Small or large churches?

Saturday 27 May 2006 at 09:09 am I can think of specific times in many of the church plant's lives when they made decisions which could very well have meant being a smaller church. Most of those decisions revolved around how much they would indulge a person's sinfulness. I'm not talking big, dramatic, typical discipline cases, I'm talking about the kinds of issues like control, anger, money, power, etc. There are times when the pastor or the leadership has to say "no" to a person who might be offering the church a lot of money, who might have an obvious exceptional gift the church needs, who might have a large network of friends. This person is making demands on the leadership and making threats. These issues go to the very heart of what a church is and what a church is for. These cases obviously aren't exclusive to church plants but in the early days when the plant is young these can have dramatic results. I've seen many cases in established churches where the leadership caves or complies and the church suffers for years even if they keep the money or keep the members. My guess is that most of you pastors out there could put names on a piece of paper telling similar stories. Most church planters are exceptional leaders and they won't blink but this sometimes costs the church plant big time, early. It means that they can't have a youth program or the building project gets put off a number of years, or ever, or their music program suffers making the church less desirable to the consumer element in the culture that everyone knows is so "key" to bulking up. I know of one church (not-CRC) that decided to refuse to cater to the consumer market and they lost much of their congregation within a few months to that new "hot" church down the road. I know of pastors in a smallish community that say they'd have to all do their building campaigns simultaneously because what usually happens is that when you do a building campaign a group suddenly decides that "God is calling them elsewhere".

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more thoughts on CRC church planting

Saturday 27 May 2006 at 09:08 am

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3 dangerous assumptions

Thursday 25 May 2006 at 12:40 pm

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The CRC "smaller church" dilemma

Thursday 25 May 2006 at 10:27 am

This is just such a huge question, one that has so many variables. Let's start with intention:

1. What does the "smaller church" desire to become? Some smaller churches, church plants for instance planted in the last 20 years may desire to become mega churches. Truth is that if they've been small for the last 10 years they will likely require a change of location or senior leadership to change their trajectory. Both approaches are high risk with no certain "return" on their investment. In our cluster we call the megas "lottery winners". The odds are probably better than winning the lottery but they look pretty long. It seems that some denominations and megas have managed to up their odds. Just like dogs have puppies and cats have kittens, megas seem to beget megas because they've done it before. If, however, you haven't been able to join that club and break those growth barriers with any consistency it seems "lottery winner" is the better metaphor.

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What About Those Hairs?

Thursday 18 May 2006 at 4:29 pm

The good hair period of my life was disturbingly brief. As a child my hair was thin, straight and unmanageable. My mother shared with me once that she worried about my hair. Could one with such hair every manage to acquire a wife? In my 20s my hair was curly, full and generally a good thing and I in fact did marry. Once the thirties hit, however, male pattern baldness emerged along with the gray. It’s been down hill ever since.

Q/A 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism says that "not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven." Am I to discern from this text that it is God’s "good" plan for my pate to be bald and gray? I’m not sure how I feel about that. Does God love Fabio more than he loves me? Is Fabio more deserving? I’m being a bit tongue-in-cheek about the whole business but you don’t have to look far to have these questions take on a far more serious hue. Belief in a powerful God combined with the kinds of sufferings and cruelties common on planet earth sometimes puts us in places where we find no easy comfort nor answer. People who glibly dismiss this truth are either not fully honest or they are not paying attention. The third sentence of Q/A 1 is not for cowards.

It would perhaps be wise to return to the notion that this in fact is a confession. Confessions earn their value in this world from their confessors. Job’s friends imagined they could accurately discern God’s mind and Job’s culpability from the story of Job’s misery and they were judged sharply for it. When it comes to billing for metaphysical blame we do so in the dark. If we find this confession on the lips of one who has never suffered we quickly dismiss it. If, however, we hear these words coming from one who has lost, one who has struggled, one who has questioned, one who has paid the large price and carried the heavy load of faith, then the confession gains weight and serves as ballast to keep a storm beset life from being swamped.

Faith is sometimes believing something contrary to the visible evidence, hair and all.

