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Church

Renovation of the Chruch

Jul 12th, 2011
by Michael Krahn.
2 comments

This book looks interesting. Just read an interview with the authors in which they say the following:

“For some years now, the church in North America has been terribly confused on this issue of relevancy. We thought that relevancy meant being like the surrounding culture, having a style and an outreach that would be very familiar and comfortable to those outside the church. The pursuit of relevancy sought to reduce the barriers that would keep people from coming to church. In many ways, we have been successful in this, and ironically, this is part of what has plunged us into our current state of irrelevancy… We are in grave danger of being simply ignored.”

“Increased attendance, when it is a byproduct of an authentic work of God, is a wonderful thing to be desired and celebrated. But it is an unhelpful and inappropriate thing to have as a goal.” Faithfulness to the pursuit of developing an authentic expression of a transformed and redemptive community should be our goal.”

Order your copy here (Amazon.com|.ca)

Self-Feeders?

Jun 1st, 2011
by Michael Krahn.
3 comments

You shouldn’t be overly reliant on the church community and its leaders to feed you spiritually, right? Isn’t this what Willow Creek’s REVEAL study taught us? Three things…

First, look at John 21. In the conversation between Jesus and Peter, Jesus says three things: “feed my lambs”, “tend my sheep” and “feed my sheep”. He doesn’t tell Peter to teach people to feed themselves and then get out of the way of the ones that catch on. Of course as believers we should know how to study the scriptures, how to pray, etc., but we should never expect to stop being fed.

Second, some comments about “self-feeders” from David Fitch in a post from a while back about Willow’s REVEAL study results:

On p. 64 REVEAL says that Willow sought to “meet the needs of its people” too much. This creates an unhealthy dependence. The solution the report provides for the problem is that the church needs to teach its people more spiritual practices. At first glance, this appears encouraging. Perhaps Willow has have been listening to those who have been asking serious questions about consumerism and business practices in American church.

But then REVEAL goes on to say that as we grow more mature in Christ, we need to teach people to become “self-feeders.” In the words of Bill Hybels (in the video), we need to provide coaching, “customized personal spiritual growth plans.” As “you go to a health club and you get a personal trainer … to figure out how to care for your health … we need to provide coaches for personal spiritual growth.” Here the language might have changed, but the strategy remains the same. We’ve seen the problem, let’s provide a program to meet the individual (customized) need. Here the Christian life is seen as a personal individualist pursuit for some goods that are frankly seen as self-beneficial. Spiritual growth has now become a goal in itself.

If Willow creek follows this course, I predict it will be spending more money on why the mature Christians are leaving their church in another ten years. Because Christian growth has everything to do with community. It cannot be achieved independently of the spiritual disciplines within community including confession, truth speaking in love, worship, working out one’s salvation in fear and trembling and above all prayer. None of these practices can be personalized. These are corporate disciplines, just not achievable in corporate bodies that are extremely large.

Furthermore, this kind of spiritual formation occurs only in and through participation in Mission, the journeying together as a people infiltrating and witnessing to the life and ministry of Christ incarnationally in the world. “Personal spiritual growth plans” sounds way too individualized to avoid becoming another form of self-indulgence. True spiritual growth takes on the suffering and hurting and lostness of the world in the ministry of salvation. One cannot undergo such a journey if its goal is personal spiritual growth versus the Mission of God.

Eph 4 is a lesson on spiritual growth. It happens within the formation of the Body of Christ. Here the organic “Body” of Christ works for the edification of our spiritual growth “until we all grow to the full stature of Christ”(Eph 4:13 – read the whole chapter).

Spiritual growth cannot happen as a “self feeder,” it is the outworking of the Body of Christ as we participate in His Mission. The solution proposed here is disastrous for not only the spiritual growth of Willow creekers but for the furtherance of the Mission of Christ.

Third, some thoughts from Darrin Patrick in an article from Leadership last year:

In my research I found that churches often lean in one of two directions. Some believe that people should be “self-feeders.” The church’s responsibility is to create impressive worship services with practical teaching, and maybe connect members into relational groups. From there, however, the people are expected to do the rest. Their spiritual growth is in their own hands.

On the other side are churches who are “spoon-feeders.” They place a high value on biblical teaching and exposition. The sermons are deep and these churches imply that if you just come and listen, you’ll grow in your faith…

There are problems on both extremes. We should not expect the church to do everything, but we cannot undervalue the role of the church either. Gospel preaching and Bible exposition are vital, but equipping believers to take responsibility for their own growth is also important.

A Powerful Drama About Youth Suicide [video]

Feb 28th, 2011
by Michael Krahn.
No comments yet

A group of young adults from my church recently performed this drama. Seeing it live was significantly more powerful, but you’ll get the idea from this video of the performance.

