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extract’d

knot
“rope knot” by leo reynolds

Though the experiences of Christ and the Spirit may be ever satisfying, and the word be life giving, the blessings of family and the fruit of ministry be ever present, the longing for heaven and the violent reality of its absence will leave you with a broken heart that will express itself in and empty and sour stomach feeling.

Upon feeling this you will very much be tempted to think your doing ministry wrong and want to seek someone/something/some success or affirmation that will take away this feeling. For most pastors you will flee from this feeling through seeking a more successful position. Don’t do it though. It is in this emptiness created by the absence of heaven and this utter dissatisfaction with life apart from heaven, that will keep your lamp lit for Jesus, it will place the gospel ring of truth in your preaching that can’t come about any other way.

His true work within you is right here in this place, and it is your half broken heart that allows you to have the burning in your bones of Jeremiah, the passion to weep in the Garden with Jesus and the courage to stand with Paul before an opposing congregation and preach Christ crucified as the power and wisdom of God. It is this knot in our stomach that will keep you an honest preacher in a sea of compromised men.

-Rick McKinley, from “Reflections on the Minstry” via rickmckinley.net


extract’d

brokenheart

Until you experience significant failure in your personal life or ministry, you won’t even know that your heart is functionally operating in contradiction to what you’re saying with your mouth. And you certainly won’t be in a position where you get those two things in line.

-Tim Keller from “Risk and Failure” @ Innovation3


create1

Day 3

Morning worship with 10th Avenue North. Young guys with a passion for worship…

The morning session was led by cre:ate creator, Randy Elrod. Let me just say this talk wonderfully ruined me. Probably one of the best talks I’ve EVER heard on leadership. My big takeaway again, much like Ian’s talk the day before, was not so much what Randy said, but what he modeled: in order to speak into people’s lives, you have to go deep with God. Randy lives a deeply “inventoried” life. I will no doubt do a blog series on it in the near future. Wowsers…

Lunch was my favorite meal of the week: cajun-boiled shrimp, onions + summer sausage, red potatoes, + salad.

The afternoon session was led by comedian Ken Davis. We cried and laughed at the same time. My big takeaway is that God loves me. Sounds simple but I needed to hear it. Ken is a master communicator. As Randy has said, comedy is one of the highest art forms and Ken has the gift.

The afternoon was closed out with the most impacting Eucharist I’ve ever been a part of. Ian led us in a modern liturgy and communion. His insights on the subtleties of this time was priceless. My new friend, Mark Roach, who is worship pastor at Fellowship in O’Fallon, MO, literally right down the road from me (I’m looking forward to hooking up with him back in St. Louis), led the worship and did a phenomenal job.

Sidenote: I’ve heard people say that as you get older, the more you walk with Jesus, the less you feel you know about Him. He becomes more mysterious and Other, which I think is actually a really good thing because He is. The more I think about worship – I teach it after all – I realize that I have less figured out than I think. This is a interesting time of convergence with the continuing influence of the modern worship music industry, the resurgence of the liturgical, the glocalization of the world via the internet, etc. My mind is racing with possibilities. I am a futurist. It’s a blessing and a curse.

The conference day was closed out with dinner at Saffire at The Factory in Franklin. Had the best prime rib I’ve ever had in my life. We were led in concert by Carl Cartee, Travis Cottrell, + Chris Sligh.

The highlight of Day 3 happened at the very end of the day. Randy and his wife, Chris, invited me over to their house to take part in a scotch “tour,” led by the venerable John Voelz, a new friend I’ve followed virtually for a while (he is the Coriolis:Experience leader @ Westwinds Church in Jackson, MI). John walked us through three different types of scotch: 1) the Glenlivet – mild, approachable, honey-tinged, 2) the Talisker – smokey, peaty, and 3) the Balrenie – a desert scotch. Not sure I’ll become a scotch connoisseur but I could do the Talisker again. What a great time of fellowship! Thanks John for teaching me about a finer thing in life!

At the Elrod’s, I spent a lot of my time hanging with Matthew Ward, who I mentioned yesterday is a huge pioneer of the CCM industry with 2nd Chapter of Acts. He shared with me about his favorite session players, studios, producers, and solo albums from his past. Matthew may come and speak at MBU sometime soon. How cool would that be?

