Clan of Issachar

Evolving in Monkey Town

2012-02-15T15:54:00.000-08:00

So my friend Tim made his first ever book recommendation to me – Evolving in Monkey Town @ Rachel Held Evans.
I sat down last night and read it.
Interesting.
A fundamental southern Christian girl speaking out loud the questions fundamental southern girls shouldn’t ask and coming away with all the ‘wrong’ answers.
It’s gutsy.
It’s about the journey from the land of certainty and accepted Christianity to the new land of uncertainty, doubt and ‘that sounds better …. but are we allowed to believe that?’
Some of us have made that journey before.
It’s a journey that takes you away from a place you can never return to.

The journey most often begins through obtaining a different perspective – maybe listening to the story of a complete stranger, maybe through failure, maybe through doubt; maybe by entertaining a new question.

A question perhaps like this: Do we choose our worldviews or are they chosen for us?
Evans calls it the ‘cosmic lottery’.
If I had grown up in a modern Muslim household in, say, Afghanistan or Turkey, I would have faithfully honored the teachings of my parents and followed Islam like everybody else. The Christians worldview throws around terms like predestination and election, but it could look like just the luck of the draw.

And as you allow yourself to entertain new questions a journey begins.
A scary journey.
The fright comes in that you feel as though you have a faith malfunction, a glitch in the system. What you used to believe is spluttering and that spluttering involves even who God is, what God does.
That’s the fright.

You thought you were only questioning interpretations of who all are ‘saved’; is hell eternal or temporary; what’s the role of women; what or where is heaven; if we are pro-life we are pro all life so how does this impact war and the bad guys; which parts of the Bible are to be taken literally and which are not – and how do we tell?

But as you roam around in these topics you discover that these topics are interwoven into a bigger tapestry, a tapestry that is held together by who God is and what God does.

It’s scary to question God.
Is that even allowed?

But this is the journey; a journey that solidly believes God is open for questions and that’s what makes faith, faith.

I recommend Evolving in Monkey Town ….. I more recommend evolving in Reedley Town, Fresno Town, Nairobi Town, Clovis Town, Gourock Town,, Seattle Town.
Just keep evolving.
[Or maybe some of you prefer me to say just keep reforming. Whatever.]

.......check out some insightful interviews with an Orthodox Jew, a Mormon, a Mennonite, an Evolutionary Creationist, a Calvinist, a Gay Christian, a Quaker, an Orthodox Christian, a Muslim, and others at: www.rachelheldevans.com/topics?tags=ask+a&start=0

Countdown to Lent

2012-01-21T16:21:00.000-08:00

Runner’s World is as magazine I read every month cover to cover.
Love it.

What’s weird is its only ever saying the same thing every month!!!
But there is something about rereading articles about doing Fartleks (Google it if you’re a non-runner), to how to gain stamina, or Peter Sagal’s running column (host of NPR’s excellent show Wait, Wait …Don’t Tell Me!), the regular what to eat to recover those sore muscles pages and the constant stories of other runners.

Every month, every word – and really nothing new under the sun.

I know of someone else who gets the same magazine and probably doesn’t read every word, might not read any words ….. and only one of us runs!

Runners need constant motivation.
Motivation to pound the streets, sweat the pavement and burn off the 500 calories of chocolate you rewarded yourself with for yesterdays run.
And what motivates seems to be rereading what you already know.

In a similar way leading is like running.
To always be the guy out front; to always be the go to leader; to always be the one people turn to.
Leaders need constant motivation.
Maybe this is why Bill Hybels and others suggest leaders need to read and reread and reread again.
It’s not that many new writers are saying new things – but they are re-saying what we need to hear to keep us staying out in front of people.

Funny when you think about it more – I’m motivated by stuff I already know!
Maybe even funnier – I buy loads of books written by authors who know they aren’t really saying anything people don’t already know – and then people like me buy them!

Is there anything new under the sun?

So here’s one of my Lental practice this year – don’t buy any new books; don’t read any new magazines or articles – for the 40 days of Lent be motivated by what I already know in one of the hundreds of books I’ve already read.

And already I’m thinking about cramming in as many new books between now and the beginning of Lent!

What disillusions me about church planters...... and myself

2011-11-16T15:16:00.000-08:00

So I spent some time surfing the websites of church planters who are starting new, exciting, bold churches.
To enter into a new community and start something from scratch is no small thing. Planters are risk takers, pioneers, faith adventurers.
Most new church starts don’t make it past their first 18 months or remain so small they can barely survive much less thrive – so those that do – you have to be highly impressed with their determination, commitment and ingenuity, along with their talent and leadership.

But as I surfed the websites of the ones that survived and listened to their preaching, read what makes them the ‘church for people who don’t like church’ I became more and more disappointed in these bold adventurers. One by one they had either sold out to the values of church they seemingly were not about (that’s why they were starting a church that people who didn’t go to church would like), or they had lost their boldness.

Click on their websites and you were clicking on to lookalike websites of most large evangelical churches.
Popular pop culture was the flavor of the day.

Want to know about the staff – and their list of interests (including their favorite movie and what they have on their iPod ….seemingly this reveals things about us that would make us want to come to our church); latest reads and seminary qualifications was plain to see.
Hierarchy was the structure of the day.

As for the preaching – formulaic, propositional, ‘say-a-prayer-or-raise-a-hand-and-receive-Jesus’ was Sundays preach.

Where’s the newness, the boldness, the church for those who didn’t go to church?

There’s a big reason why people don’t go to church and very few studies indicate it is because of the old fashioned music or the dull preaching. That turned off my generation, but not the new generation. Today’s generation are turned off because of synthetic theology, shallow living, formulas and self-centered religion.

And in most of the new churches I surfed this was the smelled out flavor.

But then my surfing discovery turned nasty.

Getting myself disillusioned over bold risk taking church planters who were way too conservative, synthetic and predictable in what they had started I blinked hard and realized that I was as guilty as them!

Sure we’ve been involved in helping turnaround a traditional inward focused classic church.
Sure we have done some bold, risky things to shake complacency out and focus on being a church for people who don’t go to church.
Sure we have fought off legalism and traditionalism.
But despite all the progress and newness we have birthed – much of what I was seeing in these ‘bold’ planters is apparent in me.

My earlier boldness – had turned rather predictable.
My earlier freshness in theology – had become somewhat stale.
My earlier contrariness – had seen me sit too much inside a box (albeit a new box).

The one that hit home the most - I’ve shrunk the Gospel down to a message of personal salvation – when it is so much more.

In fact in all of the church planters that I surfed – their theology was rather flat and dull; a cosmetic airbrush rewording of conservative evangelicalism from the 1980’s.

If there is one thing the unchurched masses of America need the church to declare it is a compelling, stirring theology. A theology that isn't used to support the things the church has stood against; or a formula that promises you how to have the best life, the best marriage, the best children or the best job……its only a “decision” for Jesus away!
Rather it is desperate for theology that unpacks the bigness of the Gospel.

Scot McKnight suggests that this “personal salvation” Gospel is deconstructing the church.

So my idle hour surfing the website of some bold risk taking church planters has convicted me. January 2012 will see me join the movement that is boldly declaring that our problem is not so much that our God is too small, but our Gospel is too small.

Starting January 1, 2012 ……..until the end of May we will be making sure that the Gospel this church is preaching is the same Gospel as Jesus preached.

Why Catholics Are Right ..... but too small

2011-11-11T14:43:00.000-08:00

So I’m reading a book called Why Catholics Are Right.
Just wondering. Always good to check.

The author Michael Coren (somewhat controversial Canadian TV talk show host) spends most of his introduction defending his strong title. “Sounds a little proud”, some of his critics said; “it might offend people” others suggested – but he decided to stand strong on his audacious title.

And it is audacious.

It is politically incorrect.
It is insulting to all other branches of Christianity let alone other Faiths.
It is offensive to any sense of tolerance.
It is downright arrogant (even if written humbly) as it loudly tells everyone else – they are wrong.

If Coren had used other words such as “better” or “good” or even “more right” which perhaps isn’t the best English but is kinder, people’s charge against him might only have been he is wrong rather than he is insulting/proud/offensive/arrogant.

But all of the above isn’t how I feel about his title.
It’s not offensive, or arrogant sounding, or proud, or insulting to me.

It’s about time someone used the word right.

Surely believing something necessitates that you are convicted, persuaded, convinced that what you believe is right.

Is this not the very nature of truth?

Truth can’t be partially right, partly right, or maybe right.
Truth has to be right – or it’s not truth.

So, thank you Cohen for defining the nature of truth.
Right is right even when it’s politically incorrect, arrogant, offensive, or proud sounding.

As Cohen himself writes “to believe something is, self-evidently, not to believe something that is its contrary.”
Therefore to be a Catholic necessitates believing that Catholicism is right.

The remainder of Cohen’s book is him detailing the views of the Catholic Church – and he is right about these views.
BUT is truth about views, about propositional statements, about a set of beliefs?
You can be right about views – but right about views does not equal right about truth.

Enter another book I am reading as I prepare to preach through Mark’s Gospel in 2012.

The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited @ Scot McKnight.

Its early days in my reading (only page 48) but already McKnight is challenging static rightness. He redefines the Gospel to the fullness of what it is and that fullness is not defined by a list of views or the rightness of beliefs.

Jesus is not a right to be believed, he is a way to be lived. You do the Gospel rather than believe the Gospel.

Here emerges the problem with Cohen’s rightness – and everyone else’s rightness (mine included). Rightness implies we can arrive at it. We can complete it. We can hold it all in a book, a list, a box.
Rightness shrinks.

So, if Catholics are right ….. or Protestants, or Baptists, or Evangelicals, or Pentecostals, or Emergents ….. its too small being right.

There’s something bigger than right. There’s Jesus.

100 Pages A Day Diet

2011-11-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

I only really have two hobbies.
One is watching English Premier League football (soccer for you yanks!).
With shock I read that Direct TV were about to lose all their Fox channels including my beloved Fox Soccer. Please note this is the only FOX channel I approve of! If fact my prayers were torn as I feel the world would be a better place without FOX News …..but as usual my selfishness dominated. So I prayed for it to remain - and God intervened to ensure I (whom the world revolves around) still got my weekend fix of five Premier League football games. Ah - bliss (especially when the family leave for the afternoon and I get the couch, the chocolate and the TV controls to myself).

My second hobby is buying and reading books.
But, for the past few months while my buying has not subsided, my reading had. The pile of books on my desk was growing beyond what I was reading. So I’m officially on a "100 pages a day minimum diet" – the only diet where more is better.

The only way to tackle this diet – buy some really good books to get me started.
So here’s my list of what I’m using to start my reading diet:

Peter Rollins has just written his third book Insurrection: To Believe is Human, To Doubt, Divine. Yet again he stretches you theologically with a strong philosophical bent. Aargh. Took all of Saturday afternoon (after 4 football/soccer games watched) to finish this off. A wonderful blend of orthodoxy and nearly heresy!

Jim Collins’ new leadership book Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck – Why Some Thrive Despite Them All. It’s even better than his bestseller Good to Great. Fascinating case studies of some of our best known companies and why they are still around.

1Q84 @ Haruki Murakami. Eh ……a racier novel than I thought (it should be R rated). Some have termed it the grandest work of world literature since Roberto Bolano’s 2666. Most critics loudly applaud it – the Guardian called it ‘a global event in itselff’. Its loud praise caused me to buy it ….662 pages in and counting. Intriguing. And no I am not recommending it (like when we show a clip from a TV show during our preach - doesn't mean we are recommending it! Don't blame me if all your kids are watching GLEE!). But by saying that I realize you will all now go and buy it. You sad bunch of people who respond the wrong way to the word ‘racy’.

Simply Jesus @ NT Wright. Yet again NT at his scholarly best. No wonder some call him the world’s leading New Testament scholar. Great reading as I get ready to preach Mark’s Gospel for 4 months in 2012.
Yes it is rather weird jumping from 1Q84 to Simply Jesus!!!!!

100 pages a day diet.

Easier when you are reading good stuff.

So my diet plan for the next few weeks:

Why Catholics are Right @ Michael Coren.
Steve Jobs @ Walter Isaacson
God is Red @ Liao Yiwu
Churchill @ Martin Gilbert
The Tenth Parallel @ Eliza Griswold
GK Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense @ Dale Ahlquist

Any other recommendations??

The two-second advantage.

2011-10-18T14:23:00.000-07:00

I anticipate the future.
I’m not saying that arrogantly as if I have some God given special ability.
I’ve got what Vivek Ranadivé calls a “talented brain”.
Ouch – that could sound arrogant as well.

To make it sound not so arrogant but perhaps more mysterious if not just plain odd - I have “memory of the future” (as Swedish researcher David Ingvar dubbed it).
I have the ability to know what is going to happen based upon what my memory has previously stored.

It’s amazing.
I can actually anticipate the future.

Here’s what’s even more amazing – I’m not the only person with this ability.

In their fascinating book The Two-Second Advantage, Ranadivé and Kevin Maney present some neat research on the predictive ability of the human brain.
This is what made Wayne Gretzky the greatest hockey player of all time.
And it is what distinguishes a top level successful leader and others.

Enter what they term “Ones” and “Twos”. Top level leaders are one of these two types.

Think through which one you are.

Ones tend to be founders.
They are bullheaded and courageous. They tell people what they think, not what they think people want to hear. They see openings and get flashes of creativity. They can take in everything that is happening and see it from a higher level, the details blurring into instinct.
Ones have ‘feelings’ about something and if the feeling is right – they go with it.

Twos pay attention to detail; they get things done, but what they do is based upon the right data, enough data, more data.
For Twos, ‘we think this is right’ never trumps ‘we know this is right.’ They move when they know it is the right thing based upon accessing and sorting the right information.

It is this constantly returning to the mountains of data that most distinguishes Ones from Twos.
Ones frequently make decision on incomplete information. Ranadivé and Maney suggest they generally have less than 10% of the information Twos require to make decisions).
Yet with not enough time, or all the data, what the Ones have that makes them different than the Twos is this two-second advantage – otherwise called predictive capabilities. Ones have an efficient agile mental ability that can quickly predict what’s going to happen despite not having all the data available – and they can be right most of the time.
They anticipate the future.
They have memory of the future.

At the neurological level, Ones have neuron activity going on in their brains that fire together (everyone’s brain does this), but then their brains simultaneously wire that pattern together to enable them to predict what is going to happen ….and when the prediction is correct their brains get strengthened (their firing neurons connected by axons gets a neurological workout that strengthens the bond) and they grow strong in this predictive capability.

Is this a ‘hardware’ genetic ability, or a ‘software’ learned ability?
Interestingly, research is pointing to a learned ability!!

So, I’m off now to get my neurons firing on topics that are central to effective leadership – strategic analysis; contextual awareness; new research; old facts; comparative reasoning – it’s that fuel that will hopefully enable me to anticipate the future and make the right impactful decisions.

I’m off now to read Jim Collins’ new book Great by Choice……

The Motion Picture Of Slums.

2011-09-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

On the day we left to visit our good friends in the Huruma slum, Nairobi, Kenya, we heard of an oil spill in a neighbouring slum called Mukuru Sinai (rather ironic that a slum is called after a mountain filled with God's presence). With oil spilled, hundreds of the residents of Mukuru Sinai saw the chance for some free oil - but tragically the oil caught fire and over 100 people died.

Some journalists blamed the residents greed for the disaster.

On the day we left Nairobi Rasna Warah a Nairobi based writer answered the journalists accusations with an insightful article. I copy it here to help people understand the reality of 4.1 billion people living in extreme poverty:

"For people who live in the nicer parts of Nairobi, where electricity is available at the touch of a switch and bathrooms have flush toilets, the behaviour of Sinai residents may appear bizarre, if not downright stupid. Surely residents must know that petrol is dangerous? Have they not heard of the recent tragedies where people died because they were scooping oil from overturned tankers? Only an idiot would rush to get a bit of free petrol even if it meant exposing oneself to grave danger.
But imagine, for once, that you live in Sinai slum or one of the many slums that people call home in the city of Nairobi. Imagine that you share a tin or mud shack with six to eight family members, all of whom sleep on a middy floor, and who share a pit latrine with dozens of neighbors. Imagine dinner time in that shack. A highly polluting kerosene or charcoal jiko is cooking and heating increasingly scarce meals. Outside, criminals and drunkards are on their nightly prowl and girls are selling their bodies for KSH50 (70c) to buy unga for their families. Stray dogs and pigs are adding to the noise and chaos.
For people living in slums, or "urban villages" as we like to call them, daily life is like being on death row or committing a slow form of suicide. Here, one is exposed to hundreds of hazards daily. If one does not die from preventable diseases such as TB or Aids, one dies from a stray bullet from a policeman's or criminals gun.
The daily grind of living can be so soul-destroying that the only way people living in these hell holes can forget about it is by drowning themselves in illicit brews or reckless sexual encounters. And because we live in an unequal society where wealth and opportunities tend to accrue to those who are well-connected and privileged, the chances of escaping this death sentence are bleak indeed, particularly in an environment where patronage, corruption, and extremely low wages ensure that the poor will always remain poor.
Now imagine that oil from a pipe leaks right into your slum neighborhood. Would you call the chief and the police to alert them about it or would you think, "Hey, life is unpredictable, I can die any time. Why not grab some oil to light my stove tonight? I'll be saving money on kerosene and maybe it will mean that my family will sleep on a full stomach tonight."
If I lived in Sinai, I might have thought the same way. So let us not blame the poor for being stupid and ignorant; let us ask ourselves why we live in a society that forces people to grab spilt oil even if it means dying in the process."

The motion picture of slums is only available for those inspired to wander down twisted, slippery, narrow aisles, jump over open sewers, take in the smells of one-year old garbage, taste stewed chicken beaks or roasted fish gills, and share in the fear of being bulldozed in the middle of the night.

Stand with us and others to do your part in kicking extreme poverty off the face of the planet in our generation.
www.whenigrowup-global.com

9/11 ten year reflection ....borrowed.

2011-09-06T17:19:00.000-07:00

With the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 nearing, Christianity Today published the thoughts of eleven senior Christian leaders on how they have changed since 9/11.
I write below the thoughts of Will Willimon, the presiding Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church.
His thoughts and reflection so resonated with me .....although the ending sentence of Philip Yancey's thoughts are also so striking.

Yancey concluded "we dare not do to Muslims what we have, to our shame, done to Jews."

But read Willimon's complete comments:

"On 9/11 thought, For the most powerful militarized nation in the world also to think of itself as an innocent victim is deadly.
It was a rare prophetic moment for me, considering Presidents Bush and Obama have spent billions asking the military to rectify the crime of a small band of lawless individuals, destroying a couple of nations who had little to do with it, in the costliest, longest series of wars in the history of the United States.
The silence of most Christians and the giddy enthusiasm of a few, as well as the ubiquity of flags and patriotic extravaganzas in allegedly evangelical churches, says to me that American Christians may look back upon our response to 9/11 as our greatest Christological defeat. It was shattering to admit that we had lost the theological means to distinguish between the United States and the Kingdom of God. The criminals who perpetrated 9/11 and the flag-waving boosters of our almost exclusive martial response were of one mind: that the nonviolent way of Jesus is stupid. All of us preachers share the shame; when our people felt vulnerable, they reached for the flag, not the Cross.
September 11 has changed me. I'm going to preach as never before about Christ crucified as the answer to the questions of what's wrong with the world. I have also resolved to relentlessly reiterate from the pulpit that the worst day in history was not a Tuesday in New York, but a Friday in Jerusalem when a consortium of clergy and politicians colluded to run the world on our terms by crucifying God's own Son. "

Thank you Will for your insight and poignant thoughts.

As Samuel Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference wrote "the only authentic, transformative solution to cultural challenges stems not from the donkey or the elephant but rather from the glorious intersection known as the agenda of the Lamb."

The Main Thing

2011-08-30T21:24:00.000-07:00

Returning back from Australia and having coached pastors seeking church transformation it has sharpened my focus on ensuring the main thing is truly the main thing.
It is so easy to be deflected from the main thing.
No deflection more common than Christians under your charge not getting it.
I accept, as Dallas Willard writes, that "non-discipleship is the elephant in the room." But so often the correcting of that elephant leads to the main thing no longer being the main thing.

The main thing is not discipleship.

Neither is the main thing evangelism.

The main thing is the Gospel, or as Jesus defined it, the coming of the Kingdom of God.

This is bigger than discipleship, this is broader than evangelism.

Discipleship can so often be both insular and individual; evangelism can so often be formulaic and point in time oriented.

The Gospel, the coming of the Kingdom of God, is corporate and tangible, process and story.

The elephant in the room often leads to us shrinking everything, and this is the call of the Main Thing: KEEP IT GOD SIZED.

So we return from Australia and launch three emphasis:

Our biggest and boldest Alpha Course yet .....and on Sunday past Redeemer's Church people threw magnetic lights onto a huge wall each with names of people they are going to boldly, courageously, matter of factly invite to take a second look at faith and Jesus Christ. 942 names - 942 precious people.

Help guide When I Grow Up (a charity to empower children in extreme poverty - http://www.whenigrowup-global.com/) to take a huge step in seeing a High school built in the Huruma slum, Nairobi, Kenya, as well as expand our partners amazing work in Guatemala and Haiti.

Join with some incredible volunteers from redeemer's Church to see new initiatives begin in communities around Reedley - REACH out to extend the Kingdom of God.

It's the main thing ......and we are working hard in the next few months to keep the main thing the main thing.

Its big.

My farewell to Australia

2011-08-09T18:33:00.000-07:00

I’m eating my last brekkie in Australia as I prepare for my flight home.
Poached Pear and Granola washed down by an Italian Red Orange Tiro –tasty.
Not that its classic Aussie food – it’s an Italian Café in the airport.
That’s classic Australia, certainly metro Australia. It is a very global country – masses of people of immigrated to Australia in the last few decades and you sense it. Unlike the US where the masses tend to assimilate into the strong US culture – Australia has a very eclectic feel and look to it.

Initially Australia felt very English and American – I was disappointed hoping for something different. But after being in 4 of their main cities while the English/America flavor is still strong – I’m beginning to discern the other myriad of flavors in this vast country.

Interesting – first airport that I’ve been in which has announcements and adverts in English and Chinese.

Would I come back to Australia – probably.
Would I want to live here – probably not.
Unsure if that has to do with the isolation Australia has – Perth is the most isolated city in the world …but truth be told its other cities on the other side of the mass of land that Australia is are to a degree still isolated (long flights to most other places).
It could still be my British heritage – Australia does have a candidness that slides towards crudeness and/or classlessness that does not appeal.
Or it could be that the Cadbury’s is still not quite as smooth and creamy as the British Cadbury’s!!! (Yesterday I did discover Cherry Ripe Bar – cherries wrapped in coconut wrapped in dark chocolate – why did I not discover them 16 days ago!)

From a Christian perspective I thought Australia would have been more like Britain – postChristian moving towards antichristian. But I did not feel that nor was I told that. Take the Salvation Army I was working with – they are highly respected here with a known and accepted strong Christian thumbprint.
There are many large churches here and people while not attending church were not antiChristianity.

So I get ready to board my plane back to California (say that here to people and they are so impressed you live in California …..although my 72 year old woman cab driver this morning did ask me if I was taking any money back with me because CA was broke!!).

Back to sun and heat.
Back to crazy LAX – worst airport in the world.
Back to no Cadbury’s – but to good Mexican food.
Back to news shows that are all about the US with maybe a I minute world report!
Back to Christianity shrinking …..but the Christians don’t realize it.
Back to polarizing politics.
Back to a country where everyone flies a flag (only in the US – no other country in the world).
Back to a weakening dollar.
Back to a country that feels and acts tired …..more than every before in its history.

But ….back to a Church that is growing.
Back to a congregation filled with generous people (when I share how much our church of 800 raises every year people literally gasp!)
Back to a church/country where people are positive and see the glass half full (mainly a good characteristic).
Back to a church where vision is central …..and it’s a vision of Christ.
Back to a church where politics are few if any.
Back to a church where people invite others to come and explore faith.
Back to a church where leaders can lead.
Back to a church that exists for lost people.

My bag is stuffed full with Cadbury’s and I’m ready for a season of more growth and more new things happening to see as many people as possible reached with the Gospel and as many people as possible becoming poverty change agents – defending and helping some of the most vulnerable orphans and children in the world.

17 hours to go.

Two icons

2011-08-09T07:19:00.000-07:00

My last day in Australia.

Taught for 6 hours and then as my colleague Paul Borden spoke to a Chinese and Australian group I grabbed a cab and headed downtown.

Time to see the 2 iconic Sydney landmarks – Sydney Opera House and Sydney Bridge.

I was too late to climb up the outside of the Bridge (next time – looks fun), but I took a ferry and sailed out into the bay, past the Opera House, under the Bridge and up to Darling Harbor. Found a neat Malaysian Restaurant, ate well, drank a smooth China beer called Lucky and walked across the river to look at Sydney from another angle.

Sydney is a city with an impressive skyline, a beautiful location, appears very clean and modern, hugely multicultural and a very appealing city.

So I gave it a good 4 hours of visiting - mixture of tiredness and a long flight tomorrow saw my energy levels sag …..and no even Lucky or Cadbury’s could resuscitate my energy.

But maybe I’ll be back.

The Salvo’s seemed appreciative (even although the Divisional Commander in thanking me for coming called me Roger!!!! ….do I look like a ‘Roger’? Keeps you humble.).
For them the work of transformation in the Eastern Territory is at beginning stages.
Would be interesting to visit in two years to see if traction is happening.

In leadership, and especially change leadership, momentum is crucial.
Our time here has been trying to generate such momentum. Get Officers into the dialogue of growth, transformation, outward focus, missional action.
Reintroduce them to what is the main thing.
Over 2 days or 3 days of teaching and discussing bring to the fore of their thinking what it would look like to lead missional corps.

Momentum.

Mine’s is diminishing.
16 days on the road is fun but weary – especially for an introvert like me.
Space and silence has been rare.
So unlike really godly pastors I’ll not be leading the person sitting next to me on my flight home in the sinners prayer after drawing the cross diagram on a napkin during my 17 hours flight home …..instead I’ll be sitting with my headphones on, ignoring them (I will introduce myself as I slip my headphones on) and taking much needed space …in a huge Airbus 380 double decker plane with 550 people on board

Another day another city.

