Around the Horn

At first, Here’s an interesting interview with Justice Clarence Thomas. It’s on the long side at an hour and eleven minutes, but it is interesting in a lot of ways. Particularly interesting are his comments on clarity in writing. They come mostly towards the end, though I didn’t note the time. But among the gems is this: “The beauty, the genius, is not to write a 5 cent idea in a ten dollar sentence. It's to put a ten dollar idea in a 5 cent sentence.” Most preachers could stand a dose of this. And no, the fact that someone can watch a two-hour movie or a four-hour basketball game does not mean that they should listen to you drone and ramble for an hour.

At second, here’s another contribution to the theme of young people leaving church. It’s worth consideration.

At third, several weeks ago I saw an article (now lost) about a message by a charismatic pastor at Desiring God’s Pastor’s Conference. The speaker apparently said that cessationists were scared of the Spirit. I set it aside at the time to write against the idea that everyone who disagrees with something is scared. In the meantime, Eric Davis has written an excellent three-part series on this very issue (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), and it is much more than I would have written. So don’t be afraid. Just give it a chance. You never know. You might get a word of knowledge from these articles.

Coming in last today (or the home run, if you like to spin it that way) is Ed Stetzer’s recent article on the myths about megachurches. I found it interesting and instructive. One of the myths is that megachurches are growing from sheep-swapping. Ed disputes it, saying that only 44% of megachurches are “local church transfers.” If you look at the statistics Ed cites, it turns out that 90% are people with significant connections to church (local transfers, distance transfers, and dechurched). Which helps to remind us that the statistics show that megachurches aren’t growing primarily from conversions. Now, I am not complaining about that. But some people (not Ed) seem to think that megachurches are signs that people take evangelism seriously, and as a result they are really reaching people for Christ while small churches are just lazy and unevangelistic. Turns out, that’s not the case.

Ed also wrote an article about how megachurches are thriving. Some in the comments expressed some reservation, and Dave Doran expressed his reservation here, particularly about what “Christian” and “thriving” means. Ed responded to Dave that he was comfortable with how he used the words, which is, frankly, to miss the point. Being comfortable is not the same as being clear or being accurate. It is much more important to be accurate and clear than to be comfortable. And this points me back to the first link and Clarence Thomas: Write clearly so that people know exactly what you mean, and so that whether they agree or disagree, they do it with knowledge.

Around the Horn

Only a triple today but here goes …

First, here’s an interesting article on mortgages, strategic defaults, and Christian responsibility. I don’t know enough about mortgages and defaults to vouch for this, but it gives a perspective that we should consider. I have had opportunity to counsel people on this issue, and it is a hard one. But we should be informed as to some of the complexities of it.

At second, here’s a good read on Evangelicals and Influence: “It’s difficult to present a compelling witness when our own practices and lifestyle are often indistinguishable from the larger culture.”

And at third, a good from from Brian Croft about measuring ministry by numbers. He quotes John Brown, a 19th century Scottish pastor.

I know the vanity of your heart, and that you will feel mortified that your congregation is very small, in comparison with those of your brethren around you; but assure yourself on the word of an old man, that when you come to give an account of them to the Lord Christ at his judgment seat, you will think you have had enough.

Now, there is no glory in being a small congregation. All things being equal, more disciples is better than fewer disciples. More people hearing the  Word is better than fewer people hearing it.

But numbers are intoxicating, easy to measure, and sometimes devoid of real meaning. R. Kent Hughes was surely right about Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome, a book well worth your time.

The truth is that that some take being small as a badge of honor for their failure to “compromise.” I fear that many of them use it as an excuse for a lack of passion to reach people. They talk about evangelism. They talk about the work of God in saving sinners. But that’s all. They are lecturers. Thinkers. Intellectuals. Not practitioners.

God may have your church small for a reason. And be content to be faithful, to preach the Word, to love people, to tell them the good news of salvation in Jesus alone.

