Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: church

  • Spying Churches

    I’m struck by the fear with which churches greet new ideas. No, I think I should make it more direct than that. I’m struck by the fear with which churches greet ideas. Any type of ideas. The type of people who manifest this sort of fear are generally those who are either unable to support what they believe or perhaps simply don’t want to be bothered with the necessity.

    My parents were life-long missionaries for their denomination, but after they retired they were suspected of some form of dissident theological beliefs. The fact is that I have a hard time really defining the difference between their beliefs and those of their denomination. They certainly remained loyal to the denomination, including supporting it financially even through all of this.

    They were visiting one local church for a period of time and considering joining. One of their lifelong practices was hospitality. If you were visiting their church they didn’t just welcome you, they offered you an invitation to come home to lunch. They did so one day, and a couple of the elders showed up as well to make sure they weren’t misleading the visitors. As I said, my parents remained loyal to their denomination, but my mother straightened those folks out in a hurry!

    All of this, and much more, came back to me when I read Shame Is a Prison, And I’m Breaking Out (HT: Rachel Held Evans). The author writes of being called with her husband to meet with her pastor who felt that her views as expressed on Facebook and her blog were inappropriate. She tells of the shame that was involved and that made it hard to break free. I needed to read her post, because my immediate mental response was “why didn’t she tell him where to go, get up, walk out, and never darken the door of his church again?” It’s just not that easy.

    And in spite of my mental reaction, it’s not that easy for me either. I like to get along. I like to be part of the team and work together with a church. But there are points of conscience that I will not surrender to the group. I do understand churches wanting to make sure their official pronouncements are compatible with their statements of faith, though I advocate keeping the list of essential doctrines as short as possible. When protecting the church’s doctrines lead to spying on members, I think it has gone too far.

    When I was single, I didn’t realize how much more this sort of thing impacts women. After I got married, I was approached by people who wanted me to explain things my wife said or to “correct” her in some way. I made an early rule and shared it with my wife. I would not even defend her in these types of conversations. Whenever someone was talking to me about something my wife said I would immediately suggest that they talk directly to her. “She’s perfectly capable of explaining this herself,” I would say. The interesting thing is that while this statement would cut off the discussion with me, I am not aware of anyone who actually went to talk to her. That suggests to me that I was 100% right about whether they were trying to criticize her, or actually interested in learning more about the subject. They hoped I would be the sensible one and straighten her out without their having to display the courage and courtesy of actually talking to her.

    The motivation here is fear, I believe, and the result is weaker church members. I would suggest instead openly encouraging both questioning and suggesting answers by every member of the church. This will create stronger Christian communities.

    (I’m currently editing a book to be released early next year, So Much Older Then … by Bob LaRochelle. In it he describes a process of offering time for a congregational response to the sermon. I think it’s a wonderful idea. When I’ve experienced such a time as a speaker it has always been positive.)

  • And Now About Church Success

    It’s interesting that just after reading an article that suggests we’re misreading school success I find one that questions our measure of church success. I find all of the points in Five American Myths of Successful Churches and Ministries (CharismaNews) by Joseph Mattera.

    In my reading of the Word of God over the past 34 years I have noticed a keen difference between the biblical measure of success and the way many American churches seem to measure success.

    Many of the ways American churches measures success are in fact direct violations of the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 23. In this passage Jesus speaks against people loving titles, celebrity status, and desiring prominent places in public events. Through the centuries theology and church practice have been greatly influenced by the surrounding cultures. …

    Well, that’s both true and not terribly exceptional. Unfortunately we all say this, but we continue to do the same things.

    Mattera lists five myths, which are generally closely related. These are 1) by size, 2) budget size, 3) celebrity of leader, 4) leader’s title (bishop, apostle, whatever), 5) leader’s affluent lifestyle. Some of these relate especially to the charismatic movement, where unfortunately apostles are a dime a dozen, not to mention bishops in charge of single churches. Mattera mentions churches offering prophecies for money. I’ve seen churches where having prophets pray for people is a good way to fill the offering plate even if there’s no quid pro quo for a “word from the Lord.”

