Week 36 - and a fatwa issued on dogs!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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

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.