July 31, 2007

The Next Caption Contest

What are your captions for this cartoon by Rob Portlock? We know Out of Ur and Leadership readers will have some great ones on this theme.

Winning entries will be published in the Fall 2007 edition of Leadership. Please include your name, your church’s name, city, and state.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 31, 2007 | Comments (28)

July 26, 2007

A Former Pastor Goes Church Shopping

How does a former pastor choose a church? That is the question Andy Rowell and his wife are facing after their relocation to a new community. The process has opened their eyes to the differences and blessings of denominational and nondenominational churches. Although they’ve still not made a decision, Andy shares his reflections on the process so far.

“Occupational hazard,” that is what my wife and I call it. We cannot help but thoroughly analyze churches we visit. My wife and I both have M.Div. degrees and have served as pastors. So when we need to pick a new church, overanalyzing churches is almost inevitable—an occupational hazard.

A month ago we moved to Durham, North Carolina so I could begin the 4-5 year Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) program at Duke Divinity School. We have visited seven churches in the last six weeks here and have not yet made a decision on where we will attend.

Our backgrounds are mostly in churches and institutions that were nondenominational or interdenominational—where denominational affiliation was played down. But around Durham, many of the churches that have been recommended to us are mainline churches. They are led by pastors that are theologically orthodox, yet the style of these mainline churches is different from what we are accustomed to.

In our vigorous Sunday lunch discussions, my wife and I have been impressed by aspects of the mainline churches we have visited. On the other hand, there are things we miss about nondenominational churches.
It seems to me nondenominational folks and mainliners can learn from each other. In that spirit, I offer a few summary points of our Sunday lunch discussions.

The Top Nine Things I Appreciate about Mainline Churches:

1. The leadership of mainline churches does not center so much on one person – the pastor. When a senior leader leaves, there are mechanisms for finding a new pastor including trained interim pastors.

2. Mainline churches have a greater appreciation for Christian history. The liturgies of the mainline churches reflect the thought and deliberation of several centuries of Christians. Many evangelical worship leaders say whatever springs to mind.

3. The worship services at mainline churches have intellectual substance. The liturgies at mainline churches are usually very rich theologically. Someone has taken the time to craft the words of the liturgy carefully.

4. Mainline churches care for the poor and are more aware regarding social issues. Though evangelical churches are coming around, they have been slower than the mainline regarding racism, care for the poor, empowering women, and care for the environment.

5. Mainline denominations take intellectual excellence seriously. They want their pastors educated and their scholars properly trained. I know an evangelical megachurch (which I like) with 100 staff members and only the senior pastor has a Master of Divinity.

6. The ordination process in mainline denominations usually screens out the mentally ill. The ordination process of the denominations takes a few years, includes a battery of psychological tests, and is done in consultation with lots of people who know you. Many pastors of evangelical churches simply decided to plant a church. Whether they have any education or preparation is irrelevant.

7. Mainline denominations care for their pastors more thoughtfully and equally. Mainline pastors are usually paid fairly and their benefits are good and fair.

8. Mainline denominations honor the arts including classical music. Mainline people seem to be the people supporting museums, visual art, architecture and NPR.

9. Mainline churches have better accountability structures. There are structures for dealing with crises and for preventing crises from happening in the first place.

The Top Seven Things I Appreciate about Nondenominational Churches:

1. Nondenominational evangelical churches structure their worship gatherings so newcomers know what is going on and want to come back. They have an elaborate plan for welcoming people so that even irreligious people will want to come back. This includes signs, greeters and the overall style of the environment.

2. Nondenominational evangelical churches acknowledge that churches are organizations that need competent leadership. They tend to value pastors who organize and inspire the church toward more effective mission.

3. Nondenominational evangelical websites are usually better. Websites should be designed for someone who is totally unfamiliar with the church but might want to go there.

4. The music at nondenominational evangelical churches is more like the music people listen to on the radio. This is a preference thing I know but it just seems to me that churches can be faithful while still evolving to connect with people today.

