Bandits No More

Continuing a commentary on Steve Sjogren’s The Perfectly Imperfect Church….

The second path for struggling churches (see Sjogren’s definition in my first post in this series) involves worship – he calls it Upward. This chapter has some of his best points so far – as well as some I’d most like to argue with. He says, “It is absolutely essential to do worship well from the beginning of the church’s existence. It’s what people experience first when they come to your celebration.”

If worship is about honoring God, then we clearly need to start there. If worship is a primary context in which people experience and come to know God, then we need to start there. But I’m still not sure what to do with his statement. First, my congregation is almost 150 years old. It’s a little late to be considering what we can do form the “beginning of the church’s existence.” Second, because we are an old established congregation (we still have several regular attenders who joined in the 1920s), our people have an entrenched notion of what worship really is and what it should look and feel like. Third, as Sjogren knows, worship isn’t about us – or about our visitors. It’s about God. If so, when we evaluate whether we are doing worship well the response of visitors – or even our regulars – cannot be of first importance.

He goes on – and this statment causes the most trouble:

Here’s a caution for smaller churches: You have to get past acting like a small family during worship. The natural tendency for small, struggling churches is to do what they call family-friendly worship, which means that children are present with the adults during the singing portion of the service. I don’t recommend including the children. They don’t get much out of worship, in spite of what we adults would like to think. It just isn’t fair to the children; they are bored being with the adults, and they are not learning to worship. They would be far better off in another room with children their own age…. I have never seen a church do worship well when the children are present.

As a preacher I have sympathy with this point of view. Some of the messages I need to preach are PG-13 and are not appropriate for children. Also, as a communicator, I’m aware of the great difficulty of speaking in a way that meets the needs and hold the attention of the wide age span present in our normal worship services. I can do good children’s messages – or so the children tell me from time to time. I can do messages that grab the adult’s attention and challenge them – or so they tell me from time to time. But doing both at the same time? That’s tough, if not impossible to do on a regular basis. I know there is a price to pay – my youngest daughter is a great one for inviting her friends to church. She explained the other night that she invites them to church to make it less boring. Ouch.

I’ve seen churches that do age-segregated worship. Northpoint Church in Alpharetta, Georgia appears to do both really well. When I visited Steve Sjogren’s church I didn’t have a chance to examine what they did with children (and that was about 10 years ago). They may do equally as well. But I notice that these churches have more than 10 times as many in attendance as we do. We take our kids out for Children’s Church most Sundays – even that challenges our available leadership. Most of the older people are “retired” from children’s ministry (“we did that when our kids came up, now it’s your turn”), so the burden falls on the parents who then miss the worship services. We also don’t have the financial & technological resources to do what churches like Northpoint do.

Notice, however, that what I’ve said about the communication gap and children’s church misses Sjogren’s point. He’s not talking about taking kids out for the message – he’s talking about taking them out of the “worship” time – by worship he seems to mean the singing time. Doubtless, there are plenty of children who “get nothing out of worship,” and demonstrate this by their lack of participation. But why should this be an argument for exclusion? On the same basis I can think of a bunch of men (mostly men – but a few ladies) who should be excluded from worship. All they do is stand there and stare when we sing. What about the autistic and mentally handicapped? It would seem then that the goal is not exclusion of non-worshiping worshipers, but doing the hard work of engaging the non- (and proto) worshipers of all ages. As for his final statement: I know what he’s getting at, but his judgment is irrelevant. I have troubel seeing Jesus say to the church, “Oh well, you included children in your worship today. Your worship just isn’t good enough.)

But he has much more to say on worship beyond Exclude the children.

He says that we ned to focus on helping peopel encounter God in worship. The starting point for this is identifying and eliminating the things (like doing goofy, gimmicky things) that keep this from happening. Applying his first path (Simple) with the second (Upward) he says we need to avoid complicated worship. In this section he explains how to build a band to lead worship. (Of course in traditional churches we already have institutions of worship leadership in place, so his advice is best for starting new services and forms of outreach.)

Skipping a few points (this series is not a substitute for reading the book), he claims that style is irrelevant. While some styles clearly are detrimental to worship in certain settings, I have to agree. Talking about style he concludes: “Your style isn’t what causes God’s presence to come into your midst. [I’d say, “Steve, remember that including children in worship is just as much a style as differences in music.”] Style is almost irrelevant. God comes into your midst because hearts are hungry for the presence of God.”

In Steve Sjogren’s The Perfectly Imperfect Church, he identifies 13 paths a church travels to become perfectly imperfect. The first of these he calls, “Simple.” He thinks that the way we tend to do church is too complicated for most people. He includes many practicalities from his experience leading worship (and you find these in many church leadership books): Keep the service to 60 minutes (not so common advice form someone in his tradition), do smooth & short transitions, keep the message 25-30 minutes. Simple is not only about worship services, but is about the total practice of doing Church. He makes two important points here. First, as we pursue simplicity, we will find ourselves “saying no to many good things.” One of the ways I present that in my ministry is asking the question, “Is that a good idea or a God idea?” Second, the work of simplification is difficult and painful. Churches develop traditions (the actions we defend with ‘We’ve always done it that way!) very quickly. Most people only have to attend once to choose a seat that is “theirs.” Our church is about 150 years old. Since simplification means change, it will definitely cause much pain – even more than I think Sjogren realizes. As I’ll comment on a future chapter, he doesn’t seem to have much experience with old established churches & seems to assume leaders have more power to bring change, or can do so more quickly than I’ve seen in my experience. But then maybe I’m just too timid.

