put a number on that…

One of the more difficult aspects of knowing the health of the church has often been number oriented…How many come to the worship service? How many are in small groups? How many new members? All very common questions in the church world. And to some degree, a decent indicator of what is happening in the life of the church. Of course this isn’t taking a number of details into the equation…Where did these people come from? Other churches? Are we just offering them something a bit more their “style.” So in the long run did the Kingdom really prosper? What about this. Why are the people coming? Is it because the church has a phenomenal speaker and they love to hear him speak? Is the worship band incredible, and one of the best in the area? Is it because the church is offering Starbucks coffee when the other churches stick with Foldgers?
What about approaching it like this. How many lives are being changed? As in, what stories of true life change do you have at the end of the year, instead of the percentage of growth in a particular body. And even more, how many lives are changing because of Jesus instead of what “your” church has to offer them. Life change looks like any of these according to the Scripture: from greedy to generous, from worried to carefree, from lost to found, from righteous to humble, from selfish to selfless, from hateful to loving, from confused to aware, from broken to whole, from unaware to informed, from doubtful to faithful, from first to last, from apathetic to striving, from safe to reckless, from judgmental to introspective, from hopeless to hopeful, from self-indulgent to self-controlled, from alone to family, from stagnate to growing, from quick to speak to quick to listen, from aggressive to meek, from accusing to understanding, from self-seeking to discipling. Just a few that stand out to me. This is, however difficult to put into a year-end-review report if you have such a thing. The good thing is, we’re ultimately responsible to God for the direction of the church and I would guess he wouldn’t mind hearing the stories again, about how life is different when you know Jesus.
So much of the focus of this church is on being rather than doing. Being a group of people that seek whole-heartedly to follow after the Jesus of the Scriptures. The doing just happens as a byproduct of loving Jesus. So if and when you ask me how the church is doing, be prepared to hear stories of life change, not statistics.

Strategy?

In any new start up venture, most likely you’re going to have a strategy. Whether it is detailed down even the smallest bit of information, or a general outline of how you would like things to go…there is a strategy. I guess you would consider church planting a “start up venture” and therefore it should have a strategy behind it. Timelines, tactics, processes, marketing, goals. You’d be crazy to just say, “We’ll see what happens.” The more I find out about how Christ discipled, did ministry, and commanded his disciples to do ministry, the more I’m finding out that this is exact attitude we should embrace. Not in the sense that we are using it as an excuse in our back pocket when things are going different than we thought. And it’s not an excuse to be lazy either, and just sit around and watch tv all day. I’m finding that these are the three prayers/thoughts that have consumed my mind.

1. Give me strength to keep this church wrapped around You, not me, and not strategies.
2. God, send the people and prepare their hearts
3. Allow me to recognize the people you are sending.

So, maybe in the purest sense of the word, that is a strategy, but it’s not wrapped around timelines and looking at people as numbers or items that are pushing us closer to being a “successful” church. What we’ve found everyone has in common, is that they need to be cared about. They may be surrounded by people in their life, but chances are, no one is really caring for them in the way they need most. It’s a simple idea to process in the mind, but very difficult to embrace in tangible ways.

In looking back at everyone who is involved in our church right now, not one of them has come because of a tactic, unless you consider sitting at Starbucks a tactic. I just like the coffee and company. So really, maybe the point is just being available and willing. I’m looking at Jonah lately and realizing, that it wasn’t the exact words Jonah said that caused people to change, but the fact that, eventually, he was available and willing, obviously not prepared for what was going to happen. I love it. The excitement of not knowing what is next. I’m much happier trying to figure out where to put the people that God has provided, then figuring out how we are going to reach people. So, I’m not really sure what this church looks like yet, I’ve got my ideas, but ultimately I’ve taken the attitude of “We’ll see what happens.”

