It Takes A Church...

First Sunday of Advent: Two of My Favorites

There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make as a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions.
--Bill McKibben, Author, Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case For a More Joyful Christmas.

    The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton.  In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen…The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.

    Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark, pp. 2,3

The Best Investment Possible

Back before we even had kids, we had a friend who told us that she and her husband made a commitment to homeschool their children for one year when each child reached the 6th grade.  She told us about the advantages of having your pre-teen so bonded and connected to you as parents before they entered the teenage years, and of the creativity and fun you can have because the curriculum never really fills a whole day of work.  She warned us that it would be quite an investment of time and resources, but assured us that it would be worth it.

Beth and I decided then and there that when we had a family, we would do the same.  Later as our kids got closer to the sixth grade we also decided that during the year, each of our two kids would go on a mission trip with one of us, as well as take another educational trip with the other parent. It has been an investment indeed.

Beth put her career as marriage and family therapist on hold to be able to teach them.  We rearranged our lives and saved our pennies for the trips we would take (especially this year with the economy such as it is.) 

But the connection and time and experiences we have had with our kids are already demonstrating the immeasurable value of this commitment. 

When our son Brooks was in the 6th grade (he is now a sophomore), he saw the American historical sites of the east coast with his mother and then went to Malawi with me on the "set-up" trip for the whole Y-Malawi ministry.  Those who have followed this blog for awhile might remember the series of posts that I wrote about the experience and how it changed both my and my son's life.  When he returned to public school the following year, he arranged the first student-led Bible study at the Junior High and has been a leader in our youth group.  Tuesday he joined a bunch of our church members and kids to feed Thanksgiving dinner to a Marine Regiment.  If you see his Facebook page, you'll know that he loves Jesus, he is a "friend" of the Senior VP of World Vision, and has a passion for seeing the world "put to rights" as only God can do. 

Now our daughter, Ali is in the 6th grade and recently returned from a trip to South Africa to visit Acres of Love (a ministry that provides homes for children orphaned by AIDS), with a stop in Paris on the way to see some art and history. And once again, we have witnessed an amazing burst of growth in compassion, perspective and sensitivity in our child.  She was guided and mentored by a young woman who grew up in our church and now works with Acres of Love in Johannesburg.  Ali spent so much time with children whose lives have been tragically altered only to experience the grace of being truly "saved" by Christian people who love them dearly.  She and her mom spent a day touring Soweto and learning of the massacre in a church and the uprisings that took place because of Apartheid.  She saw the boyhood homes of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu and she hugged a lot of children.

Ali returned from South Africa, made a PowerPoint presentation and was offered the opportunity to speak at our church for two different groups.  When a World Vision gift catalog appeared at our house telling of how $200 could buy a goat and ten chickens for a family in Africa, Ali decided that she had the time to do so as a homeschooler, so she committed to doing a yard sale at our house and running/walking the Turkey Trot 10K. 

She sent out word to our family and friends, I put some information up on Facebook and she held the yard sale.  And then yesterday, in the pouring rain trudged the 6.2 miles to make a small difference in the world.  Beth told me that she and Ali spent the whole walk/run talking about how many eggs could be produced for families because they were out in the rain.

Yesterday Ali added up the total she had raised just from some give away items and generous friends and today she'll "go shopping" on the Y-Malawi and World Vision website so that animals that will sustain people will be sent to Africa, including the Nkhoma Area Development Project that her big brother had helped establish four years earlier. 

As I said, she hoped to be able to raise $200 to buy a goat and ten chickens, as of last night, she had raised $1000.

Now the list looks like this:

2 goats
10 chickens
20 fruit trees
1 cow
1 sheep

It sounds like one of those commercials doesn't it?
Traveling to Africa, rearranging your family life, the time to teach your kids at home, putting career aspirations on hold:  Pretty darn expensive.

Seeing your kids become leaders in making a difference in the world: So priceless that you can't type the words without tears in your eyes. 

(Here is something you and your family can watch and here is something you can do this Advent, if you'd like to take a small step now.  And if you'd like to follow further adventures of my daughter's year and what she is learning and seeing, click here.)

