Last week I spend a few days here on the blog working out the leadership culture we are trying to create at The Well. Now, admittedly I am a big leadership book junkie. I love exploring the sociology of leadership and community. But, as much as I love that stuff I realize there is a danger in it. One can become so dependent on good leadership technique that we forget that it is the Spirit that works in and through us. While technique is important, and firmly believe we can’t avoid it, we must not depend on it.

With that being said, I want to highly recommend the little book by Henri Nouwen called, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership. This book is fantastic and it’s a good complement to our efforts in understanding good leadership technique. In the book, he talks through three movements we must make as leaders of the future (actually, today since he wrote this a while ago).

The three movements:

• From Relevance to Prayer.
• From Popularity to Ministry.
• From Leading to being Led.

In the first section he writes about our need to stop seeking relevance. His experience of working with the mentally handicapped played a huge role in him learning this.  He went from being a sought after speaker, author and professor at Yale, Notre Dame and Harvard where everyone was impressed with him to working with the mentally handicapped who could have cared less about his books and all he had accomplished.  He writes,

“Not being able to use any of the skills that had proved so practical in the past was a real source of anxiety. I was suddently faced with my naked self.”

From there, he was forced to discover his true identity  and concluded that,

“the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own valuable self.

My friend and former co-pastor Gary Alloway says all the time, “Remember your own irrelevance.”  This is wonderful advice (and I realize now he stole it from Nouwen!) because it reminds us that the message that we carry is that God loves and uses us as his servants, not because of what we have accomplished or how gifted we are, but because of his saving and unconditional grace.

The quesiton he asks in response to this call to irrlevancy is from Jesus himself, “Do you love me?”  That’s the question that we need to allow Jesus to ask us, “Peter, do you love me?”  Nouwen writes,

The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? But: Are you in love with Jesus?”

I’ll be honest, I know from experience it’s way too easy to be a pastor without being in love with Jesus.  Nouwen writes some more,

“Knowing God’s heart means consistantly, radically, and very concretely to annnounce and reveal that God is love and only love, and that eery time fear, isolation, or despair begins to invade the human soul, this is not something that comes from God. This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without conditions or limits.“

So, moving from focusing on our successes to others to focusing on our love for Jesus, he submits that the practice of contemplative prayer is essential. He writes,

“If there is any focus that the Christian leader of the future will need, it is the discipline of dwelling in the presence of the One who keeps asking “Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?” This is the discipline of contemplative prayer.”

and later he writes,

the future of Christian leadership it is of vital importance to reclaim the mystical aspect of theology so that every word spoken, every word of advice given, and every strategy developed can come from a heart that knows God intimately.

As Christian leaders, I pray that we are not seeking approval and acceptance from the “great” things that we have done but rather we are understanding ourselves as vessels of grace.  I pray that we would be serving out of a heart that is connected to Jesus through the practice of prayer and contemplation.

LIke I said, leadership technique is good, I’m a big fan of it and I will continue to explore it to help me grow as a person and as a leader, but I am reminded again by Nouwen that all of it is a big, giant waste of time if I am not connecting to the heart of God in prayer and remembering that all I accomplish is as a result of God’s grace in my life.

May we all remember our own irrelevance.

As a pastor who has spent the last nine years living a bi-vocational life (sometimes tri-vocational), I appreciated all the discussion on David Fitch’s blog post back in November. I posted the rhythm I have been living for the last nine months back in November also.  Things have changed a tad for me since I am working a lot less hours at Sbux and we are in the midst of a transition at The Well that will probably bring some changes to my current rhythm of life.   But, if you are interested in the topic, read David’s blog and be sure to read all the discussion below.  There are some really good thoughts and questions addressed.

Also, Jason Coker is going to be starting a series on whether missional church leaders should be paid.  I absolutely love the way Jason thinks so this should be a good, challenging series of posts.

This weekend I am swapping pulpits with Rev. Greg Holston of St. Matthew United Methodist Church in Trevose, PA.  St. Matthew is a predominately african-american congregation in our town that we partner with on occasion.   Pastor Greg will be preaching at The Well, which I will be very sad to miss. I heard him preach at our combined Easter Sunrise service and he was awesome.  He has a great handle on the scriptures and the gospel and preaches it with a ton of passion.  I know The Well will be blessed and challenged by him this weekend. 

Part of the deal is that I get to head over to preach to his community.  I’m tremendously excited about this as I love being given the opportunity to speak into other communities of faith.  I’ll be preaching on the topic of personal / corporate vocation which will fit quite well with my place in life these days. 

One of the values we have at The Well is that of “unity” with the wider body of Christ and I am excited to see us expressing it in this simple way.  If you have never done this kind of thing in your church, suggest it or if you are the pastor, just make it happen.  I think its a great way to say “we are all one body on mission together.”  