But beware of the tendency towards satisfaction. Beware of the tendency towards being at ease in Zion. And by all means, beware of judging others are compromisers because they have reached more people than you have.

A Word Worth Hearing

There is an Athenian love of novelty abroad, and a morbid distaste for anything old and regular and in the beaten path of our forefathers. Thousands will crowd to hear a new voice and a new doctrine without considering for a moment whether what they hear is true. There is an incessant craving after any teaching which is sensational and exciting and rousing to the feelings. There is an unhealthy appetite for a sort of spasmodic and hysterical Christianity. The religious life of many is little better than spiritual dram–drinking, and the “meek and quiet spirit” which St. Peter commends is clean forgotten (1 Pet. 3:4). Crowds and crying and hot rooms and high–flown singing and an incessant rousing of the emotions are the only things which many care for. Inability to distinguish differences in doctrine is spreading far and wide, and so long as the preacher is “clever” and “earnest,” hundreds seem to think it must be all right, and call you dreadfully “narrow and uncharitable” if you hint that he is unsound!*

This is a good word for this day, when people are amused and aroused by circus performers, standup comics, and musical shows masquerading as church.

It’s a good word where numbers and passion are the indicators of leaders that we should honor and esteem.

It’s a good word where creativity is a key part of church philosophy of ministry, where arts and media teams seem among the most important feature of preparation for the weekend services of a church.

It’s a good reminder that manufactured success is not lasting success.

It’s as good a word today as it was more than a century ago when J. C. Ryle wrote it in Holiness.

So, to channel the words of Paul, be careful how you build the church. It doesn’t belong to you. (1 Corinthians 3:10-17)

Church Size Dynamics

I was recently reading this article by Tim Keller on “Leadership and Church Size Dynamics.”

There is a lot of good and helpful stuff in it, I think. And it helps us to think about some broader issues.

First, church size isn’t everything. It is something however. And a larger church is something to strive for because a larger church means the Great Commission is being carried out.

Remember, the Great Commission is not only preaching. It is making disciples. And it is going into all the world to make disciples of those who weren’t previously disciples, and so that means numerical increase.

That may not be true in every single locale. There may be places where disciple-making is particularly hard and disciples are few for a variety of reasons. But the goal is more followers of Jesus, and that means that numbers matter, at least to some degree.

There are two ends to this spectrum. Some pastors and churches chase after more people and more people and do whatever it takes to get them there. They become sinfully pragmatic. Other pastors and churches are content with what they have, and have lost their passion for evangelism. They become sinfully apathetic.

Keller talks about the fact that some people attach spirituality to their desired church size. It happens both for big churches (spiritual because they are really growing and reaching people) and small churches (spiritual because they are standing firm against the tides of compromise and people just won’t come for that because they don’t like truth).

(And then there’s the pesky medium sized churches who claim that a church over a certain size should be planting a new church rather than continuing to grow the present one.)

Some pastors believe that if there aren’t more and different people there this week than there were last week, they have failed. Other pastors believe that if there aren’t more and different people there this week than there were last week, it doesn’t matter. So long as there is someone there to give in the offering and listen to his preaching, things are fine.

I would challenge both pastors to consider their task, their definition of success, and their heart for people.

The first pastor, who always wants more, can be driven by the idol of the crowd rather than being driven by the heart of the individual. He may need to repent of seeing people for the sake of their part in the congregation and begin to see people as individuals.

The second pastor, who is content with the same, can be driven by the idol of stability rather than by a heart to reach hopeless sinners with the hope of Jesus. He may need to repent of his comfort zone and begin to see people as possible Christians, meaning someone in whom God might be working to bring them to faith in Christ.

It is true that people do prefer certain church sizes, and are not comfortable in other church sizes. Pastors are not excluded from that. The good news is that there is nothing wrong with that, unless church size becomes your idol.