2011-08-08T06:01:00.001-07:00

So today I arrived in Sydney - a short flight from Melbourne.
It's the last leg of my tour of DownUnder and its time to dig deep to maintain passion and energy.

One of the sessions I'm teaching is a called "It's All About Sunday, Stupid."
I had to ask for special permission to use the word "stupid" among the Salvo's who come out of the holiness tradition.

It's an adaptation from the successful run by Bill Clinton for the White House. He had to overcome a 90% job approval by the elder Bush - riding high due to victory in Kuwait - and his chief strategist James Carville, came up with the slogan "It's all about the economy stupid" to turn the election onto the topic most Americans put as #1 - how much money they have to spend.
Brilliant strategy and Clinton won!

My session spins the title to suggest that it's actually all about preaching (It's all about the preaching stupid!").

Within my teaching I mention that one of the biggest speakers bureau in the US have as their number 1 requirement for someone to be placed on their books - they must have passion!!

So - as I get near my 37th teach I am fighting the tendency for passion to slip away.

Cadbury's is helping me.
But of more help is another group of Salvo officers eager to learn and eager to see their Corps become healthy and growing.

The central Sydney/New South Wales division is lead by a Divisional Commander who spend time in both Papa New Guinea and Russian. They have a strong mindset that the Army exists to reach people with Jesus first .....and so they lead this Division to push outwards. They are missional.

This makes all the difference.
If a Corp or a Church can grasp that the church/corp is not existing as keepers of an aquarium but fishers of people; if they can grasp they are not custodians of the saints but missionaries to lost people - the church's passion is ignited and life enters.

So, Sydney looks like being a good place - there's more Cadbury's, cool weather and an outward focused Salvation Army Division.

Firsts

2011-08-07T05:15:00.001-07:00

So Adelaide has been a number of firsts for me.

The first place I’ve been to whose time zone is 30 minutes different from their neighbors.
The first time I’ve stayed in a swamp area ……my hotel is surrounded by water that the locals call wetlands – but that’s simply a posh term for a swamp.
The first time I’ve eaten at a restaurant called Ned Kelly’s – the closest thing Australia has to a local hero …who was a thief, murdered and criminal – Robin Hood without the good! Speaks into Australia’s criminal beginnings.
The first time I attended an Aussie Rules Football game – wow!!! 18 players on each team, a field the size of two football/soccer fields and the score was Adelaide Port 21: Collingwood 159 – yep that reads 159. A 138 differential. And it rained, and we got soaked, and we ate a meat pie, and I was cold, and you could only see a fifth of the action, and ………

Adelaide.

It was also a first being at a Salvation Army Corp that is low on the standard army rituals and bigger on being outward focused. Golden Grove Corp is a suburb of Adelaide and where Majors Paul and Bev Beeson serve. Few in uniform, no band or songsters and a corp trying hard to reach new people.

But here’s the stark reality. After 8 years of being there few guests comes through their front door of Sunday worship. It is a corp of around about 100 people.

The scale of the problem the Salvos are facing, and the scale of the problem many churches in Australia are facing is that most people do not see the need for the church. Add to that a church that seems removed from reality and you have a recipe for a weak church and a post-Christian nation.

Australia is to a degree a few years behind the UK – already a post-Christian nation where only 4% attend church.
Australia is to a degree a few years ahead of the US!!

One of the things my trip down under is doing for me is reminding me that the reality of Australia is about to become the reality of the US (already declined to 12% church attendance from 45% twenty years ago) and church leaders there (myself included) need to keep leading in ways that makes Christianity relevant and the church vibrant and living in the real world.

Goodbye Adelaide …..a 1 hr flight and I’m finishing this blog in Melbourne overlooking the airport as I sleep before catching an early flight to Sydney for the last leg of my 4 stop tour.

What firsts will I experience in Sydney?

PS …opted out of a Spanish email reply. Decided to let anonymous remain anonymous and focus my energies on the change and expansion I need to lead, rather than the people who don’t really want to be led. Been teaching Salvo leaders the principle of wasted energy which is lost energy.
Thanks for the wise blog replies sent to me.

What's 70 and what's 30.

2011-08-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting at Melbourne airport waiting my flight to Adelaide. Another good day with some great Salvation Army Officers eager to see church/corp transformation.

We talked many things included Sample’s 70/30 rule.
This rule states that you will spend 70% of your time doing trivial, routine tasks and only 30% of your time on the big, major, significant leadership issues.
This goes against the grain.
Most of us think we will spend 70% of our time on the big, important issues and 30% on routine, menial tasks.
Steve Sample says it’s the other way around.
To quote him “many people want to be leader but few want to do leader.”
This rule is always a reality check to leaders wanting to see growth and development. They imagine that when their church puts to bed silly arguments and specializing in trivial things they will spend all their time on the real stuff.
Not so.

Not long after teaching that rule today I received a 70% kind of email. The kind of email you want to ignore.
The kind of email you think a healthy church leaves behind.
The email was a guest who had visited our church several times telling me the things she/they did and didn’t like ……with obviously more that they didn’t like than like.

Two things bothered me.
Firstly – there’s no name. They have some weird email address and they omitted to place their name at the bottom of their essay! They didn’t care to tell me who they are.
Always sad.

Normally we immediately bin anonymous mail – but this one warrants a reply …..because of the second thing that bothered me.
They strongly disagreed with us putting our Scripture verses on the screens in both English and Spanish.
And I quote “by this time the Spanish community should be able to understand what it looks like to read the names of the books of the Bible, the reference verses and page numbers.”
We live in a community that is 70% Latino with many in our church fluent in both but eager to invite friends or family who only speak Spanish to explore faith and Jesus Christ.

I have to tell you I initially thought I had misread what they were saying and they must have been thanking us for having English and Spanish. But slowly I reread and yes – there are supposed Christians who are racist and bigoted. Simply put they are arrogant, proud and elitist. Or, to say it another way – they are not living the way of Jesus.

So I will count to 10, or maybe 10,000 or maybe I need to count to ten million and then compose an email reply that stops me from sinning in my reply.

I would count this as part of the 70% but perhaps this is more of a 30% work. This is one of the big, major issues – the Gospel is at stake, the truth of Christ is at stake, the testimony of His Name is at stake.

So ……… I sit in Melbourne Airport contemplating my words.

Tomorrow another day of teaching and another group of Salvation Army Officers.
Tomorrow I will be writing an email reply fully in Spanish!!!!!!!! LOL.

The uniform

2011-08-03T04:31:00.000-07:00

So I saw Melbourne today - through the window of a car as I was driven to my next hotel room. Although I am still about 19km from the city itself. Tomorrow at 7.15am I cross the city on a 2 hour drive to teach again a group of Salvation Army Offficers. "Melbourne through a car window" - the possible title for a very boring travel guide.

Last night I met a senior Salvation Army Major. The only one at the conference with a uniform on (until we held our final session today when several officers appeared dressed to retrun to the real world!).

I've struggled with the whole uniform thing. It seems so exclusive, so 'we are different', it seems a possible significant barrier between them and the people they/we want to reach with the love of Jesus.

Yet last night I learned something very interesting.
The Major walks most days to work (at least parking lot to office). Seemingly most days as he walks to work with his uniform on someone, a stranger, a fellow commuter, a member of the general public will stop him and say "thank you for what you do."Amazing.

Its a badge
A badge in Australia that carries credibility.
A worthy badge.

Of course I'm not advocating we all get a dark blue, rather old fashioned looking, average cut, shapeless uniform.

We have a uniform that we just need to begin to wear - the uniform of love.
Imagine if Christians took on that uniform.
Imagine if we served, washed feet, forgave, showed grace, unconditionally loved the way jesus asks us to.
Imagine if we began to wear the 'Follower of Jesus' uniform.

That one is not a barrier, nor shapeless, nor old fashioned looking.
That one has real style and fits perfectly.

Still not seen a kangaroo

2011-08-02T03:28:00.000-07:00

Day 7 in Australia and no kangaroo sightings yet.
Truth be told, the last 2 days I haven't seen much at all.
I've walked from my bedroom to the conference room, to the dining room, to the laundry room and back to my bedroom.

I have heard a Kookaburra bird.
But still to see a kangaroo ...or Melbourne (where I'm staying!).

But what I have seen is so much better than seeing a Kangaroo.

I've seen pastors decide there are necessary endings they need to make when they return to their corps.
I've seen pastors face honestly their biggest fears - including the fear that perhaps they haven't got the gift of preaching and they need to rethink their role -so many brave, courageous pastors who do not want to be an obstacle in God's way.
I've seen pastors dream of what could be an no longer ask 'why?', but say 'why not!'
I've seen pastors grapple with the big stuff, ask the central questions, wrestle with important tensions.
I've seen tears of hope for what God could do in and through their leadership.

So - no Skippy yet, but I never came for that.

It's like going to Kenya.
I sit in the Nairobi airport and I see tourist after tourist buy tee-shirts with giraffes on them.
But they miss it.
Kenya is not about giraffes or elephant sightings - Kenya is about the people.

My trip down under is not about seeing the Gold Coast, a kangaroo or Mick Dundee - this trip is all about seeing church leaders grasping what God can do in and through them as they turn their churches or corps outward to be all about what God is about -reaching people who are lost.

I want more of these sightings.

Mooroolbark

2011-08-01T04:45:00.000-07:00

It wins the prize for the strangest sounding place I’ve been to in Australia – and believe me they have some strange sounding names ….. Burrumbuttock, Gooloogong and Wagga Wagga to name a few.

Mooroolbark is my destination for a 3 day conference with Salvation Army Officers.

We’ve talked before about how leaders define reality, but today we also shared that leaders move people to a preferred future. This is leadership. Moving people.

So my day began at 4am and a text from a friend - Sean Bautista – a United pilot who regularly flies into Sydney and Melbourne.
‘U in Melbourne’ his text read
‘Yes’ I managed to rouse myself to reply …..as I looked at the time and groaned….adding on that ‘I am in Mooroolbark an hour from the airport.’
‘I’m there for 2 hours enroute back to Sydney no time to meet’ was Sean’s reply.
‘You mean you woke me at 4am to tell me we can’t meet up!’ I texted back and tried to return back to sleep.

His text moved me – firstly to happiness thinking of sharing a pint with him.
But then it moved me again …..and again……and again…..and again as I struggled to sleep more.

Moving people.

Historically God’s people were nomads – moving was not hard for them.
Sadly, the Church is anything but nomadic.
Movement is painfully slow for many Christians.
We have lost our ability to move.
And in losing our ability to move we don’t stay static we die.

Scripture says – where there is no vision the people perish.

Movement leads to life, non-movement leads to death.

This is why leadership is so vital.
Leaders move people.

Pray that a bunch of Salvo’s downunder become people movers.

My first Sunday in Australia

2011-07-31T07:11:00.000-07:00

Church and Christianity in Australia are viewed by the majority as irrelevant to life. Only around 5% will attend a place of worship today.
America fairs slightly better at around 12%.
But like Australia there are a growing number of people in the US who see particularly Church as irrelevant to life.

Truth be told – often Church is irrelevant to life.
But, Christianity isn’t.
And that’s our problem.
How do we hold the most relevant hope and reality there is (life with God) in a vessel (the Church) that in so many ways is unattractive, irrelevant and misrepresentative of the Jesus who is the head of her?

So I walked into the Fortress to be the guest preacher today.
The Fortress is the central Perth, Western Australia main citadel.
A central corp of the Salvation Army and led by Majors Barry and Ros who are two neat relevant pastors.
I’d met them yesterday as we lead coaching for Army officers and leaders. They introduced me to one of their equally neat leaders a guy called Robin. He’s in PR and I teased him about his trendy hairstyle, cool clothes and slightly graying partial beard – the necessary accessories to be cool.

Two neat majors and equally neat and cool lay leader ………

So today my eyes were slightly surprised when I entered the Fortress and the Major’s were in their old-fashioned Army uniform (only slightly because they were the Major’s); but then my eyes were shocked when Mr. Cool PR dude was also in his uniform!

Truth be told often Church is irrelevant to life.

I expected a marching band – and the musicality was excellent.
I expected a choir – and the harmonizing was excellent.
But in many ways it seemed so …… irrelevant.

What surprises me is that after some Salvation Army band music the band leader led us on drums into some modern worship music.
After church we ate in a really hip gourmet burger place.
I headed to their home and enjoyed watching Aussie Rules Footie on their modern HD TV.
We were taken to the airport by one of the uniform, band playing officers listening to modern rock music on the car stereo.
And my neat cool relevant Majors are dressed hipper than me!!!!!

My point is a point of confusion. It seems there is a dichotomy, a dichotomy that seems to be unnecessary.

I know the Army has a great heritage.
I know they have been a part of magnificent ministry.
I know all their rituals and traditions stem from reasonable roots.
I know you can’t just throw away history.
I know there are molehills and mountains.
I know there are things worth fighting to keep and fighting to lose.
I know they are a group of good people.

PS …….I’m writing this in Perth Airport waiting my flight to Melbourne and this really attractive girl has just sat down next to me. There are hundreds of empty seats and she chose to sit next to me. Maybe uncool, shirt tucked in, balding, fairskinned with freckles, skinny Scotsmen ……is the new cool!!!

Sorry for the sociological distraction – back to my first Sunday in Australia.

I know uniforms, band music, and Army titles are not central theological issues or even the issues.
But it sits on the surface of the bigger issue.

Churches (mine included) can embrace dichotomist realities that reveal an inauthenticity/hypocretisim that unchurched people sniff a mile away, and keep them miles away.

There is a strong call for us to be One.
That call is to trueness.

My first Sunday in Australia has got me questioning where I am not one. Where am I a walking dichotomy?

Day 3 in the most isolated city in the world

2011-07-30T03:29:00.000-07:00

I watched my first Aussie rules footie game today.
Geelong beat Melbourne 233 to 47.
That’s more like a cricket score than a footie score!!!
Don’t understand the game at all – but from what the commentators were saying – the score was the worst ever!!!
I only saw the game on the telly - funny how the Aussies use similar slang to the Brits!

The second day of the layered learning event in Perth was a good day. Even although I was hungry for most of it.

Last night’s dinner/supper didn’t quite work out.
My hotel has no restaurant but they contract with a company who deliver from various restaurants.
I duly ordered a tasty pizza – pineapple, chicken, fresh tomato, mozzarella cheese and avocado (when in Aussie land eat what they eat ….and I thought it was all bbq’s and Skippy meat) to eat with my rented movie – The Top 10 Chain Saw Murders.
2 ½ hours later the pizza arrived – cold.
Being true to my Scottish frugalness – I didn’t pay for it …but did eat 2 slices of a disgusting pizza.
(PS the movie I rented was The Tourist!)

So today I was hungry all day …..but obviously I am a pathetic westerner who doesn’t understand true hunger.

Check our www.whenigrowup-global.com and get involved in ensuring really hungry kids are given hope.
Come on guys ……use your money to make a difference.

Interesting day.
A room full of Aussie pastors/officers and lay leaders passionate about seeing their churches/corps reach more and more people for Jesus.
But also a room full of Christians sadly grappling with the elephant in the church.

Listen to Dallas Willard’s insight on the elephant:

“It is not the much discussed moral failures or financial abuses or the amazing similarity between Christians and non-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their live in the Kingdom Among Us.
And …..it is an accepted reality!”

The elephant in the church is the acceptance of non-discipleship.
People will embrace Jesus as Savior – but will not follow him as Rabbi or Teacher.
People will take his forgiveness and grace – but will not live the way Jesus wants us to live.

But the elephant is – it’s acceptable.

It’s time for the church and its leaders to stop accepting it.
It’s time name it, confront it and kick its butt.

I’d love to write more on this ….but its supper time and they are taking me to a real restaurant tonight.
So sorry – theology comes second my own needs and greed come first.
Yep ……there’s an elephant not only on the church!!!!

Still down under in Australia

2011-07-29T02:17:00.000-07:00

So Day 2 saw me awake in Australia ready for the reason for my long travels to begin. Day 1 of teaching.

So to prepare I went a 5 mile run around Ascot Racecourse and along Swan River. My mind was cleared - partly due to being chased by a dog and the clarity running can bring.

It all begins with God, and so theology took centre stage in Session 1.
Who is this God that we have given ourselves to?
Who is this God that we preach and declare?
Who is this God that we lead our congregations to give themselves fully to?

Enter ......... trinitiarian theology.

Not the easiest beginning topic to handle, and tonight I'm rewriting some of it, but at its core stands a trinitarian God who incredibly moved with the sole purpose of human redemption.

3=1
We believe that God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is One God.

3-1=0
Each person is God only with the other two.
So, the incredible death of Christ on the cross and his cry 'my God, my God why have you forsaken me' describes not only the suffering of Christ but the suffering of God. God was 'damaged' due to the cross.
But this was all purposeful. God the Father sent the Son (at such a cost) to rescue humankind.
His purpose flows out of God being missional - a sending God.
Christ was sent to bring about God's rescue.

3+1=1
The Missio Dei accomplished, you and I are joined to God, heirs, co-heirs. We are brought into the union of the Godhead.

The Trinity was not exclusive. It moved to include you and me. God is inclusive.
Its moving was at the ultimate cost.
The Church is called to live out that cost - radically, sacrificially, selflessly give ourselves to see others included in God.

.....and there were too many blank stares hence my rewriting tonight.

But its core.
Miss who God is and all the pain and effort in trying to lead and serve in a local church becomes vain.
Grasp how far God went ....... you'll not pull back, pull up or pull away.

Session 2 was simple - lets talk leadership.

But over lunch conversations began, and what rose to the surface was here in Australia, like in America, Britain, most places - church leaders sit around and discuss how to help dysfunctional Christians grasp the scale and the urgency of reflecting the image of the God we worship and who made us.

Tonight I sit watching another storm hit Perth. Gallons of rain are falling as i eat Cadbury's chocolate and hit my netbook.

Trinitarian faith in all its depth and complexity being contemplated even outworked by a simple Scots guy slightly carnal and slightly tired trying to help a bunch of Aussie pastors lead towards health.

The key is knowing it is God working purposefully to bring about his one and only purpose - the missio dei ....in and through jars of clay.

Off to watch a movie and eat more chocolate.

Australia Day 1

2011-07-28T05:52:00.000-07:00

Travelling for 19 hours on a plane to reach the first city in my tour of Australia passed as slow as you think it passed.
19 hours on a plane – add on the airport waiting time and it brings you to a total of 28 hours.
Even trying out the new A380 double decker super jumbo made it only interesting for the first hour –when they had a sky cam attached to the tail of the plane for you to watch the takeoff from! But then it was back to ordinary airplane food and cramped leg space – trying your best to sleep as you flew over nothing but water.
When I did the short 5 hour flight across Australia from Sydney to Perth the monotony was broken by the incredible golden coastline we hugged and the three bars of Cadbury chocolate I eat in place of more yuck airplane food.
Thank the Lord for Cadbury’s down under.

And while I seem to have begun my travels complaining, it is absolutely amazing that I am sitting nearly 10,000 miles from California reaching here in just over one days travel – safely.
Thank you Jesus and Qantas (which I discovered stands for Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Services).

Apart from watching three pretty good movies Lincoln Lawyer, The Adjustment Bureau and the weird but funny Paul, I finished off two good reads.

Read #1 (which I finished between waiting in Fresno and reaching LAX) was a leadership book called It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy @ Captain D. Michael Abrashoff.
Fun read.
The story of turning the USS Benfold from one of the most dysfunctional ships into the go to ship in the Gulf War. Basis premise – give every sailor ownership of the ship, hence the book’s title. Revolutionary thinking in a highly pyramidical US Navy culture.

Read #2 was about Dean Karnazes called UltraMarathon: Confessions of An All-Night Runner.
This guy is incredible – he’s run the Badwater Race (Death Valley to Mount Whitney) in the summer heat where your shoes actually melt on the road surface! He’s run the Western States 100 (yep – 100 miles not 100km). He ran a marathon at the South Pole. The Relay Race is teams of relay runners running from Calistoga to Santa Cruz – 199 miles! Dean Karnazes ran it without a team ……. he ran all 199 miles himself and then ran a full marathon (26.2 miles) immediately after it!!!
Crazy.
Fanatical.
Possessed.
Or …..committed to what he can do well.

Both books stirred me as I flew to Australia.

My trip here is to work alongside the Salvation Army in Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney and coach on church transformation.

It was initially a 10 day trip talking in 2 cities; it’s now 17 days, 39 talks, 4 cities!

I needed stirring for this trip - so these books, amazing scenery and Cadbury chocolate has brought me that.

So to read #3 and the most stirring:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
Written over 400 years ago, the first modern novel, it is a classic and one of only 20 or so pieces of literature that have survived for more than 400 years.
Steven Sample suggests we give up reading new books and if all we read every year are the 20 or so true classics we would have done ourselves more good.
So here goes.
I’m at page 43 and its slow, different but in a strange way refreshing and intriguing.

Today (Thursday) I saw the Indian Ocean for the first time as I explored Western Australia.
Tomorrow – my main reason for being here begins.

I begin it with a 2 hour teaching on the Theology of the Trinity. Wonder if any will return for more on Saturday and Sunday.

So far I’d describe Australia as an English feeling place with an American overture. Unsure if that is a compliment.

Tomorrow I meet church leaders ……. brings purpose and the tangible to why I’m here.

Can’t come soon enough.

Heading to bed ……. still fighting the old jet lag and too much Cadbury’s!!

Rob Bell - poet, prophet or pest?

2011-03-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

There’s something about poetic language that draws me in.

Take this poetry:
“Many have these questions.
Christians,
people who aren’t Christians,
people who were Christians,
but can’t do it anymore because of questions about these very topics,
people who think Christians are delusional and profoundly misguided,
pastors,
leaders,
preachers – these questions are everywhere.”

There’s something about the way the poetic weaves together groups of people who would not normally go together.
The poetic finds way through a phrase even a word that pulls the unusual into community.

Take this poetic phrase:

“Honest business,
redemptive art,
honorable law,
sustainable living,
medicine,
education,
making a home,
tending a garden – they’re all sacred tasks to be done in partnership with God now, because they will all go on in the age to come.
In heaven,
on earth."

Poetry.

Putting together words that on earth don’t go together.
Merging what’s normally unmerged.

There’s something about poetic language that draws me in.
For some the movement of poetry appeals, for others it raises questions.
For me the rhythm evolves poetic license; for other its vagueness confuses or denies.
For me it draws me to think and consider possibilities; for others it causes them to think that the poet is considerably wrong.

Chesterton once wrote: “it’s the mathematician that goes mad not the poet”.

The mathematician is trying to get heaven, God, faith, truth into his head, the poet is just trying to get his head into heaven.

The poet can hold vagueness; the mathematician can’t.
The poet can write something unconcluded; the mathematician must see the conclusion. The poet in this case is the pastor and author Rob Bell.
The mathematicians in this case are the pastors and Christian leaders lining up to shoot the poet.
The topic is Rob Bell’s latest book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, And The Fate Of Every Person Who Ever Lived.

The poetry written above comes from this book.

I loved the book, in all it inconclusiveness, vagueness and poetry!
Excellent.

Like everything else Rob Bell has written he weaves new thought alongside orthodox thought and invites you to be shocked and stirred and intrigued and scratched, question and disagree and agree and applaud, and want more and want less all at the same time.
As a poet he lets you swim in the sea not curtailing its vastness ignoring the ‘don’t swim here’ signs.

It’s the work of a poet not the work of a mathematician or a scholar or a theologian.

Is he really preaching universalism as some charge him with?
Is he really presenting a false God as others charge him with?
Is he really denying the atonement?
Should he really be burned at the stake for heresy?

He’s a poet.

Another poet Eugene Peterson endorsed the book indicating that while he doesn’t agree with all that Rob’s written, he’s my brother in Christ writing nothing new but continuing a worthwhile discussion.

To some extent it’s a classic modernity/postmodernity clash.
The clash of formulaic, propositional truth with narrative.

I live in the borderland between two cultures.

I can be the poet, but I can also be the mathematician.

There are times when the ‘modern’ in me wants better supporting evidence for the new definitions Rob gives.
There are times when the ‘postmodern’ in me wants him to pull back from wording that seem to be too deconstructive.

But I enjoy Rob Bell and his poetic exegesis.

For me, God is as much a poet as He is a mathematician.

The intricacy and preciseness of creation; the clarity and formulae of The Law He gave enable the mathematician to claim God as his friend.

But the mysteries left hanging; Jesus’ answers that were more questions; the both/and of His Being (three but one; fully God but fully human); the Psalms, the Revelation, the Book of Songs ……reveal a Divine Poet.

There’s room for both; and both should allow room for the other.

To a degree I need there to be a box – call it Orthodoxy.
I need there to be lines drawn and conclusions reached and The Faith handed down.
I need the Didache, the Creeds, the Confessions of Faith, the completed Canon.

But I’m nervous of a box with the lid fully closed. (In fact the only box I know of where the lid is fully closed is a coffin!)

I’m wary of theology that has systematized God into concluded theories.
I’m skeptical of faith built upon conclusions.

Does faith not require lines to sometimes bend or be dotted?
Does God not stand bigger than even the biggest box we can find?

I need perhaps not vagueness – what if we call it largeness.

I need space for more – more redefined, or more to be defined.

I need the poet.

“And to that,
that impulse,
craving,
yearning,
longing,
desire – God says yes.
Yes, there is water for that thirst,
food for that hunger,
light for that darkness.
If we want hell,
if we want heaven,
they are ours.
That’s how love works.
It can’t be forced,
manipulated,
or coerced.
It always leaves room for the other to decide.
God says yes,
we can have what we want,
because love wins.”

Poetry.

“Is the cross about the end of the sacrificial system
or a broken relationship that’s been reconciled
or a guilty defendant who’s been set free
or a battle that’s been won
or the redeeming of something that was lost?

Which perspective is the right one?
Which metaphor is correct?
Which explanation is true?

The answer, of course, is yes.”

To some it’s misleading, indecisive, confusing, heresy.
To me its poetic thought invites thinking, engagement, discussion.

For some, including a good friend of mine, the debate is irrelevant – God’s sovereignty answers it all.
For some, Rob Bell has struck his final nail in his own coffin.