5. Nondenominational evangelical churches question traditions that no longer connect with most people. When only 1% of the people really want the ministry, it should not get time on the podium and space in the bulletin.

6. Nondenominational evangelical churches are more eager to experiment with new technologies.

7. Nondenominational evangelical churches highly value Scripture. This covers a multitude of other shortcomings.

Andy Rowell has been a pastor and professor of Christian ministry at Taylor University. He is currently in the Doctor of Theology program at Duke Divinity School.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 26, 2007 | Comments (38)

July 23, 2007

Razzmatazz or Ragamuffins?

It’s been done before. A non-Christian is paid to attend church and provide their honest feedback about the experience. The latest rendition of this experiment is occurring north of the border in Canada. Christian talk show host Drew Marshall has paid two college students, one male and one female, to attend five different churches in the Toronto area. Their observations can be read on Marshall’s website, but below are a few highlights from their excursion into Christendom.

The two students visited one of the fastest growing mega-churches in Toronto. Like many megas it has positioned itself as “the church for people who aren’t into church.” On this Sunday the pastor spoke about wealth and possessions. What did Drew Marshall’s guinea pigs think?

Why is it that I should not seek out possessions and money, but the church is permitted to do just that? Does taking 10% of every congregant’s income not count as seeking out money? Why should the institution be rich, and the congregation not? If you really believe you should be living the aesthetic life led by Christ and his apostles, why aren’t you doing it? If money and possessions aren’t important, why aren’t you meeting to discuss the meaning of Christ’s ideas and life in the local park? Notwithstanding the need to broadcast to your rather large congregation, and obviously you’d have to come up with a solution during the winter months, but really: why the son et lumiere? I found the medium more than a bit out of whack with the message.

Which brings me to another point: all that razzmatazz kind of unsettles me. We live in a culture where distraction is often misdirection - like a magician who gets you to look at his left hand while he’s disappearing something with his right. I found myself wondering why a group that liked its preacher so straightforward felt most at home in a medium of flashing lights and sound. Read more.

The paid church visitors also made a stop at the Sanctuary, a downtown congregation with deep involvement in the community—particularly with the homeless and poor. The Sanctuary provides free meals and cloths as well as medical care to those in need. One visitor’s first impression was telling:

I could tell then and there we had found what this experiment was set out to accomplish, a church that saw past the money, power and the heighten sense of moral superiority that we have grown accustomed to. Charity, real charity. About time.

He continues…

I was floored, for close to a month now I have been told of all the wonderful things the Christian church provides without any physical evidence of its truth, but here it is, in the flesh. I have to smile, we have traveled to the city’s massive churches where thousands worship and yet we find what we are looking for in a turnout of 35 on Sunday. Read more.

Overall, both Taylor and Sabrina (the non-Christians) gave the Sanctuary overwhelmingly positive marks—far more favorable than any other church they visited. Drew Marshall later tried to identify what set the Sanctuary apart. His conclusion:

This is the only Church where the majority of time, finances and energy is NOT spent on the Sunday service. At Sanctuary, it actually would have been unfair to only score them on their Sunday service, the smallest part of what they do. Read more.

What is the big lesson for church leaders? I’m not sure, and I’m hesitant to make any sweeping conclusions based on the opinion of just two people. However, Taylor and Sabrina do force us to ask an important question. Why does the majority of most churches' resources get funneled back into Sunday morning (facilities, staff, programs)? And, in a culture growing increasingly suspicious of “razzmatazz” is a spectacular worship production still the best way to draw people to God? (Has it ever been the best way?)

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 23, 2007 | Comments (21)

July 18, 2007

Out of Context: Mark Labberton

"This disparity between economics and justice is an issue of worship. According to the narrative of Scripture, the very heart of how we show and distinguish true worship from false worship is apparent in how we respond to the poor, the oppressed, the neglected and the forgotten."

