Sheep Stealing?

There is an interesting tension we are beginning to experience in our start-up year as a church. While we are convinced that our first missional community is becoming all that we hoped it would be, and it does seem to work as a way or reaching those that have never been part of a church community, it is likely going to be quite some time before people coming through the missional community end up in worship with us on Sundays. More importantly, it will be some time before we develop mature leaders through this process. So how do we go about recruiting/attracting potential leaders in the community to join us without “stealing” from the existing congregations?

I’m convinced that churches (especially new church “plants”) are not always honest with themselves in this area. So often they  end up attracting a large number of people from other congregations because they are “fresh”, have better programs/music, more energy, or people are just unhappy with their current congregation. I’m sure anyone who has been in ministry for any amount of time can relate to having a conversation with visitors on a Sunday morning who begin explaining to you that they are at your worship service because they are unhappy with their current church. For me, this always triggered a red flag. More often than not (though I understand that there are legitimate exceptions), these people will “hop” on over to another place once they realize just how imperfect and messy your church is.

So now we are at a place where we are considering doing some of the things that we have not done much of up to this point. Namely, getting a building space, and doing more promotion to invite people to join us for worship. I think we need to do this because going forward we are going to have to find more people to join us in this work. We need a worship leader, we need a church administrator, we need people to help with children’s ministry, and we need others to join our missional community leadership so that we can multiply and start missional communities in other areas. And the big question in my mind is: How do we do this without simply pulling people out of their existing church community?

I have already met people that have recently moved to the area and are looking for a church home. The demographic research tells us that the Stanwood/Camano Island area will continue to grow. So that would certainly be a group to focus on. I also know that there are some people who travel a very long way to go to worship. While I understand that there are a variety of reasons for this, I also know that it is hard to truly be the church in your neighborhood or community if all of those in your worshipping community live 30 miles away. So perhaps there is some room there for people to reconnect their worship life with their community life.

We are just beginning this conversation as a leadership team. It will be interesting to see where this all goes. In the meantime, I have Jesus words ringing in my ears:

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask

the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Will Your Kids Follow Jesus?

I can’t tell you how many times over the past 10+ years I’ve had a discussion with other parents and church leaders about the struggle of discipling children through our current church programming models. The following is an excerpt from a Verge Network article by Ben Connelly called “How To Incorporate Kids into Your Missional Community” (full article here) that articulates this challenge well:

Focusing on the right things
The focus of a “kids ministry” shouldn’t actually be kids; it should be parents. Whether preschool or high school, the same principle applies: churches and leaders who put time, effort, money, resources, and intentionality into equipping parents instead of merely entertaining children accomplish two significant things:

• They help develop the whole-life spiritual maturity of the children
• They put parents back in the place the Bible places them.

Churches with Sunday-focused kids ministries spend 50-100 hours per year (of the 8,760 hours in any given year) with your kids. Minus vacations, sickness, and other reasons to miss, trained workers teach kids biblical concepts for an hour or two on Sundays. And even the most intentional churches might host a second age-specific gathering sometime during the week.

In those few hours, trained leaders must cram in entertainment, music, a snack, and often a Bible story that immediately transfers into a life lesson. “Discipleship and spiritual growth” become limited to a few hours a month, and generally limited to one “style”: in a group, with lots of energy, listening to a teacher teach a broad lesson.

What about the rest of the week?
But what happens in the rest of a child’s week when the teacher isn’t there? Who hears about getting made fun of on the playground? Who’s there to encourage the student in the midst of a specific high school struggle? If a child is in school until 4pm and goes to bed at 8pm, parents interact with their kids 1460 hours a year!

Parents see the daily struggles. Parents have conversations in the car. Parents are asked the hard questions. Parents deal with the specifics, the scenarios, the struggles, the sins. Parents meet their child – every single day – where the real-life rubber hits the road.

The author makes the argument that we need to be spending more of our time training parents as the primary disciplers of children. I agree. Yet, look at the job description of just about any church children’s minister or youth minister and you will see just how little of their time is expected to be spent doing this kind of work. In fact, it is entirely possible (and I have seen this many times myself) where we end up with adolescents in this model that “know” more about the Bible than their parents do. Can we see how backwards this is if we really believe that the parents are the primary teachers and disciplers of their kids?  I personally believe that when we talk about the issue of so many young people leaving the church after high school that it is related to this issue. Their spiritual training, their so-called discipleship is totally disconnected from their life at school and at home.

So what is the solution? I imagine that for many programmatic, attractional churches they might be tempted simply to hire more staff to teach more classes at the church building for parents. Personally, I don’t think that is the answer. The didactic teaching style has its place, but it is no substitute for discipleship in the everyday life. I don’t want to claim that missional communities are the answer, but I do believe that they are a step in a better direction because the focus is on reorienting our lives to be on mission in our home, work, school, family, neighborhood, life.

