Virtually Paul

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MegaChurch Got It Wrong?

Willow Creek Repents? @ChristianityToday

Dissatisfied on the inside

An excerpt from the post linked below:

Sometimes I don’t know if I can deal with it anymore. I’m tired of hearing about homosexual agendas, the Ten Commandments, and prayer in school while Christians will not even love one another.

When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, he gave two. Love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as yourself. We (Christians) have helped create the world we live in by not following these instructions. In the process we have created the Church we now live with.

Hey, Ya Know What?: The Church I Know

A must-have resource for every church pastor

Link to video:
Ra’ah: Annoyed with Church Part Two

Program vs Purpose

You’ll find a nice little rant from yet another frustrated youth ministry leader here:  Youth Ministry Forum

I found myself in a similar predicament last week, at least in terms of needing to rant about a youth ministry program!

I’m the “discipleship” coordinator for my church’s youth ministry.  The title, for the sake of accuracy, should perhaps be extended to “senior-high school discipleship groups” coordinator.  I have some problems with the idea that discipleship is a program that is coordinated by a single person - in reality that’s not the case at church anyway.  We have a bunch of really capable youth leaders, many of whom have disciple-maker qualities.

I don’t really need to rant about the structure stuff because the church has recognised that it’s a problem and just launched a more fluid “Youth Ministry Team” structure to be the driving force behind an entire youth ministry that is focused on growing individuals along their journey.  We’re literally just about to revamp the way everyone thinks about and approaches ministry with our youth.  But back to the discipleship stuff…
About a month ago, I started a group of guys in the 15-17 age range to meet up fortnightly as a group and chat about what I’d broadly describe as “faith stuff”.  It was a bit of a mammoth effort getting them all in the same place at the same time but they all seemed keen and ready to commit to the meeting time.

I’d even had the savvy idea (I thought so anyway) of pitching the group to the guys attending from the outset, as a tool or a help along the journey of discipleship, rather than a club within a club that was going to save them.  It’s a pity I didn’t listen to my own advice.
After the first meeting, one of the guys hadn’t show up, hadn’t contacted me to say they weren’t coming, then informed me a week later that they had just acquired a regular commitment that they wouldn’t be able to avoid - and now couldn’t come along to the group (which was a scheduling feat from my side of the fence).

It wasn’t until I stood back a bit from the whole idea a few days ago and actually thought about this young person and what I was trying to achieve, that I realised:  it actually doesn’t matter if this particular person doesn’t participate in this particular program.

Sure, I think the group will be an effective “program”.  I even think that the individual who isn’t attending would have contributed a lot to it, at the same time as getting a lot out of it.  But that’s not the point.  Yes, my program (notice the unintentional “my” I just wrote) will be effective.  At the same time, my goal here is not to enforce conformity to a particular idea - it’s to disciple.

There is more than one way to skin a cat - and it’s not always the way that you expect!

Starting the ideal church service

This afternoon, due to what must have been a glitch in the matrix, I found myself sitting in a meeting in an inner city suburb, joining a small group of people who were sitting around discussing how to start a new evening church gathering in a reasonably dilapidated old church building which houses a morning congregation of somewhere between 30-60 people.I’ve got an extremely impressively written document in front of me right now, which outlines the general idea. I don’t think I saw a single person under forty on the busy street between parking the car and walking into this church. It therefore comes as no surprise that “young professional people” are the group that the new service is intended to be serving.

The brief document then wanders through, in all its Times New Roman splendour, the creation of what first appeared to me, as an attempt to blueprint the ‘perfect’ church service. What I found most interesting was that I didn’t see the holes straight away.

