the church geek

This is the fourth sermon in my six part sermon series on discipleship. I preached this on July 13th. The text was 2 Timothy 1: 1-7; 2: 1-7

I started my sermon by showing this video:

I love that video. The expression on that kid’s face at the end is priceless.

Now, I bet that most of you don’t really come to church thinking that it’s really all about “you” Or at least I hope most of you don’t do that….

But in a very real way, your average run of the mill church is really just a “meChurch.” If you take a good hard look at them, you’ll begin to notice that just about everything these churches do is focused solely on it’s members.

Their programs, worship services, and ministries are all designed to keep their members happy. But, that’s not really the way it’s supposed to be.

The famous preacher, Tony Campollo, tells the story of a visitor who tours a factory. The factory is humming along. There’s a lot of activity and all the workers are very busy. It looks like things are really efficient and the work is getting done.

The visitor is greatly impressed, but once the tour is over, the visitor says to his tour guide, “Hey, wait a minute, you never showed me the shipping department.”

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In the comments to my post “This is not our Hurricane Katrina” Joe, from City Team Ministries, has asked me to provide some sort of assessment as to where Cedar Rapids is in its flood recovery efforts. I’m perhaps not the best person to provide an assessment that is thorough and factually based, but per his request I will provide a few of my personal thoughts and observations:

1.) I find this personally most disturbing: It is quite possible to go day to day without really realizing that anything has happened here. That is to say that most of the city was not affected. If the majority of your life wasn’t based out of downtown, or if you didn’t live in the “Time Check” or “Chezk Village” areas, then you can pretty much get on with your life without facing the reality of what happened.

Still the enormity of it all is huge. According to the city, over 5,000 homes and 1,000 businesses parcels were affected. Most city services have moved to the struggling Westdale Mall (a place that used to be a ghost town, but is no longer….) The Public Library lost the majority of its book collection. Lots of non-profit organizations, including public services to the under-served, lost everything. The list goes on…

2.) Things are moving slowly. People’s lives are being held in the balance as the city tries to figure out what it’s priorities are and the best way to not only rebuild but to limit the chance of a similar scenario happening again. 500 year flood plain homes are getting building permits, while many permits for homes in the 100 year flood plain are being held up.

A walk through a few city streets a week ago revealed rebuilding activity among some home owners and other homeowners who appeared to be dazed and confused. Neighbors didn’t know where the renters or home owners were for houses that appeared to be abandoned. $28,800 (apparently the most that a home-owner can qualify for under FEMA) doesn’t seem like nearly enough to get some of these homes back into shape.

3.) While Cedar Rapids has been getting all sorts of attention, there are tons of little communities scattered up and down the various rivers in Iowa that are struggling to recover. It is my impression that places such as Palo and Oakville are not receiving the same sort of attention and resources that a big city like Cedar Rapids is able to attract.

4.) Lots of congregations were significantly affected, and yet the church city-wide has banded together in order to be the hands and feet of Christ in the city. It began even before the flood with a local group called “Serve the City” that was instrumental in providing the city with volunteers to help in preparation as well as early response efforts.

On the recovery end of things, Churches United has been very involved. And now all the big denominational response organizations are on the ground helping coordinate volunteers and supporting local congregations as they respond to recovery needs.

5.) The tricky thing, I think, and something that I’m slowly coming to terms with is that while people in local congregations have a desire to help out it is just not possible for everyone. Certainly, there is the issue of time, but there is also the reality that the work of gutting a home is physically demanding and not for everyone. Also, as recovery efforts go on, it is mostly going to demand folks who possess construction skills.

As a local pastor or as a local congregation, it takes keeping your eyes and ears open for just the right opportunity to materialize, but in general the reality is that we are simply going to have to rely on groups from outside the area to come here and help us out. And that’s OK, after all, we are all a part of the body of Christ.

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1.) I love some of the stuff that new faith communities are doing…they are bold challenges and proclamations to existing congregations. Internet Monk singles out one new congregation that is committed to giving 60% of their budget to mission!!…If they can do it, why can’t we?

2.) As always Jan raises good observations and questions about the nature of staffing in the established church today. I’d love for her to be a colleague in this presbytery, as we need to hear more of her voice…

3.) Tony Campolo presents what seems like a reasonable, faithful response to the problem of abortion in our country.

