Todd Hiestand

Pastors in their Offices

May 23, 2009 // 3 Comments »

“The initial locus and primary focus of [pastors] work is in their offices. Time-management studies again and again have confirmed that pastors invest a large percentage of their time in their offices – in meetings, in doing administrative work, and in taking care of administrative details…Pastors continue to spend so much time their offices because it is a familiar and habitual behavior pattern that has been nurtured and reinforced for many, many years. And the foundation underlying that behavior pattern is an understanding of the nature of leadership that is no longer helpful.”

- Kennon Callahan, Effective Church Leadership

Of course. I wrote this post from my office (which is actually a starbucks).

Posted in Book Reviews, Great Quotes

What Role Does Confession Play in Your Life?

May 21, 2009 // 2 Comments »

I’ve been working with someone in our church to take a long hard look at the culture and practices of we’ve developed in our church around the issue of spiritual formation, spiritual direction and discipleship. In this, I’ve been doign some reading about how other denominations and traditions have approached this topic throughout the history of the church. One book that has been immensely helpful is Gary Moon and David Benner’s book Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls. In this book, they give an overview of how spiritual direction is approached from different traditions.

One thing that has surprised me has been how almost every tradition has a strong emphasis on some form of confession. Now, this probably shouldn’t have surprised me. But, its no secret that evangelicals are not known to place a high emphasis on confession as a regular practice in the Christian life. Perhaps we think we will become catholic or something. But, while it was talked about on some level, it was not and has not been something strongly emphasized. This is true for us at The Well. We don’t, not talk about confession. But I am realizing we aren’t intentional enough about it.

David Fitch in his book The Great Giveway writes about this a bit in his chapter on spiritual formation. This is a long quote, but i think he hits the nail on the head…

“But we cannot do therapy like this sitting in the pew. Because evangelicals are so sermon-centric, we are tempted to think that good therapy happens by taking good notes in the pew. But ironically, the more we concentrate on good biblical instruction as central to the Christian life, the less we talk to each other about our lives and especially about sin. MOst of our small group processes are either inductive Bible studies or involved more intense, scholarly study of the bible that never deals with the emotional and character issues that are destroying our lives. It is a testament to how unsafe the church has become for sinners that we rarely discuss with each other our sin and failures and seek the healing of the HOly Spirit. Rarely do we have confession and repentance in our small groups. We need to find safe places where we can share our lives, confess our sins, receive scriptural wisdom, and be prayed for. To do this, we cannot just get together and simply share our sins and quote bible verses at each other. We must retrieve from therapy the needed skills to practice biblical confession and bring it under the lordship of Christ. This is the utmost of importance to the future of spiritual formation in the evangelical church.” (195)

Posted in Book Reviews, Faith & Theology, Great Quotes, Spiritual Formation

Surprised by Scripture

April 25, 2009 // 2 Comments »

Eugene Peterson is one of those writers who has the uncanny knack to take my deepest struggles with leadership, faith, spirituality and speak at directly at them. One of those books is called Working the Angles. That’s one of those books I read at least once a year. Each time I do, I end up with a knot in my stomach because I am so convicted.

I’ve been slowly working through his recent book, Eat This Book and I’m really enjoying it. He writes,

“Barth insists that we do not read this book and the subsequent writings that are shaped by it in order to find how how to get God into our lives, get him to participate in our lives. No. We open this book and find that page after page it takes us off guard, surprises us, and draws us into its reality, pulls us into participation with God in his terms.”

Peterson (and Barth) hit on something that has completely changed the way I approach Scripture…

Posted in Book Reviews, Faith & Theology, Great Quotes

Three Questions that Become Answers (1)

March 21, 2009 // 1 Comment »

Been really enjoying the book The Monkey and the Fish by Dave Gibbons. It’s one of those books that I will pass on to a few people and simply say “see, this is what I’ve been trying to talk about.”

In chapter 5 he goes through three questions that are helpful for pastors and leaders (and churches) to ask as they look for answers to the mission and vision of their church.

The first question is: “Where is Nazarath?”

Now, this might seem like a strange question (it did to me at first). But when you begin to answer it, its very insightful. In the Bible, the question is asked about Jesus, “Can anything good come from Nazarath?” Dave gives another way of asking this question, “Can anything good come from that place on the other side of the railroad tracks?”

He goes on to ask a very, very helpful question…

“Where is the other side of the tracks in your city or region? In other words, who are the marginalized or the outsiders near you, people whom you feel pain for?”

