Three Trends?

Congregational visits can inspire songs of great joy and deep laments – even in the same visit. This month has been no exception.

It might be helpful to share with you some of what we have seen and heard recently in your congregations:

• A team of volunteers stripped the bark from a huge fallen tree (casualty of the ice storms last winter) and recreated the “tree” for VBS in the middle of the fellowship hall along with a working waterfall – just to make the experience more profound for participants.
• “Thanks for volunteering to help. You don’t need to prepare. The kids don’t want to be there anyway. Just go be with them for 20 minutes and send them on to the next activity.”
• Her graduation picture is propped on a table in front of the sanctuary. The members of this small, graying, rural congregation are filling in for absent parents to support another fledgling about to fly.
• “Our fellowship hall and sanctuary are available for an emergency relief shelter.”
• A congregation cashes in a long-held certificate of deposit (proceeds from memorials and bequests) to pay the utilities. Giving per household is about what it was 20 years ago. The number of households is down 50%.
• “We had fifty adults helping and teaching eighty eight kids for VBS. The Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor taught one of the classes and led the whole inter-denominational group of kids in one of the best prayers those kids ever prayed!”

There are more stories to tell and we will tell more of them in time.

Some themes are beginning to emerge. We’ll just identify three here.

First, there is a core group in every congregation who still believe that the message and mission of Jesus is as important to happiness as breathing. That is hopeful news.

It is also true that many congregations are getting very comfortable just coasting on the momentum of prior generations of Christ-followers. The culture has so infected their faith that it is almost impossible to distinguish between the gospel they believe in and the American Dream.

There is a noticeable upsurge of local, ecumenical activity – much of it generated by lay folk. We cannot help but wonder if we are in the early phases of a very pragmatic course correction in North American Christianity – to unify the Body of Christ around local mission.

What do you see?

Grace and peace,

Bill R-H

Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing!

When farmers are faced with rising fuel prices, fickle markets, higher rental fees and costs for everything that needs to be planted, driven or applied, it is easy to forget that your original intention was to feed your neighbors

When budget challenges and lower worship attendance seem to set the tone for congregational life in NW Missouri, it is easy to forget that the primary reason we are part of the Church is to make new disciples of Jesus.

These days, making disciples may be the last thing we want to do. Why? Even many Christians are no longer be as sure about who Jesus is and what the Gospel means to a thousand generations not yet born.

Thus we pose a question and invite your response.

What is it about your experience of Jesus that your community cannot do without?

Without a clear and compelling answer to that question, it may be that our religious life is little more than a quaint carryover from a time when more disciples could give such a compelling answer that it made you want to become a disciple of Jesus, too.

How Well Do We Support the Saints?

When the 30,000 member Willow Creek Community Church admits publicly that it is not meeting the needs of some of its long-term faithful, it merits the attention of those who enjoy their annual leadership and training conferences.

Frankly, I find their candor refreshing in a wider church culture that likes to pretend everything is just great in the Body of Christ.

After a rigorous survey of its members, WCCC staff identified some indications that challenged an assumption that new Christians were effective, enthusiastic evangelists. In fact, they found, the opposite was more likely; those who identified themselves as “Close to Christ” or “Christ-centered” were doing the heavy lifting for evangelism. Among those more developed members, enough rated themselves as “stalled” or “dissatisfied” with their spiritual growth to make staff return to prayer closets and staff conversations with greater urgency.

Judging from conversations with folk in NW Area congregations, I suspect that we do a better job of protecting and feeding the flock than we do building up those recognized as true shepherds, evangelists, prophets, teachers, and apostles among our people. (Eph. 4:11-12)

We count too much on current structures and systems to sustain congregational life, and, sometimes we overlook what really gets results.

We Christians have nothing unique to offer if not Jesus. Our people can get excellent training from a variety of secular agencies to become more compassionate, brutally truthful, educated, enthusiastic, change agents. What universities, government agencies, and private firms are not specially called and formed to give is an awareness of God’s intention to reconcile the whole world as revealed through Jesus Christ. Has popular church culture produced more loyal consumers and producers of popular culture than disciples of Jesus? And if it has, what are we doing to make sure that those among us who strive to be “close to Christ” or even “Christ-centered” are being sufficiently supported to serve?

