Finding my y-axis

Yesterday’s cross-country flight allowed me a few hours to reflect on what is (and isn’t) happening within Paradigm, and what I’m doing (or not) as a pastor to contribute to our community’s spiritual formation. Anyone who knows me well readily admits that I’m a perfectionist in several areas, and it leads me to come across as — and sometimes be — critical and insatiable in my standards of success. But when I sit down and write out specific goals, I’m healthily forced to acknowledge that there are plenty of things going very well, even in the midst of plenty of room for improvement.

I know that the old measuring tools for ministry are bankrupt — even corruptive. Attendance in services and small groups, money in the offering plate, number of people who said the “sinner’s prayer” — these were the measurements of “success” that dominated the church landscape over the past generation. But as ministries new and old are beginning to [re-]identify themselves in the grassroots, less-institutional character of the Kingdom, new measurements for success need to emerge. They need to be contextualized for specific ministries, but generally rooted in story, shared journey, relationships, and discipleship — a paradigm for ministry success reflective of a grassroots Kingdom.

So yesterday on my flight I started jotting down my notions of ministry success — areas that, while sometimes being difficult to translate into raw data, are measurable to the extent that they help me to assess the health of our ministry. Because measuring and assessing are not in and of themselves an evil; there’s wisdom and accountability that comes from looking in the mirror from time to time. If I had to make a graph of my ministry’s success, what would the graph look like? Assuming time (months or years) is my x-axis, what measurables would my y-axis consist of? 

Here’s what I jotted down (in no particular order):

*big-picture, long-term enjoyment of shared journey (applies to leadership and entire community)

*increased, applied understanding of what makes the gospel hopeful, good news (maybe we could call this one the conversion of “Christians” to Christ-followers)

*(similarly) people who didn’t realize God was good or loving encountering an experience/community/message that transforms their perspective

*neighbors (local and global) served

*manifestations of God’s Spirit at work (both the gifts and the fruit of the Spirit in the life and worship of the community)

*biblical literacy developed among community members at all stages of journey

*continuous development of devoted, liberated worship that overcomes both spiritual strongholds and cultural barriers (exploring creative left- and right-brained ways of worshiping that feel free to move beyond the commercialized status quo of churchiness)

*people who thought they would never “fit” in a faith community finding a home and sense of genuine place (finding an option beyond church-as-usual and no community whatsoever)

*people who never imagined they would be interested in the Way of Jesus encountering a message that is so hope-filled that they begin to journey with our community

So that’s me, but what about you? What would you consider the y-axis used to graph your ministry’s success? 

Missionality is rooted in a changed gospel — and that’s good news

Via Twitter I found a series of articles the Foursquare Church is doing on “The Missional Church.”  (Take a look at it here.) I like most of the article (and see Foursquare responding to our changing world fairly well, relative to other denominations), but I take slight issue with the article’s implication that missionality is not a changed gospel but merely a new presentation of it. That’s downright deceptive.

There is an essential difference between being a missional church and being a church that is merely involved in some justice projects. On a foundational level of motivation and inspiration, a missional church is functioning out of a Kingdom-drivenness and a desire to be the “sent ones” who join God in His tikkun olam initiative. 

Actual missionality is not a repackaging or fresh presentation of the same gospel we’ve believed all along; it is an act of doctrinal recovery and transformation, particularly in the area of eschatology. We are being awoken to see that the mission of God is not to get people into heaven, that the point of this story is not “soul-winning” and sinner’s prayers and eventual escape from our present existence into an other-worldly ethereal future with God. No; truly missional people are acting out of a recovered understanding of the Story which speaks of God reconciling our present creation to Himself. It is a Story that chooses incarnate presence over-against ghostly escapism — not as a fresh way “presentation” of a story, but because that has always been the Story itself.

Missionality is not a method; it’s the message. Sincere missionality is rooted in the recovery of a Story that is far more Abrahamic than Noahic, far more Hebraic than dualistic. It’s rooted in a resurrection far more than a rapture.

