Reboot

I've been a follower of Jesus for 34 years now. I've seen the church go from "Flakes formula" to the "growth spiral", from "Masterlife" to "Eat This Book", from the Roman Road through EE, CWT, NET, and FAITH, and from program driven to purpose driven and beyond.

I remember when "God of Earth and Outer Space" crept into the hymnal, and when "Pass It On" was considered a real contemporary song. My hearing was affected by Petra, my heart by Dallas Holm, Don Francisco, and especially Keith Green.

My faith walk began with the Baptist Hymnal and a Schofield KJV, moved through a turtle green Living Bible, the NIV, and NASB, and now I've arrived at music lyrics projected on a screen and the NLT 2.0. We've never had so many resources. Need youth materials on dating? Five choices off the top of my head. Marriage? Dozens. Discipleship? Do you want printed or downloadable?

And yet...

For the last few years, I've been fighting a creeping suspicion.

It ain't working.

By "It", I mean church as we have known it. We're not effective in making disciples. By disciples I mean people whose worldview is rooted and established in love of and fidelity to Jesus Christ. Is there growth in what we are doing? Sure. More people come to our worship. More people give to the ministry outreaches that we are doing more of than ever before. By all the numbers I should be a happy man. We've just baptized some new followers at the beach a few Sunday's ago and gave a testimony that the church is alive and active.

But I just don't see the steady progression in those I love and care for as a pastor. Not just those who haven't been Christians long, but even among some who have. They get distracted by the things of this world too often. Their children aren't growing deeper in relationship either, choosing the same fractional loyalties as their parents. They care about the wrong things. Their passions are aroused by trivialities.

Possibly it hasn't been working for a long time, I was just so busy working at it that I didn't notice.

So what to do?

I could do as some of my friends have done. I could leave the pastoral ministry in frustration. In just the past few years I have seen men with great talent and passion for God, trained at the best institutions leave the ministry and find secular employment. Why? Because they decided that if they couldn't change the church, they didn't want to be a part of failure. While I understand what they experienced, and believe that each had to do what they believed to be the right path, I cannot see that as valid for me. Just not who I am.

In the movie Tombstone, Val Kilmer plays Doc Holiday (a fellow Georgian). He greets a man who wants to get after the Earps by cutting him off and stepping in his way and saying, "I'll be your huckleberry."

I think it means "I'm ready for whatever you've got on your mind."

My love for Jesus is strong. My love for the people, and their stories who make up the rich fabric of congregational life has grown more and more in the last few years. I've been through the fire, I've gotten over the need for everyone to like me all the time. Life's too short and the stakes are too high. Push has come to shove. Change must come - again. It's time to reboot the church.

So if I was placed here for such a time as this...

yeah, I'll be your huckleberry.

Looking Ahead

It's that time of year, when you are wrapping up the holidays and looking forward to what the New Year will bring. There have been very significant challenges this year that touched on everything else. When I think about a year that included a probate battle grinding to a conclusion, a tornado in Macon, wrapping up seminary, big decisions on ministry and my mother in law's battle with her health - the very first thing I am doing is giving thanks for the grace of God that was and is sufficient to meet all our needs.

He has provided. Again and again and again.

Today I'm working on gathering more information about Dot's options for home health care, reading a couple of books, jotting some notes about Sunday and beyond, and wondering. What will 2009 bring?

The "Let It Be Christmas" series really seemed to inspire our people to join in worship and invite their friends. Using secular music - really just using someone else's idea for a series was something we had never done before, but it worked. The transcripts for the messages in the "Let It Be Christmas" series were little more than an idea about where that pastor thought the topic led. I put as much work into the series message preparation as I always do, and was pleased to see how tightly the themes suggested by the secular music integrated with the answers the Bible gave for those universal needs. (Hint - love, God, love your neighbor, follow Jesus closely)

So I am really thinking about laying out the year (been working on it for a while) in series. Some we'll come up with, and some will get their genesis in the hearts and minds of others. But they will all be God focused and call for repentance and renewal. I hope over time to get better at taking a book of the Bible and creating a thematic series that communicates to today through music, graphics and text. I really admire the folks that do that well.

