Can You Relate?

Last Sunday in our "Pathways of Discipleship" study we discussed the importance of our presence in worship and smaller groupings as we strive to be progressively formed as followers of Christ. As John Wesley's movement spread and the crowds grew larger and larger Wesley began to notice that those who attended only the larger Society meetings failed to grow spiritually like those who participated in the smaller Class and Band groupings he formed.

There is a reason for this - we all need accountability and encouragement and we all need to live life a little deeper with a few people or else we remain nameless, faceless individuals floating through life with no sense of grounding or belonging. Who I am is defined, in part, by who I am in relationship with. The fewer people I relate to, or know, the less "me" I really am. Restated, we form each other by the web of relationships we are a part of. Connecting with people provides a sense of unity and common purpose that defines us in ways neuroscience has yet to fully explain.

Obviously we can't know everyone though. There is a limit to how many people we can relate to. In class I mentioned that while training to be a church planter I was told the number of people that one person (the pastor) can supposedly keep up with is 167, which is why churches typically stall at this number unless the church puts other networks in place. I failed to mention the science behind the number I gave however.

It turns out I was generous with my number. According to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, humans can only comfortably maintain about 150 social relationships.While humans have the ability to facially recognize about 1,500 people, the most a person can really keep up with is 150 (147.8 to be exact).

When Dunbar and his associates went searching they discovered groups of 150 all over the place; among them, the size of a typical fighting unit of Roman soldiers, a neolithic village, and the average Englishman's Christmas Card list. The limiting factor is our brain size - apparently 150 is the number at which our brains just run out of room to keep up with the details of other people's lives. Dunbar has researched this notion so thoroughly that the number 150 is now referred to as "Dunbar's Number" in the scientific community.

How many "friends" do you have on Facebook? How many do you follow on Twitter? What is the average worship attendance of the church you attend? How many people do you work with or know through your job? It turns out there is science behind all these numbers, and their importance should not be taken lightly. We need each other in ways we are only just now beginning to fully understand.

Windows 7 Released Today

Today is a big day in the computing world as the latest operating system from Windows, Windows 7, is being released. This event will cause nary a ripple in the life of 99% of the world’s population (including, for instance, my wife Donna’s world), but here I am sitting at my laptop typing using the “old” Vista operating system and suddenly I feel totally outdated. Why is that? I wasn’t outdated yesterday. Why do I feel that way today? What kind of hold do technology vendors like software companies, television makers (HD, 3D, 780p, 1080i, etc….) and telephone makers (Iphone I, II, III, etc..) have on me? What kind of power do they have over my mind that they can suddenly make me feel old fashioned with the release of the latest, greatest device or program that will instantly change my life?

The truth is, it’s impossible to stay updated with technology unless you are Warren Buffett, and he doesn’t appear to care about technology. And so I sit and wonder; should I spring for the $119 upgrade to Windows 7? Should I trade in my old-fashioned Blackberry for a sleek new Iphone?

Naah…the best things are the oldest. Give me a good old book – the paper and ink kind, not a Kindle. Give me a telephone that makes calls and doesn’t do everything else in the world. Give me Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Most of all, give me Jesus. He alone can satisfy that emptiness that makes me think I need to update my PC or buy a new television.

It does occur to me that the church has something to learn here however. Imagine if we could create the kind of thirst for God and the things of God that technology companies do for their products. Imagine driving up to your church on Sunday morning and seeing the line to get in going around the block like you see whenever the latest Iphone is released? Wouldn’t that be awesome? What can we learn from them? Food for thought….

FORTY DAYS OF LOVE
The time period of forty days appears to be important in Scripture. Over and over again this particular period of time is mentioned. Here are a few examples:

It rained for 40 days and 40 nights when God wanted to cleanse the world and start over (Gen 7:12) and then Noah waited another 40 days after it rained before he opened a window in the Ark (Gen 8:6). Moses was on the mountain with God for 40 days – twice (Exodus 24:18, 34:28-29 and Deut. 10:10). It took the spies 40 days to search out the Promised Land (Num. 13:25). For 40 days, twice a day, morning and evening, Goliath the Philistine giant strutted in front of the Israelite army and taunted them before he was finally killed by David (1 Sam 17:16). Elijah strengthened by one angelic meal was on the lamb for 40 days ending up on Mount Horeb where the Lord passed by and he heard the still, small voice of God (1 Kings 19:8). Righteous Ezekiel was punished for Judah’s sin for 40 days (Ezek. 4:6). Jonah warned the City of Nineveh they had 40 days until God would overthrow the city. The people repented in those 40 days and God spared the city (Jonah 3:4, 10). Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness (Mat 3:17) and was seen on the earth 40 days after His crucifixion (Acts 1:3).

Obviously, 40 days is a symbolic time. We believe 40 days are significant at NewSong as well. A few years ago we observed a 40 day season as we went through the Purpose Driven Life book as a congregation, focusing on personal renewal. We believe only changed people can change the world; renewal must start there. The foundation for everything in life begins with getting to know and love God and then to begin growing in him and serving. But we were never meant to live our lives in isolation. We need others, and they need us. There is a second kind of renewal needed – relational renewal. That’s what the 40 day season we are about to begin is all about. We must not only learn to love God with all our heart (personal renewal); we must also learn to love our neighbor as ourselves (relational renewal).

Relational renewal is so important we are going to spend 40 days – six weeks - learning how to add depth and health to our marriages, families, and friendships. We will be studying love and practicing love as we explore and implement the relationship principles the Bible teaches. Our goal in the end is to be more loving and to be better equipped with insights and a practical path for fulfilling God’s intention for all our relationships – even the difficult ones.

What does this mean for you? You have several options depending on how deep you’d like to go. You can come to worship for the next six weeks and listen as I preach on love and how to build stronger relationships (you can also listen to, or read, the sermons online, or request a CD or DVD of each message). A second option would be to hear the sermons and enroll in a small group to meet with others to go deeper. To go even deeper you can listen to the sermons, join a small group and then use the book the series is based on, The Relationship Principles of Jesus by Tom Holladay as your daily devotional guide for the 40 Days. This book is available at Barnes and Noble, on Amazon.com and at most other bookstores.

I’m very excited to see what God is going to do through this campaign as we learn how to build healthier relationships in all aspects of our lives. It will be great to all be all doing this together as well.

Teamwork

I love being on a team. It gives me a sense of belonging, more good things get done, and I feel a sense of connection to something bigger and better than myself. I am glad teams are a biblical concept; they don’t call them “teams” in the Bible, but the Bible clearly identifies the benefits of working together. My New Testament reading for today from Romans included this: “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us” (Rom. 12:4-6).

