Tag: Church

  • A Dare for Pastors

    lunch

    I am daring you and your staff to take this challenge. I promise you it isn’t as dangerous as it sounds. In fact, I think it may just fundamentally change the way you interact with the people in your ministry.

    Here’s the dare.

    Lock every staff person out of your church building for a work week. From the senior pastor to the part time guy to the janitor. Instead of going to the office and doing your normal thing for 7 work days I am daring you to put all that “work” aside for a work week and a couple of days to spend that time getting to know 10 people who go to your church in their native environment.

    Here’s how it works.

    1. Instead of getting up and going to the office, split your day in half. In the morning you’ll spend a half-day with a first shift office worker and in either the afternoon or evening you’ll pull a half shift with a blue collar worker. Trust me, you’ll find a bunch of volunteers. It’ll be fun for everyone. Repeat this for 5 days so each staff member gets to see 10 of your church attendees in their work environment for half a day.

    2. Run your ministries that week in the most stripped down way possible. Just wing it for a week… you’re professionals, you know you can wing a week. Tell the pastor to talk about his week or something. The preacher absolutely doesn’t get special treatment in this. Heck, download a free sermon from open.lifechurch.tv and tell the band to play last weeks songs on Sunday. This dare will make your ministry better, I promise.

    3. When that week is over schedule an off-site meeting with your entire church staff for Monday and Tuesday. It’ll take 2 days to debrief this.

    3a. Spend the entire first day (with a lunch paid for by the boss) sharing your experiences. What did you do? What was unexpected? What went crazy? Who works their butt off? Who has the easy job? Why do people do what they do? Who is the most servant hearted? You get the idea.

    3b. Spend the entire second day (bring a bag lunch) determining how getting to know people in their native environments changes how you minister to people, families, children, and students.

    4. Send thank you notes to every single person you visited. Let them know how much you appreciated the time with them, how much you learned, etc.

    Money back guarantee! Since this project isn’t costing you anything I promise to refund you fully if you take this dare and learn absolutely nothing.

    Go ahead, spend time with your people at work. I double dog dare you!

    For those taking the dare. Let me know if your staff is doing it. I’d love to pray for you all. Also, let me know how it went. Leave a comment here or drop me an email, mclanea@gmail.com.

  • Rock that Quirky Church

    dsc_0211I think some of my harsh criticisms of the evangelical church come from a love of our church. The mission of Harbor Mid-City is one that is quirky by design.

    We have a hyper-qualified staff brought together despite significant theological difference who lean into that tension for the sake of the Gospel in the neighborhood. For my theologically savvy readers (aka Kristen) we have staff people from PCA, Salvation Army, Baptist, pentecostal, emergent-types, traditional evangelical and hard core liturgical backgrounds. In most communities these folks wouldn’t even get together to pray for one another… much less chose to work at the same church!

    Toss on top of that theological stuff the language issues we experierience every week and you will start to see the quirks pop out. We offer the same service in both English and Spanish, meaning there are painfully long times of translation. But this is San Diego and people are used to hearing both languages on the radio and TV… so that’s no big deal. We also have a population of people who speak Korean, Vietnamese, and Swahili. Sometimes our worship music is in those languages. In fact, there tend to be as many non-English songs as English ones.

    Ready for this? It gets more quirky as the design of the church allows minority cultures to have equal voice in our services. What that means is that we’re more worried about celebrating our worship service in a way that lifts up Latin American, Mexican, African American, Southeast Asian, and African cultures above the dominant white evangelical culture.

    OK, one more quirk. There is a huge hodgepodge of socio-economic situations in our church as well. You have working class poor next to college kids from San Diego State. And you have immigrants next to upper-middle class folks who live just north of the church.

    Is it perfect? No. Do I agree with every last bit of the theology? Absolutely not! Are there things about the church I really dislike? Yes! Am I comfortable in the service? Rarely. Are the messages challenging and encouraging to where I am at in my walk with Jesus? Not often. Do they offer all of the things I need for my family? No, children’s ministry is just getting organized. Youth ministry is in a pre-formational stage.