Sunday night is also an area that we'll come to a consensus on very soon. We limped to the end of the year in that area, and that's unacceptable. Lots of reasons for that, all of them valid, but I'd really like to see that length of time used for small groups meeting whenever during the week they can. We have the materials for the revised edition of "Experiencing God" and that will be our first small group of 2009.

One crazy idea I had this weekend was to have a monthly "Solomon's Porch" type gathering that would focus on one topic but that would be intensely intentional about exploration and discussion versus a data dump lecture by yours truly. We'd decide on a topic - say "heaven" for example, let that be known weeks early, and then meet over snacks in the fellowship hall or even somewhere else and drill into the topic together. My role would be to help guide the discussion when it strayed.

Any thoughts on that?

It would seem to me to shift people out of receiver mode into participant in the learning experience, and draw people in who are tired of hearing someone tell them what the Bible says.

Today is rolling along, and tomorrow and the New Year are racing forward. Back to work.

Think about this quote

“The point is.. all the effort to fix the church misses the point. You can build the perfect church–and they still won’t come. People are not looking for a great church… The age in which institutional religion holds appeal is passing away.

“Church leaders seem unable to grasp this simple implication of the new world–people outside the church think church is for church people, not for them.” Reggie McNeal

He goes on:

“The church was created to be the people of God to join him in his redemptive mission in the world. The church was never intended to exist for itself. It was and is the chosen instrument of God to expand his kingdom. The church is the bride of Christ. Its union with him is designed for reproduction, the growth of the kingdom. Jesus did not teach his disciples to pray, “Thy church come.” The kingdom is the destination. In its institutional existence the church abandoned its real identity and reason for existence.

“God did not give up on his mission in the Old Testament when Israel refused to partner with him. God is a reckless lover. He decided to go on with the mission himself. We do not need to be mistaken about this: if the church refuses its missional assignment, God will do it another way. The church has [refused], and he is [moving on]. God is pulling end runs around the institutional North American church to get to people in the streets. God is still inviting us to join him on mission, but it is the invitation to be part of a movement, not a religious club.”

Sometimes I wonder about why I see the church's future to be not in bigger buildings but in bigger people - people who see success as followers of Jesus not in the "position" they hold in the organization, but in the influence their life has on their family, their workplace, their neighborhood.

Why can't I be satisfied with where I am? With where we are?

Because I know in my gut that time is running out - not just for the organizations we call our churches, but for the opportunity to redeem the time we've been given in this life for the advancement of the Kingdom of God.

Because lost people matter to God.

It's AD 30 All Over Again

Reggie McNeal is one of those rare folks who came from the typical SBC background and is able to step out and look around and see where God is working. His book "The Present Future" is a required read. This talk should be.

Facing Forward

Taking a break from some Romans Chapter 10 heavy lifting and thinking about the way forward here.

- Another increase in our insurance premium on the buildings. A 42% one to be exact. That's roughly (IIRC) a 400% over the last 4 years.
- Another increase in the power bills.
- When you total it all up, upwards of 4 our of every ten dollars New Hope receives in tithes and offerings goes to the mortgage, insurance, and upkeep of the buildings, which are often empty, except when they are too full. (It happens on Sunday mornings sometimes)

We have hosted Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Junior Gardeners, and recently a home schooling collective, but ironically, they are moving because they've run out of room - too.

Maybe it's time to look across the street again at the elementary school or down the road a little bit at Lewis Middle School. At some point, I'm wondering how many churches will look at the amount they put into their buildings and at the amount they put into their mission and make the connection.