I don’t think this is not a question that most churches ask seriously. Even those churches who do ask that question often don’t know what to do about the answer. He references further the passage in I Corinthians where Paul writes, “few of you were wise in the world’s eyes, or powerful, or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God deliberately chose things this world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise…” (114)

Now, I’ve read that passage 100 times. And something struck me right between the eyes. This isn’t necessarily true of my church. My community is not necessarily made up of a bunch of people who society would consider foolish or outsiders. While we aren’t all that impressive and we are foolish in our own way, we definitely aren’t people who the world would consider from the wrong side of the tracks. Of course, we can’t help that on some level. I’m not about to turn people away from the church when they are seriously seeking God.

I hope and pray that more people “from the wrong side of the tracks” would find Jesus in our community. Of course, that always creates a challenge…

“so who in your community is the outsider, the misjudged, the misunderstood? Maybe the one who seems the weakest? Who are the strangers and the friendless? Focusing on them as a church may mean you won’t grow fast. And you may lose some people. But your church will be fulfilling the most beautiful expression of who God is…” (115)

The second and third questions will come later…

Posted in Book Reviews, Great Quotes

Limitations

February 11, 2009 // 3 Comments »

I turned 32 today. Not sure what to think about that. But I can confess that one begins to think more intentionally about life the older one gets. Of course, its not like I am old. There are plenty of you reading this who are much older than me!

Recently, I read a post from Bob Hyatt where he noted the following quote.

“There is something deeply spiritual about honoring the limitations of our lives and the boundaries of what God has given us to do as leaders. Narcissistic leaders are always looking beyond their sphere of influence with visions of grandiosity far out of proportion to what is actually being given. Living within our limits means living within the finiteness of who we are as individuals and as a community- the limits of time and space, the limits of our physical, emotional, relational and spiritual capacities, the limits of our stage of life… and the limits of the calling God has given. It means doing this and not that. It means doing this much and not more.”
- Ruth Haley Barton

This is a good word for someone like me who has many “visions of grandiosity” and is convinced that I can change the world someday. I am realizing that, while vision and dreaming is important, I must also be very present to what is in front of me. That is my family, my job(s), my neighbor, my community, my friends and even the personal soul care.

So, while I still have dreams of changing the world, I am more fully aware of how its got to start in the daily and the normal parts of my life.

“How we spend our day is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”
- Annie Dilard

And finally, another good word from Robert Benson in the book A Good Life.

“It is tempting sometimes, or at least it seems so to me, to think of my work here on earth in rather large and grandiose ways. It may be that writers are the only ones who suffer from such a thing, but I am not sure that is so.

I like to think of my work in terms of building the kingdom and spreading the gospel. It is not a bad thing for us to step back and try to see how the labor of our hands and hearts and minds fits within the grand scheme of things. In fact, it is the proper thing to do so.

But it is also right that we recognize that a goodly portion of the things we do can seem mundane and ordinary are the very places where we are likely to live out the gospel.

Our days and our lives are more often filled with little chances to show our love to others than they are filled with great and grand opportunities. It is in those little things that we are given to do and to say and to be what we must do the work of building the kingdom.”

What are you doing today?

Who are you being today?

What are you saying today?

Posted in Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes

The Task of the Church

January 3, 2009 // 1 Comment »

From Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics v.4.3.2 – The Doctrine of Reconciliation

To sum up, we may say there is committed to it the gospel, I.e. The good, glad tidings of Jesus Christ, of the real act and true revelation of the goodness in which God has willed to make and has in fact made Himself the God of man and man His man.  This great Yes is its cause.  It has no other task besides this. (page 800)

Posted in Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes

Resident Aliens in Suburbia

December 26, 2008 // 3 Comments »

I’ve been reading Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon over the break. Chapter four is brilliant. This year I have done a lot of thinking about the Church as a counter-cultural community. I think this is always necessary and I’m certain there is a desperate need for those of us in a suburban context to be intentional about re-imagining a life together that is in fact counter-cultural (in the way of Jesus). Of course, we don’t have to re-imagine out of nothing, without any direction. We have the witness of Isreal, Jesus, the disciples, the church and a hope of a New Heavens and New Earth to guide this process (you know, all the stuff found in the Scriptures).

I’ve spoken about this idea using the concept of a mob in a post after I returned from Zambia in July.

Here Willimon and Hauerwas say it as well as I’ve heard it articulated:

Here [in the sermon on the Mount] is an invitation to a way that strikes hard against what the world already knows, what the world defines as good behavior, what makes sense to everybody. The Sermon, by its announcement and its demands, makes necessary the formation of a colony, not because disciples are those who have a ned to be different, but because the Sermon, if believed and lived, makes us different, shows us the world to be alien, and odd place where what makes sense to everybody else is revealed to be opposed to what God is doing among us. jesus was not crucified for saying or doing what made sense to everyone. People are crucified for following a way that runs counter to the prevailing direction of the culture…

See, I told you they were smart.