Good luck with comfort

Sorry, it’s been a while. Here is what the past few weeks have boiled down to: I’m uncomfortable and I love it. For the past couple of months i’ve been meeting with different people who “want to get involved” in what we are doing downtown. After telling them what we do, all of the sudden, they’re not so interested. “Getting involved” for us means being a part of a community group that studies Scripture and then shares Christ with others. We’re a family. Love God, Love people. Pretty simple right? It’s not just a Bible study though. It means action. It means bringing the church TO downtown. This doesn’t mean we’re out on the street corner yelling out Scripture, it means we’re sharing a meal with a homeless person. Let me make this clear, not handing out food, but inviting them to dinner with us and hearing their story and sharing ours over a meal. It means we’re going and buying a car full of pumpkins and paint and going to the housing projects down here and painting pumpkins with kids. You can plan for months for a big event that might draw a few people, or with no preparation at all we can paint pumpkins and use sidewalk chalk for hopscotch and have 50 people show up in 5 minutes. (which happened). “Who are you with?” they asked. “We’re with Jesus.”

The problem is, this is uncomfortable for many people. Some people think that we’re crazy for going to the projects and hanging out with the homeless with our 15 month old son Gideon by our side. Hopefully he won’t be a comfortable Christian because of the life we are exposing him to. There is a tendency to become safe in our Christianity. Sitting around discussing the Bible and then doing nothing about it. Or listening to a message and then not doing anything about it. James 2:14 – 24 has some pretty bold things to say about that issue.

So when it comes to “getting involved” I’m becoming incredibly bold with people in letting them know that their hands will get dirty. The tendency can become to just try and “get people in the door” and then let them know what we’re really about. Lucky for us we don’t have a door. All we have is our faith with actions. “That’s very Jesus of you.” is what a guy told me yesterday that had heard about what’s happening. “I’d like to think so” I told him. It’s amazing to know that there’s a little bit of a buzz going around downtown about the church. Weird, we don’t use marketing and people still know!

The funny thing is, there are more people who aren’t Christians that want to be involved with our church than there are Christians. Hmmmmmm. Show people the love and truth of Jesus and they want to get involved. It sounds like we’re onto something. (sarcasm) I wonder what it is? (more sarcasm)

So where do we go from here? Who knows, but I do know one thing. We can’t fail.

Matthew 25:14-30 talks about a master who intrusted three of his servants with three different amounts of money. Two of them doubled their money, and one buried his and gained nothing. (which would have been the correct thing to do in Jewish culture.) Here is what I noticed. There wasn’t an example of a servant that had lost the money and had nothing to show for it when the master returned.

If God has entrusted us with the church, and has declared that the greatest commandment is to love God and then to love people, then I’d like to suggest that in redistributing God’s love to others we can’t fail. We can’t go to the master when he comes back and say, “we invested, and have nothing to show for it.” We can’t fail with love. The only thing that this parable suggests we can do wrong is bury it, become comfortable with it and not share it. If your faith is buried for safety, waiting for the Master to return, you might want to grab a shovel!

40 day and 40 nights

Not going to write in paragraph form… Lessons learned after 40 days and 40 nights. Some of these might seem small, simple, dumb or a bit off the wall, but lessons learned non the less
In no particular order.

*God was at work in this area long before I even thought about planting a church. My job is to try and figure out what God is up to here and how I can align with that vision.
*God has prepared certain people to completely “own” the cause of this church.
*If you ask God to bring people to you, you better be ready.
*It can be difficult to love people without an agenda.
*People can see right through a person who is not genuine.
*People are hurting and have been hurt by the church.
*I can’t imagine having any other office space than Starbucks.
*”Be all things to all people”, might be the best advice I’ve heard in a while.
*Planting a church, or evangelism, for that matter, can not and should not be reduced to an equation.
*There is a faith that I have been missing out on until doing this.
*The point of Christianity isn’t reading the Bible, praying, being held accountable, or witnessing. The point, according to Matthew 22:37 is to Love God and Love people. The trick is that if you are seeking to love God and love people
*Demons are hard at work on people, and I believe I’ve seen it first hand.
*Planting a church is not cool. It’s messy, confusing, stressful, depressing and intimidating, but there is nothing else I would rather do.
*Planting a church is also: encouraging, beautiful and fulfilling.
*It’s not up to me to change people, only to provide them with an opportunity to be introduced to a God who will convict us of change.
*Being comfortable can lead to apathy. Don’t be satisfied with the way things are just because that’s the way they have always been.