• It connects with the culture by being relevant - specifically by being “contemporary” - while “unashamedly but sensitively” presenting Christianity.
• Building a “Christ-centred” community where people learn to love and support one another, can come as they are and be themselves.
• It will happen regularly and remove “unnecessary jargon and unhelpful church traditions” from the presentation of the service, which will also allow people the choice to remain as passive observers who are not “forced” to participate in worship.
• Explaining the Bible with life application and encouraging response.
• It will feature preaching, liturgical worship (written prayers), music and supper as organised by the service team.
• The service will be well-branded and then promoted “by advertising throughout the community”.
• The church building will be getting some minor cosmetic work done (ie. “the addition of colour and light”) in order to “help people to feel more comfortable”.

I watched the individuals sitting in this discussion and found it intriguing, watching as slowly but surely, at least 2 of the most vocal participants completely sidetracked the stated aims, inventing non-specific problems. At one point, almost in mid-sentence, one of them seemed to decide that it might be nice to cater for older people or young families as well. So for a cranky little auditor like me, some of it was pure pain. I could have participated in the discussion a bit, given that I’d been invited by a good friend but chose to hang back. There were also some capable individuals in the meeting who I’m sure will eventually work out where they want to go and get the rest to follow.

At this point I remain a skeptic (or was already a cynic). Some years ago, a very effective youth pastor told me that “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”. I raise the following points as questions.

• Can you, in all seriousness, present the Gospel inoffensively? Sure, you can offer nice little spaces for contemplation and let people dabble in spooky little Christian rituals to see what it’s like to eat small amounts of bread and grape juice. But does that really get you anywhere if they’re just sampling from the spirituality smorgasboard?
• People rarely feel free to be themselves. If they truly felt that they could come “as they are” to a church service, then they’d quite potentially already be attending another one. The institutional church has a reputation for actually really not thinking that people are OK “as they are”. And let’s face it, that’s kind of true. So that leaves people being subversively asked to change by the culture of the Christian community, without understanding why. Meanwhile, well meaning Christians actually don’t realise that their well-intentioned stated aim is actually a bit two-faced if you look at it from the outside.
• Spiritual attracts, theological bores. If you do any reading at all on spirituality in Australian culture, particularly the 20s age group, you’ll find that people are actually considering the more mystic elements to religion - the unexplainable movements of the Spirit of God - to be much more interesting than a lecture on their inherent sinfulness. It’s the postmodern mindset. If you use a word someone doesn’t understand, you may well find that the corresponding spiritual experience intrigues them enough for them to ask another question.
• Explaining the Bible with life application? If you’re trying to get people who live in Melbourne in 2007 to interact with the translation of a compliation of texts written over a period of thousands of years, chances are, you’ll have more luck if you take the person, in their context, to the Bible, rather than the other way around.
• Activities sensitive to the culture? Cafe latte drinking young professionals really want to come and sit in a run down old church building, do some responsive reading, listen to a sermon and eat some raisin toast?
• Walking the marketing tightrope. Events attract people wanting to be entertained. Communities attract people. It is exceedingly difficult to advertise the latter in our culture, which associates advertising with an invitation to consume. Advertising, by default, attracts consumption before community. You can try to spread the word… but don’t put some clip-art on an A5 piece of paper with one of these event names and call it advertising.
• Location sensitive to the culture? A service using traditional church building as a meeting place will undoubtedly come across almost all of its newcomers from personal invitations by people already attending. So if relationships are the key, why meet in the one building that everybody you’re trying to involve never come in to of their own accord?

Alive on a Sunday

Last Sunday, after finishing up with my house-sitting gig, I had the privilege of being able to attend the morning service at Yarra Valley Vineyard, which in my mind was just a convenient excuse to catch up with my wonderful Essendon-supporting friend Bec and her almost-as-wonderful recently acquired fiance Geoffrepops. Enough about them though… they’re already getting enough attention at the moment. Geoff has the statistics to prove it.

I expected to be participating in a run of the mill church service. Stand up, sit down, sing this, listen to that, nibble this, drink that, have a chat, go home. And I’m sure I could have been that nonchalant about it if I’d tried hard enough. Fortunately for me, God had other plans.