As a church member, rather than chasing a church of a certain size, find a church that you can worship, learn, evangelize, and serve in. Forget the size; love the church.

As a pastor, develop a heart for the people who are not there, alongside of a heart for the people who are there. That won’t make you two-hearted. It should make you big-hearted.

If you are constantly measuring success by numbers, you should probably take stock of who you are really serving.

And if you never measure success by numbers, you should probably take stock of what you are doing.

Opening Lines – Golf and the Church

Just as the church has become more tolerant on certain issues in recent decades, so too is golf equipment letting us get away with more on our mis-hits.

So begins an article entitled “How Forgiving Can an Iron Be and Still Look Like Something You’d Want to Play?” in the October 2010 issue of Golf Digest.

Puritanical title aside,  it strikes me as an odd place to see a church reference, not to mention a not so flattering way to reference a church.

It is true that the church has become more tolerant on certain issues. Depending on which issues are in focus, I am not convinced that is a good thing.

If you know me, you probably know that I play golf from time to time … at least a few times a year. And it’s well known that these days you can buy a better game. To cut that handicap down, you can skip the hours at the driving range and just hit the pro shop.

I am not saying that’s a bad thing in golf. In answer to the title question, based on the clubs I have seen, people show a remarkable ability to overlook ugly stuff if it works, or if they think it will work.

But church?

I think there are a lot of churches who have “bought a better game.” They are bigger, not because they are dedicated to the hard work of being a better disciple-maker but because they have used technology to leverage the show. And some of it is just plain ugly.

People are being entertained, not discipled. Ears are being tickled; worldviews aren’t being transformed.

I am not opposed to technology, design, and modern conveniences in the church. I use them.

And I not condemning everyone who does it differently than I do, nor those who have large churches.

But let’s be careful that we aren’t merely “buying a better” game that is a charade of the real thing.

The Trellis and The Vine – Marshall and Payne

This book has been highly recommended by others. Mark Dever said it was the best book he had ever read on the nature of church ministry (and he has read a few books on church ministry). And written a couple (which are good in themselves).

I finally got around to reading this one. And I like it.

The basic idea is based on a trellis and a vine. (I say that for those who might not figure it out on their own). A trellis is a structure; a vine is a plant. The vine grows on the trellis; the trellis exists for the vine to grow on. The trellis is not the point; the vine is.

In the same way, gospel growth (used throughout the book in contrast to church growth) is the vine; the church structure is the trellis. The point of the book is that ministry is to be about growing the vine, not the trellis. The trellis/church structure exists to support the vine/church/people.

I think a lot of churches are under the impression that if they grow the trellis, they can grow the vine. So we brainstorm and allocate resources (people and money) and space (rooms and calendar) to build a bigger, more elaborate trellis. But the vine doesn’t grow. In fact, the existing vine just gets spread out more thinly.

And in fact, very often the trellis becomes an albatross (to mix metaphors). Indeed, a very large albatross which is full of sacred cows (to mix metaphors once again). And you know what happens when you try to sacrifice a sacred cow.

Too many churches have a trellis that is virtually useless for growing a vine. But they have had the trellis for fifty years. It was useful for thirty of those years. Now it is rusty, bent up in a few places, falling down in some others. Only sparsely covered with a few twigs of the vine.

But it is “ours.” It’s what we do because … it’s what we have always done. And every successful church does this. Or at least they used to. So the trellis is exposed because the vine isn’t growing. And there’s no reason to stop doing something that we have done for so long.

The book is a clarion call to reconsider your trellis for the sake of the vine. It is not a book that discounts the usefulness of a trellis, or recommends having no trellis. It simply calls us to reconsider what we are doing.

Here’s my simple summation: Stop building structure and spend time with key people (PWWs) to make disciples of them so that they can go and make disciples of others. Build the trellis only as necessary to support the vine.

