Archives For organic church

Cake My Ass.

bob —  May 25, 2012

I read a blog post today that compared being a pastor to “cake.” The claim (made by a house church advocate) is that “a professional pastor’s job is mostly cake… By “cake,” I’m referring to the fact that his job is easy.”

The basis for this claim is “2.5 years” as a pastor while sitting in Starbucks a lot studying.

Let me just say, for the record, that while there are pieces of pastoring that are HUGELY rewarding and enjoyable, anyone who would claim that the job as a whole is “cake” is speaking foolishly about something he didn’t engage in long enough to really know. 2.5 years may seem like a long time, but it’s not. It’s just long enough to see most of the high points of ministry without many of the lows.

It’s not enough time to see marriage after marriage unravel as you sit with couple after couple. It’s not time enough to walk through an adulterous relationship and the aftermath as you work to bring reconciliation. It’s not time enough to see the ebb and flow of multiple people’s faith and feel the weight of their walk with God and your responsibility to them. It’s not long enough to make disciples. It’s not long enough to try and do all these things while also equipping people for mission and ministry, encouraging the broken, exhorting the faithful, correcting and teaching the immature and trying to maintain a growing relationship with God yourself. And it’s not long enough to know that the half-assed way you are doing it is not necessarily how thousands and thousands of others who are literally pouring themselves out on behalf of the Gospel, their congregations and their neighbors/neighborhoods are doing it.

Cake? Not by a long shot.

I get the whole bi-vocational pastor thing. After all, I now am one.

But those in the house church movement seem to denigrate what they should be affirming. Just because you have chosen a different way doesn’t invalidate the way others have felt called to go. And your consistent appeal to Paul in his bi-vocationality is both tiresome and misguided.

Paul was not a local pastor. He was an itinerant evangelist/apostle who helped start churches where there were none. As such he worked a job rather than ask for support from those who were hearing the Gospel for the first time. But he also consistently maintained his right and the right of those in full-time ministry to earn their support from that ministry and so be freed into it fully. (1 Cor 9:14)

Are there lazy pastors who are gaming the system? Sure. Show me a job that isn’t true of.

But the vast majority of pastors are in full time ministry for different reasons, and to suggest otherwise is hugely insulting.

This article was sent to me with a question I wholeheartedly agree with: “Why are house church guys so consistently obnoxious?”

In Ecclesiology, Just stirring up trouble, leadership, organic church, Pastoral
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Interaction/Review- Tony Jones’ “The Teaching of The Twelve”

bob —  December 18, 2009

‚ÄúThe Didache is the most important book you've never read,‚Äù starts Tony Jones, in his latest book, The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing & Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community.

And while Tony's examination of this ancient Christian manuscript is engaging and thoughtful, I just don't know if I'd go quite that far. I enjoyed reading this book- well-written, I think well-researched… but the main premise is something I find myself wanting to push back against somewhat.

The Didache, according to The Teaching of the Twelve, records "a primitive Christianity" of about the same era in which the synoptic Gospels were composed, and seemingly unfamiliar with the theology of the Apostle Paul. 

And in that, it's a helpful look at some of the rhythms of the early church. The question, of course, is what can/does that early Christianity mean for us today?

Tony attempts to answer that question as he examines the Didache, by also looking at a small, modern community of Christians who call themselves the Cymbrogi- a house church of sorts which includes Trucker Frank, a friend we've gotten to know from some of Tony's other works. 

The Cymbrogi take from the Didache a very praxis-oriented approach to their walk with Jesus. They are in search of that primitive Christianity that "emphasizes how you live."

Tony writes, "The Didache's vision of communal life in Christ is powerful and potentially transformative. For the Cymbrogi, the Didache's primitive rhythms of faith have changed them personally. Each one of them I've spoken to has professed that the raw, organic Christianity that they find in the Didache and now attempt to practice is exactly what they've been looking for all along." Tony continues, "The Didache offers something of an alternative to what many know of Christianity. The real power of the Didache is its ability to remind us of what is truly important in Christianity: showing the love of Jesus to the world."

Okay… Here's where I start to wonder. 


Continue Reading…

In Books, community, Ecclesiology, organic church, theology
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Kimball’s Missional Misgivings…

bob —  December 5, 2008

Dan Kimball, a fellow OutofUr contributer, has earned my respect in a number of ways. 

