Serial Church Killers

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In the interest of being clear, I state the following: There may be many reasons for church death, but the right minister can shepherd a congregation to Christ-centered solutions that will keep that congregation viable in its community and in the body of Christ. The right pastor can inspire change; the wrong one can instill despair.

There are O&A churches that thrive, and O&A churches that are die for becoming so. Within the subgroup of thriving, successful churches are liberal churches and conservative churches, larger churches and smaller churches, churches in debt and churches in the clear, etc. None of these factors per se seems to determine church survival. I contend that the crisis of church survival is primarily a crisis of leadership, and not of styles or social factors.

Pastoral performance is a taboo subject in the church today. However, we can and should consider the factors that enable a given pastor to sequentially save — or bury — church after church. For starters, let’s at least understand that all who succeed want to succeed, and among those that fail, at least some of them want to fail! There are others who simply believe that church success and survival are beside the point — and I’m not saying they are wrong. I will say, however, that if you want a particular congregation to survive as a church, one or more leaders within that congregation has to choose to help it survive! And while human willpower is not the point, I do think that the pastor who insists that a church survive and thrive is more likely to make the hard decisions that help it to do so!

There is not one instance in scripture where God wills the death or failure of a church. Revelation has seven letters warning seven churches to shape up or perish.

Some people seem to  think that church death is good. By some theologies, everything that happens is therefore God’s will, God being all-powerful and all-knowing. Why, then, would God advise anyone in any direction whatsoever? No, God does not will the damnation of souls or the demise of congregations. At worst, God permits us to choose between life and death.

The choice, however, is ours alone. God clearly prefers we choose life. God told the children of Israel how to survive as a nation, but let them choose to survive or perish.

If you believe Que Sera, Sera — what will be, will be — then you rest secure in your own salvation and write off every failure as God’s will. If that’s true, then it must be God’s will that I work with dreamers, because I want ministry partners who are willing to work for the kingdom of God!

Some pastors move from church to church, leaving each one in worse shape than before. Some people, given free rein, would move from committee to committee, ministry to ministry, job to job, confident that God wills success or failure, thereby relieving them of any responsibility.

At a General Assembly — the national gathering of Disciples of Christ — in Ft. Worth a few years ago, I overheard a minister at lunch say, “The last two churches I served are dead, and they deserved to die!” There’s a man of great faith — in the wrong theology!

2 Peter 3:9 says God is “not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” Isn’t God powerful enough to get what God wants? So why do any perish? Because we decide to repent or not, to struggle or surrender, to be generous or greedy.

Generally speaking, Disciples are not Calvinists. But you wouldn’t know it to hear them talk of the inevitable demise of traditional church. Where traditional church is deemed too unholy to survive, the traditional church that actually survives and thrives becomes demonized as something unnatural, or essentially unChristian.

I’m not saying that church success requires a big-steeple church — but a big-steeple church building can certainly be useful real estate. I’m not saying that Elders must be old — but elderly people just might remember some essential element of church success from days gone by. I’m not saying that a 500-seat auditorium is a good fit for a 50-member congregation — but both can be excellent springboards for going forward as church!

I pray that pastors who decide that a church should fail will instead realize that they have failed to inspire the congregation. Instead of giving troubled churches an interim pastor, perhaps we should give troubled pastors an interim career, where they can shake their faith in inevitable death and regain the notion that with God, nothing is impossible.

Following Jesus

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A post from the archives.  This article first appeared June 14, 2010.

“If you follow Jesus and don’t end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do.”

-Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution

Following Jesus.  I think it boils down to that, really.  I have struggled for some time with the realization that when the church fails—as it often does—it fails most egregiously in giving people the resources necessary for the outrageously radical act of following Jesus.  My reading of emerging/ent theology has led me to conclude that there is increasing energy around the simple idea that followers of Jesus ought to embody the revolutionary spirit found in the Gospels.  I sense a growing dissatisfaction with the traditional view of the church as either a clearinghouse for heavenly bus passes, or as a respectable organization whose primary function centers on affirming middle-class American values.  People, especially young people, are having trouble squaring the Jesus they read about in the Gospels with the infinitely malleable Jesus they see placed on offer by popular Christianity—Jesus as personal genie, Jesus as chief security guard at the courthouse of private morality, Jesus as a cheerleader for free-market capitalism, etc.  Jesus, stripped of the layers of religious spackling used to domesticate him, is irremediably subversive.

Subversive.  That appeals to me.  Of course, I’d like to continue writing clinically, about the religious climate shift underway at the hands of restless “young people,” fed up with a tame Jesus.  I’d like to make it sound as though I’m just a disinterested observer of religious trends.  But the truth is that I too find myself growing dissatisfied with that image of Jesus.  After all these years of a Jesus who I thought would help make me _______ (holier? kinder? more spiritual? more self-actualized?), I’ve come to believe that Jesus has a more cosmic, more interesting agenda in mind than super-tuning my soul.  On my way to spiritual superstardom, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to squeeze past Jesus, who stands in the middle of the road pointing to the weak, the homeless, the sick, the widowed, the displaced and un-embraced.