The truth is that for us as pastors, “trellis work is easier and less personally threatening. Vine work is personal and requires much prayer. It requires us to depend on God, and to open our mouths and speak God’s word in some way to another person” (p. 9). But “structures don’t grow ministry any more than trellises grow vines … most churches need to make a conscious shift—away from erecting and maintaining structures, and towards growing people who are disciple-making disciples of Christ” (p. 17).

I think this book is beneficial for people who take seriously the church that the Great Commission is to make disciples, not well-oiled church machines.

I have no problem with well-oiled church machines and large and elaborate trellises. But they should be the by-products of gospel-growth, that are supported and maintained by disciple-making disciples. They can be tools in which disciples are made. We simply need to remember that the Great Commission is about the vine, not the trellis.

Reading on Leadership

In the last month or so, I have read about 1500 pages on leadership, particularly church leadership in the changing context of today. This particular selection of books has a common theme: today’s society is markedly different than previous generations and therefore requires different leadership.

Here’s a few random thoughts:

First, several of these remark that their seminary training of X number of years ago prepared them for ministry in a society that no longer exists. My response is that they had bad seminary training. I have commented on this elsewhere (such as here and here), but I will beat this drum again, particularly for the younger men who may be making choices about seminary.

Choose a seminary where you learn theology, the languages, and how to study. Those things will never change. They will never go out of style. And when the context changes, you will still know theology and the languages and how to study.

If you choose a seminary that has a heavy preponderance of classes (as in more than a half dozen hours or so) that deal with methodology of ministry, you will be hurting yourself in the long run because that methodology will soon be out of date. In fact, it may not even work on the other side of town. You can get that stuff other places.

Second, these books on leadership in the church deal very rarely (almost not at all) with the biblical material on leadership in the church. That is a glaring error. It is an inexcusable weakness. If you are going to talk  about leadership in the church, you must talk about leadership in the Bible.

Third, these books almost completely reject the baby-boomer approach to church of the last generation for the emergent type approach to church. But when reading them, the basic philosophy seems unchanged. It seems that the belief is that church leadership is about practice—that if we organize the church in certain ways, and find good mission statements and the like, the church will take care of itself. It comes across as saying that the problem with your church is organizational (too much power at the top) and lack of clarity of vision (people don’t know what it is about). Again, there is a disturbing lack of interaction with the biblical text on these issues of what the church should be.

Now, my office notwithstanding, I am all in favor of organization and order. A church should be organized. But great organization is not the key to growing a church.

I find these books helpful, but deficient. Learning to lead in a new context is imperative for ministry in our world. Building on the foundations of Scripture needs more attention than it is given by some.

Good Article on Church Growth

For those with growing churches, who anticipate space problems, here is a good article worth consideration.

It ultimately concludes that planting churches is better than multiple services, bigger facilities, or satellite churches.

Read it for a good explanation of why.

McKinley on Church Planting

Michael McKinley on church planting, which isn’t good just for church planters:

Be realistic!  You're not Spurgeon, and that's OK.  The best case scenario for 99% of us is that we are faithful to the gospel, God in his kindness lets us see some real and enduring fruit from our labors, and we don't do anything that disgraces the gospel.  That's a win.

Success is seductive, particularly when you see it in others. Any sane person develops a desire to have it for themselves. After all, if you don’t want to reach people with the gospel, why are you a pastor anyway?

But coveting the success of others can be deadly for a lot of reasons. Here are a few that readily come to mind:

1. It can distract you from trust in God alone for the success of ministry.
2. It can discourage you to the point of wanting to quit since you are not succeeding like someone else is.
3. It can lead to unfair comparisons, particularly since your community and your gifts are not the same as his (whoever he is whose success you are lusting after).
4. It can cause you to always chase the elusive nebulous dream of success (always changing), rather than seeing people as people in desperate need of a Savior.
5. It can be spiritually, mentally, and emotionally draining.
6. It can lead to distraction from the real task of preaching Jesus and loving people.

Add your own reasons. I would like to see them.