First, as the pastor of a successful "church within a church" he had the guts to admit that ultimately, it doesn't work. New wine in old wineskins never does. 
Second, I appreciate the balance he has brought to the emerging church conversation. Yeah- he's on the more conservative end of the spectrum, and let's be honest- it's a needed voice. (Who speaks prophetically to people more conservatively-minded? Liberals. And who speaks prophetically to people who are more liberally minded? Conservatives. See?)

And lastly, he always sends me comforting Facebook messages when I get myself into little brouhaha's, like over Tony Jones's recent comments on Beliefnet re gay marriage (a Facebook interaction that took place during my recent blog hiatus)

His recent post on Ur asks some good questions of the Missional Church movement. 

I'm all in favor of good questions. And furthermore, I think Dan is asking the right ones (e.g. are people meeting Jesus in "missional" churches).

A couple of thoughts in response, though. 

Dan writes:
"We all agree with the theory of being a community of God that defines and organizes itself around the purpose of being an agent of God's mission in the world. But the missional conversation often goes a step further by dismissing the "attractional" model of church as ineffective. Some say that creating better programs, preaching, and worship services so people "come to us" isn't going to cut it anymore. But here's my dilemma—I see no evidence to verify this claim."

I both agree and disagree with Dan here. 

When I was in the middle of conversations and thinking that eventually led to me leaving a megachurch and beginning this pub church experiment, I said (and still believe) this wonderful piece of obviousness: the megachurch is great at reaching the people it's reaching. And it's awful at reaching the people it's not. 
Deep, huh?

To me the question isn't "Is the megachurch done?" Clearly, it's not. 

To me, the question has always been, is something else needed to reach those the megachurch isn't (and can't), those the traditional, smaller evangelical church (like 1st Baptist or 2nd Methodist) can't?

And the answer for me then and now is an emphatic yes. 

I pastor a growing church (something like 60% this year) of people for whom the attractional, large-scale production church was a dead end. Many of them even attempted to be part of a large-scale missional church here in town (that rhymes with Montego Bay) and found that though they appreciated the missional emphasis (as do I- I think we have a lot to learn from them), the size and difficulty of getting "in" precluded their participation. 

Many of our folks are either coming back to Christianity, just starting out (yes, we have people meeting Jesus @ Evergreen), or are, not to put too fine a point on it, half-way out the door giving it one last shot with us. I've heard from people in ALL of those places on the continuum that the attractional, program driven church, or even large church in general just wasn't attractive to them.

And that's the key to this whole discussion. 

There's a group of people for whom the megachurch works just fine. I LOVE that there are churches where those folks can find community and find Jesus. But let's be honest, there are people for whom those communities don't make sense, and an alternative is needed. 

Here's my contention (and no, I can't prove it- we'll just have to wait and see)- The numbers of people for whom the megachurch "works" is probably going to shrink over the next couple of decades. Mega Churches will continue to grow and be used by God, but those who intentionally make themselves smaller through strategies like multi-site will grow the most. More and more people will seek out medium sized communities (bigger than the house church or small (‚â§40) church but not as large as big (‚â•400) or mega-churches), recognizing that what they long for is community and it's just easier (though never easy) to create in smaller churches. I think when they want to hear Driscoll or (shudder) Ed Young Jr, or others they'll just hit the pod/vodcast. When they want production, they'll throw on a Hillsong or Crowder CD. For worship, a couple of guitars and vocals will suffice. 

But not just smaller communities, these people will seek out communities that point to and hold up Jesus, that encourage, prepare and launch people out into missional living (so no, I'm not predicting the renaissance of the millions of corner churches that can't seem to crack that particular code). They'll want communities that run lean (so not many building programs), take care of the poor, and focus on relationship and relational health. 

So while I appreciate Dan's pushback, I think it's a bit more complicated than what he's both depicted as the "missional" mindset and the way he's answering it. 

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe Osteen and Young Jr are on to something. 

But I doubt it :)

Okay- your turn- what do you think? 
In community, Ecclesiology, emerging church jive, evergreen, missional, organic church
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The Dangers of Easter…

bob —  April 20, 2006

Our Easter gathering was good… Nothing really different or special in the gathering itself (other than that we did announcements at the end), just a good time of shaking off the sorrow of Good Friday and embracing the joy of the resurrection. We ended up having more people than we’ve ever had at a gathering, which was very cool, though it always surprises me when it happens (okay- it’s a bit less surprising on Easter…)

But this weekend got me thinking… There are some dangers for the soul of a community surrounding Easter time.
And the soul of a pastor, I think.

