know are also some who tried out the other side of things and came running back to the cross!

    Evangelical Rumspringa. One indictment of the church in Hyde’s Dedication and Leadership is that we don’t call our people to dedicate themselves to the church. (He compares dedication in the church to dedication to communism.) Hyde argues that our standards of leadership are too low which leads to an utter lack of true commitment to the cause. To further Hyde’s indictment, we ask for a commitment to the faith before people are cognitively aware or capable of making a rational decision.

    This leads me to wonder if there is wisdom in giving our students entering college permission to do what they already are doing… but with a stronger purpose. Right now, we expect nothing out of college students. They are involved in churches, even on some levels in church leadership, but once they hit college we allow them to hit the pause button on their faith development. What if we did this more intentionally? What if we said, “Take this time off to go out and run free. Explore some stuff, chase your hearts desire, experiment with whatever you want to experiment with. But make me this promise that on July 1st after you graduate from college you will come talk to me about your faith. At that moment you will decide if you really want to follow Jesus and commit yourself to the cause or not.” This would test our definition of the sovereignty of God, wouldn’t it? For Calvinist, this would test our definition of predestination, wouldn’t it?

    A Secret Revealt… We already do this practically. I know some people were offended by what I just wrote. In effect I just said that the church should give young Christians permission to sin with the hope that they will come back to Jesus. My argument back is that we are largely mislabeling our kids Christians when they are not truly dedicated to Christ in their hearts. They may have made a one-time commitment… but largely we know we are failing to develop a faith that lasts a lifetime in youth ministry. Christian Smith labeled what most kids in our ministries believe as Therepeutic Moralistic Deism. And every researcher agrees that youth ministry, as we know it, largely fails.

    What I am asking is [not proposing, by the way]… Is there value in telling our kids who “don’t really get it” (e.g. about 90% of the students I’ve invested in over the last decade) to take a little rumspringa in college and lets talk about giving your life to Christ on ______?

    As a confessional evangelical, my worry is that we’ve falsely assured some people who have confessed and been baptized that they are “saved for life.“ I worry that this isn’t really true as they may have not really understood the Gospel at all. I wonder if we merely coached them to say and do what we wanted them to do… and somehow assured someone of their salvation falsely? I wonder if an emotional decision made in middle school is enough?

    How can this impact culture? Well, if that theory worked in college… maybe we could start backing down the length of time before we ask for that adult confession of faith? Back it down from 22 to 20? Then maybe move it into high school in a couple decades? Right now… in practice we largely don’t want people involved in ministry until they are married with kids! And for many… that’s 30 years old or later!

    Thoughts? I know I’m on the edge of being labeled a heretic here. Keep in mind these are merely propositional thoughts and not proposals for your ministry.

  • How to respond to critics of your ministry?

    So you’re minding your own business and doing your thing. Then the phone rings and a friend calls saying something like this, “Did you know that someone in the church wrote about you on their blog? They didn’t say nice things! What are you going to do about it?”

    I can understand. For one thing, I’ve been contacted by my fair share of people who aren’t happy about something I posted here on my blog. I’ve even been contacted by the concerned party who was just worried that I might blog about something. On the other hand I’ve seen my fair share of criticism. I’ve been blasted many times on blogs, facebook, myspace, forums, and of course the old fashioned way… church gossip.

    So… what’s Adam’s strategy for dealing with public criticism? I’ll let you in on my secrets. But just keep these secrets between us, OK? I wouldn’t want any f my critics to know how I will respond.

    Secret #1 I see everything. Thanks to the wonder of the internet I am typically alerted automatically within an hour of something posted about me, my family, or things I care about. That means I am almost never surprised by a phone call like I mentioned above. Almost always I’ve already read the critique and decided what I’m going to do! There are both paid and free options for doing this… unless you’re Joel Olsteen the free options should do the trick.

    Secret #2 I ignore almost everything. That’s right. Even the worst criticisms are worth ignoring. Let’s say someone didn’t like what I said in church and they blog about it. Is that swipe really hurting me? Not really. I don’t perpetrate myself as perfect. And I’m big enough to take a couple of shots. I’m also not concerned about “online reputations” too much. If I ran around with a chip on my shoulder about every negative thing being said about me, my people, or my work… I’d end up looking pretty stupid wouldn’t I? Here’s the dirty secret of criticism online: A link is a link. Google could care less if it’s a positive link or a negative link to your blog. All links help your online reputation.