4.) How many of the 100 NEA Recommended books of fiction have you read? I’ve read book #6, but I’m not really sure why it’s considered a “work of fiction.”

5.) Today I’ve decided to point to a few of my recent favorite photos from my flickr contacts. I particularly love the lighting in this one and the depth of field in this one.

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I’m beginning to do some preaching in my congregation that really speaks to our moving to a missional focus. Currently, I’m in the midst of a series on discipleship and yesterday spoke about the fact that the church really needs to begin to turn its focus outward. The direction of our faith and Christianity is necessarily toward the world and not toward the church as an organization.

The impetus of my sermon was that as a congregation we can no longer afford to focus on our current 94 members, instead we need to begin to focus on our next 94 members.

To me, that means a lot of things. Some of them entail 1.) no longer giving money and calling it “mission,” 2.) no longer designing worship services and other programs just with our members ‘needs’ in mind, and 3.) inviting friends to join us and having places (small groups) where people can plug in and learn about the faith from our current members.

Two comments following my sermon struck me as indicators that we have a long way to go and that I have a lot of work to do to help us get this missional focus thing down….

Last year we decided to no longer pay for our church to advertise in our local newspaper in the religion section on Saturday morning…Part of the reason? 1.) The only people who look at those ads are our church members. It makes them feel good when they see it, but that’s about the limits of their effectiveness, 2.) We decided to invest our time and money in a website.

In response to my sermon, someone said to me yesterday that we really need to put that ad back in the newspaper. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this…the underlying assumption is that spending a few bucks on advertising is what is going to grow the kingdom and bring people to visit our church. Unfortunately, I think its a way to absolve the members from having to do anything to be a part of helping the church to grow, and that’s not missional thinking…

The second comment I heard was “I don’t have any friends who don’t go to church, so I must be hanging out in the right crowds!?!” The answer is no, and again, that’s not missional thinking. You really need to have some friends in your circles who are not Christian…if this church is going to grow it’s going to be by your listening to others no matter where they are in their faith journey, inviting them to think about the faith, and asking them come join us as we explore this thing together.

I’m realizing this moving to a missional focus is a monumental change. It’s a big change for me as I begin to think about my ministry differently and as I think about what it’s going to require in my preaching and leadership within this congregation. It’s also a big change for this congregation.

But, I’m becoming more and more convinced that if we’re going to have any success together then we all have got to change our focus. That focus needs to be missional, and its direction needs to be outward, toward the world around us.

Please pray for me and for us!

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This the first sermon is a six part sermon series on discipleship questions. The text for this sermon was: Matthew 7: 21-29. I’m a little slow in posting it, this was preached on June 1st.

As you probably know by now, I like to read the comic strips in the Gazette. One that has quickly become my favorite is called Frazz. It follows the story of a fitness freak who is a twenty-something janitor at a local elementary school.

This week one of the young students at the school was searching for a four leaf clover, hoping to find a little luck. Well, on Friday, she finally found her lucky four leaf clover. So, she decided to show it to Mrs. Olsen, her teacher who is a bit of a curmudgeon.

As you might expect, Mrs. Olsen responds to the student’s excitement and enthusiasm over her discovery by dousing water on it. Mrs. Olsen says, “Bah, I don’t believe in luck. I believe in work.”

In the next frame, the young student and Frazz are talking about this incident and the student says to Frazz, “Apparently buying 30 lotto tickets a week is “work.”

I love it. That young student has connected the dots between what her teacher says she believes and what her teacher actually does.

She knows that Mrs. Olsen buys lottery tickets, perhaps in the hopes of being freed from her job. And while Mrs. Olsen says she believes in work, by her behavior the student can see that she really believes or hopes in luck.

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1.) I think this is a pretty good outreach idea: Your church, the wi-fi sharer. This is something I could even see working at my church, if we could find and outfit such a space that would be comfortable enough for folks to want to hang out in.

2.) Jan always asks good questions. Here she asks what if we didn’t keep membership roles.

3.) What excuses have you heard used in your church, especially among the leadership? Carol highlights a few of her least favorite things heard in church. I’m sure this one will generate lots of comments.

4.) If you don’t check in on Smart Pastor regularly, you really should. He always points towards good quotes, interesting links, and tech ideas/resources you need to make your ministry better.