I want us to be careful of how we think, talk and act around times like this last weekend.

Remember, Little Pastor- Easter is not a marketing opportunity. The resurrection of the Son of God is not an opportunity to pimp our programs or build our flock, even under the guise of “concern for lost”. And it’s not about me. (Please wait a minute while I repeat that a few times to myself… ) Heaven forbid we should ever do community in such a way that our main avenue for people coming to Christ is hearing the Gospel preached from the mouth of one person, rather than hearing the Gospel preached from the mouths (and lives) of the whole community. If, in your community, more people are becoming Christians on Sunday than during the rest of the week, I think you may have a problem.

Times like Easter and Christmas are dangerous for us in that we begin to see them as something different than what they really are for the life of a community. This is where the Christian calendar really helps, I think- focusing our communal life on the events of the life of Christ all year around, rather than seeing “two big outreach event Sundays!” every year in Christmas and Easter.

Yeah, a lot of people come to a Sunday service once or twice and year, and they are more likely to come on Easter than just about any other time than Christmas. And yes, the Holy Spirit is amazing, drawing people to Himself even through our goofy Easter pageants and songs (or, our smoke machines and laser shows, if that’s your thing…).

The danger in giving in to the impulse to do something radically different and humongous big and special at these times is what we communicate both to our community and those we are inviting to become a part of our community. What we subtly communicate (and sometimes not so subtly) to our people is that their job is to invite people who are not in our churches to come on Sunday morning so that the Pastor and the drama team and the worship guy and the Holy Spirit can take a whack at them.

I know that’s overstating, but believe me… I’ve been there. And that’s what “event evangelism” communicates, I think. Further, it often (unintentionally) communicates that it’s not the job of the average person to be introducing people to Jesus. Leave it to the pros with the degrees and the training and the gifts.

“You get ‘em to church… we’ll get ‘em to Jesus!”

How disempowering is that for people?

I would much rather we both explicitly and implicitly communicate a model that looks more like befriending people, enfolding them into the rhythms of our lives, sharing the highs/lows and how our faith informs those with them, integrating them into home groups and movie nights and the big events of our lives… and how natural would it be after all that love and enfolding that they become a part of our community, even before they believe? And then… that they believe, having seen it lived and tested and the reality of a life of faith, as opposed to simply a special sunday morning where the band rocks extra hard and the pastor has a few more funny stories than normal?

Easter is dangerous for those of us who are trying to avoid an attractional model of church because the attractional model reaches its zenith… or maybe its nadir… every year at Easter as thousands of churches try to do “something special” in the hopes that their people will invite others to come and be bait-n-switched into a relationship with Jesus… and we, trying hard to do something a bit more simple and organic, are tempted to abandon the rhythms of our community in a misguided effort to “keep up.”

Yeah… I said “bait ‘n’ switch” because that’s what it is. More than simply communicate to our people that it’s not their job, we communicate something to those we would love to see become part of our community… And it’s not a positive message. In fact, if we’re not careful, we could end up really disappointing some people. How?
By “offering” them less on subsequent visits. Less pizzazz… less oomph. I’d be kind of pissed off if the first week I went was Cirque Du Soleil and the next week was Phil and Ted’s Bargain Rate Circus, you know?

I was super impressed to see another church planter dial it down a bit this year after hearing the disappointment of some people who came to Easter services last year and when coming back the next week were faced with a completely different (and less exciting) offering.

Look, I’m not saying we shouldn’t take advantage of increased visitor attendance and preach the Gospel and hope that God does something amazing in people’s lives…

I’m just saying that if that’s your strategy- wait for someone to wander within range of your Gospel cannons and then fire on them in hopes of scoring a hit, or worse yet, doing some cool things in the hopes that they might be lured within range, then I think there a better way. Less defined, less able to be controlled by the pastors, less able to brag about at pastor’s conferences or have a book written about it… but better. People loving people into your community and into relationship with Jesus.