Starfish and the Spider #6: Chinese Starfish, Missional Living

I want to lift a comment on an earlier post from The Missional Network blog, with gratitude for this nice summary of  The Starfish and the Spider and the link to this video on the Underground House Church Movement in China.  This video demonstrates what I have said whenever I have been asked to speak on The Starfish and the Spider in church circles:  If Brafman and Beckstrom had known about it, they would have absolutely used the early church as a prime historical example. 

While more and more forms like this are becoming evident in the global church, I think the most pregnant line of thinking is how these Starfish examples and transform and energizing established but declining churches in the west.

 

  I also want to add some links to my friend, Craig Williams' ongoing (but sporadic) reflections on both The Starfish and the Spider and Kevin Ford's The Transforming Church.  Craig, a church planter who now serves as a nationally known coach and consultant to church planters and church plants, writes on missional issues with both of these books in mind. 

If "Starfish" is my current favorite organizational model, Ford's Transforming Church is the "leadership manual" for those who want to see the church be transformed from a "consumeristic" to "missional" mindset. Since I have other things to explore, I'll let Craig carry the ball on The Transforming Church, but highly, highly recommend it as must reading for those who still believe that the church--even as it is today--is worth trying to transform.

The Advent Conspiracy

Every year I try to nudge folks to reconsider the Christmas chaos, by rediscovering Advent.
These folks have presented far better than I:

Starfish and the Spider #5: The Stuff that Makes us Spiders

A few weeks ago, I spent some time with a pastor who had recently been “fired” from his church.  Ostensibly, the precipitating cause of his removal was to raise a theological question about a matter that most Christians in the world are pretty unclear about.  But as he described this heartbreaking situation, it became clear that another issue, unspoken, but looming so large was actually way more important than any theological nuance: Buildings.  Property.  A Large beautiful church campus and all that that entails…high profile ministry, large indebtedness, lots of anxiety.

The pastor explained to me that 15 years earlier he had been called to take over a struggling suburban congregation.  He came in as a young preacher with a bit of edge to him, and his personality became the personality of the congregation.  It was fresh, compelling, even controversial.  And the church grew.  And grew.  And grew.  He is a really good preacher.  A compelling personality and yes, has an “edge” about him. 

But a growing church led to a new campus and new buildings and a big building project.  The church attracted new people who were drawn more to the success and size and programs that a large church could produce than to the edgy preaching and prophetic ministry of the preacher that had grown the church in the first place.

And these new people soon made their way into leadership, committed with all good intention to help this gifted preacher ‘manage’ the church so that it could sustain the growth, pay the bills and continue it’s upward spiral of success. Until the pastor, in his characteristically abrasive way, started rubbing the ‘wrong’ people the wrong way. 

Eventually, the pastor was deemed too controversial for such an ‘established’, growing, church (indeed, a ‘star’ in the denomination).  And he was out.  Now the pastor runs an inner city home church network that is dedicated above all things, as he told me, to “NEVER have a building.” 

In the Starfish and the Spider, Beckstrom and Brafman tell the compelling story about how the Apaches avoided being conquered by first the Spaniards, then the Mexicans and then the Americans.  Centuries after the mighty Aztecs had been overthrown with all their wealth and culture and power, the rag-tag Apaches were still confounding the United States government with their decentralized “starfish” ways. 

Until finally, the Americans figured out how to conquer the Apaches: Give them cows.  Cows were valuable commodities that could produced guaranteed nourishment for decades.  But cows also required that the nomadic, “starfish” Apaches, had to settle down in one place and put someone in charge of the cows.  And then, they could be contained, controlled, even conquered. 

Now, some may immediately jump to the conclusion that property and possessions are inherently wrong. (Indeed, that is the conclusion my pastor friend has understandably come to.)  But, I am not.  In fact, as a pastor, I have spent the better part of the past ten years leading our church through just the kind of extensive building program that my pastor friend had undertaken.  (Thankfully, I still have my job.) 