5.) Check out Collective Lens: Photography for Social Change. Tom, who pointed me to this, is the sort of blogger I’m pretty sure I’d be friends with if I met him in person. His photo on collective lens is here.

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Last year in mid-January, I spent about two weeks gathering various committee and financial reports. I then spent a lot of sweat equity working to edit and develop what ended up being a 30 page report for our annual meeting.

We made about 60 copies, and at the conclusion of our congregational meeting we had about 60 copies left to put in our recycling bin. I was frustrated by the amount of work it took to produce a report that in the end was left behind to be recycled.

After that experience, I started to question why do we do this rather pointless activity year in and year out: producing an annual report that few people really seem to care about. There of course is the issue of the stewardship of our resources, but there is also the issue of whether or not the annual report truly reflects the activity and mission of our congregation.

The answer to that second issue was clearly no, as evidenced by this: We have a template that our various committees used to create their reports. As I looked over annual reports from previous years I quickly discovered that most committees submitted the exact same report every year (the names changed, but that was about it.)

Now, I’m not sure what the perfect answer for reform of this practice is, but for starters we have decided to try to do a few things differently this year:

1.) Since we have a mission statement, I suggested that instead of organizing our annual report around our committee activities, maybe we should frame it around our mission statement. So, as a session we are working together to prepare a summary report of activities for the previous year and dreams for the coming year that we hope is reflective of the mission of our congregation.

2.) We are summarizing our various budget/financial reports, so that people will get a broad brush strokes overview of the financial activity of the church. I honestly don’t think folks need to know how much the church spends on office paper or on janitorial supplies, so why report it? Now you do have to be careful that it doesn’t look like you are ‘hiding’ information…so if someone does feel that sort of information is necessary we will have detailed copies of our financial reports available in the church office for those who request it.

I’m hoping that these two things well help us get closer to producing an annual report that both takes the stewardship of our resources seriously and that better reflects the mission and ministry of our congregation.

I’d be curious to know what your church is doing to achieve these or similar goals?

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Last night, my wife and I watched The Mission. It’s been nearly 20 years since the first time I saw this film but it still retains the power it held back then.

For us in the post-colonial era this movie helps bring to light the reality that the church was not monolithic in its intentions. You often hear gross generalizations that the church and colonialism worked hand in hand in exploitation of the colonies. In contrast, this film presents the Jesuit missions as places where the native population was offered protection from the exploitation of colonial power. The Jesuits also provided a sense of voice and dignity that was not found with others who simply saw them as ‘animals.’

Good intentions aside, what was really at issue was this: The Catholic Church was losing its hold on power in Europe as the various nation states were gaining power and flexing their muscles over the church. While the Jesuits had been granted control of mission territories in the South America, the colonizing powers wanted access to the land’s resources. If the church did not give up its claim on these territories, the Jesuits were threatened with expulsion from Portugal and the potential of a chain reaction throughout Europe.

In the end the institutional church chose to sacrifice the mission territories - and inevitably the natives that were under their protection - in order to insure that it preserved its dwindling power and authority in Europe. Maybe it was all inevitable, but the question could be asked does not Christ call us - even the church - to pick up our cross and to follow him? Putting the institution of the church ahead of Christ’s mission is idolatry no matter how you slice it, even if the church may loss its power in society or suffer the threat of expulsion.

The question remains for us today and is one that I think both the emerging conversation and advocates of the ‘missional’ church are working to address and that I hope we can continue to engage for those of us in denominational contexts: In what ways have we put the institution of the Church over the mission of Christ in the world?

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Today I post the Pastor’s Letter I wrote this morning that will go out in tomorrow’s church newsletter for Knox Presbyterian Church. HT to two different sources of inspiration for today’s post go to Makeesha for the brilliant list of questions and to Carol for her insightful post this morning.

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and studying, some of it with fellow pastors, looking at our churches and asking the question, “How do churches today, in our society grow?”

Looking at statistics the “Church” in the US has not grown percentage wise in more than 100 years! Today, churches that think they can just implement a program, or change the way they do worship, or even attract the ‘right’ pastor are simply being pushed to the margins.

So how do churches grow? Do you want to know what I think the best and surprising answer to that question? Churches grow by not being concerned about their own growth.

