April 11, 2008

Live at Shift: Deep Ministry in a Shallow World

If there is one thing that everyone in youth ministry seems to be talking about it’s how to keep students following Christ after high school. That’s been a hot topic here at Shift, and this morning Kara Powell addressed the problem head on. As the executive director of the Center for Youth and Family Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, Powell knows the sobering statistics.

Her data reveals that 50% of high school students who had been deeply involved in a church’s youth ministry will not be serving God 18 months after graduation. And that’s not counting the many other high school students who are only going to church because their parents are forcing them. She also cited the LifeWay study that was highlighted on Ur last year.

Powell stood next to a table piled high with ministry books and resources. She asked, with so many resources available to us why are our students falling away at such alarming rates? Her thought: the more resources we have the less desperate and dependent upon God we feel. And we begin making “mindless, automatic decisions about our ministries.” She called for an end to “autopilot” youth ministry, and for us to start asking hard questions about what we’re doing.

Here are Kara Powell’s four critical questions:

1. What gospel are we feeding kids?
She says that a lot of what students are fed is a guilt based gospel—what Dallas Willard calls the “gospel of sin management.” Powell compared it to a diet of Red Bull. It’s fast, energetic, and easy, but not very nourishing. And after the rush is over you deflate. We’ve fed students a gospel of rights and wrongs, but nothing nourishing that they can internalize and grow from. No wonder they fall away shortly after graduation. The buzz is over.

2. Are students’ doubts welcome at our table?
Powell’s research shows that the students who were able to express their doubts and problems about faith in high school were more likely to endure through college. She shared about girls in her youth ministry talking about homosexuality. Rather than shutting down the conversation with fast answers from Romans 1, she let girls share openly. Eventually two expressed their own feelings of possibly being gay. Are we secure enough to let these kinds of conversations occur in our churches?

3. How can kids take their place at God’s diverse kingdom table?
Kara said that the church is suffering from a new kind of segregation—not racial or economic, but age. The youth ministry functions like the “kids’ table” at Thanksgiving. But her research shows that students who have meaningful engagement with the adults at church do far better post high school. She called for a new 5:1 ratio—not five students per adult, but five adults per student.

4. How can we train students to feed themselves after graduation?
Echoing the sentiments shared by Greg Hawkins presentation on REVEAL, Powell called for youth ministers to teach their students how to feed themselves spiritually. They can become totally dependent on the youth ministry for their spiritual nourishment, and when that resource is disrupted when they leave for college everything falls apart. Rather than making kids dependents on us we need to make them independent. A simple but often overlooked goal.

While Powell was addressing youth ministry and youth workers, I was struck by how relevant her words are to every pastor. The drop off rate seen among high school graduates is forcing youth pastors to reevaluate their approach to ministry. But shouldn’t we all be concerned? 48 year olds may not be leaving the church the way 18 year olds are, but are they really growing? Are we feeding them a Red Bull gospel? Are we teaching them to be self-feeders? Are their doubts and struggles welcomed? These are great questions for us all.

Posted by UrL at April 11, 2008 | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 4, 2008

Choosing Multi-Ethnic Over Mega

I recently returned to my native Arkansas—a world much less ablaze with all the conversations about emergent, missional, monastic, anti-institutional, and ancient-future Christianity. As much as I appreciate those dialogues, a heavy dose of them can obscure the fact that there are many local congregations nationwide that are not clinging to a sinking institution, are not confronted with a thoroughly postmodern youth culture, and are not terribly concerned with relevance (as such). They are, nevertheless, participating in great advances for the kingdom of God.

Take Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas, for example. Located in the University District of Little Rock's south midtown, the church enjoys a prime location—for burglary, murder, and carjacking. It's in that part of town you wouldn't loiter in on Saturday night (I suppose all the evildoers sleep late on Sunday morning). But its location is strategic. In neither inner city nor suburb, and just across the street from the Little Rock campus of the University of Arkansas(UALR), the church's neighbors represent a diversity of ethnic and economic backgrounds. More importantly, the church's membership faithfully reflects the district's demographics.

As a lifelong Arkansan, I can testify that the joyful multi-ethnic and economically diverse fellowship that takes place at Mosaic is a monumental accomplishment.

The small town I lived in nearby not long ago was home to a white First Baptist Church and a black First Baptist Church, each of which was located appropriately on its own side of town. Keep in mind it was only 50 years ago that Little Rock's Central High School defied a federal order to integrate. And while laws have changed in that half century, many—perhaps most—hearts have not.

That's why I was so surprised during my experience in worship at Mosaic to discover that, while it is a healthily intergenerational bunch, the congregation is not led by young, inclusive postmoderns, but by middle-aged, working class black, white, and Latino men and women. According to the latest buzz, these folks are supposed to be dying for lack of vision.

Teaching pastors Mark DeYmaz and Harry Li are quick to attribute Mosaic's growth and vibrancy to God's blessing. In fact, in a generation when traditional churches are dying, they are doing nearly everything wrong—they meet in a building, they hand out bulletins, they have a mission statement, and they run programs. But they leave success in the Lord's hands. DeYmaz, who spent nearly a decade on staff at a large, homogeneous church in town, explained, "The hardest thing about this ministry is that we know how to grow a church big and fast, but we refuse to do it. We don't use church-growth strategies; we don't market ourselves. We could grow the ministry fast. But we'd rather grow it biblically."

DeYmaz explains what he means by biblical growth in his 2007 book Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church (Jossey-Bass). Based largely on John 17, Ephesians 2, and the pattern of the church at Antioch (Acts 13), DeYmaz argues that "a house of prayer for all people" is best led by a ministry team made up of "all people." Because a church led by a white pastor will likely only reach white people, Mosaic is committed to maintaining an ethnic balance on its staff (for more on this, see "Ethnic Blends" in the upcoming issue of Leadership). They do this because they consider the multi-ethnic church as more than an effort at racial reconciliation or liberal dogoodism. It is a biblical mandate—a New Testament commandment that, because in Christ there is no Jew or Gentile, Greek or barbarian, then God's church should look like God's kingdom: full of people from every ethnic and economic class (and, in Mosaic's case, with physical and mental disabilities).

DeYmaz is careful not to criticize homogeneous churches in his book, but he does warn, "I believe the homogeneous church will increasingly struggle in the twenty-first century with credibility, that is, in proclaiming a message of God's love for all people from an environment in which a love for all people cannot otherwise be observed" (14).

What do you think? Is inter-ethnic ministry a biblical mandate? Or is it simply a new strategy (however noble) for church growth? And what does all this mean for your church if, like mine, it's full of white folks who welcome worshipers of other ethnic backgrounds, but only (as DeYmaz observes) they agree to worship the way we do and not cause a fuss?

Posted by Brandon J. O'Brien at April 4, 2008 | Comments (24) | TrackBack

March 25, 2008

Rejoicing in Rebuke

For the past couple of weeks, Ur-banites have been wrestling with questions about church membership. Below, Ken Sande, president of Peacemaker Ministries, takes one of the big questions head on: how does a church discipline its members?

On January 18, 2008, The Wall Street Journal Online published an article by Alexandra Alter on church discipline entitled Banned from Church. When Alexandra interviewed me before writing the article, I explained the biblical basis for church discipline and acknowledged how churches have sometimes neglected or abused the process. I also described how properly applied accountability can help people break free from sinful and destructive conduct. I even provided examples of churches that had used loving discipline to stop crooks from defrauding elderly people, protect lonely women from being seduced, and move child sexual abusers to confess their crimes (“A Better Way to Handle Abuse”).

Despite our conversation, Alexandra chose to paint an entirely negative picture of discipline by using the example of a 71-year-old woman who had been removed from her church for questioning her pastor’s leadership. Examples of protecting the elderly, the lonely, and the helpless from abuse apparently did not fit into her preconceived notions of church discipline.

I’m sad, but not surprised, when secular writers present a negative stereotype of church discipline. What troubles me far more is how many Christians share these distorted views.

Like Ms. Alter, most Christians seem to see church discipline either as a harsh, legalistic, and unloving process, which true followers of Christ should never practice, or (also well illustrated in the WSJ article) as a handy tool for getting rid of inquisitive, irritating, or challenging members.

Neither of these views is biblical.

The Bible never presents church discipline as being negative, legalistic or harsh. True discipline originates from God himself and is always presented as a sign of genuine love. Consider these three verses: “The Lord disciplines those he loves” (Heb. 12:6). “Blessed is the man you discipline, O LORD, the man you teach from your law” (Ps. 94:12). “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline” (Rev. 3:19).

God’s discipline in the church, like the discipline in a good family, is intended to be primarily positive, instructive, and encouraging. This process, which is sometimes referred to as “formative discipline,” involves preaching, teaching, prayer, personal Bible study, small group fellowship, and countless other enjoyable activities that challenge and encourage us to love and serve God more wholeheartedly.

On rare occasions, God’s discipline, like the discipline in a family with growing children, also may have a corrective purpose. When we forget or disobey what God has taught us, he corrects us. One way he does this is to call the church to lead us back onto the right track. This process of “corrective” or “restorative” discipline is likened in Scripture to a shepherd seeking after a lost sheep (Matt. 18:12–13).

