Tag: change

  • Stop reading books!

    No seriously.

    Books are great. Reading is fundamental. I’m all about practical resources and history and stories that carry you away to far away lands.

    But lets not get to the point where we stop thinking creatively about resourcing ourselves. Or acting in a way worthy of a historian writing about us. Or living a life that is a fantastic story which carries us to far away lands.

    You don’t change the world by sitting on a couch and reading a book. Change is an action.

    Don’t use books as a way to wuss out.

    Think for yourself.

    Act for yourself.

    You can create.

    Put the books down and get outside– live a story-worthy life.

    Inspiration is one thing. Inaction is unforgiveable.

  • Best of 2004

    Note: I’m on vacation this week. My family has a rule for daddy– It’s not a vacation if daddy brings a computer. Each day this week I’m highlighting my favorite post from the adammclane.com archives. These are oldies but goodies.

    Yes, I am Wasting My Life

    August 31st 2004

    Again this month we are short financially. Grad school came calling. Preschool came calling. Uncle Sam gets his cut in a few days. A combination of expected and unexpected expenses draws a little more money from savings to checking in a constant game of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Life’s expenses are again expensive. Each time this happens to me I start to reminisce about what life could have been like for Kristen and Megan and Paul. Had we stayed on the path of corporate success in Chicago we wouldn’t have this to worry about. The bills always got paid in full. There was always a little extra at the end of the month. We could always surprise someone with a special gift. Vacation? No problem. New tires? How about the best? New clothes? Why not. Yet in the same moments I recall the emptiness I had as I laid in bed at night, longing for my life to be wasted for something more important than getting richer… or more precisely, helping rich people get richer.

    Read the rest

    It’s 2010. I am still here. I am still wasting my life. And I still love every minute of it.

  • Affluence, Influence, and Activism

    Photo by lewishamdreamer via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    The byline of this site is: Crazy enough to change the world. On Twitter I alter this slightly, my bio line says, “The sane need not apply for the position of world changer.”

    Both of those boil down to a basic question in my life.

    How do I maximize whatever leverage I can acquire to help Christians be more Christ-like?

    Within the church there seems to be two primary ways to gain leverage.

    1. Affluence. The American church is pretty simple to manipulate. It pains me to say it but we all know it to be true. We even come up with cute little phrases to put in books affirming it. “An unfunded vision is just a dream.” Affluence is the fastest way to exude leverage on a Christian organization for change. There are a lot of Christian leaders who would balk at that– I don’t care, you know it’s ultimately true. If you are a leader of a Christian church or organization in America, budget is the fourth member of the Trinity. Budget is the silent elder. Budget is the ultimate accountability partner. We refuse to learn how to do ministry for free, so budget is power. So if you want to exude some leverage in any Christian organization, write a big check. Heck, just waving a big check is generally good enough.
    2. Influence. This is the great hope of all of us not born into money or lucky enough to buy Apple stock at $27. Many of the great voices in the American church today were not born into it. They acquired leverage through wise use of talents. (Either gifted by the Holy Spirit or just flat out gifted) These written/oral communicators are, in many ways, prophets to the church. In many ways, the local church leader is looking at these national church communicators and emulating them. People study their speaking mannerisms. People dress like them. People flock to hear them speak. People buy their books. And when a leader gets really powerful people model their churches after these prophets.

    An observation

    There are too many in category two trying to leverage their influence to affluence.

    There are not enough leveraging their influence to actualized change.

    Just because affluence is the fastest way to change any Christian organization– this doesn’t make it right. And, as we’ve seen over the last 50 years, leveraging affluence to change the church doesn’t make the church more Christ-like. It seems to just make the church more church-centric and less community-centric.

    Where are the activists?

    On Saturday, I watched a documentary about Paul Watson. Where is that guy in the church? The dude took a bullet for a freaking whale!

    On Sunday, my pastor talked about Nelson Mandela. Where is that guy in the church? 26 years in prison for his cause and came out hating no one.

    Where are the Martin Luther King, Jr’s? Where are the Mahatma Ghandis? Where are the César Chavez’s?

    Why is there no one in the American church willing to take a stand and leverage their influence for real change?

    There are a lot of strong opinions. But no one seeks to offend even when the offense is offensive. There are a lot of great ideas, but none of the people espousing those ideas are willing to spend the night in jail. There are a lot of offenses in the American church, but no one is wearing a bullet proof vest to preach on Sunday morning because we are offending people with truth to the point where we think someone might take a shot at us.

    Why is that?

    As Christians, we believe that Jesus is the solution. We believe that Jesus didn’t just come to save us, we believe we have been placed here on this planet to make things better.

    Do you want to know who is worth following? Find a man or woman who is calling Christians to love their neighbors like Jesus did, love justice like Jesus did, and leverage their influence for big/little things that matter.