The time that I spent there was nothing short of exactly-what-I-needed. The music was phenomenal. Acoustic rock all the way with at least one vocalist who I could have listened to all day. There was no sign of a crass performance mentality from the musicians. They were there to lead us, indeed, to draw us in to meeting with God. I’ve missed seeing that happen so much in recent times. The song choices were rich with meaningful words that embodied the theological concepts that I’ve been learning and meditating on over the past year and before. There were no fairy floss one-liners. This was about God. Come as you are. Be engulfed in who He is. Know God, even though everything hurts.

The sermon was fantastic and again hit the nail right on the head as we were led through content on the illusive connection between suffering, faith and healing. I’ve spent a lot of time learning about the first two of those in the last two years. I wanted to go forward for prayer afterwards but didn’t have the strength to step forward. Unfortunately I allow that to happen all too regularly.

After/during the service, I got the chance to catch up with some other Vineyardians who I’ve run into over the years. I think that really added to the atmosphere because I didn’t feel like I was there on my own. My housemate’s sister and her fiance were there, along with some people I’ve led on camps with. In fact, I think I got the best welcome I’ve had to a church service in years when Laura spotted me in the carpark and escorted me into the building, preventing the need for plodding in awkwardly and trying to work out where to go.

I had lunch with Bec and Geoff after the service, at the traditional eatery of anyone who’s just been to a church service - La Porchetta. We had a great chat and I even got the chance to unpack some of the things that have been happening in my church’s youth ministry that have been weighing on me over time. It was good fun and big encouragement to me. Thanks guys!

I took a reasonably significant detour on the way home to visit a place that I spotted in the Melways - Silvan Reservoir Park. I spent a good hour or so there reading through lots of different bible passages and praying heaps before driving back home.

And so for reasons I have shared… and also for reasons that I haven’t… I am seeing the Holy Spirit moving in and around me more and more. Through these experiences and many others, He is showing me that soon He’s going to bring me up out of this valley. He is teaching me how to walk in His strength and not my own. He has even given me a slightly amusing sense of hope that runs deeper than I usually allow anything to go.
Hope is a wonderful thing. And I’m glad that, after all that’s happened, I started to feel that extra bit alive, on a Sunday.

A bit of New Hope for Essendon Bapts

I make no apologies for the horrible pun. The events of Sunday can still manage to bring a smile to my face.

After over 2 and a half years without a permanent senior pastor, Essendon Baptist has finally appointed someone to take on the role for the long haul. The congregation voted overwhelmingly to endorse Daniel Bullock, currently the Senior Associate Pastor at New Hope (Blackburn North) Baptist Church, to be our new senior pastor.

Before I had any idea about who was coming to pastor our church, I had a strong sense of God really gearing up to do something that would exceed my expectations. I’m really looking forward to meeting this guy. Having had some exposure to people outside of my church over the last 18 months who take ministry formation studies quite seriously, I’m pretty stoked that God’s called someone with Daniel’s educational background in Christian ministry to be our pastor. He also comes with glowing recommendations from the multitudes of Blackburn Northians that I know.

Welcome to Babylon, Daniel.

In this Communion

On Wednesday night I had the rare privilege of being invited to a church service. Furthermore, I had the privilege of being invited to a church service to play the guitar - but didn’t actually end up playing it.

It was the new fortnightly Wednesday night gathering at West Preston Baptist Church. Mark, the pastor, had set it up around the communion table. There were only about six of us there and the content of the service was almost entirely responsive readings and prayer. Thanks to Ridley, I’ve developed a healthy appreciation for such things.

What I liked about it was its simplicity. Mark spoke to us briefly about how the communion table can be inappropriately sidelined, particularly by western protestant churches. I see his point. So often, communion is a tack-on to a church service where the sermon is a highlight. Sometimes I think the time is used in church services to allow people to reflect on the speaker and how that person’s words have impacted their emotions - rather than being a meal that symbolically enters us into a spiritual connectedness with our God. In the process, I think communion can become ritualistic.

