EL’s Dribble

Before we get too far into this – I don’t think theres’s a magic “method” that does it right. There’s a reason why the Bible says very little about church models. Frankly it’s so we wouldn’t rely on structure and hunger and depend on Jesus. With that being said, there is a problem when our structures get in the way of seeing Jesus.

I’m email convo-ing with my friend Carl and we were talking about the shift in opinions on the need for regular Sunday worship. We both agreed there’s nothing inherently wrong with meeting Sundays – it’s not so much the structure, but nurturing communities where we live our faith tangibly among those who have yet to know Jesus. So it doesn’t matter what you do. Sort of.

But my problem with stopping the conversation there is that we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing and not ponder whether our structures are communicating a different message. I contended with C-dog that the predominant structures in our present season of history are keeping us from really seeing Jesus. And even though structures are morally neutral, we also have to plant alternative forms in order break us out of a myopia and begin seeing Jesus clearly.

I’ll just throw out a few reasons and then follow up with a few more in another post. In a previous post, I said that the organizing principle needs to be “making disciples.” Making disciples means developing followers of Jesus and followers of Jesus can be broken down to be lovers of God and the world. And our development as disciples is measured by 2 things… LOVE and OBEDIENCE.

But the predominant structure of a weekly Sunday worship and small group accessories communicates the following:

1. The primary expectation of being a Christian is going to church, behaving well and tithing. Why is that? Because nothing dictates the actions of the church more than Sunday attendance. When there is little Sunday attendance, we need to hire a better preacher, provide better coffee and send out more flyers. When it’s high, we need to find ways to keep people going on Sundays by doing BBQs, having a better children’s ministry or a larger worship production. We can talk about “living out” what we believe, but our structure and how we implement it tells us that being a Christian means going consistently to church and doing the Christian-ish things that keep a Sunday worship going.

When I speak with my parent’s generation of Christians, it’s almost impossible for them to define their faith outside of going to church. When I say we don’t meet every Sunday, the first thing they say is, “Where do they go on Sundays then?” And I say, no where… and the look comes on the face of 97% of them… disgust, confusion, shock. It’s like I started wearing my underwear on my head. I even had someone say, “How will they know they’re Christian then?”

When we started NOT meeting every Sunday [we were meeting every Sunday at one point], people said it took a while to get used to it. They’d say, “When I’d wake up on Sunday morning and realized that I didn’t need to go to church… I’d feel… a little… guilty.” They didn’t miss community/worship, they felt guilty. Most people felt like sub-par Christians for not going to church. And their faith was defined more by what they did then by what Jesus has done.

In summary, the Gospel says one thing, our structures say another.

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From my friend David – it’s so short, I’ll just repost the whole thing… his quote and commentary. It’s very true. David’s last statement reminds me of the response the Pharisees had when this heretical Jesus guy started threatening the “institution”; they were very aware of what was at stake – per John 11:48.

As I talk to more people about our community I realize that the disconnect most often begins at this point: that church is not something you build/create, but the church is who you are.

Now this isn’t new news. It has been long talked about among many of this generation’s church planters and failed mega-church dreamers. I can hear them now, “We need to BE the church! Not DO church!” But in the end, most people still do church. I see this because many still see church as this thing you build.

It’s not necessarily all wrong in that there is an environment/ethos that each person of a church community contributes to. And that “thing” then becomes the driving force to do/build/create “church” as we know it.

Though some of that isn’t wrong, we miss something very crucial… that if church is something outside of you then that thing can easily become the “product” – the thing we produce. Whether it be the physical aspect of the building or an expansion of the organizational entity [more groups/worship services, etc.]… that becomes the thing we produce. And we miss out on why Jesus does what he does.

Jesus didn’t die on the cross for more buildings or even more worship services. He died so that the world [you, me and the person you hate] would be reunited with the one who loves and discover for themselves their need to love him back. And it’s this love relationship that begins a transformation in us that we can’t do ourselves. And that transformation within us that spurs on a transformation in others. In the end, Jesus died for you and me.

Which means that we’re the goal… we’re the destination… we’re the reason Jesus bore our shame and guilt so that we would live and live freely, fully and purposefully. You see, goals are never expendable. They’re your goals. You don’t give those up. But the means by which you get them are expendable… you use the ones that work and ditch the ones that don’t.

When the entity of church becomes the goal, the people are expendable. But if people are the goal, the entity of the church [methods/structure] is expendable. It becomes about developing people and just finding the means to get there. It’s not building the church and finding the people to get there.

