The Feral Pastor

Church Can Be Different 3 - 100% of Offerings to the Poor

2011-11-14T09:32:00.001-06:00

Let me introduce you to Keith Giles, "Author, Blogger, Missionary" who planted a church that gives 100% of their offerings to the poor. He tells his story here, and below is a glimpse of how his church has reached out to their neighbors. (For them, "neighbors" really does mean the folks on their street.) The excerpt below is from his church's blog.

"...from the beginning (about five years ago now) we started reaching out to the kids in our neighborhood. At first that involved leading Kids Church in our home on Sunday mornings. Mainly because Wendy and I had been children's pastors at our previous church (and we loved teaching kids together), and also because by inviting the kids in our neighborhood to come on a Sunday morning we would figure out which families already went to church somewhere and which one's didn't. Most of them, we figured out, didn't attend anywhere on Sunday mornings.

Later, we hosted pancake breakfasts for everyone in our cul-de-sac on the Fourth of July and we intentionally went out of our way to meet our actual neighbors, invite them over for dinner, take out their trashcans for them, and serve them in whatever ways we could. In essence, we determined that we would become missionaries to our neighbors.

Over time, (and this is an ongoing story), we got to pray for families in real trouble. We got to encourage them. We got to share Jesus with their kids. We got to see their kids fall in love with Jesus. We got to share groceries with families in financial need. We got to tutor their kids in math and spelling. We got to babysit when they were in a bind.

Suffice it to say, our neighbors know that there's a church on their street, and they know that we love them and that Jesus loves them. We're still hoping to make a deeper impact for them and to bring the Kingdom of God into their lives in a more powerful way, but we also know that God wants this even more than we do and He will lead us as we continue to submit ourselves to Him."

Church Can Be Different - 2

2011-10-25T08:38:00.000-05:00

No pulpit, no pews, no "pastor," no programs, no property. No budget, no band.

People in prayer, baptism, conversion, spontaneous "church planting" to a new site (i.e. living room), joyful invitations spreading on social networks.

Read the story from Felicity Dale below and that's what you'll see. You can find the original post here.

Church can be different.

__________________________________________________________________________

A story from our simple/organic church--and an urgent request

We need to go away more often. It's amazing what happens when we leave the country.

We currently have a simple/organic church that meets in our home. It's actually run by our daughter and son-in-law. We turn up from time to time.

For most of September and part of October, Tony and I were in Russia and the UK. Shortly after we left, a young man named Jose (aged 15) turned up at the gathering--schoolfriend of two nieces of Roxie who is part of the church. Jose is a sweet, incredibly loving, guy with a great sense of humor and a real love for the Lord. Jose had one thing on his heart.

"Pray that my mom will come to church with me. She needs Jesus."

His prayer was speedily answered. The very next week his mom, Rosaura, came with him. Rosaura had many needs. She had major problems with both drugs (including crack) and alcohol. The group spent most of their time together that week praying for her. She surrendered her life to Jesus and was completely delivered--no substance abuse since then.

The following week the group didn't meet for various reasons but Rosaura was anxious that her sister, who has also had problems with alcoholism, get prayed for too. So Roxie opened up her home and the sister was set free too. Roxie has had a weekly get-together in her home since then.

Two weeks ago we were back in the country. That week, during our time together, Rosaura's sister gave her heart to the Lord.

Jose's simple faith led to his mother and aunt finding Jesus.

Last week, the family turned up with some devastating news.

"Jose has been diagnosed with a brain tumor!"

Apparently Jose had been having increasing problems with headaches and deteriorating vision. He saw an eye doctor early last week. Several urgent specialist visits later, he was diagnosed with a large, infiltrating tumor pressing on his optic nerve and pituitary gland. He is scheduled for the 8-hour surgery tomorrow. Full recovery of both nerves and his endocrine system is expected to take more than a year. As yet, there is no way to know if the tumor is malignant or benign.

Rosaura is standing firm in her new-found faith. The morning Jose was due to see the neurosurgeon, she asked the Lord, "Please show me something from your word." She opened her Bible randomly to Mark 1 and put her finger down on verses 30-34--the story of Jesus healing not just Peter's mother-in-law but also many other sick or demon-possessed people. She knows that Jesus is working in her son's life.

Two days ago, we had a phone call from Roxie.

"Jose and Rosaura want to get baptized tomorrow before Jose's operation."

So yesterday evening, around 40 people gathered around our hot tub as Jose and Rosaura were gloriously baptized. Many of their family members and friends were there, several having come into town to support Jose and Rosaura through the ordeal of major surgery.

So here's our urgent request: obviously we have prayed for Jesus to heal Jose, but his surgery is scheduled for 10 am tomorrow morning. Rosaura has given permission for us to tell her story and to enlist others in the battle for Jose's life and health. Please pray that if the tumor is still there, it is easily removed without complications, and that Jose makes a full recovery with no residual effects. And it would be wonderful if you would get others to pray too.

Many thanks--and if the Lord reveals anything to you as you pray, let us know.

Sermon Writing and the Stewardship of Time

2011-10-17T11:23:00.001-05:00

I posted a question about sermons in an ELCA clergy forum on Facebook, but would like to hear from other folks as well so I thought I'd put it up here to get your thoughts:

"A recent question here asked about time spent on sermon prep. Eight hrs/week was mentioned, as was the "1hr per minute" rule. MLK Jr. apparently clocked in at 15hrs. I confess, this makes me wonder about the stewardship of time. What if, say, even once a month, you took 6 hours and spent them with a group of three people instead. Maybe 2 hours at a time on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Talk with them about their lives and faith, pray and study scripture together to see what Jesus is saying to them these days. Then on Sunday, the four of you spend 20 minutes in worship as a group sharing with the congregation what God has been up to among you over the past week. Question: would that be more beneficial to the Kingdom than the usual 8 hours and a sermon from you? Be sure you factor in the value of life-change experienced by the three people (and you!) over the week. What do you think?"

Church - and life - can be different

2011-10-15T11:18:00.000-05:00

Came across this article today about some house church folks who are doing what is sometimes called "incarnational ministry" in Kansas City. They and others have intentionally moved into a "blighted" area of town. It reminded me of what I wrote in part of my Facebook profile: "Christianity may be a religion, but following Jesus is an alternative lifestyle and faith is a lived relationship." Check it out if you'd like a little window into different ways to live the faith.

Cultivating community: Church members forsake suburbs to put down roots in struggling urban neighborhood

Adult Baptisms per 100 People in Worship

2011-05-04T22:12:00.001-05:00

In connection with my previous post on helping congregations learn from each other about doing evangelism, my friend Ron Amundson was struck by the chart below that is included in the background section of the discussion site. So I thought I might lift it up here as well.

The chart shows the number of adult baptisms per year per 100 people in worship in a (non-representative) sample of 27 of the 107 ELCA congregations in the Saint Paul Area Synod. (Since most of them are less than one per year on this measure, the data was actually produced by averaging worship and baptism statistics for the six-year period of 2000 through 2005. This kind of data is publicly available, by the way, on the ELCA website. Once you find the congregation you are interested in, look for the "Full Trend Report" link for a wealth of information.)

A couple of things to note:

Some congregations appear to have no effective evangelism (by this measure) with no adult baptisms over the six-years represented in the data.
Among congregations that do report adult baptisms over the last six years, there can be a ten-fold difference in effectiveness.
There is no evidence here that larger congregations are more effective than smaller ones (by this measure.) The data suggests that the reverse is likely to be true.

So. More food for thought.

Learning to Evangelize... Maybe

2011-05-03T22:23:00.001-05:00

This post is a bit of inside baseball/local interest mostly for my fellow Lutherans in the Saint Paul Area Synod. It's about a resolution I wrote for our upcoming Synod Assembly about evangelism.

In a nutshell, it's about discovering which congregations are being more effective among us and drawing out stories from them that the rest of us can learn from.

"Actually, I'm a Resolution."

To get this Resolution to the Synod Assembly, I brought it first to my Conference Assembly where it passed - but just barely, which was a surprise to me.

Next it was reviewed by the Synod's Reference and Counsel Committee which also had reservations and is recommending that the Synod Assembly not vote on it but rather have a discussion of evangelism at tables at the Assembly.

Well, there are 17 days left before the assembly and I'd still like to see this thing passed so I set up a little website where people can read and discuss it. It's public so anyone who wants to can join in. You can find it here at Learning to Evangelize.

We now return to our regular programming.

That's How You Know

2011-04-30T16:12:00.000-05:00

Because joy is a good thing.

Theological Minimalism for Mission

2011-04-12T23:21:00.001-05:00

At some point, I need to make a collection of My Favorite Metaphors. Here's one that will surely make the list.

The Library

When Lewis and Clark set off in 1804 to explore the Louisiana Purchase and seek out the Northwest Passage, I expect each of them had a sizeable library in their homes. I envision whole rooms of wonderful books on Art, Literature, Science, Philosophy, History and so on; books that they valued highly, and yet chose not to take along. For a settled life in Civilization, all those books were a great asset, but for a journey across the wilderness those same books would be a liability. For mobility and exploration, it’s important to travel light.

The “missional Church,” like those explorers, possesses a vast and wonderful library of theology, practices, liturgies, hymns, traditions, stories and so on. For a settled Church in a civilized Christendom, that depth and breadth is a wonderful gift to enjoy. But for a Church on the move into uncharted territories, the “library” is too much to carry. The missional Church needs a field guide for this venture, a “Boy Scout Manual” that can fit in a back pocket. The lighter it is, the less it will slow you down. But it needs to cover the basics: food, shelter, safety, and navigation. Thus the theme of minimalism.

Two or Three... is that it???

2011-03-28T09:58:00.000-05:00

When you read Matthew 18:20 - "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them" - how does it sound to you?

Do you hear something like this:

For even where merely two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them?

Does that sound like the voice of Jesus coming through? Or is it more like the voice of our culture which, even though it it profoundly individualistic, still lives by the more is better, bigger is better value system?

How deeply has this taken root in the way we envision our faith communities? It's pretty common to find that the Kingdom logic runs the opposite direction from "worldly wisdom." Have we missed the boat and are we doing church upside down (or "backwards" as I argued in my napkin diagram here?)

Sure looks like it to me.

For more reflection on "two or three" in the Bible, take a look at this post from my friends over at Church Multiplication Resources.

Spiritual Fruit-of-the-Week for Lent

2011-03-09T15:35:00.001-06:00

Here's a little peek for you into Lent at the Thompson's this year.

My wife and I talked with our daughters (14 and 9) about what we'd like to do for Lent and we came up with the idea of picking one of the fruits of the Spirit (unintentional pun there, sorry about that) and all of us focusing together on it for a whole week. Then the next week, we'll focus on a different one and so on. This led to a very interesting conversation about which fruit was most urgent to get started on. Kindness and Gentlenes were top contenders, but Self-control won out so we're off and running with that one as of today.

I made a little billboard of sorts to go on our table as a reminder with a complete set of fruits on sticky-notes tucked inside so we can swap them out from week to week. We're also going to use this to help us all memorize the set of 9 in order by the end of Lent. (I set up the billboard so you can hide the list while you try to put the notes in order, then open it up to see if you're right. How slick is that?!)

So if you need an idea for intentionally shaping your faith while helping your kids to learn from your example, there you go. If it's helpful, pass it along. Either way, have a blessed season.

Napkin Diagram for Simple/Organic Church

2011-03-01T10:07:00.000-06:00

Can there be a simple description of "Simple Church?" You'd think so! Roy McClung at Maximize My Ministry took a shot at it in the video below.

Note how he takes pains to be gentle in the comparison of simple and institutional church forms, stating that he is "in no way attacking" the more familiar form. I have found that spirit to be common among the people I've encountered who are pursuing simple church (e.g. House2House and CMA). It's a very good sign.

If you like napkin diagrams you may want to look at the one I've posted that shows how most of our resources are spent on the least effective things in conventional church settings - again, an argument in favor of simple church. I'd also like to point out that I used a real napkin, which is more simple than Roy's fancy-schmancy video. So there.

Zero Faith by Zip Code

2011-02-08T15:57:00.000-06:00

I just ran across a little gadget on the Percept website where you can type in a Zip code and immediately find out what percent of the people living there report "No Faith Involvement." For example, in my little corner of God's Country here in the upper Midwest, we manage to beat the national average (35%) by an exemplary three points, coming in at 32%!

Census data puts my Zip code at about 45,000 in the year 2000. That means there are around 14,000 people with no faith involvement essentially in my backyard.

As they say, North America is a mission field.

Advice for Pastors, Bi-vocational and Otherwise, on Sustainable Life

2011-02-07T10:21:00.001-06:00

An issue that comes up often among pastors who want to work in a simple/organic/house church mode is the need to be bi-vocational. That is, since you're unlikely to get enough income (let alone health insurance) from your pastoring work, you need a second (or third) job to cover that. This immediately leads to questions about how to manage it all and have some kind of sustainable life, all the more so if you have a family to tend as well. Maybe it's no surprise, but the struggle for a sustainable life is a major challenge for full time professional clergy as well. The depression statistics suggest it's a struggle we aren't managing well.

I came across a conversation on this topic back in November '09 that had more frankness and transparency than usual. But perhaps the best post just showed up there the other day and I wanted to share it with you here. I commend to you, and to myself, the wisdom and experience of bi-vocational pastor and church-planter Mark Woodruff:

Tim

MARK W. WOODRUFF, MD SAID...

I was cleaning up old email and this was sent to me by a church planting friend who has planted 4 churches in 2 countries over the last 20 years.

I myself finished my medical training in 1989 having been an elder and assistant pastor and built a church planting team in parallel from 1981-89. We moved to Omaha, NE where I started working full time as a doctor and quickly began to church plant. After 3 years in the Air Force we had established a leadership team(3 elders but unfortunately only me as pastor)and I moved to working part time in medicine(ED shifts, usually 2 12 hr shifts a week, including some nights).

Over the subsequent decade I continued this bivocational lifestyle while my children went from ages 11/7/5 to 21/17/15. The benefits of the ED were short hours but the disadvantages were increased stress and shift work.

At that point I had to make a change in my medical career and joined and subsequently bought into a medical practice. As that practice built it became increasingly obvious that I could not do a 60+ hour a week job and continue to pastor a church of about 75 people. After a 3 month sabbatical during which I sought the Lord I turned the church over to the other two elders and became “pastor emeritus”.

Here’s is what I learned about bivocational ministry:

1. You must be truly part time in both(or all 3 in your case): you can’t expect to work 80 hrs a week at 2 full time jobs, maintain your health and build your family(which is your primary calling/ministry in this life stage);

2. You must have a Sabbath!!!!!!! God established the Sabbath, and we neglect it at our own peril. I don’t know how to put this any stronger: I believe this is the primary cause of burnout, not working too many hours or church problems or anything else. That day must be a day refreshment, deep communion with God and rejuvenation(see Bill Hybels’ sermon tape: “Gifts, Gauges and Playing Games” about maintaining/filling your emotional tank; on my best days I would play some golf, read, nap, study just for the sake of studying, not sermon prep; also write, journal, ponder, think, fellowship with my wife and children, and share my heart with them; but I was not faithful to this, especially after I went back into family medicine and a full time job;

3. You must fight ministry maintenance at every turn; the benefit of newer church models is less maintenance, but you still have to delegate; you should never be doing cleanup,not because its beneath you but because others can do it and they can’t do what you are supposed to be dong when you are doing it!

4. You have to avoid the Superman syndrome–”I’ll do it”; think rigorously about whether “it” is in your calling/role/job description;

5. You must have as clear a delineation of your role/responsibilities as possible; I believe there are 3 primary leadership responsibilities in the church: a. vision casting and mission progression(seeing, articulating the vision and moving people to pursue it), b. pastoral care of the people, c. outreach leadership(leading others as they outreach, serve, care for and incorporate new lives into the Body of Christ). Discipleship is involved in the last two. If you have a 40 hour a week job(s) you will be lucky to do one of those well; at 20 hours a week you can probably do 2; to do all 3 you have to be fulltime(and it makes much more sense to split these tasks 2 or 3 ways anyway–there is quantitative research out of Fuller that shows 2 planters working half time will be more effective than one working fulltime); of note, anything not directly included in the above 3 is the responsibility of the deaconate, leading the people in doing he work of the church; also of note, much of this doesn’t fit the American culture nor the American church model;

6. You must have a pastor’s heart, particularly toward your wife and children; you don’t have to pastor(provide pastoral care) for the church, but you must have a pastor’s heart toward them, or you become a hireling; you must actually pastor your family, and given your busy schedule and your lifestyle, I recommend you be intentional in this(my wife used to sit down for an evening 2-3 times a year, discuss our children individually, talk about our vision for them, and write down a goal for each of them in the following three areas: body, soul and spirit; doing this for them at a young age when its easier incorporated it into our thinking when they were older, so it became almost automatic;

7. You must live a fairly spartan lifestyle; the amount of discipline in terms of exercise, rest, healthy eating(not gaining weight over time)does not leave a lot of time for secular pursuits(TV, following college/pro sports, hobbies–except as it relates to #2 above). One of my mistakes was thinking I “deserved” to watch football on Sunday afternoons(and Monday nights, and Saturday afternoons, etc) because I had “worked so hard”; this is unfair but an elite athlete gives up a lot of things his friends do because he’s “in training”; you are perpetually “in training”;

8. You must have focused one on one time with your wife, where you can shut out the other aspects of your life and focus on her; I recommend a 3 day weekend every quarter if possible; if you can’t afford to go anywhere, see if someone will take your kids(individually or corporately, you can return the favor) and see if anyone you know has a lodge/cabin/vacation home you could use for a weekend; don’t hesitate to talk to faithful pastors of larger churches who may be aware of this kind of thing and will be willing to share it with you;

9. You must have your own pastor/mentor; whether this is someone local with whom you develop an intimate relationship, or a denominational leader(if you are part of one) or another pastor who is translocal, you must have someone with whom you can be transparent, and it can’t be your copastor(s);

10. You must have plenty of grace for yourself and your limitations and the limitations of your lifestyle; God gives grace for your calling, but that grace is for you doing it in your weakness, not in perfection(ism).

These are the lessons I learned over more than 20 years of bivocational ministry.

I am not a prophet, but I do believe that full time paid ministry will ultimately disappear; it may hold on for a long time in the US, but it is already not part of the picture in much of the rest of the world; the American Church model of the 20th century is not sustainable in the 21st, for a variety of reasons.

"Greenhouse" Organic Church Workshop offered in Minneapolis, March 2011

2011-01-25T10:07:00.000-06:00

If you are interested in the simple/organic/house church movement and live in or around the Twin Cities there's an excellent opportunity coming up quickly for you. Church Multiplication Associates is holding a Greenhouse Training March 18-20 in Minneapolis. It's a Friday evening, Saturday morning and afternoon, and Sunday afternoon.