I’ve tried.  I’ve put forth a valiant effort.  But I can no longer envision Jesus the way I once did.  I can’t, for the life of me, picture Jesus saying, “Healthcare isn’t a right; it’s a privilege.”  I can’t figure out a way to get Jesus to say, “Homosexuality is a capital crime; but fleecing the poor is a misdemeanor.”    I’m trying to track down, but as of yet have been unable to find, where Jesus says, “If you fear someone will strike you on one cheek, dial in a Predator drone.”  The church has too often been asked to give religious cover to moralities that were conceived absent the theological reflection provided by the church.  I find that the chasm between the revolutionary Jesus of first century Jerusalem and the domesticated Jesus of twenty-first century America grows more difficult for me to span all the time.

In the final analysis, the good news of the reign of God is not first that the well taken care of will be even more well taken care of in the next life.  The good news of the reign of God is that God’s reign is present wherever the homeless are sheltered, wherever the hungry are fed, wherever the rich give away their money and power in defense of the poor, wherever the forgotten ones gather to be remembered and embraced, to be told that as long as we follow God not one of God’s children will be left to die alone and unloved.

Living Like You Say You Do

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“The eye is the lamp of the body.  So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23).

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“It is a tenet of liberal Enlightenment faith that belief and knowledge are distinct and separable and that even if you do not embrace a point of view, you can still understand it.  This is the credo Satan announces in Paradise Regained when he says, ‘most men admire / Virtue who follow not her lore” (I, 482-483).  That is, it is always possible to appreciate a way of life that is not yours.  Milton would respond that unless the way of life is yours, you have no understanding of it; and that is why, he declares in another place, that a man who would write a true poem must himself be a true poem and can only praise or even recognize worthy things if he is himself worthy.” (Stanley Fish, The Trouble with Principle, 247).

I remember being in a history of preaching class my first year in seminary.  Different styles.  Different points of emphasis.  One of the early issues that preachers had to deal with was whether or not it was possible to be a good preacher while living a life uncommitted to the gospel.  That is to say, are there good preachers who are bad people?  Or, is it impossible, by definition, to be a good preacher and a scoundrel?  You’ve probably thought about that.

I remember thinking at the time that what one said as a preacher stood on its own—that the truth of my speech was unrelated to my actions.  I thought, “Sure you could be a jerk and still be a good preacher.  Look at Peter.

Getting it right first has never been a prerequisite for proclaiming the gospel.”  A study of Scripture reveals that God is constantly calling on the crooks and deadbeats of the world to be standard-bearers for the new kingdom (Jacob, Rahab, David, Paul, etc.).  I didn’t think the integrity of the preacher’s life impinged upon the integrity of the preacher’s words.

But the more I step into the pulpit, the more I am inclined to think I was wrong about the potential disconnect between the preacher’s life and the preacher’s words.  One thing my professor said during our classroom debate that I continue to see demonstrated in ministry is that if your primary job is telling the truth from the pulpit, you can’t lie with your life and expect people to listen to what you say on Sunday mornings.  If preaching is about telling the truth, you’d better get in the habit twenty four hours a day.

Ostensibly, he meant that preachers must always live truthfully—not just behind the pulpit—because there is no way after awhile to keep the different roles straight.  In other words, it’s impossible to sustain faithful ministry in a life that is schizophrenically removed from faithfulness.  If you live one way, while professing another, you’ll forget your story.

But not only will you forget your story, you will lose the ability to tell what a true story looks like.  The church has maintained through most of its history that, after awhile, there’s no way to recognize the beauty of truth while continuing to stand in a dunghill of lies.  You might be able to get away with it on a temporary basis, but sooner or later, you will lose the ability to discern truth from deceit.  “If your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.”

“So what?” you may be asking.

Your life is a proclamation of the gospel; it’s either a true account of who Jesus Christ is or it’s not, but you’re telling the world something about Jesus with every word you speak and every thing you do.  Neither virtue nor Jesus can be loved from a distance.

The truth of the gospel is that you can’t really even love Jesus if you refuse to live like him.

The Beauty of the Church

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Sometimes I get disillusioned with “the church.”  I hear stories of people who were run out, who were gossiped about, who were hurt by the very people who were supposed to love them.  I hear of pastors who were treated like the sole employee with their boss being a board of 15 who criticized every decision the pastor made, every minute of the pastor’s time and every breath or sigh taken during the sermon.  I hear stories of bully pulpits and sanctuaries where children were definitely not welcome.

