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As I continue in congregational leadership, I have become convinced that there is much more that God wants to do than we ever allow him to do.  God really wants to heal the sick.  God really wants to cast out demons.  God really wants to change lives and bring people abundant life.  God really wants to pour out his Spirit - in the supernatural kinds of ways that we see in the New Testament and elsewhere.  God really wants to even raise the dead. 

And yet, we don’t pray anywhere near enough for this to take place.  Moreover, oftentimes, the prayers that we pray are weakened by the expectations of failure or, perhaps worse yet, survival rations of God’s Spirit.  Sadly, we often don’t expect God to respond.  Especially not immediately. 

What if the Church - and yes, our local congregation, too - were to pray 24-7 as a habit: not just in a few places, mind you, but as a habit for congregational life?  What if we were to expect the miraculous?  What if we were to expect God’s will to actually be done in our lives?  What if we were to invite the full giftedness of the Holy Spirit to come down upon us - to give us what we need for ministry, and to form God’s character in us? 

If?  Then: then we would see God transforming our communities organically through the work of the Spirit-filled church.  Then we would see the message of Christ connected to the lives of many people who otherwise would see this as just so much more talk.  Then we would see radical revival.  Are we ready for this?

Then let us pray: not just for the extravagant, but for the mundane.  Let us pray expecting that God will speak to us.  Let us pray, knowing that he hears us.  Let us pray, knowing that he desires to grant us Abundant Life.  Let us pray - knowing that God desires the church to grow as we do his work.  And let us do so together, as much as possible. 

God, move your Spirit upon us.  Cleanse us from our sins.  Heal our bodies, souls and minds.  Grant us emotional healing.  Provide for our needs.  We want to give you glory, honor and praise.  Pour out your Spirit and let your Kingdom come. 

Amen!

This was the question at our men’s group tonight.  How do we reach ____?  fill in the blank.  It was a good discussion.  We decided to pray the prayer Jesus invites us to pray in Matthew 9 - “Lord, send workers into your harvest field!” for two weeks and see what God is saying.

Pray with us!

As our congregation has transitioned from a high-conflict situation coupled with a systems-wide change situation to a point of stability and growth, I have noticed a change in the use of my time. 

Initially, I was working hyperactively, firefighting (in a sense), working long hours, high stress, etc.  This was also a time of managing out-of-bounds conflict and strategizing the change in church systems that needed to happen to bring us to health. 

As the conflict moved to the back burner, the hours-per-week slowly came down into the “reasonable and customary” needed to really be sustainable life.  Nevertheless, I was still working on the systems stuff.

At the moment, we are working on developing new bylaws for the church which will ultimately change the way we govern ourselves and make our systems more Biblical and give us accountable flexability within visionary leadership.  As this transition occurs, we are working to come to leadership consensus as we begin to teach the concepts of such new governance to the congregation at large. 

Now, I believe we have come to a place of quiet re-grouping, a place that can be bathed in prayer - because now there is time to do that.  I think we will find a happy medium in this, such that we can now structure prayer into ministry from the beginning, rather than trying to use it to fight through things later.  I think this is a very positive transition, one which I feel will flow throughout the congregation and bring true healing and Kingdom transformation - and therefore, growth. 

Stay tuned as we continue this process, and please pray for us!

Tonight, our leadership team completed its first reading of the new proposed bylaws (constitution) for the church.  Needless to say, there were some concerns and discussion.  Nevertheless, it seems the primary concerns were twofold: first, that we were going to need to really work hard to deal with the new concepts of how we run things that have been presented by the proposal, and second, that those who really want to do the business of discipleship and not worry about the structures so much don’t get dragged in to the middle of some big discussion. 

We will look at this again soon.

Last evening, our Trustee board did something I consider quite amazing: they discussed and passed a “board covenant”.  The “board covenant” states the board’s commitments to each other and the congregation in how they do business and what business they do.  It also acknowledges the accountability structures present in the congregation and deals with a few issues of discipline.  In fact, I’d like to share it in its entirety with you.  It follows in the “read more” section below.  Feel free to comment.