Talking to people who do "portable church" over the years has given me the sense that people who are involved in such churches have a greater sense of just why they are doing the Sunday morning gathering than others do. But I guess when you arrive at 6AM to set up everything you need to have worship, then stay after to break it all down and clean up, an amazing commitment to why you are there HAS to be everywhere, or you would not make it for long.

And small home groups have to be a focus because otherwise you have nowhere to get discipleship done. But we have the buildings now.

...processing....

New Hope @ Worship 05/18/08

We had an elderly deacon suffer a fainting spell in the men's SS class this morning and had lots of visitors - but they were paramedics and ambulance folks. He is one of the finest Christian men I have ever known and one of the most loved. Robert Hughes is doing better tonight, though in the ICU. That event did send us into worship with some shocked and sad people, but God is good, and met our request to meet with us today. Lots of visitors in worship too.

Music

O Worship the King - Tomlin - Just an awesome redo of a great song
Thank You Lord
Come Thou Fount - rearranged
Ancient Words - great modern hymn

O I Want To Know You More

I was led into bringing a message about what our mission is and what our vision is for accomplishing it. So to do that I used our motto - New Life, New Joy, and New Hope! We started late and I did cut some but I believe I was able to lay out the basis for why we do what we do.



Audio is available here: Church Cloud

Going, going, gone

“Many Southern Baptist churches are small groups of white people who are holding on [until] the end,” he said. “Not only have we not reached out to younger generations, but we have failed to reach out to other ethnic minorities who are all around us.” Rather than embracing a “whatever it takes” mentality to change and restore a local church to health, Page said, many pastors and churches have “chosen to die rather than change, and they are doing it."

from The Incredible Shrinking Church by Frank Page

We Can't Fix It

Down through the years, maybe partially because I was educated and trained in marketing, partially because I'm a classic "fix it" male, but really, because I want to see people experience the joy of life in Jesus Christ, I've tried to discover what we can do to get people to come to New Hope.

We've done a lot of things down through the years. Over and over again the most effective means, as reflected by the answers to "how did you find New Hope?" have been:

1. A personal invitation - far and away the most effective
2. Our sign - amazing to me
3. Our website - more and more this is the first contact

None of the other efforts have really proven to be effective for us. I have to say that it has annoyed me - the marketer me - because it is so ingrained in me that if you just get the right message in front of the right people - they will come. But they haven't.

I was reading Darryl Dash's blog this morning (was pointed there by Milton Stanley), and he reported the findings of another church's survey.

MacDonald now pastors a church in downtown Toronto called Grace Toronto. The church recently asked community members to describe their objections against Christianity. They found that many didn't have objections; they just find Christianity irrelevant. Going to church doesn't even make the list of options for Sunday morning. The seeker approach assumes that people will attend church if its relevant. But many won't go to church no matter what we do.

Friends, we overestimate our impact and underestimate the power of our opposition.

No matter what we do, we can't fix the lack of interest a population of people in rebellion to God has in attending a church worship service. Nor can we awaken their hearts to God's love. That's way above our pay grade as my father used to say.

What we can do is be authentic followers of Jesus and be available to our neighbors during times when they are spiritually receptive to the message.

What we can do is push out past the doors of the church and move into the neighborhood to experience life with our neighbors.

What we can do is pray, pray, pray for the people around us to experience the grace of Jesus.

But we can't fix it.

Is next - Theology and Practice of Ministry

Tomorrow begins the new term at Rockbridge Seminary and one of the last core classes for me - Theology and Practice of Ministry.

The course is being taught by Dr. Randy Bennett, Director of Missions, Kern County Southern Baptist Association, Bakersfield, CA. He's well versed in the online educational experience as well as the bricks and mortar classroom, having taught at Golden Gate and at Midwestern. He's currently serving as an Interim in a church as well.

I'm looking forward to interacting with Dr. Bennett.

The course is designed to be: "An introduction to the purpose of ministry through the study of the biblical and theological basis for "every member ministry," the rise of clericalism in church history, the equipping church model vs. the dependency model, and the permission-giving church vs. the controlling church. Students will examine approaches to gift discovery and ministry matching."