For this reason, I become very suspicious when an older generation of Christians claim that they’ve been missional all along (which seems to be the self-congratulating tone of this article on the Foursquare website). I think what they mean is that they’ve always been about acts of kindness and possibly social justice. Maybe they have been convicted by the story of the good Samaritan, but I believe many have acted out kindness while still being bound to a story that pointed toward a future of “soul-winning” and exit strategies for eternity.

There shouldn’t be shame in admitting that most of us have misinterpreted the Story. It’s OK to say the gospel is changing — that we’re rediscovering the Story we should have been living all along. We’re free to have “ah-ha” moments in our journey. And I think that older generations of Christians, while being understandably annoyed that they’ve misinterpreted the story for a few more years than some of us who are younger, should come clean and gain credibility by admitting that missionality isn’t what most of them have been about all these years. Many have been about acts of kindness and social justice, but as drive-by acts that were honestly peripheral to their dualistic exit strategy.

When older Christians claim to have been missional all along — while us younger folks remember quite vividly the churches we grew up in, the sermons we heard, etc. — they squash potential for genuine dialogue and hinder their chance to learn and recover and grow along with the rest of us.

Birthdays, euphemism, and dismantling patriarchy: links to the outside world

Happy birthday to Eugene Cho, and happy day of birth to One Day’s Wages — a grassroots movement started by Eugene and his wife, Minhee, focused on eradicating poverty. I think this is the sort of project we can all rally around and contribute to.

 

Tony Jones has some good thoughts about euphemism in Christian circles. In the past I’ve made light of those who say mine is a “low” view of Scripture, so I got a kick out of this.

 

Bob Hyatt has brought back a series of extremely helpful posts from the archive of his blog. The posts are focused on questions of submission in marriage. There are five parts to the series — here they are: one, two, three, four, and five.

Painting pictures of God’s Kingdom

This morning I took part in the monthly meet-up of Northwest Hothouse. Hothouse is a group of pastors, para-church ministry leaders, and community organizers who come together to explore what it means to live and lead missionally in our particular contexts. A lot of inspiring ideas and experiences are shared in these meetings. Dynamics like that of Hothouse — intelligent, imaginative collaboration — get me all the more excited about life in ministry.

 

One of the big questions — it was more of a dilemma, really — that arose this morning was this: What does it mean to appreciate missionality that is “slow steeping” and relational (not an imperialistic take-over), while recognizing that people have urgent, immediate needs to experience communion with Christ?

 

This is my attempt to answer that question.

 

First, I think it is important to give Jesus the respect of focusing our attention where he asked us to place it — on the Kingdom of God. It is the Kingdom, not a cosmic transaction, that is at the heart of the Christian story. The latter relates to the former as a means to an end. To say it differently, any truthful soteriology is entirely grounded in truthful eschatology. To say it differently still, the big picture is about the resurrection and reconciliation of creation, not “soul-winning” and an escapist afterlife.

 

We live in a Kingdom of God story. The Kingdom has come, and the Kingdom is coming. In New Testament studies this is referred to as “the already-but-not-yet.” To reverse the order, what we see around us is not as good as it gets, but it is the current creation which God has covenanted to resurrect. Creation matters because it’s creation that has been, is, and will be the project of God.

 

Like I said, it’s a Kingdom of God story we are part of. And the future of this story requires both announcement and fulfillment — pictures painted and promises kept. There is rootedness to this idea. We see the interplay of announcement and fulfillment in the words of the prophets and the teachings of Jesus — an urgent announcement to transform our ways immediately so that we can join in the gradual, progressive entrance of God’s Kingdom. Whether along the rivers of Babylon or during the Sermon on the Mount, new pictures of the Kingdom have been painted, and those pictures have inspired, befuddled, and expanded imagination. Picture are painted (immediate action) about a new reality that is being created (gradual, sequential movement). But we would be off the mark to divorce the picture-painting act from the larger sequential movement.

