I was just down at Bob Janes getting a tyre fitted to the beast and killed the time by reading Readers Digest. It sounds pretty lame, but they have some great articles in there!!
The one I liked referred to a study done in England where people were asked what they would add to the list of 7 deadly sins…
Here’s what they said:
8. Apathy
9. Hypocrisy
10. Indifference
11. Selfishness
See a theme emerging there?
I reckon apathy and indifference ought to have made the cut the first time round!
Garth is a pretty regular reader here and today while I was reading his blog I came across this autobiographical account of what he learnt in his own venture into planting a missional community.
Its a story about the community that was and what may have brought it undone.
I’d say read the whole lot, but here are a few snippets that caught my attention
‘"words, ideas, and passion are nothing without action."
I sometimes think this is why people church hop, they don’t really know why, they just get enough teaching at one place until it gets stale, then there’s nothing new, but if they were shown how to walk in this theory, they might stay and walk in the destiny for which they were born. But alas, they roam for a new teaching, a new learning, a new ear tickle…..pity ….because they were born for more than that.’
‘Why didn’t it continue?
It had no ‘follow through’. It became theoretical. Just the way our modernist heritage liked it!’
‘My advice to any fledling emergent communities? People have to be prepared to live the learning and not just move onto another ‘teaching’. Look for need, seek to serve. Connect significantly and create community with those outside the church, live in their world too, expand your horizons, know their friends.’
Occasionally I feel myself too ‘action orientated’ but maybe given our heritage of talking lots and doing little it is a necessary quality for a church of our sort.
Actually reflecting on my previous post I reckon this is one of the sparks that has been ignited in me over the years – a desire to see the church actually do the stuff it talks about rather than simpy having more meetings to work it out. This actually gets quite tiring as non action oriented folks can make such activism seem like unspiritual drivenness.
Reality is we need time for reflection and contemplation as well as focused action.
Tonight we watched a DVD made during ‘Surrender’, the UNOH gig in Melbourne earlier this year.
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The DVD was of Kiwi, Mick Duncan letting rip on the whole idea of living passionately. Very inspiring – even on DVD 4 months later!
One of his statements was ‘I lament the death of outrage in our churches’. We no longer get mad at the stuff God gets mad at. We don’t get angry and furious and wild at the state of the world we live in… and he suggests maybe we ought to.
He suggested that each of us has at least a ‘spark’ of passion in us that could become a blazing fire if we were willing to let it burn, and that spark is connected to some of the experiences that have shaped us and made us who we are today.
He shared stories of Rosa Parkes sitting on the ‘white seat’ on the bus, of Dietrich Boenhoffer muggling Jews out of Nazi Germany and of Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple – all ‘anti-social’ acts. All acts that were not in keeping with the status quo, but acts that reflected the character of God.
I think there’s something in the idea that the gospel produces ‘anti-social behaviour’, but only because what is socially acceptable is a non-gospel lifestyle.
Having been around churches for a long time I felt deeply what he was saying – that our churches are full of ‘nice’ people, but we desperately need a few more wild people to reignite the passions that seem to have been quelled in so many people. The ‘gospel of nice’ has taken over and the gospel of radical discipleship and counter-cultural living has been reframed to fit a squeaky clean middle class paradigm.
The thing that disturbs me about so much of white middle class evangelicalism (that has been my heritage) is that it is so much about ‘nice’ and so little about ‘fight’ and ‘passion’. Passionate people tend to create discomfort because they stir us. They arouse in us what we wish we were like and often its easier to ignore that feeling than to pursue it.
I had a great time with a mate today discussing how we are going as a team. One of the things we discussed was the way in which a team like ours needs to be led.
He suggested that I should consider leading more strongly – setting the pace a bit more and giving more direction. I haven’t done a lot of this – but it has been very intentional. It even goes against my natural leadership style.
But… I still believe it is the right thing to do.
You see in an established church of 200 people when the pastor / leader says ‘here is the vision – lets go!’ 30 or 40 people say ‘yeah! Count me in’. Around another 50 say hmmm, looks good, lets check it out, 50 say hmmmm…. not so sure convince me and the rest refuse to get on board.
BUT… right or wrong, in an established church with a significant core of 40 or so followers you can generate momentum and the ‘uncertain/dissenters’ can be sometimes be won or board or encouraged to go somewhere else.
You know the line ‘if you’re not on board with the vision then maybe this isn’t the church for you’. And maybe that is true. Churches can’t be all things to all people.
But in a team of 14 people you can’t operate in the same way. I have been figuring this out as I have been going, but I am increasingly convinced that especially at this stage we need to make significant decisions as a team and I need to accept a more facilitative role.
Why?
Because if I ‘lead strongly’, give direction and call people to it, I might get them there by strength of personality and their reluctance to challenge my covictions, but if they haven’t been a vital part of setting the direction and if they don’t own the direction deeply they aren’t really on board and may well bale when things get difficult.
Right now I think we need to move together more than we need to move quickly.
I wish I could nobly say that this is a way of leading that I enjoy and find easy, but it has actually been pretty frustrating at times. I think I know the answers to many of the question we face – I have been chewing them around for a looong time.
free needful things But we need to deal with these foudational community shaping decisions together as they need to be our answers – not just my answers.
At the moment the issues we face as a team are because we have decided together to choose the route we are on. I don’t feel deep personal responsibility for our struggles because we have moved together and decided on this course together. We are all responsible for where we are at – both the good and the bad – and truth be told there isn’t much bad.