Leadership Model of Ephesians 4:11-12

Have you noticed the switch from traditional spoke or solid wheel rims to five-spoke models made with super alloys? They provide needed strength while reducing the amount of material. They are engineered so that the minimum number of spokes provides the maximum strength needed to fulfill the function of the wheel – to facilitate motion.

Grind or torch off one or more of the new alloy spokes and the integrity of both the wheel and its usefulness is compromised (if not altogether destroyed). Only an idiot would do such a thing, right?

One can successfully argue that there are many models for congregational leadership in the Christian Testament. Most models call for teams of peer colleagues and one in particular was apparently a model Paul respected. Ephesians 4:11-12 refers to a five-spoke missional leadership wheel that included an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a shepherd, and a teacher.

Apostles are all about expanding the reach of the gospel.

Prophets advocate for God’s will to be known and carried out.

Evangelists look for potential disciples of Jesus and invite commitment.

Shepherds are all about the care and protection of local disciples.

Teachers make divine mystery more accessible and encourage wisdom.

Together, they make a formidable, balanced team. The current North American Protestant congregation in the rural Midwest, however, tends to favor a model which asks of its hireling clergy a balance of all five gifts. Larger churches are expected to have a staff with all five gifts. Many congregations have sawn off evangelism and prophecy and most apostolic work in favor of more self-serving teaching and shepherding.

In the Spring, 2008 edition of the Leadership Journal, Alan Hirsch suggests that the five-fold leadership team might be best understood as a team of leaders of five teams; apostolic, prophetic, evangelism, shepherding, and teaching.

Do read the article. It offers insight and hope at a time when current congregational leadership models are limping along.

None of us are so naïve as to believe that an ideal leadership model will descend from “on high.” What will work in the years to come will have to be prayerfully discerned locally, vigorously tried, ruthlessly evaluated and modified and attempted again and often. Additionally, new or re-visited models will have to have integrity with the biblical witness.

What models of leadership are proving helpful where you serve?

Who Are You, Disciples of Christ?

Have you looked recently at the new identity statement for the Disciples of Christ: http://www.disciples.org/21cvt/docidentity.html? I encourage you to check it out because at some point we will be asked to commit ourselves to it. (After all, of what purpose is a statement of identity if we are not willing to be fully identified with it?)

Maybe it's just me, but I was hoping for more . . . momentum. I wanted a statement shouted back from a speeding bus loaded with workers chugging water and Mountain Dew headed for the mission field. When I read the current statement I have visions of polite conversations in church parlors and board rooms or the tap-tap-tapping of a keyboard and mugs of Chai Latte and Organic Sumatra-Peru Blend.

It is probably a good thing that I have not been charged with writing the Disciples Statement of Identity because it would look something more like this:

We are going into the neighborhood to serve those who serve with Christ until the mission is completed.

I probably would resist the temptation to add more words to an identity statement. Any shouting from a speeding bus is done in phrases - not paragraphs.

If pressed, Id' have to explain that those who serve also help to unite those they serve and that, to me, has always been the polar star of this expression of Christianity.

No one denomination is going to be strong enough to be effectively counter-cultural. The Great Commission, the Great Commandment, and the Good Confession were all given to the whole Body and not to its franchises (which, sadly, is what too many in this culture bring to mind when you mention the word, denomination). The missions of Burger King, McDonalds, Hardees and Wendy's are certainly about satisfying hunger here and now but they are not about ending world hunger forever (a God-sized mission). There is little doubt, however, that if all the brain power and resources and networks of every major food chain and supplier could be marshaled to a much bigger, single goal, the end result would be far more miraculous than most missional efforts to date. Is it stretching the truth to make a similar case for the whole Church about the Great Commission and the Great Commandment?

The current Disciples Mission Statement appears to have been roundly affirmed - almost unanimously - by those who have left their comments. Interesting, considering that Reformation is in our DNA.

