Tag: Church

  • Public Ministry Prerequisites

    A friend recently expressed a frustration that anyone who works in a church feels all the time. He said, “We just get the leftovers of people’s time, energy, and heart.”

    He said it in a negative way. I affirmed him in a positive way. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

    I get the same dirty look every time I say that.

    Here is what most believers in your church really want to know— but you won’t give them a straight answer.

    In your opinion, what does an “all-in” lifestyle look like?

    When am I doing enough for the Kingdom so that I have the right & responsibility to say no?

    This is the elephant in the room in every church. This is what people in the pews long to know. They all want to hear a simple answer to that simple question.

    They need a checkbox and you give them an essay. They ask for a cheeseburger and you bring them a Power Bar. And you wonder why they just tip instead of tithe? That disappointed look as people meander out of your sanctuary Sunday mornings? Yup, that’s it. They don’t know if they are doing enough. And you won’t tell them.

    Why? Because, as church leaders, we don’t like the answer.

    Mark 12:28-34 deals with this exact question. See what happens when a religious leader asks Jesus, “What am I supposed to be doing with my day-to-day life?“

    One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

    “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

    “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

    When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

    I love that last line– ZING!

    You didn’t see religious leaders lining up to ask the Messiah another question, did you? Nope. They didn’t like Jesus’ answer back then and church leaders don’t like it today.

    You can hear the groan of every single church staff member. Why didn’t Jesus implore people to give more time to the church? Why? Why?! WHY?!?!?!

    The frustrated staff

    Every staff member I talk to has the same 2-3 problems. (Youth pastors, worship pastors, senior pastors, children’s pastors, small groups pastors… all of ’em.)

    They have vision for great programs. Great ideas. But they struggle to find the resources and people to implement them.

    They all deal with the same pressure: In order to be judged as having done a good job, a noble ambition, they need the resources to implement their programs.

    The frustrated parishioner

    [Confession: I never saw this on church staff! Like literally… it was there, but I never saw it and no one ever articulated it to me. I didn’t see it until I transitioned from being on staff to becoming a parishioner.]

    Each week, sermons implore them to live out the Gospel in their daily life. At work, at home, with their friends, seek justice, etc. Then they are told they need to keep their relationship with God first and their ministry to their family second. But each week they are also asked to help with the programs of the church.

    They all deal with the same pressure: They have a 40-50 hour per week job to pay the bills, they have kids that need help with homework and other stuff in their lives, they need to keep their relationship with God growing, their relationship with their spouse and kids second… there isn’t much time or energy available after that. And the church gives them 30 hours worth of things they could be doing with the 4 hours they have available each week.

    Frustration by design?

    It’s not supposed to be like that. Jesus, our Groom, never intended a life in His church to be frustrating for the bride.

    Worse yet. Everyone is frustrated and it isn’t working. The church, as a whole, is reaching less people. Our population is exploding and our churches are happy to hold steady. That’s a net loss.

    We need to get back on course with what the Bible teaches us about our daily lives.

    Prerequisites to public ministry

    (These are the things you need to take care of BEFORE you consider anything at church. Otherwise, take a ticket and head to the end of the frustration line. You’ll be there a while.)

    1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Are you putting your relationship with Jesus on hold so you can serve? If so, you are being disobedient. No wonder you are frustrated.
    2. Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus didn’t mean this metaphorically. He meant it literally. If you don’t know your neighbors names and are not actively loving them… then you aren’t qualified to help out at church. Define neighbors: If their property touches or is adjacent to yours, those are your neighbors. God placed you on your block because He is smarter than you are. He wants you to love and serve them. It’s not something you do when you have time. It’s something you make time to do. And it’s more important than helping at youth group or singing in the choir. That’s why it’s a prerequisite.
    3. Love your family. When Megan was 6 she said to me, “Daddy, I wish you spent as much time with me as you spend with the kids at church.”  Six. Years. Old. That’s when I knew I needed an extended break from public ministry. It wasn’t that I was unqualified. And it certainly wasn’t that I was unsuccessful. It’s that things had gotten out-of-order. Never again. If your family is groaning because you are spending too much time at church… it’s time to readjust.

    If you have those things in order than you can consider helping a program at church. And if you don’t have these three things covered, not just in your opinion, but in the opinion of the people in your life, than you need to stop doing public ministry.

    Trust me, the church will endure and prevail. She will be fine!

    To my frustrated church staff friends:

    Here are two things I learned the hard way.

