Distraction-free

Skye Jethani has written a blog post this week on the way in which we as 'church' regard those in our midst who are disturbances of some sort or other. He's discussing a situation in a church named 'Elevation' in which a boy with cerebral palsy was 'escorted out' (according to the mother) or moved to another part of the auditorium (according to church officials). He was a 'distraction' and the church's goal is "to offer a distraction free environment for all our guests."

As you might imagine, Jethani is disturbed by this attitude. Whatever the best intentions of the church are/were, his view is that church is a place where distraction is one of those things you put up with....because all the people in attendance are part of the family. Certainly it can be difficult for a minister doing his best to preach well to have someone in the congregation making a lot of noise (not that this boy was, apparently). Unwarranted noise can be an interruption to a well-prepared skit/drama/whatever sort of presentation.

But as Jethani notes: when I come freely to worship the Living God and gather with his people whom he describes as the foolish, weak, and despised in the world (1 Cor 1:26-28)--I do not expect a distraction free environment.

Church is not a cinema, a rock shop, a theatre, a performing arts centre. You might perhaps expect a distraction-free environment in any one of those places (although what you might expect and what you get aren't necessarily the same thing). Church is family, and in a family you put up with the noisy, sloppy baby, the irritating toddler, the old person heading towards dementia.

If we lose that, we're heading away from what church is about. Aren't we?

People with mental health problems...in OUR church

It's likely there'll be people with mental disabilities, or mental health problems in your congregation. You may be dealing with them and their situation with compassion and concern. But what if you don't know how to help them, even in the most basic ways? (My own church has a particular ministry towards people with mental health issues, but there's a very small percentage of the congregation who are actually involved with the group who come to church.)

In an article that appeared in the Leadership Journal online, Through a Glass, Darkly:
Ministry to the mentally ill, Amy Simpson talks about her own experience as a teenager with a mother who was mentally unwell, and how she has learned what things pastors and congregations need to know to help not only those with the mental health problem, but also their families and friends. For instance here's what she has to say about pastors trying to assist:

"Sometimes clergy distance themselves from people with mental illness because they realize the problem can be long term. To become involved with this person may mean a lengthy commitment. Perhaps this person will never be cured. Such a problem is contrary to contemporary Western ideas of being in control of one's life and destiny. People in modern day America expect to find a rational solution to any problem. And yet, in this case, there may be no solution. It is tempting, if an answer is not apparent, to avoid the person for whom one has no answers."

Simpson also looks briefly at the theological issues, and at the problems of overspiritualisation of mental health issues. This is quite a long article, but it's full of good insights, and practical suggestions.

One of the ugly sides of the Internet

One of the least mentioned issues in ministry is porn, particularly the easy availability of Internet porn.  I'm not talking about child porn here, but porn intended for men in general. 

And it doesn't just affect men in the congregations, it affects some ministers as well, though at present we have no New Zealand statistics on the extent of this problem.

A recent interview showed up on Newsbusters.   The article has the title CNN highlights porn's destructive effects on society?  (I'm not sure why there's a question mark at the end.)

The interview is with Gail Dines, the author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality.   The figures she presents are horrific: 420 million Internet porn pages, 4.2 million porn websites, and 68 million search engine requests for porn each and every day.   (While these are American stats, most of these sites are presumably available to New Zealanders as well.)  

Furthermore, according to one study, in 56% of divorce cases, one of the partners has an obsessive interest in porn.   Porn becomes the equivalent of a man having an affair, and worse, the women in question are able to 'satisfy' needs that his wife may not be willing or able to.

Plainly, getting up on a Sunday morning and preaching on this topic would be something of a shock to the average congregation.   But for some men in the congregation, it may be necessary....

Ways for congregations to drive their pastor crazy

On previous occasions we've posted about the bullying of some pastors by their congregations. This time, with only a little tongue-in-cheek, Richard Floyd sets out a fairly comprehensive list of ways in which congregations can make sure they're doing their best to drive their pastor crazy.

Unfortunately the list will be too close to home for some in ministry. Don't read this is you're already feeling low.

Floyd calls his list Ten Highly Effective Strategies for Crushing Your Pastor's Morale.