Missional Church: Simplified

I thought it was worth sharing this video again since I continue to receive a lot of questions about what it means to be a “missional church.” This video can be found on the “video” links on the right-hand side of my blog.

Tim Keller Talks About Missional Church

I just heard this interview for the first time, even though it has apparently been around for a long time. When I think of “missional church” I don’t immediately think about what Keller is describing here. Nevertheless, being conversant and engaged with the culture where you live is certainly a very important part of being missional. I think that what Keller is describing is primarily focused on those of us that spend most of our time in professional ministry. The problem for those that don’t work in the church is that so often they ARE “just like everyone else” when they are away from the church building and the church community gatherings. They are also just like “church people” when they are around them. The key is to reorienting oneself so that all of life is under the authority of Jesus, and then living all of life on the mission that Jesus has given us. To me, this becomes the key difference between being a “seeker sensitive” church and being a missional church. It is one thing to be sure that we talk in a way that those who have never heard the good news can understand what we are talking about in our groups and in our worship, but it is another thing to begin live out the gospel in a way that permeates and informs all of our life and conversations.

Instagram Church

As someone who worked for many years at a church where I was not only the “youth director,” but also one of the younger adults at the church, I’ve had many, many conversations about the changes in technology and the impact (positive and negative) that these changes are having on our lives. I remember sitting at a staff/session retreat trying to explain Twitter and trying to convince church leaders of the value of being on Facebook. Rarely is it possible to convincingly argue that these technological changes are either “all good” or “all bad.” I still take issue with those that want to portray the younger generations as  sitting in front of a computer or cell phone all day, ignoring face-to-face interactions. If anything, I have noticed that this is more of a temptation with the stay-at-home mom/dad crowd.

Nevertheless, it IS important that we acknowledge, discuss, and challenge the dangers and temptations that come with the increasing role of social media on our lives. The following is an excerpt from a great article by Relevant Magazine about the way we portray our lives in social media (read the entire article here):

My life looks better on the Internet than it does in real life. Everyone’s life looks better on the internet than it does in real life. The Internet is partial truths—we get to decide what people see and what they don’t. That’s why it’s safer short term. And that’s why it’s much, much more dangerous long term.

Because community—the rich kind, the transforming kind, the valuable and difficult kind—doesn’t happen in partial truths and well-edited photo collections on Instagram. Community happens when we hear each other’s actual voices, when we enter one another’s actual homes, with actual messes, around actual tables telling stories that ramble on beyond 140 pithy characters.

What was really interesting to me as I read this article is that I found myself reflecting less on social media, and more on what I have often experienced on Sunday Morning at “church.” Why is it that we dress up, act up, put on a smile, shake hands, waltz into the sanctuary with our family, sing, pray, and then bail 90 minutes later pretending that we just experienced community? Just like the “partial truths” posted onto social media sites, this snapshot of our week does not accurately portray the messiness that we really live in.

I can just hear the defensive objections coming my way already! I realize that there probably isn’t a church out there that wants our community to begin and end at the worship service. But we also all know that for many people that is what happens. But even for those that do plug into the “small group” ministry (or youth group or senior group or choir or whatever…), do they really experience community in that group? Is it a place where they can be real about their struggles, their doubts, their failures? Can they be “real” in those settings?

I know that authentic community does exist in some of these programmatic settings, but I think that it is rare. This is just one more reason why I am passionate about moving forward with missional communities. Not only does it bring people together in the messiness of life, but it also challenges them to “go out” together in the power of the Holy Spirit to share the Good News that in the midst of all the messiness Christ has overcome it all!

Practical Examples of Everyday Rhythms

Reblogged from PLANTING MISSIONAL COMMUNITIES:

As a part of the Soma family, we often speak of living out our gospel identity in everyday rhythms of life (know the story, listen, bless, celebrate & suffer, eat, rest & work). In fact, much of what we do is not meant to add things to the schedule, but bring intentionality to the things we are already doing.

Read more… 1,078 more words

I had to share this blog post primarily because I didn't want to lose the link. As we move forward with our own missional communities it will be increasingly important to be intentional about the ways we build these "rhythms" into our life. One of the reasons we like the name "Tidelands" is because the tides remind all of us that live near the water of the rhythms that God built into all of creation.

Planning the MC Mtg with Children in Mind

Reblogged from Jeff Vanderstelt:

In the next several posts my wife Jayne and I are going to address the question: How do you do Missional Community with Kids?

During this post Jayne is addressing the question: How do you address caring for kids during your weekly MC Gathering?