Day 3 was the highlight of the week for me. Touched beyond measure…

Day 4

Morning worship was led by one of Sparrow’s new signees, Sarah Reeves. Genuine heart and great songs…

The morning session was led by Anne Jackson, author of Mad Church Disease and blogger at flowerdust.net. She shared her testimony of how her father’s burnout in ministry led her to think about what the church asks of people. The book is a reflection of this journey for her. Great session. Authentic and real…

Lunch was at Stoveworks at The Factory. Southern cooking at its finest: chicken in a cream sauce over cornbread and apple cobbler…

I had to steal away for the afternoon to meet with my friend and missional crony, Ed Stetzer. We are conspiring on a couple of big projects connected to the current missional conversation that I am really excited about. Stay tuned…

I actually was so bushed from the week, I decided to spend the evening with my wife. I had missed Lost the night before so we chilled, reconnected, and got our Lost on…

Day 5

Yesterday morning, I joined about 40 other songwriters at EMI/CMG Publishing Company in Brentwood for a great time of conversation on the issue of worship songwriting. We heard from staff writer Audray Assad and again from the Sparrow roster, Sarah Reeves, as well as a forum of some of the EMI/CMG music publishing staff on the 5/5: the five elements of a great song and the five traps for songwriters…

It was a bit surreal because we met in a room right next to a rehearsal room that I played my original music for Brad O’Donnell of Sparrow Records, which ultimately led to a showcase a local club called The Basement in June of 2002. It was cool to be back there and reminisce. I definitely got the itch to start writing again. Yikes…

We had lunch catered in and before I left, I had the chance to speak with Randy and tell him about his influence on my life and what this week meant to me. It was a sweet time of conversation…

In all, this was such a refreshing week for my soul….



The first Midwest Acts 29 Quarterly of 2009 is tomorrow at The Journey – Tower Grove. I’m going to try to live blog it via the Cover It Live platform. I know it is difficult for some of you to travel to St. Louis, especially in these difficult economic times…

Here is a blurb from A29 about what the quarterly will focus in on:

Approaching Evangelism: Salt & Light

As Christians, our primary ministry calling is to bring the gospel to the broken culture. But, sadly, as pastors, church planters, and church leaders we can lose touch with this call while navigating the other demands of local church ministry. Throughout the history of the church we have seen movements that have reacted to this issue by becoming wholly focused either on making the gospel attractive to the culture or through incarnating the gospel within the culture. Does there have to be an either/or response to our call? How can we keep personal evangelism a priority for ourselves and our congregations while shaping a church culture that expresses an attractional facet of the gospel?

Our teachers for the first session focusing on The Shape of an Attractional Culture will be Darrin Patrick, lead pastor for The Journey, and Jonathan McIntosh, Teaching and Hanley Rd. Campus pastor for The Journey.

Our teacher for the afternoon session focusing on Jesus-Style Evangelism will be pastor, teacher, and author Jerram Barrs, Professor of Christian Studies and Contemporary Culture and Resident Scholar of the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO.


mcknight on pastor’s pages

Scot McKnight talks about pastor’s pages on church websites today. He has some interesting thoughts. And I’m almost sure I agree.

Here is a snippet from Scot:

What annoyed me about these sites was the utter absence of a sense of the sacred in pastoring, of the overwhelming sense of God’s call upon a life that reaches so deep that everything becomes holy, of the profound respect and privilege of the call to lead God’s people, and of the total lack of order. The sense we hear today of being real and authentic doesn’t mean we devalue the pastoral calling of its sanctity. I couldn’t and wouldn’t call any of these folks “Reverend.” If I were a visitor, I’d go somewhere else.

Many in the comment sections make some good points on both sides like. Here are a few:

I see this as partly an over-reaction to the centuries of a strong clergy/laity divide. Even the designs of churches encouraged that separation (altars for example). Today the push is to break down those barriers, and the internet makes that even easier with the ability to immediately become “approachable”.

I’d agree with your observation that as a person with calling to lead we should convey a sense of sacredness… on the other hand, shouldn’t all of us as priests of new testament should show “overwhelming sense of God’s call upon a life”, and not just pastor? Maybe, if our informality could do that (ie show God’s glory), then it is ok to be informal all the time.. [and how to put that in real life?]