But for others, myself included, Rob Bell has enabled us to keep largeness a big part of God; a largeness that allows us down here to discuss and disagree, but do so respecting our brothers and sisters rather than displaying both the arrogance of claiming to be right and the arrogance of stating the other is wrong.
It allows largeness in thought and worship that quickness my heartbeat, thrilled by the vastness of God and The Faith I’m a part of.

The poet never sets out to complete the box; the poet sets out to express their emotion and in that expression wonder if they’ve latched on to something divine.
If they have – the poem will deliver, it’s an outward journey.
If they haven’t - the poem is but an inward restlessness revealed.

For the poet while the former is best, the latter still holds meaning.
For the reader if they seek to critique it they will deduce one of either of the endings.
Or, if they can, they become the poet and the circle continues.
And continues.
And continues.
And continues.

Freaks some people out!
Helps some of us to breath.

It's hard work trying to lead a church to outwork a global perspective

2011-02-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

It's hard work trying to lead a church to outwork a global perspective.

The old model was a missions committee supporting multiple missionaries or organizations.
The missions secretary sent letters; the treasurer sent checks; every quarter a missionary visited and gave a report ending with a sunset scene.

This model engaged perhaps 5% of the congregation - those "recruited" (aka press-ganged) into the missions committee, family members of those recruited and the group of hardworking ladies who knit shawls for the natives.

It worked. But no longer.

In a flat world; a fully accessible world; a post colonial world; an anti-western world to persist with a 20th century model in a 21st century new world

Now the hard, but rewarding, work begins.

21st century global partnerships.

Let me summarize how Redeemer's Church does 21st century global missions.

Abolish the Missions Committee.
Begin creating 21st century global partnerships - pray, visit, analyse, link. [Redeemer's Church began with one partner in Kenya, Africa and now has four - Kenya, Guatemala, Haiti & Mexico.}
Create a new missions vehicle - enter When I Grow Up Children's Charity (an independent 501c3). www.whenigrowup-global.com
Move Global Missions from a committee in the church to the front of the church - regular media and partner reports.
Arrange and lead teams to partners. [Redeemer's Church sends 5-6 teams per year to partners.]
Invite all of church to be participants in the global partnerships through giving and volunteering in the children's charity. [Redeemer's Church has around 50% of church involved in its When I Grow Up Charity.]
Keep it centre stage on a weekly basis. Talk it into being core not fringe, being what we do not what some do, being who we are not just what we do. Become great global storytellers.
And do this over and over and over and over.

It's hard work trying to lead a church to outwork a global perspective - I'm at 160,000 miles stuck on an airplane already!

Pastors and Prophets.

2011-01-22T21:20:00.000-08:00

2011 has started with a roar.

Two weeks ago we tackled the subject of America being an empire. We used a line that went something like this "if you are part of a country that has the most powerful army in human history, then passages in the Scriptures that mention trusting in horses and chariots refers to you."

American Christians live in an empire and it is very hard to at adapt to empire rules.

This week we've another prophetic role to play - call Christians to rethink how they view immigration and undocumented migrants.

Pastors sit within the genre of role that Old Testament prophets sat with in.

Its an uncomfortable seat. It challenges the status quo.
It places you on the margins.
It causes you to be an 'alien and a stranger in a strange land.'

Familiar language - 1 Peter 1 & 2

Yet, its a language not reserved for pastors or priests. Peter uses it for all Christians.

It's this language that causes me tomorrow (Sunday) to call all Christ followers to be the people in our society that stand alongside the migrant - both documented and undocumented.
It causes us to rethink the immigration issue that sits near the top of this nations public, pressing issues.

So how brave have you been as 2011 started?
Or, how much have you really been a pastor in 2011?

Now, a trip to Kenya .... check out :
http://clanofissachar.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-40-and-what-i-really-think-about.html

The Other's Stay Silent.

2011-01-08T12:35:00.001-08:00

Do you ever wish you weren't a leader?

Occasionally I wish I could walk into a room and not be looked to to lead - either formally or informally.
Occasionally I wish I didn't have to be the one making the decisions.
Occasionally I wish I had the luxury of sitting on the fence; or simply giving my opinion.

But the times I most wish I weren't a leader are when there arises a topic/subject which has to be spoken into.

Our January series [God, We Need A New Year] features me speaking on two topics that to date I've put off speaking on, but can't stay silent on any more.(fhttp://www.redeemerschurch.com/dlgMediaPlayer.aspx?id=880)

This is what makes leaders leaders, its especially what makes pastors pastors.

The 'leading' role of a pastor draws from both the priest, the prophet, the poet and the pastor.

As a poet we dream of what could happen if God's people fully grasped their inheritance; as priests we centre on bringing Christ centre in people's lives; but as prophets we speak boldly and prophetically into the issues around us.

Enter this Sunday and the topic of non-violence in a world that is growing to be as violent as any era in history.

Here's a quote I give:

"The Bible can be a very difficult book to understand if you are reading it as a citizen of the most powerful empire the world has ever seen."

The Bible was a book written from the underside of power. People of the book are underside power people. Yet we teach it, read it, study it as part of a nation that holds immense power.

So as a prophet pastor I need to speak out about the divine decree that clearly states 'if you live by the sword you will die by the sword.' And, i need to say that to a people who belong to a country that is only 5% of the worlds population but purchases nearly half of the world's weapons. I need to say it to many Christians who have served in our nations military. I need to say it to people who equate patriotism with support of their military.

But this is what leaders do.

What about this insight:
"If someone were to come along who would not compromise, a rebel who insisted on taking the only moral path, rejecting violence in all its forms, such a person would seem so menacing that he would be killed, and after his death he would be canonized or deified, because a saint is less dangerous than a rebel. The first and most prominent example was a Jew named Jesus!"

Non-Violence: The History of a Dangerous Idea @ Mark Kurlansky

Brings us back to the topic of non-violence.

As prophet pastors of Jesus Christ who are called to lead - we need to lead even when the topic we need to speak into is volatile. It's what leaders do. The others stay silent.

Week 51 How Far Do You Push It?

2010-12-20T19:56:00.001-08:00

Week 51 begs a theological question:

How far do you push it?

Christmas preaching is a mixture of the best and the frustrating. If you do an Advent series, you have to come up with 4 preaches telling the Christmas story (that everybody knows) in a new, fresh way. Every year.

Think about Easter:

1 Sunday a year and 173 chapters in the New Testament dealing with the death and resurrection of Jesus - the why, the how, the so what. Lots of material to preach from.

Christmas:

4 Sunday preaches a year and Matthew has 1 chapter, Mark zero, Luke 2, but 1 very similar to Matthew, and John none. Three/two chapters for four preaches.

Aargh.

So what do you do as a preacher.

Repeat stuff - because people forget?
Avoid it.
Change Advent to just one Sunday instead of four.
Borrow other people's stuff!
Pass the baton to other staff to preach.
Delegate Children's Ministry to do a Christmas pageant.

The list goes on .....and I've tried most of them.

This year I pushed it.

Week 1 - give everyone a free lunch!
Week 2 - teach heavy doctrine.
Week 3 - preach heresy (or 'sounds like' heresy)!

Ever said something and I simultaneously sounded wrong, but really intriguing?
Ever scratched at something and wonder if you've scratched too far?

The line was "Jesus failed ".
When I first said it you could feel the audience collectively take a double-take ...including the unchurched guests.
"Did he really say what I thought he said?" "I must have misheard him!"

But then I repeated it with greater emphasis:

"Jesus failed many times!"

Christmas is so incredible.
God taking on flesh.
Virgin birth.
Miraculous signs in the sky.

We've all preached them.
But after 76 preaches, not that the miraculous should ever become common ....but it's hard to keep it at the same level. 76 preaches pushes you deeper and further into all that Christmas is.

Fully human.

What does that mean.

Chalcedon defines it.
Orthodoxy insists upon it.
Salvation depends on it.

But how far do you push it?

This past Sunday we pushed it. Not heretically ....but in thinking fuller about who Jesus was and how he redefined humanness.

It will come online in the next few days www.redeemerschurch.com - explore Sunday messages for December 19, 2010.

Comments afterwards ......more than any other preach in 2010.
People leaving the church because of it - still to be determined!!

Week 50. Got Nothing New.

2010-12-12T15:10:00.000-08:00

Week 50.

This is a leadership blog.
Every week for 52 weeks of the year some leadership thought or idea.

Have you ever reached a point where you've got nothing to say?

No new idea.
No new suggestion.
No new insight.

I was counting the number of books I have in my office (479!).

Got me thinking that perhaps for 2011 I should not buy any new books but reread all 479.

Do we need another new ideas, another suggestions, another insight ....or is there already enough written.

Maybe this blog, if not the next 54 blogs, should be remembering all the leadership ideas, suggestions and insights I've read or heard over the past 20 years.

Maybe I should let some of the best leadership learning's I've had resurface and focus on trying to do them in 2011.

Here's the top two I learnings in 2010:

"Truth is the kindest form of management." (Bill Hybels)

"When uncertainty is gone your leadership is no longer needed." (Andy Stanley)

Add in a third - "Make sure its not too trivial to be truth." (Dallas Willard)

Maybe rather than read new ideas/suggestions/insight, maybe I should deliberately practice these three leadership insights more and more in 2011.

Maybe.

Week 47 Leaders of History

2010-11-21T20:56:00.000-08:00

Week 47 and it sees me share some insight that I think is timely.

The whole name of this blog reflects an aspect of leadership that I think is core. Leaders discern the times. We live interpreting reality by keeping ourselves understanding how reality flexes and flows. We are students of tomorrow as well as students of today. We are map readers. We are connectors to history, ensuring we move forward not jettisoning the past. We are pioneers.

This causes me to constantly read books that examine culture.

Enter book number 129 on this topic (approximately!).

Christ Among The Dragons @ James Emery White.

As a church that is majorly involved in some global partnership and entering into the minefield of justice issues (courtesy of an excellent organization called International Justice Mission ....listen in on Sunday November 28 @ Redeemer's Church as we hear first hand from an IJM staffer) there was a line that White wrote that jumped out the page and drew me into reading his book:

Younger evangelicals are straying from core ideas, such as biblical inerrancy, core issues, such as opposition to abortion or gay marriage, and core alliances, such as the National Association of Evangelicals. Simply put, there is no longer a shared core. Truth is increasingly accepted as relative, an emphasis on social justice is rapidly supplanting previously focused concerns on social morality, relational and missional networks are becoming more generational in makeup, and older models of church and parachurch are being replaced with emerging communities that tend to defy traditional ecclesiastical standards.

Some of what White writes is exactly us - especially his comments on social justice over social morality.

White's book then goes on to examine four arenas that used to bring Evangelicals together and now threaten to drive us apart.

Personally I don't fly the Evangelical banner as as high or importantly as White. Not that i reject it, I just hold it in a lower priority and prefer the term Orthodox to Evangelical. (This could be another blog for another time.) But the four arenas are worthy of exploring.

The nature of truth and orthodoxy.
Cultural engagement and the evangelistic enterprise.
Christian community and civility.
Identity and character of the church.

White suggests these four arenas will unify our Christian witness and (at the core of his thesis) determine whether we are renewing ourselves for a new generation or falling from great to good, or even worse.

Leaders should read this book, and these kinds of books. We need to remain Men and Women of Issachar.

Week 45 - and the leadership scandal of global food aid.

2010-11-02T20:52:00.000-07:00

Week 45 ....and every time someone walks into my office they normally comment on the stack of books sitting on my desk. Partly I use the books to hide behind. I can position myself behind the books so that anyone walking into the front office trying to catch my eye ...I can avoid. Not very 'pastor like' but in many ways what I do is not the classic role of 'pastor' that was around when they designed our church offices and made sure that the 'pastors' office was right at the front door!

But its not primarily used to hide behind - they are the tools of my trade.

The tools help me unpack biblical exegesis; they help me find illustrations and analogies to help me preach in a more creative way; they keep my theological antenna hot as I process new theological thinking; they guide me on procedures and methods when I'm struggling to work through something.

.......but the best use of the tools is when I read something that disturbs me.

It's how I'm wired, and I think its how most leaders are wired. Conforming to common thought is boring, exploring new thought, expanding our minds to new ideas is what fuels us, energizes us.

If I go a week without a new thought ...... I begin to shrivel up, I get cranky, I double my reading for the next week ....or, I order a really theologically edgy book!

So it arrived last week and I began to read it. The book is called ENOUGH: Why The World's Poorest Starve In An Age Of Plenty @ Roger Thurow & Scott Kilman.

This one got me going .....one of these books that I couldn't put down.

Did you know that during the 2003 Ethiopian famine - the one that featured Band Aid etc - the US shipped millions of tonnes of grain to Ethiopia ....while homegrown Ethiopian grain rotted in storage sheds in Ethiopia.

The bottom line fact of much of US Food Aid is that the aid is designed more to see the US prosper than actually help the struggling country its shipped to.

The powerful US farm lobby have enforced a 1949 congressional rule that US food aid must be grown in the US and they can't buy locally grown crops. This ensures that American farmers receive annual payments to keep growing bigger than needed harvests and have a route "to get rid of their excess commodities". But the foreign countries in crisis most often need cash to help their farmers farm and their farming in turn fuels the countries economy which in turn moves it out from requiring aid.

The Food Aid bill ....keeps countries needing aid and keeps US farmers growing more crops than they need both depressing prices (hurting smaller farmers) and relying on aid payments which kills indigenous small foreign farmers.

Basically, while the US's generosity has grown (half of all international food aid is provided by the US) - it has had as much to do with self-interest than global benefactoring.
Interesting statistic - the size of American generosity is tied directly to conditions on the American farm, not the Ethiopian, Kenyan, Malian or any other struggling nations farms.

Many times, in multiple situations our helping actually hurts.
Many times, in multiple situations .....American farmers, and Midwest economic prosperity, need hungry Africans!

Go on read the book - well written, carefully documented and trying to guide us to a better solution. If you read that one, another helpful book on helping is entitled When Helping Hurts: How To Alleviate poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself @ Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert ...a required read for any people in our church travelling with us to our global partners.

But this whole strange, disturbing equation got me thinking of leadership.

How often do we as leaders make decision about the whole but really only to impact the leader?

How often do we use decisions to better ourselves and not better the church or organization?

How often do we need a crisis or a failure to always be there to necessitate our existence? Do we ever generate one to justify our leading?

The book was a stimulating read about why people are still going hungry in a world where there is more than enough food.

The book stimulated thoughts about cycles of dependency that we create to warrant our leadership roles.

Week 42 and a leader who equally loves the loo!

2010-10-16T14:33:00.000-07:00

Week 42 and I'm just finishing Tony Blair's masterful autobiography.
irrespective of your political position - these are the memoirs of a global leader who for 10 years held one of the highest offices of leadership, bringing huge influence, and impacting generations to come through the decisions he made as a leader. These memoirs are filled with leadership insights and learning's.
I've blogged on some of the early learning's already, here are some of the latter learning's:

Tony led with ordered thoughts.
Time after time in the book he mentions pausing before speaking, withdrawing to a side room and gathering his thoughts; stepping away from the media/public to gather his thoughts. the mental togetherness he practices is highly commendable.

To succeed you have to be more than clever. You have to be able to connect and you have to be able to articulate that connection in plain language. The plainness of the language then leads people to look past the brainpower involved.

A leader has to both manage complex situations and to judge them.

In the fickleness of our times, moods always trumps the policy every time!
In this matter, the public aren't always logical, but that's their prerogative.

In my reading I discovered perhaps why I like Blair so much. Here's what he writes about global travel:
"The one problem is that travel does play havoc with the digestive system. You need to eat healthily and with discipline. I am very typically British. I like to have time and comfort in the loo. The bathroom is an important room and I couldn't live in a culture that doesn't respect it."

Yep .....he and I are very alike!!!

More learning's:

Basically, most people are psychological itinerants in search of someone who wants to hear about them, who is interested in what they have to say, and who will regard what they say as both sage and stimulating.

Leaders live with the worry of what comes next - of the next call, the next slip of paper, the next confrontation, the next frisson of fear.

Blair changed the face of prime ministers. While he took office as the leader of a country, our time and generation made him into a global leader. This is unique to our time and era - leaders are much more global than 20 years ago. That global might be in different countries, or that global might be in different cultures, ethnicity's, contexts. Communications, a flat world and the 6 degree reality.

I highly recommend Blair's autobiography.

Week 41 and my Anabapist heritage has found me out!

2010-10-10T17:53:00.000-07:00

Week 41 (ouch, only 11 weeks left in 2010!)
Spent the weekend reading some excellent books. None more so than one entitled "The Naked Anabaptist" @ Stuart Murray.
This was a few-hours-don't-put-it-down-didn't-expect-to-enjoy-this-so-much kind of book.
28 pages turned down and a lot of underlining ....means this is a pretty interesting book.

Basically a history of the Anabaptist movement, Murray is drawing a contrast between the movements original context and what it means for faith in our context. If historical Anabaptism was a challenge to the era of Christendom, modern Anabaptism is a way to effectively, missionally live in today's post-Christian era.

Its a good read.

What I really enjoyed was the learning of the modern Anabaptist's core convictions, and the deeper explanation of the first core conviction in chapter 3. Here are the core convictions:

Jesus is our example, teacher, friend, redeemer, and Lord. He is the source of our life, the central reference point for our faith and lifestyle, for our understanding of church, and our engagement with society. We are committed to following Jesus as well as worshipping him. [Brilliant comment!!]
Jesus is the focal point of God's revelation. We are committed to a Jesus-centered approach to the Bible, and to the community of faith as the primary context in which we read the Bible and discern and apply its implications for discipleship.
Western culture is slowly emerging from the Christendom era, when church and state jointly presided over a society in which almost all were assumed to be Christian. Whatever its positive contributions on values and institutions, Christendom seriously distorted the gospel, marginalized Jesus, and has left the churches ill equipped for mission in a post-Christendom culture. As we reflect on this, we are committed to learning from the experience and perspectives of movements such as Anabaptism that rejected standard Christendom assumptions and pursued alternative ways of thinking and behaving. [The comments about how Christendom distorted the gospel, marginalized Jesus and has left churches ill equipped ...equally brilliant.]
The frequent association of the church with status, wealth, and force is inappropriate for followers of Jesus and damages our witness. We are committed to exploring ways of being good news to the poor, powerless, and persecuted, aware that such discipleship may attract opposition, resulting in suffering and sometimes ultimately martyrdom. [Another excellent insight.]
Churches are called to be committed communities of discipleship and mission, places of friendship, mutual accountability and multivoiced worship. As we eat together, sharing bread and wine, we sustain hope as we seek God's kingdom together. We are committed to nurturing and developing such churches, in which young and old are valued, leadership is consultative, roles are related to gifts rather than gender, and baptism is for believers. [Perhaps this one misses the ethnicity challenge of the modern church; it might also tend towards idealism ...yet it pushes us to rethink certain forms of the modern church.]
Spirituality and economics are interconnected. In an individualist consumerist culture and in a world where economic injustice is rife, we are committed to finding ways of living simply, sharing generously, caring for creation, and working for justice.
Peace is at the heart of the gospel. As followers of Jesus in a divided and violent world, we are committed to finding nonviolent alternatives and to learning how to make peace between individuals within and among churches, in society, and between nations.

It was nearly 8 years ago that I ate lunch with a local Mennonite (Anabaptist) church pastor. His concluding question, after we ate and talked was "does the Baptist church you pastor know they have an Anabaptist as their pastor?"

Anyone else wish to raise their hand and join in some excellent core convictions??

Of course, for all you Baptists out there, do you realize how much you owe your beginnings to the Anabaptist influence!!

Week 40 and what I really think about visiting Africa!

2010-10-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

Week 40 and time to be honest.
Not that I'm dishonest at other times. But, sometimes I choose not to share my more personal or vulnerable thoughts. This blog is me going to a more personal level than other times - and hence, more honest.

Here's my honesty - I don't really like going to Kenya, Africa.
I love the guys we partner with; I love our driver/agent Ben; I love all that's happening in the Furaha Community Huruma Centre, part of the Furaha Community Foundation; I love the first thing in the morning and the smells, aroma and sunrise of Kenya. But, i don;t really like going to Africa.

It's a hard journey - two major long flights.
It's a hard place to stay - my guy hurts for the entire time I'm there.
It's a hard place to lead - as team leader you are constantly aware that you are in a desperate city, a city that saw a terrorist attack against Americans; a city filled with desperate people seeing white people as targets; it's a place where the word police does not always equal justice but more often equal corruption.
It's a hard place to relax - travel through 10 time zones, hit the ground running, force yourself to sleep at the wrong times, swallow malaria meds, avoid the bad bacteria you are surrounded by; travel in a matatu with dust pouring into your lungs ...as well as hitting potholes, enduring near misses, sit in pollution clogged air, constantly watch over your shoulder.
Entering Kenya, Africa is hard and I don't really like doing it.

But during the past three years I've lead a team into a large slum in Nairobi twice a year.

This visit one of our team asked me why I keep going on the trips?

My answer - I have to, for my sake!

Not that I want to appear selfish, but, I have to find a way to keep myself exposed to some of the worst poverty on the face of the globe.
I have to find a way to keep myself aware of the reality of 60% of the world's population.
I have to find a way to be among the poorest of the poor and be where Jesus would be.

My spiritual leadership is dependent upon understanding true reality, and that reality has to involve the reality of what's happening in our globe and with the majority of humanity.

If I don't go, and go regularly (we so easily forget or switch off) I will move towards a self focused existence and a skewed view of reality.

But it does more.
It pushes me to maintain spiritual leadership as a faith exercise.

Let's be honest. Sometimes in the leading of a local church autopilot can kick in.
I've been doing this for over 10 years. Putting together a preach, leading staff, leading a congregation can too easily be done out of experience and not out of faith.
But when you enter Huruma slum and you see the chaos, hopelessness, desperateness of daily life, the though about seeing transformation come through the presence of Christ - the only way such could happen is through a moving of God. that is a act of faith, not an act of experience or professional pastoring.
Going to Kenya, Africa and the hardness of going ......renews the call of faith, the cry for more faith, the reliance upon faith and faith alone.

Going - is a spiritual necessity for effective spiritual leading.

Anyone want to join me?
Anyone want a shot of renewed, invigorated, desperate faith?

Week 38 The Chair.

2010-09-18T18:49:00.000-07:00

Week 38 and here's the line that every leader knows too well:

"Everyone not sitting in the leader's chair can have a discussion about it. Those not in the seat can point to the cost or the price, but they don't have to say which prevails. That's what the leader does."

And, the leader also knows, indecision is also decision.

This is what separates leaders from mangers.
Prophets from preachers.
Kingdom builders from aquarium keepers.

You felt the heat of this one recently?

We've just pulled the trigger on a huge step forward in the expansion of the Kingdom of God through Redeemer's Church. A step that few have tried, even fewer have seen it work. Add to this a recession year. Add to this its coming on the back of 7 hard fast years with energy levels lower. Add to this negative voices. Add to this other options.

But when you sit in the leader's chair while you can listen to the discussion around it, others' opinions can be acute but they aren't ultimate. The ultimate is made by the leader in the chair.
And, omission and commission both have consequences.

It's these kinds of decisions that define.
They seperate out.

Are you leading?
You'll know what this chair is like.
When you step out of that chair - you're no longer leading.

It's that simple.

Week 37 - learnings from a brillaint leaders. Guess who.

2010-09-11T19:21:00.000-07:00

Week 37 and I'm reading a fascinating book on leadership. In fact a book I highly recommend for any pastor/leader. Probably not a book you would naturally reach for - but trust me, its got brilliant insight.

A Journey: My Political Life @ Tony Blair.

It's hot off the press, its immediately made the best seller lists in UK and it has surprised me.

I have always admired Tony Blair, the ex-prime minister of the United Kingdom for 10 years. 10 years leading at the highest levels - nationally and internationally.

Tony introduced me to New Labor and to a political position that I could and did embrace. Thus began my many years of voting for a progressive, compassionate, intellectual yet pragmatic form of socialism.

But as this is a leadership blog, let me list for you 7 of the best, and initial leadership insights you get from reading Tony's autobiography:

There are two types of crazy people; those who are just crazy and who are therefore dangerous; and those whose craziness lends them creativity, strength, ingenuity and verve. These types of crazy you need, yet you will never tame them. The same thing that makes them different and brilliant is the same thing that means they don't conform to normal, predictable modes of behaviour. And, they are always on the edge.

I have a few rules about people I work with really closely. Work comes first. No blame culture. Fun, in its proper place, is good. Disloyalty has no place. Look out for each other. Stick together. Respect each other. It helps if you also like each other.

Leaders need to learn how to think, not just how to 'pass exams'. Think - analyse, dissect a problem from the first principles, and having deconstructed it, construct a solution.

Don't forget: communication is 50% of the battle in the information age. Say it once, say it twice and keep on saying it, and when you've finished, you'll know you've still not said it enough. (Quoting Bill Clinton a fellow modernizing socialist worth learning from.)

Every year there is a new height to be attained so that the momentum is not lost.

Intensity of the focus is the common in leadership.

Each step is fearful, yet each refusal (by yourself out of fear) means not only remorse at an opportunity missed, but, worse, despising yourself for not even summoning up the courage to try.

When you speak - speak with utter confidence; use humor; keep a thread running throughout; build the argument don't just plonk it down. Battles are won by generals not preachers.

Go beyond the confines of the debate and think about the world that was not debating trivial matters but were focused on life, hope and health versus death due to the ravages of poverty, conflict and disease. Focus always on the big.

Creating time for a leader is a near-sacred task. Show me an ineffective leaders and I will show you a badly managed schedule.

All within the first 100 pages.

Its a long but a great read.

Read it.

Week 36 - and a fatwa issued on dogs!

2010-09-01T14:19:00.001-07:00

Week 36 and I'm back.
Excuse the 10 week break.

......but for all those deeply committed pastors who have worked through the entire summer with maybe a weekend off as a sign of your devotion to Christ and His church - I'll remind you of that come December and you're out of steam!

Funny how we either deny the Sabbath principle or feel guilty for enjoying it.

So what's happened since my last blog?

