After revealing my thoughts over the past month, Pat brought a few books over for me to read. I've finished the first two, and it's just swirling more stuff around in my head. Consider this a book report of sorts.

The first book I read was Post-Modern Pilgrims: First Century Passion for the 21st Century World by Leonard Sweet. This book was published in 2000, and as such was relatively early in the post-modern discussion.

OK, so now I've introduced a new term that some of you might not know -- so here's my summary of "Post-Modern." In the 20th century, we looked at history and, for Western thought, saw three categories, each defined primarily by their worldview. Ancient history (up to around 500 A.D.) is characterized by the dawn of civilization, authority placed in kings, prophets, and oracles, and limited historical records. Medieval history (about 500 A.D. through about 1500 A.D.) is characterized by the authority being placed in the church, and the growth of the Judeo-Christian worldview, and the explosive growth of written manuscript. Modern history (about 1500 A.D. through the present) is characterized by the pursuit of and authority in knowledge and understanding (basically, the Enlightenment), and the explosive growth of the printing press.

For most of the 20th-centurty, it was taken for granted that we had "arrived." The "modern" worldview was as far as we were going to get. The term itself sort of insinuates this. But as early as the 1940's, and especially during the 1970's, people started noticing a shift in culture. In was a shift to personal experience, suspicion of authority, and a willingness to accept conflicting ideas. In each case of the worldview changing significantly, it was aided by a significant technological change. In the 20th-century, with the explosive growth of radio, television, and especially the internet -- a huge shift in communication by any standard of measurement -- the change is happening much more rapidly.

We are moving into what is best called, at this time, "post-modernism." I don't know anyone who "likes" the term, but we're kind of stuck with it for now. "Post-modernism" reflects an experience-based worldview. Spirituality is not real unless it is experienced. Large organizations are not to be trusted, as they have hidden agendas.

Most importantly, the post-modern mindset has a high distrust of Christians. They are mostly aware of Christians based on their experience of boring church experiences -- perhaps good music or great preaching, but nothing really spiritual about it -- or worse, through negative church experiences. The media, and perhaps rightly so, portrays Christians as hating gays, getting upset about the ten commandments, yelling at people walking into abortion clinics. We're dogmatic, closed-minded, and unloving. They like Jesus, they just don't like Christians. As Mahatma Ghandi said, "I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." This is how most of the post-modern world views the church.

What does this mean for the church? How are we going to survive?

Back to Leonard Sweet. In his book, he uses the word EPIC to convey the shifts we need to make.

First, we need to move from a rational approach to an experiential approach. In the shift to a post-modern world, we are seeing the growth of "experience" industry -- tourism is perhaps the ultimate experience industry. Sweet says that "in postmodern culture, there is no interest in a "second-hand God, a God that someone else (church tradition, church professionals, church bureaucracies) defines for us. Each one of us is a Jacob become Israel: a wrestler with God. The encounter, the experience is the message."

Descartes' famous quote "I think, therefore I am" -- what is considered by some to signal the start of the Enlightenment and the modern worldview -- was simply the beginning. He was attempting to prove God exists by reason (and did a pretty good job, I might add). But the post-modern mindset doesn't care. You can "prove" that God exists, but until they experience God, the post-modern mindset won't believe it.

Second, we need to move from a representative approach to a participatory approach. This kind of flows with experiential, because you can only experience something when you really participate in it. But more directly, we no longer want guidance, we want choices. We no longer want to belong to an organization, we want to participate in a community.

This is why democracy will thrive in the post-modern world -- we want to participate in government, not just be ruled by it. The same could be said for how the post-modern mindset approaches religion.

Third, we need to move from a word-based approach to an image-driven approach. In the modern world, the focus was on knowledge and understanding -- so naturally our words (what we said) had to convince and explain.

Image-driven is partially literal -- using images to convey meaning -- but it also involves making use of metaphor, of story, to connect with the post-modern mindset. "One Coca-Cola executive is said to have declared that the company could survive the loss of all of its assets... providing it kept posession of the Coca-Cola logo... If... the greatest resources anyone can 'own' are images and stories, Christianity ought to be the biggest brand around."

Finally, we need to move from an individual approach to a connected approach. This may seem at odds with the post-modern mindset -- but in reality, the post-modern mindset is not that truth doesn't exist, it's just that it is difficult to find it. And we don't trust organizations to tell us truth, but we will trust our friends, and form a community, to journey there together.

But we also want to be respected as individuals -- so it's not just about communal, it's about individual-communal.