This passage tells us a few things about teams. For instance it tells us that just because you have a group of people that does not necessarily mean you have a team. A group of people could be just a crowd of people. Paul indicates that teams involve collaboration and interdependence – the group forms “one body,” A team is a group that comes together to collaborate in order to reach a shared goal for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. A team is a group of people with a high degree of interdependence, all aimed at achieving a common goal.

The passage also teaches that teammates are people deeply committed to each other; Paul writes that “each member belongs to all the others.” A team cares for its members; they are working together at such a deep level that the group literally “belongs” to one another – there are no lone-rangers or free-lancers or superheroes on a team when it is working at its highest potential. That is not to say each person has the same level of gifting – Paul mentions that each one contributes “according to the grace” given him or her. Everyone brings something unique and important to the table. And when a team finds its proper rhythm – its groove, so to speak – where each member is contributing exactly what they should - then watch out!

And that leads to still another observation about teams found in Scripture. With teams, synergy is achieved; the sum of a team is greater than its individual parts; two plus two equals five or more. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 describes it in this way: “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

The acronym stenciled in locker rooms and board rooms across the land is clichéd but true T.E.A.M. – Together Everyone Accomplishes More. Since biblical times people have realized this. The question is, why don’t we take advantage of teams? How about you? Are you a part of any teams? Or are you just part of a few groups? Imagine what a church staff, or even an entire church could accomplish if it began functioning as a team? If your department, or class, or business or church is not functioning as a team, what can you do to foster its evolution into a team? Why not begin working toward that today?

Push Hard - Pray Hard

It is crunch time at NewSong. We begin a new ministry year next month, our tenth. In preparation for that we have been doing our best to get everyone on board with our mission of building community (relating to one another in small groups) and reaching out missionally in all that we do (worship as our front door, open chair small groups, and getting every man, woman, boy and girl serving so people see Jesus in their service). I just finished leading a series of eight meetings on eight consecutive nights in member homes and at the church in an attempt to convey this vision and mission. I met with considerable resistance to some of the changes we are proposing.

The gist of what we are doing is making a hard push for covenant membership. We want to make sure there is a clear understanding of what being a part of our church means. We are raising the bar – raising expectations. Why? Because we believe this is critical if we are going to be serious about transforming lives and transforming the world. It is also critical if we are going to build genuine community. People need to understand that being a part of our church involves more than simply showing up at 10:30 on Sunday morning.

There seems to be an assumption that people are afraid of commitment, but I believe that those who are genuinely converted actually want to grow and be serious about their faith – they find doing that attractive. They also find it natural to want to share that faith. Ironically, it is not the newer believers who are bucking this – it is the longer-term Christians who grew up in “churchanity” – my name for the blight of the institutional church with its consumer mentality (what can the church do for me?).

Adding to the difficulty is my blunt, “black-or-white,” “in-or-out” nature. I recognize that the gift of mercy is not high on my spiritual gifts list. In fact, it has even been said that I have the spiritual gift of irritation. I am working and praying about that flaw – I promise. Our Board of Elders called me on the carpet about it last weekend (which they should have). Leaders should not wield their authority like a big stick, which I do far too often. I was reading an article by Matt Chandler in the current Leadership Magazine and he said it best when he said, “Leaders shouldn’t wield authority, they should shepherd toward truth.” He goes on to say, “If you have to talk about your authority, you’ve probably already lost it.” Chandler says we should use authority to “shepherd” and not to “bruise.” I recognize that all too often I bruise when I lead. [Father, teach me…help me with this, I pray].

Further complicating matters is the fact that we have accelerated the pace of change at our church. I believe in every change we have made, and I believe the impetus for the changes clearly came from God. But I also recognize that NewSong does not look like the church many of our longer-term members joined. They did not sign up for this – it’s one thing to be objective and say, “This model is more biblical,” or “That definitely makes sense…” But it is another thing to have it happen to your church; few of us enjoy change.

At any rate – tomorrow the dust will begin to settle. We are asking all our members to turn in signed ministry covenants agreeing to our “Love, Grow, Share” process during worship tomorrow. We are starting with 135 adults on our membership roll. It will be interesting to see how many stick with us and how many of them look elsewhere. I take solace in knowing that those that will decide to move on are already believers and will undoubtedly find another church. Their salvation is not at stake. I also take comfort knowing that no one will leave because of the changes who is not a believer – that’s because we have few, if any, true non-believers at our church today. Hopefully that will change as we get “lean and mean” and hungry to save souls that need to know Jesus.

If it Ain't Broke...

I have enjoyed listening to the pundits and wags go on and on about the current global economic meltdown. As everyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock for the past couple of years knows, we are in the middle of possibly the worst recession since the Great Depression. Regardless of whether you are a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or something else, the main reasons for the recession are pretty clear: people refused to live within their means; banks got greedy and found themselves with boatloads of bad loans; the housing bubble burst; the stock market crashed; and unemployment rose. Throw in a dash of corporate corruption, a spike in oil prices, and an unpopular war and you have a sure-fire recipe for disaster.

The interesting thing I have noticed while reading about the economic mess is everyone saying, “Had the financial community, the politicians, and even ordinary consumers only realized something was wrong this would never have happened.” Had we known that something was amiss and that we were headed for a fall we would have saved more; we would have been more careful in our decision-making; we would not have bought houses we could not afford or vehicles to impress or taken extravagant vacations. We would have never invested in complex financial instruments we did not understand or “get-rich-quick” schemes. “If only we had known,” the critics claim, “then we could have avoided the pain of this economic downturn.”

I disagree. I am no financial genius, but it seems to me the handwriting was on the wall for years before the actual meltdown occurred. In fact, I vividly remember warnings that the housing bubble could burst at any time as far back as 1999 – that’s ten years ago! I have known since I was a child how important it is to save on a regular basis. Who knew that if you spend more than you make, pretty soon you are going to be in trouble? Did you? Honestly, was this really a surprise?

No, I think we are where we are today because there was a “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality when it came to the economy. Housing prices continued to rise, gas prices were fairly cheap, jobs were plentiful, corporate profits were bordering on the obscene, and the stock market was at an all-time high. Why worry? With things going that well, nobody wanted to hear someone say, “Hey...something is not right here.” But someone should have said that, right in the midst of the 'good times,' and we should have listened. Fact is, someone probably did say that, but they got drowned out because nobody wanted to hear them.