A couple of examples:

3. Make sure to have an annual customer satisfaction survey where every member of the congregation fills out an anonymous questionnaire about their views of the pastor’s performance during the previous year. Make sure all the negative (or ambiguous) comments are read aloud at several meetings, and publish them without attribution in the church newsletter.

5. Cut the mission budget to balance the budget. Better yet, ask your pastor to choose between a raise in salary or an increase in the mission budget. This would be a good subject for an extended conversation at a congregational meeting. You can never talk too much about clergy compensation at a congregational meeting.

There are some funnier ones, and some that will set your teeth on edge. One or two would make Jesus himself weep.

Countering leadership assumptions

In a review of the book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Angie Ward notes that : the authors discovered three surprises about change that run counter to common ministry leadership assumptions.

Surprise #1: What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. Perhaps the problem is not with the people in your congregation, but with the systems that reinforce their behaviours. What are you doing to enable the very behavior you are trying to change?

Surprise #2: What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. If new behaviours are too taxing, they stand little chance of developing into habits. Are you asking too much at once?

Surprise #3: What looks like resistance is often lack of clarity. Often change doesn't happen because people aren't given crystal-clear direction. Do you really know where you're going, and do the people in your ministry know the next personal step to get there?

Not so Godly business?

In an article entitled, Good to Great to Godly, Mike Bonem looks at the way in which Jim Collins' business principles have been extensively applied in the church. However, his concern is that the church isn't a business, and running it on business lines rather than God-led lines will ultimately cause it to fail. (He isn't denigrating Collins, by the way, whom he obviously admires.)

At one point in his article he writes:

There are also congregations that make no pretence of seeking God in their decisions. The leadership core may have been selected by virtue of tenure or financial contribution rather than spiritual sensitivity, or the church's culture may simply be "all business."

If you don't read anything else in the article, reflect on this one paragraph alone. It says a huge amount about how many churches are run - and possibly exposes why eventually they fail.

Why do bullies bully?

Bullying is an issue in the church as in the business world. It may be the minister (and his family) who are being bullied, or the minister himself who's doing the bullying. In an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled Create a Bully-Free Workplace, Nathanael Fast writes:

Among targets of bullying, 40% never told their employers and, of those who did, 62% reported that they were ignored. This suggests there's a significant opportunity to increase profits and beat the competition by eliminating the prevalence of workplace bullying in your organization. But how?

The first step is to identify the root of the problem. A set of recent studies conducted with Serena Chen, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, may provide some insight. We found that power is partly to blame. However, in contrast to the old adage that "power corrupts," giving people power did not turn them into bullies. Rather, it was the simultaneous pairing of power with feelings of inadequacy that led people to lash out. In our studies, the power holders who felt personally incompetent became aggressive, not because they were power hungry or had domineering personalities but because they were trying to overcome ego threat. Put simply, bullying is a cheap way to nurse a wounded ego. [my italics]

Not angels in disguise

Continuing on with our occasional series of pieces from Rowland Croucher, today's article fits in well with the last post I wrote on pastors being bullied by their congregations.

Croucher's article is entitled: Do Yourself A Favour - Encourage Your Pastor!

We're too often keen to nitpick and complain about our pastors, forgetting that they aren't angels in disguise (and thus superhuman). Nor are they supermen/women whom only kryptonite can touch.

Croucher's article is an A-Z of things to think about in terms of your minister, from Accountability (yours as a congregation member, not his or hers as a pastor) to Zeal - zeal to pick up jobs around the church scene and not leave them to the minister to do....in his or her spare time.

And Y for Yourself is succinct and to the point: If every church member encouraged others as much as you do, what sort of church would it be?

Jargonese

“We must learn the language of our audience,” [C S] Lewis wrote. “You must translate every bit of your theology into the vernacular. I have come to the conclusion that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts are confused.”

On his blog, Mike Wendland quotes Lewis in a post called 'Let's watch our Christianese.' (Blogger's spellchecker doesn't think that's a word - or didn't until I informed it that it was.)

Mike talks about how our Christian jargon/language is often misinterpreted by those outside the church. We may be saying something with good sense - to us - they hear 'born again' as 'fundamentalist/cultist/religious extremist' or 'love offering' as possibly involving an orgy.