    Secret #3 When a lie resonates, invite a discussion. In my life, about 1:100 criticisms do get responded to because that same lie or critique is starting to pop up on other blogs, discussions, articles, or other places. In other words… if I ignore a criticism 99% of the time it will go away quickly. That’s really the beauty of the internet! There are so many blogs out there that 99% of posts really aren’t remarkable. People read blog entries so fast that chances are no one even noticed the critique. But that 1% of bad things said will get picked up by other bloggers. When that happens I need to think about a response strategy. When I do respond my first step is always to invite a person saying something publicly to contact me privately. I give them my name, the link to the critique, my phone number, and personal email address. If that blog has an email I send them a message there. If not, I leave a comment inviting them to discuss the criticism privately. Some disagree with that, but I prefer to discuss a criticism privately.

    Secret #4 I vent about it, privately. I don’t care how important you are… getting slammed hurts. Even the trivial “who, said what? hahahaha!” ones hurt a little. As a pastor you put everything you’ve got into your ministry so any critique seems intensely personal. I fight my self-righteous attitude to say something here on my blog or to call and demand a person take it back. Further, most pastors don’t realize that they are in the public eye… you may be the most famous person most people in your church know! Here’s the trick. You need some outlets for that anger… and the people around me know full well what this is like. I will read something, make a “huh” little laugh and then talk to one of the people close to me about it. Try it, it helps. that way if I end up responding it is never out of anger.

    Secret #5 Truth always wins. The fact of the matter is that you will do some dumb things. I know I’ve said, written, and done some incredibly idiotic things. If you only ever do safe things you will never be criticized. But the good news is that if you’re a good guy, you’ll always be a good guy. You can’t please everyone and it’s not worth trying.

    Secret #6 There is an ounce of truth in every criticism. That’s why I read them all. WIth an understanding that all criticisms have something to teach me, I think I’m getting a little bit smarter!

  • Another reason I’m labeled a liberal

    I am the most liberal conservative you’ll ever meet. Or at least that’s how I often feel labeled. During my time at Moody I was taught and bought into a fairly conservative hermeneutic. In other words, how I read and interpret Scripture is through the lens of the original reader literally, than contextualizing it to today. “What did this mean to the original reader? How does this apply in our culture today?” People want to know where my radical views come from? They come from that! I believe the Bible is absolutely true… even when our religious culture disagrees.

    Interestingly, during my time in college I found myself differentiating with my alma mater on two major issues… based upon their own hermeneutic. So the tools that they equipped me with pretty much destroyed two of their positions for me!

    #1 A strict pretribulational interpretation of the book of Revelation. While I don’t reject this view entirely, the hermeneutical gymnastics scholars go through to get to this view is astounding. When my fellow students questioned this in our undergrad Daniel/Revelation class we were reminded that we were stupid and anyone intelligent would see that this was the only viable explanation. “It’s my role to indoctrinate you to teach this position to others” (To paraphrase the professor) Wow, not exactly the scholarship I knew elsewhere! Thankfully, I’ve learned that most conservative evangelicals agree with Yogi Berra. “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

    #2 A sexist view on women in ministry. I know many in conservative evangelicalism firmly believe women shouldn’t be pastors and a woman’s role is to be subservient to men. I would agree if Scripture agreed! But there is simply no way one can hold this view using a Historical-grammatical interpretation of the Bible. With certain passages you may be able to intitially come to that conclusion… until you get to the last step. “Does this passage agree with the fullness of Scripture?” Clearly, Jesus’ life demonstrated that he did not come to lift women to a lower level than men. In fact, he consistently broke cultural boundaries in elevating women.

    This leads me to another reason I am proud not to be labeled a Baptist. I believe within some baptistic denominations is deep-seeded sexism. When it comes down to it, a woman can serve in every pastoral duty practically but not professionally. Biblical counseling, lead ministry programs, lead Bible studies, on and on. But women are not permitted to be called Pastors nor be compensated like their male counterparts. Nor are women allowed into some seminaries where they can earn an equal voice… which leads to men speaking for women on sensitive issues. Even among my own beloved alma mater, in 2008 a woman cannot be a student in the pastoral major without segregation into “womens ministry.” In most conservative congregations a woman can practically be a deacon or elder doing day-to-day things but cannot hold the postion purely because of her gender. In many congregations the most qualified candidates to lead ministries and hold positions are passed over purely because of gender. For me, this is a church sanctioned injustice that holds back many congregations from experiencing true health.

    I earned my card to hold a conservative evangelical credential. Academically and practically no one can claim I have not. But if being a card carrying conservative evangelical means I have to buy into group think where the men make all the decisions for women… it may be time for me to put my card on Ebay.

  • An offering of fish and loaves

    An offering of fish and loaves

    As you can tell, the last few posts have been openly questioning the paradigm of American Evangelicalism. Does the Gospel need buildings? Does the Gospel need money? And today I want to ask if the Gospel requires a tithe of cash.