Overall, Sweet's book asks a lot of questions, without providing the answers. This is important, because we still don't know exactly where post-modernism will end up (which is also why we don't have a better name for it yet). We also don't know exactly where the church will end up, either. But the reality is, that for churches to thrive in a post-modern world, huge things need to change. But the biggest changes will need to be within us.

More on this in Part 2, where I will discuss the next book, and get a little more into how we need to change, both as individuals and as churches.

Labels: books, church, emerging

Ann Coulter does it again:

The sickness of what liberals have done to America is that so many citizens – even conservative citizens – seem to believe the job of a Supreme Court justice entails nothing more than "voting" on public-policy issues. The White House considers it relevant to tell us Miers' religious beliefs, her hobbies, her hopes and dreams. She's a good bowler! A stickler for detail! Great dancer! Makes her own clothes!

That's nice for her, but what we're really in the market for is a constitutional scholar who can forcefully say, "No – that's not my job."

We've been waiting 30 years to end the lunacy of nine demigods on the Supreme Court deciding every burning social issue of the day for us, loyal subjects in a judicial theocracy. We don't want someone who will decide those issues for us – but decide them "our" way. If we did, a White House bureaucrat with good horse sense might be just the ticket.

Admittedly, there isn't much that's more important than ending the abortion holocaust in America. (Abortionist casualties: 7; Unborn casualties 30 million.) But there is one thing. That is democracy.

Democracy sometimes leads to silly laws such as the one that prohibited married couples from buying contraception in Connecticut. But allowing Americans to vote has never led to creches being torn down across America. It's never led to prayer being purged from every public school in the nation. It's never led to gay marriage. It's never led to returning slaves who had escaped to free states to their slavemasters. And it's never led to 30 million dead babies.

We've gone from a representative democracy to a monarchy, and the most appalling thing is – even conservatives just hope like the dickens the next king is a good one.

Labels: politics

In the last article of this series, I will focus for a moment on something that people have a hard time accepting: change.

Andy Stanley, in the last session of Catalyst 2005, gave a talk about Gaining and Sustaining Momentum. You are only experiencing momentum if you are reaching out to more people, seeing deeper commitments to Christ, and having a greater impact on the world. Momentum represents what the church is, at its best:

And each day the Lord added to their group those who were being saved. (Acts 2:47, NLT)

I couldn't imagine a better description of momentum, and it's found right in the middle of the description of the New Testament Church at its best.

Stanley talked about three components of sustained momentum: new, improved, and improving.

Anything new, by definition, generates some kind of momentum. The momentum can be positive or negative. Study any organization that has enjoyed a season of momentum and you will discover at least one of three things: new leadership, new direction (or vision), or a new product (or program). When evaluating an organization or program that lacks momentum, ask, 'Do we need a new leader, a new direction, or a new product? Do we need some combination of the three?'

But it's not enough for it to be something small: "minor improvements to something that lacks momentum will not trigger momentum." We need to be willing to make a major shift if we want to see momentum occur. But new by itself does not guarantee sustained momentum.

If we want sustained momentum, we must ensure that what is new is also improved. If the new thing is also improved, it will sustain momentum for the short term, but it must be a significant improvement.

Stanley mentioned that significant improvement often costs money, but that we're usually already stretched too thin financially when we're at the point of needing to do something to generate momentum. He warned us to not spend money on mediocre ministries – we should focus on the core of the organization, and concentrate on the vision. If we would focus on the vision, and abandon areas that are not essential to that vision, momentum will take hold and as the organization grows, the resources will be there to replenish what used to be mediocre with a better quality program. Funding a large number of mediocre ministries gets us nowhere – funding a small number of high-quality ministries will gain sustained momentum.

But improved will only sustain momentum for the short term. To continually sustain momentum, new must be improved, and improving.

Small, incremental improvements rarely result in sustained momentum. Long-term momentum is sustained through continuous improvement. Specifically, your leadership must maintain an uncompromising commitment to relevance. Your vision must be recast and re-illustrated. Your product must be continuously upgraded. Continuous improvement requires systematic and unfiltered evaluation.

We must not just be open to change; we must be committed to change. But success breeds complacency, and complacency brings failure. We have a tendency to coast on previous successes. But we have to constantly re-evaluate, and embrace change, if we want the momentum we need to have a greater impact.

