Worth Reading: The Next Christians
The religious landscape of America is changing and with it the attitudes and beliefs of the next generation of Christians are changing. Without a doubt the church in the future will look much different. In the book, The Next Christians: The Good News About the End of Christian America, Gabe Lyons gives us a glimpse of what that church might look like as he describes the new generation of Christians. Using quotes from the book, here’s a list of questions to see if you fit into their number:
- Do you wish to separate from or blend into the world; or thoughtfully engage?
- Are you OFFENDED by the world, or PROVOKED to engage and transform?
- Do you wish to run from the problems of the world or run to them as an agent of change?
- Are you bent toward CRITICIZING and throwing rocks at people in the world, or CREATING a new cultures through transformation?
- Are you CALLED or EMPLOYED? Do you separate your work from your identity as a Christian? Are you simply working a job, or serving in a vocation?
- Are you easily DISTRACTED by the goods and gadgets in the world or are you GROUNDED and disciplined in a growing relationship with God as you engage the world?
- Do you enjoy being ALONE and hiding from close relationships or are you defined by intentional relationships and COMMUNITY?
- Do you hang out with your own kind or do you engage the diverse community around you?
- Are you striving for RELEVANCE and popularity or to COUNTER the culture through transformed living?
- Do you feel called to restore the brokenness of the world?
The Next Christians are not separatists but restorers and transformers, provoked to engage the problems in the world as change agents and creators of beauty. Their vocations serve as a launching pad for living out God’s calling on every Christian to make disicples. They don’t allow the world to distract them, but desire to be deeply GROUNDED in the faith and engaged in intentional COMMUNITY with others. They understand that relevance is not leadership, but countering culture with the values of Christ.
If you’re a Christian leader I encourage you to read this book and ask if you are seeing this in your current ministry context and how your church may need to adjust as a new generation moves into leadership roles. We know the numbers, 80% of teens leave home after high school, and leave the church. This book will help you understand how they are thinking about the world and how we may can provide a path for involvement for them.
Here’s a few more of my favorite quotes:
- when the faithful saturate their schedules with Christian events at Christian venues with Christian people, the world has a hard time believing we hold the rest of the world in high esteem.
- The Gospel is a radical call to a stark existence, not a shallow assimilation.
- Christ death and resurrection were not only meant to save people from something. He wanted to save Christians to something.
- Provoked Christians know that Christian faithfulness often means living dangerously on the front edges of pain in the world.
- Where your talents and your heart come together, this is where God has called you to be.
- Understanding Scripture is difficult. Passively watching television or quickly clicking through Internet links and Facebook updates is much easier.
- Serving others together is the key ingredient in creating community.
- the Christian has a calling and a responsibility to think, work, and live in terms of how the world ought to be…
Consumer Christianity
Attitudes that show we are relating to our church as consumers:
- Consistently dwelling on the thought, “Is this church the right fit for me?”
- Having an attitude that says, “If the leadership would just do ______________ better, then I would be happier.”
- Comparing the offerings of your church to another church.
- Seeing things that need to be improved in your church but taking no responsibility to do anything about them yourself.
A church operates more like a family than a store. If we miss this, then we will always have dissatisfaction towards those who are trying to love and help us.
Read the whole article here.
National Porn Sunday
Along with the Superbowl, this weekend, 300+ churches are celebrating Porn Sunday to draw attention and bring help to those caught in the literal web of addiction. Here’s a few links about the event and a few extras:
- “The Elephant in the Pew” – NPR article on the event – “48 percent of Christian families are dealing with the issue of pornography in their home”
- The National Porn Sunday Intro Video – Involving two NFL players discussing their battle with pornography and sex addiction.
- The Social Costs of Pornography – Academic findings about the issue.
- XXX Church Event Page – Two churches here in Louisiana will be hosting the event.
- Covenant Eyes – The tool I use for accountability
Recent Q and A:
“What are three hopes that you have for the future of your current ministry?” – I was recently asked this for the Q and A section of our state newspaper. Looking back through my answers frightened me and challenged me. What the heck are we thinking!?!?
1. Responsiveness to the needs of people – One of the filter questions we are using for decisions in our church is, “Will this allow us to stay close and be responsive to the needs of people in our community?” I’m hoping that our church can stay outward focused and unselfishly give ourselves away for years to come. I’ve been convicted as a church leader by this question about personal debt – “Do you think about living generously and then remember something you have or want?” Responsiveness and generosity must be a priority if it’s going to be a reality. Anything that keeps us from responsiveness and radical generosity must be eyed with great caution.