Spain won the World Cup ......and most of America missed that.
President Obama cut US contributions to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria ....and most of America missed that.
The Afghanistan war budget has increased to where we could start 20 schools for the cost of 1 solider per year there .....we all missed that one.
The YMCA has finally owned up and announced they will be known for the "Y" - the "C" isn't that important.
John Stott wrote his final book ....nearly missed that one but for the recommendation by a friend. The Radical Disciple - a LAX to FAT read.
The Global Leadership Summit had their best first day teaching in their history - if you missed that one, you missed a good one.
The Oakland Raiders have changed their names to the Oakland Tulips and promise to be kind to everyone. They will now wear pink instead of pirate black.........did you miss that one??
Nothing much has changed in earthquake devastated Haiti.
Relatively speaking - has much changed in Hurricane Katrina hit Gulf Coast after 5 years?
The US Supreme Court ruled that a Christian student group must accept non-Christians as members if they were to be officially recognised - I think that could help most Christian groups!
China officially became the second largest global economy.
An Iranian cleric issued a fatwa against keeping dogs as pets ......why could he not have issued it against cats.

The point?

10 weeks and some big things as well as some pretty trivial things have happened.
Nothing stands still.
Certainly Redeemer's Church didn't stand still.

So did my sabbath break help?

I'm chasing my tail ....and its the first day in September.
But I've got energy to chase it.
I've had the time to sit above the urgent and figure out the bigger picture for the next period of leadership.
I didn't stand still.
Yes I wasn't doing my normal. but I was doing something, and something that helped me as a leader:
reading I would never get to; soul nourishing that I've dieted on for the last 11 months; good, healthy perspective that I was losing.

The University of Denver reported that 47% of the books acquired between 2000 and 2009 were never checked out. The University of Arizona reported that they spent $19 million on books over the past decade that were never used.

A waste.

A leader who doesn't refresh or refuel - a waste or a disobedience.

Live the sabbath - find the right rhythm for you.

Check this out: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11139960

Week 26 - the tension of church growth and church health.

2010-06-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

Week 26.
Just read these words in one of my summer reads (see my list of books over on my daily blog - although make sure you grab Hunter's book - ouch!):

"We have substituted a gospel of church growth for a gospel of reconciliation."

John Perkins wrote that back in 1982.

But of course we all want growth.
Warren was right back when he wrote The Purpose Driven Church (1995), the evidence of church health is not simply faithfulness but fruitfulness....and that has to include more people coming to faith in Christ.

But somewhere in the messiness of leadership church growth and church health get confused.

Neither is exclusive, both are required ...its more a question of priority, or aiming, or focus.

Week 26 in my desire to be an intentional leader - figure out, in my context, what growth looks within our desire to have health.

I have a feeling the paradigm is about to shift - considerably.

A few weeks of reading, learning, listening, asking ......watch this space.

Excuse my absence for a couple of weeks .....got that reading, learning, listening and asking to do!

Week 25 - a must read for summer.

2010-06-21T14:52:00.000-07:00

Week 25.

Leadership idea of the summer.

Read.

Especially read - To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, And Possibility Of Christianity In The Late Modern World @ James Davison Hunter, Oxford University Press, 2010.

Read it.

Make it a summer read goal.

Brilliant insight.

Week 24 - when a Senior Pastor changes his position!

2010-06-13T16:40:00.000-07:00

Week 24 and for all your 'Baptists' out there ....have a read of this one and confirm my heretic status! It's a copy of my daily blog over at http://scottishpastormusings.blogspot.com

Day 163 and yesterday we saw 52 people baptized.
It was our first Wash Over Me Baptism Ceremony and a great Saturday afternoon.

There was one other baptism not in that 52, a 53rd - my own.

Strange.

When I was 13 years old I was baptized. With a mixture of 'the right thing to do', being obedient and wanting people to know that I was a Christian.
All good, all real to where I was and what I was feeling.

But over the past few years my views on baptism have begun to shift.
It's more centrally become sacramental.
But this year something bigger happened - its moved from being a fidecentric emblem to a Christocentric emblem.
This is for me a significant movement, and a movement that required me to do more than appropriate this into the baptism I had many years ago, to do the whole thing again.

Probably best that I speak into this odd site of the church's Senior Pastor being baptised by the church's staff.......

For years I've held to the idea that baptism is a result of my faith. I've come to believe in who Christ is; I've received by faith His salvation and I then take this further step in demonstrating my faith for others to see.
This is the classic believers' (converts) baptism.

Of course Christianity is divided between two types of baptism - believers' baptism or infant baptism. The more theological terms are credobaptism or paedobaptism.

I grew up credobaptist.

But in the past few years I've been restless with not so much with what is attached to credobaptism, more I've been restless with what's missing from credobaptism.
Initially I felt it minimized the Divine movement as a sacrament. Everything seemed to revolve around my movement. It was me who was moving to show my faith; it was me who was stepping in the waters and displaying my devotion; it was me identifying with Christ.
This seemed to wrestle baptism away from being sacramental. As a sacrament the movement is always from God. This is the case in every sacrament. God descends to meet us in the sacrament.

But in the past few months my restless has intensified.

Is it really all about my faith?
Is it not all about Christ?

And this began me re-reading the paedobaptist position.
[Thank you Sinclair Ferguson and your excellent defense/summary of infant baptism in Baptism: Three Views edited by David F. Wright.]

For me the issue I'm revising is not whether it is believers or infants that get baptised - for me it is what movement is happening and where does it start.

This returns us to the fidecentric emblem or Christocentric emblem.

Fidoecentric says it is my faith that is being outworked in baptism.
Christocentric does not minimize the role of faith but stressed that what is symbolized in baptism is not faith but the Christ in whom faith rests.

This is a defining difference.
This pushes it to being a sign and a seal rather than a symbol or testimony.
This pushes it away from faith towards grace......towards what God does, not what I'm doing.

This is a major part of the paedobaptist argument.
Maybe I'm exploring a third way, a way that takes the truth of believers' baptism but embraces some of the excellent theology behind the paedobaptist position.

Who says there's only two views.
maybe its bigger than we've previously known.

Yesterday .....quietly at the end of the ceremony as people headed for food.... staff and one pastor decided to experiment with a third way.

Week 22 - those dang vuvuzelas!

2010-05-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

Week 22 and as we get ready for the greatest show on earth (come on you yanks, the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa!!) - one British TV reporter went to see what all the fuss was over the vuvuzelas!
Ever heard of them?
They are like plastic trumpets that loads of fans play during the game.
Watch Gabby's report and listen to the noise: http://bit.ly/bn11uU

It's Africa, and with the World Cup being held in Africa for the first time - let it be an African World Cup.
I say that (with truth and desire), but i know if i was attending the world cup (sadly I tried unsuccessfully to arrange a vital missions trip to South Africa in June!!!) after 20 minutes of enjoying the vuvuzelas noise and the African feel ...I'd want them to shut up!!

This is our tension, and its a tension we don't always do well at living within - to the decrement of the Gospel.
It's hard to live out true diversity, we tend more towards uniformity at worst or similarity at best.

For decades the missiological push has been for homogeneous mission. Think of a book like Unchurched Harry & Sally; or the definition of Saddleback Sam. The phrase 'people like us' was a missiological phrase to help churches achieve maximum growth.
We avoided the tension by pulling towards similarity, homogeneity.

But today's church in today's America can no longer bypass the tension.
Homogeneity is not the way of the 21st century, nor the call of the postmodern, emerging society, of even greater significance - nor is it the Gospel.
Leaders must learn to live with the noise of the vuvuzelas. In truth, leaders must learn to enjoy the noise of the vuvuzelas.

Watch this blog as over the next few months we engage further on this topic. For more reading try this very helpful webblog: http://djchuang.com/multi/

Week 20 - Vimeo make you take a long hard look.

2010-05-13T13:23:00.000-07:00

So one of my Brit friends linked me to this vimeo (see end of blog).

Funny.

We're just about to go on staff thinking day and one of the questions is "what's happening on a Sunday morning."

Ironic.
Sarcasm
Timely.
Disturbing.
Exaggerated.
Helpful.

Take a look: http://vimeo.com/11501569

Week 18: Adaptive Leadership

2010-05-01T19:32:00.000-07:00

Week 18 and leadership never slows or stops.
Ever found that.
Even on off days - the leadership gift that you have been entrusted with doesn't switch off.
Is this a curse, or just a burden.
Sometimes in some settings you just want to be led, not a leader.
Even today.
Flu day number 2, no chores, no yard, no work ....but the leadership antenna remains on.
For me - today became a reading day, a vital part of leading.

Two books:
James White's A Brief History of Christian Worship. Helpful and insightful. Pushing me further down the path of being baptized again as I read early church and first six century's understanding of baptism.
Second book was Bill George's 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis.

George has delivered another good book.
It's in the Warren Bennis Signature Series - should be good.

My major learning from George comes from him citing Kevin Sharer (CEO of Amgen). Sharer leads from his favorite biology analogy: "What species survives? The biggest? The strongest? The fastest? No, it's the most adaptive."

There's insight.

After the week I've had where a new vision has impaled itself in my imagination, perhaps even my soul, a vision that has radical and revolutionary components in it; boundary breaking angles to it ....this quote brought amazing affirmation.

Adaptive leadership.
George's take on adaptive leadership is that the penalty for non-adaptive leading is severe.
We live in a changing, moving culture - adapt or perish.

This all sits within George's 1st lesson for leading in crisis - "Face Reality" (borrowing Max DePree's mantra).

It was this core leadership task that had spurred me on to rethink, re-envision, re-engineer the next many years. Look around, see what's around, feel what's around and then adapt vision and direction to that reality.

As I read today even more affirmation came ....as well as a grasping of the size of the mountain ahead of us.

It's been a good day.
It's been an adapting day.
It's been a leading day.

Week 17 Christocentric.

2010-04-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Week 17 (yep, somewhere along the lines I've miscounted and lost 3 weeks!)

Working just now on a presentation about the missio dei. Trying to highlight that Christ is the centre of the mission of God and hence what we do and how we do it needs to have a core christocentric DNA.

Here's some of my initial thoughts - would value some input and expansion:

 Christocentric worship. We lift Christ up in our worship and as that happens non-believers are drawn mystically to Christ. This includes not only sung worship (the urgent need to examine our song lyrics and ensure they have Christ as the object and not our emotions); but is essentially seen in the sacrament of communion.

 Christocentric teaching. Our task is to preach to people’s greatest needs – knowledge of Christ. Care needs to be taken that we do not preach felt needs; that we do not elevate the Bible to a place of worship. We preach Christ ….that in the handling of the Word, Christ is present. Christ is bigger than a sermon, than an illustration, than a drama, than a media clip. Everything needs to be brought under his redemptive use.

 Christocentric leading. Our church governance surrenders to the headship of Christ. Vision and values are fully connected to Him. We do not attach Him to our vision and values. The question here is ‘who leads the church?’

 Christocentric atmosphere. It is the presence of Christ that makes the church a safe place. Our welcoming environment draws on the belonging Christ invites people to have. [Belong, Believe, Become] A Christocentric welcome is a grace filled welcome. Can the people Christ came to save, belong in our churches.

 Christocentric scope. It is Christ who defines our audience. That audience is everyone. Christocentric scope expands our Un-churched Harry & Sally. In particular for most communities this expands us to a definitive multicultural scope.

 Christocentric spirituality. The church is a community of character more than belief. Christ is our spirituality. Beyond a program, a group, a study, a discipline, we are inviting people to define themselves by being ‘in Christ.’

 Christocentric eschatology. Christ is the climax of all things. Whatever our ending theology, it must glorify Christ and share in his ending of time. It is therefore glorious not mediocre or minimal; it is salvic not escapist; it is the climax of everything – the church, the planet, the world. This is Christus Victor. This is Christ’s Gospel that we live now.

 Christocentric ecclesiology. The Church is One – diversity is our cultural reality, unity is our historic reality; the Church is Holy – like Christ we are fully divine yet fully human; The Church is Catholic – wherever Jesus Christ is there is the Church; the Church is Apostolic – local, present leadership shares in what has been handed down in the life of the Church through the centuries.

How different would our churches be if this DNA saturated everything going on.

Anyone able to add or dialogue with me on this - helpful.

Week 14 and I'm in reflective mood.

2010-04-13T20:58:00.001-07:00

OK, I don't do this often but Week 14 of my leadership blog is Day 102 of my dfaily blog from
http://scottishpastormusings.blogspot.com/ so enjoy reading what I blogged:

Day 102 finds me in a reflective mood.
Been thinking about the difference between compassion and justice. We have several global partnerships (Kenya, Tijuana, Guatemala and perhaps something new in Haiti emerging), in each partnership we act with compassion but been reflecting on where our justice is. We treat the wound but not the cause of the wound.

Been thinking about what we do every Sunday on our campus. Is it incredibly easy to invite people to church on Sundays? Who am I inviting in? Are we filled with Christians who invite?
The new Reveal publication "Focus" reminds us again that to be missiological is to understand the culture and the culture wants to be wowed on Sundays. For right or for wrong we need to live in our culture, while being counter cultural. There is a difficult line to hold to where you are cultural enough to be attracting, but counter cultural enough to not be selling out.

But my biggest reflection these past few days comes from a thought in the book by David Olson The American Church in Crisis. Here's what he writes "On any given Sunday, the vast majority of Americans are absent from church and if trends continue, by 2050, the percentage of Americans attending church will be half of what it is today."

He then goes on to suggest to avoid this dismal future the American church needs to engage with three critical transitions:

1. The transition from a Christian to a post-Christian society.
2. The transition from a modern to a post-modern society.
3. The transition from a mono-ethnic to a multi-ethnic society.

The first transition was the reason the INS accepted me to work in the US. I come from a post-Christian society (the UK). In my lifetime it has shrunk from 25% church attending to 4% attending. For years the church did not waken up to this reality. Not waking up costs it dearly.
Sadly, I see mirrored in most US churches and denominations a stubborn but ignorant refusal to accept reality. We are moving fast to a post-Christian society with secular overtones. Been heading this way for the past 20 years .....we are only a few years away from full arrival.

The second transition from modern to post-modern freaks the life out of most Christian leaders. For years I've been reading and studying in this arena and while I cannot claim full knowledge I can agree that a seismic shift is happening at the philosphical level and we actually have already moved somewhere. To too many church leaders this shift is a threat to truth and orthodoxy. Not so. But this fear is causing us to react too slowly and too abstractly. In many ways we are in danger of remaining holding onto the flannel graph in the digital age.

As for the third transition - this is huge. Possibly only 8-9% of Evangelical churches are multi-ethnic or multi-cultural. WOW!! We have been amazed that Redeemer's Church is 50% white, 45% brown and 5% other! Amazing. But my reflection is to realise that we are not too sure how this has happened (not great leadership) and, we are guilty of putting on the cruise control and not digging deeper and being passionate about truly outworking what God has been doing. This one needs more fuel added to it and needs my leadership placed fully on it. Watch out Redeemer's!!!!!

Intentional follow of Jesus ...reflective consideration of where we are, where we are going, and what needs to be done.
A`Sabbath' activity.

Week 13, so what did happen at Easter?

2010-04-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

So what do the regular round of Easter weekend services actually produce?

Been hearing a little of the big crowds at various GHC churches across the region, including our own (just on the 1,000 people).

But what does it all produce, or mean?

Leadership has to define reality. Void of reality, leadership can be morass or deluded.

Easter weekend. Hours of preparation. Big services. Extra services. More people than usual, many more people than usual.

What's happening?

Be a good blog discussion - join in.

Is it a tradition thing, pseudo-Christians in a pseudo-Christian land. Time to go to church on 1 of the 3 times people think about going each year.

Is it the 1 or 2 Sundays of the year that all the church come at the one time. Average church in the US sees only 60-70% of church any given weekend. But on Easter they all come?

Where is spiritual seeking on Easter Sunday?

Is it happening?

Or is it more conscience seeking than spiritual seeking?

Is it 'our turn now' celebrating; the Christian celebration of the year and Easter special services are filled with Christians together celebrating the resurrection.

Perhaps this coming Sunday tells us more what happened on Easter weekend than Easter weekend itself tells us.

Maybe counting this weekend is more important than last weekend.

What happened at our Easter services?

Righteously, we could say 'only eternity will tell us'.

Diligently, we need to try to find the answer now.

Any ideas out there?

One of the staff discussions about Easter services I got involved in revolved around regarding many people who might come to Redeemer's Church would be self-righteous Christians coming one of the three times a year.

Questions is - do you engage as Jesus did with the self righteous and give your severest warning, or do you see them as lost souls needing to find Christ.

Do you treat them as Jesus did, or as spiritually needy?

I don't think any pastor out there does not for one minute think that some of the Easter surge is the self-righteous, three-times-a-year thinking they are Christians. But none of us preached judgement on their self-righteous heads!

So why don't we do what Jesus did?

The Gospels are pretty clear on this.

Why do we treat them differently?

Of course they weren't the full crowd - but in most of our churches they were many of the crowd.

So, who's bold enough or obedient enough to start planning Easter 2011 and a sermon Jesus style?

Just a thought.

Any other out there?

Beyond our staff discussion, here's my leadership thought:

I'm thinking the next three weeks will tell us what happened at Easter ....watch carefully. Define reality well.

Week 12 and self-leadership quiz.

2010-04-01T20:03:00.001-07:00

Week 12 and it sees myself and at least one other GHC pastor applying the self-leadership principle.

How's that going for you?

Self-leadership.

I spent the past 3 days at the coast with my family - despite this being the biggest weekend of the Christian calender.

Self-leadership.

Bill Hybels first spoke about it. Leading up, leading down, leading across .....leading inwards! We more often than not forget the leading inwards direction - self leadership.

I've got one staff member who will congratulate me on taking this one serious. (Didn't always think I did - so thanks for the compliment Deborah!)

But this week I did.
Three days at Carmel by the Sea; golf with my boys; good food; limited emails; some books to read; running the coastline; beautiful scenery.
And all the time thinking about death!
Yep .....with a major preach coming in 4 days time ...still had to let it percolate.
But this percolating was done carefully and still I was able to be gone and enjoy family time.

I'm not saying you demonstrate self-leadership only when you break from work on the busiest week of the year. What I am saying is - self leadership can be done.... no excuses.

Self-leadership is not applying the sabbath principle. That's a given.
Self-leadership is more than the normal. It is an investment beyond to go beyond.

So how do you know if you are not giving self-leadership enough attention?

Here's a helpful grid I've been using, courtesy of Nancy Beach I heard her give several years ago; its a series of questions about the state of our hearts. Worth doing it .....I know it's worth me asking these questions again:

1- A heart in trouble has flat-lined…it can’t feel deep emotion any more.
Healthy hearts can feel the spectrum of emotion such as love, sadness, joy, excitement, anger and empathy. Hearts in trouble can’t celebrate even when life is wonderful.

2- A heart in trouble no longer engages in the moment or celebrates the good things of life. Healthy hearts have the ability to seize the day and be with people in the moment.

3- A heart in trouble no longer has room for fun, laughter or spontaneity.
Healthy hearts don’t take life so seriously that they miss the fun of life.

4- A heart in trouble has lost compassion for those hurting. Healthy hearts don’t look at people in need as intrusions but are able to extend love and concern.

5- A heart in trouble has lost the capacity to hear God’s voice and respond. Healthy hearts are soft, attentive and open to the gentle prompting of God.

(To get a copy of Nancy’s message HEART CHECK FOR THE CHRISTIAN ARTIST, go to
www.willowcreek.org. It can be found under the ARTS Conference 2000.)

Self-leadership. Miss it too often and guess what - too late and its not just self-leadership you'll have been missing it will be all forms of leading.

Week 11 - the anonymous stuff needs to stop!

2010-03-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

Week 11. Come on folks quit the 'anonymous' stuff!

A leadership blog. Weekly we bring a leadership issue to the surface and engage with it.

This week is the topic of conviction and courage.

Maybe the church in America is declining faster than any other time in this nations history because leaders have such a lack of courage.

Let's take 'anonymous' blog replying!

If you really have convictions in what you blog reply and the reaction to what I write, surely conviction would be backed with courage to let others know who you are!

This lack of courage is partly why Christianity is being hammered by secularists, humanists and pluralists.

Courageous leaders tackle the real issues and the real challengers to The Faith; cowardly leaders take pot shots and hit their own ....anonymously.

It's just sad.

So .....excuse my rather impatient blog, but could anonymous guys get a little more courage - for the sake of the Kingdom and to give some honest, but slightly different thinking Christian leaders a break.

Thanks.

Week 10 - when vision fails.

2010-03-04T21:58:00.001-08:00

Week 10 and I've copied one of my daily blogs from

http://scottishpastormusings.blogspot.com

Day 63 and there's something neat about a really productive day, but there's something ever neater (is that another made up word) of a really productive evening.

Spent the evening working on some papers about values.

During two conversations this week I've been asked if our vision/mission is written down any where.
My answer is slightly surprising to some - especially fellow GHC pastors........

NO, and never will be.

Redeemer's Church is only the sum total of what we do - our values.
Aubrey Malphurs says it this way "You won't do ministry that really matters until you define what matters".

In the real world, everyone will know what your church is about not by a statement written but by seeing what it is you are actually doing, and you do what you value.

I'm not saying that at Redeemer's Church we haven't spent time thinking through our vision, even writing it down in staff and leadership settings, but it is meaningless, if not sinful, if you aren't doing it.

[Excuse me if I seem slightly distracted I am actually watching a really funny episode of The Office as I try to write this ........some distraction before heading to the sack.]

Values.

No matter what you write or say - you are only doing what you're doing!

This is my bottom line,.

So, at Redeemer's we focus on modeling our values, talking about them - formally and informally, we try to make sure our values are actionable ...they can be done, not just said.

I think part of this conviction is driven by the emerging culture where genuineness is core. To some degree vision/mission statements are from modernity - linear thinking. Today's generation do not seek linear paths, they seek authenticity - "are they doing what they say they are supposed to be doing?"

It's a bit like a church name. Do we do inside what the label says outside; are we making false promises; are we misrepresenting ourselves?

So many vision and mission statements do just this. Grand statements that have no bearing on current reality.

If you want to go this way, don't call it a mission or vision statement - call it an "aspiration statement."

Or better ...... don't print one, instead major on values.

Week 9 - wisdom from others.

2010-02-27T17:43:00.001-08:00

Week 9 (I think?)
It finds me reading two excellent books recommended by others.
First book The Apostolic Congregation: Church Growth Reconceived for a New Generation.
Its classic George Hunter III.
His earlier books How to Reach Secular People and The Celtic Way of Evangelism were ahead of his time, this one brings his thinking right to the 21st century and worth reading.

The second book Switch:How To Change Things When Change Is Hard @ Chip & Dan Heath.
Like their first book Made To Stick, this book follows the same formula - insightful leadership thinking surrounded by interesting stories and examples.

If my leadership blog this week is weak in content - its not weak in its wisdom. Read these two books and enjoy strong and wise content.

See you next week with a little longer blog.

Week 11 - you don't make camp on a bridge!

2010-02-15T20:10:00.000-08:00

Week 8 and I wonder why people who read words like 'deconstruction' or 'emergent', always seem to attack from the position of they being the only ones who know the Bible. Ever notice that. Ever read the responses to the blogs I've written on new thoughts, new ways of thinking; raising questions about faith, church and life! Ouch folks.

Everybody seems to think they know the Bible, and anyone questioning or bringing any new thoughts seems to have thrown the Bible away and seems to know nothing about it. As for honoring the Word or maybe even believing the Word as God's truth- it seems that anyone with questions or some new thoughts doesn't!

But people need to engage more intelligently and perhaps elegantly with what's happening rather than so emotively. There is a sacredness in questioning (title of a pretty good book!).

Surely the most anti-deconstructionist/"has it all in a nice box Christian" must agree that what Christianity looks like today is very different that 1st or 2nd century Christianity.

Surely.
What wise questioners and/or revisionists are saying is - the building on top is a 19th or 20th century building ...but today is the 21st century - this necessitates change.

11am Sunday services - began in the late 19th and 20th century?
Baptism by immersion .....when did that start?...remembering that 60% of Christians hold to paedobaptism not believers baptism!
Formal church memberships?
The Sunday School movement .....19th century invention!
Church buildings?
Organ music to hymns.?
Dispensationalism - first 18 centuries didn't have that going ...built by a couple of English separatists!

Or, when did we quit the holy kiss?
When did we quit sharing our possessions with everyone else?
What happened that women quit long hair; what happened that we quit ........ ??

Most people are with me to this stage ...hard to argue against history. We have to accept that some of what we believe is more what we prefer ...but to some extent that's OK

But then it gets harder for some people to stay with the debate, but in truth again its historic.

When did the Gospel become individual instead of the communal/corporate theology of the New Testament?
When did it become formulaic ... 'say this prayer and you're saved'; 'learn the 4 steps to peace'; 'do the roman road' ......is all this really true to New Testament teaching?

Surely the New Testament gospel has a solid emphasis on 'following' rather than checking boxes, or raising a hand? One is "built" on top of the Scriptures; one is within Scripture.

We could go on .....but critics need to be honest to history. So much of what revisionists are dialogue-ing on is about stuff that is not in the text ...but our add ons, preferences, cultural expressions/representation.

If liberals cut parts out of the text, many conservatists/fundamentalists have added too much into the text.
Both are wrong.

Both have strong reasons why they've done what they've done - but both are wrong.

Now what would be clearly wrong is for any revisionist to say what we/they are doing is now the only right reading of the text.

But let me pull this blog over. A core quality of a leader is to define reality - even if that reality is on how the historic Scriptures have been mishandled in the 20th century.

Of course - revisionists have to stand on the bridge of 20th century interpretation as they stood on the bridge of 19th century interpretation. It's not a new bridge that's needed, we just need to keep moving along on the bridge.

But that's bridges - we use them to keep moving forward.

You don't make camp on a bridge.

Something extra - from Bart Campolo

2010-02-09T11:59:00.000-08:00

I just posted this on my Musings of a Scottish Pastor blog (http://www.scottishpastormusings.blogspot.com/).
Found it just what I needed to read today. Maybe you will as well.
It's an email from my friend Bart Campolo (he's coming to Redeemer's Church on Sunday April 18 to preach at our services - great Sunday). He works in the projects of Cincinnati and he sent out this email today:

Dear Friends,

As much as she doesn’t belong there, I almost left Denise in jail. The $400 it cost to get her out is a lot of money, after all, especially for a woman surviving on food stamps in a $25 per month HUD apartment our fellowship covers to keep her off the street. Then again, we cover it because we know she’s too sick and disabled to work, let alone do jail time.