…this lack of taking seriously one’s call and role in the Christian community has bugged me for a while. And unfortunately I see it often go beyond just pastor web pages. As one called to ministry, I take it personally.

I fear there is an even more sinister motive at work here… the need to be ‘hip’ and accepted.

I have seen a few pastors who try way too hard to prove they’re ‘cool’ to their congregation… which ironically, is often seen as desperate for attention, and kinda ‘uncool.’

…as a pastor’s kid as well as someone who has served as a church staffer, I intensely dislike the notion of elevating the pastor (and staff/leaders) as someone “above” or “more called” than the rest of the congregation. I am also against the idea that the pastorate is any more “sacred” than other callings and vocations. That idea flies in the face of the “priesthood of all believers.”

McKnight responded in the comment section:

Belief in the priesthood of all believers, however, does not mean that all callings are the same; it does not eliminate the pastor and the prophet and the apostle.

Nor is the priesthood of all believers a radical call to religious individualism so that everyone does what he or she wants; it is a calling to be priests with God for one another. Thus, priesthood refers to service before God for others. We all have that calling.

You can read the entire post here: Pastor Pages on Church Websites

Last night I was re-listening to an interview of John Piper by Mark Dever/9 Marks and I was struck by something that I think Scot may be on to. Dever ask Piper how he teaches his people to do the things that God asks of us without adding works to our justification.

The three things that Piper does is: teaching/preaching the dynamics of “becoming what you are” – it is a natural outworking of “seeing” the glory of God; praying the Holy Spirit “down” on his people; and modeling.

On modeling, Piper says something so profound that has stuck with me for months now. He says:

We must live before them in such a spiritual and obedient and radical way…that they can smell the aroma of Christ…I consider it my job to walk close enough to Jesus so that I go in to elder meetings and staff meetings and TBI meetings, so in communion with Christ that there is an aroma of: “He is not mainly an administrator, he is not mainly a savvy [minister]…he is mainly a man of God, he mainly thinks of God, he mainly talks to God, he mainly relates everything to God, he’s mainly leaning on God, he’s mainly in the word of God.”

That’s the flavor every pastor should want to communicate. He should want to be known as a man of God. Not anything else first…

That is why I think agree with McKnight…

What do you think? What about issues of contextualization?


2. David Fitch – Reclaiming the Mission

David Fitch, Betty R. Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary; founding pastor of Life on the Vine Community, an emerging church in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago; co-founder of Up/Rooted, an emergent cohort that gathers leaders and thinkers to engage issues of the emerging church and the post-modern context; and author of The Great Giveaway comes in at #2.

David has been one of the most influencing voices in the development of my ministry/church planting philosophy. It started with The Great Giveaway, but continuing on with the stream of consciousness on his blog, let’s just say, it’s a gold mine. I believe it will be shown that David was one of the most important shaping influences on the grounding of missional orthopraxy in the twenty-first century.

I’m looking forward to becoming a regular part of the missional leader learning community in the future. I was personally invited to the one in January but can’t make. I hope to down the road..

Check these:
Please Lord, Don’t Let Me Get Pragmatic: Spiritual Formation for Missional Leaders
“The Numbers Are Going Up But Something Doesn’t Feel Right”
Conversion a casualty of Missional Theology?
When They Will Not Come – Community: The anti-attractional process of beginning a church with community
The Middle In: The Unique Missional Opportunity

Top 8 Recap
8. J.R. Woodward | 7. Jonathan Dodson | 6. Neil Cole | 5. Drew Goodmanson | 4. Bob Hyatt | 3. Alan Hirsch


4. Bob Hyatt – bob.blog

One of my favorite blogs of the last few years also happens to be thick in the missional. Bob Hyatt, pastor of Evergreen Community in Portland, is a “heart-on-the-sleeve” blogger who gives us a unique window into his ministry. I appreciate Bob’s humility in sharing the journey with the rest of us. He is particularly savvy in relating the challenge of maintaining a missional mindset amidst a church culture that is increasingly becoming ingrown. Pithy, pithy…

Check these:
Kimball’s Missional Misgivings
Truly missional…
Missional Leadership Development…


I know I just did a worship-themed “The 7″ but there have just been too many great posts in the blogosphere in the past week, I had to do another one.

So without any further ado, a non-themed “The 7.”

