The New GM?

Check out this video:

Lesson for churches: Repentance comes before renewal.  This definitely merits expanded commentary, but I’d rather start a conversation.

What do you think?

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How will Social Media, New Technologies Change Church Ministry?

This question could be framed a bit differently, because social media and new technologies are changing church ministries.  I’ve experienced this firsthand.  Through my blog, Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media I have made connections with people unexpectedly, leveraged some of those connections, and engaged in conversations I would not otherwise have had.  As one qualification, I would not ever say that my online interactions constitute my ministry, but they are part of what I am doing as a disciple of Jesus.

I’m looking for resources on how social media and new technologies are changing church ministry.  I’m looking for blog posts, web forums, books, articles, as well as the perspective of practitioners who do not host a blog or other web forum but could comment on how church ministries have leveraged social media or some other form of technology in a way they find helpful and/or detrimental.

Please leave links, insights, references, etc.  This isn’t just for kicks–this is for a project.  And if you can help me out, I would appreciate it.

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Are you part of a movement?

Seth Godin has written a great little book called Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.  I posted Godin’s TED Talk on the material here.  Among Godin’s many challenges, he exhorts his readers to start a movement.  Here is what Godin says concerning the anatomy of a movement:

 

Senator Billy Bradley defines a movement as having three elements:

1. A narrative that tells a story about who we are and the future we’re trying to build.
2. A connection between and among the leader and the tribe.
3. Something to do–the fewer limits, the better.

Too often, organizations fail to do anything but the third (bold emphasis mine).

I have friends who read this blog who are part of large church denominations.  For them, that third statement really stings.  But it doesn’t have to, because movements can begin locally and expand from there.

Tribes is a book that is worthy of a quick read followed by lengthy, thoughtful consideration.  I picked up my copy from the public library for free and read it over two days.  Godin’s ideas are very simple.  To have a tribe, you only need two things: 1) a shared interest and 2) a way to communicate.  From humble beginnings, a movement can build.

If you are a church leader, what are you passionate about?  What is your narrative?  What is the future that God has enabled you, by grace, to envision?  And how do you communicate with those around you?  Are others compelled by the same story?  And if so, how do you band together to begin working toward that shared future, with the fewer limits, the better?

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Do the people on your team trust one another?

Do you work with other people on a day in, day out basis?  Do the people you work with trust one another?  Why?  Or, why not?

One of the most important aspects of building a solid team is knowing that you can trust those alongside you.  Whether you are starting an organization from scratch or inheriting a leadership position that has been around for 150 years (or more), the people around you must trust you, and must trust one another, if you are to move forward in a positive direction.

If you are going to build trust among those you work with, try asking some simple questions.  Get people together in the same room.  Eat a meal.  Play a game.  Create an occasion where everyone has the opportunity to share a little bit about themselves.  Ask for three to five non-invasive bits of information, such as the number of siblings each person has, what their first was, best family vacation, or favorite type of music.  Keep it simple, listen, and do your best to hang on to those bits of information.  This information might not factor in to your strategic plan, but it will help you to better understand one another.

Trust is foundational for pursuing a goal or a dream.  I think of my friends who are charged with leading churches that have amassed years of tradition, are very proud of where they have been, but have little idea of where they are going before Jesus returns.  At some point in their history they stopped asking questions concerning how God was making all things new in their city, town, or neighborhood, and the part they had to play.  Instead of starting a new initiative, or waiting a year before launching your first dream (the “do nothing in your first year” rule), get to know people.  Build trust.  Develop relationships.  Ask questions.  Be intentional.  And don’t just do this so that you get to know people better.  Facilitate these conversations in the presence of a group of those you lead.  You might be amazed at what your people might learn from and about one another.

Once you have established some level of trust, move on from there.

(To read more about this, check out this leadership book.  Not bad.)

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Seth Godin :: Tribes

If you are leading anyone, anywhere, watch this talk.  If you’re not leading, we need you to lead.  Especially all of those Christian-leader types that I know read my blog.  Or the students who are dreaming about a better world.  Or the chronic complainers who can tell you everything that is wrong with the world but refuse to create an alternative.

Start something.  Connect with others.  Make a difference.  Watch this talk.

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Remarkable? That Should Come (Super)Naturally.

I’ve been reading some odd stuff lately.  Not odd as in strange, odd as in outside my norm.  Mostly I read theology and Bible.  My friends know that I read Hauerwas.  Some say I’ve picked up some of his habits.  However, I don’t really curse and I have remained somewhat likable.  I guess I’m still on my way to perfection.

Among the books I’ve read recently that fall outside my norm: Seth Godin’s Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable.  It is another short offering from Godin, which is nice for those of us who like to cherry pick ideas and attempt to run with them.  Godin’s argument in Purple Cow is pretty simple.  The book is about marketing.  Marketing, as a field, is changing.  The old methods aren’t working as well anymore.  Television advertising doesn’t affect audiences the same way.  Godin is offering a different way to think about marketing in hopes of spurring his readers on to greatness in product development and design over and against shockingly obscene or (seemingly) compelling mundane advertising.  If you have a quality product and are able to see that product adopted by the right people, then the product will, in effect, sell itself.

Here are some of the terms Godin lists as being essential in traditional forms of marketing:

• Product
• Pricing
• Promotion
• Positioning
• Publicity
• Packaging
• Pass-along
• Permission

Godin thinks all of these are great, but he suggests adding a new P to the equation: Purple Cow.  The concept is simple, and he uses a parable to illustrate it.  Imagine driving through a countryside in beautiful France.  There are cows on every hillside, grazing, and the beauty is captivating.  At first, you are in awe, but after a while, the awe fades.  But a Purple Cow?  That would catch your attention.  And be interesting (for a while).

