The Relational Mission

Is Both/And Possible?

2012-02-13T09:31:00.000-08:00

When you survey the literature about small groups and community, something becomes quite clear. There seems to be two distinct camps. On one side you find those who write and speak about how to develop "connecting" small groups. On the other side there are those talking about missional communities and missional small groups. In most cases, each side talks about their approach in exclusion to the other experience.

Let me be clear: writers about connecting small group structures focus on how to develop systems and curriculum that focuses on things like closing the back door, making the church 'sticky' and getting 100% of the church involved in groups. Of course there is a kind of life that they want those groups to experience, usually identified as "healthy" but the system is set up to connect people who attend the weekend services.

Writers about missional community focus things like creating a way of life that is in contrast to the dominant culture, embracing a set of 'forgotten ways', developing a discipleship culture, experimenting with ways of engaging the neighborhood and even abandoning traditional forms of church life.

There seems to be a concrete wall between these two sets of ideas. The assumption is that the ways of thinking are mutually exclusive. And that might be the case, but we have forced people to choose according to an either/or paradigm. You are either leading a traditional church that wants to connect people or you are doing something radical which gets equated with being missional. Is this the only option?

Can we move beyond this either/or mindset? Isn't the both/and approach just as viable? And in many cases more so? I know it complicates things to combine two sets of ideas that seem to be mutually exclusive, but I'd like to suggest that this is exactly the approach that most churches need to take at this juncture in American church life.

If we could do both/and, both connecting small groups and missional communities, what would it look like? More tomorrow. This is the first in a series that I've written.

How Spiritual Growth Really Occurs?

2012-02-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

"I have come to see how I am not the protagonist of God's story. In fact, I am not even a main character. This does not diminish my importance or value in God's eyes. It is simply a confession of the fact that God acts and initiates, and our part is simply a response to his initiation. But so often, we focus way too much upon our initiation and too little on what God does."

This is a paragraph from a book manuscript that I'm writing. Anyway, a friend has read an early draft of the book and found this paragraph to be helpful. I am been meditating on it over the last few days to see if it is really saying what I want it to say. Here I want to experiment with a few expanded thoughts.

Scot McKnight's book, The King Jesus Gospel, helps us to see that in order to understand what the Bible means by the word "gospel" that we need to think in four big ideas:

The Story of Israel/the Bible
The Story of Jesus
The Plan of Salvation
The Method of Persuasion

Usually we define of the "gospel" through the lens of "the plan of salvation" idea. But he states that when we do this we fail to understand what salvation is all about. He writes, "The Plan of Salvation flows out of the Story of Israel/Bible and the Story of Jesus. The Bible's Story from Israel and Jesus is the saving Story" (37).

If we make the "gospel" primarily about the plan of salvation—something which has largely shaped the imagination of the American church and especially American evangelicalism—then it's almost impossible not to read the Bible through the lens of my "personal"—and therefore individualistic—salvation experience. As a result, "I" then put myself at the center of the Bible. Every Bible passage becomes about "me." Then we come to the Bible with questions like these:

What does this passage say about God's plan for my life?
What do I need to change about my life?
What blessings will come my way if I obey this passage?
What is God saying to me through this passage?

As I write this, I realize just how much I've been taught and have taught others to read the Bible with such questions in mind. But this is unavoidable if we myopically read the Bible through the tiny lens of "God's plan of salvation for me." Then American consumerism—driven by free-market economic theory—shapes our imagination to make purchasing decisions purely on my self-interests. We turn God, the Bible, and his salvation into a way that I can have the "best life now." Doesn't this Bible call this selfishness? Doesn't the Bible say something about "taking up our cross and dying"? I'm sorry but teaching like that does not fit Adam Smith's idea of free-market economics. (I knew my undergraduate degree in economics would come in handy at some point in my life.)

I've been wrestling with a recipe for spiritual growth: Nine parts mystery and one part effort on my part. The more I walk with God, the more I see this to be true. It's not about me. Now if I don't offer my one part of effort and develop spiritual disciplines, I miss out on most of the nine parts of mystery. (In other words, this is no excuse for laziness.) But my one part of effort is not about trying to focus my attention more and more on what I need to be doing and how I need to apply some nugget of truth. My one part is to put my effort into allowing my imagination to be shaped by God's grand and mysterious story.

Let me say it again: My one part is NOT to focus on my actions and develop some pragmatic self-help steps for becoming a better Christian. My one part is to focus my heart, soul, mind and strength on the mysterious story of God's salvation of the world. And as I allow this story to shape me, my actions change. I relinquish control and my need to make myself a better Christian. My love grows organically. I become the kind of person that I was created to be.

This is God's story. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the main actor. I've got a bit role, but when when I really see what the Father, Son and Spirit are doing in the world, my role takes on huge significance. My life matters. I become a change agent for Kingdom life, not because I'm following someone's plan to change the world for God, but because I am truly different.

Preparing People for Missional Community

2012-02-08T08:25:00.000-08:00

There is a ton of talk about missional community right now. Reggie McNeal provides a very informative survey of the various expressions of or approaches to this vision in his book Missional Communities: The Rise of the Post-Congregational Church. (Watch for my review of this book in the next couple of days.)

Last week, I talked with a Presbyterian pastor who has a heart for developing community that, in his words, "does life at the margins." But he also realizes that most of the people in his church are not ready for this. This is a common conversation I am having now. Some have jumped quickly into the missional community vision, turning all of their groups into MCs by giving them a new name. Then they realize after the fact that their people are not prepared for life in community on mission.

So if you have a vision for missional community and you only have a handful of people who are ready for it, what do you do with the rest of your people. Here are some thoughts to get you started:

Don't think either/or. Think both/and. I've found that most established churches will need both "normal" small groups and "missional" communities. The both/and approach may not be permanent, but it's necessary to prepare people for missional living.
Develop a "normal" small group strategy that has the goal of connecting people, while providing an opportunity for people take steps toward something more. There is no one-approach-fits-all strategy. Right now I am helping one church adapt aspects of Activate by Nelson Searcy, another church adapt the principles found in Sticky Church by Larry Osborne, and another develop a unique strategy that incorporates their long-running success with Alpha. For five years in the church in Saint Paul, we adapted the church-wide campaign approach. Find and develop a preparation strategy that fits you. Don't copy the exact plan of someone else.
Think short-term small groups: six-weeks, semesters or 9 months. Resist the temptation to create and maintain perpetual groups of people who are not equipped to live out God's mission in our neighborhoods. This gives you an out if the group is not taking steps toward the vision.
Train your leaders of these short-term groups with something very basic. Don't overwhelm them with a big book that they won't read or a day-long training that they will wish they had skipped. Give them a basic introductory training, some short articles and some youtube links. Then follow up with conversations and some just-in-time training.
When a group looks like they are asking for something more than the normal experience, don't shock them with the radical vision for missional community yet. Give them an experiment that they can handle. Then build on that. Here's a link to some free curriculum called The Journey Together that helps a group discover a different way of doing life together which will prepare them for missional community.

That's enough for now. If you are interested, my book MissioRelate goes into much greater depth on this topic. But watch for more on this in the days to come.

Having a Great Ministry, One Like John the Baptist

2012-02-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

"He must increase, I must decrease." These words were the climax of the ministry of John the Baptist. They are words that preach really well because they tap into our popular slogans like "it's all about Jesus", "Jesus is the answer" or "Jesus is all I need." Don't get me wrong, I'm not making fun of these slogans. Tomorrow night I will be training a bunch of small group leaders about the importance of making Jesus the center of a small group.

But let's get real. We like to say these words, but they are a lot harder to actually embrace. Nobody really says what we are thinking: "I want to lift up Jesus all the while "I" also become somebody along the way." I know I'm not the only one who struggles with this. It's the way of celebrity church life today. There are so many personalities, promotional stunts and pretty faces leading the charge within the church. It's almost impossible today not to gather around certain names, those with whom we align. Just pick your favorite from John Piper on conservative end of the spectrum to Brian McLaren on the emergent end.

Quite honestly, (can I be honest?) I found myself getting caught up in this as I try to get this new ministry going. As much as I try not to, I feel the pressue to "carve out my nich", to "create a brand", to "portray an image in the social network."

But this morning the words, "He much increase, I must decrease" ring in my head. Wow! Not exactly a great way to build a ministry or raise funds! I wonder how this will go over as I try to pay bills and buy a new computer as this one goes on the skids.

As I reflected on these words, I put myself in the sandals of John the Baptist. He was a man who was told he was special from the very beginning. And it was true. He was a miracle baby. His parents were ancient and an angel slapped his dad mute for nine months when he did not believe that his 90 year old wife was pregnant. Jesus called him the greatest of all the prophets. Yet his ministry was all about pointing away from himself, stepping into the background by going to jail and getting his head chopped off. Not exactly how we define a great Christian leader today.

I'm not sure how many of the great celebrity leaders we have in the church today can say that they were a miracle baby and that the call on their life was a clear as this. Because my parents were told that they could not have children and then after ten years of marriage I showed up, I thought I might have a special call on my life. But no angel showed up to my dad and announced my coming. My mom didn't have a pregnant teenage virgin cousin come visit her. So there was no leaping in my mother's womb.

Whatever vocation I'm in—whether it's writing and preaching, or training churches in how to develop small groups and missional communities, or working at the local grocery store, or staying at home to take care of the kids—my calling is "he must increase, I must decrease." Maybe that's exactly the calling I need to embrace.

Whether we are a leader of a church, a small group or a missional community, our success needs to be measured this this standard and no other: Does our life and leadership really point to Jesus? Do we offer them Jesus or do we connect people directly to ourselves? Do we give away nice platitudes that make people feel better or are we inviting them to listen to what Jesus might tell them?

He must increase. I must decrease. I'm not sure that there are any more counter-cultural words found in the Bible. Will we heed them?

Teamwork in Your Small Group

2012-02-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

Is your group just a group of individuals who happen to meet once a week or has it become a team? Teams always come in groups, but groups don't always become teams. And if you want to lead your group into a rewarding experience, it's helpful to know the difference. Here's a short video that illustrates the importance of teamwork:

What do you see going on in this video?

How does teamwork protect individuals from circumstances of life and the attacks of the enemy?

What makes this group a team?

How can you help your group take steps toward becoming a team?

(A note to small group pastors: This is the kind of stuff that you can send out to your leaders on a weekly basis that will help equip them.)

Missional Music: Radical, Ordinary or Something Else

2012-02-02T08:01:00.000-08:00

Life is a song that we sing. Sometimes I think about the life song sung by heroes of the faith like Mother Theresa as she worked with the poor in India or Jackie Pullinger as she helps drug addicts find Jesus in Hong Kong or some who moved to Haiti to work with victims of the earthquake. I think about the radical song they have sung and the impact they have had on the world. Their distant stories touch me and cause me to thank God for people who sing such songs and make the world a better place.

Then I think about my life and my song. I'm no hero. I don't live in the slums of India nor with drug addicts in Honk Kong. I've never been to Haiti nor participated in disaster relief. When I look at my life the song I sing could be judged as ordinary, maybe even "unradical." In fact, my life is shaped by relatively ordinary stuff of being a husband, father, church leader, and employee. No one would call me a zealot, a radical or someone who is taking missional "leaps of faith."

As I've reflected on what it means to sing the song of mission in the Western world, I'm not sure that "radical" or zealotry is the best approach for most. I'm not saying that it does not work for some, but i question whether it's the best approach for most. When someone goes oversees or quits their job to enter I to full-time ministry or when people volunteer in sugnificant ways to support a ministry that is viewed as radical. But is radical the only approach to making an impact? Let me challenge that with two points:

First, a so-called "radical" Christian can work in full-time ministry while still sing the song that the majority culture sings. He can be just as much as self-consumed workaholic as a missionary or volunteer leader as anyone else. The song we sing often has little to do with our jobs or volunteer activities. The song we sing flows out the hidden well within. It's not a song rooted in actions and daily activities.

Second, the way a person sings in the midst of life in the ordinary everydayness of life (as a teacher, mother, day-laborer, engineer) may very well be as radical as anything done by those we typically see as being radical Christians. To sing a song of love, forgiveness and mission in he midst of a workplace filled with people consumed by strife, stress and the search for significance sings a similar song sung by Mother Teresa. To live simply and have the financial margin to bless people in need and even walk with them during tough times might be the song that leads to changed lives.

The song you sing has more to do with who you are than what you do, whether your life is radical or ordinary. The Spirit of God is shaping each of us, changing us from the inside out. As a result, our life song "is" missional as opposed to trying to do stuff that we see others doing that looks "missional." Being always includes doing. But doing missional stuff does not always include being missional. As I write this I'm reminded of Paul's words, "If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."

Training Small Group Leaders

2012-02-01T08:22:00.000-08:00

Are you a good trainer?

Here are a few questions that can help you answer this question. Answer all of these on a scale of 1-10 (10 being you agree totally with the statement, 0 being you disagree totally):

Leading a training event gives me tons of energy?
When I lead a training, I work hard to speak no more than 60% of the time.
Participants interact, ask questions, contribute creative ideas at least 40% of the time.
In training sessions, we come up with collaborative solutions and apply the concepts presented.
After a training session, people express a desire for more.

This is not a scientific test, but if your score is less than 35, your training might very well be a barrier to small group development. I tend to be the kind of person who likes to teach, but through the years, I've learned the skills to create training environments. And I've found that I really like doing it. At the same time, how to lead good training, the kind that large companies pay professional trainers thousands of dollars to lead, is not something that we talk about in the church that much. We tend to emphasize things like pastoral care, preaching and strategic leadership. All of these are important, but small group leaders need training, not sermons. Talking heads can pass on a lot of information, but it does not result in a learning environment that leads to transformation.

So what do you do about it? Here are a few ideas?:

Discover your strengths? I find that most people, including pastors, don't know the things which they have a propensity to do really well. Strength theory (see Now Discover Your Strengths) states that focusing on our top five strengths produces more results than if we try to elevate our weaknesses to an acceptable level. When we focus on our weaknesses we spend an great deal of energy and get very little in return. If your strengths have nothing to do with training then stop doing it the way you are doing it.
Develop a way of training that fits your strengths. If you are really good at pastoral care and mentoring, do your training in small groups of two or three at a coffee shop. If you are big on gathering information, read books, summarize what you are learning and write short blog pieces or record short youtube videos. Then send them out to your leaders. Find ways of training leaders that fit who you are.
There is tons of stuff on the web that you can forward on to your people. I started a new series on my blog where I will be posting a Small Group Leader tip once per week, based on something I've found out there on the www. Here is the first one if you have not yet seen it. Another option is to subscribe to the video training developed by www.rightnowtraining.org.
For public training, find someone who is good at it and work with them to lead it. This might be a person in your ministry. It might mean bringing in a trainer from the outside. Good trainers can customize and apply the training to your local context. They don't just come in with their pre-developed curriculum that they give to all churches.
Attend a small group leader training event.
Finally, whatever you do, always secure feedback from your leaders.

You will need to develop a multi-dimentional training strategy. But that's next week's Small Group Point Leader post.

What I Want on My Birthday

2012-01-31T00:30:00.000-08:00

So today I turn 42. Wow! That's weird to write. I don't feel that old. Maybe it's because my wife still looks 26. She says it's love that makes me think this, but it's true. Anyway, I thought I'd share what I want for my birthday. Instead of asking for something like Amazon gift cards (how's that for a subtle hint?), I decided to give something away today. I asked my publisher if we could give away a chapter in my book MissioRelate, and he agreed. So here you go. Click here and you can download it for free.

If you want to know more about the book, click here. And here it is on Amazon.

Now what you can give me on my birthday. If you know a pastor, a small group leader or a church leader, would you let him or her know about this free chapter download? This would be better than eating cake ... well I'm on diet and cake isn't an option anyway.

Have a great day! I'm gong to. We get a date night tonight. That's rare with four kids.

Deep Wisdom for Leading Community

2012-01-30T12:34:00.000-08:00

I wish every small group leader and every leader of a missional community would watch this short video and listen--really listen--to these words. Jean Vanier understands community, leadership and ministry at a depth that challenges us to slow down and reflect on the way we minister to others. His perspective has been shaped through the school of ministry. This is not theory. It's a lived experience. It's deep wisdom, not just another trick or strategy for growing your group.

If you listen to these words, they will penetrate your heart. You will have to sit with them because you will not immediately know what to do with them, but you will sense the Spirit speaking with deep wisdom.

If we want our small groups (or whatever you call your community gatherings) to go beyond being a Bible study and enter into a shared life that demonstrates and experiences the character and compassion of Jesus, we need to be shaped by this kind of wisdom.

The Broken Heart of God

2012-01-30T05:14:00.001-08:00

Over the last few days, Shawna and I have been having to discipline two of our kids more than usual. Because of the repetition of the disobedience, we've had to be very strict and stern in our response. This morning I had to be stern again.

While in worship today, my heart was breaking for our children. My heart breaks because we are having to be so strong in our discipline. I hate this. I want to embrace, bless and communicate how much they mean to me. My heart delights in them. They bring me great joy. I want to express this and bless them.

However, right now if I do that, they will assume that their actions are ok. If I forego the discipline because I don't want them to experience any distance or unhappiness, I'm being less than loving. I so desire them to express my heart but they cannot know the love we have for them as parents if we turn love into "nice."

I've heard the verse about God the Father disciplining those he loves hundreds of times. But this verse came to life to me in a new way. In some ways I saw God's discipline mechanically. It was his natural, computer-like response to disobedience. I didn't see his broken heart, not just because we disobey but also because he can't shower us with his embrace. I'm still searching for words to express this new understanding of God's passion for us. It's as if he must build a dam that holds back his embrace so that he can discipline us in order to prepare us to handle the embrace. But the fact that he has to hold it back still breaks his heart.

Small Group Leadership—The Control Approach

2012-01-27T06:54:00.000-08:00

What kind of group leader are you? Some leaders are quite passive and let the group meander wherever it wants. Some leaders take the opposite approach. They control everything that goes on in the small group, much like that found in this little clip from The Office:

What are the results of controlling leadership in a small group?

Why do leaders feel the need to be controlling?

How does controlling leadership hinder God's mission through the group?

Surprised by the Unexpected God

2012-01-26T07:55:00.000-08:00

"We have never seen anything like this." —Mark 2:12

This was the response of the people after Jesus healed the paralyzed man in Capernaum. You know the one where the four men lowered down the man through the hole they made in the roof.

I wonder to what degree authentic encounters with Jesus are marked by "our not having seen anything like it." I wonder if knowing God is really about encountering the unexpected. I wonder this because so little that we do in the church seems to be marked by this. How rarely do we respond with "We have never seen anything like this." We all have our ways of doing things, our patterns that are established. I'm not knocking traditions or even liturgies and promoting some kind of free-flowing anti-structure approach. (That argument does not hold water because even those who embrace some kind of "anti-structure" approach to church life actually develop a tradition. They just refuse to see that.)

No I'm talking about the hard work of moving to the other side of our the traditions, not doing away with them. I'm speaking about actually meeting with Jesus and allowing him meet us.

Let me illustrate: Small groups meet and most small group meet around a Bible study discussion. They use a sermon study guide, a Bible study they have purchased or a DVD curriculum. That is the tradition. And talking about the Bible together is a great tradition. Let's not do away with that. But can't we take it further and move beyond the tradition? Can't we engage the God of the Bible and see what the Spirit of God wants to do in our midst?

When I've led or participated in groups that stop with the Bible study, the experience is predictable. We know who will talk and who want. We know who will pontificate and who will miss the point. The discussion will be good but we know there's something more. When we pressed through to the other side of the Bible study and engaged the Spirit, it always looks different. We walk away thinking, "We didn't expect that!" or "We've never seen that before."

Are your encounters with God marked by the response, "I'm surprised by how God met me"?

Do your small group experiences result in responses like, "We've never met God like that before"?

Review of Out of Babylon by Walter Breuggemann

2012-01-25T07:52:00.000-08:00

I grew up on Country and Western music. There was one that I remember quit well that had a catchy phrase, "If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right." As I read Out of Babylon by Walter Brueggeman, new words for that tune came to mind, "If heeding this book is right, would we prefer to be wrong?" Do we want to hear the prophetic voice so clearly articulated on these pages.

Using the words of the Old Testament prophets, Brueggemann proclaims a prophetic challenge indirectly. He teaches us and then he challenges. He invites us to consider whether or not the dominant culture of the American empire and the way of life found therein shares patterns found with the empire of Babylon. And just as Israel lived in exile under Babylonian captivity and had to carve out a way of life that was faithful to its calling, so too the church today. He writes, “The experience of Israel in empire was a ready venue for the continuation of prophetic rhetoric that admitted no compromise with empire” (132). This kind of black and white prophetic confrontation worked well under the Babylonian rule.

However, the book concludes by describing how the Israelite exile shifted under the Persian empire. Instead of being dominated by a foreign empire, Persian rule allowed Israel to exist without domination, even to the point of helping to fund and rebuild the Temple. Therefore there was a shift of prophetic challenge during that time. The militant model of contrast and confrontation during the Babylonian period changed to one of accommodation and resistance, one that Brueggemann states “required a great deal more agility” (134).

There is no doubt that America is the dominant empire in the world at this point in history. And with any empire comes specific ways of life that usually relate to power, privilege and possessions. If these are left unchallenged then we acquiesce to their power over us. The rushing current of the dominant culture carries us along with it and we slap a little church and Jesus on top of it.

We need prophets today who will challenge this way of life and present alternatives. In some cases, we need direct and confrontational proclamations, those that resemble the confrontation of Babylon. In other cases, we need words of accommodation and resistance. Following Jesus in this day requires much more than just boldly proclaiming what’s wrong with America. We need prophets who will do the difficult work of pointing out the places where we rejoice in the freedom of life we possess, while at the same time identifying the places where we need to resist, standing against the flood waters of the dominant culture that sweep us up and carry us along.

You won't like everything he has to say. You may even throw it across the room because his words frustrate you. But if he is right, how can we be a church that it right? Check our more about the book by reading other reviews below.

Discipleship for the American Church

2012-01-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

What does God challenge in the American church? What we do we need to have reshaped in our lives so that we can display God's cruciformed love and join him on mission? What follows will not read like nice, American Christianity. This is not "how to have a better life 101" or "how to be happy small groups 201." There is a place for that, but there is also a place for challenge.

Western culture, and specifically American culture is addicted to three things that drive daily life:

Prestige
Power
Possessions

I wish I had come up with this on my own, but alas there is nothing new under the sun. I've been wrestling with these ideas with the likes of Walter Brueggemann, Richard Rohr and Jacques Ellul. My concern is that the church has gotten so used to these cultural patterns that we don't even see them for what they are. Right now, think about a few ways that social media in being used by Christian leaders to elevate these three things. It seems that we are more interested in tickling people's ears and thereby growing in these three things more than we are in telling the truth.