Posted in Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes, Missional, Suburbia

The Church Informing the Powers…

December 12, 2008 // 1 Comment »

Sometimes all you need is a little quote from NT Wright to get your blood flowing…

“It is by the Church living as the one believing community, in which barriers of race, class, gender and so forth are irrelevant to membership and to holding of office, that the principalities and powers are informed in no uncertain terms that their time is up, that there is indeed a new way to be human.”

NT Wright in What Saint Paul Really Said (161)

Posted in Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes

The Pastor’s Responsibility

November 21, 2008 // No Comments »

A friday rebuke/correction/encouragement from our friend Eugene Peterson,

“It is the pastor’s responsibility to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.”

From Working the Angles

Posted in Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes

What Do We become Christians for?

November 19, 2008 // 4 Comments »

From David Bosch’s brilliant little book, Believing in the Future,

As we call people (back) to faith in God through Jesus Christ, we must help them to articulate an answer to the question “what do we ahve to become Christians for?” As least part of the answer to this question will have to be: “In order to be enlisted into God’s ministry of reconciliation, peace, and justice on earth.”

Posted in Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes

Working Through the Pain

// 2 Comments »

Still reading the book Failure of Nerve.  He’s writing about how leadership is affected by the way people and people groups in our society want the quickest relief possible even if it isn’t the best way forward.  

Friedman writes,

For there is no way out of a chronic condition unless one is willing to go through an acute, temporarily more painful, phase….we will naturally choose or revert to chronic conditions of bearable pain rather than face the temporarily more intense anguish of acute conditions that are the gateway to becoming free.  But what is also universally true is that over time, chronic conditions, precisely because they are more bearable, also tend to be more withering.

This is very, very true for most of us.  We all do it.  Don’t we?

Could be simple stuff.

We grab McDonalds instead of making our own lunch even though we’ve seen or at least heard of the movie “Super-Size Me.” 

We lay on the sofa watching tv or surfing the internet even though we know its going to make it even harder to get our work done on time. 

Could be not-so-simple stuff.

We ignore the relational elephant in the room with our spouse even though we know that sitting down and talking through the issue would be so much better.  Painful.  But so much better.

We ignore the fact that one of our co-workers has deeply offended us and we “deal with it” even though we know that our work environment would be better in the long term if we sat down and worked it out. Painful.  Hard. But worth it in the long run.

We keep pushing back the emotions from a major loss (not talking about the Cubs here!) so we do’nt have to deal with them even though we know walking through that valley will bring about so much freedom. 

Leaders seek to ignore the hard conversations because it might rock the boat even though we know that the issue would make for a much more healthy community if we just addressed it head on. 

What is your issue? 

How do you seek the “easy way out” that, really, isn’t so easy… 

How are you avoiding pain?

Posted in Book Reviews, Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes, Life in Community

Leader: It’s Your Fault / Responsibility

November 14, 2008 // 7 Comments »

Last week I wrote a little bit about how leaders need to take reponsibiltiy when things go wrong in their communities or organizations. Far too often we are quick to blame it on those we are trying to lead.

Seth Godin says it in his book Tribes better than I did and clearer than Edwin Friedman did. He writes,

If you hear my idea but don’t believe it, that’s not your fault; its mine.

If you see my new product but don’t buy it, that’s my fault, not yours.

If you attend my presentation and you’re bored, that’s my fault too.

If I fail to persuade you to implement a policy that supports my tribe, that’s due to my lack of passion or skill, not your shortsightedness.

If you are a student in my class and you don’t learn what I’m teaching, I’ve let you down.

It’s really easy to insist that people read the manual. It’s really easy to blame the user/student/prospect/customer for not trying hard, for being too stupid to get it, or for not caring enough to pay attention. It might even be tempting to blame those in your tribe who aren’t working as hard at following as you are at leading. But none of this is helpful.

To that I say, amen.

Now, let me try and translate this to church / pastor / leader world:

If you hear my idea sermon but don’t believe it, that’s not your fault; its mine.

If you see my new product ministry but don’t buy participate in it, that’s my fault, not yours.

If you attend my presentation worship service and you’re bored, that’s my fault too. (no, I am not saying that worship services should be flashy to feed our consumer needs!)