    • You are not exempt. Being a pastor at the church does not mean you can be so busy you don’t spend time with God, don’t love your neighbors, and don’t love your family. In fact, having your house in order is a biblical requirement (1 Timothy 3:4) for leadership because it validates everything you do and say. #1 & #3 are usually OK with church staff… it’s #2 we forget to invest in.
    • It won’t get better until you change your behavior. I think I made the mistake of thinking that I could circumvent this if I created a good enough program or if I just invested in developing leaders more. It didn’t. It only spun more out of control as time went on. The reality was that it didn’t get better until I took care of those 3 prerequisites.

    “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” Romans 12:1

  • 5 Ways to be a Peacemaker in Your Community

    5 Ways to be a Peacemaker in Your Community

     

    Separation is to the protestant church what kryptonite is to Superman. In my opinion, separation is the bitter herb of the Protestantism Reformation.

    Separations marks are seen in every corner & practice of the church. Nearly every denomination began when one group of people decided they didn’t agree to the point that they needed to start another group of churches. When a leader grows to a certain point in protestantism– a symbol of that power is to create their own ministry. The way we do communion has resulted in separation. The way we do baptism has resulted in separation. The way our churches are governed has resulted in separation. The songs we sing, the way we preach, the Bible we read, on and on… we are a people marked by separation. (Yes, wars have even been fought over some of these things.)

    How many flavors of Presbyterian are there? How many flavors of Methodist? How many flavors of Baptist? Do you even know why they separated in the first place? Would you blush if you examined the issues there? Probably, at least a little.

    It’s in our DNA to separate. When something happens that we are uncomfortable with our gut reaction is to push away and separate. The cost of unity is seen as too great a sacrifice in the face of personal views on doctrine and practice or even personality.

    And yet, Jesus’ words ring out…

    Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God. – Matthew 5:9

    Leaning into making peace

    If pushing away is natural to us. We need Jesus’ power to help us to lean in to peacemaking.

    While our instincts are to separate, our minds know we are stronger together. We are better together. We are more effective together. We utilize resources better together. We are encouraged when we work together. The world listens to those who work together.

    When we do stuff together we stick out. It feel right because it is good!

    When we chose unity over separation our distinctives merely add flavor to our lives instead of souring the pot.

    Conversely, when the trivial, non-essential, and personal preference cause us to separate we need to call it out for what it is– sin. Jesus called the peacemaker blessed, literally happy. So what does that make those of us who separate?

    5 Ways to be a Peacemaker in Your Community

    1. Take the first step towards reconciliation. Examine the history of your church. For example: Is there a First Church and a Second Church in your town? Separated because of race in a bygone era? Reach out to the other congregation. Ask for their forgiveness. I’m not saying you need to merge congregations… but you will never know the power of reconciliation until you take the first step and humbly ask to have coffee with the other churches leaders.
    2. Develop a sister church friendship with another congregation in your zip code. This doesn’t have to be formal or difficult. But begin the process of your staff getting to know and blessing the staff of the other congregation. Even if it’s just a quarterly prayer breakfast… that’s a step towards making peace. As your congregations develop a sister relationship you will begin to see the fruit of that blessing.
    3. Support good ideas in town. When another congregation has a great idea jump on the bandwagon. Cancel stuff in your church and lend your staff and resources to the idea. Carry an attitude of what’s good for the Kingdom is good for our church.
    4. Support community organizations in town. I was shocked at how easy this was. When I’ve reached out to community organizations doing good things and said, “We’d like to help. Not to make our name great or to even tell people about the church, just to make this a great place to live.” That simple, easy, free step has lead to infinite blessings for the church.
    5. Mediate the divide. What would happen if your church became neutral ground for discourse and disagreement? What if your staff became known as people who went to community board meetings and helped develop 3rd option compromises?

    Dream with me

    Next steps: What if the people of your church started to see themselves literally as peacemakers in their job places?

    What are your ideas for the church becoming known as a place where peace is made, at all cost?

  • If Sunday morning is about teaching…

    Photo by Phillip Howard via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Then how are you measuring what people are learning?

    As a youth worker I’m always aware of leakage in my teaching. That is, the difference between what I am teaching and what learners are learning.

    There is a naughty little educational word called “retention” we need to deal with. If there isn’t, what is the point of my teaching if my pupils aren’t learning?

    Questions I ask myself as a communicator of Biblical truth:

    • Why am I teaching them?
    • How do I measure if they are learning?
    • How do I teach all levels of learners, interest levels, and learning styles at the same time?