Then think about the last time we actually talked about these things in our churches. It seems to me that the primary message that the church is offering people is about how the Gospel can add prestige, power and possessions to our lives. And those who challenge that thought are judged as negative ninnies.

I've come to see that these three cultural patterns were also promoted by Pharaoh in Egypt and thereby dominated the slaves. These are the ways of life of Babylon. These are also the ways of the Roman Empire, against which the early Christians stood offering an alternative way of life.

Are we afraid to identify the ways of the dominant culture in the West, the ways that idolize success, control and money. If we don't identify them, how will we disciple people in the ways of the Kingdom. More often than not, we end up putting a Gospel-sounding message on top of the ways of our dominant culture. We do a pretty good job of informing people about the basic tenants of the faith, and we tell people how to live morally-upright lives. But we must also confront the ways of life that determine the rules of life in our secular, normal, day-to-day activities.

But it's not just about confronting the ways of the dominant culture. It also means that we offer a contrasting alternative.

Instead of fighting for prestige where we try to climb on top, we offer hospitality where we use our time to invest in others.
Instead of power where we try to wield our influence, we offer forgiveness where we release others from any debt owed because of wrongs done.
Instead of the pursuit of possessions, we offer generosity where what we have is used to bless others.

Hospitality, forgiveness and generosity—These don't seem to have much significance. But when we live them, they change the world. They introduce the Kingdom. And they reveal the God of missional love.

Is "Missional" talk Missing God?

2012-01-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

We settle for works of mission instead of God's mission. We replace doing things that look like mission for participating in the deep things that God is doing in our world. We are a people of action. We want to become "externally-focused." We want to see "movement" growth happen. We want "exponential." Don't get me wrong. I think our intentions are good. We want to see people get saved, the church grow and the world changed. We want to see love shared. We believe that God's mission expands as we do "small things with great love." And I agree with all of this. But we overlook at deeper truth. Too often the church is trying to share love that it has not it's encountered and experienced. I'd like to draw from the words of Kierkegaard in his great book Works of Love:

"Love's hidden life is in the innermost being, unfathomable, and then in turn is in an unfathomable connectedness with all existence. Just as the quiet lake originates deep down in hidden springs no eye has seen, so also does a person's love originate even more deeply in God's love. If there were no gushing spring at the bottom, if God were not love, then there would be neither the little lack nor a human being's love. Just as a quiet lake originates darkly in the deep spring, so a human being's love originates mysteriously in God's love. Just as a quiet lake invites you to contemplate it but by the reflected image of darkness prevents you from seeing through it, so also the mysterious origin of love in God's love prevents you from seeing its ground. When you think that you see it, you are deceived by a reflected image, as if that which only hides the deeper ground were the ground. Just as the lid of a clever secret compartment, for the very purpose of completely hiding the compartment, looks as if it were the bottom, so also that which only covers what is even deeper deceptively appears to be the depths of the ground" (9-10).

The mission that on which God calls the church goes deeper than having an outward focus. It calls us beyond simply saying that we need to have a balance between sharing the Gospel and doing social justice.

Are we deceived by all our talk about the ways that the church can be missional? By all of our clever strategies for creating missional movements? By all the hype about having exponential multiplication? Are we missing God and an encounter with his love in the process?

I hope not. But a quick survey of the literature reveals our focus. God take us deeper! Are we open to a prophetic challenge to embrace the hidden life of God's mission?

Is "Closing the Back Door" Enough?

2012-01-23T06:10:00.000-08:00

Small groups are a great strategy for closing the back door. If people don't get connected within two months of visiting to your church, they are highly likely to move on. They might visit a church initially because they like the weekend services, but if they don't get connected to four to six other people, they will eventually move on. There are a ton ways small groups can be used to connect these people, including:

Church-wide campaigns (See Small Groups with Purpose by Steve Gladden)
Semester groups with a big push to join groups at the beginning of each semester (See Activate by Nelson Searcy).
On-going open groups with on-line sign ups that talk about the Sunday sermon (See Sticky Church by Larry Osborne).
Recovery groups that focus on specific needs
Task groups that make it easy for people to commit without deep relational risk

We need these options. I applaud them all. In churches that have lots of visitors and new members I say use these strategies. They help people stick.

But is this enough? Are we settling for getting people to stick and stopping there. Isn't there more than that?

There are those who think in either/or terms. They would castigate all of the above strategies as falling short of the goal of developing groups that do much more than close the back door. I have come to see that most American churches need a both/and approach. We need groups that are programmatic in nature and connect people attend on Sundays. But we should not settle for that. We need what I call Missional Small Groups.

Does your small group strategy settle for less that God's hopes and desires for your people? Don't settle. If want to take your groups to the next level, check out my latest book MissioRelate: Becoming a Church of Missional Small Groups. (Click here to read parts of the book for free.) It proposes a clear strategy that makes room for this both/and perspective.

No Positions Available on God’s Mission

2012-01-21T07:07:00.000-08:00

You and I don’t need a position or an official responsibility to change the world. We don’t need someone else to offer us to a reason to make a difference. In a world where official recognition, credentials and positions of authority we often co-opt our “difference-making” ability to the need for a position that gives us the right to actually do something.But the reality is that there are NO positions on God’s mission to change the world.

It’s not that all of the positions are filled. There are no openings for you and me because there are no openings to begin with. Contrary to the modern phenomenon where we often elevate certain Christian leader to the status of the fourth member of the Trinity because we assume that people of status and position make the real differences, I’d like to propose that real difference flows our of what we do outside of the public eye. God’s mission is one of self-sacrificial love, one that leads us to pick up a cross (See Luke 9:23). There’s not much glory in that. And we don’t need a position for it either.

Let me illustrate from the historical research of Rodney Stark found in his book The Rise of Christianity. There he tells us about one of the reasons the early church grew so fast, one related to an issue that no one seems to highlight that much. History tells us that the Roman Empire was hit by widespread disease multiple times, wiping out thousands of citizens. Secular historians tell us about how the Christians of the day responded to the decimating plagues. Roman citizens who had the means would flee the towns and cities hit with the disease. Those without financial means would quarantine themselves off from their family members who were infected, waiting for them to die. But records tell us that Christians would care for those who were ill, even non-believers abandoned to die. Medical historians tell us that survival was higher for those given care and nourishment. Many of those left to suffer and die became believers because of Christians who cared for them while putting their own lives at risk. Simply because care was given, the church grew.

No positions were needed to for these Christians to give up their lives for the sake of people suffering from the plague. They just offered love because they had been offered the same kind of love.

No positions are needed. No positions are even available. But all can participate.

Missional Discipleship Pattern

2012-01-18T07:44:00.000-08:00

Jesus tells us "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me" (John 14:1). This is a great verse of comfort and encouragement. It makes for great material for a refrigerator magnet and bumper stickers. That is until you read the verse that comes before it and see the context of Jesus' words. We don't often do this because we separate the content of chapters. But the original books of the Bible were not divided into chapters and verses. So when John penned chapter 14, it was meant to be connected the end of chapter 13, which reads:

Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus answered, "Where I am going, you cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterward." Peter said to him, "Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you." Jesus answered, "Will you lay down your life for me? Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times" (John 13:36-38).

Honestly, I like the opening of chapter 14. I'm not sure about what comes before because this means that I can't go applying the first verse of chapter 14 however I want. This is not a general verse about having faith in trying times like sickness or financial trouble. (There are other verses that can direct me for those situations.) This verse is about discipleship that leads to the cross because Jesus was talking about his journey to cross. This verse is about learning how to follow Jesus by picking up our cross and dying to self. This is about being formed and reformed and the pain that comes with that. Yes. I said it "pain."

We like the comfort of God, but the reality that our lives need to be reshaped ... which we try to avoid. We can't put Jesus on top of our life and thereby grab hold of the benefits of God while avoiding a life that looks like sacrificial love. The mystery of God is that the benefits of his love come as we live out sacrificial love. Jesus told Peter that he could not follow him to the cross "now" but that he would "afterward." Then he challenged his pride. Peter needed to be changed from the inside out for God's mission in the world.

We cannot jump to God's comfort (his benefits) until we hear God's challenge, then we get on the path of God's mission. This is trust.

The church in America, the one that is so addicted to nice words and comforting thoughts, needs to get this. The pattern here is:

CHALLENGE
COMFORT
MISSION

Sometimes this correction is a direct challenge to a pattern of sin. Sometimes it's a call to a new formation for a new task. Usually it means the tearing down of pride and self-sufficiency. All the time, it's the next step toward a life that cruciform. And it always reshapes our character.

A Deeper Look at John 3:16

2012-01-17T08:17:00.000-08:00

"For God so loved..." (John 3:16). These are popular words right now. In the simple rawness of Tim Tebow, people are wanting to find out about his favorite verse of scripture. But what exactly is going on in this verse? It's packed with meaning on so many levels. What does "God" mean? What does love mean according to God's way of loving, not ours? What is the "world?" What does "gave" mean when you consider that the Son died on a cross? And what does "eternal life" mean, especially when the modern mindset of the good life is so focused on the "my" well-being?

It's so easy to read John 3:16 through our own understanding of these words and miss a deeper reality of the life that God wants to give us. I read this quote this morning by the theologian Miroslav Volf in his award-winning book Exclusion and Embrace:

"When the Trinity turns toward the world, the Son and the Spirit, in Irenaeus's beautiful image, the two arms of God by which humanity was made and taken into God's embrace. That same love that sustains nonself-enclosed identities in the Trinity seeks top make space 'in God' for humanity. Humanity is, however, not just the other of God, but the beloved other who has become an enemy. When God sets out to embrace the enemy, the result is the cross. On the cross the dancing circle of self-giving and mutually indwelling divine persons opens up for the enemy; in the agony of the passion the movement stops for a brief moment and a fissure appears so that sinful humanity can join in (see John 17-21). We, the others—we, the enemies—are embraced by the divine persons who love us with the same love with which they love each other and therefore make space for us within their own eternal embrace." (Exclusion and Embrace, 128-129)

I'd like to propose these clarifications to those terms in John 3:16:

"God" = Trinity, which is Father, Son and Spirit who live in the eternal, perfect, unity of love
"Love" = making space in oneself for the "other" for the sake of the other
"World" = humanity, the enemies of God, those who have rejected God's embrace of love, which means that humanity stands as the position of the "other" to God.
"Gave"= The opening up of a portal into the life of God so that we might enter into his love
"Eternal life" = Being embraced by God's love even while we are in the position of the "other" so that we might participate in the receiving and giving of love to God and others.

The Trinity is an eternal dance of love between the Father, Son and Spirit. The cross opens up a way for us to enter into this dance and dance all the more by having the freedom to share in and share forth God's kind of love. I need more of this everyday.

Suffering and Discipleship

2012-01-16T10:10:00.001-08:00

After washing the feet of the disciples, Jesus instructed them to do likewise. Then he said, “servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greter than the one who sent them” (John 13:16).

With his action of washing feet and his instructions about discipleship, he clarifies what it means to be the church throughout the ages. It means that we receive his power that comes to us through the resurrected life and the filling of the Holy Spirit. Then we choose to use that power by stooping down to serve others. If there is something I’ve learned about being a leader or husband or a parent or having any role of authority, it takes a lot more power to stoop down and serve than it does to “get big” and demand that others give me the respect that I’m due because of my position.

Jesus displayed the power of God by stooping to our level. But too often we try to get around actually following Jesus in a likewise manner. We try to live out triumphal discipleship that does not cost us anything. What does it mean when Paul writes, “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake” (Col 1:24)? Is it possible that God changes the world as we suffer for and with one another? Is it possible that we are changed and we mature as Christians as we suffer for others?

Beauty and the Mission of God

2012-01-13T07:28:00.000-08:00

"Putting Beauty where Beauty is Not."

St. John of the Cross described mission as putting love where love is not. (I write about this in Missional Small Groups.) He said, "Where there is no love, put love -- and you will find love." I believe that he hit the nail on the head, but he had an understanding of love that most of us can't even fathom. His wrote of encounters with the God of love that is quite frankly humbling to say the least. To give love we must realize the hidden dimension of encountering the God of love. And besides, we use the word "love" to mean so many different things in the English language (see my post of the different meanings of the word). I don't think Aerosmith's "Love in an Elevator" fits what St. John meant.

You might say that the kind of love that he was talking about was self-giving and other oriented. Granted. I agree with this. But in our culture, this kind of language usually is associated with one person being taken advantage of by another. So self-giving gets equated with being manipulated.

While I don't want to do away with the word "love" it is hard word to use without tons of qualifiers. The word "beauty" offers us an imaginative metaphor that encapsulates what God's love looks like, while at the same time opening our imaginations to the potential of so much more: of communion with a beautiful God, of connecting in a rich life with real friends, of engaging the world around us to offer it beauty. As Isaiah said, the Spirit of the Lord comes to offer "a crown of beauty instead of ashes" (Is. 61:3).

If we think about our life with God, are we encountering beauty or are we going through the motions?
If we think about our life in community, are we really connecting or are we just having Bible studies?
If we think about our life in the midst of this tragic and less than beautiful world, are we just going with the flow or are offering an alternative of forgiveness, hospitality and generosity.

If you are looking for a way to go deeper with these questions, here's a study guide that can help you reflect. (Missional Small Groups Study Guide).

May the God of beauty meet you in the fullness of his love. May the beauty of community wrap God's arms around you. And may your life shine beauty with every step you take.

Why Tebow Can't Save the World!

2012-01-12T09:40:00.000-08:00

Tim Tebow cannot save the world, although it appears that he has saved the Denver Broncos from obscurity. And he has made the NFL playoffs interesting. He has brought in a level of unpredictability and creativity that makes his games fun to watch, even if you don't like him as a player.

But Tebow cannot save the world. No individual can. I know. The proper answer would be to say that Jesus Christ is THE individual who saved the world. Yes of course. But I want to make a different point. No individual can embody God's dream of salvation for the world. Salvation comes through a community, a people, not through individuals. Of course the way we idolize individuals in our culture makes this hard to see.

But this is not new in the church. We have a long tradition of setting church leaders on a pedestal. In church history books, we talk about great leaders like Luther, Calvin and Wesley. In modern-day church expressions, we have our favorite speakers who get elevated to a level no man deserves. I'm not bashing those individual speakers. I'm challenging the idolization pattern that we have in the church. Instead of having a relationship with God, we settle for becoming a fan of a prominent leader in the church.

New Testament scholar Richard Hays writes, "The community, in its corporate life, is called to embody an alternative order that stands as a sign of God's redemptive purposes in the world. Thus, 'community' is not merely a concept; as the term is used here, it points to the concrete social manifestation of the people of God."

The church cannot save the world either. But through local corporate manifestations, pockets of kingdom community become a sign and witness to the reality of Christ's salvation life.

On that note, I've become ok with Tebowmania, I even root for him. But let quit doing the same thing with leaders in the church.

Dancing with Beauty

2012-01-11T08:17:00.001-08:00

In Matthew 11:28 and following we hear Jesus calling us to rest, to join him by taking on his easy yoke, to walk with him. There is something about those words. I imagine myself in the crowd that day and see a ordinary man, without any religious credentials or anything about him that would give him any status, standing up and proclaiming rest, peace or as the Old Testament puts it "shalom." He was offering something other than normal life. Something wildly different from the religious demands of the temple system. He was offering relationship with The Beautiful.

And he is inviting us to join him in this beautiful restful dance with THE Beautiful. It's both safe and wild. It's restful and moving. It's like dancing with fire, but all the while it energizes without igniting.

Sadly too much of Christianity fails to emphasize this. It seems that we emphasize one of two ditches. Either we focus on our justified status before God and tell people there's nothing else. Or we focus on the actions of Christians and tell people what they need to do to walk out their salvation and be more like Jesus. Both are absolutely correct but at the same time both fail to capture the imagination of what it means to follow Jesus. The reason is that both try to communicate in abstract, logical categories what it means to be a Jesus follower. And in so doing it's impossible to synthesize the mystery of resting in our redeemed status as justified believers with the call to take up the cross and give our entire lives to Christ. Inevitably we teeter between laziness and zealotry. And that seems to me to be exactly what's happening between those who are calling the church to take a leap of faith into radical zealot like action and those who are making the entire conversation about the center of the Gospel.

The call to rest in Christ is an invitation to dance with The Beautiful. It reveals the mysterious nature of God that we cannot fully define with all of our logic because dancing, like love cannot be fully explained. It cannot be completely defined. It's just beautiful. And as we dance, we find ourselves at rest while at the same time moving to the ways of Jesus.

How are you dancing with God today?

Love Changes the World

2012-01-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

"The way we treat one another changes the world!"

This one statement is so simple that we should not need to say it. But the reality is that we miss this point in the churches, families and workplaces more than any of us would like to admit. There are a few reasons why we miss this:

We don't commonly connect daily personal choices that we make to love or not to love with world history. But my choices today about how I will love those around me have a direct impact upon history. If I choose to act in hateful ways, that impacts others. If I choose to love in self-sacrificial ways, even when they go unnoticed, history shifts a bit toward God's Kingdom.
Most of us think about following God in individualistic terms. We measure our followership of Jesus according to things like spending private time with God, moral choices and volunteering for "Christian" things. These things are important, but Jesus told the disciples that they way they loved one another was the way that the world would know that they were followers of God. Read John 13. It's in there.
Let's be real. The church in North America is not known for it's self-sacrificial love at this point in history. We are more known for what we will kill for instead of what we will die for. Think about it: outsiders describe us as judgmental and violent. This impacts us in very mundane ways. A visitor came to our church on Sunday and was shocked at how we actually entered into conversation with him. He said that had not been his experience at other churches he had visited. If we can't even engage people who walk through our front doors, then how can we offer God's love to others who have no interest in coming to our church services?
Sadly, I find that most of the church talk is not really that interested in changing the world. There is so little talk about how God is working in our neighborhoods, local restaurants, workplaces, coffee shops, etc. All the talk is about turning around the church, making the church work, getting people to come to church, etc. We are mired in the paradigm of trying to make the church a better provider of "spiritual goods and services." And the best provider wins.

So let's break the pattern today and change the world with "small acts of great love," as Mother Teresa once said.

Christian Success

2012-01-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

How do you know if you are really following of Jesus? How do you know if you are in God's will? Or maybe we could put the question this way: How do we make the Christian faith legit?

It seems to me that many people, both inside and outside the church would respond with one word: "Success." Another way to put this would be to say that following Jesus brings us personal satisfaction. Just look at how we talk about following Jesus. It is said by some of the most prominent representatives of the church that following Jesus will give you the "best life." We lift up Christians who are successful in the public arena and applaud them because they have triumphed in their particular field. We turn winning in a particular profession into a way to legitimize Christ. When we think about churches that are really doing what God wants, we point to the mega churches assuming that the success of the multi-site movement is marked by God's blessings. As they say on ESPN when a football player makes a bad play, "Common Man!" Let's really think a little bit about this.

I've been reflecting on Isaiah 53 and Peter's reference to that chapter in 1 Peter 2:23, which reads: "When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly." After reflecting on this, can we say that the mark of the following Christ is "success." If we do, then maybe we need to tear Isaiah 53 out of the Bible. Paul called all of his successes "dung" and in 2 Cor 6, his ministry resume is a list that points out his weaknesses.

We are addicted to success in the church. We have allowed the idea of the American dream to interpret the "blessings" of the Bible. If we determine that success is the mark of a Christ follower, then we must conclude that all the martyrs who died for their faith were not actually blessed of God. Does this mean that I am against success, that I'm against growing churches, that I'm against financial increases? Of course not! But there are a ton of things that have been successful, i.e. triumphed, won, dominated, etc., that had nothing to do with God. So when a Christian dominates and wins, why should we automatically attribute that to God's hand of blessing? When we do, the implicit message to those who don't succeed, who don't win, who don't triumph, is that they are NOT blessed of God. Try telling that to the disciples of Mother Teresa.

Missional Humility

2012-01-08T07:49:00.000-08:00

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)

The experience of love in this world will always be tainted with perceptions of it that are less than loving. We are surrounded by distorted, weak, and even perverted ways of love. God’s kind of love is not simply a concept that we analyze, define, and then simply live. Love is a way of life on which we discover how to relate to God and others. In some ways it is like a good story, a love story, that we listen to, ponder, talk about and even participate in. It is the one story that “remains” and is the greatest story of all. But it is God’s story and to hear this love story, we have to let God tell it his way.

I grew up on a family farm. In theory someone could learn how to run a farm by reading books, listening to experienced farmers or maybe even getting a degree in agriculture. But the farming life is played out, not as a set of theories or concepts that one learns, but as a grand story of living with, responding to, and joining in the mystery of nature. I learned this story as I walked it out with my father, grandfather and uncle. I learned how to tend to the soil, the timing of planting the crops, the agony of waiting and praying for rain, the anticipation of harvest and the urgent work of bringing in the crops by living out the story year after year.

God's mission is a bit like this. While books, sermons, and concepts about God’s love can be helpful, God’s mission of revealing his love in the world is only truly discovered as we listen to and participate in that story.

As we allow this grand love story to reveal God’s mission of love, we discover over and over that God's mission is different than we expected. The love that God is, is nothing else but a revelation. No man could come up with something like this. A revelation is something that comes to life from outside our preconceived notions or expectations. The revelation of God’s mission of love is always a surprise. It’s always different than we expect. It’s something mysterious and so good that we don’t know what to do with it.

On the farm, life is full of unexpected twists and turns. While there is a degree of predictability, every year looks different. Nature is full of mystery and uncontrollable forces. The story of farming is about learning to work with this wild mystery of God’s creation. Likewise, God’s loving mission is wild and mysterious. It's closer than our own skin but so different from us that we don’t know how to respond to it.

On the farm the mystery of nature keeps the farmer humble because he knows that he is not in control. The farmer is a lifelong learner because the story of farming is never mastered. Likewise God’s love story cannot be mastered; it cannot be controlled. We simply let the story of love enter into our imagination and ask the Spirit to empower us to enter into the story more deeply.

Sabbath and Mission

2012-01-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

I grew up on a farm and if you know anything about farms, there is never NOT work to do. But every Sunday, my father would take a day of rest. We did not do farm work on Sundays. Now I assumed that this was about reverence and worship of God, but when you read the Exodus account of the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath is about work stoppage, not about worship. Walter Brueggemann states: "It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one's life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being" (Journey to the Common Good, 26).

The Israelites had been schooled in the way of anxiety. The Sabbath was God's strategy to break what they learned and teach them a new way. As I think about life today, the word "anxious" seems appropriate. And I'm not sure that being a Christian diminishes the effects of the anxiety of our world. Too often the patterns of anxiety shape and mold us and then we try to lay God on top of that, even asking God to help us do the anxious life better.