-Mark Labberton serves as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, California, and the author of The Dangerous Act of Worship—Living God’s Call to Justice (IVP, 2007). Taken from the Summer 2007 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 18, 2007 | Comments (4)

July 13, 2007

The Disappearing Middle

Leaders should be concerned about the disappearing middle, according to Chad Hall. That bulge in the middle of a bell-shaped curve that represents the great mass of consumers and citizens and churchgoers and volunteers is getting squeezed. The result is the shrinking of the middle and the swelling of the ends, and it’s this growth of the extremes in all aspects of our society that has church planter and leader coach Hall intrigued. Here he offers some thoughts on its effects on money and manpower, faith and ministry.

A while back I heard Len Sweet say that our society is moving away from the “bell curve” and toward something called the “well curve.” His comment got me doing some research on the topic and thinking about what all of this means for church leaders. Who knew that bells and wells were such important topics for church leaders to consider?

Since high school we’ve known all about the bell curve: that fundamental law of natural science and statistics that defines normal distribution as being massed near the middle while being low on the extremities. Represented on a graph, the distribution looks like a bell-shaped curve. The bell curve implies that most people gravitate toward the middle or average and avoid the extremes. For example, most people are of average height, have moderately sized families, and earn a “C” in statistics; few people are really tall or really short, few have very large or very small families, and few earn A’s or F’s.

But within the turbulent days we live, a new phenomenon is being recognized. The distribution for some of our choices is an inverted bell curve, or a well curve. In these cases, the population gravitates toward the ends or extremes and is lowest in the middle. The well curve describes many economic and social phenomena. For instance, television screens are simultaneously getting both larger (60” plasma!) and tinier (watch the latest episode of 24 on your i-pod!); stores are getting larger (Wal-Mart) and smaller (specialty boutique stores); people are eating more healthful foods (organic) and more fast foods (McDonald’s).

Perhaps more significant than the rise in the extremes is the decline of the middle: consider the disappearance of the middle-class, the demise of mid-sized companies, the loss of status for anything considered average and the polarization of politics in America. Our tastes and choices are shifting away from the middle and toward the extremes. The well curve helps describe a number of interesting church trends going on these days...

...how the church is moving theologically liberal and conservative, with the disappearance of the moderate; how churchgoers increasingly prefer megachurches and microchurches but not mid-sized congregations; and how the church is both growing and losing prominence within the larger society.
On the local church level, pastors and other church leaders need to pay attention to the well curve for another important reason: it describes how churchgoers participate in the life of a given congregation.

The New Churchgoers: Very Active or Hardly Active
In a bell curve context, church leaders could expect most members to be moderately involved in the life of the congregation while the fringes were inhabited by the highly involved at one end and the minimally involved at the other end. But in a well curve context, leaders can expect few people to be moderately involved; instead folks will be either highly involved or barely involved.

The question is How can pastors and other church leaders deal effectively with the well-curve involvement of their church members?

As a coach to pastors and congregations, I’ve noticed four trends among churches that are adapting to this new context.

• Membership. Churches are rethinking membership in seismic ways. Some consider anyone on the mailing list to be a member or they drop membership altogether. Other congregations emphasize membership and heighten the bar of what it takes to join the church.

Church leaders who are embracing the well-curve reality allow for a sense of belonging at both ends of the spectrum. This often results in leadership strategies that make membership available at two polarities: membership that is quick and available to practically anyone, and a level of membership that signifies considerable choice and high expectation.

• Money. With the onset of well-curve participation patterns, church budgets must be adjusted because there are fewer and fewer “average givers” these days. The two (non-contradictory) messages being sent to the congregation are “don’t feel pressured to give” and “give even more.” Rather than rail against the old 80/20 principle of giving, some church leaders are adapting their stewardship strategies to take advantage of it. They increase overall giving by giving appropriate attention to the ends of the giving continuum.

As one pastor told me, “If I ask everyone to give 10 percent, the minimal giver stops giving or leaves the church altogether while the big giver obliges by giving less than he can. I’m finding it more helpful to talk about starting small or giving big. Those messages tend to hit home.”