    Those who have sat under my leadership know that I do a lot of repetition and context to my regular teaching. Why do I do that? Because I want some things to stick. It doesn’t matter to me if you write it down in your outline or talked about it in a small group, I believe the Bible has incredible value for believers, we are called to know God’s Word, and we as leaders as told that one of our qualifications for biblical leadership is an ability to teach. I repeat and quiz because I want to burn an image of God’s Word on your heart. It’s not enough to know about the Bible… the teachings of Jesus have to be in your heart to impact your daily life.

    I also know, as a leader, I’ll be judged by what people actually learn and what people actually do with what I am teaching them.

    As the years have gone by I’ve become less enamored with perfecting my lecture-styled teaching and more enamored with a discussion-based, conversational-style.

    Why? Because I’ve found, for me, that method to be a solid way to engage with the middle 70% of my audience. Folks in the top 15% aren’t my target. And folks in the lower 15%… I hope to teach them with other methods that work for them.

    Last Monday, I posed the question: Why are we, as believers, expected to listen more than we act?

    Some commenters took the post as an attack on the church, going to church, and those who lead at church. Others seemed offended that I’d even bring up Sunday morning as something we could collectively improve upon.

    My intention was to the contrary. It was an attack on doing something that is largely ineffective for the sake of doing what we know in opposition to what might work better. For all of the thousands of hours the average church goer has listened to we should have seen so much more fruit. Let’s not forget that the church is on decline.

    That pushes questions to the forefront of my mind: Is it the hearer who is disobedient to the teaching? Or is it the teacher who is failing to teach truth in a way that influences action? Probably some fault lies on either side.

    It is my hypothesis that the primary method we are using for educating our congregations on Sunday mornings needs alteration. Church leadership is full of brilliant minds. We should show off our brilliance in our ability to lead people in innovative way: Not just talk about leadership but do it.  Not merely preach a message that doesn’t move people, instead allow the message we preach to move us.

    At the end of the day results are all that matter. Jesus isn’t going to look at you and say, “Awesome preaching, my good and faithful servant.” He will look at your body of work and judge you by the results & intention of your heart.

    Photo by byronv2 via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    What are the physical restrictions to learning on Sunday morning?

    Nearly all churches are constructed the same way. Rows of seats all facing forward with a person on stage or behind a podium. That person lectures, sometime passionately, sometimes you fill out an outline, sometimes words are put on a screen.

    But the Sunday morning experience is typically based on a single teaching method: Lecture.

    Is that how you learn best? It isn’t for me. I learn best by hearing, discussing, and practicing. Passive-learning bores me. I need something to do!

    And when I look around on Sunday morning I don’t see a lot of learning going on. (Bear in mind, my pastor is off the charts good at what he does, he is my favorite preacher. Week in and week out, he’s just as solid as people who have sold as who we have at our conferences.) Instead, I see a lot of polite nodding, the occasional taking of notes, and virtually no way to respond.

    Sunday morning is highly assumptive.

    • There is an assumption that people in the pews are going to live this teaching out in their lives.
    • There is an assumption that people are going to talk about what they heard at lunch or with a small group, or somehow try to knead the message into their lives.
    • There is an assumption that the church staff spends the majority of their work week living that message out.
    • There are no checks and balances to make sure anyone is putting anything into practice. (Staff and attendee alike.)
    • The proof is in the pudding. There are hundreds of thousands of churches in America. Most use the same methods, few grow. Conversely, where the church is growing around the world and even here in the United States, different methods are in play.

    The “It’s not about Sunday morning argument.“

    I’ll be the first to admit that the Christian life isn’t 100% about Sunday morning. But, for most people, it’s the centerpiece of their walk with God. People aren’t just whining about being busy, they are. And they are sitting in your pews, bored, and saying to themselves… “You kind of waste my time on Sunday morning, why should I trust you with more of my time? We don’t need another program. We need this program to work for us.” If it isn’t about Sunday morning than why do we even do it? Of course Sunday morning is very important! Let’s not fool ourselves with double talk.

    Are the methods we use on Sunday morning “sacred?“

    Sure, Paul preached until a young man fell from a window and died. (Then Paul healed him.) And Jesus preached both at the temple and in public. No doubt, he was taught by rote memory as a boy growing up attending the synagogue. At the same time, oral tradition and discourse were both forms of education and forms of entertainment. We see from the New Testament that Jesus didn’t instruct his disciples to build churches and hold meetings. Instead, he taught them while they were on the road from place to place. Or by sending them out in pairs to do ministry in His name. Or using parables. Or by asking them questions. In truth, we see a variety of teaching methods to communicate biblical truth in the Bible.