That’s probably not everything, but these are the ones that stand out to me tonight. God bless

Service, marketing and fruit

So here is the question I’m wrestling with this week. Do service and marketing go together? If they do, then how does that work. The bigger question is, When a church is involved in serving the community, should the church doing the service get anything out of the deal. Let me rephrase it again, since I’m even confusing myself. Is it really service, if you’re exchanging one “service” for another?

Now I’ll try to explain why this confusing question is consuming my thoughts this week. There are a few facts that need to be stated as it pertains to this new church:
1. We are interested in serving the community and genuinely being a part of making it a better place. We want to help out what missions organizations are already here.
2. We want this church to grow. Not just so that we can have a large church, but because we care about growing the kingdom and saving lost souls.
Now here is the tricky part, or the part that I’m becoming pretty convicted about.

If given the opportunity to serve the community (i.e. hand out water bottles on a hot day, hand out batteries for smoke alarms) the temptation is to paste a logo on the water bottle, or have a note with the battery that says something cheesy like “protect your home from fire with ______ Christian Church.” I know, sounds like a great idea right? Serve… and as an added “benefit” someone will come to your church because of clever “marketing.”

So again I ask the question, “Is it really serving, if you’re wanting to get something out of it.” Serving means you have the community’s best interest in mind, not you’re own.

After being here a month, I’ve fallen in love with this city, which means that I care about making it a better place. The funny part is that doing that doesn’t automatically equate to more people at the church. And that’s ok. It’s ok that some things we do as a church might go unnoticed on a large scale.

One last question, “Have we destroyed the concept of serving, by combining it with marketing?”

Ok. one more, “Are we kidding ourselves to think that people are blind to our intentions?”

Serve because you care, even if you never will see the fruit.

Where to start?

So I just go my first free coffee from Starbucks. Either the employees are confused and think I work here since I am here so often, or this relationship-building thing is starting to pay off…And I don’t mean in the form of saving $1.69. Right now I’m thinking back to the days not so long ago where my week consisted of organizing, planning, picking songs to sing and practice, and other office driven tasks that drove me a little bit crazy. I dreamed of the day when my job could be to just go meet people and spend my entire day with people…. people that may or may not agree with what I believe. So now I’m doing that. I’m at our community pool, I’m at the Starbucks, and I’m going to the bookstore and local restaurants. Anything to meet people. And I find myself trying to put myself back in the situation that drove me crazy. It’s more difficult than I previously thought to just love people. I’m trying to make it into something that at the end of the day can be seen. It’s the same reason I like mowing the grass. I like to see the fruits of my labor. But it’s different with people. First off, to think of people as “fruits of labor” is absolutely appalling. Seeing them as items, or “being in the box towards them,” as the Arbinger Institute would put it isn’t what Jesus had in mind. Secondly, on a more practical level, how can you know when your “labor” has been completed? So at the end of each day, I’m not sure what I’ve “accomplished.” I can only be sure that I will wake up the next day, meet the people God has in store for me to meet, say the things that they need to hear, and hopefully get another free cup of coffee.

A new city

After a long weekend of moving in, I had my official first day as
senior minister of Response Christian Church. What a weird day. No
office, no building, no members…no clue what I’m doing. It’s easy to
get caught up in the thoughts of what “I” need to do in order to make
this church materialize. I was reminded today that this isn’t about
what I do here, but what the fact that God has already primed the
people of downtown Indy for a transformation. It’s not about how many
people I will “win” to Christ, but how many lives are already being
prepared for the gospel that will be presented to them. What a relief
it is to know that the pressure really isn’t on me to use clever
schemes, target an “ideal” person, or employ any other idea that man
can come up with in order to achieve “success.”

The truth is already evident to me through the people I have met, that
some people are stoked on the idea of being a part of this, and others
could care less. Either way, it’s there choice. All I can be
expected to do is give them the chance to respond. As I’m walking
around town or riding my bike, I can’t help but to look at every
person I see as someone who might want to be apart of a life-changing
commitment to Christ. Not as a number, a target, or another notch on
the church roster, but as individuals that might not know what God’s
true church really is.

So it’s been a good first day. As I said before, weird, but good. My
main hope is that I can have the courage and faith to press forward
and listen closely to what God might be speaking in the midst of this
new adventure.