Bandits No More

I’ve been going to ministry conferences for years. I’ve read piles of books and listened to many tapes & CDs. I’ve heard inspiring and informative teachings on how to reach people, how to grow a church, and how to lead a congregation. The Willowcreek Leadership Summit in 2003 was great. The Catalyst Conference in 2001 exposed me to the ministry of Andy Stanley and North Point Church. Reading Purpose Driven Church and going to Dan Southerland’s Transitions Conference gave me great ways to understand the church and how to move forward.

But at the same time these experiences leave me with an emotional high, they quickly lead to depression. We can’t go out and buy the best leaders in the world like Willowcreek. We don’t have the facilities or the budget or the critical mass of people to do children’s & youth ministry like NPCC. We don’t have the large base of new Christians like Saddleback.

We’re a small church, in a small town, in the third smallest county in Texas. The biggest towns in the area, Tyler & Longview, are an hour away. We’re also an established traditional church. The vast majority of our people were raised in church and their formative experiences of what church is about happened 50 or more yeras ago. Willowcreek, Saddleback & NPCC, however attractive they might be to me, are vastly different. All are in high population areas. All are recent church plants still led by the founding pastor. What they identify as “basic principles” that can be transferred elsewhere, may look universal, but are too intertwined with their own local peculiarities to be readily transplanted.

There’s another church planter that seems to have a different approach. Sure, Steve Sjogren has grown a church from nothing into the thousands like the others. Sure, he’s in a major metropolitan area. But he has less of an aura of certainty and perfection. In a recent article he says perfection – we call it “excellence” – is overrated. More important is the willingness to take risks.

There is a general malaise in the Church today that has been brought on by an attitude of perfectionism. “If you can’t do it with nearly perfect excellence, don’t even bother giving it a try.” This is hogwash!

I ascribe to the wisdom of turn-of-the-century Christian writer, G.K. Chesterton, who said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” I love the permission that comes with that paradigm. Of course, neither he nor I nor you would embrace the concept of doing things poorly on a general basis. However, the idea of perfectionism is so insidious it makes us think that if we can’t do a super bangup job all the time, we might as well not even try.

There is a well-known church in America at which I have often been invited to speak over the past decade. I love that church in many ways, but they are overly committed to the concept of excellence. Each time I’m there, I come away feeling discouraged; as if I could never attain their standard of measurement.

I look up to the pastor of that church in a big way. I think he is one of the greatest leaders in America today – both in and out of the Church. But he overstates the value of excellence. What’s worse, they are modeling this set of values to hundreds of other churches eager to learn the best way to do church in the American context.

The truth is, God is looking for people who are looking to take risks. Risks are the way forward in life and in the church world.

We’re a small church in a small town. We’ll never be a mega church and I’m not sure any of us want to be. But if we learn to take risks, i.e., trust and obey God even when we don’t see any way what we’re doign can possibly work – then God can do great things through us to reach our community.

Friday night was homecoming in Pittsburg. Though they’d played a few close games this season, the varsity football team had managed to enter the night with no wins. With a strategy that included only one lost fumble (if I remember correctly), the Pirate finally won, beating Mt. Vernon 36-30. As usual, the Pittsburg band was better than the other band.

Fans came to the game in a variety of decor, though I didn’t see any as colorful as this fellow.

Here’s a recent report from the UK:

Marriage is on the rocks in Britain, with the proportion of unmarried people set to exceed that of married people within 25 years as more men and women opt to live together without constraints, according to government statistics published this week.

The proportion of married men is expected to fall from 53 percent in 2003 to 42 percent in 2031, while the percentage of married women will decline from 50 percent to 40 percent, Britain’s Office for National Statistics predicted Thursday.

The “Population Trends” report predicted on the other hand that the number of unmarried couples living together will almost double from two million in 2003 to 3.8 million in 2031.

The projections are based on the recent steep fall in marriage rates for people aged under 30. As the older generation dies, a new generation of people who prefer living together to marriage will take their place.

My travels have not yet taken me to the UK, so I can’t speak from personal experience, but I have difficulty seeing these trends as being good for children – or even for those who for the sake of freedom (is that their reason?) eschew marriage.

Marriage is hard work. Raising children is hard work. Both require self-denial. Both require delayed gratification, often for years – sometimes forever. Both are still worth doing.

If we want to learn about faith, holiness, the bible, money, evangelism – and many other subjects – John Wesley is a great source. But when it comes to learning how to lead one’s family life, Wesley’s example is best taken as how not to do family life.

