A few weeks ago, Georgia, my wife and I went to downtown Berlin to do some shopping. We had seven different stops to make. As we were leaving the house I told my wife that I wanted to “add value” to the employees of the places where we were going to shop. I prepared myself inside, prayed shortly, opened up my heart and approached the people accordingly. I asked how people were doing, complemented them, asked them some deeper questions and just added value to them. It was amazing how people reacted! They sucked in everything I had to say and received every bit of encouragement I brought.

As I was pondering what had happened that afternoon I realized that the Lord daily encourages us in the same way. He not only gave us his life, he gave us everything that comes with it. We are his children and he cares for us beyond our ability to comprehend! We are heirs of the kingdom with everything that includes to help us through life. He certainly is adding value to us.

Since that day I decided to always leave the house with that little prayer: “Lord, allow me to add value to the people I meet today.” How about adding value to the people in your city you are reaching out to this coming year? You will be surprised to see their response. People are hungry for even a bit of encouragement.

African gazelles can jump over a ten foot fence, but they can be contained at a zoo behind a six foot wall.  You see, they won’t jump if they can’t see where they are going to land.  It makes sense.  What if there was a hungry lion on the other side of the wall.  Most of the people who have come to our churches over the years have never been to a new church before.  They have to jump over our wall.  They don’t fear a lion, they just don’t know what to expect.

The cross is a stumbling block; as is the exclusivity of Christianity.  So perhaps it would be advisable to guard the information you provide.  A first time visitor can be overwhelmed by the difference between whatever spiritual experience they had as a child (if any) and the shock treatment they get when they walk into a new, post modern American church.  I was raised in a Catholic church in the north east. My first experience in a non-Catholic environment was real culture shock.  I had never seen the inside of a Bible.  The music was well done but foreign to my ear.  Everything was a huge adjustment.

How you get folks over the wall into your church will vary.  (We do that – www.tellstart.com )  What you say when they land is another matter.  I happen to be a prelapsarian, double election, five point Calvinist.  Do people who jump my wall need to know about my Reformed theology?  Most of us know of and complain about ministries that have watered down the Gospel – giving too little information.  It’s probably fair to say that some of us give out too much.  Pet doctrines and traditions are often the lion on the blind side of the wall.

Without vision the people perish.  Folks who take the risk to jump need to be given a vision of what’s ahead.  Fear of the unknown is often worse than fear of what you can see.  We tend to do a pretty good job of this when we first launch.  However, as the months roll by new people will come in among us.  They will have just jumped the wall and need some picture of what they have gotten themselves into.  So, as part of your regular routine consider including a vision/picture of who you are/what you stand for/ what people can expect in the future.  If will inform the new folks and refresh the vision of your regulars.  Without vision the people perish – so does a new church.

Every year a number of our family and friends send a Christmas card with a family summary. I really love getting those, especially from folks I don’t have much contact with during the year. The kids are always amazingly taller, our friends’ hair is thinner or grayer, and it’s fun to see who traveled to where. Sometimes there’s more somber news of lost family members, tragedies or disappointments. Not as fun to read, but part of a real family’s authentic life.

Most of us in church planting understand the value of telling the stories of our new churches to the churches and individuals that make our planting possible. These vital partners in ministry have prayed for us, sent generous contributions, in some cases they’ve traveled to our new church and worked our nursery or helped with our outreaches. They’re vital to our ability to do what we’ve been called to do.

So at the end of the year, and at the end of every month, keep in mind the value of communicating with your support team. There are some practical considerations that might help.

• Keep it concise. Regularly communicating a short story, with efficient words is more effective than long, drawn-out narratives full of catharsis! People care about you, but they’re busy. You may need to write it all out, but don’t send it all out.
• Remind your partners of the mission as you share the story. You’re not planting a church just to have something to do! The story you share should highlight the transformed lives that have encountered Jesus and his body, the Church.
• Include a picture if possible. Technology makes it lots easier to include a really good picture with an email or print piece. Make it a tight shot that has some inspirational potential. A baptism, kids laughing, hugs of happiness or sorrow, families together—this is the stuff that gets us out of bed in the morning and causes generosity to grow in our hearts.
• Always communicate gratitude. The purest motivation for your prayer partners, donors, and scaffolding workers is to make Jesus smile—but they also appreciate knowing they are helping you in ways that you acknowledge.
• Keep the needs of your new church or ministry in front of the whole team. Not every communication is an appropriate place for a call to action (ask), but if there are needs, ask your team to pray and keep them informed. If they don’t know, they can’t pray well or respond to God’s lead to help. If you overdo it, they’ll stop reading your notes, but if you don’t carefully keep the need in their scope of awareness, you’re leaving resources on the table that will help you accomplish your mission.

