Who decided that efficiency and effectiveness were the highest values for ministry?

There’s an excellent post from Skye Jethani today which hits close to home for me in a number of ways. First off, he’s taking a lesson from the redundancy that is built in to airplanes, making them the safest way to travel. (I’m a certification engineer at an avionics company, so I am very familiar with what he’s talking about.) Second, he asks what the church should be learning on this issue. It is wise to structure a large church organization around a “main man”?

(This also hits home because there was a time in my history when I was told that I would cause great damage to my particular church if I chose to follow what I felt was God’s leading to go elsewhere. I wasn’t the pastor - only an elder and part-time worship leader. I went ahead and left anyway. The church, of course, was fine. But that’s a different story.)

Jethani is asking questions about places like Bethlehem Baptist (John Piper) and Redeemer NYC (Tim Keller), both of which are large organizations built around single, superstar pastors. (Other churches quickly come to mind - Mars Hill Seattle (Mark Driscoll), for instance.)

…whenever I’ve discussed this inherent danger [of a single failure affecting multiple congregations] with those operating video-based multi-site systems they invariably mention the efficiency and effectiveness of their model. Who can disagree? Utilizing one highly gifted person to impact thousands of people in multiple cities is unquestionably efficient….

But who decided that efficiency and effectiveness were the highest values for ministry?

Boom. Awesome question. Jethani goes on to enumerate some reasons why a more redundant, less efficient organization might well be healthier for churches. It’s worth a read.

And oh, yeah - about those airplanes? Some of the most amazing safety engineering ever done happens on those aircraft. They include redundancy in ways you’d never imagine. Very cool stuff.

A Rant about a Church Sign

There is a Baptist church in our town that I drive by on my way to church at least a couple of times a week. For the past couple of weeks they’ve had a message up on their sign that has irritated me to no end. Now, sayings on church signs have a way of being trite and cutesy, but this one has surpassed that and gone on to outright misguided ridiculousness.

First, the quote from the sign:

“Don’t make me come down there!” – God

Here begins the rant.

I’m trying to think of ways this could be interpreted, and no matter how you do it, they’re all bad. Some things it could be construed to be saying:

  • God isn’t actually involved down here on earth right now. Apparently He’s somewhere distant, and just observing. That’s obviously incorrect.
  • People on earth are at some marginally-acceptable level of sinfulness right now. Wrong again! We’re all sinful. No one does good. We’ve all missed the mark.
  • If we cross some line of sinfulness, then… BLAM! God’s gonna come down and make us pay! No. God isn’t up there threatening to blow us away. He promised he wouldn’t flood the earth again and wipe everything out. (I have to remind myself of that when the springtimes get abnormally rainy…) And He poured out His wrath on Jesus. Jesus died so we don’t have to.
  • God coming down here to Earth is a thing to be feared. Uh, no. God coming to Earth in the person of Jesus is the best thing that’s ever happened to Earth and humankind.

I assume somebody at that church saw the message on the internet somewhere, thought it was clever, and put it up without even thinking any further about it. It pains me that the message has been there for weeks now and apparently no one at the church has discernment enough to recognize the gross error and get it taken down.

A message to church sign designers everywhere: if you’re going to put a weekly message on your sign, keep it informational, or, at worst, cutesy. This sign is a big steaming pile of pseudo-cleverness served with a nice heretical gravy on top. Make it go away.

Some thoughts on the proposed new mission statement for Stonebridge

A couple of weeks ago Becky and I attended a Friday night meeting at church where the church leadership discussed their notional new mission statement for the church. While this statement is still a draft, and has yet to be presented to the full congregation, with the pastors’ permission I want to explore the new statement in some detail and explain why I’m very much in favor of it.

First, the statement:

“The mission of Stonebridge Church is to walk alongside each person we meet as they take their next step with Jesus.”

Let’s look at some key phrases.