Personally I hate being asked to 'please be seated.' Who talks like that in real life? And there are heaps of other jargon phrases that many churches use, perhaps with the intention of sounding more liturgical. Let's move these archaic expressions on - or at the very least explain them to those who might be visiting.

We had one of our leaders 'explain' Communion the weekend before last - I suspect that more than 50% of our congregation had their eyes and ears opened as a result. Regular explanations like that are worth doing, and perhaps more useful than telling the people who've been attending for 20 or 30 years that they need to remember that Christ died for our sins, the sort of thing we actually know - because we've heard it several thousand times....

5 Barriers to Church Growth

Back in August this year we posted a piece relating to Charles Arn and his five principles of church growth. [Church growth principles remain.]

I've just come across another piece by Arn, which looks at the same issue from the opposite perspective. He calls it 5 Barriers to Church Growth. (Mr Arn actually cheats a little - there are nine points in all in his article, but we won't quibble too much.)

The five barriers are simply stated: the Pastor himself can be the first barrier, the Congregation can be the second, perceived irrelevance (on behalf of the community the church is situated in) the third, using the wrong methods the fourth, and finally having no plan for assimilation.

No new words there, you might say, but these are things that we need to keep reminding ourselves about. That church down the road that is growing: does the pastor have vision and communicate it? Does the congregation have a sense of being ministers to their local community (which will deal to the third issue)? Is that church using methods that we might consider trendy or faddy or out in the left field? Do they have a way of making sure new disciples grow?

If the answer to more than one of these is Yes, then perhaps they're doing something right. Worth checking out!

Listening to the 'right' preacher

One of the interesting points made on more than one occasion at the Calvin Conference held over the last couple of days was that Calvin was reluctant to have his sermons published because he preached them to a specific congregation at a specific time. He felt they were a very focused Word of the Lord.

Elsie McKee spent a good deal of time in one of her talks discussing the way in which Calvin, in 1541, had translated his Latin version of the Institutes from 1539 not just into the French equivalent, but into a French that was explanatory of points that would have been obvious to the Latin academic reader, that changed examples and proverbs to ones more familiar to the unacademic audience, and that removed classical references where there might be difficulties in leaving them in.

There has been some comment made recently on other sites about the way in which people can now listen to the 'best' preachers on their Ipods, perhaps to the detriment of the local minister who preaches in their own church. But what came out of the Calvin lectures was that this is not necessarily the most healthy way to hear preaching. Your own minister should be - will be? - speaking to the needs of his particular congregation, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, will be encouraging his church to grow. The preacher on the MP3 will have been talking to a totally different congregation in totally different circumstances. This isn't to say that his preaching won't be used by the Holy Spirit to speak to you, but there is the possibility that it will speaking along lines that suit you, and not along lines that you need.

Webinar & Book

After reading an article on the number of words being introduced to the English language on a daily basis - one about every hour and a half, (culminating in some million words in the language by the end of April this year) - I've just been introduced today to the word, Webinar, which is apparently a seminar conducted on the Web. You pay your sub, and you're then allowed access to the real-time audio-visual. In the case I have in mind, it will be conducted from Dunedin by Lynne Baab, a North American Presbyterian minister living here in the city. The webinar is being hosted by the Alban Institute, and the blurb states:

Words, photos, graphics, and links work together on websites to communicate the values and priorities of the congregation creating the website.

Most leaders of congregations are experts in using words for sermons and newsletters but have less experience with the ways in which photos, graphics, and links can express a congregation's values and priorities. In addition, websites require some different strategies in the way words are used.

In this webinar, we'll look at the ways words, photos, graphics and links can be used effectively on websites to meet the needs of congregation members as well as reach out to potential visitors.

The webinar starts on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 3:00 p.m. Eastern (American) time. Amusingly, if you click on the link called Registration Information, you'll find a note saying:
Unless otherwise indicated, our events start on the first day with lunch served at 12:00 noon and close on the last day with lunch served and departure immediately after lunch.
I'm guessing lunch won't be on the agenda for this webinar, although it doesn't actually say so (LOL!)

