Bandits No More

If I am in my car in the evening, I often listen to Tony Snow on the radio. Last night was just such a night. Like many other “conservative” talk radio shows, the topic was the “spying on us” scandal that has pervaded the news lately. Mr. Snow said something to the effect that he had no problem with the President doing whatever he had to do to protect us from Terror.

Really?

I find it ironic that alleged “conservatives” are perfectly willing to cede President Bush free reign on domestic eavesdropping in the name of national security. It is ironic because whenever a “liberal” brings up the slightest infringement on, say, gun control, there is a cacophonous cry from talk radio throwing up Ben Franklin’s “Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither”

Or is it okay to sacrifice freedom when “your guy” is in the White House?

North Point and many other prominent Christians (John Maxwell, Bill Hybels, etc.) look to the secular world to learn about leadership. They find examples in business, politics and the military. The North Point book, 7 Practices of Effective Ministry, is rooted in a baseball metaphor. The thought is that the church is organization, and that although it may be different from other organizations in numerous ways, the likeness is sufficient for us to find models of organization and organizational leadership in effective organizations around us. If this thought it wrong, we might as well toss the book and move on to other things. I do recognize some challenges, however.

The biggest is whether we can do this and remain Christian? Or is it a defeat for the church, evidence that we’ve succumbed to the secular world? [If you want the short answer, skip to the final paragraph] Perhaps, some might suggest, we ought to just leave the particulars up to God. After all, the Christian faith is about mysteries – and mysteries cannot be understood, only experienced.

In the late 18th century William Carey, an English Baptist, observed that many people around the world had no way of hearing the good news of Jesus. At the same time he observed that Jesus had commanded the disciples to “make disciples of all nations.” Nothing controversial there – or so we think. In Carey’s day, however, there was a strong conviction that if God wanted the “heathen” to come to faith He’d do it Himself. It was presumptuous to think humans could have a role in such a work. Perhaps the first Apostles had such a command, but we today – especially a lowly shoemaker like Carey – are not apostles. Responding to such non-missional attitudes, Carey wrote a short booklet, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.

The idiom of “using means” isn’t commonly used today. In the history of missions that follow, “using means” amounted to (a) identifying the need, (b) thinking about how to meet it, and (c) doing something about it. In Carey’s case, he observed people in India who did not know about Jesus. Consulting the New Testament model of Paul’s missionary journeys, Carey decided that the way to meet this need would be for someone to go to India and share the gospel with the people. Acting on this theory, Carey moved his family to India and spent his life translating the bible and presenting the gospel to the people of India.

Most churches today at least tacitly accept Carey’s argument. They send missionaries to the ends of the earth as a reasoned act of obedience to Jesus command to make disciples. Of course it might be argued that this is just an expression of what Max Weber called the “routinization of charisma,” the rationalizing of an enterprise after the founder leaves the scene. Jesus has left the scene, his (charismatic) apostles are also long gone. We don’t have the Spirit the same we they did, so we need to depend on “using means” to accomplish what they did through “charisma” alone.

In what follows, I’m going to try to make a case for learning from non-church organizations and leaders. My case (much abbreviated) will have two prongs, one defensive the other offensive.

Is it a defeat for the church to look to the secular world to learn leadership? I think it can be, but it need not be. First, I confess that in my preaching and teaching I maintain a conviction that the Fall and the sin that comes from it are very real. Sin has infected every dimension of our lives. Because of sin we experience four broken relationships that encompass all of life. Sin alienates us from God, from each other, from ourselves and from Creation. All humans experience this brokenness in variety of ways. Because sin and its effects pervade all of life, this brokenness infiltrates not only our lives, but also our institutions, ranging from the family to the business to the State. As I read church history I even notice that the church – God’s own people – has, as an organization, incorporated this brokenness into its very life.

Second, learning from the world around us is nothing new for Christians. Very early on the church looked to Caesar and his empire as they organized the church. After the church was legalized they looked to Caesar’s methods of hierarchy and command and control and often brought them wholesale into the church. Many of our churches are still based on that top-down management style of so-called benevolent paternalism that Caesar claimed.  So in the first case, the choice appears not to be whether we learn from the world but whether we continue learning from the world or simply baptize what our forebears in the faith learned centuries ago as the true organizational principles. We look at the Amish and wonder why they choose 17th century technology as the proper model. We rarely look at ourselves and wonder why 4th or 12th or 18th century organizational styles and leadership practices are the way to go. [After all, many still think the best musical styles for Christians originated centuries ago, and that anything devised since is a perversion. Others think that if Latin was good enough for a millennium of church life, it’s still good enough for today. I’ve even heard ignorant folk suggest that since the KJV was good enough for Jesus, surely it’s good enough for us.] Perhaps in each case of learning fro the world the church is simply applying the Augustinian principle of “plundering the Egyptians.”