    While the way we’ve always done church is held as sacred, the methods we use aren’t Biblically sacred. But what is sacred is the simple command to teach.

    A challenge

    Photo by SparkFun Electronics via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    I want to challenge you to try something. Maybe it’ll sound crazy. But maybe it’ll just be crazy enough to change your church. (And maybe you don’t have access to try this with the whole church, so try it with your youth group!)

    Conduct a six-week experiment.

    Week one: Teach a normal Sunday service. On Thursday, send out a 5 question email (or Facebook) survey for Sunday morning attendees, asking them 4 basic questions about your message, and one open-ended question about how they applied the message on Sunday morning. (What was the passage? What was the main point? Which of the following was an illustration? What’s one way you are applying last week’s teaching today?)

    Week two: Teach, again, in your normal fashion. This week, acknowledge after the sermon that they will again receive a survey via email on Thursday. This will tip them off that it is coming, so expect the results to be higher.

    Take weeks three & four off from the experiment. You’ll be tempted to peak at the results so far. Show discipline!

    Week five: Try a different teaching method on Sunday morning. Maybe teach by discussion. Or get people into work groups. Do anything that isn’t one person up front teaching. Don’t warm people that this is coming! That’ll mess up the experiment. Then send out the same 5 question survey again. (Expect some negative comments, people coming on Sunday might hate any type of change.)

    Week six: Use the same method one more time. Send out the same survey. Just like in week two, tell them to expect a short survey on Thursday.

    At the end of the six weeks unseal the results and meet together as a staff to look at them. Did retention scores increase or decrease? Did the change in method cause more people to apply teaching? Did the workgroups hold each other accountable? Overall, what was the net change? (Heck, maybe the old method was statistically better!)

    Week seven: Send out one last email sharing the full results.

    This will serve two purposes. First, it’ll communicate to your congregation that you are taking your biblical role as a teacher seriously and being professional by sharing the results of an experiment which involved them. Second, it’ll invite the congregation into the problem solving. Chances are good that you’ll get a lot of feedback simply by conducting the experiment.

    Of course, I’d love it if you shared your results with me as well. Email me a Word document and I’ll share them on my blog.

  • No more country clubs

    Photo by Elliot Brown via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Quick facts

    Cumulatively, the American church is likely the largest private land owner in the country. Most zip codes contain at least one house of worship. In my zip code alone there are more than 30. In many communities around our nation the church occupies some of the prettiest property in town. It’s square footage competes with all other public buildings in girth and consumption of natural resources.

    Cumulatively, the American church is likely one of the largest private employers in the country. Each of those congregations in my zip code employ at least one individual. But when you include secretaries, janitors, and associates, the number goes up. Nationwide hundreds of thousands of people are employed by churches.

    And yet…

    • Churches pay no property taxes
    • Most church staff do not pay full payroll taxes.

    Think about the fiscal crisis your state is going through… not taxing churches and their staff comes at a pretty high cost, right?

    Why is that so?

    Have you ever thought about it? Why don’t churches pay property taxes? And why are clergy taxed differently than other types of employees?

    The best I can tell there are two main reasons for this:

    1. In the last 70 years, there has been an increasing desire to keep church and state separate. The Supreme Court has, again and again, affirmed a desire to not sniff around in the churches business too much. Collecting property and payroll taxes would probably require audits which the federal government wants no part of.
    2. Historically, there was an understanding that the local church was the primary provider of social programs. It didn’t make sense to tax the entity taking care of the sick, feeding the poor, and often providing meeting space for the community.

    (More on this from the L.A. Times)

    Closed to non-members

    If I were to walk to the front door of most churches in our country today and pull the handle of the door I’d find it locked. (And not because it’s a holiday, it’s locked nearly every day. Even if unlocked I don’t have access to use the space.) I’ll quickly be told it is private property.

    The simple truth is that the church is one of the largest private land owners and largest private employers, but it is generally closed to the public. The possibility of its existence is financed by 100% of the community whereas the benefits of the property, staff, and resources, are functionally only available to the 5% or so who attend.

    For years I’ve heard the local church referred to as a country club and scoffed. But largely, it is true.

    The public is not welcome.

