Paul's leadership model

Eugene Peterson translates the beginning of 1 Timothy 3 in this way:

If anyone wants to provide leadership in the church, good! But there are preconditions...

In an article on the site now known as Smart Ministry, Todd Rhoades takes a look at these 'preconditions' in the light of our current society, using Peterson's up-to-date language. He says it's worth doing a kind of examination of yourself every so often to see whether your leadership behaviour is 'fitting' to the leadership model Paul wrote about.

Are you pushy rather than gentle, for example; are you thin-skinned; are you well thought of by outsiders? These are just a few of the various points that need to be considered, and Rhoades' brief comments are worth giving attention to.

Changing Face of Church?

In a short(ish) piece, Todd Rhoades and Dave Travis outline what they think is the changing face of today's church.

Some of their suggestions may be temporary - multi-site churches, for instance, seem to be a fairly controversial approach in some quarters, and may not outlast the idea that church is local. (See David Fitch, for example, on the topic.)

The widespread adoption of social media - not necessarily in church, as in using tweets to tell the preacher what you're thinking - but in the culture at large.

Internet campuses, online giving, the use of iPhones, more multi-racial churches....and the list goes on. I'm sure there are other trends we should be keeping an eye on - Rhoades and Travis don't make any mention of the Saga Generation, though of course they talk about young people (who apparently are 'flooding' non-institutional churches).

What's your take on the changes?

Pubs as Church?

Back in July, Todd Rhoades set off a great debate on his Monday Morning Insight page, when he wrote a British Christian couple who've not only taken over a pub, but have confronted their customers about swearing, but have banned gambling on horses, and removed the dart-board. On top of this they walk around with a Bible in their hands.
Rhoades himself doesn't comment on this innovative way of doing church (!) but the people who read his page certainly do. It sets off a great argument about the rights and wrongs of the way the couple are going about 'being Christians' in this setting.
Well worth reading the comments as a way of thinking about the debate regarding Christians in the 'world'.

Who needs God when we've got ideas like these?

And since we're on the subject of top ten lists, here's another. This time it's looking at the top ten ways to grow your church without God.
I suspect that anyone reading the list will recognise virtually every item on it as being something they've done or tried at some time. That's the scary part.
The good thing might be that most of us have begun to realise these aren't the ways that God necessarily grows the church: He seems to have other ideas, and fortunately, is far more creative!

Todd Rhoades comments on the list (and adds ten ways to slowly kill your church WITH God while he's at it) which was originally produced by Ray Baumann.

Todd Rhoades (who calls himself a Christ-follower) has an interesting list of ten theological issues that he feels the church will still be facing for at least another decade. Soteriology (the doctrine of salvation) heads the list, but I'm not sure that the list is in any particular order. Homosexuality is there, of course; what sort of churches we'll be looking at in the future is there; social justice - and Christian consumerism. It's a good list, though no doubt others could add to it.
The comments make interesting reading. A couple of people think the list is pretty ho-hum, because it covers ground that the church has been looking at for some time, but others make some worthwhile points, including the man who defends Open Theism.

Pastors and their time

I imagine every pastor has been accosted at some point in their career by someone demanding to know how they spend their time. Is the congregation getting 'value for money?' I'll even admit to heckling a young pastor in my church one day many years ago (along with a couple of other equally ignorant members) about what he was doing with his day.

So I was a bit surprised to see Todd Rhoades encouraging people to use Twitter to find out how pastors are using their time. He introduces his brief article in this way: Most church conferences have a time set aside for speaker Q&A, and one of the first questions asked nearly every time is "What does your day look like?" In other words, "How do you schedule your time, and how do you prioritize your tasks?" The answers are always interesting and insightful.

He then goes on to list a bunch of pastors who have offered their Twitter addresses to the concerned public at large. Is it just me who thinks this is crazy? Do pastors really need to account for what they're doing to such a degree?

Rhoades writes: You can find out when their days start, what they're reading, the meetings they're attending, how they balance their family time, and what gets them really pumped (or ticked off).

Good grief. Twitter only allows 140 characters at a time. Is this really going to tell anyone what their pastor is doing, and shouldn't these people be doing something more productive with their lives anyway? As my colleague says, he's a right twitter!