There have been times when I have been down about “the church.”  I become very critical of an organization that can perpetuate myth in tradition, that runs on models outdated and yet expects the pastor to be a miracle worker.  I have been hurt by people in my churches in the past.  I have been hurt as a guest by a pastor using their pulpit to instill fear and justify their own narrow beliefs.  I have been hurt by the things said casually about other people, even in general terms, that were degrading to certain groups of people that happen to be who my family is made up of.

It’s easy to walk away from the church.  I see people do it all the time, I have had people visit me as a pastor and now speak to me as a chaplain about why they will never set foot in a church again.  They are done with organized religion.  They are done with the institution called “the church.”

It breaks my heart.  But rarely do I try to encourage them to go back.  Sometimes the damage is too great.  Instead, I always encourage them to continue on the spiritual journey.  And my hope and prayer is that perhaps they will find their way back to the church.  But me, as clergy, as a direct representative of the institution that has harmed them, I don’t feel it is my place to tell them to come back.  I wouldn’t tell the victim of domestic abuse to go back to the person who has abused them.  But I would tell them they can love again, that in time, perhaps they can trust again.  The same I would say to those abused by “the church.”  I would encourage them to continue on their spiritual journey, and my hope is that they would find a loving, supportive, embracing community.

I love the Church, the Body of Christ described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12.  I don’t love all manifestations of the church.  But I love what it is supposed to be.

The church is supposed to be the place where you feel you are a part of the Body of Christ.  You are valuable.  You are significant.  Your gifts are useful and necessary.  You have an important part to play in the whole body’s function.  You are part of the family.  You are loved, exactly as you are, exactly as you were made by God.  You can come with your wounds and hurts and find comfort and strength.  You can come with your worries and fears and find courage.  You can come with your grief and find some ease.  You come and find your burdens are born by others, your joys are shared by others.

Thankfully, I have experienced the church as this: the body of Christ.  I realize it is hard for me to say this as clergy and have any clout beyond that, but before I was a minister, I loved the church.  As a teen, the church was where I was welcomed and embraced and encouraged in my call to ministry.  As a child, the church was where I was included and loved just as I was.

It saddens me when people throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Whereas I understand completely how individuals, even groups of people have been hurt by the church and have left, I am grieved that there are people calling for the end of the church.  I do believe the church is changing, dying even, but with death there is always the hope of resurrection—something new.  It may look completely different than it is now.  But my hope and prayer is that the church—whatever it is—will be the Body of Christ.

All too often I have friends who claim to be spiritual but not religious—who want nothing to do with church.  Fine.   I actually have no problem with that because the “church” they are rejecting I would reject as well, a place where people are harmed rather than healed.  But it is when my friends go to nothing—there is no faith community, no gathering of people to talk about spirituality or God or whatever—when there is just an absence, this is where I grieve.

I’m not talking about those who have rejected those things and have gone to atheism (that is a different kind of grieving for me, I will admit), but for those friends who rejected the church of their childhood and are raising children, and they tell me they want their children to have the values they were taught but not in the church, and don’t know where to turn—I grieve for them.  I grieve for the ones who want to talk about spirituality and faith but feel they have no place to go.  And I grieve for the ones who simply ridicule those of us who stayed in the church.  I have friends among them all.

But I know one person, who once described his return to church after a twenty-year absence as a “homecoming.”  He walked in the doors and was immediately greeted.  Someone came to his seat and welcomed him.  The people shook his hands and shared their names and made him feel comfortable.  The preacher shared a message of hope.  The songs were uplifting.  And communion was shared with all as a welcome to Christ’s table.

This is the beauty of the church, that for all the shortcomings of the earthly “church” (and as I used to say, the problem with churches is that they are full of people!), there are some who will find their way home again, and find the love, grace, peace and joy that we expect to be there.

Why Can’t We Say Our Denomination Is O&A?

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Another Conversation

Pastor (First Church, Anywhere, USA): Hey Derek! Good to see you. Listen, I want to tell you that I’ve read some of your stuff about churches becoming Open and Affirming.[1]

Me: Yeah, I seem to be having those conversations quite a bit lately.[2]

Pastor: I also see that you think our denomination [Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)] should declare itself O&A.

Me: Yes, I do.

Pastor: That’s not going to work.

Me: Really? Why is that?

Pastor: Congregational autonomy. Churches can do and believe just about anything they want. So, to say that our denomination is O&A is basically a lie, because we have a significant majority of churches that aren’t.

Me: So, just so I get this right: Are you saying that we should never make claims about ourselves as a denomination that can’t be demonstrably supported in the life of all congregations?

Pastor: Not all of the congregations. If that were true, you could never say anything.

Me: True enough. Then, how many of the congregations need to be on board before you’re comfortable making claims about our denominational identity?

Pastor: I don’t know that we should put a number on it—but at least a majority.

Me: Do you think that should apply to our denominational Statement of Identity?

Pastor: What do you mean?

