Wednesday, May 9, 2012

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Should Christian Women Skip Church To Walk The Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure?

I don’t doubt for a second that emotions run high at the Susan G. Komen 3 Day Race For The Cure.

I don’t doubt for a second that this is a way for breast cancer survivors to celebrate the camaraderie they’ve found in each through life’s darkest moments.

And, of course, I don’t doubt for a second that the race raises millions for breast cancer research and awareness.

All of these are profoundly important things.

I’m just wondering if Christian women, nationwide, skipping church on Mother’s Day, to participate in a fundraiser, is the best way to support breast cancer survivors/research and live out their faith. Are there other options?

What do you think?

(NOTE-I have disabled comments for this post. Comments were starting to take a negative turn, attacking SGK for their financial support of abortions through Planned Parenthood. While I am pro-life, indirectly attacking Planned Parenthood was not the intent of my post in the least. I was simply raising the question that if 50% of the Race for the Cure participants are Christian, can’t there be a collective call to avoid racing/walking on Mother’s Day. That’s it. No legalistic insinuations that Christians who miss church occasionally, for whatever reason, are bad Christians. Just raising a legitimate question).

Please leave a comment and make sure to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter!

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Why I Never Read Anonymous Letters, Comments, Emails, Or Notes In The Offering

in Rethinking Church

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

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Why I Never Read Anonymous Letters, Comments, Emails, or Notes In The Offering

I have a simple rule: whenever I receive anonymous letters, notes, emails, or blog comments they go straight into the trash.

I never read a single word. Ever.

Why?

  1. People who write anonymous letters want to avoid the hard work of discipleship. Matthew 18 makes it quite clear that Jesus’ followers are to take conflict resolution seriously, and very specific steps are given on how to resolve it – all face to face.
  2. I make mistakes, lots of them to be exact. And I can’t grow and learn from them if those who want to point out my mistakes aren’t credible sources.

I get 4-5 such items a month (usually letters, emails or notes in the offering bowl), some of them quite cruel in nature. In talking to my friends who are pastors (and bloggers) it appears I’m not alone.

What that means is there are at least 4-5 people out there every month who…

  1. Rob me of the opportunity to learn and grow.
  2. Rob themselves of the opportunity to get all the facts.
  3. Have wasted a lot of time writing something that no-one will ever read.

Actually, #3 isn’t entirely true.

Because of an episode a few years ago with some really bizarre anonymous letters, we took the advice of law enforcement and no longer throw these letters/notes away.

They are handed over to my Executive Pastor and are sealed and placed in a file.

Every. Single. One.

I would encourage you as a leader to do the same.

When needed we’ll take those letters and turn them over to FBI/law enforcement friends of ours who will draw DNA/fingerprints from them and formally log them as documents of interest in potential harassment cases.

99% of the time they amount to nothing.

But that 1% turns out to be the linchpin in nailing someone.

Trust me. :)

How do you handle anonymous letters/emails/blog comments?

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in Biblical Issues, Rethinking Church

Friday, April 27, 2012

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Team Building Retreat 2012

Because of the generosity of someone who donated a shore home, two weeks ago our CCV staff took a 1.5 day retreat to Sea Isle, NJ.

People always tell me what a cool staff we have.

While I’m pretty sure they’re referring to me, personally, as the staff leader, with my natural Brad Pitt good looks and suave effervescent personality, there’s the off chance that what they’re actually referring to is the fact that we seem to really have a good time together.

That last part, at least, is true.

In fact, I think one of the best compliments our staff has received in a long time came from one of my daughters. Over dinner she casually said, “I think the best part of working at CCV would be hanging out with the staff. I’d love to work there. They’re so chill.”

To have a staff kid get a front row seat to all the inner workings of a church staff and walk away with such a positive feeling speaks volumes to me.

The fact is we do have a chill staff, whatever that means exactly.

And it’s not by accident.

We’re fanatical about team building. And not just at team retreats. Work around here very long and you’ll start drinking the Kool-Aid and end up repeating our staff values in your sleep:

  • “No unresolved conflict. EVER.”
  • “Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No.’”
  • “Maintain appropriate boundaries with the opposite sex at all times.”
  • “Speak the truth in love.”
  • “Pray for one another.”
  • “Ministry is a marathon, not a sprint. Take care of yourself and your family.”
  • “Have fun together.”

I’d like to thank the donor who gave the use of his beach home for our staff time together, but I’d also like to thank our CCV team for their tireless hard work and creativity.

Serving alongside you as we serve the people here at CCV has been one of my life’s greatest joys.

Please leave a comment and make sure to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks!