Keep in mind, when we think about children and our missional community we ask: How can our children join us in the overall mission?

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It is good to read about how others have approached the missional community gatherings with children. We have been stumbling along with this without a lot of intentionality or planning so far (in regards to children). It has worked for the most part, but I like the idea of having the "on call" adult for each meeting. So far, we have attempted to integrate our children into all that we do as a missional community. I am finding that, at least for me, some of the most profound learning moments have happened when our children have been engaged with us in our story time or discussion. It is a difficult challenge to navigate, but I agree with Jayne that each missional community will need to address their own unique challenges with kids. It will change as the age of kids in the group change over time.

What Makes a Missional Community a Missional Community?

Reblogged from PLANTING MISSIONAL COMMUNITIES:

At Redeemer we are committed to missional communities. We want to see missional communities planted and reproduced all across our region of central Texas. As apart of the Soma Family, we want to see missional communities planted and reproduced all across North America. Why? Because we believe that organizing people into missional communities is the most effective way of making disciples who make disciples-- and the church in the west desperately needs to return to making disciples (making disciples the way Jesus made disciples).

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Here is yet another great resource on the discussion about what makes a missional community. This comes from Jordan Elder and the folks at Redeemer Church in Bellingham. Take a look at their blog if you are interested in finding more resources and ideas for developing missional communities.

Be the Church!

GCM Collective video on missional communities

 

Missional Community: Erasing Lines

One of the real blessings of starting a missional community is that the lines between personal life and “church” begin to blur as one seeks to live out the calling to “be the church” instead of simply “going to church.” One of the real challenges for me, as a full-time pastor, is classifying what parts of my life are “work” and what parts of my life are “family” or “personal” time. Truly, it is a beautiful dilemma! Let me give you some examples:

I’ve just helped launch the “Watch D.O.G.S.” (Dads of Great Students) program at my kids’ elementary school. The program is designed to get more men involved in their child’s education by volunteering at least one full day a year to volunteer at the school. On that day, the men provide a positive male role model for the kids by helping out in the classroom, lunchroom, recess, etc. They also provide additional security by checking doors, “patrolling,” etc. throughout the day. They can help reduce bullying by being another set of eyes and ears at the school. We launched the program last week, and already we have every available day in March filled with a volunteer Dad/father-figure!

As a dad, I believe in the value of this program. As a a dad and a pastor, I want to do everything I can to help the local school be the best, safest place it can be for learning. As a pastor and follower of Jesus who seeks to embody the gospel in our community, I want to minister to all of those kids and parents that are in single-parent families (the fastest-growing demographic in our area).

I’ve also been amazed at how many opportunities have come up to help in my neighborhood. At our old house in Marysville, it took us over a decade to build even a few substantial relationships with neighbors. I don’t know if it is just the difference of life on Camano Island, or if it is our intentionality and openness to forging new relationships, or if it is the Holy Spirit stirring things up. My suspicion is that it is a combination of all three things – but primarily the work of the Spirit! In the coming weeks I will be watching a neighbor’s child before school so that she can make her nursing classes at a community college. I’ve been able to do this with some other kids in our missional community this year. I have to take my kids to school anyway, I have a flexible schedule, so it doesn’t negatively impact my day to help in this way. I’ve been helping another neighbor with some things that he needs for his business. And there are other opportunities as well. Sometimes, just walking out to my office (in my shop) I will end up having a conversation with a neighbor walking by that will end up being more significant than I would’ve thought possible. The real power of what is happening in all of these circumstances is the timing. I can’t share details, but there are some incredibly significant things happening in some of these relationships and I believe without a doubt that it is God’s timing.

I could also talk about coaching, volunteering every week in my kid’s classroom, weekly dinners at the local restaurant, the impact of fixing up and living in a derelict property in the neighborhood, and more! The truth is, not having a “church office” to go to every morning has been one of the best things that has ever happened in my ministry! However, it is also difficult, because I feel like I can more easily justify my time as “work” when I am sitting at a desk or sitting in a meeting. It is much harder to define that time as I engage in many of things we need to do to launch missional communities.

I share this because Tidelands is moving into a different phase of our life beginning with Easter 2013. We are now looking for that office space, and perhaps even a small space for worship attached to that office space. We will begin meeting for worship every Sunday morning. More of my time will be spent preparing sermons, planning music, prayers, etc. In a way, I look forward to being able to spend more time teaching and leading people in worship – it is what I love to do and it is essential to our life as followers of Jesus. And yet, I don’t ever want to lose what I am experiencing now. I don’t ever want to minimize the importance of these other opportunities or limit my ability to engage with others where they live, work, and play. And this is why, if we’re going to do this well, we will always need our leaders and staff to be active members of a missional community.