So Merry Christmas! We appreciate your partnership in the Gospel and we want you to share our joy. Guess what we’ve been up to this year…

Un-met Expectations can KILL! You know the feeling… You were expecting with all of your heart for “this”, instead you got “That!” We all have expectations, we have them in marriage, kids, team mates, weather, restaurants and friends..etc…

The problem is when our expectations are not met, then we get mad, hurt, disappointed or worse… Disengage or become bitter. I have experiences in all of those and quite frankly, I want all of my expectations to be met! But then, that is an unfair expectation!

That’s the thing about expectations, there are rules…

• Expectations must be communicated to be validated. If they don’t know…They don’t know.

• Expectations must be accepted to be effected. You can’t force expectations the other party refuses to fill.

• Expectations must be loving to be lasting. You can’t put legalistic, selfish or cruel expectations on someone, it just won’t last!

Ask yourself a question. Why am I disappointed, hurt or bitter at _________ ? Fill in the blank with the name. Then ask yourself if the reason for your pain is an unmet expectation. If so, make sure that you expectation had met all the rules above. If not, go and ask forgiveness for being mad!

This has been a huge help to me as a leader of others, lover to my wife, father to my kids and friend to many. Hope it helps you get through one of those painful places today!

Image by bjornmeansbear.

Over the years we’ve launched just under 70 churches from our own.

Those congregations have planted others and the number of churches that we know of exceeds 700.

They often don’t use our name or join our parent denomination. Right or wrong, we have intentionally tried to build the Kingdom of Heaven rather than shoot for institutional forms of church.

But while we care little about labels, or even governing. We do care about the values we pass along to out church planters.

Our disciplemaking efforts involve personal mentoring, much on-the-job training and learning by osmosis. Because of this, our budding young preachers sort of “organically” learn to teach exegetically. They just naturally generate sermons from the context of scripture.

However, over the years we’ve noticed a problem. Because our people are not exposed to eisegesis, or topical preaching, they can become enamored by it when they encounter it at a seminar or by some other means.

A new style is viewed as new revelation and we see people drifting off from the church culture that birthed them. This is a cause for frustration.

We’ve lost a few people to extreme topical teaching, or to an over-emphasis on doctrine.  Some have even gone to writing sermons from “motivational books” and then looking for scripture to support their statements—dangerous turf indeed.

The other day one of our better preachers spent two hours with a group of young staff members and explained the difference between exegesis and eisegesis.

The concepts took in their minds and they each expressed a renewed desire to let the scripture speak for itself. We are on the right road.

What we learned as mentors is that relational disciplemaking also needs structure and even curriculum beyond the books we read together. A small lesson, but significant if we intend to build the Kingdom together…

Most of us, when we go on a trip, do a bit of thinking beforehand about what it will be like when we get there. We don’t just show up in Rome and then think, “Hmmm what is there to do here?”  Aside from the rare nomad who considers that kind of travel fun, most of us would, say, buy a guidebook beforehand—or at least look around online. There we could find a picture of the coliseum. We’d look at it, imagining what it would be like to be there in person. We might visualize ourselves alongside a significant other, with the monument lit up at night. We might picture ourselves there on a sunny day with our kids getting an educational tour of the site. We might visualize ourselves backpacking and seeing the city on foot and staying in hostels. Whatever it is we’re visualizing, we’ll call our picture postcard—it’s our ideal version of the future journey.

We can’t know everything it will take to get there along the way—the delayed flight, the crowds of tourists, the rain on the day we arrive, the kind local who helps us when we get lost. But the point is that we have some expectations. Those expectations may be close to how the trip actually pans out or they may be wildly wide of the mark. But how we envision our trip determines how we prepare for it—everything from who we travel with to what type of clothes we pack to what sites we decide to see.

Church planting is similar. You, as the planter or planting team, need to imagine where you’re going—what type of church you want to start—even though you know you can’t possibly get all of the details right in advance. But you still need to spend some time imagining your vision—praying over it, looking for it, refining it, articulating it. The type of church you want to start determines the kinds of choices you’ll make to get there… even though no church ever ends up looking precisely like it did in your imagination.

To help you think through your vision for your church, your neighborhood, and the people you’ll reach, check out a recent series on my blog:

I have a dream too

A dream for the churches

A dream for the neighborhoods

A dream for the broken

Getting there from here

I met an interesting congregation on one of my recent teaching trips. They call themselves “The Oregon Community.”