Of course, as a taxpayer I understand the county’s case against Denise, whose three kids were raised entirely on county funds despite the fact that neither parent ever paid a dollar in child support. I understand why they want the more than $15,000 she still owes, and why they call it contempt of court when she is consistently unable to pay even her $65 monthly minimum. What I don’t understand is why the judge continues her case every few months, even though it’s obvious she’s permanently broke, or how it helps anyone to lock her up for missing one of those countless court dates, like they did last week.

“I can’t do this, Bart!” she wailed into the phone. Just the night before we had celebrated her long-awaited return to our Monday night dinner, after she nearly died of pancreatitis. Now she was worried about having to move too much, and losing sleep, and missing her medications. “I’m gonna die in here,” she cried.

I felt sorry for her, of course, but I also felt frustrated and angry with her. After all the time fellowship folks have spent hustling around for her these past few years, and all the money we’ve spent on her rent and prescriptions and household needs, and all the phone calls and application forms and letters and hospital visits, how could Denise mess everything up by forgetting her court date? Forget becoming an addict and abandoning her kids in the first place; I almost left someone I claim to love in jail for the higher crime of stupidly inconveniencing me once too often.

Or maybe I almost left her there because I couldn’t stand the thought of having to listen to Denise whine and complain and blame everybody but herself for her troubles all the way home. Maybe I’m just up to here with people telling me about how it was the boss’s fault they got fired, or the teacher’s fault they got suspended, or their friend’s fault they got arrested, or their lawyer’s fault they got convicted, or their landlord’s fault they got evicted, or the minister’s fault they quit going to church.

In any case, the next morning I paid the purge order, drove down to the county jail, and gritted my teeth as Denise got into my car. And then it happened.

“Bart,” she said, “As soon as they told me I was getting out, I knew it was y’all that did it. And I’m just so thankful that I have this fellowship family that does so much for me. But all last night I was laying there feeling sorry for myself, and I got to thinking how all of this is my own fault, and how it wasn’t anybody else’s job to remind me of my court dates or take me to them or anything. I know I told you I couldn’t do it, but I was wrong. If I had to stay there for a week or a month, I decided I wasn’t gonna complain or blame anybody, I was just gonna pray to God and hang on. It was me that put me in this situation, not you or nobody else.”

To me, it was a pure miracle. My frustration, my anger, all gone in an instant. That was all I wanted, I suddenly realized. That’s all most of us want, most of the time, Almighty God included. Not perfection. Not even close to perfection. All we really want is for the people in our lives—our friends, our spouses, our children—to just take responsibility when they let us down. We can put up with a lot, we can forgive a lot, and we can help with a lot, and even do it with a smile most of the time, if only the person who blows it is just willing to admit that they are the person who blew it, not us, not somebody else. That, mixed together with a little genuine gratitude…my God, it is the jet fuel of compassion, the wonder drug for an ailing love.

I didn’t drive Denise straight home. I took her out to lunch first.
Sincerely,

Bart

Just stirred me - hope it has you.

Week 7 - because I seem to have lost Week 6!

2010-02-08T12:58:00.001-08:00

Week 6 - or have I missed it?
I think maybe I have.
I think this is Week 7.
Where did week 6 go to?

Yep, often I fail on the leadership level because I let days/weeks slip and I can't account for what's happened during that time! I just get busy. On a day to day basis I would say that I worked hard and it was all about serving as a church leader/teacher; I would say it's all about the Kingdom of God; at the end of every day I would say I worked really hard towards the vision of our church and our lives -but then I get to my blog and I've missed a week due to "being busy" and I makes me take a personal audit on was my busy really serving God and intentional in outworking the building and extending of the Kingdom of God.

So - welcome to Week 7.
I'm sitting in Stockton, CA listening to the story of Jeff Kristenson who has led exciting transformation in South Valley Community Church, Lemoore, CA.
As I listen to the classic story of moving an inward focused, politic playing, committee led church existing for itself to an outward focused, church existing for lost people, Kingdom of God extending healthy church.
Brilliant story and brilliant leadership.

But as I sit and listen what excites me is the ongoing vision to see more growth. Jeff is not plateauing. Jeff is not content with the 1000 people they have attending (it was 117 ten years ago when Jeff arrived); Jeff and his team yearn for greater impact for the Kingdom of God.

This is true leadership.
This is exciting.

"The appetite grows with the eating" .....might be a French proverb, but it reflects the heart and reality of effective leaders.
As you eat growth - through all the hard work, sweat, praying, thinking that goes with this - your appetite for more growth only grows. As you eat growth, you desire more.

Jesus beat the French to this proverb. Regularly Jesus spoke about to those who have more more will be asked of - or ....to those who grow their talents - more talents will be given to them, or ....Luke 6 "Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap."
Is this not the same.

So, forgive me losing of Week 6. May Week 7 inspire you to eat growth, kingdom, Gospel growth.

Week 5 - a pastors' EDGE.

2010-01-29T20:59:00.000-08:00

Sorry folks that I missed week 4 - Africa, no internet and jet-lag.

Week 5 ..... and it revolves around the idea of EDGE.
Jack Welch and Noel Tichy write about this idea.

All leaders possess ideas undergird by values creating energy in people around them -but winning leaders bring EDGE to their leading.
EDGE is defined as "the ability to make tough decisions and the willingness to sacrifice the security of today for the sake of a better future".

EDGE.
Let me talk about our children's global charity called When I Grow Up.
Presently we help four global partnerships with the most developed partnership the one I've just returned from in Nairobi, Kenya called Furaha Community Centre. For the past few years we've helped this centre. We've seen our help grow but in truth it has remained at a fairly doable level - we can remain at this level and not hurt other growth we need to work on within our own church and within our other global partnerships.

But now as I return from another visit, I'm challenged with the reality of EDGE. Am I willing to make the tough decision? A tough decision not to stop helping, but to take our helping to the next level - a level that moves us beyond the comfortable security of what we can afford today for the sake of tomorrow.
This is an EDGE decision.

I guess Welch and Tichy call it EDGE, but Christian leaders call it FAITH!
Can we take the next step - can we take this next step along with every other next step our church and our charity are needing to take.
Growth requires EDGE / FAITH.

Growth always requires more growth. In fact the fuel of growth is more growth.
The challenge of every growth leader is the boldness, the edge, the FAITH to not settle at the level of initial growth, but push deeper beyond settledness.

This is exactly where we are at in Redeemer's Church. 800 attending, front door working, global ministry happening, healthy ministries, healthy financials, good programming. BUT - FAITH says we need to now go to the next level - the next step for our overall vision, the next step in our When I Grow Up charity, the next step in our Growth Engines ....and these three mission critical next steps will require the next step in our financials, our leadership, our strategies. This is EDGE, or better put, this is FAITH.

Do I have it?
Do you have it?
Growth requires it.
The Kingdom of God breathes it.

Week 3 - Leaders do what isn't natural to do

2010-01-16T19:22:00.000-08:00

Week 3 - and I'm about to head to Kenya, Africa.

I've been to Kenya several times. We have some incredible partners there who we link with to help a slum that is around half a million people. Our Kenya partners run a feeding program, AIDS clinic, school for over 500 kids, a community centre, a justice program - and all of them weave Jesus through it.

But here's the truth - I've never really fallen in love with Africa.

You read reports of people going and they fall in love with Africa. Whenever they leave to return to the West they say things like "I left a part of my heart/soul there!"

But not me.

I think the guys we work alongside are modern day heroes. I think the face of every child is the face of the most precious child there is. Each of them. I think Christ is with the poor way beyond how He's with us.

But every trip to Kenya doesn't come naturally. Every trip to Kenya takes a lot out of me.

But here's the leadership point - I know that if I don't go and lead the way ...how can I get others to follow us into doing what Christ undoubtedly wants His Church to be doing.

Despite how uneasy it is for me to go, and return and go again ....a leader has to go where he/she wants others to go.

Leadership simply is leading.

That's week 3 .....heading 11,000 uneasy/unnatural miles to help others come as well and catch the vision of God and His amazing Gospel.

Week 2: To deconstruct or not.

2010-01-12T16:09:00.000-08:00

Week 2 of 2010 and some thoughts on churches and leadership within such.

Been introducing a group of new leaders within our church to the postmodern/modern debate. For some people the debate and its pro's and con's are old hat, but for many its a new issue.

My group was an eclectic group of differing ages, gender and ethnicity. But here's what was interesting - the idea of "deconstruction" resonated with them all. They all described aspects of the way they had been raised in churches, and/or the emphasis that they had all experienced that they knew needed to be deconstructed.
Now while many of us think the postmodern movement needs time, but only so much time, to deconstruct before they head to construction - what became even clearer to me in leading the conversation was that careful deconstruction is a key component of not only philosophical leadership but all leadership.

Deconstruction is the taking apart of the existing structure not to destroy it or demolish it, but to ensure the right bricks stay in place and the wrong bricks are removed ....to enable the structure to be stronger and have a effective future.

Deconstruction is not to destroy - but to improve.

There was not one person in the group last night who did not value deeply the Church and its mission and purpose. And because of that value they wnated to see the Church be all that the Church could be and needs to be.

Leaders should not fear deconstruction.

The question that we then raised was the question of whether or not a generation from now - removed from any postmodern/modernity debate - would the next generation see what we've built as needing to be deconstructed also?
Or, to put that question in a better way "how do we build something now that does not need deconstructed in the future?"
Is that possible?

The answer we came away with is yes. It is possible if leaders stay fluid, organic, flexible. There is a way to lead that will see what is built last and not need deconstructing. But it will require constant reading, researching, morphing.
Entropy remains a big enemy. We can experience entropy in our theology (we should be reformed and always reforming); entropy in our methods (we veer to comfort and familiar when we need to veer to courage and adventure); entropy in our practices (when we need to adapt and constantly modernise).

If we fail to battle entropy - we will see the next generation deconstruct what we are building, but if we attack entropy ......the next generation will not need to firstly deconstruct before they can build, but they can quickly stand on our shoulders and build even bigger.

Week 1 of 2010

2010-01-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

So the new year has begun.

My Musings of a Scottish Pastor blog (http://www.scottishpastormusings.blogspot.com) tells you what I've decided to do with that blog for the next 365 days ......everyday blog on what intentional act that day I have done to help me live as a follower of Jesus Christ.

A daily blog - yikes!

But it got me thinking about my leadership blog and 2010.

Could I blog weekly on what leadership activity and/or learning I've done to lead more effectively in 2010.
52 blogs with 52 learnings or actions in leading a local church in extending the Kingdom of God.

So let's start.

My first learning of 2010: "health in a church is gained slowly but lost quickly."

Its gained slowly. Health often is. I'm not long over 40 - but boy its a slow hard process to keep myself healthy .....hard work, daily effort, constant wise choices - but can be lost with one bad day of eating, or stop working out for a week and boom ....its gone!

In church life - you are constantly battling against values and behaviors that remain self focused. The push to be Kingdom focused and Christ centered is a constant battle. It can take years to break old DNA's and habits.
But slowly and surely with constant teaching, modeling, challenging and coaching movement can happen and safe ground be secured.

But it can all be lost quickly - a foolish decision, a maverick leader, a reckless action, a scandal.

This means that in church leadership we are more marathon runners than sprinters. We are more like artists and poets allowing decisions and actions to perculate slowly and rise over time to maturity than a quick microwave of an idea.

Week 1: health in your church is gained slowly but lost quickly.

My top 10 reads of 2009.

2009-12-23T14:49:00.001-08:00

So here’s my best ten reads of 2009.

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything @ David Dark
When Eugene Peterson endorsed this book by saying “David Dark is my favorite critic of the people’s culture of America and the Christian faith”, I knew I’d like this book.
Read it on a flight to Miami and had fun talking about it with the couple sitting next to me. Multiple pages turned down by me that will require a second read to engage with further. Brought depth to my thinking that can sometimes due to everyday living can become too surface.

Three Cups of Tea @ Greg Mortenson
This crept up nearer the top of my list than I imagined. Struggled with first 50 pages – but then it gripped me. Perhaps it was where I was at and what I was thinking, but this book inspired me to believe that any ordinary guy in any ordinary church could do something global that was extraordinary.

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism @ Timothy Keller
If you have gone through 2009 without some Timothy Keller wisdom spoken into your life – duh!!! The new John Stott of the next generation. Wisdom, insight, solidly biblical and orthodox. A reformed teacher, mentor and preacher and listening to him will only strengthen your faith, keep you well established and yet live in the real world of building the church and extending the Kingdom of God.

ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church @ Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch
This is either my number 1 or my number 2. Came at the right time with enough substance to draw me in. Will become a staff read for our team in 2010 as we make sure the church remains true to its Bride and Head. Often a good book whimpers to a close – the last two chapters helped me as much as the good stuff in the opening chapters.

How (Not) To Speak of God @ Peter RollinsThe purest form of postmodern theology I’ve read since Reforming the Doctrines of God @ Shults. Only this time, unlike Shults, you could make sense of it and it wasn’t 400 pages. This one makes your head spin ….but you know why it’s spinning. While many people have differing views on Peter Rollins and what he’s doing with the Ikon Community in Northern Ireland, his blend of philosophy and theology helps you see the new face of an emerging theology.
His book The Orthodox Heretic is perhaps better ….but you need to start here to appreciate it.
I like a thinker. May not stand with him always, but I like a thinker.

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible @ A J Jacobs
How a secular New York Jew made me laugh a lot. This was a good book. You often wondered what part of the Bible is he's going to try and take literally today …like the stoning of an adulterer in Central Park. Funny ….but it makes a point.

The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture @ Shane Hipps
This one came to me from our Media Arts Director who takes ‘the sacredness of questioning everything’ literally!! Our staff team read it and talked it through (nearly).
An important read. A necessary read. A challenging read.

Killing Cockroaches @ Tony Morgan
A collection of Tony’s blog articles and hence each chapter goes somewhere else and is a circular more than linear book. Appeals to me. Very practical. Neither profound nor theological but a little punchy number on many topics of church leadership. Helps keep focus and diligence in the practical of leadership.

Contrarians Guide to Knowing God: Spirituality for the Rest of Us @ Larry Osborne
It felt a little like this was a retake of Messy Spirituality by the ‘well done good and faithful servant’ Mike Yaconelli. And it is but like Mike’s book it is helpful. It helps us be honest …despite being a pastor and teacher ….praying is hard, and I so often miss what God is saying!! A great book ….average writing, but good material.

The Hole in our Gospel @ Richard Stearns
A great read. The story of Richard Stearns’ journey to becoming the President of World Vision. This was the book that Bill Hybels gave to all his church last year.
My leadership small group went through this book together. Some lines stab you and you know its God behind the stabbing. It didn’t have the feel of a book that laid out the huge problem of world poverty and then made you feel guilty about not doing enough, it more inspired us to make sure our church kept poverty at the front of the line and not pushed further down.

Too Trivial To Be Truth!

2009-10-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

The writings of Dallas Willard are poignant if not pointed. Sharp words, kindly written, that cause even the most mature Christ follower to re-examine their discipleship. His most piercing words, at least for me, were not written but heard in an interview he gave. His quiet voice clandestinely hit me hard and remains the most haunting leadership words I have heard in 2009. Here’s the comment he softly spoke: “Maybe people are not coming to your church because they see it as too trivial to be truth.”

Too trivial to be truth.

Of course there is no church out there that thinks it’s not about the truth.
From the staunch bastions of Conservatism to the dogged Liberal landmark congregations; from the swaying Charismatics to the most staid Dispensationalists; from the solidly Reformed to the fluid Emergents – there’s no congregation and no pastor who does no think that what they are about, what they stand for and the shape of what they hold isn’t about the truth.

But the comment hit on perception by others of us trivializing the truth.

Do we trivialize the truth when we wrap it in three points each beginning with the letter “P”?
Do we trivialize the truth when we bumper sticker our theology?
Do we trivialize the truth when we Daily Bread our Scripture reading?
Do we trivialize the truth when we give 7 steps to a healthy family sermons?
Do we trivialize the truth when we tell God how great he makes us feel in our worship songs?
Do we trivialize the truth when our worship songs talk about me instead of Him?
Do we trivialize the truth when we stick it into a formula – say this and you’re saved?

Too trivial to be truth.

Do we trivialize the truth when we suggest that we have the truth all worked out??
Do we trivialize the truth when we keep the truth irrelevant to how we live and nothing in our lives has been changed for the past 10 years!

Too trivial to be truth.

It pushes you into the deeper questions of substance, authenticity, realness, mystery and depth.

It’s not about whether you use modern songs or classic hymns; media and drama or choir and liturgy.
It’s about something that is greater, deeper, ‘more than us’, being packaged traditionally, modernly, or even postmodernly, in a box that is too human, too formulaic, too all worked out, too one dimensional, maybe two dimensional.

Searchers of faith, seekers – know that the God shaped void in their souls need to be filled with God not our ideas about God or our explanations of God.

Maybe Willard’s comments help us understand why Americans by the millions have walked away from the church – we sit at 12.7% US church attendance on a Sunday morning, a drop of millions in a 25 year period!

If Willard’s words have hit me hard, they’ve caused me to ask new questions.
Not surface questions.
Not easy questions.
How do we clearly present the Gospel yet honor its depth and profundity?
How does a preacher bring help but not appear to have all the answers – which we haven’t got but sometimes have suggested otherwise?
How do we teach our doctrines but leave room for mystery and the unknown?
How do we honor the Word and the Spirit.
How do we explain faith when its sometimes unexplainable?

I guess as the church moved West – it moved towards answers, solutions and systems.
Willard’s comments continue the push back East – to where tension is willingly held; where mystery remains; and where the journey is as important as the destination.

Too trivial to be truth – maybe wiser words than even Willard knows.

Hunt For The Third Way.

2009-09-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

When you live within a polarized society effective leaders have to always hunt to find a third way and then lead towards that.

I grew up in a very polarized Scottish society. On one side were staunch Catholics and on the other side were staunch Protestants. It was like Northern Ireland without the guns – but just as much hate. Every city in Scotland has two football teams. Historically one was a Catholic team and one a Protestant team. It’s in my lifetime that a traditionally Protestant team signed their first Catholic player – the result was a foretaste of Armageddon!

Leaders in this kind of context need to lead away from the polarization and towards a third way.

America has its significant polarization and Christian leaders rather than stay entrenched in a polarized position would be more effective if they lead away from polarization towards a third way.

Some might say that the third way is a compromise.

Let’s take abortion. Two polarized positions – pro-life and pro-choice. America remains not only polarized in these positions but stagnant on any advance to change the stalemate.
A third way (i.e. pro-adoption) is not to compromise life but to present a way through polarization that respects life and engages with the reasons many are pro-choice.

Let’s take war. Two polarized positions – pacifism and just war. Within the Christian community these two positions divide. A third way Anti-War. Not an immediate solution to end present conflict but a new way to move a Christian community forward from polarized positions that are having little impact in today’s global conflicts.

The list could go on.

The philosophy behind it is not new.
The Pentecostal movement developed what’s called the Third Wave – a new middle position away from the polarized views on gifts and signs.

Come to the new polarizing positions within the church – Traditional versus Emergent.
A good/helpful new book just released worth reading – a third way.
Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional @ Jim Belcher.

Tim Keller calls it an important book; Mark Driscoll and Rob Bell (polarized pastors) both call it a helpful book!

It’s the principle of the Third Way.
Effective leaders hunt to find a third way then lead towards it.

There's An Eggtimer Sitting On Your Desk!

2009-08-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

This leadership blog has a very distinct title “Clan of Issachar”. Not for no reason. It communicates an essential skill of effective leadership – discern the times.
Every good leader must be able to read the times and know how to respond. Weak leaders are decades out of fashion or so far in front the vision they cast is too conceptual.
Good leaders learn to ride the wave of history, culture and context.

In this regard there’s a must read book pretty hot off the press God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World @ John Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge.

Some have labeled it a political book; others see it as a diagnosis of modern America. I guess the fact that the co-authors are British writers of The Economist would suggest it might be either but it probably isn’t a theological book. Yet – it is all three. The former two topics are obvious to spot as you read about Obama, Bush and Blair or read quotes from people like Michael Novak, Dwight Eisenhower and H L Mencken to name three strange bedfellows.
But the theological topics and discernments are discerning, stimulating, and somewhat shocking.

By theological I mean the writers ability to highlight how people are believing in God today both locally and globally and how America’s approach to God is becoming the global norm. God is back – and how faiths and countries are handling God is shaping this century.

Church leaders need to read this book. I place it in my top five most helpful reads of 2009.

Unlike other bloggers I’m not about to write another 500 words telling you what the books says – buy the book! (Cheapskates visit Borders and read it before you stick it back on the shelves. Sad folks use Amazons reviews and pretend you’ve read the book!)

Discerning the times. If (as Micklethwait and Wooldridge claim) global religion is embracing a market driven American model we are about to see an explosion (maybe not the best term) of fundamentalism beyond the normal geographical/cultural boundaries of religions.
I’ve suggested before that THE crucial question of this century is “will Islam modernize?” However, to this question we need to add this equally crucial question “Will Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity remain within the market driven culture of evangelicalism and other religions or will they go counter cultural and present an alternative, a clear alternative not just in message but in methods.”
Or to say it in a more direct way: "Will evangelicals see that in this context and this culture the method IS the message."

Failure to do this will see this century a continual battle – a religious war – between two dominant religions wielding the same weapons of market appeal laced with each their own fundamentalism and its excesses and dangers.

There needs to be an alternative. And that alternative is in the realization that our method is the message (to quote Shane Hipps who quotes the iconic Marshall McLuhan).

This is a difficult concept to grasp. Tracing how the message changed as we left the method of an oral culture into the method of a written word culture so in this emerging culture does our method change again – but in so changing the message itself also changes.

There’s much to this idea – worth reading Hipps’ book The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture to explore it more.

There is something in it. Something the church needs to discern as we need to move distinctively different than the movement of religion around the globe.

God is Back serves as an egg counter. The evangelical church, your church, needs to discern the global religious movement and be different – not to preserve the church or the Gospel, but to expand both.

Enjoy the book – leaders need to read it.

What Pastors Do In The Dog Days Of July.

2009-06-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

Here comes the June blog for church leaders:

READ

LEARN

RETHINK

GO FOR IT!

[READ]: There are some excellent books newly off the press that I encourage leaders and pastors to read this summer:

The Hole In Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? @ Richard Stearns
Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge @ Dallas
Willard
How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In @ Jim Collins
God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World @ John
Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge.

[LEARN]: The Hole in Our Gospel - Will help each of us refocus on the fullness of the Gospel.
Knowing Christ Today will teach us the essential need to hold and preach a Gospel of substance (“too trivial to be truth” is Dallas’s haunting words of warning to the western evangelical church).
How the Mighty Fall will teach us that complacency will kill even the most secure and successful.
God is Back will teach the need to hold the big picture of what’s happening with Islam and Christianity around the globe and guide our thinking on being a global church in a flat world.

[RETHINK]: try this video ……..exciting way to rethink how you are missional. http://bit.ly/pBTnW. The old adage defining stupidity as 'doing the same thing over and over and expecting a new result' - can be true for many growing churches. Time to rethink. More innovation needed when the gorwth curve is steep but beginning to slow. Do the rethink.

[GO FOR IT]: this is where we often drop the ball. No more analysis – move to action. Take new steps in September and turn the corner into 2010 with newness, freshness, boldness.

An audacious plan - that worked.

2009-05-12T17:09:00.000-07:00

Rick Warren's famous ditty “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing” is both strategic genius and strategic frustration.
It is genius in that leaders need to remember that followers are crying out for clarity. It is frustration as every leader knows too well there are multiple things pushing to be the main thing.

A few years back we faced this exact dilemma.
We had taken on a congregation that was well intended but classically inwardly focused.
Very quickly we brought an outward focus and a strong Kingdom of God teaching – we serve people who do not yet know Christ. Our constant language was of ‘belong believe become’; ‘a safe place to explore faith and Jesus Christ’.
We worked hard at bringing clarity of vision and purpose.
With focused teaching we emphasized that the main thing was to reach people who did not know Christ. The very essence of what it means to be the church is derived from the church’s origins in the Gospel. “No Gospel - No Church : No Church - No Gospel.”
Week after week we banged that drum – the church exists not for itself but for those outside of Christ.

But we knew we needed to put flesh to our language and theology.

So – we introduced our congregation to the Alpha Course (www.alphausa.org), a ten/twelve week exploration of faith. People were ready – they had the theology, they knew the reasons - but the critical strategic component was giving them something safe and quality they could invite people to. This is the Alpha Course. The sweetness of the Alpha Course is that people don’t invite neighbors and friends to a ten/twelve week course, all they invite them to is a single evening event – then the pastor invites them to go further.
As we urged people to invite their friends we equipped them on how to invite through using the “Becoming a Contagious Christian” course (www.willowcreek.com).
People began to invite. People began to come. People began to find new faith.

But as new people came and as the church got busier – the main thing was harder to hold on to. People needed discipled; ministries needed more volunteers; more staff needed to be hired; everything needed more planning – the church got more complex if not more complicated.

Within 18 months, we felt that the main thing was slipping, we were taking too many forced detours. It was time to do something bold, big and hairy!

We decided to ditch Sunday morning worship services for twelve weeks.
Rather, we’d run the Alpha Course on Sunday mornings in place of our two worship services. We’d take the main thing (reaching lost people) and take the main way we’d seen this happen (the Alpha Course normally taught on Wednesday evenings) and do it at the main time (Sunday morning worship hour when all the congregation attended).
Twelve weeks of no sermon, no worship singing, no ushers, but twelve weeks of the church fully participating in the main thing, at the main time - for everything else there’s normal Sundays!

Here’s how it went:

We took over our Family Life Center building, sat people around tables in groups with trained table leaders, served breakfast burritos at 9am, started teaching the course materials at 9.30am, moved to small group discussion at 10.25am, and ended the morning at 11.00am.