 

When we paint pictures, we are doing more than more than simply describing something that will someday be. Our descriptions are entities in their own right. Pictures are real. We can hold them on various levels. Pictures have thingness, yes?

 

Because they have thingness, they also have an irrevocability to them. When we see important images, they stick with us. They delight us. They haunt us. They inspire us. They speak of new realities while being themselves a new realities created. When the pictures we paint are real and true, the audiences to our picture-painting cannot help but own them in an irrevocable way. Even if we paint an image of the future, that future has just happened in that it is now been seen or heard. That is the in-breaking of the future into the present. The future exists in that its picture has been called into existence.

 

Some of the most powerful moments within our Kingdom of God story have come about when the future is called into the present through picture-painting. Again, I think of the prophets of an exilic Israel sitting along the rivers of Babylon and being filled with the dream of universal exile — a sensus plenior exile. I think also of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Did the future of which King dreamed exist at the time of that speech? We might be inclined to say that it hadn’t or even still hasn’t. There were countless race riots yet to come after that speech, and some racial tension remains today. But I imagine that if we asked those who were there in person to hear King’s dream, they would tell us that something that hadn’t existed prior to that speech suddenly did as King spoke. A new reality came into existence. And many events that have helped to fulfill that dream since the day of the speech happened only because the dream was announced.

 

Pictures create futures.

 

An unimagined, unannounced Kingdom never comes. 

 

We live in a culture that believes talk is cheap. We form a dichotomy between words and actions. Falling to the temptations of our distrust toward the spoken word, we leave little room for speech-acts — for words that not only describe future realities, but also are, in and of themselves, immediate realities. We need to reclaim the speech-act as an essential, prophetic component to our Kingdom of God story.

 

Sometimes picture-painting happens in front of a large crowd (like King’s dream), but more often it happens in family rooms, coffeehouses, and bars, with a handful of people or just one person at a time. When the picture is beautiful and real and true, there is nothing those small audiences can do but grapple with the picture’s irrevocability and possibly begin to draw that picture, or a continuation of it, themselves. 

 

As Kingdom of God pictures are painted, we experience an in-breaking of tikkun olam in two ways: our description of where the story is heading is itself an invitation to join the story, and new reality is created because we have chosen to paint.

 

It is amazing how many people — whether self-proclaimed Christians or people who are unfamiliar with God’s story — well up with hope when they hear the good news about God’s commitment to, and intentions for, creation. While it is possible to dream aloud this good news and still be met with hostility or rejection, I believe that real good news is generally better received than the incomplete good news, the news that explains a cosmic transaction but does not explain where the story is heading. As I said earlier, all truthful soteriology is grounded in truthful eschatology. 

 

When the story as a whole is told, most neighbors who disagree with us are still generally glad to be our neighbors. We can be very “Abrahamically effective” like that, when we tell the whole story, the real good news.

 

So how do we face the balance of being an incarnational presence for the long-haul in our ministry context while acting on our concern for so many who have not received what God has for them? We dream out loud. We paint pictures about God’s covenant faithfulness to creation, the Kingdom that is growing, and God’s continuous tikkun olam mission. We demonstratively look forward to a bright future, and in so doing create new present realities that cause people to hope in a way they’ve never hoped before. 

 

Really, Zondervan? Really?

I can’t believe I’m so riled up about translations of Scripture, but Zondervan’s recent decision to discontinue the Today’s New International Version (TNIV) has me in a bit of a mini-fit.

The 2005 translation received attention and scrutiny mostly focused around its transition to gender-inclusive language. The gender language was broadened in cases in which the meaning is “all people” or “humankind.” Gender changes made up only roughly 30% of the edits made to its predecessor, the NIV (1984). Other improvements within the TNIV include specification between “Jews” and “Jewish leaders” when encountering the phrase hai Ioudaioi, which is invaluable in bringing education to the majority of the Evangelical community who still suffers from Luther’s misunderstanding of Judaism and its Law, and clarification of the word hagios when it is intended to mean all true Christ-followers (and not a select canonized few).