    My dream for the church

    It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I will watch the speeches. (And make my kids watch them, too.) I will remember the effects of his ministry. And I will be inspired by the quotes on Twitter.

    More importantly, I am empowered by Dr. King’s message to keep dreaming.

    When I close my eyes these are the things I dream about:

    Photo by Brian Hawkins via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    One day, the churches facilities will embrace the implications of its tax status. It will be a place truly separate from the world because it serves the world. So separate that people coming into her doors will wonder if they are in an alternate reality. I dream of a church who flings it’s doors open to the public Monday – Saturday from 6:00 AM until 10:00 PM. It’s a place the poor are served. A place the sick go for healing prayers. A place the elderly use as a resource. A place high school volleyball teams practice. A place kids go for tutoring. A place of civic debate. A place the arts are celebrated. A place local business people use for meetings. And a place where people go to find out how they can serve their fellow neighbors.

    One day, the churches staff will see themselves as employees of the community. The skills Paul talks about in Titus 1 & 1 Timothy 3 will be used not just to run programs attended by the faithful but cast upon the community for the common good of all people. Sure, there will be sacramental duties performed by the staff. But they will be kept in focus by the needs of the community. The pastor will see himself as not just the pastor of the people who come on Sunday morning, but as the pastor of the community he’s been called to serve. (Using “he” in an inclusive mode, my egalitarian friends.)

    The church will no longer be dictated by fears of lawsuits. They will rise above the desire to protect its assets in realization that the assets came from and belong to the community in the first place. The church will no longer be stricken by a separation of church and state because it is too busy embracing the needs of the state’s citizens. You want to sue us? Then sue us because we have made our property open to all. You want to close our doors? Then you are closing the doors on the place of refuge for refugees and the place of stability for those lacking the stability of a family. Let our good works be our best defense.

    The church will be a physical manifestation of the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit. The church will be a continuation of the ministry of Jesus. It will be a place every person can both be served and serve in the fullness of their spiritual gifts.

    What will we see than? We will see Jesus at work. We will see the irresistible draw of our Savior on the hearts of the community. The church will cease being a place for the 5%-10% on the fringes and regain its place as the centerpiece of our communities. We will see that the church will be the waypoint when giving directions to people around town. We will see that the community will look at offering tax breaks to churches and clergy will be a bargain and a burden its people happily bear for the greater good of the community.

    This won’t wallow in a social gospel. Instead it will embrace that the Gospel is social. It’ll be the embrace that the Gospel isn’t just about renewing of our hearts but also a renewing of our community.

    Let the religious among us be skeptics of what can happen when we embrace our role in society. In the meantime, when we step into these things, we will see today’s skeptics give their hearts to Jesus when they finally see the Gospel alive with their very own eyes.

  • Final thoughts on canceling church

    My post last Sunday about megachurches (and their copycat little brothers) canceling services the day after Christmas generated a massive response. Apparently, there were a lot of people who also felt it was a smidge ridiculous that in America we found an excuse to take a Sunday off while those in other parts of the world risk their lives to worship Jesus publicly on any day. And a good amount of people, especially those who commented, thought the connection between the persecuted church and canceling services was unfair.

    That’s OK. I’m a big boy and can handle people disagreeing with me.

    There were several spin-off posts generated which I’d like to call your attention to as they are worth reading:

    I learned three things from the post and its fallout.

    1. In general, American Christians don’t feel much of a kinship to non-American Christians. At least the majority of blog commenters would not put kinship above their individual churches rights to meet or not meet.
    2. Few people latched onto a central concept in the post that the church is our real family. I consider my community group part of my family, I’m left to assume that this family-feeling is not all that common. How can that be so?
    3. The priesthood of the staff is so deeply engrained that it was nearly 30 comments before someone brought up that churches canceling services could have just managed their resources/staff differently by empowering more lay people and depending on the staff less.

    In the end, the post did more than I could have hoped for. Rather than simply getting a pile of people to agree with me or disagree with me… it seems as though the post generated the exact discussion I had hoped for. And getting church leaders to critically think about their ministry is about all I could ever ask.

  • Pastor as Vocation

    Confession: I do as much or more pastoral ministry now than I did when I worked in a church.

    That is no knock on my friends in full-time vocational ministry.

    It is more an affirmation for the myriad of people I know who have stepped out (or been pushed out) of their ministry job.

    Leaving vocational ministry in a church for the great unknown is an identity crisis. These friends are left asking themselves, “Am I still a pastor?”

    I went through the same thing 2 years ago. You are OK. You are still very much a pastor, even if your paycheck doesn’t come from a church.