  • “to walk alongside”. I am more and more convinced that this is the posture that we as Christians should take with all those that we encounter. We are not enemies in opposition of those who don’t believe the way we do; we are not self-righteous, hypocritical mockers of those whose sin is more obvious; we are not insulated saints who retreat to the comfortable hidey-hole where everything is “safe”. Instead, we are right there alongside people, where they are. We have an arm around their shoulders and we are speaking words of love and encouragement. We need to be alongside both the lost and the found, among the rebellious and the repentant alike.
  • “each person we meet”. This phrase reminds us that our calling isn’t limited to the church but is as expansive as each person that God places in our path. The heart of the believer is to be outwardly-focused, and a heart filled with the love of God will overflow into each one they meet.
  • “as they take their next step”. This recognizes that all of us, believers or not, are still in progress, taking one step at a time. It reminds us to be gracious with each person we encounter, because they are on a journey just like we are, even if they’re at a different point. And it reinforces the message of 1 Corinthians 3:5 - 8: that we may each play a different role in God’s work to bring someone to Himself. Whether we plant the seed or water the seed or see the seed blossom into flower, it is God providing the growth, and we are reminded not to be discouraged if our work doesn’t create instant results.
  • “with Jesus.” And this brings us back to the ultimate object of our lives in service to others: to bring them to, and encourage them with, Jesus. Whatever work God calls us to do, it is done out of love for Jesus, in the name of Jesus, and for the glory of Jesus. Whether you are serving on the stage or behind the scenes, publicly proclaiming Christ in the midst of a crowd or quietly sharing with a friend or co-worker, working for justice in a far-off country or just caring for the weak and needy person on your street, you do it for Jesus. God has given diverse roles and functions, but puts us all together in one body, and says that it is the body of Christ (1 Cor 12).

I feel like this mission statement does a good job of capturing the essential direction of ministry that we’re already on at Stonebridge, and I hope that as it is further refined and rolled out it will encourage each of us to be constantly mindful of being alongside those that we encounter every day.

Introverts in the Church

I’ve been doing a slow-and-steady re-read of Adam McHugh’s Introverts in the Church, and words don’t well express how much I resonate with what he is saying. Just as I read Dilbert and think that Scott Adams must’ve worked where I work to get it that right, I read McHugh and think he must’ve served in the same churches I’ve served in. Amazing.

Last night I got to chapter 5, “Introverted Community and Relationships”, and found a few paragraphs that were so apt that I couldn’t resist sharing them.

As introverts seek to enter into and participate in particular communities, their trajectory of commitment may take a different shape than that of their extroverted counterparts. extroverts, who want to increase their level of involvement, may proceed roughly in a straight line as they move from the periphery into the nucleus of the community. … The journey of introverts into a community, however, is better conceptualized as a spiral. They take steps into a community, but then spiral out of it in order to regain energy, to reflect on their experiences and to determine if they are comfortable in that community. They move between entry, retreat and reentry, gradually moving deeper into the community on each loop.

The introverted path into community, much to the confusion of many extroverts, never reaches a point in which the spiraling form is shed.

You know how it feels when someone puts words to something that you’ve always felt and experienced but haven’t been able to describe? That’s how I feel when reading that passage. That’s what my pattern has been, or has needed to be, for the past 10 years.

Some more:

An introverted college student I worked with…encountered several reactions when he chose to step outside of his community after two years of consistent participation. Extroverted leaders chided him for his lack of commitment and were convinced that his pulling back was indicative of a larger spiritual problem infecting his heart. The pastor of the community arranged meetings with him to understand what was happening and what was the source of his dissatisfaction with the group. These efforts, as well intentioned as they were, only pushed him further away instead of drawing him back into his previous level of commitment.

And yes, I’ve been there. And I’m thankful to be in a place now where that isn’t happening.

The hazards of church music...

…aren’t necessarily what you think. My left ankle and leg has been very sore for the last two days. Why? Because I had an hour of music practice on Saturday, followed by an hour of practice and then two church services on Sunday morning. And because I play the keyboard while standing up, and I pedal with the right foot, which means I end up doing a lot of standing and flexing on my left leg.

Do they have special workouts so I can prepare better for this type of strain? This is not the way I thought a commitment to playing in the worship band would wear me down.