The contrast on Wednesday night was marvellous. There were no little pansy 15mm squares of bread to place on your tongue and swallow whole. Similarly we had glasses of grapejuice (wine) that had a bit of volume to them, instead of those little ones that you could possibly use to give a child a dose of demazin.

The effect wasn’t lost on me. John 6:53-57 …

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.

If I was reading that for the first time, without a fair idea of the whole picture in the book of John, those metaphors would be extremely confusing… so if that’s you, don’t stress. It certainly hit me in a new way. As my jaw moved, tearing away at the big chunk of bread roll and as I gulped down the large cup of grapejuice, it actually required some physical effort. I couldn’t just slide communion down my throat. And in those moments I reflected on Jesus’ actions on the cross in a new way.

I came away from the service feeling refreshed. I felt like I’d been part of something alive and real. I didn’t feel the emptiness that comes with a stage-produced church service. I felt more like we were cutting to the chase. No one cared that I didn’t have the music for the one song we could have sung. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t about that.

I long for the day when I’m part of a community that is willing to put “what we do” aside and, instead, asks “why are we here?” When worship - when church - is just another churchy song, why do I feel so disconnected from it on the inside? Where’s God?

Have you experienced anything like this?

Words and Theology

Following some good discussion starters from Geoff:

One of the things that we looked at quite a bit in my first semester at Ridley was the worship/church service stuff. With three weekly chapel services to practice/practise in, my eyes were opened to a world of prayer books and meticulous attention to eloquent readings of scripture. My church seems much more haphazard in comparison. We’ve got a decent bunch of bible readers now, who even pre-read the passage before they drop it on the church… but we don’t use prayer books… and sometimes even the pastors say stuff, that, if you took it back to the letter of the biblical-theological law, wouldn’t actually hold water.

I was in one chapel service at college where a fellow student said, in passing, during a closing prayer, “Thanks God for showing up today”. At morning tea following, there were 5 stiff old Anglicans there to remind him that God is actually omnipresent. Now, for an ordination candidate in a theological college, that’s probably not as tactfully horrific as it would be in a church laity context. The point, however, remains… and I think this is the source of Geoff’s underlying ponderings.

Language is one of the key means through which we express and understand theological ideas. The thing about words, is that they are merely a representation of the concept that the communicator is trying to explain. The quality of that representation, is influenced not only by the lingual/literary education of the speaker… but also by the decoding processes of the listener.

So what does that mean for Geoff and the Third Day song? Well seeing as I’ve actually sung live on stage with Third Day, I’ll dig a bit deeper into the song lyrics. I agree that the phrasing of the lyrics over the music leaves the obvious misnomer surrounding what the beautiful thing is. But the words aren’t just “You are beautiful, my sweet, sweet song”… the bridge says this:

You are my strong melody
You are my dancing rhythm
You are my perfect rhyme
And I will sing of You forever

Anyone who has ever tried to write a song will tell you, from the experience that these are all components of a beautiful song. I think that’s where the words of “You Are So Good To Me” are coming from. That’s what I take away from it anyway. It’s an analogy. And it’s a largely emotional/experiential one, rather than a strongly theological one.

Now, to drive my point home, I decided to pick on one of Geoff’s favourite songs, which I actually really like as well. “How Great Thou Art”. It is a really nice song. However, I kind of struggle with it sometimes, particularly singing this verse:

When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.

I understand what the song is getting at here. It’s reflecting on God’s creation as a revelation of His greatness and trying to express that. It has a more staccato melody compared to a Third Day song where the chords tend to ring out and flow together. That, for me, really brings out the “ye olde english” feel to the verse as it talks about “forest glades and woods” that “I wander” through. I get what the song is saying… but I’m an Aussie. I don’t wander through forest glades. I walk. I walk through the bush.

I could start a rant about how crap I think songs are when they talk about Jesus and his “fame” just because of it’s sheer literary Hollywood-infused stupidity… yep… I just did start a rant.

Words are awkward. Theology is complicated. That’s about to become my tagline.