Centered Set pt. 2

part one

The danger of writing about something like Centered set, for me, is that it seems a little like writing a blog post describing kissing to someone. It's not only awkward to read but it may put you off kissing forever.

The importance of describing my understanding of the application of this illustration to how we "do church" is primarily in my own relationship as a pastor of a specific local church. Shedding some light on my perspective will, i hope, create a door through which others may enter to understand why I do things the way I do things and hope our whole church will follow me in this understanding and practice.

Set theory gives us a nice illustration of three ways we can organize ourselves as a church. We can choose to be a Bounded set, a Centered set or a Fuzzy set. These are not intended to limit how we think about the church as a group of people who have been called out to form community or a new family – these are just illustrations that are helpful in the broadest terms to help us picture what our life together is like.

A Bounded set picture is probably the most familiar picture and easiest to get our heads around in our church context. You have a ring that represents the clear boundary between who is “in” and who is “out.” That ring represents the beliefs and behaviors (spoken and unspoken) that a person must adopt and adapt to in order to be on the inside. If you do not adopt and adapt you are on the outside of the set. Belonging to the set is based on clear, external markers.

The Fuzzy set picture is an illustration of a group with no clearly defined raison d’etre, no unifying center or obvious boundary. Values, standards and expectations on the members of the set are kept intentionally vague in a Fuzzy set. If you tried to nail down the participants in a Fuzzy set to define the nature of their involvement with the set, they might say that the only thing that matters is coming together but more likely they will give a wide variety of reasons for being in the set. Belonging to the set is based on the willingness of the participants to identify with a particular set for as long or as briefly as they choose.

I would describe the Centered Set as being wholly dependent on the Center and the gravitational pull of the Center to define the relationship of the individual to both the set and the other individuals who make up the set. I would define the Center of the Church to be Jesus as the autobasileia, the kingdom of God in person. Moving towards the center makes us a part of the set and creates the connection with one another in the set. The Centered set in this case is based on relationship – the individual’s to Jesus which in turn defines all other relationships by the direction of the primary relationship (moving towards the Center or moving away from the Center) of the individual.

In this use of the Centered set illustration then, the questions about “in” and “out” are instead questions of orientation – “are you moving towards the Center or are you moving away from the Center?” The complication this creates then is that it means we actually have to get to know other people and engage in conversation and relationship with them to develop an awareness of their orientation. Jesus said, “Stop judging by mere appearances and make a righteous judgment.” Centered set illustrates that appearances can be deceiving, and we can’t simply Tweet someone “out” or “in” to the kingdom life.

Sometimes people describe themselves as Centered set but then take one more step to give specific definition to what “moving towards” and “moving away from” looks like in such specificity that their Centered set is simply a cleverly disguised Bounded set.

Centered set is inherently messier than Bounded or Fuzzy set. Bounded allows us to make very superficial determinations about others and requires no proximity. Fuzzy set allows us to make no determinations about others and requires no proximity in relationship. Centered set requires time. Time to accurately observe the direction a person is moving. Centered set requires proximity. Proximity to accurately observe the outside and glimpse the inside of an individual – to see the evidence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

And we despise mess in our North American culture. Certainty, not mystery, is what we look for in our faith and in those who espouse it and desire to lead us.  

A Centered set means that the individuals in the set are becoming more like Jesus as they move closer to the center but not necessarily more like each other. Arguably to become more like Jesus is to become more like each other but not in any sense that would require us to become nonspecific or conform to a superficial appearance by which we identify one another as part of our set.

 In Jesus, God adapted to become man. He continues to adapt to those who follow him and are adopted by him. You don’t have to become a man to follow Jesus. You don’t have to become Jewish to follow Jesus. You don’t have to move and live in Israel. The pull of the Center is to become like Jesus in our day, and in our way. That may look different from another person who is on the same journey towards the same Center because their place and circumstances are different from my own.

(in part 3 I will describe some specific, real-life situations in doing life together in which Centered set is different from the others.)

Centered Set

I want to write about Set theory and how I use it as an illustration for doing life together. But to do that I need to write in at least 3 parts. First, my pre-amble where I describe the weakness and complication of Set theory in conversation about doing life together. Second, my own personal take on three components of Set theory as they relate to doing life together. Third, and most challenging to write or read will be a conversation about real life instances where Set theory helps and hurts as we try to work out what doing life together looks like.

Pre-amble

Along the way I have had some questions, as a pastor and a follower of Jesus, about how we do life together…how we are supposed to do life together.

Following Jesus is not a solitary journey. Our story is a story about community and “one anothering.” Someone once said that pastoring would be easy if it wasn’t for all the people. But what is pastoring if it's not about all the people? From Paul’s epistles to the present day there have been vast amounts of writing and preaching committed to explaining how to do this life together. And while there are many similarities and overlap, like snowflakes, no two takes seem to be the same.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing but it can create a lot of confusion.

Bonhoeffer’s, LifeTogether, was a big influence for helping me think through how our relationships are supposed to work.

Another significant influence has been the use, in the Vineyard, of Set theory (or Social Set theory) – as an illustration of life together that Wimber borrowed from Sociology (and Mathematics). After Wimber, other Vineyard leaders and scholars have continued to use Set theory as an illustration to answer the question, “What does doing life together look like?” as well as the two questions that seem to preoccupy the evangelical mind:

How do we know if we are “in” or if we’re “out?”

And perhaps our greater pre-occupation -

How do we know if someone else is “in” or if they’re “out?”

Even Set theory, as it has been used as an illustration to try to answer this question, doesn’t always say the same thing. But analogies and illustrations are like that – the more specific we try to get the more it tends to break down.

So why use it?

Because it is, I think, a very useful illustration for doing life together. But what we have to do is let each person’s use of the illustration stand alone as it is dependent primarily on the perspective it is meant to illustrate and not as a doctrine in and of itself.

