TILL HE COMES Blog

I want to make another post about some of the things my pastor, Stephen Hammond, said in his message on Sunday. If you want to listen to all of it, you can do so through his podcast here. The section I am quoting below begins at 13:00 from the July 20 message.

What would our community look like if we began to really understand where God was wanting to take us?

Could you imagine a community where everyone was accepted?

Could you imagine a community where everyone got a chance to participate in what God was doing? Even our friends who haven’t yet trusted Jesus? There’s a starting point for them too. Even for our atheist friends, or for whatever friends you may have. Even for people who have been Christians for a long time. What would it look like if everyone got a chance to play, and service wasn’t just for the paid staff?

Imagine a community where everyone was forgiven, and if you hurt somebody, they would just say, “You know what? I forgive you as God has forgiven me.”

Imagine a community where everyone is accepted. Democrats hung out with our Republicans, and our Librarians hung out there too.  I mean, Libertarians. Librarians are welcome also.

…We are a community that wants to help take care of the world’s problems. Imagine a community where AIDS is taken care of in our lifetime. Imagine a community where no one in El Salvador has to drink dirty water again.

Imagine a community where whatever your race, whether black, or white, or Hispanic, or Asian, when people looked at you, they just saw a heart, a soul, and a spirit.

I really like Stephen’s thinking here (which is part of the reason we attend Mosaic). I think all of us must continually imagine and reimagine the church, what we could do, what we could look like, and what we could accomplish, if we simply changed a few things.

I have a blog post I’ve been working on for over a year now called “What if?” It contains all my musings about how the church could function differently and more effectively than it does today. Someday, I’ll get around to posting it, though right now, in it’s present state, it is so long it would take over 20 posts.

On a related note, I just received an advance copy of Frank Viola’s Reimagining Church in the mail today. I am pretty excited to read it. As I was browsing the book, I found a short section on p. 27 called “I Have a Dream” which is where he lays out his dream for the church. If a get a chance later this week, I will post his dream.

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I was recently talking to a pastor who was telling me about the amazing things God was doing in his church. The church is 150 years old, and had gone into steep decline. Up until a few months ago, they were averaging only 8-10 adults on a Sunday, all of whom were over 65 years old.

The pastor shared with me that recently, in response to many years of prayer, God had brought “revival” to the church, and they were now averaging about 150 people!

I was amazed and impressed. The church went from 10 to 150 in a few months! And while I believe in the power of prayer, I was amazed when the pastor said that, aside from praying a lot and building a brand new building (how did they fund that with only 10 people?), they hadn’t really done anything different with outreach or their worship service.

But as I talked longer, it came out that the 140 people had come from a big church across town that split.

My heart sank at the news. This pastor was thrilled at the “health” of his church, and the “revival” that God was bringing in response to years of prayer, but really, not a single new person in the community had come to faith in Jesus. Instead, a church across town experienced a messy split, and 140 people came over to the church in town with a new building. Is that really a “work of God”?

As I sat there fuming, trying to decide if I should burst the pastor’s bubble by telling him what I thought, and that it was probably just a matter of time before his church split also, God reminded me that in my first pastorate, I was actually praying for other churches in town to split or fold, and for other pastors to have moral failures, so that my church could possibly receive some of the people in those other churches. It saddens me to even think about it!

But this is what the American church has come to…feeding off each other as we try to survive a nose dive into oblivion and cultural irrelevance. If we want to not only survive but thrive, we need to change. I think I am beginning to see and envision what some of these changes will mean for me. The question now is whether or not I have the faith and courage to follow through on them.

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I finished reading How Women Help Men Find God today. It’s a book written for women, but as a former (and future?) pastor, I wanted to read it because it is packed full of ideas on how women  (and churches in general) can help men become followers of Jesus.

Such a book is desperately needed because the average church today is seeing a massive drop-out rate among men. We are not just losing a generation; we are losing an entire sex.