Books should arrive this week and I'll get busy. That ticking noise you hear in the background is the time running out in my pursuit of this Masters. I'll have it in hand before Christmas, Lord willing.

The price of Admission

A couple of nights ago, I was looking for something to read that didn't have to do with the church, or theology. My life is so centered on New Hope and what God is doing and wants to do through all of us here, that I don't really read anything else. In years past I spent a lot of time bring drawn into the stories of Mark Twain's characters, William Faulkner's Mississippi, Steinbeck's California, and the military fiction of W.E.B. Griffin and Tom Clancy - and others, lots of others.

But as time has passed, I've spent more and more time in books about church.

Well, Tuesday I went out in the garage, where boxes of books still lie packed up from our move almost two years ago (the rest are in the attic or at church) and found "Flags of Our Fathers." I remembered reading it a while back and how it helped me understand a little bit of what my own father had gone through in that era.

So I picked it up and started reading again. The author is the son of one of the men forever immortalized as the "flag raisers" on the island of Iwo Jima. After his father's death, his family finds a couple of boxes in the closet with clippings about that event. They discover things they never knew about their father's courage and his relationship with the men he shared that "mountain top experience" with that day. Great book I highly recommend.

One of the men whose life he examines had come into military service the same way my father, who passed away a couple of years ago, did. When the war broke out, this individual was in an outfit called the Civilian Conservation Corps. The author explains how it was created to help men whose families were impoverished out of that hole called the Great Depression, and served as an intro to the rigors of Army life.

Here's what caught my attention. In order to participate in the program, that would lift your family out of poverty...

You had to admit you were poor.

That you were in need.

That was the price of admission, and I suspect there were some whose pride would have kept them from participation. My father and his family must have done that, or they wouldn't have gotten helped. I'm so thankful that they did. For my father's joining the CCC was their first step up from poverty - a poverty so bitter that decades later my father would point out certain weeds and explain to his boys that "those were all we had to eat." Times were hard, but hope was available - if you paid the price of admission, and swallowed your pride and said "I need help."

Funny how similar that organization is to this one - the Church.

I've been reading with interest Ed Stetzer's posts on the future of the SBC, as well as a few of the posts examining what the findings mean.

What has amazed me frankly are those who are rushing forward to claim that declining membership doesn't mean anything is wrong. There's so much wrong that for once I do not think any church growth guru can possibly design the next Lifeway program to help us pretend to fix it.

I'm reminded of one pastor's encounter with some Nob Hill socialite who was recounting a litany of woes. The pastor patiently hear her out and suggested that the woman needed to admit she needed help and call upon God.

"Has it come to that?", she is said to have replied.

Yes brothers and sisters, it has come to that.

I Want It Now

I want the works
I want the whole works
Presents and prizes and sweets and surprises
Of all shapes and sizes
And now
Don't care how
I want it now
Don't care how
I want it now - from the Oompa Loompa song

Earlier last week, I was cleaning up in the closet and noticed that there was a copy of "Civilization II - Test of Time." It's an old, old game for the PC that lets you pick a people group and build a civilization. That's right, you get to RULE THE WORLD!!!!

So I began the game and decided to be the Ancient Greeks. I figured I had a depth of knowledge about them, knew the geography, and might get to show Alexander how a REAL general would handle those pesky Persians.

But it's so darn slow, this empire building. You have to convince people to settle, and farm, then build cities and defend them. There's danger of loss from outside forces and from treachery within. Even if you make yourself supreme ruler (they actually have a "despot mode" of government mode) people will be - people. Everything just takes so long.

That prospect of making things happen NOW! is most appealing to the pastor of a small church, friends. There's so much of what happens here that can best be described as incremental gains. You cheer when a couple more guys join the men's group. You're ecstatic when a couple of families seem to be fitting in. And have someone cross over to faith in Jesus, and it is as if everything you are doing is paying off.