    I’m here to tell you this simple truth: When you are a pastor you are a pastor wherever you go. It’s a calling and not a vocation.

    My reality

    I opened this by saying that I do as much or more pastoral ministry now than I did while I worked at churches. So what does that look like?

    • Removed of the stigma of “going to talk to my pastor” I give a great amount of pastoral counsel. Instead of people coming to my office for that we meet at coffee shops, my house, and even bars. (Gasp!)
    • I love teaching at youth group. I don’t do it often enough to get into a groove… which keeps it from feeling like a grind.
    • I totally miss filling the pulpit. At the same time I’ve learned that I probably preach too much and act too little. I have a lot more time to do ministry rather than prepare a message.
    • We’ve rediscovered authentic relationships. When you work at a church your life is full of people who claim to be your friends– but it’s a positional thing. When you are a nobody in your congregation you have to develop friendships the old fashioned way. Better yet: When the positional ones come along you don’t feel obligated.
    • I’m ministering to people in my life that are a part of my neighborhood, work life, adult small group, and students in my youth group.
    • Straight talk, no B.S. (Stealing a line from a politician) That’s kind of how it feels. Free from the weirdness of people probing and constantly feeling like I’m answering every question on behalf of the church, I can just let it fly. Want to know what I think or what the Bible says? I don’t need a “church filter” anymore.

    Conversely, when I was a vocational pastor I was constantly thinking to myself, “This is it? I rarely spend time with people. All I do is run programs. I want to be with people and do ministry!”

    Interesting how freedom from the work of running a church has lead me to doing more pastoral ministry, right?

    A global perspective for the naysayers

    My fellow Americans, live in an ethnocentric culture. And American church culture is even more insular than American culture. Those of us who are in that culture have a very hard time seeing outside of it. So when I say things like “It’s a calling and not a vocation” most people in the church have no frame of reference. So while we’ve tied the concept of “I’m a pastor” with “I get paid to work at a church” we really get messed up when we no longer work for a church.

    Two things to chew on…

    Within Christianity: Outside of major Westernized countries almost no one who is a pastor does so vocationally. (Bi-vocational is the norm) In fact, the fastest spreading Christianity is spreading is absent of vocational staff and mostly without resources like buildings, Bibles, Bible study materials, etc. I’ve been pointing out the inverse relationship between church growth and church spending for months… but no one is lining up to cut their church budget/staff to see their church grow.

    Other religions: Outside of the Christian church most religions are run by either volunteers or people who have taken vows of poverty, sustained only by the meager donations of people in their care. The Latter-day Saints are an excellent example of this. Very few people get paid within the Mormon church and yet it is one of the fastest growing religions in the world.

  • Rejecting the priesthood of the staff

    And Reaffirming the priesthood of all believers.

    That the pope or bishop anoints, makes tonsures, ordains, consecrates, or dresses differently from the laity, may make a hypocrite or an idolatrous oil-painted icon, but it in no way makes a Christian or spiritual human being. In fact, we are all consecrated priests through Baptism, as St. Peter in 1 Peter 2[:9] says, “You are a royal priesthood and a priestly kingdom,” and Revelation [5:10], “Through your blood you have made us into priests and kings.”

    Martin Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nobility, 1520

    Most people on church staff have no idea how to turn the reigns of their ministry over to the church. It seems counter-productive to lead without holding the reigns. The attitude is generally that church staff are the experts, seminary trained, denominationally ordained and battle-experienced to do the work. And the people in the pews won’t do anything even if you asked them to. On most church staff’s the concept of the priesthood of all believers is taken figuratively, dismissed as impossible in the literal sense.

    Hogwash.

    There is an inverse relationship in the church today between the increase in church staffing/overall spending and the decrease in the number of people we reach per capita.

    The Vortex We Created

    Somewhere along the line we, as church staff, started to think that we could do ministry better than people who don’t work at the church. We bought the lie that because people are busy that they can’t be functional body parts described in 1 Corinthians 12. Instead of leaning on Scripture to correct, rebuke, and train in righteousness to call believers to their responsibilities– we assigned them books on Christian leadership which affirmed that we were the ones called to do the work and they were called to write checks.

    Worse yet, we started to believe that being a pastor was a vocation of leadership and not a holy calling.

    We turned saints into spectators. Then we handed them literature that told them to pursue excellence in leadership and got mad when they left our hard-working church of 500 for a megachurch of 10,000.