We sometimes face the same predicament in the local church. There are times when things appear to be going swimmingly in the church - they are going great; everybody is happy. But then someone does some in-depth analysis of what is really going on in the congregation, or God gives an insight, and suddenly the realization dawns, “Something is not right here.” But no one wants to hear that, so no one wants to believe it is true. The cry goes out, "Don’t rock the boat! We like it like this – we like the status quo!" "Why change anything?"

In the final analysis this ends up being simply a different verse of that same old song, “It ain’t broke, don't fix it - just leave it alone.” And so pain is sure to follow – or worse, God’s hand of blessing is removed because of that church's failure to obey His leading.

Trust me, someone out there is looking at the bigger picture and they know… they know something is broken. The question is; will we listen?

License or Legalism?

We are holding membership meetings for our upcoming ministry year and I find myself in a familiar conundrum, one I have been in many times before in my role as a pastor; the battle between the opposing poles of license and legalism when it comes to membership in the local church.

On the one hand I am grateful for anyone who comes to Christ and wants to attend our church. I hate to add requirements or rules to being a member of our church such as attending a membership class in order to join, and regular worship attendance, participation in a small group, and service on a ministry team after you do join. Why does it bother me to require these things? Mainly because I remember familiar verses Jesus spoke like, “Come to me all you who are burdened and burdened and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28 emphasis mine). Jesus did not add a post script to that verse and say, “Oh, and do this, and that, and the other as well.” I am also haunted by Jesus’ sharp words to the Pharisees who he accused of being “Blind guides who strain out a gnat but swallow a camel” (Matt. 23:24). Jesus told them flat out that they were not only being unhelpful to those seeking to know God, but he said they were actually making it more difficult for people to connect with God because they were placing burdens which were not His burdens upon their shoulders.

I do not want to be legalistic – but it seems to me that in order to be faithful disciples of Christ and in order to accomplish anything as a church we need a clear standard or expectation for our members to live up to.

On the other side of the equation (license) I recall Jesus’ exhortation to “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt. 7:13-14). Yes, Jesus is talking about salvation here and not church membership, but he is also clearly saying that not just anything goes. There is a path to follow to get to Him and it is not the six-lane expressway of “anything goes.” I also think of Jesus statement just below that where he says, “By their fruit you will know them” (Matt. 7:20). Believers are supposed to bear fruit; something is supposed to be happening in their lives that gives evidence of their faith. I am probably disturbed most of all by the account of the rich young ruler where Jesus clearly laid down what is expected or required, “Go and sell all you have and give it to the poor…and come follow me” (Luke 18:22) and the young man walked away. When he did Jesus did not chase after him and say, “Oh, I’m sorry, is that too difficult? Is that too much to ask? Then don’t worry about it.” No, Jesus let the man walk away. Jesus set the bar at a certain height and said that is the standard. Is that legalism? I don’t think so.

I confess that by nature I am more of a legalist than a license kind of guy. I am more afraid of the “anything goes” side of the pendulum than the "that's too hard for them." I heard Chuck Swindoll quote Francis Schaeffer on the radio tonight talking about what Schaeffer called the “great evangelical disaster” which is Christianity’s current propensity to accommodate the culture it exists in. Anything and everything goes because Jesus was “full of grace” so we should be too. Yes Jesus was full of mercy and grace, but he also had expectations – He had a standard. As a trophy of that grace myself I understand my life must be different than it was before he changed me and different than those around me.

And so the battle rages on in my heart and soul. Are we placing higher expectations on church members’ lives than even Jesus would? Shouldn’t we just be happy they are attending? Or should we set the bar where we believe Jesus would and then let them walk away if they won’t agree to that standard? It is a tough choice to make, but ultimately someone has to make that choice. What would you do?

Is Everybody Happy?

The Church Relevance Blog (see sidebar) has a conversation going called “Boring Typical Church” where they point out that according to the Barna Group, “Half of Americans say they know a growing number of people who are tired of the usual type of church experience.” That is an oddly-stated statistic “half of Americans say they know a growing number….” but it appears to mean that at least half of the American population believes a growing number of people are dissatisfied with what is going on in church. And that number is growing.

Of course as we all know, one person’s “trash” is someone else’s “treasure.” One person’s boring or unsatisfactory church experience could be someone else’s dream church experience. What’s worse – these two people with their disparate experiences can be (and often are) sitting in the same church service just a few feet apart.

The responses to the Church Relevance blog post run the usual gamut from rants against the contemporary church with their loud music and mind-numbing media, to assaults on the traditional church with their high-brow services, huge buildings and big budgets while single moms are struggling to pay for diapers.

So what is the answer? How do we proceed? Is there a middle ground? If you were starting a church today, what should you aim to be? I am certainly no expert, but I believe there are a few principles to consider that might prove helpful.

First – whatever you do must be authentic. It must be “you.” We are all guilty of jumping on the latest, greatest bandwagon, regardless of whether what we are mimicking is really “us,” or not. While every church shares the Great Commission to “go and make disciples” each church must discover the distinct ways God is calling that particular congregation to do so.

Second – it must be biblical. Read the Book of Acts. The early church was on fire and everything the church did stemmed from the love of God and issued from dead center of God's will. The Spirit was palpable; there was life, excitement, joy and ministry all done in a spirit of "want to" and not "have to" or "ought to."

Third - the church must concentrate on building relationships. Study after study has shown that people today are searching for community, not another obligation to fulfill or another place to be. The basic principle of church life - the glue that holds churches together whether they are big churches or small ones - is relationships. That's also where smaller churches (like NewSong) have an advantage - if that's what people are searching for, we can do relationships better than the "big guys." What's more, relationships are also essential to effective evangelism.

Finally - and this is the tough one given what I have just said in #3, the church must be outward focused. The buzz word for this today is missional. A missional church is a community (relationships) of disciples (the product) in mission to their community and the world. The bane of every church seems to be that it starts with a passion to change the world by serving others and soon succumbs to an attitude of “serve me” or "it's all about us." The people in the early church did not need to be cajoled or coddled or catered to. There was no “club mentality,” no “what’s-in-it-for-me” mentality back then. Instead the church was a catalyst for change to the world around it. This disease of being excessively inward focused, dubbed koinonitis by C. Peter Wagner, has reached epidemic proportions today. When in doubt about the importance of being missional or outward focused, remember these famous words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison) who wrote, “The church is the church only when it exists for others."

I am sure you can think of other important principles. I suppose what I am trying to say is that the answer to the growing dissatisfaction with the church today is not to ask the question, "Is everybody happy?" Instead we should be asking questions like, "Is what we are doing 'us'?" (authentic). "Is what we are doing biblical?" And, "Are we growing closer to one another as we draw closer to God?" (relationships). And finally, "Would our church be missed if it did not exist?" (outward focused).

