wonders and reflections in God's presence

I am forty-four years old, I have been ordained for nearly 18 years, and I continuously lament over the fact that when I attend Church gatherings, I am still one of the “young” ones – often being the youngest in the room. It was different last month when I attended the Emergent Convention in Nashville. For the first time, I was actually one of the older ones in the room. Hundreds of pastors and church leaders – and I was in the oldest quartile of participants! It felt good – but odd; hopeful – but unfamiliar.

Emergent is a conversation regarding the characteristics, thoughts, and shape of the emerging Church in North American and, actually, around the world. It started with a few people realizing that the younger generations are becoming lost to the church, but still very interested in Jesus, God and spiritual things. Church-going parents and grandparents used to console themselves with the assurance that when the younger generations grow up, settle down, and have kids of their own, they’d come back to church. But they’re not. And now we are more than one generation into this trend, meaning that today’s young adults are very often total strangers to the church – they didn’t even attend Christmas and Easter services as children. They sometimes don’t even know that Christmas or Easter are religious holidays. Yet, they long for spiritual experience and meaning in their lives.

Many young adults are cynical of the institutional church. After a book-signing at which she was the guest musician, a young woman asked Brian McLaren, a Christian author, if he really believed the stuff he wrote or if he was just trying to sell books.* Fortunately, McLaren heard the deeper longing in that question – a curiosity about what difference faith makes in his life. And, fortunately, he was able to respond with an authentic articulation of the path of discipleship he was following. I think that’s our biggest challenge in evangelism, in church transformation, in new church planting – we need to hear the questions which may not even be posed as questions, and respond not so much out of our answers, but out of our journey … sharing together, living together, and loving together.

Our culture has changed. Stanley Hauervas claims that anyone over the age of 40 is an alien in our own culture. At Emergent, though, we’ve learned that it’s not so much about a person’s age as it is about their mindset. It’s more than a generation-gap – it’s a different way of experiencing the world. Some church members are convinced that if we’d just change the style of worship music, they would come. No, say the people I met in Nashville, it goes much deeper than that. Contemporary music, relevant sermons, casual dress, friendly greeters, or icons and candles don’t attract young people to the church. No, it’s changed lives that attract. What is appealing to the younger generations of adults is seeing how discipleship in Christ can make a difference in our lives, in their lives, and in the world.

*to know more about the spiritual relationship which developed between Brian McLaren and this young woman, see his book, More Ready Than You Realize, which I review on page of this issue of Connections.

Printed in the July 2005 issue of Connections, a publication of the Presbytery of New Covenant.

My nearly sixteen year old daughter is now wearing the high school ring of one of the varsity football players around her neck. They are together nearly everyday, and I can sense the excitement around them. Filled with the mystery of spring, of life, of possibilities, day by day they are falling more and more in love.

Falling in love. Dewitt Jones, photographer for National Geographic, says that creativity is not a skill reserved for the few; it is really nothing more than falling in love with the world. Isn’t that what God does with the earth and all its creatures? God fell in love with the world – and it was good. In fact, the Creator fell in love with us, so much that he surrendered his own flesh and blood for our benefit, that we might also know the life, breath, and creative power of love and be bathed in them forever. God is love, and releasing that love in the world is, essentially, falling in love with God in Christ.

The more I read about success in transformational churches, new churches, and even the marketplace, the more I am struck by the need to get out of our heads and into our hearts. Business leaders are not giving up strategies and planning and thinking well about their enterprises, but they realize that they have to “fall in love” with what they are doing to really have a lasting impact on the market. Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, writes this in the prologue of his book about the rise of Starbucks coffee:

“A company can grow big without losing the passion and personality that built it, but only if it’s driven not by profits but by values and by people.

The key is heart. I pour my heart into every cup of coffee, and so do my partners at Starbucks. When customers sense that, they respond in kind.”

I have to admit, one of the first things I notice in a church is the level of passion visible, audible, and palpable in the room as they worship together. When a community of faith is in love, you know it. You feel it. You are moved by it. When a congregation merely recites prayers, sings notes, listens to the words of a sermon, and passes the offering plate, it is no more alive than a body on life support and a feeding tube. This is not the fullness of life that God intends for us.

Falling in love is one of the key elements of transformation in a church. But, be careful who and what you fall in love with. I remember being a teenager myself, and the truth is that at that young age, I was more in love with the idea of being in love, than I was in the young man for whom I expressed my affections. It didn’t last.

What we fall in love with as a church is just as critical to the lasting relationship with the community to which God has called us. A congregation needs to be careful not to fall in love with the order of worship, with the music, the pastor, the architecture, the history, or even “the nice, close, family feel”. But, rather, falling in love with Christ, with the very essence of being church, with all the people God loves and longs for like the loving father longs for the lost son – that’s the mark of the Church alive.

Printed in the May 2005 issue of Connections, a publication of the Presbytery of New Covenant.

Occasionally I read a book which excites me – inspires me – and compels me to drive others crazy talking about it.  Last year is was Hilary Clinton’s autobiography.  My family affectionately advised me that if I told them one more story about the Clintons, they’d disown me.  This year it’s Dee Hock’s account of the birth of VISA International called Birth of the Chaordic Age.

Perhaps you’ve noticed; these days I cannot enter into a conversation about the church and its future without at least mentioning the book once.  More likely, I end up buying you copy.  Why this fascination with VISA and its founder, Hock?  Because, I believe the church can relate to the challenges Hock faced as he successfully transformed the banking industry, and, more importantly, we can learn from his techniques, theories, failures and successes.

When asked by the National Bank of Commerce to head up the launch of its BankAmericard franchise, Hock had no idea of the depth of innovation he would soon be required to summon up in himself and in the people working with him.  Innovation comes only after you have a good handle on the general principles which will guide you into the future.  For Hock, it was his belief that VISA ought not to be about making money, but about the transfer of value between people and peoples of differing cultures, nations, ethnicities, etc.  Hock had a vision of the card being more than a credit card, but a transaction card.  Today VISA international is owned by 22,000 member banks, and it transfers $1.25 trillion a year across hundreds of national borders and across currencies.  In order to help move the traditional banking industry into a new world, Hock had to envision an organization which was not hierarchical, tyrannical, or highly controlled, but one he calls chaordic.  That is, a self-organizing structure in which each part is guided by the internal DNA of the whole.

Those same principles are important for leading the Church through the transformation God is calling us toward as we face a new multi-cultural, post-modern world.  For starters, we need to be absolutely clear about the principles which guide us.  You may call them your core values, or bedrock beliefs, or mission statement, or vision.  Stan Ott calls them the defining vision and defining practices of the church.  What is the ultimate goal, the reason for being church?  Find your answer to that question, live by it, and the programs and “doings” of the church will more readily birth themselves.

Hock’s book is filled with many other ideas and stories that will shed lots of light on the transformation of congregations.  Throughout the chapters he highlights “MiniMaxims” – short pithy sayings which tell challenge us to think about leadership in a new era.  Let me end with two which I think have real meaning for transformational ministry:

Only fools worship their tools. (p.44) 

Life is a gift, bearing a gift, which is the art of giving. (p.45) 

Hock, Dee. Birth of the Chaordic Age.  Berret-Koehler: San Fransisco.  1999.

Printed in the April 2005 issue of Connections, a publication of the Presbytery of New Covenant.