    So why do we go? We go because we believe at the core of our being that there is tremendous strength in that diversity. I am not arrogant enough to believe that my evangelical expression of theology and worship is superior. I love to worship in a place that agrees on the essentials while allows gray areas to be interpreted through the lens of culture.

    Don’t get me wrong. This place is solid theologically. In fact, I’m convinced that Harbor expresses in their worship many best practices of things believed across Christianity. This hodgepodge isn’t just the brain child of idealists. It is the brainchild of idealists who are stupid enough to think that it will work, have the training and experience to make it happen, and have a core of people at the church who are dreaming the same dream.

    In these quirks I see tremendous hope for the Gospel across our country. Lives are changed as they are surrendered to Jesus. And as I think about it, much of what I rebel against here on the blog about evangelicalism is because I see Harbor doing something right while most of evangelicalism is doing it wrong.

  • Medium-sized Church Crisis… Let’s Talk Money

    medium-sized-church-crisis

    The first time I talked about this topic, the assumption in comments was that the reason the medium-sized church is struggling is because of money. In my last post on the topic I explored the core problem… that there are no “medium-sized church people” in America. There are big church people and small church people. So… here were: Money problems are the effect and culture is the cause.

    3 Financial Reasons the Medium-sized Church Struggles

    1. People give to vision, not to guilt. What this means for medium-sized churches is that people simply aren’t going to give to a vision they don’t believe in. So if you talk about growth, the small church folk won’t give and visa versa. See number 3 for what I think the solution is.

    2. Video killed the adequate preacher. A former student of mine summed this up well in describing the church she currently attends. “What I like about the worship leader is that he’s not trying to be Crowder or Tomlin.” In a society where everything seems fake, authenticity goes miles.

    3. Big buildings are a waste of money. If you’re a megachurch you can spread that cost of a big building around. And massive buildings and huge programs are affordable for megachurches. Otherwise, I think most churches would be wise to shed their buildings and complext programs. This really squeeezes medium-sized churches. That’s why I think most medium-sized churches will go multi-site, video-site, house church, etc. See, I’m not predicting the death of a medium-sized church. I’m predicting that this size church will get creative in order to sharpen their mission.

    Again, I’m not claiming to be an expert here. I’m just kind of putting into words a bunch of conversations I’ve had over the past few months. Share your thoughts!

  • Sunday Normalness

    torreypinesPretty much every Sunday is the same for our family. It’s our new normal and we love it. For the first time in my adult life I have weekends off… and I’m still enjoying the novelty of it. Here’s what a typical Sunday looks like.

    7:00- Everyone up. We don’t set alarms, but we all get woken up by hungry animals.The pace of our morning is extremely slow. With 3+ hours until church we hang in our PJs for as long as possible. The kids usually play quietly while mom and dad enjoy coffee and just enjoy the morning.

    8:30- Dad and Paul head over to Yum Yum Donuts about a mile away to hunt & gather some donuts. Typically, we get 6 donuts and a bag of donut holes.

    10:00- We leave for church. Old habits die hard… so we’re always there a little too early. (Californians are notoriously late for church; the cool kids come late.) This is the part that astonishes me… I just go to church. It took some intentional pulling back but I now do nothing on Sunday mornings but attend services.

    12:30- We leave church and head for home. Sometimes we go out sometimes we don’t. But there’s no hard and fast rule for going out like before. We’ve been to Chili’s exactly once since moving to California! (In Romeo we went almost every week.)

    2:00- We’re done with Sunday running around. No evening meetings. No youth group. Nada. We have the rest of the day to ourselves.

    When it’s warm outside we are in the habit of going to the beach after church. We run home, grab a quick lunch, and pack up the car with all of our stuff. But that hasn’t happened since October. We’re hoping for the beach routine to come back in April!

    It’s taken us a few months… but I finally feel like we’re hitting a healthy stride for Sunday’s. From the donut routine, to “just going to church,” to doing something simple and fun. Our family is actually starting to look forward to Sunday coming again!