Thus, neither restorative nor corrective discipline is ever to be done in an unloving, vengeful, or self-righteous manner. It is always to be carried out in humility and love, with the goals of restoring someone to a close walk with Christ (Matt. 18:15; Gal. 6:1), protecting others from harm (1 Cor. 5:6), and showing respect for the honor and glory of God’s name (1 Pet. 2:12).

Biblical discipline is similar to the discipline we value in other aspects of life. We admire parents who consistently teach their children how to behave properly and lovingly discipline them when they disobey. We value music teachers who bring out the best in their students by teaching them proper technique and consistently pointing out their errors, so they can play a piece properly. We applaud athletic coaches who diligently teach their players to do what is right and correct them when they fumble, so that the team works well together.

The same principles apply to the family of God. We, too, need to be taught what is right and to be lovingly corrected when we do something contrary to what God teaches us in his Word. When this is done as God commands, it usually leads to repentance, change, and restored relationships (see 2 Cor. 2:5–11). But when people harden their hearts, it is entirely appropriate for a church to take the rare but necessary step of removing them from fellowship, both as a warning about the gravity of their sin and as a means to protect the innocent and weak from harm.

Practically, it is important to consider such things as legal liability issues and how to secure informed consent to a church’s disciplinary practices. But the most important questions to ask are: Why has the church bought into the world’s view of church discipline? Why are we afraid of carrying out a process that Jesus himself has commanded us to follow in order to protect his church and retrieve his lost sheep? And what can we do to show our people and the world that redemptive church discipline is truly God’s gift and blessing to his church?

Ken Sande is the president of Peacemaker Ministries®, a lawyer, and the author of The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict (Baker, 2004).

Posted by UrL at March 25, 2008 | Comments (13) | TrackBack

March 12, 2008

They Love the Church but Not the Institution (Part 2)

In the first part of this post, I discussed my suspicion that we have confused the church (the community of God’s people) with the church institution (the 501c3 tax-exempt organization). This leads to a myopic understanding of Christian mission and service. We can slip into the idea that the only legitimate use of one’s gifts, time, and energy is within the institutional structures of the church organization. In part two I want to explore why we may have fallen into this mindset, and how we can begin to think differently.

Without doubt there are numerous factors behind our exaltation of the church institution above the community of saints that created it, but one critical component may be cultural. In our consumer culture we’ve come to believe that institutions are the vessels of God’s Spirit and power. (The reason for this is a subject I explore in more depth in my book due out next year.) The assumption is that with the right curriculum, the right principles, and the right programs, values, and goals, the Spirit will act to produce the ministry outcomes we envision. This plug-and-play approach to ministry makes God a predictable, mechanical device and it assumes his Spirit resides within organizations and systems rather than people.

You often see this mindset after the death or departure of a godly leader. A man or woman powerfully filled with the Spirit’s breath demonstrates amazing ministry for Christ. Others are attracted to the leader and over time a community forms. But once the Spirit-filled leader is gone, those remaining assume his or her ministry can and should be perpetuated. The wind of the Spirit may have shifted, but they want it to keep blowing in the same direction. So, an institution is established based on the departed leader’s purpose, vision, and values. If these are rigorously maintained, it is believed, then the same Spirit-empowered results that were evident in the leader’s life will continue through the institution. Many ministries and denominations originated in just this way--with success defined not merely by faithfulness but by longevity.

But what we often fail to see is that the Spirit was not unleashed in the leader’s life because he or she had the right values or employed the right strategy. The “fire of God,” as Dallas Willard calls it, was in their soul because of their intense love of Jesus Christ. Rather than focusing on reproducing a leader’s methodology by constructing an institution, we ought to focus on reproducing his or her devotion to God—but that is a far more challenging task. As Willard writes, “One cannot write a recipe for this, for it is a highly personal matter, permitting of much individual variation and freedom. It also is dependent upon grace—that is, upon God acting in our lives to accomplish what we cannot accomplish on our own.”

This is what highly institutional consumer Christianity fails to grasp. It reduces ministry to a predictable machine where the right input results in the desired output, and then invites religious consumers to engage the test-engineered institution for their spiritual nourishment. It is also the assumption behind a good number of the ministry books, conferences, and resources we produce every year. But I don’t believe the Spirit of God is laying dormant waiting for the institutional church to compose the right BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) so he can be unleashed the way a pagan god is conjured by an incantation. God is a person, not a force. And his Spirit does not empower programs or inhabit institutions but people who were created in God’s image to be the vessels of his glory.

As I stated in part one, this does not mean structures and organizations are evil. It simple means that institutional structures should exist to support the Spirit-filled people so they can advance the mission of God through human relationships. It’s not about either people or the institution, but about getting the order right. The institution exists to resource the people. People do not exist to resource the institution.

My Honda Civic serves as a helpful metaphor. Decades ago Honda began using an engineering philosophy referred to as “man-max, machine-min.” The idea was to design cars by allocating maximum space for the human occupants and minimal space for the mechanical components. It sounds intuitive, but in the 1970s—the age of gas-guzzling land yachts—it was a radical approach for an automaker. Since then the notion of ergonomics and user-friendly technology has become pervasive.

What if we approached our mission with a similar philosophy: “man-max, institution-min”? This is not an anti-institutional philosophy of ministry any more than Honda is an anti-mechanical car manufacturer. It simply recognizes that people are both the instruments and objects of God’s mission in the world. Human beings are the vessels of his Spirit, not organizations or institutions. This would mean asking new questions when the church (the community of believers) seeks to advance the mission of the Gospel:

Not: How do we grow the institution?
But: How do we grow people?

Not: How do we motivate people to serve in the church/institution?
But: How do we equip people and release them to serve outside the church/institution?

Not: How do we convince more people to come?
But: How do we inspire more people to go?

Not: How many programs can the church start?
But: How many programs have other churches started that we can help support?

Not: How many people have a committed relationship with our institution?
But: How many people have a committed relationship with another brother or sister in Christ?

Not: How do we make people dependent on the institution for their growth?
But: How do we equip people to grow independent of the institution?

Not: How much revenue can the institution generate?
But: How much revenue can the institution give away?

Not: How many buildings, pastors, and programs are necessary for the institution to have maximum exposure in the community?
But: How few buildings, pastors, and programs are necessary for God’s people to have time and energy to engage the community?

How these questions are answered will vary from place to place and church to church. How the Spirit of God leads one community of believer to engage the mission will look different than another. I’m not attempting to prescribe a single institutional model as normative for all. What I’m trying to do is challenge the assumptions behind the pervasive belief that sees institutions rather than people as the vessels and instruments of God’s power in the world. Learning to think “man-max, institution-min” may be the first step toward becoming a truly missional, rather than institutional, community.

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Posted by Skye Jethani at March 12, 2008 | Comments (26) | TrackBack

March 10, 2008

They Love the Church but Not the Institution

Dan Kimball, a regular contributor to Leadership and Out of Ur, has written a book titled, They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from emerging generations. The book chronicles the attitudes of younger seekers—they feel a strong affection for Jesus but they harbor distrust, even disgust, for the church.

I can relate to that perspective. In college I studied in the comparative religion department of a secular university and was closely involved with a parachurch ministry. During those years my fascination with Christ and my devotion to him was budding. But I carried a lingering resentment toward the church. For a number of legitimate (in my mind) and illegitimate reasons, I had pushed the church to periphery of my life. I saw it as a superfluous appendage to faith; like a sixth finger or third nipple—pretty harmless but best removed or kept hidden to avoid embarrassment.

That sentiment changed in me, however, through prayerfully reading the New Testament. I came to see that is was impossible to love Jesus but not his church. As the “Body of Christ,” the community of believers is at the center of God’s mission and work in the world. As Saint Augustine says, “You cannot have God as your Father and not have the Church as your mother.”

I repented. I prayed for weeks asking God to fill me with a love for his church that I knew was absent from my soul. In time my heart caught up with the biblical truth my mind had already conceded.

Fifteen years later I now find myself struggling with a new dilemma. As a young Christian I loved Jesus but not the church. As a more mature believer, I now describe myself as one who loves the church but not the institution. Let me explain.

I genuinely love the church; the community of God’s people who are together striving, and often failing, to pursue Christ and his mission. I love the men, women, and children that I share my life with, worship with, and serve alongside. I have even found myself feeling an unexpected love (although not always) for a critical church member complaining in my office, or the cantankerous person who seems to delight in disagreeing with my perspective on even mundane issues. Admittedly, mine is an imperfect love of the church, but it is real.

What I don’t love is the 501c3 tax-exempt institution we incorrectly refer to as “the church.” For decades we’ve heard the old adage, “the church isn’t a building, it’s the people.” We’ve come to recognize that the brick and mortar structure isn’t the church, but somehow we haven’t had the same epiphany about the intangible structures of the institution. In many peoples’ imaginations the church remains a bundle of programs, committees, policies, teams, ministries, initiatives, budgets, and events. Most people speak of “the church” the same way they refer to “the government”—it’s a hierarchy of leaders managing an organization that they engage but remain apart from.