This is not the place of giant leaps, or miraculous growth. No Beanstalks - more like centipede grass.

In the game, they have "cheat codes" you can use to speed up the process - to advance beyond what you could have expected to normally.

Ever hear of anything like that in the church? Or ever think about how easy this would be if only *those* people got out of the way or *those* people would come and join you?

I'd be surprised to meet a pastor who didn't want to see God glorified in His church. Or who didn't want it to happen sooner rather than later.

It's that "Don't care how" part that worries me.

I'll let God be the judge of other people's ministry. But I'll answer for mine. So if you'll pray for me to keep my desires in line with God's plan, I'd be grateful.

Succinct and to the point

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."
(Galatians 2:20)

There, I found your problem. Dead people don't have rights.

HT: Finishing Well

Interesting quote, and an interesting blog that it came from. Take a look. Might want to add it to your reader.

Clarity. Movement. Alignment. Focus.

Clarity. Movement. Alignment. Focus.

Those are the hallmarks of the Tao(Way) of Simple Church. When I read the book a few months ago, I actually wound up reading in immediately again, because I didn't "get" what was so amazing about the way Geiger and Rainer went about explaining how to "do" church. It seemed so simple.

Now that I'm actually praying and thinking through how to make a good church better, I begin to see that the "Simple Church" process might be harder to achieve for the church that's doing okay than for the one in flames or falling to pieces. When you are doing okay, to do well means you will have to change or eliminate something that's working - sort of - but isn't working toward your foundational goals. I've been looking through some other church's processes as they turned toward a "Simple Church" way. Here's one example.

From CECWORSHIP: It teaches basically to come up with principal areas of ministry and an order of discipleship process. We have heard that before, but the difference with this is taking a look at the church ministries and taking out the ministries that don’t fit into that process.

Our pillars are:

Live For God
We commit to daily give our life and will to God, getting to know Him through prayer and His Word, while seeking to live in a way that would please Him

Grow Together
We commit to a weekly time of fellowship with other believers, where we can grow together, and support each other in our walk with God

Give to Others
We commit to a ministry or other service activity, whether in the Church or the community, through which we can express God’s love working in and through us

Go and Share
We commit to sharing the gospel in word and action, and that when given the opportunity we will invite others to join us on the path of life

Our Church slogan if you will is Together on the Path of Life

The book makes the case that business as usual produces the usual results.

We are talking about people not being transformed. Week after week, year after year, many people are the same. The building project of people’s lives is stalled. Stagnant believers and congested churches go hand in hand.

Sadly, in many churches people are stuck in the same place spiritually. And there is no intentional process to move them.

The Bible paints a different picture of spiritual growth. According to Scripture a believer’s life is to be transformed more and more. People are not supposed to be the same. There is to be progression, movement.

Our churches should be filled with people who are becoming. Becoming more like Christ. Becoming more loving and joyful. Becoming. Being transformed (136).

Exactly. I want to resist the urge though, to treat discipleship as a business model, and people as a product that comes as a result of the application of the model. The Holy Spirit is the One Who produces results as people yield their lives to His instruction, correction, and rebuke - as Christ is formed in them.

People should be changing, morphing into awesome examples of the grace of God inhabiting their lives in the person of the Holy Spirit. Some will. Many won't, choosing instead to become a shadow of what they could have been if they were completely surrendered to Christ.

So we pray for wisdom now Lord. Help us to be clear on what You want from Your people through Your Church.

What Do You Want Me To Do For You?

I've been working these last two weeks on some ideas about what we could be doing in the weeks and months to come to see God glorified here at New Hope. Some I've shared openly on here for feedback (and I appreciate all I have received so far) and some I've kept close to the vest. In my heart, really.

Times like this, when instead of giving us a "put tab a into slot b, now stand back and watch it happen" sort of direction, God gives us stillness - don't really sit well with me. Yet I have learned over the years that some of the best things God has ever done came at the end of one of these "sessions."