In a day dominated by anxiety and fear, the people of God demonstrate God's mission in our world by "stopping their work." By resting. By demonstrating trust. By putting hope in the one who breaks into the world to do what we can not. This is far beyond some optimistic dream that things will get better if we keep doing what we are doing, building upon today's reality for a better tomorrow. Sabbath trust. Sabbath hope is the practice of stopping to see that God is coming into our reality with his reality.

This is his mission!

Leading from Jesus' Presence

2012-01-06T06:50:00.001-08:00

Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.” Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment. —Matt. 9:20-22

Most often when we talk about this passage we focus on the words of Jesus to the woman about her faith. We then discuss our need to have faith like hers. I wholeheartedly agree, but I'd like to step back and experience this story a different way. The precondition to this woman reaching out to touch his cloak is that fact that Jesus was present that day. In fact, it could be argued that these stories in chapter 9 of Matthew are not really about the responses of the various individuals but about the one to whom they are responding. We so often turn stories like that of the woman with the "issue of blood" into mini-moral lessons that we miss the primary point. JESUS, THE MESSIAH, WAS PRESENT.

When I think about church gatherings, from small groups to large worship settings, from groups of three that meet to discuss life to weekly church worship, we measure a lot of different things to determine if we are on track. After small group meetings, we reflect on how the discussion went, who took it off track, whether or not people were transparent, was the food ok. But do we reflect on whether or not we recognized the presence of Jesus. Did we experience him in the midst of our group? Did he, through the leading of the Spirit, guide us to go in a different direction that we thought. Don't worry, I'm not saying that we need to all become "charismatic." I've been a part of charismatic small group meetings that follow their own kind of small group formula that misses his presence too.

I challenge you to go to your next small group meeting with this one goal in mind: meet with Jesus. I'm not saying you don't need to prepare the other things also. But focus on how the group members might open their eyes to his presence. A few ways might include:

sitting in silence,
talking with him like he is in the room
eating a meal together
sharing communion
share stories of what God has been doing in your lives

It helps if you enlist a couple of other people to prepare their hearts to meet with Jesus ahead of time. Maybe talk about this in your next meeting and see where it goes. Small group meeting can be more than Bible studies.

Christian Training: for Missional Living

2012-01-05T07:46:00.001-08:00

I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:14)

Whenever we use the word "training" in the church world, we think about conferences, seminars, classes, webinars and written resources. All of these depend upon an expert giving us information, as if information should be classified as "training." Contrast that with training in the sport's world. Athletic training does not require athletes to sit and listen to experts. In fact it can be done with very little input or direction. When my 7th grade football coach gave us instructions about how to prepare over the summer for 8th grade football, he handed out one piece of paper and told us to go do it.

Now if you walk into a bookstore, you will find hundreds of magical plans for getting in shape, but the biggest part of the training is just doing it. I wonder if we have made Christian training as difficult and complex as it seems like physical training has become.

Ultimately it's just not that complex. We train by worshipping. We train by sharing meals together and receiving communion and living in community. We train by sacrificing for each other. By prayer, by fasting, by waiting on God's presence, by reading the Scriptures. We train through obedience, submission and generosity. We offer hospitality to those who can offer it in return. All of these things depend upon us doing them if we are going to "press toward the goal."

I know that reading books and attending seminars can be helpful, but let's not confuse that with actual training. Training shapes the way we live, our personal experiences with God and out freedom to engage our neighbors with God's love. And as we train we attain the prize of knowing and experiencing the God of beauty who changes everything.

How are you training today?

Missional Outreach—Jesus Style

2012-01-04T00:30:00.000-08:00

So much of the ministry of Jesus happened in the ordinary stuff of life, eating, walking, sharing life with friends. In Matthew's Gospel, he records his own initiation to life with Jesus:

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” —Matthew 9:9-13

I wonder what Jesus saw in Matthew that would make him a good choice to be a part of the twelve. I wonder if Matthew wondered the same thing. After all, he was at his place of work, which spoke of his allegiance with the Roman government, which of course meant that he was viewed by ardent Jews to be an outcast, a traitor, or a "sinner." But Jesus chose Matthew and then he ate in his home, along with others like him. Of course, to eat with people meant that Jesus embraced those people, refusing to require them to change before he offered them fellowship.

As I reflect on this passage, my imagination goes to random conversations over food that Jesus shared with this group. I wonder what they said. Did they laugh? Did they tell stories? What did Jesus say to them? Formerly I assumed that Jesus would have been highly purposeful in his conversations and would have steered the talk to some kind of sermonizing. After all, this story is one of the few that we have about what Jesus did. So it must have been significant.

But what if it was different? In cultures like this, a shared meal would have lasted for hours. There would have been lots of stories and conversations. It would have been very normal for Jesus to chime in and add his point of view without having to be intentional or purposeful. All he had to do was engage the people in the room, to be present with them and show interest in them.

Evidently it worked, at least it did for Matthew.

Learning to Live Real Community

2012-01-03T06:00:00.000-08:00

When we talk about being missional, at the same time we need to talk about being relational. If we don't we turn God's mission into an act of violence where we try to accomplish something for God. People, usually called unbelievers or the lost, become objects of our monologue. We turn ourselves into Gospel agents of aggression, trying to get something done for God. I've been down that road far too many times—although we didn't use the word "misssional"—and I've no desire to go back.

The Apostle Paul wrote: "make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others." (Philippians 2:2-3)

The way we love one another determines how we will be on mission. In our modernistic mindset we tend to divide outreach from community. But if we think about it, this makes no sense whatsoever, that is unless we want to turn the life of the church into a set of endless programs, some for community and some for outreach. But oh, that's exactly what we've done.

Today, go forth on mission by simply putting Paul's instruction into motion. Put one or two people in your life ahead of yourself. Put a neighbor above yourself. We don't have to think big. We only need to think about the interests of others.

How We Misunderstand "Missional Community"

2012-01-02T22:27:00.000-08:00

Today, I picked up The Sky is Falling by Alan Roxburgh and reread the introduction. There you will find two paragraphs that summarize the call to be missional as well as any I've read. I quote them here because they help us think about what it means to live in missional community.

"Throughout Western societies, especially in North America, there has occurred a fundamental shift in the understanding and practice of the Christian story. It is no longer about God and what God is about in the world; it is about how God serves and meets human needs and desires. It is about how the individual self can find its own purposes and fulfillment. More specifically, our churches have become spiritual food courts for the personal, private, inner needs of expressive individuals. The result is a debased, compromised, derivative form of Christianity that is not the gospel of the Bible at all. The biblical narrative is about God's mission in, through, and for the sake of the world and how God has called human beings to be part of God's reaching out to that world for God's purpose of saving it in love. The focus of attention should be what God wants to accomplish and how we can be part of God's mission, not how God helps us accomplish our own agendas.

"This is why the way we conduct church is such an essential part of the missional conversation. God intended the local church to be a sign, witness and foretaste of where God is inviting all creation to Himself through Jesus Christ. The ways of the church are to be a contrast to the ways of the world—it is intended to be strikingly different from the immediate society around it. The church is to be formed around beliefs and practices discovered through interaction with scripture and not primarily derived from the particular culture in which is it found, although it must also be embodied in translatable forms within a culture. We are to be in the world, but not of it—we are to give it meaning and purpose, not pull our meaning and purposes from it."

There is so much packed into these two paragraphs that they deserve some commentary. The first thing that we need to say is that almost every church leader will agree with the second paragraph, but the first paragraph is hard for many to swallow. As a result, we interpret the "sign, witness and foretaste" language through the paradigm of the gospel of meeting people's needs and desires. Too often, it is assumed that this is what the church is supposed to do. And because the church has done it for so long, it's hard to break that imagination. So we create programs and small groups that are nothing but options in the "spiritual food court." Now it is popular to call one of these options "missional communities." But we are slapping "missional" on top of a "gospel that meets our personal needs instead of embracing what God is up to in the world.

A Missional God

2012-01-02T00:30:00.000-08:00

To be "missional" is to be sent. The church is sent. The people of God are sent to be a sign, witness and foretaste of God's coming Kingdom in the midst of the world. We are sent to put on display God's beauty in the midst of violence. If we are going to do this God's way, then we must actually understand how God sends. Philippians 2 reveals some insight into this. Jesus Christ:

⁶ Who, being in very nature God,
   did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
      being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
   even death on a cross!

God reveals God's missional nature in the sending of Jesus Christ. God's mission flows out of his nature which is revealed in Jesus. Jesus was the ultimate sign, witness and foretaste of God's Kingdom. God sends us, through the power of the Holy Spirit in the same way that Jesus came, through self-giving, sacrificial agape love. As we do this, we become the beauty of the world.

Missional Community and Lament

2012-01-01T00:30:00.000-08:00

"My judgment is that the cultural temptation to triumphalism that has beset the church was powerfully reinforced by the scholastic catechism tradition that took God as 'omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.' Thus, self-sufficient selves in communion with an all-managing God has no room for lament, and that theological premise is now powerfully replicated in so-called praise hymns, in which 'never is heard a discouraging word." (Walter Brueggemann, Disruptive Grace, 180).

I quote this with some trepidation, knowing that I risk being misunderstood. But I'll risk it anyway. The point is that we have a limited ability to practice "lament" according the biblical tradition because we believe in an all-controlling, triumphalistic God. And because he is managing everything from on high, any attempt to cry out to God in lament does no good. In other words, God intended for human trafficking to happen. Or he intended for people in our neighborhoods to be addicted to all sort of stuff. So we are happy Christians who don't see the pain of the world for what it is.

The call to lament is the call to cry out to God because we see the pain, the suffering, and the principalities and powers of the air. We know that the world is not right and that God does not want it that way. And we are in relationship to a God who can and is faithful to do something about it.

And we lament because we believe that our prayers actually have an impact upon this world. Our prayers matter. Missional community is about life together where we cry out to God because we know that it can be different.

11 Books that Influenced Me the Most in 2011

2011-12-23T13:49:00.000-08:00

Here are the books that shaped me the most over the past year. Most are newer books, but there are a few that have been around a bit. None of these titles are especially practical in nature. The books that impact me are those that help me think so that I can offer a different perspective on practical ministry.

Missional by Alan Roxburgh—I got the privilege of reading this in manuscript form three years ago. It shocked me then. After reading it for the third time this year, I realize how the message of this book is so prophetic that most of us are not yet ready to digest it. But I challenge you to try. Click here for my review.

Disruptive Grace by Walter Breuggemann—This book opened the Old Testament up to me in way that surprised me. He demonstrated how the Old Testament narrative connects to life in the West and the call of the church.

After You Believe by N.T. Wright. This insightful exposition of New Testament passages that highlight the call to practice our faith for the development of character is worth multiple readings. I've already read large chunks of it twice.

The Only Necessary Thing by Henri Nouwen. All I can say is Wow! This is a collection of his best writings and reflections on prayer.

Simplicity by Richard Rohr. You won't agree with everything he writes, but the way he challenges the dominant idols of Western culture is prophetic.

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin. This must be my fourth time to read this book. I see new things every time and wonder how I could have missed the deep wisdom in previous readings.

The End of Evangelicalism? By David Fitch. Fitch challenges the three major tenants of evangelical thinking and church life. What are they? Read the book. Or read my review by clicking here.

Practice Resurrection By Eugene Peterson. This unusual exposition and reflection of Ephesians will make you pray unusually.

The Missional Church in Perspective by Van Gelder and Zscheile. This book frames the conversation for the missional conversation and it sets the course for future development.

Cross and Covenant by Larry Shelton. This theological treatment of the atonement through a covenantal paradigm is illustrated via the author's experience with a heart transplant.

Improvisation by Samuel Wells—This books is helping me make sense of so much with regard to ethics and theology and even ecclesiology.

Best Cell Church Books

2011-12-22T07:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I wrote a review of Joel Comiskey's new book Myths and Truths of the Cell Church where I stated that it might be the best book on the cell church ever published. This got me to thinking about the top five books on the cell church. Well, I came up with six. I'm not sure if these are the best, but these are the six that I feel are the most essential to a leader who wants to start or lead his church into cells:

Where Do We Go From Here?: A Guidebook for the Cell Group Church by Ralph W. Neighbour Jr. I assume that if you know about the cell church that you have this book already. It is the book that started the stir around the globe when it was published in 1990.
Myths and Truths of the Cell Church by Joel Comiskey. See my review.
How To Lead a Great Cell Group Meeting by Joel Comiskey. This book is for the small group leader. You will be hard-pressed to find a group leadership book that has more practical insight than this one.
Small Groups Big Impact by Jim Egli and Dwight Marable. Based on an international research project, this book reports the key factors that produce group growth and group health. This simple guide should be on the shelf of every pastor with cell groups.
Planting Churches that Reproduce by Joel Comiskey. This is a great book on planting simple cell churches. It demonstrates how to do it in a way that does not depend upon a mega-church mentality.
How Do We Get There From Here? by M. Scott Boren. This is a book on how to transition a church from a traditional paradigm to a cell-based paradigm.

(I provided links to the publishers because that's the cheapest place to get these titles. But they are all available on Amazon.)

What books would you add to this list?

In a few days, I'll post a blog on my top "small group" books of all time.

Myths & Truths of the Cell Church by Joel Comiskey: Book Review

2011-12-21T12:41:00.000-08:00

In 1993, I started working for Ralph Neighbour Jr., the man whom some have dubbed the Father of the Cell Church. His 1990 book Where Do We Go From Here? sold over 120,000 copies domestically and was translated into numerous languages. In the 1990s the cell church was a huge hit. It was hard for us to keep up with all the work of helping churches develop cell groups.

Now in the US, the cell church is viewed as a fad that has passed. Sadly, during the 1990s, cell church got associated with the mega-church/church growth focus and now it has been written off as passe. Overseas, it is a different story. My former colleague, Jim Egli, spent three years writing training modules for church leaders who wanted to transition to the cell church approach. Recently we learned that Robert Lay, the leader of the cell church movement in Brazil is still using that training and will lead 1000s of pastors through it over the next year.

While the tendency in America for fad hopping has led church leaders on to other pastures, there is one writer who has remained true to the cell church vision. His name is Joel Comiskey, and he has just published what may be the best book on the cell church ever.

It's calls Myths and Truths of the Cell Church. (Read parts of the book by clicking here.) Joel deals with common misunderstandings about the cell church and about how cell groups work. From myths about the cell church being a mega church strategy to those about cell groups having to multiply within a certain time frame, this book reveals truths that will break false conceptions that have hindered the cell church strategy from being effective.

The way the book has been written makes this a page-turner. He identifies a myth and then follows it with a truth, each of which can be read very quickly. In addition, each chapter opens with personal insight from cell church leaders from all over the world. With a Foreword from Ralph W. Neighbour Jr. and an Afterword by Carl George, this is a gem.

If you embrace the cell church strategy, this book is an absolute must. But even if you don't and you have small groups, then it's really close to being a must.

For a list of the top six books on the Cell Church, click here.

The Counter-Imagination of Missional Community

2011-12-20T07:23:00.000-08:00

I'm almost done with Disruptive Grace by Walter Breuggemann. In one of his essays, he writes about the need for a subcommunity that hosts an alternative world in contrast that that of the dominant community. This requires a counter-imagination than that of the dominant imagination. He identifies three things that characterize the dominant imagination of Western culture. They are:

The shriveling of the human by the pressures of commoditization;
The failure of the communal infrastructure, in which the notion of a 'public' is mostly driven out by devotion to the 'market'; and
The nullification of holiness, in which everything is reduced to technological control that leaves nothing to the imagination.

He then says "the 'missional responsibility' of a human subcommunity in response may be:

The enhancement of the human in ways that energize, authorize, and celebrate our common humanity;
The reconstruction of a neighborly infrastructure that requires acts of obligation and generosity but that requires, in a prior way, a set of symbols and images that invite an imagined public; and
The recovery of a sense of the holy that resists every ideological reduction, that opposes every easy absolute, and that affirms a hidden mystery of governance out beyond all of our posturing and contestation.

He packs a lot into a sentence. But I think he is on to something. If we were to go to South Asia as missionaries, we would be trained to understand the context of the dominant culture and think about ways to practice life as a subcommunity that is shaped by a counter-imagination. Should we not take the same approach in our own neighborhoods?

Missional Community and the Individual

2011-12-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

One of the key issues that we must address in the church is how individualism relates to community. Around the world the church is growing in unprecedented rates. For the most part, this growth is occurring in cultures where individuals define the self according to their relationships with others. They live as groups, they remain in groups and they stay connected in groups.

In the West, we define the self according to our autonomy. As Descartes said, "I think therefore I am." Now, the thought is "I feel, therefore I am." We view ourselves in terms of "me", "myself" and "I" (the great trinity of individualism) and then we get to pick and choose those with whom we will relate. In addition, because many churches are being built on a steroid-induced view of the "priesthood of all believers" the individual is being taught that we really don't need each other. As a result, community is extra. Church is extra. What really matters is the salvation of the individual. "I'm saved, therefore I am."

"I" is at the center.

We have a great theology of individualism in the church. And this bleeds over into the small group. We use groups to meet individual needs. We use groups to help individuals reach their potential. And as soon as the individual does not like his current group, there is another one that he can join.

So what do we do about this? Preaching against individualism will be about as effective as telling someone who lives in New York to quit using the taxi to get around. Individualism is the air we breath. The first thing to do as leaders in the church is to recognize this reality. And then we must be honest about the kinds of small groups that we are actually developing in our churches. This is the reason I differentiate between connecting small groups (also called "regular" or "normal" groups) and those that are living out missional community. (See MissioRelate for more on this.)

Then we must begin to equip and empower those who really want to live in community and break the hold of individualism. The way forward is to start with one or two groups and then build on those successes. Breaking individualism is a lived experience that grows organically, life on life.

Christian Community: Theology, not a Pragmatic Structure

2011-12-19T08:40:00.000-08:00

I live in two worlds. On the one hand, I read theologians who ask big sweeping questions about God, what God is doing in our world and the call to be God's people. On the other, I'm always wrestling with what it means to be the church in this day and how do we actually do that? I get concerned because it seems that most of the energy in the church is spent on the pragmatic questions of what we do we as church leaders. We talk a lot about How do we get people connected? What is the latest strategy for closing the back door? How do we mobilize people for outreach? These are important questions. Don't get me wrong.

But are we so focused on the pragmatics of ministry that we fail to think much about what we are doing?

The focus on pragmatics seems to be at center stage in small group talk. Yes there are the introductory chapters in the primary small group vision texts that speak to why we should be doing community. But then 75% of the books focus on pragmatics. We all need to here the challenge to think theologically about not just why we do groups but also how we do them. Recently, Bill Search, author of Simple Small Groups told me how we need new conversations about the theology of community. I agree. Community 101 by Gilbert Bilezikian helps, but we need to help our people see a way of thinking about community so that it might penetrate how we live. It's got to move beyond just another strategy for doing church.

In other words, we need to go deeper than the question: What is working? That question reveals that we are basing our ministry on a theology of pragmatism. There are a lot of things that can and do work in the church that have no foundation based in good theology. This is the reason I write. (Click here for a little background on why I wrote each of the books I have.) I am called to ask questions beyond that of what works, while at the same time not ignoring the practical questions either.

Leading Missional Community

2011-12-11T22:53:00.001-08:00

This wraps up the series on 9 Practices of Missional Small Groups (Community) Leaders. I wrote these to post to build upon my book Missional Small Groups where I introduce a way of understanding Missional Community as a story that a group tells through their life together. As I have written these posts, I have come to see how these practices and the concepts that underlie them show us how to create a missional habitat, a natural environment where the missional community story spontaneously happens. To those who are new to missional life, one might think that missional community "just happens." But life doesn't just happen. Life happens when the environmental factors are right to support that life.

I grew up on a farm. My father who loved just about every farm animal imaginable. Chickens, sheep,cows. You name it, he raised at least one of them at some point. We even hatchedchicks from eggs we collected from the hen house. Sometimes a hen would “nest” and incubate theeggs herself, but we also had an incubator that would create the rightenvironment for the development of chicks. It takes 21 days for a baby chick todevelop and start pecking its way out of the egg shell. But for this to happenthe eggs had to be placed into the right environment. Eggs don’t just becomechicks without an intentional environment. This is the purpose of an incubator.

I've sought to identify missional incubation practices. When you do these things, you are much more likely to create an missional habitat where missional community "just happens." It just flows organically almost as if life is supposed to be lived this way. But that makes sense. God created us to live in self-sacrificial, other-oriented love. God is agape and we are made in the image of agape. We are most ourselves when we live in agape. These practices aim to create an environment where agape can be experienced freely.

Here is a list of all the posts in this series:

1. The Practices of Missional Community Leaders

2. Typical Expectations of Small Group Leaders

3. Rethinking How We Train Leaders

4. Missional Heroes as Missional Group Leaders?

5. Missional Community Leadership: Saints Needed Not Heroes

6. 9 Practices of Missional Group Leaders: An Overview

7. Practice #1: Hear the Call to Missional Community

8. Practice #2: Focus on Character Formation

9. Practice #3: Lead as a Team

10. Practice #4: Develop Basic Small Group Skills

11. Practice #5: Gather Around the Presence

12. Practice #6: Make Time to Waste Time

13. Practice #7: Be Present in Your Neighborhood

14. Hospitality, Generosity and No Vengeance

15. Practice #8: Prepare to Fight

16. Practice #9: Work Together for Missional Synergy

Let me know what you think about this series. I plan to refine these idea and do further research on them. So if you have input or feedback please add your comments or stories.

Practice #9: Work Together for Missional Synergy

2011-12-11T20:11:00.001-08:00

This is the last practice that I've found to be essential for leaders who want to move beyond "normal" community where small groups connect people and into "missional" community where groups experience life together that makes a difference in the world.

This practice is about how the leaders of the group work with leaders beyond the group. This is essential if the group really wants to move beyond the normal small group experience. Most groups don't have enough resources—time, energy, gifts, etc—within the group to have the sustaining impact that is needed in the world. There are two kinds of relationships that groups need in order to create synergy

1. The Relationship with an Elder-Like Leader. I hesitate to use the word "elder" (I give an entire chapter to this in my book MissioRelate), because it is so commonly used today as a label for a church governance role. Here I'm talking about the need for someone to serve as a wise guide, a prayer partner and a pastor who can help deal with difficult situations. Traditionally, we have called such a person a "coach" or group "supervisor." I don't care what you call the person, the role is that of an elder who knows God and can speak into the life of the group. I use the word "elder" because I like how Paul speaks of people like this in the early church. I've found that groups that remain in the normal group experience often outgrow the need for an elder (coach). The remain in mediocrity and can handle such a state very well all on their own. But when they want to move into mission, they enter into the land of risk. That's when the wisdom of an elder is most needed.