I see this dichotomy most clearly when it comes to volunteer service. As church leaders we often feel compelled to draw more people into the institution’s programs to serve. I have, like many of you, scanned the membership roster and marked possible recruits who are not presently “serving the church.” Those focused on the financial end of things keep track of who is “giving to the church.” Even the use of words like “churched” and “unchurched” testifies to the centrality of the institution in our imagination and mission.

But is it possible for faithful and obedient Christians to be using their spiritual gifts, actively serving others, advancing God’s mission, and financially giving their wealth outside the institutional structures we’ve created? Are we able and willing to celebrate these things, or has our vision become so institutionally bound that we can only champion what occurs under the banner of our ministry's logo?

Sometimes I wonder if we have so confused these two entities—the church and the institution—that our mission becomes the growth and advancement of the later rather than the former. When attendance at a church program is large we say, “the church is growing,” and when attendance is poor we say, “the church is failing.” But is that really accurate? Is the church growing or failing, or merely the institution? Can we even tell the difference anymore?

I am not anti-institution. I am not one of those rabid fluid-organic-anti-linear-pomo-loosy goosey-anti-establishment church people. I believe structure is necessary. Structure is good and even God-ordained. We see organization and structure from the very foundation of the church in Acts. But these structures always existed to serve God’s people in the fulfillment of their mission. Today, it seems like God’s people exist to serve the institution in the fulfillment of its mission (which is usually to become a bigger institution). Most of the curricula available to pastors on spiritual gifts and service focus on getting people to serve within their institution. Rarely does a church recruit, equip, and release saints to serve the mission outside its own immediate structure. (Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon, is a refreshing exception.)

This is the heart of my dilemma. I sometimes feel the energies and time I pour into the institution doesn’t translate into God’s people being more equipped for the ministry of loving God and neighbor. Could my spiritual and personal resources bear more fruit if poured into real people (the church), rather than into the institutional trough they feed from on Sundays? I’m haunted by that question.

I know some of you will dismiss me as a cynic that’s spent too many evenings away from his young family trapped in church business meetings. Touché. But the ranks of those who love the church but not the institution is growing. Willow Creek’s REVEAL study, which has been the focus of relentless conversation on this blog, testifies to the dissatisfaction more mature believers feel toward the institution. I don’t believe they’re rejecting the church. The study shows these believers continue to grow spiritually by serving others and through meaningful relationships with other believers. In other words, they are growing by engaging the church. What they’ve realized they can do without is the institution. George Barna’s 2005 book, Revolution, documents a similar trend.

This is my dilemma. I love the church but not the institution. I want to give my life to serving Christ’s people and equipping them to accomplish the work of ministry. I want to use my Spirit-given gifts to build up the Body of Christ and edify the holy catholic Church whose faithful members surround us as a great cloud of witnesses. But I don’t want to give my life to a temporal institution. For the sake of argument I’ve constructed this as an either-or dichotomy, which it is not. I can be a part of the church (institution) and still faithfully pour my life into the church (God’s people). Discovering exactly how to do that remains the problem.

Continue reading part two of "They Love the Church but Not the Institution."

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Posted by Skye Jethani at March 10, 2008 | Comments (25) | TrackBack

February 5, 2008

Al Mohler is Too Cool for School

Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, has a reputation for diving fearlessly into controversial issues. A visit to his Wikipedia page reveals his history of treading into cultural minefields and not leaving until every bomb has detonated. His penchant for pyrotechnics continues with his latest book, Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth (Multnomah, 2008). Mohler addresses issues like faith and politics, morality and law, war and terror, homosexuality, and abortion—that’s a lot of mines to detonate in 160 very small pages.

In a chapter entitled "Needed: An Exit Strategy from Public Schools," Mohler argues that "public schools are prime battlegrounds for cultural conflict.” In Massachusetts, for example, children as young as seven years old have been assigned a book called King & King, in which a homosexual prince falls in love with another prince and, one assumes, lives happily ever after. Because same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts, educators insist that a homosexual lifestyle be presented in public schools as normal and, as a result, they affirm the districts' decision to require the book. Many Christians object to this sort of curriculum, but what can be done?

Mohler suggests the following:

I am convinced that the time has come for Christians to develop an exit strategy from the public schools. Some parents made this decision long ago. The Christian school and home school movements are among the most significant cultural developments of the last thirty years. Other parents are not there yet. In any event, an exit strategy should be in place.

This suggestion elicits questions about Christian mission and presence in the world. Will the darkness become even more pervasive if we stage a mass exodus from public school systems? On the other hand, do we risk the souls of our children for the sake of outreach?

But Mohler's solution also has implications for church leadership. He continues:

This strategy would affirm the basic and ultimate responsibility of Christian parents to take charge of the education of their own children. The strategy would also affirm the responsibility of churches to equip parents, support families, and offer alternatives.

I'd like to hear what all of you Ur-banites think. Do churches have a responsibility to offer alternatives to public education? Is it appropriate for church leaders to decide for their congregations whether their children ought to remain in public schools or move to a private or home school environment?

Mohler is certainly right about one thing; it is only a matter of time before Christians in every region of the country face challenges like the one described above. He is also right that churches are responsible for equipping parents to respond to their children's difficult questions. But how? How can church leaders equip believers—including their very youngest members—to follow Jesus and be salt and light? And what does that mean for our relationship to public schools?

Posted by UrL at February 5, 2008 | Comments (82) | TrackBack

January 7, 2008

Politics from the Pulpit

The race is on for the White House and it began with excitement last week in Iowa. Tomorrow it’s New Hampshire’s turn, and on February 5, “Super Tuesday,” near half of the country will be voting to select the Democratic and Republican nominees. With one of the most open races in recent history many Christians are still undecided, and some are looking to their church and pastors for direction. Should the church wade into the murky waters of politics? And if it does what is the risk? Allen R. Bevere, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Cambridge, Ohio, and contributor to RedBlueChristian.com, has written to share what a church is legally allowed to do in this political season.

The Associated Press has reported that several pastors in Iowa, who have publicly supported Governor Mike Huckabee for President have received anonymous letters warning them that their churches are in danger of losing their nonprofit status. The fact that the letters are anonymous means that they are probably from someone opposed to Huckabee, who wants to silence these ministers who support him.

There is great misunderstanding, even in government, as to what tax-exempt status does and does not mean in reference to what churches are and are not allowed to say and do when it comes to politics and elections in particular.

First, for some history:

Historically there was no law in the United States restricting any church or other nonprofit organization from endorsing or opposing a candidate for political office.

In 1954, after being opposed by a nonprofit organization, then Senator Lyndon Johnson proposed legislation prohibiting nonprofits from either opposing or endorsing any candidate (which did not and still does not apply to appointed offices such as Supreme Court Justices). The code was amended without debate. Since that time, the political landscape has changed.

So, exactly what is it that pastors and churches are allowed to do politically?

Churches may not directly endorse or oppose a political candidate. The key word is "directly." No church may officially say, "We endorse Jane Doe." "We oppose John Doe." In addition, the pastor should not send out a personal written endorsement on church letterhead. Political signs should not be displayed on the lawn of the church. "Indirect" participation is allowed and includes the following:

1. Pastors may personally endorse a candidate. The office of pastor does not exclude clergy from expressing their personal views. Everyone has that right. The IRS explicitly states that, while a pastor may endorse or oppose a candidate in the parking lot of the church or in the local grocery store in conversation, he or she may not directly endorse or oppose a candidate from the pulpit. There are many who believe, however, that such a view is unconstitutional. At the very least it is problematic from a polity standpoint in that, even in the pulpit, most pastors do not speak officially for their congregations.

2.Pastors may also personally work for a candidate and contribute financially to his or her campaign. No church may contribute to a campaign.

3. Pastors may even endorse a candidate in print, such as in a newspaper ad. The pastor's title and the church s/he is affiliated with may also be listed for the purposes of identification.

4. Pastors may also preach on moral and social issues (abortion, gay marriage, economic matters, etc.) which, depending on the pastor's views, may by implication throw support behind one candidate over another. It is wise, however, not to connect any one candidate to any one position during the sermon. Churches may also take official positions on such issues, as long as they don't directly endorse or oppose a candidate in the process.

5. Churches may organize voter registrations and drives as long as they are directed at all eligible voters and not only toward voters of one political party.

6. Churches may hold forums where candidates address the issues.

7. If a candidate visits a church during worship, he or she may be introduced publicly.

8. Churches may host candidates who may speak from the pulpit, as long as that candidate is not directly endorsed or urges the congregation to vote for her/him.

9. Churches may distribute non-partisan voter guide giving information on where each candidate stands on the issues. Churches should be warned about using guides that come from outside sources as they may be deemed to be partisan.

10. Churches may use their premises as voting stations.

Whether or not it is a good idea for a pastor to personally endorse a political candidate or not, and exactly how far a church should go in getting involved in the political process is another post for another time; but for those pastors and churches that are so inclined, it is helpful to know what the rules are as Caesar continues to domesticate the church into doing his bidding; whether it is in threatening the church's tax-exempt status, or in so sucking us into the partisan political process in both parties, that we forget the church's more profound political task of reminding the nations of the world that it is God who reigns and they are on borrowed time.

Allan R. Bevere is the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Cambridge, Ohio, and a Professional Fellow in Theology at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio.