2. Reproducible. I hope that more disciples, leaders, ministries, and churches will result. Insisting on reproducibility forces us to keep things ultra simple and stretches our faith. We’re already planning for new expressions of Bridge Church in 2011, in surrounding communities. I’ve been wrecked by Ralph Moore’s question in How to Multiply Your Church – What’s better, a church of 400 taking on overhead, or 5 churches of 80 that can be responsive to the community and quickly reproduce itself?
3. Transformation. A question that I’m constantly asking myself as a leader: “What good is it if our church grows, but the community continues to deteriorate?” Disciples transform the world by responding to the needs and shaping the culture around them. I hope that we won’t settle for anything less than transformed lives and community. One of the things I’m most excited about is multiple dysfunctional family systems that we’re engaged in restoring around our community. Families that for generations have battled addiction, abuse, disease, etc. It’s hard, messy, discouraging at times, but when transformation is your goal, seeing someone sitting in the pew every Sunday isn’t enough. We insist on seeing God glorified in the daily and seeing a new road paved for future generations.
What are your most challenging hopes and dreams?
Worth Reading: Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code
“Culture – not vision and strategy – is the most powerful factor in any organization.”
Samuel Chand brings a much needed perspective to the hype over mission statements and strategy with the book Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code. Why do great strategies not produce results? “culture eats strategy for lunch. You can have a good strategy in place, but if you don’t have the culture and enabling systems, the negative culture of the organization will defeat the strategy.” As a leader who is tasked with helping churches strategize and revitalize for effective ministry this book has been very helpful to me and will be for anyone in church or secular leadership. Dr. Chand defines culture as “the personality of the church or nonprofit” and in the book he gives you insight on how to identify problem cultures, how to influence culture positively and negatively, and how to change a negative/defective culture. The author uses many personal stories and real life examples from his work as a leadership consultant, making the book easy to read. Well worth reading for any leader interested in organizational effectiveness.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
- Culture – not vision and strategy – is the most powerful factor in any organization.
- Toxic culture is like carbon monoxide: you don’t see it or smell it, but you wake up dead!
- Healthy teams are pipelines of leadership development. …an organization is only as healthy as the pool of rising leaders.
- developing people is far more essential in creating a healthy culture than training people in specific skills.
- Managers get the most out of themselves. Leaders get the most out of others.
- Healthy teams foster the perspective that failure isn’t a tragedy and conflict isn’t the end of the world.
- We can rearrange boxes on an org chart in a moment, but changing culture is heart surgery.
- Loyalty earned is a beautiful thing, but loyalty demanded is toxic.
- Our ability to connect with people, earn their trust, invite their opinions, and inspire them is the most important trait we bring – even more important than our experiences and skills.
- the sickest cultures are those that close their doors to new ideas.
- How do we know if a vision is from God? One of the measures is that it has to be something so big that it requires God’s wisdom and power to pull it off.
- Most church leaders use their vision statements to say yes, but they rarely us it to say no and eliminate options.
- The conundrum of leadership is this: people want improvement, but they resist change.
Think 10 Conversations
Influence seldom happens with just one conversation. Bad news if your aim is positional and not relational influence. Influence takes multiple conversations and investment in someone’s life. Think 10 conversations and you won’t feel insecure or like you’ve failed when at first someone seems uninterested or unavailable. After each conversation, pray, invest, and keep planting seeds of influence.
Put Your Faith in Action. Why?
Every fifth Sunday Bridge Church, scatters instead of gathers, for what we call Faith in Action Sunday. This Sunday, Jan 30th will be our first FIA for 2011. Looking forward to worshipping through serving senior adults, elderly widows, single mothers, inmate families, families in ICU, public servants, multi-housing residents, families at local parks, and more this Sunday AM. When telling people in todays generation about our Faith In Action Sunday’s, one question we seldom get is “WHY?” It just makes sense to most people that the church ought to be out serving. But just for fun, here’s a few reasons:
- Because following Jesus includes putting our faith in action (Luke 6:46-49)
- Because Christianity is about more than just attending worship services
- Because Jesus said “Go…” (Matthew 28:19-20)
- Because if we love God, we will love people “in actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18, 4:7-8)
- Because if we love God, we do what He says. (John 14:21, 23; 1 John 2:3-6)
- Because success is community transformation, not just a big organization.
- Because proclaiming and demonstrating God’s love go hand-in-hand. (Luke 9:2)
- Because there are needs in our community that are going unmet.
