A Right Brained Church?

Last week I finished Daniel E. Pink‘s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.  Great read full of good analysis, helpful illustrations (not just stories, but pictures, too!), and practical suggestions for developing your right brain abilities.  This book has been on the shelf for a few years, but it contains the type of stuff that was never talked about in seminary, and thus, for me, was exciting, informative, and suggestive.  There is plenty of stuff in here that I think could be utilized by any church leader, especially since church leadership demands employment of our creative capacities.

Here are Pink’s “Six Senses” of right brain thinking that he believes will define the future:

• Design
• Story
• Symphony
• Empathy
• Play
• Meaning

I never considered myself a right-brain person growing up.  Maybe it was just me.  But over the past few years my ministry has demanded that I employ right brain capacities.  I’ve had to tell stories, design experiences, put together devotional guides using creative tools (writing, layout design, images, etc.), paint a big picture for people as I’ve exercised leadership (symphony), employed empathy in understanding the people I lead, played alongside children, students, and other adults leaders, and helped groups derive shared meaning.  I’ve been doing this right brained stuff.

The church is pegged as being a left-brained institution with a very left-brained discourse.  We have a chance to redefine that stuff.  Logic will continue to be important, but this right brain stuff cannot be denied.  We need a whole new mind.  And this means reclaiming the right brain and doing some cool, creative stuff.

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The 3, The 12, & The 120

I think the church has been given a gift in Andy Crouch’s Culture Making.  Before I say anything else, I need to offer a command: read this book.

As Christian people we are called to create and offer culture to the world.  As human beings we are created in God’s image.  When we create, we reflect our Creator.  As Crouch illustrates in his book, this motif is evident in the Genesis account, but is not confined there.  Culture making takes place throughout the biblical narrative.  The biblical story, being our story, invites us to a life of faithfulness that includes creating spaces in our communities where the life of the Kingdom is found manifest.  This can be in a group as small as a family or tightly knit group of friends, but can grow to be larger.

In the third part of his book, Crouch illustrates how we can go about creating culture.  The task begins very small.  The context for culture making is named as The 3, The 12, and The 120.  The principle is simple.  Crouch cites examples from movies, books (writer, editor, publisher), and forms of government that focus centrally on about three people, widens to around 12, and reaches to approximately 120.  The numbers aren’t always exact, but they fall near that range.  Christians will immediately think of Jesus, his inner circle, the twelve, and then other disciples (the 70, for example) that Jesus commissioned during his ministry.

When we think of creating culture, whether we are lay leaders, ordained clergy, or other church staff, we never go about creating culture by ourselves.  We need others.  Crouch states:

Absolutely no one makes culture alone.  There may be periods of solitude where we work alone to shape our contribution to our own cultural sphere and scale.  But for our work alone to bear any fruit at all, we will need to join with a 3.  So one of the most important questions for our calling is, Who are your 3?  Who are the few people you trust enough to risk creating something together?  What is the cultural sphere and scale where you could imagine successfully proposing a cultural good?  Who might be members of your 12?  Who might be drawn into the circle of the 120 who will eventually lend their effort and energy to moving the horizons of possibility with you?

These are all great questions.  So, who are your 3?  Who are your 12?  And who are your 120?  And what are you creatively discerning and formulating together for the good?  What will you invite others to take part in?

Surround yourself with friends, dream big, and get to work.  May God bless your labors.

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Compassion International

Molly and I support Compassion International, and invite others to do so as well.  For $32 a month you can support a child’s education, well-being, and personal development in under-resourced areas around the globe.  Molly and I exchange letters with our Compassion child who is from Brazil, and are encouraged when we hear what he is learning, what he is interested in, and how he is doing.  Compassion is a Christian ministry, which will be clear from the statistics below.

Here are some significant stats from a recent Compassion update:

• In the last fiscal year, 154,122 children from our Child Sponsorship Program made commitments to Jesus Christ! And child sponsorships reached 902,172 globally — a 13 percent increase.
• Compassion’s Child Survival Program is now providing lifesaving assistance to 12,073 caregivers and babies.
• This year, nearly 200 students graduated from our Leadership Development Program.
• Compassion was honored in an  recognizing charities that have earned consecutive four-star ratings. Compassion is the only ministry of its kind in the nation to receive this honor seven consecutive years!

