Let the Children Come to Me

There's a strange phenomena that happens in churches that unites new churches, established churches and mega-churches: a high commitment to childrens ministries. Whether that means a simple "Sunday School" or a more recent approach such as "Children's Church" or "Kidzone"-style separate worship services, childrens ministries are often one of the first areas for any church to create, staff and develop. Missional churches do it as a way to attract the coveted "young family" demographic and established churches do it as a way to keep the young families from leaving or coming back after sowing their wild oats.

Childrens ministry, like youth ministry, often receives imperative treatment - we have to have a program for that, we need to develop that ministry, we can't cancel that program this week - and the classic "I think kids are the future of our church" (which everyone says euphorically, as if they were the first person to think of such a concept). There are various childrens ministries issues that could be discussed, but I'd like to try this one on for size: bus ministries can ruin a community.

Now that I've got your attention, [insert rural evangelical church name with bus here], let me explain. A town to the south of us, where I do a significant amount of work, is spiritually dead. But, its a different kind of spiritually dead than you might find in other places. In this city, folks have been inculturated to think that church is for old people and kids. Like King David, we might look aghast and ask "Who did this?" But like David, the finger is pointing back - it was the churches themselves.

Four churches (three Baptist and one Nazarene, though many more around the country are guilty) own buses or vans and participate in what has become a Sunday ritual known the town-over. At 8:30 AM, as if it was a school day, kids are picked up by the van-load and carted off to churches in the countryside where straight-haired, KJV-reading, suit-and-dress-wearing pietists welcome them in with open arms.

Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Each of these churches have stellar childrens ministries. They teach Scripture. They disciple children. They report hundreds of "decisions" for Christ annually. By 5 year olds.

What is the net effect? This town is FILLED with former bus kids - former children who made "decisions" for Christ. I don't want to quench the power of the Holy Spirit, but almost church in the town has an average attendance age of 70. Q-Tip churches. I have had dozens of conversations with unchurched adults in that community and, to a person, each one has uttered the same words, "My kids really need to go to church. I don't want to take them, though - do you have a bus ministry? Its really important that they go." Ouch.

But, I'm not leaving you out, mega-churches and trendy evangelicals. How many of your current adult attenders went through a Kidzone-style childrens ministry? If you're like most churches, not many. Mega-churches around the world are beginning to ask themselves if worshipping with all ages might not be such a bad idea. Multi-gen ministry is one of the hottest topics in the church world today. The reason? People are inculturated as worshippers. When they're inculturated to consumer-based childrens ministries, its hard to transition to student ministry worship, even if its also consumer-based. And, its hard to transition students into "adult" worship. At each transition, huge numbers are hemorrhaged.

Children are the future of our Church. Really? Then let's start re-evaluating.

To Plant or not to Plant

Lately, I've found myself trapped between two worlds within the Christian scene: the established church and the church planting movement. These worlds might not seem to be at odds at first glance, but once you're stuck in the middle - you'll know it.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I think one of the keys to future leadership in my home denomination was to stop the herding of leaders into either the church planting track or the established church track. Additionally, seminaries need to stop serving one side or the other exclusively, particularly in the practical parts of education.

The deeper reason that this happens, however, is that churches have separated themlseves into these categories, so putting their future leaders into them is important. From that point, established churches can ensure that their future leaders are people they desire and those who are less desirable can be sent to the church planting realm. In a similar way, since the church planting realm doesn't really want those folks who are "tainted" by the established church, so it works out.

But what of those of us who would not want to write off the established church? I had a recent conversation with a graduated seminarian where we lamented the fact that we've been made to feel somehow guilty for wanting to bring change to established churches that makes them more viable. In some ways, we're guilty for not writing off the established church and going into planning and we're guilty for trying to innovation instead of perpetuating the status quo in the established church.

What gives?

Pretty Positive TV

As I write this blog entry, I'm watching "The Tony Peace Gospel Hour" on TCT. I've found myself strangely drawn to TCT, TBN and EWTN recently, asking myself the simple question: what is it about these stations that feel so wrong to me? In a way I feel guilty - am I simply a product of my GAP-driven, hippie-wannabe generational influence? Have my churches inculturated me to detest people in suits, people raising their hands in worship excessively and giant globes on preaching stages with toll-free numbers running across the screen? Is there anything inherently wrong with Benny Hinn, Robert Schuller, The Signature Sound or even Ed Young's TV presence?

I haven't fully thought through this (so I'd love some thoughts), but here's my best approach to it right now. Watching these stations makes me reflect on a denominational gathering I recently attended where I felt very uneasy in worship. Now, let me tell you that it takes quite a bit for me to be uncomfortable in a worship service - I've worshipped in Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Mennonite, Vineyard and many other church services that were "different". What was different about this service for me was what I can best describe as "inauthenticity". In particular, there was a woman who had a constant smile, a constantly raised hand and a constantly exuberant expression. It was the kind of worship service that makes me see why many people identify the worship genre as "happy clappy". My guess is that there was a time in worship music where folks were simply reacting to a "sad pietism" and reacted by writing happy, upbeat music that was meant as an alternative hymnal to the one in the pew. What resulted was what many rural churches refer to as "praise and worship" time which is meant to be wholly positive.

The problem, of course, with positivism and "happy clappy" theology is that it is a horrible reflection of real life. If someone sees worship service as a "pickup" for the week to aid in the rest of life, the fake positivism is probably the necessary product. If, however, one views a church service as the intersection of daily life and God's presence, it is very difficult to believe that this is an accurate representation of daily life. To me, a worship service should encompass the realities of sadness, anger, disbelief and messiness as well as joy, happiness and smiles.

Of course, there is a certain segment of Christianity that wants a faith that is happy all the time. The problem is that that kind of faith is impossible to find and was never something Christ promised us. So here's where the rubber hits the road: when visitors and children see their 40-something parents in pretty suits and dresses on stage acting like their lives have never had a wrinkle and then meet them during the week, the only result can be disappointment. If your music, if your worship shows no authenticity (the reality of the whole spectrum of emotion), you will lose your chance at most visitors and at most of the next generation.

Take a minute and put yourself in the shoes of an unbeliever. Why, if I were flipping through the channels, would I stop on TCT? Frankly, I like Southern Gospel (I can even appreciate the Gaithers and the Lawrence Welk-style Christian variety hours). Maybe, just maybe if I heard the musical harmonies on the radio, I might stop. But, every person on these stations is pretty. Some are large, some are bald - but all of them are wearing their Sunday-best. What's more, their smiles seem painted on, their eyes never seem to blink and I get the impression I'm tuning into a cult broadcast. I have a grand ecumenical stomach, but this gives me an honest gag reflex.

That brings me back to TCT. As I watch this station, there is a single demographic. It does not indicate a racial divide - there are blacks and whites. It does, however, indicate a generational divide. It makes me wonder, as a viewer at home, if the TCT, TBN or EWTN producers realize that there is hardly anyone in the audience under the age of 35. Strangely enough, at our meeting a month ago, I was also one of a handful of people under the age of 35.

Nice suits, slick haircuts and positivism might sell well to the bankrollers of TCT (which I assume to be Christian retirees), but it makes me uneasy. What's more, I think it damages our witness. Strangely enough - this pretty positivism has a similar effect to the Baptist unbeliever-damning sign in our city: it gives us, as a generation, a hole to work out of - not a baton to carry forward. My generation, and those within ten years of me in either direction have a unique ability - we can spot scams. Even as a believer, this honestly feels like a scam. As if our secular culture did not offer enough hurdles for building the future ministry of the Church, Christian culture gives us even more.

Pointless Perpetuative Preaching

For those of you who "preach" or "teach" on Sundays, do you ever wonder what the point is? Far too often, I hear the comment, "I really liked your message - I actually remember what you said Sunday", as if that's a shocking thing. Don't hear me as saying I get those comments a lot, because I've preached plenty of bombs in my young career, but doesn't it get you to thinking: if people don't remember the message of your message or remember the words of one of the songs you sang, what's it really worth?

I was reflecting on the passage from Isaiah which talks about honoring the Sabbath by not speaking "idle words". How would you define idle words? How about half hour sermons that no one remembers 10 minutes after they're given or that don't give any impact to their lives. How about songs that are comfortable or eradicate our white guilt because they're in a different language? Come to think about it, I've sat through quite a few worship services that were chock full of "idle words" - its why there's some churches (and even the chapel at my own school) I have trouble sitting in, even though I affirm a universal Church. The words just seem so empty, as if they're being said for the sake of the words themselves. And yet, there's a strange normalness to it that reassures you that this is "just how it is". Its also why I'm disillusioned more and more with doing pulpit supply. How can someone coming into an unknown church, picking 5 hymns at random and preaching a "canned" message be anything but idle words?