- Because God cares for the whole person. (James 2:15-18)
- Because God desires individuals to live in healthy communities and just societies. (Jeremiah 29:7)
- Because everyone can serve.
- Because people follow examples better than they follow instructions.
- Because God has a special heart for those who are poor and vulnerable. (Jeremiah 22:16)
- Because God’s people are to be an instrument of blessing to the world. (Genesis 12:2)
- Because disciples are shaped through serving, not just sitting.
- Because the church’s ministry should be incarnational. (John 1:14; 20:21)
- Because God empowers us to participate in ministry. (Ephesians 2:10)
- Because God created us for good works. (Ephesians 2:10)
- Because it’s joining God in what He’s doing in the world.
- Because it’s fun.
While even a Faith In Action Sunday can become a meaningless ritual or a isolated event, our desire is that giving away will become a part of the flow of peoples lives as it’s part of the flow of Bridge Church.
“I refuse to sit around and wait for someone else, to do what God has called me to do myself”
Love Josh Wilson’s new song I Refuse. Can’t get it out of my head as my church preps for a Faith In Action Weekend this weekend. Check out the lyrics below. Follow Josh Wilson on his Blog, Facebook, Twitter. Original Video of the song here.
I Refuse
Sometimes I, I just want to close my eyes
And act like everyone’s alright
When I know they’re not
This world needs God, but it’s easier to stand and watch
I could pray a prayer and just move on
Like nothing’s wrong
But I Refuse
I don’t want to live like I don’t care
I don’t want to say another empty prayer
Oh, I refuse to sit around and wait for someone else
To do what God has called me to do myself
I could choose not to move
But I refuse
I can hear the least of these, crying out so desperately
And I know we are the hands and feet of You, oh God
So if You say move, it’s time for me to follow through
And do what I was made to do
And show them who You are
I don’t want to live like I don’t care
I don’t want to say another empty prayer
Oh, I refuse to sit around and wait for someone else
To do what God has called me to do myself
I could choose not to move
But I refuse
I refuse to stand and watch the weary and lost cry out for help
I refuse to turn my back and try and act like all is well
I refuse to stay unchanged, to wait another day to die to myself
I refuse to make one more excuse
I don’t want to live like I don’t care
I don’t want to say another empty prayer
Oh, I refuse to sit around and wait for someone else
To do what God has called me to do myself
I could choose not to move
But I refuse
The Christian Sponge
Each week us church goers, like sponges, sit and soak up great teaching and preaching from professional and highly trained
clergy, high quality Bible Study materials and devotionals, praise and worship music that moves us to experience God, and many, like me, listen to more great teaching and preaching through podcasting and conferences. Here’s the question: What’s next for the SPONGE after it’s has soaked? It SOURS and becomes unusable. Almost nothings more disgusting than a sour sponge. No one wants to pick it up, it stinks up the entire kitchen, and most of the time at our house we just throw them out.
As a Christian, I’ve had seasons of my life that can be described as SOUR. The sour Christian is sour toward others – nothing meets their standard, no sermon is good enough, they and their class or group or church are the only ones doing it right. No one wants to be around the sour Christian and he/she doesn’t really care to be around them. Being right matters more than being generous and graceful. (For a Biblical illustration of a Sour Christian see the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32 and watch for the Elder Brother).
What’s the remedy for keeping sponges from getting sour in the sink and in the church? A GOOD SQUEEZE. A good wringing out. With the sponge, by hand. But how is the Christian squeezed? Two ways:
1) Through Suffering – When I’ve lost a loved one, or experienced discouragement, or dealt with sickness, or faced financial struggles, or walked with others who’ve experienced these and worse, I have been squeezed. I have had to put to use all that I know about God and His word. That’s why God’s word tells us that there is great benefit to suffering. See James 1:2-4, Romans 5:3-5.
2) Through Serving – Don’t wait to be squeezed through suffering. Give yourself away and be emptied out through serving others. As we give ourselves away as Christians, we are allowing God to squeeze us and use what He’s placed in us for His good and glory. As we serve others, we experience more of God and the joy of being used by Him and He continually fills us.
In an effort to be intentional about the necessity of Christians to be serving, our church has made a part of our flow an opportunity for everyone to serve. Every time there is a fifth Sunday in a month we have Faith In Action Sunday. Instead of having church, we scatter throughout our community to BE the church in some of our communities neediest areas. This Sunday, January 30th, will be our first Faith In Action Sunday of 2011. Contact me if you’d like more info or need an avenue for God to squeeze you through giving yourself away.
Lane Corley 