I contend that thoughtful, careful stewardship of resources is one of the responsibilities and opportunities for insuring a lasting legacy of an organization.  When Brafman and Beckstrom write of the “hybrid-combo” that seeks to decentralize most of an organization, it seems to me that what should remain centralized is the responsibility for that thoughtful stewardship.  If you have anything that is worthy of protecting and passing down, then some centralized form of leadership is necessary and that may be the ONLY role for a "head" of a "starfish".  (What Richard Chait and colleagues deems “fiduciary responsibility”.) 

But one of the most important realities for any organization to face "head" on is that organizations change when they get stuff.  And to put it even more bluntly:

Stuff changes organizations.  It is ‘stuff’ that turns a starfish into a spider.  It is usually ‘stuff’ that will keep a spider from becoming more starfish-like, even if that transformation is exactly what needs to occur to accomplish our mission.

Mostly, it is unconscious.  (I would dare say that if anybody from my pastor friend’s church reads this, they’ll protest loudly that it was NOT about the buildings but about his theology!) But more often than not the unspoken driving force behind an organization being overly centralized, overly fiduciary and overly regulatory, and dramatically under-performing in its actual mission, is the drive to protect the stuff.

If we are going to have effective missional organizations than we must have candid conversations around this conviction:

When we stop protecting our mission and start protecting our stuff we lose our mission.

Green Saturdays: Care for the Earth is Care for the Poor

“Damage to the environment makes the life of the poor…particularly unbearable.” 
Pope Benedict, August 27, 2008

Today, on this particular Saturday when my eleven year old daughter is having a yard sale to raise money to buy chickens and goats for families in Africa (through World Vision and Y-Malawi), I want to use my "Green Saturday" reflection to make a connection that we often miss.   Nobody is more reliant on a good, healthy earth than those who live closest to it.

No wonder the scriptures speak of the ultimate salvation of God in such all encompassing terms:

When the poor and needy seek water,
and there is none,
and their tongue is parched with thirst,
I the Lord will answer them,
I the God of Israel will not forsake them.
I will open rivers on the bare heights,b
and fountains in the midst of the valleys;
I will make the wilderness a pool of water,
and the dry land springs of water.
I will put in the wilderness the cedar,
the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive;
I will set in the desert the cypress,
the plane and the pine together,
so that all may see and know,
all may consider and understand,
that the hand of the Lord has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it.

Is 41:17-20, (NRSV)

And a quote from the good Bishop NT Wright about how creation and redemption "play" a melody together:

“We must acknowledge that beauty, whether in the natural order or within human creation, is sometimes so powerful that it evokes our very deepest feelings of awe, wonder, gratitude, and reverence…beauty is both something that calls us out of ourselves and something which appeals to feelings deep within us...We say that the present world is the real one, and that it’s in bad shape but expecting to be repaired. We tell, in other words…the story of a good Creator longing to put the world back into good order for which it was designed…[a story of a God] who completes what he has begun, a God who comes to the rescue of those who seem lost and enslaved in the world the way it now is... “…the present world really is a signpost to a larger beauty, a deeper truth. It really is the authentic manuscript of one part of a masterpiece. The question is, What is the whole masterpiece like, and how can we begin to hear the music in the way it was intended?”

Green Saturdays: The Soul's First Step and First Teacher

The initial step for a soul to come to knowledge of God is contemplation of nature.
Irenaeus (120-202)

Nature is a schoolmistress, the soul the pupil; and whatever one has taught or the other has learned has come from God--the Teacher of the teacher.
Tertullian (160-ca.230)

Intergenerational Youth Ministry: More good stuff from FYI

This is a good article by David Fraze at the Fuller Youth Institute site that reveals some of the principles behind intergenerational youth ministry.  Click here: share

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Starfish and the Spider #4: The Head of the Starfish

In his seminal presentation at the Presbyterian Global Fellowship gathering of 2007, missional theologian Michael Frost gives a beautiful description of a first century “ekklesia” (the word from which we get the word “ecclesial” or “church”).