    Follow those people.

    God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing. Ephesians 2:10 The Message

  • Church Leaders Love Status Quo

    Yesterday, a friend of mine sent me a link to a blog post by John Ortberg, a very successful author and pastor in the Bay Area of California.

    The blog post is titled, “Stop Trying to Change the World” and is aimed at people like me and you.

    Ultimately, we’re not the ones in the world-changing business. Our claims otherwise imply that history and humanity can be controlled and managed through human efforts. And–partly because of the law of unintended consequences–those attempts always end up doing more harm than good.

    Only God can change the world.
    Christianity is not first and foremost about creating values or establishing justice or championing righteous.
    It is about the greatest good:
    God Himself.

    Now, I understand that the blog title was written as a bait & switch to draw people like me into a discussion as his rhetoric quickly comes down from the bold title. And I understand that there’s a good chance Dr. Ortberg didn’t even really write the blog post since he likely has people to do that for him.

    But my thought for John Ortberg is pretty simple. I can see why you’d be against people in the church changing anything that might rock the boat. You’ve got it pretty good.

    Isn’t he breaking the rich-white-guy rule? Aren’t rich white men, based on his zip code he’s probably in the top 5% of earners in the United States, who live in comfortable suburbs full of gated communities supposed to either be all about social justice or just not talk about it at all?

    Speaking out against change… seems kind of out-of-place for a guy who writes books called “If You Want to Walk on Water You Have to Get Out of the Boat.”

    I don’t know which passage of Scripture leads Mr. Ortberg to say, “He says that because of the way power is widely viewed in our day, talk about ‘redeeming the culture’ or ‘transforming the world’ is largely understood as implying conquest, take-over, or domination. It means ‘our side will defeat your side by coercing everyone to do what we want.” The way I see church history, it’s precisely this tactic of seeking justice and serving the local community that lead to the rapid spread of Christianity! As the church cared for widows, orphans, lepers, and stood up for the oppressed, the church became an unstoppable force in culture because armies could destroy a community or people but the love that lived within and gave freedom both physically and in people’s hearts was unstoppable! Within 400 years of Christ, the emperor of Rome gave his heart to Jesus!

    Ortberg paraphrases the Jews in Babylonian exile as an example of God’s people being blessed for not changing the world. He neglects to mention why the Jews were in exile in the first place!

    The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young woman, old man or aged. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the LORD’s temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. They set fire to God’s temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there. 2 Chronicles 36:15-19

    And why did God hand them over the Nebuchadnezzar? Let’s see what those prophets, aka the Book of Jeremiah, whom God’s people mocked, had to say:

    • “I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and made my inheritance detestable.” Jeremiah 2:7
    • “I had planted you like a choice vine of sound and reliable stock. How then did you turn against me into a corrupt, wild vine?” Jeremiah 2:21
    • “Your own conduct and actions have brought this upon you. This is your punishment. How bitter it is! How it pierces to the heart!” Jeremiah 4:18
    • “This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the LORD.” Jeremiah 9:23-24
    • “You are always righteous, O LORD, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” Jeremiah 12:1

    I could go on. But anyone can read Jeremiah and see that the Jews weren’t exiled to Babylon to be some kind of faithful presence among the Babylonians. The Jews were taken into exile because they sinned against God, making a mockery of the law, and suffered a 400+ year timeout!

    I’m positive I am reading Mr. Orberg’s words incorrectly. Certainly, no pastor and Christian leader really thinks that the church is not supposed to be an agent of change within its own community?

    Certainly, we are not called to maintain a status quo when thousands of people in our country are sold as sexual slaves, millions oppressed by banks in debt they can never get out of, our economy completely dependent on illegal immigrants for our way of life while not granting those individuals basic civil rights the majority enjoys, and churches who gleefully oppress and belittle the people they are called to reach.

    Certainly the church is called to help our country, a nation full of no-fault divorce, more than half the kids living in single-parent homes, crumbling schools systems, a prison system over-flowing, drug-addiction, porn-addiction, on and on… right?

    Are we?

    Or maybe I’m just immature and idealistic.

  • Stick it to the Man

    I want to see church culture change. I know that if we’d just apply what we believe the church would be the most attractive option on the planet.

    And I also know that in order to change the leadership culture within a church you have to do three things.

    1. You have to play along to gain access to the people who can change things.
    2. You have to gently prod leadership with ideas that are approachable.
    3. And sometimes you need to show them your middle finger and just plain stick it to the leaders by giving them glimpses of your vision for reform.

    Here are some examples of moments in history when visionaries have extended the middle finger (mostly figuratively) to the man and changed the culture forever.