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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

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Why I’m not joining the “missional” church fad

Yesterday I received an email from a ministry friend who asked:

Brian,

So what do you think about Greg Nettle’s Christian Standard article The Missional Model: ‘Go and Make Disciples’ and his thoughts on 70/30 vs. 30/70? I remember in our conversations you telling me to pour the majority of our resources into our Sunday morning gatherings. Do you still find that to be effective?

Can an attractional church still create depth in disciples?

Chadwick

Since Greg Nettle is a trusted ministry friend whom I hold in the absolute highest regard, and since we have the exact same heartbeat for the lost and hurting (our churches are doing a lot of the same things), I thought I would share my answer to my friend Chadwick’s email here on my blog.

I felt that younger pastors might find my thoughts on the “missional” movement and church fads a counterpoint to 95% of the current trends in ministry thought. Here goes…

Chadwick,

There are two issues that are greatly distracting pastors right now:

  1. The resurgence of Calvinism
  2. The giddy embrace of the “missional church” fad

At CCV we just want to be the church, period. We are definitely attractional. But we are definitely missional. Not because we have “bought into a new paradigm of doing ministry,” but because that’s what the church does (in addition to dozens and dozens of others things).

In a few weeks our entire church will sweep across the Philadelphia metro area for seven days and serve alongside over 50 community organizations to help bring hope and healing to our region. And trust me, it has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to be a “missional” church. Continue Reading…

in Living It Out, Rethinking Church

Monday, April 23, 2012

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The Painful Cost Of Unity

Unity within a church is the indispensable key to accomplishing the Great Commission.

Show me a church with tremendous talent, resources and potential, but no unity, and I’ll show you a church that is already dead in its tracks.

But show me a unified church with limited resources and significant challenges, and I’ll show you a church that will find a way to win every time.

Church unity is never accomplished by wanting to feel unified. The feeling of unity is never the goal. It’s the by-product of church leaders focusing on 5 extremely difficult and often times painful actions:

  1. Unity comes through installing good leaders and removing bad ones.
  2. Unity comes through casting a clear enough vision that the wrong people don’t join your church.
  3. Unity comes through confronting sin.
  4. Unity comes through teaching sound doctrine, even when you think people will leave as a result.
  5. Unity comes through leaders insisting that the entire church follows the biblical path of conflict resolution found in Matthew 18:15-17, without exception.

Unity is a funny thing.

If as leaders we focus on trying to obtain the feeling of being unified, we’ll ultimately accomplish anything but.

But if we focus on simply doing what godly leaders do, unity somehow always has a way of showing up on our doorstep.

Have you seen examples of churches avoiding the five actions I listed? What happened? 

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in Biblical Issues, Rethinking Church

Friday, April 20, 2012

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12 Reasons I’ll “Un-Follow” You On Twitter

In the 3 months since I’ve started blogging, one of the most surprising things has been the way Twitter has allowed blog readers and ministry acquaintances to become genuine friends and comrades in arms.

I really enjoy connecting with people on Twitter. But it’s been frustrating as well. Since my interest has been developing genuine connections with people, and not buying or selling something, I’ve found that I’ve had to wade through a lot of, well, excrement, to find people who are sincere, actually use the tool, are willing to collaborate, and take the time to build friendships.

That said, I’ve come up with 12 stand-by reasons why I will un-follow someone on Twitter. Here they are:

1. You don’t take the time to get a profile picture.
People like to see each other’s faces when they talk, and not having a profile pic communicates you’re not interested in real communication (whether that’s your intent or not).

2. You don’t follow back.
This tells me that you either think you’re a celebrity or that you aren’t actually investing the time to use the tool to connect with people. I regularly use www.Wakooz.com to “un-follow” people who don’t follow me back.

3. You Swear.
Big turn off. You can always tell which comedians have weak material because they always swear to fill in the gaps. Swearing on Twitter is lazy and distasteful.

4. You’re a porn star, multi-level marketer or SEO expert.
Enough said. Continue Reading…

in Living It Out, Rethinking Church

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

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Are We Creating “Oprah’s Favorite Things” Churches?

A few years ago a ministry friend, Brian “Lumpy” Rutherford at Christ’s Church in Albany, NY, emailed me and asked if we had ever completed a community-wide survey, so I shot him the results of our most recent survey.

You just can’t not respond to a guy named “Lumpy.”

I thought you might be interested in seeing what we did and what the results were as well.

Our entire staff went door to door in our community and asked three questions:
1. Why don’t people go to church in this area?
2. What are the greatest needs of people in our community?
3. What would our church have to do or offer to get you to seriously consider attending our church?

