I’ve accepted a new call. Assuming that all the denominational processes work themselves out, then effective March 12, 2012, I will become pastor of Jewel Lake Parish in Anchorage, Alaska.
You can’t photograph a church, but here’s the building they meet in:
(Click to enlarge).
Nicholas Kristof has another column about the awful reality of human trafficking. (Reader discretion advised.)
So for those of you doubtful that “modern slavery” really is an issue for the new international agenda, think of Srey Pov—and multiply her by millions. If what such girls experience isn’t slavery, that word has no meaning. It’s time for a 21st-century abolitionist movement in the U.S. and around the world.
I agree. I don’t know how to solve that problem, but I like the work that Gary Haugen is doing at International Justice Mission. If you’re looking for an unconventional Christmas present, or a charity to support before the year-end, consider them.
(Via Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, who sadly concurs with that “millions” factor in Kristof’s article.)
Have you heard about Yousef Nadarkhani? He’s a Christian pastor in Iran who is facing state-approved murder for the “crime” of apostasy.
Apostasy is turning away from a belief, either to another faith or to atheism. It’s a crime punishable by death in some (all?) countries with Islamic legal systems. In civilized places, it’s a free choice people exercise daily.
As it happens, Yousef Nadarkhani isn’t even an apostate. He never was a Muslim. But Iran set its barbarism knob to “11″ back in 1979. Their so-called judges say, that’s okay, because Nadarkhani is of Muslim ancestry. Even though he never was a Muslim, some of his ancestors were, and his “apostasy” consists of turning away from the faith of his ancestors. (Seems to me there was a fellow in Mecca in the 600′s who did that, PBUH.)
What can be done now? First, we can pray for Nadarkhani and his congregation. Pray for all Christians suffering under the heels of repressive governments, and pray that their oppressors develop a conscience.
Second, we can publicize his case. Jesus said “All who do evil hate the light” (John 3:20). The Iranian clerics judging Nadarkhani think they can perpetrate this evil in the dark, with nobody seeing. They’re wrong.
In another article, I talked about our new mission statement (“Sharing the Life of Christ”). I’ll be saying more about it later, but first I wanted to answer the obvious question: “Why a mission statement?” Mission statements are infamous wastes of time. People sit around hashing them out, they’re announced with great fanfare, and then, most of the time, they’re abducted by aliens and we never see them again. So why bother?
Chip and Dan Heath pass along an example of a mission statement. In it, Herb Kelleher, the longest-serving CEO of Southwest Airlines, explains his company’s mission to be “THE low-fare airline”:
“Tracy from marketing comes into your office. She says her surveys indicate that the passengers might enjoy a light entree on the Houston to Las Vegas flight. All we offer is peanuts, and she thinks a nice chicken Caesar salad would be popular. What do you say?”
[The interviewer] stammered for a moment, so Kelleher responded: “You say, ‘Tracy, will adding that chicken Caesar salad make us THE low-fare airline from Houston to Las Vegas? Because if it doesn’t help us become the unchallenged low-fare airline, we’re not serving any [expletive] chicken salad.’”
—from Made to Stick, p. 29
In the case of Southwest Airlines, there’s nothing wrong with the Caesar salad. It’s a good idea, and the customers would like it. But it doesn’t help Southwest achieve its purpose, so they don’t do it. We have a mission statement because we can’t do it all either.
We’re a small church in a small community and we have very real constraints. We have a small staff. (That would be me. My doctor says it wouldn’t hurt if I were 20 lbs smaller still, but that’s another discussion.) Our church has a number of wonderful people who help out in all kinds of ways, but there are only so many of us, and everyone has other things going on in their life in addition to what they’d like to do at church. Our budget is finite, and so are our facilities: seating and parking and so forth.
Since we can’t do it all, the mission statement reminds us what we’re trying to do. Our mission is to share the life of Christ. There are lots of places we can do that: in worship, in fellowship, in spiritual growth, and in evangelism and works of compassion. And there are lots of ways to share the life of Christ. But the methods and places are tactical. However good those things are in themselves, they are not our ultimate end, but only means to it.
The Apostle Paul wrote about how he had “become all things to all people” (1 Corinthians 9:22). But that wasn’t his mission. He didn’t do that because he thought God wanted him to be a chameleon. What Paul said was, “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.” His mission was to save some people. He was willing to be a chameleon to do so, so he became all things and used all means to carry out his mission.
I’d like to hear your thoughts. If our mission is to share the life of Christ, what are some things we do that advance our mission? What are some things about our church that are like chicken Caesar salad: not bad, but not helping us carry out our mission? What changes could we make to them so they did help us share the life of Christ?
I heartily approve of the mission statement recently adopted by our Session: “Sharing the Life of Christ.” The first reason I like it is that it’s concise. I used to work in big companies that had those horrible mission statements nobody could repeat or even knew existed, half a page of fashionable buzzwords strung together, like “strategic,” “teamwork,” and “partnering.”
By contrast, our new mission statement passes what I call the “Tee-Shirt Test”–it’s not too big to fit on a Tee-shirt. (Another simple test: which is easier to say: “our mission statement” or the mission statement itself? If it’s not a toss-up, your mission statement needs to be shorter.)
The second reason I like “Sharing the Life of Christ” is that it’s a mission statement. It tells us what we’re doing as a church. There’s a reason God put us here, and we’re doing it. Even if we fail, we’ve done our best, but hopefully, our mission statement will help us succeed.
The Bible records many places where Jesus gave instructions to his disciples. The most famous, perhaps, is the Great Commission in Matthew 28: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all I have commanded you.”
