Filed under: Church, Innovate 09, Videos | Tags: baptist, Church, conference, empty tomb, innovate, perry noble, prodigal son
What can I say? Perry Noble ROCKED!
I seriously do not know where to start. He said so many great things that I cannot choose a highlight.
Perry spoke from Luke 15, the story of the Prodigal Son. But he looked at the ‘other brother’ and compared him to so many churches and leaders. It was very poignant.
Here are just some of the ideas he shared that I wrote down:
- I am not a speaker; I am a preacher.
- The older brother was working for the Father rather than being with Him.
- If it is God’s will, then it’s God’s bill.
- We celebrate the empty tomb. Discrediting, protesting – those things are not “tomb worthy.”
- We always love to condemn the sins we’re not committing.
I am taking these statements out of a greater context, so they probably feel disjointed. Essentially, he was challenging us to get with God before we try to “build the church.”
You can view Perry’s message here.
Filed under: Church, Innovate 09, Videos | Tags: baptist, Church, conference, innovate, Mark DeYmaz, Mosaic
Mark was the one speaker at the conference that I was really looking forward to hearing from. Perhaps my expectations got too high. I was disappointed with his session.
I think the biggest disappointment was that he presented information rather than really engaged the group. Maybe it was just that it was after lunch. He just seemed to be riding a hobby horse, and he took way too long develop his main ideas. Even his main ideas were somewhat cliché for me. I’ve heard all these things before.
One of the other things was just that he spent so much time identifying things that we (pastors and leaders) can do on our own. I felt like he was trying to spoon fed the carnivores. He should have thrown some steaks in front of us and let us gnaw.
That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy hearing things I’ve heard before or that I don’t like the simple things. An earlier speaker, Francis Chan, did not introduce anything I hadn’t heard before, but he said it in such an amazing way. Mark simply was not as effective or as engaging – in my opinion.
It is hard for me to put my finger on my issue with the multi-ethnic presentations that I have heard over the years. It seems to me like these guys have an unconscious condescension toward those who are not multi-ethnic. I’ve heard it in all arenas – church, politics, business. It just feels as if they are calling us to force something. I don’t know how to do it better; but it just sounds weird to me.
Don’t get me wrong. Our church is wonderfully diverse. We love this. We continue to adapt and make it more so. In our little church of 45-60, we have an extremely, beautiful diverse group of skin tones, countries of origin and cultural identities. We do it just because in Christ, we don’t see the divisions.
We just are diverse. I feel like when you make the race issue and issue, it becomes MORE of an issue. We choose to simply believe race does not exist.
You can watch the video here.
Filed under: Church, Innovate 09, Videos | Tags: church growth, Ed Stetzer, Innovate 09, thomas road baptist church
In the church, we need to take seriously the damage and danger of sin.
I really expected Ed Stetzer to throw statistics and charts at us. I think it may have been what he was planning to do. A funny thing happened on the way to the church…
He spoke on the topic of “Secret Sins” and it was actually pretty good.
It was not quite as excellent as Francis Chan (the Spirit used him to blow me away!) but it was more than I expected.
Quite simply, Ed challenged us to live “Christ-centered, repentance-filled” lives. It was simple and yet cut so deep.
You can watch the video here.
Filed under: Church, Innovate 09, Videos | Tags: crazy love, Francis Chan, Innovate 09, Simi Valley, thomas road baptist church
On Tuesday morning, Francis Chan offered us an awesome challenge in ministry. He had a ton of great stuff, and to be honest, I was pleasantly surprised.
One of the best things he shared was this single thought:
It bothers me that the modern church is so stoppable.
I heard that, and I thought, “YES! What is up with that?!?”
Why is the modern church so stoppable? Do you know what I mean by that? A single grumpy member can nix the entire vision of Christ with a single protest. A late nursery worker can make the entire worship service grind to a halt. A Sunday when the biggest giver does not show up means that we are suddenly on the edge of bankruptcy. The modern church spends more time stalled and waiting for consensus than it does doing anything else.
And that should piss us off.
I know that we’re not supposed to get upset with other Christians. I know that we’re supposed to keep everyone happy and let that little old lady have the power to stop everything. That’s just dumb.
The mission of Jesus Christ is unstoppable. So if the church can be stopped and halted by every little thing, then aren’t we compromising the mission and vision? Aren’t we distracted from what Jesus wants us to do?
Watch Francis Chan’s Session.
Filed under: Church, Innovate 09, Videos | Tags: baptist, Church, eric geiger, erik divietro, harvest, innovate, liberty university, thomas road
A couple of guys from our church team and I are down in Lynchburg, Virginia, for Innovate ‘09. We are intentionally not going to every session because I think there’s just too much going on to actually be able to absorb it all. Yesterday, we heard Eric Geiger, co-author of Simple Church.