As I've been working on a series on "Big Questions" to begin next week, I've tripped several times over a question that Jesus asked in the Scriptures. "What do you want Me to do for you?"

I chose "tripped" there to indicate that I'm a little uneasy about what I would answer. There's a tendency to want to wrap your own ambition up with a God honoring request. Here's a quote that might help you understand what I mean.

Something has happened in the past thirty or so years that has shifted our pastoral ethic from one of faithfulness to one of productivity and success. I believe this has stirred the fires of ambition. Given the nature of our American culture, this doesn't surprise me. It also doesn't surprise me that the battle with ambition will be a ferocious one, for the tendency toward self-absorption plagues every one of us.

For more than twenty years I have attended church conferences. I have observed as we sized each other up to see how quickly we could find out who had the highest attendance, the largest staff, the biggest budget, the most property. The secret that hardly anyone talks about is that most of us want to win the "largest church game." Or at least make a good showing. I am convinced from first hand experience, as well as from paying close attention to the darkness of my own heart, that if all-of-the-sudden thought bubbles appeared over all our heads, we would all fall to the ground in repentance.
- Kent Carlson writing in Leadership Journal

It is so darned easy to get caught looking at the numbers and deriving your worth to God from them. If they are great, you inflate your importance in God's plan. As I look back over the years, I'll confess to having done both. Someone pointed out once that in farming, 95% of what happens - success or failure - is out of the farmer's hands. A farmer only has a 5% impact on the outcome. Well, pastoring a church has to be much like farming. The successes you may have may very well have occurred through other people's faithfulness, and are always initiated by God in His grace and mercy.

So as I head off to bed tonight, I am thankful that God saw in me something He could use to illustrate His grace and mercy. And I pray that through my efforts in love of Him, He might find Himself glorified through changed lives who then go on to change other lives.

I am fighting the good fight. I am keeping the faith. And one day I'll receive the evaluation, but for now it is enough knowing that God loves me and has chosen me to serve His purposes in this generation.

Crazy Idea #3287

We have "game night" once a month here, where the kids and some adults get together and play board games against one another. It's not fun having a 7 year old whip you at Yahtzee. Don't ask me how I know.

What if we got several copies of a PC based game like Cesear 2, or Rise of Nations and had a lan party as well? Might bring in some others in this technologically savvy part of the world. We got engineers on top of engineers here.

Ooooh - we could buy 10 copies of F-15 Strike Eagle or F-16 Falcon and get one of the pilots from the base over here and teach them some humility. :)

Or get some Ranger Camp instructors over to play us in America's Army.

If we did the latter, we could publicize it and maybe get a bunch of folks and build some goodwill with military units here. Awesome people, doing a great job who don't get told "thank you" near enough.

Of course with my game prowess, I'll be over with the elementary school kids playing Trouble, or maybe "Operation".

Whatcha' think?

Living the Resurrection

"The do it yourself, self-help culture of North America has so throughly permeated our imagination that we ordinarily don't give attention to the biggest thing of all - resurrection. And the reason we don't is because resurrection isn't something we can use or control or manipulate or improve on."

Eugene Peterson, from Living the Resurrection pg 13

I LOVE Easter. It's my favorite holiday by far. For us, living away from our families means that it's not a real "family" day. There's no real distraction with shopping and gifts either like there is with Christmas. No real commercialism. It's about Jesus, His resurrection, and being with others who feel that way too in worship of our Risen Lord.

Every year I go into my role as pastor and teacher thinking "If I can just get them to understand and believe, believe and understand - then everything is different - everything CAN change.

When I was looking through the Scriptures this year, I came across this.

32 The whole congregation of believers was united as one— one heart, one mind! They didn't even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, "That's mine; you can't have it." They shared everything. 33 The apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of the Master Jesus, and grace was on all of them.

