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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?

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?

Earlier this evening, I had the opportunity of going up on our church building’s roof with one of our maintenance folks to check on a few issues.  The picture you see above is looking out across our flat roof down Eastland Ave. in Warren. 

It is now almost cliché to talk about going outside the walls of one’s congregation into the community.  But what about going above them?  From the vantage point of the flat roof, the walls are relatively invisible.  Going above gives us the unobstructed view of the community in which we live: still distant, but much more clearly displayed.

“Church folks” are often challenged to find ways of relating to people outside the walls of the church.  From this vanatage point, it isn’t so daunting.  For one, without in any way neglecting the identity of who we are as a Body of Believers, we break down the us-them divide entirely.  With our identity securely in Christ, we can relate to others without fear of the loss of our Christian perspective, lifestyle and hope.  This is the essential piece of our outward view. 

For another, we see people from a different angle.  From the rooftop, we see backyards and roofs - a very different perspective from the street level.  Perhaps added perspectives will help us relate to people better.

Finally, we have risen above the business of being the church together and can look out at others without having to draw them into our politics.  That, perhaps, is the greatest asset to rising above the walls of our church.  Outsiders don’t care about our internal struggles any more than a dinner guest cares whether the oven is gas or electric, as long as the food is cooked evenly and throughly.  Rising above our structures allows us to stand upon them to gain a vantage point, instead of being locked in them. 

These are lessons I have thought about as I stood on the roof.  Any other analogies we can draw?

Today, I really think I connected with a large portion of the congregation.  At the end, someone stood up and told me it was the best sermon he’d ever heard me preach.  The congregation applauded.  I didn’t quite know what to do. 

All I can say is that God is at work to transform our congregation into a missional community of disciples who reach out to those who normally get left out of what God’s up to.  And that was the content of the sermon, basically.  Since that’s connecting now with the whole group, that means we’re on the right track.

Praise God!

 See the yellow-ish tinge on the tree in the picture?  It’s about to burst into bloom.  All the other trees on the street are still vertical brushpiles, but this one - it’s ready to go.  That’s about where our congregation is right now.  We are slowly, surely becoming a missional congregation.  We can see that once this thing blooms, it’s really going to bloom.  Now, we just have to wait for it to mature enough to bloom. 

Our Worship is becoming more reverently relaxed and celebratory.  Our Men’s and Women’s Formation Groups are growing.  Our prayers are still leading us into greater realization of God’s vision.  We’re learning how to care for one another.  We’re probably one revision away from having a workable new set of bylaws that can be shown to the congregation at large for feedback and ratification sometime in the near future.  Last Sunday, a man who just got sober at the Warren Family Mission gave his (powerful, moving) testimony.  He has been accepted and welcomed into the life of the Church.  It’s looking more and more likely that our stuff for Teens and Children will be re-started by the early summer. 

We’ve had some serious pruning, to be sure.  But that will make the new growth all the more plentiful, as the roots go down deep to nourish it. 

Praise Be to God!