Posted by UrL at January 7, 2008 | Comments (14)

November 9, 2007

Lifestyles of the Rich and Religious

I come from a diverse family where few are Christians and even fewer venture into the curious sub-culture of evangelicalism. For this reason a number of my relatives have an impression of Christianity based largely upon what they see while surfing the television—an impression that I do not fit and work hard to deconstruct. Televangelists are loud and energetic; I’m rarely the life of the party. Televangelists have big hair; I have no hair. Televangelists fly around in private jets; I ride a bike to work to save on gas.

My work to deconstruct the image of gold-gilded Christianity appears to be getting some help from the United States Senate. Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, is investigating possible financial shenanigans on the part of six widely known TV preachers. From Ted Olsen’s article at ChristianityToday.com:

"Recent articles and news reports regarding possible misuse of donations made to religious organizations have caused some concern for the Finance Committee," Grassley wrote to the ministries in letters asking for detailed financial records.

None of the ministries targeted—those led by Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, Eddie Long, Joyce Meyer, and Randy and Paula White—are required to file the financial disclosure Form 990 with the IRS because they are designated as churches.

The ministries have until December 6 to submit audited financial statements, compensation reports, records for ministry jet travel, and other documents.

Read Ted Olsen’s full article here.

The Tampa Tribune has also published the letters sent by Sen. Grassley to each of the ministries concerning his investigation.

If your perspective and temperament is anything like mine, when you first heard about the Senate investigation you may have thought, It’s about time! After all, the ministries listed are not exactly the Salvation Army. Most are identified as “prosperity preachers” who flamboyantly practice what they preach. Sen. Grassley cited $10 million private jets and $23,000 toilets as part of his investigation.

If there has been a violation of the law, and not merely stewardship, then we should not mourn to see these ministries held accountable. But there’s another benefit to the truth being brought into the light. How many struggling people are suckered into sacrificially giving to these ministries in the hope of receiving God’s blessing? How many people are led astray? And how many non-Christians are given a false impression of Christ, the Bible, and his Church?

But after my initial reaction I had second thoughts. This investigation may have a downside. First there is the “slippery slope” scenario. (We evangelicals are trained from childhood to spot slippery slopes.) If the government begins to investigate these ministries will it eventually be looking at my church too? Will the Senate, IRS, or other agency demand my church’s expense reports? Admittedly, this kind of paranoia is what leads people to live in "compounds” and stock firearms next to their communion cups, but it’s something to think about. In the U.S. churches enjoy significant independence. Could the (alleged) abuses of a few high profile preachers impact us all?

But there is also a more personal angle for me. Many in my family don’t grasp the nuances and divergent streams of evangelicalism—let alone broader American Christianity. When any church scandal hits the media, they see it as an indictment on the whole faith the same way some Christians, unaware of the divergent beliefs of Muslims, can dismiss Islam as a faith of terrorists. To be honest, I’m just not looking forward to talking about yet another Christian scandal, no matter how overdue it may be.

Posted by Skye Jethani at November 9, 2007 | Comments (28)

October 30, 2007

Missions and Masturbation

There is no need to reiterate the statistics on sexual immorality among clergy. We all know them. And we also know that addiction to pornography is at epidemic levels even within the church. But do we know how many gifted young leaders never answer their call into ministry because of the guilt they feel over past sexual sins?

John Piper has written an article for Christianity Today addressing this problem. He says:

…so many young people are being lost to the cause of Christ's mission because they are not taught how to deal with the guilt of sexual failure. The problem is not just how not to fail. The problem is how to deal with failure so that it doesn't sweep away your whole life into wasted mediocrity with no impact for Christ. The great tragedy is not masturbation or fornication or pornography. The tragedy is that Satan uses guilt from these failures to strip you of every radical dream you ever had or might have. In their place, he gives you a happy, safe, secure, American life of superficial pleasures, until you die in your lakeside rocking chair.

It’s no surprise that Dr. Piper’s prescription for overcoming a guilty conscience is a heavy dose of Reformed theology. “Take two doctrines and call me in the morning,” seems to be his answer:

With this passionately embraced theology—the magnificent doctrines of substitutionary atonement and justification by faith (even if you don't remember the names)—you can conquer the Devil tomorrow morning when he lies to you about your hopelessness.

Agree or disagree with Piper’s solution, the problem he is addressing is important. As our culture becomes increasingly sexually charged Christians will need the tools to not only fight temptation but also the means to recover from failure. When facing an epidemic preventative medicine alone isn’t enough.

Similarly, how do we help young people find balance when many gage the health of their relationship with Christ on a single issue—their sexual purity? A friend working at a Christian college has noticed this trend in recent years. Incoming freshmen are the first generation to have grown up since grade school with internet access. Many have been exposed to massive quantities of pornography since their pre-pubescent years. By age eighteen some young men are already sexual addicts. But many others have been formed to measure their spirituality based solely on their sexual self-control. When a single issue carries so much weight the guilt of failure can overwhelm.

Is Piper right? Are we at risk of losing a generation of Christian leaders not because of sexual failure but because they haven’t been taught to fight the aftershock of guilt? And is embracing a passionate theology of justification and atonement the solution? I encourage you to read Piper’s entire article here, and post your thoughts below.

Posted by UrL at October 30, 2007 | Comments (35)

October 29, 2007

Squelched by Marriage

When I get home tonight, I'll think awhile about Gordon MacDonald's new column. In fact, I think most pastors and leaders should think hard on his thesis: What has the dominant, big-personality, leader type squelched in his spouse? I may muster the courage to ask my wife what she thinks about it.

Those of us who have spent our lives getting close to people for pastoral reasons are quite well acquainted with the grief that floods the life of one who has lost a dearly loved spouse. We've observed the paralyzing sadness and sense of loss and know that only time will dull the pain. There are a plethora of books and seminars that speak about this experience.

What is less talked or written about is the opposite of such grief. The word that comes to me is liberation. In some cases the death of a spouse actually liberates the surviving spouse to remove something like a disguise and become a new person.

I once stood near enough to overhear a conversation between a woman and two of her adult children soon after the funeral and burial services for her husband (and their father) had concluded. Apparently, either the son or the daughter, thinking they were offering a kind of protective love to the mother, tried to take charge and tell her something that she should or shouldn't do.

The mother (freshly a widow, remember!) reacted with words wrapped in anger. "Now let's get something straight right this minute. No one! No one is going to tell me what to do any longer. I've been doing what everyone else wanted (alluding no doubt to her deceased husband) for fifty years. Now it's my turn. I'll make my own decisions from here on out. Is this understood?" I had the feeling these words has been rehearsed and that it was only a matter of time until they came out. Now they did.

They came from a small-statured woman who had always seemed content to live as a loving and serving wife in the shadow of her more-dominating husband. As far as I could tell she had always seemed happy with her marriage arrangements. Now I had some doubt.

More than a few times, I have seen surviving spouses who—soon after a period of mourning—seem to change dramatically. They buy new clothes, begin to travel (or stop traveling), redecorate their home, join organizations or find new ways to make money. They deepen spiritually or (and this shouldn't surprise) do just the opposite. Anyway, a new person emerges. A new person? Or the hidden one?

What I have learned from watching episodes like this is that many people apparently harbor a secret person inside of themselves that never sees the light of day. That hidden "person" is intimidated or refused by someone near who controls all the airspace of the relationship.

Someone, by the way, will point out that this is most certainly true in many acrimonious divorces. Terminate the relationship and you have no idea what new person may emerge.

Of course there is a corollary to all of this for which I do not have space except to mention. Sometimes the survivor goes into a kind of character or spiritual disintegration and you realize that what they were was being propped up or held together by the one who had just passed on. This scenario is not pretty.

Having seen one more of these hidden persons emerge in just the past few months, I was pressed to engage in some reflective thinking about my own marriage. Could there ever be such a person hiding in my wife, Gail? Someone that I have refused to recognize and welcome over the years of our marriage? Put another way: is this woman whom I dearly love everything she is capable of being partly through my encouragement and affirmation? Or—and this is hard to write—would my departure be that "person's" liberation? I'd like to think that the answer is a resounding "no!" There is nothing in Gail that needs to hide. Nevertheless, it is a question worth asking myself (no matter how morose) so that I can be the more sure that I have encouraged her (as well as all my friends) to be all that God meant her (and them) to be.

A wonderful read: Jonathan Aitken's John Newton (Crossway, 2007) is a marvelous biography. I'll never sing again Amazing Grace without remembering the power of Christian conversion as it was so remarkably evidenced in Newton's life. Before Aitken's book, I thought I'd covered the bases on John Newton. Not so. He's a fresh new hero to me now.

An irritating read: Jim and Casper Go to Church, by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper (BarnaBooks, 2007). A brilliant idea for a book. Two guys (one an out-of-the-closet-atheist) visit various well-known churches in America at worship time. The atheist, Casper, offers the Christian, Jim, a fresh-eyed view of what he is seeing as people gather and sing and listen to sermons. I guess I'm glad they didn't come anywhere near where I preach—although I probably would have learned a lot.