For Pete's sake: if reading the newspaper is as spiritually transformative as going to church, why are we surprised that people don't want to come?

In being frustrated about sermon-giving and sermon-receiving throughout my lifetime (and especially my seminary career), I've often thought that maybe, just maybe, the redemptive panacea for sermonizing was some sort of combination of dynamism and content. After all, people remember when you suck as a sermon-giver (usually more than if you're marginally talented). And when preachers suck, its usually because they lack dynamism or content. Some preachers lack both, and while that's a topic for another day, just consider the main criteria we look for in future pastors: academic excellence (yes, the same academic excellence most churches could care less about).

However, I think that maybe non-idle preaching (or teaching) is more than just personal dynamism or content and I'd like to propose something new: How about if the words you're about to speak or the words you're about to lead people in singing are not passionate, authentic and transformative, keep them to yourself. Seriously....if it comes down to Sunday morning and you haven't got something that meets that criteria, just don't speak or sing. Would it really alter the course of anyone's spiritual direction? Other than make you look like you're not working your 40 hours, would people's lives be any different than if you would have spoken or sung?

I think what Isaiah is getting at in 58:13 is that God's day is not the time to waste time on our own fruitless measures. It sickens me when preachers preach messages that only benefit themselves. It troubles me when preachers try to impress their congregation by what they have to say or what research they've done. I think its unfortunate that so many preachers stand up on Sunday mornings to deliver a message because its what's supposed to be done to continue their "ministry of maintenance". There are a lot of well-educated, talented orators that just need to get off their high horses (or high pulpits), wake up and realize that their speaking is just noise because the chief beneficiary is the self. That is anti-Sabbath.

I've stopped repeating sermons. I hope if you're reading this, you do, too. Unless you really reshape the sermon to fit the context, you run a very high risk of speaking idle words. Preaching/teaching should always be driven by the unique situation to which you are addressing your words. We're far too often tempted to just do things the way they were done in our home church or in a church where we saw it work or how they told us to in school. The disciples were not charged with perpetuation, they were charged with innovation. They didn't do ministry exactly the way Jesus did it in exactly the same places - they each used their gifts and took the message to transform lives where the Spirit led.

I think we all (as speakers and worship leaders) need to own up to the fact that we've spoken "idle words" - words that are just words - with no power to evoke passion, no power to transform, and with no innovation. There might be times when we need to challenge the perpetuation norm. There might be times when we need to just shut up.

Doing Worship Ministry Poor

There is perhaps nothing in the church that gets me as passionate about ministry as poor, rural churches doing worship ministry well. After all, its where I got my start in ministry and its one of the few areas my brother and I are forcibly harmonious on.

Certainly, worship ministry has become a focus within the last 50 or so years in the Church at large. There are some that would say, and I'm often tempted to be one of them, that worship ministry is currently in an evolutionary pattern, from something that was not sustainable to something that is sustainable for the future growth of the Church. Without getting into that argument's validity, I think its important to point out that churches across the US have positioned themselves at one step along the path from traditional worship to post-modern worship (what I would call post-contemporary worship). Many churches claim to be blended, but blended often only means that you have one foot in two different places on the path or that you can't do anything well at all. That said, one of the main issues in worship ministry today is quality or, as some would put it, excellence. While this might be a commercial/advertising term in many cases, in its purest form, it is attempting to give of our worship "firstfruits" - giving our best, as a congregation, to the Lord.

I've spent my time in several churches over the years that, like all churches, have had their own unique issues in worship music. I've been yelled at, argued with, praised, chided, cheered for, walked out on, gossiped about and about every response you can have in ministry in the short time I've been leading worship. As I stated in the previous post, however, doing ministry in the Greenville/Belding area is often an exercise in the undone - exploring truly new ways of doing things and being resourceful with what you've been given. Once again, these are not all my thoughts, but have been contributed to by fellow worship pastors. To that end, I truly appreciate the thoughts of Dan, Nate, Scott, Jeff, and Paul. This is a journey we traverse together.

As with Youth Ministry, I very much wish somebody would write a book about doing ministry in a poor, rural environment. If that were not possible, I would settle for a book about either a poor or rural environment. In lieu of a book I am not yet experienced enough to write, here are some thoughts specifically about doing worship ministry poor:

• Shallow Talent Pool: For years, I neglected to consider how lucky I was to have not one, but two Christian colleges in my backyard in Orange City. It is truly amazing how many college students, both male and female, are capable of being phenomenal worship talents. If you don't believe me, check out your local Christian college's worship service. In many small communities, this worship service is the best thought-out, well-equipped service to be found for miles around. This isn't a mistake - its because in every Christian college dorm, there are 20 guitar players and vocalists galore. Even if you're nowhere close to a Christian college, however, living in a city provides so much untapped talent. Within a few blocks of your church's campus, my guess is that you can find hoards of talent in local bars, coffee shops, high school talent shows and lots of other artistic venues. That simply is not a luxury that affords itself to rural America. Artists, by their very nature, are driven away from the rural, the uneducated and the rural, "Redneck" poor. You don't see poetry readings or Jack Johnson concerts or hippie hangouts in small rural America. You also don't find loads of musical talent.
• There is Little Appreciation for the Arts: This point is exhibited by the previous point to some extent, but it should be noted that you cannot prepare an urban worship leader for what they will experience in taking the stage in a town like ours. I've often talked with fellow worship leaders (who are far better musicians than I) about the feeling of disgust and disappointment they feel after walking off the stage of their worship gatherings. In places where the arts are appreciated, musicians on stage are blown away by the energy, passion and sound of the crowd. Here, if you play a musically fantastic or musically defunct service, you get the same response - nothing. In short, there is little motivation for playing well, little motivation for giving your musical "firstfruits" to the Lord. Often, our job as rural worship leaders is to build up and compliment our musicians for a job well done because we know that if we rely on the normal complimentary spirit of the congregation, our musicians will burn out because they feel unsupported.
• Artistic Personality + Power = Trouble: There is a truth about those of us with an artistic persuasion that is true - we are moody. I think most artists and musicians would admit to you that they have weak moments of moodiness - depression, elation, rage and passion. This isn't so much a bad thing - its what fuels the beauty of the arts. However, what happens in many small churches is that it provides an opportunity for the worst parts of an artist's personality to become paramount. Think about every small rural church you know of that does not have paid worship personnel; isn't there one person who has taken over the show, bent it to their own needs and desires, driven many other people away and, even though they may be talented, brought the entire worship ministry down with them? Sadly, this is also true in many churches with staffed worship personnel. The sad reality is that any ministry, when there is a leadership void, will produce a leader who exercises control to their own tune over time. When you multiply this reality with the passionate personality of the artist, this is magnified. It is a sad reality that many worship programs - the most visible aspect of a church's ministry - can be and are being done in one or two people.
• Lack of Balance: It is a sad truth in many rural congregations that there is a lack of balance between outreach-driven attractional ministry and inreach-driven self-service. It is a true fact that all churches need dimensions of outreach and all churches need dimensions of inreach, but many churches are unable to find anything close to this balance. Sadly, many err dramatically on the side of inreaching. Many times this is due to an ugly combination of inexpensive and undesirable leadership, uneducated perspective, stubborn mindset, unintegrated Christian lifestyles and a disjointed view of outreach. This may sound judgmental, but last weekend I watched a church bonfire with one attendee, a corner Baptist protest with signs condemning motorists with KJV fire & brimstone, a hip-hop concert called "Summerfest for Jesus" and a ministry year kick-off with roughly one half of the church attending the one Sunday morning service. There are things that happen in the rural, poor church that are inexplicable, personalities that are disgusting and ideas that are horribly ill-formed. Without a system of accountability, many of these activities happen within our church walls and are branded with the name of Christ.
• Irrational Discussions: I've often heard the comment from younger folks who are working for worship change: "Why should I continue to embrace the other side of this discussion when they are simply tolerating us to our faces and gossiping behind our backs?" It is true that there are many irrational discussions that take place behind the scenes and sometimes on the scene of worship ministry based almost completely on personal preferences that have been misidentified as Biblical norms. We've all seen it on both sides. However, in a poor rural culture that believes email forwards about Barack Obama being a Muslim and the starting petitions to stop the government from charging to use your email, its easy to see how irrational arguments can become stubborn shouting matches
• Burnout: It is not surprising that so many people burn out. For the average church musician in a small town, you might be the only drummer or only guitarist your church has access to. In that case, they want you to play every Sunday, every service. For paid worship staff, this means that the grass looks greener in the city with every passing day and the endless cycle of talented ministry staff fleeing for large, suburban churches is perpetuated once again. It is tiring to run a basic worship ministry in your average suburban church - it is maddeningly exhausting to run one in a poor rural church where you are under-appreciated, often-maligned and tormented for shielding what musicians you do have from church persecution.
• Good Leadership is Hard to Find: If you've worked in a poor, rural church you already know about this one. Whereas in many churches, you'd have a quick short list of people who would be good leaders and point people for areas of worship ministry, doing ministry in this kind of a setting is often a one horse parade. You're happy if one of your musicians listens to Christian radio and knows some of the songs. You're happy if your instrumentalists will commit to showing up every two or three weeks. You're happy if you ever can hold a practice with everyone caring enough to show up. However, if you've worked in a suburban church, even a small one, you know that these pleasantries of the rural church are not enough to base a consistent, quality worship ministry on. They're a start, but they're not everything.
• Under-Resourced: When I came to my current church, the entire area of worship ministry had a budget that was just big enough to buy bulletin stock and communion supplies. Even with a good degree of lobbying on my part, we still are working with lots of equipment that either belongs to our musicians or has been donated from our own personal stashes. We cobble-job electronics all the time, we work EBay and Craig's List so we can buy the bare essentials and have some money left over. We have equipment that's not even legal by Federal Government standards and often times violate copyrights out of necessity. And we're a well-resourced worship ministry in this community. It is amazing to hear stories from other churches about shortcuts they've used, laws they've violated and one-man-band-type performances because they were not given the resources to do what was asked of them. Good worship ministry takes money - even bad worship ministry takes money. Don't take it for granted.