Me: “We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord’s table as God has welcomed us.” Should we be able to say that about ourselves if we don’t always live up to it? Should we wait to say that about ourselves until we can be reasonably certain that it’s true for Disciples and Disciples congregations … at least a majority of the time? At what point, and based on what polling data were we convinced that it was theologically acceptable to allow women to become ministers? Even though it’s fairly clear that in practice, at least based on the hiring practices of a majority of Disciples congregations, as a denomination we don’t believe in women ministers.

Pastor: But, here’s where you’re missing the point: The Statement of Identity is not necessarily supposed to be a descriptive statement. That is to say, we don’t slap that up on our web site, claiming that this is true of all Disciples all of the time. We put it up there to show us who, according to our best lights, we ought to be.

Me: Ok. So, here’s my question: How is voting to say that Disciples are Open and Affirming any more a lie because it doesn’t represent all congregations than saying that “Disciples are a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world?” Neither are true of all Disciples everywhere. Isn’t that false advertising?

Pastor: No. It’s an ideal, not an empirically verifiable statement of fact.

Me: But voting to declare ourselves O&A as a denomination should be?

Pastor: It’s not the same thing. We don’t want to mislead LGBTQ people by telling them that we’re O&A and have them come and find out we’re not.

Me: I understand that—and I think it’s a legitimate concern. But the church always has to deal with the issue of hypocrisy—saying one thing, but doing another. What happens if a person who’s been hurt by the church before wanders onto the denominational web site and sees this Statement of Identity and thinks, “At last, I’ve found a denomination where I can be safe. They heal people here; they don’t break them?” Then that person goes to a series of Disciples churches and finds out that in practice we aren’t always “a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.” Don’t we risk alienating people by representing ourselves this way, when sooner or later they will find out it’s not always true of us?

Pastor: All right, but at least we can all agree in general as a denomination that we should be “a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world”—whether or not we always live up to it. We don’t all agree in general as a denomination that we should be “Open and Affirming.”

Me: But isn’t that what the second part of the Statement of Identity says? “As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord’s table as God has welcomed us.”

Pastor: “Welcoming” people to the table isn’t the same as “affirming” someone’s sexual orientation.

Me: I’m not so sure about that.

Pastor: You know what I mean.

Me: I think I know what people who disagree with me about this issue mean when they say it. But how does the average person reading our Statement of Identity know that?

That’s the point: If you say that we can’t honestly claim to be an O&A denomination because it’s not true of enough congregations, then you’ve seriously limited what we can say about ourselves as a denomination—since, we’re never in full agreement about much of anything. Moreover, we don’t have any metric in place by which we can measure when we’ve reached consensus—apart from “Sense of the Assembly Resolutions,” which is what many have said we cannot put forward on this issue because there’s not enough evidence to establish its veracity—a veritable ecclesiastical extravaganza of question-begging.

Additionally, if you say that we can’t claim to be an O&A denomination because it might mislead people by luring them into the church under the false pretense that we affirm their sexual orientation or gender identity—which they may soon find out isn’t necessarily true and by which deception they might be hurt—then we’re always in danger of false advertising and potentially harming people any time we hold out the vision of who we think God wants us to be … since we so regularly fail to live up to it.

“You are master of the straw man argument. You use this ‘conversation’ device to trot out easy arguments so you can knock them down.”

Fair enough. If the past is any indication, I’m sure I’ll get all kinds of email pointing out my failings as a logician, a theologian, and a human being.

But my point in all of this isn’t just to be right; it’s to struggle toward the truth. And the truth is that “We can’t say we’re O&A when we’re not” doesn’t settle the matter. It risks confusing different kinds of discourse. A Statement of Identity is at least as exhortative as it is declarative.

The question that our denomination will continue to contend with is the extent to which we can claim to be “a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world” that welcomes “all to the Lord’s table,” when in practice we defend a brokenness that excludes people from that table.

Discuss.

  1. Open and Affirming (hereinafter: O&A) is a designation that speaks to the decision of a congregation or organization to declare itself publicly to be not only welcoming to LGBTQ people, but embracing of them as people created by God with equal standing in the church.  ↩
  2. As always when I write about this issue, I realize that not everyone agrees with me on the proposition that LGBTQ people are fine just the way they are—at least as far as their sexual orientation or gender identity. If that describes you, this post isn’t addressed to you and will just make you mad. I’m writing to people who already agree with me on the basic issue, but who (for whatever reason—and there are many) don’t think pressing ahead on the question of O&A is a good idea.  ↩

The Thing I Thought I’d Never Say

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I’m a minister.  Which is to say, I work as a minister in a church.  Historically, I’ve found myself reluctant to offer that bit of information in casual conversation, not because ministry occupies a position inherently more shameful than a host of other vocational options, but because when people find out that I’m a minister they either want me to answer their questions about I watch TBN, or they want to impart some theological nugget they’ve mined from The Prayer of Jabez or The Left Behind series.  Please don’t misunderstand—I like questions.