If I fail to persuade you to implement a policy invest financially in a way that supports my tribe, that’s due to my lack of passion or skill, not your shortsightedness.

If you are a student in my discipleship class and you don’t learn what I’m teaching, I’ve let you down.

It’s really easy to insist that people read the manual our church rule book. It’s really easy to blame the user/student/prospect/customer congregation for not trying hard, for being too stupid lazy to get it, or for not caring stepping up enough to pay attention. It might even be tempting to blame those in your tribe church who aren’t working at hard as following as you are at leading. But none of this is helpful.

Pastor, stop blaming your congregation for your church not living its mission well. Take some responsibility.

While we’re at it…

Congregation, stop blaming your pastor for your church not living its mission well. Take some responsibility.

The reality is, its probably everyone’s fault.  

But you can’t control everyone’s behavior, thoughts and actions.

You can control yours.

Blaming helps no one.  

Taking responsibility and doing something about it helps everyone.

Posted in Book Reviews, Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes, Missional Leadership, Pastoring

Amazing People

November 12, 2008 // No Comments »

Been loving Seth Godin’s little book called Tribes. It’s full of some amazing one liners and is the kind of book that makes you want to get up off the couch and change the world.

Here’s a good one:

“When you have amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff.”

Seth Godin, Tribes

If you are a leader, this begs the question: Do you trust the people you work with?

Posted in Book Reviews, Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes

What is Mission?

November 11, 2008 // 2 Comments »

“Mission is more than and different from recruiting to our brand of religion; it is alerting people to the universal reign of God.”

David Bosch in Believing the Future

Posted in Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes

The Church as Sent: Five Important Thoughts from David Bosch

October 9, 2008 // 9 Comments »

I’ve been reading David Bosch’s book “Transforming Mission” for almost four years now. If you are familiar with the book, you will know why its taken me so long to get through it. It is essentially a summary of paradigm shifts in how mission has been understood throughout history. It’s widely respected and largely identified as one of the most important books in missional theology ever written. My friend John Chandler and I talk about this book being required reading in order to get your missional drivers license. In fact, Steve Taylor, author of The Out Bounds Church, writes here that “IMHO no-one should be allowed to talk about emerging church until they have read this book. It is such an essential missionary text.”

So, go get legitimate! Buy this book and start reading it.

Anyways, Bosch writes on page 376 that when we begin to gain an understanding of the church being “for the sake of the world” there are a few things to keep in mind.

The church should be aware of its provisional character.
The church is not the ground or the goal of mission but instead it is an instrument.

The church is not the kingdom of God but rather a credible sacrament.
This is helpful. There is a temptation to forget that the church is a sign of the kingdom of God. It is not the actual kingdom of God, but rather, something that witnesses to it.

The church’s missionary involvement suggests more than calling individuals into the church as a waiting room for the hereafter.
There is a convergence between liberating human beings and and people in history and also proclaiming the final coming of Gd’s reign. The people of God must be seen as part of world history. This is something that Karl Barth refers to “the people of God in world-occurrence.” I wrote about this topic a length in the mission section of my paper on Suburbia.

The Church is to be viewed pneumatologically, as “a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit” as movement of the Spirit toward the world en route to the future.
Somewhere, somehow I have heard that critique that churches that are known as missional don’t talk about the holy spirit enough. Maybe that’s because they haven’t read Bosch! You just can’t talk about being missional without understanding that the church is “a community of the Holy Spirit.”

If the church attempts to sever itself from involvement in the world and if its structures are such that they thwart any possibility of rendering a relevant service to the world, such structures have to be recognized as heretical.
He continues to write,

“The church’s offices, orders, and institutions should be organized in such a manner that they serve society and do not separate the believer from the historical. Its life and work are intimately bound up with God’s cosmic-historical plan for salvation of the world. We are called, therefore, to be “kingdom people”, not “church people.”

He then quotes Snyder (No, I don’t know what Snyder he’s quoting here. Sorry.),

“Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy and truth. Church people think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church change the world.”

Wow. That’s good stuff. May we all be Kingdom people.