    Let’s state the obvious right up front. Kristen and I tithe. We aren’t staunch legalists so I can’t say we give exactly 10% of our income away. To our local church we give a set weekly amount. We also support some missionaries monthly. And we do other things, as needed, on top of that. As someone who earned 100% of his living from local churches for the last several years, I’m a big fan of giving to the local church. If you don’t give and you can, please do. This post isn’t asking people not to give. It’s asking what we should do when people can’t give.

    We are entering a season in America in which our people will simply have to wrestle with money in ways they may never have. For most adults they probably have not wrestled with money this much since college. With inflation in every area of the economy people are having to chose between paying their mortgage/rent and buying gas for their car to get to work. In the same way, they are having to chose between giving to their church and buying groceries. To me, this creates a crisis for the church. And I wonder how ministers will speak truth into the lives of their people.

    I use the word crisis intentionally. This goes back to my fundamental belief that every crisis is an opportunity. And every crisis will create vast success for those who innovate solutions.

    On the one hand, we love people whether they give financially or not. At least we say we do. But we know, definitively, that giving to God is not tied to God’s benevelent love. And it would be completely sick if people were punished because they once gave and now cannot. (I know a couple people who would argue that their inability to give somehow disqualifies a person to hold a leadership position.)

    On the other hand, I wonder if the tithe has to be cash. Are we prepared to tell our people, “I know you can’t give because you got laid off. Would you be willing to tithe your talents? Would you be willing to tithe your time?”

    I am openly questioning if paid people in ministry are so worried that giving will shrink to the point that they will lose their paychecks that they not comforting the suddenly poor. I am worried that church leaders will be so desperate for income that they will skew what the Bible says for their own gain. And I’m openly wondering if the church is willing to think of a new way to make an offering to God. Will you still love Joe the Plumber when he becomes Joe the Gas Station Attendant?

    The more I think about this the more I am convinced that we, as Evangelicals, are missing something. I think we’ve so engrained ourselves into the lie of the American dream that we have warped the Gospel to being a game of bigger and better. If God is blessing a church, it’ll get bigger. Offerings will go up. We can hire more staff and build bigger buildings. What if God blessed the church by making it smaller?

  • The church of no money

    You’d have to live under a rock to not know that our country is in trouble financially. Voices like Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman just weren’t loud enough and our nation has basically credited itself to death. Amazingly, I’m not seeing any Christian blogger asking the most obvious question, “What will happen to our church when people stop giving?”

    Here’s the deal. The almighty dollar greatly matters to the church. From big buildings, to big salaries, to big spending ministries. The American evangelical church loves to collect and spend money. I don’t think that’s arguable.

    So, what’s going to happen when people stop giving money? We talked about this last night in community group. For whatever reason most people consider giving to their church to come from their discretionary income pocket. It’s important… but not as important as paying bills. Whether or not that is biblically right or not really isn’t the issue. The issue is that people give out of discretionary money. And now that huge segments of givers are loosing their ability to spend any discretionary money, the church will suffer big time. Missionaries and non-profits will feel it first.. they already are. Even the best planning, best savings, and best stewardship may not be able to make it through. I know of a megachurch in Michigan that has 12 months in reserves. I don’t think that will be enough.

    As churches fail to meet payroll a crisis may emerge. And like any crisis the wise will see it as an opportunity. What is true in business will be true in the church… out of crisis will come the best innovation!

    Tony Campolo touched this a litte at NYWC Sacramento. And it got me thinking… what will the church of no money look like? Tony paralleled it to the church in China after the Boxer Revolution. Surely, the church of Jesus Christ will prevail! But what will it look like?

    Thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

  • The Chicago Edition

    Each week I have fun shooting the podcast. But this particular episode was special because we had the opportunity to do a Chicago special.

    The concept of a Chicago special really didn’t come to me until Cathy and I got off the plane in Chicago. We had Andrew Marin booked to do the devotional and I knew I wanted to shoot my parts at North Avenue beach… then it hit me. If we added Jason Raitz from Willow Creek we could complete the Chicago-trifecta. Thankfully, Jason was able to squeeze us in. And just to show us he was a pro he did his segment in one take.

    Some tidbits about this episode…

    We shot Andrew Marin’s part on the rooftop deck of his condo. Technically, we walked past his deck to the unfenced part so we could shoot the city in the background with no fencing. If you look carefully… behind Andrew is Wrigley Field. Cathy went up there with me even though she is afraid of heights. We were about 15 floors off the ground, Andrew sat down about 5 feet from the edge… and Cathy stayed back a good 20 feet taking pictures. She was a trooper!