Now we can go 100 ways with this from here on out… questions come up like, “Is it wrong to build buildings?” or “Why do we always veer towards putting out a product?” or “Why is this post so darn long?”

But we’ll go with one short example…

We do a Sunday worship thing once a month. That requires another post all together I know. But in anycase, lately I have had some of my leaders take turns doing the corporate teaching time. They learn how to prepare, listen for the Holy Spirit, practice their public speaking and learn how to shepherd people from that vantage point. It’s overall been very good. No outright heresy as of yet. They’ve all had very powerful things to say… and have helped people understand Jesus better. It’s not perfect and they have plenty of room to grow… but they’re doing great. I’m proud of them.

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Originally taken from here. An excerpt from Seth Godin’s book Tribes.

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. The scarcity makes leadership valuable. If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens. It’s discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership worthwhile. In other words, if everyone could do it, they would, and it wouldn’t be worth much.

It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers.
It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed. If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.

A quote from comedian John Cleese from Monty Python fame :

“I think that the real religion is about the understanding that if we can only still our egos for a few seconds, we might have a chance of experiencing something that is divine in nature. But in order to do that, we have to slice away at our egos and try to get them down to a manageable size, and then still work some practiced light meditation. So real religion is about reducing our egos, whereas all the churches are interested in is egotistical activities, like getting as many members and raising as much money and becoming as important and high-profile and influential as possible. All of which are egotistical attitudes. So how can you have an egotistical organization trying to teach a non-egotistical ideal? It makes no sense, unless you regard religion as crowd control. What I think most organized religion—simply crowd control.”

I rarely do a lot of ranting via the blog – and God has slowly worked down a lot of bitterness in me. So this is not so much a rant against the church, but an acknowledgment that the world sees the disconnect between the message and the method [medium]. We think we can use whatever means to communicate the Gospel… as long as it goes out. But our method is contradicting our message and everyone knows it.

It’s in line with what John says in his Gospel that the Word was God… the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us [1:1,14]. Jesus wasn’t just communicating a message – he was the message. He embodied the message – how he lived, who he was, his identity, his purpose, his being was as much the message as the words that came out of his mouth.

We need to recognize how our method is contradicting our message… and begin to repent and reform.

>> changed the title from “where does the bible talk about senior pastors?”

I remember being in seminary and a friend of mine came to me with a “huge” discovery. He said – I don’t see any where in the Bible that talks about churches needing a senior pastor. He pointed out that the early church communities functioned from a plurality of non-educated, regular Christian leaders and that we need to rethink how the church does leadership.

When he said that, I was flabbergasted. How dare he challenge the church. I couldn’t believe it – some young punk coming in and speaking against what generations of Christians have accepted. I remember a friend and I started throwing back rebuttals to his argument; of which none were biblical. We just couldn’t imagine a church without a singular pastoral head. In the end, I thought he was a loony. He can take his “infantile” ideas of church and start his own little commune.

Little did I know, I’d be taking my own advice. I’d even run with his premise and take it way further. Why was I so resistant? Here are a few reasons why:

• Threat – It threatened what I had believed in for so long and had never challenged. Because if he’s right, then I may be wrong [at least partially].
• Pride – I didn’t want to admit that he was on to something. If I gave credence to his question, I’d need to travel down the same road of questioning. And you never know where that’s going to lead.
• Fear – What’s going to happen to my master plan? My plan of getting lots of degrees and being a big shot? What if all I was trying to achieve is a waste of time? What do I tell the people who were paying my way?

I had to fight back. I had to… or else, I’d lose it all.

And in fact I did lose it all. God found a way to drive that nail of skepticism into my brain. I had to ask the questions I didn’t want to ask. I had to confront why I didn’t like asking them. I had to defend why I came to certain conclusions. And I realize that it was God’s way of helping me lose. Helping me lose it all… so that in turn I can gain something better. That seems to be a theme somewhere.

And now when I ask the hard questions to others and feel the push-back, I know the feeling. And when it’s coming from leaders who are supposedly more experienced and more knowledgeable than me… I don’t quite know how to respond. I can empathize… because they have way more to “lose” than I ever did. I’m 35… I don’t have 30 years of ministry life to reckon with.

But at the same time – I find myself assuming the elder brother role in the prodigal son narrative – and I judge. I judge the heck out of people. I wonder why they can’t see things the way the Bible so plainly states. I wonder why they are so defensive and inadvertently say things to put me down. I wonder why they are so obtuse – resistant to just asking the simple, unavoidable questions… just questions!