As I said in my previous post, many of the aspects of doing ministry poor can be horribly frustrating. Its no surprise that the most talented staff and church attenders with an artistic barometer head for suburban and urban centers. There are services after which (and during which) I would like to break down and cry or just cancel. One of my fellow pastors said to me that he often feels he could be replaced by a musical chimpanzee with cymbals and the congregation wouldn't bat an eye. But perseverance pays off. Our worship ministry is leading the way in our church in terms of growth and accountability. We're plugging in non-Christians who become part of our community of faith. We're resourcing other churches to help give them a step up (check out the free Worship Arts Retreat). We've become an artistic haven for those who, at the very least, can gain energy from other artists even if they don't feel it from the congregation. We're dedicated to not burning out talent, but home-growing it through the involvement of people without compromising our "firstfruit" excellence. And most of all, we're offering our worship to a worthy God who loves the redneck as much as the white collar, the rural as much as the suburban and the farmer as much as the lawyer. Our labor is not in vain.

Doing Youth Ministry Poor

Back to a little blogging before the start of my final few classes which will, undoubtedly, get me riled up enough and leave me bored enough to get back into the blogosphere. So, here is the first of three blog entries about Doing Ministry Poor.

I was thinking back the other day about my Youth Ministry education in college compared to what my youth ministry looks like today. I've further reflected on it in conjunction with two fellow area youth pastors who have had to do ministry amongst the culture shock of post-factory Greenville and Belding, so thanks to Dan and Paul for their thoughts.

What is clear to all of us is that we are in a situation that our youth ministry educations and youth ministry experience did not prepare us for. Its very interesting to me, and rather frustrating, that the vast majority (if not all) of the ministry innovation resources you can pick up at your local Christian bookstore are geared at middle class and higher folks in urban or suburban areas. Don't believe me? Search CBD or Amazon and, other than Tex Sample, you won't find anything under the category "rural" or "blue collar". Theoretically, ministry innovations and models are conceptual, and therefore just need to be applied differently in urban, suburban and rural churches. What we're finding more and more is that it is the very models of youth ministry which must be altered to work in our area.

The one experience which does inform ministry here for me was working in Appalachia. Having known folks working in Martin County, KY (the former poorest county per capita in the country) is consistently similar to working in Montcalm County, MI (the current poorest county per capita).

Many churches have given up. Some churches have given up because they have been backed into a financial corner by their own parishioners or by poor mortgage decisions. Some churches insist on doing white collar ministry in a blue collar community, pinning their hopes on the bank employees, civic leaders and Grand Rapids commuters. One such church recently left our neighborhood and built anew 5 miles outside the city limits. Its really hard to blame them - after all, ministry innovations, resources and concepts are geared for white collar ministry, seminaries train pastors for white collar ministry, white collar ministry is more economically secure and white collar ministry is usually more consistent, with people taking responsibility in areas of volunteerism and leadership.

Other than when I lived in Appalachia, I have always been a part of white collar ministries and it is all I knew. Its all many of us knew before coming here. Its all many of our churches knew before the factories left town. Its all older brothers and sisters of current young people knew and now their younger siblings are left with scaled-back programs and non-staff leaders.

The distinctives of doing "poor" youth ministry, as I see it, are as follows. First of all, events must be low-cost or free. We give away virtually everything and when we do plan the occasional out-of-town trip, we end up covering the entire cost of those kids whose parents can't afford food for their own tables or like to spend the money on themselves. Second, "poor" youth ministry doesn't value the arts or technology like white collar ones do. While kids everywhere still love Guitar Hero and big screen TV's, blogs, big name Christian concerts, contemporary worship services, art shows and the like are out the window. Third, teaching must be more innovative. The brunt facts are that lecturing is not attractional and small groups are hit or miss in terms of effectiveness. Where you go from that depends on how creative you can get. Fourth, good lay leadership is tougher to come by in blue collar churches. This is especially true for anything that happens on a day other than Sunday, but its true for Sundays, too. Fifth, community collaboration is the one of the few rays of hope for smaller churches which can't afford a youth staff position, but that truth is unequivocally hitched to the benevolence of larger churches who are willing to be sacrificial of themselves. Sixth, it occurs to me that "success" in youth ministry might be measured differently in the blue collar community. Whereas in a white collar ministry, success might be students in discipleship programs, individual mission efforts, Christian college attendence or marrying a Christian partner, it seems to me we might be ecstatic about our students not winding up in jail, getting into community college, not getting pregnant before age 21, or, ironically, getting out of town. Finally, in a more immediate way than in an urban, educated area, quality rural churches do not start at ground zero in terms of legitimacy. To put it another way, extremist churches, which often gain a more prevalent voice in less-educated communities, leave level-headed churches with ground to make up, even before being evangelistic or missional in their communities. In short, we need to convince the public that we're not naive idiots before we can even have an audience to share the gospel. If you don't believe me, check out my pictures from our good friends here in town: Liberty Photos.

What occurs to me is that youth ministry here (and in Appalachia) feels like a more needed ministry. Ultimately, in the consumer-driven culture that is youth ministry (maybe the biggest consistency between urban & rural), its sometimes easy to go home at the end of the day and wonder if your presence was really needed - if your youth ministry is even really needed. After all, stats show that kids who graduate from churches with dedicated youth programs fall into moral decay at the same rate as those without them and ultimately spiritually mature parents generally spawn spiritually mature students and vice versa regardless of what we do as youth pastors. However, in an area without hope such as Greenville, Belding or Appalachia - where depression is as much psychological as economic - where entire generations have become non-religious, perhaps doing youth ministry here, no matter how thankless and frustrating, is youth ministry in its very best form.

Postmodern Christianity: Part I

In a recent conversation with a former church planter, we ran into a bit of a impasse about the place of denominational churches in post-modernity, especially in terms of church planting and newly-developed churches. To shed even more light on the topic, the conversation had implications for me as a future pastor of such a church and the flexibility of the CRC or any denomination with a church order to enfold a church plant as an "organized" member. Of course, there are monumental things at stake here: the accountability of individual churches to a denominational body, the theological cohesion of a new church to the church order of all the other member churches, the ability of self-determination within a congregation, the integrity of the church planter and Elisha pastor and the theology of church splits.

The issue centered around this idea: if a newly-developed church has theological convictions or even polity convictions that are contrary to the receiving denomination, the new church should either override its own convictions for the sake of the denomination or find a new denomination. I understand the concept, at least in theory. For one, most church plants are denominational, meaning that they are funded by a denominational body with set governing rules and creedal or confessional statements. In addition, the argument is put out there that people should join a denomination with which they fit theologically. The rules are there; if you don't like them, find another denomination! There's 25 churches in this zip code, after all! This is the "don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out" approach. In fact, it might even have a nice ecumenical face: we're all part of the body of Christ, but this part has its own way of doing things.