Of course, if your congregation is bucking the trend and is comprised of at least 50% men (in all age groups), then chances are good that you and your church are already doing some of the things mentioned in this book. Read it to affirm what you are already doing, and maybe to provide insights on some other areas that could be tweaked to encourage greater involvement by the men in your church.

But if your church is like the vast majority of churches in the United States, and your congregation consists primarily of women, this book is for you. It is full of practical suggestions (often written in a humorous way) to help men see that following Jesus is not just for women and children.

For example, most men don’t mind singing in church, but songs about being held by Jesus, and kissing Him, and Him being our lover will keep most men from singing too boisterously. As Michael Frost has said, Jesus is NOT my boyfriend.

In a similar vein, don’t invite men into a “relationship” with Jesus. Such terminology is attractive to women, but men respond better to the more biblical invitation to “follow” Jesus. This is especially true when the dangers and risks of following Jesus are emphasized.

Also, simple things like changing the way the church is decorated can go a long way in showing men that church (and following Jesus) is for them as well.

The book is also full of helpful suggestions on how to evangelize men, how to disciple men, and how to encourage them to take the role of spiritual leader in the home and in the church.

So do you know a man who needs to become a follower of Jesus or take a more active spiritual role? Do you want your church to become more effective at reaching men, making disciples, and raising up leaders? Read this book.

Oh, and don’t forget to check out David Murrow’s two websites: www.speakingofmen.com and www.churchformen.com

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As I drive around Dallas for my carpet-cleaning job, I can’t help but notice how much land is tied up in church real-estate. I drove by one mega church today that must have had 50-40 acres in land, and a good 20 of it was nothing but grass. Think of the tax revenue the city is losing! But I’ve written on that before.

With just a tiny bit of creative thinking, churches could be redeeming their land and buildings in ways that would truly benefit the community. Take the Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Pleasant Grove, Texas as an example. It’s a church of only 30 people, but they recently divided their four acres of land into garden plots, and rented them out to area residents for $30 a month and an agreement to donate 10% of their produce to a local charity.

Since 2003, they have donated 18,000 pounds of produce to area food pantries.

So what are you growing on your church property? Who uses your church building Monday-Saturday? Can you think of any better uses for both?

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Stephen Hammond is my pastor. Well, actually, he’s not. The truth is that he doesn’t really like to be called a “pastor” but he does help lead a community of people (called Mosaic) who are making a difference in this world by following Jesus. By this definition, some would call him a “pastor.” He also co-leads a church planting organization called Square 1 church planting, which I have blogged about before.

But whatever his title is, I am so glad I know him (and his family - my wife loves his wife, and my three girls adore his daughter) and feel that my life will never be the same. He speaks into my life with much grace, wisdom, and encouragement. If you want to get a glimpse into his mind, he just started a blog this week, and I recommend you go read it: http://www.stephenwhammond.com

Here is something he wrote earlier this week about how Mosaic defines success:

Success at Mosaic is defined in part by how many friends we meet with regularly (i.e. softball, movies, concerts, food, poker, etc…) who don’t come to our Gatherings on Sundays but who love to spend time with our Mosaic family during other parts of the week.

When we insist that people have to meet with us on Sunday mornings to be a part of Mosaic we limit the influence Mosaic will ever have on creating the future. And yet when we simply meet with friends for fun, and not help them live a life of faith, love and hope through Christ, we limit what they can do for God and others both for here and for eternity.

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When someone finds out you are a Christian, have you noticed how they respond?

As Wendy and I talk with people in our neighborhood, at the store, or down at the park, it often seems that the discussion comes back around to “religion.” Maybe someone asks what brought us to Dallas, and we say that we came here for me to attend seminary. Or they find out that I used to be a pastor. Or maybe one of our girls is singing “Jesus Loves Me” at the top of her voice.

Anyway, however it comes up, Wendy and I have noticed that there are four basic responses, two negative, and two positive.