What's a Greenhouse?

In a nutshell, a Greenhouse training does two things:

Helps participants to reground their thinking about Church in "organic" terms as a simple, living organism that readily grows and reproduces. Much of the time at the training is spent exploring how that looks in practice, both as outreach and as discipling believers.
Invites participants to follow up on the training by gathering monthly through the following year for encouragement and supportive accountability as they begin to pursue this kind of "missional living" in the context of natural relationships.

I attended a Greenhouse some time ago and highly recommend it from that experience. The cost ranges from $110 to $150. It's worth it.

For more specific information, contact my friend Katie Driver who is the local coordinator and will be one of the presenters. You can register here. For more of my thoughts and opinions about it, read on.

Although the Greenhouse training has good content in several areas, that's not the main reason I suggest you go. Frankly, good content isn't that hard to find these days and you can buy a lot of books for the price of this registration. What makes this worthwhile is that it pulls together three things that I think are key to Kingdom work - whether you're talking evangelism, discipleship or social ministry for that matter:

Simplicity.  Lots has been written about simplicity. That's ironic, that is. Simplicity is vital for something to be easily transmitted and replicated. That goes for churches as well as viruses. The Greenhouse training works with a very simple expression of church, simple in both written and in human forms. That's good.

Substantive Relationships.  Relationships where people feel safe enough to get below the surface of life are foundational, both for people to come to faith and for believers to mature in faith. This is one reason why conventional congregations struggle so much under the burden of maintaining a weekly large group gathering that inherently can't facilitate those kind of relationships. The Greenhouse training focuses on equipping people for exploring faith together in groups of 2 to 4 as normative. It offers one simple tool for people to use in self-facilitating such groups, but only as an example or as one resource they recommend.

Intentionality.  This truly is the linchpin. Even mediocre ideas that actually get implemented will probably show more results than great ideas that are left on the shelf. I think the Greenhouse folks know this, which is why the real goal of the training is not simply to deliver good content to people. It's to lay a foundation for the formation of supportive accountability groups. (That's my term. They call them Greenhouse Monthly Gatherings which sounds much more fun and friendly and is probably a better term for that reason.) At the end of the training, they invite those who are interested to begin meeting monthly to encourage each other as they work to live out what they have learned. And note how the monthly meeting is not the main event. Rather, it plays a supportive role to the weekly gatherings of people in groups of 2-4, most of whom have not had the Greenhouse training. That's the kind of flip-the-pyramid strategy that sent me off to learn about house churches in the first place, two years ago.

This is good stuff and these are good people. If you can get to a Greenhouse I think you'll be glad you went.

Navigating the Asteroid Field: Spiritual Growth Practice

2011-01-12T14:21:00.000-06:00

One metaphor I keep returning to in my thinking about how to pursue the life of faith with intentionality is the asteroid field. I haven't yet written about it here. but did bring it up recently over on Felicity Dale's Blog. The topic there had to do with the tension between tending internal relationships vs. outreach to others, but that raised the question of whether there is a regular "sequence" to these things or not. (E.g. "FIRST we get close, THEN we can reach out to others.") In that context I dropped in my thought about navigating in the absence of a stable sequence or pathway. I think it applies both to groups and individuals. At any rate, here's the comment from that conversation which will at least introduce the metaphor for us here.

The critique of "sequentialism" resonated with me. It's like the traditional way of navigating where you have a map and a route and just go step by step. But that only works if the terrain stays put! These days I think navigating as a faith community is more like flying your moving spaceship through a field of randomly drifting asteroids. There is no "path," and if you start trying to chart one the asteroids will have moved before you get it finished so it's obsolete before it's done. Navigating in this environment is, I think, done by quick orientation followed by incremental movement, then repeat. And orientation means knowing what's right next to you as well as where you ultimately are trying to go.

In practice, I think that calls for the listening to God and each other that others have mentioned. We Refresh our awareness of where we are and where we are going, then Respond. So the path forward isn't laid out in advance as a sequence A to B to C to D etc. Rather, the sequence is replaced by a discipline: "(Refresh, Respond) Repeat."

I think, if we do that, then the original question about community vs. mission gets answered over and over as God leads.

Thoughts on an (R,R)R practice for faith life? I'd love to hear them.

Visual Census Data

2011-01-07T22:37:00.000-06:00

Interested in race, income, education, and housing diversity in the US or your local community? Check out this fascinating, interactive map based on census data.

Community Pot Luck Accountability Experiment

2011-01-04T15:21:00.000-06:00

Back in September I launched a little experiment in supportive accountability with some friends. The idea was very simple: gather once a month for three months for a pot luck dinner, followed by a conversation. The conversation was an opportunity for people participating to share some goals for their family faith life for the month, then report back at the next gathering. I knew that was something I was wanting for my own family life so I was hopeful some others would want to give it a try as well. I invited three other families, friends of ours with children around the same age as our daughters, and they all three signed on! Woo-hoo!

Well, we finished our 3-month a couple weeks ago and will be re-upping for another round shortly which is a good sign. And this time we're going to look for ways to gently lean our conversations towards more depth. It's not like we were talking about the weather before, but it was clear that we were all drawn to the deeper sharing when it came about. So rather than just let that happen whenever, we'll be looking for ways to nudge ourselves that direction without locking into anything rigid. One idea that's been floated is to view the conversation time as a pot-luck too. There's still an element of unstructured freedom at the core, but we would come to it "bringing something that we have prepared," be that a prayer, a question, a song or a thought.

This simple no-pressure accountability scheme of our first round really helped me to move on some of the things I've wanted to do, but never quite got started. The simple presence of a kind of "due by date" on the calendar got me to follow through on my desire to have a monthly service project of some sort as a family. That part worked well.

Another part didn't work as well, and that turned out to be very instructive. I kept setting a goal for having one or two intentional faith conversations per week with my daughters - to talk about different ways to pray for example - and those conversations just weren't happening. And of course, by the end of the month it was too late to "catch up" before the pot luck! (After all, what's a deadline for if you can't cram everything in just before it hits?) So I changed the goal. Rather than a goal to have conversations, I made the goal to set target dates for the conversations. And the key here was to link the scheduling task itself to a fairly stable weekly event which we had in place around the Monday grocery shopping run. So it went like this: once a week when my wife and I sat down to figure out the family schedule (who's home which nights; who's cooking what for dinner...) we also looked for two days per week to have a conversation, typically at dinner. The goal was simply to plan which days we were going to shoot for having the conversations. If they actually happened, that would be good too but the main thing was to have them in sight - it was what we needed to move our desire into a specific intention.

Well, it worked pretty well! Most weeks now we are having these conversations on purpose with the girls and that's been a real treat. And I've learned some good points about intentionality and the value of building off of existing schedule patterns. But I probably wouldn't have gotten that worked out if not for trying and failing and reporting on it for three months in a row.

It's just a pot luck and a conversation, but it makes a difference.

Twin Cities House Church Coalition

2010-12-22T21:50:00.000-06:00

David Brown

I recently met David Brown, a UMC Pastor who has launched "A coalition of house churches across the Twin Cities living in the way of Jesus" called STORM Faith Community. At some point I'd like to post a little profile/interview with him here but for now I suggest you visit his website if you are interested in House Church groups in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul Area.

I would add though, that this is one of only a couple of cases I know of where a mainline denomination is actually investing in a home-based faith community as a missional strategy. (If you know of others please let me know!) The proof of that pudding is that STORM only gathers for large group worship monthly. That may sound familiar if you've been reading my blog from the beginning since that pattern was part of my very first musings:

I began to wonder… what would it do for the life of the people if they met weekly in small groups, and then monthly, perhaps even quarterly for a rip-roarin’ pull-out-the-stops large group, corporate worship celebration? I thought about the possibilities for spiritual growth and evangelism. I thought about the time and the money it would release. I thought about the amazing celebrations we could do if we had a month or more to prepare for each one. I thought about the enormous decrease in the facilities needed. Then I realized, there is a name for the kind of congregational life where the small group is the main thing instead of an extra thing.

It’s called the house church.

Blessings, Dave. May your house increase!

Felicity Dale: House Church Going "Mainstream?"

2010-12-18T11:20:00.000-06:00

Felicity Dale

Tony and Felicity Dale are prominent voices in the House Church community in the US, and good folks in general I've had the pleasure to meet and talk with several times. In fact, their annual House2House conference was my first substantive introduction to HC, back in 2006. So Felicity's blog is one I follow routinely. Her most recent post, copied below, gives a nice snapshot of their early involvement in House Church in the UK, but more importantly provides a look into where the movement is at now in the States.

Note how her choice of "Option 3" at the end reveals a lack of competitive or us vs. them spirit. I'm pleased to say that I have found that to be common among the HC folks I've encountered. Also, if you go to her post and look at the comments, you'll see some good discussion around the poll numbers re. HC involvement.

If you want to keep an ear to the ground on HC developments, Felicity's blog is a good place to go.

TT

How do we respond when our radical thinking becomes mainstream?

This post is a follow up on trend number 4 from the last post, that we will see an increasing acceptance of simple/organic church principles across the legacy church spectrum.

Back in the UK, in the 1970s and 80's, we were involved in what was then known as the "British House Church Movement." It was a heady, exciting time taking place against the backdrop of the charismatic renewal that swept much of the world, and it transformed the church landscape of the UK. Although it became a megachurch movement because we did not have a theology of multiplying the small, for its day it was a radical, forward-thinking movement embodying many of the principles we now hold dear--things like non-religious Christianity, every member participation etc. We reckon that about one third of British evangelicalism was transformed by that move of God over the next decade or so.

Fast forward a few years to 1996. We are now in the States, having gone through 9 years of God's favorite training school on the backside of the desert, and God starts speaking to us after 9 years of silence. The first thing he says is,"You'll be a part of a move of my Spirit again." The implications of this as we asked the Lord about it is that we would see a move of the Spirit that would have a similar impact on the church landscape of America.

When the simple/organic movement began to gain momentum a few years ago, it was generally dismissed as, at best, irrelevant. We were the radicals, the minority with some crazy ideas. We never dreamt that these ideas would become mainstream. But this is happening right in front of our eyes! For example, Austin Stone, one of the 100 fastest growing churches in the country, is a megachurch here in Austin. Earlier this year they held a conference called Verge. It was sold out within a few short weeks. Around 2,000 people attended, almost all from mega- and legacy churches, with more than 4,000 joining online. What is interesting is that the majority of the speakers were simple/organic/house church proponents--people like Neil Cole, David Watson, David Garrison, George Patterson, Alan Hirsch. They spoke about missional communities, Luke 10 principles and church planting movements. This coming year, Verge is joining with Exponential for the largest church planters conference in the country and the theme will be similar.

Not only that, Austin Stone actively encourages their people to start missional communities with unbelievers, not insisting that those people and those they reach, come back to the mother church. Maybe because of this relaxed approach, most choose to stay in close relationship with them. Here in Austin, several of the mega churches are actively seeking to reach out with the missional community approach. They recognize it as the only way to effectively touch every part of society.

The Lord has given Joel Hunter, the senior pastor of Northland: A Church Distributed, in Orlando, a new task. They are to facilitate the start of 1 million house churches around the world. In typical Northland fashion, they are doing this by partnering with other groups who are more directly involved in missions or house churches, and they seek no credit for their part in what is created.

Like it or not, (and personally I am very excited about it even though I recognize some of the potential pitfalls) simple/organic church concepts are in the process of becoming mainstream. Many mega- and legacy churches see this as the way forward. God is speaking to them, and he's saying the same things to them that he is speaking to those of us involved in simple/organic churches. And to be honest, as some of these churches embrace the principles of reaching out to the world via missional communities, they have the potential to change our cities even more than we do because many of them have large numbers of young, radical, on-fire disciples who are longing to reach out into their communities.

The secular media is taking notice. There are an increasing number of articles such as this one about house churches. According to the latest Pew Forum figures, 9% of Protestants worship in their homes. Legacy churches of all kinds are embracing simple/organic church principles and attempting to implement them within their context.

My question is, how are we going to react? Those of us in the simple/organic church movement have several options:

Are we going to criticize because they aren't doing everything right (according to our thinking)? That we have the "pure" form of church and unless they do it our way, they are taking a lower path.
Are we going to cheer them on from the sidelines?
Are we going to work cooperatively with them, rejoicing in all that God is doing in their midst, helping where we can, accepting their help where they offer it?

Personally, I'm for number 3. What could happen in our cities if we all work together and nobody minds who gets the credit?

Love in a Glovebox - part 2

2010-10-21T18:35:00.011-05:00

Recently I wrote about a service project, assembling "gift bags" that can be given to homeless people when you see them along the roadside. Today we followed up on that in my home and made ten bags containing the following:

Scarf, hat, headband, or a pair of gloves
2 granola bars
Small box of raisins
10 cough drops
Chapstick
Travel Kleenex
Comb
2 extra Ziploc bags

The cost for each bag came to $4.50 and half of that was for the item of clothing. We're planning to add a note to each bag, just to give a word of encouragement to the recipient and to let them know that this little act of love was done in Jesus' name.

I took my two daughters and granddaughter along to shop for these items, and had two of their friends from the neighborhood helping as well when we assembled the bags. Each of the neighbor friends got to take a bag home for their parents to give away, and we sent two bags home with my granddaughter. So the project is touching a couple of bases: blessing the poor, reinforcing our value of compassion in my daughters & granddaughter, and even letting the neighborhood know, if subtly, what kind of household we are (or at least are trying to be!)

One last idea that I may follow up on as well. I'm thinking of including a stamped postcard, addressed to my church, with a note inviting the homeless person to share any thoughts they wish. If they want to say something to me or to the church - even about what kinds of "giveaways" are helpful or insulting - that would be great. If they want to say something to the Church at large, or to society, or to the Governor or President, I'll promise to deliver their message as best I can. It may well be that some of those messages might end up on this blog. If nothing else, it will let them know that someone thinks their voice is important and is trying to listen. I think any of us would appreciate that.

Someone Saw This Coming

2010-10-11T12:08:00.006-05:00

I recently came across this striking quote about people leaving institutional forms of Church for the sake of their faith, rather than as an act of moving away from faith. I first encountered this idea in Reggie McNeal's book The Present Future, but the quote below predates that seminal 2003 work by, um, a fair bit.

Multitudes of Christians within the church are moving toward the point where they may reject the institution that we call the church. They are beginning to turn to more simplified forms of worship. They are hungry for a personal and vital experience with Jesus Christ. They want a heartwarming personal faith. Unless the church quickly recovers its authoritative Biblical message, we may witness the spectacle of millions of Christians going outside the institutional church to find spiritual food.

Care to take a guess as to who said it and when? I'll post the answer in a couple of days. If you can't wait, just go ahead and Google "the spectacle of millions of Christians."

Love in a Glovebox

2010-10-07T12:30:00.004-05:00

Here's a great little service project from my friend Steve Bonesho and River of Joy community.

They call it "Love in a Glovebox" and all you need to do is gather a few items to have on hand in your car to give to homeless people as you encounter them at intersections. Hats, mittens, scarves; maybe a bus pass or gift card to a restaurant e.g. Subway; maybe some food items like granola bars. Put these into a little box or bag and have it ready in your car for the next encounter.

If you want, you can join them this coming Sunday as they gather to assemble gLoveboxes after their worship service Sunday October 10th at 10am at the Spring Lake Township Hall.

I'll be elsewhere with my family that morning but we are going to do this as our October service project anyway & send them an e-mail to say thanks for the idea & for being a good example. I encourage you to do the same! You can shoot Steve an e-mail at steve@rojlc.org.

Sunday Services: the Blind Spot and Sacred Cow in Church Decline

2010-09-13T11:54:00.007-05:00

Dave Householder has written a bracing post about the decline of the Lutherans in North America that is well worth reading. He gets extra credit for leading off with this; "This article is not just for Lutherans. It applies to most North American faith families." I expect the comments are really good too, but with 90 at last count I confess I lacked the fortitude to actually read them all!

He cites ten factors contributing to decline, including:

Low birth rate
Poor retention of the babies we do have
Staggering ineffectiveness in evangelism
Unwelcoming if not toxic parish communities
Little or no effective use of media

Decline has been an ongoing topic of my blog. I've integrated several of his points into the "pond metaphor" where you can easily see why the church used to grow but is in decline now. I even threw together a metric for "evangelical effectiveness" that is pretty jarring to look at.

But after reading David's post I still think that one of the most significant issues is going unnamed: the inherent ineffectiveness of Sunday morning gatherings, both for discipleship and for evangelism. Yet we persist in making these gatherings the centerpiece of our faith-life culture, and investing the vast majority of our time, energy and money in maintaining them as I've discussed here. Sunday morning, large group, presentational, professionally led, property-dependent worship services are, I'm afraid, both our biggest blind spot and our most sacred cow.

And this central assumption about the way to "do church" is perhaps the most unifying feature of North American Christendom. It can't be much of an overstatement to say that we all do it that way. No wonder then, that the decline spans the decades so readily and cuts so easily across denominational lines, and the liberal/conservative divide.

Large group gatherings are not bad. But as the centerpiece of faith practice they can never be effective in spreading or nurturing the faith. That requires face to face, heart to heart conversation, which is notoriously difficult to have in a pew, disrespectful during the preaching, and drowned out by the performance be it the organ or the band.

Evaluating Wellbeing - a Tool for the Church?

2010-05-19T12:19:00.006-05:00

Gallup has launched a new book and program focused on Wellbeing. Their StrengthsFinders work has been extremely valuable to me so I expect this will be good stuff as well.

It uses an online assessment questionnaire that you can take repeatedly in order to see changes in your wellbeing over time and the influence of events and actions you take. Suggestions are provided for making improvements in the five "Essential Elements" of Wellbeing their material presents:

Career
Social
Financial
Physical
Community

A couple of things come quickly to mind:

No "Spiritual" aspect to wellbeing? I can't imagine that's an oversight, so they must have reasons for not going there. I'll be interested to learn what they are.

Social and Community Wellbeing are two different things. The fact that I was surprised to see them listed separately is telling evidence that I really am a part of my Western culture, which is generally so focused on the individual that issues around community are generally off the radar.

What if your congregation picked this up and ran with it? Suppose your congregation made intentional, ongoing work with this tool a core practice of your community life (after adding in a Spiritual Wellbeing component, of course)? Imagine adding a faith-based perspectives to conversations on Career and Financial Wellbeing? Do you think this might be something your people would value and benefit from?