I have several objections to this argument laid out by my professor. On the one hand, theological congruency is necessary in practice for the sake of unity. However, theological congruency in theory should not be nearly as absolute. If the above concept of "just find another denomination that fits your beliefs" holds, then we should have never experienced any change to church order, no change to confessional standards, and no change to church structure. In fact, we've experienced each of those to such an extent that we can't even publish a hymnal with the RCA because our confessions look so different. To put a face on this issue, take something like women in office. If you hold to the line of thinking that says "try the church up the street", a change should never have happened in the CRC's interpretation of women in office. It did. Why? Because people believed in the denomination enough that they weren't willing to leave it over one non-salvific issue. Now take an issue like infant baptism. You might be inclined to tell a new church that if they want to dedicate infants instead of baptizing them that they should just find a new denomination, the system is not working. There is a system in place where churches or individuals can appeal to governing bodies, both regional and national, to challenge such a non-salvific issue. That these processes are in place is evidence in and of itself that the system was meant to be elastic. Maybe the challenge is denied. Then that church must make a decision to stay and comply or disagree and go.

In reference to my last post, we also differed on what it meant to be ecumenical. In a way, polite denominationalism is a form of ecumenicity. Their definition includes keeping the status quo and shuffling people into pre-existing categories according to theological conviction. My theory on ecumenicity is a communal one, one that that seeks the combination of denominations, however idealistic. In their mind, they were more ecumenical than I was, and in my mind, I was more ecumenical than they were. We were speaking different languages.

What we acknowledged, as well, is that there is a deeper philosophical difference that we had. Both people on the other side of the table from me were 55 or older and here I was as a (new) 24-year-old. Their mindset is logical and denominational. My mindset is post-modern and communal. As one of the men talked with disgust about the tendency of "emerging" churches to gather together and decide on what direction their body should take, I thought to myself how similar this sounded to my own convictions and how similar it sounded to the church language of creating a vision or mission for our churches. Of course, this concept is dangerous for denominationally-planted groups. While, out of the one side of their mouth they say to join the church that fits them theologically, they have to acknowledge that a denominational church planter who does not tow the party line and allows theological or administrative incongruencies is irresponsible and reprehensible. Why? At the heart its all practical. We commissioned this planter and we paid the bills. They have a point.

Many people ask me why I'm still in the CRC, or in a denomination at all. Why subject yourself to three years of onslaught? Why subject yourself to the pains of Greek and Hebrew exegesis? Why subject yourself to the narrow theological viewpoints of the education at Calvin? Why join and pastor in a denomination where you don't completely agree?

Firstly, I love the Church - the holy catholic and apostolic one. Second, the CRC has faults like any other denomination, but it is one heck of a solid product. I mean, from top to bottom, this is a well thought-out, well organized, efficiently run, perspective-laden, quality and faithful organization. Other than the Mennonites, no one can boast a program like CRWRC. No other denomination can pull off the kind of publishing quality that the CRC does. No other denomination can initiate a version of the Bible that replaced the KJV. No other denomination can survive the kind of split the CRC did in the 90's without missing a step.

And I believe this denomination is elastic enough to endure much more change than it already has. I think that the next 25-50 years in the CRC will bring forth an unprecedented rate of change. I think Christian education will decline on a national level, infant dedications will happen within our denomination, strictness in church polity will be abandoned, theological congruency will be held less high, and that homosexuality will prove to be much more of a non-issue than we previously thought. And I would be surprised in 50 years if we had not joined with the RCA.

Elasticity of theological congruency is a post-modern value and will lead to more and more questioning, more and more re-evaluation of things that had previously been accepted at face value. People shouldn't be surprised that I'm a post-modern thinker and remaining in a denomination. People should realize that the only reason I can remain within a denomination is because I am a post-modern thinker.

Ecumenicity: The U.N. of the Church

Once again, my apologies for limited postings. This is a rough quarter for me, but I promise I'll get back at it. Its my last year at seminary, so there's lots of things to consider. And maybe sometime, like Ryan, I'll have to shut down my blog so I'm more marketable :) Until then, read on.

One of the blessings of my current job is that I've gotten the opportunity to dip my feet into the waters of ecumenism like never before. I've had experiences in the past of bi-lateral ecumenical projects, working with one or (at the most) two churches on a mutual interest. The sadness of the Greenville situation is that, with churches feeling the inevitable pocketbook pinch the parishoners are feeling, staff and programs are being cut at such an alarming rate that our only choice is to link up on things. Its a blessing in disguise.

I've gotten the opportunity most recently to be involved with a couple different community-wide youth ministry groups. What I find interesting is that when senior pastors get together, they often meet at a fancy restaurant and function largely as a social support group. Of course, that's needed, but what's been great about the youth groups is that they're very much action-oriented. It makes sense, after all, that we plan events together if our kids all go to the same schools and are faced by the same issues in the community. We get to pool our expertise and get to pool our knowledge.

Theoretically, this works, and, for the most part, I'm appreciative of them, like I said. But like anything, there's pitfalls. So, for as apt as I am to paint rosy pictures of ecumenicity, here goes some ventures of critique.

My main thesis is what my title says: ecumenical bodies look like and function like the U.N. Now why is that bad, you say? My wife will tell me that the U.N. is the greatest thing ever to happen to the world, and I'll agree to a point. The problem, of course, is two-fold. On the one hand, the U.N. gets held captive by the reluctant and the crazy and the rich (or some combination of the three). On the other hand, because the U.N. has the interests of everybody in mind, it really has the interests of nobody in mind. Its very similar in community ecumenical groups. When the senior pastor group runs a community dinner for poor people, the rich people foot the bill, the church with the most volunteers hold the most influence, and the few crazies in the group are the loudest ones of all, wagging their fingers at people, telling them they'll go to hell if they don't repent over their mashed potatoes. When the local ultra-fundamentalist church puts in their bulletin the following Sunday that 25 people "got saved" through the free turkey give-away, and the Methodist Church can't recall anyone coming to faith, you see the heart of the matter. Or consider the other scenario: the community youth pastors band together to host "insert-crazy-youth-event-here". Many kids come, but have no clue who put it on or how to move along in this new fascination they've found. If you allow one youth pastor to hand out business cards, you open the floodgates for crazy recruitment fairs instead of sensitive youth events.

Like everything, the answer has to be somewhere in the middle. If you read my blog a lot, you'll remember my comparison of the CRC folk and the Amish in our community. That's not a good alternative, but polite hand-shaking community events aren't the answer either. I've more and more been leaning on what Steve Anthony is doing in Toledo, OH. He runs an organization which unifies local churches like a denomination.....not based around doctrine, but based around common interests (ie, local poverty, local schools, gospel missions, shelters, etc.). So, you set up an administrator for the "ministry shares" to be dispensed instead of each church fighting the daily barrage of people asking for electric bill payments (my daily exercise of answering machine cleaning). In addition, the churches participate in mutual agreements about encouraging Christian accountability by fighting church shoppers. Each church agrees to not receive members (or even deter visitors) who have not made peace with their former congregation and been "released" by their council/board. Its radical, but its realistic and effective.

In the end, the needs will inform the means. If you're in a community like ours where needs are so great, then a coordinated effort of Anthony's model is about the best thing one can think of. In other scenarios, the needs may be different and so should the means. What this requires is a great degree of trust and a great deal of theological humility. To be sure, we in the CRC can take this lesson to heart, but its just as true of conservative Lutherans or Baptists, as well. We often practice what Pope Benedict preaches: our church is the only true church and the others are a nice try. Make the starting point "The Church" not, "our church" and maybe we'll start getting somewhere.

Professional Jesus People

Somewhere down the road (although it scares me), I may wind up as a senior pastor or even a solo pastor at a church. At some points, this is really exciting....something I really look forward to. At other times, I think I'd like to keep the job I have forever.....hanging out with teenagers and playing my guitar for a living.

What perhaps frustrates me most about being a pastor are some of my future colleagues. To be sure, this is no slam against my senior pastor, who is one of the most laid back and socially adequate pastors I've ever met. What drives me crazy, however, is the constant flow of pastors who come back to my seminary classes and try to impress the professor or us as seminarians with their large storehouse of knowledge. A couple semesters ago, we had this guy in one of our classes who we called "Professor Student". He was obsessed with sharing every bit of knowledge he had ever acquired and pumping up his own abilities in Greek and constantly reminding us how we were still in seminary and "not there yet". Yesterday, one of these guys just reeled off four sentences in Hebrew while he talked about how he uses it so effectively in his ministry.

