something to chew on this weekend:
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Posts tagged as:
church
It happened again. I was in a church and listening to a powerful testimony that was full of pain. It made me angry…in a good way.
I was pissed about injustice and I was now haunted by the reality of injustice around the corner and around the world.
It was true. It was beautiful.
Then it got churchie.
We took a minute to ‘reflect’.
We sang a pretty song.
We felt good about God and ourselves.
We left the room and got some coffee.
I would rather leave the room haunted. Confused. In crisis.
I want to lose sleep thinking about heavy truths.
Instead we sing a pretty song. We like this because it brings resolve to the moment.
…but it neuters future action_
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We are launching a new website at Impact Church and we try to do our homework. I have visited a lot of church websites in the past weeks and I started to notice something.
Most churches have a doctrinal statement of sorts, we do too. Some churches also add a list of ‘issues‘ that they want to be clear about. I think the thought here is that some of these issues are gray areas and they wanted to clarify.
For the most part there were a couple of common themes; abortion, homosexuality, divorce among others, speaking in tongues.
This is cool. I think it’s fine to state what you believe as a church on your website.
After seeing several pages like this, I started to think that their were some issues missing; War, poverty, obesity, capital punishment.
I won’t pretend to know the answer to these, but I would like to feel safe talking about stuff. Especially amoung Christian brothers and sisters.
What are we scared to talk about?
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Seth Godin posted a great article on Firefox users and their tendency to be above average web users. He goes on to contrast Firefox vs. default browser people and people who go to college.
This is true of bloggers, of Twitter users, of Flickr users… everywhere you look, if someone is using Firefox, they’re way more likely to be using other power tools online. The reasoning: In order to use Firefox, you need to be confident enough to download and use a browser that wasn’t the default when you first turned on your computer.
You can see the same type of mindsets in the Christian community. At your church you can bet that the 20% percent rule is in effect. You know. twenty percent of the people doing eighty percent of everything. I don’t expect that to change, it’s true of everything.
The question is, what is it in some people minds that they are not satisfied with the ‘default’?
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We load up the kids on Saturday from time to time and head down to the farmer’s market to see what’s going on and to pick up some fresh fruits and veggies. The coolest thing about the farmer’s market is that you literally buy stuff right from the people that pulled it out of the ground or picked it off of a tree. The guy selling you the apples is passionate about apples and will tell you the differences in taste and explain the nuances of the inner soul of each and every apple. He probably has all his trees names and talks to them. He knows when they are doing well and when they need tender care.
The guy selling the artisan breads made them. He didn’t order them from a vendor and set them out to sell at a markup. He created each and every loaf. It’s the same across the whole market, people who are passionate and real and they are right there. From the guy dealing in Maui onions, to the lady selling weird turquoise jewelery. There is even a dude who sells worm poop, it’s for fertilizing your garden. You can have a real relationship with the guy who made the strawberry jam. Humans are involved.
It’s counter to the experience we are used to having in America. We go to a store and we like the fact that we can get in there and see the neatly packaged food with fancy logos and sexy people on the wrappers. We like the fact that the people that work there are clean and dressed nice and probably never been to a farm. We like the fact that we are ten people removed from who ever made the bread and the average item in the store traveled 1500 miles before landing in our shopping cart. The shopping experience has become very institutional, very impersonal, and the worst part is that we have grown to like it as a society. I know when I
The same thing has happened to church in America. It has lost it’s roots as a true community of people closely connected and become an institution. People have become used to ‘church’ being served up in a very refined and well packaged kit that markets well. It isn’t too offensive and it doesn’t risk too much to be different, and if it does, it is merely for shock value and the underlying motive is really to fill the seats. The programming is complete and doesn’t demand that I get involved and shift my life to implement the super cool vision statement and neatly listed purposes.
The farmer’s market church is different. The produce served is not aesthetically perfect but is pure of pesticides and other artificial crap. The offerings are seasonal and they might not have what you think you want when you want it. The farmer’s market church is organic and only exists and has identity based on who is there an what they bring. There is no fancy packaging to hide the imperfections. Best of all, you can have a relationship with the farmers and the community of the market.
I think this is what church used to look like, but has made a lot of changes through the industrial revolution and in the shadow of capitalism. It’s not the church’s fault that we have become like this, we are just trying to keep up with society and be relevant and there is nothing wrong with that. But I do see a shift happening. The baby boomer’s love the well packaged church, and we are quick to apply that knowledge to tap into their money. I see my generation as one that is over the ‘big show’ and I’m glad. The church has a great opportunity ahead of it to set the tone for our communities as we move away from the institutional church to a true community of believers.
Time will tell.
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A couple weeks ago I was flipping through Dan Kimball’s book ‘The Emerging Church’ and I stopped at a comment he made that got me thinking. He didn’t expound on it much, but I did.
In short, he asked a question and It got me thinking. The question was; “What would you prefer as your mode of transportation in 1910?”
Pretty much everyone today would say a car would be their main mode in 1910 if they had to choose. But if you were to actually live in 1910 and you had to make that decision for real it would be different. You see, the automobile was just getting a start in 1910. The vast majority of the population in America would still be rolling around with a horse and carriage. While the car was just beginning it’s evolution to what we know today, carriages had basically been around in some form or another for more than 2000 years and had reach their zenith around 1910. This is what the automobile had to go up against before it could dominate the transportation market. [click to continue…]
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I have had the opportunity to sit and talk with ministry with some old friends in the last few weeks and it has been a blast. I love sitting and listening to people work through their vision of where God is taking them and their church. With that comes the opportunity for me to share my vision and verbalize where Impact Church is at. It helps to keep skills fresh and keeps your progress in check.
Right now I’m thinking that the local church is too much of a focus in ministry. We end up serving a ministry and a program and not serving the community of people that are around us. We tend to get so busy with ministry junk that we are sheltered away from the reality of what our neighbors are going through.
Then I think I figured it out. Maybe we need to stop trying to offer a remedy that we call a ministry and just invest in people who can be the remedy.
What does that look like? And are we to worried about building a ministry career to care about much more than growing a church?
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