Chris​Hubbs​.com

Tonight after the service at Imago Christi, I read this brief letter to the congregation:

It has been a blessing to be at Imago Christi this year, to serve as an elder and as worship leader, and to help plan and organize a church in its very first days of existence. It is therefore with sadness tonight that I come to tell you that my family and I will be leaving Imago Christi Church as of the end of this month.

Why are we leaving? Like any decision, there are a multitude of reasons each having a small part in the big decision. Primarily, though, it comes down to personal and family needs, and the conviction that I need to reprioritize my life with family in mind first. Some have already asked “well, can’t you stay at Imago and just reduce your responsibilities?” and believe me, we have wrestled long and hard with that question. I have had something of a pattern of this my past several years in ministry - needing to recalibrate, trying to reduce, finding it impossible to effect permanent change. It is that history, as much as anything, that has convinced me (and Becky, too) that bigger change is necessary.

In case I haven’t been clear about it already, this isn’t a case of anyone being forced to leave or asked to leave or pushed out - quite the opposite, I have been pleaded with at length to stay. We are still very much behind the mission of Imago Christi, and our prayers go with you. I know that some of you do not or will not understand quite why we made this decision. And that’s OK. If you have questions feel free to talk to me afterwards. But please know that we have prayed much about this, and really feel like we are following God’s leading here. So we go. And so we trust, and pray that you will, too, that God is at work in this, both for our family, and for Imago Christi as a church body.

This has been a very difficult decision for us over the past couple of months. In the end, though, we feel like this is where God is leading us - to make a break and try and re-form things in a way that works better for our family. We don’t know where we’ll end up for church, but we’ll be looking around. That’ll feel weird after nearly 10 years with mostly the same folks at Noelridge and Imago.

One day at a time.

One of our challenges at Imago has been figuring out the right time to hold our Saturday night service. Pick a time to early, and folks find it hard to attend because they’re still wanting to finish their Saturday activities. (Especially during the summer.) Pick a time too late, and you’re running in to evening plans (which is bad if you’re trying to attract college students), dinner schedules, and small children’s bedtimes.

When we started back in January we decided on holding the services from 5:30 - 6:30pm. The reasoning went something like this: it’s early enough that people can eat afterwards, even go out to dinner with someone else from church after the service. It’s early enough that people with small children won’t run into trouble with bedtimes. It’s late enough that people should be able to make it and still have been able to put in a good day of work on Saturday. And really, for the past 7 months, that’s worked pretty well. For our volunteers, it means something more like a 4:30 - 7:00 commitment, but that’s still not awful.

Now we’re approaching fall and we want to add a couple of adult Bible studies on Saturday nights. We’ve tossed around all sorts of service times, from starting earlier (5:00?) with classes afterwards, to having classes first, then the service, to moving everything later… Even though we’re talking about at most a two-and-a-half hour block of time, for some reason it seems a lot more difficult to fit it in on a Saturday night than it would be on a Sunday morning.

Tonight at our core team meeting the elders are going to propose the following schedule:

• 5:00 - 5:15 prayer for the service
• 5:30 - 6:30 worship service
• 6:30 - 7:00 fellowship and snacks
• 7:00 - 7:50 adult Bible classes

I think it’s probably the best option we’ve got right now. The other challenge is what to do with the kids during the class time given that we’re struggling with having enough manpower to do kids ministries. But we’ve got to do that somehow, to make the opportunity available. We’re trusting that God will provide the workers to teach the kids He brings in.

One of the things we’ve been wrestling with as elders at Imago is the concept of church membership. Now, we all agree that membership is important, both for accountability for folks who are a part of the fellowship, and to provide accountability for the church leadership. But most of us come from Baptist churches where “membership” is too often considered a ticket to gripe and cause trouble at business meetings.