And one other thing. Lynne published a book in 2008 which relates to her webinar. (I keep repeating the word so you'll remember it!) The book is called, Reaching Out in a Networked World: expresssing your congregation's heart and soul. I've just received a copy today and am looking forward to reading it.

Networking

In his book, Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi wrote about the safety net provided by a robust network of social connections.

"Experience will not save you in hard times, nor will hard work or talent. If you need a job, money, advice, help, hope, or a means to make a sale, there's only one surefire, fail-safe place to find them - within your extended circle of friends and associates."

The same might well be said of the church. It wasn't because he thought the phrase had a good ring to it that Paul said, 'Forsake not the gathering of the saints'. He knew the value of being 'networked' within the church family, the body of Christ.

Justin Pinkerman writes about keeping up with your network in a Leadership Wired article online.
He's talking about the business network, seeing it as a kind of safety net in these difficult economic times. But the church is the same, and more so - in all times. The congregation may annoy the hell out of us (which might not be a bad thing!) but it's also a place where our particular bit of the body grows best.

John Updike

In a November, 2004 article on John Updike published online in the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly magazine there is the following comment on Updike's Christianity:

While much of his earlier work contains traces of Updike's furious immersion in Christian theology, he said he looked more to the congregation of his hometown Massachusetts church as the rock of his faith today.

"When I haven't been to church in a couple of Sundays I begin to hunger for it and need to be there," he said. "It's not just the words, the sacraments. It's the company of other people, who show up and pledge themselves to an invisible entity."

And in a quote from one of his books (one of the Rabbit tetralogy)

"When on Sunday morning then, when we go before their faces, we must walk up not worn out with misery but full of Christ," he tells a disconcerted Eccles. "Make no mistake. There is nothing but Christ for us. All the rest, all this decency and busyness, is nothing. It is Devil's work."

Missional Shift or Drift

Leadership Journal conducted a survey in May 2008 asking nearly 700 evangelical pastors how their perceptions of the gospel and mission currently compare with their understanding a decade ago. The results were illuminating, and have been summarised in a report by Helen Lee. What follows here is a brief look at some of the highlights.

Compared to ten years ago, they found

• Pastors are focusing more on the Gospels than on the Epistles.
• More pastors believe the gospel is advanced by demonstration and not simply proclamation.
• More pastors say the goal of evangelism is to grow "the" church rather than to grow "my" church.
• More pastors believe partnering with other local churches is essential to accomplishing their mission.
  

Scot McKnight says, "The shifts have actually been going on for maybe 25 or 30 years. There has, though, been a surge in the last ten years. Evangelicals rediscovered the Gospels, and began to reframe their understanding of the gospel in terms of the Kingdom and not just justification."

Five changes are gaining momentum in congregations all across the country:

* Affirming the whole gospel
* Not looking to a megachurch model
* Focusing on making disciples
* Encouraging a missional mindset as a means of spiritual formation
* Establishing partnerships to advance the gospel

Smaller more adaptable churches are being seen as more viable than mega-churches. David Platt said, "We've learned that we don't have to bring people into a building to accomplish our mission." And Dave Gibbons says, "The pastor is now a subcategory of the church. I am now thinking about how to gear everything so that the laity is leading. It's all about how to make our congregation feel as though they are the leaders of the church as opposed to the pastoral staff."

Larry Grays, pastor of Midtown Bridge Church in Atlanta, whose congregants are mostly urban professionals between 20 and 40 years old, has learned that his people want more opportunities to serve the community around them. As a result, Sunday mornings have become less important as the emphasis shifts to inculcating a mentality that service should be a seven-days-a-week commitment.

Partnerships between churches are increasing, and a humility regarding non-Western churches in growing. Gibbons again: "We tend to be patronizing, thinking that we know more, but often it's the locals who know more, and we need to partner with the government, with educational institutions, or other organizations instead of going alone."

Some cautions are aired: don't move from one extreme to the other, from the seeming severity of the Epistles to the social action of the Gospels, from proclamation to 'demonstration evangelism', from leading your congregation to suddenly expecting them to take the initiative.

The full report is here.

WHAT DOES A HEALTHY CHURCH LOOK LIKE?