Do you think they might, just possibly, mention it to their friends, neighbors and coworkers?

Suppose you offered workshops and support groups around this to the community around your church... gave them the books for free as a sign of your commitment to the practice of being a blessing to others... made the sessions completely non-religious but offered an opt-in conversation after each gathering for those who wanted to add the faith dimension... I'm just thinking out loud here...

Do you think people outside your church might begin to see it as an asset to the neighborhood, a partner in the community?

I wonder!

Kiddie Pool Community Gardens?

2010-05-03T11:55:00.004-05:00

Is your congregation looking for a way to serve - and meet - your neighbors? Interested in a ministry to help feed the poor or welcome immigrants from foreign lands?

Here's an idea - offer free garden space to the community in kiddie pools!

The materials are fairly cheap and reusable. You could probably get a grant for a project like this from any number of community-building or hunger related groups. (Know a good one? Please leave a comment!!)

Got apartment dwellers on the block? There have got to be some frustrated gardeners living in there! Give them a reason to cross the street and then go meet them as you garden together.

Does your local food shelf need fresh food? Why not grow some for them?

Are there immigrants in your community who are still trying to develop a taste for Mac'n'cheese but really miss the flavors of home? Offer them a place to grow the vegetables they are used to eating. Imagine what you might pick up from swapping recipes with them!

Maybe a small flotilla of tomato-laden kiddie pools isn't quite what you had in mind when you thought of ways to make your church landscaping more attractive. Of course, there are different ways to think about "beauty." Is Jesus really that big into well-mown grass? Or is a community meeting place a more likely field in which to sow the seeds he favors anyway?

As they say, it's all in the eye of The Beholder.

Ownership vs. Posession

2010-04-21T08:56:00.003-05:00

I had occasion to give my personal perspective on stewardship recently at my church and it was videotaped so I though I would share it here. The key moment is when, after placing my wallet, mortgage, car title, marriage certificate etc. on the altar I simply ask God; "What do you want me to do with your stuff?"

The video starts with the distinction between ownership and possession, covers my personal family journey into tithing, and affirms percentage-based giving as a grace-filled approach. It specifically advocates a three step process: start where you are but look at your giving from the percentage perspective, set a goal, then make a plan to grow towards it.

Plus, you get to see me ask my friend Rick to hand over his wallet to me in front of the congregation.

Pastor Tim on Stewardship from Gethsemane on Vimeo.

Why I Believe

2010-04-16T11:54:00.006-05:00

My friend Jonathan posted an interesting question on Facebook yesterday:

Curious: Christian? Why? Or... Non-Christian? Why? Would love to hear your answers. Don't try to convince anyone of anything. Not a debate. Just interested in YOUR response, your story, your heart.

I've though a bit about that over the years, and more so recently, so I wrote a reply which I thought I'd share here too:

Christian. To be quite frank about it, I am a believer because my parents raised me in belief. As Christof says in The Truman Show; "We accept the reality with which we are presented."

More to the point, though - why do I continue to believe? As I have looked at that, two reasons are the most influential.

First, I have an actual sense of the presence of an Other, that resonates with the God of the Bible as seen in the person of Jesus.

Second, the whole belief system that is grounded in my relationship to that Other is something that I find comforting, inspiring, intellectually and emotionally compelling, and integral to my sense of living a life that has meaning.

I guess that's the short answer. ;)

As Jonathan, I'm also curious to hear from others. Why do you believe what you believe?

The Curse of Abundance

2010-04-08T14:36:00.005-05:00

Am I corrupting my children?

Recently one of my daughters came home from school and announced that she was hungry. I told her that she could have some fruit, or veggies and dip, or the vanilla yogurt that she likes. She was very displeased with these options. I was very displeased with her displeasure. In my standard scolding tone I informed her that having three choices of what to eat was nothing to turn one’s nose up at, and that furthermore, one of those options was in fact a category with six options within it. (Through unusual circumstance, we happened to have an excess of fruit in the house. I impressed this upon her by providing the list.) With great resignation and some irritation, she announced that she would suffer an orange.

Dissatisfaction is the curse of abundance.

On another occasion, with my other daughter, I found myself going through the morning “What Do You Want for Breakfast?” routine. Cold cereal? No thanks. Oatmeal? Cream of Wheat? Nah. How about some eggs? Fried? Scrambled? I could make an omelet… Nothing sounded good to her. “What else do we have?” was the question hanging in the air.

It occurred to me later on that by constantly presenting options and asking her to weigh them in her internal Desirability Center, I was training her to focus on her preferences, to keep on exercising the “want” muscles. And over time, this was resulting in more wanting, as well as a belief in the existence of The Magical Food that is so delicious, so wonderful, so special that it actually can fulfill all of one’s desires. I don’t know what it is, and neither does she, but hope springs eternal that if I can somehow speak its Name then she will recognize it and exclaim; “Yes! That’s it! That’s what I want!” So there we were. Me training my daughter in how to want, and her unable to revel in the astounding goodness of simply sitting down and having a hot meal appear before you that you didn’t even have to prepare for yourself, much less milk the cows and bake the bread.

From here it is a straight line towards the yearnings for The Magical Toy (adults: gadget) that is endlessly fun, The Magical Job that fulfills all your vocational and financial desires, and The Magical Spouse. Whatever you have now may well be good, but belief in the Magical will always invite you to wonder if there might be something – or someone – better.

How far our lives are, in the land of plenty, from the life Paul lived that led him to say; “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances” and “…if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.” (See Philippians 4 and 1 Timothy 6.)

Those of us who want to be followers of Jesus should be mindful of two things: abundance and purpose. Constant abundance becomes invisible to us as we get used to it. We need to see people who have actual needs or we’ll lose sight of how much we have to share and instead fall victim to our endless wants. And the purpose of God in the world is something much broader and much deeper than fulfilling our desires. If we are not devoted to that purpose, it will be no surprise if we end up devoted to our preferences.

I know I have a need to see my abundance and to renew my purpose. And as a parent, I need to help my children find this life as well. The Land of Plenty, it turns out, can be a tricky place to live.

Welcome to PostChristendom

2010-03-09T08:59:00.004-06:00

Here's a quote that caught my eye:

"We had numerous Catholic churches praying for us, a Buddhist temple, a bunch of Lutherans, a pagan sect and at least two Satanists that I know of, so we were pretty much covered."

I ran across that in a Star Tribune article about a guy who found a kidney donor for himself through Facebook. I'd say that's putting the "S" in "social networking!"

I know this is old news for many of you, but worth repeating especially "for some have never heard," that the world around us in the US is no longer saturated with Christianity, if indeed it ever was.

Of course, you can still simulate a Christianity-dominated culture quite easily. All you have to do is surround yourself with nothing but other Christians in your social world and be sure to rarely venture out. Listening solely to Christian music, Christian radio, and reading nothing but Christian books can also be a big help with this.

But do take note. If a collection of Catholics, Buddhists, pagans and "at least two Satanists that I know of" doesn't bear at least some resemblance to the world you live in, then you are probably living in a religio-cultural ghetto.

From which position it will be very, very, very hard to do effective mission.

Very.

Church Decline in the Public Eye

2010-01-16T10:26:00.006-06:00

The decline of the church is something that borders on an "open secret" - "widely known to be true, but which none of the people most intimately concerned is willing to categorically acknowledge in public." (Lifted that from Wikipedia.)

If you want to see evidence of that, take a look at this Bizarro cartoon in todays Pioneer Press, near the top right corner. It actually points out both the reality, and the denial of those "most intimately concerned," in one punchline.

When church decline is well enough established and so widely understood that it can be the source of humor in popular culture, it's way past time for us to do something about it.

Does Your Marriage Strengthen Your Faith?

2009-12-11T12:03:00.005-06:00

I think the idea that a shared faith life can strengthen your marriage is pretty common, but I've been musing about the reverse:

Do you intentionally look to your marriage as a "platform" from which you pursue your faith? Put another way, is your primary life partner your primary faith partner?

I came to this from a curious direction. I think a lot about small groups and house churches. More recently I encountered suggestions for "Three is Enough" groups as well as "Church of Two." One thing that seemed to be in common across all of these is that you have to begin by finding one or more people to team up with, and then spend some time building a significant relationship of trust. With that foundation established, you can work together to pursue your faith with support, encouragement and sharing of ideas, insights etc.

Eventually, I wondered why not start with an established relationship of trust that a great many of us already have in place: our spouse? And I'm not talking here about sharing a life of faith as a way to strengthen the marriage, though it certainly will. Rather, the focus is on intentionally turning to the marriage relationship as a resource for pursuing faith. After all, there we hopefully already have someone who knows us well enough to "speak into our life" as they say. Hopefully, with enough trust built up to be able to "speak (and hear) the truth in love." And generally, someone you can get quality time with fairly easily (even though we often don't.)

Wouldn't that be easier than trying to find someone, find a place and time to meet, and start building a deep, faith-based relationship?

I'd love to hear from others who have though about this, or better yet begun to live that way. What have your experiences been? What kind of practices have you found helpful (or not.) What challenges have you encountered?

How My Mom Introduced Me to God

2009-12-06T21:33:00.004-06:00

Part Advent craft for the family, part spiritual autobiography - how's that for a multi-purpose blog post?

One Christmas season when I was a child, my mom had the family do a special activity at home. She set up a little doll-size manger with a small pile of straw next to it and invited us all to "prepare a place for the baby Jesus." We were to add straw one piece at a time over the weeks of Advent. And we were to only add straw when we had done an act of kindness for someone, anonymously.

These good deeds were to be kept secret. It was just between us... and God.

It was a nice activity, and fun in a way that appealed to a young boy who got permission to be sneaky for a change. I don't recall that we ever did it again in the years after that, but by the 25th I do recall there was a decent amount of straw in the manger for the Jesus doll to lie in.

Looking back, it has seemed to me that something really significant got catalyzed in my spiritual life back then. The experience of sharing a secret with God - and essentially engaging in this "spiritual practice" over several weeks - was, as far as I can recall, my earliest clear encounter with God as an actual "other" I could relate to. My first sense of the "Thou" in my "I-and-Thou" relationship (thank you, Martin Buber, for giving me that language some years later.)

So this year, I decided to bring back the manger. I made a little video of how to build one with my daughter Rebecca that you can find below. I think she's already got a stronger spiritual sensitivity that I did at her age, but if this helps to encourage her growth (or mine, or any of the rest of us in the household), well, it's all good.

And anything that encourages more intentional acts of kindness is worth a shot!

Blessings on you and yours this season. May you all share good secrets.

How to Make a Manger from Timothy Thompson on Vimeo.

The Sticking Point: Social Density

2009-12-01T08:59:00.008-06:00

A Facebook group I belong to associated with Luther Seminary recently started a discussion on this question:

What are the sticking points of your community of faith that keep you all from becoming a missional congregation?

I thought I'd take a crack at that and here's what I posted:

The sticking point? If only there were just one! I see a host of impediments to the emergence of a missional culture - everything from clericalism and Biblical illiteracy to the hyperindividualism and consumeristic ethos of our civic culture. But there does seem to be one factor that exacerbates all the others and is the place I keep coming back to when I try to decide where to invest my energies.

There is a general lack of substantive relationships.

You can easily unveil this by looking at the one-anothers that describe healthy Christian community. For example, how common are relationships in our churches that are substantive enough to allow people to actually "admonish one another?" Not very.

Culture change - like faith itself - travels from person to person like a virus. You can stop a virus cold (so to speak) by isolating people from each other. Similarly, our community relationships are generally too distant to support a culture-change epidemic. We don't "breathe each others air" enough to transmit anything.

Our primary gatherings may look like good places to catch something - Sunday services are something of a crowd scene. But there is very little relational contact that can take place in that setting. You may catch a cold by passing the peace, but you won't catch a missional culture that way.

Invest in small groups? Of course. But that's typically done as an add-on to Sunday services, as icing on the cake of everything else that's already entrenched in conventional congregational life. Most of our time & energy goes towards the large gathering which tends to have a small impact on a large number of people. Small groups, that have a larger impact on a smaller number, get the leftovers. That's a fundamental mis-alignment. (To see it graphically as a napkin diagram, go here: http://bit.ly/Misalignment.)

To switch metaphors from infection, think in terms of a nuclear chain reaction. To make that take place, the atoms have to be at a high density, packed very tightly together. Then as the neutrons fly, they release even more and the reaction multiplies.

Our "social density" is not high enough to support a "chain reaction" of missional culture change. In contrast, that's just what you see when the Church is "packed very tightly together" under persecution, often resulting in "explosive" growth.

So if I had to pick one factor above the others to focus on, I guess it would be social density. That's why I continue to be drawn to the house church movement - an eminently Lutheran expression and a subject for another time!

Sustainable Pastoring, Sustainable Church?

2009-11-30T13:26:00.004-06:00

One of the blogs I follow is by Todd Heistand. He is a tri-vocational pastor (not counting the additional two vocations of husband and father!) and his community is called The Well which is in Feasterville, PA. (Not to be confused with The Well in Orange County, CA that I have blogged about previously, which is a community intentionally transitioning into a network of cells.)

Todd recently posted a very open description of his weekly schedule and wondered aloud about it's sustainability long term.

In my mind, I think he's raising a broader question, not about the sustainability of pastoral life per se but about the sustainability of a congregational life that's built upon unsustainable leadership expectations. Maybe part of the problem is what we assume is required for congregational life, in particular, weekly large-group presentational worship services.

Here is how I presented the question to him:

Todd – I echo the comments above, grateful for your transparency.

I also wonder about sustainability, but from a different angle. If this is what it takes to provide leadership to a missional community, then is the model itself sustainable for the Church?

I’ve mulled this over quite a bit and my thinking has been strongly challenged by the simple/organic/house church expressions that I’ve encountered. It’s left me wondering if we’re encountering a stumbling block in our assumption that we have to offer a large group gathering every week. I do think people should be gathering weekly, but that could be in the home/small groups. But what if the larger community gathered, say, monthly for something more like a traditional worship service with sermon, liturgy, music etc.?

So my question to you is this: if your community went to a monthly gathering, would that make enough difference in the workload that your current tri-vocational + family lifestyle would be sustainable over the long haul?

If you're interested, you can follow that conversation on his blog though I'll probably cross post some of that here as well. But I'm interested in hearing from my readers.

What do you think about the sustainability issue, both pastoral and congregational, and my suggestion to have weekly small gatherings supported by a monthly larger service?

Advent Conspiracy

2009-11-27T20:53:00.003-06:00

If you'd like to share some ideas on ways to make Christmas more meaningful this year (and less stressful) click on over to this little blog I set up for my congregation and friends. There are links there to the main Advent Conspiracy site, as well as one to Rethinking Christmas. Good stuff!

The Workers - Video

2009-11-25T17:32:00.002-06:00

The confirmation students at my church presented The Workers in a dramatic version, and added impact by setting it into our contemporary context. They did a great job, as you can see in this video.

The Workers from Tim Thompson on Vimeo.

The Workers - Conclusion

2009-11-25T09:13:00.004-06:00

As the line advanced, the workers became more and more angry. John felt deeply ashamed at the way they were treating the owner; grabbing the money out of his hand and making angry remarks. Finally, there were only three of them left to receive their wages. The first one stood before the owner defiantly with arms crossed. "So!" he said, "You think my work is no better than what you get from some bunch cripples and weaklings? You think a whole day in the sun by me is worth as much as an hour in the shade by some lazy beggar? Is that what you're trying to say with your lousy money?" Then he grabbed the money out of the owner's hand and said; "Let me tell you something. I'll take this money because I worked for it and I deserve it. But I'll rot in hell before I waste my time working for you again!" and he stormed off.

Then, the second man stepped up to the owner and stood before him. He calmly took the money out of the owner's hand, turned the coins over in his palm, and then let them fall between his fingers into the dust at the owner's feet. "I don't need your money." he said, looking him right in the eyes. "My pride is worth more than a lousy day's wages." "Oh?" said the owner softly, "And is it worth more than the hunger of your wife and children, who have no bread to eat?" The man's face flushed with rage and he stood there stiff before the owner. Then he spat on him, and walked away.

Now there was no one left but John, and the owner of the vineyard, and John's eyes were brimming with tears. "I don't know how they can say those things," he said, "when you've done nothing but good to them, and to all of us! You came into our town and offered us work when we were nearly starving. You gave us food and water while we were working, and time to rest. You even hired people who couldn't work the whole day, or could hardly work at all, and then gave every one of us a full day's pay! I... I just want to thank you." he said, taking his hand, "Thank you, for all you've done for us today." And then he turned, and brushing a tear away from his eye, he began to walk home.

But the owner said to him; "Wait!" And when John turned around, he saw him smiling with his hand outstretched, holding John's pay.

"You'll need this to buy bread for your family." he said.

John smiled and took the money, and then the owner of the vineyard said; "John, the harvest is great, but there aren't many workers. Come back again tomorrow. There will always be work for you here."

So John went home and shared the good news with his family. And from that day on he worked gladly in the vineyard, and he and his family were never hungry or thirsty again.

Video

The Workers - Part 3

2009-11-24T20:56:00.006-06:00

When the call came to go back to work, John got right up. Rested and refreshed, he was eager to work, and his body felt strong again. As he was heading out into the fields, he thought he heard someone calling his name. He turned and looked, and in the distance he saw still more people coming from the town to work in the vineyard. And there near the front, calling and waving with his one good hand, was Philip. John smiled, and waved, and wiped gently at his eyes as he headed back to work.

For the rest of the day, John worked in one of the outer fields, and as he brought in his last load, he was again filled with amazement. He saw young children and old people working in the vineyard. He saw Philip harvesting with his one good hand, and even the poor beggar from town who couldn't walk had been given a job dipping water from the well for those who were thirsty. It was almost too much to believe. It looked like every man, woman and child in town had been given work to do.

John stood by, staring and lost in wonder at the scene until he realized that the steward had been ringing a bell to call the workers in to receive their pay. Now he was already lining them up, according to how long they had worked, with the ones hired last at the front of the line. John hurried over, but he ended up being the last one in line anyway. Everyone was pretty quiet after the day's work, but once the owner started handing out the pay, a commotion got started at the front of the line. The word spread like lightning. The owner was paying these people a full day's wages! And some of them had only worked for one hour. Now everyone was excited, and the people in front of John in line started to say; "Imagine how much we'll get if he's paying those others a full day's wages!" But as the line advanced, they found out that the owner was paying everyone a full day's wages, regardless of how long they had worked.

Now the workers near the end of the line, who had been in the vineyard all day, started scowling. Their mood grew dark, and they muttered, and some even cursed the owner under their breath. John could hear them in front of him and it bothered him. Something didn't seem right about them talking that way. After all, the owner wasn't cheating them! Why couldn't they be happy for the other people from the town?