Antagonistic Response
A very small percentage (maybe 1%) of people get somewhat antagonistic and imply that we are crazy for believing in God and the Bible. Neither Wendy or I are easily offended or put off by this kind of response, and we are generally able to have great conversations with these people. The conversations are not always about Jesus or the Gospel, but that’s okay. We’re not trying to cram Jesus or the Bible down anybody’s throat.

Avoidance Response
About half of the people who hear the words “Jesus,” “seminary,” “pastor” or “church” just want to avoid talking about religion, and quickly change the subject. That’s understandable, especially in light of many of the common “evangelistic” techniques that are popular today. Again, if they don’t want to talk about such things, neither do we. We aren’t one of those “Christians” who have to turn every conversation around to Jesus (e.g. “Oh, it’s your daughter’s birthday? Cool! You know who has a birthday on December 25th?”).

Religious Response
About 25% respond positively by telling us how involved they are in church. Generally, when they hear that we are followers of Jesus, graduated from seminary, or previously pastored a church, the first thing they say is what church they go to, how faithfully they attend, and how involved they are. I call this a religious response because they seem to want to emphasize to me that they are performing their religious duty. Frankly, I have the hardest time connecting with these people, because once they know I have been a “religious” leader, it seems that all they want to do is talk about devoted and dedicated they are. I find that I am often the one trying to change the subject to sports or the weather, but they keep bringing it back to their own religious efforts (e.g. “Yes, it is hot, and I’m so glad, because I prayed for good weather today.”)

Relationship  Response
The most refreshing of responses come from people who seem to have a relationship with God, but who may or may not attend a church. In fact, with these people, church rarely comes up. I find that they are not too concerned about telling me all that they are doing for God in church. They are not focused on their own performance. Instead, they focus on how God is at work in their life, what He is teaching them, and where He has shown up in miraculous ways.

When it comes to people who claim a connection with God, there are “church people” and “God people.” Church people focus on what they are doing for God, and God people focus on what God has done for them. Check out this quote from David Bosch’s book Transforming Mission:

Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy, and truth. Church people think about how to get more people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church change the world (p. 378. He is quoting Howard Snyder, Liberating the Church).

And here is what gets me the most: In my experience, there are not a lot of “God people” or “Kingdom people” in the typical Sunday gathering of the church. Most of the “God people” we’ve ran into recently don’t “attend church” at all. Why do you think this is?

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Katdish (Kathy Richards) asked a great question on a previous post of mine, and I realized my reply needed to be it’s own post. Here is what she asked:

We’re in the beginning stages of planting a church. I’ve been reading quite a few blogs about church planting. I like what I’ve been reading for the most part. My biggest challenge/question to date has been how do we convince the “regular” church people that they need to leave the building in order to follow Christ? I just think they’re missing out on what it means to really impact the world. The “build it and they will come” philosophy just isn’t working anymore — if it ever really did.

My basic answer is “If you can figure that out, you can write a book!” It is the number one question on the minds of most missional thinkers and leaders today. It is the “uncharted waters” of missional churches. Most “missional” churches are new church plants, and they launch with mostly new or non-believers. Very few people have been successful in taking an established church, and leading it to become missional.

One book that begins to deal with this issue is Breaking the Missional Code by Ed Stetzer and David Putnam. They suggest some ways that established churches can become missional.

Though I own the book (see my post from yesterday!), I haven’t read the book yet, but here are my suggestions:
1. Study Christ. In the teaching times of the church, emphasize the radical teaching and mission of Jesus. 
2. Study Culture. Help your church understand the culture it is in. American (or Australian, German, whatever), plus the more local microculture within your city and neighborhood. Figure out what kind of people are there, what they value, how they think, and what they do for fun.
3. Creatively bring the two (Christ and Culture) together. As you study the teachings of Christ, and you see how He lived what He taught, come up with tangible ways you and your church can do similar things in your own cultural context. He fed 5000. How can you feed 50 homeless people in your community? He showed love to a woman caught in adultery. How can you show love to prostitutes, single mothers, and strippers? When you have an idea, go do it. Even if only a few show up to help, that is a start.
4. Celebrate and share the stories. In your services, share the stories of the people’s lives you touched. This will encourage more to get involved the next time.