    I find the issue of titles particularly interesting. Mattera speaks of titles that aren’t backed up by training or mentoring. I’m wondering if we have need of most of these titles. In addition, I’ve noticed a tendency amongst some Christians to be very anxious to get degrees, creating an excellent market for diploma mills.

    It’s interesting that the author is then identified by his titles that include both “presiding bishop” and “supervising bishop.” I’m not entirely against any titles. Sometimes we need them just for identification. But it seems odd to use that bio after this article. I don’t mean that as particular criticism of this author. There are plenty of things in my life that do not match the ideals I see in the New Testament. We almost need to throw everything out and start over.

    Come to think of it, is the idea of a “measure of success” even appropriate to Christianity? I think it’s a good question.

     

    In my reading of the Word of God over the past 34 years I have noticed a keen difference between the biblical measure of success and the way many American churches seem to measure success.

    Many of the ways American churches measures success are in fact direct violations of the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 23. In this passage Jesus speaks against people loving titles, celebrity status, and desiring prominent places in public events. Through the centuries theology and church practice have been greatly influenced by the surrounding cultures.

  • Is the American Church in Prison?

    Christians in many countries face imprisonment, but is it possible the American is imprisoned metaphorically by our way of thinking? Eric Carpenter thinks we are, and suggests some things to rethink.

     

  • Connectionalism and Dysfunctional Churches

    I have made a few negative comments about conference dashboards keeping statistics on membership, apportionments, and other activities available to anyone who wants to read. I continue to question whether these numbers really tell the story of the health of the churches. There are, I believe, some very large and growing churches that have little or nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

    Nonetheless, I think we have a problem with accountability in the United Methodist Church. When I took my new member class in my first United Methodist congregation, I recall the teacher, who made a number of historical errors, emphasized connectionalism. But if I were to go by his discussion of it, connectionalism means simply that we all go help one another as needed; nothing was said about accountability.

    Those who are pushing the statistical approach are, I believe, responding to a very real problem. Pastors and church congregations in the United Methodist Church can go on indefinitely violating the discipline of the church or refusing to take necessary actions to make their church successful, while expecting that others will take up the slack.

    That is what happens when a church continually fails to pay its apportionments. Now I’m not 100% a fan of apportionments as they are currently implemented, but they do represent a critical element of connectionalism. We put our money together to accomplish things we can’t do separately. Whatever reforms the system might need, the basic concept is sound, and more importantly if you have such a system, and some churches don’t do their share, all suffer.

    This means that we need accountability as part of our connectional system. Churches need to be accountable to those who support them. In a more congregational system, an older church barely hanging on while slowly dying would have a hard time getting people to send money to help. A United Methodist congregation that refuses to take necessary actions, and continues to fail to support the team will nonetheless benefit from the resources of the denomination.

    We should be willing to give money to support the mission of the church. But supporting a church that is willfully imitating a sinking ship sliding under the waves is not mission—it’s bad stewardship.

    In addition, dysfunctional congregations continue to be part of the witness our denomination gives regarding Christ. Our “brand” can be tarnished by the actions of any of our churches. In the case of a denomination, tarnishing the brand also provides a negative witness—tarnishes the brand, so to speak—of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

    My problem is that statistics can and generally do fail to get the entire picture. You can have good statistics and still not be building the kingdom of God. I welcome moves to make pastors more accountable. I think more could be done to make churches accountable as well.

    But accountability is going to take more than reading the numbers. It will require people with good discernment who can see the context, make the necessary decisions, and take responsibility for those decisions. It may be difficult. We may prefer to find some objective measure, but it is still necessary. An objective measure of a subjective set of values will, by nature, be deceptive.