  • Two Kinds of Medium Sized Church People

    Here are some more thoughts on the medium-sized church crisis. My post the other day attracted a fair amount of comments and attention… and I was pretty frustrated that people jump to the issue of money.

    I only think that the money problems of current are bringing the Medium-sized church crisis to the forefront. At the end of the day I’m meeting two types of churchoers. Once you cut past the nice fluff they say about their churches and preacher they are really either small church people or megachurch people.

    What does this mean for medium-sized church? My experience in medium-sized churches is that there is a tension between these two types of people. One is resistant of anything “small church” so stuff that is appealing to the small church is annoying to them and visa versa. Eventually, misguided and unaccepted tension results in hurt feelings, bitterness, disappointment, and a range of other typical medium-church angst.

    And that angst is why I’m saying the medium church is in crisis… Eventually, church leaders must chose to lead their church one direction or the other: Lead towards smaller environments or toward becoming a megachurch. The cultural division is causing this squeeze. The financial crisis merely accelerates the trend.

    A Personal Example

    In Romeo, we mislabeled these cultural issues as a “personal preference issue” instead of a cultural issue. Big mistake! Our small church folks didn’t mind if the worship team wasn’t professional sounding or if the church basement was a bit too homey for potlucks. Small church people find those things endearing… maybe even spiritual.

    Meanwhile, the megachurch people wanted everything to be like the megachurch they used to go to and they wanted the church to become. Everything was compared to the megachurch down the road or the stuff they saw on TV or enjoyed at a conference or read about online. To the megachurch people, the failure of the small church people to realize all that Romeo could become was an abomination… a spiritual failure at worse and a lack of vision at best.

    See… this isn’t about money at all. Maybe I’ll be called a heretic for this? But, I will tell you what 10 years of church ministry has taught me about giving. Giving has 0% to do with what people are taught from the Bible and 100% to do with whether or not they feel that their money will further a cause they believe in. People are just sophisticated like that. They see right through the pleas for cash to your motivation. When motivations converge they give. When they disagree they give somewhere else. Christians are extremely generous… but they won’t give to a church simply because they go there.

    Next, let’s talk about money. I’ve only hinted at it, lets hit it straight away next time.

    Then, I want to talk about the superiority of small church and megachurch missions in our culture. This is the core reason for the crisis.

  • Medium-sized church crisis


    I guess this diagram is rather self-explanatory, eh? Over the last 4-5 months I’ve had several conversations in which the discussion centered on this diagram. So I submit it to you to chew on.

    Thoughts?

    If you are seeing the same thing, what are the plusses and minuses of this trend?

    If you think I’m nuts, let me know!

  • How come?

    I was reading a couple ministry blogs this morning who were talking about worship services they either produce or visited. I don’t need to link to them as they are easy enough to find.

    Now that we go to a church with zero theatrics… and new people still come, and people still worship, and people still experience faith for the first time, and people still get connected, and people still give, and people are ever happy with our service!

    It made me wonder… how come people always want to do more with their worship services and not less?

    Why don’t bloggers brag about using one less camera man? One less drummer? One less actor? One less video screen? One less smoke machine? One less lighting board?

    Why is more noteworthy and less not?

    Why does over-the-top = excellence in worship?

    I have my theories as to why this happens in America, England, and Australia but few other places in the world. But I’ll just ask my friends… why is this so? Am I the only one who is annoyed by the logic that more = blessing, less = curse in the church? Am I the only one that finds massive theatrical production odd for “church?” Am I the only one who wonders how odd it must be for visitors to walk into a theater fit for a broadway production of Rent?

  • Love is an Orientation

    I’ve been so impressed with Andrew Marin and his work to help bridge the church to the homosexual community. Check out Andy’s promo video. If you want to buy his book, you can join me in pre-ordering it from Amazon.

  • Alpha Male Pastors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • How Should Church Staff Be Treated?

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

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

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

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

    I promise you this. Mark my words.

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

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

    – They will pay for them to get higher education.

    – They will create opportunities for advancement.

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

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

    – They will work less that 50 hours consistently.

    – They will reward for things other than numeric growth.

    – They will facilitate innovation outside of the executive leaders.

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

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

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