Rowland Croucher, an Australian pastor who writes prolifically on a variety of Church-related topics, and who's the mainstay behind the John Mark Ministries in Oz, has sent me an email in which he links to material on signs of a Healthy Church/Congregation.

The page has only just been created in October 2008, so it's fresh off the block.

Rowland covers a number of areas - justice, spiritual abuse, governance, affirmation of diversity, tolerance of ambiguity, leadership styles and accountability (amongst others) - and each is linked to further material either from the John Mark site or elsewhere.

It may take you a few days to absorb all the material, but it's worth the trip, in my opinion.

Multi-ethnic Church

The following enthusiastic review of Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church: Mandate, Commitments and Practices of a Diverse Congregation by Mark DeYmaz comes from the Christian.com site. It's written by Andrew Wilson, who appears to be one of the leaders of the Mosaic Christian Community in Christchurch, a three-church multi-ethnic community. (I haven't been able to find Andrew on the Net to ask his permission to use the review, so I hope he won't object!) The review was written back in February this year.

A Must Read for Every Church Leader! Being in leadership at a multi-ethnic church I have read most of the books that are considered landmarks in terms of coming to grips with the `race' issue in the local church. Mark DeYmaz's book is unique in terms of what it offers.
It is unique because it does not focus on issues of racial reconciliation. It does not focus on issues of cultural anthropology and sociology. This book starts with theology and finishes with practice. Mark does not ignore issues of power or the very real stench of systemic racism within the church. He challenges these issues head on. It is neither the untested musings of a seminary theologian nor the pragmatic response of a frustrated practitioner. This is a book written from the perspective of deep theological insights and strong exegesis backed by years of practical involvement in multi-ethnic ministry.
This book is theology in practice. As such there are stories and examples that inspire any in multi-ethnic ministry and resonate for others involved in similar ministries. This book is not a how-to book although there are basic principles and guidelines in the second section of the book. These simply reflect the difficult path that you walk down when you are involved in multi-ethnic church.
Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church is compulsory reading for our leadership team. Every church leader should read this book regardless of the diversity or homogeneity of their church. Then after reading this book they should answer this question from the book, If the kingdom of heaven is not segregated, then why on earth is MY church?:

The book is published by Jossey-Bass, 2007.

The Rural Church

The Canadian Rural Church Network's latest newsletter encourages people in rural communities to be reslient and think laterally. From a section entitled RAVEing Rural, comes the following:

There is a virtual riot of lively innovation and adaptation welling up in the rural United Church. In 2007, the United Church solicited workshop proposals for an event called "More Franchises than Tim Hortons: Vital Ministry in the Canadian Context". The workshop proposals from rural leaders reveal something of the face of the 'RAVEing Rural' church. [Tim Hortons might be thought of as the Canadian equivalent of Starbucks.)

Many rural congregations are finding life through new forms of congregational partnership and innovative organizational structures. One group of 4 congregations in Northern Ontario is experimenting with a "Multi-site Congregation" model. This is not a multi-point pastoral charge, but seeks close cooperation between participating congregations with one governance body that doesn't repeat committees. It includes an organic structure, which allows for grafting on or removing existing communities as needed without changing the congregational structure.

Another congregation was experiencing the tension of a massive influx of ex-urban households in their community. They turned this into a ministry with the community by hosting discussions on what it means to be a 'new rural' context bringing healing to both church and village.

Some congregations are using reports of demographic and psychographic marketing style data to learn more about themselves, and build relationships with those outside the church. Other congregations are embracing lament as a biblical spiritual practice and are releasing energy for a new future, discovering that all change involves loss, so to change well means to grieve well.

None of this is a surprise really, since resilience and adaptability have always been the way rural communities have thrived.

Pastoral Restoration

Pastoral Restoration: The Path to Recovery will guide those church leaders faced with facilitating the healing and recovery of a minister and the church from a moral failure.

This new book comes from The Parsonage Site where you can also see the previous books in the series;
Enriching Life in the Fishbowl - provides assistance to congregations in properly caring for a pastor and his family in order to make their lives rich and their ministries effective;
Living in the Pastor's Home is a unique experience. Join four adult PKs as they look back with new insight that would benefit any congregation.;
Working Together to Impact Your Community will direct you in forming a community impact committee to benefit your congregation and pastor alike