Category Archives: Churchy Stuff

The Swing

Posted on by
Reply

Anyone in church circles would have recognised that in the last 10-20 years there has been a growing emphasis on the importance of social justice in its various forms within the church. Where it was once the domain of the so called ‘liberal’ denominations, it is now standard fare for Baptists, Pentecostals and others who previously were much more concerned almost exclusively for ‘personal evangelism’.

I’m wondering how much of the shift has been because we have genuinely become enlightened and convinced of the truth and how much is a in fact a response to a culture that has become increasingly secular and hence difficult to penetrate with standard fare ‘personal evangelism’ methods.

If our context hadn’t become so secularised and our attempts at evangelism so poor would we have given ‘social justice’ the time of day?

You know… I’m not convinced we would have. For sure, there would always be those who carry the torch for the poor and the oppressed, but I’m not sure most of evangelicalism would have made the shift if the old strategies had still been working. If people had still been coming to church I’m not sure we would have seen any need to re-think what we were doing.

Perhaps our evangelistic dark period has been a blessing in disguise as it has actually allowed us to see and experience some truth we may never have seen otherwise.

Just a thought that rumbled through my mind today as I joined some pipes and laid some lawn…

How to Vote in The Next Election

Posted on by
2

At the last federal election I voted for the Greens. I don’t think that makes me a ‘Green’. It does mean that I felt – on the whole – their position best depicted the stuff of the kingdom.

What disturbed me was the way some folks concluded that I obviously wasn’t a Christian because I held this point of view.

Next time we have an election and we need to decide how to vote I’ll be using some of the content from this book to help people think through their approach to such a complex question.

Its an easy read, but I recommend it to any pastors who know there isn’t a ‘Christian’ position and are looking to equip their people to make intelligent decisions. I thought that given it is American in origin it might be a bit lacking in relevance, but not at all.

I don’t know who I will vote for in the next election, but I do know what will be shaping my thinking on the issue – and it will be the same principles as last time. Perhaps if we can develop a framework for making decisions and appreciate that no choice is without its problems then we can avoid this nonsense of declaring people ‘out’ because they don’t tow the party line we have ignorantly decreed as ‘Christian’.

Culture Eats Vision

Posted on by
2

My friend Andrew Dowsett has some excellent thoughts here on why we should focus more energy on culture formation and change than on vision.

This has been one of my own learnings over the last few years but Andrew has articulated it much better than I could so go and read his thoughts here and here.

Andrew lived in Jindalee right near us about 5 or 6 years ago and we got to hang out a fair bit. He’s well worth reading (for an Anglican…) Chuckle… 🙂

Pegs and Holes

Posted on by
2

We were talking this morning about this strange concept of ‘working for a church’ and then even stranger doing it ‘two days a week’.

The longer I am involved in leading a Christian community the less I see it as:

a) work

b) able to classified into designated days & hours.

To be sure, there are days when I have to do some things that aren’t really my forte or passion and in my view that is when it becomes ‘work’, but for the most part it is a calling and a role that flows with my life and that fits who I am. It would be more accurate to say who ‘we’ are, because Danelle and I are together ’employed two days a week’.

It is the ‘two days a week’ bit that feels more and more absurd, because it just doesn’t work like that – and if it did then I think we would have got it wrong anyway. Its like being a business owner and only doing that 3 days/week. It just isn’t reality.

Every day of the week I carry responsibility for my business and every day of the week we carry responsibility for the life and health of our church community. The extent to which we can physically do tasks related to each is limited, but I believe the key here is the ownership of responsibility and the weight that goes with that. Some days it means I have a little to do. Other days it means I have a lot. It doesn’t translate nicely to a two day working week and then of course there is the question of Sundays…

Some say Sundays are not counted because everyone else does Sundays while others ‘count’ Sundays because they have to be there and don’t get the option of a sleep in or a week off because they are tired.

I sense that when we are counting and running the numbers we are missing the point. When we are asking ‘what do we need to do to lead these people well?’ then we are on the right track.