Maybe the day will come when our mission team needs a different type of leadership from me, maybe not…
I am enjoying the journey God has got me on leading more instinctively and trusting those feelings rather than trusting my tried and tested methods.
Today I met with my mate Steve McAlpine who has been looking at trying to get Steve Timmis from Crowded House in Sheffield to come to Perth.
We were discussing and teeing up his visit for June next year. This guy sounds like a sharp theologian and effective practicioner. It’ll be great to have in Perth meeting with our local missionaries.
Here’s a sample of his stuff here.
We’ll running some broad brush exposure days for folks new to missional paradigms as well as some intense / indepth stuff for those who are further down the track in their thinking on this stuff.
problem child 3 junior in love divx download Last night I went to the wedding of the very lovely Rachel Harris. Rachel is a local legend and now she is married will be heading off to Sydney. We will miss her!
While there I met someone who was interested in what we are doing and he asked me to describe a typical day…
I began to answer him and found myself fumbling for a description. I listed some priorities and tasks that I wanted to accomplish, but I really don’t have a typical day…
As I began to try and articulate how my life was organised he reflected back ‘it sounds like you are paid to be available to people’.
divx prophecy the What a great summation!
Number one priority is to be available to people as they seek God. You can’t schedule that.
Over the last year I have made a point of dropping in at our local tavern each Friday afternoon to hang out there and maybe make some connections with local people.
elephant man the movie This activity began well as I found myself meeting people each week and a regular crew were forming who I was feeling a part of.
Over the last 4 months I have been more erratic in my own time spent there, but the familiar faces have also seemed to disappear. Its as if there is a different crowd each week now and I feel a bit dislocated.
Up until my last two visits (today being one of them) I have always been able to easily strike up a conversation with someone. Maybe I’m just tired… Maybe its just not an easy scene… or maybe its time to explore some other places to find connections…
The jury is out, but I am wondering about the merit of continuing this regular Friday gig. Perhaps when the Brighton tavern finally goes up next year I can start it up again – perhaps when I finish teaching and don’t feel so reclusive on a Friday afternoon I will have some energy.
Perhaps… I dunno… I’m just not sure what to do here.
Ok that’s enough public embarrassment for ‘Bec the chuckler’. I will take her off the top of my blog now with a new post… Sorry Bec!!
I have 5 different talks I have been preparing this morning… Yes that is difficult! But different ideas hit me at different times for each talk so I keep moving between them. As you can imagine I haven’t been very focused.
This Sunday I head out to Chidlow where I have been asked to speak about the difference between the incarnational and the attractional church. Then the others are for our Forge intensive later this month on Pioneering Leadership.
They are:
‘The Wild Frontier’ – with the geographical missionary settings pretty well accounted for now this one looks at the pioneering challenge of reaching the whole new world of post-modernity/christendom etc etc…
‘Good to Great in Missional Communities’ – looking at Jim Collins book and how it applies to pioneering new church plants. Some great insights there!
‘Pioneering Discoveries’ – just the stuff I have learnt in the last 2 years.
‘Blah Blah Blah’ – the final session challenging people to not just talk but act – to follow the calling wherever it leads – to ‘just do it’.
Some days its hard to lock myself away and prepare stuff – but when I don’t do it I always regret it one or two days before the event!backwoods the divx online
At last week’s round table meeting with the Church of Christ youth pastors we discussed the whole thing of planting an ’emerging church’ and I sensed the need to clarify that its not for everyone.
In fact its probably not for lots of people…
Just as planting a typical church is not for everyone I would suggest there are some character qualities that enhance a person’s chances of success and some that would be less desirable.
Perhaps the top of my list is what you might call being a ‘self starter’, or an ‘initiative taker’. So far no one has come to my door and asked me for information about Jesus… No one has invited me to join a community group, and no one who I hadn’t met first has asked me into their home.
Hmmm… tell you something?!
I’d suggest that if a person isn’t prepared to make the first move then it’ll be a long, lonely and possibly disillusioning experience. I sense the ability to grab the bull by the horns and take initiative in meeting people is for me possibly the single biggest quality a church planter needs.
Alongside this would be the ability to live with chaos, ambiguity and uncertainty cheaper by the dozen 2 download free beowulf grendel divx movie online . This is pretty hard at times as we come from well established and ordered systems that have been part of our lives for a long time.
But in an emerging missional setting we are ‘building the bridge as we walk on it’, learning as we go and changing as we need to. We are an experiment in progress and those seeking stability and predictability will be disturbed by the lack of familiarity. Ultimately there needs to be some systems established as no organism can live in a constant state of chaos, but these will take time to form and may even mutate regularly as the church evolves.
Clarity of vision would also be very high on the list of important qualities. It can be easy to get distracted from the main game or to be swayed by the opinions of other strong people. While you may not need to have filled in all the blanks, a well distilled concept of who you are and what you are doing is essential.
The longer I do this the stronger my own sense of calling to being a missionary becomes and the stronger is my committment to leading a team of people who also see themselves as urban missionaries. I don’t want to preach good sermons or run great Sunday services. I will do these things if they are what missionaries do, but I won’t be chasing them in themselves.
Have I forgotten qualities like love, patience, sense of humour, etc etc?…
Nope – there are many essentials – some I would take as ‘givens’ – but my observation of how we have planted churches over the years would suggest that others need to be spelt out a little more clearly!
Just my two bobs worth