If you really want to get radical, try something a little subversive. A while back there was a man moving into our neighborhood, and for various reason I knew he needed help moving into his house, and didn’t have anybody to help him. I also knew that if I called around, I might be able to get 2-3 guys to help, but that wouldn’t be enough. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and so I went over to the man and said, “At 7:00 tonight, about a dozen men from our church will show up to unload your moving van. It’ll take us about an hour.”

How could I promise this? Here’s the subversive part: On Wednesday nights, we have a men’s Bible study. Generally about a dozen men come. I knew that if I called and told each man that we were going to “go help someone unload a moving truck rather than study the Bible” few would come. So I didn’t tell them. When they showed up, I said, “Hey, instead of study the Bible, we’re going to go serve our neighbor instead. Let’s go!” And we helped the man unload his truck. It took about an hour. And everybody enjoyed it. Well, one or two grumbled, but it was still fun.

You could maybe do something similar on a Sunday morning, although you might want to tell people in advance. Say “Hey, we’ve been talking about how Jesus loves children. Next week, rather than meet here for Sunday service, let’s all meet down at the kiddie park. I’ve been noticing that the benches need painting and lots of trash needs to be picked up. We’re going to go clean up the park for the kids. It’s not going to take any extra time, because we’re going when you would have been in church anyway. Instead of being in church, we’re going to go be the church.”

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Did you see The 2008 TIME 100 list? Every year, TIME magazine compiles a list of of the 100 most influential people of the past year, divided up into categories like “Leaders and Revolutionaries,” “Scientists and Thinkers,” and “Artists and Entertainers.”

In previous years, I have noticed that at least one pastor made it onto the list. Several years ago Rick Warren was on the list (because of his Purpose Driven Life book). I think that Rob Bell made the list last year. This year, pastor Richard Cizik got half a spot, and an Eastern Orthodox leader, Bartholomew I, also made the list for his stand on environmentalism as a spiritual responsibility. Oh, and of course the Dalai Lama was on the list, as well as the Muslim leader Muqtada al-Sadr. The person I was most excited about was Isaac Berzin, especially when I go fill up my car with gas. Every nation in the world should be sending millions of dollars to Isaac.

I believe that if we, as followers of Jesus, are truly going to be living radical, missional lives of purpose, protecting the planet, healing the abused, giving water to the thirsty, feeding the starving, inventing new and better ways of doing things, and leading the way for global change, then every year we should see more and more Christians on this list. Of course, it is quite likely that many of the people on the list are actually Christians. For example, I think I read somewhere that Craig Ventner is a Christian, and he’s on the verge of “creating” life. Crazy stuff.

I’m not trying to be imperialistic here. I just think that if Christians are trying to live the Kingdom of God, then we should be the most innovative, artistic, and creative activists on earth! We need to be the pacesetters, the trend makers, the world shakers, the vision creators.

Erwin McManus, in his book An Unstoppable Force, put it this way:

The church was never intended to be a monolith but a movement creating moments that change history. …The first century church didn’t keep up with it’s time… The first century church changed time. It rewrote history. It radically impacted culture. The church was the forerunner, not the runner up. And out of the church’s influence came the greatest art, the greatest music, and the greatest thinkers (p. 66).

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What is the best program for making good disciples? In other words, how can a person be adequately trained and prepared to be a follower of Jesus?