In fact I entered the ministry because of some of the questions I had about life and its ultimate meaning.  My problem lies not in questions in themselves, but in questions about whether or not I believe that the World Council of Churches, Democratic politicians, and certain cartoon characters on prime time television form a shady cabal intent on ushering in the anti-Christ and a one-world government—complete with standard issue UPC codes emblazoned on everyone’s forehead, or whether I’ve finally come to my senses and realized that mega-churches are the goal of God’s reign here on earth.

The fact is I like being a minister, in large part, because of the conversations that attach to a life spent following such a strange, quixotic, compelling character as Jesus.  The conversations, however, that seem to me to be important to have center on questions of justice, non-violence, grace, faithfulness, friendship, and devotion, rather than the sort of mass-produced fare provided by a popular religious culture that asks nothing more of Christians than that they act nice, refrain from swearing in public, and support any military action proposed by the American government as, ipso facto, God’s will.

To put a finer point on it, I like being a minister at Douglass Boulevard Christian Church.  I’m blessed to belong to a community of faith that takes seriously our call to live out the example of Jesus in the best way we know how.  DBCC is a community unafraid to take a chance on following Jesus down a dark alley.  I like that.  I like the sense of adventure I find in a church like that, as well as the adventurous thoughts I have when I think about what we can do together.

I guess this is all a long way of saying that my thoughts about ministry have evolved since coming to Douglass.  Many of the things I do don’t even feel particularly like work.

In fact, now when I’m asked what I do, I tell people I’m a minister at this really great church that seeks justice for the marginalized, that provides embrace for those who’ve been excluded, that looks into the eyes of the forgotten and says, “You’re welcome here.”

Though we’re not perfect, we are constantly looking for ways to grow and be better.

I’m a minister.  I just thought you should know.

Are you too young or too old for church?

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This article first appeared on anglobaptist.org.

When will the age genie stop by and make it all better? When will that beard cream take all the grey away? Maybe you’ve seen the add where the last grey-haired man on the planet caves to the social pressure and colors the hair on his face…That’s right. Colors. The. Hair. On. His. Face. You have got to be kidding me! Unreal. Many of the commercials are utterly offensive to men and women, but I digress.

Once upon a time a grey beard symbolized wisdom or intellect. A sage had a long grey beard. There was something synonymous about wisdom and grey hair. I don’t know what sages are sporting now. Seth Godin’s bald head, perhaps? Amazing how times change and what meant one thing to one generation means something else entirely to another. Your grey beard is another generation’s, I don’t know, um, coffee press. That’s right. Coffee press. Yes, I’m being silly. Of courseI am. Sometimes it just cannot be helped, but this whole thing is silly. It’s one sociological non sequitor after another. It is in this spirit I request:

Someone explain to me why we viify one another by virtue of age in this culture.

I don’t have any real understanding as to why. It didn’t begin with the 1960′s and the don’t-trust-anyone-over-30-40 propaganda, that’s for certain. Ancient theater and epic poetry is full of “youth culture” (Paris, Helen, Achilles, etc) and their disdain for the old people in their lives (Priam, anyone?). Old gods are replaced with new and vigorous gods. This ain’t a new phenomenon. Still, this bit of satire has some folk riled up. Perhaps it hits too close to home. I don’t know.

It’s a little satire, a little poking of fun from some 30-somethings to other 30-somethings…but some of us are taking it rather seriously. Suddenly young people are once again unable to make the cut. They are whining. That’s all. They need to get over themselves and get a real job and move to the suburbs/exurbs/whatever. That’s okay, because the young adults want everyone older to stop trying to save their precious institutions/religions/political parties and let them all die like the irrelevant relics of television reruns that they are. It’s all useless. Who needs ‘em?

The generation of men is like that of leaves.
The wind scatters one year’s leaves on the ground,
but the forest burgeons and and puts out others,
as the season of spring comes round.
So it is with men: on generation grows on,
and another is passing away.
The Iliad, Book 6.

There are countless stories of generations being at odds with one another. None of this is news. It’s simply that I’m astonished at how pervasive it is these days..especially in church circles. How many posts have there been about young adults and the church? Heck, Newsweek has been publishing articles about it. I’ve certainly passed them along.

I wonder what it will take for us to stop doing this to one another…or if we’re simply doomed to find ways of tearing one another down like this. We have reasons for young adults leaving the church (fifteen or seven). Sure. We always have. And though the challenges that this generation (which generation?) of church leadership faces has particularities, we will always find a way to blame those younger or older than ourselves for the collapse of civilization. We’ve gotten very good at it. In a related Facebook thread I offered this comment: “We have decided that useful people are roughly bettween ages 45-60…maybe. We don’t like aging. We don’t like watching one another aging. We don’t like one another as we age. We find reason upon reason to cut one another out and call it ‘generational theory’ or ‘age appropriateness.’”