While all of these changes are obvious improvements — more faithful to the text’s meaning and combatting potential misunderstandings of Scripture for readers new and old — Zondervan seems to be catering to Evangelicalism’s patriarchal members and dismissing the TNIV as a mistake.

According to the Christianity Today article, the publishing company is discontinuing the translation in part because of how it “divided the Christian [E]vangelical community.” I understand that they need to sell a product, but does Zondervan abide by any standards higher than consumer reviews? Where does faithfulness to the text and meaning of Scripture fit into this decision?

Zondervan reps insist that a lot of the decisions behind the 2011 NIV translation have yet to be made. Still, I remain skeptical that many of the TNIV’s strengths will carry over to the new translation. The English Standard Version (ESV) has sold well within more deterministic and patriarchal circles (which says less about the accuracy of that translations and its readers’ theology and more about a militant sect rallying around a product that supports its agenda). I have to believe that Zondervan, with partners Biblica and the Committee on Bible Translation, is ultimately going to cater to the masses and make decisions that cut into the ESV’s market — even at the expense of faithfulness to Scripture.

Which then leads me to wonder, where is the Bible for the rest of us, those of us who aren’t caught up in patriarchy, replacement theology, antinomianism, hyper-monergy, and determinism? What are our options if we want to read a translation that is faithful to vintage Christianity? Two possibilities are the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and the Contemporary English Version (CEV). The NRSV adopts gender-inclusive language in appropriate instances and is generally the standard within academic biblical studies. The CEV has much more conversational language, is gender-inclusive, and rightly steers hai Ioudaioi away from grave misinterpretation.

Or, if you’re interested, you can voice your concern about the new NIV translation at NIVBible2011.com, asking them not to drop the ball more than they already have. Feel free to make your voice heard, but I have to admit that I think the decision has already been made, and the new NIV will leave much to be desired.

Ministry teams should fight more often

(photo taken from the99percent.com)

 

The 99 Percent continues to provide me with food for thought. I am very interested in their tips for leaders and organizations, and how their rules do and don’t apply to the world of ministry. Reading “Fight Your Way to Breakthroughs,” compiled by the Behance team, I found that essentially everything they suggest could be applied to ministry teams, though many in ministry would be fearful to live it out.

 

To me, the notion that conflict has no place within a ministry team seems presumptuous and unexamined. Many in and around ministry teams figure that the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ is diametrically opposed to beating around important ideas in an impassioned way. It’s true that not all topics of discussion are equal in importance and thus not worth getting riled up for, but there are plenty of important creative arguments that can take place within a team that possesses gentleness and self-control.

 

Everyone on the team has to differentiate themselves from the ideas they support. It’s imperative that all ideas go through their trial as cognitive punching bags — receiving a wallop of scrutiny from all angles and (hopefully) coming out of the process in one mostly-resiliant piece. If the idea’s author sees his or her own face attached to that idea during the punching bag process, unhealthy sensitivity and conflict are bound to emerge. If the creator is inordinately attached to a particular idea, it’s his or her responsibility to clarify that before the conceptual slugfest begins.

 

As the Behance team notes, “‘fighting’… is a critical factor in your ability to find the best solution.” A lot of people in ministry won’t beat up on an idea out of sensitivity to its designer, which is why so many appalling ideas are enabled to putter along.

 

Those with stronger personalities need to make an effort to moderate their temperament to the extent that every idea doesn’t come across as the idea. It’s the boy who cried wolf concept: inflammatory speech evidently dilutes the gusto behind all statements. Those with boisterous personalities can practice talking at a “6” or “7” and leaving room for that “10.”

 

People with a less demonstrable demeanor owe it to the team to bring it up a notch when they’re ready to die on the hill of a certain idea. Even if their idea of a “10” is more like most everyone’s “4,” if the disparity is noticeable, the team will understand where their generally-tame teammate is coming from.

 

When people love their work, they’re willing to fight for good results. More ministry teams would do well to be infused with far more passion considering their field of work revolves around the holistic well-being of creation and the deeper existential meaning of life. 

