Admitting Ignorance is the Beginning of Wisdom

At least I hope so…

Things are not always “smooth” around the Adams’ household.  In spite of the efforts of my amazingly beautiful and loving wife, and my two stellar daughters, life just seems to spin toward complexity.  The honest truth is “normal” life situations come up every day that require a decision from me, and I do not know what to say….I am at a loss for answers – often!

  • Your child said she feels bad, should you let her stay home from school today?
  • Home work was late, or incomplete, should you push harder?
  • Financing college requires a completed FAFSA, which requires completed state and federal taxes, and the end of the process the question  remains a mystery. Will we be able to pay for college next year?
  • Friends can’t stretch their income to meet expenses, do you send money?

These aren’t simple questions such as “what should I wear today?” or “what should I have for breakfast?” The questions I struggle with have no clear right answer, unless “It depends” can be classified as a “right answer.”

So, what will I do when I don’t know what to do? I’ll admit my ignorance, and seek the best counsel available, and make the best decision I can make.  Maybe someday I’ll be more certain that I know all the right answers. But today I’m hoping admitting ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.

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The Iron Rule of Ministry

“Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ…. For each person will have to carry his own load.” Galatians 6:2, 5

It is the heart of the Christian community to meet each other’s needs, to care for widows and orphans, to set free the oppressed and care for the afflicted. But there is a limit, and it is simply this, “Don’t do for somebody what they can do for themselves.”

It is better to equip someone with the skills they need to provide for their needs than it is to meet their needs in an ongoing way.

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Who Loves God More?

If you’ve seen the movie “Slum Dog Millionaire” you know the extreme hardship of orphan children on the streets of India. The hardships depicted in the movie are a real and honest portrayal of the oppression these children face. They are treated as outcasts, trash, worthless.

 

A year ago our church bought land to build an orphanage in India. The orphanage is named, “New Life Children’s Home” and is home to 164 children. We also partner with the “Light of Love” children’s home which is home to over 500 children.

 

I was touched by the story of one of our members. Kim, who visited these orphanages recently. Kim was profoundly impressed by the love these children express to the Westsiders’ who visit. It is a scene that is hard to describe. Hundreds of children swarming to give hugs, and dancing with joy.

 

As Kim reflected on this experience she shared a personal revelation. These children are deeply grateful that Westside has rescued them from a lifestyle of poverty, and the streets of oppression. We provide them a home, school, food, a safe place to call home, and we tell them the story of Jesus and His love.

 

Kim said that God’s been waking her up to the idea that He has rescued her, and all of us, from the same lifestyle of hopeless oppression. This rescue is cause for celebration and joy overflowing.

 

This story challenges me to take a moment to reflect on the amazing rescue that God has provided.  I am asking Him to help me to know the love and joy that our children in India feel each day.

 

  • 19% of the children in the world live in India.
  • 50% of the unreached people groups in the world are in India.
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Heart Breaks and Hope

This past weekend the message was at Westside was about anger. Our worship time included an open alter for prayer. We lined the front of the room with counselors. In three services I met and prayed with: a woman angry with God over the death of her husband from cancer, a man deeply wounded by the betrayal of his wife, a family with a two year old dying of cancer.  I could not hold back the tears. I barely got out the words to voice a prayer while choking back my emotions. 

Our God heals marriages, comforts the grieving, and knows our deepest heart ache. I believe one of His greatest blessing to us is each other. My heart breaks at the kind of stories I heard this weekend. But my heart is full of hope in a God who loves us and gives us each other to love.

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Technology and Ministry

With many thanks to my technological mentor, Jason Morris, I am slowing advancing my knowledge of technology.  I now have a Facebook account, twitter, web blog, Google reader account and link them all with something called twitter feed. The best of it all is Google Reader which allows me to read about twenty blogs that I follow in about 15 minutes. I can easily share a blog that’s interesting to me and automatically update both twitter and Facebook with a tiny URL of that blog.