Surely we can make mistakes. We don’t have to look far in church history to find occasions when the church copied a destructive model or learned a leadership style that deviated from the teachings of Jesus. When we spend more effort looking at the world than looking at Jesus, we will likely err.

Might it be that we get our ends (the “What”) from Jesus and the means (the “How”) from the world? Picking up the example from Carey and his recovery of the Great Commission, we might say that the “What”  – “Make Disciples of all nations” – is provided by Jesus. In fact, the world would really rather we simply mind our own business and not both making disciples. Be tolerant, live and let live, they tell us. We could then adapt some means (methods) – some “Hows” – from the world. These might include Sunday school classes, bible translations, Evangelistic meetings, books and tracts, TV and radio broadcasts, material inducement (bribes), bait and switch (“Having problems in life? Want to take care of all your problems and become prosperous along the way? Come join our church!”), or force (“If you become a follower of Jesus we won’t kill you/raise your taxes, etc.”).

Well maybe that strategy doesn’t work so well after all. While the first few methods seem fairly harmless, the latter strike us as antithetical to the character of Jesus. So while we may legitimately (so it appears) take some methods from the world, we cannot do so indiscriminately. At the same time, I believe that not only will the ends we pursue be drawn from Jesus, but also the foundational methods we rely on to achieve them. The first of these methods is fairly easily understood but strongly resists the routinizing we prefer in our search for principles. Jesus’ first method of pursuing his ends was to seek the Father and then obey him. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? A second method, however, one that seems to have resulted from the first is suffering. Through obedience to the Father his pursuit of our salvation led to his death on the cross. Over and over again throughout scripture – from Jesus’ own “Take up your cross and follow me” – the message is that the suffering of the righteous is, strangely enough, God’s way of winning the world.

How does this help us in our quest to discern first, if we can learn from the world, and, secondly, how we can learn from it? Here’s a suggestion. Whatever we adopt from the world must fit within the story of Jesus, a story of the Son of God motivated by love, who came to live as one of us, listened to and obeyed the Father at every turn, and suffered and died for the sins of the world. If what we learn fits with that story, then were doing ok. It maybe that the church will, on occasion, adopt a practice that seems to fit the story of Jesus. Later, however, as the church does what it has learned from the world, it comes to be seen that the method doesn’t fit with the way of Jesus. At that point the church – if healthy (listening and obeying, that is) – will repent and drop the method. I realize this is vastly oversimplified. Not only do we have methods, but we have methods of doing methods ad infinitum. At no time will the church be able to sit back and relax, thinking its work of discernment is done.

Consideration of the story of Jesus leads to the final defensive point I’ll make and also to my offensive case. Remember my claim that sin causes brokenness in four kinds of relationships? Likewise, the salvation Jesus brings offers healing and deliverance in each of these areas. Jesus died and rose not merely so I could have a renewed and restored relationship with God, but also such relationships with others, myself and all of creation. Because salvation – like sin – goes beyond the individual, the sacred-secular dichotomy is not as absolute as we sometimes think. Partly because some Christians work in the world (in my church the vast majority of members are employed outside the church), Christians have infiltrated the secular. While on occasion this might work to the detriment of the Christian, surely sometimes it works to the benefit of the secular – of the organizations in which they find themselves. It is also possible that on occasion a non-Christian may – knowingly or unknowingly – be attracted to Jesus and learn from Him. His ways do, after all, depict how life is best to be lived. So when we learn from the world, we are not learning from institutions that are completely free of grace or the work of God.

At the least, I hope my defensive case has inclined you to believe that learning from the world (or, more accurately, from non-church institutions) need not be an evil. What about the positive case? Just because it need not be bad, ought we to do it? My offensive case will be much briefer.