I’d encourage you to check it out, and sign up.

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Identity, Creativity, and the “Emerging Church”

It is Friday morning and I hope yours is going as well as mine thus far!  My job with the bus company has me up early each day and gets me started, and then I move to a coffee shop or my living room to research and write.  As I’ve been perusing my blog reader this morning I’ve found a few items I think that are of note.

First, Dan Kimball writes about how the meaning of the term “emerging church” has changed in the 5 years since he published his book The Emerging Church.  I tend to agree with many of his observations.  For anyone tired of the term, I would strongly recommend checking out Kimball’s analysis and clicking through his links to other bloggers and thinkers who have dropped the term all together.  The “emerging church” that I was attracted to around 6 years ago has evolved into something else–now I’m striving to practice historic, orthodox Christian faith.  Admittedly I have a  Protestant/Baptist predisposition, but am learning a great deal from the Church Fathers, the Monastics, and Reformers.  I’m currently in a Methodist context, and have been for a few years.  Anyway, here is an excerpt from Kimball’s post:

So…. the first thing that has changed in the 5 years since the book The Emerging Church came out is that in my opinion, the definition has changed. I am not wedded to any term and I don’t think most people are. I, like most others, are wedded to the gospel and to Jesus’ command of making new disciples – not a term to describe it. I have gone through the disiullusionment stage about church, and been hurt by the church and the whole deconstruction phase and questioning phase.

So I understand that very deeply. But the urgency of eternity here and the here-after and the people who are not yet Christians who need to hear about experience in this life the saving gospel of Jesus is what enabled me to rise me out of that. I want to focus time, prayer and energy on healthy evangelism and new disciples of Jesus being made who weren’t Christians before in our new cultures and new generations. That may involve all varieties of conversations including anything from music and art to justice to leadership to all types of thing. But underneath it is evangelism and the words of Jesus in Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8 and mission driving it all. So in moving ahead, I don’t think using the term “emerging church” as it is generally defined today, describes this like it used to.

Next, I thought this post from Accidental Creative was quite good, entitled “Identity vs. Masks.”  The quote from Thomas Merton drew me in.  I’m all for creativity in ministry–in fact, I think it is critical in efforts to contextualize the gospel.  If we take a missionary approach to our culture, our communities, our cities, our ministries will express diversity reflective of the true nature of the Kingdom of God.  In order to contextualize our ministries effectively we’ll have to be bold in implementing our own creativity.  Here’s a portion of this post from Accidental Creative:

Many of us move through life wearing someone else’s clothes. We produce someone else’s art. We make someone else’s music. We write someone else’s words.  We replay someone else’s arguments. We don’t have the courage and the conviction to stand on our own and speak our own thoughts and craft our own work. We don’t have the courage to say “I don’t know” and to make it up as we go. We are wearing a mask…

The best antidote for all of this is – wait for it – unnecessary creating time. It’s critical that we have time to create for ourselves (and no one else) in which we can take on projects that fuel us, give us life and the opportunity to explore new means of expression. We discover ourselves and our unique “voice” as we act. We need to build intentional, structured time into our lives to express ourselves in new ways and to take creative risks where there’s a safety net.

Lastly, for anyone out there exploring the possibilities of launching an internet campus, here’s a great link from Tim Stevens.  A United Methodist Church decided to baptize someone over the web.  Check it out.

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Low-Hanging Fruit (John 15, anyone?)

Yesterday Seth Godin put forth an interesting question I couldn’t ignore.  Here’s an excerpt from his post:

Imagine that half the cars in the US get 10 miles per gallon. And half get 40 miles per gallon. Further stipulate that all cars are driven the same number of miles per year.

Now, you get one wish. You can give every low-mileage car a new set of spark plugs that will increase fuel efficiency by 5 mpg, up to 15. Or you can replace every 40 mpg car with a car that gets 75 mpg, an increase of 35 miles for every gallon driven.