The Perils of Hipster Christianity

Brett McCracken’s column that appeared on the Wall Street Journal website yesterday really hit home for me. McCracken, 27, outlines the increasing efforts that the evangelical church has made to try to attract and keep 20-somethings. Whether it’s the obsession with being culturally savvy, or with being technologically cutting-edge, or with using shock tactics (‘you’ve never heard your pastor talk about *this* before’), McCracken argues that they are simply gimmicks that may bring people in the door; “But”, he asks “what sort of Christianity are they being converted to?”

Quoting David Wells, he further adds:

And the further irony is that the younger generations who are less impressed by whiz-bang technology, who often see through what is slick and glitzy, and who have been on the receiving end of enough marketing to nauseate them, are as likely to walk away from these oh-so-relevant churches as to walk into them.

McCracken concludes that “cool Christianity” is not a “sustainable path forward”, and that, “when it comes to church, [twentysomethings] don’t want cool as much as we want real”.

It’s worth reading the whole post. I, for one, give him a hearty Amen.

Another thought on church shopping and polarization

Yesterday’s post on church shopping and cultural polarization reminded me of a question I’ve been cogitating on for the past week or two.

What would it look like if we were forced to go back to attending local community churches? How would it affect our view of what was necessary in a church and what things were “essentials”?

Say gas prices spiked to the point where we couldn’t afford to drive the 10 miles each way to our church of choice. Our choices are now walking or riding bicycles on Sunday morning. In my neighborhood, that would limit my choices to four churches, one Catholic, one United Church of Christ, one “Community of Christ” (which I know very little about) and one Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

In our 2008 church search (not limited by driving distance) we didn’t really consider any Lutheran churches; would a walking-distance limit change my mind? Probably, given my options. Another possibility: would we canvas the neighborhood to see if there were other like-minded evangelicals who wanted to meet in a house church with us? Seems like an option, but it also seems somewhat fractured and silly given that there’s a LCMS church in the neighborhood.

See how quick the criteria changes? All of a sudden I’m thinking about what might be “good enough” rather than finding the church that’s exactly what I want. So what I’ve proved (to myself, at least) here is that in my non-distance-limited church choosing I’ve unconsciously made a tradeoff, choosing a church that more closely aligns with my doctrinal and worship style comfort zone above a local church that would have me going to worship with my neighbors.

This isn’t an unusual trade-off; it’s one that our suburban culture has widely adopted. Gas is (relatively) cheap, driving everywhere is natural, and so we spend time in the car to associate, or shop, or worship, with those of our choosing rather than those of our neighborhood. And this post isn’t really all that different from a slew of other blog posts and books wrestling with the suburban culture and longing for a true local community.

But it’s a challenging exercise to think through. What churches would you have as options? What would you do?

Church shopping and cultural polarization

CNN.com has a blog post today exploring “How Church Shopping is Polarizing the Country”. Written by law professors Naomi Cahn (George Washington University) and June Carbone (University of Missouri Kansas City) who have recently co-authored a book on cultural polarization, the particular focus on church shopping intrigued me. Heck, I was church shopping not all that long ago. I’m helping cause cultural polarization? I must know more.

Fascinating (and saddening) are their definitions of the two polarized camps: traditionalists, who “…believe in an eternal and transcendent authority that tells us what is good, what is true, how we should live, and who we are”, and modernists, who “…would redefine historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life”. Modernists, they note, “…have become less likely to attend church at all.”

In previous generations, they say, both modernists and traditionalists tended to attend the same churches, typically right in their community. Today, though, the ability to church-shop has the traditionalists seeking out churches that affirm their “personal values”, and has modernists staying home.

The authors lament the decline of the mainline Protestant denominations that in previous generations housed both camps, and complain that today’s evangelical churches (full of like-minded traditionalists) are self-reinforcing in belief, and that evangelicalism’s close ties to the Republican Party serve to marginalize those who might be in agreement politically but not religiously (or vice versa). In the end, they say, traditionalists group together and talk only to themselves, and modernists leave church altogether, resulting in an increasingly polarized society.