Posted in Book Reviews, Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes, Missional

Lesslie Newbigin on Election

September 27, 2008 // 3 Comments »

Great stuff from my favorite author…

No one can say why it is that one was chosen and another not, why it is that here the word came “not only in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost” (1 Thess. 1:5), while there the same word carried no regenerating power. The answer to that question is known only to God. But if we cannot know for what reason one was chosen, we can most certain know for what purpose he was chosen: he was chosen in order to be a fruit-bearing branch in the one true vine (John 15:16), a witness through whom others might be saved. He is chosen in order that through him God’s saving purpose may reach to others, and they too be reconciled to God in and through His reconciled and reconciling people…

And we can also see that wherever the missionary character of the doctrine of election is forgotten; wherever it is forgotten that we are chosen in order to be sent; wherever the minds of believers are concerned more to probe backwards from their election into the reasons for it in the secret counsel of God than to press forward from their election to the purpose of it, which is that they should be Christ’s ambassadors and witnesses to the ends of the earth; wherever men think that the purpose of election is their own salvation rather than the salvation of the world; then God’s people have betrayed their trust.”

Lesslie Newbigin

Posted in Faith & Theology, Featured, Great Quotes, Missional

NT Wright on the Resurrection & the Church

July 19, 2008 // No Comments »

Reading NT Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope this afternoon. A few quotes for your reading pleasure:

The mission of the church is nothing more or less than the outworking, in the power of the Spirit, of Jesus’s bodily resurrection and thus the anticipation of the time when God will fill the earth with his glory, transform the old heavens and earth into the new, and raise his children from the dead to populate and rule over the redeemed world he has made. (265)

and…

the split between saving souls and doing good in the world is a product not of the Bible or the gospel but of the cultural captivity of both within the Western world… (265)

Posted in Faith & Theology, General, Great Quotes

How does the gospel judge suburbia?

July 11, 2008 // 11 Comments »

I’m working on a class at The Well for tomorrow that is basically serving as an introduction / overview to missional theology. It’s been a blast to put it together and I think we’ll spark some great conversation about our specific context and calling here in suburban Philadelphia.

Of course, I’ve been looking back through a few of my Newbigin books and came across this gem in The Open Secret:

“The day-to-day worship and word and witness of the local church has to be developed in relationship to all these in such a way that it becomes credible to the inhabitants to the local culture as a sign, instrument and foretaste of that one universal reign of God that is the true origin and goal of this and every human culture. It must communicate in the idiom of that culture both the divine good that sustains it and the divine purposes that judges it and summons it to become what it is not yet.”

So, the questions at hand:

• What are the ways that the gospel judges the culture suburban America?
• What are the characteristics of Suburbia that the gospel says “yes” to?

I would love some of your “gut” feedback here…

Posted in Book Reviews, General, Great Quotes, Missional Leadership, The Church, The Well

Individual Salvation and Restoration of all Things

December 5, 2007 // 4 Comments »

Quote of the day from The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World in the chapter by Tim Keller,

“In General I don’t think we’ve done a good job at developing ways of communicating the gospel that include both salvation from wrath by propitiation and restoration of all things.”

Yeah, I can get behind that! I tried to emphesize this concept in my sermon at the funeral last week.

Posted in General, Great Quotes, Missional

Congregations Aren’t Stupid

October 3, 2007 // 8 Comments »

Eugene Peterson writes in his book Under the Predictable Plant,

“The congregation is not the enemy. Pastoral work is not adversarial. These people in the pews are not aliens to be conquered – defeated and then rehabilitated to the satisfaction of the pastoral ego. Thomas Merton wrote, “it is both dangerous and easy to hate man as he is because he is not ‘what he ought to be.’ if we do not first respect what he is we will never suffer him to become what he ought to be: in our impatience we will do away with him altogether… and the congregation is not stupid and lumpish, waiting for pastoral enlightenment. Condescension is pastors is even worse than hostility.”

This are some great thoughts from one of my impersonal spiritual mentors. Those of us who are pastors know how easy it would be (and sometimes is) to wish your congregation was something else or acted different ways. Really, when it comes down to thinking this way, we just want them to be what we have for them rather than what God has for them. Or, at least, we’re pretty sure we know what God has for them and we’re pretty sure they don’t. There is a fine line between shepherding a community and assuming to always know what is best for them.

I think when you are shepherding a community, its a very relational process. Learning together what God has for the community. When as pastor is assuming what is best its not a cooperative effort anymore. It becomes the pastor telling everyone else what to do. In this approach, it doesn’t seem like there is that much listening involved.

Alan Roxburgh says that the spirit of God is among the people of God. If that’s the case, as pastors we’d better be taking the humble approach of cooperation rather than the arrogant approach of assuming to know what is best.

Remember that old saying, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life”… Sometimes I think pastors take the approach, “Your Pastor loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Too bad pastor’s aren’t quite as accurate with those plans as the Holy Spirit is.

Our congregations aren’t stupid. At least, not any more than the pastor is!

Remember, the Spirit of God is among the people of God.

Posted in General, Great Quotes, The Church