Which is better?

So, what would you choose?  One might be inclined to increase the efficiency of the vehicles with the best fuel economy, but you’d be wrong.  Godin answers:

It turns out that the 5 mpg increase is far better for overall mileage than the 35 mpg increase, even though it’s smaller both as a percentage and absolutely. That’s because the 10 mpg hogs use up so much gas. They’re the low-hanging fruit, not just easy to fix, but worth fixing.

This seems counter intuitive, but it adds up.  All things being equal (fleet and miles driven), the overall percentage of fuel which would be conserved on the lower end would easily outweigh the decrease in fuel consumption by the most efficient vehicles.

You can read the rest of Godin’s post here.  This got me thinking: Jesus spoke of fruit in John 15, among other places.  Thinking specifically of his discussion of the vine and the branches in John 15, Jesus states:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.” -John 15:1-2

As far as churches go, many leaders think of productive, growing, and dynamic ministries as prime targets for investigation, excitement, and hope.  People ask, “What is __________ ministry doing to increase in effectiveness, reach their community, and grow their church, and can it be replicated?”  People want to be like the big boys (or considering that the Church is portrayed as the bride of Christ, the big girls (hottest babes?)).

Within the context of some of these booming churches, the focus is on evangelization and church growth, continuing much of the excellent work that has already begun so that the ceiling can continue to be raised.  In order to continue this type of growth, these church ministries (and their congregants) demand excellence in staff hiring practices, desiring that the church only bring on the best quality staff people to lead that ministry, which results from time to time in large churches hiring the most capable people away from other churches.  Ministries must be highly effective, with effectiveness usually measured by number of participants.  When a ministry does take off, resources are placed behind that particular effort in order to push the envelope and continue to raise the ceiling.  Overall, I’m not saying that this growth at the top is bad.  It may just cause us to forget about the low-hanging fruit.

Godin’s post left me wondering–what is the low-hanging fruit in a denominational context, or in a local church context?  I’m not thinking about ministries and churches in the process of dying–I’m thinking of church ministries that are producing some fruit and with a little help, encouragement, and additional resources, might come to produce a little bit more.  I’m thinking of leaders who are tired and exhausted, yet continue to work hard, and could benefit greatly if someone would praise them and celebrate the work they are doing.  Perhaps a little encouragement, a little investment in the life of someone leading a smaller ministry might go a long way and have great overall benefits for the Kingdom of God.

Of course, my thesis here supposes that we can identify churches and ministries that would fit the category of producing “low-hanging fruit,” which I concede would be difficult, if not impossible.  Measuring these things would have to go beyond numbers, looking at other markers of spiritual health.  At the very least, this idea serves as a reminder to encourage my colleagues and my friends in ministry, to listen to their stories from their church contexts (both large and small), and to celebrate the good work that God might be doing through their life.

 

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Sometimes Eschatology Makes Me Want to Vomit

This story from FoxNews reports that a group of Christians holding a pre-tribulation, premillenial doctrinal understanding of eschatology (or “last things”) have launched a website which will alert friends and loved ones if the “Rapture” has occurred.  According to this report, “Final e-mails from vanished subscribers will be triggered when three of the site’s five Christian staffers fail to log in for six days in a row.”  Those persons administering the site seem quite certain they will be among those taken up in to heaven when the final trumpet sounds.

The site, http://www.youvebeenleftbehind.com/, will alert up to 62 loved ones of your departure via an email message if the above criteria are met.  This form of premillenialism has led the site administrators to also facilitate storage of financial account information.  This is so you might pass your assets on to family before the conclusion of the tribulation, which according to this strand of theology is a period lasting 7 years.

This story does include one bit of poor journalism, stating, “According to Christian theology, after the Rapture, Satan will rule a global government that will torment doubters with seven years of Tribulation”(emphasis mine).  Such broad statements about Christian theology fall short of the truth, as eschatology is but one of many historic doctrines which exhibit broad diversity between different Christian communities.  This reporter could have done a better job by indicating the strand of theology from which this perspective comes, rather than making a blanket statement that doesn’t do justice to the tradition.  Some Christians will no doubt be offended by this generalization, as they would claim that the particular eschatology which gave birth to this website is not only errant, but dangerous.