What do you think?

Perceptions

We have all heard it before – "perception is everything." It does not really matter what the reality of any given situation is, people are going to form opinions about what it was really like and oftentimes those opinions are going to be more varied than you can possibly imagine.

How many times have you seen someone listen to a recording of their own voice and then insist the voice on the recording sounds nothing like them? Why is this? It is because we are the ONLY person in the world who experiences things from our point of view. The voice we are hearing does not sound like that to us when we speak, so how could it possibly sound like that when we hear it played back? It is because we all hear and see and experience things from our own unique perspective so we cannot possibly expect others to have the same experiences we do – even given completely identical stimuli.

Look at this picture. What do you see, an old woman with a big nose, or a beautiful young maiden? Look again – look long and hard; do you still see the same thing? What do you see? Beauty? Ugliness? Young? Old?

Perception is how you see the world around you. Every time you look at something, or someone, you are forming opinions. You are observing, processing, and deducing information to form an opinion. The opinions you arrive at may be accurate, or they may be far from the truth. Since we cannot be “inside” someone else’s mind and heart we can’t possibly know what the reality is in a given situation. Truth is, sometimes we do not even know or understand our own motives. And if our motives and perceptions are unknown even to us on the "inside" of life as we experience it, how can those "outside" us have a chance to understand what the reality is in a given situation? We are constantly unconsciously running everything we experience through a set of filters we were born with, or educated into, or we picked up from our generation or from a previous generation.

Why am I talking about this? I am writing about perceptions because of today’s worship service at my church. Depending upon who you ask at our church and certain factors I have yet to completely sort out, today’s service was either, “exactly what a ‘win’ looks like at NewSong,” or else it was “one of the worst services we have had in a long time.”

I know. No one ever said leadership was easy. This evening I perceive it to be very difficult. I am not even sure what step to take next. As usual it brings me back to the old leadership arts of listening, measuring, clarifying and communicating. Perhaps it is even time to retool a few things. But whose perceptions to we retool towards? What do people actually perceive? And what is the correlation between what they perceive and the underlying reality? Is what people were either deliriously happy about or totally disgusted with today even the issue on the table now?

How do we deal with perceptions and whose perceptions matter most (besides God’s, of course). What do you think?

Sermon Player -

Here is a nifty sermon player I stumbled upon from another pastor today (Dennis Papp, Field Notes). We will eventually have this player on our church website. There is also a link to it on the side bar further down and to the right of this post.

The greatest best thing about it is that the audio starts immediately, no more waiting for the file to download or questions about if you want to save the file to your computer.

NewSong also has its own channel now with sermon.net where the player comes from. Check it out at: http://www.sermon.net/NewsongSermons


Enjoy!

Book Review: Tribes by Seth Godin

I actually got this book as a “freebie” at last October’s Catalyst Conference and just got around to reading it tonight. Godin is a self-described “best-selling author, entrepreneur, and change agent.” I think of him as the Leonard Sweet of the Internet era. He specializes in marketing and communication, especially Internet marketing and connecting. He is a prolific blogger, writer, and speaker who loves to challenge the status quo, dares to question the accepted order and who specializes in debunking commonly held assumptions ("myths"). He calls doing this being a heretic.

Tribes is actually the first book of Godin’s I have read (he has written a dozen), but I read his blog faithfully. In the book he defines a tribe as "any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea." Tribes can be religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). Godin contends to be human is to long to be a part of a tribe.

With the Internet and all its social networking opportunities (Facebook, Twitter, etc…) it is easier than ever today to form or join a tribe. With the exponential expansion of modern forces of connection anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at his or her fingertips to form a tribe or to locate one to be a part of. The main question this opportunity presents, Godin contends, is who is going to lead all these tribes?

Tribes has some good leadership thinking in it. Much of it is very relevant to the church too. He talks a lot about the “tightening the tribe” using all the tools available to leaders in our new more connected world. He especially touts the efficiency of blogs for doing this. “A blogger has a free, nearly effortless tool to send regular (daily? hourly?) messages to the people who want to read them. And with comments and trackbacks, the members of the tribe can talk back and to each other. Discussions take place, ideas are shared, decisions are made – quickly” (pg. 53).

I loved Godin’s important distinction between "fans" and "numbers." He writes, “A true fan brings three friends with him to a John Mayer concert…a true fan connects with other true fans and amplifies the noise the artise makes…” “Too many organizations care about numbers, not fans. They care about hits or turnstile clicks or media mentions. What they’re missing is the depth of commitment and interconnection that true fans deliver…the real win is in turning a casual fan into a true one” (pg. 33)

There is a plenty of other good leadership insight in this short 147 page book. I definitely need to go back now and reread the book with a highlighter in hand. I plan to encourage our staff at NewSong to read the book and to use its principles as they form their tribes within NewSong as well.

In conclusion, I encourage anyone interested in thinking outside the box about their church or business to read this book and to apply its principles.

Elder/Staff Retreat Part Two

Our Elder/Staff retreat held this past weekend was about as good as it could possibly be. I could definitely sense the prayers people were praying for the weekend. When I got home Saturday night I told Donna (my wife) that I honestly could not imagine a single thing about the retreat that could have been better. Everyone came. Everyone participated. No one held anything back. We all shared our life stories, including our personal testimony. Everyone had read the Simple Church book and done their homework in advance. Our staff was prepared with exciting well-done reports on their ministries and plans for the future. There was plenty of laughter, tears, good food, great worship, and amazing fellowship (including a few odd bed-partners, but that's another post for another day).

Things we accomplished:

- We thoroughly went over Clarity - Movement - Alignment - and Focus from the Simple Church book. We know our work is cut out for us; mainly in properly communicating the "why" we need to do this to our congregation. As Vicki Eitel reminded us, Jesus never said anyone "had" to do anything. But "if" one wants certain things to happen then he or she "must" make certain changes or do certain things. We need to make our process crystal clear to everyone and in time, hopefully it will become a part of our church's DNA.

- Our staff leaders gave overviews of their respective areas including their mission, lens, target audience, and what constitutes a "win" for them.

- We raised the commitment level for leadership at NewSong by agreeing on what is expected of a "Level One Leader."

- We simplified our organizational structure so everything we do fits under the "Five Things We Do at NewSong" These five are: Weekend Worship, Small Groups, Missions, Youth, and Children. Existing ministries that do not "fit" will be phased out as an act of stewardship of our resources and faithfulness to God and His mission through us.