I know the church he comes from...its floundering. Maybe try some English.

There's a catch 22 here. Having feet in two denominations has opened my eyes about the necessity of seminary education. Its obvious that certain pastors and leaders in my current denomination would have benefited (some just a little, but some huge amounts) from a mandatory seminary education. Firstly, the Biblical knowledge and theological perspective would help. However, exposure to ministry in different settings and the cross-fertilization of ideas would benefit them greatly. On the other side, ministry in the CRC seems to be defined by intellectuality, and it drives me crazy! When churches want to call you as a pastor, they want to hear your sermon tapes, as if sermons are the only thing you do. In order to get my license to preach in CRC churches, I have to promise to preach Christian Education and Heidelberg Catechism. Never mind relevance. I've taken multiple "exegesis" classes, learning how to interpret the scriptures for preaching and teaching. What did we do? Memorize the original languages. Argh. Today we discussed how we would teach about the Hebrew language and applications of the Jewish mishnah in adult bible study classes by lecturing. Wow.

One of the things that really cracks me up is the pride that pastors take in programmatic development and how closely its success is related to themselves. I addressed this in my most recent sermon. We always view ourselves so highly, as if our churches would become a hole in the ground if we would leave or somehow the passing down of the gospel will cease if I am not the facilitator. Shame on us.

My greatest concern when I go to fill pulpit supply now is not how prepared my sermon is, or how well I can announce songs (because everyone knows hymns are the only music we use), but whether or not I'll get a swift kick for not wearing a suit. If being a preacher means wearing a suit on Sundays, dressing up like a bank owner during the week, trying to dispense knowledge at every turn, and enjoying the sound of my own voice, then I'll stick with plucking my guitar.

Public Apology

Just a memo to all Church outsiders in the world: we're sorry.

Let's face a simple fact here: the way Christianity is presented to the world through many different outlets is idiotic and ridiculous. Sometimes when I make my commute into Grand Rapids, I feel self-conscious if I pass someone going 65 because I'm afraid they'll see the Christian fish on the back of my car and assume all Christians are law-breaking vigilantes. But that doesn't compare to the ridiculousness of the face that Christianity presents to the world in many different ways. If I were an outsider, I would think Christians are the most backward, bigoted people in the whole world.

Of course, this isn't true in all areas. Certainly, there are many churches who present a socially conscious self-respecting message to the world without sacrificing the truths we all stand for. But I think this is even more true in the very places the gospel needs to have more relevance: smalltown America.

For example, we've got a fundamentalist church that is positioned right on the main entrance to town that somehow got their hands on a lighted-up sign. Of course, they use that sign to do the Lord's work, like condemning the NIV, associating tattoos with Satan, associating body piercings with hell and telling everyone who drinks that Jesus would disown them.

Come on.

I went to a rummage sale last week where a nice, well-meaning Christian man sold me an entertainment stand for our youth room for $1. He was selling his possessions from his trailer park home so that he could go on the mission field for two years. Even though he knew I was a pastor, he still handed me a tract. As I was leaving, I overheard him trying to "evangelistically" speak to some Harley bikers in a beat-up pickup truck. When he saw one of them wearing army pants, he used this keen line: "You're in the army, huh? Well I'm in the Lord's army!"

Nice. And our numbers are dropping?

And how about that Christian TV. Strong showing for Christianity there. Whether its poorly produced "extreme sports evangelism" or Biblical "health supplements", somehow we've managed to put our least relevant foot forward as a Christian community. Why is it that the only relevant Christian message on television is spoken by vegetables? I was watching South Park the other night on Comedy Central do a caricature of the 700 Club, and it was probably the most accurate thing I've ever seen. If you want to check it out, its episode #311: Starvin Marvin in Space.

I'm tolerant, I really am. We played church league softball a couple weeks back against a team where all the girls wore skirts during the game. But they're socially adjusted! Good Ghandi. Lets just throw in the towel if we really think talking in old English, condemning piercings, or even clinging to Christian education are the kinds of things we need to cling to so Christianity is Christianity. I'm not one of these argumentative emerging-church-only types. I just don't like it when I work all day long to help my church do legitimate ministry as Christ would and we're simply trumped by the louder, prouder arm of the Church that has lost complete touch with their own culture. Like it or not, marketing is part of evangelism, and we suck at it. Some people just need to be shook.

Or maybe I'll just drive the speed limit.

Letters from Arminia

Once upon a time, there was me. Me, being a good little Reformed boy knew the Heidelberg Catechism like the back of my hand. For fun, I used to page through the tune name index of the gray hymnal and looking for congruences between the Canons of Dort and the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Now I find myself in a place where none of that really matters, where we daily walk the line between the Church falling apart and staying together, and where I learn lessons everyday about how the majority of Christendom operates. This is Arminia.

Not very many towns in America are absent of some sort of Presbyterian Church. The ones that are usually have some sort of UCC or Reformed presence somewhere in their midst. Rarely, especially in Michigan, do you find a town where there is not a Reformed soul to be found. A town where the Lutherans are almost ready to close the last of their 3 churches, the baptists welcome people to town with condemning phrases from the KJV, and the Christian minority is almost entirely Catholic, Congregationalist or Wesleyan. Welcome to Greenville.

I wouldn't be surprised if I was the first Calvin Seminary student/graduate every to work in this town, of if I was the first commuter to the Calvin campus in the city's long history. Reformed thought is irrelevant here, it would seem.

Ironically, however, I would like to dissuade people from believing that Arminians are inevitably bent on their own personal choice to the exclusion of all else, that they baptize every congregant every Sunday, and that a Reformed person can get chewed up and spit out within a few Wesleyan sermons. I believe that this is untrue just as much as I believe its untrue that election is a core belief in many of our Reformed communities in this country. The Church is a melting pot, just like the US, and that might just be okay.

People often ask me how I can exist at an Arminian church. How can you reconcile your beliefs with theirs? How can you sit through a worship service, a sermon, an altar call? How do you deal with perfectionism and the like?

Many people describe my senior pastor and I as people who have "agreed to disagree" on some theological topics, and since we get along well, you might think that. However, I think the greater truth is that we both acknowledge what I wrote about in my previous blog. Calvinism and Arminianism, while both eloquent and well defended against one another, are simply a peephole into the grandness and wondrousness that is the actual theology of God, or that which God knows about himself. How we speak about God, our theology, is but a speck of dust compared to God's theology, or how he speaks about himself. If any theologian would deny that to me, I think I might have to pop him in the face.

My senior pastor, Dave, is not an hard-core Arminian. He does not believe that people can achieve perfection this side of glory, as Wesley hinted at in his later years. He's offended by determinism and fatalism, the flaws that he sees in Reformed thought, especially hyper-Calvinism. But then again, so am I. I shudder at the thought that we're just stagnated linemen on some cosmic foosball table, and I don't think its Biblical either. I like theologians, like Aquinas, who give me a way out here. They identify God as the primary actor, but do not push the ideas of election/predestination/etc. While I might confess those if you held a sword to my neck, its not necessary for my daily ministry that I push those on my laity. In fact, I think Dave and I would both say quite openly that while we're comfortable in our own theological recliners, neither of us would be surprised if, at the end of time, Jesus lays out a far different theology than anything Calvin, Wesley, Aquinas, Augustine, Luther, Chrysostom, or anyone else has laid out. Why? They're not God.

While we've come a long way from the way Calvin treated Servetus and how the Reformers treated the Anabaptists, its sad that we really still just don't get it. In communities around the world, ecumenism is broken down by theological cockiness. There are a lot of pastors and churches that just plain weird me out. Some of them are Arminian, some of them are Reformed, and some of them are so "out there" that I can't identify them. Recognize the affinity that you have with people across denominational lines because they, like you, hold up the primacy of Scripture, which is so trampled in today's world and because learn from the things they do better than you. Our church's worship library is now a fully-integrated Reformed/Wesleyan resource, and I hope the same would be true if I find myself in a Reformed congregation someday.

Few Reformed people get the opportunity that I get to see the inner workings of a solid, comparable, Arminian denomination from as up close and personal as you can get. I continue to urge as many people from both sides of the table to sit down and talk....sit down and cooperate. Often times, you will have far more in common than you think. And remember, no matter how big your allegiance to Calvin, Luther, Aquinas, or Wesley is, your greater allegiance is to the Lamb of God, who is not a follower of any of those four. Let God's theology of Himself and His Church increase as your theology of God and His Church decreases. And let all churches, Calvinistic and Arminian alike, ascent "soli deo gloria."