One of them was saying he couldn't believe the owner wasn't going to pay them more than those other people. John replied cautiously; "But, didn't you agree to work for a regular day's pay?"

The man snapped back; "Oh! And I suppose you think it's funny that he's made fools of us all, working so hard when they get off so easy!"

John didn't say anything more after that.

Conclusion

The Workers - Part 2

2009-11-23T13:07:00.006-06:00

Near the center of town, there was a corner where the people who were looking for work would go, and if someone needed workers for the day, they could come there and find them. When John arrived, there were already several people standing there, and before long there was a small crowd. A few were being hired here and there, but with so many people out of work it looked like there might not be enough jobs to go around again today. But then a man came walking in on the east road, and he stood up on a step and said; "I am the owner of the vineyard to the east, beyond the river. The time has come for the harvest and I need workers. Any of you who want jobs can go now to my vineyard and the steward will give you work to do."

John was overjoyed! He could hardly believe it! All these people hired by this one man... could it really be true? He wasn't going to take any chances, so he was off like a shot, running down the east road. And as he ran, watching as the sky was beginning to brighten ahead of him, he laughed at himself, because he hadn't even thought to ask how much he would be paid.

When he got to the vineyard, his eyes opened wide and his mouth fell open. The vineyard was enormous! No wonder the owner had hired everyone in the marketplace, there was so much work to be done! He wished so much that he could send word back to Philip in town... maybe even he could get some kind of work here today. But he didn't have time. The steward was making job assignments, and John went right to work with a crew in one of the nearer fields.

After he had been working for quite a while, he paused to wipe the sweat from his brow, and he noticed that in the distance, another big group of people was coming from the town to the vineyard. "Well!" he thought, "This is certainly a great day for the hungry people in town! The owner is still hiring even though the morning is half over." He wondered if Philip might be in this group, and he wanted to go and see, but he had to let it go. He turned back to his work.

Midday finally came, and there was a break for lunch. John was feeling pretty weak by now, and as he walked towards the well by the owner's house, he couldn't help but think about the bread he had left at home that morning. "Maybe..." he thought, "one of the other workers will take pity on me and share his lunch with me." But when he got to the well, he couldn't believe his eyes! There was the steward of the vineyard handing out big loaves of bread and fish to anyone who wanted them! The owner of the vineyard was feeding all of the workers, and there was more than enough for all of them! John ate his fill for the first time in a long time, and rested under a shady tree.

Part 3

The Workers - Part 1

2009-11-22T20:55:00.010-06:00

Somewhere back around 1991 I wrote a dramatic interpretation of Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) in which I added some extra characters to the story. I recently had the opportunity to share it with my current congregation and thought it might be something others would appreciate as well. I'll post it in for installments. Hope you like it & would love to hear comments.

The Workers - Part 1

It was dark, still an hour at least before dawn, and the air was cold and quiet when John woke up. He listened, searching the silent hour for the sounds of the approaching day. Outside, he heard distant marching as the Roman guards patrolled the streets. Inside his one room home, he heard his wife and children breathing deeply in their sleep, huddled together with him on the floor. John wished that he could go back to sleep, but his thoughts wouldn't let him rest. He knew what this day held for him: the desperate, desperate search for work ‑ any kind of work ‑ that went on day after day. Oh, how he ached to have a real job! He remembered the days when he had been working at the granary, together with his brother‑in‑law Philip. It was so wonderful to have a steady job, to be able to sleep securely, knowing that there would be food on the table. But then that day had come, when one of the grain carts collapsed, and crushed Philip's hand. The foreman blamed Philip for the accident and fired him, and when John tried to stick up for him... he lost his job too. Now they had to find work wherever they could, always living from one day to the next. And some people wouldn't hire John because they thought he was a troublemaker. And Philip... well, it's hard to get a job with only one good hand.

Although it was still dark outside, John was beginning to hear a few voices out on the street, so he got out of bed. His empty stomach growled, and he looked at the few pieces of bread they had left, but he decided not to eat any. "We're almost out of food again" he thought, and left the house to search for work.

Part 2

SOAP Journaling: A Resource for Biblical Reflection

2009-11-13T11:28:00.006-06:00

Early in 2003 I encountered a simple devotional resource that I've been using ever since. Created by Wane Cordeiro of New Hope Christian Fellowship, it's called the Life Journal, but I always think of it as my SOAP journal because of the acronym it works with:

S - Scripture
O - Observation
A - Application
P - Prayer

Simple enough. On the blank pages of the journal, you write down a verse or passage of scripture that hits you in some way. Make a few observations about it - maybe the context of the verse, or questions it raises - whatever you'll need later to recall what was going on and why it caught your attention. Then you write about how this applies to your life. That's the kicker... it keeps you mindful that you're not just reading to read, but to be changed. This is underscored (literally) by the phrase printed lightly at the bottom of each page of the journal;

"How will I be different today because of what I have just read?"

You finish up with the P for prayer, writing a prayer that relates to your entry.

Then comes my favorite part. There are pages at the front for you to create a Table of Contents of your journal, recording date, text, title of your entry and keywords. Over time, you generate your own library of biblical reflections that you can return to and rediscover through the index you generate.

One other thing I love to mention about the Life Journal is the daily reading plan it includes. There's certainly no shortage of reading plans out there, but Cordeiro has structured this one to present the Old Testament narrative chronologically. For example, you read the sections of Kings and Chronicles that deal with the same incidents on the same day, rather than reading all the way through Kings and then some weeks later going back over those events in the Chronicles version.

This has several benefits. It makes the sense of following a story much clearer. It also lets you see how the different authors sometimes bring strikingly different perspectives to things. (For the most glaring example I know of, compare 1 Samuel 24:1 to 1 Chronicles 21:1.) The narrativizing of the readings also allows Cordeiro to sprinkle the Psalms throughout and this often makes them easier to understand as well. Similarly, he's placed the prophetic books in their narrative context vis-a-vis the historical books. The New Testament readings are also re-sequenced somewhat, though I confess I haven't caught all the logic at work behind his arrangement there. Reading about four chapters a day, the plan takes you through the OT once and NT twice in a year.

Plus they're cheap - $6.50 each, less in bulk.

It's a good tool. I highly recommend it.

Home-Based Faith Formation

2009-11-13T10:50:00.006-06:00

An interesting conversation has been taking place on Facebook that I wanted to share with you. Here are some excerpts:

Chris: I'm amazed at how many congregations are challenging parents to invest in their kid's faith formation. Almost viral actually!

Melissa: Why are you amazed? That's a good thing, right?

Chris: It's a GREAT thing!

Tim: (That's me) I think it's great too. Sadly, somewhere along the line we got into a mode culturally in the church of "outsourcing" faith formation from the home to the sanctuary.

Melissa: That's what I thought! I am so happy to be teaching my children & husband about FAITH.

Susan: And watch how parent's faith will grow expotentially as they teach their children:)

Lisa: And maybe the parents will start investing in their own faith formation as well.

Tim: Being forced to teach is one of the most effective ways to learn. So home-based faith formation will absolutely be the best thing for both kids and parents. Clergy (and congregation) can then serve in the "equipping the saints for ministry" mode ( See Ephesians 4). Also, HBFF sets you up for both "vertical" and "horizontal" transmission as in viral infections. Vertical is from one generation directly to the next. Horizontal is among peers: imagine couples sharing ideas & issues with each other about how to raise their kids. In the peer-to-peer conversations all kinds of ideas, values and beliefs can get transmitted.

Catalyzing new communities? Thinking about it?

2009-11-06T12:15:00.004-06:00

Those of you who are looking for kindred spirits to connect with as you plant or dream of planing new missional communities may want to check our TransFORM. It's a newly forming Ning-based social network. Here's a chunk from their About page. If you join, I'd be delighted to connect with you there.

Vision
TransFORM is an international, trans-denominational missional community formation network:

international — primarily focusing on the United States context, where the majority of our members/partners live and work, but intentionally involving international partners, as well
trans-denominational — working across denominational lines, in partnership with existing denominations, as well as with independent non-denominational groups
missional — participating with God in God’s holistic mission to restore all of creation
formational — contributing to the formation of vibrant communities of practice that in turn contribute to the formation of robust disciples of Jesus Christ

Purpose
The purpose of TransFORM is to bring together men and women who are on the verge of starting new communities (i.e., community catalysts) or are already cultivating new communities and to give them the encouragement and resources they need to get started and be sustainable:

by providing training in missional community development, practical start-up issues, and theological engagement
by connecting community catalysts with potential support structures
by helping community catalysts negotiate complicated and challenging support structure relationships and hurdles
to link community catalysts with mentors/spiritual directors

Goals

Organize regional gatherings to bring together missional practitioners with those interested in forming new missional communities
Partner with denominations/networks/groups to put on these regional gatherings and provide other resources and connections for community catalysts
Develop other resources to encourage missional community formation
Build and sustain momentum, share best practices and other learnings, provide mutual encouragement and exchange of ideas, and develop emerging leaders

The Well - A Congregation that Became a Network

2009-10-20T21:40:00.003-05:00

From time to time I come across examples of conventional congregations that literally left their buildings in order to transition to a network of house churches. One such example is The Well, which is based in Orange County, CA but has recently branched out by planting a community in Denver Colorado. You can read their whole story to date here but I've lifted out a couple of tasty tidbits for you below. The story is told by their pastor, and the first excerpt comes shortly after he had come to the congregation which was still in a building.

I soon discovered that although the church had almost a million dollars in the bank, the money was untouchable. They were convinced that cash would someday buy land so they could build a new building. Perhaps they forgot that a million dollars would not even get them an acre of ground in Orange County. Nonetheless, the funds were off limits, and I was left to figure out how the church could afford its $5,000 per month rent. I felt like I was steering a sinking ship, filled with untouchable cargo that would surely capsize us sooner or later....

I got online and decided to Google the words “house” and “church.” My heart started to race as I saw thousands upon thousands of websites and articles listed before me. I dove in and couldn’t read the blogs and articles fast enough, especially those by house church advocate Wolfgang Simpson. I was immediately obsessed and terrified all at the same time. I had no idea what this surge of energy and excitement meant, but I continued to seek out more information. I talked with a man named Mike Goff who had already begun a house church. For three hours, he described how his church family would meet in each other’s homes for corporate worship and fellowship—and then go fix the neighbor’s fence together....

We realized that the Church was everyone’s responsibility, not just the pastor’s. And everything a “normal” church did—missions, study, growth, evangelism, and so on—each person could do, because their change of venue did not negate the responsibilities and privileges of any other church....

So what do I do now as “pastor” of The Well? Since our beginnings in 2005, my part has transitioned from spiritual guru to church planter. As new branches of The Well form throughout homes in Orange County, I will typically stay for a couple of months until the gathering has a solid foundation, and then let go....

But not every church plant is the same. In fact, there is one gathering whose door I have not even darkened, because I have a sense that my presence might actually snuff out what God is doing there. The Church is certainly not about me....
I am now convinced that many other congregations in America are being held back from actually being the Church because of something as simple as a building. While mortgage payments, capital campaigns, custodial duties, and even well-structured programs are not bad in and of themselves, those things can tie us down and prevent many from following God’s footprints....
Like Lazarus, do you hear God calling you to, “Come forth!”? Is it time to strip down to the bare essentials and see your local body resurrected to become church all over again?

Celebrate Kisten by Alleviating Poverty

2009-10-16T13:24:00.007-05:00

October 17th is a significant day for two reasons. It's my wife Kisten's birthday as well as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

That may seem like an awkward pairing, but it's not. Let me tell you why.

Kisten cares about the poor. When she turned 50, as a part of that celebration she asked friends and family to donate rice to the hungry in Vietnam as her birthday present. Her goal was to give one ton of rice for her birthday, and she did! In the photo at right, you can see her holding a 25lb bag of rice. She's standing in a little "cage" I built to show visually what a ton of rice would look like.

So once again, I invite those of you who know Kisten to celebrate her life by helping her to bless people living in poverty.

Any way you choose to do that is fine of course - follow your heart! And you don't need to tell us about it, although that's a delight and an encouragement to hear. If you want, you could post an anonymous comment on this blog for that. But if you do want a suggestion, here are two that I know are close to her heart.

Our friends at the Catalyst Foundation work tirelessly to bless the poor in Vietnam, and Kisten has served on one of their Aid Expeditions. (Our family is going on the Fall 2010 expedition together.) Among their projects is a focus on whole communities that live in garbage dumps like Kien Giang and often lose their daughters to the sex trade. But that is slowly changing as Catalyst builds schools there and works to develop those communities to break the cycle of poverty. You can give to them directly, or in connection with America's Giving Challenge here.

Closer to home, Kisten and our family have provided Christmas gifts to financially troubled refugee families through the Southeast Asian Ministry (SeAM) of the Saint Paul Area Synod. We've done this each year for several years, and it's been an amazing blessing to us as we are able to meet and spend some time with the families each time as we bring the gifts. To hear their stories and receive their hospitality is priceless. If you live in the Twin Cities, I encourage you to take part in this great program. They are taking registrations now to match families with donors in time for the holidays.

So there you go - a birthday celebration gone global in the best way. I hope you can join the party. And before I forget...

Happy birthday, honey! I'm glad you're here.

Mainline Decline and a Radical Response

2009-10-02T21:13:00.005-05:00

Phillip Clayton, who teaches at Claremont School of Theology and leads a Transforming Theology project, recently posted some reflections from a conference that explored the reasons for mainline denominational decline. The article concluded:

"Effective answers to the current situation will require us either revivify the older beliefs and institutions or to invent radically new forms of Christian community."

Well, I had some thoughts, both on the why of decline and on a radical response, so I put up two comments on his blog and thought I'd share them here as well.

First comment:

Re. the original question “Why? … what has changed..?” to account for the decline, I offer this analogy.

Consider a pond. It grows larger when the inflow exceeds the outflow.

Mainline denominations (like my own Lutheran tribe) previously grew through immigration from the old country and childbirth. (My believing parents had 6 children: 400% church growth!). In addition, societal pressures “herded” people into church as a necessary entry point into civic community, as you noted in point 1 of the initial post.

All of these have changed and no longer feed people automatically into our congregations. The “tributaries” have largely dried up. One additional tributary is conspicuous by its absence: Evangelism. It seems never to have been a substantial feeder to the mainline pond. It’s been easier to rely on the other tributaries.

On the outflow side, there has also been change. People still die, of course, presumably at more or less the same rate. (If anything there’s been increased longevity which prolongs the life of the pond.) What’s changed is the erosion of the banks that have kept the water in place. The pond “leaks” like never before. Again, this is related to the sociological landscape you mentioned in 1 above. It is no longer a scandal for people to leave the church and have no formal “institutional” spiritual life.

So: less inflow, more outflow; shrinking pond.

Second comment:

Re. your second question: “HOW radical do the changes need to be to respond to the reality of the situation that the mainline is facing today?”

Pretty radical I’d say.

For starters, we’ll have to discover how to do evangelism in our current context. Just doing evangelism at all will be a big leap for a lot of us! (Among Lutherans, it’s often noted that we invite someone to church, on average, once every 20 years. Maybe 30.) Add to that the fact that our context is radically different than what we’ve known and it’s a tall order.

But more than that, I think we need a radical revision in the way we “do church.” (That really should be “the way we be church” which is unfortunately awkward to say.)

Conventional congregational life – across the denominations and across the decades of decline – centers around a weekly large group gathering. For most, this is their primary if not sole experience of Christian community. Yet in these gatherings, it is essentially impossible to experience the “one anothers” that are truly at the heart of being a people sharing a life of faith together. That kind of substantive community requires smaller groups to flourish.

We invest vast amounts of time, energy and money into maintaining a weekly event, in the hope that substantive community will arise around it.

We need to invert that. We need to invest primarily into nurturing small, self-reproducing faith communities where people actually grow as disciples. That’s a radical change.

Whether this results in larger gatherings arising from the small communities or not is secondary, icing on the cake.

Can existing, conventional congregations can make that kind of transition? It seems doubtful, though it would be exciting to try. Whether they can serve as a launching pad for new expressions of Christian community seems more likely, and I’m hopeful there. But whether they can or not, I think these communities are on their way, thank God. We need them. We have a lot of Kingdom work to do!

Driving as a Spiritual Practice

2009-10-02T20:42:00.005-05:00

Christine Sine has collected a whole set of posts from people about "What is a Spiritual Practice?" It includes reflections on a whole host of things from running and throwing parties, to smoking, sex and yes, driving.

The driving post caught my attention and I encourage you to check it out here. The author finds six different ways in which we can recognize the spiritual dimensions of this daily activity that often feels empty... something we just have to do in between important things.

I wanted to add one of my own, so here is what I wrote as a comment there:

Just found your wonderful post by way of Christine Sine’s collection on spiritual practices.

I stumbled into driving as spiritual practice first by way of confession.

I noticed that when I merge onto the freeway, I often get irritated if people don’t make at least some effort to let me in. Then when I’m in the right lane, I get irritated by people trying to merge if they don’t take the initiative and end up making me speed up or slow down! I am totally self-centered, and change my sense of the “rules of the road” so that it’s always the other person’s job to make the merge work!

What a sinner. I thank God I can laugh at my self-centered self.

But since then, as I’ve made it my job to intentionally facilitate other people’s merges, I’ve started to hear a phrase from John 14:2 “I go to prepare a place for you.” The phrase is curiously out of context, but even so it has become a part of my spiritual practice of driver’s hospitality.

And, lucky me, I get to engage in this practice over, and over, and over, and over again… every day!!

And blessedly, I am generally less irritated now.

Greenhouse Training, September 25-27

2009-08-05T15:34:00.009-05:00

(Please note: since this post was originally put up the organizers have decided to re-scheduled the Greenhouse training. Please let me know if you'd like to be informed directly when a new date has been set. FP)

I'd like to invite anyone living in or near the Twin Cities to join me for the Greenhouse Training we're hosting at my church in September. It's a Friday evening, Saturday morning and afternoon, and Sunday afternoon September 25-27.

What's a Greenhouse?

In a nutshell, a Greenhouse training does two things:

Helps participants to reground their thinking about Church in "organic" terms as a simple, living organism that readily grows and reproduces. Much of the time at the training is spent exploring how that looks in practice, both as outreach and as discipling believers.
Invites participants to follow up on the training by gathering monthly through the following year for encouragement and supportive accountability as they begin to pursue this kind of "missional living" in the context of natural relationships.

I attended a Greenhouse a year or so ago and highly recommend it from that experience. The cost ranges from $110 to $150. It's worth it.