2. The Relationship with Other, Like-Minded Groups. One of the things that can jump-start a group to move beyond the normal is to partner with one or two other groups to take on some kind of project that will cause them to be present in a neighborhood. Recently, I spoke with a pastor in New Jersey who connects three groups who work together on a Habitat for Humanity project. When groups work together in this capacity they have the ability to break out of old habits and minister to needs in a way that they might not be able to do as an isolated group.

3. The Relationship with Local Ministries. Too often the church has thought in isolation. They think that any ministry must be developed within the confines of the church organization. But there are so many good ministries out there who are looking for partners who can invest life. These include things like Habitat for Humanity, local homeless shelters, ministries for orphans and battered women. There are a ton of them. At my former church, we had a list of different kinds of ministries so that groups could easily discover the options and see where they wanted to get involved.

4. The Relationship with the "Locals". This falls in line with Practice #7 Be Present in the Neighborhood. We need to listen to what God is already doing in and around us and to do this requires relationships with our neighbors, friends, co-workers, and family members. These I call the "locals." We must listen to the needs that are being expressed which could be as simple as a wife needing help with her chronically-ill husband to addressing racial tension in specific part of town. But we have to listen if we are going to actually go with God's life and share God's message of reconciliation. We cannot assume that we know what they need. We listen and then walk with them.

For the last post in this series, click here.

Practice #8: Prepare to Fight

2011-12-11T18:11:00.001-08:00

We live in a violent world. I wonder at times if we are addicted to violence. It seems that we like having enemies and we like winning. This is what happens when our fallen state becomes the accepted norm. We no longer call into question our fighting nature.

Fighting happens at all kinds of levels, globally as nations go to war, nationally as politicians tear each other apart, and locally as neighbors let petty differences cloud their judgement.

It also happens in the church. Duh! And IT HAPPENS IN SMALL GROUPS!

Of course every small group leader training manual or book says as much. Some call it conflict. Others "storming." M. Scott Peck calls it chaos. When people get to know one another, someone is bound to cause offense. Sometimes it's as minor as an innocent comment taken the wrong way. Sometimes it's as big as a yelling match. A few years ago, a small group leader asks to meet with me. He told me that while I had been out of town over the weekend, his co-leader and another group member had come to blows and almost got in a fight after church on Sunday.

Fighting will happen in small groups. Normal small groups deal with it in normal ways. Some get out their boxes gloves and duke it out. Some fly, running way emotionally so that they don't have to deal with the real issues. Some run away literally as they seek out another group or quit groups all together. A lot pretend that it's not there and simply co-exist in what Peck calls pseudocommunity.

If you want your group to move beyond normal and enter into missional community, you have to "prepare to fight." Most don't. Yes the leader gets some training about the stages of group life and they are told that it will happen. But it's not enough for the leader to know this information. I've never seen a group in the middle of all the emotions that come with group conflict who are ready to be taught about how to handle conflict. It's too late at that point.

Groups that want to experience missional community are much more likely to do so if someone leads the group to talk about how they will deal with conflict BEFORE it happens. One way to do this is to have everyone take a simple personality profile. Find a free online profile that provide simple personality summary which group members can bring to a meeting. Then share those with each other. Then you can ask people to talk about the kind of people that most often bother them. Ask how people tend to respond in times of conflict. This can lead into a conversation about some healthy ways to respond when the fights—whether big or small—arrive. (You can download a free study guide that leads a group through this discussion. It's Week 4 of The Journey Together.)

We prepare to fight in a way that leads to reconciliation and peace. No one says it will be easy, but it's a lot better than living in the normalcy (the boredom) of pseudocommunity. We must train ourselves to respond to violence without vengeance. This is the way of Jesus. This is the way of God's Kingdom.

For the next post in this series, Practice #9, click here.

Hospitality, Generosity, and No Vengeance

2011-12-10T14:12:00.001-08:00

What do you think about this video:

This video of the imminent Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann is poignant because it gives us an imagination about the kind of people God was calling the Israelites to be as a contrast to life under Pharaoh's rule and the early Christians to be in contrast to life under Caesar's rule. It points us to life in the Kingdom and God's rule. It points us to missional living and it points us toward missional leadership.

Three practices are identified. The first two, hospitality and generosity, relate to my post about missional leadership Make Time to Waste Time. The reason we make space in our lives is to create energy, time and emotional space to be hospitable and generous. We need to be shaped by patience so that we can demonstrate hospitality to others.

They also relate to my post entitled Be Present in the Neighborhood. Hospitality and generosity shape the way we are present with people in our neighborhood.

The third practice mentioned in the video "refusing to be vengeful" looks ahead to the next practice of Missional leaders. I call it Prepare to Fight.

For the next post in this series, Practice #8, click here.

Practice #7: Be Present in Your Neighborhood

2011-12-09T11:31:00.001-08:00

About 15 years ago, our small group pastor challenged all the groups to do at least one outreach event or activity per month. So one month we'd play volleyball at an apartment complex. The next we'd through a cookout for some friends. The next we'd do some kind is service project. While these were good, we failed to be present in any one neighborhood.

When I need an imagination about what it means to be present in a neighborhood, I have to break the my pragmatic tendency to immediately develop a list of ways to be missional. As helpful as such lists are, it's too easy to do missional things in a non-present way. In other words we do something but we fail to remain, to reveal God in an ongoing way.

By contrast, imagine that you were a part of Paul's entourage in the first century as he began ministering in Ephesus. Pull out a study Bible and look at a map of Ephesus. It was a large city for the time but small in size, only about five miles long. The houses were built right next to one another. They didn't have private garages or glass windows. Nor did the have big yards and fences to separate the homes of nuclear families. The reality is that usually multiple generations of one family would share one roof or a series of connected homes. It was a different world.

Now imagine that as you and the rest of Paul's team start to minister in this city, all kinds of God things happen. Someone gets healed. Someone gets set free from a demon. A family converts to be Jesus followers. Those in the synagogue have questions. Very quickly you start meeting in someone's home to talk about Jesus, worship God, eat together and pray. The New Testament called this church.

My point is that most people in Ephesus, and all in that section of the city, would have known about Paul and this little group that's been meeting to worship a crucified Jewish Messiah. They had no choice but to be present in their neighborhood because of the way local architecture worked during that time. Everything that they did was public. Anyone could see how they lived as Christians. They way they prayed and worshipped could be observed by simply walking by the host's home. They way they sacrificed for each other in love was on display everyday. They had no concept of a division between private spiritual activities for church insiders and public ministry activities done for the sake of outsiders. This kind of division that puts prayer and community into the category of insider ministry and evangelism and social justice into the category of outsider ministry is a relatively new idea in the history of the church.

Now of course we don't live in first century Ephesus. We live on streets and in apartment complexes where our homes are built for privacy. And we've done church by dividing up activities into insider and outsider categories. We need a new imagination about what it means to be present.

Missional small group leaders are learning to be present in a local setting and lead others to be present there. This is not hit-and-run evangelism. This is a way of doing life together as a group so that outsiders can observe and experience "the reason for the hope within" (1Pet 3:15).

Are there things we can do to be missional in our neighborhoods. Of course. There are quite a few lists online that are getting a lot of circulation. There are great ideas in those lists. However if you want to have an impact, be present, remain, focus, stay put. Let people see the life of God in you and your group.

For the next post in this series, a challenging, short video, click here.

Practice #6: Make Time to Waste Time

2011-12-06T17:32:00.001-08:00

It might seem counter-intuitive to say that leaders of "missional" community need to practice the art of wasting time. After all being missional usually means being active. However to be on mission means that we are offering people a Kingdom-like way of life, not just a message that will save them from immorality and get them to Heaven one of these days. It means we embody the ways of the Kingdom, which the Apostle Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit. It's what the Old Testament calls shalom, which means peace, wholeness, and communal well-being.

Aaron's benediction is helpful here:

"The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace (shalom)"

Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann reflects on shalom, connecting it to an experience of God's presence (see my post on Presence):

"Shalom is perhaps perhaps the quintessential mark of infinity, a counting state of communal well being that is wide and deep and sustainable. The face yields shalom." (Disruptive Grace, 53)

We don't live in shalom because we lack the experience of the face of God. Instead we fill life with unsustainable busyness. Often those who are the most committed to God are living in some of the least sustainable ways. We lack free space in our lives to waste time with God, with our families, with our missional community and with those we engage in our neighborhood.

If we are going to allow an experience with God to have a sustaining impact in our lives we must make space for wasting time. For rest. For Sabbath. For sharing laughter and tears. For just being present for others.

Make time to waste time. That's what missional leaders do. The question for us is what we will do with our time?

For the next post in this series, Practice #7, click here.

Practice #5: Gather Around the Presence

2011-12-05T08:07:00.001-08:00

Imagineif you were to read the Bible just to read it. You are not preparing for asermon or a Bible study. You are not trying to figure out the meaning of somedifficult theological question. You are not even trying to read itdevotionally. You are just reading it like you would a epic novel, where youallow the story to take over and let your imagination be shaped by that story.

Thenafter reading it through—yes all the way through—imagine that you tell a friendabout it. Now this person is not a Christian and has only been observedchurches from the fringe. But she has read her fair share of novels. She doesnot ask the normal kinds of questions that we church people might ask. Insteadshe just simply asks, "What makes the story work?" She's intrigued asto how such a long book could keep anyone's interest.

Yourimmediate response is "God." This answer might even surprise you atfirst because it's so simple but yet so true. He is the one who creates. Hecalls Abraham. He hears the cries of the of the Isrealite slaves and sendsMoses. He anoints David. He sends prophets. He confronts. He loves. Hesacrifices. Then Jesus comes. Jesus reveals God. Jesus heals. Jesus dies. Jesusrises. Then the Spirit comes and fills the church. Jesus through the Spirit confrontsPaul. The Spirit sends forth leaders to start new churches all over the placewith all kinds of miracles. Then in the last book, Jesus returns and restoresall of creation. This story is about God.

Thenshe asks, "What do you mean?" You say something like, "WellGod's active presence with his people is what carries the entire story. It'sthat simple."

Sheflippantly ask, "If that's true about the Bible, is it true about God'speople today?"

Howdo you respond to her?

.............................................................................

Wehave our Bible studies. We have our DVD curriculum. We have our nice meetingswhere we gather in homes and we share conversations with one another. We haveour "good advice" sessions where we try to help each other throughtough times. We even have our worship song time in our groups.

Butshould any of these things "mark" us as God's people? We have nicegroups. We know how to do that. No doubt. But we need groups that experiencethe active presence of God, where we know his love, his leading and hisshaping. Jesus is the center of life, the one through whom we relate to one another.

Whydon't we hear more about this in our small group literature and training?

Nowwe have missional communities who gather around a action or a cause. Good yes!But is the cause, the social action, the intentional outreach that which shouldmark missional communities as God's people?

Ifwe are going to move our groups beyond simply connecting people so we can closethe back door, we need a cause that's bigger than us, but even more we need toknow God's presence. God is the one on mission. He is the one who is activelyredeeming creation. If we don't know God's presence, then how can we getinvolved in HIS mission?

For the next post in this series, Practice #6, click here.

Practice #4: Develop in Basic Small Group Skills

2011-11-29T16:10:00.001-08:00

Whether serving as a host of a short-term campaign group, a leader of a connecting group or as a part of a leadership team of a missional group, there are some basic small group facilitation skills that apply to them all. In this practice, I'm talking specifically about the meeting. It is my contention—and has been for over 12 years—that missional groups depend upon the meeting much less than those that are simply connecting groups. I estimate that the group meeting contributes about 40% to the group life that is moving in mission, whereas a connecting group might depend upon the meeting for 80%-90% of its life.

At any rate, 40% is still significant. If group meetings don't work well and the gatherings don't contribute that 40%, it will steal the momentum from the mission.

Here I want to quickly address some of the key basic skills that every leader needs to develop and even refine as a group moves into missional life:

Meet weekly: The statistics are conclusive. My friend Jim Egli has performed extensive research on this and writes about it in his book Small Groups Big Impact. Groups that gather weekly have greater spiritual vitality and they are much more likely to impact others outside the group. If a group only meets twice per month, it will remain a connecting group. While there might be some exceptions, this is a basic rule.
Welcome people as they arrive: This might sound rudimentary. You might think that since everyone knows everyone and all are comfortable with one another that greeting people as they arrive is not that important, but when we assume this, we miss the opportunity to greet one another with affection. We are not especially good at this in the Western world, but if you go to places like Russia, those who know each other the best greet each other with the most passion.
Eat something together. It does not have to be a meal, but I do suggest that you share a full meal together at least once per month. At least have coffee and a light snack on a weekly basis. Food bonds people, even those who are already bonded. And if new people are involved, food tears down walls.
Manage the space. Sit in a circle. Make sure that the temperature is set right. Put away the dog. Set the atmosphere with a candle. Take care of distracting smells. Make sure that the electronics–if you are using them—is working right. It's remarkable how the small things done right can take a group meeting to the next level. For instance, if you have a typical three cushion couch, it can only sit 2 people. If three sit on it, the center person's head will be on a swivel for the entire time. Or consider how shy people often pull their chairs back about two inches so that they can hide a bit. And the most talkative person will find a chair where he can make eye contact with the facilitator because eye contact means "permission to speak."
Explain what you are doing at the various points of the meeting for anyone who is new. Don't leave them in the dark. And don't use insider language.
Remember that the meeting time is not about the leader doing all of the talking. It's about facilitating by asking good questions. But I'll speak to this in Practice #5.
End the meeting at the agreed upon time. Even if people want to remain and talk or even have extended times of prayer, give permission for people to leave if then need to. This is especially important for those who are newer participants in the group. Having an official ending time creates a safer environment.
Have fun!

Good meetings can feed mission. Mission will feed the meetings. They work together. In fact, the more a group enters mission together, the easier the meetings will become.

For the next post in this series, Practice #5, click here.

Practice #3: Lead as a Team

2011-11-29T07:51:00.001-08:00

About ten years ago, we had a group that had grown to the point of multiplying. As I was praying about the future of that group and how we could help it through its growth and transition, I sensed that the Lord was leading us to wait. During that time, we realized that our approach to group leadership put a lot of pressure on ONE person to be all things to the group. Of course, we had leaders in training (Interns, Apprentices) just like we see in all of the small group books. Of course we had a plan for developing new leaders. But when push came to shove, all the pressure fell on one person. And usually, week-after-week, no matter how hard we involved others, the rest of the group looked to that one person to do 80% of the work.

As a result, we experimented with co-leaders. I had not seen much at that point about leading groups this way. The common logic was and is that if you have co-leaders you will only have 1/2 as many groups. In fact, pastors often responded to me with this argument when I shared this experiment with them. Based on that experiment and follow up work through the years, I am all the more convinced of the need for team (2-4 people) group leadership if the group wants to move beyond that of a connecting group and enter into a missional community. Here's why:

Solo leadership requires one person to be good at all of the things that good small group leaders do. For instance, when I looked at all of the characteristics, traits, habits, etc. of great group leaders (Click here for a post on this subject), I realized that I'm not very good at many of them. I'm not good at creating a hospitable environment. I'm not great at inviting new people. Nor am I very good at contacting people and being pastoral. If you were to look at my gifts, they would fall into the teacher/prophet gifting. I've always struggled with some of the basic things that are required to lead groups well. But I've found others who were good at them, but not at some of my areas of strength. When leadership is team based, strengths and giftings are emphasized and people receive the ministry better.
Solo leadership can entrap the leader into a task focus. Caring for and leading a group of people includes a lot of practical things. When the leadership is shared, the focus can be on the people because the tasks are shared.
Solo leadership most often means that the focus will lie on a Bible study or a video curriculum in the group meetings. The rest of the group will show up waiting for the solo leader to guide them. And in my experience, the solo leader has to depend upon curriculum to lead them through the meeting. This is not completely horrible, but why do we settle for it. I want groups that experience the presence of Jesus, not good curriculum. (More on this in Practice #5). If you have 2-4 people who work as a team and show up to the meeting expecting to hear God and follow the Spirit's leading the rest of the group will be much more likely to join in.
Solo leadership can put people on a fast-track to ministry burnout. I remember when I first started leading a group and I felt guilty for taking a vacation. This is the reason that Michael Mack wrote the very helpful guide called Burnout-Free Small Group Leadership. It is one of the most helpful guide for effective group leadership because it shows people how to work as a team.

Team leadership not only addresses these issues, but it also provides an opportunity for a group to enter into an entirely different way of doing life together. When a team works together, it sets a tone for the rest of the group. It gives space for people to step up and contribute because they see this happening with in how the leadership operates. If creates safety for people make mistakes as they learn how to minister to others. It tears down the leader verses group member divide that is a residual of the clergy verses laity divide.

In addition, it empowers the group to be creative about how it will engage people outside the group on mission. Solo leader groups often struggle to survive. The leader spends a lot of energy just getting the group to show up and connect. But with a team, there will be more ownership of the vision and therefore more space for the group to get involved with what God is doing outside the group.

For most people, this view of team leadership and shared contribution by the entire group is different. They need a way to catch this idea without having it forced down their throat. For this purpose, I wrote a free five-week small group study guide called The Journey Together. (Click here to download it.)

For the next post in this series, Practice #4, click here.

Evangelism Power: Do We Have It?

2011-11-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

This post invites us to look at evangelism from a different angle. I'm not talking about whether we should do it within a missional context? I covered that in a previous post. I'm not going to talk here about how it should be done. I'll do more on that down the road. Here I want to ask the question about our evangelistic paradigm and if our paradigm has been co-opted by the attempt to attain power.

When I refer to power, I'm not talking about power that controls others. Nor am I necessarily referring to things like political power or positional authority. Instead, I'm talking about the kind of power that comes in the form of ideas, the kind that says "I'm right, you are wrong, and you need to agree with me." This is the kind of power that occurs in debates, in legal wranglings, sales pitches and in quite a few sermons. It's the kind of power that has to prove that "our" side is on the inside of truth and that the rest are deceived and need to "see what we see."

I know that I am treading on dangerous ground here because the Bible presents a lot of cases where the early church carried forth the truth and shared it with others who did not possess it. We need only look at the Apostle Paul's speak on Mars Hill to make this point. But I could also point out tons of scriptures in the New Testament that point to evangelism through weakness, brokenness, mystery, servanthood and even martyrdom.

It seems to me that the kind of evangelism on which I cut my teeth—and am now trying to parse out to see what is right and what needs to be pushed aside—is one that had to prove to the world that it was right by using the world's standards of proof. Instead of weakness, we had to prove our intellectual equality with our apologetics. Instead of brokenness, we had to justify the success of the Christ message with the glorious church—just look at our buildings. Instead of mystery, we had to make the Gospel useful so that people would its benefit to their personal lives. Instead of serving for the sake of serving because that's what God's people do, we had to develop a program called servanthood evangelism. Instead of martyrdom, we even embraced "power evangelism" so that we might call on the power of the Spirit to work miracles so that people would believe.

I know that I'm picking on some very substantial trends that have been used by the Spirit of God to lead many to Christ. I'm thankful for the many apologetics books I've read. I'm not one who goes around verbally trashing church buildings. I think that we should make the Gospel relevant and communicate effectively. I'm thankful for both the servant evangelism emphasis of Steve Sjogren and the Power Evangelism of John Wimber. My questions are not about these specific things. My questions relate to the paradigm in which these specific things have been applied.

In many cases it's as if we've tried these approaches to convince the world that we are right because we have so badly needed to justify our existence. And if we can get people to join us, that somehow makes us more "right."

Greg Boyd speaks about living in a way that is "power under" as opposed to "power over." With a "power over" mindset, we try to manipulate, sell, package, control, and even trick. The ends justifies the means. I am beginning to see how this "power over" paradigm dictated my evangelistic imagination. I remember one evangelism training I attended where the denominational leader caste a vision "Each One Reach One." His point, if we all reach one, then look at the impact. It was a subtle "power over" but it was there. His intentions were good, but his focus did not lie on loving a lost person sacrificially, listening to them, sharing life with them, seeing what God is already doing in their life, etc. It was all about getting them to agree with us.

We must embrace a "power under" paradigm of evangelism, one shaped by things like dialogue, honestly, hospitality, love freely given, presence in the community and praying for others. I'm not the only one that is saying this. But we need to do these things not so that people "might get saved." We need to do these things because this is who God is and this is what God does in and through his people. We do this because we are followers of Christ and have the Spirit living within us. We do this even if people don't respond well to God's love. It's what God's people do, not to win people to our "camp" but to be a light in the midst of darkness. If we allow God to shape us in this way, people will join us. They will become Christ followers. It's power but it's a different kind of power.

Practice #2: Focus on Character Formation

2011-11-24T08:15:00.001-08:00

I've been around a lot of leaders over the last two decades. I've worked with zealots, plodders, rule-followers, and wanna-bees. I've seen those who want to lead a great group but can't though they try with all their might. And I've seen those who seem to lead so easily that it's like a knife cutting through warm butter.

In all the lists of habits of great leaders, the focus almost always lies on the actions of the leaders. But most often one is not listed which seems to have a huge impact upon groups that go on mission. The leaders are not just people who do the right things. They are actually the right people. They are the real deal. They are people of character.

As I watch leaders and those who lead groups that make a difference, I've found that character is a crucial thing. The inner life of a leader, who they are when no one is looking, the attitude of a leader toward others, the genuine Spirit-directed love has a huge impact. I guess we don't talk about this much because these are intangibles that are beyond our control. Character is developed over time through trials, successes and failures.

Today is Thanksgiving. So I'll use this day to illustrate an aspect of character that is crucial to group life but often goes overlooked because it relates to the state of our hearts. It's easy to be thankful when everyone shows up to our meetings, when people are growing and maturing and when the group is committed to loving those who don't know God's love. But leaders of character know that the time to be most thankful for the people they lead is when these things are not happening. They are thankful simply because the people they lead are loved by God. They are thankful not because the people are doing the right things but because they are prized children in God's family.

Often church leaders are professional complainers. And it seems to me that missional leaders take this to another level as we complain about the state of the church and the mediocrity of our people. If we want to change things we won't do so with a character shaped by complaining. We do it by being thankful.

Of course we know that's there's more to to character than thankfulness but for today this is a great place to start.

For the next post in this series, Practice #3, click here.

Practice #1: Hear the Call to Missional Community

2011-11-22T23:26:00.000-08:00

The first practice of leaders of missional communities is to hear to the call to go beyond a community that connects people. Connecting groups come in all kinds of forms. Some are short-term. Some are sermon study groups. Some are house churches. Some are even groups of 40. Some are even called "missional communities." What they are called or the form they take is not the point. Connecting community is a kind of story of life together that focuses on helping the people in the group develop good internal relationships. We need to help leaders think in terms of the story that the group tells, not about the strategy, the form or the name of the group. I go into depth about this in my book Missional Small Groups.

The call to missional community is the call to a story of life together where the group lives on mission together. It's a call to a way of life that makes a difference in the world.

