cup a joe

"As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly....."

Have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

Boobalicious Baptism - now those are two words that I never thought I would hear together...

HT: Matthew Paul Turner

A lot of new church plants wait until they can run a good worship service before they open up to the public. There is little talk about whether the community has the spiritual depth to receive and disciple newcomers.
It reminded me of some other voices in my life:
One is Bobby Clinton who taught Leadership Theory and Change Dynamics at Fuller Seminary. He said that if you want to figure out how long it will take to bring change in your community, you take your estimate and then double it. And double it again. And that's how long it takes.
Another is my German friend Hans Peter Pache who asks how to build a cathedral. The answer is that you plant an oak grove and in a hundred years you have enough wood to build your cathedral. The rest is simple.

I think that we as pastors need to put stuff into a little context.  We tend to feel that success means numbers and growth.  I agree that we need to be fruitful, that we need to do something with the talents that Jesus has given us, but I think we miss the concept of time.  It doesn't take much time to gather a crowd but it takes time to make disciples.  We look at our churches and begin to question ourselves with unrealistic expectations.  I remember speaking to a pastor of a new church plant last summer who was apologizing to me that they had only grown to 120 in the past year.  I was shocked - only 120?  It took Jesus three years to get to 120 and I figure he was probably a bit more gifted then we are!  (Heck, one of my favorite passages in the bible is when Jesus preaches a hard message and everyone except the twelve leave (John 6:60-71) - I can relate to that!)

What we need to remember that we are not called to gather a crowd, but to make disciples.  That quote above from Hans Peter Pache is spot on.  We are not supposed to build a mega church, we are supposed to build a cathedral.  Now before you think I'm speaking out of both sides on my mouth, let me explain.  A cathedral is big, so big that they are noticeable in the community, they tend to dominate the landscape.  In many towns, the cathedral gives that town a sense of identity.  As disciples of Jesus, we are supposed to be making a difference in our community.  We are supposed to be salt and light.  We should be an intrical part of the community, a part of the community's identity - it's DNA.  That doesn't happen overnight.  That takes time.  It is not because of a large gathering, it is because there has been a "transformation of the mind" (Romans 12:2).  The cathedral is not about building a big building, a big budget or big numbers.  It is about building people, disciplining people, transforming them into "Gospel Planters" that will in turn transform those around them.  It's about being salt and light and that takes time.

We had a planning meeting for the church last Sunday that we opened up to the entire church.  Our goal was simple, we wanted to get some stuff on the calendar for the next few months (at least until Easter).  I didn't know what was going to happen, but I gave them all some guidelines.  First, I felt that we needed to focus on five things - prayer, small groups, discipleship, outreach and community.  Secondly, there was no budget, whatever we were going to do would have to be done on the cheep.  I was hoping for some discussion in each area, but I feared that we would only plan "community" things.   I wasn't prepared for what actually happened.  Prayer started first.  They wanted to bring back the prayer labyrinth and they wanted to do another 24/7 prayer but with multiple churches involved.  Someone actually suggested that we do a Daniel fast in January (and the group approved of it.)  I was in shock - I hadn't seen this much interest in prayer in a long time.  Small groups then multiplied (from one to three) and there was an excitement about doing more discipleship groups.  Our youth want to go and scrub toilets for a servant evangelism outreach (as suggested from a youth) and people want to go downtown once a month and pray for people.  The one thing we didn't figure out was the community side - but since we are going to be doing all this praying, and discipling and ministering, I guess we will have to do it as a community!

This is what I mean by transformation.  Amazingly, the only thing that I have to do is talk to the other churches about praying with us.  Everyone else is doing the rest of the ministry. This would not have happened twelve months ago.   Twelve months ago it would ave been all one me.

Here is the interesting thing: there were only 17 people in this meeting, about half the church.  What difference can 17 people make?  Well, the way I look at it, we've planted an Oak Grove with these 17 people.  Give it time.  We should have enough to build a cathedral in a couple of decades.  It's the way God does things - once person at a time.  I'm willing to wait, are you?

The church-on-the-corner that’s been the bedrock of American Christianity since colonial days will cease to exist by 2062. These churches of 50 to 500 souls will become too expensive to staff and their aging buildings too difficult to maintain. These so-called “family churches” are already losing members to megachurches that offer superior preaching, music and programming. Pastors are shunning their pulpits, preferring to plant new congregations. In their place we will see:
Megachurches will accelerate the establishment of satellite campuses.
Some of these will have a physical building holding hundreds of worshippers, and some will be microchurches of less than 50 people. These churches will have little or no staff. Microchurches will be led by a layperson (or couple) and will meet in private homes or in rented spaces. These will not be “house churches” as we know them now, because they will be affiliates of…
I predict that about 200 megachurches will come to dominate American Christianity by 2062.
In the same way WalMart took over the mom-and-pop store, a handful of megachurches will absorb thousands of other congregations – including other megachurches. They’ll do it by planting satellite campuses in thousands of cities and towns in America, delivering their teaching and music via video. Just as there are Baptist churches in nearly every city in America today, in 2062 there will be satellite and microchurch affiliates in every city and town.

