Dunbar on Missional Antibodies

In his latest missional journal, David Dunbar addresses “Missional Antibodies.” After a discussion of shifts in leadership practice and theory, he pulls in Roxburgh’s perspective:

Alan Roxburgh discusses the anxiety over marginalization that has led pastors in late modernity to “the continual search for ways to reconfigure pastoral identity.”   This has resulted in three common images, all of which he argues, remain within the paradigm of modernity.

1.   the therapeutic – pastor as counselor

2.   the technical-rational – pastor as CEO/manager/entrepreneur

3.   the creator of community – pastor as facilitator of body-life [4]

Less is more

These critiques highlight two important issues that need to be addressed by leaders in the missional church.  The first is the tendency toward elitism in current models of leadership.  The pastor as scholar/teacher and as technician/professional reinforces a strong top-down understanding of spiritual authority and ministry.  The expectation is that ministry leaders can (or should) know it all and do it all. This of course puts more pressure on pastors to “prove” themselves in a culture of rising leadership expectations.

Read Dunbar’s whole article here.

Four Thoughts On Worship

Last night I led our Worship Team in a short devotional based on 1 Peter 4:7-11. I shared four main thoughts:

God-glorifying Worship is Christ-centered Worship
According to Peter, our gifts, our service, our love, our prayers, our hospitality all exist in “order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” To glorify something is not to make it bigger than it is, but rather to demonstrate it’s inherent centrality. It is the difference between magnifying through a Telescope and a Microscope. How do we magnify God? Through Jesus Christ. We do this in two key ways: Creation and Redemption. As artists and technicians we can approach God because he made us in Jesus (Col 1; Heb 1). We can worship God as artists and technicians because Jesus has bought our spot with his blood. We do not merit God’s presence in any way; it is a gift of himself to us. All things in through and for Jesus. Creation & Redemption. We worship because we were made and remade through him. His once for all sacrifice secures our spot as worshippers.

You are Not Your Gift
A Gift is a gift; it isn’t you or yours. The gift is a stewardship, something given for the good, the service of others. Its not really yours…if anything its theirs; it belongs to the Church. Your spiritual and musical talent is something given to you by God. You didn’t earn it. It is a stewardship. You are honing your gift, employing it in the service of the church, just as people with the gift of service are serving you in set-up. The gift is for the good of the church. The gift isn’t you, though it is your expression. I am not my sermons, though my preaching is an expression of me. I am constantly working on not seeking praise but seeking criticism so that I can serve our church better with God’s word. It is a gift given for service, for the good of others, for worship. You are not your gift. Your significance does not fluctuate with how well you set up, play an instrument or run sound. Your gift is not about you. Lead from your significance in Jesus not for your significance. Lead in the Strength that God supplies. This word “supplies” is used of a choral leader, of abundantly furnishing a chorus for a drama. God is rich in strength to supply others-serving, Christ-centered worship. These musical undertones remind us that worship comes from God in rich supply. God is more committed to his praise than we are and is disposed to lead us, fuel us in worship leading!

Love Covers a Multitude of Technical Difficulties
You guys seem to love one another, to really be striving for unity and mutual concern. Everyone helps out with set up and tear down. There seems to be very little grumbling or complaining. This is a wonderful expression of Jesus in you. Cultivate it! I have read of horror stories of division between the technical people and the musical people. Where people get really edgy and irritable that they have to turn their amp down or monitor up. You aren’t above this. So it’s important that you cultivate love for one another, show hospitality to one another without grumbling, keeping the centrality of Jesus in view in all things. We need to create a space in our Worship Teams that fosters kind, thoughtful ciritique and encouragement. If your identity is wrapped up with your music, then you will be slow to give encouragement and unreceptive to critique. The more your identity is wrapped up with Jesus, you will be able to consider your craft critically. You are all equal in Christ and different in function. Everyone doesn’t lead or set up. But you can all arrive at the same time and help unload equipment. In setting up and tearing down we need to practice hospitality. This means that those responsible for set up should serve without grumbling and those who play should play without grumbling. You are all equal in Jesus. To believe anything else is to believe a lie. Band should help unload. There is no higher tier of artist.

Worship Begins with Prayer

Worship starts with prayer, with confessing our inability to worship Christ on our own. With confessing that all things are in through and for Jesus, including worship. Worship is not something we manufacture; it is the giving of God himself to us. We have things backwards. Practice, practice, practice and pray for five minutes. Let’s be aware that worship is fueled by prayer. The end of all things is coming. Let’s pray for God’s presence not for musical perfection. Let’s pray that our church would be full-time worshippers, not Sunday service singers. Let’s pray that worship would result in mission, the making of more worshippers in this city.