    In critical ways, the church is not a business. Thus my call is for accountability carried out by human beings who exercise all their discernment and wisdom and seek to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

     

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  • If THIS is the Purpose of Your Church then It IS Obsolete

    Mark Cuban guest starred in the episode.
    Image via Wikipedia

    John Meunier cites comments by Mark Cuban, owner or the Mavericks, who says he doesn’t need the new media because he can reach their readers just as well himself. I would note in passing, though it’s not the topic of this blog, that I think Cuban is optimistic about his ability to reach people directly. I get my sports information via the internet, and I almost never do so through the team’s web site or official channels. But that’s something time will test.

    Meunier’s application to the church is interesting, however, and matches with some things I’ve read recently and also heard in discussions at church, i.e. in the physical building we call church. The general idea is that because people can make connections now via social media, they need the church less. I have no doubt that for certain definitions of “church” and “need” this is true. People who attended church for the purpose of social or business networking no longer need the church as much in that particular way.

    So if your church exists for the purpose of providing social networking, then your church indeed is obsolete, or is rapidly becoming obsolete. Even someone like me, past middle age, can contact my business associates, friends, and family via social media and text. In fact, I do almost all my business networking online. That doesn’t mean I don’t ever want to physically meet people. In fact, I like to meet them whenever possible. But I have had design work done by people I never physically met. I regularly publish authors I have never met. I sell to people I have never met in physical space.

    The problem here is with the definition of church. We use “church” to refer to the building, to the congregation that meets there, to denominations, and to the church universal. Our physical building is diminishing in importance. Not becoming useless (or obsolete), mind you, but diminishing in its role. The local congregation, in the sense of those located in one physical place, is diminishing in importance, as we have it now. But there is no reason in all of this to suggest that the church, as the body of Christ in the world, is diminishing in importance. Unless, of course, we’ve made church equivalent to one of those other things.

    Social media is regularly decried as a means of keeping people apart. But people are using it to get together. People complain about how the easy access to one another via cell phones, on Twitter, on Facebook, and in so many other ways diminishes more personal contact. But for me, and I know for many others, all of those are means of keeping in better touch with people I care about. In addition, they make it possible for me to find out about, and care about, people I might never have met otherwise.

    The building was never the church in the first place, at least in the biblical sense. Yes, we use the word that way, and I’m not complaining about the way language changes. We just need to be aware of which definition of “church” we’re using. Social media means the building is less important, because it gives us other ways of connecting.

    Now if your church, in the sense of local congregation, existed largely as a social network, it’s going to be obsolete as well. It just isn’t as efficient at social networking any more. If that was all your church was, there’s no reason to mourn its passing. But if your congregation was a gather of people filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered to do ministry (see 1 Corinthians 12-14 and don’t skip chapter 13), then three things may happen.

    First, you can expand your congregation and connect it to other congregations  more efficiently. There might be a congregation in some other part of the world that needs to connect to your gifts in order to serve where they are. You can connect with them via social media, and both be more effective.

    Second, you can more efficiently get your congregation aware of, and working together on the things you are called to do. You can arrange rapid responses to disasters. You can discuss the Sunday School lesson on your Facebook wall. You can tweet about the church service if it excites you and thus reach people who couldn’t, or wouldn’t (and probably won’t) enter your building.

    Third, remember all those buildings? As they became less useful as places for the membership to gather, you can convert them for use in other ministries, or if you find no new use for them, sell them, and use the money to accomplish the church’s mission. I personally think church campuses are the most underutilized class of real estate around. What good is that sanctuary to anyone during the week?

    Speaking of which, and only slightly off topic, what is it with all these closed and locked gyms (or family life centers, or whatever you call them)? I’m guessing that if the church was willing to go to work you could have young people using those facilities for fun and learning. Many of them wouldn’t be church members? Their parents aren’t paying tithe to support the building? Good! Learn as a church to give in mission. There’s a risk in having kids off the street in your facility? They might tear it up? Good! It all belongs to Jesus anyhow, and he can handle it.