It's easy to accept change if you believe, as I discussed in previous posts, that very little of what we do is sacred. If you are holding onto customs and styles that defined success in the past, then change is scary, and momentum actually makes you uncomfortable. But with momentum, we have a greater opportunity to reach out and take the message out into the world. This is our calling, to adapt to our surroundings and communicate the gospel. We must maintain a firm grasp on the few things that are sacred, and let the rest go. Only then can we be fully committed to Christ's calling.

If we are afraid of change, then we are afraid of momentum, and as a result, we are afraid of success. There is another way I would describe complacency: being lukewarm. And Christ specifically warned us about being lukewarm:

I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, I will spit you out of my mouth! Revelation 3:15-16 (NLT)

Are we complacent? Are we lukewarm? Or are we hot, ready to do whatever it takes?

Labels: Catalyst, church

In my previous post, I finished by asking the question – what is the purpose of a weekly worship gathering? What is the goal?

The first purpose of a weekly worship gathering is to call people into deeper worship. It is about following Jesus. We must encourage deeper submission, deeper sacrifice, and deeper obedience. By revealing God, we encourage a response based not on the emotion of the moment, but on the truth of who He is and what He has done.

William Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1942-1944) wrote:

To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God.

Worship is about God's nature being fully revealed to us, and our response should be opening ourselves more fully to God, and letting Him have His way with us.

The second purpose of a weekly worship gathering is to meet together as a community. It is about sharing life. Regularly attending a weekly gathering builds community, binds people together, and promotes unity.

Hebrews specifically links worshiping together and the building of community, saying:

Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24-25, NLT)

The third purpose is to provide a pathway for those searching for truth to find it. It is about investing in others. While a weekly worship gathering should not be relied upon as the only means of outreach, it is natural for people who are curious about Christ to attend a weekly gathering, especially if they have a relationship with someone in the church.

Paul specifically mentions considering those outside the church in Corinthians:

If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if all prophesy, an unbeliever or outsider who enters is reproved by all and called to account by all. After the secrets of the unbeliever's heart are disclosed, that person will bow down before God and worship him, declaring, "God is really among you." (1 Corinthians 14:23-25, NRSV)

So while the first two purposes of a worship gathering are clearly for the benefit of the believers, it is also clearly for the benefit of an outsider as well.

I know some people have a problem with the idea of a "seeker-sensitive" service, but Paul clearly lays this out as something we should be mindful of. At the same time, if everything you do is dictated by the mantra of "seeker-sensitive," you're missing out on two incredibly important aspects of a weekly gathering.

These three purposes are not only the purposes of a weekly gathering. They are also the purposes of the church as a whole: following Jesus, sharing life, and investing in others.

How do we combine these purposes into a weekly worship gathering?

To call people into deeper worship, we must infuse our worship activities with more revelation about God, and less of a desire to generate an experience. If we provide the revelation, the Spirit will provide the experience. We should include songs and scripture readings that reveal God's presence in our midst. We can't just throw a few songs together and see what happens. We need to think about what we're presenting and what we're trying to get people to think about. But we have to keep the presentation fresh – if the pastor used the same sermon week after week, people would stop listening (and likely stop attending). Likewise, we can't simply rely on the songs that the congregation knows well. When a new song says something in a new way, it makes you think about God in ways you hadn't considered before, and can even change the way you think about scripture verses you've had memorized since you were a kid. We cannot afford to ignore God's modern-day prophets – the talented songwriters that are living among us, revealing awesome things about God – any more than we can afford to ignore the songwriter-prophets that came before us, leading the way.

To help build community, we must leave room for fellowship. When Sunday school classes get out five or ten minutes before the gathering is supposed to begin, and the gathering dismisses at a time when people feel rushed to take off for lunch, we've lost the opportunity for fellowship. We must also encourage participation – people should feel encouraged to share what the Spirit has laid on their heart. Our gatherings are typically so rushed that there's no room for people to connect. Our agenda is too full. We need to treat our gatherings more like a family gathering, rather than as a program where we need to get to the next step, so we can finish on time and get to lunch.

To help keep the pathway open for "outsiders," we need to lose some excess baggage, so that all outsiders see in us is Christ. The reality is that the first two purposes can be fulfilled with any musical style and any cultural lexicon. But too often we shroud our message and our community in language and culture that is out of touch with those who surround us. The message should be based in who God is. The community should be based in love. And the context should be based on who will likely be walking through the door as an outsider. We want the message and the love to be transparent, and the only way to accomplish that is to use contemporary language. If we want to reach German-speaking people, we need to speak German. If we want to reach 21^st-century families in our community, we need to speak a language they can understand.