Both of the guys who are down here with me commented, “Isn’t this pretty much what you did?” The answer is yes. We looked at our church and said: let’s not do programs just to do programs. Let’s have meaning and vision for everything we do. We clarified our vision and we ask the hard questions to keep ourselves focused. We take our time and do things right.
One of the thoughts Eric shared was that too many churches have ministries that are “silos”, distinct from the other ministries of the church. Eric said it just as an illustration, but I spent most of the session thinking about the idea of silos in ministry.
It is no secret that I am highly cynical about the way the modern (and postmodern) church at large does ministry. To me, the purpose of the church is to lift Jesus Christ up and create environments where people encounter him. Too much is invested in church and not enough on living the Way of Jesus.
And this idea of silos really resonates with me because I grew up on farms, and I know that silos are for storage. They are for accumulating grain and storing as much of it as you can for later. Jesus spoke on the problems with this in two different situations.
Jesus said to his disciples:
The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. [Luke 10:2, ESV]
He makes it clear that we are called to be laborers in his fields rather than farmers of our own fields. In fact, it reminds me of a church growth book I read a few years ago that talked about how pastors need to be ranchers instead of shepherds. This idea always struck me as a bit off from what Jesus said. Jesus does not call us to own the church but to be his servants in the church.
Which leads me to the second time that Jesus spoke on this topic. He told a parable:
The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ [Luke 12:16-20, ESV]
Here is the danger of building silos instead of working in the fields, in believing we own the farms instead of living as workers in the LORD’s fields. We become complacent; we become content. We store rather than serve. We forget the amazing blessing of seeing the harvest come every year and knowing it is from God.
Jesus spoke on this theme of ownership at another time:
A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while. When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent another servant. But they also beat and treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent yet a third. This one also they wounded and cast out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.’ And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others. [Luke 20:9-16, ESV]
Do you see what Jesus is saying to us? We cannot afford to think that the church is ours, that our ministry there is somehow ours to control. We are his servants.
Ok, so if you haven’t watched the video of Britain’s Got Talent contestant Susan Boyle, watch it RIGHT NOW of this post won’t make any sense.
Watched it? Ok.
This video has 20,000,000+ hits as of 2:30 this afternoon. That is since it was posted on Saturday. Yeah, that’s over 4,000,000 hits per day.
Why is the video so popular? Because Susan is a nobody who spent her life taking care of her mom and she has this amazing voice that is better than any female vocal most of us have ever heard. When she talks, no one outside of Scotland can understand her brogue; but when she sings, the entire world is shaken.
It is cliché to say that we have learned a valuable lesson from Susan; but we really have. In a world where Simon Cowell (the same man who compliments Susan so profusely in the video) tells many contestants on American Idol that they “don’t have the look,” Susan is the anti-hero.
Unfortunately, her popularity will fade because we truly are obsessed with appearances and she is not one of the “pretty people” that we idolize. In fact, some of our fascination with her is tied to the fact that she is NOT one of them.
Makes me wonder how much of our Christian faith is “pretty” and completely devoid of spiritual substance. We look for the pretty as well – the big churches, the great looking musicians, the nice bindings on books. We reject the unattractive; and I think we are the worse for it.
This week on his blog, my friend Josh Gagnon over at Next Level Church in Dover has been doing a series on the dangers of idolatry in Christian ministry. Thus far, he has hit on three major areas where pastors and Christian leaders can slip into a subtle idolatry.
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PART 1: Focusing on the visual impression rather than spiritual brokenness before Jesus
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PART 2: Being consumed with how many people come rather than how many lives are changed
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PART 3: Trying to trick God into blessing what we’re doing (the tool) rather than seek God first.
Josh’s thoughts are simple, straightforward and definitely worth a think. In fact, I believe every pastor and Christian leader in our current ministry environment needs to ask the questions he is asking.
You can check out his most recent post on youtube:
Some of Josh’s thoughts really resonate with me because I went through a similar exchange of ideas. Those of you who worship with us at Heritage know that we emerged with a different kind of ministry there than Josh and the guys are pursuing at NLC. We’re more stripped down and raw without a lot of the visual elements a lot of churches use – not because those things are wrong. In fact, we think they’re awesome. But in order to keep our focus (at Heritage) on Jesus, we needed to “do without” for awhile because we risked slipping into this subtle idolatry.
I call it a subtle idolatry because it is often an idolatry with the name of GOD or JESUS plastered over it. It is subtle because it is not idolatry in the sense of worshiping an image of another god but of giving God’s name to an image of your own making. It is a subtle mingling of worshiping the true God and satisfying our own needs – whether they are for security or fame or affirmation.
Don’t Fall for the Ole’ Golden Calf Switch
This is the same form of idolatry that Israel’s children engaged in at the foot of Mount Sinai. As soon as Moses was out of sight, they were wondering, “We don’t know what has become of him.” [Exodus 32:1] They had Aaron build a golden calf for them. And why? Because they needed the security of a god they could see.