Acts 4:32-33 (MSG)

Right there - right in the center of their everyday God-blessed life - was the resurrection. They used it much like a diver uses a springboard to propel their faith to do amazing things. Christ had risen - just as He said. Because He had, everything was possible. We look at the cross and in our 21st century view, see that as the center of everything for the early church.

No.

It was the resurrection.

10 If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we're at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! 11 Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!

Romans 5:10-11 (MSG)

The resurrection was the ultimate reminder of God's power AND His love. They reveled in it, rejoiced because of it, lived in it - everyday. The life after the resurrection is full of possibilities through the power of God.

14-15 God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?"

Romans 8:14 (MSG)

It provided a bulwalk against all the hazards and hardships that the early Christians faced, and provided them with a glimpse of God's glory and His grace. It was motivation enough to endure, but not just endure - to undergo the worst - and STAND.

31 I look death in the face practically every day I live. Do you think I'd do this if I wasn't convinced of your resurrection and mine as guaranteed by the resurrected Messiah Jesus? 32 Do you think I was just trying to act heroic when I fought the wild beasts at Ephesus, hoping it wouldn't be the end of me? Not on your life! It's resurrection, resurrection, always resurrection, that undergirds what I do and say, the way I live.

1 Cor 15:31-32 (MSG)

So friends, LIVE THE RESURRECTION! You've been given not just a new lease on life, but a new life today and a new life tomorrow and beyond. You've been led from prison cells into the wide open spaces of God's love and eternal power. Look up!

1 So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. 2 Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ— that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.
3 Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life— even though invisible to spectators— is with Christ in God. He is your life.

Col 3:1-3 (MSG)

Join with me to see where our freedom takes us - where this incredible opening we have in the veil of this life leads us into resurrection life today, tomorrow, and the days after that.

Resurrection. Just LIVE It!

A Dangerous Time - This Easter

Bob Hyatt issues a timely reminder today.

Look, I'm not saying we shouldn't take advantage of increased visitor attendance and preach the Gospel and hope that God does something amazing in people's lives...

I'm just saying that if that's your strategy- wait for someone to wander within range of your Gospel cannons and then fire on them in hopes of scoring a hit, or worse yet, doing some cool things in the hopes that they might be lured within range, then I think there a better way. Less defined, less able to be controlled by the pastors, less able to brag about at pastor's conferences or have a book written about it... but better. People loving people into your community and into relationship with Jesus.

It doesn't take mailers, banners, and Cirque Du Soleil every week. Just a bunch of loving, welcoming Christ followers. People who genuinely care. People who are seeking relationships with other people, and sharing life with them. A competent all-community gathering where things work well so as not to be a distraction from what God wants to do that morning, sure... but less of a focus on Sunday mornings as the center of community and more of a focus on the community and its revolving around Jesus Himself.

I remain convinced that what we win people with, we win them to.

Go read the whole thing. That guy makes a lot of sense. Not like that's unusual. :)

What Does My Reading Say About Where I'm Headed?

I'm here on my day off trying to get over a nasty cold and Bunny and Sean have headed out to Destin to pick up a few things. I've had three phone calls from members, read some of my seminary text, and watched a little TV. (Why do we even have TV - there's nothing there)

For some reason I glanced up and saw the books I have here on my desk. Now I have a couple thousand in my office at church, but these here at home are in sort of a rotation. I'm either using them for background information on what I'm currently doing, reading them for what I might be doing, or rereading them because something in them is causing me to think.

I like to think.

So here's the list.

They Like Jesus, But Not the Church - Dan Kimball
unChristian - Kinnaman & Lyons
The Cross and the Prodigal - Ken Bailey
Searching for God Knows What - Donald Miller
Breaking the Missional Code - Ed Stetzer
Matthew - the Holman NIV Commentary - Anders
Matthew - the Communicators Commentary - Augsburger
The Jesus Creed - Scot McKnight
An Unstoppable Force - Erwin Mcmanus
The Jesus Way - Eugene Peterson
Communicating for A Change - Andy Stanley
The Present Future - Reggie McNeal
Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places - Eugene Peterson
Living the Questions In Matthew - the Navigators
Crossing Cultures - Lane
To Follow Him - Mark Bailey
A History of Christianity - Paul Johnson
The Moody Handbook of Theology

Man, I need to go find some good fiction. LOL

How Do We Help Them Grow?

