Tag: challenge

Good News idea: Ring that bell

Pretty soon you’ll start hearing a familiar Christmas jingle. No, I don’t mean the annoying Christmas muzak you’ll hear at the grocery store. I mean the jingle of the bell ringer outside.

If you’ve rushed by the red kettle as quickly as possible your whole life, maybe you don’t know that it’s a fundraiser for the Salvation Army. Simply put the Salvation Army is a denomination (of sorts) built upon the idea that the Gospel of Jesus isn’t just for people who are accustomed/comfortable going to church. For more than 149 years the Salvation Army has ministered to the destitute, hungry, and homeless.

In other words, the Salvation Army does the work of bringing Good News to those who most need it 365 days per year. They are there every day for the homeless among us. They are there when disaster strikes. They are there when the hurts are bad. And they are there to help heal painful addictions.

Here’s a challenge. From Thanksgiving to Christmas you will see these Salvation Army bell ringers outside of malls, grocery stores, and department stores all over.

Don’t pass a single one. Every time you go in a store with a bell ringer outside drop in a quarter or a dollar. If you have your kids with you, give them the money to put in the kettle so they can start to see the connection between your money and what you do with your money for good.

But wait? That might cost me a lot of money?

Yup, make a choice. You want to save that quarter or dollar– don’t go shopping.

Think of it as a toll. To get into that store you have to donate to the poor. Are you up for the challenge?

Don’t just wish good tiding of joy. Be good tidings of joy.

November 11, 2011
New is dangerous, old is noble

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring. ~Warren Chappell (1904-1991)

I find that people have a curious attitude towards new ways of doing things.

If I were to tell you that part of my job is to remain informed by reading journals on the study of adolescence, magazines to keep up with the latest trends in adolescent culture, network with youth workers around the world to hear what’s going on in the field of youth ministry, and read book after book of youth ministry training materials… you’d likely have a noble attitude towards my lifestyle.

Wow, Adam McLane is a well-read, well-informed guy.

But if I were to tell you that I do all of that sitting in front of a computer all day, reading dozens of blog posts, networking with people on Twitter and Facebook, and reading hundreds of pages of stuff every day to find the very best stuff out there.

Oh, Adam McLane is addicted to the internet. [Make ugly, judgmental face]

People’s attitudes towards acquiring news information and reading.

6 hours of sitting and reading a book or digesting the latest newspaper = noble use of time.

6 hours of sitting and reading online or digesting the latest news online = evil use of time.

The same could be said of people’s attitudes towards mobile devices.

6 hours of sitting behind a desk pushing paperwork around = noble use of time.

6 hours of actively doing stuff in the field with 30-40 minutes of time away from that to send emails or communicating with co-workers = evil use of time.

The same could be said about interacting with ones friends.

I either see or call all of my friends nearly every day = noble use of time & energy.

I connect or exchange messages with all of my friends nearly every day on either Facebook, Twitter, or text messaging = evil use of time & energy.

What’s the point?

I find it disturbing that people say, “You need to manage your time online or with your mobile device. You are probably addicted.” But you will never hear someone say, “Pray for Adam, he’s addicted to reading books. Holy cow, he sits and listens to his friends way too much. I think he is addicted. He’s a communication-aholic.”

I’m not saying that there aren’t times when I’m horribly out-of-balance or that I’m somehow really perfect. (Because I’m actually quite messed up.)

What I am saying is that people have had negative attitudes towards people who do things in new or innovative ways for as long people have invented stuff.

Several thousand years ago there were probably people challenging villagers to not use this new thing called a “bridge” too much or you’d get addicted to it and not really appreciate walking around the canyon or wading through the icy river.

It’s always been this way.

Old is noble.

New is dangerous.

March 11, 2011
Cultural Engagement Strategy
Photo by Stuart Boreham via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Have you ever opened your eyes underwater? You know, without goggles?

All of the underwater world is a blur. Sure, you can see stuff but you can only see things nearby and its nothing like what you see on a National Geographic special.

Then someone hands you a set of goggles and you go back underwater. It’s an entirely different experience. If you are shallow enough and the water is clear, you can see the bottom. You can see fish and rocks and plant life.

The difference is quick and obvious.

This is the same experience I feel that most people in full-time church ministry go through. They are underwater in the culture they live in without goggles on.

Most churches are failing to reach the culture because they lack a strategy to engage the culture they live in.

The staff needs goggles so they can actually see what is happening, not just 5 feet in front of their face and fuzzy, but all the way to the bottom!

Any ministry professional can do the math. Add up the amount of people who are actually attending the churches in their community, divide it by the population and you can see that the Gospel is not winning. In most communities you’ll find less than 10% of the population goes to any church more than once a month. In the most reached communities you’ll find about 30%. (Go ahead, spend the 30 minutes to do so with your zip code if you don’t believe me.)

That’s an F for the church. The church is underwater in the culture it is supposed to thrive in. Jesus calls us to reach the whole world (100%) with the message of the Gospel and we’re at 3%-30%. Not awesome.