I’m not going to stop learning. We’re exploring ways to enhance our volunteer equipping and discipling through tech tools. So, there’s definitely more to come.

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Twitter is following me

I drove to Springfield, MO today for a meeting with a couple of small group pastors. As I arrived in town my phone received a message that said, “SpringfieldMoCVB (Springfield CVB) is now following your updates on Twitter”.  Forty minutes later “Ozark’s Red Cross (OzarksRedCross) is now following your updates on Twitter.”

Someone smarter than me is going to have to tell me how SpringfieldCVB and OzarksRedCross knew I was in Springfield, and how they found me on Twitter.  This would be scarry if it weren’t so cool!  I’m thinking there must be a cool application for churches in this.

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The Fellowship

Eric Sparrman is one of my heroes. Eric has been the pastor of the Harvest Ridge Covenant Church in Shawnee, Kansas for a little over twelve years, and for the last 7+ years Eric has been my friend. What is truly special about Eric is his warmth and love for other pastors. Every six weeks Eric hosts an area pastors bag luncheon.  Eric makes the coffee and always has a dessert ready. This gathering of brothers, and sisters, is a time of fellowship, sharing and praying.

We met today. I won’t share all that we talked about, but one thing I will share. At the end of our time together we agreed to meet next at the church building of one of our friends. The building is still under construction, but we will gather there to pray the people who will gather there. For God’s kingdom to be advanced through the ministry that happens there.

This isn’t unique, but what amazes me is that this is a gathering of methodist, lutheran, covenant, baptist, etc. All followers of the one Jesus.  We could argue some of the finer points of doctrine, but we don’t, because we are in the fellowship of Jesus.

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Are we discipling those we’re reaching?

One of our newest group leaders came by to talk this afternoon.  He’s new to the church, and loves it! He tried to lead a group with our “Blessed?” series, but the group didn’t make it.  Two guys in the group did, however, agree to meet with our new leader to continue to study the Bible outside of the group.  That’s  a win!

The question came when he discovered one of these guys has been attending our church for almost six years, and still didn’t own, or read, a Bible. His first Bible study lesson was, “now here’s the table of contents.” 

I know this seems like an exageration, but when my new leader asked me if we were doing more than reaching thousands on the weekend I had to admit – we have a lot of work to do.  He knew all about our discipleship strategy, our next steps brochure, our purpose classes, etc. But still he asked, are these people closer to Jesus because they are attending our church.  Admittedly, this is not a new question for us.  It is something we as a leadership team are taking very seriously.

I said plainly, “you’ve identified a serious problem and we’re working to address it, but you have to decide…do you want to stand on the outside and point out the problem, or stand on the inside and help us fix it?

Here’s what I think…he’ll help us fix the problem.  A year from now, if I’m right, we will have 4000 people in small groups. Every group will be reading and applying the Bible, praying, and serving. This will be a huge win – especially when you consider that for 2500 of our current attenders the weekend is their only exposure to the Bible.

I love my church, and I embrace this challenge. We are already taking significant steps to grow our people, and we have lots of steps still to take. Tonight, I thank God for young men like this new leader, who are bold enough to ask, and willing to invest in making a difference.

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The Future Evangelical

In his book The Younger Evangelicals, Robert Webber suggests three paradigms expressed by the evangelical church in the past one hundred years.

 

Traditional Evangelicals (1900-1980) – characterized as modern with a rational worldview.

  • Pastor- and program-centered in their ministry and traditional in their worship style.
  • Spirituality is determined by attendance, adherence to rules, and position in the church.
  • Facilities are recognized by their architecture, including steeples and stained glass.
  • Most visible religious figure is Billy Graham.
  • Mission focus was oversees – a few went, a few more gave, others prayed.

 Pragmatic Evangelicals (1980-2000) – a high value of ministry effectiveness.