Let’s pick up the story of Jesus again, this time looking backwards to the beginning – the very beginning. In the beginning God created some humans. He put them in a perfect environment and appointed them stewards over creation. This work – this ruling over creation – is a significant aspect, I believe, of their being created in God’s image. As beings created in the image of God, humans were made with creativity. God delighted not only in creating things, but in creating mini-creators. Though our powers are immensely less than God’s – no creatio ex nihilo for us – our creativity is still a significant part of us. The advent of sin did not remove our creativity but warped it, leading us to habitually use it in harmful and destructive ways. We don’t have to look far – either in history or in the world around us – to see the death and destruction wrought by human creativity. This creativity is creativity not submitted to God and his purposes. But need it be that way?

John Wesley claimed that because of the Atonement – the work of Jesus – we do not live in a state of nature, a state devoid of grace. Because of God’s Prevenient Grace not all human creativity echoes death. Some, in fact, hauntingly points us to God. Even more, as people turn to Jesus and begin to experience his salvation, their creative powers are employed in new ways, ways directly subservient to God. I propose that our learning of leadership fits within these parameters. As we “use means” in the leadership of our churches – that is (a) identify problems; (b) think of solutions; (c) pursue those solutions – we are using our God-given and Jesus-redeemed creativity. While God can create from nothing, we can’t – we can only use the materials we find at hand, in this case, non-church organizational practices. As a sculptor fashions a statue from a piece of marble, we fashion a practice from the materials we find in the world around us. Instead of chisels and hammers we use prayer, study, fasting, and other spiritual disciplines, but it is creativity nonetheless.

So – may we learn from the world? Yes, but it’s hard work to do it well. But most things in life that are worth while are that way.

For those who don’t know, my son Paul is taking video tech at high school this year. He doesn’t limit his creativity to what he does at school. His first online movie is The Curse of the Living Dead. It’s pretty large (5 mb) so you’ll either need a broadband connection or lots of patience. If you like the movie send him some comments at heyduckbandit08 “at” yahoo “dot” com. (Replace the “at” & the “dot” with the appropriate symbols.)

I’m starting a series on Virtues & Vices. Today I spoke about Attitude from Colossians 3:17. You can listen here.

Those who speak of “The State” as univocal are mistaken. Not only is “The State” – or even “The Modern State” an entity that changes through time, it is also an entity that changes from place to place.

One of the things that determines the nature of “The State” is the existence, nature and health of the intermediate social institutions that stand between them and the individuals of the society. Though modernity is, in theory, atomistic and individualistic, this is only in theory. We see the outworkings of that theory in American life, but in spite of the theory intermediate institutions (the family, churches, clubs, etc.) continue to exist.

The next thing I want to bring up can best be approach by considering again NPCC’s mission statement: “The mission of North Point is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. We accomplish this by creating irresistible environments led by skilled staff and volunteer.”

The unique part of this mission statement, and a feature that permeates everything they do is the focus on “environments.” I’ll have more to say about them later. The goal to “lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ” is quite ordinary. It is the function equivalent of the United Methodist mission statement – “To make disciples of Jesus Christ,” – and other mega-churches (I think of Willow Creek’s mission: “To turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Christ.”). In the past when I’ve concocted mission statements for churches I’ve always used some variant of the Great Commission, just like these other folks. Sure seems like the biblical approach, doesn’t it? But is it enough? Over the past couple of years I’ve started to think that it’s not.

The first problem, is that it’s highly individualistic. We’re about reaching individuals and helping them grow in Christ. Surely we are individuals, and surely we individuals need to enter a growing relationship with Jesus, but what about our other relationships?

The second thing I wonder about is the tendency to instrumentalize everything. That is, for every X that we do, we expect some Y to happen. We’re told that we need to have goals. Furthermore, we’re told that these goals need to be measurable. We can measure the number of people in our “environments.” But can we measure everything else? Can we measure “relationship?” I’m just not convinced that we can quantify and measure everything God wants us to do.

In spite of these reservations I’m still attracted to what NPCC and others are doing and to the making of mission statements. Too often in our traditional churches our de facto mission statements (regardless of what we put on the letterhead) is some variant of, “Our mission is to do what we’ve always done and to keep all the members happy.” I am very much attracted to the notion of asking WHY we do what we do. Now if we start asking WHY, we’ll soon find out that some of the things we’re doing aren’t done for any discernible reason and that others that we think we’re doing to accomplish X, really either accomplish Y or do absolutely nothing but expend money and get people tired.