    Many Luthers Wanted!

    We need brave men and women to publicly state the obvious– the current strategy isn’t working. It’s not a liberal thing. It’s not a conservative thing. It’s not an emergent thing. It’s not an old-fashioned thing. It’s no modern. It’s not post-modern.

    It is the church, universally failing to reach more than 10% of the population on any given Sunday.

    There is no hope that a staff-led church can reach your community much less the world. (My pastor has only been to my house once, he doesn’t know the names of any of my neighbors.) It is not mathematically possible because it is outside of the design. The hope of the world is not that we flock to bigger and bigger megachurches with more refined experts. It is the opposite.

    The hope of the world lies in individuals and families embracing a simple strategy of neighbors loving neighbors. As we, the body of Christ– messy, broken, and dependent– embrace our role as the God-ordained priests on our block, the church can get back to the designed multiplication strategy.

    Thought questions

    1. How is the identity of your pastoral calling tied to the responsibilities of being church staff? If you weren’t on staff would you still feel like a pastor?
    2. I make the argument that there is an inverse relationship between increased spending/staffing/programs and reaching people. Looking back at the last 30 years of history in your congregation, do you find that to be the case? Why or why not?
    3. Read 1 Corinthians 12. What are spiritual gifts lacking on your staff team? What are ways your current staff structure may be handicapping your church?
    4. What are ways that your staff’s ecclesiology or even church polity are getting in the way of the priesthood of all believers?
    5. What are practical ways you and your staff team can reaffirm the priesthood of all believers in 2011?
    6. Do you know the names of all the neighbors whose property touches or is adjacent to your own residence? What are ways you can love your neighbors better in the next 14 days?

  • Farm Fresh Offerings

    Photo by Halliew via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Right out of college, Kristen and I were full of ideals about where we wanted to serve in a local church.

    We had a list of things we were looking for: Having been in the midwest for eight years we were ready for a geographical change. We wanted to see mountains and take a break from winter weather. We wanted a ministry in a small town that reached out to kids from broken homes, loving the unloveable. And we wanted to leave the big church world for the medium-sized church world where I could be involved in more than just one program.

    When we found the right place in Northern California. We looked past the rough parts of the job (Which would lead to us staying only a year) to tried to see the diamond in the rough. The ministry was in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It boasted the highest teen pregnancy and teen drug abuse rates in California. It was a strong, medium-sized church, and I’d have responsibilities in a bunch of areas.

    In truth, being my first experience in looking for a full-time ministry I asked all the right questions but didn’t listen for the right nuances to the answers. It was perfect and wrong at the same time.

    Worse yet, when it came down to talking about my salary package I based our salary off of what I hoped we could live on instead of what things were really going to cost. Visiting this small town with a big city mindset I just couldn’t have seen some of the hidden costs of living in the middle of nowhere.

    About 60 days into our new life in rural California I came to a painful realization. I had misunderstood what my utilities were going to cost in making my budgets and we were in trouble every month. (Water and electric were about 400% more than our place in Chicago. Combined, they totaled what I was paying in rent.) I had flat out negotiated for the wrong salary.

    I sweated out a couple of months hoping that it was just a fluke and we’d settle into a more affordable reality.

    It didn’t happen.

    Every month we had too much expense and not enough income. Kristen and I cut back and cut back. We cut back to the point where we were spending less but we just didn’t have enough for groceries. (About $100/month was all that was left over after fixed expenses.) A hundred dollars was basically covering formula and the basics. In truth, the only way we were making it was by accepting every offer for a meal that came our way! (After church every Sunday, every party people from the church had, stuff like that.) Another trick to hide our meal shortage was that I started taking tons of high school students out to talk so I could take them out so I could buy a meal and put it on the church credit card. (Taking home the leftovers was part of the deal.)

    But, as financial pressures tend to go, this was really stressing us out and stealing our joy.

    With my tail between my legs I took our budget to the elders. It was humbling to look at these older men and admit that I was going broke and needed help. I’ll never forget opening up my laptop and showing them the numbers on Microsoft Money. It was humiliating.

    Since the church was doing well financially I had hoped they would just increase my salary by a few hundred dollars per month to alleviate the pressure.

    I couldn’t have been more wrong.

    They chuckled. No, they laughed at me. They gave me the small town vs. city slicker grin I had long ago tired of. And they came back with two possible solutions. (Three if you count the sarcastic “you can live in a tent in my backyard” comments.)

