November 2006 Archives
Last week I talked about an old book called Brethren, Hang Loose. Robert Girard reached a crisis point in ministry when he came across a book by Watchman Nee. Here's a sample of what he read:
To create an earthly thing is easy for us. If we are content with an outward, technical Christianity - a "movement" based on an earthly foundation, with an earthly structure and organization - then it is quite possible for us to do the thing ourselves. But we have been apprehended for something utterly different from this. The Church is spiritual, and her work is heavenly. It must never become earth-bound.
From Soul Journey:
"I am convinced that personal pastoral ambition, and a pastoral ethic centered around productivity and success is brutal to our souls and destructive to the souls of the people we lead. I believe there is a better way. But it requires us to walk right into the messiness of our own ambitious hearts, ready to die to those ambitions. We must become skilled at detecting the odor of personal ambition, then flee from it as if the church's future depends on it. For I believe it does." -Kent Carlson
Connor Carney comments on my latest column at Christian Week:
I know exactly 2 people my age who go to church on any kind of regular basis. Most of the rest would never set foot in a church -- and it's not because the church places too many demands on them.
The church, in fact, either makes no demands at all on people, or makes only demands related to supporting the church. These aren't the kinds of demands that make an organization worth joining. As much as modern Christian leaders like to talk about making the church more "relevant" to the culture, they're usually just talking about modern music or casual dress or new technology.
But no music, dress code, or technology will make the church relevant. The church is relevant if and only if it changes lives. And, frankly, the church is not changing very many lives. Church members come to church, are entertained by well-produced music and smooth speeches, and then go home and live their lives in pretty much the same way they did before. If the church is going to survive through my generation, that is what needs to change.
From Brethren, Hang Loose:
Rediscovery of New Testament life for the church can never take place as long as men who make up the church are satisfied with the status quo or cling to the conviction that they are capable of solving its problems and renewing it through their own efforts and ingenuity...
The place where I have no more solutions, and no one else to whom to turn, is the place where renewal can begin. Until then, I am the biggest roadblock in its way.
My latest column at Christian Week:
It was a proud moment. The church had just welcomed eighty-three new members. The pastor began his sermon. "This is great, isn't it?" he began. "But before we get too giddy about new members, let me ask you a question: Why should we bring eighty-three new people into something that isn't working?"
The pastor, Bill Hull, describes this as the first time he had unmasked himself in thirty years of ministry. "Something his wrong," he said. "All the formulas, strategic planning, mission statements, and visionary sermons are not making disciples." In his book, Choose the Life, Hull comments, "We were stuck in the same rut in which so many churches find themselves - religious activity without transformation."
I remember finding a book in the church library as a kid way back in the 1970s. I noticed the book because the title didn't fit with the rest of the books; I'm not sure how this one got in. The title: Brethren, Hang Loose.
I heard again about this book last year and ordered it for myself. I'll be posting some quotes from the book over the next few days.
The author, Robert Girard, reflects on his experience of building a "successful" church (written back in 1972):
It cannot be denied...that the Lord used the early emphasis on programming to bring pagans to faith in Christ and into the church.
But all our programming could not bring about spiritual maturity. It seemed, rather, to encourage dependence on "the program." And it couldn't prevent the development of many of the old institutional diseases...
I began to ask, "Is this really the task we've been called to do: to build a large congregation of new Christians...and then just try to keep these spiritual babies dry and happy 'til Jesus comes?
"Or is there more to building a church?"
Jordon Cooper writes an open letter to denominational and church leaders:
The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things and expecting a different result. That doesn't seem to be a great use of time, energy, or resources. A desire to change is what Sider is talking about in The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like The Rest Of The World? is what drives a lot of the emerging church. While we still love the church, we see the church having failed it's own basic mission. I wish I could hear a big Amen at this point but the reality is that not everyone sees it that way. I have colleagues in ministry that point to the Sunday attendance of their churches and their building programs and tell me that everything is going great and they criticize those of us that go in a different direction. All denominations deny this but the sweet allure of success is just too powerful, successful and big churches drive the agenda's of many denominations, either formally or informally. Success is largest impediment of change, which is why most downtown cores of cities across the United States and Canada are full of massive church buildings that were the megachurches of their day. What made them successful made it very hard to change from that. Change and new initiatives don't traditionally thrive in most institutions and need to be nurtured and protected at times.
Doh! It turns out that the comments weren't working for the past month or so. For those who have left comments lately, they've disappeared without a trace. Sorry! They should be working fine now.
Thanks to Naomi who finally prompted me to check the settings.
The Summer 2006 issue of Leadership Journal ran an article I missed at first due to (I think) a bad title, "Cookie Cutter Community." The subtitle is a little more descriptive: "Distressed by consumer Christianity, this church razed the ministries enjoyed by so many for so long - and started over."
Oak Hills Church was a seeker ministry that executed "cutting-edge worship" as well as any other church. As attendance grew, something seemed wrong.
"A number of us were doing some really hard work in terms of the whole spiritual formation process," says Kent Carlson, the founding pastor, "and we were not completely satisfied with the 'product' we were turning out - not only our church, but all of evangelicalism - that we were not in any significant way helping people to be substantially transformed."
Maybe it is time for us to humbly admit that we are missing something. My guess is we are missing Jesus. We equate Jesus with the values and morals of the Christian subculture, or vigorous theology, or spiritual experiences. Perhaps we can do all these things without knowing Jesus at all. Maybe we've been going through the motions for so long we don't know what is real anymore. Maybe we don't really want to know Jesus because the cost is too high.
Preachers, like the members of their congregations, stay busy with many important activities. There are sermons to prepare, people to visit, meetings to attend, classes to lead; on and on it goes. Being a pastor of a church is, after all, a full-time job...
As I noted earlier, however, such "busyness" is one way in which the powers divert people - including pastors - from discerning their work in the world (not to mention one of the ways in which the powers "kill" pastors by burning them out). The busyness created by the institutional church can be an effective way of diverting pastors from the work of the powers, stifling discernment, and keeping the pulpit silent about the ways of death in the world. Busyness, in short, can inhibit truthfulness, not only about the principalities and powers but about the church's own captivity to them. (Charles L. Campbell, The Word Before the Powers)
From The Pastor's Buzz: Market church as brand of Christ:
A key aspect of contemporary marketing is something called "branding." Branding is a marketing concept whereby concrete symbols are closely associated with a product's values, ideas and even personality. Brands are intended to be so well integrated into the product and marketing that the hopeful outcome is that consumers will not be able to see one without thinking of the other.
Since the church represents Christ, then perhaps we ought to be marketing suffering, self-denial and sacrifice.
Admittedly, it doesn't sell very well in today's consumer Christianity, but let's face it: That was the only brand he carried, and he carried it all the way to the cross.
Will Willimon writes in Pastor:
The pastor is [often] reduced to the level of the soother of anxieties brought on by the dilemmas of affluence, rather than the caller of persons to salvation. My colleague Stanley Hauerwas has accused the contemporary pastor of being little more than "a quivering mass of availability." Practicing what I call "promiscuous ministry"- ministry with no internal, critical judgment about what care is worth giving- we become victims of a culture of insatiable need. We live in a capitalist, consumptive culture where there is no purpose to our society other than "meeting our needs." The culture gves us the maximum amount of room and encouragement to "meet our needs" without appearing to pass judgment on which needs are worth meeting... In this vast supermarket of desire, we pastors must do more than simply "meet people's needs." The church is also about giving people the critical means of assesing which needs give our lives meaning, about giving us needs we would not have had if we had not met Jesus.