Prank Calls

Being a seminarian gets you introduced to lots of buzz words. Some of these are distinctly Reformed, but some are buzz words across the denominational lines, and most of them bug me like heck. Having attended two Lilly-funded institutions and having a mom who works for a third, I've certainly gotten my share of rhetoric about "discovering your calling". I used to think this idea of calling was pretty profound, maybe even Biblical. After all, Lilly sent me to Turkey for a sight-seeing trip to "discover my calling". However, after sitting through a nauseating presentation today where three people were put in front of a group for a mass group counselling session, I have to ask myself: do we have any idea what we're talking about when it comes to calling?

My initial thought is no. Let's start with something simple. Is "my call" something I get because I'm in ministry, but that my friend Jon doesn't get because he's in architecture? Absolutely not, chime in Dordt & Calvin, but why are seminarians pigeon-holed for this type of self-discovery? No one asks my friend Mick if he's really "called" to be an insurance salesman, but God help my soul if I'm not really called to be a pastor. Now sure, I've been taught to tell my calling story, and its pretty impressive how God has worked in my life and made me fit to be a minister in the church. What I've been taught to do is tell about things that have any hint of pastor-like situational benefit and anoint each one to be one of those big lighted signs with the arrows on top that led me into the ministry. To be left out: being a pastor is a legitamite career, pastors make more money than their average congregant, pastors get to count coffee and golf as ministry expenses, working at a particular church because it was situationally helpful.

Conveniently, the CRC believes its every pastor's calling to go to seminary for three (cough, four) years, or at least Calvin for a quarter. Well, senior pastors at least. That's not how evangelists or youth pastors are called, apparently. Kudos to God for consulting with our denomination about that first, when He sees perfectly fit to "call" other people to ministry through monestaries, one year of seminary, or no seminary at all. That's cool, though, because God has a different set of standards for calling Methodists and Catholics.

After all, becoming a pastor is contingent on "getting called" by a church. Notice, though, how if a church needs a secretary, custodian, youth pastor, or organist, they don't "call" one of those. Those jobs only warrant a newspaper ad and the submission of a resume. See those people running towards the janitor? Yeah, they're the Christian scholars coming to baptize his hiring as "discovering his calling". However, it'll be those same people at the council meeting two years from now deciding that janitoring is, in fact, not his calling because he doesn't know how to make toilets shine.

Now, theoretically, if three faithful churches call you as a senior pastor, what the heck are you supposed to think? Obviously 2, or maybe 3 of those churches are just crappy at "discovering God's call" for them, just like they were 2 years ago when they hired the "man of God's leading" and had him leave over allegations of sexual misconduct. Kind of sounds like a stereotype of election, doesn't it? People in the Church are elect forever and ever....that is, until they leave the Church and then they never were elect to start with or they're still somehow elect and in denial.

What this really all reminds me of is my high school relationships. Since I hung out with a good group of Christian youth-group-attending girls, my dating life had great overtones of providence. Those of us who were most pious would say things like "I think its God's will that you date me" or "I need to break up with you because its not what God wills". Possible. Maybe. Laughable? Absolutely. The truth is that while we can sometimes hear that "still small voice" in our heads, its often our own subconscious. We are also adept at getting "confirmation" from our like-minded friends.

Oh brother.

Here's what I think. Somehow the pundits have found a mystical union between the idea of calling as both prescriptive and descriptive. We know how the prescriptive extreme works: God decides before we're born what our calling is and we just live that out. Yay for fatalism! On the other hand, descriptive calling seems only like subjective nostalgic interpretation: God did this in my life, and this, and this and it was because he wanted me to be a pastor (oh, and I recently graduated from a Christian liberal arts school with no direction plus the pastors have uber job security).

Maybe I'm off my rocker here, and its not to say that I think retelling the action of God in our lives is a bad thing. But lets stop telling high school and college kids to wait for some mystical "calling" that is just as much descriptive as it is prescriptive. One of the major problems that our seminary's high school calling discernment program has had is that kids who get rejected from participation feel that they might not be called to ministry. The year after I participated, they opened the field up to 50 participants from 35 for particularly that reason. What kind of monster have we created this "calling" to be? Can't we just focus on grateful, faithful Christian living instead of passing around ideas about a non-graspable, individualistic buzz word?

The Opportunity Cost of Service

There's been two growing strains within the North American Church within the last couple of years regarding service trips. If you've ever been on one, then you've undoubtedly come into contact with this debate in an implicit or explicit way. The reality of this situation is that we have litereally thousands of churches in the US who are sending kids and adults away on service trips around the corner and around the world to do service for people around them.

There are a lot of people who are very quick to jump up and say "Amen" at this proposition. Most of these are the "nodders" from the congregation who think sending as many of our own congregants to do service projects is the definition of what Jesus commands us to do. Another group who has a similar reaction to service trips are those who have gone on a trip that they really enjoyed because they liked what they did, liked the people they went with and liked how they felt about themselves when they came back.

Modern liberal Christian thought has told us this is wrong. In many ways, they've hit a good nerve. Many churches and schools spend literally thousands of dollars per person to send laity overseas for a week at a time. They come back with the impression that they've changed the world, ebbed closer to their salvation and gained the right to tell every person within five feet of them about every aspect of the trip. The reality, as the pundits point out, is that often times these people do little to no good, sometimes even hurting the ministry that they go to help because of something an immature Christian says, displaying an inconsistent lifestyle and simply acting on general bias with an imperialistic notion. Hey! We're the cocky Americans here to help you because you're mostly worthless, on our own terms. People generally get indignant or repentant when shown the errors of their ways here. Okay, we're the bad guys, we get it.

Lets consider the other side of this for just a minute. On the one hand, yes, ministry would be FAR more effective if we took all the money we spent on our own lavish service/vacation projects as North Americans and gave it to indigenous missionaries/aid workers who are culturally sensitive and work for lasting change without bigot abrasiveness we often bring. However, if you think that indigenous missionaries would automatically get the same amount of cash as teenagers doing a carwash to go themselves, you're wrong. People give for various reasons. Among them are good things like a heart for missions, a care for others and a servant spirit, but also among them are things like reactions to a real and present service team, emotional first-person reports afterwards, and a general guilt about not helping out the service trip as much as everyone else in the pew around you.

But, there are also ministry opportunities where outsiders can do the work more effectively and more efficiently than the local staff. Take the current situation in the Gulf Coast region. There are many, many opportunities for work, and nearly no one who is willing to put their hands to work. Those who are there are overwhelmed, untrained, and hopeless about their situation. The cost of labor for bringing in a contractor paid for by a church in Kansas IS less effective than bringing in a team that can and will do the work of drywalling, stilt-setting, roofing and painting (granted, this does not refer to the inevitable tendency of high schoolers to paint eachother during service trips...ugh). The fact is that you can put a team down there, including travel costs, for cheaper than the cost of bringing in a contractor, plumber, painter, roofer, drywaller, etc.

This is a basic economics concept known as opportunity cost. It refers to what one has to give up in order to accomplish a goal. This could be money, but it could also refer to time and other resources.

A month ago at a fundraiser, a random homeless guy showed up at our church who had been hitchhiking around the country and read about our fundraiser in the paper. He came just to encourage in what we were doing because "kids need to see what is out there". I can stomache that. What's harder for me to stomache is everyone who says that we need to give people a "heart for missions", which means that we turn them in to mission trip addicts, often ones that need to get bigger and better every year to feed this "heart". What would the church's mission program concept look like if we considered the opportunity cost of what we do before going in on a trip rather than going "because it sounds fun" or "because we can help other people (as if they're the main beneficiaries of our trips". And when we realize that cost, are we willing to be efficient, responsible servants in our mission trip planning?

Points of Contact

I've had an increasing number of conversations in the past couple weeks about the fact that there is a difficult balance in churches between creating a community within a congregation (or tradition) and making that a gated community. There's two particular situations which have come to my attention because of my current position, which has both led me to see things in the denomination I currently serve and, for the first time, being an outsider of my other denomination within an observable distance. Its also come from conversations with pastors, parishoners, class discussions, and other observations. What I don't mean to do is call anyone out or be abrasive, for all of the communities I will talk about are communities which I have grown to love.