We’re cutting one another out of church left and right. It’s not about theology this time though we tell ourselves it is. It’s about age.

“You aren’t old enough for it. You don’t appreciate it.” says the Boomer.
“You are too old for it. You don’t know how to let go.” says the Millennial.

I’m still muddling through as I do…But I was wondering what wisdom you all might have to share. You see, it’s one thing to use demographic trends to understand sociological phenomena. It’s another thing entirely to think that such generational theory is a determinist theory for sociality. There’s no such thing as a determinist theory.

This was originally posted at anglobaptist.org, April 18, 2012

No Red Ink on the Vision Test

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As a boy in elementary school, I would sometimes tussle with other boys. Generally we would not hurt each other, but sometimes it would result in a visit to the nurse’s office. During one such incident, my head hit against a cement wall. It hurt some, but I felt I was fine; however, the teacher did not believe me, but who would argue with a teacher that was allowing you to go to the nurse’s office and miss some of class(as we were just coming in from recess)? The nurse examined me and asked questions. I was determined to be fine, diagnosis “boy.”

The last question posed during the nurse’s examination was, “Are you seeing double?” My response worried her, as I stated, “No more than usual.” I was seeing double often while reading and I just trained and strained myself to read both images simultaneously. The nurse, concerned and curious, did some tests and discovered what I thought was normal: I saw double. What I also remember about her is she did not make me feel stupid for thinking that seeing double was normal, and she did not make me nervous about this situation.

I went to the optometrist, and I must say that was an exciting experience. It was explained to me that everyone has a focal point in which when you get closer to the eyes, one will see double, but generally it is centimeters from the nose, not an arm’s length. This doctor prescribed intense exercises. I had various contraptions and ditto papers and spent one to two hours a day strengthening my eyes, so my focal point would be in a normal range. I was committed because reading, which I greatly enjoy, was much easier with only one image.

I share this anecdote to emphasize the importance of knowing vision in the church.  We in the church world use this term often, and it is not easily defined as it is different for each ministry and congregation, while also being part of God’s Vision.  I assume that there is an importance of vision, for it is what drives a congregation and/or ministry in the direction of God.  We know that it is not simple to find a vision, but it is just as important to realize when your ministry has lost or been burdened with poor vision. Just as I believed seeing double was normal, many churches and ministries keep going, not realizing they would have a difficult time reading the bottom line on the metaphorical eye chart.

For many, the reality of finances brings a congregation to the metaphorical optometrist.  However, I want to share the story of a local food bank I was involved with this past year that closed.  The bank had been serving the community for 30 years, but the original vision of helping people between applying for food stamps and receiving them is now outdated.  Other food banks had taken form over the past decade serving the community more efficiently and in greater numbers.   The food bank needed a new vision of how to utilize their resources.  For various reasons the need of a new vision was not taken up by the board and the volunteers, until the vote that closed the bank.  Even a year before, a vote keeping it open (by one vote) didn’t get enough people realizing the need of a vision.  However, this ministry did not lack resources.  We had enough food, especially canned corn (not sure why so much corn), and we could have continued for 15 years without raising anymore funds, at the level of help we were providing, give or take a couple of years.

My point is that vision has nothing to do with finances.

We need to not wait until it is reflected by red ink.

My question is what is, or can be, our metaphorical eye chart?  (comment away)

How to Start a Church (From a Guy Who has Never Done It)

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The laments are familiar: congregations in decline, churches refusing to adapt to today’s culture, the growth of the unchurched or the “nones” who need to hear a Gospel that is both compelling and relevant. Starting congregations that break traditional molds and seek to reach individuals and communities too often ignored by “traditional” churches is a hopeful response to these contemporary challenges. This is why new church planters are my heroes. Those called to develop and nurture a community of believers ex nihilo are engaged in a form of ministry that is urgently needed, not to mention apostolic.

Within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) our commitment to this task and the resulting success we’ve experienced is nothing short of amazing. The discernment and faithfulness of our leaders is to be applauded. The movement of the Holy Spirit in this effort should be celebrated. Yet I wonder how much potential has been left unrealized. Does a better, more sustainable model exist?

Many new church starts that I’ve experienced, or new church planters I’ve engaged in conversation, reveal a model built around the vision, persistence, and endurance of a single individual, aided by God’s guidance and perhaps a few dedicated lay leaders. The limited financial support available from general and regional structures often requires the new church planter to be bi-vocational, working full-time in another position to meet his or her economic needs and then part-time as a new church planter. Given the amount of time and energy needed to birth a new congregation, this approach seems rife with the potential for dashed hopes and clergy burnout.