Our objectives for “membership” and the “membership process”:

1. Provide a way for people to feel like they are a part of the congregation
2. Provide a process whereby people can understand Imago’s distinctives, including doctrinal statement and leadership structure
3. Create an environment where people come to think of “membership” as having responsibilities and commitments rather than “privileges”
4. Keep the voting base limited to the core planning/leadership team, rather than the standard Baptist congregational democracy.
5. Oh, yeah, and the end result needs to be church members, committed to service and under the authority of the church.

We have pretty well settled on a set of three “covenants” that might be looked at as “tiers” of membership, though we’re trying hard not to call them that.

Fellowship Covenant

• I will support the ministry of Imago Christi Church with my regular attendance at worship services and other events sponsored by the church.

This one is pretty basic. This allows people who want to feel like they’re a part of a fellowship to say that yeah, they’re a part of the fellowship. I have really wrestled with whether or not this covenant should include a statement of accountability to the church. I am thinking maybe it should.

Ministry Covenant

• I will support the ministry of Imago Christi Church with my regular attendance at worship services and other events sponsored by the church.
• I will support the church with its financial needs as the Lord so directs me.
• I will use my spiritual gifts in ministry opportunities of the church.
• I will become better acquainted with ministry opportunities and strategies by attending planning and evaluation meetings of the church. I understand that I am able to contribute to the discussion at these meetings, but do not have the right to vote.
• I will submit myself by being accountable to the leadership of Imago Christi Church.

Part of the commitment at this level would require completion of a membership class, which would include a review of the doctrinal statement. At this level we wouldn’t require that the person agree with the doctrinal statement 100%, but we’d ask them to identify any differences they have and discuss them with the elders.

People committed at this level would be able to assume responsibilities such as teaching children, assisting in (but not leading) ministries, and would be welcome to participate in business and planning meetings of the church, but would not have a vote.

Leadership Covenant

• I will support the ministry of Imago Christi Church with my regular attendance at worship services and other events sponsored by the church.
• I will support the church with its financial needs as the Lord so directs me.
• I will use my spiritual gifts in ministry opportunities of the church.
• I will attend and participate in the discussion at planning and evaluation meetings of the church and have the right to vote on any church business as prescribed by the church bylaws.
• I will submit myself by being accountable to the leadership of Imago Christi Church.

At this level, we would require that folks agree with our doctrinal statement, have been baptized by immersion, and have completed the membership class. This level would also require the approval of the elders.

We’re still not sure when we’ll institute this process - I’m guessing probably in January. A year is plenty long for us to run with no members.

I had the opportunity to do the Easter “program” (if you want to call it that) twice this year: once in a slightly-odd (celebrating Easter on Saturday?) Saturday night service at Imago; the other on Sunday morning at Noelridge. It was a nice change to not have to plan the service this year; I really enjoy just being the pianist and playing behind someone else. Of course, not planning the service means that you get whatever the leader plans. My only real comment in that regard: I am not a fan of Gaither tour DVDs. In fact, I think pretty much any sort of live person-led activity, even of lower technical quality, is preferable to playing a DVD of a song. Your mileage may vary.

My larger observation, though, is that I think we at Noelridge, and likely the greater evangelical church, miss something by not observing all of Holy Week. Maundy Thursday? What’s that? Good Friday? Well, there’s a community Good Friday service that we could’ve attended, I guess. But it’s not really pushed as a priority. We just have an Easter morning service.

What happens, then, is that the Easter morning service turns into an observance of all of Holy Week, and, in our case, turned into 80% (or more) reflections on Christ’s death and the cross, and only about 20% (or less) about His resurrection. And the natural result of that is that the message (sandwiched in after all the special music at the end of the service) ends up being a call to unbelievers to believe, with nothing really targeted at believers, other than a reminder of the hope that we have that death is not the end.

Now the influence of N. T. Wright’s recent Surprised By Hope on my thinking is going to show. Wright argues strongly that we don’t celebrate the Resurrection enough, and I think he’s right. He says, and I loosely paraphrase since I don’t have the book with me at the moment, that we spend 40 days in sacrifice for Lent (oh, something else we don’t do as Baptists) but then Easter is maybe 2 hours on Sunday morning. Instead, Wright says, Easter should be the kickoff day for a full week of celebration. And the message of the Resurrection isn’t just for hope that we will go someplace better when we die, but that God is working to redeem and restore the whole of creation, and that we look forward to participating in Christ’s kingdom.