They are a fairly recent church plant with an intense focus on meeting the needs of their local community. Outgrowing a rented facility gave a whole new opportunity for the church to link itself to the community.

Because their ideas were so far outside the box, no denominational monies could fund a move. This simply drove them to color further outside the lines.

Several people in the church ponied up the money to purchase an older two-story building in this regenerating part of Portland, Oregon. With a clean slate and a new building the leadership asked the surrounding community what a church could do for them. The answers were surprising…

The upstairs part of the facility is now called “The Village Ballroom.” The church uses it on Sundays and it is rentable by the community the rest of the week (When we finished our seminar, a local Buddhist group began setting up for a party). It is available as “A community gathering space for performance, dance, special events, conferences, classes and workshops.”

But others have created community centers before. This church also runs a non-profit daycare center and a non-profit pub. Yes, a pub. And they do serve alcoholic beverages.

I was told that the three “unusual elements” surrounding the use of the facility all arose from a neighborhood block party the congregation threw to introduce themselves to the community. They simply asked, “What can a church do to make a better neighborhood? The responses were new, unique and effective.

Another factor working in this equation is Portland itself. The city is focusing on neighborhood development in new ways. They’ve divided the area into 43 “boroughs” in order to de-emphasize a “big city” feeling. In light of this, smaller, neighborhood oriented churches look like the wave of the future.

It’s obviously a work in progress. But, one worth watching. For more, click on http://www.theoregoncommunity.com and http://www.villageballroom.com.

In the early 1900s one of my Dad’s relatives was the governor of Utah, so our family has deep roots in the Mormon Church.  Sunday, I asked our congregation if they knew what a cult was.  Only a few raised their hands.  As you know, recently an evangelical pastor publicly proclaimed that Mormons were not Christians and that the LDS (Later Day Saints) is a cult.

Well, when you throw a stick into a chicken coop – the chicken that cackles the loudest is the one that got hit by the stick. (Yes – feel free to repeat that) We all saw the generally anti-Christian media throw a fit. When asked, Governor Perry of TX and (former) Sen. Rick Santorum of PA said that they didn’t think Mormonism is a cult.  Ignorance, cowardice, or pandering?  When Romney ran against Ted Kennedy in 1994 for his Senate seat the same issue was raised by the Left and the media gave Kennedy a pass.

As you no doubt know, Joseph Smith – the founder of the LDS, claimed that an angel appeared to him and gave him the information that later became the book of Mormon.  Paul addresses this in Galatians 1:8.  ”But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed.”

Every President since Washington has claimed to be a Christian. It’s probably clear to most of us who know what a real Christian is that many – if not most – of the Commanders in Chief were cultural Christians, not born again, blood-washed children of God.

Perhaps it is true that politicians who are now affirming that Mormonism is truly Christian are simply ignorant of the LDS facts.  If you are a pastor or Christian worker you do not have the option of not knowing.  The best synopsis I have read is from the late Walter Martin in his bestselling book, Kingdom of the Cults.  For a shorter but very helpful understanding of Smith and the origins of the LDS, Wikipedia does a pretty good job. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith,_Jr.  Now, our main job is not to educate our people as to the intricacies of all the cults.  However this issue is front and center today and a cult member is running for President.

As church planters we are going to be quickly “branded” in our community as to who/what we are.  So, what to say then?  My suggestion: speak of things like this only after a relationship with the listener has been established and you have earned the right to be heard privately.  NEVER put controversial opinions in writing.  And remember, most energy you spend not propelling your new church to critical mass is energy wasted.  Passion is a precious but limited commodity.  Save yours for your new church.  I planted my first church when Jimmy Carter was running for President.  Today most people under forty don’t know anything about Carter, but that church is still packed to the walls every Sunday and is still changing lives in that community.  So, while being vigilant of the battle that rages in the heavenlies, let’s keep our eyes on the prize!

There are two great tasks for the Church in North America today. First, we must do everything we already know how to do to reach people we already know how to reach, multiply disciples, and start authentic communities of faith. The second great task for the Church is to address the present future by prayerfully submitting to the challenge of figuring out how to reach people who are seemingly more and more resistant to the gospel as it has been individually and corporately expressed in the West for many generations.*  This second task is more difficult than it needs to be for two primary reason.

First, we are motivated by a culture of success. We recruit, fund, celebrate, advocate, propagate and evaluate based on predictable, measureable success rates. This is not all bad; after all, who wants to spend time and money on something that fails? However, this mindset also keeps church planters and their partners from engaging truly new expressions of church. Instead, we simply tweak things like worship or preaching style, signage, or room configuration. What if we carved out time and resources to truly innovate? Health care, businesses, and nonprofits all have R&D branches that are deployed to solve problems and speculate about the future. God has enough resources at His disposal to allow for Spirit infused innovation.