To see eighty-year old church members involved in the main thing – wonderful.
To see over ninety new guests exploring faith – amazing.
To have over forty people make a first time commitment to Christ – true worship.

The clarity of vision that these twelve weeks brought to our church cannot be underestimated. It put everyone on the same page. Everyone saw the new faces. Everyone witnessed the new names being pinned to the cross. Everyone got it.
The following five years have only built off of those crucial twelve weeks.

You doing much reading?

2009-04-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

So I decided that my reading was slipping …..reading to preach but not reading to study.
So I’m on this 100 pages a day pledge. But here’s what I’m observing – I’m more confused than most folk already thought I was.
On my desk being read at the same time are the following books and authors:

The Atonement Debate: Papers from the London Symposium on the Theology of Atonement, edited by Derek Tidball with contributions by Steve Chalke, I Howard Marshall, Joel Green and several others. A worthy read on the atonement debate sparked by Chalke’s earlier book.
Reforming The Doctrine of God @ F. LeRon Shults. This guy is the premier Emergent movement theologian. He penned the Emergent Village’s anti-statement of faith back in 2006.
The Life You Can Save: Acting Now To End World Poverty @ Peter Singer. He’s a mad Princeton bioethicist who advocates infanticide while at the same time wants to eradicate poverty.
Death by Love: Letters From the Cross @ Mark Driscoll – Reformed pastor who loathes the emergent guys.
The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing And Why @ Phyllis Tickle …who Driscoll would strongly disagree with. Actually a very weak book – not worth buying.
Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church @ Michael Horton – editor in chief of Modern Reformation and host of The White Horse Inn radio broadcast who frequently questioning many of the authors above, including strongly questioning my next author.
Repenting of Religion: Turning from Judgment to the Love of God @ Gregory Boyd. A strongly criticized Openist who had hundreds leave the church he pastors over his insightful book The Myth of a Christian Nation.
Add to this some interesting global reading We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work @ Jimmy Carter – and excellent read similar building on his earlier book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. Really appreciate his knowledge of the key players in this conflict.
The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier @ Tony Jones – wild Emergent Village guy.
Being Well When We’re Ill: Wholeness and Hope in Spite of Infirmity @ Marva Dawn – writer and theologian often known to speak out against modernized, seeker type churches – famous for her books critiquing the church worship wars of the past decades.
Prayer Coach: For All Who Want To Get Off the Bench and Onto The Praying Field @ James L. Nicodem. A helpful read for people who want to pray more.
The Principle of the Path @ Andy Stanley …..easy read, one of these ‘duh’ moment books worth running through.
Add in another great Tim Keller book , Brennan Manning’s latest and Michael Frost’s latest, not forgetting the Total Church book by the British guys Tim Chester and Steve Timmis …….am I mixed up or what?

…..and then been sharpening my leadership thinking by reading a leadership a week:

The One Thing You Need To Know….About Great Managing, Great Leading and Sustained Individual Success @ Marcus Buckingham
E-Myth Mastery @ Michael Gerber
Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling @ Andy Crouch
Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration @ Warren Bennis
Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos @ Tim Keel

And then just for fun The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess @ Andrei Codrescu

Each book has something interesting to say and something necessary for me to edit and process.
Sharpens the mind ….but is always secondary to God’s Word.

So what you reading? Blog it, email it or twitter it.

A twitter of a blog!

2009-03-24T16:44:00.000-07:00

So I now Twitter.[Twitter Name: GilbertFoster]
Yep.
140 words – say it with less words.
A real discipline.
But in leadership I'm more and more appreciating the less words route.
This is not the same as me going home and Carolyn wanting to talk to me and I say “can you give me the short version babe” – that’s just bad.

Take for example last week.
I left the office at 11am, drove 25 miles, ate lunch (which I needed to do anyway) with Tim Brown a pastor in Clovis, drove back and was at my desk by 2pm. Three quick, simple hours ….but that relatively short time was so helpful in multiple areas of ministry leadership and thought process.
The week before I’d left home on a late Sunday afternoon, drove 4 hours, slept in an hotel room, sat for 6 hours at a seminar, drove 4 hours home, exhausted for the rest of that day (14 hours total)….and in truth, the 60 minute talk with Tim was more beneficial – short, sweet, 140 word principal.

Short and sweet.
Maybe that’s why 140 word tweets appeal.

So rather than write a really long blog that few will read …here’s my twitter equivalent:

Great article on missional church by Tim Keller:
http://www.redeemer2.com/resources/papers/missional.pdf

Interesting book to read on the history of Emergents:
The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier @ Tony Jones.

Perhaps a balanced critique of the Emergent movement:
http://www.9marks.org/CC/article/0,,PTID314526%7CCHID598016%7CCIID2249226,00.html

Five e-articles on missional church:
http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/the-meanings-of-missional.html

Great short read for Easter Sunday preach:
Jesus, the Final Days: What Really Happened@ Craig Evans & N.T. Wright.

Each was less than 140 words – hope they are helpful.

Shush ...... there's a global financial meltdown going on.

2009-02-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

So I'm recovering from a little surgical procedure and I’m sitting with my feet up not trying to stress my mind too much (doctors orders) …so I watched American Idol 2009 Season 8.
I’m realizing that this recession is pretty vast – its hit American Idol. This must have been the poorest bunch of singers to grace their stage – and these were the finalists out of over 100,000 people who auditioned! They were dreadful (with maybe the exception of Danny Gokey the Milwaukee church choir director and Anoop Desai) this viewing did not aid my recovery ….it would have been less stressful if I had been doing my taxes or reading Joel Osteen – and normally these two rank at the top of my stress inducers!!

Recession.
I’m noticing pretty much a silence coming out of Christian blogs, e-newsletters and magazine/journals on the recession. A little in Sojourners (thanks guys – read a very insightful blog http://blog.sojo.net/2009/02/10/two-kinds-of-recovery by Brian McLaren) but nothing like the noise I thought might have surfaced by now.
Quite interesting - the demise of the Christian influence in my homeland (UK) was when the church stayed silent on the relevant issues and made noise on all the irrelevant issues. That was 25/30 years ago and the UK slipped from 25% evangelical to maybe around 5-6% now. I have always argued that the US is but 25 years behind the UK in the demise of the Evangelical voice and influence. Is our silence on this global recession further evidence I am a prophet of doom!!

So what should Christian leaders be doing or saying in this global economic meltdown and why silence?

Rather strange that the evangelical church has shouted loudly about the morality meltdown in our nation; shouted pretty loudly about religious meltdown in our institutions; shouted pretty loudly when they sniff a possible theological meltdown among their own; some are trying to shout loudly about our environmental meltdown – but astounding silence on this global economic meltdown.

Why?
Is the Western Church as guilty as any in bad spending and living beyond its means, relying on the green-back for our strength, influence and even our success?
Is the American Church – its churches and its congregation members - as much about the dollar as their neighbors?
Is our silence due to our own dependence upon the Benjamin’s?
Maybe we can’t speak into this meltdown because we’ve lost the moral ground to speak from?

Yet – we need to speak into the reality we all find ourselves in. Any church leader removed from reality is not leading.
So where do we start and what do we say?

If we follow the lead of President Obama we need bold and big moves. The money that the US Government is injecting into our economy is money with mindboggling zeros and ordinary person can’t get their heads around. Big and bold.

Maybe the big and bold is to close shop on how we are doing church and rush to a remake of the house-church movement. It could seem that for the latest church guru’s this is highly attractive i.e. Total Church: A Radical Reshaping of the Church around Gospel and Community @ Tim Chester & Steve Timmis (a good book – worth reading).
But reality says the big and the bold is improbable (size and substance has always been a part of US Christianity) and maybe it is unnecessary. Maybe multiple small steps could mean more; maybe more small steps would accomplish more in this economic recession.

Here’s some small steps every church, every pastor, every congregation member could take – these are steps we’re taking as we don’t remain silent about the economic meltdown:

1. Place the present reality within the spiritual teaching of the church. We’re using the wisdom of the Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) to help us. A new series called Spent: When Life’s Got You Max’d. (Helpful graphic and title from Pursuit Resources out of Central Christian in Henderson NV- http://www.pursuit.org/

2. Give real practical teaching and training on getting out of debt – the bottom line reason of most peoples financial issues. We are launching Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University Course – 13 weeks, on brand new evening, with full child care. Senior staff and leaders all involved modeling that this is serious and for everybody. Check out www.daveramsey.com/fpu/home. FPU will see them cut up credit cards, focus on getting out of debt and will keep that focus for long enough that it becomes a habit and they truly do change their financial situation.

3. Model financial changes and modification at the corporate level for all to see. We’ve put our staff on a 50 day no spend; we’ve cut out Sunday refreshments for a few weeks; we’ve put a moratorium on courses and training; we’ve reduced our spending to a minimum – not because we’re broke, but to demonstrate sound fiscal policy making sure we end the first and second quarter ahead not behind. We’re helping every church member see that when you’re in a jam or a crash you can’t keep doing the same thing and except a different outcome – classic leadership motto “in drastic times you have to take drastic action.” This is the big and the bold but it comes in small steady steps.

4. We’re talking about it at leadership level every time we meet; we’re discussing and praying about it at every staff time together; it is staying clearly on the radar screen of our church.

5. We’re guiding people to our Celebrate Recovery ministry for support and help through habits and hang-ups that are characteristics of many peoples economic situation.

6. In pastoral situations we explain we can’t fix their financial crisis, we guide them to organizations that possibly can help them a little, and we help them see that in any meltdown situation – economic, relational, physiological God’s redemption through the door of repentance is the right road ahead.

Maybe these smaller steps by one local church are not loudly heard around the globe – but imagine if church after church after church began to speak, teach and train their people in how to handle finances differently, spend differently, and take the personal big and bold steps in the midst of this meltdown.

Historical Economists tell us there are economical cycles – and this too shall pass. But the wise Christian leader does all he or she can to make sure we learn the big lessons of our historical reality and teach and train people to not return to the cycle – but leave it for a new, biblical Kingdom of God guided economics – debt free and free to give.

So what’s your church doing to speak into this meltdown – speak up, there’s too much silence.

What it takes to be a leader in 2009.

2009-01-28T08:56:00.000-08:00

Leadership in 2009?
How different than 1999 or even 2008?
Enter Thomas Freidman – yet again.
Leadership in 2009 must be global.
If the world truly is flat; if our generation can travel anywhere around the globe within 37 hours; if the global is local – then the measure of our leadership must include the measure of our global-ness.

That’s what it was for Paul back in his day.
With the Pax Romana and the incredible road network Paul’s leadership rose or fell on his seizing the day and expanding the Gospel due to the global conditions around him.
True also for every epoch of the Christian expansion.
Take the Great Awakening.
The revival of the colonies began through the travel of George Whitefield from England. For him the new world now open to receive visitors required him to travel, to be global in his preaching.

The measure of your leadership at this time in the history of our world will include the measure of your global-ness.
To our generation of leaders the responsibility and opportunity of a flat world has been entrusted.

So how you doing leading at a global level – or have you defaulted that to some international mission’s board or travel wired adventurer in your congregation.

So what does global leadership look like?

Here are 5 key features:

1. Our grasp of reality cannot be shrunk to the reality on our doorstep but must engage a global perspective. We cannot be insular in our world view. We need to be the eyes that lead people to seeing things beyond themselves and their corner of the globe.

2. How we interpret Scripture and/or the voices we listen to as we make decisions theologically or philosophically need to reflect the cacophony of color and diversity within a global church. We need to lead in moving the West from only engaging with western thought and idea. We have much to learn from Asian and African scholars and practitioners.

3. We must work to remove any sense of Western superiority within the Christian sphere. Our resources and education does not make us greater than our global brothers and sisters. We are equal – lead your church to seeing that in complete ways.

4. Our missions profile; budget spending; resource allocation should reflect a global church – not just an American church.

5. We need to travel – leaders need to touch the greater world and be touched by it.

So how you doing?
Need help?
Email me (gilbert@reedleyfbc.com)and I’ll help you become a global leader.

The Kingdom of God is always so much bigger than our systems, structures or spheres.

Detox

2008-12-28T14:35:00.000-08:00

So it’s just turned noon and I’m back home from our last Sunday service of 2008. We call it “Simple Church” and on the last Sunday of the year for the past four years we’ve closed down our stage, sound, lights, food booth, resource booth, welcome teams, ushers, trolley driver, musicians, vocalists, camera guy and children’s ministry – rested our tremendously valued volunteers (we need 76 to make Sundays happen – we rest all 76 of them) and we sit in a circle around the communion table. For 60 minutes we quietly pray, hear the Word read and eat communion.

Simple Church ….pulling everything back, take it to the bare bones, a bit like detoxing!

Which is what I am about to do – literally. Thanks to a wonderful procedure I’m due to enjoy on Monday – today I've to swallow a special potion and boom ….my overeating Christmas binge body will be detoxed!!
[You know they had to take the stuff I’ve to swallow off of the shelf because people would literally try using it every month to detox themselves. Hey guys – this privileged potion is the exclusive right of us colonoscopy victims!]

But talking about detoxing.
I’m sitting in Simple Church and I’m thinking – in 2009 could we try a detoxing of the church. Not just strip bare a service from time to time – what would a total detoxing of everything we are about look like.

There’s some stuff out there written on this already. Simple Church @ Rainer; The Big Idea @ Ferguson; or even the old classic The Purpose Driven Church @ Warren.
Strip the church down to the bare essentials and focus on them.

Yet most of the above books aren’t performing detoxing – they’re more doing the slimming thing. Slimming cuts back consumption – number of ministries, number of things you teach.
Detoxing is more radical, deeper.
Detoxing asks questions of the why, not just the what.

Book like Organic Church @ Dale; The Forgotten Ways @ Hirsch or Total Church @ Chester. What’s helpful about these books is the theological exploration they bring to the search. Worth reading.

But come back to the detoxing question.
At its root definition, detoxing is to “get clean of a severe addiction.”
Take this thought into 2009.
I’ve read all the books mentioned – helpful insightful – but I think still blind to some of the insipid addictions evangelicalism has in the West.
In 2009 can we rid ourselves of our ecclesiological addictions?
Here’s a few addictions we have going on:

Addiction to time.
Addiction to copying what someone else is doing.
Addiction to ‘money still talks’.
Addiction to civic/patriotic Christianity.
Addiction to bumper sticker theology.

Simple Church slimming does not remove these addictions.
These addictions are deep within our church cultures.
For decades churches have allowed these habits to permeate our ecclesiology.

To detox.
To get clean of severe addictions.

May our staff and leadership, your staff and leadership drink the potion of God’s Word and Spirit and detox in this coming year.

Leading through paradoxes

2008-11-28T10:26:00.000-08:00

One of the odd things I am discovering is that often churches get the pastor they deserve and pastors get the church they deserve – even when they don’t like each other!
It’s odd.
This is relational sociology 201.
It is true in life.
We get the relationships we magnetically pull.
This is so true.
We complain about people, about politicians, about other people’s kids, about our neighbors dog – but maybe the relationship we have with them is merely a reflection of our own self’s.
We complain about the shows on television – but we watch them.
We criticize the bad movie – that we’ve just finished going to the cinema to see.
We are a paradox of hypocrisy. We have developed skills of double lives.
We live on two tracks of life.
We stole the cookie out of the cookie jar.

So how do we live this paradoxical life and yet lead transformationally?

Or think about this.
How many times have you heard pastors use language that cannot be delivered on?
How many times have we spoken false promises?
Just a few weeks back I recorded how many times our staff guys used the word ‘awesome’ in describing something going on at our church as they tried to encourage people to participate while they gave announcements in one of our services. While the event or the ministry was a good event, unsure if ‘awesome’ was not going too far. That word is now banned from our announcements – as is ‘brilliant’, ‘wonderful’ and ‘incredible.’ We don’t want to mislead the public.
But there is a bigger reason – apart from shrinking some words, maybe we’ve begun to believe that it actually is ‘awesome’, ‘brilliant’ or ‘incredible’.
This is not so much a paradox of hypocrisy; rather it is a paradox of exaggeration.

Both our hypocrisies and our exaggerations are the enemies to leading transformationally.
Yet we cannot flee such, they are the human factor we are stuck with, we need to lead through them.
Effective, transformational leadership always leads through not around.

I’ve only got two suggestions as to how to deal effectively with our paradoxes:

1. Be fully recognizant of it – just knowing that you have this bias to hypocrisy and exaggeration helps you work through it. Be honest.
2. Listen to your spouse more often – my wife’s antenna to pick up on both hypocrisy and exaggeration is hot!

Anyone got more suggestions?

The Gospel Makes it Possible to Have Such a Radically Different Life

2008-11-08T15:13:00.000-08:00

The gospel makes it possible to have such a radically different life.

Listen to the words of a lady who grasped how amazing the gospel is:

If I was saved by my good works then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would like a taxpayer with “rights” – I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if I am a sinner saved by grace – then there’s nothing he cannot ask of me.
[Timothy Keller, The Reason for God p183.]

I love that quote. She’s got it.
It is these radical asks of grace that make the Christian life so radically different – because when God asks he empowers.

This asks are beyond the realms of human or natural boundaries. In his grace he asks us to forgive those who wrong us. In his grace he asks us to trust him even when the darkest cloud hovers over us. In his grace he asks us to give – even our last dollar. In his grace he asks us to turn the other cheek. In his grace he asks us to forego how the world defines success – give up for his values and his Kingdom.
In his grace he asks us to die to self and live for his kingdom and his gospel.

And when get this you begin to live a radically different life – a life that some don’t understand. But what a life.

So why are so many Christians living dull, ordinary lives.
Maybe it’s because they have assumed they are saved by their works and they refuse therefore to let God ask anything of them.

But maybe these works are different than we think. Sometimes our ‘works’ are our biblical knowledge, or our “daily devotional time” or our ‘Bible study”. We’re not doing door to door work like some cults but so often we default into a works based salvation and we miss the radical call of grace….we stop listening to it too busy doing our ‘works’.

Of course nobody would ever confess this. But the evidence is in the ordinariness of our living. Christians are boring. Christians are just like everybody else. The words ‘radicals’ and ‘revolutionaries’ are absent from all but a few. [Take Jake and Renée. Living in Guadalajara to then head to Guatemala to plant a church …..with their little daughter and no money!! …check out their blog @ jakenrenee.blogspot.com - radicals.]

Grace more than knowledge, more than theology, more than church activity, more than Christian piety makes you open to do whatever God asks. Risk, boldness, radicalness…are products of grace not of works.

So Christ followers out there ….live in grace …it’s an adventure. Read about it; learn about it; but most of all live it.
So church pastors out there ….. teach grace; saturate your campus with grace; model it …it will transform your congregation.

The gospel makes it possible to have such a radically different life.

Dare we even suggest - why vote?

2008-10-30T11:19:00.001-07:00

So I thought I could make it through this election season without blogging about it. Nearly.
Six days short of my goal.

But why?

Is it because I just discovered that attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund want pastors to endorse a candidate from the pulpit so they can engage in a legal challenge against the IRS rules taking it all the way to the Supreme Court to win the right for pastors to speak freely from the pulpit?
Is it because everyone else is talking about it so why don’t I join in?
Is it because prophetic speech about political stuff is an essential part of the Christian identity?
Is it because I’d prefer one candidate to win over the other?
Is it because some Christian's contributions to the debates are just downright unchristian and I’d like to disassociate my name from that sort of junk?

Maybe. To all of them.

Maybe the whole show has just got too much for me. We’ve gone crazy. Beyond the money, the rallies, the reality TV, the books about each candidate, the pundit’s thoughts, and the yard signs, the late-night comedian’s lines, and the latest polls – it’s begun to feel like a giant American Idol contest…..but the danger is there’s no Simon to tell us the truth.

Or perhaps there’s something else.

Why Vote?

Imagine standing in the pulpit the Sunday before the elections and daring to ask that question?

Some will jump to their feet and declare – we fought hard to win that right ..taking it back to running out the English and declaring constitutional independence.
Some might rise to their feet and declare that the civil rights struggle was about obtaining for everyone the right to vote.
Other will declare that democracy is American and America is Christian therefore you need to vote to be a good American and you need to vote to be a good Christian.

But I’m not even coming from that angle.

Why vote?

Maybe alongside whatever other reason we have for voting, we vote as some form of social action. In this election our voting could save lives – soldiers and unborn; our voting could feed the hungry; our voting could protect the environment; our voting could provide health care for needy people etc, etc.

This is my issue.
For too many Christians voting is the only form of social action they carry out. But it’s the weakest form, if not the most ineffective form. Christian social action is never secret, is never private, is never individual. It is never the action of public opinion. Christian social action is always communal, it is always public, it is always unpopular. More than that, and this is the biggest issue – Christian social action is not through the benevolence of the State or through majority opinion – it is through the sacrifice of the church and its people.

So ….we expect record voter turnout in this 2008 election – millions of them will be Christians.
Somehow, some way, prophetic pastor-leaders need to make sure that these same millions know that voting is not their social action.
Somehow, some way pastors need to delineate between political action and Christian social action. And if the surest way to delineate is to appeal to people not to vote – maybe you’ve done a greater good.

'Better Christians" go into Africa - that's just how it is.

2008-10-20T20:18:00.000-07:00

Let’s stay away from guilt.
Let’s stay away from heart tugging photographs of starving AIDS ravaged children.
Let’s stay away from even Jesus’ teaching to go into all the world.
Let’s stay away from James’ exhortation to care for the orphans is pure religion.

Here’s something really interesting…….
As our church has begun to send dollars and people to Africa – our monthly giving has gone up!
As our church has taken big steps in being global and turning our focus to new continents and new countries – more and more people have begun to come to our church searching for faith!
As our church has devoted time and attention to people in need 10,000 miles away – our church has never been busier!
As our church has helped people connect with people beyond our borders – we’ve seen more doors open within our community to extend the Kingdom of God.

I love this about God.
You can’t out give Him; you can’t out work Him; you can’t out do Him.
The more you sow - it seems the more you reap.
The more you give – it seems the more you receive.
The more you go – the more He comes.

It changes how you lead a missional church.
Maybe becoming a missional church is not singularly focusing on reaching more lost people, but maybe it more about focusing on forming ‘better Christians’ than just ‘more Christian’.

If you’re only about making ‘more Christians’, you’ve shrunk the church down to a local organization concerned about the individual often for the sake of the church. But, if you aim to form ‘better Christians’, you’ve expanded the church to be a catalyst for the good of the world – concerned about both the individual and the world in which the individual exists.

‘Better Christians’ (to use a Brian McLaren phrase) are at the heart of church growth. Don’t take McLaren’s word for it; if you’re familiar at all with the Willowcreek REVEAL study – it says much the same thing. The heartbeat of a growing healthy church are not new converts or ‘more Christians’ – but ‘better Christians’. These are Christians that have a bigger view of the church, a bigger view of salvation, and a kingdom theology.
‘Better Christians’ take seriously the great commission.
‘Better Christians’ go beyond individualism to globalism.

So here’s a very practical invitation. Become a missional leader by becoming yourself a ‘better Christian’ – orphans, AIDS, poverty, Africa.
Some GHC churches are already involved in Nairobi, Kenya and can connect you and your church to incredible indigenous leaders doing incredible Kingdom work.
Join a GHC pastor next year in Africa to see the role you could lead your church to play in bringing the Kingdom of God to earth.

To explore this further email Pete Shaw at pete@CrossWalkNapa.org or myself at gilbert@reedleyfbc.com – both church web sites link you to videos and blogs about what’s happening. Worth checking out.

Grow a church through developing ‘better Christians.’

What's most needed for leading in today's church - a brain ...but??

2008-09-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

So we’ve moved into what some people call The Conceptual Age. For those who promote such a reality (i.e. Tom Peters and Thomas Friedman, to name two) this new era is pronounced with three simple yet profound questions:

1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
2. Can a computer do it faster?
3. Am I offering something that satisfies the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age?

These three questions, first posed by Daniel Pink, have been rattling around in my thinking for the past few months. What is the Conceptual Age saying to church and to church leaders?

But let’s not be too modern in our engagement with this question. Rather than straight line these questions, let’s take a curved approach. What are some of the animations of the new age? (Again Pink is helpful here.)

• Creation of artistic and emotional beauty.
• Crafting a satisfying narrative.
• Combining seemingly unrelated ideas into something new.
• Embracing high touch; empathize with others; understand subtleties of human interaction; to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

This list could go on, but the amazing thing for every pastor or church leader in examining these animations is that the Church and the Gospel checks out high on each of them.
Everything the Conceptual Age calls out for – the Church and the Gospel can more than deliver on.

The Church and the Gospel should be fully impactful in the new age.
This is our time.

BUT ….for leaders to charge full speed into this new conceptual age leaders need to flick the switch from left brain to right brain. This is the challenge. Most of our churches and most of our denominations or organizations are led by left brainers. But, left brain will leave you short every drive.
This is the right brain time.

Strategic plan – out; holistic design in.
Church growth theory – out; journey in.
Goals - out; synthesis in.
Data and information – OK; but organizational and behavioral empathy better.
Size - says something; depth says something more.

So what could this look like in a local church setting?

While there will remain the need for making plans and having tactics, new aspects of church will emerge ….local church global involvement. Not the surrendering of this to a para-church missions organization, but the local church doing it. Community care – bigger than pastoral care, but community care that meets the needs of the community at large, not the community within. Planting churches, but churches that not only preach and teach but feed and care and heal and work for justice. Holistic design.

Theories, formulas, models of how it all works are out ….its the journey, the story, the narrative specific to your context, your thumbprint, your DNA. Each one will be distinct, each one will be compelling. But don’t try to replicate someone else’s story. Journey is in.

It’s about seeing, more than goals. It’s about art more than math’s. It’s about music more than science. The difference – art, music, seeing …are much more subjective, more relational. This pushes us away from the flat lines of goals, to the symphony of metaphor.
And …..it is done with feeling, with soul, more than with targets or data. This is synthesis, this is empathy.

Instead of seeking to grow a large church, the church will see the health of reproduction over production. This is the size of health. This is depth.

It’s a new day in church leadership. The shift is subtle.
It happens through fermentation.
But …it’s the way of the now.
It’s our day.

Make the shift.
Change your thinking.
Welcome to the labyrinth of effective church leadership.