So much still to think through…

This past weekend I had the pleasure of leading music both at Imago Christi on Saturday night and at Noelridge on Sunday morning. It was the first time in a month that I’ve been to Noelridge, and with a month of Imago under our belts it was a good chance to draw some comparisons.

Look and Feel At Imago we’re meeting at night in a 100-year-old sanctuary with lots of stained glass and insufficient lighting. At Noelridge we’re meeting on Sunday morning in a smaller 50-year-old sanctuary. Noelridge has a smaller, intimate, friendly feel to it; Imago has a deeper, more awe-inspiring feel. I think I prefer the relative expanse of Imago. We do need to do something about the lighting, though. (Plans are in process.)

Music OK, the music was basically the same. At Imago I led on an electric keyboard with Dave playing guitar behind me. At Noelridge I led from a baby grand with another Dave playing bass and Tapuwa on the congas. I’m much more comfortable sitting down leading at the piano rather than standing up - partly I need a mic stand with a longer boom so I can situate the stand better; partly I’ve just mostly led while sitting down, and it’s a bit of an adjustment to stand up. Both congregations knew the songs pretty well. There was a bunch of sound generated by each congregation with the singing. I am struck, though, by how much more live the sanctuary at Imago is. Hardwood floors and a big high ceiling let the sound rattle around in a way that creates some presence. Noelridge with its low ceilings and carpet is dead by comparison.

Preaching Same pastor, same sermon, pretty much. I don’t have recordings of either of them, and I was semi-distracted during the Imago service during the sermon (trying to decide what song to sing for a closing meditation), so I’m going on middling memories here. The Imago version was more concise and seemed targeted a bit more toward unbelievers in the audience. At Noelridge it went kind of long (which seemed OK, though). Still, quality stuff from John 1 both times.

Attitude This is where there are two very distinct feelings between the two churches. At Imago, since we’re so new, everyone seems focused on finding the visitors/new people, greeting them, pulling them in. At Noelridge we have an established congregation, so it’s much more of a family feel - people have established relationships, and it shows. Noelridge is still very friendly to visitors, but it’s a slightly different feel. What I gather from this is that we at Imago really need to work on developing relationships among the core team and volunteers, getting us feeling more like a warm family and less like a band of volunteers.

Conclusions? There are good things going on both places. We both have work to do. We both have things we can learn. In both, the gospel is proclaimed, and so I rejoice.

“…and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” (2 Tim 2:2)

Paul’s wise counsel to Timothy is applicable on many levels, and has a multitude of benefits. A few that I will mention today:

It about the message, not the messenger. Paul was a good example of this, not being jealous of others who gained renown preaching the gospel, but rather simply rejoicing that the gospel was proclaimed. Pride will tempt us to want to be “the guy” - the teacher and leader that people remember and look to. But what is of primary importance isn’t us, but is the gospel that gets preached. When we practice entrusting to faithful men, we are shedding a few of the (multitudinous) opportunities for pride.

The message must carry on after us. Paul himself knew that his days on the earth were short. To have his most effective ministry, he needed not only to preach to unbelievers, but also to teach the teachers who would reach the following generation. I have heard it said that your effectiveness as a parent isn’t shown as much in how your children turn out as in how your grandchildren turn out. For Paul’s spiritual grandchildren to be vibrant and mature Christians, he needed to make sure his spiritual children were well-trained.

You can’t do it all on your own. This is the big temptation for me, and was the initial thought that prompted this post. Just because you (or I) have the skills to do the task yourself doesn’t mean you should be the one to always do it. There is far more work to do than any one of us can handle. Finding and training others who can both assist and replace you is essential in maintaining health, sanity, and the healthy operation of any ministry.