Success II


We have been very successful at creating religion haven’t we? Man, in my neck of the woods, the beloved Bible belt, we have a facility on every street corner and a monopoly on Sunday morning. If you can’t find it in person we have managed to give you an internet experience like no other. You can have a virtual worship experience in your own living room.

We have succeeded in creating religious people, should we be proud?

What should we think when someone says they have church on the internet? You mean the body of Christ, the called out? How does one gather with the called out when they don’t gather at all? Isn’t that just religion?

When I was in college my university, a Christian one (As if a university could be a Christ follower), would bring the Lord’s Supper to those students who slept in on Sunday morning. What was that all about? Imagine a drive-thru Lord’s Supper window at your local facility and contemplate what that is saying. Sounds like religion to me.

How sad and depressing that a relationship with our Creator through His Son Jesus Christ has been boiled down to attendance at a building and a pinch of cracker followed by a swig of juice. On occasion I go to Jamba Juice and get a shot of wheat grass, don’t ask, with an orange juice chaser. I don’t feel like I am a part of Jamba Juice for the experience. I am not somehow united because we shared that time together. If anything I am a little of put by the aftertaste, but that is another discussion.

Recently I have been trying to spend time at our local bar. One of our other members spends time shooting pool there from time to time. He was relating a recent experience and all I could think about was religion. A man who was going through a divorce, about to lose his home and family, was commiserating with my friend. My friend steered the discussion towards hope, our only hope, only to be told that if the man ever went to church, sadly Jesus equals building in my neighborhood, it would have to have the Baptist name out front.

Oh man have we not succeeded in creating religion? Wow we have been successful. The kind of brand loyalty that General Motors and Ford would love right now and yet the man is lost. His life is spiraling out of control and he can’t get his head around the idea that it isn’t about building or brand but about a Man who came and said I am the answer, I am the way, I have the hope.

I think we could use some failure when it comes to religion. That is my prayer today that our religion fails and fails because Jesus succeeds.

Success


How do you measure success? How would you measure your churches success?

I’ve been thinking about this lately as we end 2006 and prepare for 2007. Our theme for 2007 is Making Noise. Now I like that theme and I really do believe it is one given by God for our upcoming year but lets face it, what noise?

Recently I was in a restaurant where a couple of kids decided to get noisy. They made noise, trust me on that one. When I drop something that is breakable it makes noise. How do I measure whether or not I am making the right noise?

This is what has struck me recently. I think believers often times measure success the wrong way. I think we use the world’s way of measuring success. In fact, I’m not to sure that what we have decided to call success is in many cases failure, and miserable failure at that.

Imagine what problems this causes in the body of Christ. If I think something is successful what am I most likely going to do? You know exactly what will happen, I will copy it. So we copy failure and then measure that failure and say it is success. Not healthy.

Not that long ago I was reading about a new church plant that was called a success. Why? Because they started their first service with 500 people and ended up a month later with 1500. Very impressive? Successful? Where did that number come from? If I told you that 97% of those people came from other churches in the area would you still call it success?

Now when one starts to question this they are called jealous, jealous of others success of course, and simply ignored, but my problem is not with success but whether or not what we believers call success is success at all.

In fact what if all these new mega church plants are only hiding our problems? What if they are just reshuffling attendance numbers? Imagine a town losing a business and thousands of jobs to the community up the road, would we really call that success? I thought it was called relocation.

Do you want to know a hidden secret that no one is talking about? Small churches bring more people to Christ than the large ones. Did you know that small bodies of believers are growing at a much faster rate than any other size fellowship? The problem is not with success but with how we measure success. A network of house churches in California has over 100 within their fellowship averaging between 18 and 25 in each home.

What is even more striking is the fact that the numbers are turned on their ear when it comes to those who were believers versus those who are new children of God.

Be careful how you measure success, because it will impact your goals and aims.

Certain Words


Words are to easily stolen. That is why I have a bad attitude about words like emergent, relevant, relational, incarnational, missional. They are to easily co-opted by the very things they are trying to distinguish themselves from.

I struggle with this because in the end these words make communication easier with those of like mind and yet they can really guarantee nothing because they are words in the public domain.

How many times I have wished that someone using the name of Jesus would just stop, if only we had some card they could carry that said authentic, another one of those words, Christ-follower. We could have some double top secret glasses that showed the real from the fake like with gems.

If only, and then I am reminded that John said you would know them by their love and it all becomes clearer. You can have the words I should be worried about love.

Oh, but words are so much easier than love.