Summer of '08 Leadership Learns

2008-08-28T09:37:00.000-07:00

It’s been a few weeks now since I wrote this leadership blog. Traveled many thousand miles, been in several countries, and enjoyed family time making sure that my Scottish accent remains loud and clear!!!

From a beach in Majorca, to the glens of the homeland, to the post-segregated Northern Ireland ……this summer gave me new experiences, experiences that offered leadership insights and developments. Yea we read many books ..but some of our most vivid summer leadership learning’s came from our locations.

Think about this.
Scottish people can cope with the 260 days of rain they get – if for two weeks they can fly away and soak up some glorious sunshine on some Spanish island.
260 hard days made bearable with 14 days of sun!
Leadership Learn - Sounds sociologically a version of Kotter’s short term win leadership strategy. Celebrate a win to help people stick with the mountain climb of change.
When last did you give your people some sunshine amidst the wind and storms.

Think about this.
We visited Northern Ireland to preach in Belfast, but on the Saturday we took a taxi ride up the Falls Road …and the taxi driver was an ex-IRA guy!
You maybe don’t know all about the issues in northern Ireland. But you’ve heard of the IRA and know that they were responsible for the innocent killings of many over years of the bloody conflict. They were a paramilitary organization wanting Northern Ireland to cease being part of the Union and join with the South – they used weapons to advance their cause. Now there’s more to it that that – but that’s the gist of it.
So we ‘re being driven up the Falls Road – a staunch IRA street …covered with photo’s of IRA hunger strikers and other paramilitary heroes and we’re listening in to the story of the troubles and the present through the opinion of an ex-IRA guy. This was a city where if you worn blue in a green area, or green in a blue area you’d be shot at! WOW!!
Leadership Learn - peace and progress can look very different that you imagined! Have you caricatured what peace and progress looks like and in so doing you’ve closed your mind to how that actually might look in the present. Who do you now consult with, listen to, befriend that you never imagined you would …or perhaps you haven’t …..take the risk. We were being driven around the Falls Road area by a taxi driver wearing green and we didn’t have a stitch of green on!!!!
Secondly – the story is very different when you hear it from the other side. Truth might be stranger than you think. The story we heard was from his perspective was the real story. It was how he viewed reality. The job of effective leadership is to help people view reality differently.
Leadership is managing differing realities while moving everyone towards a new reality.

Think about this:
We complain about $5 price of gas …..but it cost me $14 a gallon in the UK!!! So everything there is about fuel efficiency. Weird seeing GM or Ford try to sell a car here promoting it as getting a good, ‘here’s why you should buy this car’ 32mpg ……..the equivalent car in the UK or Europe would get around 45/48mpg!! Some argue its because of our US emissions requirements; some argue its because of the weight we require our vehicles to have for safety ….but the bottom line …we could if we really wanted to manufacture cars that have exceedingly greater fuel efficiency.
The point, the Leadership Learn – what could we do if we really wanted to.
There’s an old African proverb “Want something long enough and you don’t want it.”What is it you are saying you want but you don’t yet have …and question if you truly want it!

As for more summer 08 leadership learning’s?
Two more short ones -
A quote from Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission – “Jesus did not ask the disciples for what was needed, he just asked for what they had!” very helpful - made me and our team quit complaining about what we didn't have!
Secondly , Ax-i-om @ Bill Hybels …read it.

Got the time? Hit the blog response and let us in on any leadership learning’s you had this summer.

It has to always come back to the Kingdom of God - always.

2008-06-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

It's not often I publish on this blog what is on http://www.scottishpastormusings.blogspot.com/ .....but today I do. Keep thinking and keep reading below..........

So it’s a balmy early summer evening and we’re sitting around the barbeque enjoying a Saturday evening when one of the group pop the question ‘Gilbert, what do you think of California’s recent law allowing gay marrage?’

For those who read this blog across the pond and have no idea what this is all about let me explain. In May California Supreme Court past a ruling giving the right to marry to same-sex couples, making CA the second state, after Massachusetts to legalize marriage for same-sex couple.

In light of the Supreme Courts action some Christians have started talk of a renewed drive for a U./S. constitutional amendment. Other Christians have spoken of how ‘this decision puts marriage at risk all across the nation”, others suggest churches should ‘work to overturn it.’

The question hung over our barbeque waiting a response.

Now the front door of that question requires me to talk about homosexuality and marriage. Basic issue - definition of marriage and who defines it – the state or the church?
Or – both.
Is it wrong for the state to define marriage one way and the church define it another way?
Can marriage only be a religious institution or can it be a secular institution.
Who are the guardians of marriage – and what marriage?
Are we always talking about the same thing.

The single issue driven political culture of the US is a difficult place to engage in a balanced debate. Single issues tend to lead to singular answers …and singular answers though maybe right are not always the only answers.

So take the common response of Christians – gay marriage is wrong. Of course it is in the eyes of God and the eyes of His followers. God’s sacrament of marriage is between one man and a one woman. As a Christian that’s how the Bible says it and that’s how the Christian should see it.
But what about marriage as seen through the eyes of humanists or secularists or even plain deists – what definition of marriage do they need to hold – the Christian definition or the state definition. Or to ask this another way – what definition of marriage does the state need to hold – only the Christian definition, or could it hold multiple definitions due to the pluralistic and multiplicity of our culture.

Should the church, should Christians, expect their view to be the only view.

So the front door question maybe isn’t the front door question. Maybe the real front door question is – what is the relationship of Christians in America to America?

Enter the theology of the Kingdom of God.
You do not define Christianity through American history or American policy – you define Christianity through the scripture and scripture majors on a ‘kingdom theology’.
Is this not all about why Jesus came …. “Repent for the Kingdom of God has come.”
It’s the template theology of Christianity.
The Christian prayer is a demand prayer “your Kingdom Come!”
The Kingdom of God defines how Christians living in America relate to America.
The Bottom line …….the Kingdom of God is an alternative kingdom and Christians leave one kingdom (the Kingdom of this World – America) to enter the Kingdom of God – on earth but marching to the beat of another drummer. Jesus himself told Pilate (the representative of the Empire), “My Kingdom is not of this world”

Early Christians never tried to overthrow or even reform the empire, but they also weren’t going along with it. Never were the early Christians reformists offering the world a better Rome. They offered people another world altogether.

So ….bring this back to our gay marriage issue …….yes, the Christian holds to the biblical teaching on marriage –between one man and one woman - but, the Christian does not expect America to be Christian. Christians expect America to live out its own values and its own believes. And they are not Christian because America, or Britain, or anywhere is not the Kingdom of God …the Kingdom of God is always subversive, always counter cultural, always working within and away from the kingdom of the world……..the Christian holds to what the Bible says – but in holding to the same Bible the Christian does not expect the kingdom of this world to hold to such. The Christian is not trying to reform America to offer a better America – the Christian is offering something completely different, revolutionary, another kingdom – God’s.

Tony Campolo once wrote “we may live in the best Babylon in the world …but it is still Babylon, and we are called to come out of her.” This is the right outworking of a true Kingdom of God theology. This is John’s revelation being practiced, this is the Book of Revelation done today not waited for some future dispensation.

This guides how I handle the gay marriage debate.

Of course you might recognize this is another form, a cousin of this position – the separation of church of state.
Its funny how many church people strongly endorse this philosophy but on something like gay marriage that philosophy is thrown out! Wise Christians support separation of church and state for the church’s sake – not the country’s. Remember Constantine …the disaster that befell the church when it gained power in the State …never again – God forbid.
A strong kingdom theology upholds this essential separation.

But of course our barbeque engagement with this question didn’t stay at a kingdom theology level. It is my strongest argument to let the state be the State and the Church even stronger be the Church – the primary agent of the Kingdom of God.

But there are other paths to explore.

The cry of a moral argument is often used. Maybe rightly so. But watch how you outwork that cry.
Sometimes the loudest voices condemning gay marriage are Christian voices driven by a Christian morality. But where are those voices condemning the bombing of innocent lives in the multiple wars we are engaged in. Where are those voices condemning the inequality in our own nation’s health care provisions – the rich enjoy it the poor can’t get it, or our own nations education divisions. Where are those moral voices engaging with the our immigration crisis …the moral voices that see all men as created equal and equally valued. So the list could go on.

If people, Christian people want to engage with the gay marriage debate from a Christian moral position at least make sure that your moral position is not one-sided based upon some condemnatory preaching you’ve sat under. Make sure the morality is a godly morality …..a godly morality that is enraged with the injustice, the inequality, the oppression of innocents, the rejection of basic human dignity and value on the poorest, the innocents, the most vulnerable.

We could take this one a lot further – but I’m guessing you’re catching my drift.

It appears that too often our view of truth is biased.
Biased to our subjective experiences and conditioning.
That’s our reality.
Not wrong, but not always good.
We are subjective people.
We read and view life through the lens of our lives conditioning.

Today, as at all times in the advancement of the church and the Kingdom of God, Christians need to strive to surrender their conditioning to the text rather then submit the text to their conditioning. That surrendering will see Christians move from a moralist stance to a revolutionarist stance. It’s not that our morals are wrong – far from it - but it does mean our morals are not the whole story. There is something bigger.

So the barbeque evening rolled on, the kids got restless, all the food was gone and the cool breeze guided us towards home and rest.
As for the question ……you can tell it moved. It moved from being a question on “gay marriage”, to a question on truth…and how Christians live it, preach it, share it.
One word from the early church begins to surface – μαρτυρε – martyr. It means witness. Literally, ‘one who bears witness by their death’. In the early church Christians didn’t only want to live like Christ, they wanted to die like Christ. That living and that dying didn’t revolve around reforming Rome or defending morality – it revolved around the bigger thing ….the witnessing and confessing of allegiance to a new kingdom – God’s Kingdom.
For that they didn’t gain political office nor seek to get their issues on the ballot – for that they got burned alive, eaten by the beasts, crucified upside down ….martyred.
So let’s return to the question ……….. are you martyring or willing to be a martyr?

The Church is both one and more than that.

2008-05-26T20:31:00.000-07:00

The other day after preaching a guy from out of town came up to me and after thanking me for the service told me that ‘the church needs to go back to what it was in the New Testament.’
Now this isn’t a new idea to me. I grew up in a tradition that would have you convinced that they were the closest thing to the early New Testament church.
Of course my response to the guy who said it to me …was the classic reply. "Hey man, I’ve just finished an eleven week series on 1st Corinthians – do you really think we should try to get back to that!"
It was the classic reply. Still perhaps the best reply.
[For an interesting, though slightly naive modern look at the question of getting back to the New Testament kind of church read Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna. I say slightly naive because I don't think the book resolves anything, nor does it present a good hermeneutic of history - but, it is certainly interesting.]

But ever since that conversation – questions are rattling around in my head. Leadership questions. Maybe even primal pastor leadership questions.

What is it we are leading …and how do we know we are leading it to the right thing.

Two years ago our church leadership took an adventurous strategic step and we completely redesigned our Sunday services. This was the highly visible catalyst of an even bolder plan to see our church become what we feel it should become in the future years. Wise leadership knew we would end up somewhere so it’s probably best to think through where we would prefer to end up.
But, and this was an essential but …..before we pulled the trigger we spend time, dialogue and study on what theologically is a local church. Beyond our strategic plans, beyond our new design and direction ….peel it all back, strip it down to its birthday suit – what is a local church??

Now this is when this blog begins to get interesting. Stick with me.

Pastors have to first and foremost be theologians. Too many churches set sail on tides of culture, popularity, or reducing church down to the capitalistic mindset of ‘if it produces more people it must be right.’ Yet, it must be theology that guides our leadership.
Calvin rightly taught we are theologian’s first, preachers second.

[The sad thing about most US seminaries or at least their students – they major on subjects that are ‘easier’ than the core biblical theology classes. I remember a fellow student plotting their way through seminary to avoid all the ‘hard courses’ which seemed to always be the theology – either pure or biblical theology courses.]

So as theologian’s pastors have to lead church leaders to examine what it is we are leading.
Simple.

Not.

Pastor-Theologians or Theologian-Pastors offer differing models of church governance – Episcopalian; Presbyterian, Congregationalism, etc - from the one Bible.
Pastor-Theologian or Theologian-Pastors offer differing models of church functioning – Alexandrian model, Antichan model, Jerusalem model – from the one Bible.
Pastor-Theologians or Theologian-Pastors offer differing models of church mission – attractional, engagement, seeker, emerging, incarnational, house church etc, etc – from the one Bible.
Pastor-Theologians or Theologian-Pastors offer differing models of church community - ecumenical model, confessional model or missional model - from the one Bible.
Even the newest emerging church Pastor-Theologians or Theologian-Pastors on the block offer differing models of the new way of churches – Deconstruction model, Pre-Modern model, open Anabaptism model or Foundationalist model. [See interesting blog http://gatheringinlight.com/2008/01/13/the-four-models-of-emerging-churches.]

Every differing model under gird by theology and outworked by pastors birthing churches that look theologically and ecclesiologically distinctively different

So how does a pastor lead effectively when theologians speak differently?
How does theology shape our leadership if theology offers multiple outcomes?

Some might suggest that we go the route of applied theology – that trumps pure theology.
Others suggest we should place a socio-historical or a social-cultural template over our pure theology to explore our right model.

Or ….maybe there’s another angle.

The acceptance of one gospel, many forms – one church, many forms.

Maybe all those models are there, will always be there. Maybe it’s not so much about applied theology, socio or historio interpretation. Maybe there is only one church – but there are clearly different forms in which that one church can be expressed.

Take our cue from the gospel.
Tim Keller writes an intriguing article in Leadership Journal Spring 2008 entitled “The Gospel In All Its Forms.” His premise – like God, the Gospel is both one and more than that.
Take that cue and turn it earth-wards – like God, like the Gospel – the church is both one and more than that.

The job of the Theologian-Pastor is to ensure that the ‘more than that’ is still solidly encased within the ‘one’. The one is not dependent upon applied theology, socio nor historio interpretations – the pastors job is to ensure the one is pure…and then with the one pure – design and interpret in any way that makes the
The church is both a simple formulation and yet multiple contextual presentations. The latter is the linguistic applied theology of the former pure theology.

The pastor leads by outworking both. This means he knows Corinthians, but he doesn’t stay in Corinth. He takes the one he learns in Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus…all over Asia Minor and then knowing the one he outworks the multiple that relates most to his or hers socio, historio and cultural context.

The danger – no theology, only pure theology, only applied theology.

Three hours later, one Thursday morning.

2008-04-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

For 3 hours one day recently I sat with several other pastors and we debated and discussed the Emerging Church movement and the rise or not of postmodernity within our day and generation.
I enjoyed it very much.
I had the privilege to lead the discussion and on a topic that intrigues me I had the chance to dig deeper into to try and lay out a balanced and fair critique.

I then returned to my office to write and email to a dear friend in Kenya who lead the Kenyan church in a countrywide tour of reconciliation (check out his blog of some incredible events - http://msafara.wordpress.com ), and I read again the struggles of displaced peoples, injustice, families left with nothing and the key role of my friend in brining hands on, real help to real people.

…..and I couldn’t help but wonder ….did our emerging church discussion add any value to the Kingdom of God. It seemed removed from the real world – cerebral, academic, and too removed.

This wasn't helped by one of the pastor friends as he left saying "I didn’t understand a word you said!”

So how do we ensure that our days are spend in true kingdom extending, valuable ministry and not deflected to mere genealogies or boring administration etc, etc?

How many times that does happen in ministry? We write reports, we attend committee meetings, we do constant emails, we meet Board deadlines, we write more reports, we answer more emails, and we attend more committee meetings.
Give us the real stuff of kingdom leading!!

But then we have to ask further, maybe more analytical questions.
Is administration stuff not kingdom stuff also?
Could a 3-hour discussion on emergent theology not be critical to forming a strong ecclesiology without which we could be floating around in naivety let alone ineffectiveness?

[Maybe here I’m leaning again back to my last blog. Is most effective ministry not ministry that is placed within a broader, bigger, comprehensive ministry?]

So let’s return to my Kenyan friend.
He’s helping displaced Kenyans, he’s mobilizing the Kenyan church to model reconciliation, he’s working constant on the front line of a national crisis with the truth of Jesus Christ and the Gospel. BUT ……..he’s not doing that in isolation for the sort of things sometimes we see as getting in the way of ministry – long dialogical meetings, deep theological reflection, major administration and management support, clear systems and processes in place.
Rather than see them as hindrances to ‘real ministry’ we have to see them as crucial catalysts to effective ministry.
As practitioners we live in this tension.
Even as long ago as my first time through seminary …I went into seminary seeing it as a nuisance – “Why can’t I just begin preaching”.
But wisdom prevailed (if you give it a chance it always will) and seminary became a learning zone important to effective future ministry.

So in daily, weekly church life. The countless emails, the staff reports, the diligence to systems and management – they all deepen the impact of your ministry.

Let’s take our church’s glocal initiatives – When I Grow Up. Three initiatives in three countries all helping children. This idea could not fly without a strong theology undergirding it, countless hours of planning, strategizing; and it will not remain impactful without strong systems and management processes.

The rub however, or the contest …is to make sure you hit the right balance.
Larry Bossidy & Ram Charam wrote a book back in 2002 called “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done". On first read you might think their philosophy is quit all the strategy, all the planning, all the techniques and just do it, but this would be to misread their philosophy. Their leadership philosophy is that execution must be built into the company’s strategy, its goals and its culture. Execution flows out of good management and developed systems. It is the result of all the stuff we see as a nuisance.

We are aware that we can hold out too long for execution. We are holding out for the 4-star, bells and whistle plan. This can swing the pendulum too much towards management and systems. Rather we often now go with a 2-star plan that we can execute in the near future but still the out working of satisfactory systems and management in place.

It’s learning to live in the tension zone.

We need execution, but execution not adrift from effective systems and comprehensive thinking. It is the latter that enables the former to produce.

I used to be a banker. I saw so many small businesses go south – not because they weren’t great at their craft or their skill …but because they had lousy systems in place. You need both to move from good to great.

So let’s return to our 3-hour dialogical discussion of the Emergent Church.
Better things to do? Things that would add more kingdom value to our Thursday morning? OR ……gaining insight and knowledge about culture and the emerging of a new ecclesiology to meet this new culture (depending on which side of the EC debate you sit on), could be crucial to enable any execution of any front line ministry in the coming years ahead.
By itself ….it is meaningless, but attached to thinking, implementing leaders it could be transformational.

One Thursday morning could see years of impact and expansion. Effective missiology, flows out of developed ecclesiology built upon a true and discerning theology.

Maybe not next Thursday …..but I’m happy for another 3 hour discussion soon to help me better be a front line kingdom builder.

How many days stock of grain does the world have left?

2008-03-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

Political leaders follow – they don’t in fact lead.
They follow popular culture.
The question that pastors and church leaders have to ask is – who then is calling the shots; who is determining the prevailing values?

I’m finishing off a rather unusual read for me - A New Kind of Conservative by Joel C. Hunter -and Hunter speaks a little into this very issue.

(These days I’m reading more political books in my attempt to pull together reading material that we will suggest to people as the heat builds up in the US’s quest for its next President - books to help people think about politics with the mind, love and concerns of Christ.)

Hunter suggests that “whoever is putting forth the ‘big ideals,’ which come from the big ideas, are the thought leaders of the culture.”

This makes me rather anxious. I don’t know of too many pastors who live with the big ideas.

I don’t know many pastors who live in the realm of the big.

Most pastors I meet live in the realm of the local.
They are experts on all things local.
Every day they engage with myriads of stuff all relating to their staff, their congregations, their church, their community – but few live in the local with a good grasp of the big.

Yet, effective Kingdom leaders will live closely with the big.

Here’s a few of the big that I think pastors have to better live with:

Will Islam modernize?
Will China continue to expand?
Will geographic tribalism redraw the world map?
Will environmentalism and the changing climate determine most other issues?
Will gas or water be the most influential commodity?
Will the predicted population explosion to 9 billion by 2050 cause the food and energy crisis also predicted?
Will the church embrace the conceptual age?
Will AIDS ravage Asia the way it has Africa?

The questions could go on………
These are some of the dominant questions.

In coming months and years these big issues will become the currency of political discussion, debate and policy. But, church leaders need to engage with them before politicians get to them. Church leaders cannot be followers, we must be leaders.

Imagine if every church leader in the over 300,000 US churches spoke into the big questions – how much could we influence prevailing values which politicians follow after.

The church needs to begin to speak the language of the big not just the local.

But we speak the language of the big in the context of the local.
We redefine reality for people. We lift people out of their local world and help them see a bigger reality, a bigger world.

This is core to the Gospel. The Gospel is about the world.
The most memorized bible verse – 3:16 …..places the Gospel within the cosmos not simply the local or the individual.
Church leaders have shrunk not only the world, but the Gospel.
Too small a world – too small a Gospel.

May pastors become learners of the world.
May pastors be leaders who know the big questions.
May pastors be leaders who lead well in the local by helping people see the big.
May pastor influence the big by leading the big in the local.

Do you know that we only have 40 days of grain to feed the world left in stock!
Do you care?
Does it speak into how you lead?

Spiritual Formation and a Diet Pepsi

2008-02-29T11:21:00.000-08:00

This year for Lent I decided to give up soda. The spiritual activity that prepares us to truly celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the excruciating sacrificial death of being crucified ….and I am giving up soda! WOW!

You don’t need to tell me, I myself, feel such a wimp!
Even worse, I’m really struggling. I’ve lost count of how many lunch times I’ve craved a cold Diet Pepsi. We’re only just past half way and if I didn’t think God could see me – I’d quit.

Today I was reading of an older Christian guy from the US who moved to Kenya. He went there not as a pastor or as a church leader but simply as a helper. He and his wife gave up everything they had here and moved to Kenya just to help, to do whatever is needed. Due to what’s happened in Kenya over the past few weeks they are living as displaced persons in a foreign country with nothing. Although they could have come back to the US they have chosen to stay and stay because of Jesus. And I’m struggling to not have a Diet Pepsi!
[Check out this blog-site to keep you involved with an amazing Msafara by Kenyan pastors http://msafara.wordpress.com/ as they lead the healing and reconciliation in Kenya.]

This kind of story to highlight my wimpiness could be retold a thousand times and more by huge heroes of the faith.

So here’s the odd thing. I feel a wimp for just giving up soda. I feel a total wimp for struggling to give it up. Yet, every lunch time when I deny the urge and drink water with my Subway I receive this incredible spiritual high! (I hope it’s not because at my core I’m Scottish, and an ex-Scottish banker and the buck I’ve saved at lunch time is really my reason for this spiritual high.)

How strange is spiritual formation?!
How strange is the discipline of denial? It seems too relative!
Compared to what my friends displaced in Kenya are doing and giving, my wimpish Lent denial seems utterly nothing.
Yet, for us both at nearly the opposite ends of the denial spectrum …we meet the same God, we receive the same spiritual strengthening.

I know this to be true because I know of extreme times in our lives when Carolyn and I have given up huge things – family, country, and career. And the amazing thing – in giving up my Diet Pepsi the victory I sense from that gives me a similar spiritual experience as when we gave up our jobs to follow Christ.

Weird!
Or is it more - wonderful!!!

How neat is our God?
He views the ordinary and the extraordinary as both means of grace to reveal himself to us.
God meets us equally in the small as well as the big!

This is the theology of grace.
Jesus once told a parable that astounds everybody. Some guys are hanging out waiting for work and early in the morning they’re hired. Later in the day some other guys get hired – like the middle of the afternoon. At the end of the day – those who worked from early morning to sundown and the guys who work only a few hours – all get the same pay!
[Check out Matthew 20]

Grace is not only how we receive God’s salvation, it’s also how we live in His salvation.

It’s the theology of the body …..the hidden or small parts are of equal value to the prominent big parts!

This is God.
I love this about God.
You can experience God washing your pots and pans …as much as having done a 40 day prayer and fasting exercise.
You can experience God in the high of an intense worship service …but also singing in the shower.
You can experience God in giving up everything to go and serve him in some foreign country …..and also by struggling to give up soda for Lent.

It’s as if God is inviting all to experience him – at all times, everywhere, in everyway!

Turns out that thorn in the flesh might be a good thing after all!

2008-02-19T11:14:00.000-08:00

So I used to always think that when St Paul spoke of his “thorn in the flesh” that he was referring to something physical. Some illness he had, some problem he had that restricted him.
Of course commentators have had a field day trying to figure this one out – was it Paul’s way of speaking about his wife, or was it a sin he had that he couldn’t quit from – perhaps lust?
But as I sat and thought about this “thorn in the flesh” I was always coming up with something either tangible or something I could define. I was always analyzing this (and much of my theology) from the earth up.
But maybe Paul was thinking in the other direction.
Maybe this thorn in the flesh was not something of him – some sin, or weakness or even illness. Could the thorn in the flesh have been something of God that he couldn’t understand?
Was the thorn - his fleshly limitation to understanding what God was about?
Was the thorn in the flesh something that said more about God than about some weakness or shortcoming in Paul?
So I’ve gotten to thinking that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was Paul’s way of saying “I don’t understand what God is doing. I’m confused. And in this I don’t know, I can’t even claim to know what God is all doing.”
The amazing thing about this weakness is there is incredible strength!

But if I take this as a theological thought, it’s a theological thought that then begins to overflow into so much more of my life, my ministry, my calling.
This takes me back again to my last blog and the rethinking of vision versus values. This last ‘vision versus values’ blog has received the most responses back to me both on the blog and via calls and emails.
The strong vision way of leading takes us into a mindset that says – I know what God is doing and here is the vision to see that all happen here.
The second, value based leadership, embraces this ‘thorn in the flesh’ perplexion.
We don’t know what God is doing, or where God is taking us – but what we do know is something about who God is, what God is passionate about – values – and as long as we focus on raising up those values then we may not know where God is taking us but we know we won’t miss it.

And I think this is what we have to begin to think further on as leaders.
Too often out thinking is earth up.

Don Miller (of Blue Like Jazz and Searching For God Knows What notoriety) is about to release a book talking about the concept of story. Don Miller is going to hit here close to where I’m trying to hit.
We need to begin to think of our leadership more in terms of narrative and story rather than vision and goals.
God has invited us into a story. It’s a true story – in fact there is no truer story – but it is a story, a narrative. God never invited us into a strategic plan or some annual goals.