    1. Apply for WIC and/or welfare.
    2. Allow the people of the church to offer you welfare.

    I chose the latter. And the elders quietly began to let it be known that those city slicker McLane’s needed food.

    From humiliation to humbled

    You know, as a pastor, you know in your head that your salary comes through the offering plate and that you, in turn, have enough to pay your bills because people give. You feel it but you don’t really see it as the process is rather sterile.

    But when you hear someone pull into your gravel driveway and get out of the car with a paper bag full of vegetables from their garden or a hen they’ve raised from a chick– it changes your perception of an offering.

    Our little family literally ate people’s first fruits of our churches labor.

    And it changed us forever.

    What had once robbed our joy became one of the few sources of joy in a ministry experience of sorrow.

  • Economy of Words

    Good communicators are aware of an economy of words.

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

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

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

    The secret? Editing.

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

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

    Let’s review:

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

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

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

  • My Kids Aren’t Your Target Audience

    Imagine the freedom of hearing this one phrase.

    A parent affirming a youth pastor by saying, “My kids aren’t your target audience. Reach the lost.”

    What would happen if parents stepped into their role and discipled their teenage children, and at the same time affirmed the church’s youth pastor by saying, “My kids aren’t your target audience. Reach the lost.”

    Game changer.

    G-A-M-E-C-H-A-N-G-E-R

    The reason so many youth workers feel like babysitters or cruise directors is that they are regarded as such by many people in the pews. (And sadly, by their bosses and governing boards who see them as a way to attract or keep parents of teenagers.) The attitude is… “Well, we give money to the church which funds this persons salary and the program they run so we should allow the expert to pour into my kid and I’ll just step back, get the most for my money.”

    This makes some logical sense because its visible. But it is missing the point, missiologically and ecclesiologically.

    Modern church youth ministry, as a movement, sprung out of parachurch ministries like Young Life and Youth for Christ in the 1950s-1960s who stepped up to answer the call the church would not… reach lost teenagers. It was primarily a method of evangelism. And it operated well outside of the walls of a church because the methods often used to get students interested in the Gospel freaked churchgoing adults out.

    In the 1960s and 1970s churches woke up a bit and started hiring youth workers of their own. (Lots were former YFC and Young Life staff) And all of a sudden the vocation of youth pastor started to shift from something that looked like a missionary to something that looked like a pastor.

    As things have morphed over the years many youth ministries focus has shifted from non-church teenagers to almost entirely church kids. Youth ministry has gone from being mostly about evangelism to mostly being about discipling church kids with an evangelism strategy which boils down to, “Bring a friend.”

    That’s a bad thing! And as I’ve said over and over again… we’re reaching a decreasing amount of the population with this strategy. Some try to dismiss me by claiming I’m just deconstructing. I’m not deconstructing, I’m calling the church to recognize her strategic failure and change!

    Personal Example

    I’ve always known this to be true. (That my churches job wasn’t to reach my kids, but to reach the lost.) But I suppose economic realities and race make it obvious enough for my dense mind to notice now that we go to a mission-styled church.

    I don’t want my church reaching my kids. If I sit in on my churches kids ministry program and it is targeted at my kids I know something is wrong. Why? We’re a mission church in a neighborhood where 75% of the people don’t speak English in their home and even more are not from the U.S.A..

    My kids aren’t the reason my staff raises support! I know this and I celebrate it. I’m pleased that my tithe doesn’t help create a ministry paradigm designed to disciple my kids. Why? That’s my job!

    Their job is to reach the neighborhood!

    Why is acknowledging this important?

    1. It changes my attitude from entitlement to supporting the mission of the church.
    2. It clarifies expectations.

    Your Role as Parents

    If you are like me, a Christian parent, your role is vital. Deuteronomy 6 is abundantly clear. A life with Jesus isn’t reserved for the temple. You’re to talk about God in all that you do, everywhere you go, and in your own home. You are to impress on your children that your faith is real. If you want your kids to believe in God it is up to you. If you leave it to your church to do you have failed as a parent. (If your church is telling you it is their job tell them they are wrong, they need to hear it.)

    Your tithe is an offering to God not a ticket to entitlement to church programs. While it is our role to oversee and make sure that the church is not misappropriating funds– It is hardly an offering to God if it has strings attached to it which stipulate that the church will create programs to entertain and disciple your children.

    Imagine

    Imagine the freedom it would create to your church staff if you uttered this simple phrase, “My kids aren’t your target audience. Reach the lost.”

    Go ahead, try it.