My take on the Centered Set, Bounded Set and Fuzzy Set (the basic components of Set theory) as they illustrate how we relate to others has been influenced by the way it has been used by others. Nevertheless, I can’t illustrate my thoughts with Set theory as if I my central ideas are the very same as those of others who have used this sociological theory as illustration. When we read what other people are saying about Set theory in this same context, we should not assume they mean the same thing or arrive at the same conclusions or are illustrating the same point to  the same end. 

Or to put it another way, just because I use Set theory to talk about life together does not mean, in fact probably does not mean, that I am accurately representing

OR EVEN TRYING TO

the teaching and writing others have done on doing life together using the same concepts of Set theory to illustrate their own understanding.

Jack Niewold writes:

Set theory, or social set theory, describes the relationship between organizations and their cultural and social environments. My discussion of set theory primarily concerns the church. In concept, set theory is quite simple and easy to grasp. When one leaves the abstract level, however, set theory rapidly becomes much more subtle and complex. As formulated by Hiebert and others, social set theory postulates that organizations fall into one of three models: bounded, centered, and fuzzy sets.[1]

In other words, Set theory is great as an illustration but we get in the weeds pretty quickly if we try to break it down and try to find our specific answers within the simple illustration.

So that’s my pre-amble or pre-ramble.

I want to explain my own view of doing life together in my next post and I will be using Set theory to illustrate my understanding. If you come back to read that, please keep the above in mind as you do. And please note, as you do, that I am not claiming to exegete Wimber or anyone else who has used Set theory before me.

As we move into a new day and a new way of living, where church attendance patterns have changed and giving patterns have changed and traditional metrics no longer have much meaning, figuring out what life together looks like is more important than ever.

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[1] https://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/jbpl/vol2no1/Niewold_Jack_Final.pdf

That's Not How This Works, That's Not How Any of This Works

One of the things that fascinates me most is our tendency to disregard the things the Gospels and the Epistles teach in order to embrace or accommodate doing things just like the dominant culture around us.

I think the root of this is not biblical illiteracy but rather a conviction (conscious or unconscious) that the Bible, for all that it is, is not practical.

Back in my Bible College days, right after John finished writing Revelation, a good friend of mine was interning for the summer at a Colorado church. In his first staff meeting the senior pastor asked if my friend could recommend any good books on leadership. My friend suggested a book we had just read for a class the semester before, A Theology of Church Leadership, by LarryRichards. The senior pastor replied, “No, I mean something practical.”

A little part of me died when I first heard that story.

One thing that seems clear to me is that kingdom leadership has only one Lord and we’re not to have any “lording” going on in the kingdom.

First, there’s this troubling passage in red, Matthew 20:25-28 “But Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (NLT)

And then Peter seems to be drawing on that when he writes to church leaders and says, “Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly—not for what you will get out of it, but because you are eager to serve God. Don’t lord it over the people assigned to your care, but lead them by your own good example.” (1 Peter 5:2-3 NLT)

Jesus demonstrates his approach to leadership in the Upper Room by washing his disciples feet and punctuates the experience with these not so cryptic words, “I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.” (John 13:15 NLT)

I’ve been with church leaders who, with a very straight face, have told me, “The way I wash people’s feet is by telling them what to do. I serve the church by exercising my gift of leadership and giving them direction.”

In heaven, Jesus does a face palm every time someone says something like this.

The primary problem with this is: “The way the kingdom comes is the kingdom that comes.” 

If we lead like bosses, we’re bringing a bossy kingdom but not a foot washing kingdom. If we, as leaders, lord our position over people rather than becoming their slaves, we’re bringing a lordly kingdom but we’re not bringing a servant of all kingdom. Our tendency is to be like Peter and tell Jesus he has more important things to do than wash our feet but Jesus still reminds us that if we don’t let him serve us, we’re not going to make it into the kingdom. And we can “release” other people to do the foot washing, but if we’re not humbling ourselves and cleaning toilets, stacking chairs and giving someone a lift, we’re building a kingdom but we’re not bringing the same kingdom that our foot washing king calls us to bring.

But this isn’t practical. And it’s messy. And people might not know you’re the boss when you lead like Jesus.

In North America, it seems to me that we are challenged to strive to arrive at a level where you’ll never be mistaken for a slave again. The level where people ask for your endorsement, where they bring you water bottles in the green room and they stop asking you to pick up after yourself. It seems to me that we’ve inverted Jesus’ plan for kingdom leadership in favor of creating a celebrity class and a boss class where your behavior can no longer be questioned and your success is not measured by feet washed but by finances and followers.

“We’re too big to fail.” Isn’t just said about financial institutions and big business. It’s also said about some churches and some Christian celebrities and this is not and has never been the way of the foot-washer King.

Recovery, I think, starts with rejecting celebrity culture, particularly within the church.

Second, while I believe Christian leadership is a form of martyrdom, we must not turn a blind eye to the bad behavior of our brothers and sisters, particularly in leadership roles. We're all human, we all mess up, we all need to be called on our stuff. We all need a Nathan to step up - which starts with leaders who welcome "Nathans" and the confrontation they bring.

Third, we need to filter our practices through this lens, “The way the kingdom comes is the kingdom that comes.”

And finally, we need, like Israel, to stop insisting on human kings so we can be cool like the other nations and just let Jesus be Lord.

I’m not arguing for anarchy, necessarily, but I am very sure that we have by and large adopted pragmatism as our ethic – if it works it must be God – when Jesus called us to entirely different kind of kingdom where leaders are recognized by their service and not by their status.

Dear VUSA

Dear VUSA,

I have a dream.

It involves the two of us.

I’d like to tell you about it.

VUSA, you know I believe in you, I love you, I support you.

And I believe that you believe that you believe in me, you love me and you support me.

When I do pre-marital counseling with a couple one of the things we talk about is that we need to learn each other’s life language – what communicates love to one is oppressive smothering to another and what’s overly attentive to one just barely scratches the surface of need for another. Love is hard like that.

So I’m writing this to tell you what love looks like for me. Just me. I’m not speaking on behalf of or representing anyone. I don’t presume to speak for my generation, for churches or pastors in our region or even all older, chubby, white male pastors.