A Tale of Two Islands
The town which I live in has various ministry opportunities and challenges which I've addressed previously, but our community is one that encompasses a large portion of rural community surrounding it because we're the last outpost with retail/restaurants before the dead expanse which is central Michigan. For this reason, our church draws from not just one community, but rather four or five within 20 miles of the city. Throughout my travels and interactions thus far, I have been able to profile other churches in our community, for good or for ill. We have two faith communities in our larger geographic area which stand out to me as similar: the Amish community to the north, and the Christian Reformed community to the south. At first glance, my CRC readers will wonder at this comparison, but that's intended. The similarity? Both communities have few points of contact with the community at large. In my interactions with community church groups, shopping, eating out, etc., I've never once run into a CRC person, although I often meet Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and Congregationalists. Of course, the Amish shoot for this "set-apart"-ness, but what causes CRC folk to be like that? The first and most obvious thing to me is Christian school/public school dynamic. I attend public school events weekly (sometimes more often) such as sporting events, concerts, etc. There I meet members of other churches and non-believers. People care passionately about their local school system, often even more than their own church. I would suspect that if one of my parishoners were to try and establish a friendship with a family who sent their kids to the Christian school (which is sequestered out in the country, just like the Amish school), their conversations would not go all that far because the experience is not common enough. For the Amish and the CRC, both churches lie about five miles out of town, and this symbolic non-presence in the community is not overcome easily because its practical effects are far-reaching. The second is a class issue. The local CRC's in our area are suspected by people of being upper middle class. Once again, having expendable income for Christian education is not something most of our parishoners can understand. Upper middle class people often have a much higher liturgical preference, as well. We've discussed this with other churches in our town, which is progressively becoming lower class. People don't want academically-driven preaching and high liturgy. That was hard for me to swallow as a worship planner/preacher, but its true. This was reinforced by a CRC pastor I met with who ministers in inner city Grand Rapids. Even though his people live in close proximity to the church (which is rare for the inner part of GR), they can't make inroads into the community for the same two reasons: kids are in different schools and class issues. Schools are the centers of community life, often, and if those communities are different than the larger community, points of contact are diminished greatly. Five years ago, I might have resonated with this concept, but I see it now much more clearly: I want you to join my church, but I won't invest my time or children into your schools, and you should worship on my terms. Don't take me as nay-saying Christian education or the CRC, or even our local one (they do a great community pre-school). Plus, Christian schools paid the bill for our house for the first 18 years of my life. However, if we are going to willingly forfeit huge quantities of points of contact with our communities, then it would be an offense to the Great Commission if we don't put programs and attitudes in place to counteract these effects. The

Plank in Our Own Eye
I would be remiss to cast stones at the Amish and CRC here if I'm not willing to look at the denomination I currently serve as well. If we're talking about created communities without gating them, its important to identify where our possible gates might go up. For the last two examples, its physical distance from the community, schooling choices, liturgical preference, class limitations, etc. For the Church of God, at least one of these is denominational association. I have had multiple people come talk to me about how greatful they are that I've come in from another tradition because I don't speak Church of God-ese. This denomination has such great ministries, a great intellectual tradition, great inter-connections. All these things are great, and we gain great benefit from them. However, when an outsider who comes in, its often difficult to learn that denominational language. What's Anderson? Why are adults going to camp? Who is considered Youth? What is State? I thought St. Louis was in Missouri. What are heritage songs? What's a Jesus Birthday Offering? What's the difference between SYC, IYC, ISL, ATL and YISL? Good questions! I've finally figured some of them out, but these types of things are big hinderances to someone coming in from the outside. My wife and I were talking the other day about how learning this Church of God language helps us reflect upon similar community gating in our denomination of origin. Most notable among these is Christian education, but liturgical inaccessibility and theological snobbery/preoccupation are other major concerns as we observe the CRC from the outside.

Ungating the Community
If there's any sort of conclusion to be made, I think that all churches and denominations face these kinds of issues, but it is the responsibility of the particular group to counteract the effects of their potential community gating. Christian education and denominational community are both good things, but can become pitfalls if they become the major concern of the given body. Counteracting these will hopefully give us the points of contact with our communities that lend themselves to reaching out to others in the name of Jesus.

Youth Ministry to the Detriment of the Church

There's something that they don't often teach you in Youth Ministry in college, and something most youth ministry people don't like to think about. Its the dark side of youth ministry which often causes more problems than good. Statistically speaking, youth ministry is one of the most unsuccessful ventures the Church has ever embarked on, and yet it has caused nearly the same amount of turmoil where absent as Contemporary Christian Music has. Half my income comes from youth ministry, so I'm not about to advocate the removal of it from churches across the country, but I think that we would be wise to consider the ramifications of this beast we've created.

The thought started in the late 80's and early 90's that high school students needed their own staff member at churches. It would be helpful, at this point, to notice that this movement came from an internal outcry of young people, which was not alone, but simply louder than that of other age groups. For instance, there were hardly any churches at this point with paid Worship Pastors, Congregational Life Pastors, Evangelism Pastors, Children's Pastors, etc. We should immediately recognize what effect a staff member with a targeted age group has on a church. The positive is that the group is usually blest by this person and therefore enjoys the addition. In the case of youth pastors, parents were also pleased because their kids were receiving a greater deal of attention while paranoia ran rampant that our kids were being marched off by a secular pied piper wholesale. What was lying in the background of these hirings, however, were the host of people who had little or nothing to gain from a teenager-focused staff member. Children, young couples, middle-aged adults, older adults, and sometimes even parents were told that they were less important in the church's eyes, not by a word off the pulpit, but by the church's checkbook. This was evident not only in the hiring of youth pastors, but in the program funding that would inevitably blossom.

This is not to say that hiring youth pastors often makes a church angry. Many of the people in the congregation get a martyr-like attitude with respect to youth. One of the classic lines I hear over and over again in churches is: "We need to lay aside our preferences because they are the Church of tomorrow!" I suppose there is some noble truth to that statement, but suddnely you have entire generations of passive Christians that believe their non-involvement and the lack of ministry to their age group has a direct correlation to super-fueled ministry to teens.

In fact, passivitiy is one of the harshest drawbacks to the hiring of any staff members at any position. Teachers feel teaching is covered, singers feel worship is covered, youth leaders feel youth ministry is covered, but the passivity of the "sacrificial lambs" in the congregation is perhaps the greatest loss. While we often complain about those who only want things their way, we often also lose those who don't feel hip or with it and are just fine with clamming up. All of this is often a direct result of any pastor who is a "do-er" and not an "enabler".

The other thing that we as youth ministers often like to forget is the simple fact that youth ministry is very rarely effective. Ouch! Of course, my more careful colleagues will be quick to point out to me that "effective" is not a good word to use in ministry. After all, ministry should not be results-driven, but might simply be God planting seeds in the hearts of kids. Given, but those who take a quick inventory of kids they graduated five years ago from their programs are often very, very humbled by the fact that many of those have wandered to other churches or often from the faith completely. If our goal as youth pastors is to keep our kids in the pews from cradle to grave, then most of us would admit that we are failing greatly.

One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that youth ministry has been a narrow-scoped concept from the very beginning. The Church as a whole was losing people to the world at a near-record pace and we needed to do something. The most logical something was to stop the obvious bleeding - our teenagers who were uninterested in church and rebelling because, well, they're teenagers. What youth ministry has accomplished in that respect is a delayed exodus, with the Church now maintaining huge numbers of high school students, but losing huge percentages in the first couple years following graduation. Those who even dare attempt college-aged ministries are frustrated by kids that are uninterested in developing their faith past the music-festival experiences of their local youth group.

Another reason that the scope should be considered narrow is that science does not support our most common conviction: that high school is the most formative time in a person's life with regard to faith commitment. Psychology and research clearly indicate that the most formative time for faith development and commitment, for whatever reason, is much earlier. To this end, ministry focuses have continued to get younger-reaching. Many churches have developed Jr. High ministries, and many churches have hired Children's pastors. Research indicates that the largest percentage of people make a faith commitment in the 4th-6th grade range and the percentage gets exponentially less each year after that. We missed the target.

Churches that do have successful educational programs outside of Sunday morning worship are churches that do not gap their ministries. While this is true for the developmental ages we've just talked about, it is just as true for adult ministries which are often lacking or non-existent in many churches. Some black eyes that many churches don't want people to see: junior high ministry, post-high/college-aged ministry, singles ministry, new believers ministry. All of us should do a self-inspection to see that our overall ministries do not suffer because of one ministry. A wise speaker I once heard commented that the devil can use church programming by setting one program against another or creating an idolatry in one program or another. For instance, if hiring a full-time youth pastor means cutting three other ministries, perhaps the motivation is poorly founded. This is true not only in your local church, but in denominational programming, funding and ciriculum development, as well as other tell-tale signs. We in youth ministry need a slice of humble pie, sometimes, as we drain our congregations of volunteer hours and resources that could be used for other purposes. How can we promote holism in our churches which promotes the good of the community for the benefit of everyone?