It’s no wonder why…
- Christian colleges and seminaries focus little on engaging culture. I’ve visited a fair number of them and most of their students describe their campuses as a bubble. (Meaning they don’t engage the community around them very well.)
- Churches are notoriously insulated from culture.
- Churches tend to hire people who have spent the vast majority of their adult life either in a Christian college, a seminary, or the local church. All places which are notoriously bad at engaging with culture.
The result is an “us vs. them” mentality. It’s a simpletons philosophy of cultural engagement.

And it isn’t working.

I once visited a church that had the following truism painted in big letters on the wall of their foyer. “Through you we have access to every single person in our community.”

That is true. But if we aren’t teaching people how to engage with those people in a meaningful way it’s empty access.

I believe that people working at churches across the country and around the world are good people. They are in ministry because they want to reach people with the Good News of Jesus Christ. (e.g. The right reason for being in ministry.)

I believe that the vast majority of people who are frustrated in their ministry calling are frustrated because they feel stuck… a ministry life isn’t what they thought it was… and that frustration will be eased if they stop focusing their time on running programs for people who come to church and start focusing their time on reaching people who don’t come to church.

5 Steps to Creating a Cultural Engagement Strategy for Your Church
1. (observe) Lock your church staff out of the office for a week and each of them visit 10 parishioners at their places of work. (More on this idea)
2. (engage) Implement 3 of these 10 ways your church can be good news to the closest public school to your church office.
3. (engage) Implement 3 of these 10 ways your church can be good news to the neighborhood your church building is in.
4. (strategy) Schedule a 2 day off-site retreat with your entire staff and leadership team to share what you’ve learned in items 1-3, and create a strategy which continues to foster engagement between members of the church and the community the church ministers in. (Cover my travel and I will facilitate this retreat for free, if your church will commit to doing items 1-3 beforehand.)
5. (implementation) Take whatever steps are necessary to become a church wholly focused (Maybe possessed is the right word?) on meaningfully engaging the needs of your churches immediate area for the sake of the Gospel prevailing.
Before people will hear Good News you have to become a church which is Good News.
November 3, 2010
Put Up of Shut Up

I’m 33 years old. Let’s say I live to be 100. Best case scenario I’ve completed a third of my life. The first third of my life was relatively unremarkable. Looking at the fictional “bucket list” I still have a lot of dreams, goals, and accomplishments left to complete. I have suffered through some hard times. I have experienced great exhilaration and moments of joy. But, with 33 years in the past I’m left with precious little to show for it. A sober judgment of myself reveals that I’ve talked a good game… but don’t have the track record to back up my smack talking. That’s a crisis of self-realization, isn’t it?

Some respond to this reality in their lives by shutting up. I hope to respond counter to what my cultural leanings say is best. I do not think I’m called to slither away into silence and sit on a list of dreams for the next two-thirds of my life. Personal failures and moderate successes to date aren’t going to stop me from a pursuit of something much greater.

My personal mantra lately has been, “put up or shut up.” In relationships, I’ve gone into a risk taking mode by radically speaking the truth– making myself more available to some and less available to others. At work, I have a tendency to play it safe– but this mantra has me a lot more vocal. In my family, I realize that I can’t just talk a good game about stuff publicly– so I’ve gotten aggressive in putting up barriers to protect my family from my own stupidity. Those are just three areas of my life I feel like I need to put up or shut up. There are a lot more.

I look at my first 33 years as preparation for the next 33 years. It’s time for me… In increasing ways to put up or shut up.

I suppose there is a challenge for any Christian leader in this. This speaks to our worldview as believers. If the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true… it isn’t just a Gospel of personal renewal, it is also the Gospel of institutional, societal, interpersonal, and even corporate renewal.

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

If Ephesians 2:10 is true God’s people are a people of renewal. Their good works make things better and better. It’s my naive hope that women and men who say yes to Jesus will embrace Ephesians 2:10 and wrestle with this reality… they need to put up or shut up. If we are really God’s workmanship the evidence of that will be our good works into our society. When I look at the people and institutions in my life… my society, my company, myself, and my family… I believe that our best days are yet ahead. If I am faithful to God, that is. I believe the reason I am placed in those institutions and relationships is because God prepared in advance for me to be there.

Conversely, it is the same for anyone who is God’s child. We are called to express the Gospel is tangible ways. (American evangelicalism focuses too much on church and preaching and not enough on application the other 6 days, 23 hours per week) We don’t just have relationships just by coincidence, do we? We don’t have families for biological reasons, we are called to live out the Gospel to our children and ones we are most intimate with. We are not just called to run a program or earn a paycheck, we are called to be God’s workmanship in the workplace. We aren’t just mystically placed into our apartment complex, neighborhood, or city randomly. God chose the work of loving our neighbors for us to do in advance for us to do. Those actions are the Gospel of Jesus Christ flowing through his people and renewing those areas of our lives.

“Is it time to put up or shut up?”

September 14, 2009