For more general information, registration etc. click here. For more of my thoughts and opinions about it, read on.

Although the Greenhouse training has good content in several areas, that's not the reason I suggest you go. Frankly, good content isn't that hard to find these days and you can buy a lot of books for the price of this registration. What makes this worthwhile is that it pulls together three things that I think are key to Kingdom work - whether you're talking evangelism, discipleship or social ministry for that matter:

Simplicity. Lots has been written about simplicity, ironically. Simplicity is vital for something to be easily transmitted and replicated. That goes for churches as well as viruses. The Greenhouse training works with a very simple expression of church, simple in both written and in human forms. That's good.

Substantive Relationships. Relationships where people feel safe enough to get below the surface of life are foundational, both for people to come to faith and for believers to mature in faith. This is one reason why conventional congregations struggle so much under the burden of maintaining a weekly large group gathering that inherently can't facilitate those kind of relationships. The Greenhouse training focuses on equipping people for exploring faith together in groups of 2 to 4 as normative. It offers one simple tool for people to use in self-facilitating such groups, but only as an example or as one resource they recommend.

Intentionality. This truly is the linchpin. Even mediocre ideas that actually get implemented will probably show more results than great ideas that are left on the shelf. I think the Greenhouse folks know this, which is why the real goal of the training is not simply to deliver good content to people. It's to lay a foundation for the formation of supportive accountability groups. (That's my term. They call them Greenhouse Monthly Gatherings which sounds much more fun and friendly and is probably a better term for that reason.) At the end of the training, they invite those who are interested to begin meeting monthly to encourage each other as they work to live out what they have learned. And note how the monthly meeting is not the main event. Rather, it plays a supportive role to the weekly gatherings of people in groups of 2-4, most of whom have not had the Greenhouse training. That's the kind of flip-the-pyramid strategy that sent me off to learn about house churches in the first place, two years ago.

This is good stuff and these are good people. If you can get to a Greenhouse I think you'll be glad you went, and if you can join us at Gethsemane in September I'll be delighted to met you.

Bumpercar Bishop Caption Contest

2009-07-28T11:28:00.008-05:00

The photo below got put up on Facebook and I shamelessly ripped it off to post here. It's the bishop of my denomination, Mark Hanson, down in New Orleans for our national youth gathering. I actually worked with Mark some years ago and he baptized my first daughter. He's a great guy.

So - he's having a good time, we can too! How about a little caption contest, eh?

"Bishops just wanna have fun" perhaps?

How about "Lutherans: not nearly as boring as we used to be?"

Whatcha got for me? ;)

Tim

Evangelism as Fundraising: Let's Not

2009-06-12T14:32:00.006-05:00

I belong to the Emerging Leaders' Network (how's that for self-aggrandizing!) and a friend there started a discussion about the risk of doing outreach & evangelism as a fund raising strategy when the church is having a hard time making budget. I just had to offer my two bits on that and thought I'd share it here as well:

Here's a small step we're tying to make where I serve.

In our little brochure about membership and in conversation as it comes up, I always present membership this way: Everything of value that this Congregation has to offer, it provides free of charge to anyone who wants it: Baptism, Communion, Sunday School, Bible Studies, worship services, pastoral care and so on. So "membership" provides no additional benefit. Rather, becoming a member is what you do when you want to get on the "supply" side of the equation and join us in keeping all this stuff available to others for free, just like it was for you when you arrived. The only thing you "get" with membership is extra responsibility.

I compare it to enlisting in the Army or Peace Corp: a voluntary choice to join an organization that serves others, because you believe in its mission and want to take part in achieving it.

That also sets up a great point I love to share with prospective new members. When you "enlist" in an organization like that, then they have a responsibility to equip you for the work you will be doing - basic training, as it were. So we as a congregation have begun to provide "Equipping Workshops" for new members (open to everyone, of course) to fulfill our responsibility to them when they join.

On a completely different track, though, and with apologies if I'm being a gadfly, I can't read your post without thinking that there would be a lot less temptation to link evangelism and finance if we could break our dependence on buildings, programs and professional clergy (like me), as if that were the only or even a relatively effective way to be Church. I spend a lot of time thinking about the house church model, which you can easily imagine, would have a very different outlook on both evangelism and stewardship.

Tim

More on Relationships - Movement towards Depth?

2009-05-01T08:46:00.005-05:00

Brian made a comment recently voicing concern over the apparent lack of depth often seen in Christian relationships. Here's a sample:

I'm not so sure many people inside church buildings or w/n the crumbling Corpus Christianum know much about relationship as commitment or that relationship entails an ethos of sacrifice. It seems that many Christians opt toward relationship as mere convenience rather than as an expression of faith; buying into the cheapened notion that love is merely a feeling & not much else beyond that. Many Christians have not yet learned to love into relationships when it is inconvenient to them.

I have to say I share that concern, especially because the struggle for substantive relationships seems so deeply rooted in the hyper-individualism that is so characteristic of our age and culture.

With that in mind, you can see why this quote from Phyllis Tickle caught my attention in an e-mail this morning:

"I don't think anybody knows exactly where the Great Emergence is going, much less where the Christianity, emerging/emergent, coming out of it is going to go exactly, but there are some contours that are clearly visible right now and can be described. ... It is definitely communal, even to point that about a quarter of it is probably engaged in a form of monasticism."

I certainly don't see monasticism emerging as the dominant form of Christian life. But I'm sure that the impulse that's driving that expression to grow these days - a hunger for and willingness to pursue substantive relationships - is being felt by many more than just the ones acting on it in that way. So that's encouraging. And there are people at work to nurture that impulse and help others act on it. Karen Sloan is one example. You can watch a video of her discussing it here on TheOozeTV.

What are others seeing in terms of greater dissatisfaction in the Church with "thin" relationships and a willingness to explore ways to find depth again?

Event Alert: Twin Cities House/Organic Chruch Conference

2009-04-30T14:35:00.003-05:00

We interrupt our current series of posts for this important announcement: a really good conference is being organized for June in the Twin Cities for people interested in the missional movement showing up in simple-, house- and organic-church expressions.

The official site for the conference will be Matthew Berry's Raw Religion, but at the moment I've found the most information here on Katie Driver's Backseat Driver blog.

Among those who will be taking part are:

Neil Cole of Church Multiplication Associates
Tony and Felicity Dale of House2House and SimpleChurch
John White of the Lk10 Network

These are all folks I've heard before and highly recommend.

Spread the word, and if you'll be going let me know. I'd love to meet up there.

What the Bishop Said, Part 2: Relationships over Programs and Structures

2009-04-24T08:55:00.004-05:00

As I mentioned in the first post of this series, I'm exploring four "core values" offered by my Bishop Peter Rogness, to lift up the ways I see them align with a house church expression. Peter's first value is this:

Relationships are more life-giving than programs or structures.

It's tempting just to write QED and move on to the next post, but I'll expound a bit anyway.

He's absolutely right of course. Relationships must have primacy over programs and structures, and the latter should be evaluated on the basis of how they contribute to the former. Sort of a "Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the sabbath" kind of thing (Mark 2:27). I'm convinced we desperately need to make the changes that would reflect having relationships as a real priority.

So, how do we act on this value?

In conventional congregations, it's going to be tough sledding. Most of our resources there are invested in large group activities that are inherently less able to nurture relationships, Sunday morning worship being the most prominent example. (I've written more about this fundamental mis-alignment here.) Programs and structures are already in place - dare I say entrenched - and institutional inertia is a hard force to overcome. Not to mention the chronic challenge of funding even when we're not in a historic recession. But this re-prioritization is important work and it needs to be done. At a minimum, there needs to be an emphasis on nurturing small groups or perhaps "counting conversations" as Reggie McNeal has suggested. Kudos to Peter for putting relationships at the top of his list.

But there is another option: start fresh. Start new communities that are centered on the primacy of relationships from the outset and let them generate the programs and structures they need to support that kind of life. New communities, where the small group is the primary expression rather than a programmatic add-on. In a word, house churches.

It's not an either/or situation. I do not believe we should abandon conventional churches rather than take on the hard work of re-aligning their priorities. But I do believe we should add another strategy, and invest at least some of our time, energy and funding in an approach that's naturally aligned with the primacy and priority of relationships.

If we want to take Peter seriously, and I believe we should, I think that's what we'll need to do.

What the Bishop Said: Four Values that Point towards Lutheran House Churches

2009-04-17T10:40:00.011-05:00

Recently I heard my Bishop speak, and just about everything he said made me think about house churches.

Peter Rogness is my Bishop and a very fine Bishop he is, IMHO. He was speaking to a gathering of local ELCA clergy and shared with us the four core values that he envisions guiding the shared work of our congregations. It's good stuff! Here they are:

Relationships are more life-giving than programs or structures;
Outreach is fundamental;
We are “repairers of the breach;”
Being Lutheran is an asset.

As he was introducing each of these to the group, I was doodling/taking notes on a plate. Each time he introduced a value I found myself thinking; "Well, that fits with house churches." (It's sort of a mental reflex for me now. No matter what anyone says about anything, I'm likely to be thinking about how it relates to house churches.)

So for the next few posts I'm going to take each of those values in turn and talk about how I see it pointing us towards an emphasis on a house church expression. Stay tuned!

A Simple Resource for a Simple Church

2009-03-27T13:39:00.009-05:00

Brian over at Faith Practice & Simple Church Movements has posted a wonderful little brochure (still a draft) that offers a description of simple churches. It includes a set of three norms for this kind of church life that are oriented towards practice rather than doctrine.

A Rhythm of Presence speaks to the relational foundation, being present to God and each other in ways that are significant and active.
A Movement of Renewal speaks to the outward focus of working to bring peace and justice - God's shalom - more fully into the world.
A Culture of Blessing speaks to enacting grace in love and gentleness no matter what you do (or is done to you.)

Beyond being explicitly centered on Jesus it is presented without any doctrinal core or theological boundaries. Some may find that to be a weakness, but for the purpose helping to nucleate a broad spectrum of faith communities instead of cloning the one you have I find it to be an attractive strength. I think this comes through most clearly in this one comment in a section of final thoughts; "Communion & baptisms should become a consistent expression of your simple church."

I invite you to take a look at his work and give him some feedback as he continues to develop it. Below are the first couple of introductory paragraphs.

Tim

This simple church brochure is designed for Jesus-centered & Spirit-led communities that revolve around three essential norms of expression: rhythm of presence, movement of renewal, and culture of blessing.

Simple churches share life together through prayer & deep conversation, over meals, in play & recreation, & through adventure in serving those in need. Simple churches actively seek the care of the last, the lost , and the least in our world – always with a gracious invitation to join us if you’d like & yet whatever your decision we will still treat you with dignity & respect . . . we will treat you as Jesus himself.

And while this brochure does not place an emphasis on restricted religiosity as typified by many fundamentalist expressions of religion it does have a central focus on following and imitating the practices & teachings of Jesus & the rhythms of the Holy Spirit - envisioning the renewed reality of a people unleashed to collectively utilize their gifts & talents not toward service of money, consumerism, & self but in service of the Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of constantly. (Read more...)

Renew Community, Lansdale PA - Worth A Look

2009-03-23T22:00:00.006-05:00

My daily Google search on the term "House Church" led me to Renew, a network of house churches in Lansdale PA. Judging by their website, these are people I'd like to know better.

A couple of things caught my eye:

A post on the rhythm of their house church life described gathering 2x a month for "Exploring" together, once a month for service, and once more for some form of celebration, which is not a fancy term for a large group Sunday-style worship gathering. Rather, it's as they say; "While followers of Jesus are seldom accused of throwing great parties or being known for being celebratory people, we should have a reputation for this!" Amen to that!!

In previous posts I've talked some (I think) about theological minimalism. So I was pleased to see that the only thing they list under "What We Believe" is the Nicene Creed. That's refreshing.

Apparently they don't - yet - have a public or large group gathering up and running. When they do I'll be interested to see if they feel compelled to offer it weekly or not.

Anyway, if you're interested in "who's out there" or looking for signs of hope on your journey to a different way of being Church together you might like to check them out. And if you live near them in Lansdale... lucky you!

Twin Peaks: Resource Allocation and Effectiveness in Promoting Spiritual Growth in Conventional Congregations

2009-03-14T08:13:00.007-05:00

Dontcha just love that title? It's just like the stuff I used to write back when I was a molecular biologist.

I have an observation.

In conventional congregations, the larger a gathering is, the more resources are invested in it. For example, the typical Sunday morning worship service consumes the vast amount of the resources available. This is true I believe in terms of staff time, funds and physical space. (It's probably true of member time investment as well, to the extent that they invest their time in their spiritual life.)

Here's how that looks:

(You'll notice that I drew that on a napkin to underscore the sophistication of this analysis.)

Thus far, I've restated the obvious.

I also have a hypothesis: The smaller a group is, the more effective it is in promoting spiritual growth (to the extent that the group focuses on spiritual life).

So on one extreme you have spiritual friendships, marriages, mentoring relationships and "two or three are gathered" accountability groups. Next up come the familiar "small groups" and Bible studies. At the other extreme is, well, Sunday morning worship.

Here's how that looks:

The obvious question here is; "What's wrong with this picture?" To which I would respond; "Well, it looks to me as if resource investment in conventional congregations is 180 degrees out of alignment with the strategies that are most effective in promoting spiritual growth."

But here's a more interesting question: "What would congregational life look like if we realigned our resource investment to reflect this?"

Thoughts?

The Magic Purse

2009-03-13T20:36:00.008-05:00

So, shameless sell-promotion is okay when you're not selling anything, right? I mean, what's a blog for?

I wrote a short story a while back called The Magic Purse. It's a little fable about scarcity and abundance. Over the years a number of people have downloaded it from a collection of stewardship resources hosted by Luther Seminary and told me that it was helpful to them in their congregations. Cool!

For the last couple of weeks I've been having some more fun with it at my current church. I've used it as the basis for a contest for kids, inviting them to write alternate endings and to create illustrations. It's been fun to see their work! I've created a little website in support of that where you can read the story and the alternate endings and see the illustrations. So if that's intriguing to you, or you're looking for a stewardship resource to use in a creative way, check it out. I think you'll like it.

Merging Faith, Work and Traffic

2009-02-26T16:57:00.009-06:00

Guess it's time for my "monthly" post. Harrumpf.

One of the most fascinating blogs I've encountered is Experimental Theology put out by Richard Beck. He's a gentle writer and brilliant thinker who blogs on faith and science, psychology, philosophy, fuzzy logic, game theory... you get the picture. Oh, and he's done an extended series on Calvin and Hobbes. If you read his blog, be prepared to look up Malthusian on a regular basis.

In his most recent post he shared a chart showing how Americans spend their time:

He brought it up in the context of a discussion about the impact of the rise of the bourgeoisie on the life of Christians and the Church. Some of the comments continued to explore that, but a couple of folks, myself included shared some less philosophical reflections. I wanted to share what I wrote with you here:

I also am interested in how the life of faith is integrated and expressed in each slice of the pie. (Harry Wendt of Crossways.org talks directly about that, even using a pie-chart motif as well.)

For example - as I drive and have to deal with people trying to merge into my lane on the freeway, I've started to hear an echo of John 14:2b "...I go to prepare a place for you." Clearly not what Jesus had in mind, and yet it has made driving in traffic a place where my spiritual life manifests in my own experience and (usually) in my outward behavior as well.

If I was a truck driver, that could open up the bulk of my work life to concrete spiritual expression. Alas, I'm merely a pastor!

But it makes me wonder, how else can we merge work life and faith life in whatever we do, for our own sake and the sake of others?

Concrete spiritual expression for a truck driver - say, that's a good one! Amazing the stuff that pops out when I try and write with my "erudite" voice. ;)

God's Short List

2009-01-26T21:54:00.005-06:00

I volunteered the other day to read some theology and blog about it in connection with a project Tripp Fuller is doing over at Homebrewed Christianity. He got so many applicants he's having to sort us out with some questions on a registration form, including this one:

What is the most interesting God question in your mind today?

So, with a little box to fill in, here's what I discovered I had to say about that:

I'm interested in minimalist Christianity from a practical standpoint, because the smaller something is, the faster it can be copied and spread. I blogged about this under the heading "Viral Christianity" here: This drives my interest in Simple Church, House Church, Organic Church, Todd Hunter's "Three is Enough" groups and so on. It also is part of an ongoing exploration into my own theological heritage (Lutheranism) which, while it can be as baroque as the next guy's, has certain features lurking at it's core that I think make it ripe for radical self-pruning.

That's what I think about anyway. To re-frame it as an answer to your question, maybe I'd put it this way; "What's on God's short list of the things that really, really mater for the Church?"

Nothing like a good question to get things moving.

So, what do you think is on God's short list?

And what would your life, and your church look like if you used the same list?

Eyeglasses for the Poor

2009-01-24T10:47:00.005-06:00

I like to take note of encouraging signs that the poor of the world might actually have their lives improved. That's part of what I recognize as answers to the prayer; "Thy Kingdom Come!" So I think I'll start passing these on under the heading "Blessings to the Poor."

For starters, here's a link to an article about a British Physicist, Josh Silver, who has invented eyeglasses for the poor that the wearer can adjust to their own "prescription" without the need for an optometrist. He estimates they can be produced for $1 per pair and his goal is to have one billion pairs delivered by the year 2020. (20-20... get it? Cute!)

Here's a quote from the article about how much this could mean to people:

The implications of bringing glasses within the reach of poor communities are enormous, says the scientist. Literacy rates improve hugely, fishermen are able to mend their nets, women to weave clothing. During an early field trial, funded by the British government, in Ghana, Silver met a man called Henry Adjei-Mensah, whose sight had deteriorated with age, as all human sight does, and who had been forced to retire as a tailor because he could no longer see to thread the needle of his sewing machine. "So he retires. He was about 35. He could have worked for at least another 20 years. We put these specs on him, and he smiled, and threaded his needle, and sped up with this sewing machine. He can work now. He can see."

You can also hear a 3 minute segment from National Public Radio interviewing Josh here. It says that the U.S. Military has already purchased 20,000 pairs to give away.

How cool is that?!

Here's the Wiki page on him, a link to the Adaptive Eyecare project, and a YouTube video of him demonstrating how they work.

Of course, what he really needs is a "Donate Now" button! That's something I'd like to see.

Outcome-Biased Christianity?

2009-01-01T22:28:00.006-06:00

Phyllis Tickle had an interesting post at the Emergent Village site that led me to write a comment I wanted to share here as well. She was writing about how people are rethinking the very definition of church and Church (which often ends up significantly shaping how people actually live as C/church.) She offered this expression:

...as of right now, I believe both church and Church are “a body of people delighting in God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit.”

