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

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 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.

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?

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.

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

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.

1. The nature of truth and orthodoxy.
2. Cultural engagement and the evangelistic enterprise.
3. Christian community and civility.
4. 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.

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.