We need to learn from NPCC that a mission needs to be clearly articulated, broadly communicated, commonly shared and consistently followed. Having a real mission statement is serious business because not only does the statement tell us what we do, it also tells us what we don’t do. When that kind of thinking comes into the traditional church where each of the “things we’ve always done” has its own constituency, change will be required. And we all know that change brings pain. The normal function of pain is to tell us to stop doing what we’re doing. You put your hand on the stovetop. You feel heat. You pull your hand off so you won’t get burned.

But there’s also a saying, “No pain, no gain.” What’s the difference? In the latter situation we have to go beyond the instinctual level and be able to identify some Good Thing that will not happen unless we work through the pain. We will never be educated unless we go through the pain of homework and long hours (and years) of study and work. We will never get a paycheck unless we go through the pain of getting up in the morning and going to work. We will never reach people who are not now followers of Christ unless we go through the pain of spending time with them, learning their “language” and how to express the Gospel in ways they understand, and sacrificing our comfort for their sake.

My guess is that our mission is something like, “Together we will exhibit the reality of the Kingdom of God so that people will be attracted to Jesus.” There is a measure of the quantifiable there. We do count people. Have you ever seen the Home Alone movies? Those are stories about a family that doesn’t count well and ends up leaving a person (their young son) out. We count because we don’t want to leave people out.

There’s also an element of the impossible in this conception of our mission. How do we exhibit the Kingdom of God? Well, it’s mostly by letting the Holy Spirit live in us and through us. As we together live a life that is unintelligible apart from the reality of God, the world will have reason to ask questions. The world understands excellence. The world understands growth. The world understands growing market share. The world understands proselytizing. The world doesn’t understand unconditional love and radical trust in and obedience to God. There’s just too much self-denial involved.

Though the idea of “exhibiting the Kingdom of God” isn’t quantifiable, we do need some way of identifying whether we’re actually doing it or not. More on that in future posts.

Learning from North Point part 2

North Point Community Church was one of the churches that generated publicity last month by not “having church” on Christmas day. They have at least three reasons for this position, two explicit, the other implicit.

First, they want to “create margin” in the lives of their people. Here’s what they say in The 7 Practices of Effective Ministry:

“Another example of calendaring margin is the unheard-of decision by our elders to cancel services on the Sunday following Christmas [so 2005 when Christmas fell n a Sunday is not the issue]. On that Sunday we simply shut down. We do this for two reasons: first, as a thank-you to the thousands of volunteers it takes to run a Sunday morning here; and second, to protect the quality of our product. So many of our volunteers travel on that weekend that we find it difficult to maintain the level of excellence to which we are accustomed. But by scheduling this closure and announcing it to everyone, we are able to take a potentially negative situation and turn it into a positive one.” (p. 177)

Ok, they provide their first two reasons there – a relief to their workers (their normal Sunday morning ministry requires over 1500 people), and a desire to maintain “the quality of our [their] product.” What is that product? It’s their Sunday morning Foyer environment. They want the people to come to be drawn to Christ, and they’re convinced quality will bring more people (or drive away fewer) than a slip-shod product. Here’s where the third and implicit reason for closing Christmas day comes in. Sunday morning is not about what the traditional church thinks of as church. It’s about evangelism – reaching people for Christ. How many of our traditional, liturgically correct churches schedule our evangelistic events, our seeker services on days our culture identifies as “family time holidays?”

But how many of our traditional, liturgically correct churches schedule any evangelistic or seeker events? How many of us exert huge effort to create and offer environments where non-church people can come and hear the message of Jesus focused on their hearing and learning style – instead of the hearing and learning styles of the insiders? As Mike Slaughter of Ginghamsburg UMC in Ohio has said, [I paraphrase] “I want to overcome all the barriers in communicating the gospel so that the people know they are offended – by the gospel itself and not by my style.” That seems to be what NPCC is about.

Therefore we need to nuance our claim that NPCC did not “have church” on Christmas day. If by “have church” we mean a event whose primary purpose is to unite all the members of the church worshiping God, then no, they didn’t “have church.” But they don’t “have church” any other Sunday either. NPCC is not organized to “have church” like our traditional churches. They’re a mission outpost, a missionary station in the middle of secular culture. They seem to be thinking along the lines of English missionary C.T. Studd, “Some want to live within the sound of a church or chapel bell, but I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.”