Just me.

And let me answer the obvious question – why do this on a blog? Why not write directly to you?

Truthfully, I don’t even know how to write directly to you. Isn’t that crazy? I know I have email addresses but I’ve sent emails off before and not even received an auto generated “read receipt.” To be fair, I’ve also sent emails off and I have received a response right away or eventually or after a while. But I don’t write every day or every week or even every month. And I’ve tried to write with positive “way-to-go’s” and not just questions or criticisms or requests.

So I’m writing this and posting on my blog much like I used to write letters to Santa as a child and then drop them in the mailbox at school. Truthfully, I never did get the stuff I asked for so I tend to doubt the efficacy of that/this approach. Still, a person has to try.

But do they?

I suppose not, but I have to try. It’s how I’m wired.

So I’m posting this in the hope of telling you about my love language and attempting some kind of positive communication.

First, I need to feel heard. I need to feel like someone is there and someone is listening to me. I think it’s one of the fundamental gifts of relationship. VUSA, I don’t feel heard, I don’t feel there’s a mechanism for being heard and that gets extremely frustrating for me.

This probably surprises you, the not feeling heard part.

Your communication to me over the last couple years has dramatically improved. Thank you for that. The last annual report was killer, as I emailed you at the time.

But telling me things is only half the relational equation, listening is the other part and the most important part.

Last year I received a call from VI. A very nice person asked me a number of questions about our involvement with VI and how VI could be an even greater benefit to our local church. We spent 30 minutes or so on the phone. I felt listened to. I’m not sure that VI made any changes at all based on my input, frankly I don’t care. But I did feel listened to and that was not only something that I care about but it made me feel cared for.

As a pastor of a small church that is in the range of 75% of our Vineyard USA churches, that little bit of feeling listened to made me feel pretty good and feel a lot more invested in what happens with and to VI.

There are some extraordinary resources available these days that you could use VUSA that don’t even require you to pick up a phone and call me or sit at a keyboard and email me. Even if you jumped on Survey Monkey and sent out a free (for you to use) 10 question survey once a year, it would at least make me feel like you were listening and I was actually participating in our relationship beyond my monthly spousal support cheque.

When you’re about to make a big decision, you could let all 600/1200 of us know before you did it and just invite some simple feedback through a simple online form or forum. Even if you never read it, I’d still feel listened to just because you asked the question and gave me a chance to respond. The illusion of partnership is more comforting than the feeling of a hard cold “I don’t care what you think, this is what we’re doing.”

It’s how I’m wired.

I know I’m supposed to be getting this from other pastors and from our area and our region but to be honest, the decisions you make are the decisions that affect us. The choices you make are choices that not only affect you but for which all of us must bear the consequences. And while it doesn’t hurt to have this same kind of thing happen at the area and regional level, it’s really nice to hear, now and then, that you want to hear from me and you want to know what’s going on with me beyond our annual census.

For me, and this is just how I’m wired, the annual auto-generated birthday email is a little like peeing in my bowl of cornflakes. For me, the way I’m wired, it just serves as a reminder how deeply out of touch I feel from you. But if you sent me a note once a year that asked me how I’m doing and what the biggest struggle I’m facing is right now, that would really speak to me.

VUSA, I get that you’ve tried to create a structure where this happens through our area and our region – I’m not speaking for everyone VUSA, just me, but for me, that’s just not working. Sorry, I wish it was but when you make all the big decisions, when you ask for my census numbers, when you decide how to spend the money we faithfully send every month, I feel the need to hear from you.

Now, let me tell you what will happen next and ask you to pray for me.  Some of your other fans are going to tell me I have a bad spirit.  A spirit of cynicism, a spirit of judgment, a spirit of criticism, and so on. Maybe they are right. I don’t think they are but I have to be open to the possibility that they are right and know me better than I know myself. It won’t be a helpful response, so please pray for me not to respond like a jerk – as is my tendency.

The other thing that will happen is that someone will explain to me that this isn’t how you and I are supposed to work, that this isn’t the kind of relationship that we have with each other.

That’s o.k. too, and no doubt it is true.

But I have a dream.

I’ll tell you more about it in my next post…

Dear Christian Millennial Bloggers Who Speak for their Generation,

Dear Christian Millennial Bloggers Who Speak for their Generation,

Stop it.

I’ve read several versions now of “the kind of church we’re looking for” and I need to tell you this…stop it.

It’s just not true. It might be true for you and if you’re writing it I definitely hope it’s true for you. But I promise you, it’s not true for your generation.

I’m smack dab in the middle of fog machine, lights and mega-church country and I see your generation lining up every week for multiple services at the very kinds of churches and services that Christian millennial bloggers keep insisting you are not interested in.

It’s probably just a really good idea if all our self-appointed spokespeople for generations, races, faiths and politics just stop it.

Speak for yourself. Fill your boots. Have at it. I’m not mad at you, it’s just tiresome to have writer’s summing up a generation or other demographic groups of people as if any group of people is monolithic. People just aren’t as simple as all that and you and all your friends are not a reasonable sample size to provide a conclusion that applies to a whole continent of people who share your demo. You are neither as uniformly flavored as your critics might think or your fellow bloggers might like to think.

Dear Christian Millennial Blogger, I don't think the issue is that you are a Millennial. I think the issue is that you are a blogger and I'm not asking this for my generation or even my vocation - just for me, here in my mom's basement. Please stop with the posts about what your generation is looking for from the local church. Just go hang out with a few pastors over coffee and talk to them about what YOU are looking for - or better yet, start a church, it's apparently very easy to do what we do.

Honor Where It's Not Due

John Wimber used a string of metaphors to describe what the Church is and how we’re supposed to engage with one another and the world. John said, “The Church is called to be a family, a hospital, a school and an army.” We experience the truth of these metaphors, not just through their positive characteristics, but through their negative characteristics as well or the unintended consequences of functioning in these ways together.