I guess the ‘two day a week’ framing will always stay as long as we need to determine a way to reimburse people for their time spent and their subsequent inability to earn money in other ways. But to imagine that the role of leading a Christian community can be neatly packaged into two days is to try and put a square peg in a round hole.

Perhaps a better framing is for a church to say ‘we are allocating $x to support you and your family as you fulfill the role of leading us’. Thankfully this isn’t an issue where we are, but it is one of the reframings that has taken place in my own mind over the last few years and that helps me function in a more healthy way.

Small Church Big Impact

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve slowed my blog reading right down these days and read only a select few, but a new one popped up today that I think will be well worth adding to the RSS.

Its entitled ‘Small Church Big Impact‘ and looks at the challenges and opportunities that are present in the smaller expression of church – about 90% of Aussie churches I’d guess…

Its author is Andre Van Oudtshoorn, a local small church pastor and Academic Dean at Perth Bible College. Andre is well known for being a provocative thinker and lecturer and he has also managed to lead a small church through some difficult waters and into good health, so he knows what he’s on about.

As one who is now leading a small church – and very happy to be doing so – I have found great joy in the kind of community that the smaller expression creates. There are things that are harder when you are ‘small’, but almost anything that needs to be done to create disciples can be done well by the smaller crew.

I look forward to reading Andre’s thoughts.

Functional and Flexible

Posted on by
1

Its ironic if not tragic that the very religion that was waiting on a Messiah failed to recognise him when he came – and then rather than admitting their mistake after his resurrection, decided to persecute and kill his disciples.

It seems little of the conflict we see in the gospels and the book of Acts is related to religion per se, but in fact is more about power and authority and control. Its about ‘who gets to call the shots’.

That Judaism wasn’t able to contain the new move of God that arrived in Jesus is somewhat bizarre, and yet quite understandable. He came along claiming to be a (the) king, and Messiah, but then broke many of their cherished religious rules. He established a community of people with huge influence and supernatural power (see Acts 3-5) who did not conform to the established order either.

And it wasn’t just that they were mavericks. I think that’s too easy a solution and maybe too appealing for those with an anti-authoritarian streak of their own.

They were people who had learnt a whole new way of life – a way of life that was in sync with the priorities of God – and oddly enough sometimes out of sync with the priorities of their own religious tradition. Whatever structures had formed within Judaism (and no doubt some of them were good) were now serving to undermine the future of their faith rather than advance it and the main culprits were the ones in power – the elders and chief priests – the Sanhedrin.

I wonder what would have happened if the Sanhedrin had been able to say ‘wow – God is really at work among us – take a look at that!’ I wonder what have happened if they had embraced this new move of God rather than fighting it.

Instead the ‘system’ wouldn’t bend. Power could not be re-allocated and the people were the casualty. As I was reflecting on this last week I was thinking again that any structures in churches must always be functional and flexible. They need to serve the cause and the people and be easily adaptable when they fail to do so.

Everything has structure of some sort, so to be ‘anti-structure’ is just a bit naive, but to recognise that structures can facilitate either good health or poor health is important. In Acts 6 the apostles need to work out a ‘food roster’ for the widows who weren’t getting their fair share. We don’t have one of them today… and rightly so because its a non-issue.

But we still seem to have many other irrelevant or superfluous structures that don’t change easily. If you aren’t sure what is a ‘not negotiable’ structure in your community then just try and change it. You will soon find out.

So the challenge to us this week as we read this book of Acts is to consider how to create and sustain a church community that has healthy structures and then to recognise when those structures need to change without worrying about who ‘gets control’.

Random Reflections on Acts

Posted on by
2

This week at QBC we get stuck into the book of Acts so lately I’ve been reading it again and reflecting on it to get my head & heart in the right space to approach it.

I reckon its a grenade just waiting to explode the life of any church that reads it and I’m both genuinely excited and apprehensive about what it could bring.