A Confession

Wednesday 17 May 2006 at 12:05 pm

There are multiple meanings to the word "confession". When we use it as a verb it’s some sort of admission of guilt. When the police emerge from the interrogation room with "a signed confession" they’re pleased and the court appointed attorney frustrated. In church circles a confession often means relieving one’s heart of a painful burden to a trusted friend or clergy. It is said "confession is good for the soul" and that’s true.

The Heidelberg Catechism is called "a confession" by the church. I’ve seen church confessions used as "in your face" documents as if they were clubs or swords used to intimidate, enforce or defeat. The word, however, betrays the truth. A confession is a personal statement of weakness, failure or guilt. It is an admission of helplessness, throwing one’s future to the mercy of the court. To plead "guilty" is to accept whatever sentence the judge will hand down. It leaves the defendant without defense.

A confession is also one’s honest disclosure, the truth as they see it to the best of their ability. It is an act of vulnerability and openness, one which is seldom seen in this world of pointing fingers and long noses. Lawyers often try to protect people from themselves by discouraging confessions. Confessions make defendants vulnerable.

The best court to confess in is one where the judge is truly righteous and wise. It’s there that the only reasonable approach is to bank on his mercy and admit who you really are like the crooked manager in Jesus’ story.

Eugene Peterson on the pastoral vocation

Wednesday 17 May 2006 at 10:53 am

The world of religion generates a huge market for meeting all the needs that didn’t get met in the shopping malls. Pastors are conspicuous in this religious marketplace and are expected to come up with the products that give customer satisfaction. Since the needs seem legitimate enough, we easily slip into the routines of merchandising moral advice and religious comfort. Before long we find that we are program directors in a flourishing business. We spend our time figuring out ways to attractively display god-products. We become skilled at pleasing the customers. Before we realize what has happened, the mystery and love and majesty of God, to say noting of the tender and delicate subtleties of the souls, are obliterated by the noise and frenzy of the religious market place.

Under the Unpredictable Plant, Eugene Peterson, p. 173

I Am Not My Own

Tuesday 16 May 2006 at 10:31 am

What did we really want when we signed on to this thing (Jesus, the gospel, church, etc)? Not much different from what the crowds and the disciples wanted as they saw Jesus heal the sick, raise the dead, calm the storm. We wanted a fix. Isn’t that what all of this is all about, undoing the fall? Isn’t what makes me hurt or makes me anxious a result of that fall? "God, can we begin right over here, in the place that I am feeling the pinch? Today maybe?"

Sometimes a miracle happens even when we’re complaining more than we’re praying. Call it grace. More often we get distracted and forget, or move onto a different problem or just try to cope.

Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 1 is deceptive. It seems to promise, like most spiritual salesman a blank check, a golden ticket, a winning lottery number, but we should read more closely. In Romans 6:16-18 Paul says we’re no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness. A slave cannot assert his independence because he has none. Righteousness is usually not popular in this world. People sometimes admire it but they don’t form a line to own it. Most churches have plenty of extra space.

When we say "I am not my own" we should know that we relinquish control and try to rest in what from our perspective looks far less than certain.

CT Interview with Peterson on Spirituality

Tuesday 16 May 2006 at 09:50 am This is vintage Eugene Peterson: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/003/26.42.html

And I struggle with it.

Millions: Resurrection and Money

Wednesday 10 May 2006 at 11:22 am

I was doing a series on what the Resurrection changes. This sermon was about the Resurrection and Money. I used the movie "Millions". Here is the ppt. Click here to download the MP3. Click here to stream the audio.

Early Edition

Wednesday 03 May 2006 at 9:54 pm

There used to be a TV show on called Early Edition which was about a guy who would magically get the next day’s newspaper the day before. Armed with information from the future the main character would go out and right certain wrongs. His buddy, however, wanted other bits of information from the paper: stock prices, sports scores, lottery numbers, etc. We may fantasize about how we could change our lives or the world if we could only get this future information.