A question I’ve been asked many times in pastoral ministry has been in relationship to one of the Ten Commandments. The question goes something like, “How do I honor my father and my mother when they’ve…” and there is a spectrum of things with which you can fill in the blank that range from the cruel and criminal to the thoughtless and absent. Family is like heaven when it’s good and it can feel like hell when it’s bad.

If that’s true, it’s just as true about church family. And it can really scramble our eggs when this family we’ve become a part of is the setting of both our healing and our hurting. What is true of family systems can be especially true of our denominational or ecclesiastical systems. And the special kind of grief and hurting that family systems generate for those within, our church government systems will not only duplicate but even amplify because of the mixture of familial relationship and the practice of faith in God.

In the church system of today there is a culture that has developed that further compounds the hurt and harm done. This culture is found in many or most of the expressions of the church in North America today but is probably most prevalent in the Fundamental, Evangelical and Charismatic sub-cultures. We’ve taken this beautiful idea of “honor your father and mother” and turned it into something controlling, shaming and dismissive. An “honor culture” has come to dominate our culture in a way that makes, “speaking the truth in love” seem abusive or at least disrespectful and wrong.

I’m not suggesting this is something brand new but I am saying that we are now reaping the full effect of this dysfunctional way of relating to each other as the family of God.

How does the honor culture manifest? We have come to believe that honoring men is more important and pleasing to God than telling the truth about abuse or neglect. When someone in leadership is doing or has done something wrong we quote, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” As if it actually says, “Love covers up a multitude of sins.” And that we are somehow honoring God by protecting the reputations or speaking well of those in leadership because God places a higher value on honoring people in power than calling them out for the hurt they cause. And while there are egregious examples that make the news and we can all shake our heads over and feel good that we’d never “do that,” it is the result of the very same culture that we’ve allowed to develop wherein a senior pastor speaks in ugly and disrespectful ways to the worship pastor on staff and we make excuses and insist on everyone holding their silence and telling ourselves that the number of people coming to faith is more important than calling the leader out and insisting their behavior stops.

In family systems there are rules that develop. The members of the family aren’t given a manual or asked to watch a video detailing the rules and yet the same rules come up again and again in these dysfunctional families. A counseling organization’s website lists some of these rules:

Here are some typical spoken or unspoken rules in unhealthy family systems:

Do what “looks good”, even if it is dishonest

Don’t be a bother and don’t rock the boat

Deny things you don’t want to see, and they will go away

Do what I say, even when I do the opposite

Express only happy positive feelings

It is wrong to be angry or sad

You must never question our behavior, but go along with it

You must conform to what we expect of you, no matter what

Your needs are not as important as our needs[1]

So, here’s a simple question. Have you ever heard or felt any of the above coming from the leadership of your faith community? Your denomination, network or your movement? Do you think God is more interested in “honor” or health or truth? Do things usually get better because we look the other way or do things tend to only improve when we speak truth to power? Ask yourself, do the people who we ask to follow the rules feel as empowered as the people who make our rules?

There’s a risk here, whether it’s in our biological family or our church family, denomination or movement. If you rock the boat and speak up you are likely to be told you have a rebellious spirit or told you are being cynical or have a spirit of cynicism or told the only problem is that you keep complaining when no one else is or, and this is the hardest cut of all, you'll be ignored until you go away. When talking to others who are feeling the need to speak up in family situations like these I always offer the same warning, don’t bring it up unless you are fully prepared to have the family shun you – we are quicker to turn on the person who turned on the light than the person who brought the darkness to begin with. This is especially true in our church families.

But I still have this conviction that these words are true, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

What rule of dysfunction have you broken? How can we honor each other without ignoring the harm we and others in our family system do?

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[1] http://www.smokyraincounseling.com/articles/dysfunctional-family-rules-and-roles/

Pastors and Disintegrated Anticipation

A couple weeks ago, disintegrated anticipation was the topic of a podcastconversation my wife and I had with each other. It’s an idea that I’ve thought a lot about since a friend first introduced the idea to me. The implications of disintegrated anticipation are experienced every day in pastoral ministry. The cause and the effect can both weigh heavily on pastors and those who aren’t as willing to run on the hamster wheel as others are.

The big idea is simply this, as pastors who have been at this for over a decade or two, we have lived through the appearance of a long series of “new things that God was doing.” Each of these new things often came with a promise, implied or explicit, that this would solve all our problems. Our church would grow, pagans would come pouring into the Church, money would cometh, and our church would grow.  Did I mention our church would grow?  That’s the anticipation part.

The disintegrated part is that after a while, with some amazing highs, these “new things” would become “old things” and the ultimate payoff would never arrive or the original expectations would be reframed or retold to lower the bar closer to what actually happened.  About that same time a new “new thing” would be ramping up and we would be too busy getting on the bus to spend time reflecting on the fact that the last bus didn’t get us to the advertised destination.  So, over time, anticipation starts to disintegrate as we jump on the “next bus” for the next “new thing.”

Think of it like this – you go on a 1 mile hike to a peak that promises amazing, never before seen vistas. After a mile, the guide tells you it’s actually just one more mile. Then, after the next mile you’re told they’re sure it’s just one more mile. And so on and so on and so on.  You might be really into hiking but as some point you start to find your excitement about the peak and the vistas start to wane. Add to that disintegrating anticipation other people on the hike who join along the way and are super excited about the upcoming peak and vistas and who say some unkind things about your obviously lack of faith and “religious spirit” because you’re just not buying into the promised peak ahead the way you would if you were really full of the Spirit.

Oh, and then add to that a small group of people on the same hike who, upon reaching the next 1 mile marker, insist that they ARE on the peak and they CAN see the vistas and if you can’t, well, you’ve obviously got a “religious spirit”, “spirit of cynicism” or some other dysfunction that is keeping you and others from receiving the joy and glory of the peak and vista.

Are you feeling it?