 

Leadership teams need to leave room for fighting. As the article says, “If you have the guts and relentless fortitude to advocate for your field of view while considering someone else’s, then you’re likely to help the breakthrough find you.”

What the “IKEA effect” says about ministry

(photo taken from the99percent.com)

 

I read a piece on The 99 Percent by Scott Belsky, focused on something dubbed the “IKEA effect” — the connection between participatory investment and satisfaction.

 

 

“I was in a board meeting the other day for a non-profit organization struggling to engage its constituents. Along with the staff, we were trying to find ways to keep people involved and motivated over time. So much work goes into programs and communications – but sometimes people still fail to listen and engage.

 

 

“Rather than focus on the reasons for the struggle, we decided to discuss the examples of success. Why were some programs especially successful?

 

 

“One early discovery was that the programs organically conceived by participants, rather than staff, seemed to have a higher success rate. In addition, the programs with especially large programming committees (i.e. number of people leading the event) were also quite successful.

 

 

“It was at this point that a fellow board member chimed in with the concept of the ‘IKEA effect.’ When people buy furniture at IKEA, they are forced to assemble it themselves. As a result, people report a high degree of satisfaction with their IKEA furniture – largely because of the greater sense of ownership from the labor required to assemble the furniture.”

 

 

This might very well be the greatest challenge standing in front of me in terms of ministry leadership — involving people beyond keeping them informed. As Belsky writes, just as programs aren’t always the answer, communication is not always the X-factor its often made out to be. Keeping people informed is wildly different than keeping them involved and thus invested.

 

 

Here’s where the intricacy comes in. We want people to have investment — to be the builders of the proverbial Swedish sofa — without doing so by creating bureaucratic watchdog positions. It’s easy to get people involved by giving them a voice on such and such a committee, but then, before you know it, organizational decisions that should have been simple are suffocated because they need layer upon layer of approval. There’s a difference between the “IKEA effect” and having a bunch of chefs in the kitchen.

 

 

Decision-making is a legitimate form of participation only when it goes hand-in-hand with the carrying out of said decisions. To use a ministry example, we can listen to someone’s armchair quarterback opinions about the role of music within a liturgy or the direction our teaching time should take, but the “IKEA effect” comes into play when that person picks up an instrument, runs a soundboard, or gives a sermon. 

 

 

In other words, it’s easy to create positions of oversight, but creating positions of ground-level involvement is far more risky-yet-potentially-rewarding. The “IKEA effect” comes into play when people make the bed and sleep in it, too (metaphorically as well as quite-literally in the case of the Swedish furniture company).

 

 

When I think about how this connects to Paradigm and our calling in Seattle, the one word that comes to my mind is “liturgy.” Literally “the work of the people,” a great liturgy minimizes a hierarchal transfer of information in favor of something more communal and lateral. That’s not to suggest that a good liturgy is somehow leaderless; good leaders will find ways to direct while allowing others to build the proverbial Swedish sofa.

 

 

For this reason I draw a line between emphasizing learning and exalting the typical sermon form. I think people learn best when they take ownership of the “material.” In some ministries this comes into play through a dialogical sermon form. At Paradigm this means leaving plenty of room for people to engage God’s Spirit creatively in both the unison and free space components of our liturgy. The challenge for furthering the “IKEA effect” in our gatherings is to find ways that the reflections people generate during our worship can find back into the progress of the gathering.

Helpful ministry resource: Organic Community

This past weekend I read Organic Community by Joseph Myers. The book was released in 2007, so I’m probably a bit late to the party, but after breezing through this compelling book I have to say better late than never. 

Myers’ book is separated by chapters that describe eight different characteristics of an environment in which community develops organically — patterns (descriptive, not prescriptive), participation (individual, not representative), measurement (story, not bottom-line), growth (sustainable, not bankrupt), power (revolving, not positional), coordination (collaboration, not cooperation), partners (edit-ability, not accountability), and language (verb-centric, not noun-centric).