Few would describe this model as ideal but some might contend it is necessary given the limited resources available within the denomination for this endeavor and the value of having a new church planter engaged with the local community. There is not a better alternative within the existing constraints. One could imagine more ideal models but none of them are realistic.

I disagree.

Christians affirm that the Holy Spirit imparts to each of us a different set of gifts to be used in glorifying God and testifying to the hope of new life found in Jesus Christ (1 Cor 12:4-6). Larger, established congregations have professionalized this principle with staffs full of professional clergy performing different roles within the church. The senior pastor supervises the staff, provides spiritual leadership to the congregation, and preaches most weeks. Associate pastors focus primarily on youth, families, pastoral care, new members, mission, etc. The music minister handles the music (duh).

Why can’t new church starts enjoy the same diversity of talents? Arguably these congregations need these specialized gifts even more since they are just getting started and don’t enjoy the same degree of lay leadership, sense of community, and public identity.

Lack of money is the obvious answer. New church starts church starts cannot afford large, specialized staffs.

Before discarding such an idea as ridiculous, perhaps it is worth considering whether the thinking that wants to dismiss this idea is part and parcel of the outdated mindsets that contributed to the laments listed above.

Clearly, the economic resources allowing for new church starts to have a team of full-time paid clergy do not exist. That is just a fact. However, could there be a model of ministry that embraces, encourages, and pursues teams of planters with diverse gifts working together on a single new church start?

There could be. Perhaps it would look something like this….

Having discerned the call to new church ministry and identified an appropriate and viable setting for a church plant, a team of ministers (maybe 3-5 in total? maybe more?) covenant to help bring life to a new community. Each clergyperson relocates to the area of the church start and seeks full-time employment outside of the nascent congregation. Perhaps one becomes chaplain at a local hospital, while another begins works at a local non-profit. Another has teaching credentials and continues a career in education and a fourth turns a carpentry hobby into a construction job. As part of their covenant with one another, each also commits 10, 15, or 20 hours a week to the new church start.

The covenanting process involves several other crucial conversations. Among the new church planters, duties and responsibilities must be assigned based on the spiritual gifts each person offers. One pastor will lead pastoral care ministries. Another will focus on preaching duties. A third commits to developing and leading vibrant worship services. The fourth focuses on outreach and engagement with the local community. All promise themselves to support the work of the entire congregation, providing spiritual support to the whole pastoral team, and building up strong lay leadership to help sustain the long-term development of the congregation. The general and regional church must be brought in as partners to the project, offering nurture and encouragement, sharing of best practices, and whatever financial support is available.

As the new church plant grows through these combined efforts, the needs of the congregation will also increase. Members of the pastoral team transition to full-time roles as finances allow. The end result is a healthy, vibrant, relevant congregation served by a team of skilled pastors and devoted lay leaders.

There are obvious objections. Such a plan takes time and requires significant commitment from the planters. Bringing together a team of compatible pastors equipped for such a challenge would require the regional and general church to work together in offering a vision and identifying the right people for this task.

I’ve never started a church. Maybe this idea won’t work. Perhaps it is ridiculous.

But the potential here could be huge. Just think of the gifts these congregations could be to their members, communities, and the denomination that planted them. Imagine the witness they could offer to the God that creates, sustains, and saves this broken world and the creatures within it. Perhaps fewer pastors would suffer from shattered dreams and clergy burnout.

Just think. It could be really beautiful. Maybe it is time to let God do a new thing?

Never Let the Guy with a Broom Decide How Many Elephants Can Be in the Parade

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This is the follow up to last week’s article, Being The Last “Buggy Whip Salesman of the Month”

“Who authorized that decision? Nobody knows what’s going on around here anymore.”

How many times have you heard that one?

What’s the quick response when that complaint makes its way into the life of a congregation?

“Well, it has been a while since we talked about the organizational structure. Maybe we should look at the constitution and by-laws again, make sure we’re doing it right.”

It occurs to me that what’s at the heart of grousing about congregational organization is fear over who gets to say “yes.”

“Who authorized that decision?” is usually an expression of fear about where power is located. So, congregations spend much of their time in organizational thinking concentrating on this issue—who gets to say “yes.”

By-laws, organizational charts, endless meetings all exist—at least in part—to rehearse the relationship between an idea and its authorization.

“I’ve been in recovery for 3 years now, and I’d like to start an AA meeting in the adult Sunday School classroom on Tuesday nights. Who do I have to talk to get permission to do that?”

“Well, you’ll need to check with the secretary to see if the room’s available. You’ll probably have to get board approval for that. Is there going to be smoking on the grounds?”

“I’d like to offer a middle-school class. What’s my next step?”

“You need to talk to Angie, she’s the Education chairperson. She’ll bring it to the committee. Then, they can pass a recommendation to the board, which will vote on it.”

“We’ve got a group that wants to use the church fellowship hall for a drag show. Is that all right?”

“You’re going to have to bring that one straight to the board.”