Read More »

Our Church’s leadership team began to look at the draft of a new set of by-laws tonight.  While there was some initial confusion as to the purpose and scope of a set of bylaws or Constitution, I believe the discussion went well.  We made it through three of the ten pages in the time allotted.  We will look at it again in two weeks.

Our primary concern is to create structures for our congregational life that will empower us to be disciples of Jesus Christ and live out the Great Commandment (love God, love others), and the Great Commission (make disciples).  So far, we think we are achieving that end. 

Please pray for us as we continue to work through this process!

Churches breed passivity. Over years, congregations have newsletters thrust into hands, visions spoken over their lives and the Bible dictated to them. It’s a lazy form of Christianity that breeds passive consumers.

Thoughts?

I was surfing around this evening and this caught my eye:

In case that’s too small to see, it says, “Church Trailer Thief: Stealing from God… Ballsy. kineticchurch.com”

Here’s the summary story:

One weekend in early March, our portable church trailer containing about 75% of Kinetic Church’s equipment was stolen; leaving our church with virtually nothing.As a result, Kinetic Church created five billboards and multiple web banners in hopes of grabbing the attention of the thieves (and everyone else for that matter).

Their website is here: www.kineticchurch.com.  And here is their forgiveness video.

All I can say is, “wow.” 

Can we do this?  Can we be like this?

Church budgets are often the hardest parts of a church to transform in a process of congregational change.  Budget categories are notoriously resiliant and resistant to change.  Even groupings of line items often stay together in configurations that must have made historical sense at one time but are now baffling to the present.  Even more significantly, it is hard to translate the traditional budget categories (personnel, building, utilities, office supplies and other operating expenses) into categories that reflect the vision of where the congregation is going matched to the ways in which the vision is going to be carried out. 

Today, I designed a model to help our congregation begin to measure our budget along missional lines.  At this point, all of our active programs and activities have generally fallen in line behind the vision:

Our vision is to be a community of disciples of Jesus Christ, who invite, equip and empower others to be Jesus’ disciples. 

We desire to be a community of disciples through seven basic areas:

Worship, Proclamation, Formation, Service, Prayer, Care and Fellowship.

Thus, I began to divide up my time and the use of the building along those seven lines plus Administration.  The math on the building use has been quite complex, but it ended up coming out pretty well today.  These numbers were all tied in with the more obvious stuff - like BIble study guide costs, etc., and linked to form a missional presentation of the budget. 

In the end, I was able to create a pie chart based upon the seven aspects of our mission plus administration, that showed our budget distributed according to our vision.  As we grow, we will make adjustments to the various parts of the budget to try to reflect our visionary priorities.

Any feedback?

Today, our congregation had a potluck.  This is the second of such in the same number of months.  As recommended by some congregational consultants who reported to us in December, we were desperately in need of time together just having fun and enjoying one another’s company - time when we weren’t trying to get anything done.  Granted, we are trying to use this time to build relationships with one another, so it is accomplishing something. But it’s not a meeting.

In Leading Congregational Change: A Practical Guide for the Transformational Journey (San Francisco: Josey-Bass/Wiley, 2000), Rev. Dr. James Harrington places a congregation’s Spiritual and Relational Vitality at the center of his model for congregational change.  (13)  In Herrington’s model, the strength and the depth of this piece is the constraining factor for any change that operates in a congregation to move it toward any positive change.  The relational vitality aspect is based in the ability of the congregation to carry out the “love one another” aspect of Christian life. 

Fellowship events, such as potlucks and other more social settings are often downplayed in church planting and church renewal, but they are essential.  They enable people to build relationships outside of the politics of church.  Next to service projects that involve a broad spectrum of the congregation, they are often the key missing ingredient to building the relationships necessary to bring about positive transformation. 

Beyond the theology, though, today was genuinely fun.  We genuinely enjoyed one another’s company - with people mixing and mingling with no hint of cliquishness.  Suffice it to say that we are taking positive steps toward a healthy congregational life, based in the life of Christ, expressed in love.  I believe we are starting to see the kind of joy and “don’t want to miss it” of the kind seen in the ancient Christian practice of communion.  And that makes this thing all worth it!