- We reduced our number of leaders from over 50 this year (2008-09) to less than half that number for the upcoming ministry year (2009/10). We also came up with a concensus list of leader candidates to fill those positions.

- We decided we will handle our ministry sign-ups differently this year (in August). We will still have sign-ups but we will try to have many people already recruited and signed up by ministry team leaders relationally.

- During the chapter reviews from Simple Church and the staff reports we kept a running list of significant changes we have recently made (or will make soon). These include:

1) Worship (Love) as our "Front Door" at NewSong. This is part of our new evangelistic focus, which is our number one strategic ministry priority in 2009. Our services are now being designed and targeted more towards non-believers so when our members invite their unbelieving friends, relatives and neighbors they will be able to more easily connect to God. We believe we can do this and still satisfy existing believers' needs for engaging worship and relevant, biblical teaching. What believers miss out on in "depth" in worship they will now get in their small groups.

2) Small Groups will become our main discipleship (Grow) vehicle, rather than traditional Sunday School. True life change happens best in small groups which will hopefully all eventually meet in the more intimate setting of a home rather than in sterile classrooms. Besides, we have many more homes available to us at NewSong than we do classrooms. We are planning a church-wide small group emphasis in the fall built around Saddleback's "40 Days of Love" campaign where we hope to launch 10-12 small groups.

3) In Missions (Share) our focus going forward will be "to serve Christ so others see him." We we will no longer artificially divide this area between "ministry" (inside the church) and "missions" (outside the church) but instead will focus on doing everything for Christ so that those we are serving will see Him in our service. We believe you can hand someone a worship guide, or prepare refreshments, or operate a sound board as though you are doing it for Christ Himself. Doing so would constitute a "win" for us in this area.

4) In our Children's Ministry our focus will be on developing a parent-church partnership to help our children come to know God instead of parents simply taking their children to church for the church to teach them "about" God. A win in this area would be when the families in our church are intentional about teaching biblical truths in their home on a daily basis.

5) One final noticeable difference will be an emphasis on being intentionally relational in our worship, grow groups and recruiting for our share ministries. This is a shift from our former "warm body" method where we were just looking at numbers, having multiple ministries, filling slots and always having impersonal sign-up sheets in the back. Strong churches are built on solid, godly, peer relationships. We plan to take full advantage of the strong relational ties that already exist at NewSong and to strengthen them further.

NewSong Elder/Staff Retreat

Well, tomorrow we are off for our Elder/Staff retreat for NewSong Church. So far all our staff members and Elders are attending - that is eleven of us. I am very excited at this opportunity to synchronize our efforts by clarifying, aligning, and focusing in our mission as a church. One of our four strategic ministry priorities for 2009 is what we called “Empowering Leadership” and is about expanding our leadership base. This is critical in order for us to move from being essentially a single cell church with me at the center to being a multi-celled church with multiple points of entry and several leaders as hubs for people to latch onto.

Church leadership gurus call where we are the “Shepherd-Rancher” threshold. It's an indisputable fact that the leadership style that works well with a church of 35-50 people will most likely hinder the growth of a church with 150-200. The little church pastor knows everybody, does all the praying, all the baptizing, all the teaching, and becomes a bottleneck for growth at some point because everything has to be run by him or her. He or she is the only one who knows everyone else in the church, and this person ends up with his hand in everything that happens at the church. The problem is there is a limit to how many people one person can personally shepherd. As the church grows the pastor must change roles from “Shepherd” to “Rancher.” The Rancher helps oversee the farm, mainly through under-Shepherds.

We have been at the threshold where this needs to be addressed for some time now at NewSong. The time has come for me to be more “hands off;” I must learn to delegate more, trusting the people to make what needs to happen transpire. The “sheep” for the pastor become the leaders he/she is mentoring and equipping for ministry. While shepherding only a few, they continue to serve as rancher to the entire flock.

Can we make this transition at NewSong? My experience has been that not too many pastors are able to do this. Most of the fault for this lies with the leader who is unable or unwilling to give up the responsibility and authority they presently have. But the people in the church who are not willing to be unselfish enough to let their pastor’s leadership style change share in the blame for this as well.

Theologically and practically most of us recognize it is not good for people to look exclusively to one person, a pastor, for all their spiritual guidance, answers, and leadership. The same Spirit that rested on Christ came down on all believers at Pentecost. On the flip side, it is also unhealthy for pastors to lose touch with their people and begin treating the congregation like widgets or numbers. Pastors can never let themselves become so “hands off” that they don’t know what is going on in the church. A disengaged leader can be disastrous.

Ideally, a pastor would be able to adopt a different style to match the different phase of development of the congregation. He or she should be find a way to grow along with the church. This assumes the pastor wants to stay, of course, which I want to do at NewSong. Flexibility on the part of the pastor and a willingness to continue to expand on the part of the church are the keys. A leader who feels he or she cannot adopt a different style as the church grows should recognize this and find a new church where his or her leadership style is needed. Likewise, the congregation that is plateaued or declining must decide if they want to be unselfish enough to grow, or if they want to remain comfortable where they are. A word of caution: Biblically-speaking such a congregation (one that opted for "comfortable") would be standing on shaky ground.

I Love My Church

I love my church - I mean the people. I know this sounds weird on the heels of last night's late-night post (this one is even later!). But tonight at the Christian Life and Witness class at FBC Cumming, NewSong had what had to be the largest group there (except for FBC) I'm certain of that. The people who were there really care about lost people. People at our church are hungry for Jesus - and hungry for God's Word. I sat next to Michael Smith and he spent the whole time underlining every verse the speaker mentioned. Michael also handed me his "counselor" application before the event was even over. He is ready to help someone come to Jesus! I'm excited about what God is going to do in Forsyth County and at NewSong through this event. I love NewSong. I love my job. I love the Lord Jesus.

Yes, pride is a sin - but I confess it. I was proud tonight; proud of my brothers and sisters in Christ. All of them, from all 25 churches that were there - God bless you!

Devote Yourself

Okay, it's 10pm on Monday night and I'm tired from a long day (but a great one!) and it is time now to sit down and consider what to write for my newsletter article which is due tomorrow, but before I do that I want to blog. I'm enjoying blogging more than newsletter writing lately...I don't know why, I am confident not many people are reading this - but it doesn't matter.