Here's what that triggered in me:

I like the feel of C/church as a “body of people delighting…” because it moves away from trying to define C/church on the basis of it’s attributes, and instead looks at how one might recognize C/church through it’s actions and attitudes. (I think that’s what you mean when you say it has “predication.”)

In my own thinking, I’ve begun to look for C/church as the body that, because of its delight in its relationship with the God revealed in Jesus, lives into three outcomes:

Growth of individuals into Christlikeness,

Growth of the C/church body itself (deeper in relationship among members, wider in drawing more into the body), and

Growth of the Kingdom beyond the C/church (as seen in justice, mercy, kindness, abundance etc. for all.)

To me, that expression provides the necessary specificity by linking C/church directly to Jesus, while also allowing for enormous diversity of belief and practice around him as the center.

I thought about referring to this as "Outcome-based Christianity" but that's not quite right... The basis isn't in the outcomes, so much as the relationship which impels us to pursue them. But I am drawn to the idea of being "outcome-biased." For one thing, I think it steers us away from investing too much into theologizing on the front end about what the C/church is or isn't. And for another, it pushes us past simply focusing on what the C/church does (e.g. we do "word and sacrament" or we do "worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry and evangelism") without at least checking to see if all our activity is resulting in anything or not.

I think I'll continue to muse on that, and I'd appreciate some feedback, particularly about how this might help shape the life of the C/church in practical ways.

Viral Christianity

2008-11-29T11:01:00.002-06:00

What would it take for the church to go viral?

That's on my mind pretty persistently these days. All the more so as I'm reading Frank Viola and networking with people pursuing "simple church" and "organic church" expressions. So I guess it's no surprise that even a political editorial can get me started down that track again. For example, here's what I read this morning in an article by Danielle Allen about Obama's use of the internet:

Over the last two years, the Obama campaign... used its website to disseminate tools for grass-roots organizing and made its campaign infrastructure infinitely expandable as groups replicated over and over, learning from and copying one another. The campaign infrastructure became, to a significant degree, self-organizing. This explains its remarkable people power.

Among the people I know in conventional church settings, self-organizing groups that learn from and copy each other as they replicate just because someone gave them the tools... well, it's pretty hard to envision. But among the simple/organic/house church people I encounter, that's not just what they envision, it's what they do.

Personally, I get an extra kick out of this because terms like "self-organizing" and "replicate" take me back to my days in grad school doing Molecular Biology research with an RNA virus. (Here's a little shout-out to all those Fan lab alumnae!) So when I muse about "viral Christianity" I don't just think about the internet and social networking. Visions of particles and genomes dance in my head as well.

So let me just try and wander my way into one point today. When you're a virus, "keep it simple" is an extremely powerful strategy. The smaller and simpler you are, the easier it is to make more of you. The smaller your genome is (the number of genes that make up your DNA or RNA), the less time and energy it takes to replicate it. The virus we worked with in my lab actually had only three genes. Three! Yet with just that it was able to infect a cell, instruct it to create a vast pool of virus components, assemble the parts and bud off mature virus particles capable of starting the next cycle.

"Viral Christianity," if it's to spread effectively will want to be as small, as simple as possible. Including blueprints for buildings, reproducing twenty-page constitutions, and requiring four years of grad school to train a leader before you can start is not simple, and simply ineffective. I am not saying those things are inherently bad. I am saying that if you require them or rely on them, you'll never go viral.

So. What is the smallest number of "genes" required for the church to be the church and to replicate, and what are those genes? That's what I think about.

I wonder if we can get it down to three?

Emerging Parents and "Church"

2008-10-19T20:01:00.001-05:00

A fellow blogger over at Emerging Parents posted a question about how people are parenting their children in the changing church landscape:

What is your family currently doing as far as growing your children spiritually? Do you attend church, do church in a home or an alternative and how did you come to this decision?

Here's what I wrote - a little window into life in our home:

My wife and I are both pastors, currently serving as interim pastors in two different congregations, and we have two girls ages 12 and 7.

As others have said, we are trying to teach our children to be church 24/7 along with us as we try to do that ourselves! But as far as Sunday worship services are concerned we are frankly making it up week by week.

Sometimes they are with me, sometimes with mom, sometimes with extended family at a third congregation which is near our home and has their school friends attending. Other times we have a family worship time at home on Sunday.

A while back, I specifically wrestled with how I felt about the girls not having "a church home" since they were so itinerant as a result of our employment. I ended up ambivalent. I see a loss to them from not having one particular community to identify with and the consistency of relationships there. But I see a greater gain to them of having a clear sense of belonging to something much larger than a congregation.

Given the growing uncertainty I have about the future of conventional congregations, that broad experience may end up being more valuable to them that I can imagine!

Money Talk Church

2008-09-29T14:35:00.002-05:00

I think about house churches a lot, talk about them frequently, and write about them occasionally. Yet for all of that I've never really been a part of one much less led or planted one, though I have visited a few. It's frustrating and not just a little embarrassing. And it leaves me with persistent, nagging doubts about just how realistic all this thinking is. So naturally I'm thrilled whenever I meet someone who is in a house church. That's always a great encouragement. But I read something in the paper on Monday that really convinced me that this can work. It was an article about the Smart Cookies - a group of women who banded together to help each other get out of debt. Here are some excerpts from the article:

In 2006, these five young professionals living in Vancouver, B.C., formed a "money club," a sort of financial-health support group. After two years, they reduced their collective debt from $55,000 to $10,000. All either own their own homes or are on the way there, and are regularly making deposits in IRAs and savings accounts.
They accomplished this impressive feat by setting individual spending limits at weekly meetings, then holding the overspenders accountable -- over a bottle of wine -- at the next meeting. They shared clothes, low-cost recipes, advice and encouragement. Each week, one member researched a topic to share with the group, such as how to calculate credit-card interest.

"The first meeting was really scary, laying out all our checking and Visa statements for everyone to see. A bottle of wine was definitely involved, which we recommend."

"We'd all tried on our own, read all these financial books, but it had no effect on our lifestyle. Knowing you have to share your saving and spending record for the week helps you resist temptation."

That's not a house church, but it absolutely could be.

Just look at the themes that are in play:

Small group
Frequent, regular gatherings
Self-organizing
Openness based on trust rooted in mutual acceptance
Real-life relevance and goal-focused
Accountability (sought, not imposed)
Joy and celebration

What really amazes me is that the very topic we struggle to get people to engage seriously in church - namely money - is the topic they are most eager to focus on!

These days when people are so anxious about money as they watch Congress try to respond to the hosing/credit/banking crisis and the market teeters it really makes you wonder... couldn't we start churches with a mission to help people put their financial houses in order like these women did?

Of course, there would be suspicion. We're talking about money of course. People would wonder if this is just a front to get them to contribute to some denomination or pay the salary of the "evangelist." They'll be watching for the catch and wanting to read the fine print.

But what if the church planter/evangelist took no salary? What if he or she had independent support from other churches that wanted to bless the new congregations, or maybe worked a regular job as well on the side... like making tents or something?

Nah. It'd never work.

Too bad though. I'd love to give it a try.

Twin Cities House Churches

2008-09-22T15:08:00.000-05:00

For the last two years I've been looking to see how God might use me to support the house church movement. Along the way, I've encountered quite a few people here in the Twin Cities who are involved in house churches but I haven't seen much in place to help them link up or even just have conversation to share stories, learnings and encouragement.

When Jon Dale set up the Simple Church network it seemed like a good opportunity for me to create a common space within it for people in my area. So I set up a group called "Twin Cities, MN" within the SC network. I don't have a specific agenda or a vision for this online group, but I do hope it makes it easier for people to connect in person. It's great we have access to so many social networks now and it's a gift that they let us connect across the miles and the seas. But I do believe we need people locally as well that we can meet and work with in person.

If you are interested in simple/house/organic church expressions I encourage you to check out this network. It's only been up for a couple of weeks but already has over 600 members and quite a few of them are outside the US. And if you are in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area, I'd really love to have you join the group I set up there. Maybe we can work towards having a public site for the area like the excellent one put up by Colorado House Churches.

Easum, Emergent and more conversations about Truth

2008-09-05T18:10:00.002-05:00

There's a valuable conversation taking place just now between Bill Easum and Emergent-minded folks that I've been adding my voice to just a bit. In fact, Bill is stimulating several conversation on his blog where he's described...

"...a growing conversation is taking place that no Christian leader can afford to ignore. The players in this conversation are multiplying like rabbits. As we will see in a moment, much of the future of Western Christianity lies at the heart of this conversation. So we had better pay attention.
Here’s a list of the primary players as of now

The Emergent Folks
The Incarnational Folks
The Organic Folks
The Attractional Folks
The Reproductive Folks"

He's taking each of those players in turn to offer his insights and advance the discussion. I highly recommend it. (Bill has been a formative influence in missionalizing my faith for a decade or so.)

Part of his conversation with emergents is playing out in parallel on the Emergent Village blog, which is where I've done most of my posting. I expect this to be especially valuable because Bill and Tony Jones will be alternating posts once a week in a month long "blogologue."

My own interest really spikes when this conversation turns to discussion truth and knowing which is a giant piece of the conflict between Modern and Postmodern thinking that so often is playing out between Evangelicals and Emergents these days. I confess, I like that stuff in part becasue it's brain candy for me. But I'm also very excited becasue I see it having massive practical implications for daily Christian life and evangelical mission.

If you want to follow the discussion and see my writings so far, you can find that at the EV blog I mentioned above. But I'll also be posting a synopsis here soon as well.

House and Mega Church in Conversation

2008-07-15T14:20:00.003-05:00

Back in May I mentioned in a post that my friends at House2House were getting some inquiries and support from some folks among the megachurches. I asked them if there was more that they could say about that and Felicity Dale was kind enough to share the following, along with permission to post it here.

"Thank you for your comments on the Simplychurch.com blog. Yes, we are aware of the Willow Creek situation and like you, are blessed by their honesty.

We find ourselves increasingly excited about the potential of working with some of the megachurches (and the regular sized community churches for that matter too). Just in the last few weeks we have had contact with three megachurches, all of whom are interested in working with us in some way. One is asking us how they can bless the simple church movement. They did the same a couple of years ago, and made their video department available to us and produced the video component of the Getting Started course. A second here in Austin is asking us how we can help them to run true house churches as part of their outreach. And then a third leader from a megachurch asked to meet with us to find out more about what is happening within the organic church world. We had a brief time with him a week or so ago and now are in ongoing contact. We know that others are getting the same kind of opportunities too.

It is not just the megachurches, but denominations and mission groups are also showing interest. For example, just a few weeks ago we were asked to speak to the Texas rural regional co-ordinators (or some such title) of a major denomination to share what is going on.

Who knows where God is taking all of this. The potential is incredible. It is a huge privilege to be a tiny part of what is going on. Pray that we hear Him in it all and don't mess it up!"

That's certainly encouraging. If others know of partnerships between house churches and other, larger forms of church I'd love to hear about it here.

Tim

Missional SynchroBlog

2008-06-22T22:02:00.003-05:00

Rick Meigs over at Blind Beggar recently voiced his "continuing concern that the term missional has become over used and wrongly used." So to foster some discussion about what we all mean by "missional" he put out a call for a SynchroBlog on the topic for today. I'm pleased to be one of 50 bloggers taking a crack at it, and savoring the irony of 50 bloggers writing about a term we're concerned is being over used. But that's just me. ;)

For a change of prose, I'm going to let my Inner Modern sit this one out, along with some of my better judgement perhaps, and just start out with this:

Missional is like pornography. It's hard to define but you know it when you see it.

Here's what I've been seeing lately.

I heard one person trying to explain house church to another, saying it was not just another worship option, like going from traditional to contemporary to house church worship. "It's not an alternative worship service - it's an alternative lifestyle." That's missional.

I was thinking about the Lord's Prayer. The petition "Hallowed be thy name" always feels like it's still awaiting translation into English. I think it wants to be something like "I want you to be famous everywhere!" followed by "And I want everything to be just the way you want it!" Or maybe even this: "My Father - large and in charge, oh yeah!!" Either way, it strikes me - what does a life look like when those two things are at the very top of your prayer list? Missional.

Recently I gave myself the challenge of telling the Old Testament story in three minutes or less and produced this narrated slideshow. In it, I set the stage for Abraham by saying that at first everything was good, but then something went wrong and it all came apart. Then I summarized God's response to the crisis with these words; "I am going to fix this, no matter how long it takes, no matter how much it costs me." Now that's missional!

I've been helping the congregation I serve re-think "membership" along the following lines. Church membership is not like health club membership where you pay for privileges. Rather, it's like public radio where the programming is free but people join anyway because they believe in the mission and want to help keep it free for other people too. But better still, Church membership is like yet another organization people join voluntarily because they believe in the mission: the Army. Public radio listeners are still mostly passive receivers, but in the Army you are the one who does the work. That's why they send you right off to basic training - a great model for new church members, eh? That's missional.

So... string all that together and it comes out something like this: An alternative lifestyle where your top priorities are all about signing on to God's project to repair the World because you want to do that work. That's missional.

I hope there's something helpful to you there - that always feels like my little part of the mission. And I invite you to check out what the others have to say as well. The blogroll is included below.

Blessings!

Tim

Missional SynchroBlog Blogger List
Alan Hirsch
Alan Knox
Andrew Jones
Barb Peters
Bill Kinnon
Brad Brisco
Brad Grinnen
Brad Sargent
Brother Maynard
Bryan Riley
Chad Brooks
Chris Wignall
Cobus Van Wyngaard
Dave DeVries
David Best
David Fitch
David Wierzbicki
DoSi
Doug Jones
Duncan McFadzean
Erika Haub
Grace
Jamie Arpin-Ricci
Jeff McQuilkin
John Smulo
Jonathan Brink
JR Rozko
Kathy Escobar
Len Hjalmarson
Makeesha Fisher
Malcolm Lanham
Mark Berry
Mark Petersen
Mark Priddy
Michael Crane
Michael Stewart
Nick Loyd
Patrick Oden
Peggy Brown
Phil Wyman
Richard Pool
Rick Meigs
Rob Robinson
Ron Cole
Scott Marshall
Sonja Andrews
Stephen Shields
Steve Hayes
Tim Thompson
Thom Turner

The Three Minute Old Testament

2008-06-14T08:18:00.001-05:00

Here's something I'd like to share. I created this short telling of the Old Testament narrative to support a sermon series we're doing at my church for he summer. It has what I think is the bare minimum of details for the story to hold together. As with any telling, it's an interpretation. I've presented the "plot" of the story as God's plan to use Israel as a showpiece and a meeting place to introduce himself to the rest of the world, with the whole people serving as a "priestly kingdom." (Exodus 19:6) I love how consistent God is in this fundamental outward focus for his chosen partner/servants. We see it applied to the Church in 1 Peter 2:9 where we we called a "royal priesthood." It beautifully begs the question: "If we are all priests, then who is the congregation?" All the rest of the world of course, the ones we are called to serve.

So - here is the video. I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful. (The resolution is'nt very good so you may want to view a slightly larger version here.) I also want to say thanks to Harry Wendt of Crossways International for the use of his graphic icon for God, his prophet sketch, and general inspiration for this video. I encourage you to check out his excellent Bible-teaching materials!

Myth of the Balanced Life

2008-06-05T09:00:00.001-05:00

Tom Bandy is a church consultant I have high regard for. Here's a sample of his thought from an excellent (and cheap!) online coaching forum he leads with Bill Easum:

"Modern church people (especially boomers) yearn for spiritual habits, but desperately fear accountability. So they have a real approach-avoidance attitude.

I think this is rooted in their desire to live a "balanced life". The myth of the "balanced life" is one of the great illusive quests. Church people often equate the "balanced life" with the "spiritual life" ... when in fact the spiritual life is a very "unbalanced life" ... unbalanced because of their thirst for God is greater than their desire for stability.

In my book Coaching Change, I offer a checklist of mentoring to help "unbalance" Christian leaders:

Crossing the Boundary to Post-Modern Faith

Christendom-----------------------------------Millennium
Systematic Theology--------------------------Pragmatic Christology
Propositional Thinking-----------------------Metaphorical Imagining
Judicious Evaluation--------------------------Experiential Witness
Denominational Heritage--------------------Congregational Identity
Standardized Liturgical Religion-----------Contextual Spiritual Expression
Professionally Interpreted Scripture-------Amateurly Interpreted Scripture
Leadership by Office and Competency-----Leadership by Credibility and Vision

Breaking a 17-Century Habit

2008-06-02T19:27:00.000-05:00

I've been writing a little lately over at the Emerging Leaders Network, a Ning-based social network about 130 strong, populated predominantly by Lutherans interested in the Emergent conversation. One thread there led me to write the following about a shift taking place in our culture that undoes something fundamental which has been in place for 1700 years.

"One other thing I wanted to pick up on: you wrote about how "...many Gen X/Y people, especially, haven’t even had enough church contact to be alienated—the church is simply not on their radar." I think that's critically important for us to wake up to. People often talk about the importance of the change in worldview from Modern to Postmodern... shifting something fundamental that has been in place for some hundreds of years. But I believe there is - at the same time - another shift now in process that undoes an assumption that has been in place for 17 centuries: the relationship between Church and civil culture.

"Before Constantine, the Church was viewed as an enemy. Afterwards, the Church was viewed as a partner. (The Reformation - as significant as it was - did not depart from this. It simply led to multiple choices for which Church each State wanted to partner with.) But now, as your observation reveals, this way of relating for the past 17 centuries is changing. The civil culture is now looking at the Church as irrelevant.

"It's this kind of massive context-shifting that I believe really urges us to first, go back to the kernel of Christian faith, and second, experiment wildly with various ways to re-enflesh Christian life and community."

Media Scan - Recent Articles of Note

2008-05-24T11:47:00.001-05:00

Local/Cell-Church: The Minneapolis Star Tribune has an article on Julie Jacobs and her cell church network, Frontier Fellowship. Julie was the first person I profiled for this blog in my 100 Cups of Coffee thread. The article gives a nice introduction to her work and her cell-church approach, and it's good to see the point in print that it's not intended as a rejection of larger/conventional congregations or as a competition for members. My only quibble is where Julie says that "Home churches are trying to grow big enough that they can get a building" in contrast to cell churches that aspire to grow in order to multiply into more cells. (Frankly, I'm skeptical that Julie would make that kind of sweeping generalization.) Obviously, some HCs do aspire to get back in the building, while others intend to grow by multiplication instead. Most of the people I'm in contact with who are active or interested in house church forms are interested in growth by multiplication and are pretty passionate about steering clear of buildings.