Of course we could just teach thru it systematically and (re) learn all the same stuff we have done for the last umpteen years or we could lob that grenade in and see what new inspiration come from it… Perhaps ‘grenade’ is the wrong image as its one of destruction and read freshly Acts can be incredibly constructive, but perhaps some deconstruction is required first.

For example as I began reading Acts I found I was placing myself in the disciples shoes and asking ‘so what do we do now?’ Jesus dies, comes back, spends 40 days hanging with us, then ascends and we are left with the commission to ‘go and make disciples of all people groups, baptising and teaching them to obey eveything they had been commanded from Christ.’

‘So how shall we do that?…’ must have been a prime question.

And hopefully they would look back to the time spent with Jesus to see how he went about his mission and how they were involved with that. Hopefully they would immediately be asking questions of establishing the kingdom on earth. Hopefully they would be asking ‘so what really matters?’

What I can’t imagine them doing is immediately figuring out who was responsible for running the weekend gig. What I can’t see them doing is drawing up a roster for music and preaching… Forgive me if I sound cynical, but I am constantly disturbed that the priorities of the church in the 21st C seem so different from those of the first Christians. And I don’t want to stop being disturbed until I see us really grappling with the questions. I understand that we live at a different time in history and I don’t think our goal is to be a first century church. But in the process of reading the book of Acts it seems almost impossible not to read it thru the lens of our 21st C experience.

When we read the classic Acts descriptions of church being both from home to home and in the temple courts its easy to read that as ‘small groups’ and ‘Sunday worship’ because that is our frame of reference. But that wasn’t where they were starting. Jesus didn’t leave them with the church planting manual that explained how to move people from ‘community to core’, in 5 steps.

So when we look at the highly predictable format that the vast majority of 21stC churches take I can’t help but imagine that if Jesus lobbed in, he might say ‘really?… that’s what you thought I wanted you to focus on?…’ I am sure he would be glad that we hold some core DNA, but I think he’d be somewhat mystified that our core DNA had become our denominational / cultural preferences rather than the foundational elements of a church.

I sense that our familiarity with ecclesial processes and procedures of all kinds may have a tendency to stunt our ability to read this book afresh. We may struggle to ‘clear our heads’ and think afresh about what the mission of church is.

As I observe it in the western world the biggest priority for the church is to run the Sunday service and to do that as best we can. Can someone please find that priority for me in the book of Acts?…

Seriously, I’m not for dissing the importance of meeting together, but I can’t help but wonder if our enemy may have created a perfect distraction for us – a seemingly positive distraction – that consumes so much of our time, energy and resources that we find it hard to get on with the other things that matter to the establishment of the kingdom.

Anyway that’s probably incendiary enough to provoke some thinking and to give you a taste of what I see as I start to read this book. I see the danger of both rigid thinking – that reads Acts thru the lens of our own expeirience and lazy thinking that says its all too hard to re-imagine, but I hope to lead us in some creative thinking that will ask questions of ‘what if?’ and see where they lead.

Purposeful Leadership

Posted on by
3

When I finished work at one of the churches where I was a pastor one of the members of the congregation who I liked and respected suggested to me that in the future it would be wise for me to consider how to lead people rather than ‘drive’ them. It was a very helpful piece of input that has made more sense with each passing year.

He had observed that when I wanted to move a bunch of people in a direction I would approach the task somewhat forcefully and with minimal room for negotiation. Many would come because they liked me and I could do the ‘visionary’ thing, (or they had no better ideas) but it had the trade off of lower buy in from others and yet another group feeling pushed around or bullied into a place they had no desire to be.

When a youth pastor does this, young people (often/usually) cheer and ‘rah-rah’ because they want someone with rabid conviction to lead them. Many want to be part of something and a strong sense of direction adds to this.