At any rate, one of the ways I prime my creative pump is by reading other blogs, especially ones by other pastors. I made my usual round tonight (you can see the ones I read on the right side of my blog, further down). But... (boy this is taking a long time to get to my point)...But... I ran across something by Pastor Steven Furtick tonight that really struck me as important. I don't particularly like Steven Furtick to be totally honest. He didn't make a favorable impression on me when he spoke at a Catalyst event I attended last October (boy, here I go again digressing....) But to make a long story short (ha ha) - what Furtick said resonated with me. I've got it below with a few comments interspersed and with my own take on a few things he covered.

Furtick reminds us that in Acts 2, 3000 people were converted to faith in Christ in one day and became believers. Acts 2:42 begins the description of the strategy for discipling this bunch of new Christians:

"They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer."

Did you catch it? They devoted themselves. Who devoted themselves? The new believers did! Nobody devoted them to the teaching. They had to do it for themselves. The apostles did the teaching - they laid it out for the people - but burden of discipleship rested primarily on the new believers, not the leaders of the church.

The job of church leaders is to create and sustain processes and systems that responsibly enable people to grow in their faith after receiving Christ. At NewSong this is the LOVE, GROW, SHARE process. But if a new Christian (or even existing ones) are not willing to devote themselves to teaching, community, and service, this does not mean the pastor or leaders of the church have failed in discipling them. It could be any number of things. For instance it might mean the person is not a truly regenerated born again believer. The speaker talked about that at the Christian Life and Witness Class tonight. There are plenty of people who sit in a pew every Sunday that "know all the verses but don't know HIM." They don not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. A new nature should produce an insatiable appetite for the things of God. And that’s an appetite only God can create - not me, or Jordan, or Griffin, or McKenzi, or Justin, or our Elders.

I think if I hear one more person say they left "thus-and-so" church because they "weren't being fed" I'm going to throw up (my comment). Biblical discipleship is not about spoon feeding people. According to Acts 2:42, it’s an all you can eat self-service buffet where you get your own plate, refill your own drinks, and you clean up after yourself (Furtick).

Devote yourself!

Come Together

I went to a Christian Life and Witness class tonight at First Baptist of Cumming. The event was led by a representative of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. It was great. It was even greater to see so many believers from so many churches come together in one place. There are 24 churches in our local community coming together for an evangelism event that will be held in September. It has been amazing to see us all come together under the banner of Jesus and tonight was the best yet; Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, non-denominational churches like ours, and others all together for the same reason – to win people to Christ.

At one point the speaker asked everyone to call out the name of their church on the count of three. The result was a cacophony of noise; some names were short, others long, but you could not make out any single one. Then he asked us to call out the name of the Savior on the count of three. The result was a clear and resounding JESUS!! – our voices became one. What a great illustration about what can happen when we put aside our differences and come around him instead of remaining isolated and divided in our little “tribes.”

Lord, help us to see this issue the way you see it… Amen.

Brand Loyalty

This past week I changed all the stuff I use on the Internet to Google from Yahoo. This shift took more time than I anticipated, but having completed the transition I am very happy with it. Among other things my web portal is now iGoogle, I’m using Google Calendar (which syncs with my Outlook calendar automatically), I have also added Google docs for the church Elders and staff to share and collaborate documents on, and I was already using Gmail.

As I made this transition I realized how I am usually very loyal when it comes to brands. Even though I love change in most instances, when it comes to changing brands of something, I’m slow to make changes. For some unknown reason to me, I choose a brand and then stick with it, seemingly for life. I am a Nike-Coke-Windows-Levis-Charmin-Starbucks-GM-Wesleyan-Browning-Dial-Colgate-NIV-Lipton-Sony kind of guy.

The whole issue of brands is an interesting one. Why do some people prefer Coke and others Pepsi? Why do some people drive GM cars while others prefer Ford? Why do some use Apple computers while others use Windows-based machines? Why are we so brand-intensive and brand-loyal? Why are we so quick to defend "our brand," or to tell others about it?

What makes us purchase the same brand time and time again when we have so much choice these days? And why do we “choose” certain athletes, movie stars, politicians, sports teams, and even friends and then stick with them so loyally – even, at times, when such loyalty is not warranted? I did a cursory search on this topic and discovered the issue has been the object of intense study. There are some very deep essays and even dissertations on the topic available on the Internet. Mostly, of course, by scholars and marketers who either love or hate brand loyalty, depending upon their share of the market.

I didn’t dig deep enough to find out much, but I did discover a few things. For one, brand loyalty is not necessarily about price or which product is actually best. We don’t choose our brands logically, we choose with our hearts. Reasons are varied but can be anything from catchy advertisements, or packaging, or the it being brand our parents always used, and a whole cluster of other reasons.

Loyalty was important and noted even in biblical times. Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24 NIV) Attempting to serve two masters leads to “double-mindedness” (James 4:8), undermining loyalty to a cause. James 5:2.

Of course brand loyalty is important in my field, the church world. Why do people choose one church over another? I’m sure there are a million reasons (proximity, like or dislike of the preacher, the people, facilities, programs, and probably way down the line, the church's theology). My guess would be people choose churches in the same illogical and unexplainable ways they choose the other brands they choose.

What do you think?

Book Review: Crazy Love

I just finished reading Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God by Francis Chan. Amy gave me this book for my birthday (thank-you!) and I’m glad because I have heard so much about it. My overall impression of the book is that it is really good, but not necessarily life-changing.

I have decided my “less-than-over-the-top” reaction to the book stems more from unrealistic expectations of what it was going to be like rather than from any shortcoming on Francis Chan’s part. I had heard this was a life-transforming book, and it might be for some, but personally I have been wrestling with these same issues for quite a long time now (at least since I first received my call to ministry in the early 90's) so mostly what I found myself doing as I read was nodding my head thinking, “Yes, that’s right” instead of shaking it in amazement and saying, “Wow! I never thought of that,” or “Really?”

Chan describes why he wrote the book on page 168, “I wrote this book because much of our talk doesn’t match our lives. We say things like, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,’ and ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart.’ Then we live and plan like we don’t even believe God exists. We try to set our lives up so everything will be fine even if God doesn’t come through. But true faith means holding nothing back. It means putting every hope in God’s fidelity to his promises.”

I could not agree more. As a pastor I see this all the time. In fact, as a pastor (and as a Christian) I do it myself. I often find myself planning “exit strategies” in case God doesn’t show up, which I realize demonstrates a definite lack of faith. I did it earlier this week when the Elders and I were wrestling with whether or not to proceed with buying a piece of land for the church to eventually build on. It is a huge financial commitment for us. As I prayed through the issue I kept thinking in terms of "What if it isn't God's will" instead of boldly claiming the land, "by faith." I wish I didn’t do that. Truth is, the father's cry in Mark 9 of, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) often could be used to sum up my spiritual journey. I do believe, but then by my actions I prove I don’t really have faith.