I think the church as a whole has done a pretty poor job of fulfilling these three purposes. We have let ourselves stagnate too much, and it's time for a major shift in how we think about our gatherings. The temptation, though, is to fulfill these purposes in other ways so that we can keep the weekly gatherings more or less the same as they've been. But this approach won't work, because people will fall through the cracks. We can't let someone escape participation in community simply because they won't (or perhaps can't) sign up for a small group. Our weekly gatherings must satisfy all of these purposes, if we truly want people to be transformed and say, "God is really among you."

Are we ready to really believe that nothing is sacred, let go of any traditions that hold us back, and envision a weekly gathering that really fulfills all of these purposes? If we are, then God is ready to do huge things with us. If we aren't, then we will continue to coast along, wondering when God will really show up. I'm ready to get moving.

Labels: church

In my previous post, I described true worship as submission, sacrifice, and obedience.

As a worship leader, this is problematic. What is the purpose of a modern-day "worship service" (or as we now call them at Faith, "worship gathering"), in light of these definitions?

First, though, I want to start with a clean slate. Many people treat a lot of elements of how we do "church" as sacred, untouchable, and unchangeable. Sunday morning services. Bulletins. Singing songs. Taking an offering. Having an offertory. Choirs. Having a sermon. Using a pulpit. Having a response song. Et cetera.

But I believe that there are only a handful of things that are sacred, in terms of what rituals and activities we choose to use in worship. In fact, there are only three rituals – baptism, washing feet, and communion. These are rituals that Jesus directly participated in, but even more important, commanded his disciples to continue to do. Worship activities that could be considered sacred would include reading scripture, singing songs, prayers, and sharing messages from God, all having solid Biblical examples and foundations for their use.

Nothing else is sacred. Other things we treat as sacred might just be baggage we need to get rid of.

Once we have embraced this truth, it's easy to not be tied down, on any level, to church tradition, personal preferences, or cultural norms regarding worship. If we are challenged on a particular item (that is not listed above), we only have to remind ourselves, as well as those challenging us, that those things are not sacred and are just based on someone's personal preference. We shouldn't forsake anything just because it is someone's personal preference, but neither should we feel an obligation to hold onto something that has outlived its usefulness simply because someone prefers that we keep it.

I'll give an example outside of worship, one that I've been thinking about for a while. I personally feel that Sunday school is a product of an older time, and has outlived its usefulness. It should be completely rethought, and probably abandoned. The mere mention of that might draw gasps from some, but the reality is that Sunday school was only first developed in the 1800's, but almost exclusively for children, and was used extensively in the 1900's as an outreach tool as it was expanded into adult ministry as well. But the success of Sunday school has waned, as society has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades and the church has failed to adapt.

The question I would ask is: what purpose does Sunday school serve? Are there a better times and places to serve that purpose? Are there more important things we could be doing with that time slot? What would be the positive and negative effects of dropping the Sunday school program? The thought that "some of the old people would get upset that we're not doing a Sunday school program" doesn't count as a negative effect. Someone being upset over the loss of a program should not be a reason to keep it.

If we moved the idea of a Sunday school program to a different time, it might be more effective, and we might have more impact in other arenas. For instance, not having Sunday school would allow volunteers to focus more energy on the 11:00 hour – which would mean better nursery care, better children's church programs, etc.

I'm primarily using this example because I think we should constantly be evaluating everything we do in such a light. Is Sunday morning the right time to have weekly worship gatherings? Is singing songs something we need to do to be effective? Are there better ways to raise funds than taking an offering during worship gatherings? But most importantly, can we objectively evaluate these things, from a perspective of being effective in reaching our community, without feeling rejected when we talk about the usefulness of a program or worship element that we're fond of?

I hope we can. Keep in mind that when I make a specific proposal, I truly believe that there is very little that is sacred. You don't really mess with baptism, communion, foot washing, etc., but everything else is fair game. And nothing I propose is sacred, either. They are just things I think we need to do to be more effective to reach our community at this time. And those things will change, and anything we introduce now will eventually need to be tweaked (or possibly even abandoned). I hope we have the courage to do that now, and I also hope our successors will have the courage to do that in the future.

So where do we start? I believe we start with discussing the purpose of a weekly worship gathering. What is the goal? Why do we put energy into it? If we don't know the answers to those questions, we can't evaluate elements and determine how effectively they help us reach the goal.

Stay tuned.

Labels: church