Lifelong Learning Center: an immodest proposal

Okay. So you are standing on the set of God's "Let's Make a Deal" and the Apostle Paul is the highly caffeinated show host. As the main contestant for the NW Area Christian Churches you've just been given the option of door number 1, door number 2, or door number 3. You know that part of your "prize" is 160 acres of land in Lathrop, Missouri. What lies behind each door is what God will do with that land. The only clue given to you is a reference to the passage where Jesus tells the parable of the talents. Which door would you choose?

Door number 1 is the one-talent option. God blesses the 160 acres with lots of hay. Occasionally, folk from area congregations go to visit but unless the hay is cut there really is little to see or to do. It is pretty, though and the sound of the wind in the tall grass is almost hypnotic.

Door number 2 is the two-talent option. Behind this door is a view of the NW Area Church Camp about 5 years from now. It looks a lot like Camp Crowder at Trenton (where we hold church camp now). There is a 15 acre area with a house, barn, kitchen and mess hall, several cabins and a craft hall. There are about 80 campers, counselors and staff members this day and everyone looks like they are having a great time.

Door number 3 is the five-talent option. Open this door and what you see 10 years from now takes your breath away. Over by the wind turbines and solar panels a tour group of engineers from Japan is hearing Ken Jameson explain how we developed an international award winning green camp and conference center. On their way back to the state-of-the art conference center (filled with employees of Cerner for their annual corporate retreat), they pass a cluster of ranch-style buildings arranged in a cul-de-sac that hosts a unique End-of-Life Camp for children diagnosed with end-stage cancer and their families. On the 20 acre lake, senior citizens from Osborne are taking kyack lessons from one of the staff while a preschool class learns to fish on the opposite side. Almost hidden are several one-room studio cabins where, on this day, a pastor is outlining a sermon series, a single mom is struggling to find balance in the midst of chaos, and an artist is working on what will become a piece that will one day hang on a wall in the White House. The music of midday prayer wafts from open windows in the glass walled chapel as several staff members and guests praise God and intercede for everyone being served on the campus. The chef on duty is preparing 5 different lunches with interns provided by a local technical school to be served in a simple but beautiful set of dining rooms - each with their own theme. When our international guests leave to board their plane at KCI, they will take the campus shuttle which will drive on roads paved clear to the Interstate.

If you could ask God for one of these three scenarios, which would you choose?

We are in the process of recruiting candidates for a long-range development team that we will ask to form a 501.c.3 not-for-profit corporation dedicated to serving a wider public described in option 3. A short-term development team is already hard at work preparing the campus for your arrival on September 6 (or sooner if you happen to be a volunteer). Their commitment is primarily to serve congregations and to prepare a place that will be used often by members.

We have made (and plan to keep) a solemn pledge to keep the neighbors in the loop and to be responsive to any concerns they may have about noise and traffic and other difficulties.

Unless we hear differently from you, we'll keep working hard and praying that God grants us what is behind the door that will require the most from all of us and from partners within beyond the Church.

Blessings,
Bill R-H

Don't Just Stand There, Do Something!

We must engage in conversations around mission at least 20 times a week. Much of the talk is about how tough it is to motivate "them" to greater faithfulness, missions with greater impact, and more consistent compassion.

Some complain that there is not enough (fill in the blanks) coming from (the area office, the regional office, the general office, etc.) to help us move from where we are to where we think God want's us to be.

Most certainly, I am the worst offender. It is acceptable, even fashionable, to indulge in scapegoating as a way to cover up my own inadequacies or under-performance.

At some point, however, I have to take responsibility for the outcomes I live with.

Note that I did not say that a disappointing outcome is my fault. It is, however, my responsibility. It will change for better or for worse to some degree based upon my own engagement with it.

If I don't like the way things are shaping up in the church or if I yearn for something more, I have a responsibility to engage proactively.

If I find that there are too few companions with whom to make those changes, I have a responsibility to find and to invite more committed colleagues.

If there are not enough resources, I am responsible enough to change that rther than to let lack determine outcome.

This week your area staff and executive officers took a hard look with Dick Hamm at what we are doing to support pastors and other congregational leaders.

We cannot take much credit, nor can we completely accept blame for the way things are, but we can choose to be responsible, and we have.

Staff and officers have taken on new homework assignments and we have agreed to take some risks to improve the quality of our service to you.

No one told us we had to do that. It is simply a part of what it means to be responsible.

If you'd like to help your staff or team to deepen its sense of responsibility, join us for the Quickening Preview on Sunday evening, August 31. Click here
to learn more and to register on-line.

What Is Our Place in the Body of Christ?

Imagine for a moment that Disciples of Christ have discovered a new sense of purpose rooted in serving and supporting other Christians.

We wake up one morning and realize that we don’t really enjoy competing for the dwindling number of existing church members in our local communities . . . even if some of them are members of that weird church across town.

We are weary of being the denomination of last resort. “Hey, Disciples of Christ don’t require you to believe or to do anything beyond Baptism. We can get our weekly dose of whatever we need and leave the rest behind.”

Lately our own people admit to feeling spiritually restless. They want something more from their religious life than keeping the congregation running on fumes.

Our hope in a vision coming from a small group of people who make their living going to meetings has cooled a bit and we are becoming more adept at looking for what Christ is doing locally.

We have observed that when Jesus does something big in our home town, the effort requires the investment of more Christians than attend our worship services . . . or the Methodists or the Baptists (combined).

A review of our denominational history suggests that we were originally all about reclaiming the oneness of the Body of Christ and with 33,000 known Christian denominations, sects, and cults; we have our work cut out for us.

But oneness in what? A coalition of denominations that welcomes all comers? Wasn’t CUIC supposed to accomplish that? (It hasn’t.)

Churches in our community decide to raise money so that Cindy can have that liver transplant that her family cannot afford. They work with civic clubs to organize after school programs for kids whose parents have to work minimum wage jobs. Whenever those missions get going, or need to begin, the one ingredient that is essential is someone (or a group of leaders) to help get very different people working well together.

Why is it that so often those community project organizers are Disciples of Christ? It is not as if we have a lock on that kind of work but it does fit so well our DNA.

So, what if we got far more intentional about calling and equipping new saints – not only for the more common, congregational missions, but also for the missions that local communities of Christians will do together?

What if our worship services made room for celebrating what Christ is actually doing locally (as well as globally)?

If our Sunday Schools and Bible studies included a weekly focus on how we could better support the folk who actually do the work of these community missions, might they be more vital and dynamic?

How about those beloved symbols of summer – the Vacation Bible School and the annual youth mission trip? Imagine if instead of offering competing programs we committed to help local Christians to organize and carry out one program with excellence for all the local youth (or at least most of them)?

And if you have a better idea about how Disciples can become clear about God’s preferred role for our denomination within the larger Body of Christ, what’s keeping you from sharing that with the rest of us?

Bill Rose-Heim

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?