Somebody has to hear this call. Someone in the group has to step up and introduce to the others that the group can be more than a connecting group.

This is not a one time thing. This is not something a leader does and suddenly the group goes "missional." The call must be heard on a consistent basis because the magnetic pull to connecting mediocrity is so strong. It's easy to settle for a good connecting group and it will always be tempting to go back even after enter into mission.

For the next post in this series, Practice #2, click here.

King Jesus Gospel #1

2011-11-22T07:36:00.000-08:00

I'm reading Scot McKnight's latest The King Jesus Gospel. I love this book already and I'm only a 25% through it. Because I think that what Scot is saying is so crucial for the Evangelical Church if it is going to advance down the missional road, I'm going to blog as I am reading it, rather than waiting till I complete it.

Thus far the strength of Scot's argument is to give us some new language to understand ourselves as evangelicals. Don't worry, he is not attacking the need for having a salvation/conversion experience, he is instead challenging the idea that the Gospel=Salvation. Since the word "evangelical" has its roots in the Greek word for "gospel", we can easily assume that we practice church in an gospel-centered way. Instead he invites us to consider that we are really a "salvation culture" instead of a "gospel culture." Because of our myopic focus on the salvation/conversion experience, we have stripped the "gospel" down to mean "get saved."

If you are like me and grew up with an invitation for salvation at the end of all three services each week—even thought the pastor knew very well that everyone in the room had already walked the aisle and had been baptized—then you need to think through this book with me. While the conversion experience is crucial, Scot helps us see how the gospel is much bigger than that. Get this book and read it. TODAY!

9 Practices of Missional Group Leaders: Overview

2011-11-21T11:21:00.000-08:00

Now I'm about to write nine posts that outline the practices that shape the leadership and life of missional small group (community) leaders. I'm not the first to try to comprise such a list, but as I've said in previous posts, I'm looking for an alternative imagination for leading. So at the risk of being critical, I've felt I needed to be as concrete as possible. What follows are some key lists that have shaped the conversation about small group leadership over the last ten years. While I agree with them, I also want to ask if we can go further. Might we need to extend the conversation beyond this. If not, then we already have these lists. But if there is something else we need to explore, then lets do it.

Henry Cloud and John Townsend speak of these actions as "responsibilities" in their very popular book Making Small Groups Work. These include:

Balance grace, truth and time
Facilitate process
Listen
Provide Safety
Clarify and Ask Questions
Confront
Set Limits
Be an Authority
Require Integration
Interpret Themes, Symbols and Meanings
Help Contain Strong Emotions

Carl George provided a more concrete list of actions that group leaders should take in his highly praised book 9 Keys to Effective Small Group Leadership. The nine keys that he points are include:

Connect with the leadership network in your church
Recruit a leader-in-training
Invite newcomers to your group
Prepare yourself to lead the meeting
Meet together for one-another ministry
Bring your group to worship
Serve your group and others beyond
Win the world as Jesus would
Seek God's renewal as you meet him in secret

Before I proceed, let me be clear that I don't have any major issues with these lists or with the others that I provide below. I want my leaders to grow in these things and the practical input that these books provide is great. About twelve years ago I was serving as the managing editor for TOUCH Publications. While our primary focus was on helping churches develop healthy small groups, we lacked cutting edge resources that would equip people to lead groups well. One day, I got a call from a pastor from Ohio who had grown his church to about 2000 people meeting in about 200 small groups. He had written a book entitled 8 Habits of Highly Effective Small Group Leaders which served as the foundation for the groups in his church. They are:

Dream of leading a healthy, growing, multiplying group
Pray for group members daily
Invite new people to visit the group weekly
Contact group members regularly
Prepare for the group meeting
Mentor an apprentice leader
Plan group fellowship activities
Be committed to personal growth

This book has sold about 60,000 copies, a significant number when you consider that the author is not a household name in small group circles, and it was not published by a big publishing house. This resource is practical and accessible. I still encourage people to use it because the habits help leaders go in the right direction.

I want to point out one other resource that puts a slightly different spin on this. Josh Hunt's book Make Your Group Grow summarizes the key ideas that resulted from his extensive statistical research project. His results revealed that there are three things that matter a little, four things that some a lot and four things that matter a lot when it comes to growing groups. Here I will simply list the four that matter the most:

Hospitality
Working as a team
Good people skills
Spiritual vibrancy

Then he found one that matters more than anything else. He found that group leaders who believe that their groups will grow are much more likely to grow groups. He wrote, "Groups that believe that they will grow are nearly 12 times as likely to be growing, compared with those that don't believe they'll grow." (101)

Each of these lists have an imagination about the purpose of small groups and small group leadership. I think that the imagination that drives the 9 Practices of Missional Group Leaders is slightly different, while at the same time it does not discount them. I'm not thinking in terms of either/or, but both/and. We need these lists, but I think we need to go further.

I am looking to identify practices that help leaders see what God is doing and tap into his movement. Most leaders assume that they can control outcomes with their actions. And to be honest, most of the lists above assume the leader has control over the outcomes of the groups. We need practices that embrace God's mystery our midst and the reality that our world is full of unpredictable circumstances that are far beyond our control.
I am looking for practices that help leaders guide their groups to participate in God's creation restoration project, not just on how leaders can do things to grow their groups. I don't think that the two are mutually exclusive. But if our focus lies on growing our groups, we might miss the bigger picture of what God is doing around us. If we see what God is doing, group growth will most likely be a bi-product.
I am looking for practices that help leaders change the focus off the self which requires them to be spiritual superstars. Notice how almost all of these lists focus on the actions of an individual leader and his/her abilities. I want to find a way that deconstructs these superstar expectations.

With this as a summary of the last few posts, here is the list that will be be introducing over the next nine days:

Here the Call beyond Connecting Community to Missional Community
Focus on Character Formation, Not Just Leadership Actions
Lead with a Team
Develop Basic Small Group Skills
Gather around the Presence of Jesus in the Midst
Make Time to Waste Time
Be Present in Your Neighborhood
Prepare to Fight
Work Together to Create Missional Synergy

For the next post in this series, Practice #1, click here.

Missional Community Leadership: Saints Needed Not Heroes

2011-11-20T18:25:00.000-08:00

In North America, we love our heroes. I challenged this in yesterday's post, but I'd like to pursue this a bit more. We idolize the solitary individual who takes a cause upon his or her back and changes the course of history. When Steve Jobs passed a few weeks ago, watching all of the tweets about him was comical to me. No doubt, Jobs has changed the way we work today. We have five apple devises in our household and I need about three more to do my work well (at least I think I do but my budget says otherwise). But the comments about Jobs impact made it sound like he had built Apple all by himself.

It seems that this hero fixation is alive and well in the church. The elevation of the paid minister created spiritual heroes of those called "pastor" and "priest." But this has been taken to an entirely new level with the advent of the mega- and super-mega church. Now the preacher is the hero, even if he has little to do with the day-to-day ministry that occurs in the church. On a more personal level, I remember my first youth pastor in a church of 75 people. He would only let us see his good attributes and he had a lot of them. Now come to think about it, the same was true of my youth pastor when I started attending a church of 350. Both of them were excellent athletes. They both could sing, teach, tell great jokes, and talk all day about the good things going on in their lives related to following Jesus. So I guess the hero thing extends beyond the mega church.

This hero paradigm has been imported into the missional vision of the church. Now we have missional heroes. I don't have to name them. We only need to google it and you will quickly find missional superstars. But the reality is that these heroes don't exist, except for in our imagination. Our imagination is so shaped by the myth of the hero that we read about churches or ministries and assume that a hero is at the center of it all. Let me illustrate by pointing out how Mother Teresa is often portrayed. For years, I've heard her quoted, her work among the poor in India praised and her impact set up as an example for others to follow. The picture painted of her is that of a spiritual giant among spiritual giants. But when you read just a little bit of her story, you realize that there's much more. I've never hear much said about the Missionaries of Charity which she founded that includes 610 missions in 123 countries and over 4000 sisters who worked with her. While there is no doubt that Mother Teresa did some incredible things, the faces and names of these others who served with her are unknown. If you look at the history of the church and the churches that are currently making huge impacts upon their communities, its the unseen, unnamed, unspectacular who are making a difference.

When we are talking about developing leaders of missional communities, we need to help them deconstruct any preconceived notions that they must lead according to some kind of spiritual hero imagination, anything that would cause them to expect to carry the weight, make great things happen and have great courage to get the group "right." We don't need leaders to set themselves up at the center of the life of the community. That's the place of Jesus.

Instead, we need to help leaders develop a leadership imagination shaped by the call to live as saints. This is the perspective that Thomas Aquinas promoted as an ethical alternative to that of Aristotle. A saint is one who does not live at the center of the story. Their actions are often invisible. They live out of faith and seek to produce fruit even in their weaknesses and failures instead of trying to live up to some external idea of success. And often the life they live is characterized by sacrifice. Samuel Wells states, "A hero fears failure, flees mistakes, and knows no repentance: the saint knows that light only comes through cracks, that beauty is as much (if not more) about restoration as about creation." (Improvisation, 44)

Leading missional community is not about learning how to be radical nor is about following some kind of predetermined standard of what great leaders do. It's about learning to live out the practices of saints. It's about living into life rhythms that praises our God. At the risk of being overly simplistic, it's about being formed for a life of worship. When we do this, the idea of being a heroic leader crumbles.

For the next post in this series, click here.

Missional Heroes as Missional Group Leaders?

2011-11-20T01:49:00.000-08:00

Because there is a lot of talk about churches being missional and the need for missional community, there is a lot of talk about how to be a missional leader. In the previous post, I challenged the common approach to training leaders by giving them a list of habits that promises group growth when they are practiced. This is an leadership approach that is shaped by a mechanistic imagination, "If I do these things, I will be a good leader."

As an alternative to this, it seems popular to shape an imagination about missional leadership around word pictures like "radical", "leap of faith", "rejection of the status quo", "irreligious", "subversion", and the like. This is "hero" language. There seems to be a loud call for heroes of the faith to stand up and do wild things for Jesus. This use of words to shake up things and wake the church out of its slumber is challenging the mechanistic imagination, but is this hero imagination pointing us in the right direction?

This message is quite popular at this point in the journey of the American church. Many seem impressed by this approach. I'm not so much. I've been down that road. In the 1990s I worked for Ralph W. Neighbour Jr. He used very similar language to stir up the church. He challenged the status quo with a prophet's clarion call that shook people into action. He called people to a different kind of church. He invited people into a new world of follow Jesus in radical ways. And it has had a huge impact ... on some churches in North America. (Most of his lasting impact has been in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, but that's another story. Here I want to focus on North America.)

Here's my experience with this radical message: First of all, it was inspiring. In fact, it changed my life. I made some radical changes and took some huge leaps of faith. However, I am a radical person. I think in prophetic ways and I'm very innovative. In my experience, radical language works for someone like me, but not so much people who are much more consistent and don't make huge changes quickly. In the same way, leaders in North America who responded well to Ralph Neighbour and have been able to carry forth his vision were wired in a way that would make it easier for them to be radical or heroic.

My second point builds upon this. The DISC personality profile has found that 69% of the population is an "S" which stands for "Steady." They are consistent, faithful and diligent. They don't make changes quickly. Instead they are thoughtful and considerate when it comes to change. They are not naturally the "hero" type. They don't do "radical" or "wild" things. If that is the case, then does that mean that they cannot be leaders in the missional life that God wants?

And my third point is even more troublesome. Over the last two decades of working with radical challenges to the status quo in the church, I've found that many people who respond to this radical message and even want to bring it to fruition fail to do so. The problem is that they take on this radical hero language and try to implement it with the practices of a hero. Heroes will not carry out the vision of God's mission in the world, but hero language sure does sell a lot of books and stir up a lot of hubbub in the church. Let me explain.

Heroic Practices has a deep tradition rooted in the ethics of Aristotle. Don't worry, I'm not going to get too deep here. I just want to point out how Aristotle's practices emphasized a kind of ideal life that would shape heros. Ethicist Samuel Wells has served me as a guide for identifying the practices of Aristotle's hero. He's the center of the story, a stand out above others, self-sufficient, courageous, disciplined, quick witted, quick in battle, and excellent at whatever he does. He does what normal people do not. He stands against the status quo and leaps into the fray in a way that others do not. He is "great." But there is one more thing that marks a hero. His actions and choices turn out "right." He wins. He succeeds. He is a hero.

Honestly, I am saddened by how much hero language is used to describe leadership and discipleship in the church. I'm even more saddened at how much I have used hero language. I'm troubled by how the hero imagination is shaping the conversation about what it means to lead a missional small group or a missional community. While I've not seen a list of "missional hero practices," I've read enough blog posts and books to comprise a non-definitive list of practices that is shaped by this imagination. Missional community leaders practice the following:

They lead people to "attack" a cause. For some reason, "having a common cause" seems to be the driving force for being missional. And while a common cause is helpful, it's the imagination about "attacking" a cause that concerns me.
They are risk-taking entrepreneurs who know how to venture into new areas. But most people are not like this. Therefore this cannot be a common practice that can be applied across the board to all missional leaders.
They develop experimental structures.
They are charismatic in that they are inspiring leaders. But again, if we allow this mark of heroic leadership to shape missional leadership then we are narrowing it to a few people.
They rebel against tradition and anything that has been developed in the traditional church. The heroic imagination tends to emphasize the new and the next and discount the fact that God has been working in the world long before the hero arrived on the scene.
They focus on the imitation of Christ. Now of course you might think "What's wrong with that?" My response is "nothing" as long as it's done with the mindset that you are imitating Christ's dependance on the Holy Spirit. But the problem is that a heroic imagination causes people to focus on "being like Christ" in a photocopy kind of way, which of course no one can do. They tend to miss the reality that the Holy Spirit empowers in unique ways in the present context.
They idealize the vision for the church. They point to some kind of ideal way of doing church, usually looking at the New Testament form of church life as something that serves as a goal to which all churches must return. This stimulates the prophetic voice, but it causes them to miss the reality that God is working now through weak, broken vessels just as he did in the first century.

We need innovative, risk takers. We need prophetic voices. We need people who will stir the pot. I hope so because I am one of those people. But we don't need leaders who are shaped by the heroic imagination.

By contrast, we need leaders who are shaped by what the New Testament calls a "saint" imagination. We will introduce that in the next post.

For the next post in this series, click here.

Rethinking How We Train Small Group Leaders

2011-11-18T21:33:00.000-08:00

I've been waiting to write this post for over six months. I needed some evidence to back up what I felt I needed to say. Even more, I had to make sure that I really believed this to be true since it goes against most common teaching on group leadership. In addition, I found that what I had discovered actually contradicted much that I have previously taught and written about group leadership. So be warned: the following might take some time to embrace. You might even bristle at it. It took me some time to see it clearly and I'm the one who had the "ahah" experience that caused me to see things differently.

Now to the point.

Through the years, I have trained hundreds, if not thousands of small group leaders. My first book was a basic training guide that has sold over 20,000 copies. I believe in quality training for group leaders. It's crucial if we want them to have an impact and move beyond the minimal requirements that I introduced yesterday. Some of the best training resources and books have been developed this way:

     First, perform research on what effective small group leaders do to grow healthy groups.
     Second, identify key factors or habits that result in effective group leadership.
     Third, explain how the habits work.
     Fourth, suggest specific practical things that leaders can do to put the habit into motion.

I can pull quite a few resources off my shelf that take this approach. I've helped authors develop some of these resources. I won't name any of them because I don't want this to be viewed as a challenge to any specific list. Instead, I'm challenging the kind of list that these resources provide. Of course we need to train our leaders to develop good leadership habits, but I've had to question whether or not the lists provided actually fit the call to lead missional small groups.

Honestly, challenging these resources is difficult because the results are clear: when leaders practice these habits, groups are more healthy and they are much more likely to grow. I know of some resources that have extensive statistical evidence to support their lists. I'm not challenging that fact. By putting these habits into action, you will become a more effective leader. And while those who want to lead missional groups would benefit from resources like these, these habits are not quite the same as those of missional group leaders. Here are a few of the reasons I say this:

1. These habits (and those identified by other similar resources) focus on the efforts of the individual. They fail to tap into the greater mission of God. They tend to put the ministry of the leader under the microscope. Missional group leadership calls leads to develop habits that focus on what God is doing. While I know that if I were to sit and talk with these authors about this, they would agree. But I am just dealing with the language as it stands. By in large, small group leadership training resources focuses on the actions of leaders which assumes that the group success is under the control of the leader. They fail to embrace the mystery of life and the fact that it's God's mission in the world that shapes what ministry is really all about.

2. In most cases, these habits work best in what I call "connecting" groups. The groups are either designed to "close the back" door of a church or they invite friends to the group after they get saved through relationship evangelism. The point is usually to grow the group. They don't really address the call to participate in God's restoration plan for creation. These habits are clear, practical ways to improve one's leadership of such groups. For that reason, when I consult with churches, I suggest two or three of these resources for this very purpose. In other words, I do see their value even though I want to go further than they do.

3. This third point was the one that caused me to question this the list of "habits a leader must have approach." In my experience, I've found that these habits work best with those leaders who have a propensity to do those habits well. Those who have this propensity flourish. Those who do not work at it and try their best, but they struggle along the way. Honestly, I'm one of those people who struggles. I'm have to work very hard to lead a group well. I don't like calling people on the phone. I struggle with follow-up and regular communication. I've done it, but it's hard for me. On top of this, there has been a common teaching that anyone should be able to lead a group well if they only follow a certain set of habits. I've tried that approach and it did not work. I've worked with leaders and set them up for disappointment. Sadly, we were subliminally communicating that no one could live up to the ideal vision that we had for a good small group leader.

So I've searched for a different way of leading. A way of leading that invites leader to:
1. Focus on what God is doing and get their eyes off of their efforts.
2. Participate in God's restoration project, not just the growth of their group.
3. Lead out of their strengths, rather than trying to fit into a preconceived mold of what an ideal leader should look like.

This is what has led me to identify the 9 Practices of Missional Small Group Leaders. Those posts are forthcoming. For the next post in this series click here.

Typical Expections of Group Leaders

2011-11-17T22:58:00.000-08:00

Leaders of missional small groups lead differently than leaders of groups that are not on mission. Before I proceed to identify the nine key practices for leading missional community, we need to clarify the commonly accepted practices of group leaders. This will help us better understand how the practices of missional group leaders are distinct and therefore produce distinct results.

(For the other posts in the 9 Practices series click here)

In this post, I want to identify the practices of those who lead groups that connect people who attend the church. In my book Missional Small Groups, I call these "normal" small groups. Here I am calling them connecting groups. These groups play an important role.

Please don't hear that I'm denigrating connecting. I'm not. They play an important role in the church. But they are different than a missional group. In addition, in what follows I am stating things is overly simplistic language for the sake of clarity. Of course good group leaders do more than this and every pastor desires for group leader to do more than this (I'll deal with that in the next post). But the system for connecting groups is set up so that groups can connect people with the leaders only putting a minimal set of practices into action.

Here are some of the minimal practices of connecting group leaders.
1. Follow Instructions: Connecting groups work because they follow a pattern that is established by leadership. Whether a church sets up a six-week campaign, a semester group system or weekly sermon study guides, the expectation of leaders is that they follow a clear pattern. This also means that the leader agrees with the theology and vision of the church.

2. Depend on Curriculum: In almost every situation, connecting groups are based on curriculum. In most cases this curriculum is uniform in all the groups. In other situations, the curriculum varies from group to group. In either case, the practice is that the curriculum shapes the group.

3. Ride the Momentum of the Church as a Whole: Connecting groups feed off of the energy of the large groups gatherings and the organization provided by the staff. Again, let me say that this is not necessarily bad, but if you take away these factors, connecting groups loose their momentum. Leaders of these groups depend upon them, and this allows less mature leaders to serve as group leaders when they might not effectively lead other kinds of groups.

4. Create a Welcoming Environment: One of the most important practices for connecting groups is to serve as a welcoming host. In my introductory training for connecting group hosts, I'd spend a significant amount of time reminding people about the importance of being a welcoming host to the group members. We emphasized the importance of clear and timely communication via phone and email. We'd talk about how to welcome people as they arrived. And we'd spend time clarifying how to set up the room so that everyone was one equal footing.

Let me say that I have never written training for connecting groups that listed these a minimal practices. That's because I hoped for more from them. So I would train for a little higher standard. However, more times that not, I've found that a high percentage of leaders lead out of these basic practices. Some start here and move on. Many just remain here.

For the next post in this series, click here.

The Practices of Missional Small Group (Community) Leaders

2011-11-17T08:29:00.000-08:00

Small groups on mission don't just happen. Mission doesn't just happen because a pastor, leader or even an entire group wants to it. Mediocrity is a road built with good intentions. Think about it this way. I have faithfully followed the Texas Rangers since 1978. I can still name names of players and give you statistical information about how they played over the years. At the beginning of every year, the players would always say that they had high hopes for the team and that they were aiming for a championship. For over 30 years, I believed them, but they were always one of the worst teams in the league, year after year after year.

That is until Nolan Ryan became the president of the organization. Not only did he bring his reputation as one of the best pitchers of all time, he brought with him a different set of organizational disciplines. Before, the organization try to advance with hype, public pronouncements of excellence and commitment to winning, the signing of big-name players, etc. They had good intentions, but it got them nowhere. Now you don't hear as much about those things. When you look inside how they operate, they are building the team on things like playing as a team, discipline, good coaching, hard work, and a commitment to the long-term. They have develop a different set of practices that permeate the organization. I saw this culture change happening about five or six years ago, even though the results were not immediate. Now we can see the impact with back-to-back trips to the World Series.

Too much of the time, we try to advance mission through public pronouncements, sermons, promotions, programs and the like. And while I'm not against such things, having good intentions for mission and talking a lot about it won't change things. Or if it does bring change, it's not lasting. We cannot be missional by riding the back of hype. Missional living is developed in underground ways, through unseen practices that leaders and communities put into place to make a difference in the world.

In my book Missional Small Groups (along with the Study Guide), I talk about the practices that small groups put into action to live in missional community. In my subsequent book MissioRelate, I introduce the practices of church leaders (senior pastors, small group champions, leadership teams, etc.) put into motion to promote the development of missional community in groups.

For the next post in this series click here.

Purpose of Missional Evangelism

2011-11-14T19:43:00.000-08:00

Admittedly, I'm wrestling out loud in this post. Because I grew up in a denomination whose core identity was shaped by the conversion experience, I'm finding that I have a lot of ideological work to do around the theme of evangelism. Afterall, by the time I was 12, I probably had sung "Just As I Am" 500 times. Those words are ironed into my brain.

So my question is this: What exactly are we inviting people to "come to" just as they are? This is not a question of whether or not we should do it or even how we should do it. It is a question of what we are trying to accomplish when we invite people to "come." In order to think about this, I reflect on some of the reason why people join organizations.