Stetzer to Teach a Course on Missional Communities

Ed Stetzer will be teaching a course on missional communities at Trinity Divinity. Here is the syllabus. Here is the course description: 

Transformational ministries in today’s rapidly changing culture require churches that are “missional” from a biblical, theological, and cultural perspective. This course will help you better understand the cultural context in which you serve and teach you how to apply biblically faithful and culturally relevant missiological strategies to your ministry. Special attention will be given to North American cultural shifts, the missional/sending nature of the church, effective communication in various cultural contexts, and emerging ministry patterns in North America.

Reflections on The Dark Knight

HERE.

Learning from the Demon-possessed

Jesus was radical, a spiritual Van Helsing, if you will. But instead of vanquishing only evil and preserving good, Jesus vanquished evil and restored the broken. When arriving on the shores of the Gerasenes, Jesus was immediately welcomed by a zombie-like, demon-possessed, Houdini kind of being who lived among the graves. His name was Legion because he was filled with many demons (perhaps 2000). The kind of creature that anyone in their right mind would want to lock up. But he couldn’t be contained. Having the strength of two thousand men, Legion shattered shackles and snapped chains. He was an otherworldly creature who cried aloud in torment from the graves, day and night, cutting himself with stones in an attempt to release demon from human.

Can you imagine encountering such a creature? At the sight of Legion most of us would run the other way or, perhaps some, in a rush of adrenaline, would find the closest weapon and vanquish this evil with our gamer passion and skill. But remember, nothing could hold this thing; the strength of two thousand men. Enter Jesus, the demon-slayer. Well, not exactly.

Here are a few lessons I learned from this story in Mark 5:

• The Masculinity of Jesus: Jesus was radical but not because he was Van Helsing–vanquishing only evil and preserving good. Jesus conquered evil through counter-cultural redemption. In an age of emasculated, Fight Club, Ultimate Fighting voyerism, men do well to learn from the actions of Jesus. His masculinity was shaped, not by violent outbursts or the destruction of weird and wicked foes, but by mercy and redemption. He encountered the evil and suffering of this world with otherworldly wisdom and bold compassion. Is your Jesus this kind of manly?
• The Cultural Wisdom of Jesus: Jesus did not immediately banish the demons from the countryside. Why? Was he just a softy, caving into the pleading of demons? Not at all. Instead of just glorifying his power over the demonic, Jesus also glorified his wisdom. He sent them to the pigs. Unclean spirits to to unclean animals. In doing this Jesus passed cultural judgment on evil, while preserving the good creature he had made. Contrary to Jewish practice, Jesus did not exile the man but only the demon. As pastors and disciples we do well to learn from Jesus’ cultural savvy, exegeting evil in our culture and banishing it in cultural stereo, but discerning that which can and should be redeemed and restoring that which is broken. Is your Jesus that wise?
• The Sensitivity of Jesus: Not only did Jesus restore and renew his mind and heart, but he also clothed the man. Jesus also addressed his social needs. Instead of bringing the former demoniac with him on the preaching tour, Jesus sent him home, to his friends, where he could celebrate and enjoy social restoration and the love and acceptance of his family. Jesus was preaching and living the whole gospel in the whole culture. Is your Jesus that holistic, that compassionate?
• The Mission of Jesus: Instead of passing judgment on the poor nameless demon-possessed, Jesus showed him mercy. The demon-possessed man wasn’t simply an innocent host for misery-hungry demons. He was a sinner, unclean on account of breaking Jewish law, but more importantly, under judgment for his personal sin. Jesus did not write him off, culturally or personally, but had mercy on him. How? He restored his mind, gave him some clothes, renewing him spiritually and materially. Not only that, Jesus gave him a new purpose. Instead of crying out in pain day and night, the former demoniac began to preach in cities concerning the mercy and person of Jesus, to extol the Lordship of Christ. Jesus made a demon-possessed man a missional disciple. Is your Jesus that powerful, that missional?