A Purple Cow would catch our attention because it would be remarkable.  Godin even says he would simply list “remarkable” as a marketing concept, but it doesn’t start with P.  So he went with Purple Cow instead.

When it comes to being the church, we’re not in the marketing business.  But we are called to be remarkable.  The beauty of our calling to be remarkable is that it is a gift of divine grace that is spurred along by our willingness to undertake certain disciplines that transform us more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ.  Salvation is in itself quite remarkable.  Unfortunately, we have allowed it to become boring (after a while).

The challenge for followers of Jesus is to recapture the awe that comes with knowing Jesus and following him.  Then we have the opportunity to creatively discern ways to communicate that to others.

Though this has been said in other places in similar ways, this remark from Godin challenged me in how I think about ministry:

Challenge your people to start with a blank sheet of paper and figure out what they’d do if they could do just about anything.  If they weren’t afraid of failing, what’s the most audacious thing they’d try?

If you’re in church leadership, take risks, and challenge your people to do the same.  I hope that the church would not only be known as a peculiar people, but a remarkable people, who offer the eternal life that begins in this life and extends into the next.  In the process of living this kind of life, I pray that we would creatively act as agents of God’s Kingdom, living an outrageously compelling discipleship to the God we worship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

By grace, we can be remarkable.  And the glory should be given to the Giver of Every Good and Perfect Gift.

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The Curse of the Analytic Mind

The risk in thinking “worldviewishly” is that we will start to think that the best way to change culture is to analyze it.  We will start worldview academies, host worldview seminars, write worldview books.  These may have some real value if they help us understand the horizons that our culture shapes, but they cannot substitute for the creation of real cultural goods.  And they will subtly tend to produce philosophers rather than plumbers, abstract thinkers instead of artists and artisans.  They can create a cultural niche in which “worldview thinkers” are privileged while other kids of culture makers are shunted aside.

But culture is not changed simply by thinking.

-Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Rediscovering Our Creative Calling

This week I’ve been reading Andy Crouch.  It has been quite enjoyable.  In fact, this is one of the best books I’ve picked up in a while that offers a helpful challenge to Christianity.  I’ve been convicted just as much as I have been encouraged.  That is the mark of a good book.

I’m analytical and critical.  I love to break down a discourse, a book, an event, a newspaper article, a poem, a piece of art, a movie, a play.  I enjoy asking questions.  And I enjoy sharing my opinions.

But the true desire of me heart, in recent days, has been to undertake a creative, cooperative venture with other like minded people to create something in our world that is helpful, hopeful, and true.

For those of us (myself included) who tend to analyze culture, I hope that Crouch’s words remind us that to think about and analyze our world is not alone sufficient.  We have to create.  We have to get about the business of bringing about new things.  You don’t like the current culture, whether it be national or ecclesial?  You’re discouraged by an institutional or communal structure you think is outmoded, outdated, sluggish, apathetic, restrictive, or errant?  Quit complaining and get to work.

As Crouch himself has written, “The only way to change culture is to create more of it.“

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Great Questions for Technologically Innovative Ecclesial Bodies

The title for this post will never come up in a Google search.  Oh well.

I have been involved in a number of discussions on the pros and cons of multi-site and video venue church ministries, and I have no shortage of opinions on whether such ventures are good for the future of the church.  Though I strongly believe there are more drawbacks than benefits to such ventures, the temptation to implement such technologies will be irresistible for many ecclesial bodies.  Despite my objections, as churches consider these decisions, a few good questions are in order.  The following list is from the “Technology” chapter of Neil Postman’s Building A Bridge to the 18th Century, and I believe each can be helpfully applied to church discussions of live-streaming and video venue ministries.

Here is the list:

1. What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?  Is this a problem that most of us have yearned to have solved; indeed, need to have solved?
2. Whose problem is it?
3. Which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution?
4. What new problems might be created because we have solved this problem?
5. What sort of people and institutions might acquire special economic and political power because of technological change?
6. What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies, and what is being gained and lost by such changes?

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Tony Jones No Longer to Serve as National Coordinator of Emergent Village

The new year brought a change to Emergent Village, with Tony Jones no longer serving as the National Coordinator.  This news broke here, among other places, in November, and was among the changes outlined in an online letter posted to Emergent’s Weblog.  I wasn’t aware of this change until yesterday when spotting it as a news blurb in the most recent edition of Christianity Today.

We’ll see what the future holds for Emergent Village.

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Suffering’s a Coming…

In the most recent edition of Christianity Today an article by Richard Foster entitled, “Spiritual Formation Agenda” notes the deep need of Christian communities to undertake the “heart work” or Christian character formation in the next 30 years, otherwise the church will “dry up and blow away.”  Foster writes of the need for growth in grace by individual Christians (pastors and lay men and women alike), identification of those gifted as spiritual directors (thus avoiding self appointed gurus), and congregational renewal that recognizes the church’s capacity to form persons according to virtue.  Foster notes Philipp Jakob Spener, Wesley, and Hans Nielsen Hauge as guides for the church’s rediscovery of her spiritual formation capacities.

Foster did make one chilling comment.  His third suggestion for congregational spiritual formation is this: we must learn to suffer together.  After this suggestion Foster offers this opinion:

I believe our time of suffering is coming.  A multitude of factors will bring this to pass.  For example, the hostility of the general culture to things Christian is only going to increase.  We should not be surprised by this or even try to change it.  What we should be doing is building a rock-solid community life so that when suffering comes, we will not scatter.  Instead, we will stand together, pray together, and suffer together regardless of what comes our way.  Suffering together may well be one way God uses us for a new gathering of the people of God.

Thoughts, reactions, questions, comments?

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