• Movement. When it comes to moving people into deeper spiritual waters, North Point church near Atlanta provides a great example of maximizing the extremities while giving fittingly minimal attention to the middle. They talk about moving people “from the foyer to the kitchen” which roughly means from large-scale worship experiences to small group participation, or from anonymous to intimate. The middle step (I believe they refer to it as “the living room”) is an important one-time meeting that helps people consider and get started in a small group. Contrast this with typical Sunday school, a big middle strategy aimed at getting everyone to attend classes that avoid anonymity while rarely delivering intimacy.

• Manpower. In a well curve context, who is going to do all the work of the church? After all, there are classes to be taught, ministry to be done and good news to be spread. Some are finding the answer to be a shift in church staffing that emphasizes more volunteer and part-time personnel overseeing armies of workers.

Gone are the days of Mrs. Sally teaching the fourth graders 50 weeks each year for two decades. The newer paradigm is for two-thirds of the church to be involved as short-term or rotating workers, while a significant number of high capacity volunteers or part-time staffers bring continuity and oversight. In this paradigm, there is a shrinking role for the moderately involved volunteer.

What well curve trends have you noticed in your own congregation? And if the well curve trend continues or even increases, how will you respond?

Chad Hall serves as a coach/consultant to church leaders and is the co-author of Coaching for Christian Leaders: A Practical Guide (Chalice Press, 2007).

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 13, 2007 | Comments (19)

July 10, 2007

Is Video Technology in Church Manipulative?

As you read this post the summer issue of Leadership is arriving in mailboxes. The issue tackles the impact of living, and ministering, in an increasingly visual culture. Many churches are eager to employ video and other new digital tools, but is this tread helpful, harmful, or completely neutral to our mission? To preview the theme of the summer issue here is an interview with Shane Hipps on the hidden power of visual media from our partners at Faith Visuals.

How can we be better about perceiving the power of media in both our churches and our lives?

Probably the best orientation that I've discovered to help me understand the real power of media was when I read a quote by Marshall McLuhan where he says, "The content of any medium is the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind." What he's saying is that the medium itself has a power, a bias, and a meaning regardless of what message you put through it. He's challenging the metaphor that we often assume: Media are simply pipelines, a neutral conduit through which information can be put through. I think it's crucial for Christians to begin to perceive the media forms themselves, rather than just looking at—and understanding—the content. We're too easily distracted by the content, and we miss the power of the medium.

You mentioned Marshall McLuhan. In your book, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture, you talk about McLuhan's four laws of media a lot. Could you explain those a little bit, and how they are useful for thinking about the media we use?

Sure. The only difficulty with the four laws is that it feels a little unnatural at times. It can be hard to answer some of those questions. The point is not to get the right answers; the point is to ask the right questions. McLuhan offered four questions he believed were crucial to understanding media.

First: What does the medium enhance and extend? For instance: The wheel is an extension of the foot.

Second: What does the medium obsolesce? And "obsolesce" doesn't mean get rid of. It means change the function of. So, for example, the automobile extends our speed of transportation, but it obsolesces the horse-drawn carriage. The horse-drawn carriage doesn't disappear; it simply changes its function. It's now used for romance and entertainment, but it is still used.

Third: What does the medium retrieve from the past? This is the conviction that nothing is new under the sun. And so every new medium retrieves some older medium. For example, security cameras retrieve the medieval city wall which simultaneously protects and imprisons its citizens.

Fourth: What does the medium reverse into? This means that every medium will always reverse into some form of its opposite when it is overused. So for example, when the automobile, which is designed to increase speed, is overextended or overused, it actually reverses into traffic jams and even fatalities.

There is no single answer to these questions; they can be asked of any medium almost endlessly to deepen our understanding. So that's one way of understanding the complexity of how media shape us.

So what do you think are some changes that would happen if people started to look at how we present our message? Like if we use McLuhan's four laws to think more about how we're presenting a message.