    • 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence and told King George, “Come and get me, punk.“
    • William Wallace lead a band of warriors against King Edward in a fight for independence for Scotland. “I’m not your slave, I’d rather die than serve you. Here, look at my butt.“
    • On December 1st, 1955 Rosa Parks sat down in the front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. “What are you going to do about it?”
    • George Whitefield lead massive outdoor revivals in staunch opposition to the established church and local laws which required permits to preach. Much of the American evangelical church was born from his disobedience. “We are going to meet outside, where the people are… you know, just like Jesus did. You OK with that, sucker?“
    • Martin Luther recognized he could barely move the needle an inch in his lifetime if he worked within the rules of Rome. So he wrote some things down and made his own appointment with the Pope Leo. “You’ll be changing one way or the other, Mr. Fancy Hat.“
    • Instead of ignoring the Pharisees and their muttering, Jesus teaches his band of cultural losers that they should go out and try to reach Pharisees. “Sometimes you stick it to the man by going out and loving the man while sticking it to him.”

    What’s the problem with this?

    • A lot of us are the man.
    • In nearly all of those situations, the established religious leaders were on the wrong side of history. Oops.
    • We stand in a long time of people who realize… awful hard to stick it to ourselves.

    The reason I’m saying this is to remind people like myself that we are, oftentimes, the biggest agents against change. We have our ways. We have our culture. We look at prominence and degrees. As the established religious leaders we give a million excuses why the pains in the neck are wrong and we are right.

    World changing men and women come into our lives, observe our behavior and practices, and give us the middle finger.

    The lesson from the examples above is simple: When people come to you to give you the middle finger of no-more-fellowship… you need to listen to them. You need to give them the opportunity to be heard.

    They may be right and you may be wrong.

    You need to look at those people with sober judgment.

    Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. – Apostle Paul, Romans 12:2

  • 10 Ways Your Church Can Be Good News to the Neighborhood

    I have a fervent belief that if we want to reach a post-Christian society, we have to be Good News before someone will listen to Good News.

    Here are 10 ways you can begin transforming your church into a place where Good News flows from:

    1. If you have a building, offer a public bathroom and shower that’s open to whomever needs it during your office hours.
    2. Ask every attendee to get in the habit of bringing a canned food item (you get the idea) to church every week. Then start a food pantry that’s open a couple days a week for people to drop in.
    3. Buy things for the church from local suppliers. Avoid the big box (probably cheaper) stores for ones that support a local company. Encourage your church attendees to do the same.
    4. Encourage people who go out to lunch after church to be generous with tipping servers and conscious of how long they are staying. You want wait staffs to desire the church crowd, they are avoiding it at all costs now.
    5. Require church staff to live within the area you are trying to reach.
    6. Add a requirement to all board and staff job descriptions that they attend public meetings. (Schools, city planning, city council, county government, etc.)
    7. Ask adults to volunteer at the public schools. (Give staff lots of freedom to volunteer)
    8. Participate in organized community events. Cleaning up, planting flowers, helping with parades, etc.
    9. Make church property open to the public. (Playground equipment, skateboard park, community garden, host local festivals, allow the schools to hold events in the auditorium.) Better yet, turn all of your property into a community center.
    10. Create a culture of saying yes to community involvement instead of no.

    These are my ideas. What are yours?

    How can your church (and the people who go to it) become Good News to your neighborhood?

  • Boring Old Church

    Photo by richardmasoner via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Perhaps the reason your church isn’t growing is because you are boring? Your church is boring. Your faith is boring. The Jesus you’re presenting is boring.

    People’s faith isn’t challenged by your ability to keep them busy. It is transformed when they are sent out to do God’s work in their daily life.

    The last thing most people need is another sermon. The last thing they need is another worship experience.

    The first thing they need is to apply the last thing you taught them. I guarantee you that your next worship service will be exciting if your community of believers is coming to worship Jesus after they have dipped their toes in the River of Grace and seen Him act.

    That is exciting. That grows… Quickly.

    No more songs about moving mountains until you show people– God moving mountains!

    Deal?

  • Why would giving more offerings to the poor change the community?

    Yesterday, I received this comment on the post The Goal of the Staffless Church. I think that the comment is representative of a lot of people’s opinions, and I wanted to report the comment as well my response for the purpose of discussion.

    Pete’s comment:

    I get what you’re saying and where you’re coming from, but I feel like you’re ignoring the cultural differences between AD 2010 America and AD 35 Rome. Sure we can devote 90% of our offerings to the hungry and poor, but that has not had any success when we devoted 20% to it, why would it change now? Plenty of churches offer plenty of services to those in need. It rarely results in anything resembling conversion and is usually simply a faith-based form of socialism. I’m not saying we shouldn’t so those things and indeed, we do far too little of it. but if our motivation is evangelism and growth, as opposed to loving others and obeying God, then we’re missing the boat.