We usually take little things for granted – that’s why we clasify them as little things and not big things. In social contexts it can be really hard to tell whether something is big or little. Think no farther than family life. I’m very different from my wife. She’s visually observant and I’m not. It can take me months to notice a piece of furniture or wall decoration. So when it comes to things that cause changes in our visual fields, most things are little to me but big to her.

The Spirit of America Blog is now visiting in Lebanon, meeting many of the people hungry for freedom. He notes:

The U.S. and Europe are both winking – big time – at Lebanon now. We had better be serious. I get the impression the Lebanese have no idea how important their tiny country’s struggle is to the rest of the world. And I wonder if Americans and Europeans have any idea how powerfully the tiniest word of support, even in a politician’s throw-away line at a press conference, resonates here.

So what are we to do when things we do that we think are almost meaningless mean so much – and perhaps in completely unintended ways – to the people who see and hear us? I don’t know the whole of it, but I think the startign point is paying attention. We need to learn to pay attention to what we do and say. We need to learn to pay attention not only to what the people around us do and say, but also how they hear and respond to what we and others say. In practical life, this will likely mean that we act and speak more slowly as we add in more processing time.

This coming Sunday I’m preaching on “The Blessings of an Imperfect Church.” As part of my preparation I picked up a copy of Steve Sjogren’s book, The Perfectly Imperfect Church: Redefining the “Ideal” Church. I’ve enjoyed Sjogren’s books in the past, and thought this one might be useful as well.

Sjogren begins by identifying four kinds of churches. The first he calls the struggling church. This kind of church has fewer than 200 in average attendance. Most churches in America fit in this category. Everything in this church is work. Leadership is hard to come by. Because there are few leaders, those there are tire quickly. He says leading a struggling cuhrch is like his friend’s experience one a yacht trip when the crew was only half what was needed. They finally made it to port, but just barely.

My current congregation fits into this category. In a lot of ways we’re doing pretty well. Attendance is up since I’ve been here and we’re managing to pay the bills. But Sjogren’s right. It’s lots of work. As Senior Pastor I have to pay attention each pay period to make sure there’s enough income to make payroll – and pay all the debts we’ve accumulated caring for our historic buildings. We have a thriving children’s ministry – last week at our after-school program for 5-6th graders we had at least 40 kids, most non-church kids. But we’re going to have to change the program radically – we just don’t have the people we need to handle that many of the kind of kids we’re attracting and maintain a safe, positive environment for them all. We need to start new small groups – but leadership is already stressed. Large churches like Sjogren’s Cincinnati Vineyard make some things look so easy.

The second kind of church is the Ego-Driven Church. These view largeness – of the church and pastor’s persona – as an end in themselves. They tend to be self-centered. He doubts they’ll last for the long haul.

The Launching Pad Church is the third type. In common language we might call this a healthy Megachurch (where the last type was the UNhealthy Megachurch). This kind of church is evidently blessed by God and completely willing to share that blessing. Instead of simply growing, they seek to plant other churches. This kind of church also shares with other churches as a teaching church, sharing the knowledge & skills it has gained with others.

The final type of church in Sjogren’s typology is the Pretty Good Church. This type is distinguiched by size – averaging 300-500 in attendance, which gives it enough resources, both financial & leadership, to maintain the church. He thinks this kind of church may be the healthiest, even saying that if he had it to do over again, he would have led his congregation to become several smaller congregations scattered geographically instead of a megachurch.

The Bible tells us that “the wages of sin is death.” That sounds pretty dangerous to me. One of the prevailing sins in our culture (and throughout the ages from what I can tell) is the way men deal with and relate to women. It’s horrible how many pastors and ministry leaders end up destorying their families and churches through what they do – even if it’s “only once.”

James McDonald, pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel, has written about the “fences” he’s put up to protect himself (and thus his wife, family and church) from sin in this area. His fences are pretty close to what I try to do. His practice is well worth considering by all men in ministry – even all Christian men.

What about Christian women? I’m not sure what precautions they take. If anyone has some insight in this area, please add some comments.

Everyone knows the preachers only work 1 day a week. When someone else is doing the preaching for us, we don’t even work that one day. People seem to think it’s easy for us. It sure isn’t for me.

Last week was the celebration of our church sanctuary’s centennial. Bishop Janice Riggle Huie was our guest speaker. She did a good job by all accounts. This week was UMW Sunday, and one of our lay speakers who is also District UMW President spoke on the history, values and activities of the UMW. She did a good job too. It’s still tough not to preach. Why?