So let me spell out here, as clearly as I can, some of the peaks and vistas that my wife and I can recall over the last 30 years of ministry.  I’m not sharing these to say they are bad or good or neutral. This is simply meant as a record of all the peaks that were a whole lot sexier than “a long obedience in the same direction.”  Some of these I quite like. Some I think are rubbish. Some are just funny footnotes. Some were really hurtful.  But none of them have (in my experience) achieved the implied or explicit peaks that I remember in the buzz that surrounded them at their outset.

Ready?

In no particular order…

Evangelism Explosion.

Aglow.

Crusades.

Shepherding Movement.

“Christian…” as a subset: our own bookstores, colleges, radio stations, music, news, breath mints.

Focus on the Family.

PTL Club.

Mission Statements.

Contemporary Worship.

March for Jesus.

YWAM.

24/7 Boiler Room Prayer.

Healing Rooms.

Small Groups: Kin, Study, Fellowship, Home, Life, Koinonia, Affinity, etc.

Campus Crusade, InterVarsity, Young Life

Revival Meetings.

Willow Creek Sensitivity.

Steps to Freedom.

Signs & Wonders.

Promise Keepers.

Cell Church.

Dream Interpretation at Psychic Fairs.

Inner Healing.

Purpose Driven.

Blood Moons.

Toronto Blessing/Renewal.

Brownsville Revival.

Restoration of the Apostles and Prophets

Lakeland Revival.

Watchmen for the Nations.

Left Behind.

Spiritual Mapping.

Acts 29.

Church Growth Movement.

Natural Church Development.

Alpha.

Soaked.

Treasure Hunting.

Global Awakening.

Sticky Church.

Messy Church.

Simple Church.

Missional Church.

Schools of Ministry & Internships – where the best and brightest of our youth are sent off to other larger churches/programs for a year to two years (often never coming home again) to be discipled, grow and do ministry (because God knows they couldn't grow in their home church).

Christian Celebrities as “spokespeople” for the Church.

This is not an exhaustive list.

The reason I think this matters for pastors is that we’re often called to take a lead role in these things, even leading the hike to the next peak, and frankly, the disintegrated anticipation wears us down mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.  Or, and this is a very real reaction, we have to insist on the unproveable: we’ve actually achieved all we set out to achieve. And I would suggest that the cognitive dissonance created by that reaction ultimately hollows us out and leaves us trapped playing pretend and losing our faith. A long obedience in the same direction is a tough sell in an instant society, especially tough when the church down the street is promising all the peaks with none of the valleys.

It’s a challenge for a pastor who has been pastoring for a couple decades is getting excited about the next “new thing God is doing” or the next program that is rolled out for us from our denomination, publishing house or big church or big Christian personality. It’s a challenge to have someone in the church come in to tell you about this cool program/move of God they are all about and want you to be all about too, without regard to or in spite of what’s already going on in your local church. It’s a challenge having someone in your church tell you they are switching to another church because God’s doing a “new thing” there and you’re part of the “old thing” God used to be doing.

It’s challenging as a pastor when people want to focus on the “success story” behind something when you’ve been around enough to be aware of the bodies that have been thrown under the bus to make that “success” happen.

It’s challenging as a pastor because we’re offered books and stories at conferences and gatherings that tempt us to plagiarize and plunder someone else’s story and try to make it our own so that we can get to the same peaks and same vistas as the author and speaker have reached. We’re invited to cut n paste from other sources with the empty promise that we can have their ending without ever having had their beginning or middle.  The truest thing a senior pastor of a very large church told me once, when I asked about the secret behind their growth from 35 to thousands was, (as he leaned in close to say quietly) “we were in the right place at the right time.”

Pastoring is challenging because we often find ourselves being asked to make a sort of “Sophie’s Choice.” Will we invest ourselves in the church as it is or will we invest ourselves in the church as we think it ought to be? Bonhoeffer warns us against this wishdream but here in North America we live in a culture that develops our sense of self-worth out of our conviction that we are winning: best job, best spouse, best kids, best house, best church. If one of these is off we’re likely to jettison one or all the rest to plug in a replacement so we can maintain or recover that winning feeling.

Pastors face many challenges but I am convinced that one of the greatest challenges for pastors in North America is the pressure of disintegrated anticipation. Pastors in evangelical, non-liturgical churches, especially those that lean towards charismatic and Pentecostal flavors, will feel this most acutely. I have a deep appreciation for those pastors that are willing to face the giants in the land with their little stones and sticks, who get laughed at by those who know better and who continue to put their trust in faithfulness over props and illusions.  I’m praying for you and the story you are in and that you will find that a long obedience in the same direction satisfies your hearts greatest hunger.

Have you ever felt disintegrated anticipation? What made your list? How do you stay off the hamster wheel? What gives you the juice you need for the long obedience in the same direction? Have you ever tried to cut n paste someone else's story to make it your own on the way to "pastoral success"?

The Trouble With Pastors

There’s an amazing passage in 2 Corinthians, chapter 11. I've mentioned it before.

Paul is defending himself and his ministry with and to the Corinthians. 

The apostle Paul. 

Let that sink in for a few minutes. 

Seriously, take a few minutes to reflect on Paul, church planter, apostle, pastoral voice, epistle writer, theologian, disciple maker, missionary - you know his c.v. – justifying his existence and his vocation, to that dysfunctional fellowship in Corinth.

As it reads in our New Testament, Paul is writing the church at Corinth, and he is once again responding to their criticism of him.  They’ve previously criticized his preaching, his overall leadership and they have resisted his efforts to give them pastoral direction. It’s easy to see in 1&2 Corinthians that the church wasn’t fond of Paul or how Paul did things. In chapter 11, Paul seems to finally snap emotionally and just vomits out a frustrated rant, listing what he’s been through in his vocation…

To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that!
But whatever anyone dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman—I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not indignant? NRSV

It’s not insignificant that Paul comes to the end of his rant and says, “And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.” Paul highlights what most people in pastoral vocation already know, being a pastor is a pressurized, anxiety producing work. Paul puts this daily pressure right up there with being stoned, whipped, beaten and living in danger from enemies and circumstances.  A study from Duke reported that the rate of anxiety/depression among clergy was twice the national average.