I think people will begin to use our media rather than be used by them unconsciously. The power of our media become less powerful when we actually understand and become aware of them. Right now, most people are distracted by the content of our media, while we miss the power of the form. Thus we encounter our media with the proverbial slip on the banana peel. We end up being used by the media we think we're using. My hope isn't that people will stop using technology in a church but rather, that they'll begin to understand so they can make more discerning decisions about how to use media.

If we ask ourselves these questions, how can video and visual multimedia do their best work? What kinds of messages do you think are best communicated by video or multimedia?

The messages that are best conveyed by video or multimedia are almost exclusively emotional and entertaining. The bias of these media is that they exercise the right hemisphere of the brain, which evokes emotions, impressions, and intuitions. Regardless of what you're conveying, these are the things that your brain uses to engage, perceive and understand the content of images. At the same time, when overextended, images erode our capacity for logic, abstract thinking, and complex discernment. Perhaps the most unintended consequence is that images too often become a form of manipulation.

Can you explain that a bit further? What do you mean by "unintended consequence?"

Well, visual multimedia are probably the favorite medium of the greatest manipulators in world history: advertisers. And I know because I was one! One of the things we discovered was that the absolute best way to move people against their better judgment was through emotion, not reason. Everything we did was to try and give emotional experiences, evoke emotional impressions, and basically ignore the nuts and bolts of the superiority of our product. Nobody cared about the superiority of our product; they cared about the kind of emotional empowerment they would experience. And so, regardless of whether they had the money to buy what we wanted them to buy, we could find ways to manipulate their emotions against their better judgment, because emotions are not things you argue with. They're simply an experience that you have. Whereas if you try and go through reason, people will argue with it.

So that's the thing I'd be concerned about in terms of how we use video and multimedia in church. We need to understand that we're dealing with an incredibly powerful medium that all too easily leans towards manipulation—a subtle form of coercion. It's not at all something that people who work and create this medium are necessarily doing on purpose. I know that. It's just a matter of helping us become aware of how immensely powerful images are.

Can you give me an example of that kind of manipulative use of visual media?

Let me give you an example from when I worked in advertising. On one campaign, our goal was to sell Porsches. And we didn't do it by convincing you that our car was better than a BMW because it had higher RPM or it could do 0 to 60 faster, but because it promised you freedom, sex, and power. And so we showed you a gorgeous woman with the car. So emotionally viewers experienced an unconscious message—buy the car and get the girl.

Another print ad we did was a shot of the Porsche Turbo running in the Salt Flats of Utah and the headline over the photograph read "Pins the logical side of your brain to the back of your skull." It's an ad that basically says, This is not a rational decision so don't over-think it; go out and buy this $120,000 car right now, but also exposes a greater truth about our methods as advertisers. Everything we did was an effort to pin the logical side of the brain to the back of skulls, so that we could simply manipulate this soft and highly malleable emotional response and experience.

How do you help filmmakers know how they can best avoid the unintentional consequence of manipulating? Especially because we obviously want people to be moved through videos, but not in the sense that we want to manipulate them into anything?

It's really hard to say to a filmmaker or an artist "Here's how you should create your art so that you're not manipulating." Part of it is the context. It's the context in which it's shown—who the audience is.
But the questions I would ask of a filmmaker or someone who is involved in creating a show video piece are:

What is your intended goal or outcome? In some ways, if your goal is too clear or concrete as an artist, you may be at risk of inadvertently using your film manipulatively.

What is the means by which you're trying to achieve that goal? Does what I depict exploit the senses or emotions, or does it awaken them? This is very fine line, so ask it prayerfully and honestly.

Only after I heard answers to these questions could I give some more meaningful direction. It's hard for me to say specifically for filmmakers what they should or shouldn't do, other than ask the hard questions and answer them as honestly as you can.