National/House Church: My Google Alert service constantly scans the web & blogosphere for me in search of key words and phrases and sent me a surprising notice yesterday. Someone over on the Huffington Post was talking about house churches! This I had to see. Turns out it came up in the post Small Is the New Big in Progressive Politics by Rob McKay. The article is about political organizing strategy and "whether the Democratic Party is about short-term voter excitement or permanent citizen engagement." In that context, he makes these observations:

This new group of efforts focuses on local leadership, small circles, and cultural organizing. They are taking their strategies from the anti-slavery movement, groups like craigslist, and most surprisingly, a new Christian movement. "We keep saying that the evangelical churches gave Bush the White House," Erin Potts, a leader in strategic thinking for groups as diverse as foundations and big rock bands, said. "If we want to know, we have to study it and see what works. And what works, is culture and small groups. The emerging house church movement has a very dynamic and interesting strategy."
Potts and other organizers note that while overall church attendance has steadily declined since the 1990s, a new form of church has taken off--the house church. Unlike traditional churches, the house church movement doesn't meet in a specific house of worship, but instead, as the name suggests, in people's homes. While traditional churches have hierarchical leadership, the house church meets as a circle of peers, and while churches try to grow the membership of a congregation, house churches purposely splinter into smaller groups as soon as a circle gains more than a handful of members.
The success of the house church movement is staggering. Membership is well into the millions. One study suggests that 70 million Americans regularly attend or have experimented with a house church.

I think it wold be pretty ironic if political groups took more and better notice of the HC movement than Christian denominations and congregations. Ironic, but in a way not surprising. Like people in the business world, politicos are driven by a powerful zeal to get an outcome; elections won and policies enacted for one, profit and market share for the other. This drive can lead to experimentation, risk, innovation etc. and it's commonplace to see churches learning from the business world - although typically after quite a lag. But sometimes it seems that urgency, drive and passion are more prevalent in politics and business than in the Church. Profit and power more motivating than sharing the gospel? "Irony" isn't enough to cover that; it's just plain sad.

Moving right along, and to something more encouraging, here's my third newscatch.

Denominational/Emergent: My denominational magazine, The Lutheran devotes its cover article for June to Emergent/emerging ministries with profiles of three examples within the ELCA and a study guide. I haven't read it yet so I can't comment on the content But I will say that my little heart went pitter-pat when I read this among the study guide questions:

If you had a school, home or prison where people proclaimed the gospel and
celebrated the sacraments, would that be the church? Why or why not?

If you're familiar with my blog, you'll know I believe that is a question for which we have an answer - and a very, very Lutheran one at that.

Luther on House Churches

2008-05-19T10:00:00.000-05:00

Most of the people I talk with about house churches are Lutherans. One of my favorite things to do is to find out whether they know that Luther himself proposed house churches as the natural, even preferred context for people who were serious about following Jesus. (He calls these people the ones who are "desirous of being Christians in earnest and are ready to profess the Gospel with hand and mouth.") It's great fun to see the look of surprise on their faces - especially the ones who went to seminary and, amazingly, somehow never encountered this fact!

I've got the relevant section from Luther's writings uploaded in my "document vault" but I've neglected to post it here so now's the time to fix that. Here is the key excerpt, with citations at the end. Friends, and Lutherans especially, you'll want to take note of the following:

Self-organized

Home-based

Lay led

Full sacramental life

Stewardship and social ministry

Simple catechetical instruction

Ideal context for loving accountability after Matthew 18

"Form and Order" are not imported but emerge spontaneously from community life.

I also enjoy pointing out that Luther gave two reasons for why he did not implement this: 1) he lacked the "requisite persons" (leaders, presumably), and 2) no one wanted to do it. So he decided to wait "until those Christians who are most thoroughly in earnest shall discover each other and cleave together." Well, we've got lots of people capable of leading this now, and lots of people who want it, and I can tell you, there are a whole lot of people discovering each other and cleaving together.

Anyway, enough from me. Here's the Old Man himself:

But the third sort [of Divine Service], which the true type of Evangelical Order should embrace, must not be celebrated so publicly in the square amongst all and sundry. Those, however, who are desirous of being Christians in earnest, and are ready to profess the Gospel with hand and mouth, should register their names and assemble by themselves in some house to pray, to read, to baptize and to receive the sacrament and practise other Christian works. In this Order, those whose conduct was not such as befits Christians could be recognized, reproved, reformed, rejected, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ in Matt. xviii. Here, too, a general giving of alms could be imposed on Christians, to be willingly given and divided among the poor, after the example of St. Paul in 2 Cor. ix. Here there would not be need of much fine singing. Here we could have baptism and the sacrament in short and simple fashion: and direct everything towards the Word and prayer and love. Here we should have a good short Catechism about the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer. In one word, if we only had people who longed to be Christians in earnest, Form and Order would soon shape itself. But I cannot and would not order or arrange such a community or congregation at present. I have not the requisite persons for it, nor do I see many who are urgent for it. But should it come to pass that I must do it, and that such pressure is put upon me as that I find myself unable with a good conscience to leave it undone, then I will gladly do my part to secure it, and will help it on as best I can. In the meantime, I would abide by the two Orders aforesaid; and publicly among the people aid in the promotion of such Divine Service, besides preaching, as shall exercise the youth and call and incite others to faith, until those Christians who are most thoroughly in earnest shall discover each other and cleave together; to the end that there be no faction-forming, such as might ensue if I were to settle everything out of my own head.
This material can be found online at the Hanover Historical Texts Project, and in Volume 53, pp. 63-64 of Luther’s Works, American Edition.

Evangelical Venture Capital in Scotland

2008-05-15T21:34:00.001-05:00

The Church of Scotland is investing in entrepreneurs, it seems to me.

A news brief I found reports that this Presbyterian denomination is planning to invest about $3 million in "emerging ministries" over five years. Some grants could be as large as $60,000 per year for three years.

But more than the dollars, here's what really caught my eye (emphasis added):

The Emerging Ministries Fund will be supporting projects that engage with people outside inherited formal structures and at grassroots. In many cases this may mean less of a dependence on buildings and getting people to 'come to church' and a greater emphasis on taking church to the people.

The Assembly will hear that the Emerging Ministries Fund intends to support work in three areas: the promotion of new church growth alongside or beyond the existing congregation; establishing church from the ground up and exploring what that means for the given demographic and cultural context; and experimenting with new approaches to ministry.

Can you say "House Church?" Perhaps using - oh, let's call them "Home Front Missionaries" who could plant micro-churches alongside and in companionship with existing congregations?

But enough of that... let's get back to the dollars! My own tribe is about 7 times as large as the Church of Scotland, so if we invested proportionately that would put about $20 some million dollars on the table. That's some dough. If something like that is coming down the pike I'd sure love to hear about it!

Lately the term "seedcasting" has been lingering in my thoughts. Like when the sower sows liberally, though only a few really produce, yet the harvest is still abundant. Seems like a good strategy. Seems like the Scots are gearing up to sow, God bless 'em!

Mega Church, Micro Church, and ELCA Pastors in Ecclesiastical Limbo

2008-05-07T22:25:00.000-05:00

One of the groups I've encountered that is working on House Church/Simple Church multiplication in the US is House2House. I recently noticed this comment on their blog and it caught my attention:

There have been several instances of mega-churches being in contact with the simple church movement with an amazing openness to what we are doing. One is asking how they can bless us, another how they can get involved in starting organic churches and others wanting to learn more. What would happen if the mega and micro learned to co-operate?

It made me think about Willow Creek's Reveal study and their conclusion that they need to help people become "self-feeders" because merely participating in church programs was leaving people spiritually stalled. (And this at a church with really well developed programs, I'm sure!)

It also made me think about the possibilities for experimental/missional co-operation that might emerge within my own Lutheran tribe. I'm in conversation with some folks denominationally now on that very topic so we'll see where it goes. I believe large and small expressions of the Church are meant to be partners and have unique gifts to share that come with their size. I'd like to be a part of making that happen.

So far however, what I'm seeing in my tribe is more sobering than encouraging. The other day I looked through the list of contacts I've accumulated of people in my denomination who are trying to explore the house/simple church expression as a way to grow the kingdom. Most of them are "on leave from call" which is a kind of ecclesiastical limbo for a pastor in the ELCA. (I'd be there myself if I hadn't happened upon an Interim Associate Pastor position, and I expect to be right back in "on leave" when that job wraps up.) So what I see is that there isn't a ready way for these folks to pursue this work while maintain their standing in the denomination. They end up hanging by a thread, and the clock is ticking, becasue after three years "on leave" you come off of the clergy roster.

I wonder... will my denomination will find a way to hang on to these comitted, risk-taking evangelical entrepeneurs? I sure hope so!

The clock is ticking.

Kind Words about Lutheranism

2008-04-28T23:30:00.001-05:00

I'm for people following Jesus and I've got no problem with 31 flavors of believers in the world as long as we don't embarass Jesus by the way we treat each other out in public. That said, I recently replied to a question about what I value most in my own Lutheran theological heritage and I thought I'd also share that here. No doubt many of these things are shared by other traditions as well. (I imagine my #1 is pretty popular.)

What I most value in my Lutheran heritage these days are the things that I think are assets for effective mission to postmodern North America.

1. The centrality of grace. I can't imagine mission making any sense without that a priori.

2. Minimalism. Lutheran theology can be as ornate as anyone's, but I think that at it's heart the "Lutheran impulse" is towards minimalism. The Solas steer in that direction. The concept of adiaphora parses essentials from non-essentials, which is minimalistic. "The canon within the canon" has this feel too. What this means to me is that Lutheranism has a leanness in it's DNA, and the leaner it gets the more portable it becomes, and that is an asset for moving out far and fast in mission.

3. Mystery. Again, Lutheran theology can be extremely Modern and rationalistic, working to explain everything and tie up every loose end so that it all "make sense." But Lutheran DNA has a lot of mystery encoded in it that just doesn't get expressed as much these days. We readily talk in terms of "both/and," "already/not yet" and the simul of being both saint and sinner. You could even bring in things like Two Kingdom theology and the Law/Gospel dynamic itself. What I see in all this is an embrace of things that exceed human understanding - mystery. An that, I believe, is what makes Lutheranism a natural fit for the emerging postmodern conversation which is critical for missional effectiveness.

4. The priesthood of all believers. The amount of freedom this affords us in ordering congregational and worship life is truly exhilarating and almost totally uncapitalized on (among Lutherans). This is what has opened the door wide for me - as a Lutheran - to embrace the house church movement which has enormous potential as a missional strategy. Luther himself actually proposed HCs as the preferred mode of Christian community. You can find that on my website here. "Mutual conversation and consolation of the saints," a very close also-ran for sacramental status, so I hear, also comes in here.

5. The Bible is not the Word of God, Jesus is. That may not be the way it's usually put, but it get's the point across. Someone else already mentioned the idea of the Bible as the rough cradle in which we meet the Christ child. That way of engaging scripture is HUGE to me, and especially so, again, for mission into postmodernity.

Hunter's Three is Enough Groups: Three People, Three Activities

2008-04-11T16:54:00.000-05:00

A little more information has just come out about the Three is Enough groups that Todd Hunter is developing and will be introducing at the Conversational Evangelism Conference in May. Here is a description just now added to that website:

"Todd is forming Three is Enough Groups as an antidote to the massive image problem currently ascribed to Christians and Christianity. This unfortunate viewpoint stymies most attempts at evangelism. TiE Groups have a double meaning: they are three friends or colleagues doing three simple and humble activities together (reading, praying and serving others). Functioning in members’ most natural places of community – the workplace, school, or at the local coffee shop. TiE Groups will go on the Journey Inward of spiritual transformation and the Journey Outward of serving others. Spiritual transformation into Christlikeness has always been the true goal of Christian faith—now it is utterly strategic. TiE rescues evangelism out of the program category and relocates it back in the natural context of spiritual formation."

Three Is Enough Groups – Spirituality For the Sake of Others

2008-04-07T14:39:00.002-05:00

Here's an exciting piece of news I just received April 3rd.

Todd Hunter - former President of the National Association of Vineyard Churches and former CEO of Alpha USA - is launching a new ministry to focus on spiritual transformation and evangelism.

The details are still pretty sketchy at this point so It's not yet clear what his "Three Is Enough" groups will look like. It may be a reference to the idea that three people is enough for a powerful spiritual community, or that having three things to focus on in a small group is enough.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the e-mail I received announcing this. (The whole message is pasted below.)

Hunter has a passion for evangelism but is convinced that Christianity in America has a massive image problem that stymies most attempts at evangelism.

Christianity needs to be re-practiced in order to help make followers of Jesus in this generation.

Three Is Enough Groups..... are designed to show people how to undo un-Christian faith by showing them that heaven is not the goal of Christianity - it is simply the destination. Being the servant - otherly people of God - is the goal.

Hunter will encourage churches and lay leaders to begin forming Three Is Enough Groups to help individuals pray, grow and serve.

Apparently, this is going to be rolled out at the Conversational Evangelism Conference coming up May 16-17 in Lakeville, MN. I happen to be going to that so I'll be able to report back on it here.

This new endeavor is being launched through Off The Map, an excellent group led by Jim Henderson that has done some pretty innovative things around evangelism, notably the E-bay Atheist and Jim and Casper Go to Church. I've been very impressed by these folks!

You heard it first here! Stay tuned.

(Full content of original e-mail, sent from Jim Henderson at Off the Map:)

Todd Hunter Transitions

Many of you are Todd Hunter fans and have been following his progress since his leadership of The Vineyard. Todd has been actively seeking to support organizations that are missional and evangelistic. His passion is spiritual formation for everyday people. He has been a leader in rescuing evangelism out of the program category and re locating it inside spiritual formation.

Todd has recently decided to launch his own movement called Three is Enough. You will be hearing much more about this over the next couple of years. Off The Map is proud to have the opportunity to support Todd’s new vision and partner with him to communicate it through writings, media and events.

Three Is Enough Groups – Spirituality For the Sake of Others
Todd Hunter, former CEO of Alpha USA, launches new ministry to focus on spiritual transformation

Boise, ID, April 2, 2008

Effective April 1, Todd Hunter (51) transitioned from his role of National Director at Alpha USA to launch a new ministry focused on helping pastors and lay leaders reach a generation that has become disenfranchised from the church.

Under the new non-profit, Society for Kingdom Living, Hunter will develop his writing, speaking and professional activities in the areas of conversational evangelism and the 21st century church. Hunter has a passion for evangelism but is convinced that Christianity in America has a massive image problem that stymies most attempts at evangelism. With the basic premise that Christianity needs to be re-practiced in order to help make followers of Jesus in this generation, he is developing resources and events that include writing a series of three books, the first to be published by InterVarsity Press, developing conferences, and teaching at key seminaries.

His first major conference to be held in Minneapolis on May 16-17 features conversational evangelism pioneers Mark Mittleberg, Becky Pippert, Dan Kimball and Garry Poole and Rick Richardson. Hunter has asked Jim Henderson and Off The Map to produce these conferences.

Hunter will begin this ministry by teaching and consulting on Three Is Enough Groups. These groups are designed to show people how to undo un-Christian faith by showing them that heaven is not the goal of Christianity - it is simply the destination. Being the servant - otherly people of God - is the goal.

Through his writing and teaching, Hunter will encourage churches and lay leaders to begin forming Three Is Enough Groups to help individuals pray, grow and serve. Keeping the groups small and focused insures that evangelism can happen anywhere, in the midst of people’s busy lives. Meeting in their most natural places of community – the workplace, school, or at the local coffee shop - Three Is Enough Groups will go on the Journey Inward of spiritual transformation and the Journey Outward of serving others. This will be done through the power of the Holy Spirit, for the sake of others - the least, the last and the missing.

Hunter will continue to be a consultant to Alpha USA and will remain on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee. He will have an active role in promoting Alpha, teaching on Alpha’s practices, building relationships and advising the organization on strategy.

Why House Church? Community.

2008-03-31T17:37:00.001-05:00

This is part four in a four-thread topic.

Please Note: Although I'm "defending" the idea of house churches here, I don't think it should be an either/or proposition, or that conventional congregations should be abandoned wholesale in favor of nothing but HCs. I see value in both, and I'm eager to see hybrid and partnership forms develop as well. But since HC is appearing as the "new thing", it's natural for it to need more explanation, which is what I'm trying to provide.

Community. Lastly, I also think we should explore the HC form because it provides the most natural context for the rich life of Christian community Jesus wants us to have. By “Christian community,” I’m referring to the kind of shared life we find described in the “one-anothers” of Scripture; things like love one another, care for one another, encourage, admonish, comfort, serve and so on. Most of these simply can not be done readily in a large group gathering like Sunday morning worship, if they can be done there at all. Yet a HC provides a very natural context for encouraging, comforting and such. So I think the work of the Kingdom will progress better if the primary expression of Christian community is the one in which you can readily practice these key marks of community.

The importance of community and investing in the kinds of gatherings that promote it is even apparent to those who don’t believe. You may have heard of Matt Casper, an atheist who was hired by a Christian to visit and comment on a wide variety of congregations. You can read all about his visits in the book Jim and Casper Go to Church. But here’s a quote I found on another blog in which he himself talks about community:

“The “community” at some churches seemed to disappear with the first note of the recessional, if it was ever there at all. I think “community” goes out the window when you have 2,000 (Saddleback), 7,000 (Willow Creek), or 16,000 (Lakewood) people under the same roof. What you’re seeing then is simply mass mentality, no different than a World Cup game, a rock concert, or the Nuremberg rallies. It’s when these mobs would break into smaller groups that the community focus would kick in. And the smaller the church, the larger the sense of community. I attended a house church where the sense of community was so incredible, even a non-believer could feel it. And these house church people were/are committed to working together to make the world a better place and held each other accountable.

It’s a simple fact of human nature: the more people there are, the less individual accountability there is. And the message of Jesus is ALL about individual accountability. The biggest problem facing the entire world may be people saying, “Hey, that’s not my problem.” Johne Donne put it best: ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Basically, the big churches let people feel like they were doing something to make the world a better place, when they weren’t really participating at all.”

Striking words for us to hear – especially as they come from an atheist who's been to a lot of churches.

Why House Church? Discipleship.

2008-03-31T17:30:00.000-05:00

This is part three in a four-thread topic.

Please Note: Although I'm "defending" the idea of house churches here, I don't think it should be an either/or proposition, or that conventional congregations should be abandoned wholesale in favor of nothing but HCs. I see value in both, and I'm eager to see hybrid and partnership forms develop as well. But since HC is appearing as the "new thing", it's natural for it to need more explanation, which is what I'm trying to provide.