Also, its always helpful for communities to hear the scriptures spoken from someone who lives in the midst of a different environment.  While there is some overlap for sure,  there is no question that the lives that Pastor Greg’s people are living have somewhat different narratives and questions than the people at The Well.  I’m excited to be able to speak into their community from my experience and he into ours. 

Of course, since the baby has come I haven’t preached in about 7 weeks so I’ve got to figure out how to do this again…

May 12, 2009

Dear Church Family,

During our worship gathering on Sunday we took a break from our regular sermon series in order to look back at the early dreams and passions of The Well and to celebrate how God is making these dreams a reality. (You can listen to the audio on the church website here: http://church.thewellpa.com/podcast/the-history-next-steps-for-the-well/)

The Well has four foundational values:

• Discipleship (we are a community of people becoming more and more like Jesus)
• Justice/Evangelism (we reach out and share the love of Jesus with others, especially those on the fringes of society)
• Locality (we are locally embedded in our neighborhood, especially through the use of our building)
• Unity (we are connected to the historical and global Church)

On Sunday we focused on three of these four values, and how God continues to bless our desire to serve in these areas. Below is a quick overview:

Discipleship: God has been actively working in the lives of the people in our congregation. It’s clear that his Spirit is present and active among us. We believe that it is now time for us to become even more intentional about allowing God to form all of our lives into the image of Christ. We seek to enrich our environment in a way that will help people discover practices and relationships that foster Christ-likeness. This summer we will begin a very intentional time of searching and seeking in order to more fully understand the next steps before us. If being part of this process interests you, please e-mail Shanna (splatt20@hotmail.com).

Justice/Outreach: Over the last few years God has given us wonderful opportunities to serve our local community in things such as the missions trip to Lower Bucks County, meeting specific local needs, and partnering with local community services organizations. As we continue serving in those ways we are making intentional steps to reach outside ourselves. God has planted a desire among many in The Well to serve our neighboring community of Bristol. From June 7 to August 23, we will meet in Bristol for informal Sunday night worship gatherings. We will meet at Brian and Dorie Morgan’s house (922 Spring St, Bristol, PA) at 6 pm for a potluck dinner, followed by music and discussion from 7 to 8. Once a month, we will also do a service project in the community of Bristol. We pray this will be an awesome opportunity to worship God in an intimate setting, grow close with friends and neighbors, and serve in the most depressed part of Bucks County. For now, this is a summertime program, but we will pray as to how God is leading us in the future. For anyone interested in serving the people of Bristol, there will be a meeting after church on May 24. If you have any questions, please contact Gary Alloway (garya@thewellpa.com).

Locality: Our prayer is that our building would serve as an important means of blessing and partnering with our local community. We have certainly seen God honor our prayers, as he has allowed us to use our building to minister in exciting ways. We now see the need to hire a Building Ministry Coordinator to continue our faithful use of this resource by finding new opportunities for our community to serve others through use of our space. Our goal is to have the Coordinator in place by August in order to prepare for fall programming. We will also be undergoing some renovations to our bathrooms and coffee bar as well as adding another classroom. We are currently in the midst of estimating costs and exploring grants to fund this position and the renovations. If you are interested in helping with the planning process, writing grants, or doing renovations please contact Todd Hiestand (toddh@thewellpa.com).

Our journey the last twelve years has been much like a hike. Our dream was to walk this journey in step with the Spirit. There have been some peaks, some valleys, and some great stories of God working in, among, and through us. For the last year or so we have sensed that God has brought us (organizationally speaking) to a peaceful clearing on the trail. This clearing has been a place of much needed stability and rest. We’ve been able to catch our breath, roast a few marshmallows on the fire, and throw the frisbee around a bit. As nice as it is, we do not desire to stay in the clearing for too long. It’s time to continue on our journey. So we walk forward in faith, believing that God will continue the good work he started in us twelve years ago.

As always, we invite conversation and discussion about these decisions. We also ask you to join in prayer with us as we ask God to lead and direct these goals. As each of these areas proceeds there will be opportunities to participate with your time, ideas and finances. If you have questions, concerns, ideas or just want to hear more, please do not hesitate to ask.

The Ministry Leadership Team at The Well,

Gary Alloway, Shanna Cummings, Todd Hiestand, Patti Pearson, Anna Pelger, Phil Wood

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.

This month (Nov. 16th) we are meeting as a community at The Well for our quarterly discussion on issues that are important to our mission together.  We call these meetings Midrash meetings.  This month we’ll be addressing the issue of prayer in our community life.  Our mission statement reads “…a community shaped my scripture and by prayer…”  We’ve got some big time room to improve in being a community that is actually shaped by prayer.  

In preparation for this gathering, I’ve been doing some reading on the subject and picked up the late Stanley Grenz’s book on prayer called “Prayer: A Cry for the Kingdom.”  It’s really a great book and here is a collection of short excerpts from the introduction. 