    Then we drove over to North Avenue beach.     When Kristen and I first started dating this was a favorite spot. In fact, just 100 yards north of where I shot my parts Kristen and I had our first real date. Romeo students will recognize that spot as well, we always took our mission team photo right there.

    From there, we went out to Willow Creek to meet Jason. I’ve known Jason a few years and I really love his passion for middle school students. The thing a lot of people probably don’t know about Willow is that while they have massive middle and high school ministries, they are 99% run by volunteers. As Jason shares in the podcast, a big part of his role is setting up those volunteers to lead small groups. With a staff of 4-5 full time folks they lead something like 1700 middle schoolers. Think about that… 4-5 adults oversee an organization that impacts 4-5k people any given month, including parents.

    When it was all said and done, shooting this 11 minute video and all the travel time was about 12 hours of our day. Totally worth it. I hope we get to do more location-based podcasts soon.

  • The Mission of Less

    Planet Wisdom Chicago was great. 2000 kids slammed into a building to be challenged by the word of God is always awesome. Going into it I knew that the team was passionate about the conference and I saw first hand why. It’s really cool! Lives were changed. It doesn’t get any better than that.

    At the same time I felt really challenged by the church that hosted. It was one of those brand new megachurch $10 million deals. I don’t know how long it has been open but it was massive and it was gorgeous. It had that new church smell. And I thought to myself, “I’m glad I am not on the leadership team of this church.” I would never question the integrity of a church leadership team and I am certainly not doing so now. Yet, I wondered how I would process the excess as it correlates to the excessive need of the gospel in their community. Would I have stood behind the decision to build? This is more a reflection of where I am in my walk with the Lord than it is an indictment on a church. In fact, I want to fully acknowledge that I am positive that it’s a great building for them. And I want to make it clear that I am positive the gospel is advanced as a result of that church. And this post has way more to do with big church buildings generally than it does the particular church who hosted us. Moreover, driving around the Chicago suburbs that particular church merely did what dozens of others did… build a bigger building to better suit their needs. OK, enough apologizing for what I’m about to say!

    Here’s what I was left thinking about. For $10 million how many churches could they have planted in their community? For $10 million how many kids could they mentor at the local schools? For $10 million how many homeless people could they feed? How many families could they help? Assuming they paid cash for the building, for the $10,000-$20,000 per month it likely costs to heat, cool, and light the building how much kingdom work are they prevented from doing with those same dollars?

    Now that we go to a church with no building, my perspective has changed. All of my life I’ve said “the church is the people and not the building.” And yet fiscally, the churches finances reflect that the church is the building and the staff. (90% of spending, more or less.) When a person diverts giving to advance the kingdom, a building based church says “No, that money needs to pay our light bill! We have staff to pay!” And as a result the kingdom work the Holy Spirit has compelled a giver to give towards is thwarted by a churches building needs. Now that we go to a church with no building, we can worry about building the kingdom of God in our community and not a building. It’s freeing and wonderful and we are thankful for this time that God has placed us here.

    As I’ve shared before, my perspective on big fancy churches always makes me think of my time in Europe. Congregations spent generations building trillion dollar cathedrals that are largely empty today. They were so busy showing their community that they were the city on a hill that they forgot to be the city on the hill!

    What do you think? Is a big, nice building needed to advance the gospel? Or is it preventing the people from being the church?

  • The Gospel is Social

    As I mentioned in my post last night, my head is spinning a little as I think about today’s evangelical church.

    And yet I know that simply by saying that the evangelical church should stop doing church the way they currently that some people will instantly categorize my thought as “social gospel” in order to ignore what God is doing in my heart.

    Here’s the thing. The gospel a social gospel. Pure and simple. Jesus didn’t just come to make a way for us to experience salvation. He also came that we may “do good works” to help bring the Kingdom of God to the people. This means bringing justice and mercy to people who experience injustice and no mercy.

    This is what I’m really asking. Is there any way that the church can stop discriminating? Is there any way we can try to reach all people? Or are we doomed to see the evangelical church target rich white people for another generation? And will that generation tolerate classism towards everyone who is not rich & white?

    What do you think?

  • Engaing students online

    Later this morning I’ll be jumping in on a conversation with Tim Schmoyer and a bunch of other youth ministry practicioners to lead a discussion on engaging studets online.

    It’s actually something I started doing back in 1994. My first freshmen evangelism paper in college was about doing ministry online… so it’s something I’ve got some experience with and enjoy talking about. Head over to Tim’s website and you’ll see a little more about how to get engaged in discussion. (note: I didn’t say lecture. I don’t lecture, I lead discussions.)