Don’t miss that. They needed the security of a god they could see. Who was their god up until that point? It wasn’t YHWH; it was Moses. They were following Moses, not Moses’ god. If ever there was a warning to Christian leaders, that’s it. No matter how much credit you give to God, expect people to worship YOU, your wizz-bang, your personality. They will adore you when things are going great (and abandon you as soon as your out of sight).
But what is most fascinating about this whole thing is what Aaron does. Aaron builds their golden calf and then says to them, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt!” Watch his next statement though, “Tomorrow shall be a fear to YHWH!” [Exodus 32:4-5]
(Just as a side note, Aaron built that golden calf with their offerings. You can have financial liquidity and still be practicing subtle idolatry. People are quicker to give to a cause that benefits them than they are to the cause of Christ. Ok, digression done.)
The Weight of Leadership
Most of us are pretty familiar with the story. YHWH tells Moses to go down to the people and leave him alone because YHWH is going to kill the “stiff-necked” people. Moses pleads for them; YHWH shows some leniency and Moses heads down to fix the problem.
Moses shows up, breaks the tablets of that contain the ASHARETH DABARIM (Ten Commandments, literally “the ten words”), kills the rebels and the people move on. This is essentially how it went down, but there’s something that leaders need to read in this as well.
Watch what YHWH says to Moses, “Go down, for your people, who you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the that I commanded them.” [Genesis 32:7, italics mine]
Did all of your leaders out there catch what YHWH said? Despite the fact that the Israelites were violating YHWH’s commands, they were still Moses’ people. Moses was still responsible for his congregation’s failings. Their mistakes weren’t his fault, but it was his job to correct it because he was the shepherd.
It is easy for us to get sucked into the mentality of doing what we think we should do, keeping ourselves true to Jesus and when people start worshiping the idol they call “church”, we think to ourselves, “Well, we didn’t do that. It’s their own damn fault.” If Moses had thought that way, Israel would have been wiped out in the wilderness – a footnote in history.
Our Potential Golden Calves
Josh’s final post – the video one – really gets to the core of this issue. The modern church growth movement has fed (unintentionally, I think) a mentality that says: whatever works is God’s thing. This simply is not true.
The church of Jesus Christ is founded on the teachings of the apostles – initially a bunch of Galileans screwups who became Jesus’ screwups and eventually submitted to his authority and changed the world. They learned from Jesus how to step into a culture but remain Jesus’ servants.
What are our potential golden calves in our church?
Well, the church (little c) for one. When we worship they way we do it and compare it to how everybody else does it, then we begin to worship our particular manifestation of the kingdom and lose sight of the whole deal.
I’d never do things the way Josh does them. Josh would never do things the way we do them. And neither of us would do things the ways our friends Steve, Rob, or Anthony would do them. More than that, we shouldn’t; and we should not be envious of what God is doing through them. (Josh throws a subtle barb at those kinds of comparisons, calling them “peeing contests” which they are!)
When we (leaders and congregation) see our churches (again, little c) as part of something much bigger, something God-sized we minimize the risk of idolizing our own little manifestations.
Another golden calf? Our wizz-bang. This is my little anachronistic onomatopeia for everything “cool” we do in church, and that’s whether it was cool in 2009, 1959, 1429 or 309. It is easy to worship the visual appearances, the appropriateness of our worship gatherings. It is easy to become divas because we believe that if everything is just right, God will show up. If we’re not careful, we worship the ritual rather than the Lord.
Here are some other golden calves: preaching styles, other preachers, our families, education (or the semblance of such), social causes. The list just goes on an on. I mean, some of us have even made idols out of not making idols. The golden calf does not have to be an actual object. In fact, those are the least prevalent idols in our culture.
I loved Josh’s conclusions. But I’m not going to give them to you. If you want to know where he went with his thoughts, you’ll have to listen yourself.
Do you know this guy? He’s the Shamwow guy and is now hocking Slap Chop – quite possibly the most annoying infomercial guy on television.
I was not sure who he was and could not for the life of me figure out why someone would hire him to sell ANYTHING, so I did some digging.
It turns out that his name is Vince Offer. He is a terribly failure of a comedian who attempted to sell a sketch anthology called The Underground Comedy Movie. He insults people and is just a terrible, B-level version of Johnny Knoxville (who is himself a terrible, B-level comedian).
His condescending character comes out of a previous job as a kitchen utensil spokesman at swap meets and flea markets. Apparently, he was extremely good at selling things and they decided to put him on TV.
If you listen to the way he talks to the consumer, it is condescending and sarcastic. Offer treats you like you’re a child. Amazingly, Slate.com says Offer possesses “impressive and subtle mastery of the pitchman’s art.”