We have amazingly complex systems of authorization in place. Layers of bureaucracy that ensure no one gets away with anything.

Believe me, I understand. You can’t have just anyone doing who-knows-what in the name of the church. Eventually, that will come back to bite you.

But for all the time churches spend figuring out who gets to say “yes,” it’s amazing to note that they’ll let just about anybody say “no.”

“Now, see, I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration.”

Is it really? How many truly interesting ideas have been shot down in church because one person pulled the trigger?

“That sounds like a great idea, but I’m afraid that if we let those people use the building, something’s going to get broken.”

.

“Of course we love young people, but I don’t think that kind of thing is appropriate for Christians.”

.

“I think you’ll find that nobody will mind … except, Norman. Yeah, he won’t go for it.”

Brooms, Elephants, and Blocking

Merlin Mann has famously said: “Never let the guy with the broom decide how many elephants can be in the parade.”

What does that mean?

It means, according to Mann, that to the guy with the broom, an elephant isn’t an elephant, it’s a source of inconvenience. If you ask that guy, he’ll say there shouldn’t be any elephants, and you should spend your time and money hiring more broom guys.

Why?

Because elephants, no matter how wonderful they might make the parade, threaten to make that guy’s life miserable.

“What is the purpose of a parade?”

To entertain people.

“Do elephants entertain people?”

Yes.

“Then let’s have more elephants.”

No.

The guy with the broom answers the question about elephants by saying that elephants upset the balance. As if the purpose of a parade was not to entertain people, but to make one guy’s struggle with life a bit more manageable.

Of course, people say “no” for reasons other than just that a proposed action produces more headaches. There are any number reasons people give for blocking:

  • We don’t have the money to do x.
  • We’ve tried x before, and it didn’t work.
  • We’ve never done x before, and we shouldn’t start doing it now.
  • “People” will get upset if we move forward with x.
  • “People” might leave if we follow through with x.
  • My aunt Gladys would roll over in her grave if she knew we were doing x.
  • X is just not something a place like this should be involved in.

Or, there’s the all-purpose blocking tactic:

  • I’m not comfortable with us doing x.

Any idea, no matter how good, reasonable, or promising that runs up against one of these phrases in a meeting is almost surely doomed in most churches. In unhealthy systems, blocking tactics are virtually fool-proof.

And the beauty of it is almost anyone can successfully execute them!

  • People who haven’t been to church since the Nixon administration
  • People who’ve never given an hour or a dime
  • People who’re resentful about the prospect of having to give another hour or another dime
  • Even proxies for people dead, absent, or non-existent (i.e., “People are saying …”)
  • (I’ve even heard of denominations that are set up to allow people to be bused in for the express purpose of keeping change at bay.)

Bonus: The louder and more obnoxious you can be the better chance you’ll have at succeeding!

The Problem

Don’t misunderstand. Sometimes blocking is necessary. Prophets are often blockers—loud obnoxious people who are famous for standing up and saying “No!” We need people with the courage to stand in the middle of the road and refuse to get out of the way of the oncoming tank convoys.

The question I’m raising is not whether blocking should occur sometimes, but whether or not a congregation or a denomination should be prevented from ever even attempting great and interesting things because of the threat (real or imagined) of the broom pushers, who if asked, will invariably say “no.”

Or what about this: Everybody in charge knows it’s the right thing to do, but nobody wants to clean up the inevitable mess.

Organizations devote so much time and energy to set up systems that are explicit about who gets to say “yes.”

What’s a quorum? How high up the organizational chart does it need to go to get authorization? How many votes are necessary? Who said you could do that?

I think organizations would benefit from spending a quarter of the time dealing explicitly with the question of who gets to say “no.”

What kind of investment is necessary on the part of a person who seeks to torpedo an idea? Does the person have to demonstrate any expertise in the area before being able to stymy the group, or is just “feeling” like it’s the wrong thing to do enough? Can one person carry the water for another person, a group of persons, a whole demographic?

Saying “no” is just as much an exercise of power as saying “yes.” We write all kinds of rules about the latter, without ever explicitly taking up the issue of the former.

The problem isn’t just that good ideas are always in danger of being shot down. In an unhealthy system good ideas often don’t see the light of day because everybody knows up front that bringing them up is a waste of time. I would wager that serial blockers have killed ten times more ideas in people’s heads than they’ve killed on the floor of meetings—just because everybody is convinced that bringing up an idea would be a waste of time, or because it would cause World War III.

The reality of the situation is that you’ll never do great things, exciting things, things that change the world if every idea is stillborn for fear that somebody will object.

Spend some time considering to whom you give the power of veto.

Make sure you know why the guy with broom doesn’t like elephants in the parade.

Or don’t do great things. The choice is ultimately up to you.

Here’s an idea for a cheap bracelet: WWJASN

Who would Jesus allow to say no?