My main criticism of the book is I don’t think Chan really provides an answer to this problem. He sees the problem is we don’t love God enough so the answer is we should love God more, but love can’t be forced, can it? Isn’t that the nature of love? The reason we don’t love God enough, according to the author, is because our understanding of God is deficient (page 22) so he proceeds to write three chapters to show us who God really is and why he is worthy of our love. He expects us to be convinced and then expects we’ll be driven to our knees in worship, which ultimately equates to love in Chan’s vocabulary. I don’t blame him for not being able to explain "how," I struggle with the same issue myself and in my church.

In the next seven chapters Chan examines what he perceives to be the sorry state of the church (apparently mainly thinking about the church in America, and in particular in Southern California). His conclusion is that we are lukewarm Christians who attend lukewarm churches spending our time striving for a life with God characterized by control, safety and an absence of suffering.

Are we “missing it?” as Chan contends? Are we even “good soil” (saved) as he asks? Do we offer God our “leftovers” instead of our best? Perhaps… probably...maybe. To the extent that we ask ourselves these questions and wrestle with the answers, the book is helpful. When it comes to the answer to the big question, yes, God is definitely the answer, and yes, God is love, but I’m not sure I’m any wiser for having been retold this so many times; mostly I just feel guilty.

God's Mission for NewSong II

How did NewSong go from chasing after “lead chickens” (see the post “God’s Mission for NewSong I) to being a church that is gaining clarity for its unique calling and mission? That’s what I’ll tell in Part Two of our “mission story.”

In October 2003 NewSong moved across the street from Forsyth Central High School and we felt as though the sky was the limit. After 3 ½ years we finally had our own place to worship without setting up and taking down all our equipment each week. We had brand new leased worship center that seated over 225, classroom space, a kitchen, real nurseries and a space for our youth. We thought we had died and gone to heaven. We were averaging about 160 a week in attendance when we moved in. We fully expected to shoot past the 200 threshold very quickly in our new “digs.” We were surprised to discover just the opposite occurred however. We finished the next full year (2004) averaging 156 a week. By the end of 2005 we had dropped to 148. We ended 2006 at 146, and by the end of 2007 we had slipped to an average weekly attendance of 138. I remember being totally discouraged at the end of 2007. In the previous 18 months we had lost our youth pastor (Lee), our worship leader (Allen), and our children’s director (Tidwell). We had also lost other key leaders and seen ministries fold. God seemed to be winnowing us down. That December (2007) we lost still another youth pastor (Sanders). Things looked grim. But God was already moving.

During 2007 I began teaching an adult Sunday School class using books from Dallas Willard and John Ortberg to guide the class. Willard has written several books and is probably best known for a somewhat difficult read called The Divine Conspiracy. It was actually another of his books titled The Spirit of the Disciplines that helped me see something really important though. In the back of that book there is an appendix, which is also the first chapter of a subsequent book titled The Great Omission. The “great omission” Willard refers to is stems from what he views as an “historical drift” since Jesus commissioned the first disciples to “go and make disciples.” This great omission is actually two-fold. Instead of making converts to a particular faith and practice, Willard contends that somewhere along the way we began simply enrolling people on a church roll with no repentance, and no real change in their lives. They just added Jesus to their lives but nothing else changed. The second part of the omission is that instead of enrolling these “converts” as students or apprentices to Jesus who intend to progressively reorder their lives in order to follow him; there is no change in subsequent behavior either. According to Willard what that means is that our churches are filled with what he calls “undiscipled disciples.” He says much, much more, but he finally concludes that most problems in churches today can be explained by the fact that our churches are filled with people who have not yet decided to follow Jesus!” Ouch!

Willard wasn’t picking on individual Christians in his critique though. He says that it really isn’t their fault. The real culprit is the church. Most churches, he contends, allow this “easy-believism.” Furthermore, most churches don’t have a process in place to help people move from being new believers to mature disciples.

This is when my ears perked up. I was convicted by that thought. We certainly didn’t have a process to do this in place at NewSong. Our mission statement at the time (“borrowed from Northpoint) was “Leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.” But the question was, “How?” The answer certainly was not to ask them to come to church once a week, make them feel guilty, and then work them to death with busyness at church.

Once I saw this I began to really pray about our mission statement. It didn’t describe who we were or what we were doing (or not doing). In time God impressed three things on my heart as being important to Him and important to us at NewSong. He gave me three words/concepts: “Kingdom Relationships” (with God and others), “Spiritual Formation” (becoming students of Jesus Christ), and “Missional Focus” (looking outward to serve).

Fast forward a few more months and I stumbled across yet another book (actually my daughter Amy suggested I read it) called Simple Church. When I read that book I felt as though authors Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger had read my mind. As I read the stories of Pastor Rush and his ministry schizophrenia and as I compared notes with “First Church” and “Cross Church” I began to realize that they were describing something very important, and something very real to us at NewSong.

I asked our Board of Elders if we could read the book together and they agreed (we have a wonderful Board of Elders at my church!). From July to September 2007 we used the book as a guide to craft a new mission statement – one that was built around a three-step process for making disciples: “Love God, Grow to be like Jesus, Share with the world.” Eleven words which we often shorten to only three: "Love, grow, and share." Not surprisingly, our new mission statement reflected what God had given me a few months earlier, “Kingdom Relationship” (Love God), “Spiritual Formation” (Grow to be like Jesus), and “Missional Focus” (Share with the world). We now had the mission statement that I believe God intended us to have to fulfill our unique calling to the world. We now had a process in place to make disciples, our “product,” if you will. What’s more, it is our unique process for fulfilling the unique calling God has given us.

It was a great moment. We announced the new mission to the church with great fanfare. We changed our website and letterhead and business cards to reflect the new mission statement. We plastered it on the wall in our worship center. More importantly, people began to “own it.” Almost immediately we began to grow. We saw a bump in attendance of about a dozen people a week in the fourth quarter of 2007. As we began 2008 we gained a few more attenders. We also got a brand new youth pastor and saw an influx of younger families (“twenty-somethings”).

By Easter, 2008 the Elders felt we had gained enough momentum to start a second service. Almost overnight we added another 10 or so to our worship attendance, and the spiritual momentum was growing. In June we hired a new worship leader and in July we hired a children’s director. People were getting excited, we had a focus, and our mission was finally being grasped and understood.