Many people try to read the Bible like tomorrow’s paper on "Early Edition". These people write books or go on TV prophesying about how world events in the paper today were foretold in the Bible. I’m always chagrined by these guys because they tend to major in telling us how today’s news fit whereas if they indeed saw so clearly they should be telling me what tomorrow will bring. When, however, they were obviously wrong (such as 1984, Countdown to Armageddon, etc. where the Soviet Union invades Israel...) they never apologized or explained just how their "clear" understanding of Scripture was so flawed.

It is doubly ironic that Jesus does give us glimpses into the future but not in the places we expect and not for the things that Jack Van Impe and his type point out. In Luke 16:9-13 Jesus tells us the future of our friend Mamona. Her days are numbered and her value is not as we suppose. The resurrection changes the value of money/mammon because it opens a window into the age to come where the stuff that is valued today will look totally different after that day. Jesus says to use money today with the values in sight of the age to come, not this present age. Use the stuff of this world to demonstrate your trustworthiness as God’s steward and you will be entrusted with far more in the age to come. Use it according to its supposed value today, and you’ll just get what you expect.

Mamona has more outfits than Barbie, goes more places than Waldo

Tuesday 02 May 2006 at 8:48 pm

In our world everything can be reduced to money. After 9/11 the government hired a guy to put a settlement dollar amount on each victim. Each life is reduced to a figure. Age, earning potential times years of lost work, number of dependents, insurance policies that the family will receive, etc. Major hurricanes are remembered by what they cost rounded to the billions. Each year the government recalculates what it costs to raise a child. Everything can be reduced to money.

Money is also seemingly infinitely expandable. Money can’t buy you love? Tell that to the mothers who urge their daughters to marry a doctor. Is it because doctors have so much free time, have such a stress free job and are so emotionally available? How many times doesn’t "more money" seem to be the obvious solution to the dilemmas that keep us up at night? I have yet to meet a pastor or ministry leader who doesn’t fret about money for their ministry in one way or another. Be honest, if someone said "your God or your money" would not pause?

The Supreme Court has declared that money is a form of speech that is protected under the First Amendment. "Money talks." "Talk is cheap." "Put your money where your mouth is." Pastors blather on and on about God and people sleep. If a pastor starts talking about money, people develop an opinion.

Jesus puts money at the top of the list of rivals to God , maybe that’s because money too seems omnipresent and omnipotent.

This American Life

Monday 01 May 2006 at 10:14 pm

I very much enjoy This American Life, the radio program. I don't always get a chance to listen to it, sometimes I listen to it on their website: http://www.thisamericanlife.org . This past week's program I thought was exceptional: "The Allure of Crime". 3 stories as usual: one of their frequent contributors talks about a period of her life when she stole, another guy who attacked his father who was a beater and a preacher, and senior shop lifters. At least three good sermon illustrations in this episode. One of the best lines from a senior woman who shoplifted all her life. Narrator: "did you make friends with anyone else in the [senior shop lifting] program?" woman: "No! Who wants to get friendly with a bunch of thieves". Wow. Humanity. pvk

God and Mamona

Monday 01 May 2006 at 9:31 pm

All of you know Mamona. Chances are you think about her almost all the time. You think about her when you get up, when you talk to your spouse, when you’re driving in the car, when you go to bed, you even dream about her. Who is Mamona? You know her by some other names. The KJV calls her "Mammon", the NIV calls her "money". In both Matthew and Luke she’s set up as the chief competition with God for our hearts.

Mammon is broader than money of course, but for us "money" just nicely cuts to the chase. Money is such a powerful thing, yet so nebulous. Unless you’re living on the street or seriously hand to mouth, you never see most of the money that really counts in your life. It shows up simply as numbers on paper, computer screen or in that appraiser’s report. You don’t touch it, you don’t hold it, it’s ethereal. Even if you incarnated all of those numbers down at the bank and brought it home in paper form, it’s still just exquisitely printed paper. It’s only value comes from the power vested in it by the Federal Reserve. What exactly is a Confederate dollar? Not the historical paper artifact, the dollar itself.

We knock God for not showing up and staying hidden. Most of us can understand those who claim not to believe in God because we can't lay our hands on him, yet no one doubts Mamona.