Does Preaching Make Disciples?

Feb 22nd, 2011
by Michael Krahn.
10 comments

Thabiti Anyabwile responding to the assertion that the traditional sermon is the culprit in “crippling discipleship.”

I think that assertion errs in at least two ways:

1. It assumes that the primary or perhaps exclusive way of making disciples is the Sunday morning sermon.
Wherever that’s being assumed, it seems to me to be wholly in error. Preaching is necessary to but not sufficient for making disciples. It takes the entire body with every member every day to make solid disciples.

The reason we have spiritually immature believers (which we’ll always have in some measure) and burned out pastors isn’t because the pastor preaches every Sunday (which most pastors enjoy doing). The reason we have immature believers and burned out disciples is because so many Christians are not opening their lives, inviting others in, and making spiritual deposits in intentional disciple-making relationships.

The problem isn’t that we have preachers; the problem is that every disciple is not themselves making disciples as our Lord commands.

2. The assertion errs because it makes preaching to believers unnecessary when the NT makes it necessary.
Paul explicitly commands Timothy to “preach the word” in the gathered assembly. What word is that? Likely the OT, which Paul says elsewhere was written for our instruction and example. Insofar as Timothy is to “preach the word,” he’s doing some form of exposition in the assembly. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

That was found in the comments section of a post called “Who’s Doing the Talking in Our Church Gatherings?” The entire post and about 2/3 of the comments are worth reading here.

Seed-change and Sea-change

Feb 18th, 2011
by Michael Krahn.
2 comments

Leading change as a leader in any organization is both exhausting and exhilarating. Ideas often polarize – at least ideas that you intend to act upon – and the proportion of “seed-changers” to “sea-changers” involved will determine the degree of the polarization.

What is a Seed-changer?
Seed-changers won’t require you to have a clearly defined strategy before they allow you to embark on the process of change. Sure, they like to know what the eventual goal is, but the process of getting there can be one that involves uncertainly. Drop an idea on a group of seed-changers and it will take root in as many different ways as there are heads in the room. Uncertainty, as well as ambiguity, is a draw rather than a repellent.

Seed-changers immediately take an idea and dream about “what could be”, but because seed-changers accept the principles of seed growth – namely, that you know what type of plant will grow but not much about its size or shape – they can accept an end product that doesn’t look exactly like what they first pictured in their heads.

Seed-changers love the fact that there’s something beneath the surface that they haven’t seen yet. They love that soon they’ll see a small green chute emerge from the soil and that they’ll have an opportunity to tend it and contribute to its health.

What is a Sea-changer?
“Sea-change” is a poetic term meaning the gradual transformation of something in which the form is retained but the substance is replaced. There are two keys to understanding people who are sea-changers.

First, a transformation must be gradual.
If it’s not gradual sea-changers feel like the rug has been pulled out from under them. They find uncertainty and ambiguity alarming. They prefer to know at the beginning more or less how the story will end.

Second, the existing form must be preserved.
Almost anything can be changed on the inside as long as the external facade remains in one piece. Sea-changers are uncomfortable with ambiguity and so it is very important to them that the fundamental elements of their existing structure remain intact. You can change things bit by bit, but it needs to happen in the context of the appearance of safety, certainty, and stability.

Managing Change
If you attempt seed change on sea-changers the reaction will be one of distress.

If you attempt sea change on seed-changers the reaction will be one of disinterest.

Choose your change strategy carefully.

The Table Project – Yet Another (Doomed) Social Network

Feb 7th, 2011
by Michael Krahn.
6 comments

Via John Dyer: The Table Project is one of many new socially oriented web platforms being released for churches… Take a look at the promo video and then let’s discuss. (watch)

I say – doomed. Noble, but doomed. That’s not to say that nobody will sign up, but within a relatively short period they’ll lose interest. Some will continue to use it but most will acknowledge the fact that nobody wants another social network they feel obligated to check in with every day, especially when they’d be checking in with the same people they’re already checking in with every day on Facebook.

It would be like talking to the same person on two phones, one on each ear. “Let’s talk about life in general in the left one, but churchy, intimate stuff on the right one, ok?” It’s like a “secular” song recut with Christian lyrics – we all know which song it is and we insert the original words over your substitutes and, eventually, we acknowledge that the original is better than your recut and we go back to listening to it. It’s like asking the person you meet you for coffee every week to meet with you twice every week because there’s a new Christian coffee shop in town.

In the same way, we all know that The Table Project is Facebook with a different face. We can also see that it might be better than Facebook in a some ways, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s an existing song with Christianized lyrics (a good/bad example of that here).