Here’s a post from Randy Hageman about some opportunities to help people recover from Hurricane Katrina:
Gateway Community Church (formerly Abundant Life UMC), in conjunction with Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (both Clear Lake area churches) have set up the C.O.R.E. (Christians Organized for Relief Efforts) Base Camp in Ocean Springs, Mississippi at St. Paul’s UMC. This camp is designed to be a staging area for volunteers wanting to help in the relief efforts along the Mississippi Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. This camp is available to any church group, of any denominational affiliation, as well as community groups and other volunteers, who desire to serve in this area. C.O.R.E. Base Camp is working in conjunction with Jackson County relief efforts and other relief organizations.
 C.O.R.E. Base Camp can now accommodate 200+ volunteers at a time. The camp provides large air-conditioned tents, cots, meals, portable restroom facilities, showers and more to meet the physical needs of volunteers who will serve in weekend and week-long service projects. “This is not your ‘pup-tent’ operation,” said Mike Malkemes, camp director. “One of our tents is 4,000 square feet… with air conditioning!”
 At the present time there are over four hundred projects waiting for volunteers, with each project taking, on average, a couple of days for a team to complete. If you are interested in volunteering there, or taking a group there, go to www.katrina-relief.net and click on “Volunteer Information” on the right-hand side. In addition, the camp now has two phone numbers: (228) 875-3416 & (228) 875-3568. The website also offers additional information and pictures about the camp and its mission.
 Obviously there will be significant needs right here in our own conference in the Golden Triangle area. However, for those wishing to serve in Mississippi, or who are interested in serving right now before sites are open in the East Texas and SW Louisiana areas, C.O.R.E. is available.
Grace and Peace,
Randy Hageman
Gateway Community Church
760 Clear Lake City Blvd.
Houston, TX  77598
(713) 551-4800
www.gateway-community.org
www.welcometoyourjourney.com
www.katrina-relief.net

This just in from a friend who wanted to remain anonymous:

City officials of Houston have seen the errors of their ways during the recent hurricane evacuation and have improved the Houston Hurricane Evacuation Plan. Here is the newly developed Houston Hurricane Evacuation Plan:

• Cajuns use I-10 E to Lafayette
• Hispanics use I-10W to San Antonio
• Rednecks use 59N to East Texas
• Republicans fly Continental to Washington DC
• Yankees & Democrats use 45 S to Galveston
• Longhorns use 290 W to Austin
• Aggies use Loop 610

Steve has no been profiled at Locusts & Honey. Go check it out!

This is “Banned Books Week.”  Let’s all take a minute to celebrate that in the good ol’ US of A we don’t ban books!  Why, then, have a “Banned Books Week,” you ask?

In honor of freedom of the press and freedom of speech, the American Library Association wants to take this week to proclaim that there are people who complain about what books and videos are in their libraries.  To make the “Banned Books” list all that is required is that someone somewhere has questioned the placement of a book in a library.

We should realize as good Americans that the only persons qualified to choose which books are “in” and which books are not are the librarians.

Clearly censorship is alive and well, at least in my community.  Why, a quick spin on Amazon.com would reveal thousands of books our local librarians do not want us to read!

The librarians who are proudest of their own strategic censorship are the ones who shelve Books in Print. A quick perusal of this compared to their local card catalog or computer equivalent makes it clear our librarians are choosy, choosy, choosy.

So if you find a book that is in your local library and you don’t think it should be, or if you find an erotic thriller shelved in the children’s section and think it inappropriate, You better get an MLS degree before you say anything, otherwise you are BANNING BOOKS!

If ever you doubted God’s providence, surely you are a believer after the past week!

Less than one week after focusing worship on Jesus’ parable of the Talents and what it means to live in the Kingdom of God, we received an incredible opportunity to put it into practice.

I remember preaching that the Kingdom of God is here, on earth, but its appearance is dependent upon us, as citizens of the Kingdom, to make it visible. We made it visible, beginning last Thursday evening.

After what must have seemed an interminable drive out of the Houston area, over 50 people arrived at our Family Life Center for shelter. Before I returned that evening, you all had opened the building, set up sleeping arrangements, planned and organized meals, and already began to make that place feel more like home than anyone expected.

Many of you have expressed to me that you felt like you received more from stepping up and acting than you could have given to others. That is EXACTLY the point of living the Kingdom; of living in a relationship with God here and now.

All who opened their hearts to our guests quickly realized that we were blessed to be able to do so: not that we are so well off we should help others, but that as recipients of God’s grace, we cannot help but pass it on to others!

I asked in a Monday morning email: “How can we repay our guests, the evacuees, for what they have done for us?” I understand some of you may not have thought of the question this way. I encourage you to consider it too.

Elsewhere in this newsletter you will find one church member’s answer to this question. I received this reply within hours of sending out the email. I encourage you all to answer the question, from your heart. Please write, call, or email me with your answer!

Denmark has an offical state church (of the Lutheran variety). One of their leaders (a custodian) decided years ago that he thought reinarnation was part of Christianity so he started teaching it. The other leaders in the church (pastor, bishop, etc) decided this was inappropriate and excommunicated him, in essence saying, “Reincarnation is not only not a Christian doctrine, but it is a teaching that doesn’t fit within Christian doctrine.” Well, the custodian took his case to Caesar’s courts and was unexcommunicated.

The lesson? When you take Caesar’s money (12% of the national church’s budget comes from the Caesar), Caesar gets a say in what you do and what you can’t do. The Christian tradition might value truth and faithfulness fo Jesus, but Caesar puts a higher value on niceness, lack of conflict and profit.