Multi-Site Churches - Modern Day Bus Ministry

This article was started prior to my knowledge of the 9Marks EJournal. I have not read that yet. Any thoughts here are to be blamed solely on me.

I have mentioned multi-site churches before. A recent article about Mars Hill Church in Seattle going to its first out of state campus started me thinking again.

It used to be that the buses ran to bring the people to pastor. Now, the modern day bus ministry can take the pastor to the people. Is it bad? Perhaps not. But I think it deserves more thought.

Here’s a quick list of why I think that, some of which probably overlap, and all of which need some development, refinement, or answers as to why they should not be on this list:

1. Celebrity Preachers – Why listen to some local yokel when you can hear “the Big Guy”? This reminds me of Dan Phillips’ recent article on Porn and Paper Pastors.
2. Separation of the roles of pastor and preacher – One of the roles of the pastor is to shepherd his people through the preaching of the word. A DVD can’t do that. It ends up minimizing the role of pastoral ministry.
3. Minimization of local church emphasis – One of the main features of a local church (preaching) isn’t actually local.
4. Minimization of developing leaders – There is a decreasing need to develop biblical leaders who can teach the word effectively because you can download them. Qualifications for leadership begin to be boiled down to “Who can push play?”
5. Temptation to Kingdom building – Why do we need 100 campuses in different states?
6. Temptation to a belief in indispensability – “Smalltown USA doesn’t have a pastor who can preach like me. Let me send you a link so you can download a great church there.” Does Mark Driscoll really think God has no one these other cities who can preach the gospel? Is he really that indispensable? Yes, I know they have planted churches in many places, including local areas in Seattle. So why don’t they keep doing that? Train pastors and send them out.
7. Difficulty of pastoral training – You can’t learn to pastor by serving under a video pastor.
8. Separation of preaching and leadership – Local churches should be lead by … wait for it … local people. One of the key factors in church leadership is the pulpit ministry. When the pulpit ministry is hundreds of miles away, it seems hard to avoid a dichotomy between separation and leadership. A church essentially has a special speaker every week.
9. Difficulty in contextualization – Mars Hill (not the first multi-site, but the one that sparked my thinking here) is big on contextualization in ministry. How does Mark contextualize his preaching for a city he doesn’t live in and doesn’t know anything about? It will be hard to contextualize your message for a city you don’t live in and for a congregation you know nothing about.

I don’t think multi-site is always bad. But as Ed Stetzer recently said, there are some disturbing implications here.

Daisy Cutter Doctrine

Skye Jethani at Out of Ur has an interesting article on church conferences that are always pimping the latest and greatest tactics, presented by motivating speakers who lead large churches (after all, they are successful at the mission). Jethani says,

When Christians with a consumer consciousness try to wrap their imaginations around such a large undertaking [making disciples of all nations], they will automatically think about products or corporations that have impacted the world and emulate the same methodologies. So we ask, how does Coca-Cola impact the world? How does Disney impact the world? How does Starbucks impact the world? And we forget to ask the only question that really matters: How does Jesus impact the world?

He continues,

For example, through much of its history the church in Europe employed conventional (worldly) means to advance its spiritual mission. This resulted in the gospel being spread by the sword. We now look back at the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the slaughter of native peoples in the Americas mournfully. Centuries removed from those atrocities we wonder—how could people do such things in the name of Christ? Did they not see how inconsistent those methods were with the ways of Jesus? At the time, of course, they did not.

Today we consider ourselves more enlightened, but are we? We may not use the sword to advance the church’s mission anymore, but the sword is no longer the conventional instrument of power and influence. Today the church emulates the methods of corporations and business, and most of us never pause and ask whether such tactics are consistent with the ways of Christ. Like the Crusaders, we seem content to leave such judgments for future generations whose vision will be sharpened by history.

Whether Jethani parses the problem just right, or has the right solutions, is up for discussion.

But his comments seem worthy of reflection.