Some would call this ‘strong leadership’ and in one sense I guess it is. It requires significant strength to shove a bunch of people in a direction and keep them there. Some days though it resembles the feeling of pushing a car uphill. You exert a lot of effort to make the gains and if you take yours hands off then the whole thing rolls back the other way (and often over the top of you)

In the next phase of leadership (with Upstream), I took a much gentler more collaborative approach, but because I wasn’t very skilled at it I found it hard – and I think people found it hard. I was trying to learn a different way of leading and it wasn’t coming naturally or easily. I was naturally directive, and they knew me as such, so to invite other people into the process was not easy. I wasn’t at all sure how to genuinely engage other people’s input while still leading with strong personal conviction.

In time I found my balance again and was able to be myself in that different mode. I learnt how to invite participation and yet hold strong opinions where they mattered. (In a smaller forum directive leadership just seems completely odd anyway.)

The last couple of years at QBC have involved re-thinking leadership yet again. We are not a large church, but we are an ‘established church’ with some set protocols and procedures – for better and for worse. So it has been an interesting exercise re-discovering leadership yet again in a different context. Some folks like the strong directive leader – so long as the direction is one that they can agree with. Others like the more consultative approach and need to have their input considered. One of the challenges in leading has been simply to navigate the spectrum of expectations that exist and not to just bow to the loudest voices.

There has been a need for highly collaborative decision making at some points and at other times a need to just ‘draw a line in the sand’. I think that perhaps the last 10 years have helped me to see what things are genuinely ‘line in the sand’ issues and what are of no real consequence.

On reflection I would hope that the leadership I give now would be purposeful, but not driven and that our directions would spring from giving people the opportunities to participate in the process, yet also recognising that sometimes leaders just see stuff and know stuff and need to make decisions. And these days I feel better placed to be able to discern which decisions require which approach.

We have a church leader’s meeting tonight and part of our agenda is to look at what we feel are our priorities for the coming year and then to discuss how we begin to lead people towards these. The ‘priorities’ were agreed on in an open church day of prayer and planning towards the end of last year (an all welcome gig) and now we are looking to help people on the journey of making them more than words on a page – hence the few minutes of personal reflection…

I’d be interested to hear the observations and learnings of others who have been in a range of different leadership roles.

What have you learnt? And what are the bigger priorities that need to be considered?

“If it Aint Broke…

Posted on by
Reply

Fix it anyway…”

So was the advice of Calvin Miller when he came to Perth many years ago to teach a preaching class.

It stuck with me. What he was encouraging people to do was to keep change a part of life and the culture of the church community, that way there wouldn’t be battles every time something actually needed serious adjustment.

Change for change’s sake?…

I don’t think so – more ‘change for health’s sake’. If we are adaptable and flexible then we can morph and change as we need to, when we need to. But if we start to ossify then change becomes difficult and often involves conflict.

So in reality the chances of health in any community is more likely if people are free to embrace change.

That said, I haven’t changed this blog’s appearance in a very long time. Partly because its the look and feel that I like, but it is probably overdue for a good overhaul and freshen up.

So expect some changes around here…

Faithfulness and Fire

Posted on by
Reply

I was chatting with ‘R’ last week about what the coming year looks like for our church (QBC). In some ways its more of the same – a keeping going in the same direction and being faithful to what we feel God has called us to.

As we talked I had to agree that faithfulness is good, but as ‘R’ said, we really want to see some ‘fire’, some passion in the lives of people, some spiritual battles fought and won, some adventure and faith expressed in risk rather than doggedness.

We have stablilised nicely as a church. We have a healthy bunch of people who seem to get on well together and we can be grateful for that, but wouldn’t it be great to see a ‘bomb go off’ under QBC that ignites it into a dynamic community of people inspired by God and willing to take great risks of faith?

Just a balance to the need for faithfulness…

Its good to be faithful and I think we have done that one pretty well for a while now, but as we come to the book of Acts early in the year I’d like to think we would be asking ‘why doesn’t the 21st C church look a bit more like the 1st C church?’ Of course there are differences due to context, but I get the sense there was energy, conviction and power in those first Christians that is strangely foreign to us here and now.

Let’s have some fire along with the faithfulness I say!