Conclusions
I’d like to be wrong on this one because it does look like a noble idea. So I, like John Dyer, wish them the best, but I’ll wager two things:

(1) Nobody who is already on Facebook will abandon Facebook for this so it will consume more of their time, not less.

More time online means less time offline, which means a decrease in face-to-face interaction. The creators of The Table admit as much in a blog post on their site (read): “To be clear, we are not trying to compete with or replace Facebook. We act as a compliment to global networks such as Facebook.” In other words, “We want people to keep social networking elsewhere but also on our site.” How is that compatible with the goal of increasing local human connection?

(2) Very few people who are not currently engaged in social media will suddenly become engaged just because there is a Christian alternative.

The whole idea of The Table is to cause a transference of behavior from an existing network to another network. It needs to leverage people’s behavior on Facebook and to exploit their familiarity with it in order to engage them in the same behavior in a “safer” space. The problem is that if you’re not already assimilated into social media culture, The Table is every bit as foreign and foreboding as Facebook.

What do you think? Are my conclusions plausible or ridiculous?

Success By Numbers: Defining the “Authentic Church Experience”

Jan 12th, 2011
by Michael Krahn.
1 comment

An excellent piece here by Brandon O’Brien from CT Online. First, his premise:

Many ministers have surrendered their judgment about what constitutes “the authentic church experience” to expectations shaped by experts. These experts write books, speak at conferences, and typically lead large and influential congregations.

Because of their success, we imagine them to be great pioneers who are part of something we have never seen—the “real” church experience. Over time, the experts have done for church what postcards and PBS specials have done for the Grand Canyon: they’ve made it difficult for us to appreciate our own experience apart from theirs. We have lost the ability to see and experience and appreciate ministry for ourselves. All we can see is the disparity between what our churches are and what they are “supposed” to be.

Next, some thoughts I’ve been grappling with these last few months (see “Some Thoughts on Prospects and Pastoral Ambition” and “Seasons of Attack the Lure of Adultery“):

When I accepted my first post as pastor, I was entirely seduced by the experts’ description of ministry success. The arc goes something like this: at some point in your life you sense a clear call from God to enter the ministry. It makes a better story if this happens after years of success in a lucrative secular career [MK: ouch - guilty as charged] or a period of profound and sinful rebellion.

After some sort of preparation—whether in seminary or careful perusal of church planting materials—you take a position in a small church. Over the next several years, your ministry grows. You see people reconcile with God; lives are changed. You feel confident you are squarely within God’s will. You’ve found your calling. You may move from church to church—usually to increasingly larger, more vibrant congregations—or your church plant grows rapidly.

Soon your peers recognize your success and a publisher asks you to write a book about your story. You share it at conferences. You have arrived.

O’Brien also draws attention to the following, which we all seem to conveniently ignore when we’re in the throes of adoration while attending one of the many “come listen to large church pastor tell you how it’s done” conferences out there:

According to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, 94 percent of churches in America have 500 attendees or fewer each week. Only 6 percent—19,000 churches—have more than 500 attendees. Megachurches (regular attendance over 2,000) make up less than one half of one percent of churches in America.

The narrative of success may be the one people write books about, but it is not the typical one. We have allowed the ministry experience of 6 percent of pastors to become the standard by which the remaining 94 percent of us judge ourselves.

Excellent closer here:

An important part of following Jesus is learning to see the truth of things behind appearances. In Christ, the foolish things of the world confound the wise; in Christ the powerless supplant the powerful; in Christ, the eternal purposes of God were fulfilled in the death of the Messiah. If our ministries are to reflect the values of Jesus, we should be skeptical when we are more “successful” than Jesus was.

Read the rest of the article here. Brandon O’Brien is associate editor of Leadership and author of The Strategically Small Church(Bethany House, 2010)

The “Gay Christian Network” and Philip Yancey

Jan 10th, 2011
by Michael Krahn.
7 comments

Yes, what you’ve heard is true: Philip Yancey will, later this year, be speaking to a group called the GCN (Gay Christan Network).

Yancey notes (here) that various people have been hammering him for agreeing to speak to such a group. And so it’s important that we understand the nature of this engagement.

To that end GCN’s Executive Director, Justin Lee wrote an open letter about Yancey, the entirety of which you should read here.

Here are some highlights:

When I was a teenager, I discovered to my horror that I was attracted to guys instead of girls. I was a deeply committed Christian growing up Southern Baptist, and I was firmly opposed to homosexuality in any form. Nevertheless, when I turned to my pastor, church, and Christian friends for prayer and support, they all turned their backs on me, condemning me for my temptations even though I hadn’t acted on them.