Right here is usually where someone interjects that if these clergy were really following Jesus they wouldn’t have problems with anxiety or depression.  Four words: Tell it to Paul. Actually don’t, that’s exactly what the Corinthians Christians were doing and it didn’t help. They called Paul, “weak.” And his “weakness,” they felt, disqualified him from leadership or at least made him a lesser leader than some of the cooler people they knew.

Don’t get me wrong, there are pastors who suck hard. Paul tells the elders at Ephesus to be on guard for these sorts, “Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son. I know that after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them.” Paul doesn’t warn against men and women who can’t break the 100 or 200 or 300 barrier, he warns against wolves that will come to lead people off after themselves. (Thankfully we don’t see these personality cults in our day but apparently it was a problem back then.) There are some “bad hombres” who bite the sheep, chew them up, fleece them and take them for a ride to the abattoir.

But most pastors I’ve met are hardworking, sacrificial, loving, Jesus focused, Kingdom minded, authentic women and men who follow Jesus and get anxious about the well-being of the church they pastor. And just like Paul, they get grief.  Check out this verse from Hebrews 13, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with sighing—for that would be harmful to you.”  I know we like to get hung up on “obey” and “submit” but for right now can we just take a few minutes and meditate on the phrase, “Let them do this with joy and not with sighing…”?  Ever heard a pastor sigh? I have.  

In July, I attended a National Leaders gathering and on the first night the host pastor had a “word” that there would be pastors attending who were “at the end of their rope.” Can I just tell you that the prophetic discernment on a word like that is a little like saying, “I sense someone here is breathing.” Or “The Lord’s just told me that some of you in this room were born at one time.” In a room of 500 pastors and spouses, I can guarantee you that there will be people who will identify with “some who are at the end of their rope.” But it wasn’t 5 or even 50 who responded. My guess would be a couple hundred responded and walked to the front to receive prayer from their brothers and sisters gathered around them.

I’m telling you this because I believe there are a lot of ‘sighing’ pastors out there. Some amazing men and women who, among all the crap they have to wade through in the world every day, also come home with sheep bites from other sheep, every night. This isn’t my rant about my local church and my local experience, though I am among all the other pastors who “sigh.” This is about the story we are in and how common and ‘normal’ it is for people in pastoral ministry to add their vocation to the list of ways in which they sometimes or daily suffer. And when we’re talking to and about pastors, and when pastors are talking with or about other pastors, we acknowledge that pastoring is not easy.

I love pastors. I admire them. I think they are extraordinary people who daily face pressures, keep secrets, deny themselves, prefer others and carry burdens…and yes, I know you do to. Acknowledging the unique troubles pastors face is not a negation of your very own trials and tribulations. I just think sometimes we don’t acknowledge the troubles of pastors unless they are troubling us or the pastor – like the unseen sound person – has made us turn around and look because something has gone horribly wrong.

So, let me just say to all my pastor friends out there, vocational, bi-vocational, unpaid, titled, untitled – I thank God for you every day. Your hard work matters. What you give, week in and week out, noticed and largely unnoticed, praised, ignored and critiqued, is a beautiful gift to God, a ministry to Jesus and an expression of the Holy Spirit. Please keep doing what Love does, no matter what. Gather, share stories, pray for each other, find safe people to share your weakness with and let others share their weakness with you.

There's bound to come some trouble to your life / But that ain't nothing to be afraid of 
There's bound to come some trouble to your life / But that ain't no reason to fear 
I know there's bound to come some trouble to your life 
But reach out to Jesus, hold on tight / He's been there before and He knows what it's like 
You'll find He's there  - Rich Mullins

Pastors (and other endangered species)

Among Paul’s list of the ways he had suffered on behalf of the church he drops this little line, “my daily concern for all the churches…”

The vocation of a pastor, when practiced by someone actually committed to that vocation, is a weighty thing.

Often, people remark about the appearance of a man who has been the President of the United States and how he has visibly aged, more noticeably than others his age, over the span of his time in office. I’ve seen the same kind of “road wear” on men and women who serve as pastors and I’ve seen it accumulate in far less time than it takes to become evident on those politicians.

I realize there are some “bad hombres” out there who have managed to get a gig or are serial gigging as pastors. Clear back in the book of Acts, Paul warns about “wolves” that will appear from among the leadership of a local church, dress up like sheep and turn the church into a mutton buffet. It’s not a recent development.  I have a friend who invests a lot of time gathering, illustrating and telling the stories of these carnivores to a receptive, appreciative audience of people who have themselves been cooked, carved and served up by some of these lupine in lamb’s drag.

But I love pastors.

I’m not oblivious to the wolves, I’m just in awe of the men and women who willingly choose to serve the flock of God of which they are a part. I’m in awe of their devotion to a vocation that is a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year vocation. As highlighted in Paul’s list of sufferings, even when they’re not right beside someone from the church, they’re still caring the church inside their hearts and heads.

These men and women don’t set the thermostat for themselves, they constantly juggle the needs, desires and expectations of a community of people, all at various stages of faith and spiritual, emotional and personal maturity. These men and women have been at the deathbed of more people than is normal. They have grieved and mourned with more families of saints and ornery buggers, seeking to comfort both, (sometimes at the same time) than is normal. They make every vow that they invite yet another couple to make sound as fresh and as hopeful as they did the first couple they married; despite the countless couples with whom they’ve suffered through divorce.

These men and women, most of whom serve in churches with fewer than 200 people in attendance, have often graduated with a degree that cost them more than they will be able to earn enough to repay on the salaries they will make.

They listen to horrific confessions and confer forgiveness and grace to  fallen saints without a hint of judgment or condemnation.

Their children live under microscopes and have to deal with spoken and unspoken pressures unique to them.

Pastors are often accused of things they would never dream of and they dream of things this life will never afford them. They anguish over decisions and work hard for things that will ultimately benefit others and not themselves. And regularly they get to entertain the wisdom of the “arm chair pastors” in their churches who tell them how it could, should, ought and would be if someone else was doing the pastoring.