Organizations usually base their invitation for new people to join on one of the following:
1. Usefullness. The organization provides a service that will prove beneficial to the individual. For instance, I was a member and a leader of the FFA organization in high school. It's purpose was clear. For those interested in agricultural activities, it provided a way for us to participate in the exhibition of our animals at agriculture fairs. In other words, it provided a service to those of us with this interest.

2. Reasonableness. Some organization base their invitation on the fact that it is the logical thing to do. Behind this logic is usually the aim to prove that the organization has the "right" perspective or goal. Political parties come to mind. Nation-states as a whole are based on this, especially in times of war.

Before I move to a third alternative, I'd like to point out that the gospel message has been founded on these two. I have been taught how to explain the Gospel of Jesus Christ to unbelievers so that they might see Jesus as useful. "There is a God-shaped hole in your heart. And you will never be truly happy until God fills that hole." Or "God has a plan for your life." The examples of the useful Gospel message are endless.

And of course there is the reasonable Gospel, the one we can explain up one side and down another. The evidence that demands a verdict, the convincing case for Christ, the knowledge of what we believe. We can put a nice bow around what we believe and make it very reasonable.

Now before I go on, let me ease your angst. I do believe that there is a God-shaped hole in our heart that only he can fill. And I do believe that there is a logic to our faith. But I now see that the invitation to follow Christ must be based on more that these. The usefullness and reasonableness of the Gospel must be in service to this third option.

3. Beauty. There are some organizations whose invitations to join are based on the fact that they have a mission to contribute beauty to the world. In other words, the organization is a conduit for something beyond itself, not and end in and of itself.

The invitation to follow Jesus is not simply an invitation to salvation, although it is at least that. It's not a simply a call to grow in Christ and receive freedom to bondage, although it is at least that. It's not simply an opportunity to experience a better life, although it is at least that. It's not simply the logical way to believe and live, although it is at least that.

If we make following Jesus about these things, we will clamor for them and never attain them. We will try to convince people to join us based on these assumptions, but we are only inviting them to enter into a never-ending loop of wish dreams. But if we see that the invitation to follow Jesus is about participating in his beauty restoration project, then we get those things along the way. Missional evangelism is in the very least–and there is much more to explore—the practice of inviting people to join God's work to restore and redeem the world. It's an invitation to join with a people who are called to this end, not to the end of just growing itself as an organization, but to the end of beauty realized.

Trinity Prayer: A Missional Form of Praying

2011-11-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

I just read a one of the early books by N. T. Wright, Bringing the Church to the World. In the epilogue, he writes about praying the thesis of the book into reality. He introduces the Jesus prayer that has become popular over the last decade which goes like this: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me."

The goal of this prayer is to make it such a regular part of one's thoughts and expression that it naturally flows out like breathing. Therefore it is often referred to as breath praying.

Wright expands upon this in a way that expands our imagination about God. Most people people in the church are shaped by a Christological imagination, but it is a truncated view of Christology. A New Testament view of Christ requires a trinitarian imagination. It is so easy for people today to have a high Chistology, but only apply it to their private spirituality in such a way that it has nothing to do with daily life. We need a way to pray that expands this so that train imagination to see what God is doing in our world. N. T. Wright suggests that we expland the Jesus prayer to be a Trinity prayer to something like this:

Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth:
   Set up your kingdom in our midst
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God:
   Have mercy on me a sinner.
Holy Spirit, breath of God:
   Renew me and all the world.

Over the last four years, I've put the Jesus prayer into motion in my life from time to time. Honestly, it has not yet become a breath prayer, but I'm going in the right direction. I know that having three stanzas to pray complicates things, but I think it worth the effort to pray into the life of the Trinity and not just Jesus. I need to train my imagination to see what God is doing through Jesus by the power of the Spirit to redeem all the world and establish the kingdom of God.

The Road to Missional by Michael Frost (Short Review)

2011-11-10T10:35:00.000-08:00

Recently, I read Michael Frost's new book The Road to Missional. I assumed, from its title, that it would be a book about how a church moves along the road to becoming missional. But that's not really the case. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the book places a great emphasis on evangelism, specifically sharing the Gospel with unbelievers.

For some reason the topic of evangelism from a missional perspective is not been much of a focus. The reasons are many, including the fact that the evangelical church has spent so much time talking about how to talk to unbelievers that we have not spent nearly as much energy on how to "be" the church on mission for the sake of redemption of the world. So during the last decade, there has been much ink spilled over the call of the church to be on mission and not just talk about how to lead people to a point of praying a conversion prayer.

In addition, the missional conversation has rightly challenged the individualistic emphasis on the conversion of individual sinners that diminishes the call to be a part of a social and participatory movement. In the book Stormfront (an early resource on "missional") the team of authors write:
"The biblical understanding of salvation is that our lives become swept up into something larger and greater than ourselves, into God's purposes for the world." (34) With this statement they are challenging the common "sales pitch" approach to evangelism that "meets their needs" and invites people into a better individualistic life. They point out that salvation is about being incorporated into a people who are seeking to live out the reign of God.

But as Michael points out, this does not mean that those on the missional "road" should ignore the fact that we are called to actually talk about Jesus with individuals, invite them into a life with Christ and participate in this reign of God movement. We actuaslly have a mandate to "present" the gospel verbally, although we might do so in a different way than we've done in the past. This is the most significant contribution of this book to the missional conversation and because of this alone it is worth the time required to read it. I especially like how he is asking the question "what does the reign of God through Christ look like in my neighborhood?"He writes, "Our involvement with this restoration will include both our lips and our hands. It will involve evangelism, advocacy, peacemaking, worship, and proclamation as well as service, justice-seeking, healing, building, and feeding" (57).

Following Jesus into the World

2011-11-08T17:06:00.000-08:00

God is a missionary God. "From all of eternity, mission has been a part of the Divine life." Do we understand God's missionary nature? If we don't, we will try to be on mission in a way that God is not. We do good things apart from the character of God's mission. Here's John Franke teaching on this. Worth your time to watch.

What Missional Evangelism is NOT

2011-11-08T07:59:00.000-08:00

When I was in my early 20s, I got a call from Bob, a childhood friend. He and his wife were in town for a conference and they wanted to buy me lunch. While we were not that close when we were younger, I was honored, so much so that I was willing to miss the Cowboy game and meet with them.

After arriving and we got through the pleasantries common to re-connecting, the reason for lunch became obvious. For the next hour, I sat through a multi-level marketing presentation, all the while I was boiling inside. The only thought going through my mind was "I'm giving up the Cowboy game for this." I wish I had had the guts to walk out of the restaurant mid-sentence. Bob and I have not talked since and honestly, that one encounter made me feel like a target instead of a friend. So I'm not sure I care to reconnect.

This experience made me think about Eli, the owner of a restaurant where our small group frequented. We would sit late at night, talking and drinking coffee. Over time, we developed a pretty good friendship with Eli, so much so that he invited Trey and I to go fishing with him in Galveston. After failing to catch anything, the three of us went to lunch. While eating shrimp, Trey proceeded to tell Eli all about Jesus. Obviously Eli was not interested in the conversation but Trey continued on with all the questions we were taught to ask when someone resists such a presentation. And the more Trey talked the more Eli squirmed. I wanted to reach over and pull Trey's tongue out, but Trey had mentored me in the past and I assumed he knew something that I did not. That day really messed up our friendship. Subsequent conversations with Eli were always met with resistance. I wonder if we made him feel like my friend Bob made me feel.

Honestly, Eli was an evangelism target. We had been taught to befriend people, share Jesus with people and to recruit them to participate in our small group. Of course no one put it in such crass terms, but I think this is the way Eli felt like we were treating him.

In retrospect, we did a lot right. We loved hanging out with Eli and his family at the restaurant. We did not try to force Jesus down his throat and then move on. We invested time into that relationship. However, it felt like we were waiting for the opening to present our sales pitch for Jesus. We had the "right" answers for Eli and he needed to hear them. Were we genuinely interested in Eli, his questions, his life and his fears? Or were we just interested in getting him to pray a prayer? We never dreamt that God might already be working in Eli's life in some way and that our job was to listen to Eli and the Spirit to see what was already happening. We assumed that we had to take God to Eli. We needed to pray for ears to hear and enter into dialogue with Eli and see what might being going on in his life. We just did not have that kind of humility.

Evangelizing Everything: Do We Need a New View of Evangelism?

2011-11-06T13:14:00.000-08:00

Recently, I've been rethinking evangelism from the lens of a missional perspective. It seems that a lot of people are simply importing their previously established patterns of evangelism and then slapping "missional" on top. On of the better resources on this topic is The Evangelizing Church: A Lutheran Contribution. While I am not Lutheran, this book has helped me think through my assumptions about evangelism. It roots evangelism in theology and causes us to rethink our practices from those roots. The authors write:

"Whenever we think about God, we need to add the words, 'the mission of the Triune God within all of creation." Whenever we talk about the gospel, we need to add the words, 'for the sake of the world.' Whenever we discuss the church, we need to add the words 'sent into the world to participate fully in God's mission.' Our view of God is not complete without having the world in view, with God in relationship to it as both Creator and Redeemer. The gospel is not fully the gospel if it does not have the whole of creation as its horizon. The church is not fully the church if it does not seek to bring redemption to bear on every dimension of life." (51)

A lot of talk about evangelism today is about the relationship between personal conversion and social justice. And while this topic is important, most often the focus lies on what we are supposed to do as the church. We assume that the subject of evangelistic action is us. But is that really the case? What's often left out is the invitation to see what God is doing. God is the active subject of evangelism. He is relentless lover who will not stop until his love is spread throughout all creation. We want to jump straight to what we can do as the church. We want a list of things that we can do to be missional. Small group leaders want options that will get them active. Pastors want to see impact, the kind of impact that you can report on Sunday mornings.

While I believe we need to be practical and that we need to have impact, we also need to start at the starting point. We can do a lot of good things in the name of the gospel—all the while thinking that we are bearers of God's Kingdom—but we need to first of all attain the eyes and ears to see what God is doing all around us. Needs will always cry out to us. Hurts, pain, despair are the reality of this age. We cannot base our mission on all the needs out there. We need to develop the disciplines of discerning what God is doing and get involved with that. The authors of The Evangelizing Church put it this way:

"There is no exact formula or perfect plan for congregations to use in being called and sent by God for the sake of the world. However, an evangelizing culture can be, and must be, nurtured. This requires that a congregation and its members listen, discern, speak, and act from a deep awareness of the privilege God has given them to announce the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. The gift is the call. This awareness is best developed through an intentional prayer life, one that seeks to say yes to God and to God's mission in the world."(73)

We pray to be shaped by the Spirit so that we can participate with God in his action in the world. Do we talk about evangelism this way? I hope that more of us begin to do so.

So What Really Produces Missional Community?

2011-11-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

Recently, I asked if a common mission produces community (click here to read) or if the experience of community results in mission (click here to read). Both are taught, often with great passion. Both have scriptural support. And both seem to have anecdotal evidence (great stories) to bolster the claim. However, when I have stepped back from both scenarios and looked beneath the specific path that a group has taken, I've found that in every case something deeper is really going on. In other words, the argument of community first versus mission first is a argument that leads us to miss the real thing that produces both.

I'll first explain why this is true and then I'll point to the deeper issue that often is overlooked in small group strategies.

Paul instructed the church at Philippi, "Consider other more important than yourself." This is the mind of Christ and this is one of the primary ways that the Spirit works through his people today. The problem is that this mindset—the word "consider" is a mindset kind of word that plays out in action—is so contrary to the American way of life. I don't have to go into all of the ways that our common life is shaped by a "consumption" mentality. We are taught to "consider" ourselves as consumers. We don't turn this off when we enter the church. We cannot turn this way of "considering" off when we show up at a small group meeting. We consume small groups. We consume each other. And when we don't like what we consume, we figure out how we can consume elsewhere.

As a result, there are those who consume the group meeting. Or they consume the feeling of community. Or if they prefer, they consume a common mission.

Often leaders fail to see this and they only create small group systems that feed consumers. It might look successful. However, when when you get inside it, the story being told is not one of the Kingdom of God. It's one where people are getting their spiritual goods and services through a small group. A lot of good things happen in these groups, but I do think we need to ask some different questions about them.

So what's the deeper thing that is needed to produce missional community? Discipleship!

Everybody agrees that the church should be on mission. Everybody wants community. And there are lots and lots practical methods for accomplishing mission and community. But the magic is not found in the methods. I've seen all kinds of methods work. And I've seen all of them fail, often disastrously.

The magic is found in the "way" that the method is lived out, a way that tells a story. This way of agape love—"considering others more important than ourselves"—is one that is only developed and passed on through discipleship. This is something we learn to do through practice as we relate with one another, usually outside the meeting in very intentional and deliberate ways. (BTW-this is the foundation of my books Missional Small Groups and MissioRelate: Becoming a Church of Missional Small Groups)

Most of us want a formula or an axiom, something like "common mission results in community." But when you observe the churches where this is being promoted, they are driving their mission and their community through relational patterns of intentional disciple-making. They might not be using those words, but that's what's going on. We don't need formulas. We need a way of practicing, which is the point of my Missional Small Groups Study Guide (Click Here for a Free Download).

Does Community Lead to Mission?

2011-10-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

Does a common mission produce community? I don't think that we can make this a universal claim. Nor can we toss the claim aside as if it has no relevance. See my previous post.

Then must we conclude that community produces mission? Many make this claim and it has some very important biblical texts to support it. Jesus prayed in John 17 that his followers would live in unity so that the world might know him. After washing the feet of the disciples, Jesus told them that the way that the world would know that they were his disciples was by their love for one another. Our love for one another is one of the greatest, unused evangelistic tools.

And I have seen many small groups communities that have grown in love and the natural overflow of that has been mission, evangelism and even group growth. We have 40 years worth of small group experience around the world to support this. So we cannot say that community does not lead a group into a life of blessing those outside the group.

At the same time, we have all seen small groups that experienced deep community nothing every moved beyond the people in the group. They grew insular, developed inside jokes and sequestered themselves into a elite club that others either envied or despised. It might have felt good for insiders but there was nothing inherently beautiful about it that flowed out to bless the rest of the world.

What can we say then:

There is a reciprocal relationship between living in community and sharing a common mission. They feed each other.
Which is first? In some cases it's community. In other cases its a common mission. Most of the time is both.
In most cases where community leads to a group that impacts the world, the groups are set within a church that already has an established church culture of impacting the world. Or they have a pretty big front door and the groups infold new people.

But I think that there is more to the story. Which will be in tomorrow's post.

Does Mission Lead to Community?

2011-10-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

A common statement I hear bouncing around in the discussion about developing missional community is this: If you start with community, you rarely get mission, but if you start with mission, you almost always get community.

I've heard this stated in many forms over the years. We used to proclaim something like that in cell church circles when I was doing training for cell groups in the 1990s. In my previous pastoral position, I had a colleague who would fight for this supposed axiom. She said to me once "Groups that have a common mission will grow in love. It's like an army platoon that grows together while fighting a common enemy."

On the surface, this sounds right. And there are enough church situations where the church culture lines up with this statement. Therefore, it's not hard to list examples that seem to support this claim. However, I can also list plenty of stories of groups that tried this approach and it actually made matters worse. Today, I am going to deal with the practical reasons why we need to call this statement into question. (Tomorrow I'll address another aspect.) Here are a few reasons why this is the case:

Let's look at the analogy of a platoon at war. Brotherhood (and sisterhood) is formed as you fight together. This is true. But let's not forget that soldiers go through basic training before they go to war. They are equipped with basic tools so that they can fight in tandem with others. Throwing people together around a common mission without considering how they have been equipped can produce disaster.
People need to be equipped in the basics of what it means to give agape love in a Kingdom community. I've yet to find situations where people know how to do this just because they have a common mission.
When a church has unhealthy relationship practices, putting those people in groups does not change those patterns. And giving them a common mission does not change them either. In fact, it can actually work against you as those patterns are put on display for the lost to see.

The churches where the "common mission leads to community" strategy works are churches that have created a culture characterized by three basic things: First, they have established healthy, other-oriented, agape love relationship practices. Second, they have developed the church around the vision to engage the community. And last, they are usually highly flexible because the church is relatively new and the participants of the church are relatively young. As a result, often the leaders in such churches are more entrepreneurial. In such cases, therefore, mission often does lead to community.

But it cannot be claimed to be universal truth. We need to listen to churches that are basing their groups on this statement, but we also need to understand the church culture from which they speak. We cannot go to them and try to do it like they do it. That's like a business owner driving up to GE and asking them how he can copy their business model. Most of the churches with whom I work need to establish some basic training to establish new practices that will result in missional living and then release people on mission. We need to understand where our people are and what they need in order to be prepared for mission and not just throw them out and expect them to "get it" on their own.

The End of Evangelicalism? by David Fitch: A Book Review

2011-10-19T14:46:00.001-07:00

Even though David and I come from different parts of the country, we share the same tribe. We both belong to the tribe that would carry the label "evangelical." For the last ten to fifteen years there have been quite a few thinkers who have wrestled with what evangelical theology is, what it is becoming and why there should even be such a thing as evangelical theology.

This books takes things to a deeper and more challenging level. He moves from the level of how we think as evangelicals to the level of how we practice evangelicalism by looking at it through the lens of politics. (Not in the sense of national politics, as the word is commonly used, but in the sense of politic as an order of our life in the midst of the world at large. Fitch defines "politic" as "what people assume about the way things are and how those assumptions are maintained in order to live together.") To do this, he employs the work of Slavoj Zizek as a dialogue partner. Admittedly, the rather obscure writing of Zizek makes this a challenging book to grasp, especially chapter 2. However, if one can get to chapters three and following, the logic of this analysis takes our tribe to a deeper understanding of how we live as evangelicals and how that impacts the way we do church.

Fitch writes: "As evangelicals, we have rarely evaluated our way of life together. Traditionally we have been more focused on the rightness of our theology or, even more so, on the pragmatics of getting people 'saved.'" In chapters 3, 4 and 5, Fitch analyzes three core "evangelical" assumptions that have shaped evangelical life. These are:
1. The idea of the Inerrant Bible
2. The idea of making a Decision for Christ
3. The idea of the Christian Nation

Fitch challenges these assumptions and therefore the identity of Evangelicalism. He does not do this so that we can be better theologians, nor for the sake of having bigger churches. He does this for the sake of the church's mission in this world. He invites us to think about our assumptions so that we might better practice a way of life that demonstrates Christ's character in the world.

This book is a challenging read and many Evangelicals will take exception to what he writes. But this is exactly the kind of book we need to read and work to understand. Fitch confronts our assumptions and if we never listen to such confrontations we will just continue to "rearrange the deck chairs." This book points out that there are icebergs ahead. I hope we will listen before it's too late.

Theology and Small Groups

2011-10-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post asking if your small groups are theologically sound. Now it is time to pose and address some more questions along this line. Let me lead by stating that I am not asking whether or not the topics discussed in our groups fit within the bounds of orthodoxy. There is a place for that, but I want to invite us to think about a theology of community and therefore a theology of small groups, not just about what is doctrinally correct to discuss in our groups.

Nor am I trying to establish a theological or biblical foundation for doing small groups. That argument has been made many times over from many different angles.

At this point, you might be wondering what need there might be for a theology beyond these two concerns. And let me say that there is are a tone of theological questions we should be asking about small groups, cell groups, house churches, missional communities—whatever you want to call them. We need to move beyond labels and brands and actually get in touch with something deeper.

To do this I want to confront an under-discussed theology of practicality. Most of us involved in the day-to-day concerns of pastoral leadership are driven by practical questions, which has roots in an unnamed theology of practicality. I have had to dig up this theology and look at it within my own life during the past few years. It basically looks like this: if it works, if it grows, then it's God. If I can find a methodology that results in more people and more groups then it must be a sound methodology that should be replicated. And what I mean by replicated is that the methods are formulated, written and dispersed so that they can be copied by others. A theology of practicality assumes that the structure is the key. The methods are essential for producing results. Left out are things like a theology of spirituality, a theology of culture and a theology of what it means to be the church.

But this theology of practicality comes with a slew of other assumptions. For instance, it assumes that success in a church is numerical growth. More people in more groups = effectiveness. I don't think that we need to do away with growth. I'm all for it. But because we have a theology of practicality we jump to this conclusion.

Then we also have the assumption that the job of the small groups pastor is to grow lots of groups. This means that a small groups pastor need never to raise theological questions that might interfere with group growth.

If we are going to develop a theology of community, we need to look at the assumed theologies that drive our imaginations because a robust theology of community will come into conflict with them. At least this has been the case in my life. While I still deal with practical issues, the practical stuff must be developed in conversation with other questions, some of which cause me to slow down, see what God is doing and change the bottom line from numerical growth to something much more rich.

Outside the Norm Books for Small Group Pastors

2011-10-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

What are you reading? If you are leading the small groups in your church, what is informing your leadership? I know that you have the normal stock of books on group leadership, training manuals and plenty of stuff on small group strategies. And of course everyone has Life Together by Bonhoeffer.

Let me also encourage you to add these to your shelf or electronic devise. These are not the normal how-to books. Instead these are books meant to equip your soul and challenge the way you see groups and community. Admittedly, these authors are not writing about Christian small groups. In fact, only one of them would be labeled as a "Christian" author. But these books can point us in some new and prophetic directions.

A Different Drum by M. Scott Peck
Community by Peter Block
A Hidden Wholeness by Palmer Parker
Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson
Community by Zygmunt Bauman

These are books that have influenced my writing in Missional Small Groups and MissioRelate and they continue to challenge me.

What books about groups and community are challenging you to think differently about how we live in community with one another?

Consuming Small Groups

2011-10-11T21:27:00.001-07:00

American culture, broadly speaking, is a consumeristic one. We are shaped, without any work on our part, to be consumers. History tells us that when production capacity began to outgrow consumption patterns during the industrial revolution companies sought ways to increase the level of consumption of the average person. They did not produce to meet needs. They produced to sell products. Now this is just the air we breathe. We don't question it. And those who tend to challenge this pattern are viewed as trouble-makers and radicals by those who accept the status quo. Consumption defines us more than we want to think about.

My point here is not to confront this pattern of our culture, but to point out how this view of life seeps into our life as Christians. We don't turn off this mentality toward life when we enter into church life or join a small group. The fact is that too often I meet people who have been so defined by consumerism that they consume God, consume church and consume small group life.

The response of the church typically tends to fall into one of two camps. There are those who rebel against consumerism with all their might. Then there are church leaders who buy into it shape the church to provide the best spiritual goods and services. Those who are sickened by consumerism consume the anti-consumeristic message. While the majority fall in line and go to church to consume their weekly dose of spiritual goods and services.