If you check with the local Christian bookstore, you will find that the most common way to disciple someone is to take them through some sort of discipleship manual. This book or workbook is designed to teach the person some basic biblical and theological truths as well as some instruction on basic Christian disciplines like praying, reading the Bible, attending church, and tithing. This is why discipleship almost universally takes place in a “discipleship class” and is often a subset of the “Christian education” department.

I’m not against such methods…except that they don’t seem to work. Very few people who go through such programs actually end up acting much like Jesus. If the goal of a discipleship program is to help a person act like Jesus, then our discipleship programs are failing.

Discipleship = Serviceship
The best discipleship program is one that follows the actual method Jesus used in making disciples. Did He teach His followers the Bible, how to pray, and what to do with their money? Absolutely. But unlike most discipleship programs today, Jesus always taught His followers within the context of service. They would go feed 5000 people, and then He would teach them. They would go heal the sick and then He would teach them. He sent them out two by two, and when they came back, He would teach them. Teaching was almost never isolated from mission and service.

You want life transformation to result from your discipleship programs? Add mission. Add service. Don’t just teach; obey (Matt 28:20). I have often thought that a better word for discipleship might be serviceship, or better yet, apprenticeship. How does an apprentice learn best? By doing.

All Together Now!
And this service and mission is not a later stage or second step to discipleship. It’s not (1) learn, then (2) serve. Ideally, learning and service go together. However, we often banish new believers off into the endless cycle of Bible studies so they can learn basic Christian doctrine before we let them serve. And instead of taking the class, and then going out and serving, they often just move from one class to another. They emerge thirty years later with a well-worn Bible, bloodshot eyes, and a hyper-critical, judgmental, puffed-up personality and ivory-tower attitude that is no longer useful for service.

To maintain a soft heart, a proper discipleship program trains both the head and the hands.

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In Part 1 and Part 2 of this short series on the Future of the Church, I wrote about how the church needs to escape the attractional, church-growth model of the church, and become more missional. Doing so will enable us to prepare for the world-wide reawakening of the church that is coming.

In this post, I want to focus on a process by which you personally can prepare for this reawakening.

1. You must reimagine the church as the body of Christ. Forget everything, and I mean everything, you know or think you know about the church, what it is supposed to be, do, and look like. Then, start reading the Gospels with the understanding that Jesus is showing by example and teaching with words and works how His followers are to live and act. I believe that Jesus’ life is God’s dream for the church. If we are the body of Christ, then we must be the body of Christ now as He was 2000 years ago. When people say they want to get back to the early church the way it was in Acts, I believe they have not gone far enough back. They need to get back to the way Jesus lived and acted. He is our church model.

2. Follow up this study by reliving the life of Christ. In other words, try to live like Jesus lived. But here’s the key: You can’t do this by yourself, because you are not Christ, and you are not the Body of Christ. It is only “we” who believe in Him and follow Him who are His body, and so we can only live as He lived, and do what He did, in concert with other members of the body. So, find some other like-minded people, and together, start trying to be Jesus to the world. As the body, you can help the poor, set captives free, help the blind to see, heal the sick, feed the hungry, and show people the way back to God. And I don’t mean with miracles, though I don’t rule miracles out. It is amazing what a few people can do together who share a common desire to help others.

3. Don’t revert! When people start to join with you, and your numbers begin to grow, and people start coming to faith in Christ, resist the urge to protect what you have gained by reverting to more safe and common ways of doing church. Trying to become safe and protected is the beginning of decline and ineffectiveness. I’ll let you decide what this looks like in your context.

When you embark upon this process, you’ll notice that once you are able to discard everything you think you know about church, and begin the adventure of reimagining church (step 1), your life begins to spiral upward in some new and interesting ways (step 2), which then causes you to both seek more from Scripture (step 1) but also desire to run from risk and return to what is safe and known (step 3). So this is a constant process of going back and forth between reimagining (step 1) and reliving (step 2), while warding off the temptation of reverting (step 3).

I know because I’m right there. It’s a terrifying and thrilling place to be.

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