     

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  • The Wrong Reason for Church Growth – Quote of the Day

    From Allan Bevere:

    And one more thing– as long as the church wants to grow only in order to pay the bills; if we see new people not as persons made in the image of God who need God’s transforming grace as much as the rest of us; if we only see them as instruments by which to meet the general budget, then we will have really lost what it means to be the church in the world.

    This comes from a post titled The Church Has an Edifice Complex. You should read the whole thing.

    I’d link this to the numerous times I’m aware of in which a church has forced some ministry off church property because the people served weren’t those who attended church. These include a Wednesday night program for community youth whose parents weren’t church members and a young adult class whose members weren’t attending the church service.

    Is church attendance desirable? Yes. But if you do ministry only to those who are already doing so, where’s the outreach?

     

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  • Choosing a New Church

    No, I’m not choosing a new church. In fact, I really like my home church, First United Methodist Church in Pensacola. But today I received an e-mail from someone who asked me to share a blog post with my readers. I get few enough such e-mails that I normally at least read them, though I’m not going to link unless I feel there’s something worthwhile.

    In this case, while I think the post makes some interesting points, I have a major problem with the entire approach. The post is 10 Tips for Finding a New Church Home.

    The points are generally valid. I have some objection to the fact that “mission” is #9. But that is only the minor point.

    My major point is that the primary thing we should consider when choosing a church congregation is how we will be able to serve through our membership in that congregation. Now all of the other points in the article may well contribute to our ability to minister. For example, if your church does not have adequate ministries for children, or if you are not challenged and convicted by the sermons, you may find it more difficult to use that congregation as a base for your own ministry.

    Christianity is about serving others. When my wife and I have changed congregations, we generally ask first about the mission of the church. In fact, I have quite a “thing” about church mission statements. Most churches have one. What I’ve found in visiting churches is that if the members in general can tell you what the focus of their church is in ministry, you’ll find you have a vibrant church. If the members in general aren’t sure what they are there for, you’ll find the church is dead.

    So while this list of tips for finding a new congregation includes many things that should characterize a good church, it looks much too much like the way I’d choose a grocery store.

    This leads to point #10: Keep trying until it feels right. I’d suggest instead a prayerful process of selection that ends when you know you will be able to carry out your personal part of the overall mission of the body of Christ as part of that congregation.

  • If You Are Having Trouble Accessing God, Read This

    When I’m teaching church members, I like to emphasize service in one’s choice of a church congregation.  The best congregation for you is the one where you can best fulfill your call to minister to others.  I believe everyone has such a call.  That’s a generalization that often doesn’t answer that many questions, but it often does help.

    Thus I don’t like to talk much in terms of whether a church “fulfills my needs” or “feeds me” or whether I enjoy the worship services, and whether the services are up to standards.  That seems like selling church as a commodity, and whether you’re looking for child care or entertainment, it’s likely that your church isn’t going to compete well according to secular standards in any case.

    That’s not to say that all these things are not important.  The servant who is not fed, clothed, and housed is unlikely to be able to serve well.  That principle applies spiritually as well as physically.  So the search for a church in which I can best carry out my call to ministry may well come back to the question of where I will be fed, all other things being generally equal.

    I must confess that I’ve been having trouble with “church” for some time.  I’ve struggled with everything from attendance to writing the tithe check.  It’s not because I don’t like to get up that early in the morning.  I have normally had hours with the books before I ever get to church.  It’s not the financial scare of writing the tithe check either.  I’ve been in much more difficult financial circumstances.  The temptation is to right the tithe check to some other organization to accomplish some task that I choose, rather than to my local church, which is where I’m convicted it should go.