An interesting picture, one I'm not too sure about.  The other interesting thing is an e-mail that I received over the weekend.  One of the things that has surprised me since becoming a pastor is the number of unsolicited e-mails I get from people I don't know, who have never stepped foot in my church, telling me what we should or shouldn't be doing.  These are not sales pitches to buy the newest biggest program, but are people just telling me what to do (or warm me about how I may be preaching heresy!).  I received this from someone by the name of "Adrian":

As far as a better way to run Sunday morning services/church, I don't have the exact answer because I haven't lived to experience it, but I think one idea that might be more effective than just having preaching is to have separate topic/task-oriented groups going during the normal service time. One group could be teaching people how to play musical instruments and sharing worship ideas. Another group could have a team set up for going into the community and blessing people. Yet another group could be set aside for fellowship (and have food and/or games). And the pastor could have his own group to preach his sermon to. The concept behind this is that not everyone needs the same things at the same times, and in order to be more efficient and have the Kingdom flowing more effectively, we could adjust how things are run to meet more of the Body's needs. Some people work a lot and so aren't able to spend time with other Christians during the week, and so would benefit the most from having fellowship on Sunday morning. Some people are itching to minister in the community and only have Sunday free to be able to do so. Some people would benefit the most from learning skills that they could use to serve God in new ways. And, of course, some people enjoy and need spiritual messages and a Sunday sermon can help meet that need.

Adrian went on to explain that the basis for these ideas was from "science/research".  His concern is simple:

...many people get passed over every Sunday morning because the message the pastor preaches is not what they need. While they can possibly glean something useful from it if they try hard enough, this ignores the bigger problem at hand: they shouldn't have to. It's like watching the same movie over and over and trying to get an incredibly different experience from it. While small details that may have been missed can be picked up, it would be much more beneficial to pop in a new movie to get a new experience to take in. A greater amount of ideas can be shared if more than one group/message is going during Sunday mornings.

So, is this the future of the church?  What do you think?  I've been thinking about this stuff for some time and I can see the church moving into both of these places.  These suggestions would create extremely efficient church that can serve the wants and desires of the individuals within their congregations. But is that what the church is supposed to be?  Makes me wonder if that is the kind of church that I want to be a part of.  Turing the church into a WalMart where you get everything you want the way you want really doesn't do much for me.  Let me know what you think.  I'll post my thoughts later in the week.

And that was the goal.

Blogging has changed over the years.  I follow nearly 100 church related blogs.  Every morning I get up, do my quiet time, make coffee and then turn on my computer.  I do a quick check of e-mail and facebook, then I go to Google Reader to see what is new.  I've been doing this same routine for a decade and today it hit me, nothing is new.

Blogging has transformed into something ugly.  Very few people are telling stories of what thy are trying any more.  Instead, we either blog to build ourselves up or tear each other down.  Most of my reading this morning either explained to me why the blogger had the greatest thing that I needed to join, buy, attend or vote for (usually in five easy steps) or why someone else thing was crap (that is putting it mildly.)  The internet has become a dangerous place to think out loud lest someone label you a heretic or worse.  I've seen it happen to some of the people I follow and I have experienced it to a lessor extent as well.  Toe the line or else someone will beat you into submission - and the church (local and global) has suffered for it.

So here is what I'm going to propose.  First, I'm going to clean up my reading list.  I'm going to stop reading those who tear down and start reading those who are actually doing something.  Secondly, I'm going to start being a bit more honest here.  What am I doing, what is working, what isn't and most importantly, what does it mean in my life to be a follower of Christ in the 21st century.  What do I have to do or change personally to do it.  Thirdly, I'm going to try to not be a part of the problem.  I will try to build up, not tear down.  I will try to lower the volume of hateful criticism by not participating in it.  I still will read, I still will review books and such, but I will attempt to do it showing the love of Christ in such a way that is not destructive to the body of Christ.

I don't know what this will look like and I don't know what the future will hold.  I realize that in comparison to others, my little blog is insignificant.  But as Junior Asparagus says: "little guys can do big things too."  I'll end today with the same way I ended on May 8, 2003:

Cindy's dad heard the call and gave me an old laptop of his that had "issues".  He said the screen was dimming so bad that he could no longer see it, so he went out and bought a new computer.  The laptop was an old Dell Vostro 1000 with 1 gig internal and a 100 gig (aprox) hard drive.  I turned it on, the screen was dim and I got numerous battery errors as the Windows XP logo came on.  The dim screen was a software issue (cost $0).  The battery errors were due to an out of date BIOS issue (updated BIOS cost $0).  I cannibalized some of the broken computers to up my memory to 2 gigs and put Ubuntu 12.03 LTS on it (cost for memory and operating system $0).  I discovered along the way that this thing has a 64 bit processor in it (AMD Athlon X2) and although Dell says it can only take 2 gigs, with the new 64 bit operating systems, many other users have put more in successfully (planing on upping it to 4 gigs in the near future).

So for a total cost of $0, I have a pretty decent computer - much better then the last one that was shooting flames out of the back of it.  My excuse for not posting is now gone.  Now we just need to see what I do next.