Here were the responses:

Why don’t people go to church in this area?
1. Because I’m too busy
2. I don’t see any need to go to church
3. I’m Catholic, I’m not supposed to go to your church
4. I know I should but it’s my only day off to rest
5. It’s irrelevant
6. There’s nothing for my kids and they hate it
7. I have been looking and still haven’t found what I’m looking for Continue Reading…

in Cultural Buzz, Rethinking Church

Monday, April 16, 2012

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6 Uncommon Characteristics Of Masculine Male Pastors

In a previous post I highlighted what I think are the 7 uncommon characteristics of masculine Christian men.

Limitations of the word “effeminate” aside, here’s what I consider six uncommon characteristics of masculine male pastors.

1. Masculine male pastors create church cultures that protect women and children.

I’m convinced that one of the reasons the Catholic Church swept the issue of clergy sexual abuse under the rug for so long is because of the preponderance of effeminate priests and cardinals. Can you imagine Jeremiah, Elijah, or John the Baptist putting up with that garbage? I find it interesting that when widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food in Acts 6 the Apostles instructed them to “choose seven men from among you” to make sure this problem stopped. Not women, but strong men.

A couple years ago I was sitting on a ferry when a drunk came in and started bugging the female passengers on the boat. After seeing him intimidate a 14 year old girl and an elderly woman I came uncorked on the guy. Know what happened? No other man backed me up. They sat and stared straight ahead! Call it whatever you want – the combination of testosterone, physical stature, Ephesians 5 “headship” tendencies, whatever – masculine godly pastors instinctively protect women and children. As a result women feel valued and sense that the churches those pastors serve are safe places spiritually, emotionally and physically. I think this explains why so many elderly women are drawn to churches with masculine male pastors.

2. Masculine male pastors publicly address uniquely male sins head-on.

In Titus 2:6 the Apostle Paul exhorted Titus to “encourage the young men to be self-controlled.” Crete, the island on which Titus was serving, was sexually charged. Most homes had a statue outside marking its property called a “herms” – a small statue with a large erect penis (denoting strength and virility). Temple prostitutes were plentiful. Affairs were expected. So what did Paul do? He told Titus to address it head on. Know how many times I heard a sermon on sex, masturbation, pornography, adultery, lust or sexual fantasizing the entire 18 years I went to church as a kid? Zero. Not one time. Unlike Paul, effeminate pastors think issues such as these are “inappropriate for church” and assume these issues will take care of themselves. Continue Reading…

in Living It Out, Rethinking Church

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

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Could churches making a big Easter “splash” do more harm than good?

Contrary to what we’ve done in the past, we purposely toned things down a bit for Easter at CCV.

  • No Good Friday services.
  • No Easter Eggstravaganza attracting 2500+ to our campus.
  • No major marketing initiative throughout the community.
  • Few worship service elements out of the ordinary.

The decision was primarily financial in nature, but in some respects it was also our way of testing the waters philosophically.

A question I’ve been wrestling with is “Could churches making a big Easter ‘splash’ actually be doing more harm than good?”

The questions I’ve been asking myself are:

  1. Did Jesus ever envision “special” Easter worship services on “Easter” in the first place? Where in scripture do we find support for this? The early church certainly never made a colossal deal about “Easter” the way we do today.
  2. If our goal is to get people to come back and eventually come into a growing relationship with Christ, what happens when non-Christians actually come back the next week and find ½ the people and ½ the energy?
  3. Does the “event-oriented” nature of Easter services in evangelical churches take away from the work of the Holy Spirit? In other words, can we be misled into thinking that the buzz and momentum in our Easter gatherings are anything other than good old fashioned manufactured American “hype?”
  4. Does placing special emphasis on creating compelling Easter services actually help create a culture of “C & E Christians” (Christmas and Easter visitors only)? In other words, when we bring our “A++ Game” on Easter, do we raise expectations in the mind of visitors so high that all other worship services pale in comparison?

Your thoughts?

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in Rethinking Church

Monday, April 2, 2012

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Is Entertainment The Key To A Great Sermon?

There is near universal agreement that except in rare occasions, most sermons people have to listen to are excruciatingly horrible.

I know that for a fact, if for no other reason than I’ve had to listen to myself preach for the past 20+ years.

The question I often ask myself is, “What can I do to consistently deliver great sermons?”

Any ideas?

My quick thoughts are:

  1. Stay prayed up
  2. Live a holy life
  3. Make sure it’s biblically grounded
  4. Find the most important point and focus on that
  5. Keep it short
  6. Be transparent with your own struggles
  7. Above all else point to Jesus.

I think there’s another key element though. In his book Reality Check, Guy Kawasaki writes,

Many speech coaches will disagree with this, but the goal of a speech is to entertain the audience. If people are entertained, you can slip in a few nuggets of information. But if your speech is deathly dull, no amount of information will make a great speech.

Do you think that applies to sermons too?

in Rethinking Church
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