Tag Archives: church

Some Blog Thoughts

16 Mar

Los is back with a great post here.

of particular note is #4.

I wonder if modern day Christian leaders are more concerned about becoming famous than becoming Jesus?

And here’s a quote from Will Wilimon

“The gospel is not simply about meeting people’s needs. The gospel is also a critique of our needs, an attempt to give us needs worth having. The Bible appears to have little interest in so many of the needs and desires that consume present-day North Americans. Therefore, pastoral care will be about much more than meeting people’s needs. It will also be about indoctrination, inculturation, which is also- from the peculiar viewpoint of the gospel- care. Our care must form people into the sort of people who have had their needs rearranged in the light of Christ.“

thanks Bob.

And from Ben Arment

Next time we complain about our audience not bringing their Bibles or not laughing at our jokes or not taking us seriously or listening intently, we have to remember… we raised them that way.

Just some thoughts from the blogosphere.

“Just Be Blessin’”

3 Mar

Great Post from Ben Arment.  On the blessing of God on churches.

I think part of the problem is our understanding of what God’s blessing is really all about.  Just my $.02

U2 and organizational greatness

3 Mar

U2 released No Line On The Horizon, which is growing on me.  It’s quite a departure from How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, which I loved.  I was reading an interview with the band on CNN.com, and I was struck by the last statement from drummer Larry Mullen, Jr.:

We were always labeled “big” — you know, “U2′s a big band.” And you want to be a great band, and I think that’s one of the reasons we stick at it. There’s still work to be done.

Wow.  Some people might read this and think pretension.  I thought just the opposite.  For a guy who has spent most of his life in the biggest band in the world, he realized that big and great are not the same thing.  You can be big and suck as a musician (I could name some examples, but that would be mean).  Or you can strive to be great and your audience will find you.

Organizationally the desire to be big is a killer, for churches, business start-ups, whatever.  If your desire is to be big you are simply a balloon, Balloon’s pop when they get to big.  If your desire is to great, then you start with substance instead of air.

For the church, it is so easy to just want to grow, but I’ve been in enough big churches that were just that, big, they weren’t great.  And I’ve been in some small churches that were really great.  The small church knows that there is work to do.  Sometimes it’s harder see where you can grow when your desire is just to be big.

To stretch the metaphor a little more, look at the human body.  It’s easy to get big, just consume, consume, consume, and don’t strain yourself.  You’ll get big.  It’s a lot harder to get strong.  You have to consume, and exercise, and you have to monitor your body, and make sure that you are on track.  You set goals, and you work towards them.  You can be big and strong, or you can be big and flabby.

If your goal is big, that’s easy.  If your goal is strong (great) you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you.  And it’s totally worth it.

The Bible still challenges me, and it should.

5 Feb

If I’m being totally honest, when I read the Bible I get really messed up with what I think, today I was reading in Matthew 23 and Jesus said this:

2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, 3so practice and observe whatever they tell you— but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, 6and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues 7and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. 11 The greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Jesus was telling the disciples a lot about leadership in this passage.  First of all he was instructing them to honor the pharisees, which is contrary to the what I feel about pharisees.  But Jesus tells his followers to listen to them because they are in a position of honor.  And what they tell us to do, we should do out of honor.  But we should not be like them.  We’ve all followed leaders who we didn’t want to be like, but we should not just follow begrudgingly, we should honor the position they hold.  I heard Steven Furtick talk about honor on the Catalyst Podcast a few months ago and it blew me away.

Jesus says to honor them by obeying them but don’t strive to be like them, because they don’t practice what they preach.  My prayer is that as a leader I will always be able to say I practiced what I preached.  I’m not perfect, but I’m press on to be more and more like Jesus.  I don’t want it to be said of me that I asked people to do things that I’m not willing to do myself.  There is not job too small for me, just like there is no job that is too big for me.  If I ask people to read the bible everyday, then I better be willing to read the Bible everyday too.

Verse 8 is where things get tricky for me.  As a pastor am I missing the point of this verse, “But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.” I’m a teacher, a pastor, a modern day rabbi, that’s part of my job.  I think this passage is why I don’t really like to be called “Pastor Jason.”  Because I know how human I am, and I really want to be normal like everyone else.  When people want the job of Pastor for the title, that makes me nervous for them and the people they lead.

I do believe that God calls certain people to a life of service in the local church.  The job title that we have given to those people is pastor, so I can totally get behind calling people pastor.  But maybe Jesus is saying that when we listen to our Pastors more than we listen to Jesus, our true instructor, then we are in effect practicing idolatry.

