Church

I really think that this post nails how we're supposed to "do" church. Unfortunately most churches would rather work on a flashy program. It's easier to do that. It's harder to be missional. Click-through to read the whole post, but this line will give you a good feel:

I would suggest that it is instead, the simple acts of closing the gap between people. The gap that is filled with hurt. The gap that is filled with pride - and silence.

JM

Christmas

We're trying to plan our Christmas Eve service right now. Two things are bad about this. The first is that we're at least 6 weeks late on planning it and the second is that we're battling against doing what we've always done. I'm trying to change it up this year and push us to do something that is more similar to what we would typically do on a regular Sunday.
I think when we take high-attendance gatherings like Christmas (and Easter) and produce something that is formal and expected we perpetuate the idea that going to church is something you should do on Christmas and Easter. And in doing this we fail to reach any of the guests that are willing to come out on only those two days.
So I'm trying to come up with what that might look like in our church's context. I'm pushing for something with kind of a raw feel featuring an acoustic guitar and one vocalist. Then weaving a concept throughout that in a laid-back conversational manner with video backing and illustrating that. We'll see what happens. We'll probably end up somewhere in between the two. JM

Teens Church Preferences

Ran across these stats on what teens expect, prefer, and learn from church. Several things are interesting. Like 72% of teens pray, but only 48% attend a worship service, which points to the idea that students are searching for the spiritual. The number one thing students expect from church is to worship or make a connection with God. And the number one preference of teens is a church that teaches how their faith should influence their everyday decisions and lifestyle.
So teens want to commune with the spiritual, but be taught the practical.
The problem is that most youth ministries seem to teach the moral/theological and ignore the spiritual and practical. We tend to ignore how a Christian teenager should live their life.
I would rather talk about what a Christian teenager looks like. How they respond to real life situations - boyfriend dumped you, parents yell at you, best friend betrays you, etc. I think that's what students desire too. JM

Acts 4:1-4

Peter and John got in trouble because they were teaching the people. They took the message that God had given them and took it directly to the people. Typically teachers would just teach in the temple to the other religious leaders. But Peter and John went straight to the people.
The thing is we've gone back to how the pharisees wanted it. We don't take the message straight to the people anymore. We hide our message up in our own little Christian circles. We shy away from any kind of spiritual conversation outside the walls of the church. Church is where we talk about God, but we don't bring it home, or to our neighbor's house. JM

Atheists In Church

Here's an interesting article out of Seattle. They sent 31 atheists to local churches to see what it was like. While most of them were closed off way before they walked in the door, it's interesting to see how intimidated they were by the simple act of going to church and how much they desired to go unnoticed.

I slept badly the night before church: I was scared because I had never been before, and everything I know about Sunday services comes from David Lodge novels and Garth Ennis's Preacher series. "Are they gonna make me confess my sins?" I asked my boyfriend. He promised me they would not. "Can I eat beforehand? Can I get up to pee?" I was sure I would stick out.

We do it everyday, but if you haven't done it in a long time, or have never done it, you don't know what to expect or how to act or even what to wear. If the church is ever going to truly reach out, we have to discover new ways to make them feel comfortable, or at least as uncomfortable as possible.
It's also interesting to note what the visitor thought of the "health and wealth" church

If you're thinking of attending a church, I beg you not to attend the CFC—find one that understands humility and grace and charity. I'm an atheist, but the CFC brings Bible imagery to my mind. Standing in all the gaudy sound and tacky fury, all I can think of is the perverted temple that Jesus Christ ripped to pieces with his bare (expletive) hands.

JM

Wife Swap

I love this show. It's just like being at church. They like take two moms from diametrically opposed situations and switch them. So like the shallow, consumerist mom trades with like the communal, minimalist mom. They live like the other mom for one week and then they can impose their rules on their new family for another week.
What's great about the second week is that the moms go extremely overboard. They throw out any vestige of the normal life and transform it completely to what they are used to with no middle ground.
It's the classic, my way is the only way thing. It's just like at church where people believe the only way to worship is through hymns. Or when people believe the only way to run children's ministry is with VBS. Or that you have to run Sunday school. Or that you have to raise your hands in worship.
It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. I think we should be able to appreciate both sides, and find the happy middle ground. Maybe I'm naive, though. JM

Chase The Lion

Tonight at my church we had a men's event with Mark Batterson as the featured speaker. It was a great night. Interesting to hear Mark speak. His speaking style is very close to his writing style. A lot of times you'll see guys who are gifted at one and not the other, but he really does well in both arenas.
Several things were cool about the event tonight. First, there were about 530 men there. That's a huge turnout for our church. Second, it wasn't just our church. There were tons of other churches represented as well as tons of guests. Third, everything from the meal, to the music, to the decorations, was done with excellence. I really felt like this was a high quality event and something we should be proud of.
It was really cool to have something like that at our church. It makes me proud to be a part of it, even though I had absolutely nothing to do with this event.
Hopefully we can carry some of that momentum over to our weekly programming and channel some of those people into it. JM