Dispensationalism (what we’re talking about here) can trace its roots to John Nelson Darby, a Christian leader during the 1800s.  His teaching became largely popularlized through the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible.  I know all about it–I went to seminary at a place that holds dispensationalism as a key doctrine.  I’ve had my fair share of conversations about premillenialism, postmillenialism, and amillenialism.  I’ve read books on the topic.  I’ve sat around discussions concerning the specifics of the “tribulation,” asking if the rapture will occur pre-trib, mid-trib, or post-trib. I’ve also been around persons who do their very best to match current events with what they understand as relevant biblical passages so that they might speculate on the timing of Jesus’s return.  I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about these matters myself, continuing to study the different eschatological frameworks and measuring them against the biblical evidence so that I might arrive at a well-reasoned faith. 

We all know that dispensationalism has been popularized in recent years in the publication of the Left Behind series of Christian fiction.  LaHaye and Jenkins (and friends) have not only published books, but guides for Bible studies, a video game, and other forms of media to increase their following.  This particular product is quite interesting, to put it mildly.

For church leaders and preachers out there who don’t like premillenial dispensationalism, what is your response?  Clearly there is one particular form of eschatology that dominates the American landscape.  Aside from premillenial dispensationalism, are there any other options, and if so, are we teaching them?  If we are teaching them, do our people have the ability to clearly articulate the grounds upon which they might hold an amillenial or postmillenial viewpoint?  Can they make clear statements about the nature of God’s actions in history, and what Christians claim concerning Jesus’s awaited return?  Or are they pan-millenialists, asserting they are not worried about particulars, simply confident it will “all pan out in the end.”

Stories such as these present a challenge to church leaders across America, particularly those persons who exist in church traditions that believe dispensationalism is not our best option.  We do have other perspectives which have a rich historical and theological heritage, but are we teaching them?  How well are the people in the pews instructed concerning our belief in last things?

For some persons the response might be, “well, I’ll preach and teach about how dispensationalism is wrong.”  I say unto you, “OK, but are you going to construct a theology in its place that is historically and theologically well grounded?”  If you go about blasting away what you believe are misconceptions, you have to go about the work of construction.  You have to tell a narrative that makes sense.  Eschatology is about hope.  The doctrine which you teach on this aspect of theology is critical for your ministry.

I hope that pastors, church leaders, and Bible teachers who take this stuff seriously will consider how they might address eschatology. It is one of the essential pillars in building a systematic theology.  It deserves our reflection, our esteem, and our best efforts at teaching people in our congregations in a way that they might understand.  Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection are all events that in themselves are eschatological.  The world hasn’t been the same since God took on the flesh, died on the cross, and rose three days later.  Now, we await the culmination or full measure of the Kingdom of God to be brought about as we exist in the time between the times.  Until Jesus returns, what is our hope? 

That, my friends, is a question I hope we can stand to answer.

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“Take Up Thy Tools”

Here is a great article from Clive Thompson on getting your hands dirty and becoming more handy.  I’m not too handy myself, but I have enjoyed those occasions being a first time homeowner has provided to build and install stuff myself.  Sometimes it is a disaster.  Sometimes it is great.

I can see his point in saying that if we become increasingly engaged in building and fixing things ourselves we may create occasions upon which innovation and new ideas can take shape.  The “information economy” Thompson describes has removed us one step from putting our hands to those projects we are seeking to form.  In many ways, church ministry can relate.

Some Christian ministers/leaders/thinkers spend too much time in their head.  We think great thoughts, tightly construct complex doctrinal statements, and perhaps have some really great discussions (or debates) with our friends (or our enemies).  But there is something that comes along with putting our hands to the work that is vital for a life following Jesus Christ.  By putting our ideas into action, we have occasions upon which we can innovate–occasions through which God’s Spirit can move us so that the world might be transformed.

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