Ministry should never be about putting on a show so that you can be honored in public.  Should ministry really be about living a life in private that honors God and helping others to live that same kind of life.  The pastors job is to help people to learn to hear from God.  That’s spiritual growth, when our people are coming to church not to encounter the communicators on the stage, but to encounter the presence of God in their heart.  If our church is a place where people learn to meet with Jesus and learn how to carry out their life with the Holy Spirit every day of the week, I believe that church can’t help but grow.

Jesus didn’t really present a church growth model, neither did Paul, or Peter, or James, or any of the Gospel writers.  What they seem to be presenting is a model of living every day with Jesus, getting out instruction directly from him.  And we do this through Bible reading, through prayer, through community with other believers.  It is good to have a plan for the growth that God will bring to your church, but if people are not connecting with Jesus for themselves then that growth will burn up in the sun.  Good disciples make disciples.

Just thinking digitally.

after I wrote this post, i read this.  good thoughts.

Hope

20 Jan

Seth Godin has another great post today on hope. Read it.

Today with the inauguration we witnessed millions of people who were willing to by hope, from a politician no less.  I believe Barak Obama has what it takes to lead our country out of the many messes that we are in right now.  I believe John McCain could have done it as well (just being honest).  But both of these guys are still just dudes.  There is nothing about them that is more or less special than any of us.  We are all sinful and broken and left to ourselves we are completely hopeless.

The sad thing is that the church, should be able to market hope better than Barak Obama’s campaign did.  We have the message of Jesus Christ, which is the hope for all of us, to be saved from our own sins and our own destruction.  We have hope to spare.  The Gospel is hope and we are known for doing a very poor job of communicating that hope.

The perception of the church to the world is that we are a rigid bunch of people who follow rules.  The Gospel of Hope is not adequately presented in that perception.  So what can we do to change the perceptions?  It has to be more that words, it has to be more than good sermons.  We have to show our hope.  We have to live out our hope every day.  We have to talk about the hope that we have.  We have to connect our hope to our everyday lives.

I’m praying that President Obama will be a great president, but I can’t put my hope in him.  Because he will let me down. Jesus will never let us down.  My prayer is that we would look beyond President Obama and look to Jesus, and that we would put our hope in him.

Psalm 25 is a great reminder of where our hope should be directed.

Church is Boring

15 Jan

What?!?!

As one who as been trained to be a religious professional I probably shouldn’t creates posts about how the organization by which I am employed is boring.  That’s a pretty big no-no.  So what am I talking about?

I read this post by Seth Godin. And it got me thinking . . .

here are some highlights:

If people aren’t discussing . . .  your movement there’s a reason.

The reason is that you’re boring.

You don’t get unboring for free. Remarkable costs time and money and effort, but most of all, remarkable costs a willingness to be wrong.

Remarkable is a choice.

Church is boring because people are not talking about it.  People are not talking about what’s happening there, people are not talking about the lives that are being changed, the good that the community is bringing to the neighborhood, the strength of the community, the times of worship.

The last thing a church wants to be is boring, because boring is forgotten on the way home.  There are several qualifiers though.  Anti-boring does not mean flashy; you don’t have to have the best show in town.  Anti-boring does not mean controversial; you don’t need to do a 3 month series on sex in the Bible.  Anti-Boring does not mean pure entertainment; the band doesn’t have to be the best, your preacher doesn’t have to be the funniest, most compelling or best looking pastor in the world.

When it comes to the church, all of those things are neat.  And some churches may be able to grow because of controversy, or production, or just plain good looks.  But a church that’s remarkable gets remarkable for what happens the other 6 days of the week.

Our church is striving to be remarkable.  We want people to talk about what happens on sunday, we want them to remark on what happens in their community group.  We want Creekside to be a community that people just can’t shut up about, because ultimately, when we talk about what’s happening at Creekside, we are talking about what Jesus is up to, and that’s pretty stinkin’ remarkable.

Good point Tony

17 Nov

Every pastor needs to read this article from Tony Morgan.

Hmmm . . . is there truth here?

9 Nov

What if starbucks Marketed like the church?

Calling all bloggers

18 Oct

I was struck today in class by a statement that I put on my twitted and then was challenged by Josh H to blog it.

I’d love to hear how other bloggers would respond to this statement so please write a post in response to this question:

“Do we want church services or gatherings that train us for service?”

Discuss. I will create my own post later this week. If you write a post leave a comment below with a link back to your blog.

(update: Some explanation in the comments)

Reading YEAH!!! Writing about Reading BOOO!!!

5 Sep

I am totally digging my pre-session reading for the two courses that I am taking this fall.  One is the meaning of Christian Community (it’s about the church) and the other is Theology and Contemporary Media (culture).  These are two of my favorite subjects to talk about, read about, think about.  But I’ve been procrastinating on my writing assignments.  The reading is great, the application is hard.  

Sounds like life, huh?

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