It doesn’t take mailers, banners, and Cirque Du Soleil every week. Just a bunch of loving, welcoming Christ followers. People who genuinely care. People who are seeking relationships with other people, and sharing life with them. A competent all-community gathering where things work well so as not to be a distraction from what God wants to do that morning, sure… but less of a focus on Sunday mornings as the center of community and more of a focus on the community and its revolving around Jesus Himself.

I remain convinced that what we win people with, we win them to.

update: Andrew Seely has some good and similar thoughts here

In church planting, community, emerging church jive, evergreen, organic church, Pastoral
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preaching @ evergreen

bob —  August 16, 2005

I guess we’ll be talking preaching here at the ol’ bob.blog for a little while. I began it this weekend with The Ballad of the Cowardly Preacher… and while I thought I had blogged on our way of doing sundays before, I guess I haven’t… or at least I can’t find it, so…

The Word of God is central to what we do on Sundays. It’s in and through and over the whole thing. Yes, we try to communicate in such a way as to make sense to everyone- church, unchurched, formerly churched… But that doesn’t mean we cherry pick it or seeker sensitive it…

A typical morning goes like this:

A welcome by someone (often me, though I’m trying to get more people to do this- other voices are good), wherein we talk about an aspect of the community- one of our core values or something we are trying to do or be. I think this is important as it not only orients the newer folks, but reminds the old hands.

We’ll have a few moments of quiet, centering prayer… often accompanied by a reading (usually the whole group, in unison) of a Psalm.

After that, the fun begins.

We generally take passages in large chunks- either whole chapters or half chapters. It’s pretty rare (and usually done for contrast) that we do just a couple of verses.

We work verse by verse through the whole passage. And we talk alot. For us, the sermon is (at least this is the ideal) the work of the community. We are teaching each other. Yes, as the “Teacher” I have a role- I keep it on track. I emphasize the correct points, correct the wildly wrong points (if no one else does… often the people do this themselves, lovingly and gently) and move things along when someone says something just kind of odd. I do the majority of the speaking, but I do my darndest to get others talking to each other as well. In this way, as a community, we wrestle with the Scriptures.

It works like this for me: I tend to think of the sermon in thirds. In the first third, it’s difficult to get people talking, so we begin with review or intro, orienting ourselves to where we are in the text that day. A few, easier, more closed-ended questions to get people into opening their mouths. (Newer folks really can’t believe they are allowed, nay encouraged to talk in church!) The first third ends up being a pretty even balance of me and them.

The second third, I try to bring out more of the them… open ended questions, examples of where they’ve dealt with or struggled with the subject matter of the text, what they think about any hard, interpretive issues… The second third is less me, more them.

The last third is almost all me. This is where I get on my horse and go… where I preach. I try to get at what I’ve heard God saying to our community through the week, as we’ve discussed, as I’ve studied… I tend, by body language, to discourage too much talking here, as we’re usually getting towards the end of our time.

It takes us the whole morning, from right after the welcome to the closing blessing to get through this process.

So where’s the worship, you ask?

What a silly question. It’s all worship, isn’t it?

If you mean, where’s the singing though, that’s a different story. We don’t do the start-off-with-an-upbeat-get-’em-out-of-their-seats type thing… most of our music tends towards the quieter, more contemplative. And we sprinkle it throughout the morning. We’ll work through the text until we come to a point where I know “We better stop and respond to God on this, or we’re gonna miss it.” We may do that once in the morning, at the end or in the middle.. or we may do it two or three times throughout… it just depends.

We really ant the community to be involved, beyond just Sunday morning as well… I try to post the week’s passage on our forum during the week before, so people can meditate, process, ask questions, give insights… It’s still a discipline we’re learning as a community. Yes, I may be “the Teacher” of the community, but it doesn’t mean I’m the only one. We teach each other. And while I give the elders and others a chance at the pulpit…err… music stand often, this method allows them to teach the community- through their example of participation, through the discussion on the forum, through commenst and questions in the group on Sundays.

It’s not perfect- I did have to learn new skills in facilitating discussion (read: keeping things on track, keeping comments short, handling the very rare fly ball from left field…), and I had to learn how to say less so that others could say more.
I used to walk into the pulpit with four to five pages. Now it’s three.