Stetzer on Movements

Ed Stetzer lists at least 10 Elements to Christian Movements:

1. Prayer Prayer must be a conviction that establishes its priority. Before we see movemental Christianity, we will have to be praying, asking God to change us.
2. Intentionality: We will also need to show the intention of being movemental (see the next 8 elements). As of now, I believe our focus is primarily defensive and incremental, not intentional and exponential.
3. Sacrifice: Change will not come without giving something up.
4. Reproducibility: Movements do not occur through large things (big budgets, big plans, big teams). They occur through small units that are readily reproducible.
5. Theological Integrity: Churches wanting to be involved in transformative, movemental Christianity hold firm and passionate positions on biblical views.
6. Incarnation: Movemental Christianity recognizes that the gospel is unchanging, but the expressions and results of the gospel will vary from culture to culture.
7. Empowerment: Movements only occur when the disempowered are given the freedom, and then take up the responsibility, to lead.
8. Charitability: A movement of God cannot be contained in a single movement or theological tradition. Therefore, movemental Christianity requires charity to maintain our firmly held convictions while rejoicing for and speaking well about those with whom we differ but are being greatly blessed by God.
9. Scalability: When God begins to move, and believers allow movement Christianity to begin to grow, structures must be able to rapidly re-size to not stifle such movements.
10. Wholism: Movemental Christianity will practice wholistic ministry much in the way of Jesus.

Read the whole post here.

Cutting Edge Magazine

Okay. This issue of Cutting Edge is excellent. Every article is worth reading, which is rare for any publication. Here is the list. Here is the online pdf of the mag.

• Process Managing Church Growth, Tim Keller
• Small Group Strategy, Jim Egli
• Sound Strategy: a few hints from an audio professional about your sound ministry, Lightning Atkinson (yep, Lightning)
• Strategizing for Diversity, interview
• Strategic Preaching, John Elmer
• Getting a Building
• Web Strategies for Church Planters

Keller on Managing Church Growth

Tim Keller has an article on “Process Managing Church Growth” in the newest issue of Vineyard’s Cutting Edge. In it he offers some very practical advice on how to manage stages of church growth and adjust church culture accordingly. I will summarize some of his points:

1. Every church has a size culture that goes with its size that has to be accepted. For instance, to impose the small church expectation of lead pastoral accessibility upon the lead pastor of a large church will “wreak havoc on the church and eventually force it back into the size with which the practices are compatible.”
2. Everyone knows that at some point a church becomes too large for one pastor to handle. The threshold for hiring another pastor varies from context to context, with “white collar communities demanding far more specialized programs”  thus requiring an earlier hire.
3. With growth comes increasing complexity which requires increasing intentionality in communication. Here Keller emphasizes a lot of “increasings.”
   

• Increased growth requires increased communication–informal, grassroots is no longer effective. This requires more deliberate and systematic assimilation; visitors are less visible. More well-organized volunteer recruitment becomes necessary.
• More planning and organization must go into events. Higher quality is expected in larger churches and spontaneous, last-minute events do not work.
• More high quality aesthetics must be present. People enter a service without a knowledge of the ungifted singers who are appreciated “because we all know them.” Visitors are looking for a vertical, not horizontal encounter, with a sense of transcendence.
  

The whole article is well worth working through and can be found online here. I sense a tension between wisdom and convention in this article. For instance, there is no doubt that I need to think much more about intentionality in all the areas Keller mentions as our church grows. Organic, frayed at the edges kind of stuff can only work so long. However, Keller’s advice seems, in places, to assume a largely staff driven church. For instance, if people are sufficiently trained can they not perform a considerable amount of the “pastoring” without lowering the expectation of pastoral accessibility. Can we not change the expectation to expect pastoral care from one another in the context of a gospel-centered missional community? I’ll be reflecting on this article for a while. You can subscribe to a free copy of Cutting Edge here.

Creating Communities of Grace

See Tim Chester’s notes on Steve Timmis’ Creating Communities of Grace.

American Church Stats

1) Less than 20% of Americans regularly attend church – half of what the pollsters report. There are approximately 330,000 churches in America; out of those churches approximately 17.7% (52 million) of Americans attend church on an average Sunday.

2) American church attendance is steadily declining.

• Evangelical 9.2%
• Catholic 5.5%
• Mainline 3.1%

3) Only one state is outpacing its population growth. Hawaii. 4) Mid-sized churches are shrinking; the smallest and largest churches are growing.

• Churches under 50 and over 2,000 are growing
• Average attendance of Protestant church: 124
• 1,250 mega-churches in America/one emerges every three days

5) Established churches, 40-190 years old – are, on average, declining. New church starts reach more people better, faster, cheaper than existing churches. 6) The increase in churches is only ¼ of what’s needed to keep up with population growth.

• 3,000 churches close every year
• 3,800 new church starts survived
• Net annual gain: 800 new churches
• Net annual gain needed to keep up with population growth:10,000 new churches

7) In 2050, the percentage of the U.S. population attending church will be almost half of what it was in 1990.

• US Population in 1990: 248 million/20.4% church attendance
• US Population in 2050: 520 million/11.7% church attendance

HT: Gary Rohrmayer