Discipleship. The stewardship questions from the previous post press us to look into the utility of a HC form. Once we do, I believe we find the strongest reasons yet for supporting this expression of the Church. I think we’d agree that the most important thing in making and growing disciples is the movement and power of the Spirit of God, which can happen in any size gathering. But next to that, I would say that the most important thing for discipling is conversation with believers about Jesus. In the absence of that, it’s hard to see people readily coming to faith or growing in it. But here’s the critical turn: what is the best context for conversation? Clearly, it’s small groups – even down to the level of “two or three gathered in my name.” And so, to put it simply, I think the Church should invest most of it’s time and energy in the context that is most supportive of effective discipling. The House Church form is far better structured for this than a conventional church, where most of the time and energy and resources are used in support of a large group gathering that effectively precludes conversation.

I should hasten to add that I do think there is value in large group worship! (And buildings and clergy, for that matter.) But I think the discipling goals of the Kingdom are calling us to invert our priorities: small groups and HCs first, with large group as an addition, rather than large group as the norm, with a handful also in small groups or HCs.

Why House Church? Stewardship.

2008-03-31T17:23:00.001-05:00

This is part two in a four-thread topic.

Please Note: Although I'm "defending" the idea of house churches here, I don't think it should be an either/or proposition, or that conventional congregations should be abandoned wholesale in favor of nothing but HCs. I see value in both, and I'm eager to see hybrid and partnership forms develop as well. But since HC is appearing as the "new thing", it's natural for it to need more explanation, which is what I'm trying to provide.

Stewardship. The stewardship of time, energy and money is one of the most powerful arguments in favor of the HC form, in my opinion. Conventional congregations require lots of money to pay for buildings, salaries and programs. HCs require vastly less money. The time and energy involved in crafting and presenting a weekly conventional worship service is again, very substantial – ask any pastor or church musician! Worship in a HC; much, much less. And of course, there are meetings. From that one perspective alone, the HC model cries out for serious consideration.

That’s the “input” side of stewardship: consumption of resources. From the output side, we also need to ask about the return on all that investment. How effective are conventional congregations in the core tasks of the Kingdom: making disciples out of people who don’t know Jesus; growing mature disciples out of people who do know Him? In North America over the last 60 years at least, I believe the evidence is clear: conventional congregations have not been very effective in either. Now, I can’t really say yet how effective HCs are in North America. That jury is still out, though we could look at the evidence so far. But even so, the ineffectiveness of conventional congregations calls for us to at least investigate the HC form to see if it might serve the Kingdom better.

In addition to input & output, there’s the question of stewardship of assets. It is very common to find churches that struggle to make ends meet while maintaining a congregation that is a fraction of the size their building can serve, yet their net equity in the land alone is in the millions of dollars. That money belongs to the Lord. Is that the best use He has for it? It’s sobering to me how much that situation resembles the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) where one servant just hid the money buried in a hole in the ground rather than risk investing it.

Why House Church? Good Questions!

2008-03-31T16:54:00.000-05:00

In another thread on my blog, some folks raised questions about the whole idea of house churches and I wanted to lift that up as a topic in it's own right. After writing some replies to their questions, it became clear that several threads would be even better! So below is an introduction.

Please note: Although I'm "defending" the idea of house churches here, I don't think it should be an either/or proposition, or that conventional congregations should be abandoned wholesale in favor of nothing but HCs. I see value in both, and I'm eager to see hybrid and partnership forms develop as well. But since HC is appearing as the "new thing", it's natural for it to need more explanation, which is what I'm trying to provide.

So then, these are the concerns I found in the posts:

Promotes Separatism; don’t splinter the Body
Plenty of Churches already
Stewardship: better to invest in existing churches
What’s the point? What purpose does the house church serve which is not being met by the church as it already exists?
We don’t need “missionaries” because the Church is already here

I'm going to say just a bit about separatism first, but focus on Stewardship, Discipleship and Community in the three posts that follow.

Separatism. Separation and the formation of new congregations is not unique to HCs, and can happen for good or bad reasons. Good reasons might include exceeding space limits, reaching into a new community either geographically or culturally (e.g. Paul to the Greeks, Peter to the Jews), language barriers and so on. Bad reasons abound: fights over minor points of doctrine, personality clashes and childish intolerance of others, selfish & consumeristic insistence on wanting Church to be done “your way” etc. So the creation of a new congregation should be evaluated both by motives and by fruits, to see if it is pleasing to God or not. (It should also be noted that having lots of different groups & congregations is not inherently bad. It can be part of God’s intent for the various “parts of the Body.” Being distinct doesn’t mean you’re not unified in Spirit and purpose.) Since the issues around separation apply equally to new HCs and new conventional congregations, it can’t be a critique of the HC form per se, so I won’t focus on this but we can discuss it more on this thread if people want.

Defining Terms: Conventional Congregation

2008-03-31T16:35:00.002-05:00

I'm about to put up a slug of posts that often refer to "conventional congregations" so I thought it would be good to say what I mean by that.

I use conventional to refer to congregations that share the following four traits.

Property ownership, i.e. a sanctuary for worsip etc.

Pastors or clergy by other names, meaning people who are trained as professionals, typically with a post-graduate degree, and usually receive a significant salary as part of the congregation's budget.

Programs including Sunday School, Youth Groups, Bible studies etc. that people are encouraged to attend in addition to Sunday worship.

Presentational Worship - services where a small number of people present the service for the larger group and invite them to participate.

I find this a helpful sketch becasue it covers a wide swath of congregations from many different theological traditions and sets up helpful contrasts with what is normative in house churches, which typically differ on all four points.

Home-Front Missionaries: A Paradigm for House Church Planting through Denominational Congregations

2008-03-28T09:33:00.002-05:00

I consider it a good thing that the Church can express itself in multiple forms: "two or three gathered together", house church, small church, megachurch, para-church, denomination and various points in between. Like parts of one Body (1 Corintians 12) each has different strengths and weaknesses. The question is, how best to work together?

I've given some thought to that. In particular: How might a denominationally-oriented conventional congregation support and nurture a house church expression?

The idea I keep coming back to is that such a congregation could support a pastor as a house church planter in the same way they have often supported missionaries sent overseas to plant churches. This could even take the form of a formal pastoral call within the practice of the denomination. The key would be to have the same kind of expectations for these "home front missionaries" as you have for the missionaries who serve overseas. And, you'd need to have the same expectation for the house churches formed as you have for the churches formed overseas. For example:

We don’t expect the evangelized people to join the sponsoring congregation “back home.”

We don’t expect the new congregations to look like us, but to reflect their own, indigenous culture.

We don’t expect the new congregations to suport the missionary financially - that’s our job back home. But we do look to them to develop and support their own indigenous leadership in order to carry the work forward and grow the Church among their own people.

We don’t expect to see the missionary show up at the home church very often, except perhaps on occasion in order to share stories about the work and renew the partnership relationship. We certainly don’t expect the missionary to care for the members of the home church!

We don’t expect the converts to become members of our denomination, but we hope and anticipate that they will be blessed by the theological, spiritual and cultural gifts we have as they gather themselves into their own “denomination” (or whatever larger expression fits in their context and culture.) We do hope and anticipate that they will emerge as a natural partner with us in the work of the Kingdom.

I think using the "overseas missionary" as a paradigm for "home-front house church planters" can be very helpful, as long as people can accept that it’s mission work, not just another tactic to get more people into the sponsoring church. In my own Lutheran tribe, I see no insurmountable barriers to this approach. In other denominations, it could present more or less of a challenge institutionally.

I'd like to hear comments and critiques around this idea, especially from anyone who knows of something similar to this already in use.

Tim

The Pipe: A Visual Metaphor for Humanity, Sin, and "Atonement" (but not penal substitution).

2008-03-08T13:10:00.001-06:00

Yeah, that title is a mouthful but it helps with the search engines.

Okay. I've had this Pipe metaphor in my bag of tricks for something like ten years now. It represents God's intention for human beings by saying we are created to be like "L-Shaped Pipes" - connected to God as the Source, receiving love, life and forgiveness from God as the "flow," and directing that flow out through us towards the world and our neighors. When the flow goes that's human fulfillment which we experience as joy.

A lot of the fun with the Pipe comes from extending the metaphor by asking what kinds of things can disrupt the flow. So you start talking about clogs, dents and leaks etc., which themselves are pretty potent metaphors for human heart conditions. I'll be writing more about that in posts to come, I promise!

But I surprised even myself when I discovered how the Pipe can be applied to illustrate how being "united with him in a death like his" (Romans 6:5) leads to new life. The trouble is, you pretty much have to see it to get it. Words and even still images are pretty ineffective in conveying the 3D mechanics of it all.

So there it sat, until Emergent Village came calling.

The folks over at EV put out a call for new Atonement metaphors, looking especially for those that aren't based in "Penal Substitution." Well, that was the bait I couldn't resist so I finally sat myself down and recorded the illustration in a two-part video which I posted on YouTube. Each segment is about 4-5 minutes. You can also view them through these links:

The Pipe: Part 1

The Pipe: Part 2

I've got a few comments and observations to add, but I think I'll let others chime in first, except for this. One of the things I like most about this metaphor is that it doesn't necessitate centering the work of Jesus on issues of guilt, punishment, justice or forgiveness. Rather, it turns our attention to "the problem of sin" as being a condition we are in and unable to get out of on our own. This metaphor shows both how death is the necessary transition from this condition, but that death only leads to life if one dies with Jesus.

So - does the video work in getting the ideas across or do I need to make some changes? Comments and critique of the metaphor are invited!

Tim

Priesthood of All Believers

2008-02-27T17:08:00.000-06:00

Some wonderful Lutheran maverics over at A.R.E. (A Renewal Enterprise) just put up a comment on "What’s the golden nugget in Lutheran theology that is the most underutilized?" Their answer, the Priesthood of All Believers, finally got me to say a couple of things out loud that I've been thinking silently for too long. Here's a recap of what I wrote in a comment on their blog:

Well, I agree that the P of AB is the motherlode of underused gold, but I think it’s a lot more explosive than most people think! (Sorry for mixing metaphors there.) The idea that all believers are capable and authorized for all “priestly” ministry - including sacraments - has always been in our theology but only rarely apparent in our practice. Instead, we’ve reserved vast swaths of ministry to professional clergy (like me) “for the sake of good order.” Well, I’ve finally begun to ask “How’s that working out for us?” Put another way, since we don’t seem to be doing well at all in either making disciples or growing them, then what exactly is good about our order? The fact that it's orderly?

Thinking about my answers to those questions led me finally to look at the house church movement, an expression of the Priesthood of All if ever there was one. Plenty of room for unhelpful order there, too, I’m sure! But I have a lot of hope that the results will be better. And truthfully, I think that Lutheranism at its core is built for both house church and the postmodern world. But that’s another topic. ;)

The Huckabee Bible Quiz

2008-02-11T10:59:00.000-06:00

If you’ve been following the presidential primaries, you may have noticed that Mike Huckabee often refers to Bible stories in his speeches. What you may not know is that when he does that, most people in the U.S. have no idea what he’s talking about!

A recent story done by National Public Radio took several Biblical allusions from Huckabee speeches and went in search of people who could identify them. Most could not, which wouldn’t surprise you if you knew that 50% of Americans (and that includes Christians) can’t name any of the four Gospels, or know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible. But it should surprise you to learn that every person they asked had been raised in a Christian home and gone to Sunday School.

Want to see how you’d do on the quiz? Here are the four quotes. Do you know the Bible story each one comes from? I'll put the answers in the first comment to this post. In fact, why not add a comment yourself and let us know your score!

1. "It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people."

2. "Sometimes," the former Arkansas governor told his supporters, "one small smooth stone is even more effective than a whole lot of armor."

3. "We've also seen that the widow's mite has more effectiveness than all the gold in the world."

4. "It's almost like when the prophet was looking for a king. He came down, looked through all of Jesse's sons, went through a whole bunch of them, and said, 'Is this all you got?'"

I hope you did well.

Why does this matter? Well, consider this: Huckabee has a message he is trying to get out to people. He is using Bible stories as a way to get it across. But people will never get the message if they don’t know the stories. In the same way, God has a message that He is trying to get out to people, including you. God uses Bible stories to help get the message across. But if you don’t know the stories, do you think you’ll understand the message?

Have you read your Bible lately? I highly recommend it. After all, Someone is trying to communicate with you.

100 Cups of Coffee #3 - Paul Anderson

2008-01-21T10:41:00.000-06:00

I first met Paul Anderson several years ago at an event for Pastors he was leading at North Heights Church, and I was impressed by his genuineness and warmth. Then earlier this year I learned that he had become involved in some kind of house church expression so I sought him out and we’ve had some wonderful conversations.

History
Some time in 2005, Paul had some young adult believers living in his home (in addition to his own family) as a result of his gift for hospitality. Some of these were people who had come home changed from service in Iraq, and had leadership gifts. They began to pray together and were drawn to an image of a spiritual “fire” starting in the Twin Cities, where their role was not to try and create a centralized bonfire around themselves, but rather to help start lots of fires in many locations. It was an uncomfortable image that stretched them to think about “going out,” so they began to think of their own gathering as a kind of training or Boot Camp for that work. As they talked about this with others, more people started to gather, typically young adults in their early 20s. Gatherings were monthly at first, but started becoming more frequent and over time became a weekly event. The group grew and grew and now typically has 50 to 60 people attending, packed into Paul’s home, sitting on stairs and so on.

Leadership
From the outset, Paul has resisted the temptation to lead or control the group. He serves primarily as a mentor, and meets with the people who are the de facto leaders just before the whole group gathers. The group actually talked about formally identifying leaders but decided against it, so the leadership circle is a fluid, porous group. In essence it is a self-selected group of servants. This avoidance of closed structures (my term) also showed up in a discussion of whether they should establish a website for the group. There was concern that defining the group might end up confining it. Paul sees this as a part of the move towards centered set identity (in contrast to bounded set) and you can see it reflected in some of the quotes below in my “Tidbits” section. (For more on bounded vs. centered see Frost and Hirsch p. 47, or go here for some nice visuals: http://www.3dff.com/php/viewtopic.php?t=386.) Paul does provide a little bit of structure, simply working to ensure that for any given gathering there is someone ready to lead the people that come. Though he is a resource to the active leaders, Paul only rarely acts as the teacher in the large group so as not to set up some kind of external (“professional”) standard that others will then think they have to live up to.

Gatherings
At about 6pm, Paul typically will meet with the leaders he is mentoring. During this time they may discuss broader issues related to the community, but the focus tends to be on preparing for the evening’s gathering. By 7 they turn to prayer, again, largely but not exclusively pointed towards the gathering which gets going at about 8:00. In the gathering there is usually about 30 minutes or so of worship led by 3 or 4 people who were in preparation since the 6:00 meeting. After that, someone will share “a word” with the group that can be teaching, exhortation, personal story etc. Occasionally someone from outside the group may speak here. After this, there is discussion in impromptu small groups focusing on what was just shared. At that point, people are invited either to stay in the room for open prayer or go out to the dining room for food, or move back and forth between both. People often linger for about 2 hours and sometimes return to Paul’s home in between gatherings.

Community
Paul uses the term communitas to describe the kind of relational network he is seeing, a term that is distinct from community. This is a concept I’m still new to, but I gather that it refers to a kind of bonding through challenging experiences – a “fellowship forged by fire” – and a shared life that extends beyond the times of group gathering. Frost and Hirsch have also written about this, notably Frost in Exiles.

Mission
I’m not well-informed here, but Paul did mention that the group has been active in supporting some of its members in short-term international mission trips to Thailand and Brazil. An ongoing connection to a Thai church is emerging. Although there is a desire for the gathering to be “here for the people who are not yet here,” Paul reports that he is seeing more discipleship of current believers taking place, as opposed to new believers being birthed.

A Few Tidbits:
● Personal sharing is common in the group time. People are eager and often ask; “When can I share?”

● Some have said; “This is more like church than church!”

● Some have wondered; “Are we a church?” The sense of the group is that for those who think they are a church, they are. For those who think differently, that’s OK.

● Some have asked; “Can I make this my church? Would that count?” Paul’s sense is that the majority of people involved still have a connection to another, traditional faith community. But for most, this gathering really is their primary faith community.

Everything but the House Church Kitchen Sink?

2008-01-07T12:15:00.000-06:00

It's past time for a little personal update.

Since the beginning of November I've been working as a part time interim associate pastor at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Maplewood, MN. I rather fell into this position since I wasn't really looking for a conventional church job. The pastor there is Rick White, a good friend of mine. He found himself short-handed after his FT associate pastor retired, and when it became clear that it was going to take some time to find the right person to hire he asked me if I could help out for a while as that process unfolded. For various reasons it was best to set that up as a formal interim position, expected to run for a year.

There have been a lot of great things for me in this situation. I'm glad to help Rick out and it's fun and easy to work together since we've known each other for a good many years. I've been very warmly received by the folks at Gethsemane and it's always a plus to be affirmed when I offer my gifts. I've been doing a fair amount of preaching - especially this month as Rick is out for three weeks recovering from shoulder surgery - and I do enjoy that. The interim position also helps me maintain my clerical standing as an ELCA pastor: once the interim is over I'll have another three years to figure out how to stay on the roster while working on HCs.

And I should say, getting a paycheck is a pretty big plus, too!

At the same time, it's presenting some challenges. My main desire is still to find a way to serve in the house church movement, and my work at Gethsemane takes up nearly all of my "free" time for that. Since Kisten is full time at Trinity, I'm taking the lead in parenting and homemaking these days, so "free time" is a pretty limited commodity. That's at least one reason why this will be just my fifth fresh blog thread since November. (If I'm not more diligent, people might get the wrong idea and think I've run out of things to say!)

On the other hand, I would not be at all surprised if the Lord found a way to leverage this part of my journey into my house church work so that it wouldn't end up as a delay or detour at all. I've known from the start that I want to nurture HCs that have meaningful links and partnership with larger church expressions - congregations and denominations, most notably. So I'll need to have a relationship myself with a congregation that wants to be a part of the venture. Perhaps that will open up for me with Gethsemane. Rick is one of my strongest personal supporters of what I'm hoping to do, and I've made no bones about it to people in the congregation that I'm not looking for a permanent, regular church job because of my interest in HCs. So it's a conversation that will be occurring naturally.

So, as a parent, spouse, PT pastor, PT caterer, and would be blogger and HC explorer I do feel like I'm back in my plate-spinning mode sometimes. But as I recently said on my Facebook page: "Tim is living a good life!"

I thank God for that!

Tim

(P.S. - The plate-spinner in the image above is a real guy named John Park who apparently does this for a living - keynotes, tradeshows etc. Need someone for an event????)