While Myers stresses that he’s not writing a “how-to” book, his book is filled with examples that are practical enough to be used by most anyone, never slipping into ideas that are either too vague or too specific to transcend context.

One of my biggest disappointments with a lot of the church planting or church model books that circulate is the theological views from which they’ve been written. Myers’ book, however, is rooted in sound theology. His central point is to move away from a “master plan” approach to ministry, toward responsible and flexible preparation that  partners with God to engage possibilities and develop the future.

Overall, the book was quite a helpful challenge to me — reminding me that people are to be held with an open hand. They may or may not fit cleanly into ministry models and strategies, and in those cases it’s the models that need to budge.

The combination of practical suggestion and thoughtful theology in Organic Community was refreshing enough that I’m adding the book to my recommended “curriculum” for people with whom I’m ministering (along with Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and Tim Keel’s Intuitive Leadership).

When mystery and revealed truth are held in tension

Bob’s recent post on the level-headed nuance of a faith that admits to having both questions and answers still has me clapping my hands a few days later.

I so strongly want to echo his sentiment here in Seattle, where in the last year I’ve realized the spiritual landscape is dominated by people who “know” that Jonathan Edwards’ wrath-god gives us cancer and predestines those He hates for hell, and some folks who read about five pages of Derrida, wet themselves, and are now convinced that we can’t accept any of Jesus’ claims and expectations as normative.

The only difference between these groups, I suppose, is that the latter group will at least admit that they are only loosely affiliated with Christ and his Way.

Is it really a mystery why so few people in Seattle follow Christ when those who claim to be Christians spout such sub-Christian views on life and faith? Is there any room for nuance between extremes in a city that is said to be well educated and literate?

Without sounding like too much of a martryr, I should note that there are others (like these friends) who are trying to make Christ’s Way known in this city — not settling for wrath-god or feeble wallowing in uncertainty — but too often it feels like it’s the sub-gospels that dictate the spiritual climate in this city, and the rest of us are left to play by crooked rules.

All that to say I’m thankful and refreshed by Bob’s words, and hope that the dynamic that exists within Evergreen in Portland would find deep roots in several faith communities here in Seattle.

Jimmy Carter raises the bar against chauvinism

I don’t always agree with Jimmy Carter, but today I can do nothing but applaud his recent decision to take a stand against male chauvinism and leave the Southern Baptist Convention over their mishandling of Scripture in regard to the role of women within families and the Church.

Carter pretty much hits the issue in the teeth:

“The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met. . .

“The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.”

Here’s the deal: if you are an individual that is part of a congregation, or a congregation that is part of a denomination or network, and that larger entity is pushing back on the trajectory of Scripture and placing invisible ceilings over the heads of women and young girls, and doing so by means of faulty exegesis. . . the blood is on your hands for being an indifferent sap. You are just as at fault as the group to which you belong as the Bible is perverted into a polemic against women. Your silence is an endorsement to maintain injustice.

You have a responsibility to call for justice, making it known that you expect women to be treated as fully human, and for responsibilities and leadership to be distributed on the basis of calling and readiness, not genitalia. If you don’t raise your voice, who’s going to be the prophetic voice calling for the change God desires?

What happens if you call for change, exercise discerning patience (these things don’t change overnight, but weeks turn into months and months to years), and transformation doesn’t take place? Then maybe it’s time to walk away. Is that course of action divisive? Well, let me ask you, was it divisive when individuals, churches, and groups of churches in the U.S. took a stand against slavery — going as far as to break off from those who were turning a blind eye to injustice?

If you keep your mouth shut and stay put, don’t pretend that you’re doing so for the sake of “unity.” There’s nothing unifying about passively allowing discrimination. Is that the type of “unity” God is wanting to see from you?

Here’s to Jimmy Carter for stepping beyond empty threats and promises, and deciding that he wasn’t going to endorse prejudice within the Church or use Scripture as the wrong kind of sword.