    And in an age where church volunteering is at an all-time low, the idea that churches should ask ministers to do as much as they do AND hold down a full-time job seems a little off base.

    The problem, in my opinion, is that the theology of the modern church is very similar to that of the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. They mean well, but focus on avoiding “dirty” people, doing “good, Christian” things and and are highly judgmental and inbred. Most of the church’s functions today are focused on the congregations and not those who don’t know Jesus. We’ve created a whole new type of Gentile. We spend far too much time and money on conventions, retreats and Christian concerts, books and seminars. We can get 100 people for a special Christmas Eve service but only 5 for an evangelism class. We’ll pay 300 dollars and travel hundreds of miles for a weekend of listening to our favorite authors talk about how to be happy people, but barely drop a 20 for missions.

    And the answer is to refocus and look outwards to those who need God, accept them without judgment and lead them to God’s love–much like Jesus did when faced with a similarly minded Jewish community.

    Adam’s response:

    We’re not too far apart here. I agree with you about theology. My contention is that most churches don’t practice monothesis worship of God, they practice a form of animism. They feed the god of fear with their teaching dependency. They placate the god of safety by reshaping the Bible about the individual. And they lay it all on the alter of the god of church growth.

    Honestly, if all churches in America gave away 20% of their offerings to the poor… we’d live in a country that looked much different.

    I think your wrong about the connection between volunteerism and busy pastors. My contention is exactly the opposite. If the pastor refused to do ALL of that stuff he/she is doing, it’d either force people to step up… or the church would stop doing those things.

    And just a reminder, the early church describes socialism. Capitalism is not a Christian value. It is a perversion of the New Testament’s view of possessions, personal value, and money. Aspirations of a capitalistic/Christian society is a syncretism with Western culture.

    Your thoughts?

  • Putting Failure in Perspective

    When I meet someone who is stuck in life I often discern that they are really stuck because they are afraid to fail.

    Some ways that exhibits:

    • They hate their current lot in life (job, relationship status, living situation) but are afraid that if they make a move that may regret it and long for their current comfort.
    • They feel called to trust God in an area of their life but they want to wait for x, y, or z conditions to be right before they do anything.
    • They want to try something (new career, new relationship, new life) but think they aren’t qualified.

    Here’s a secret. I’ve got all of the same insecurities. I’ve got all the same worries. I don’t want to look stupid or act any more foolish than anyone else.

    But I’ve also learned this:

    • I’m not getting any closer to my dreams by sitting on my hands.
    • I’m not getting any more qualified by sitting on my hands.
    • I’ll never have a relationship with _____ if I don’t say hello.
    • If I don’t go for a chance to live somewhere else than it’ll never happen.
    • If I know God called me to do something, I don’t want to be like Jonah.
    • If I have friends who try to hold me back, I know they aren’t the type of friends I want to have.
    • I don’t want to sit on my porch swing in my 60s and tell my grandkids “coulda, woulda, shoulda” stories. I’d much rather tell them, “I tried it and sucked at it.“

    Here are some things I’ve learned about failure.

    • Failure is part of the process.
    • Failure can actually be fun.
    • Failure doesn’t make you a bad person.
    • Being a failure doesn’t make you a fool.
    • Failure is key to discovery.
    • Failure is a learning device.
    • Failure doesn’t limit your opportunities, it explodes them.

    Fear is none of those things. Fear inhibits the process. It prevents fun. It makes you no fun to be around. It makes you feel foolish. It prevents discovery. It prevents learning. It limits your opportunities.

    “The only thing worth fearing is fear itself” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

  • Change as Technology

    I love to track changes in technology. I can’t help looking my sons Nintendo DS, his prize possession, and remember what it was like when I received by Nintento Gameboy back in the day.

    If you are anything like me you are also infatuated with tracking these changes. It doesn’t matter what you are into– computers, television shows, sewing machines– you can look back and remark on changes to the technology you love.

    One of my favorite past times is talking about the change technology cycle.

    But do we stop to think and think of change as a technology itself?

    Wait… did you catch that?

    Change is a technology. Absolutely.

    Philosophically speaking we believe in change. Our society conveys it and our science confirms it. Change is necessary.

    • Change means innovative.
    • Change means keeping ahead, keeping fresh.
    • Change means alive.
    • Change means evolving.
    • Change means refinement.
    • Change means you are fighting against the effects of entropy.

    Does it actually mean those things? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. But we almost always believe change is either good or bad.

    When we look at change as a technology we gain the ability to zoom out the lens and examine the underlying currents, reasoning, and relationships which change creates. When we see change as technology we are able to recognize where we’ve been, why we are where we are now, and potentially what will come next.