Shane Hipps is pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church—a missional, urban, Anabaptist congregation in Phoenix, Ariz. Before accepting a call as a pastor, he was a strategic planner in advertising, where he worked on the multimillion dollar communications plan for Porsche. It was here that he gained expertise in understanding media and culture. Shane speaks nationally, is a contributor to Leadership Journal, host of the "Third-Way Faith" podcast on wiredparish.com, and author of The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 10, 2007 | Comments (14)

July 6, 2007

The Measure of a Ministry

This week Americans are celebrating their independence by watching parades, enjoying backyard barbeques, and by not going to church. If your congregation is anything like mine you know that during the summer worship attendance slips noticeably, and the week of July 4th is typically the low point. Family vacations and parties draw people away for some valuable R and R. I’m not pointing a self-righteous finger at church slackers. Last Sunday my family and I were not seen in church either, we were away camping.

But the “summer slide” raises a question. Why is Sunday morning attendance the one measurement we cannot escape? Why is Sunday morning attendance the make-or-break number; the figure we proudly display or secretly despair? Like a corporation’s stock price, worship attendance seems to encapsulate a church’s entire mission and health in one simple, if volatile, number. A number we watch carefully week to week praying for its increase.

At my church I am aware of a number of families and individuals who won’t be attending Sunday worship very frequently this summer, and I’m thrilled about it. These people won’t be in worship because they’ll be overseas helping missionaries, or taking inner city kids to a camp in rural Michigan, or they’ll be making meaningful connections as families on vacations- something valuable in a culture where families are struggling. Don’t misread me, I think gathering regularly as a community for corporate worship, confession, and learning is both good and important. I just don’t think it’s so important that it should be the singular measure of missional impact, or even the primary one.

It has become very popular to talk about “life transformation” as the purpose of the church, and numerous studies have shown that worship attendance alone does not seem to impact people’s behavior or values. (Ron Sider’s book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience comes to mind .) However, people who connect in meaningful and transparent relationships, the kind possible in small groups or with a mentor, do show more evidence of life change. Wouldn’t this be a much better and more helpful number for church leaders to measure? Do you know how many people in your church connected relationally with another brother or sister in Christ last week? Probably not, but I bet you know how many sang songs and passively listened to a sermon.

Granted, Sunday worship attendance is easier to measure than small group attendance or relational connections but I don’t think that’s why we do it. Dallas Willard has said that most churches are designed to grow their ABCs (attendance, buildings, and cash) not disciples. The ABCs form an unholy trinity; a cycle that cannot be escaped easily. Sunday attendance is vital and meticulously measured because that is what funds the church—people give money on Sunday. The money is necessary to pay for institutional needs such as buildings, staff, and programs. And, of course, these tangibles are needed to attract more religious consumers to pay for more buildings, staff, and programs.

If our primary measurements are the ministry ABCs one must ask if the mission of the church is really life transformation or institutional expansion? I believe the first step toward breaking this cycle is to change what we measure. Rather than making Sunday worship attendance the most important statistic we need to emphasize something else. Relational or small group connections is one option but there are many others.

I know one church that measures how many people spend at least 30 minutes reading scripture three times a week. Another congregation measures the number of troubled marriages rescued. And another records how many members have invited neighbors to their home for a meal. This summer, rather than determining how many people are skipping worship services I’m much more interested in how many from my congregation are participating in short-term missions projects, serving in local compassion ministries, and spending meaningful time together as families. I believe what we measure indicates what we value, and what we value is what we should celebrate.

Posted by Skye Jethani at July 6, 2007 | Comments (17)

July 3, 2007

Out of Context: Shane Hipps

"I believe certain technologies preclude incarnational ministry. And the reason I believe that is because God became embodied in Jesus. And embodiment means human physical touch; presence. And there are certain technologies that disembody us, like video."

-Shane Hipps serves as the Lead Pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church in Phoenix, Arizona, and the author of The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, The Gospel, And Church (Zondervan, 2006). Taken from the Summer 2007 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 3, 2007 | Comments (11)