You see, if a church is only concerned with its own growth, then the church is asking the wrong questions. Instead, the types of questions that churches should be asking are:

• How are you touching lives of others outside the church?

• How are you doing as a church in showing people the tangible love of Jesus?

• How often as a church have you seen Jesus in the poor, marginalized, confused, hurting, sick, and dying?

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Today it is a great honor for us to invite four of our 8th and 9th grade kids to be confirmed. Later on in our service they will affirm the baptismal vows for themselves that their parents and their congregations took on their behalf when they were baptized as infants.

As they come to join us as active members it is an occasion to celebrate. When kids profess their faith and become members of the church it gives us all a sense of pride and joy. Wherever life’s journey may take them, we long and hope for our kids to deepen in their faith and to become active members of the church.

Their coming to be members also gives us a sense of hope for the future of our church. It is our desire for the church we know and love to remain a vibrant place of faith and fellowship for many generations to come.

Whenever we see kids come and join, even if they are not our own kids, those hopes for our children and for our church are renewed and confirmed within us.

It seems that hope and concern for the future of the church is on many of our minds these days. Our denomination is losing not thousands, but tens of thousands of members each year. The PC(USA) is not the only one; if you turn to the Methodists or the Episcopalians or any of the others, you’ll hear the same thing.

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I had a chat with a young couple who recently stopped by the church. In the midst of our conversation, they asked me what time our service was, and I of course responded Sunday at 10:30 AM.

It turns out that this young family moved to our church neighborhood quite a while ago, but their various job situations in the service industry have required them to work on Sunday mornings. This meant for them that they weren’t able to find a Presbyterian Church they could worship in even though we were just around the corner! Thankfully a new job has opened up the opportunity for this couple to possibly visit us on Sunday.

As I look around the neighborhood that our particular church is located in (late 1950’s style homes that have become starter homes for very young couples) I wonder if we are totally unavailable and inaccessible to these and other young folks simply by virtue of the fact that our only worship service happens to be on Sunday morning?

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Jeanette, the owner of this new Habitat for Humanity home, expresses thanks and joy for the work that is being done to rebuild her life. The home will be dedicated a little over a month from now. Thankfulness and gratitude are the words of the day to describe the feeling of being able to help out in just a small way. It has been a wonderful week being able to be a part of the recovery work here in New Orleans. More photos from our day our here.

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This empty lot and the house across the street are in the Lakeview neighborhood close to one of the many levee breaches. We took a tour today to get an overview of the destruction in this city: 80% of which was flooded in the aftermath of Katrina.

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Today’s work was a lot harder both physically and emotionally. We were working in a lower to middle class African American community (the upper ninth ward). This home belonged to a family with a couple of young kids, so the debris we pulled out was what you might expect to find in any kids home.

I’m not sure if this photo is of an actually wedding dress or not, but it certainly was a dress for a formal occasion. It is hard finding such things in the midst of the debris, and still it is a rewarding experience to know that we are playing just a small part in helping people get their lives back together.

I am however awestruck at the fact that we are doing this type of work a full year and half after the storm and there is lots more yet to be done. Don’t forget to click here to find more photos from today. I’ll provide captions for them soon.

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It’s been a long day here in New Orleans. We spent about six hours today totally gutting an unbelievably soggy house, in what I’m sure was a pretty harsh neighborhood to live in in the first place (pre-Katrina). Our work today was a small drop of water in a huge ocean of need. Tomorrow we will move on to work on another home.

The story of the day comes from a trip to Walgreens to get Lori some drops for her eye (she spent a few hours today at Touro Hospital having her eye checked…she is fine, but somehow overnight sustained a corneal abrasion that will need some time to heal.) Standing in the check out line, the clerk asked us how we were doing. We said “Fine, how are you?” Responding she just shook her head with a look of resignation and sadly said, “Tired of being stressed out. I’m just stressed out all the time and I’m tired of it.”

It is hard to grasp what life must be like here day in and day out. Driving around we see stark contrasts. We are staying close to Tulane University, an area of town that was relatively unscathed and that is brimming with life, young people, and a lot of activity. But that is clearly not the way it is in the rest of this town. Huge pockets of town are totally uninhabited. Buildings are gone with just a pile of rubble to mark where they once stood (like a Wendy’s I often went to). Lots and lots of businesses are boarded up.

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