I wish the book could be rewritten with an eye toward more depth in the subject matter. There weren't a lot of surprises about what one might experience if he visits a congregation at worship for the first time. Still, the value of the book was in its reminder that some things done in church must seem pretty bizarre to the critic who stands outside the faith.

The price of the book is in the question that Casper asks Jim several times after leaving various churches to which they have traveled. "Is this really what Jesus told you guys to do?" Casper seems incredulous.

A prayer request. This was a wonderful weekend in New England: the foliage remains brilliant; the Red Sox won the World Series; the Patriots are undefeated; and Boston College is number two in the nation. We need humility. Right now it's a spiritual battle for all of us. A spiritual battle I would be happy to entertain into the foreseeable future.

Gordon MacDonald is Leadership's editor at large

Posted by UrL at October 29, 2007 | Comments (16)

October 9, 2007

Living with Less

Chad Hall is experiencing the simpler life. Intentionally. And he’s wondering what effect his quest for less has on those he leads. And he has three questions we can ask.

Everywhere I go these days, big is in. My combo meal is super-sized, my SUV is third row, and the TV of my dreams is 62-inch plasma. We Americans are big eaters, big spenders, and big wasters. Even our churches are into big, enlarging auditoriums, renting big malls and even bigger coliseums in order to accommodate big crowds and enable big growth. Like the population at large, we Christians seem to have a growing acceptance of the bigger is better credo.

But all this growth might be creating some big problems.

Our society and systems seem incapable of handling the never-ceasing expansion of want and need. Our souls are groaning and the planet is buckling beneath the collateral damage of growth. Landfills are full, the air is thick, and we cannot drink from many of our streams.

In light of our growing problems, maybe the church should give small a chance. I propose that ministry leaders are just the ones to help Christ followers exchange big for small. After all, leaders are supposed to help usher others toward something better (not just something bigger), so maybe we should start ushering folks toward living lives that are less hectic, less cluttered, less selfish, less toxic. And maybe instead of a big ad campaign advertising “LESS!” we should start living with less ourselves. Instead of just preaching it from the pulpit, maybe some personal choices would help slow down the growth, bring some sanity to our lives and make the world more livable.

Give less a chance
Our family recently decided to sell our riding mower because its impact on the environment was not offset by its necessity. Shortly after, my wife quipped, “I think we’re becoming tree-huggers.”

How had it come to this? After all, I have a strong dislike of Birkenstocks, I think Michael Moore is a narcissist, and I appreciate creature comforts every bit as much as the next guy. So why is my family choosing to push-mow the lawn, ditch the extra television, and experiment with line-drying our clothes? I’m not sure how it all began or where it’s going, but we’ve adopted a series of small questions that are redirecting our souls and may be benefiting the world around us.

Three small questions
Not to cast blame, but my journey toward less started with Randy Frazee. Prior to a conference in 2003, Randy and I had a dinner conversation during which he shared with me the somewhat radical lifestyle changes his family had made in order to make room for real relationships.
A few months later Randy wrote the book Making Room for Life.

When my wife and I read that book, we started talking and eventually began asking the question of simplification, “Even though something is commonplace, do we really need it in our lives?”

With that question in mind, all sorts of things were up for grabs: buying a house in the “right” school district, needing two incomes, cell phones, minivans, and even (hold your breath!) signing our kids up for soccer. It was like a little compact fluorescent light bulb turned on to illuminate some of the chains of conformity we had allowed to make our decisions for us. We began to see how deeply we’d bought into culture’s code of success being equated with more and more. The results of all this “more” were clutter and confusion and so we decided to simplify our lives. Removing some of the typical suburban clutter was a bit scary, but over the course of a few years, it really has begun to make room for life.

We soon discovered the joy of having fewer bills to pay, fewer trips to make, fewer calendars to juggle, and fewer agendas to manage. Lurking amid the resource of free time, we discovered the pleasure of not just having neighbors, but of knowing our neighbors. Our lives soon began to revolve more and more around the half dozen or so families we considered to be our neighbors.

We soon recognized that our role as good neighbors meant significantly other than trying to get someone to attend this or that church. As we experienced the inherent value of people and place, we began to ask, “How can we live so that when Christ returns he won’t have to work so hard to redeem our neighborhood?” This became our family’s question of significance. We want to add kingdom value to the relational, spiritual and even physical environment we inhabit. Our interactions with neighbors have gone from enjoying their company to co-laboring with them for the good of our little corner of creation. Campfires in the backyard, pizza on Sunday nights, and building a tree house all took on kingdom significance because we were contributing to making things in our acres of earth a little more as they are in heaven.

Continue reading Chad Hall's article at LeadershipJournal.net

Chad Hall is a coach/consultant living in Cary, North Carolina, and the co-author of Coaching for Christian Leaders: A Practical Guide.

Posted by UrL at October 9, 2007 | Comments (23)

September 25, 2007

ATMs: Automatic Tithing Machines

How can you pass the plate to people who don't carry cash? You can't. So the next big wave may be the "Giving Kiosk" in your church's lobby.

"A lot of people no longer carry cash or a checkbook," says Marty Baker, pastor of Stevens Creek Church in Augusta, Georgia. So he installed two ATMs in 2005. The experiment has been a success.

During the first year, the kiosks processed over $100,000 in donations at Stevens Creek. In 2006, that number increased to just over $200,000, representing more than 25 percent of the church's total income. Even more impressive is the fact that giving as a whole increased 18 percent since the ATMs were installed. "It's a safe, convenient way for people to donate to their church," Baker notes, "and it meets people where they are today."

These positive returns encouraged Baker to launch SecureGive, a for-profit company that produces and maintains several different versions of the giving kiosks. "We knew that if this concept and technology was so beneficial for our church, others could benefit from it as well," says Baker.

SecureGive currently operates in 25 churches around the country. One of them is Family Church in West Monroe, Louisiana, where Terry Taylor is the executive pastor. "We wanted to help those who were not giving to start walking in obedience," says Taylor. "We feel that is being achieved."

Princeton Pike Church of God in Hamilton, Ohio, had featured online giving for years, but the service was used consistently by only ten families. The church engaged SecureGive in January and now has more than 150 families contributing regularly through the giving kiosk.

The company points out an array of practical advantages. One example is a decreased risk of embezzlement, since donated funds are transferred directly into a church's bank account, bypassing the counting committee. And the kiosk documents satisfy Internal Revenue Service regulations requiring taxpayers to present a written statement from a bank or charitable organization when claiming a deduction on their returns.

Phil Martin of the National Association of Church Business Administrators says that Automated Tithing Machines might only be the beginning. "Whether we'll have an offering plate with a card reader one day, who knows," he said. "But we're certainly not far from that."

Posted by UrL at September 25, 2007 | Comments (18)

April 3, 2007

Jesus and the Art of Automobile Maintenance

Leadership’s editor-at-large, Gordon MacDonald, is back with further reflections on life and faith. This time he addresses the nature of spiritual brokenness—a truth incarnated by his temperamental 1950 Ford. (Sorry, I have a weakness for bad puns.)

My first car was an 8-year old 1950 Ford (stick shift on the steering column) purchased for $200. Its mileage was north of 100,000. To call it a lemon is not an exaggeration. The starting motor was a fifty-percenter, meaning frequent pushes. The radiator leaked like a sieve. The fuel gauge was accurate to the nearest 25 gallons. The engine drank a quart of oil every 200 miles. The tires were bald, and the muffler was absent without leave.

On cold winter nights, I had to park the Ford at the crest of a hill near my college apartment and drain the water from radiator to prevent a freeze-up. In the morning I would refill the radiator, nudge the car downhill, release the clutch and hope that the engine would leap into life. No amount of prayer seemed to directly affect the success of this process.

I used to imagine that the Ford talked to itself when it saw me coming. “Looks like he’s in a hurry today. I’ll slow ‘em down.” Or, “he looks like he’s dressed for a date. Probably wants to impress a pretty girl. He’s toast.” I tell you, it was not hard to believe that the Ford despised me.

The Ford was, in a word, broken, and I had to accept its mechanical eccentricities as a normal part of my life. I couldn’t fix it because I wasn’t a mechanic, and I couldn’t afford someone who was. Add to that my suspicion that the Ford didn’t want to be fixed because its brokenness gave it a strange kind of “control” over me.

Today, decades later, I drive a relatively new vehicle (a Suburu Outback). Every time I turn the ignition key and the Outback starts, I am freshly surprised because I still (to this day!) instinctively anticipate the “click” of a balky starting motor. I believe that, unlike the Ford, the Outback likes me and thinks nice things when it sees me coming. It appears committed to my happiness.

Nevertheless, if I had to liken myself to a car, I’d have to identify with the broken Ford and less the friendly Suburu (this side of Heaven anyway). I know I’m supposed to say that I’m a sinner (because I am), but it’s more helpful to me to regard myself as broken—a person far, far less functional than God designed me to be and in possession of the same rebellious spirit I once imagined to be in the Ford.

Perhaps we are all like broken Fords who sometimes start and sometimes don’t, who may make it to an intended destination but, then again, maybe not. We’d like to appear as if we just came from the showroom. But the truth is that most of the time, we deserve to be towed to the junk yard.