There are components of a good narrative - central character, plot, conflict …..and essential to a good story is it is never written linearly.
It’s not written predictably.
It’s not written that the reader knows where they are going!
The glue that holds it together is the characters.

Now to transliterate this into what I’m suggesting:
The characters in our story are the values that we know God holds and we need to hold. As long as we hold these values – not placed within some 5 year plan or some central strategic document – but held within the livingness of the story, constantly featuring in the story we are writing ……a great story will be written.

If postmodernity has settled.
If we are now in a new day of culture, thinking, engagement, it is held with new words.
Words such as story, but also words such as organic, organism, morph, texture, motion.
These are the new leadership words of the emerged cultured.
They are significantly different than the words of a decade ago – vision, purpose driven, goals, targets, strategic plan, mission statement.

So for a Senior Pastor our role is changing from always casting vision, hosting staff meetings talking about reaching our goals, hitting our targets or laying out our next mountain to take - to birthing of value, feeding, nurturing, tending, releasing - a different nuance to our leadership that we need to engage with.

Now here’s the really good thing about a good story.
In a good story there are always positive turns and negative turns.
In a vision driven style of leadership negative turns are disallowed.
But in story they are allowed.
In a vision driven church if you don’t make a goal or a hit a target or stick to the plan …..you’ve failed. But in a story whatever turn you take is still part of the story.

So my leadership is no longer going into my office, pulling out the master plan and making sure that I know exactly where we are on this plan.
It’s going into my office and taking the characters of the story – our values – and bringing them more alive in our story.

And here’s the best part – I go home at the end of the day not thinking about all the stuff that still needs to be done to reach this goal or that goal ….but I go home knowing that the values are living in the lives of each person who is part of our staff, our leadership, our church and the story is still being written even when I’ve put my pen down for that day!
Like true characters the values live …whereas a plan is only worked on.

There is a ‘thorn in the flesh’ like Paul that we as leaders must be content to live with.
Vision, goals and target leadership does not help that happen – values based leadership does.

Right-Brainers CARPE DIEM ...or at least dance a little!

2008-01-15T17:38:00.000-08:00

So I was reading something today that disturbed me. It said “we have become a church of marketers, not artists.” Now this in itself is disturbing. There are lots we could blog about the church selling out and selling short….but also the need to do more to make sure the best/only message of hope and life in the world is heard! But let me leave that one for a later day.
The article then went on to say “And the artists, feeling distrusted, lacking support and resources, are leaving the church to find the freedom and ability to explore imagination and answer God’s call.”
Church leaders have to read those words and ask some questions.

The words come from Jeffrey Overstreet’s blog “Looking Closer” where he is discussing The Golden Compass debate. A very helpful critique of the brewing controversy – check it out at http://lookingcloser.wordpress.com under “The Golden Compass – Questions I’ve been asked, answers I’ve given.” Don’t take this one off the radar screen ‘cos episodes two and three are just around the corner.

Returning to his comments about church and artists.
A few weeks ago I showed in church a part of Michelangelo’s classic work The Last Judgment. Michelangelo was commissioned by the Pope to do this work as part of his masterpiece on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Despite being commissioned, the Pope did not fully trust the artist’s discernment so he put in place an editor of his work. The editor was the then Vatican Master of Ceremonies called Biagio. Biagio did not only dislike some of the painting Michelangelo did, he disliked Michelangelo. He would often try to edit what he had painted.
Well, in The Last Judgment, Michelangelo gains his revenge because in this work he depicts a man descending down to hell. He is naked, with a serpent wrapped around his body – eating part of his sensitive area! Here’s the punch line ….the face of the man in the painting is the face of Biagio!!!!! Biago’s image remains today in the Sistine Chapel in a way I’m sure he never would have wanted!

But let’s return to the point. Here is Jeffrey Overstreet blogging that artists are feeling distrusted and hence they are leaving the church. What’s new. The Pope distrusted Michelangelo and many of the other church art painters – they were edited.
But they never left the church.
So what’s changed.

One of the books someone recommended me was A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future @ Daniel Pink. I love it. But if right-brainers just get up and quit because the struggle is too hard?? …..come on artists and dreamers and designers and poets and writers and counselors and inventors and symphonic musicians and storytellers and some right-brain pastors/preachers/leaders - you’ll only rule the future if you stop walking away.

But there is something happening. Some of us who in this “left-brain ruled world” for years suppressed our right-brain tendencies and indulged in masses of left- brain fodder to survive, some of us are now allowing our natural right-brain inclinations to rise and rule! The brakes are off and we are allowing our right-brains to energize and evolutionize our worlds. This sometimes makes us misunderstood and scoffed at BUT…….

Is this just the postmodern versus modern debate in new language? I don’t think so. Although there might be some mileage in that one for somebody to open up. This is not saying that left-brain thinking is defunct or outdated or held with an agenda. This is saying left-brain is not enough.
This is saying to lead well you need to employ left and right brain thinking.

This maybe why the old vision and 5 year strategy thinking is redundant. [See the last blog!]

Pink’s thesis is that in this conceptual era - if we are not offering something that satisfies the nonmaterial transcendent desires of an abundant age – we will lose.

So ‘The Church’ knows and holds the most satisfying nonmaterial transcendent reality there is.
Hello – to be missionally effective all we need now is a bunch of right-brainers bringing all they’ve got to help deliver it!

Right-brainers - whether artists, poets, writers, inventors …..and hopefully pastors and preachers - don’t walk away. Rise up.

Maybe 'vision' isn't all its cracked up to be?

2007-12-24T17:29:00.000-08:00

There's a text hanging in my office that is a powerful leadership text. It's Psalm 103:7 "He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel." I was a young leader when a wise and godly leader shared it with me - emphasizing the difference between Moses being told of God's ways and the people only being told of God's deeds. This is leadership, the wiser leader told me - knowing the ways of God.
Not long after that wisdom was shared with me ...... Christian leadership guru's emerged onto the scene and the word 'vision' became the driving word in leadership. 'Without it things will perish' was often preached. 'If you don't know where you're going you'll end up nowhere' came in a close second preach. Vision as a word and concept has held sway over much Christian leadership for the past decade and more.
But this blog wants to put a question mark over that leadership philosophy. Maybe 'vision' is not what it was/is all cracked up to ....and I've often cracked it up to be lot!

Vision is very much about where we are going. Its a linear word. It produces 5 year strategy papers, plans and 'how to' manuals. Vision is held out there and then everything lines up behind it.
But maybe therein lies a problem. More a clash. A clash of cultures. Our culture, our context is less and less a linear context. Much has been made of this in the tiring debate between modernity versus postmodernity; between systematic theology versus narrative theology; between meta-narratives versus paradigms ...but why has it not crossed over into the philosophy of leading?

Maybe I'm too much living in my paradigm, but the drive to vision - cast it, plan around it, staff for it, budget to it, is getting tired. it seems to be being moved to the back of the line. In its place is a moving to the center the concept of values.

Vision is about where we are going; values are about being.
Being is the new going.

Of course,values were always meant to be under-girding vision. But did they?

Maybe I'm too much of an existentialist (in the good sense). Were humans called to this linear, always moving forward existence? Or were humans called 'to be'. Does the emphasis on vision not drive us to miss today and miss what it is to be human? Is being human not about living in the present?

'Moses knowing the ways of God' ...is more about values than about vision - surely!

Here's how we're seeing it these days. If a church is all about values that reflect the heartbeat of God ......then acting on those values alone will lead you into the future more than wrapping a vision around it.

In the old vision way ...you got the value and then you cast a vision of what living with that value might look like in 5 years ....and here's the steps to make that happen.

In the new way ...you just live with the value and let God morph whatever God wants to morph!

Is this a subtle semantic adjustment - maybe ...but it feels more than subtle. It feels like its placing the right thing in the right place and not allowing it to be squeezed to a lesser place because of something more compelling, more organised, more strategized.

Its trying to be more about the ways ...rather than the deeds.

Maybe the church should be more sinful? Ouch!

2007-12-11T11:24:00.000-08:00

I’m on the phone to a friend in Scotland and we are talking about church and faith. But the conversation is slightly different than you might have imagined. I’m making the case to him that his church needs to become more sinful!

Let me bring some context.
Many Christians live in two worlds. The world of the week – busy jobs, hard deals, tough bargaining, hectic hours, constantly pushing forwards.
Then on Sunday they go to church ……and they enter a completely different world than the world they have lived in for the past 5 or 6 days. Their church world speaks the language of the ‘saints’. They talk about being separate from the world; they talk about holy living; they sing songs that speak of purity, of living a victorious Christian life; songs about truth, love, commitment, loyalty.
In many ways their church language of faith is a very ‘high’ language.
People are urged to count the cost. Sermons on sacrifice, denying self are well preached. People are reminded that they will suffer rejection for the name and the cause of Christ.
To all this they, like me, would say ‘Amen’. The bar is set high.

But then for so many here’s what happens. Monday arrives and they return to their busy living …..and it bears no resemblance to the language they heard or used on the Sunday.

If you look closely many Christians seem to be two different people. A Sunday person and a very different Monday person.

This is not unfamiliar …in many ways it's the reality of most Christians whether in the UK or the US. We live double lives. We are the saint on Sunday and we are the sinner on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc. [Check out the problem with this on a preach I did on April 29,2007 Mastering the Art of Living “Be One” – download or listen at http://www.reedleyfbc.com/ click on Messages.]

Now this is where our conversation came in. As we talked about church and faith I suggested that while most people would say the problem is they’re too much of a sinner on Monday and they need to become more of the saint on Monday – I argued the opposite. I suggested that the solution is – they should be less of the saint on Sunday!!

Here’s an interesting thumbprint we’re noticing in our church. People come on Sundays – not trying to play the saint – but being vulnerable and authentic enough to admit they are the sinners.

How worshipful, how godly is it, when a group of people gather on a Sunday and pretend to be what in reality for most of their living they’re not? Is it not better to be honest in the presence of God than pretending!

Now you might say … “well Gilbert what about the Scriptures teaching on being holy, on being set apart, on sanctification.” I would say – absolutely – but is a part of being holy, of being sanctified is it really being dishonest on a Sunday!
What part of sanctification is about causing our people to pretend to be what they really are not?
Maybe if we are more honest on a Sunday, more authentic true and real …..our Mondays and Tuesdays would be less removed from our worship and we’d begin to move to something nearer what we should be.
Maybe if our Sundays were more sinful we’d be less sinful on Monday.

Did Jesus not teach that it’s the pure in heart who shall see God? Am I not more pure in heart when I’m most honest about my sin compared to Sundays when I pretend to be the saint I’m not. Maybe there’s more purity on Monday when I’m honest about who and what I am …and maybe then I’ll see God …..which cannot leave me unchanged!

I’m arguing that a movement in spiritual formation is not just the movement away from being sinner to saint; I’m arguing that some of our movement is from being the saint to being the sinner. I think God is more pleased and God’s Spirit can more do His work when sinners are honest, rather than when saints are dishonest!

So …how sinful is your church??

Take the church back - be a Glocal Leader!

2007-11-19T16:13:00.000-08:00

So I was emailing a fellow glocal trekker by the name of Bob Roberts and I was asking him if he knew any Kenyan pastors in Nairobi that we could connect with as we prepare for another trek over to see our guys in the Huruma slum – daily heroes. Bob comes back to me telling me that this very Sunday a Nairobi pastor was at his church – Oscar Muriu. And then he tagged on words to his email “he’s the real deal – are you?”
So I emailed him back telling him that Oscar pastors’ Nairobi Chapel which has its roots in the Plymouth Brethren and those were my roots and therefore both Oscar and I were THE real deal – but what about Bob? [If you haven’t read Bob’s book Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World ….hello!!]
Roots are so important. Roots hold us. Roots take us down deep. Roots determine our strength and endurance.
That got me thinking about my roots. The Plymouth Brethren were a group of guys who in the early 19th century quit the Anglican Church and started a new movement – trying to do church the way the early church did it. Now I greatly admire them, but if you read the New Testament the early church was pretty messy – hence Paul’s multiple letters trying to fix things. I mean – who’d like to return to being like the Church in Corinth …aaargh!
But, one thing these ‘Brethren’ got very right was their missionary spirit. (They got other things right as well – I owe much to the hours and hours of bible teaching they poured into me.) But they got right their missionary adventure. Go to most of the reached nations in the globe and you’ll find people there who can trace their roots to the Brethren movement. Here’s an aside - the Catholic Church acted with genius when during the Reformation while the Protestants began to argue with them and amongst themselves they sent out the Jesuits to Latin America and evangelized that entire continent - the results live on today! So too the Brethren movement instead of joining in the debates about the established church they began to send all over the globe missionaries. But – they never forgot the local ….. read their history – orphanages in the UK, inner city hostels, and small churches built in the poorer housing estates with their doors open to help and serve. In some sense the Brethren were Glocal Christians …and that’s the roots that Bob, Oscar and myself are trying to put down within our local churches for this generation and coming generations.

So church leaders – how glocal are you?? Glocal leaders are the real deal. Glocal leaders are missional but missional beyond the way the emergent church guys or the way Robert Webber talked about missional (there’s another book really worth reading Ancient Future Faith @ Robert Webber – a theologian the Church deeply misses). Missional that is fully both-and. Both local and global. Both engaging with the sins of individuals and the sins of society. The key word is connect. This is not sending money to some mission’s organization to do the global while you do the local (or vice-versa) – this is people within the local church being connected both locally and globally, individually and communally to other people. Within the church there is a great movement for community living churches within urban ghettos. I love this movement and many of the people involved in it - they stir and inspire me. But with a flat world we get to be part of generation of leaders that don't only lead towards new forms of local churches in urban ghettos - wherever the ghetto might be - Cincinnati, Philadelphia, or Nairobi, or Paris, or Phnom Penh. Glocal Leaders are both-and leaders.

The early Plymouth Brethren guys wanted to take the church back to the New Testament time. Glocal Leaders are doing the same – taking the church back to seeing the world in all its size as on their doorstep. Reread how global and local the early church was - fascinating.

Be a Glocal Leader - and take the church back. Back is the new forwards. Think about it. The best new movements don't invent new things ....they rediscover what got lost. In the history of the church there was a point and time when we did glocal well, when we did holistic well, when we did missional well, when we did multicultural well. All today's new words and new movements the church in history at some time and place did - the best leaders take us back to go forward. I think that's what my Brethren upbringing is newly teaching me ..... but of course that's not new.

Maybe its all a matter of language.

2007-11-05T20:35:00.000-08:00

So I've just spent a day with some church leaders - all engaging with the topic of leadership. Good fun and good conversation. But its got me thinking, or rethinking - again. My friend Tim Brown from Clovis was speaking about the transition in his own thinking driven by both the reality of what he was hearing from people in his church and the new thoughts Simple Church @ Thom Rainer was stirring in him. A new way of looking at spiritual formation and ensuring that we guide people from searching for faith, to finding faith to being formed in their faith. Its a topic close to my heart and to our church. But here's my concern. I admire the thinking behind Simple Church. In fact I admire much of the thinking of many of the 'bright lights' of the modern church - the Andy Stanley's, the Rick Warren's, the Bill Hybel's the Ed Young's. Names that anyone passionate about lost people and the church being centrally missional will know and will listen to - wisely. But as I listen I feel a tension. I hear their thoughts/ strategies for both growth and discipleship but it sounds (may I say it) - formulaic. Their strategies are based around propositional solutions. Their pathways still sniff of linear western thinking. And it makes me question it. Because, at the same time as listening to these leaders I listen in to other guys that I equally respect - Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Mark Driscoll and their pathways seem so different - at least how they talk about them seems different. Their wording is more dynamic, more organic. Its morphing, its movement, its rhythm. One leaves me cold, one leaves me invigorated. This leaves me puzzled. Which one do I choose, which do I give greater attention to. And that gets me thinking even more. One sounds Western, the other sounds more Eastern. One sounds static the other sounds dynamic. One sounds linear the other sounds holistic. They sound different .....but this is what I'm wondering - they sound different but maybe their not. Maybe its all a matter of language. Maybe their same exactly the same, but differently.

As Tim and I talked maybe what the church has to do is pay more attention to our language than we do. Maybe at the start of the 21st century we have to pay closer attention to our wording.

Sometimes people think I'm heretical. At first listen sometimes they wonder ..... "where does this guy stand on this or that?" ... and they email me or rush to set up an appointment to make sure I'm "sound". But, when they dig deeper, listen closer, they see that I'm completely Orthodox - all I'm doing is choosing my words carefully to cause you to hear the same old truth in a new way. If I can make you hear it differently it becomes fresh, dynamic, alive....and maybe then you'll re-think it to then re-live it. So many people know it linearly - but they don't know it dynamically.
Maybe leadership at this juncture where cultures, generations even philosophies are birthing while some are dying - maybe leadership needs to pay closer attention to the choice of language.

I guess beyond strategies and vision and organizing and planning - a huge part of what leaders do and how we do it is speaking words - and what I'm suggesting is that maybe today our words have to change. I grew up in a generation that talked about having a 'new song' and a new movement of worship was being birthed. Today we need 'new words'.

I'm urging leaders to not only have a strong ecclesiology, a strong missiology, a strong theology ...but at this time and place we need to have a strong "wordology" - words shape, words form, words guide, words birth. Maybe today we need new words for people to hear it.
Friends - choose your words carefully.

Is doing - being?

2007-10-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

So there's this line that preachers preach (me included) - "don't be what you do, be who you are" - and I know why we preach it. We're in a crowed room meeting new people and our first question normally is 'so tell me, what is it you do?' It's like the classic conversation starter. So when they tell us they manage some major company or are a NASA physicist we have some internal chart that then tells us they are more important than us; we earn less than them etc, etc. We live in this majorly competitive culture and to survive in this culture we need to always be measuring others to ourselves to see who comes out on top. So preachers (rightly) challenge this cultural phenomena because we know a persons worth is not measured by their job title or their income levels ....so we preach it "you're more than what you do, who is the real you - away from the job, removed from the task ....just be who God made you to be." It sounds so existentially wonderful.

And at some level it is existentially wonderful - but at another level is it true reality? So let's return to the last blog article and the last blogging comments (thanks Tim and Morton). Can a pastor live in the dichotomy of 'this is what I do' and over here 'this is who I am' ....or is it all one, and we've created a false dichotomy and we have allowed a tension to exist that was never a tension in the first place. We've placed Greek thinking about parts onto something that is truly a whole.
Think about God. In the Old Testament he has multiple names, each name representing a differing aspect of his character. God is multi characteristical BUT he is fully one. You and I being made in his image - maybe we are multi characteristical - in both function and personality- yet this is who we are - the one.

Therefore ..... in the case of a pastor (and is it only in the case of a pastor??) "we are what we do" AND "we do what we are". So getting away from it, switching off from it, struggling with my identity sometimes more being formed by what I do rather than by who I am - is all poor theology at best, Greek ideology at worse. To just be - is to do and doing is being.

Is it who we are or is it what we do?

2007-10-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

So it's past 5pm on Monday and the job I told myself I would do first today still has been left undone. Of course, sadly, this is not the first day that this has been my reality. In fact for the last three weeks I've been chasing my tail ....my wife would say its been since August (yes, sadly she has now put a picture of me on the fridge door along with all the other friends we see once a year - and no, I'm not proud of this confession - but it is the first time for several years.)

But now, I'm closing my door, switching to my answering machine and getting this done - or am I?
Is this my tension?
Is this the leadership article we want to blog as our first official virtual mentoring article for church leaders?

.......... "Do we ever switch off? Are we ever off-duty? Can we ever truly shut the door? Can the
world outside ever stop getting inside?"

I've heard and read Bill Hybels on The Art of Self-leadership ....and nod fervently and fully agree.
I've read Dallas Willard's The Great Omission and been challenged by the early Church Fathers discipline towards solitude.
My best buddy Stuart (involved in some amazing missional stuff up in Canada ......and will write us a leadership article in coming months) has duly spoken severely to me about switching off and so I slow down on Monday mornings to read, pray, listen.
I've heard Bart Campolo talk about self survival and the need to escape to survive.

But can you truly do it?

It's like farmers in our community ....always farmers; 24/7; spring, summer, fall and winter- when at the local football game, when drinking coffee at church, when shopping with their wife's (although I've never known a farmer to go shopping with their wife!)
It's like mom's ....even when at the coast with their husbands ....still calling the kids back home 'just to make sure' ...you can tell I speak from experience 'come on babe call once but every hour on the hour and especially this hour - ah em'!!!

Does your mind ever stop thinking about life, faith, the lost and how to do better?
Can you ever stop the world outside coming inside - can you ever switch off?

Now I know some leaders who tell us they do ....but I'm unsure how honest their being? I mean they may be at their cabin in the mountains or hanging with their kids ...but are they really fully present?

I spoke about that some months back in a preach ......how present are we when we're there?

Now before you run too far ahead of me and have me conclude something that I'm not concluding. I need to say we need to rest. We need to do self-leadership well. We need to hold to the Sabbath. We need to be able to be fully present ...and not running to the next thing. We need to redefine who we are not by how busy we are but by who we are becoming. We need solitude. We need ...and so the list rolls. I remember John Ortberg preaching a message about ruthlessly eradicating hurry from your life and that's one of the main reasons I don't carry a cell phone and I've learned to drive slower - and enjoy it. I also agree that the western order of living is incorrect - start at sunrise end at sunset, the Hebrew order of the day is God;s order - start sunset to sunset.

But ....this tension thing. Do we only do rest by switching off the leader/pastor antenna? Is there times when we can truly close the door and keep everything else out?
Is the model of rest and closing the door ...the right model or a model that only ever generates guilt.
Why do I feel guilty that today I did not get done all I was to get done ...and so to try to relieve that guilt I'm closing the door to make sure I get it done.

Got me thinking about the Sabbath. Was the Sabbath to withdraw from society or was the purpose of the Sabbath to make sure that in our journey we didn't miss God. Is the whole purpose of live - making sure we don't miss God.

Did I miss God today by not getting done the things I needed to get done - or did I not get done some things today - but today I was still with God ....and that's all that counts.

Is there the possibility that my best leadership does not come by accomplishin the tasks - even the task of rest, but my best leadership comes through not missing God - even if that's in the mess and unaccomplished tasks of the day.

I guess the only problme is - how do you explain this to your spouse or your Board????

So - anyone willing to engage? How do we hold the tension of being pastors or leaders ....its what we are ...don't ask me to switch off from being that. Or is it a being thing or a doing thing? What does it mean to say "I am a leader" or "I am a pastor"? How far do you take it?
By the way ....my door was closed and my phone was off ..but I still met with two people, answered one call and made one call while writing this blog....aaargh!!!

Have I proven the point or just highlighted one of my biggest flaws?

Have you all got blogstipation?

2007-09-13T18:59:00.000-07:00

So no one has posted a comment on my first blog.
Patiently for the last 22 days I've waited for even one brave soul to make some comment - even if it is from a blogroach. But nothing.
Zilch. Zero. Silence.
Is it because something has entered the blogosphere and inflicted all bloggers with blogstipation?
Is it because it's only blurkers who are reading my blog and you're out there lurking around quietly?
Is it because commenter's are blego-ing and in measuring this bloggers worth that too has been zilch!

What is it? Why?
How do you think this makes me feel?

Is this both the genius of a blog while at the same time the curse of a blog?
If no one comments - a blogger can say whatever they want. Its a bit like the speech you've gone over a hundred times in your head that you'd like to give to your boss, your colleague, your neighbor with the cat (for no reason other than they've got a cat!), or your mother-in-law.
So you say it.
But here's the curse - no one heard it! Or if they did - it wasn't your boss, colleague, neighbor or mother-in-law.

But this brings me back to my blog.
Does silence mean I stop and just return to my day job of saying what I want to say from the pulpit on Sundays ....which come to think of it can often be like my first blog - zilch, zero, silence!
Do you just say something when you're guaranteed a response?
Do you only say something for a response?
Is there value in just saying?

Let me put it this way. "Silence", wrote Stephen Webb, "is constructed not natural."
The zero, zilch, silence my first blog has incurred doesn't mean there hasn't been a response. The response has been the construction of silence.

So I'll keep saying, because in saying something is always constructed.

Parents, lovers, teachers, preachers need to keep saying ...... even in the silence.

Does carbon foot printing really matter?

2007-08-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

So it seems completely strange to me that my introductory blog post for this mentoring blog has drifted seemingly off course to talk about carbon footprinting! Has the long hot summer living in Reedley (the backside of a desert and not far from purgatory) done something to what I thought was a pretty decent brain?

Whatever has happened you are reading this interested in joining this blog for missional church leaders and the title demands that some how an introduction to this blog and carbon footprinting over lap. [It's a bit like my preaching sometimes - found a great illustration and now I need to find a text about God or Jesus to make it work ...ouch...and that's even after two degrees from two seminaries!]

I could start by saying - carbon footprinting is todays hot topic and all missional church leaders live amongst the hot topics because we value relevance and cultural architecture as propellants of our missional leadership. There's mileage in that one.

Or I could say - carbon footprinting is a pragmatic lifestyle for "live in the present leaders" to display their engagement and participation in the new cool 'green' theology (supported by eminent theologians from all branches of orthodoxy expect the Southern Baptist boys who love to live frequently in denial!). Its new and cool but somebody should tell people - if it hasn't been around since the time of Genesis then it most certainly has been around since the days of St Benedict, St. Francis and of course, for you more reformed followers - your very own St. Calvin.

But now let me try and make my point as we launch this mentor blog.

Leaders, especially missional leaders, define reality. This is what stands us out as leaders. Our leadership is fully present. Carbon footprinting is part of today's reality. We may know little about it. We may have only briefly heard the term. We may view it with apprehension, maybe even cynicism - but it is part of the language and thought around us and thereby part of our reality - and therefore it matters. Leaders define the reality that others just experience.

So, to all my Issachar's - get the title yet? The men of Issachar knew the times (1 Chronicles 12:32). David was a wise leader. He had with him folks who could define reality.
This blog hopes to become a community of missional leaders who are better defining reality helping each of us and all of us know what we should do.

Welcome my fellow clansmen and clanswomen - join me.