These brave souls regularly get in trouble with those who want a human master to tell them what to do. Instead these pastors choose the harder but better work of walking beside people to help them make their own choices and their own decisions and take their own steps to grow up to be more like Jesus.

Week after week these pastors come up with one or two or three new messages to share with the church. Can you imagine being a pastor of a church of 75 people, counting everyone including the unborn, and preaching a new message every week to a YouTube and TEDtalk generation?

Imagine having people who compare you, generally unkindly, to the TEDtalk their friend just sent them a link to or the megachurch pastor they watched on the 'net. Usually they don't consider that mega-pastor has a team of writers working for him or that it was still his third service they broadcast because it always goes much better than the first two and by that time he hardly had to look at his notes at all. And they can always edit in a joke from the second service if it got more laughs.

Imagine having to answer more than once the query of a well-meaning church goer, “Why can’t your talks be as engaging as a TEDtalk?” Imagine having to answer them with a kind tone in your voice after having been out the night before at the hospital beside a family whose oldest teenage daughter tried to OD herself into eternity.  Imagine having someone critique the energy you brought (or lack thereof) to the morning service and responding to them gently while you are still thinking about the couple you sat with the night before and tried to help them navigate the meltdown of their marriage and guide them into a healthy conversation.

Imagine the restraint it takes not to suggest they call Brene Brown the next time they are in crisis so you have time to polish up your talk.

Proverbs says that if you find a good wife you’ve managed to do something extraordinary.  Can I suggest that it’s also true that if you’ve found yourself a good pastor – someone who cares more about your soul than you do, who listens to you, who seeks your best and wants to see you discover and fulfill your vocation, who wants to help you grow up and not stay a perpetual baby in Christ – that you’ve found yourself something miraculous.

I love pastors for who they are, for what they do and for all the crap they put up with to do it.  Shepherds get dirty, there’s no way around that. True shepherds don’t grind on about the smell, the mess, the poo, they just embrace the vocation and get on with it. To those men and women pastoring day in and day out, I say, thank you. You are a gift from God to all of us, whether we ever meet or not, you have made the world a brighter and tastier and more creative space for being in it. Thank you for the gift of life you bring, however perfectly imperfect that you do it. You are a gift, a treasure, a little wind of heaven into the souls of the men and women, boys and girls that you pastor.

I have a pastor friend who was senior pastor of a very large church in a very large city. One Sunday morning, between one of their three morning services, while my friend was running down a hallway from visiting with people in the lobby as they left and re-entering the sanctuary for worship, he was stopped in the hall by a woman he recognized as an occasional attender at their church. "I'm so glad I caught you," she said, "my mother and I were wondering if you could do something about the volume of the music and get  someone to turn it down?" I know my friend well enough to know a million appropriate responses ran through his mind but what he chose to do was answer firmly but kindly this inappropriately timed request. Now imagine this happening to every pastor, every Sunday times infinity.

Cheers to you, pastors. I admire each one of you.

I'm going to be launching a podcast soon where I'll be exploring my admiration for pastors and their stories more in depth.  If you've got a question you've always wanted to ask a pastor, leave it in the comments and I'll pass it along.  Stay tuned.

My Problem with Worship interlude: (A multi-part post in which I offend many friends)

One of my favorite stories about worship leading comes from Eddie Espinosa.

Eddie tells a story about one of the members of his worship team coming to him to complain that worship had become boring and flat.  His band member zeroed in on the problem, Eddie always had a prepared set list for worship and what he needed to do was toss the list and follow the Spirit.

Eddie listened, didn’t argue and took in what his bandmate was telling him.

And then he went home and prepared for worship the next Sunday just the same way he always did.  He prayed, listened, considered songs, listened and came up with a list.

But this time he made two small changes.  He hid the list.  He didn’t give the list to his bandmates.  The other change was that he asked God for permission not to follow His lead.  What he meant was that while he normally would drop in a song if he sensed the Spirit leading in a particular direction in the midst of worship, this time he would stick to the list, no matter what.  He felt God was with him.

Sunday morning the band sound checked, ran over a couple songs, seemingly at random and then chilled until the service started.  Once the worship service started, Eddie played his set list just as he had prepared it, start to finish.

Worship went so well that his complaining bandmate came to him after the service really excited.  Instead of complaints he told Eddie how amazing the morning worship had been and he told Eddie he knew exactly why it had been so good…because he’d thrown out the list!

And that’s when Eddie told him the truth.  He’d used the list, just like he had every other time. And he’s done the songs in the order they were on the list, just like every other time.

Eddie’s story isn’t about making a list or not making a list, but it does reveal just how subjective our singing experience can be. 

As a worship leader I’ve led some Sunday mornings where I was pretty sure God had left the building and I wished I could’ve gone with Him.  And then mid-week I’ve received an email about how “powerful” the worship time had been that week for someone there.  Other times I’ve felt like we were in the groove and if we were ever anointed it had been that Sunday, only to have another leader tell me how flat and dull worship had seemed that morning.

As a preacher, I’ve preached sermons I felt went nowhere and sermons I felt were almost worthy adding to the back of the Bible.  And just like with the worship songs, the reactions from others have been contrary to my own experience and perspective.  There’s a lot of subjectivity that takes place on a Sunday morning but to be honest, most of the pressure for how a morning goes lands on the worship leader.

They succeeded/failed to create the atmosphere for the Holy Spirit to move.

They succeeded/failed in getting hearts to open up to what God wanted to do.

They succeeded/failed in ushering us into the secret place.

It wasn’t me screaming at my wife on the way to the service, or yelling at my kids all morning to get them ready.  It wasn’t that I haven’t looked at my Bible app since we left the service last Sunday.  It has nothing to do with my total disengagement with prayer since the last Amen the previous week.  The problem rests solely with our worship leader not jiggling the right levers that got me with the feels.  It was the poor song selection.  It was the bands lack of attention to their transitions.  Or it was simply because the stupid fog machine broke down between first and second service and I can’t get my praise on without diffused light and copious amounts of fog.