Resolutions

So one of my goals for this year was to read 18 books. I finished my first one last night: "Simple Church". Pretty good, although I felt like a lot of it was covered in "Breakout Churches", but the ideas certainly deserved to be implemented. The main focus is on creating a simple ministry process for your church, helping the church understand that process, aligning all ministries in the church to that process, and eliminating anything that doesn't fit into that process. My favorite line is when he is talking about how to transition your church from complex to simple he says regarding timing "Get there as fast as you can but not faster". Good advice. JM

Church League Basketball

We have two youth teams that play basketball in the local church league, and tonight they played each other. The skill level is pretty low, as is the scoring. I always wonder what the purpose of church league is. I mean, I know what the purpose was originally, but wouldn't it be awesome if you took one team of students and let them represent our church in a city rec league? And they wouldn't be pushovers. You could have them practice and really take it seriously. Then after they kill some other team, they could win graciously. And if they lost, they could lose graciously. And if the other team was playing rough, they could respond in a Christ-like manner. Man, that seems like it might have more of an impact on our culture than some church league sport. But I guess you can file that under not my decision. JM

Church Promotion

So I love looking at other churches print promotion for upcoming series or events. It helps me get ideas as I critique what other people have done. A church near us does lots of direct mailings.
The two most recent are both 1/2 sheet postcard flyers. The first was an inviation to their Christmas eve service. On the front was a picture of "Santa", but he was bent over and the focus of the picture was on his butt with the caption "No ifs, ands, or butts". On the other side it explained what to expect at their service.
The other card was describing a series they are doing on sex. The front of the card had two sets of feet poking out from under a blanket with the words "pure sex" under it (a not so slight rip-off of the my lame sex life series at Granger Community Church).
Both cards had their slogan/catchphrase "We're a church for anyone, but not for everyone."
Now I know that all marketing is, or at least should be done, with a specific market in mind. But I always wondered how people outside of that market would respond. I just found a little bit of insight into this.
I was looking for something on the middle school hall at our church. This hall is shared by middle school at one hour an senior adults during the second hour. On one of the bulletin boards were both of these postcards taped with a copy of a letter from one of our members to the pastor of the postcard church. The letter basically said "I am so offended." It also said that our member would be praying that the pastor would get right with the Lord and that she would never set foot in their church. It also noted that she had kept the card and looked at it occasionally with disgust, which is pretty funny.
Obviously the cards need to come down and have the reason why explained to our member. But I hope that the pastor of the other church wasn't discouraged by the letter from our member. Marketing and churches are for specific markets. While I don't think we should necessarily try to offend other markets, I think it is important we shoot for our market unapologetically. If we don't, then we're unremarkable, and that's not the kind of Christian that I desire to be. JM

Ministry Process - Part II

The other day I talked about how my church is creating a ministry process and my initial thoughts on what it should look like (you can read it here). Basically my equation that I came up with was:
People + Christ = Justification
and
Justification + Teaching + Encouraging = Transformation = God's desire for the church.
So I started to think about what that might look like in a tangible phrase and I came up with:
Trust God, Follow God, Serve God
Here's how it matches up. To trust God is to have salvation, or justification. Once you have that then you need to follow God, which you do with teaching and encouraging to learn the disciplines of the Christian faith and then live that out in your daily life. Lastly comes serving God where you contribute to helping others trust God.
So if I were to assign programs to them it would be
Trust God - Worship Experience
Follow God - Small Groups
Serve God - Ministry Position
I debated different wordings on all of the phrases:
Trust God - Love God, Know God
Follow God - Love God, Obey God
Serve God - Love God, Live For God, Serve The World
I really like what I came up with, though. We're supposed to talk about it some more tomorrow during staff meeting, so we'll see how that goes. JM

Get Used

We have some friends that are very wealthy. A lot of times they will end up paying for stuff for us. We're always appreciative because we don't have a lot of money. But sometimes I wonder if they think that we're just using them. Do they think that we wouldn't hang out if it was us that had to pay for dinner that night? I hope not.
Jesus probably felt used a lot. I just read Matthew 4:23 - 25 and it talks about how all the sick from all over Syria were coming to him to be healed. People weren't coming to worship him. They weren't coming to listen to his message. They were coming out of selfish motivations. I bet that was frustrating.
But the paragraph end with this: "Many people...followed him." I think Jesus knew something that the church is just now starting to grasp. In order to reach people, you have to fill a need of theirs. People don't naturally care about God. They care about themselves. Until you can show them that what you provide benefits them, they're not going to be interested in what you have to say. But filling a felt need is like an open door to showing them that the best way to be selfish and lead a meaningful life is by discipling yourself to Jesus standard. Interesting. JM