Week 1 of 2010

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.