Missional Done Well

Does anyone have examples of the idea of missional done well? The word seems to be the new buzz word along with Incarnation. I understand the idea and to be honest didn’t know you needed a word to be it but that is just me being smart. This just guarantees I have no friends is really what it guarantees.

Anyway, I would love to read about missional fellowships done well. This came up because recently I was reading a group who called themselves missional and yet all I could get from their site was that they watched Monday Night Football together with a Bible Study at halftime. Maybe that is missional but it seems like it means something more than that. Maybe I don’t even understand the concept.

One person who probably embodies the idea of missional incarnation is Mike Exum. I drop in from time to time on his blog to find out what he is doing. Please note I am not looking for theories or ideas or idealized speech, I want cold hard case studies.

Any other good examples? Bad examples? Buehler, Buehler?

The Remote Control

Oh how I hate when the remote control falls into my wife’s hands. She seems to have this knack of waiting for me to get interested in a program before flipping the channel or passes by so quickly that I never know what is happening. Let’s face it, we often have two distinctly different tastes in programming.

In the end I often time migrate into the other room with the computer and our other television. I can surf the internet while I watch whatever programming I like. I don’t have to worry about the channel ever resting on the Food Network or Home and Garden. I can be assured that ESPN and ESPN2 will get plenty of air time no matter how many times I have seen the episode of the World Series of Poker. I am fully in control.

The problem is this ability to control pushes me away from my wife. We spend less time together whenever we don’t agree on what to watch on TV. I noticed that it impacts our relationship. It makes us more distant. It becomes harder to connect. That is what control does. Control kills relationships.

It is unfortunate that we often times fight for control in the church today. Whether it is modern or postmodern, contemporary or traditional. The struggle for control, who gets to set the channel, is a guaranteed recipe for division and disassociation. It only helps push believers apart.

This evening I went shopping with my wife. I didn’t want to, no part of me dreamed about going to Wal-Mart and standing in line with groceries and a couple of Christmas presents. What I did discover though was that when I focused on building our relationship instead of how much I would choose something different, the experience was a lot better. Maybe we could all use less control in our life, what do you think?

Neil Diamond


What do you do when the songs you really loved growing up are classified as Adult Contemporary? My wife informed that I can’t call my music “pop” anymore because the pop meant popular and none of what I like would fit that category today.

I have a sweat spot for Neil Diamond. I struggled with a lot of confusion growing up and Neil was a friend. I remember listening to Neil on my dad’s real-to-real that he picked up while in Vietnam.

Something about Neil always said this guy has it together. I mean on every cover he did there was serious Neil looking like this cool confident cat. If you can look like he did on the Rainbow cover and stand with confidence you must know something that no one else does.

The two albums that hooked me were You Don’t Bring Me Flowers and The Jazz Singer. The American Popular Song is one of my favorites that never makes any of the greatest hits albums. Forever in Blue Jeans for whatever reason still takes me back to a simpler time before the confusion of puberty set in.

I think we all long for something simpler, something less stressful, a place of hope and rest. When I think back to all of my confusion I am reminded of Neil Diamond and my escape and I rejoice that I have found a more permanent place of rest today.

Several years ago I had the chance to go see Neil, sequined shirts and all, but I declined because I preferred the Neil of the album cover. When I discovered that Jesus longed to gather me under his protective wing, that he hoped to give me a place of rest, I abandoned my need for Neil.

I stumbled across Neil on Rhapsody today and listened to The American Popular Song for the first time since I was a kid. As I listen I say a special thanks to God that I have someone much closer than an album cover today to take comfort in.

The songs sound even better now that I live on the other side of the storm.

Blog Traffic

How many blogs do you read? I just wonder if there is some kind of average. What type of blog do you enjoy? Why do you read the ones you do?

Thanks.

Authority

Why do you think authority bothers us so much today? Help me understand why no one seems to want to be under anyone’s authority. Is it because of abuse? Is it because of what happened in the 60’s? Did Richard Nixon forever put the final death nail in authority? Did too many people die for no reason when they blindly followed authority?

I see an aversion to authority everywhere today. Do you want to lead? Sure, as long as you do it exactly how I would do it and want it done. If you do something I wouldn’t have done than I will no longer follow. What is leading about that?

What can be done about such an attitude about authority? Is there no hope? What do you think?

Watered Down Text


Is that what we have today? Watered down Jesus? Let’s face it, Jesus sayings were hard not easy, at least that is how people responded to him in His day.

What about the wealthy young man who approaches Jesus in Mark 10:17-31? Jesus certainly doesn’t pull any punches with him. The text says that Jesus looked at him with love right before he told him to sell everything he had. Jesus says give it to the poor. How many people today are going to follow Jesus if that is what He said?