The 12-stepper understands this rationale every time he introduces himself with the words, “Hi, my name is ________, and I’m an alcoholic.” Which is not unlike saying, “My name is Gordon, and I’m broken.”

Thinking like this helps me to appreciate the remarkable grace and kindness of the Savior, Jesus, who searched for and loved broken “Fords” (then and now) and enjoyed rebuilding them and increasing their reliability factor. And thinking like this helps me to look at others (and at myself) with the understanding that they—like me—sometimes have more characteristics befitting an old broken Ford than a brand new Outback.

When seeing things from that perspective, one can get excited when anybody (beginning with myself) actually starts up and gets where they are supposed to go. You could have a pretty fine church if everyone saw each other like this.

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

March 13, 2007

Where Have All the Prophets Gone?

While studying for my ordination a few years ago I was required to read Oswald Sanders’ classic book, Spiritual Leadership. I’ve forgotten most of his practical advice about leading a church, but one short section has stayed with me. Sanders talks about the choice pastors face between being a popular leader or an unpopular prophet.

The logic seems rooted in the Old Testament differentiation of these roles. The kings of Israel served as leaders over God’s people. They used their power to pull wires and drive the nation forward. The prophets, on the other hand, served as correctors. They came down from the hills to tell everyone what they were doing wrong. And after being rejected, stoned, and thoroughly despised they returned to the hills. Quoting A.C. Dixon, Sanders says, “If [the pastor] seeks to be a prophet and a leader, he is apt to make a failure of both.”

Prior to reading Sanders I had already been wondering why few pastors led with any prophetic energy. Scanning my favorite books on my shelf, typically ones with a provocative challenge for the church, I realized that virtually all of them were written by professors. Few, if any, were composed by pastors. Where were the voices of correction in the local church? Where were the sermons calling God’s people in a new direction? Where was there a pulpit challenging our popular assumptions about church, mission, and discipleship? Reading Sanders helped me see that we’ve driven the prophets out of the local church and into academia.

A recent post by David Fitch cited a new leadership model gaining popularity among missional churches. Referred to as APEPT by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch in their book, The Shaping of Things to Come, it is pulled from Ephesians 4:11. Paul says God has given the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Frost and Hirsch, among other advocates of the model, say the contemporary church has focused its leadership almost exclusively on pastors and teachers while ignoring the contribution of evangelists, prophets, and apostles.

With structures intolerant of these other leadership functions the evangelists abandon local church ministry for para-church groups, apostles are driven to missions agencies, and prophets take their provocative ideas to academia. But, say Frost and Hirsch, “only when all five are operating in unity and harmony can we see effective missional engagement begin to occur.”

So, why has the local church been so unwelcoming to prophets, and how do we get them back? I’d like to suggest a few ideas. This is certainly not an exhaustive list, but just a start.

1. Seminaries are not training prophets
My seminary education (and I assume my experience was not too different than most church leaders’) primarily equipped me to teach the Bible. Professors taught me Greek and Hebrew, historical theology, hermeneutics—everything was designed to help me exegete the text, but no one equipped me to exegete the culture. Correction—one professor did, but his course was an elective not seen as essential for pastors. With seminaries churning out teachers we shouldn’t be surprised that few prophetic voices are heard in the local church setting.

A first step toward reintroducing prophets is for seminary programs to value this calling. Since I left seminary I believe more schools are doing this. Tracks are now available in some progressive schools that focus on cultural engagement and discerning social phenomena. We need more pastors who can engage ministry ideas and not simply discern if they work, but if they are right.

2. Church structures are unsafe for prophets
A prophet by definition is going to disturb the status quo, make people uncomfortable, and rock the boat. But when a pastor with a prophetic function is completely dependant upon the congregation for his/her livelihood it creates a conflict of interests. Hirsch and Frost state the problem well:

Centralized funding makes the minister or leader economically subservient to the dominant interests of the group. It’s very hard to have a prophetic ministry to the group that provides your salary. And this incapacity to cultivate an authentic prophetic ministry contributes directly to the institutionalization of ministry and the church. Leadership is thus always hostage to the reactionary groups in the congregation. Change becomes inordinately hard.

One way to overcome this problem is to decentralize funding for church leaders. David Fitch wrote about the value of bi-vocational pastors, and Hirsch and Frost recommend more leaders consider raising their support from outside their congregation the way missionaries do. Certainly, these ideas raise other challenges but they might allow a prophetic voice to once again be heard within the local church.

3. Ministries evaluate size not depth
Dallas Willard refers to them as the ABCs of ministry: Attendance, Buildings, and Cash. These are what we measure to determine if our ministry is effective and successful. The ability to increase these quantifiable elements is not the strength of a prophet. In fact, an unrestrained prophet is a sure to diminish attendance, buildings, and cash. For example, Greg Boyd, senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, preached a prophetic series on the dangers of confusing the kingdom of God with partisan politics. As a result 20% of his congregation (about one thousand people) left the church.

If we only see success in ministry as numerical growth we’ll never tolerate the ministry of prophets. Their role is not to add people to the church; that function belongs to the evangelist. Prophets bring depth and discernment to the community, they correct our course when we get off track, and they warn us when pragmatism begins to overshadow faithfulness.

Ultimately, if we have any hope of restoring a prophetic ministry to the local church we need to abandon our either-or thinking. We mustn’t require pastors to be either leaders or prophets. We cannot value either expansion or depth. And we must not see the role of pastors as being either to comfort the flock or correct it. Both are necessary for meaningful and balanced ministry.

Posted by Skye Jethani at March 13, 2007 | Comments (38)

March 8, 2007

Brian McLaren Thanks God for Enemies

Have you ever heard of Nikolai Velimirovic? I hadn’t either until Brian McLaren introduced me to a prayer written by the Serbian Orthodox bishop. McLaren credits the bishop with helping him process the increasing criticism he’s received in recent years. In this interview, McLaren shares his thoughts about the blessing of having both friends and enemies.

How do you handle criticism? Did your years as a pastor prepare you for what you're now experiencing?
As you know, I have people writing books and saying very critical things about me, but in some ways it’s no harder then being a pastor was. In fact, it might even be easier. Many pastors know what it’s like to have people they’ve cared for—people they’ve married, and baptized, and counseled—come up and say, “You’re not meeting our needs anymore, and we’re leaving.” It’s wounding. It’s very, very hard.

When we hear criticism, it can echo in our minds for days. On one hand, we can’t stop beating ourselves up and second-guessing. On the other, we're tempted to get revenge. We torture ourselves. What I found I need to do is retrain my instinct to defend myself. Of course that is what Jesus was talking about when he says to turn the other cheek.

The second thing I’ve learned is to process the criticism with God. The prayer by the Serbian bishop has helped me do this. The bishop was taken to a concentration camp for speaking out against the Nazis. His own people betrayed him. But in his prayer he asks the Lord to bless his enemies, and he recognized how they actually help him. That has been incredibly helpful for me.

How do you think your critics have helped you?
We all want people to think we’re better than we actually are. I want people to think I’m more holy than I actually am, more knowledgeable than I actually am. Well, a critic comes along, and they don’t give me a chance to inflate my image. And in that way, if I can learn to live with a lower image through criticism, then maybe I won’t be so prone to inflate my image in other circumstances. Critics teach us humility.

If we should thank God for our enemies, what about our friends? How do they help us grow?
I think we all need non-utilitarian friendships. In ministry it’s easy for us to use people—to see them as a way of advancing our ministry or our agenda. And there are many ways people want to use us. A non-utilitarian friendship is where we build a relationship because I like the person and I’m not trying to use them for my success, and they’re not trying to use me.

C.S. Lewis talked about this in idea in The Four Loves. These kinds of friends are not looking at each other. They stand side by side looking at the world because with that friend they have someone who loves the same things they love. It’s about companionship. That’s what I mean by a non-utilitarian friendship.

When I was a young Christian I went through a period of doubt. I just wasn’t sure I believed anything anymore. I shared this with a good friend and mentor and he said to me, “I just want to assure you, Brian, I’ll be your friend even if you become an atheist.” That helped me believe in God more, because I felt the unconditional love of God through him. If he’d threatened me or put a lot of pressure on me, that would have made it harder to believe in God. To me there is something about unconditional friendship that demonstrates the grace of God.

Posted by UrL at March 8, 2007 | Comments (23)

December 26, 2006

70 Effective Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards

Making a resolution for 2007? Before you do, check out the resolutions of one of America's most celebrated pastors. Eric Reed shares with us Jonathan Edwards' effective resolutions.

Jonathan Edwards was a serious man. Even at 19, the young man who would become a leading figure in the First Great Awakening took his faith seriously. In several sittings over a one-year period, Edwards drafted 70 resolutions by which he governed his life and ministry.

For such a young man, he wrote a life's code that was amazingly well-rounded. He addressed personal spiritual growth and physical temperance, and matters of attitude, behavior, and relationship. Edwards wanted to live as if he had "already seen the happiness of heaven, and hell torments."

He pledged that he would "never speak anything but the pure and simple verity." "Let there be something of benevolence in all that I speak." In a pledge that he would speak evil of no one, Edwards added the caveat, "except I have some particular good call for it."