The greatest challenge facing the church of Jesus Christ today, and therefore every local congregation, is moving the people of God to engage in sincere, honest, fervent prayer….

If we look closely at the contemporary situation, we would likely find ourselves readily admitting that ours is the epitome of a prayer-less church….

Prayer is a relatively insignificant aspect of the structured life of the people of God…

Not only does prayer find little place in the structuring of church life, but meager attention is devoted to fostering a praying congregation…

When it comes to prayer, denominations and churches are simply reflecting what is true of most individual Christians. For many believers, prayer is a lost art.  Many do not know how to pray and do not pray.  For many the mere mention of the word results in an immediate recognition of our personal failure to pray as we should. 

Good words and a good challenge.  I am looking forward to our meeting on November 16th as we discuss some practical ways to have our community actually shaped by prayer. 

I’ve been devouring this new book I have by the late Edwin Friedman called “A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix.”  It’s been one of those books that came at the perfect time for me as a person and as a leader.  One of the many great topics he discusses is our society’s constant blame placing and lack of personal responsibility.  When challenges and struggles come, we are constantly blaming others.  He writes that good leaders don’t do that and take personal responsibility for the situations.  

I am beginning to realize that to be a strong leader/person, you have to be willing to take the responsibility when things go wrong.  Too long have we been too quick to “displace blame.”  While its really convenient, its not helpful and no growth and is really, well, honestly, its cowardly.  

Friedman calls it a failure of nerve. Here’s a little blurb from his book where he ties this into our political situation:

Perhaps the most outstanding example of blame displacement in chronically anxious America is what has come to be called anti-incumbency, the tendency of voters to reject whoever is in office almost irrespective of their political party affiliation.  This flailing at the political winds amounts to a collective irresponsibility on the part of voters seeking magical, quick-fix answers to a complex range of problems of existence.  Instead of focusing on their own response to the challenges of change, these voters find fault in their political stars.  And this is not just a political phenomenon; it is occurring with regard to coaches, educators, CEOs, and clergy, not to mention marriage partners and parents. 

I am sitting here doing some study / preliminary work on my sermon for this weekend. We’ve starting the book of Ephesians and I’m taking in Ephesians 1:3-10. Its a quite a full passage and I’m looking forward to the challenge of preaching on it.

But for some reason, my mind is going to the idea that pastors need to be doing their own personal reading (call it devotions if you want) outside of the text they are preaching for the week.

I get the concept behind that.

But now I’m wondering, is this because we’re trained to approach the text that we are preaching in a way that doesn’t effect or transform our lives?

We encourage those who are part of The Well to sit with this text during the week and let it be part of their regular reading. But, as the pastor, that’s not good enough? I need to read beyond that?

When I study a text for a week that I am preaching I am doing background work and (some) language work. But, I am also sitting with the text all week long, keeping it in on the front of my brain all week long and letting it become infused in my daily life. Sounds pretty devotional to me.

The question for me is, am I doing this with the text when I am not preaching?

That’s another story altogether.

I guess my point is, as pastors, we better be taking in the text we are preaching in a way that it can transform our own lives, or we’re probably better off not preaching it at all.

And when we’re not preaching, we’d better be doing it too…

Now I am preaching at myself…

This week at The Well we had a child / parent dedication. We do dedications in a pretty cool way and I’ll write about that this week, but I wanted to share something I wrote that outlines our overall approach to children, worship and community.

Children & Families at The Well
There is no question that children are a precious gift from God. Because of this, how they fit into the life of our community is no small matter. At The Well, we believe that the family is the best place for spiritual formation of children. It is the role of the church community to partner with parents in helping children to love God and love others. Therefore, our goal is to work alongside parents as they rear their children.

We also know that parents are not the only ones who have an impact on the development of a child. Most adults do not realize how important their interaction with other people’s children really is. We take seriously the idea that “it takes a village (i.e. church) to raise a child.” Therefore, it is important to address the role that children have in our worship services.

Sunday School & Nursery
Beth Wood, our Children’s Ministry Director, has done a great job of growing an excellent Sunday School and Nursery ministry. The volunteers who generously serve with her are awesome. Both Nursery and Sunday School are great places for children to learn at a level that they can understand as well as interact closely with qualified, caring adults. (All of our volunteers undergo background checks and are carefully selected by Beth Wood).

At a specific time during the service, usually after our opening music, children are invited to the classrooms in the back of our building for a time of learning more appropriate to their ages. The children are separated into different classes based on their age. After the preaching, parents are welcome to bring their kids into the service to join them for communion and the final songs. For safety, we do ask that parents personally pick up and drop off their children from the Sunday School rooms. The nursery is available during the entire service.