So we traditional churches are “doing church” while NPCC (and some other groups) are “doing evangelism.” Which is more biblical? I have to think that having a desire to reach people for Christ as part of your lifeblood is mighty biblical. The Book of Acts tells us of the early churches who were “adding to their number daily.” What? Not only at the invitation time on Sunday? It sure looks like NPCC has something we need.  In their focus on evangelism the NPCC folks seem a lot more like the early Methodists than our current batch. Of course the early Methodists didn’t constitute a church, but more of what we today would call a “Parachurch” organization. John Wesley remained a member of the Church of England all his days. So maybe, although the name of the organization is North Point Community Church it’s not really a church after all.

Or then again, we might need to rethink our definition of church.

It looks like the Texas Conference isn’t the only one doing some major change. Bishop Will Willimon tells a little of the change they’re instigating in North Alabama, including, like Texas, a reduction in the number of districts. I wonder, though, how this kind of “big change” from above will influence local congregations.

Back in 2001 I flew to Atlanta for John Maxwell’s Catalyst Conference, held at North Point Community Church in Alpharetta. I didn’t know much about NPCC before I arrived, but found my experience there quite impressive. Here’s a short list of what impressed me:

• Clean Restrooms. It sounds like a minor detail but when a church can maintain clean restrooms while hosting a conference with several thousand people that tells me something about the commitment level of their people. The whole facility was staffed continuously while we were there, not only maintaining cleanliness, but to be available to help out in any way needed. Clearly this was a high commitment church.
• The children’s ministry. NPCC is one of those churches that segregates by age. (I’ll comment on that practice elsewhere.) Their Sunday morning children’s ministry is a high energy ministry to children and parents. Parents are not allowed to drop off their children: they must attend with them. This is a great idea – and another sign of a high commitment church. (It also looks like it’d be tough to transfer what they do to a small church in a small town.)
• The simplicity of their model of ministry. Their mission statement – “The mission of North Point is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. We accomplish this by creating irresistible environments led by skilled staff and volunteers” – doesn’t look like anything special. It’s the way they envision it that drew me in. Using the metaphor of a home (“environment” is a key concept in NPCC thinking), they talk about moving from the “Foyer” to the “Living Room” to the “Kitchen.”
• Of the Foyer they say: “It’s the place in your home that serves as the welcome area for guests and new friends. It’s the first step, and it’s often your only chance to make your guests feel comfortable enough to return.” They have Foyer-type environments for each level of their ministry: adults (the Sunday morning service), children (Kidstuf), youth (Rush Hour) and singles (7:22). Anonymity is possible in the Foyer environment – it’s designed for checking things out.
• Beyond the Foyer is the Living Room. “When guests arrive and are welcomed into your home, you invite them into the living room. Everyone finds a comfortable place to sit, and the interaction begins. At North Point Community Church, this is where you connect with people like yourself. Smaller and more interactive than the foyer environment, these gatherings offer genuine opportunity to begin friendships…just like the living room in your home.” People start interacting face to face in the Living Room and begin to build trust as they grow with God. Again, there are Living Room environments for each age group.
• Finally, at the greatest level of intimacy is the Kitchen. “This is where lasting friendships are made. And that’s the kind of environment we are striving for in our small groups. Small groups are where people meet regularly for Bible study and prayer, and commit to accountability, friendship and support. They are the safe place to open your heart, share your life, and ask the tough questions.” In these small group environments, again there are separate groups for different age levels, each person is able to grow in their intimacy with God and find the support they need to live as faithful followers of Jesus.
• Their success in reaching people. Their objective is to reach unchurched people, not just to shuffle sheep. In their short time of existence (about 10 years) they’ve clearly done that.

NPCC puts on several conferences a year (check their site for details). They also put out a variety of resources from those who want to learn about how they do what they do. They’ve put out 7 Practices of Effective Ministry, a book that explores the practices that shape what they do. If you’d like to find out what they have to say, the simplest way is to go to their site and download the mp3 version of the discussion. I find the material quite useful – and challenging at the same time. In several future posts I will discuss my take on what they have to say and how we might apply it in our old small town church.

Sit down and try to imagine this: network television is about to misrepresent the Christian faith!

I know it is hard to believe, but let it sink in for a moment. As if many of our denominations are not scandal and corruption riden enough, now NBC is piling on with the new series “The Book of Daniel.”

The American Family Association is so concerned they want us to email NBC and contact our local affiliates. The AFA would like us all to join them in telling NBC that this show is not what we consider a favorable presentation of Jesus or the Christian faith.

While I see their (the AFA’s) point, and am deeply saddened by such a portrayal, I am even more saddened by the truth that we as an allegedly Christian Church have given the world so much fodder for shows like this!