Some might say Edwards was too serious. Although not in the Resolutions, his pledge to spend 13 hours a day in the study of Scripture isolated him from his congregation, and indulged his solitary nature and his tendency to melancholy. Some in his congregation complained about his absence from their daily lives—they were accustomed to the regular rounds of most parsons—but they could not complain about his moral integrity or his commitment to the pulpit. Edwards reviewed his code of ethics weekly, and subjected himself to rigorous spiritual examination.

His commitment "towards making, maintaining, establishing, and preserving peace" was ultimately tested when, after 23 years of ministry among them, Edwards was terminated by his congregation on account of a nasty doctrinal disagreement.

One of the most devout pastors in American history, and one of our greatest theologians, was canned. Even so, he stayed on and filled the pulpit, until the church called a replacement.

Edwards later took the pulpit of a tiny frontier church. He pastored there six years, a productive period for Edwards the writer, until he was called as president of Princeton University.

Edwards served but six months, felled by a smallpox vaccination at age 54.

Let's consider a few of the resolutions that guided Edward's ministry:

Being sensible that I am unable to do any thing without God's help, I do humbly intreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to His will, for Christ's sake.

Resolved, That I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration.

Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty, and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general.

Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever.

Resolved, Never to lose one moment of time, but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

Resolved, Never to do any thing, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.

Resolved, To be endeavoring to find out fit objects of charity and liberality.

Resolved, To maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking.

Resolved, Never to do any thing, which if I should see in another, I should count a just occasion to despise Him for, or to think any way the more meanly of Him.

Resolved, To study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.

Resolved, To strive to my utmost every week to be brought higher in religion, and to a higher excercise of grace, than I was the week before.

Resolved, To ask myself at the end of every day, week, month and year, wherein I could possibly in any respect have done better.

Resolved, Frequently to renew the dedication of myself to God, which was made at my baptism, which I solemnly renewed, when I was received into the communion of the church; and which I have solemnly re-made this twelfth day of January, 1722-3.

Resolved, Never hence-forward, till I die, to act as if I were any way my own, but entirely and altogether God's.

Resolved, I will act so as I think I shall judge would have been best, and most prudent, when I come into the future world.

Resolved, Never to give over, nor in the least to slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be.

Resolved, After afflictions, to inquire, what I am the better for them, what good I have got by them, and what I might have got by them.

Posted by UrL at December 26, 2006 | Comments (9)

December 1, 2006

AIDS Activism Makes Strange Bedfellows

This morning I attended a prayer breakfast in my town for World AIDS Day. Despite the blizzard conditions, leaders from local churches, schools, and relief organizations gathered for the event. More than a few people remarked about the odd group. My table had three evangelical pastors, a newspaper reporter, and a board member from an organization led by a gay man. Across from us were Roman Catholic nuns in their habits, Wheaton College students, and leaders of the gay community.

The two main speakers represented the polarity of the group. Ruth Bell Olsson is the leader of the HIV/AIDS ministry at Mars Hill Church near Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ruth comes with solidly evangelical credentials, and she also happens to be Pastor Rob Bell’s sister. The second speaker was Dan Pallotta, founder of AIDSRides and Breast Cancer Walks. Pallotta’s passion for AIDS awareness stems from his own experience as a gay man in Los Angeles watching many in his community die from the disease.

In a time when cultural divisions are as distinct as blue and red, the coming together of liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and gays, was refreshing—at least to me. But not everyone is happy about the emerging connection between evangelicals and those outside the conservative camp. Rick Warren, for example, has taken flak for inviting pro-choice Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) to Saddleback to speak at the HIV/AIDS summit today. Saddleback responded to the critics:

“We do not expect all participants in the Summit discussion to agree with all of our Evangelical beliefs. However, the HIV/AIDS pandemic cannot be fought by Evangelicals alone. It will take the cooperation of all – government, business, NGOs and the church. That is the purpose of this Summit."

[Read more about Senator Obama's remarks and Saddleback's AIDS Summit here]

I applaud Rick Warren, Saddleback, and those in my own town who are defying cultural divisions in order to tackle the issue of AIDS locally and globally. I am amazed when Christians refuse to participate in the fight against the pandemic because others in the trenches don’t agree with them politically or theologically. 8,000 people die everyday from AIDS. Eight thousand! As a friend reminded me this morning, for the church to sit on the sidelines is tantamount to a New York firefighter refusing to enter the burning World Trade Center because another firefighter voted for Hillary.

Anyone who has been to the front lines of the AIDS battle knows it is not simply a political, moral, social, or theological issue. AIDS is a human issue. My first encounter with AIDS was in college. A young man with HIV came to our state university to talk about being a Christian with the disease. He had contracted the virus from a blood transfusion, not through sexual contact. I suppose that made him more acceptable in Christian circles. But he challenged the Christians on campus to reach out to everyone affected by HIV/AIDS, including gays and lesbians.

While in seminary, I served as a hospice chaplain visiting dying patients in the poorer neighborhoods of Chicago. That was the first time I saw the devastating final stages of AIDS mingled with the dehumanizing effects of poverty. I sat with one woman, a mother in her forties, as she cried about her children. She feared they would be lost to gangs after she died. Her emaciated hand clasped mine with meager strength as I prayed for her.

Last year I had a similar experience, but on the other side of the world. In a tiny village outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I held another mother’s hand as she wept for her children. Her husband had died of AIDS just weeks earlier, and now she was in the final stages—confined to her dirt and grass hut. Her four-year-old daughter (the same age as my little girl) was being held by my friend. “I know my mommy will be the next to die,” she said.

The tiny village, in which every adult had AIDS, was organized by missionaries. The Christians cared for the suffering, sought desperately to acquire drugs to slow the progression of the disease, and ran an orphanage for the abandoned children. They also held funerals, sometimes multiple services a day, and cremated the bodies of the parents as the children watched.

Whether it’s a neighborhood just minutes from my home or a village half a world away, AIDS is destroying lives and families everywhere. As followers of Jesus Christ, our participation in this battle is a test of our claim to be “pro-life.” To quote Saddleback’s statement again, to truly be pro-life "means far more than opposing abortion. It also means doing everything in our power to keep people alive, so they might respond to the grace of Jesus Christ. Sometimes that means working with people you disagree with. With AIDS killing 8,000 people a day, saving lives is more important to us than political alignment." Amen.

Posted by Skye Jethani at December 1, 2006 | Comments (33) | TrackBack

November 8, 2006

Signs of a Restorable Spirit

In the wake of serious moral failure, church leaders are quickly asked about “restoration.” What does a person have to do to be deemed worthy of reinstatement as a church leader?

In many ways, the question is premature, like asking a toddler to decide on a college major. Too much has to happen, too many decisions along the way have to be made, a new direction of life has to be established before it’s even appropriate to weigh the possibilities of restoration.

And yet, the process is important. A direction does need to be pointed toward.

Author Chris Maxwell quotes one fallen minister:

“When a pastor commits a moral sin, the magnitude of that sin is so great that is has the capabilities of destroying the calling itself, the ministry, the man, his marriage, his family, his legacy and the community where that moral failure took place. In disgrace, humiliation, heartbreak and nearly being tarred and feathered, one man did that and was thrown out of town. I was that man.

“I needed to lay aside ministry and regroup. In reality I was a man without a ministry, a church and an income. Not a nice place to be. The transition from the religious/spiritual world to the secular/non-religious world was not difficult. It was the secular world that brought out innate skills that ultimately would make me a better man – if only I could survive the eight-year ordeal of getting my life back on track. It’s called Restoration.

“During this eight-year wilderness journey, there were six individuals who were used by God to be part of His restoration process. My life now of 69 years is a valid example of the concept that even though we humans ‘miss the mark’: God uses people, not the religious institution to restore us back into His favor. This process is called God’s grace” (from Changing My Mind by Chris Maxwell).

This man’s test, the apt root of the word testimony, prompts some key questions. During this hiatus from ministry, what are the issues that need to be dealt with by the group that oversees the fallen brother? What are the evidences that repentance is taking place and that grace is having its intended effect? Here are five evidences I’d look for before ever considering any restoration to ministry leadership:

1. Is he rebuilding the broken trust with his wife and children? His marriage vows and his relationships at home were clearly damaged. What progress has he made to restore the damage at home that his actions caused?

2. Has the sin been confessed in a way that shows he understands the deeper issues involved? Confession is not simply “I’ve done something wrong.” It’s an awareness of both the depth of the damage done AND the depth of the sin embedded in his soul. Any healing will involve a sharper clarity of the motivations, drives, and character issues at work.

3. Has he taken clear and specific steps to address the deficits in spiritual, relational, and emotional health? Without identifying, confessing, and correcting the root causes of his behavior, no change can be lasting.

4. Has he willingly relinquished his claim to position, privilege, and power? Any sense that “I’m doing what you’ve told me to do; now when can I get back into leadership?” is a red flag.

5. Has enough time passed that it’s clear that his life has taken a new direction, that repentance (the “turning”) is lasting, and that the soul and relationships have been cleansed?

What other evidences would you be looking for?