1. Bob Roberts sums up for us the number one missional value here. As usual, Roberts simple profundity will surprise you…

2. What connection does the Beijing Olympics and church have? If we aren’t careful, maybe way too much.

3. Contextualization, if defined and implemented correctly, is a good thing. But if it isn’t, it can be syncretism disguised as ministry, as David Fitch shows us.

4. Thabiti Anyabwile alerts us to what he thinks is a more pressing issue than in-house debates over things like The New Perspective and postmodernism. Read about it here.

5. Via Aaron Snow: “Have our church buildings, and services become our idols? Have we accidentally allowed them to replace the pursuit of deep, Biblical community with others?” Aaron challenges us to look at where we pour our energies in ministry in his post, “”‘All Mixed Up, Don’t Know What To Do’ – Man’s Expectations Have Crippled the Growth of The Kingdom”

6. Should we pay pastors? In light of the missional conversation taking place re: tent-making, bi-vocational ministry, de-centralized leadership, etc., Bob Hyatt takes on this hop topic in many ministry circles.

7. And finally, Dan Kimball pushes back on Christian critics regarding what being a missionary looks like in our culture. In many ways, Kimball is reacting against the opposite of syncretism, which is sectarianism – when you love God but not your neighbor.

Also, check out this video from the forthcomingThey Like Jesus But Not The Church DVD curriculum from Zondervan, which shows Kimball in full ‘missionary’ mode:


darrin patrick on elders


Series recap: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

CONCLUSION

One of the reasons much of the American evangelical church has not faced the same steep degeneration as the Protestant churches of Europe and Canada is because in the U.S. there is still a ‘heartland’ with the miscellany of the old ‘Christendom’ society. Michael Wolff says:

There is a fundamental schism in American cultural, political, and economic life. There’s the quicker-growing, economically vibrant…morally relativist, urban-oriented, culturally adventuresome, sexually polymorphous, and ethnically diverse nation…and there’s the small town, nuclear-family, religiously-oriented, white-centric other America, [with]…its diminishing cultural and economic force….[T]wo nations… [1]

In conservative areas, it is still probable to see people confess faith and the church expand without becoming ‘missional.’ Most traditional evangelical churches still can only win people to Christ who are traditional and conservative. But, as Wolff notes, this is a ’shrinking market.’ Keller states, “…eventually evangelical churches ensconced in the declining, remaining enclaves of “Christendom” will have to learn how to become ‘missional’. If it does not do that it will decline or die.” [2]

Churches that have been denoted by a stalwart sense of their distinctiveness have employed in faithful witness to the world. And to carry out this witness, those churches have perpetually required new structures and forms fitting to the cultural context.

But ecclesiology is the most fluid of the doctrines of Scripture. The church is a vibrant, cultural representation of the people of God in any particular place. Forms and practices are not sacrosanct. Worship style, social dynamics, and liturgical expressions, to name a few, must result from thinking “missionally” by contextualizing the Gospel in any given culture. Church follows mission.

In The Mission Shaped Church, Graham Cray, its editor, says:

Those who start with the questions about the relationship of the existing Church have already made the most common and dangerous mistake. Start with the Church and the mission will probably get lost. Start with mission and it is likely that the church will be found.” [3]

No doubt the deliberation over the nature of the church’s mission will continue. Yet the most alarming reality threatening the church as it enters the 21st century is not an disproportion of resources on the issue but rather “the unequal distribution of the light of the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ.” [4]

Thus, the church is called upon to do what the world cannot and will not do – bring the Gospel to the lost. It was the ultimate task for the Church of the New Testament, so it must be for the church today. [5]
____________

1) Michael Wolff, “The Party Line,” New York Magazine, 26 February 2001, 19.

2) Tim Keller, “The Missional Church,” Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Recommended Resources – A Gospel Movement; available from http://download.redeemer.com/pdf/learn/resources/Missional_Church-Keller.pdf; Internet; accessed 13 May 2008.

3) Graham Cray, ed., The Mission Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context (Brookvale, NSW, Aus: Willow Publishing, 2005), 116.

4) Ralph Winter and Steven Hawthorne, eds., “Evangelism: The Leading Partner.” Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. 3rd Edition. (Pasadena,
CA: William Carey Library, 1999), 575–577.

5) Ibid.

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