First, I try to preach purposively. This entails the hard work of discerning what God is wanting to do in the lives of the people and knowing the people well enough to know to say what needs to be said in a way that they can hear while keeping their attention. At no time can I say everything that needs to be said, so week to week I build on what I’ve done in the past. Somethings cannot be said until I’ve laid the groundwork – sometimes for weeks, months or years. I feel like I get so few shots at people – especially since so many attend only sporadically – that I need to get every one I can.

Second, I rarely know what other preachers are going to say. There are plenty of preachers out there that say some pretty wacky things. I can too easily imagine working for a year to build to a particular point in a complex argument only to have a guest preacher come in and say something that knocks me back to square one.

So I worry too much. I take these occasions as opportunities to pray more. As pastor, it is up to me. But as for life change, that’s not my department. My job is faithful obedience. My job is working hard and investing in the lives of people.

Out for the past two weeks – but I’ll be back next Sunday!

In today’s New York Times, David Brooks writes (requires registration) about the relative advantage (political) conservatives have vs. liberals by being so much more divided. I’m not sure this is entirely correct, though it does seem true that liberals value unity more than conservatives do. (Within the church, unity is a value clearly articulated by Jesus in John 17:21, and by Paul in Ephesians 4:1ff. If within the UMC we identify a one-dimensional theological spectrum with conservative at one end, and liberal at the other, it seems to me that the relative ranking of unity in relation to other values and concerns is higher at the liberal end of the spectrum.) Perhaps because liberals value liberty so much, they tend to see it in conservatives while conservatives would deny it. We see this in politics in talk of the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy;” we see it in the church in the recent assertion that UM conservatives as merely political hacks working for the secular Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, aiming to take over the church (one response to these accusations can be found here). Although I could write further about which side is more paranoid about the other, I’d like to focus on a further point Dabid Brooks made in today’s column. He observes:

When modern conservatism became aware of itself, conservatives were so far out of power it wasn’t even worth thinking about policy prescriptions. They argued about the order of the universe, and how the social order should reflect the moral order. Different factions looked back to different philosophers – Burke, Aquinas, Hayek, Hamilton, Jefferson – to define what a just society should look like.

Conservatives fell into the habit of being acutely conscious of their intellectual forebears and had big debates about public philosophy. That turned out to be important: nobody joins a movement because of admiration for its entitlement reform plan. People join up because they think that movement’s views about human nature and society are true.

Liberals have not had a comparable public philosophy debate. A year ago I called the head of a prominent liberal think tank to ask him who his favorite philosopher was. If I’d asked about health care, he could have given me four hours of brilliant conversation, but on this subject he stumbled and said he’d call me back. He never did.

This politcal phenomenon looks like a secular version of what I’ve heard said in the UMC: “Doctrine divides, service unites.” The implicit argument goes something like this: “Let’s not pursue questions of truth and belief too much, since we’ll inevitably disagree. Disagreement leads to rancor, rancor leads to disunity. Since unity is our highest value, we need not only to avoid doing that which harms unity (attending to doctrine) but we also need to focus on what we can all agree on – being loving, kind people who do good things for people. ” You don’t have to be in the church long to hear something like this. In this context, liberals are often quick to judge conservatives (because of their emphasis on doctrine) as not caring about love, while conservatives tend to accuse liberals of not caring about doctrine. I’ve known too many loving conservatives and too many doctrinally concerned liberals to think this is an accurate picture. I do believe, however, that what we see at work here is a combination of different understandings of the nature and function of key concepts (doctrine, love, unity) and a resulting difference in the way these concepts are valued and work themselves out in church life. (For a detailed discussion on different views of the nature and function of doctrine in the church see my book The Recovery of Doctrine in the Contemporary Church.)

If we both value unity – which as followers of Jesus we must – and if we reckon that we do not now have it (in spite of the fact that we’re the UNITED Methodist Church), then our first step will be to recognize that unity is something we have to work at. Paul says to keep the unity of the Spirit. We get the idea that it’s difficult. The road to unity is not merely the way of official pronouncements, holding hands and singing “We are One in the Spirit.” In fact, I’m convinced we need MORE, not less argument. If we’re willing to tell the truth about our current disunity, and spend time pursuing clarity about where we now stand (this is a BIG job), then we can – over time – achieve healthy unity.

This is a long discussion about changing/reforming institutions, written from a secular – libertarian point of view. The author’s conclusion is that she simply doesn’t have enuogh information to decide whether gay marriage would be a good thing or not. Well worth reading.

Emily & Kelsey: Easter 2005
Originally uploaded by rheyduck.

Our oldest daughter Emily met Kelsey while in school in Houston. They have been good buddies ever since. Emily is sad that Houston is so far away, and they only get to see each other a couple of times a year.

Tim Whitaker, UM Bishop in the Florida Annual Conference has a well-reasoned and compassionate piece on the Terri Schiavo case.