    It’s that conviction that keeps me going and keeps me doing these things.  But what if one is a church leader who needs to work with the folks who are a bit less convicted?  I belong to a United Methodist congregation, and 50% attendance on a given Sunday is considered very good.  Some churches run more like 30%.  Part of that is a paperwork problem, in that it is very difficult to remove members from the church rolls when they disappear, and people are not that keen on membership paperwork these days.  It’s one way in which the United Methodist Church is perhaps a bit out of touch–a bureaucratic church in an age when people want to escape that style, at least on Sunday morning.

    But that’s not the whole story.  Somewhere in that 50-70% who are missing on Sunday morning there are a lot of people who simply aren’t convicted enough or motivated enough to show up at church.  So my message to church leaders (including myself), is that we do have to be concerned with feeding the people and motivating them.  It’s all well and good to say they ought to attend church services, and they ought to be looking for a place to serve.  When I’m teaching them, I’ll tell them that.  But we as leaders need to help make them welcome.

    Making people welcome, involving phrases like “seeker sensitive” and even “user friendly” have gotten a bad reputation in some circles, and I think that in many ways they should have.  They can easily lend themselves to marketing a service or advertising entertainment, which is always going to be a losing proposition, unless our churches also fulfill spiritual needs, and fulfilling spiritual needs always leads to both the motivation for, and practice of, action and service.

    I discovered a blog through the Christian Carnival this week, Boston Bible Geeks.  They have a post titled The Necessity of the Church for a Persevering Faith, in which they say:

    But God has not left us alone to fight against sin and temptation.  He has given us each other.  He tells us to assemble together, not to meet a requirement or get a star on our Sunday School attendance chart.  He tells us to meet together so we can build each other up and keep each other from sinning.  We are given the responsibility to restore each other when we do sin (Gal 6:1, I deal with that verse here).

    Now you need to go read the entire post to get the context of that, but the point here is that the congregation–not just the pastor or the Sunday School teacher–is charged to encourage one another in their Christian walk, and the major purpose, according to Hebrews, is to keep us from falling into sin, and to help restore us if we do.

    That reminded me of something that has happened each time I signed onto my web hosting account this week.  There’s a message that appears right after I sign on that says, “If you are having trouble accessing your account, read this.”  It has made me laugh each time.  I even went to check whether it can be accessed without logging in.  It can, but it doesn’t appear conveniently on the login page.  The encouragement, you see, comes only after you’re “in.”

    That’s the problem with church, and even with small groups.  What reaches out and encourages our Bible study each week?  I’ve been disturbed by the number of times I’ve taught a series of Sunday School lessons, and entire Sunday School classes will confess that they didn’t read or study anything that I provided on a topic during the week.  That means that they absorb (too often) or even reject what I say without giving it more thought than occurs in a Sunday School hour.

    It’s as though we have a sign on the inside of our church sanctuary and on the inside of our Sunday School classrooms that says, “If you are having trouble accessing God, read this.”  The church needs to create connections that go beyond the church setting, beyond the Sunday morning hour, and provide a “spurring to good works” (Hebrews 10:24) that lasts through the week.

    There are many means of doing this.  My home church’s new ICON service even has a Facebook page and Twitter account, so that they can send out messages.  But these are only part of the means, not the content.  I’m not a good person to go into all the means of reaching people socially.  I do know it needs to be done in order to build a complete Christian life.  Whether the means are high tech or low tech the question is whether the Christian activity of “spurring” continues all week.

    It’s that spurring, that building of a complete Christian life that will make church worthwhile, and if it’s really worth it, people will be there.

  • Two Paradigms for Church

    Many of us have discussed the problem, as we see it, of young people leaving the church when they become adults, and sometimes–too rarely–returning at a later time. Sometimes people have complacently told me, “Oh, they’ll be back when they have children of their own, but it doesn’t always work that way.

    In this video Bill Lizor uses a couple of Bible stories to provide a paradigm for our relationship to life in the world and to church. The reason I’m linking to this here is that it is such an excellent example of working with Bible stories and finding applications in daily lives.

    I think this presentation is excellent, both for its content and its method.

    HT (and a big thanks) to Hit the Back Button to Move Forward.