There are any number things we could be doing to fulfill the Great Commission, but, given our size and our limited resources, there are probably only a few we can do well. The entire Christian church can and should go to all nations, but if we attempted to do that as individual Christians, we’d spend our whole life in airports, and not have any time for making disciples or teaching them to obey Jesus. A mission statement helps us decide where to focus our efforts.
I’m excited to have this new tool to help us be faithful in our calling to be disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I hope you are too.
Over the next several weeks, I’ll let you know what I think it means for us to share the life of Christ. I’d love to hear what you think. What is “the life of Christ?” How do we share it? Who do we share it with? Let’s talk!
(Cross-posted at the Desert Hills Presbyterian Church blog.)
Via Twitter, I saw a fascinating article on Forbes’ blog about the “Seminary Bubble.” Excerpt:
After all, what matters more to the customer, the member: the ability to discuss the relationship between Paul Tillich’s theory of ultimate concern and Karl Barth’s version of neo-orthodoxy in light of the demythologizing textual hermeneutic of Bultman, or the ability to keep the congregation/audience’s attention for twenty minutes with a relevant sermon about family life? Seminary tends to give you loads of the former and little of the latter.
I might quibble with the word “customer” there, but then, I’m seminary-trained and quibbling is my stock-in-trade. Other than that, there’s a lot of truth to it. The theological gibberish in that quote is spot-on. God forbid I ever say anything that stupid from the pulpit.
I’m not sure 20 minutes is the target any more, either. It’s still the norm in the mainline, but the point of the article is that the mainline is hardly a standard any more. My guess is that a lot of “customers” want more than 20 minutes worth of sermon. Anything worth doing is worth doing. Also, as people become less and less familiar with Christianity, liturgical rites and ceremonies are increasingly arcane. You can’t devote most of an hour to incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo and assume it’s relevant to people just because you’ve eliminated references to Barth and Tillich.
(As an aside, the writer says the disconnect also has to do with politics. This is a stock complaint. “The mainline denominations are populated, barely, with Prius-driving Democrats, while evangelical churches are packed with Nascar fans who vote Republican.” That may be true, but 1800 years ago, the Temples were filled with rock-ribbed devotees of Juno and Apollo, and Christians were in the arena. So what?)
That’s not to say there aren’t some real insights in the article. Read the whole thing. The gist is that seminary is expensive but doesn’t necessarily produce people who “succeed” in ministry. (That’s another word I can’t help but quibble with: success in ministry isn’t necessarily measured in a church’s budget or seating capacity.)
When I speak with less-well trained ministers, the less tactful of them tell me something that boils down to: “we equip the called, and [your denomination] calls the equipped.”
Maybe. But my guess is it has at least as much to do with assuming pastoral ministry is something you can learn in school. It’s not a question of who’s called, or not always. It’s a question of how you equip them.
Paul didn’t send Timothy off to seminary. A lot of people at “successful” churches — especially church planters — have spent a fair bit of time either in what amounts to an apprenticeship, or belong to networks that provide more support than a denominational superstructure provides. (For a hilarious-but-tragic example of denominational indifference, see Eugene Peterson’s Under the Unpredictable Plant
Here’s why there’s not a sermon podcast again this week. See the yellow highlighted region?
That yellow portion is the sermon. The microphone was off, or something. I don’t know if it was something I did wrong, or something in the soundbooth. (Occam’s Razor says it was me.) But the past couple of weeks, it’s been one thing after another. Sorry!
Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.
—1 Corinthians 12:27
Are you a member of this church? Would you like to be?
Our denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has a website where you can find different types of reports by our Research Services arm. If you’ve ever wondered how many Presbyterians there are, or the number of congregations they belong to, you can go there to find the answers.
Periodically, the folks at Research Services issue a report, and, frankly, most of those are pretty depressing. The number of people worshiping in PC(USA) churches on Sunday, for example, is down by almost 20% from what it was in 1999.
Sometimes, though, the stats aren’t depressing as much as they are interesting. For example, one of those studies showed that smaller churches like ours have a higher ratio of members to worshipers than larger churches do.
Churches our size (50-100) average 64% in attendance each week. So if we had 89 members, then we would expect to have about 57 people attending our worship services. A church 10 times our size, however, would expect a lower percentage (43%) to attend, or about 382 people.
Where are the others? Read the rest of this entry »
The bank needed to have minutes showing who was authorized to write checks on the Deacons’ bank account, so we had to have a special meeting of Session today.
That’s exactly 1/100th of a second less than a minute. We opened with prayer, then the authorization was moved, seconded, and carried, as was a proposal to adjourn, and the meeting was closed with prayer. I doubt that I’ll have a Session meeting that short ever again.
I’ve mentioned that “Orthodox” is a word I’d like us Mainline Protestants to reclaim. Another word like that is “Catholic.”
The word “catholic” means “universal” or “entire.” It comes from a Greek word that means “according to the whole.” Unlike “orthodox,” this word actually appears in Scripture, where members of the high priest’s party examine the disciples and order them not to testify about Jesus:
So they called them and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.
The word that eventually became “catholic” is translated here as “at all.” The only place in Scripture where this word occurs is here in Acts 4:18.
If that verse were the only place Christians used the word catholic, it wouldn’t matter. But of course it isn’t. Most of the time, when American Protestants say “catholic” they’re referring to the Roman Catholic Church. This is reasonable, as 95% of “Catholics” are members of the Church of Rome, and only 5% belong to the 22 Eastern Catholic churches.
But at the same time, Protestants assert their own catholicity. Read the rest of this entry »