In either approach, people also consumer small group life. We are really good at giving people what they want. For radicals we give them a radical message to talk about in their groups along with some action. For non-radicals we give them religion on Melba toast which we now package as a DVD Bible study. Then we get excited that we are enfolding such a high percentage of our people into groups. But we are just giving them what they already want. Is that really the goal?

Well I'm all for wise enfolding strategies. I've written nine set of church-wide ca pack curriculum that has aimed at this goal.

BUT WE CANNOT STOP THERE. Enfolding, assimilation, closing the back door cannot be our aim. It's only a step along the way, unless of course we don't care about people remaining within the Christian consumer mentality.

What's the alternative? Don't assume that I'm anti Bible study or anti DVD curriculum. I just want more than that. It's connecting small groups +. What's that +?

Any thoughts?

I'll have more to add the rest of the week.

The Four Seasons in a Small Group

2011-10-09T11:02:00.001-07:00

This weekend I've been leading a retreat in Minneapolis for The Table. This is a picture from my walk this morning. We don't get colors like this in Houston. My walk this morning reminded me of the beauty of autumn.

It also speaks to transitions. As a family, we've been in a time of transition. It's been exciting. It's been tearful. It's been a lot of work. On my walk beneath these autumn colors I realized how we've had to let go of many good things about life and ministry in Minnesota in order to take next the steps in our calling. We would like for the goodness of Spring and Summer to continue perpetually but life does not happen that way. There are seasons to natural life. There are seasons to our personal life.

And there are seasons to life in a small group. There are ups and downs. There are growth spurts followed by times of transition. No small group experiences perpetual summer growth, although we wish we could. If we are seeking God's life in our group, we will be aware of how the life of the Spirit in the community follows the order of the seasons.

In what season of life is your group?

Spring-a time of new life, new vision, new hope
Summer-a time of growth, excitement, and impact
Autumn-a time of harvest, transition and the reality that something new is ahead
Winter-a time of dormancy, quiet life and waiting on God's new birth

Do You Need Ministry Coaching?

2011-10-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

There are lots of different ways that an outside voice can help church leaders be effective. One option that leaders don't often consider is called "Ministry Coaching." With coaching, an outside voice walks with a church leader or leaders on a reoccurring and consistent basis as the ministry develops over time.

Two years ago, I helped a friend write a book on ministry coaching, and I thought, "I think I would really enjoy doing that." However, I was a full-time pastor at that point. Now, since we have moved to Houston, I am only a part-time pastor and now I have the space in my life to coach churches in a regular way.

If you are interested in this, I'd love to talk with you. Here is a description of how the coaching works. Or click here to download this information.

Coaching Purpose: To walk with a church leader to help in the establishment of small group communities that make a difference.

Coaching Process: Scott will work with the leader to establish clear goals and progress markers that fit the local context of a local congregation. The needs and circumstances of the local situation will dictate the kind of coaching provided.

Coaching Content: The information that will shape the coaching is introduced in Scott’s books Missional Small Groups and MissioRelate. More specifically, the content is based on the fact that most churches need to develop missional community through what is called an “AND” experience. What is needed is not a judgmental attitude that divides the missional experience from the attractional. We need a way to move people from an attractional mindset into a missional way of life.

Scott also has at his disposal resources that deal with the specific leadership needs (Called a Missional Leader 360) a Church-wide assessment (Called a Church 360), and a group system assessment (Called a Groups 360). Depending upon the needs of the situation, these resources might serve as additional content.

Coaching Pattern: The pattern is quite simple: we talk on the phone once per month. The first phone conversation will be for two hours, thereafter, one hour. In addition, you get unlimited email interaction.

Coaching Start-up: In order to get started well, all written information about the vision and strategy of the church would need to be provided to Scott two weeks before the first phone conversation.

Coaching Costs: The start-up cost is $400 which covers the preparation and the first two-hour conversation. The one-hour conversations will be $150 per month.

Do You Train Your Groups for Success?

2011-10-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

One of my last tasks as a pastor at the church in Saint Paul, MN before we moved back to Texas was to write curriculum that we called The Journey Together. As I met with the other pastors who gave input into the project, their comment to me was something like this: "We train the leaders in how good groups work, but the people in the groups need that same information. It's not enough to train the leaders." What an idea. Honestly, I had not given it much attention and as I have looked around, neither have many other church leaders. Then last week, I saw where Alan Danielson wrote a blog post last year on this topic. (Check it out here)

After reading his article, I realized that Alan and I shared a similar discovery from totally different circumstances. I realized that most people in American churches are not being set up to be effective group members. As a result, most of us put all of the pressure upon group leaders and set them up with unrealistic expectations.

One reoccurring experience I've had revolves around the idea of group conflict. Every small group leader book or training manual worth its salt contains information in it about how conflict works and the stages of group life. You know: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, Re-forming. But what about the group members? They are the ones going through the conflict and the time to teach them about it is NOT when emotions are high. It's not like the leader can go to the meeting and say, "Yes I learned about this in my training. What we are going through right now is the conflict stage. Don't worry, we will press through this."

We need creative ways to train groups, not just leaders. We need to equip groups for effective group life. This is the reason I wrote The Journey Together. It's designed to train the group to get started on the right track and figure out how they are going to continue on an effective path together.

To download The Journey Together for FREE, click here. Let me know what you think about it.

Is Your Small Group Strategy Theologically Sound?

2011-10-02T21:41:00.000-07:00

As I read books, articles and blog posts on small groups, I don't often read much that points to theology. Most of the time, I find information that is highly pragmatic and aims at helping you and I with the practical questions of how we develop effective small groups. And to tell you the truth, I learn a lot from what I've read over the years. I am a better leader for all the pragmatic information I've gathered.

However, I've thinking about the disproportionate focus on pragmatic issues when weighed against the almost lack of theological reflection regarding small groups. Now I know that most of us have a basic theology of "why" small groups in our back pockets. We all can give one of the two standard reasons why we do small groups. The first being the Trinity and the second a list of the "house to house" scriptures from Acts. But I'm not talking about a "why" theology for small groups. I'm talking about a "what," "how," and "who" theology of groups. Do we have that?

In my experience, most of us don't. Part of the reason for this is that theology has been set apart from the questions of practical ministry. We need theology in order to preach or to teach a class. But if someone is a good leader and has a good prayer life (for some this might be optional), he or she could run most programs in the church. We don't really need much theological reflection to run most programs in the church and this includes most small groups. Even if we are trying to become a church "of" small groups.

We need to reflect on questions like:
• What kind of groups are we aiming to create?
• How does God form people to live out the Kingdom?
• What does the Kingdom of God look like in this local context?
• Who are the people that are a part of these groups?

What kind of theological reflecting are you doing as a leader in the church?

More to come.

An Institutionalized Soul

2011-09-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

After communist regimes tumbled down in Eastern Europe, stories about life under various dictators came out. One of the most poignant was one from Romania. Under the rule of Ceauşescu, the leaders had determined that it was in the best interest of the country to raise children in an institution instead of a home with their parents. The results were shocking. Even though the children were provided all the means to meet their physical need, they were undersized, slow to develop in motor functions and behind in their communications skills. There were so many kids in these institutions that those hired to care for them could only feed and clothe them. They had no time to hold them, care for them when they were crying or simply play with as kids long to do.

How often we do this with our soul. In our busy world, we treat our emotions, mind and spirit as if they are children who only need a bed and three square meals. Maybe we think that since we went to church on Sunday or we read our Bible for a few minutes this morning that all is good with the little children inside us. So we can go about our busy lives, dragging our soul along. When we do this, we control our soul and force it into mold that it does not fit.

It's not normal to treat children this way but it has become quite normal for us to ignore the voices of the children within us. We shove aside our emotions. We turn away from pain. We refuse to ask hard questions. We put all our energy into our outer world, but the way we treat our inner world resembles the way kids were treated in Romanian institutions.

Are you institutionalizing your soul? Stop now and listen. The Spirit is near working in you. You can break free from it today:
• Simply sit still where you are and take a deep breath.
• Here this word: "Be still and know that I am God."
• Ask yourself: "If I could say anything to God right now, what would I say."
• Then reflect on your response. What does that say about the things going on in your soul?
• Wait for a couple of minutes to listen to what God might say back to you.

Reason #6 that Small Groups Don't Work in America

2011-09-09T07:37:00.000-07:00

The Senior Pastor Does not Possess the Vision for Small Group Life

I've taken a break from this series due to our relocation, but there is so much more to say. If you want to view the first five entries in this series click here.

Notice the wording I used above. I did not say "vision for small groups" because I've found that senior pastors commonly carry the vision for small groups and promote their benefits. I said that the senior pastor does not possess the vision for "small group life." Between the two is a huge gulf.

A lead pastor can possess a vision for groups and even promote the small group program. That's better than nothing I guess. But if the vision never goes beyond that, then groups will never be anything more than a program. And people don't need more programs.

A vision for small group life is not something a person gets. Actually the vision gets them. It gets inside them in such a way that they are compelled to lead people into the vision. They long to see people connected in community and mobilized for mission. They want much more than a bunch of people in small groups or a small group structure that will close the "back door." They are driven by the hope that their sheep can be discipled by the Spirit as they connect as God's people in groups.

Let's briefly look at a few marks of lead pastors who are compelled by this vision:

1. They are the vision carriers and champions of small groups. Most likely they are not the primary point persons of the small group ministry. But they promote it more than anyone else.
2. They participate in group life and they speak from their experience.
3. They understand the strategy of the group life team. They participate in that team at appropriate times so that they are doing more than just serving as the promoter.
4. They lead relationally. They are involved in the lives of the leaders with whom they directly work. They know them beyond their jobs and minister to them as a shepherd.
5. They receive ministry themselves. They are not trying to be perfect, but they are in relationship with others who sow into their lives.
6. They work with other leaders as a team. They have shed the expectation that they have to be the super-star leader who has all the gifts. Instead they have found leaders who have other strengths and gifts that compliment theirs. In this setting, they have learned to defer to others who have insight and gifting in areas that they do not.

A Missional Theology of "Election"

2011-09-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

"He [Jesus] appeared, as the Scripture makes clear, to those who had been chosen beforehand as witnesses. They are chosen not for themselves, not to be the exclusive beneficiaries of God's saving work, but to be the bearers of the secret of his saving work for the sake of all. They are chosen to go and bear fruit.

To be chosen, to be elect, therefore does not mean that the elect are the saved and the rest are the lost. To be elect in Christ Jesus, and there is no other election, means to be incorporated into his mission to the world, to be the bearer of God's saving purpose for his whole world, to be the sign and the agent and the firstfruit of his blessed kingdom which is for all. It means therefore, as the New Testament makes abundantly clear, to take our share in his suffering, to bear the scars of the passion. It means, as Paul says elsewhere, to bear in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of the risen Jesus may be manifest and make available for others." (Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 86-87)

Why have you and I been chosen to be included as a part of God's people. Chosenness is not about being “in” verses those who are “out.” It's not about being a part of a privileged group that gets to go to heaven. That imagination has no place in the biblical story even though it's a common understanding of election and chosenness.

Israel was chosen to put on display the beauty of God as a colony of life in the midst of a world of death. They were not called to be an exclusive club, but that's what they assumed they were. Too often the modern church has fallen into the same trap. Instead of being purveyors of beauty we have horded it.

Missional communities are outposts of beauty, displaying the life of God in the midst of unGod. Instead of a privilege that we horde because we are his favorite for the sake of being his favorite, we are set apart to suffer with God for the sake of the world's redemption. This is truly a great privilege, but it will cost us much.

We are blessed so that we can bless. We are touched by God's presence so that we can be bearers of the presence in the world. We are loved so that we can love.

Many reading this might recall many sermons on this or variations thereof but in most cases the take home was applied individualistically. We apply this call to our personal lives and try to become individual missionaries in our lives. But the call is not to individuals but to communities. Individuals cannot be a people. We are chosen as individuals to participate in this colony of peace (Shaloam—wholeness and healing) in the midst of strife and violence.

Mission is Lived in "Veiled Form"

2011-08-29T07:49:00.000-07:00

"The mission of the Church is to be understood, can only be rightly understood, in terms of the trinitarian model. It is the Father who holds all things in his hand, whose province upholds all things, whose tender mercies are aver all his works, where he is acknowledged and where he is denied, and who has never left himself without witness to the heart and conscience and reason of any human being. In the incarnation of the Son, he has made known his nature and purpose fully and completely, for in Jesus "all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Col 1:19). But his presence was veiled presence in order that there might be the possibility of repentance and freely given faith. In the Church the mission of Jesus is continued in the same veiled form. It is continued through the presence and active working of the Holy Spirit, who is the presence of the reign of God in foretaste. The mission of the Church to all the nations, to all human communities in all their diversity and in all their particularity, is itself the might work of God, the sign of the inbreaking of the kingdom. The Church is not so much the agent of the mission as the locus of the mission. It is God who acts in the power of his Spirit, doing might works, creating signs of a new age, working secretly in the hearts of men and women to draw them to Christ. When they are so drawn, they become part of a community which claims no masterful control of history, but continues to bear witness to the real meaning an goal of history by a life which--in Paul's words--by always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus becomes the place where the risen life of Jesus is made available for others (2 Cor. 4:10). (Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society).

This kind of talk about the church and the God of the church causes us to see that goal of God's mission is not the success of a local church or the flourishing of a missional community. We tend to have such a small success oriented perspective. We don't understand the "veiled form" of God's life in our midst. God's veiled work is not about have a goal of being as good of a church as possible. This is not a missional community that is trying to make an impact in the world. This is the mission of the Father, Son and Spirit who has a much larger agenda than creating effective churches or good missional communities.

We tend to turn mission in on itself as if the point of redemption is to make good churches. That's like saying the point of an army is to participate in parades and do war simulations.

But God's mission is much messier than that. God gets involved in the dirt and filth of our life to redeem the worst of death. That's the nature of the suffering of the cross. The means of Jesus's death is the worst of the worst of suffering. He took on the darkest form of suffering to restore and raise up the lowest of the low.

Missional community is far from an experience of success and victory—as most of us wish it were. It's a community that bears the suffering of those in our little worlds. It's a community who enters into the pain of neighbors, friends and relatives.

Of course we don't do this on our own. Nor do we seek to purposely avoid success of try to do church in self-defeatist ways. Being missional does not mean “unsuccessful.” It just means that “success” is not our end goal. Our goal is to step with the power of the Spirit because it's God's presence that lives in the midst of the pain who empowers us to make a difference. This kind of success might look very different than we expect.

Living Missionally Study Guide

2011-08-25T08:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I posted a video that was developed by The Table in Minneapolis. They developed this for a retreat I am doing for them in October. This week I wrote a study guide to go with this video. Click here to watch the video and download the study guide.

Might I suggest that you use this video and study guide this way: If you want your group to take new steps to join God in his mission, use these as for the discussion time during a meeting. And if the group wants to explore this further after that discussion, you can use the Study Guide for Missional Small Groups. All of this is free.

Live in the Local

2011-08-24T07:35:00.000-07:00

Recently, I realized that this marks the fourth time that I have moved to Houston and the third time that I have lived in this specific area of West Houston. It hit me how I need to reengage this local environment, to pay attention to the specific life of this neighborhood. This is a challenge because life in modern society is not usually lived locally. With the web, Twitter, global news, franchise restaurants, etc., life is anything but local.

While reflecting on this, I've been reading a book by Wendell Berry. In it he wrote,

"Because they [early Americans] belonged to no place, it was almost inevitable that they should behave violently toward the places they came to. We still have not, in any meaningful way, arrived in America. And in spite of our great reservoir of facts and methods, in comparison to the deep earthly wisdom of established peoples we still know but little." (The Art of the Commonplace, 11)

This is a reflection on how the early Americans treated the land violently because they did not belong to the place. They just consumed space. If I am going to live locally, I have to embrace the local, to grab hold of this place and treat it as God's creation.

The first step in my situation is to observe, to get to know this place. That's my goal.

Is Changing Diapers Missional?

2011-08-23T07:17:00.000-07:00

Once while sitting in a pediatric doctor's waiting room, I read an article that a baby will have his or her diaper changed an average 3700 times. This means that by the time all four of our kids are out of diapers, we will have changed about 15000 wet and stinky, mushy wads of fiber. Ugh!

In a sermon I preached a few weeks ago, I spoke on Making a Difference. I was making the point about how our everyday, mundane choices make a difference, that we can advance the Kingdom of God in what we might assume as insignificant. I was trying to confront the myth that only the big choices make a difference. While I was preaching I said something like, "My attitude while changing a diaper makes a difference." This statement was not in my notes. It just came out of my mouth and I almost had to stop myself while preaching and think more about what I was saying. I can choose to have a complaining attitude while serving my children or I can use this act as a prompter to pray for them.

It might not seem like much. It's not something to put in one's memoirs. But the very normal, everydayness of changing a diaper (and millions of other small stuff we do everyday) and the attitude I choose to have while doing it can change the world. I might not know exactly how I'm changing the world, but if I cannot do it in the small stuff, how can I join with God in his mission in bigger things?

What are some of the things in your life that could make a difference when done with an attitude of joining the work of the Spirit through that activity?

Confronting the Utopian Church

2011-08-22T07:48:00.000-07:00

“We look at what has been given to us in our Scriptures and in Jesus and try to understand why we have a church in the first place, what the church, as it is given to us, is. We are not a utopian community. We are not God’s avenging angels. I want to look at what we have, what the church is right now, and ask, Do you think that maybe this is exactly what God intended when he created the church? Maybe the church as we have it provides the very conditions and proper company congenial for growing up in Christ, for becoming mature, for arriving at the measure of the stature of Christ. Maybe God knows what he is doing, giving us church, this church. (Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection, 14).

I love this passage from Peterson but I also have a distain for it. He brings us as leaders into the realm of sober reality while not leaving us to settle for reality as we know it. Too many writers and speakers about the church are in the business of talking about an ideal utopia. They pull on our heartstrings because most if not all of us want church to be a different experience than what it currently is. And we are drawn forward not to be a new reality but by a dream-like unreality. To be honest, every time I read another promise for a utopian church experience if I only adopt the plan of the writer, my heart wishes it were true.

It’s not that we don’t need new experiments that explore new ways of being the church in our world. It’s not that we don’t need to call into question our current experiences. We need both. But Missional Community is about as far from a utopian experience as anything I’ve ever known. Missional Community actually leads us into a greater revelation of reality. Our struggles come to the surface. Our pain is shared. Our relational unhealth is open for all to see.

Some respond with some kind of cheerleading mantra like, “Yes, this is the way it should be. Now we are getting into real church.” But when people respond this way, I know that they are only talking about the dream and not living into it. While the experience of Missional Community is one of the greatest joys of all of life, it is revealed in the midst of death. If you are really living it, cheerleading is not necessary and talk of a utopian ideal is ignored. Just like there is not utopian family experience—something that everyone who has been a parent knows—there is no utopian community. But when you have it, you know that it brings life.

Life Change Brings New Challenges

2011-08-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

Well, we have landed in H-town. And besides the heat, we are settling in quite well. We have done the normal things: Unload moving truck and put all in storage. Find preschool for kids. Register kids in elementary school. Try to make the kids feel secure in the transition. Try to feel secure in the transition ourselves. Do paperwork and more paperwork. Finalize some details on our house which will be ready in September.

This week, Shawna started her job at the church. I start my part-time role as an Equipping Pastor next week when the kids go back to school.

I'm getting my Fall consulting/training schedule organized. And I'm developing a phone coaching process where I set up monthly hour-long conversations to work with pastors and help them either with the implementation of a missional church strategy or with the development of small groups.

Everyday life stretches our faith in God but it's during times like this that my faith gets stretched. What is stretching you today?

Do We Really Need New Ideas for Small Group Ministry?

2011-08-18T23:07:00.000-07:00

I've been asked to write a blog post where I share something innovative in small group thinking, some idea that will help churches advance small groups in new ways. I am excited to contribute an idea. I do have a few. However I find myself fighting with myself as I write about innovative small group ideas.

King Solomon once said that there is nothing new under the sun. Every time I read a book or blog that promotes some kind of new idea that will revolutionize small groups, I'm quite cautious. I've yet to find any new small group idea that is really new. I'm even cautious about my own new ideas.

What I have found is that most of the small group fruit that I have experienced is the result of some very basic principles that are as old as Moses. Groups flourish in an atmosphere:

of prayer, which causes me to ask if churches today depend upon programming more than they do upon prayer.

of life together, where people connect in healthy relationships, but most people are too busy to really invest in a few people who share life in a group.

of neighborhood engagement, where love is given without expectations, but to many in the church spend their energy judging those who need love instead of actually loving them.

of relational discipleship and mentoring, where spiritual growth is not dependent upon attending classes but upon personal investment in one another.

of relational investment in leaders, where coaches and pastors have the time to invest in the lives of leaders and in group members.

But is any of this really new? Not really. Maybe our innovations are simply undiscovered ideas that have been true all along. Maybe what need are new ideas to help churches facilitate these relational principles listed above. The focus though is not on the new ideas, even though my pride gets in the way from time to time and wants to elevate their importance. All that we innovate must be in the service of promoting relational life, community that is on mission.

Baseball Matters and Mission Matters

2011-08-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

I must admit that baseball is my favorite sport. Sometimes I wonder if circumstances had been different if I could have made it in the sport. But alas, I am just an admirer of the game and those who stumble along to excel at this difficult game. Recently, I realized how the game of baseball is a kind of parable for how the Kingdom of God is manifest. Here are some reasons:

Baseball games happen almost every day, as opposed to less frequently in most other sports. It's not about huge up times followed by long periods of down times.
Baseball is comprised of tons of small, almost imperceivable actions stacked on top of one another. Games are won and lost based on these small things, not on big huge, spectacular moments.
Success in baseball depends upon those who can deal with failure the best. Think about it: if a hitter is successful 1/3 of the time, he will be in the Hall of Fame.
Baseball allows individuals to stand out and contribute their unique talents in obvious ways.
It makes room for average player to have their better than average moments.
Superstar players cannot carry a team to victory on a consistent basis. In fact, two or three superstars on the same team is not enough. Too many players are needed to play all of the roles that are required to win at this sport.

Kingdom life practiced in missional community:

is an everyday thing,
is comprised of small actions of love,
depends upon how people respond to failure,
makes room for individuals to offer their gifts,
and puts those with stand-out gifts on a team.

A Video that Captures the Missional Imagination

2011-08-15T21:03:00.000-07:00

I'm doing some training in October with a church in Edina, MN. The funny thing is that the church is only about 30 minutes from where I used to live. Anyway, The Table is the name of the church and they are holding a retreat for which they developed a video to promote. I was so impressed by their promotion which you can view here that I asked them if they would do some slight modifications to use. The first time I saw this, I cried. I was moved by the fact that the Spirit was revealing a missional imagination to these leaders.