Community Involvement
A good Sunday School program is only one part of a child’s involvement in our community. Our goal is not, and never will be, to hide children away so we can get on with the “important big people stuff.”

Their interaction with the rest of the community before, after and during the service plays a vital role in shaping their lives. Whether you are a parent or not, we hope you know that your presence and interaction is shaping these children in significant ways. This is a great gift and also great calling. This is both humbling and exciting.

With this in mind, we encourage our families to be intentional in helping our children understand what it means to worship God and celebrate Him in the midst of community.

To Parents:
We encourage you to worship with your children during the singing and quiet times of our gatherings. This might mean sitting up front with them. This might mean sitting with them at a table in the back while you enjoy your coffee and they have a donut. (We don’t suggest you give them coffee. That might be trouble for all of us!) The goal here is not merely to get them to be quiet and sitting with you. While that is obviously more conducive to worship, we all know that it is not always possible. Instead, the main goal is to teach them how to worship as part of a community. But, the fact is, this goal is much easier realized when you are sitting and worshiping together as a family. We know that kids will be kids! Of course when kids are kids, parents need to be parents. Please be aware of where your children at all times and seeking to ensure that they are participating in worship and not running around without supervision.

To Those Who Aren’t Parents:
We encourage you to welcome our children into your lives as well. Sit with a family during worship. Teach once a month in Sunday School. Play with them after the service. Before you know it, you might just find yourself at a school play or a pee-wee soccer game. The Christian community is a family and you are a part of it, even if you are single.

As we have already said, children are a beautiful part of our family. We want to be intentional about inviting them into our church family in ways that teach them the simple, yet difficult call to love God and to love others.

We pray that our Sunday mornings, in addition to our other community events, will be a great support to the parents and families in our community.

This is really the first election year that I’ve spent a lot of time listening to the speeches and debates from the two main Presidential candidates. Usually, the only campaigning that I let into my system are the television commercials and that’s only because the DVR hadn’t been invented yet. This year, as I have taken in all these speeches and “debates” I’ve realized that there is something to be learned for pastors and people who teach or preach on a regular basis.

Watching these two candidates has made me ask this question: As pastors and teachers does our preaching give way for conversion or does our preaching simply make those who disagree with us disagree more?

I have come to realize there is a strong difference between how I used to preach and how I preach now. I used to preach, and still sometimes do, in a manner similar to these conventions, speeches and commercials. When I was done, those who already agreed with me cheered me on and told me, “That was one of your best sermons.” But, those who disagreed with me would not have said, “You really made me think.” Instead, they probably just wrote me off, or even worse, tuned me out halfway through the sermon.

Why the different reactions? Because my sermons were too much like those of our wonderful politicians. As I’ve watched them, it has become clear that there was no way someone who is a strong Democrat would be able to watch McCain or Palin and say something like, “Hmm, that’s a good point. I never thought about it that way. Maybe I should think carefully about that.” Conversely, no one who was a strong Republican would have been able to listen to Obama and Biden and say, “Wow, that’s an interesting point. I should think carefully about that.”

No, the reactions were… well, you read them in the papers, the news websites and friends’ blogs. You’ve heard them talked about awkwardly and sometimes ignorantly in your workplace.

“The Democrats are socialist liberals and will ruin our country!”

“The Republicans have ruined our country for 8 years and they are war mongers!”

Why these reactions? I think partly because these speeches, like my early sermons, aren’t so much geared at conversion of people’s thoughts, but rather to show why and how one side is right and the other side is wrong. Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t speak about things with conviction. In fact, without conviction there would be no point of me continuing to preach and there would be no point to hearing these men and women talk. But, a huge challenge to those who preach (and, dare I say, those who speak in political settings) is to make your case for your conviction in such a way that allows the other side to begin to see why it is important that you think the way you do.

The reality is—the Democrats are right on a lot of things and so are the Republicans. Neither party has a corner on the market on “rightness.” Of course, the two sides will never fully agree with each other. But, I can’t help but think that there is room for a lot more respect.

What I am talking about here is the difference between being a bully with your words and carefully shepherding with your words. When I get done preaching, I honestly would rather hear someone say to me, “Your sermon was very thought provoking” than to hear, “Your sermon was awesome.” When someone says, “Your sermon was awesome,” it usual means they already agreed with me and I just reinforced their previously held belief. When someone says, “That was thought provoking,” it means I really communicated well and made them think differently about a topic in which they disagreed with me on or one that they hadn’t thought of before.

It’s easy to effectively communicate with those who already agree with you. It’s a whole other challenge to communicate effectively with those who disagree with you.

Oh, and by the way, ticking them off isn’t necessarily effective communication. I heard a few times that “Obama really took McCain to task” or “Palin really laid the smack down on Biden.”

Well, your side thinks that’s what happened.

But their side just thinks that other person is an idiot.

I have to wonder, when this happens, how much is really accomplished?