And yeah- I manuscript. It keeps me on track, and it keeps me on time. If I tried to do this without a manuscript, we’d be an hour over every week. I don’t know where Mark Driscoll finds people willing to sit through an hour and forty minute sermon, but sheee-ooot… I just don’t have that much to say :)

Anyway… more on this jive later. I just wanted to give some background as to where we are at as a community before diving into Doug’s books.

For our non-evergreen readers… I’m wondering if any evergreenies or people who have visited would care to comment on our sunday mornings- good, bad, indifferent. Does it work? Props? Shortcomings? What think ye all?

In best of bob.blog, evergreen, organic church, preaching
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and let’s just lay it out…

bob —  July 18, 2005

Let’s put it out there… when you choose to plant churches rather than simply getting larger and larger, when you choose 10 churches of 200 rather than 1 church of 2000, what are you really giving up?

Resources?

I think that 10 churches of 200 can resource the same ministry that one of 2000 can, if they stay relationally connected and work together. And, I believe they can do so with lower overhead. In fact, I’m betting on it.

I think what you really give up is power. Power and influence.

Would I love to sit atop a muti-million dollar organization? In many ways, yes.

But.

But, but, but…

That’s not the goal.

And in fact, as I read the Gospel, choosing to cede power and influence in favor of relational connectedness just might be a more (careful here) kingdom-oriented choice.

Yes, I am glad to see certain mega-church pastors using their influence for the poor and the oppressed.

But.

It seems as if the church as a whole began speaking on certain things rather than relying on celebrity voices to inspire and move and make things happen… When we as pastors step back and refuse to do for the people what they should do for themselves, interesting things happen.

No, I’ll never be in Time Magazine as an Influential Evangelical‚Ñ¢. The mayor will never phone up for an opinion.

But anyone in my church community can get on my calendar if they need to. My cell phone # is not a closely guarded secret. My sermons can be formed and shaped and influenced by what actual people in our community are dealing with. I know people’s names. They know me. By intentionally choosing to remain small through church planting, I get to be their pastor.

And if I have to give up the powerand influence that comes with numbers to see that happen, well then, so be it. It’s a choice I gladly make.

Sorry for the stream-of-consciousness ramblings. It’s monday. :)

In best of bob.blog, evergreen, organic church
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size matters…

bob —  July 18, 2005

I’m sure I’ve blogged on this before, but…

Another pastor once said a few things to me on the issue of size.

1st he said, “Don’t make a moral issue of (church) size.”

But I can’t help it.

If it’s not a moral issue, what is it?

Is it moral for a church to spend $55 million a year on their TV ministry? Close to $90 million to renovate a sports arena to house an out-sized congregation? At a certain point it simply becomes how many people can you fit into a room.

Alright- I have no idea of the hearts and motivations of those doing this stuff, so I can only tell you how we have chosen to do things.

From the beginning, we put a limit of the number of people we would have in our community. After that, it’s just planting churches. And planting churches. And planting churches.

I hope we will always be growing, but the fact is, when you get over a certain size, the pastor is no longer pastor. I suppose you could call the head of a huge, corporate sheep farm a “shepherd.” But if he or she spends all day in the office looking at numbers and talking “strategy”, never works with actual sheep, in fact has fifteen layers of managment between himself/herself and the sheep… I just don’t think that person should be called a shepherd.

So, if I want to do that which God has called me to do (pastor), then I must, out of necessity, limit the number of people I’m trying to shepherd. I know, I know, there are ways to “make a church smaller” even as it gets larger… I’m just not sure if I buy that anymore. And beyond just me personally being able to know the people in my care, even more importantly is the issue of the community being small enough that people can know, love and care for each other.

Can that happen in a huge church? Sure.

Is it harder? You bet.

Should we avoid making it harder if we can? I think we should.

So, we’ve said- at 200 we better be ready to plant a church. When we hit 250, we better be ready to send 50 of them off with their own pastor, worship pastor/team, etc. And then we do it again. And again.

Multiplication.

2nd, that pastor that was telling me a thing or two said: “The way to avoid ‘selling out’ is to do the things when you get larger that you did when you were small.”

The things we are doing now involve individualized approaches to spiritual formation, dialogue and discussion on Sunday mornings, and a non-programmatic approch to ministry.

I just don’t know how we’ll do any of that over a certain size.

So, I’ll take the second half of the advice, even if I can’t take the first.