By the time one year had rolled around with our new mission it began to be apparent that we hadn't gone far enough or deep enough in adopting the new mission. Instead of focusing, clarifying and aligning ourselves through the lens of our new mission and process we had simply gotten excited about it and then dropped down on top of what we were already doing. Why? Perhaps we were tired or lazy. Maybe the time wasn’t right, or maybe we just didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

And so by the fall of 2008 we had begun to drift again. After an initial burst of momentum, we began to lose our momentum and coast. We lost our focus. But things were about to change again.

During this fourth quarter God impressed upon me that we were really dropping the ball when it came to evangelism. Two incidents stand out in particular. A church member who was attending a Christian college used our church as a case study for a paper and she us asked for some statistics from the church. When we pulled them out for her we realized our congregation was made up of practically 100% transfer growth (Christians either switching churches locally, or else moving into the area as Christians and choosing to affiliate with us). The second incident was more convicting. A pastor friend of mine subtly (and not so subtly!) challenged me about the issue of reaching nonbelievers for Christ. I remember getting exasperated with him in a restaurant one day and saying something along the lines of, “We’re just not the kind of church that reaches new people!" I practically choked on the words as I spoke them. God chastened me about my poor leadership at NewSong with regards to evangelism. Reaching people who don’t know the Lord isn’t an option; it must be a priority for us because it is a priority for Him.

As I did my planning for the coming year through the holiday season at the end of 2008 it became clear to me that we needed four strategic ministry priorities for 2009: 1) Evangelism. 2) Involvement (more connecting and growing), 3) Facilities, and 4) Empowering Leadership. I announced these priorities our my annual “State of the Church” sermon which I give every year on the first Sunday of the New Year. I used the image of an open door that God had opened that no one could close (Rev. 3:3-8). It took us eight years to figure it out, but God wants us to reach the lost. God wants us to get involved in the process of discipleship, God wants us to take seriously the challenge of building His church at NewSong, and God wants us to start empowering one another in our leadership. We can no longer function, leadership-wise, like we did when we started with me being a bottleneck to our growth because I was still leading the church as I always have from the beginning.

Thankfully, God already knew we needed to make these changes and was preparing for it all along, especially the leadership piece. During 2008 God brought us a new youth pastor (January), Worship Leader (June) and Children’s Director (July). In December God sent us the person who is now the staff volunteer leading our Grow ministry. For the first time ever we have someone leading discipleship at NewSong. I'm embarassed to admit that, but honestly, I think that for whatever reason, we've only now gotten the right person for the job.

What an answer to prayer. In one year God provided someone to take ownership and lead all five of the main areas we now have at NewSong: Love, Grow, Share, Students and Children.

We also expanded our facilities at the beginning of this year, taking in and remodeling the dance studio next door to us. This gave us much-needed growing room.

In January 2009 our Board of Elders also approved giving our youth pastor additional responsibilities as an “Assistant to the Pastor.” Momentum has begun to build in our staff and we have begun to gel as a unit. We meet as a staff on a weekly basis. With these other leaders now in place to lead the five areas, their vision and leadership has begun to complement my own and has allowed us to have more intentional focus in each area. This has allowed us to examine what we’re doing and to formulate ways to go about accomplishing our mission.

Today
And that brings us up to the present moment (March, 2009). Our staff and Elders are now reading the Simple Church book, some for the first time, and others are re-reading it. We’re reading it this time with emphasis on focusing, clarifying, and aligning our mission and ministries. We have also recently come up with a set of leader guidelines to help us underscore what is important to us in terms of leadership at NewSong (character, competency and calling). We want to get the right leaders on the bus at NewSong and get them in the right seats.

I’m also very excited about a retreat we have coming up in May where both our Elders and our Staff will be together for the first time ever in this kind of setting. The goal for this retreat (in my mind) is synchronization so that all our leaders have a shared understanding of our church’s values, priorities, goals and objectives. It’s very important for us to have the same assumptions about what constitutes a “win” for NewSong. In fact I believe it is essential if we are going to accomplish what God wants us to accomplish.

In the meantime, God continues to reveal things to us in our weekly staff meetings. In recent weeks I believe he has shown us the following in our Love, Grow, and Share areas.

Love
Through discussion, prayer, and our current series on evangelism we have come to see that our worship services have been geared too much for “us” and not enough for people who don’t know Christ. We believe worship should be viewed as the “front door” to our church since that is typically the first place a visitor encounters us. We are under deep conviction that our services should be planned and executed with the nonbeliever in mind. Since it is our desire (and God’s!) to lead new people to Christ and we are not looking for transfer growth, our facilities, bulletins, media, music, and teaching should intentionally be “nonbeliever friendly." We want our members to feel comfortable inviting others to our church and make sure that once they get them here we present the gospel clearly.

A "win" for us in worship has been clarified as people bringing friends, relatives, co-workers, and neighbors to church and having those people have a non-distracting, intelligible worship experience that would encourage them to commit to, and then go deeper in, a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Grow
We agree that we would really like to see our members get jump-started in the Love, grow, share process. Thus we have come up with our NextSteps classes. We've taught one Love class and will be teaching it again in April. In May we'll teach our first Grow class.

We have also established what GROW stands for:
• G: giving (of time and talents to others and God)
• R: relating to others (Connecting)
• O: oneness with God (Prayer)
• W: word of God (Bible Study)

A “win” for us in Grow would be for our members to get moving through the love, grow, share classes and to be be involved in a small group that meets regularly for prayer, Bible-study, accountability and prayer. We would like to our members growing in their own faith and reproducing other disciples.

Share
We have also had some clarification of what “Share” means at NewSong. We formerly divided Share into “ministry” (service within the church) and “mission” (service beyond our walls). Ministry was what we did for “us,” and mission was what we did for “others.” What we’ve come to see through our new evangelistic lens is that all serving should ultimately be evangelistic. Even if we’re doing something mundane or internal like ushering, greeting, sound, or bringing refreshments, we should understand ourselves to be serving Jesus and doing it in such a way that lost people encounter him. We have also come to understand Share as more of a lifestyle instead of just something you do on Sunday morning or when you go on a mission trip somewhere. Can you serve coffee or sweep a floor for Jesus so people will come to know him? Can you speak to your waitress at Waffle House or the person in line next to you at Wal-Mart so that they can see Jesus? We believe you can.

A “win” for us in Share would be to see everyone adopt this lifestyle and begin praying for nonbelievers, interacting with them, and then looking to start spiritual conversations with them with the goal being to share the most important thing anyone can ever know or understand; that God loves them.

God is definitely pouring out his vision for us at NewSong. My prayer is that He keeps it up, and that we keep on obeying Him and trusting Him.

It's late again...until next time...