Worship is a performance but it never has to be entertainment, even if we are entertained.  A performance is something we do together, share together and own together.  Entertainment is something we grade, we consume and when it doesn’t keep us engaged we move on to another vendor. 

Internal. External.

There is a subjective nature to our worship service that begs for leaders, senior leaders, who will trust their worship leaders and work collaboratively with them.  We need senior leaders to communicate with our congregations that we are all responsible for our worship experience and Sunday mornings are the summation of our experience that started on Monday morning and not a pep rally to get us through the week.

and thus I conclude this interlude...tomorrow I conclude my ranting...

on worship.

As always, leave your comments after the beep, I love to hear from you.

*Eddie's story appeared in Things they Didn't Teach Me in Worship Leading School, Tom Kraeuter, Emerald Books, 1995.

My Problem with Worship pt. 3 (A multi-part post in which I offend many friends)

Part one is here.  Part two is here.

Let me sum up the big idea of part one and two – we have turned worship into a commodity. We leverage it to obtain market share and we treat songwriters, worship leaders and worship music like cogs in our machine.  This has created a number of unintended consequences.

Back in the day, John Wimber, who became the catalyst of the Vineyard Movement, knew music and knew musicians because he was one.  That’s exactly the kind of leader you want to lead a movement with the songs of worship and the experience of the presence of God at its core. Heart of an artist, mind of a strategist, imperfectly perfect to nurture the vulnerable and artistic hearts that gathered to sing and seek, hungry for an authentic experience of God’s presence.

John’s leadership was critical because he understood that the journey to the heart of God always had a singular result – to be propelled back out into the world to love the lost and least, to be the Church. Worship was more than the songs we were singing in the Vineyard, worship was a life laid down in surrender and obedience – a willingness to be a fool for Christ.

And then, worship became popular.

I remember when Christian radio wasn’t playing worship because everyone wanted to listen to contemporary Christian music – it was about God, it was about living for God but it wasn’t usually about God or to God.  It was more often a sermon set to music, sometimes heavy on emotion – “hey kid, who are those Christmas shoes for?” – but it moved away from worship songs.

And then, worship became popular.

The Vineyard had a lot to do with this – not exclusively, but the Vineyard was very influential in making worship (and forgive me for this expression) relevant again. John and the Vineyard influence went overseas – not to plant Vineyards at first, but to come alongside and work together with the churches in the U.K. that were hungry and open to what John and the Vineyard had to offer. It was like fanning a flame or pouring gas on a match – like all these songwriters had just been waiting for someone to say it was o.k. to give birth to new songs and new sounds.  John brought a spark but the tinder was there and ready.

And then, worship became very popular.

And then someone said, “Hey, we can make some money off this!”

Little companies sprang up and big companies bought them and worship as a commodity quickly took shape. And worship filled the airwaves again.

First we bought CDs packed full of amazing songs.  Then we bought CDs with a couple amazing songs.  Then we bought CDs hoping for at least one amazing songs.  Because when we commodify something, we lose interest in quality in our drive to have product to sell.  Eventually we saturate the market to the maximum of what it will bear. And then just a little bit more.

And we start ripping songs, trading and sharing songs because as consumers we know the man is sticking it to us with a 12 song CD that only has two tracks we really like so we’re totally justified in sharing and not paying for our tunes ‘cause, y’know, it’s the man. 

And the artists suffered.  The creators piece of the pie became infinitesimally smaller.  Getting on a CD now was just “giving people exposure” for which they should be thankful and they should stop asking or royalties.

What does all this have to do with how worship became songs?

As we commodified worship, it required us to elevate singing in order to secure our futures.  It’s like toothpaste or shampoo – in order to get your dollars, we have to make the paste about more than teeth and the shampoo about more than soap for your hair.  We’re selling you a brand, a lifestyle, a chance at romance, self-esteem and admiration.  We can’t really brand serving homeless people a meal or speaking out against human trafficking or showing hospitality to strangers or building a racially diverse community or doing most of the things that love does.  Mind you, we’ll brand it and commodify it when and where we can, but it’s just a lot harder than commodifying songs to sing.

Rather than following the Wimberism that the “meat is in the streets,” the commodification of worship has led us to believe that what we do in here is the meat.

And so we influence the Church at large to embrace the belief that songs are our worship.  When we sing is when God shows up.  Because we’re doing this song, miracles can finally happen here.  Social Justice is a code for liberal theology and works based faith, we’ve transcended that with worship and the Spirit will change the world in response to the sweet songs of love we gather to sing.  I don’t need to tell anyone about Jesus or live like Jesus with my neighbor, I just worship him and people walking by will be hit with waves of the Holy Spirit and want to follow him.

Then we started judging Sunday morning worship by whether we did that song we really like, the one that gives us the feels.  Was “Oceans” in the set? Then the anointing was present.  Was “Oceans” still in the worship set? The anointing has obviously left that worship leader/team.  And we’ve reduced our worship experience to measuring the ability of the leader and team to give us the feels rather than our ability to pour out our hearts to God, lose and find ourselves in the Father’s heart and to be compelled by his great love back out into a world full of pain and need.

Recently, I heard someone say, to oppose the powers, you’ve got to oppose the Powers.

I’m writing this as a follower Jesus who loves to worship with songs, who learned to play guitar so he could write songs and sings songs to Jesus.  I’m writing this as a follower of Jesus who has been shaped by worship music by people with last names like Barnett, Tuttle, Doerksen, Park, Smith, Ruis, Prosch, Redman, Mark, Beeching, Hughes, Houston and others.  I am not suggesting that present day worshipers don’t minister to people beyond their songs.  I am simply observing that powers have generally coopted our worship wherever possible, commodified it and marketed it to the singers of the songs by reducing worship to this single expression for which we can be charged a reasonable fee.

And our artists become baristas. (no offense to baristas, I need you too!)

I will now put on my tinfoil hat and sit quietly in my corner.