Sermon for the second Sunday in Christmastide on Jeremiah 31:7 – 14 – January 2, 2011
I read an article today on Leadership magazine’s Out of Ur blog by Skye Jethani that I thought could spark some good discussion. The original article is here. The article follows below the line.
Enjoy!
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The financial talking heads are attributing the current economic crisis to a number of things: lack of regulatory oversight, bad mortgage lending practices, and globalized market structures. But some of the more plainspoken pundits sum up the mess in a single word: Debt.
Simply put, for too long people have been spending more than they have. We have been purchasing homes we cannot afford, saving less than we should, and racking up debt at an unprecedented rate. The average American currently has a negative savings rate and over $8000 in credit card debt. As Dave Ramsey says, we are not “acting our wage.” On a national level, we have been importing more than we export and borrowing money from foreign governments to make up the difference.The picture is not pretty. We’ve made the foundation of our economy consumer spending rather than manufacturing, saving, or production. All that debt simply cannot hold the weight of the economy over time, and now we’re starting to see the system crumble.
How does this apply to ministry? Read the rest of this entry »
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.
Food for thought from TheHeresy.com. (via tallgrassworship, via dyingchuch)
If the church were a business we would measure our profit and if we weren’t making enough we would change. If we were a hospital we would measure how many of the sick and injured become healthier. If we were a vocational training institute we would measure how many people get jobs and keep them in their area of training.
Now imagine a school that measured how much people enjoyed the classes, how great the day care was, how inspiring the teacher was, the levels of enrolment and the amount of funding they had but only passively cared about the success of their graduates in the workplace. That my friends describes most of the church in North America today.
We need to change what we measure and how we measure our success.
· Do people have a proper understanding of the gospel?
· Do they love the people that can offer them nothing in return?
· Are people willing to sacrifice for others?
· Are people becoming more like Christ in their values and behaviour?
· Do they have life and freedom?
If we considered these things, we would realize the state we are in and we would change. As long as we measure things based on our own personal satisfaction or by the markers of organizational success we will miss the point.
Full post here.
In our days of congregational conflict, we experienced the conflict in terms of the “customer satisfaction” paradigm. The irony is that the dissatisfaction came from the fact that we had begun to measure the “success of graduates” sorts of things and found ourselves not only lacking, but almost utter failures. From this distorted sense of purpose flowed our lack of success in the proclamation of the Gospel.
Now, with the conflict largely resolved, we find ourselves having success in bringing the life of the Good News to bear in our lives and in the community around us. Having focused on “success of graduates” has allowed us to find that “customer satisfaction” comes along for the ride – but only to a point. Disciples, eventually, have to come to value discipline – which, of course, from time to time, involves correction. As long as correction is considered part of a satisfying experience, it’s all good. If not, well… then we’re back to where we were.
Whatever comes, though, it is essential that we measure the right things. And I have hope that as a culture of discipleship develops in our congregation, even discipline and correction will be welcome.
Tonight, our men’s group decided not to meet in one of our classrooms at the church, which has been our normal practice. Instead, this evening, we went to the Dunkin Donuts shop around the corner, where one of our young men was working, and had our group there. We read our Bibles and prayed, and didn’t disturb the other customers or employees. But we began to see how the Good News of Jesus could carry beyond the walls of our church into our community.
Just one more small step in the right direction, eh?
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.
Yesterday, I attended a meeting with some of our congregational leaders in a town about an hour’s drive away. We gathered with leaders from 3 other churches to discuss how we were progressing in congregational transformation. I was able to give a report as to how our congregation was making great strides in becoming more missional in our community.
Looking back over the three-year process we’ve been going through, we have really come a long way. God has transformed many lives – and of course, for the better. Now we hope to solidify that momentum as we continue to structure ourselves for discipleship and mission.
Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the day-to-day life of ministry that we lose sight of this. I’m grateful for these kinds of opportunities for telling the “Good News” of God’s work in our congregation. It helps me to remember the good stuff.
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!