The Guilt Problem

It wasn't until yesterday around 9:30 AM that I realized how different my views on the preemininece of guilt are in the Reformed evangelism realm. What to do? Blog, of course. Here you go:

The Church has a fascination with guilt. Yes, its true. Tell me how you would go about telling someone about Christ? Think about it for a minute. Okay, minute's up. We've been addressing this issue this past week in my evangelism class. Most people would identify the "bridge" method as one of the best ways for presenting the gospel. If you're not familiar with this message, it points out the chasm that exists between human beings and God: a chasm that exists because of sin. In a triumphant soveriegn engineering feat, the cross gets lodged in the chasm and creates a bridge to walk across to where God is. Ha! If that's Reformed, Calvin just rolled over in his grave. My vision of Reformed theology is a lasso being sent across and Christ pulling us across kicking and screaming.

Okay, so maybe you don't subscribe to the bridge. Let's try something more familiar: the Heidelberg Catechism. If you paid attention in Catechism class, you know that the presentation of doctrine goes along these lines: Sin -->Salvation-->Service. Or, Q&A #2:What do we need to know to live and die in the comfort of God? "Three things:first, how great my sin and misery are; second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery; third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance." The commonality of these two presentations I've made is the fact that the gospel takes root in guilt, period.

On that front, I made the argument on Wednesday that we don't necessarily need to present the gospel by starting with guilt. [The crowd goes aghast.] What's more, its necessary to find other ways to seed in the gospel because our culture does not feel guilt! What did he just say? I'm not saying no one feels guilt, certainly I feel guilt and you do too, but the cultural emphasis on moral subjectivity has all but chased guilt into a shadowy corner. Like it or not, the generation we are currently raising does not identify with guilt the way the previous ones did. If we keep harping on guilt, we will find ourselves preaching to teddy bears.

Ron Martoria presents a helpful concept for this discussion. He argues that there are multiple themes in the Old Testament such as covenant, exodus, exile and priestly atonement. His point is that the Church has triumphed the idea of priestly atonement for years to the detriment of the other themes. And its worked! Think about how the prophets worked: Go to a city, tell them they are sinners, offer them a reward for repentence. Fastforward. Jonathan Edwards and his fire-and-brimstone sermons capitalized on the exact same principle: Go to the pulpit, tell people they're on the fasttrack to hell, tell them God will save them, but only barely so that people aren't tempted to step outside the lines for fear of burning off an extremity.

Go into any city in America, urban or rural, stand on a milk crate, and preach this at the top of your lungs. Go ahead, I dare you. Its foolish. Why is it so heretical for me to present the idea that there might be other ways to motivate people to God other than threatening them with hell! Hell might just be the greatest weapon the Church has had in its arsenal. Dan has some good thoughts on this here. Are you seriously telling me that we've been around for more than 2,000 years and the most convincing argument we can make for worshipping God is fear of hell? Bush administration anyone? Fear built basilicas in the 1500's, it brought people out in droves into Puritanism and Methodism during the Great Awakenings, and we've used it in the Reformed tradition to "scare the elect out of bushes". Sweet! Regardless of the focus on numbers, it spoke their language and was thus a useful evangelism tool. In Europe and North America today, its not. Perhaps if Jesus saved us from terrorism, Christianity would sell.

I don't like to present problems without some ideas about a solution....that simply makes me a rock-thrower. I'm working on it, but I think acknowledging the issue is half the problem. One idea I have is to repackage sin. Moral relativity has virtually eliminated a preoccupation with sin and guilt. Okay. Let's try that again. Brokenness is undeniable. What's happening in Iraq isn't okay, regardless of what your moral stance is. What's happening in Sudan isn't okay regardless of where you find yourself in the spectrum of moral relativity. Systematic poverty is a problem, unless you're a social Darwinian. Its a small start, but addressing brokenness is not only a better way to present sin to a sin-ignorant culture, but its also probably a better way to present Christ as a solution because it increases the scope of Christ's redemption. Focusing on individual sin as the only problem makes a person-focused Jesus the only Savior.

If we keep on our current path, the only thing we'll feel guilty for is losing a generation and boarding up our church windows.

Inbred Worship

A few friends of mine back at Dordt have a blog called What Grinds our Gears. If I had to write an entry about what grinds my gears, its problems with worship events in churches. This is particularly important to me now in my new job as Pastor of Worship at my church. We're starting to throw around a new term these days in our worship meetings: inbred worship. This is no slam on my wife or anybody from northern Michigan, its a term we use to stop ourselves from the temptation of making worship ours. This blog assumes Biblical worship categories and considerations....don't jump on my back unless you're attacking the actual text here.

There is a large temptation in the Christian worship arena that wants to make worship something that belongs to us. A current mission statement might look something like this: Worship is done by our congregation, with our congregation, and by our congregation for the benefit of our congregation in the context of our congregation. Ouch. The problem with this is, obviously, that it doesn't make room for God. Of course, we would all claim that our worship is for God, unless we're way out of line. But worship planning and practice quickly becomes a circle we enclose ourself within.

For example, as a worship planner, I'm in charge of reading our context. Then, I'm in charge of creating a relevant worship service. I pick songs I like (or I wrote) or that I think would "speak the congregation's language". After that, I go to worship and benefit greatly from the service. If its done right, my evaluation tells me we did a great job!

My worship class is attempting to teach us out of that idea. It said, lets not ask what worship can do for people, but how we can equip believers. Great idea. However, while we're equipping believers, here comes a non-believer. What are equipping them to do? Find Jesus, hopefully. But what kind of sermon equips believers and altar calls? I ain't got one of those on my computer.

In order to make worship that's not inbred, we should allow doors in our circle for entrance. These doors can be things like a gospel presentation in every service (not hoping for people to glean it off of our ritual). Another way is a highly accountable worship staff. I'm in the process of recruiting music people and non-music people to serve as service critiquers. Grandpa Frank who's plowed fields his whole life can be as good an evaluater of my service as Mrs. Jones who teaches music for a living. Why? Only asking music people about your music is back to the inbred. Its like one of those concerts where the choir does lots of really musically cool things, but the audience hates it because its completely irrelevant.

This isn't just music. Its preaching, its kids ministry, its offertories. Our prostrate nature in worship should limit our ultimate control over it.

Ron Martoia

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to listen to Ron Martoia, a postmodern church growth guy who has some really good stuff to say. Here are my quick notes, if you want explanations, you can ask me or check out his website : Velocity Culture.

· Our current situation: Deep change or slow death

· Semiotics: Reading the signs and context of our times
o Why is Extreme Home Makeover so popular?
§ It showcases real people with real problems
§ People are willing to give if they can be convicted of the cause
§ Tripping our emotions is often the key to realizing the importance

· We need a ecclesiology based on missiology rather than doxology
o Our view of the church must be based in mission as well as praise

· Information does not guarantee transformation
o We have a narrow scope of cramming information into our parishioners
o We often preach a fall/redemption paradigm. We need a Creation/Fall/Redemption paradigm
o Categories: Fidelitas, Feducia, Visio, and Ascencis
§ Ascencis is far overplayed in today’s church (doctrinal/creedal)

Knowing --> Doing
· This paradigm doesn’t work
· We need more steps
· Knowing-->Seeing-->Sensing-->Doing

· Plant when a church reaches 400. This should be a mothering relationship rather than a “planting” relationship

· Old Testament Themes
o There are three stories which set the tone of the OT
§ Exodus
§ Exile
§ Priestly
o We primarily teach the priestly story, which is not holistic
o Modern people operated with a guilt mindset, in which priestly themes were perfect
o Postmodern people feel no guilt
o If we do missions overseas, we learn the language. We need to learn the postmodern language.

· Our current programs are perfectly constructed to get the results we’re currently getting.

· World Religions: Islam, Buddhism & Hinduism are descriptive of our current human state. Christianity is prescriptive of the life that we ought to live and will live. It does not accept the status quo.

· Salvation
o Zaccheus wouldn’t have been saved in most churches today
o Christ made the initial statement, justifying him before he asked

· Isaiah 61 is foretaste of Luke 4. It is a Rabbinic telos.

· In developing programs, go deep, not wide at first

· Leadership from Leath
o Leaders must cross thresholds
o Commonly associated with death

· Change is like trapeze artistry
o One must let go and hang on

· Three requirements
o Logos: Speaking the Word
o Pathos: Feeling for your people
o Ethos: Living in the present