And, as you can imagine, my intent is not so much to debate the merits of the Statement of Identiy but to encourage all of us to answer a question that Jesus may be asking the disciples of today; "Who do people say that you are?"

Let's hear from you!

Bill Rose-Heim

It's Still Broke

Once again, we cannot pay the bills. Giving is down. It does not seem to be going up any time soon.

Recent budget crunches in congregations and in mid-level judicatories are not merely a reflection of a sputtering economy. They are reflections of a truth that none of us wants to face. Of course, irresponsibility is not an option for disciples of Jesus - and especially not for those of us in leadership.

Could it be that the era of the Americanized hybrid of corporate church is closing? Generations that once looked to scholarly theologians, excellent liturgy, and congregation-centered ministry are aging and dying. Subsequent generations are not scrambling to shore up what they built. In fact, they are silently, almost passively allowing some congregations and denominations to die while investing in local missions that are clear and which invite participation and require far less structure or financial support than conventional models.

Jesus still requires a Body-in-Motion. That suggests that while muscle tone and skin may be "in," skeletal structures have not suddenly become unimportant. How will the Church continue 2000 years of witness to the work of Christ among us in a context that has never existed before?

Here are some emerging trends to watch:

• Congregational campuses will either serve more and more often or they will be sold and smaller groups will meet in homes and larger groups will rent facilities or build multi-use community centers.
  
• Pastors will be trained (along with other types of Ephesians 4 leaders) locally with input from on-line theological seminaries and their training will center more around the practice of spiritual disciplines and leading the formation and work of disciples (rather than "members").
  
• In those communities with strong ties among all Christians, denominational distinctions may become only as important as surnames like Smith or Jones - standing for something but not for as much that separates as for what unites the Body - a major paradigm shift led by lay people living in democratic republics. Ministerial alliances and non-denominational associations (like Willow Creek and Vineyard) may become the next mid-level judicatories among those who know or care little for episcopal or presbyterian forms of church organization.

The biblical record suggests that there will always be a need for apostolic oversight. Heresies come and go and should never become confused with eternal truth. Local prejudices still need challenging as does "white privilege." Idiots can still sway the gullible (or the intellectually lazy) and someone has to notice the devil-in-drag among the sheep and in the systems that perpetuate the power of a few. What new forms that oversight may take are not yet clear.

What is clear is that current forms are no longer capable of living comfortably into perpetuity and a serious conversation needs to begin with greater urgency among us.

Jesus engaged his Jewish peers in similar conversations resulting in changes that brought about our own reconciliation with God even 2000 years after his death and resurrection. Monastics brought needed change as did reformers. It is our turn and the importance of our task cannot be exaggerated.

What are your thoughts?

Open Doors!

The clergy retreat with Dick Hamm and the area staff and Executive Team is now a pleasant memory and we look ahead to new opportunities to go more deeply into service and leadership.

The Allelon missional leader formation initiative has asked this area leadership team to host one of five regional training centers in North America. Click here for more information. I have seen the proposed curriculum (as have some of you) and it appears to offer something local congregational leaders seek, so we are inclined to move forward once the details are worked out.

At the same time, area staff and executive team along with about 10 -15 invited congregational pastors and leaders will begin a 100-day period in January in prayer and share triplets (teams of three) to see what that might look like, go to the Spiritual Strategic Journey website.

Missional Church conversations continue in Cameron, Maryville, and Higginsville. We encourage participants to invite their non-Disciples clergy colleagues.

We have also been invited to host in 2009 a Heartland Regional Cluster learning event for congregations engaged in transformation. This would bring together leaders from congregations in seven states to articulate best practices, share wins and losses, and become together a life-long learning community for congregational transformation and leader support.

Finally, we are pulling together resources in the area of character development for leaders - including some secular options for clergy who may do better personal character work in a non-church setting.

We appreciate your prayers and your responses to our sincere desire to support you, your families, and the missions to which God has called us in local communities.

What new learning opportunities are working well for you?