I’m not saying that everyone should see it the way we do, or do it the way we have chosen to.

But if you approach growth unthinkingly… if your strategy for growth is simply “bigger is better!” I would urge you to spend some time thinking, praying about and discussing this with your community.

Ask youself:

Do we want to plant churches and multiply?

At what size can we no longer do the things we are now doing that make this community special and engaging?

At what point do we lose the ability to move, react, change course simply because our size has gotten too large to allow for fluidity?

At what point are we spending more of our resources on maintanence and upkeep than on being missional?

In organic church
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pastor as protector in the organic church

bob —  May 26, 2005

Since the issues of the role of pastor in protecting and teaching have been weighing heavily on my psyche lately, I thought it might be good to take some time and think those issues through, particularly in regard to the organic church milieu.

I know what “protecting the flock” looked like in my past. It involved separating out those who didn’t toe the doctrinal line, regardless of how secondary or tertiary the issue was. It generally involved shooting the wounded. It was about drawing in and out, lines and boxes…

In this new emerging church context, where we are attempting to do church organically, what does that look like?

I know for us, as we have progressed as a community, we have tried to see things (particularly the community itself) less as a bounded set (you are either in or out) and more as a centered set (you are either moving closer to the center, which is Christ, or you are moving farther and farther away).

We have attempted to define little doctrinally other than the essentials of the faith- creedal Christian orthodoxy is important to us. Your stand on the end times is not.Having an opinion on secondary and tertiary matters where there is a wide range of Christian thought is fine. Insisting that everyone else share it is not.

We have made room for people to ask questions and process issues without being handed prepackaged answers. We have tried to recognize that asking another question in return, helping someone to take the next step towards discovering the answer on their own may, in the long run, end up being more valuable than simply handing them the answer.

So, what place “protecting the flock?” With all this room for dissent and doubt, where does Paul’s admonition (there’s a great church word!) to “…beware! Be sure that you feed and shepherd God’s flock–his church, purchased with his blood–over whom the Holy Spirit has appointed you as elders,” come in? He says further, “I know full well that false teachers, like vicious wolves, will come in among you after I leave, not sparing the flock.”

A few observations…
i think multiple metaphors are allowed. I like the biblical metaphor of shepherd. One I’ve been playing with in my mind a bit is pastor as gardener (e.g. 1 Cor 3:5-9)

If the church is an organic garden, if we do our job well, things will grow. The growth is not dependent on us as pastor/gardener, but rather, through our actions we either help or hurt. The growth comes from God.

The organic nature of it is that we realize the best way to let things grow is to let them take the shape they will take and grow at the rate they will grow. We recognize that the introduction of foreign elements (in the form of programs nurtured and developed in settings wildly different than our own) may not be the most helpful thing for us in the long run. We resist the temptation to (artificially) accelerate growth or control it. We plant, we water… we wait.

But what about weeds? What about pests?

It seems as though one of the principles of organic gardening is that doing too much is just as bad as doing too little. When pests arise, you do something… but you resist measures which may hurt as much as they help (pesticides, for example). The plant is useless if, though pest-free, it becomes poison.

I’ve seen some churches that become ruthlessly concerned about “pests” and become very poison in the process…

Add to this Jesus’ words in Matthew 13: “Here is another story Jesus told: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. But that night as everyone slept, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat. When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew. The farmer’s servants came and told him, `Sir, the field where you planted that good seed is full of weeds!’
¬†¬†¬† ” `An enemy has done it!’ the farmer exclaimed.
¬†¬†¬†” `Shall we pull out the weeds?’ they asked.
¬†¬†¬† “He replied, `No, you’ll hurt the wheat if you do. Let both grow together until the harvest. Then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds and burn them and to put the wheat in the barn.’ “

Jesus went on to give an eschatological meaning to this parable, so we don’t want to take it too far…

But I guess I am beginning to synthesize all this in this way:
As one of those entrusted with tending this particular garden, I want to
1. be aware of and be constantly assessing the health of the garden. Does it need more water? More sun? What is out of balance that needs to be adjusted? And is there a healthy, organic way to accomplish that balance?
2. I want to avoid overly harsh measures which may seem to help in the short run, but in the long run damage the health of the whole system.
3. There’s a difference between weeds and wolves.

gotta do more work on sermon/hit a couple of meetings right now. Anyone want to comment on the difference between weeds and wolves? :)

Am I getting totally off base here?