The second reason that that the task of engaging the future is more difficult than necessary is that in our confusion, too often we blame one another. It clearly isn’t God’s fault that church membership has been declining all over North America, so the fault, dear Christians, is in ourselves that we are spiritual weaklings. We don’t care enough, obey enough, pray enough, and we have abandoned spiritual disciplines and practices, right? But are we certain that we are less enthusiastic disciples than previous generations? Is it true that we do not worship as wholly, that our families are more dysfunctional, or our leaders less godly- or has something fundamentally shifted that makes our work more challenging than it was when the formulas used to work?

Predictable protocols and processes that work every time are called algorithms. Algorithms work when problems are already solved. For generations, Christians have employed consistent methodologies within given cultural contexts. These have worked well for starting, growing and leading churches. Some have worked so well that we are tempted to rely more upon our own capacity to employ the algorithms than on the activity of God. Perhaps there is salvation in the not-knowing because greater faith is required. Maybe being forced to contemplate and trust that His kingdom will come is impetus enough.  Will some of the body of Christ, including many from our church planting tribe, consider the call of the wild, move out of the algorithm and embrace the mystery?

* For more information on this topic see: Linda Bergquist and Allan Karr.  Church Turned Inside Out: A Guide for Designers, Refiners, and Re-Aligners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010, p3

The art of writing a sermon fascinates me. How does a speaker move from a good idea to a great message? Others much more qualified than me have written on this subject (e.g. Andy Stanley’s Communicating for a Change), but I wanted to throw out a couple of thoughts.

Most of us have experienced the five stages of writing a sermon:

Denial: I don’t have to study for this message. I’m just going to read the text and let ‘er rip. Driscoll doesn’t need notes, neither do I.

Anger: If I have to study I’m going to make it count. I’m cleaning house this weekend; kicking butt and taking names. Deacon Jones better be there, it’s time for some wrath of God upside his head.

Bargaining: I’ve read the text 500 times, every commentator who’s ever written and listened to everything Piper, Chandler and Warren ever preached and I’ve got nothing. God, please help me write this message. I need something, anything. I promise to be nice. I’ll even stop praying for Deacon Jones to meet an untimely demise; just give me a nugget to preach on.

Depression: I can’t write. I can’t preach. I don’t even think I’m a Christian. This will be the weekend when everyone realizes I’m a fraud. I wonder if I could get a job selling insurance?

Acceptance: Well, it’s done. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. It might even be pretty good. If God shows up and I can remember how to speak English on Sunday lives could be changed. Thank you God for another shot at it.

Now we have a message. We are so relieved to have something for the weekend that we want to put away the manuscript until Sunday. But I think this is where we have a chance to take a good message and possibly make it great. I think the key to improving any kind of writing at this point is to look for what can be cut.

Where is the fluff that might get in the way of the message? I usually look for three types of material:

Interesting but irrelevant

These are the great jokes, fascinating statistics and amusing personal stories that don’t really go anywhere. I have shoehorned them in because they make me smile or they intrigue me, but in the end they’ve got to go. Hopefully I can file them away and use them in another message, but this weekend they wind up on the cutting room floor.

Relevant but not interesting

This is the long excerpt from the article by Keller that really nails down the concept of rational faith, the statistics from Barna that detail the American exodus from church, or the passage from Jeremiah detailing God’s condemnation of Edom.  While these speak directly to the point I  am trying to make, if the audience checks out while I am reading to them it doesn’t matter. A message not heard is a message not delivered. How can I paraphrase, condense, illustrate? Most people are over being read to by about the 4th grade.

Deep but not wide

Writing a great message requires a massive amount of background work. I have studied every relevant passage of scripture I can find; I have researched historical, contextual and critical analysis on the subject; I have Googled it, Wikapediaed it and Sermon Centraled it. I now have deep knowledge on this very narrow subject, and almost all of that knowledge should stay in the background. It is like applying a coat of primer when I paint; it is absolutely vital and always invisible. A full day’s research on 1st century Rabbis may be condensed into the phrase “which was a common practice among Rabbis of Jesus’ day.” The same is true of most of the scripture I have read in preparation. People can only comprehend so much in a 30-40 minute sermon and the more scripture I throw at them the more diluted my message becomes.

In preaching hundreds of sermons and listening to thousands of others I think it is this final 10% of cutting that makes the difference between, “Good sermon, Pastor” and “That message rocked my world”.