And then I remember myself… and how I shot down my friend and judged him for being so bold as to challenge the “church.” I want to judge some more and be angry… but I have not far to look but within myself to find the same crap that I’m so outraged by.

Lord, help me to forge ahead and yet have mercy on my friends/father-figures who may not quite see it yet.

Here’s a great summary article on emotional intelligence from MindTools.com. I find that most people don’t understand their emotions well and yet it’s so critical in being able to relate with people and function well in whatever career or social setting we’re in. And yet I read this and I realize that for most people, there’s a roadblock to being able to “do” the things they suggest. Because if you can do all the things needed for higher emotional intelligence [humbly receiving criticism, observing how you affect people, taking responsibility for your own actions, etc.] you need to already have some level of self-assuredness, confidence or character. Without those, emotional intelligence is almost impossible to develop or maintain. 

Which brings me back to that Jesus-thing. Without some transformative work by Jesus, we’re left powerless to overcome the extraordinarily selfish disposition that keeps us from enduring someone’s verbal hits, owning up to our junk and being mindful of how others feel when we do things. 

But in the end, I agree with the article that emotional intelligence is as important if not more important than any other kind of intelligence. Check it out:

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Developing Strong “People Skills”

We probably all know people, either at work or in our personal lives, who are really good listeners. No matter what kind of situation we’re in, they always seem to know just what to say – and how to say it – so that we’re not offended or upset. They’re caring and considerate, and even if we don’t find a solution to our problem, we usually leave feeling more hopeful and optimistic.

We probably also know people who are masters at managing their emotions. They don’t get angry in stressful situations. Instead, they have the ability to look at a problem and calmly find a solution. They’re excellent decision makers, and they know when to trust their intuition. Regardless of their strengths, however, they’re usually willing to look at themselves honestly. They take criticism well, and they know when to use it to improve their performance. 

People like this have a high degree of emotional intelligence, or EI. They know themselves very well, and they’re also able to sense the emotional needs of others.

Would you like to be more like this?

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There are these houses right next to the place that we rent for our monthly worship gatherings. They are boarding houses that cater to mentally impaired adults that fall between the systemic cracks. Not dysfunctional enough to be hospitalized. Not functional enough to be integrated in society.

We’ve been next door to the houses for almost 4 years and have gotten to know a lot of the people. It hasn’t been easy… their range of ailments span widely… schizophrenia, depression, bi-polar, brain damage, psd, prolonged drug/alcohol abuse, etc. – everyone is on some more form of medication. And it hasn’t been easy to connect or love them. The truth is that I think we’re getting over the dirtiness… the smell… the ingrained suburban value that the reason you work hard is to avoid people like this… and getting over taking the easy route of just giving money and withholding the human touch.

I think the biggest struggle for our community when it comes to connecting with our neighbors is being open to integrating our lives with theirs. They aren’t charity cases… they aren’t projects for us to complete. They are people and they like everyone else are dying for someone to acknowledge that their existence in this world matters. That they aren’t alone… that someone cares.

There’s two people named Snappy and Mona. They are good friends and likely 15-20 years apart in age. And they’ve been faithfully coming to our worship times for the past few years… with no one to remind them that it’s on the 3rd Sunday. In this realm they are far more committed than some of our more “functional” people.

Snappy asked me last Sunday, “When are we going to go out to lunch? I owe you lunch!” We did lunch once before and had burritos and he was bent on going back to the same place. It’s got good memories apparently. We go and Snappy asks me politely whether Mona can come and we head over to Super Tacqueria for lengua burritos. That particular day was really packed… I was meeting with several disciple groups, doing some training and preparing for pre-marital counseling. Lots of “work” that day.

But as I was sitting in the sun with Snappy and Mona, two people who may never quite fit into the “brilliant” church structure that I’ve created, I was reminded that I was eating with two of my friends. They enjoyed my company and I enjoyed theirs. They didn’t need anything from me other than me. And I couldn’t expect anything from them other than just them. And I realized that that was enough. They remind me that it’s not always about “getting it done”. They remind me that there’s a human level to everything that gets missed when we’re always functioning on the business side of life. I’m reminded that Jesus doesn’t love me any more and Jesus does love them any less. And that the Gospel makes more sense when we have friends who are physically poor and we can recognize our common inability/desperation/incompetence in life.

Every time Snappy is in my car… he leaves a “residue” on my seat. I really don’t care to guess what it is and it kinda smells. But hey, we’re friends and friends can clean up after each other and look forward to the next burrito date.

“Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: ‘What does his voice sound like? What games does he like best? Does he collect butterflies?’. They ask: ‘How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?’ Only then do they think they know him.”
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I talk to a lot of people about our community and the churchier people always ask about numbers. And then ask very little after that. It’s always a race to get more in the door… and not a look at what “more” really is. Many a prophet [Leonard Sweet, Reggie McNeal, etc] have talked about changing the metrics of church and church planting… “measuring” the important things that reflect transformation not accumulation.

I had to explain to my boss what was getting me excited lately… things that reflect the right kind of growth. Lisa and Serg have been in our community for a long time and have been leading a house church for quite some time. They were good and faithful leaders, but have struggled at times and were surely learning on the job [that's intentional]. But over the course of the last few years, they along with myself have realized that they have a discernable passion for high school students. And as I began to notice it more I wondered, “Why the heck are they leading a group full of their peers. It ought to be high school kids!”

Lisa and Serg helped at a youth retreat recently discovering yet again that the passion in them for students wasn’t arbitrary, but certainly God-planted. So when Lisa returned she prayed how she might move out among her students to bring Jesus to them. Through prayer, she was led to 5 students – 2 of whom do not know Jesus. She asked all 5 students if they wanted to meet up to study the Bible together and all of them gave a resounding ‘yes’. They’ll start it up at McDonald’s this Saturday.

During the retreat Serg had a great connection with one student and made a very tangible impact in his life. The student returned back to school and after a week, told Lisa and Serg that he had 3 classmates who didn’t know Jesus but were interested in learning more. And he asked them what he was supposed to do now and Serg is now discipling this student to continue to bring the Gospel to his classmates.

I realize that I can’t count any of these people as “members” of Haven. And I don’t want to. It doesn’t work all to well with the traditional metrics of church planting. And the truth is that Lisa and Serg likely needed to grow in certain areas of their lives before they were able to get to this point. It’s hard to “measure” their growth over the course of the last few years… numbers don’t reflect that either. But it’s their growth as lovers and followers of Jesus that precipitated God placing them in the right place with the right heart to begin transformational movement among people that they have true passion for. Either way… numbers don’t reflect that.

I have had to wrestle away the importance of numbers in my own spirit. Wrestle away my need to base my value/significance on the numbers. And relearn what it means to see the important things… about people and about community. And begin to live it even when my spirit screams otherwise.

I realize that my little church planting experiment has done more for me than any one else… but I’m glad some of what I’m learning is rubbing off on the people who are coming along for the ride.

I might as well just feed David Watson stuff into this blog and then call it a day. I was asked by a few of my ardent subscribers [2?] to write more on leadership and everytime I read Watson’s blog on leadership it just encapsulates exactly what I’d want to say. So why not just copy it?

The big thrust is this – management over leadership. As I reflect on reading many leadership books, listening to countless diatribes on leadership, I find that most of them have to do with managing. Managing resources and people to get the objectified yet “spiritualized” goal of either church planting or church growth.

And I realize the questions that divides the two is this: are we developing people or developing the organization? And I haven’t found many who’s heart is to truly develop people at the expense of the organization. Because the truth is that there will be plenty of moments where we must choose one over the other. They are not one in the same. But that already begs a lot of different questions that this posting wasn’t meant for in the first place.

Another way of communicating this:

Manager –>> Uses People [incl. other Resources] –>> Develop/Build Churches

OR

Leader –>> Uses Churches [Structure/Money/Vision] –>> Develop/Build People

Is the goal church or people? That’s a big difference. David Watson fleshes this out more… I’ve had a few people read this and immediately realize that they’ve been managers and not leaders all along. Take a read:

What Makes a Great Leader?

As I begin this new series on Leadership, I want to orient us towards a biblical understanding of leadership.  Most of us have spent a lifetime studying leadership.  We have read all the secular and religious leadership and management books we can get our hands on.  We have attended the conferences and seminars, and some of us have led conferences or seminars on leadership.  Many of us have degrees that include elements of management and/or leadership.  Our ministries are about developing leaders, and we are serious about our coaching and mentoring skills.

With all this information, why is it that there is a dearth of good leaders, much less, great leaders, in the in the world – whether we are looking at government, business, non-profits, or ministry.  Understand, I am not talking about management, I’m talking about leadership.   For many, there is little difference between management and leadership.  Both involve people.  Both are about reaching objectives. But the focus is very different.  Management requires some leadership skills, and leadership certainly requires some management skills.

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