Explore the More from Jeff D. Johnson on Vimeo.

Can the Church Be More than a Purveyor of Personal Salvation?

2011-08-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

“The fact that Christian faith becomes increasingly a matter of personal decision can be misunderstood to mean that Christianity is concerned only with the narrow range of personal moral problems. When this happens, there is a grave danger that the Gospel may be mistaken for a mere offer of individual and private salvation, like the mystery religions which were its rivals during the first centuries of its mission. … The Gospel is concerned with something greater, with the redemption of the world, including precisely those realms of human life which are being so drastically secularized in our day. (Newbigin, Trinitarian Doctrine for Today’s Mission, 60).

This sounds good. It resembles things we have heard in the Bible. But if truth be told, it is hard for most Western Christians to even begin to think about the Gospel and salvation in these terms. Salvation is most often seen as a personal experience that we have so that we have a personal relationship with Jesus, deal with our moral problems (because we have been told that we are powerless to change them on our own) and go to heaven when we die. When we take this approach to the Gospel and salvation, we have a good private relationship with Jesus, line up with an upstanding moral code while still living the rest of our lives according to the standards of the broader culture.

Jesus came to set us free from the –isms of our culture not to place church on top of them and call our lives holy. He came to introduce us to a new way of life that challenges the life patterns of individualism, sexism, racism, isolationism, consumersism, workaholism and others that shape our lives in ways that we don’t even recognize. We most often overlook such life patterns because we assume that public issues like these belong to the realm of the secular. When we only see the Gospel as applying to our private lives it hard to imagine how it can apply to matters like abuse of the environment, how people of color are neglected by the governmental systems or how immigrants have trouble integrating into the local culture. We fail to see how the idol of success is destroying families and the drive for power and prestige is crushing our souls.

Has the church simply become a purveyor of personal salvation? Is it primarily a provider of events so people can hear a message that will empower then to become all they can be in their “real” lives?

Is community, whether in a small group, mid-size group or a house church, just another spiritual option for people who have that felt need?

If the Gospel is really about the redemption of the world, then we must tear down the artificial divide between the secular and the spiritual. Church then becomes something much different. It becomes a venue for salvation formation, a means for shaping our lives to flow with the salvation of the world in all its parts. It becomes a pod of redemption where salvation life is demonstrated in the midst of all that is controlled by non-salvation. This means that our lives will be shaped by a set of salvation practices instead of secular practices. We need not attack the secular to change our lives. We just need to establish an alternative way of living in the midst of the secular.

A Brief Theology of Missional Spirituality

2011-08-08T05:26:00.001-07:00

“The difference is that these churches must now ‘package’ their spiritual ‘values’ in accordance with the dictates of the market, which means that they must effectively vacate the specifically Christian content of their life and language.

Under the terms of this agreement, whatever it means to be a Christian can no longer be tied to the practices that constitute the church as a social body visibly, publicly manifesting the intrusion of God’s apocalyptic regime into the world, but must be limited to mattes of the soul, leaving the body to the authority of the powers and economic principalities of the age. Christian identity and church authority are thus disembodied, relegated to a separate sphere of private life, transvalued into ‘religion,’ that is, habits and practices that are useful for both depicting the mysterious and invisible whole taht is the body politic of the modern state and global market, and also for conserving social energies in a numinous ether called ‘values,’ which at the appropriate time can be put to a ‘real’ social use in the state’s behalf.” (Barry Harvey, Can These Bones Live, 123)

If we wait until we need to call upon a spirituality that we might call "missional" then it's too late. In other words, if we see a need in our neighborhood and we want to do something to make a difference then how can we make a difference unless we already practice a spirituality that could truly make a difference.

I believe that most Christians want to have an impact upon the world around them. I believe that we want to lead people to embrace Christ followership. That most want to do more than give money to good causes. That they know they have a calling to make a specific difference in the world.

It's like a baseball player who comes up to bat in the ninth inning with an opportunity to win the game. No doubt that anyone in that situation "wants" to come through in the clutch. But want to is not enough. Players that are prepared depend upon their preparation not their desire.

In this quote, the author refers to an agreement that the church has made that has relegated church to the realm of the private, internal spiritual matters that have nothing to do with the public practices of daily life. Public life is driven by the market, which basically means that the supply and demand for goods, services, jobs, and resources controls how we live on a day-to-day basis. Therefore our lives are shaped by market-driven practices, these are the practices where we invest our lives wisely in order to guarantee as much as possible an equitable return on our investment. And these practices we assume are beyond the realm of any spirituality. As a result, our lives outside of church looks pretty much like that of anyone who does not call themselves a Jesus-follower.

Then when we do want to make a missional difference--when we want to hit that game-winning home run--we don't have the wherewithal to actually come through. We must practice the non-private disciplines of missional spirituality so that we challenge the practices of the market economy. These include things like: hospitality, generosity, self-sacrifice, fasting, praying the hours, returning non-violence for wrongs down, blessing those who cannot bless back, etc. These are practices that rebel against the life shaped by the market.

Mission Begins on Our Knees

2011-07-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

Missional Reflection #8 in a series where I quote a theologian and reflect on how it might shape a missional imagination. This quote is from Henri Nouwen.

"To pray is to unite ourselves with Jesus and lift up the whole world through him to God in a cry for forgiveness, reconciliation, healing and mercy. To pray, therefore, is to connect whatever human struggle or pain we encounter—whether starvation, torture, displacement of peoples, or any form of physical and mental anguish—with the gentle and humble heart of Jesus. ...

Prayer is leading every sorrow to the source of all healing; it is letting the warmth of Jesus' love melt away the cold anger of resentment; it is opening a space where joy replaces sadness, mercy supplants bitterness, love displaces fear, gentleness and care overcome hatred and indifference. But most of all, prayer is the way to become and remain part of Jesus' mission to draw all people to the intimacy of God's love." (Henri Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing, 36).

The doorway into God's mission does not turn on the hinges of action. Nor does it open to us through Bible study or reading theology. We cannot embark upon mission through mission statements or clear strategies. We can do a lot of good things through such means—many of which might look missional—but most of the time we are trying to carve out a doorway toward something that ultimately is not God. This is the reason why pragmatic questions like "Can you give me a list of things our church can do to be missional?" are so dangerous.

Of course action is required for mission. Faith without deeds is no faith after all. The Bible and good theology can shape our imagination for what mission actually is and help us know the God that is on mission. And clarity of calling in our local setting helps us focus how God wants to move through us so we are not bogged down with endless needs and never actually do anything. But we still cannot start there.

God's mission begins on our knees.

We need God's eyes to see the needs around us. We need God's compassion to feel the pain that we see. We need God's love for people so that we will consider them more important than ourselves. We need God's power to do something about it. We need God's voice so we act with wisdom.

It is God's mission in the world, no ours. It's not the church's mission. It's not the mission of a missional community that makes a difference.

Prayer opens the door for entry into mission. Prayer as waiting on God. Prayer as coming before him with all that would hinder us from being bearers of his love. Prayer as a means for formation so that we can actually be God's light in the midst of the darkness.

Prayer actually makes us into the kind of people who have something to go forth on mission. It is a missional practice, on that shapes us to be missional instead of just doing missional action.

Free Small Group Campaign Materials

2011-07-28T05:56:00.000-07:00

I am writing the material for our Fall Church-wide Campaign, entitled Tru Calling: Praying in a Way that Makes a Difference. This is the eleventh campaign that I have either written or helped develop. At Woodland, we call them Adventures instead of campaigns, but they work the same way.

It's hard to argue with the effectiveness of church-wide campaigns. Six-week series of sermons, small group discussion guides, and personal devotional or reflection guide combined with some form of actionable objective help create an effective learning and discipleship environment. And they help get disconnected people connecting in a small group on a short-term basis, proving a low risk, easy-in/easy-out opportunity for people to explore community.

An essential ingredient to an effective campaign is finding the material that fits your church's situation. This means you need options. Visit my website to review nine options to consider. And you can download the basic resources for free. That's right, you can have these for FREE. And there's a way to also purchase them. Check them out.

The "Yellow Brick Road" of Church Strategy

2011-07-27T13:35:00.000-07:00

For some writing I am doing, I have been reading and re-reading some books with which I see things differently. I'm not talking about secular books or books that promote something about which I have a totally different point of view like the recent popular books on atheism. I've been reading books about small groups, organic church life, the missional church and how one can live in missional community. Unlike a popular book on atheism for example, I actually agree with quite a lot of what these authors write. But there is a fundamentally different point of view that I have from most of them.

Honstely, I’m exhausted from the endless books, conferences and consulting processes that promise that they have found the secret to church, or small group, or missional success. It seems that every other church book that comes out promises to have found the proverbial "yellow brick road" that will lead us to the wizard's secrets. If we would only follow the prescribed practical steps of implementation ... if we would assess the key factors of church health ... if we would adopt their insight into something that no one has ever taught before—as if this were even possible ... if we could only have radical vision that stretches beyond the possible ... if we would get back to the long ignored pattern that somehow is so obvious in the Bible … then Oz himself would stand before us and the secrets of successful church life would unfold.

Again, the problem is that I agree with much of what these books state. However, I don’t like how they are postured. In their promises, they don’t seem to be talking about real people in real churches. They make me wonder if they are writing from an ivory tower and don’t deal with real people very much. While I’m sure that they do deal with real people, it just seems that they promise too much.

Before you deem me judgmental, let me share where I’m coming from. I used to promote a church plan and process that promised the magic of the great wizard, but then after a few years of watching churches struggle and fail with the methods that we were selling, I started rethinking what I had to say. Oh there was enough success in enough churches that you could promote the plan and process. But I saw too many leaders jump from our plan to other plans, all looking for the right "yellow brick road.” Then they jumped to something else a couple years later. There always seems to be another new and improved road that the church should take. This made me ask questions about why we promise so much but actually see so little fulfillment to those promises.

Now you might wonder if the books I write and the seminars I lead aren’t offering another “yellow brick road” in a slightly different form. Here’s the difference: instead of providing a road for you to follow, my goal is to provide experiences and environments for you to discover the road that the Spirit is call your church or small group to walk.

There are a lot of “Great Ozes” out that that promise much more. And I will continue to learn from them because they are pointing to an aspect of truth. However, we need much more than the inspiring visions and lock-step plans that they promote. We need a vision that challenges us and a process that helps us discover what the Spirit is saying so that we can move forward. When we have this, the fog parts and we find the yellow brick road that is specific to our local situation.

Reason #5 that Small Groups Don't Work in America

2011-07-26T13:19:00.000-07:00

Reason #5 that Small Groups Don’t Work in America: Senior Pastors Try to Be Small Group Pastors

For various reasons senior pastors feel the need to be the primary small groups pastor. They lead the church and try to develop small groups and oversee life (or lack thereof) that transpires in those groups. They often feel that they need to serve as the group architect, the group builder and the group sustainer. In other words, they feel the pressure to be the creator, developer and the pastor of groups.

In addition, this idea of the senior pastor as the small groups pastor has been propagated for years, if not decades. David Yongii Cho has always stated that he is the cell group pastor of his church. There are those who state that Rick Warren is the small groups pastor at Saddleback. And there are others who instruct pastors that they need to be the primary initiator of groups when they want to start them.

Then in the case of smaller churches, pastors are left with few options but to be the small group pastor. They don't see anyone else who can do it.

About ten years ago, I was wrapping up three years of research on churches that had successfully developed small group systems and compared their change journey with those who had not succeeded. One of the things that I found was that in most churches that were successful in their transition, the senior pastor did not serve as the small group pastor. Over the years, I have continued to ask questions about this in the most successful cases. When you do a bit more digging, Cho has always been the carrier of his cell church vision. Warren is the standard bearer and the primary promoter of small groups in his church. And when you look inside Andy Stanley’s church in Atlanta, he has always participated in group life, promoting the vision with his feet.

But in almost every case of small group/cell group success, there is someone else who walks alongside the senior pastor as the small group pastor. The senior pastor of course carries the vision, talks about groups, teaches about group principles, but this is done in partnership with someone who walks side-by-side with the senior pastor. I’ve seen this to be the case more times than I can count in all kinds of small group and cell church models. This is the case with Steve Gladen and Rick Warren at Saddleback. Steve plays the role of small group point leader. I could make a long list of other examples.

I have followed the journey of one church that started off with a small group pastor who developed the group systems and walked alongside the senior pastor. But then they changed and the senior pastor took over. It did not take long before small groups eventually took a back seat.

The skills needed to preach, lead the various aspects of church life and work with the different departments of a church are different than the skills needed to develop groups. Most pastors don’t have the gift set for recruiting and training leaders to oversee groups and develop group leaders. In fact, many times the best small group point persons who pastor the groups are not great preachers and won’t ever be a senior pastor down the road.

In Reason #6, I’ll deal with the exception to this rule and when the senior pastor can effectively serve as the Groups Point Person

In Reason #7, I’ll deal with the pitfall of the Senior Pastor and Groups Point Person being on different pages.

New Ventures in Texas

2011-07-26T05:24:00.000-07:00

Over the last six years, full time as a pastor in Minnesota. Now it's back to Houston. So what does Houston hold? I cannot believe that in 9 days we take off.

First, we will be near family, and with four kids eight and under this will be a great thing.

I will be serving as a part-time Equipping Pastor on the staff of a growing church in West Houston called Hosanna. For them I will be writing curriculum and serving on the teaching team. This will be a fun challenge.

This will give me time to serve as a consultant, trainer and writer for other churches. I am excited about this opportunity. Consulting with churches and denominational systems and leading seminars has always been something I did on the side of my full-time job. Now I get to do more of it. If you have thought about getting someone to do some training or serve as a consultant in the areas of small groups or the missional vision, then please read through some of the options on my website http://mscottboren.com. Click here to see a specific list of services. I'd love to serve you. Contact me at mscottboren@gmail.com if you have questions.

Is Missional Church Practical?

2011-07-25T04:46:00.000-07:00

Missional Reflection #7 in a series where I quote a theologian and reflect on how it might shape a missional imagination. This quote is from Jacques Ellul.

"Christians who are conformed to the world introduce into the Church the value-judgments and concepts of the world. They believe in action. They want efficiency. They give first place to economics, and they think that all means are good. ... They are denied by their sociological milieu. The protestant thinks to adopt this the means which the world employs. Since he finds those means useful in his profession, or in his leisure time, they stand so high in his estimation that eh cannot see why he should not introduce them into the Church and make the things of the spirit dependent upon them.

He never faces the problem of these means. ... They are effective. Hence they are good. Since they are in a sanctified world and are effective, why not make use of them in the Church? The criteria of his thinking as a Christian are so vague, and the demands of his faith are so "inward," that he is unaware of any contradiction between the world's means and the life of faith. (Jacques Ellul, False Presence of the Kingdom, 47-48).

Many reading this quote from Jacques Ellul will find what he says hard to embrace. Pragmatic actions that lead to tangible results rule the day in the church. We are drawn to solutions that work. We want to know the steps that will make us into God's kind of church. We attend conferences so that we can learn something that we can implement, something that will help us be better Christians, something we can do to transform the world. For most people the only other options is some version of irrelevant theological pontificating that seems to have nothing to do with reality.

When it comes to missional community we often look for pragmatic direction so that we can be effective missional people. At one level this search for the pragmatic is good. There is no point in turning missional talk into ivory-tower academic ideas. We do need tangible ways for growing in missional life.

But at another level our pragmatic search hinders us from actually getting us to the place where we want to go. We want actionables and we search until we find them. However our search is at the expense of attaining a missional imagination which can guide our journey much better than any 12-step program toward missional living.

We are so used to pragmatic answers for doing church that we don't realize how the questions of effectiveness are driven by the world's imagination not God's. As a result, being missional gets turned into a way to grow exponentially or inspiring thoughts about staring some kind of movement instead of a church. Missional community becomes a specific form or groups format and size. We need to be cautious of fads an so called "movements" that work, not because missional does not work nor because it is not effective, but because we have a tendency in the church to attach ourselves to a "means," a method instead of the God of that means. We are prone to make a god out of our methodology. As a result, we miss the God of mission and the call to "peoplehood" that he wants us to embody in our local context.

If your immediate response to this is that I (and Jacques Ellul) am being impractical, you are missing the point. I'm just challenging the typical approach to practical. If we want to see the practical steps that the Spirit wants to provide for leading churches into missional life, we often have to repent of our expectations of what those steps will actually look like so that we can actually have the ability to see what God is doing in our world and meet him there.

There are No Prayer Experts, ... but we think they exist

2011-07-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

Everyone is a prayer novice.

With that in mind, take a deep breath and relax. Yes. I mean just that. Take a deep breath and let any pressure you feel about prayer or being spiritual roll off of you.

It does not matter if you are a brand new Jesus follower or if you have seen God work great miracles through your prayers. The difference between the two is microscopic when compared to the vastness of God. It’s like a grasshopper comparing itself with an ant. However when you set both next to an elephant, the differences in size fall away.

Sometimes, we compare our prayers with those of others. Some seem so comfortable with prayer. They say the right words. They refer to scriptures. They might even express passion as they pray. I remember praying with a few people years ago and voiced a short, somewhat tentative request. After we said our “amens” a guy in the group corrected my theology regarding my prayers. He told me that my prayers did not quite get what God was all about. I guess he was the grasshopper.

Isn’t this ridiculous? Even if I am a grasshopper prayer-er, what difference does it make? Why would I being looking at myself in comparison to others when we are trying to connect with the maker of the universe? Why would I have anything to take pride in when we are talking about prayer as the call to get to know someone that cannot be fully comprehended?

When it comes to prayer, there are no experts.

"Colony of Heaven in a Country of Death"--Eugene Peterson

2011-07-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

Missional Reflection #6 in a series where I quote a theologian and reflect on how it might shape a missional imagination. This quote is from Eugene Peterson.

“So, why church? The short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of heaven in the country of death. … Church is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit for providing human witness and physical presence to the Jesus-inaugurated kingdom of God in this world. It is not that kingdom complete, but it is a witness to that kingdom.…
Church is an appointed gathering of named people in particular places who practice a life of resurrection in a world in which death gets the biggest headlines. … The practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life.” (Peterson, Practice Resurrection, 12)

Why church indeed? If we are really honest, much of the time church seems to normal, so mundane, so unexciting. After all, if you know the facts about Jesus and salvation and you know you are in good standing with God, why do we need church? Should we look for something that will meet our needs a little better or stimulate our senses a bit more?

We often miss the point of church because we expect it to be exciting and stimulating. Of course, that is the pattern of our culture. We do very little that fails to meet our needs or entertain us. The story of America is the story of consumption. Day-by-day we consume, so much so that we don’t even realize that we consume. It is impossible not to carry this mentality into the church. We consume church. We consume small groups. There are even those who are consuming the house church experience.

Unless we confront this consumption life practice, we will never grow up to be those who practice resurrection. We will bounce around from place to place and fail to stay put long enough with a specific group of people in a specific place to be a specific colony of heaven. Life requires a mentality of investment, not one of consumption. As long as we consume church—in whatever our preferred form—we will miss out on the experience of being God’s colony in a country of death. This requires us to stay put, to contribute, to work through difficulties, and to love others when we want to find another easier place to “get fed.”

We Are Moving to Texas

2011-07-17T21:15:00.000-07:00

In 18 days, we will be loading up our furniture and heading to Texas. My last day of serving on the staff at Woodland Hills Church will have sadly passed. I'm still living in a bit of shock. We have been in Minnesota for six years, but now we are heading back to Houston, Texas. My wife, Shawna, will the the Leadership Development Pastor at Hosanna Church in West Houston, and I will be serving the same church as a part-time equipping pastor. The departure saddens us but excited about this shift of the winds of the Spirit.

Because my new role is part-time, what will I be doing with the rest of my time? I will be developing my work as a consultant, trainer, writer, and editor, and I will be doing some ghost-writing. Over the last 18 years, all my consulting and training work has been on the side. But now it is moving front and center. So if you know of anyone who needs a trainer/consultant in the areas of small group systems, missional church empowerment, or missional small groups, please pass this post on to them.

If you are interested in some of the specific ways that I can serve a church or a group of churches, please feel free to visit here.

If you care to pray for us, please pray that we are able to end well and in peace. Shawna preaches and then I preach. I am completing three different writing projects for the church and there are tons of smaller things that must be completed. Then we have to finish packing while dealing with four kids during a time of transition.

90 Years of Heaven Now

2011-07-15T06:12:00.000-07:00

This morning I was in Wal-Mart and saw once again the popular books that continue to be on the best-seller’s list about heaven and the after life. We are fascinated with questions about the hear after. We want to hear the story about 90 Minutes in Heaven and want to know if the little boy can tell us if Heaven is for Real. Is it true that Love Wins or are we just Erasing Hell? Americans are fascinated with the afterlife. I guess I should not be surprised by this phenomenon after watching the frenzy of book buying that occurred with the Left Behind series. So much of American Christianity has been built upon the question of what happens after death.

This made me want to write a book with the title 90 Years of Heaven on Earth or Heaven on Earth is for Real. But as soon as I say that, I wonder if the conservative contingent out there will automatically pigeonhole me into some kind of liberal camp. Nonetheless, I cannot get all wrapped up in this afterlife ranting. To a Jew listening to Jesus in the first century, talk about the kingdom of God had very concrete implications. Mark’s account of Jesus’ life summarizes the beginning of his public ministry with these words: Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:14-15)

Luke tells us records a specific account of Jesus’ early ministry where he reads from Isaiah 61.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:18-21)

The point in both of these passages is that the kingdom of God is revealed in the presence and ministry of Jesus Christ. The listeners that day no longer needed to await the coming of the Messiah. Jesus came to offer good news in the moment and time of those listening and it would result in concrete, tangible, visible manifestations. This is the point that N. T. Wright is making in the following quote.

“If, then, someone were to speak to Jesus’ contemporaries of YHWH’s becoming king, we may safely assume that they would have in mind, in some form or other, this two-sided story concerning the double reality of exile. Israel would ‘really’ return from exile; YHWH would finally return to Zion. But if these were to happen there would have to be a third element as well: evil, usually in the form of Israel’s enemies, must be defeated.” —N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God

The Kingdom of God, the reign of YHWH had concrete “right now” meaning. It was not something that was simply coming in the after death, some kind of spiritual, non-physical reality that has nothing to do with this earth and God’s creation.

I know that there is coming a day when Jesus will return and restore justice and redeem all of creation. I know that the New Testament confronts Jewish assumptions about the kingdom of God. But the Bible never ever turns the kingdom of God into platonic, disembodied experience that has nothing to do with life on earth. Jesus wants to reveal his kingdom in the midst of the powers and the principalities of the air, He want so provide an experience of the good news in very concrete ways. Questions about the afterlife and not unimportant, but the questions about the kingdom of God in the here and now are a lot more important.