GCN began when I met other Christians who were in the same boat. All of us were struggling to figure out how to live holy lives with our same-sex attractions, and all of us had felt the church’s rejection. Some of us ultimately decided to commit ourselves to lifelong celibacy, while others of us decided to pursue monogamous relationships. In spite of our theological disagreements with one another, we all wanted to serve Christ, and we all longed for a Christian community that would hear our stories.

***

I invited Philip Yancey because I respect him as a Christian. I’ve always been impressed at how well he balances our need to live moral, holy lives as Christians with our need to have grace toward those who do things we disapprove of. I did not invite him because of any views he might or might not hold on gays; I invited him because this is a group of people who desperately need to hear not only that God loves them, but that other Christians do, too.

***

Last year, we had a keynote delivered by Baptist minister and author Tony Campolo. Dr. Campolo believes that gay relationships are sinful, and he said so during his keynote address. He also received a standing ovation at the end—from an audience including some people in the very relationships he had just condemned. Why? Did they think he was supporting their decisions? Not at all. They applauded him because he was one of the very few Christians who would dare to reach out to them in love and say, “Even though I don’t agree with you, I love you. I hear your stories of pain, and I want to count you as my friends.” That message was powerful. It changed lives.

Read the rest here.

Baggage is Part of Community

Jan 7th, 2011
by Michael Krahn.
2 comments

A Caveat
In the comments section of yesterday’s post (Pastoring and The Honeymoon Period), PJ pointed out that marriage is not the perfect metaphor for describing the relationship between pastor and congregation. I agree to the extent that Jesus is the bridegroom and the church is his bride – not the pastor’s. But the analogy of a honeymoon period works insofar as the relationship is, like marriage, a covenant between two parties.

So I’ll continue with the marriage metaphor with the caveat that I’m not talking about taking the place of Jesus in the lives of the people in a church.

I ended yesterday saying that in a pastor-congregation relationship, whether a decision is made to continue or to part ways, there is probably some accumulated baggage.

Baggage
Baggage is looking at someone (or a group of people) and knowing things about them that wish you didn’t. Baggage is also them looking back at you and knowing things about you that they wish weren’t true. Once this is the case, you’re done dating.

Despite all of the above, an absence of baggage should not be the ultimate determining factor in the decision to continue or part ways. It’s not like a probation period for either the pastor or the congregation. It’s not a “Behave well during this time and we’ll reward you with our presence” arrangement.

No, baggage is part of community; until you have some, you don’t have community; once you have some, you have the potential for community and the beginnings of a healthy relationship.

Baggage should not determine the future of a relationship. But the way baggage is handled will. Sin – which is what leads to baggage – in any relationship needs to be confronted, confessed, repented of, and then forgiven.

Forgiveness, as all of you who are married will know, is the foundation of marriage.

Tomorrow: Seasons of Attack the Lure of Adultery

Team Pyro Takes a Swing at Derek Webb

Dec 30th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
5 comments

So Derek Webb did this interview with Huffington Post this week. You can read it here.

Frank Turk responds with an “Open Letter to Derek Webb” here.

Read them both – or don’t. Your call. I did and I kinda wish I hadn’t.

I just find critical “open letters” so pretentious to begin with. A sort of “Hey choir, listen up – I’m about to preach!”

Here I go: [In Frank Turk's words] Derek Webb is someone who does “not want to be held morally and philosophically culpable for the trash [he] flatulently expel[s] into the common conversation.” AMEN BROTHER – PREACH IT!

Not to put too fine a point on it… and I’m not putting Derek Webb on a level with the great Reformers, but the things Turk says were said to them as well:

“Are you really more-qualified to make moral, political and social pronouncements than anyone else — than pastors and qualified teacher of the Bible?”

“Is it really at all reasonable let alone generous or spiritually-mature to denigrate pastors?”

I don’t see anything in Webb’s actual words in the interview that indicates he believes his “moral pronouncement trumps, for example, John Piper.” (Turk’s words again)

(And while we’re naming people’s fixations and idolatries, John Piper is a good one to start with – and I say that as an admirer of Piper BTW. I love him – he’s just not my pope, and I don’t think he wants to be anyone else’s either.)

If Webb wanted to be a big star, as Turk accuses him of aspiring to be, he wouldn’t put himself on a career path where he’s lambasted from both sides. He was already established in the CCM market and could be making a much nicer living there.

Turk makes inferences about what Webb is saying and nails him to the wall for it, all in the form of an “open letter”.

It’s bad form and it’s a blatant shout out to his own army of sycophants.

Webb’s response (via Twitter): “An ‘open letter’ from a blogger i don’t know is no more a moral imperative than it is any form of accountability. i have nothing to clarify.”

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