There are certainly places where I disagree with the authors’ views on the topic. I think that Protestants seeking churches where their beliefs are shared and reinforced is a good thing. And drawing rosy pictures of a post-WWII generation where everyone attended the same community church regardless of what they believed only serves to hide the fact that those weak, any-belief-is-OK churches in large part helped cause the modernist/traditionalist divide we see today, by valuing the form-over-substance mindset that was eventually cynically discarded by Generation X.

However, within the microcosm that is the evangelical church, there are good lessons to be learned here. We need to be vigilant to ensure that we limit our “distinctives” to the fundamental Gospel truths. As soon as our teaching, or even our church culture, becomes, even by way of unspoken assumptions, ’the gospel plus conservative politics’ or ’the gospel plus homeschooling’ or ’the gospel plus pre-millennial dispensationalism’, etc., we will alienate those who either desperately need to hear the Gospel or who could be vibrant, participating members of our local body.

The good news that Jesus Christ is Lord of all is polarizing. We should not be surprised when law professors find it so. But there is still a lesson for us here: let the Gospel be polarizing, not the cultural things we are so apt to add on to it.

Well, we joined.

After taking quite a bit of time to make our decision, Becky and I yesterday became members of Stonebridge Church (EFCA). For a while we were wondering if enough members would show up to form a quorum so we (and 14 others) could be voted into membership, but eventually enough trickled in to make it official.

It feels good to have made the decision and committed to a body of believers. We are very thankful that God has led us to this fine group of folks as we continue through life’s journey.

Partaking "in an unworthy manner"

Brent Thomas posted yesterday on the question of “fencing the table” at communion, and while the comment thread on his post has gone down the path of fencing based on doctrinal fidelity (ah, those Calvinists!), I’ve been more thinking about it from my evangelical perspective, and the idea of partaking “in an unworthy manner”. (Thanks to my brother Andrew for batting around some thoughts with me.)

1 Corinthians 11 is the relevant passage here:

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. 32When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.

So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment.

Now, in the churches I’ve been in, the pastor typically instructs the congregation something along these lines before communion is served: “take a minute quietly, examine your heart, ask God to reveal sin to you that needs confessed, then confess and partake. Don’t take it unworthily.” And while these are good instructions, I’m not sure they’re actually the point of the passage.

The problem Paul is addressing with the Corinthians isn’t that there are a bunch of unrepentant sinners partaking of communion (which undoubtedly there were), but rather that people are coming and gobbling up the food in a haphazard, flippant, gluttonous fashion, not recognizing, as Paul says, that this is the body of the Lord. They’re not taking it as a serious remembrance. Paul’s corrective summary in verse 33 doesn’t say “repent of your sins before you partake!” - rather, it says “wait for each other”. Paul is emphasizing the corporate nature of this sacrament, something that the Corinthians seem to have forgotten.

I don’t want to discount the need for examining our hearts as we come before God in worship - in Matthew 5:23-24 Jesus says to go make things right with your brother before you come to the altar to sacrifice to God. But I’ve talked to people who told me “you know, I thought about it, and I remembered something I needed to settle with another person, so I let the elements go by and didn’t partake”, and this, to me, seems to be entirely missing the point.

Partaking of the bread and the cup in communion is a reminder of the sacrifice that gave us salvation. In giving us salvation, God calls us to repent and believe, even knowing full well that perfect repentance won’t ever happen for us this side of eternity. In communion, God calls us to remember the death of His Son, with the same heart of brokenness and repentance that is working in our salvation, even as He knows that each of us will go back out and willfully commit sin.

To put it another way: communion isn’t intended to be for Christians who’ve somehow managed to get everything cleaned up. In examining ourselves, we should quickly recognize that we wretched, miserable sinners desperately need Jesus’ blood to cleanse us every day. And in partaking, we should not fear that we’ve somehow forgotten a sin and so God is going to smack us, but rather should be humbly thankful for the awesome gift we have been given.