Frost says that whenever a village got big enough that it needed to keep its children and animals safe, it would put a wall around the village and install a big gate whereby strangers could enter. 

Whenever a men got to be past the child-bearing years and had a grown son, (excuse the (culturally sexist tone of this illustration), he would hand his son the family business that that he would have mentored him into since he was a child.  Then that “semi-retired” man with white in his whiskers (who was probably about 40 years old or so), would do what “semi-retired” men would do.  He would regularly gather at the city gates with all others who had ‘white in their whiskers’, all other fathers, grandfathers and uncles and they would together make themselves available to help the villagers discern wisdom whenever there was a conflict, an issue, or a something that could help the village.  These men, these elders, would serve the whole village by being the people who would together determine and insure whatever was in the best interest for the good of the whole village. 

Whenever a young man would have a problem within his family or within his community, whenever he was unsure of what to do with fortune or misfortune, whenever he was in conflict with another man or another family, or whenever he wanted to try something new, he would seek out the “elders at the gate”.  They would counsel him and then set him free to carry out what was in the best interest of the community.

According to Frost, the word that describes the gathering of the elders at the gate is the ekklesia. The ekklesia is the group of people who “add value to the village of which they are a part.”  The ekklesia is the community of wisdom and discernment within the community that would add the value to the larger community.  The ekklesia didn’t control the community, but served it by insuring that the “good of the whole community” was represented in every decision of every part of the community.

This illustration highlights what I would call is the purpose of the “head” of a “starfish”.  Of course, starfishes don’t have heads, do they? That’s what makes them starfishes and not spiders as authors, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom remind us. 

But for Brafman and Beckstrom the model of organizational life (which I am arguing is the best model for “ekklesial” life) is the “hybrid combo” where there is “centralization” or a “head” that is very small, very specific and entirely functioning around protecting what has been entrusted and needs to be past down.

Just like the way that a village didn’t need walls until it needed to keep its children and animals safe, an organization like a church only needs to be centralized in the things that need to be entrusted and past down (what Richard Chait in his book, Governance as Leadership, terms “fiduciary” elements.)  The “head’s” job is to protect that which “adds value” to the greater community.  (Which, as Michael Frost persuasively points out, is exactly what the church should be about—we “add value” to the greater community.)

Everything else can be “decentralized”.  Every other structure, group, system should be about expressing that “value add” within the community.  Once we are clear on what we must protect and pass down and once we have created a way of doing so that is safe and agreed upon, then we can encourage and allow growing, catalytic circles that build on existing “networks” so that the “DNA”, the “shared values”, the “mission” and “vision” of the “head”, the “elders” can be expressed throughout the village for the good of the whole village. 

This the original understanding of the ekklesia, the church, is exactly what a church structure should be today also.  The church must be organized so that the only thing that is centralized in the “head” is that which should be “protected and passed down”.  As long as every circle understands and has within it the “wisdom of the elders” (the values of the organization, the DNA of the head—pick your metaphor), then it is free to “add value” to the whole community, carry out the mission and express it in anyway it can.

In a missional church, understanding this hybrid-combo structure is crucial.  Determining what can and should be “protected and passed down” and what should not is the crucial act of discernment that takes the wisdom of elders in leadership.  In this model, there are two things that MUST be centralized:  Share Values and Resources. 

The first of which is crucial.  Shared Values or what Brafman and Beckstrom call “ideology”…the corporate identity, the values and vision, the “DNA” of the organization, is what gives the organization life.  If Shared Values are not “protected and passed down” then the organization ceases to be.  Indeed, as Brafman and Beckstrom write in their most important “Rule #8”: Values ARE the organization."

The second of which is potentially very dangerous.  Resources change everything.  Resources when handled wisely can insure the survival of the organization into the future.  But resources can also lead to a starfish ceasing to be a starfish.

And understanding this delicate balance of what MUST be protected and what CAN be potentially so dangerous to protect is the next topic of discussion.

Missional Primer: A Feast of Resources

I stumbled across a blog post by JR Woodward that is a feast of resources for all things missional.   This is very helpful (what else would one expect from a Fuller guy? :))