In best of bob.blog, organic church, Pastoral
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organic church pt 2

bob —  May 2, 2005


But as the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. Those who spoke Greek complained against those who spoke Hebrew, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve called a meeting of all the believers.
“We apostles should spend our time preaching and teaching the word of God, not administering a food program,” they said. “Now look around among yourselves, brothers, and select seven men who are well respected and are full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. We will put them in charge of this business. Then we can spend our time in prayer and preaching and teaching the word.”- Acts 6:1-4

Over the next few weeks, in this space we’re going to be laying out some thoughts on doing church organically.

One of the things that doing church organically means is this: the pastor(s) focus on what God has called them to do (pray, teach, counsel) while allowing the people to focus on what God has called them to do. The question, of course, is “What has God called us to do?”

This is the challenge- has God called us to meet the needs of the poor? Then who is our community will step up and do this? Has God called us to meet the spiritual and emotional needs of the children among us? Then who in our community will step up and do this?

I love that the very first pastors of the church left us this example: Do you want to see something happen? Then have at it!

In the garden that is the organic church, the leaders are the gardeners, watering, pruning, tending… the “fruit” comes from the people themselves. The leaders recognize that too much water, just as too little can kill a plant. Finding the right balance is a challenge…

I love that we have people who are stepping up and taking our community into AIDS hospices, to the homeless teens of Portland, into building a house for needy families. Thank you all for taking it upon yourself to live out our core value of justice!

Some areas where our community needs to consider the next step-
Kid’s ministry. Right now, by and large, the people involved in kid’s ministry are parents. Do we as a community want to allow this to continue? Or do we want to give these parents a little break, love, serve and teach the kids in our community even if we ourselves don’t have any kids? If so, we probably need someone to put some structure in place- someone with organizational skills. You could help put volunteers in place even if you are not a “kids” person… think and pray about doing this…

Welcome coffees… have you noticed
a. a ton of new people
b. a lack of “welcome classes”?
The reason you don’t see these classes is because… we don’t have them. We (we made this decision together, and we can change it if we like) decided to go the more personal route of one-on-one coffees to welcome people and orient them to the community.
We need more people helping to make this happen. Please talk to Chris to find out more about helping.

I am so thankful for those of you helping to make the dream of evergreen a reality. Please continue to dig in and discover what God is asking us to do… and doing it!

In best of bob.blog, organic church
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organic church

bob —  April 21, 2005

I’m hoping to write a book this year on the organic church… as a step in that direction, I want to begin sussing out the concepts in our weekly email and in this space. Feel free to help shape the project by commenting questioning or just plain cheering :)

Entry one, containing no major revelations is this:

Over the next few weeks, in this space we’re going to be laying out some thoughts on doing church organically.

No, we’re not talking about a church with only natural ingredients, though that’s a really good metaphor now that I think about it…
When we say “organic church” what we mean is this: we want our community to be an expression of who we are as a people, not a program we “borrow” from another church in another context. Though we share much in common with followers of Christ all around the world, our search for relationship with God is just that, our search. And it behooves us to express that in what we do as a church community.
So, while we want to respect those who have come before us (“history” is one of our core values, after all…), sometimes you really do have to reinvent the wheel.
When we were still in the dream phase of this thing people would ask “What will it look like?” I grew to love answering “I have no earthly idea.” All I could say was that if a bunch of cloggers and bluegrass musicians showed up, well… we’d be the clogging church. If a bunch of skate punks showed up, we’d be the skate church. I wasn’t out to niche target-market our community, and so felt great freedom to just sit back and watch what happened. I still feel that freedom…
This means- as a community, we have both the privilege and the responsibility to shape this community. More and more, we are singing our own songs. More and more, the art on our walls comes from our own artists. If we have a children’s ministry, we won’t be buying it pre-packaged from a large church somewhere, not that there’s anything wrong with that… but the fact is, when we create it, we’ll own it emotionally.

What we make, we nurture. What we buy, we merely consume.

While we may take inspiration and ideas from others, we have the freedom to make this church thing a unique expression of our search for God and our relationship with one another.
You just need to ask yourself- What’s my contribution to what evergreen is becoming?

In best of bob.blog, organic church
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