  • Includes church-growth and seeker-church movements still prominent today.
  • This is a transitional paradigm between the modern and postmodern worldviews.
  • Primarily boomers
  • Churches make great use of media, technology, and innovation.
  • Market driven and success oriented.
  • Worship is contemporary and performance oriented.
  • Tend to be ahistorical and minimize religious symbols and architecture.
  • Most visible religious figure(s): Bill Hybels, Rick Warren
  • Mission focus is all about evangelism – both personal and corporate. Focus is on church growth through “seeker service”
  • Because the “traditional” paradigm ignored the unchurched and dechurched there were plenty of people available to come “back” to church
  • Theology says, “Come unto us, and we will give you Jesus.”

Younger Evangelicals (2000-  ) – prone to deconstruct and reconstruct ministry.

  • Primarily younger
  • Have an aversion to performance and programs in the church.
  • Prefer to emphasize the development of authentic Christian community.
  • Love to blend the ancient with the contemporary in their worship environments (e.g. stained glass on video screens)
  • Prefer an authentic spirituality in which the leader is a sojourner with them.
  • See themselves and their church as a small part of something larger that God is doing, not as the center of spiritual activity.
  • No one leader has risen to prominence.
  • Entirely different view of evangelism – because most postmoderns have no church experience they seek to engage the culture by caring and relating to individuals on their own turf.
  • Theology says, “We will show you Jesus as we share life together.”
  • View the church not as the kingdom of God, but as God’s agent in the world to usher in the reign of God.
  • For this reason they do not strategize to take people from the world and put them in the church:  they engage the church in the world to represent the kingdom of God and His desire to reconcile the world to Himself.

 “Members of the emerging transformissional church will find authentic spiritual community and develop spiritual friendships with lost people while engaging the culture and serving the community rather than creating programs to serve only the converted and attract the unconverted. The church is only truly transformissional when it is able to engage in both the social transformation of the culture and the spiritual transformation of individuals.”

 

LEADERSHIP

  • Traditional Evangelical – requires pastor/priest
  • Pragmatic Evangelical – requires CEO
  • Younger (Transformissional) Evangelical – requires a leader who engages the surrounding culture for the sake of the gospel. He leads by doing. He leads by the example of his own spiritual journey and practices. He leads by his own authentic participation in community. He leads by taking, not just sending, his people into the culture to meet needs and make relationships.

EQUIPPING LEADERS

  • Traditional Evangelical – train leaders in Bible and theology at Bible colleges, seminaries and in Sunday Schools. Training focused on knowledge with some emphasis on personal spiritual formation.
  • Pragmatic Evangelical – Trained leaders in specific strategies and models of ministry through short-term, focused, and practical seminars. Focus has been on the communication of models and skills, with little emphasis on personal spiritual formation and a decreased emphasis on biblical and theological knowledge.
  • Younger (Transformissional) Evangelical – neither seminary nor seminar will prepare us to do ministry in the postmodern future. Equipping leaders will be “just in time, on the job, on the Internet, in the church, and in the trenches.”

IMPLICATIONS –

  • SERVE/MISSIONS – Embrace a servant based evangelism with the focus on building relationships, meeting physical needs, impacting communities (schools, housing, comprehensive needs)
  • LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT – Develop equipping modules that are accessible on the Internet and paired with personal ministry coaching.
  • WORSHIP – Evaluate the impact of worship that is historical and relational. This may happen first in smaller gatherings rather than weekend worship.
  • PASTOR/STAFF ROLES – Must lead by example of transparent, authentic relationships, personal involvement in the community, minimize “church work” so we can be known for being in the community.
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Amazing Grace

Here are just a few of the reasons that grace is so amazing:

Grace gives me eyes to see people as God sees them
Grace extends God’s love through me
Grace energizes my worship
Grace humbles my pride
Grace gifts me with a life mission
Grace strengthens me when I am suffering
Grace restores my relationships
Grace establishes my identity as a child of God
Grace motivates me to extend mercy
Grace empowers me to reach my potential in Jesus
Grace …(you finish this one)

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