Posted by Marshall Shelley at November 8, 2006 | Comments (39) | TrackBack

November 5, 2006

The Haggard Truth

What are Christian leaders to make of the spectacularly painful experience of watching Ted Haggard this past week? The president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of giga-church New Life Community in Colorado Springs, Colorado, gradually admitted to purchasing methamphetamines and the services of a male prostitute. We asked Leadership editor-at-large Gordon MacDonald to reflect on what we should learn from this episode.

It is difficult beyond description to watch Ted Haggard’s name and face dragged across the TV screen every hour on the news shows. But as my friend, Tony Campolo said in an interview last week, when we spend our lives seizing the microphone to speak to the world of our opinions and judgments, we should not surprised when the system redirects its spotlight to us, justly or unjustly, in our bad moments.

We are still in the process of learning what has actually transpired over the past many months on the secret side of Ted’s life. In just the last few hours the leadership of New Life Church has announced that he has been asked to resign. His ministry at New Life Church and as leader of the NAE is over.

I’ve spent more than a little time trying to understand how and why some men/women in all kinds of leadership get themselves into trouble whether the issues be moral, financial, or the abuse of power and ego. I am no stranger to failure and public humiliation. From those terrible moments of twenty years ago in my own life I have come to believe that there is a deeper person in many of us who is not unlike an assassin.

This deeper person (like a contentious board member) can be the source of attitudes and behaviors we normally stand against in our conscious being. But it seeks to destroy us and masses energies that—unrestrained—tempt us to do the very things we “believe against.” If you have been burned as deeply as I (and my loved ones) have, you never live a day without remembering that there is something within that, left unguarded, will go on the rampage. Wallace Hamilton once wrote, “Within each of us there is a herd of wild horses all wanting to run loose.”

It seems to me that when people become leaders of outsized organizations and movements, when they become famous and their opinions are constantly sought by the media, we ought to begin to become cautious. The very drive that propels some leaders toward extraordinary levels of achievement is a drive that often keeps expanding even after reasonable goals and objectives have been achieved. Like a river that breaks its levy, that drive often strays into areas of excitement and risk that can be dangerous and destructive. Sometimes the drive appears to be unstoppable. This seems to have been the experience of the Older Testament David and his wandering eyes, Uzziah in his boredom, and Solomon with his insatiable hunger for wealth, wives and horses. They seem to have been questing—addictively?—for more thrills or trying to meet deeper personal needs, and the normal ways that satisfy most people became inadequate for them.

When I see a leader who becomes stubborn and rigid, who becomes increasingly less compassionate toward his adversaries, increasingly tyrannical in his own organization, who rouses anger and arrogance in others, I wonder if he is not generating all of this heat because he is trying so hard to say “no” to something surging deep within his own soul. Are his words and deeds not so much directed against an enemy “out there” as they are against a much more cunning enemy within his own soul. More than once I have visited with pastors who have spent hours immersed in pornography and then gone on to preach their most “spirit-filled” sermons against immorality a day or two later. It’s a disconnect that boggles the rational mind.

No amount of accountability seems to be adequate to contain a person living with such inner conflict. Neither can it contain a person who needs continuous adrenalin highs to trump the highs of yesterday. Maybe this is one of the geniuses of Jesus: he knew when to stop, how to refuse the cocktail of privilege, fame and applause that distorts one’s ability to think wisely and to master self.

More than once we’ve seen the truth of a person’s life come out, not all at once, but in a series of disclosures, each an admission of further culpability which had been denied just a day or two before. Perhaps inability to tell the full truth is a sign that one is actually lying to himself and cannot face the full truth of the behavior in his own soul.

But then all sin begins with lies told to oneself. The cardinal lies of a failed leader? I give and give and give in this position; I deserve special privileges—perhaps even the privilege of living above the rules. Or, I have enough charm and enough smooth words that I can talk anything (even my innocence) into reality. Or, so much of my life is lived above the line of holiness that I can be excused this one little faux pas. Or, I have done so much for these people; now it’s their time to do something for me—like forgiving me and giving a second chance.

I am heart-broken for Ted Haggard and his wife and family. I cannot imagine the torture they are living through at this very moment. Toppled from national esteem and regard in a matter of hours, they must adjust to wondering who their real friends are now. They have to be asking how these events—known by the world—will affect their children. Mrs. Haggard will not be able to go the local WalMart without wondering who she may bump into when she turns into Aisle 3 (A reporter? A church member? A critic?). Both Haggards will face cameras every time they emerge from their home in the next few days until the media finds another person with whom to have its sport.

The travel, the connections, the interviews, the applause of the congregation, the organizational power, the perks and privileges, the honor: gone! The introit to people of position/power: gone! The opportunity to say an influential word each day into the lives of teachable younger people: gone! The certainty that God has anointed one for such a time as this: gone? And what will grow each day is the numbing realization of regret and loss. In time they will be approached by people who will say in one way or another, “I used to trust you, but what you’ve done has made me very angry….you’ve turned my son away from the gospel….I thought I knew you, but I guess I didn’t.” It will be a long time before either of the Haggards feel safe again. Suffering over this will last most of a lifetime even after some sort of restoration is rendered. How I wish this could all be lifted from them.

Perhaps there will come a day down the pathway when there will be some kind of return to influence. But right now it is—or should be—a long way in the distance.

Among my prayers is that the leadership of New Life Church will not assume that “restoration” means getting Ted back into the pulpit as soon as possible. The worst thing in the world would be to raise his hopes that just because he models a contrite spirit he can return to public life in the near future. He, for his own sake, must take a long time to work through the causative factors in this situation. He will not resolve whatever is wrong in his own soul by going back to work. He and his wife must set aside a long, long time to allow their personal relationship to heal. Forgiveness is a long healing, not a momentary one. And there are those five children. Thinking of them makes me want to weep. And then there are countless people in and beyond their church who must take a long time to figure out what all of this means. No, the worst things Ted’s friends and overseers can do is to try and bring him back from this prematurely. The best thing they can do is ask him to retreat into silence with those he loves the most and listen—to God, to trusted elders.

The statement issued by the NAE Executive Committee late Friday afternoon seems flat to me. It appears to have been written by savvy PR people who wanted to say all the nice and appropriate things which might mollify the media and cause no heartburn for the lawyers. The burden of the statement seems to be that the NAE is already on to the question of who the next leader will be. The fact is that, all too often, we have seen the President of NAE on the news and talk shows speaking as the leader of so-called 33 million evangelicals. I’m not sure that most of us were polled as to whether or not we wanted Ted Haggard (or anyone) speaking for us. I know that last time I felt safe about anyone speaking for evangelicals as a whole was when Billy Graham talked on our behalf. But, as of late, an illusion was permitted to grow: that the NAE was a well-organized, highly networked movement of American evangelicals headed by Ted Haggard who, when he spoke, spoke for all of us. Now, unfortunately, that voice has misspoken, and our movement has to live with the consequences.

I have a fairly poor batting average when it comes to predicting the future. But my own sense is that the NAE (as we know it) will probably not recover from this awful moment. Should it? Leaders of various NAE constituencies are likely to believe that their fortunes are better served by new and fresher alliances.

Ever since the beginning of the Bush administration, I have worried over the tendency of certain Evangelical personalities to go public every time they visited the White House or had a phone conference with an administration official. I know it has wonderful fund-raising capabilities. And I know the temptation to ego-expansion when one feels that he has the ear of the President. But the result is that we are now part of an evangelical movement that is greatly compromised….identified in the eyes of the public as deep in the hip pockets of the Republican party and administration. My own belief? Our movement has been used. There are hints that the movement—once cobbled together by Billy Graham and Harold Ockenga—is beginning to fragment because it is more identified by a political agenda that seems to be failing and less identified by a commitment to Jesus and his kingdom.

Like it or not, we are pictured as those who support war, torture, and a go-it-alone (bullying) posture in international relationships. Any of us who travel internationally have tasted the global hostility toward our government and the suspicion that our President’s policies reflect the real tenets of Evangelical faith. And I might add that there is considerable disillusionment on the part of many of our Christian brothers/sisters in other countries who are mystified as to where American evangelicals are in all of this. Our movement may have its Supreme Court appointments, but it may also have compromised its historic center of Biblical faith. Is it time to let the larger public know that some larger-than-life evangelical personalities with radio and TV shows do not speak for all of us?

And so I pray: Lord and Father, how sad you must be when you see the most powerful and the weakest of your children fall prey to the energy of sin and evil. There is nothing any one has ever done that we –each of us—is not capable of doing. So when we pray for our brother, Ted Haggard, we pray not out of pity or self-righteousness but with a humble spirit because we stand with him on level ground before the cross. Father, give this man and his wife the gift of your grace. Protect them from the constant accusations of the evil one who will seek to deny them sleep, tempt them to talk too much to the public, arouse conflict between them as a couple and with their children. Send the right people into their lives who can provide the correct mixture of hope and healing love. Deliver them from people who will curry their favor by telling them things they should not hear. Restrain them from making poor judgments in their most fearful moments.

Lord, be present to the leaders and people of the New Life Church. And to the NAE leadership which has to live with the side-effects of this tragedy. And to people in the evangelical tradition who are wondering today who they can trust. What more can we pray for? You know all things. We so very little. Amen.

Posted by UrL at November 5, 2006 | Comments (136) | TrackBack