The past few weeks, I've been engaged a a real struggle over how well we at New Hope are helping people become more like Jesus. I've struggled in prayer over it. I've thrashed about with the issue over on a pastor's forum I'm blessed to be a part of. I've consumed mass quantities of information from every source I could find.

The lethargy of movement in growth and reluctance to pursue Jesus with abandon that I see as lacking in many of the good people of New Hope is a real issue for me. The question of whether they are believers hasn't been one I've puzzled over. It is the lack of perceptible fruit in their growth.

When you look ahead by looking at the generations coming along (at least here) There doesn't seem to be any help coming along. If I went to the RA leader tomorrow night and asked for a boy to give his testimony in Sunday morning worship, (I may be mistaken and wouldn't that be wonderful) I doubt he'd be able to find one who could do a credible and sincere job of it. What does that say about how well we are training the next generation of leaders?

We've been doing the typical SBC plan for as long as I can remember - here and in the other churches I have been a part of. Sunday School, Wed night classes, and for a long time worshiping together on Sunday night. We've used Lifeway, Group, Serendipity, Willow Creek, Saddleback and other curriculum.

It doesn't seem to be transforming people.

Yes, they mostly know about the Bible. But absent the heart to read it like a love letter, what does that mean? I can remember coming home from dates with Bunny and lying there in bed running back through everything that happened - what she wore, what she said, how she looked at me. I wanted to know everything about here. I wanted to love what she loved.

And yeah, I know this isn't the same as a romantic love relationship. But if there's a relationship that matters, shouldn't there be a real desire to know?

So I'm searching for what to do to change the status quo. Surprise, surprise.

Leader so far - discipleship triads. There's a great article about that type of intensive discipleship here (click on it for link). Jesus certainly did large groups, but for the more serious instruction he broke those down to 12 and even went farther to the inner three.

It will take time. We cannot add it to everything else we are already doing. Some activities need to die. I know that whatever we change or cancel will have some people complaining about the changes. So be it.

Stay tuned. More as this story develops.

What Should the Church Look Like?

From John Wimber:

Folks, the world knows what this is supposed to look like. Years ago in New York City, I got into a taxi cab with an Iranian taxi driver, who could hardly speak English. I tried to explain to him where I wanted to go, and as he was pulling his car out of the parking place, he almost got hit by a van that on its side had a sign reading The Pentecostal Church. He got real upset and said, "That guy’s drunk." I said, "No, he’s a Pentecostal. Drunk in the spirit, maybe, but not with wine." He asked, "Do you know about church?"

I said, "Well, I know a little bit about it; what do you know?" It was a long trip from one end of Manhattan to the other, and all the way down he told me one horror story after another that he’d heard about the church. He knew about the pastor that ran off with the choir master's wife, the couple that had burned the church down and collected the insurance—every horrible thing you could imagine.

We finally get to where we were going, I paid him, and as we’re standing there on the landing I gave him an extra-large tip. He got a suspicious look in his eyes—he’d been around, you know. I said, "Answer me this one question."

Now keep in mind, I’m planning on witnessing to him. "If there was a God and he had a church, what would it be like?"

He sat there for awhile making up his mind to play or not. Finally he sighed and said, "Well, if there was a God and he had a church—they would care for the poor, heal the sick, and they wouldn’t charge you money to teach you the Book."

I turned around and it was like an explosion in my chest. "Oh, God." I just cried, I couldn’t help it. I thought, "Oh Lord, they know. The world knows what it’s supposed to be like. The only ones that don’t know are the Church."