Now I understand that Jesus follows up this statement by telling the bewildered disciples that it is impossible for man to get into heaven but God can get it done. I understand that, but that is not what Jesus said to the rich guy who knelt before him. He didn’t say that it was hard for him to find heaven but you sound like you are doing a great job honoring your father and mother. It is not what He said.

In Matthew 8:18-22 it is recorded that a teacher of the Law said he was going to follow Him wherever he went. Jesus got really excited and jumped up and down and said praise God, add another one to my growing list of disciples. Oh, that is not what he said is it. Instead Jesus tells this would be disciple that "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

I don’t know about you but that isn’t exactly how we American’s would market a movement is it? Jesus maybe we tell them what you will do for them before we get into this it is hard business.

If you had been sitting at Jesus feet when he delivered the Sermon on the Mount what would you have thought? Sounds easy? Now I realize that we must balance expectations with grace and forgiveness, no one is perfect, but that doesn’t seem to keep Jesus from saying what He needed to say.

I just wonder because recently we have been talking about the flesh and the Spirit in our Sunday morning Bible study. I have noticed a tendency to take some of what makes being a Christ follower hard, love, and I have listened as we try to water it down, at least as it seems to me.

I have had some people upset with me because I really think we should strive to live for the Spirit. I agree we are saved by grace through faith but why, if we believe God’s ways are the best ways, wouldn’t we want to strive to follow them in our lives?

I realize it isn’t easy but isn’t it worth the struggle? Isn’t it worth the fight because of truth? Could it be that the church today gets no traction in our world because we have watered down Jesus words? We no longer look much different than the world around us?

Help me out, am I being too hard? Have I missed something? Do I not realize that this is why Jesus came? Not so much so we would live differently but because we really can’t live differently so we need a Savior? Something doesn’t seem right about that but that seems to me how many have taken His life. What do you think?

One Step at a Time

I want instant. I love instant oatmeal, apple cinnamon hands down. I love microwave popcorn, the entire popping experience is confined to one pre-buttered and salted bag. I love convenience. Who can resist an instant sandwich already made or a window that dispenses a hot meal? I like easy, easy seems good. Easy means I have a remote control so I can flip by the countless channels I never watch. Easy means I have shampoo and conditioner all wrapped into one bottle, easy means I can self check out with that bottle if I desire.

Working in a faith community typically offers none of the above. I have seen very little when dealing with God that is instant, convenient or easy. I have been inspired by Philip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew to look at Jesus temptation in a different way.

You see that is what Satan offered Jesus instant, convenient and easy. Satan offered Jesus instant, “You need food? Why not turn those stones into bread?” He also offered convenience. “Do you want to build a kingdom? I will give you all of the kingdoms if you will just bow down to me.” What about easy? “Throw yourself off the temple Jesus, you have nothing to worry about, your angels will make it easy.”

I don’t think I had ever put it in this context before. Satan is the one who offers instant, convenient and easy and though they seem best, we know that Satan is the father of lies.

It takes time. We have a man I will call Jack who has been gathering with us these past few months. He is a very helpful man and yet he still does some things that we good God-fearing Christians wouldn’t do. He is a work in progress. The fact that he comes each week says so much about what God is doing in his life and yet I struggle at times because I want to see him all cleaned up and pristine, just the way I think a good Christian should be.

Last night I was talking with our elder about this gentleman and I learned more about how far he has come. He was a heavy drinker and he has given it up. He hadn’t gathered with a fellowship for years and yet he has found a home in ours. He has some really interesting ideas and yet there he is worshiping God, trying to figure out what it might mean to be a Christ follower.

Someone might wonder if we have a proper discipleship program in place. Some formula that will help him move beyond some of these areas. Trust me I understand the desire but all I can think about is, did you want that in apple cinnamon or brown sugar?

Someone might tell you that you need a class for those reengaging their faith. We have a Faith 101 class and some other courses but isn’t expecting discipleship to take place on our hourly schedule convenient? Will that happen when it is most convenient for me, or should I realize that this journey will be one of inconvenience? No, I think he will still make mistakes but if I don’t expect easy will that come as a surprise?

My tendency has been to think I wanted it faster and sooner but when I realized those are the invitations of Satan I have decided I can wait. Trust me I’m not sitting on my hands but at some point I have to know that discipleship won’t be instant, convenient or easy and yet it will always be worth it. I am trying to resist taking these ways out because Jesus never did.