HGTV and Church

Posted on June 30, 2009

“Church Lessons from HGTV” by David Gibbons of Newsong

What our design says about our values.

I usually make sure I get the remote control quickly in hand, so I can steer the programming toward the exercising of my mind: ESPN and Fox Sports are two of my top choices. But my wife beat me to the coveted piece of gadgetry in our hotel room. So I spent the day watching HGTV design shows.

Surprisingly, I did like some of the shows, like Color Splash by this cool Asian guy with tats on his arm. But the take away after a saturation of design tips and styles were some thoughts on how design is a reflection of how we see ourselves and who we want to become.

Have you ever wondered what your church space says about you and God? We often pick our cars based upon our personalities. We can look at our homes and see what type of people we are by the way we arrange furniture, paint or don’t paint walls, the type of art we have, what we use as our focal point for guests to see, the rooms that we care about usually get more resource dollars. How about the church? The truth about design is that it reflects values, perspectives, priorities and beliefs. Design is a good way to define the reality of your heart. When many of the early missional movements began, the focus was on resourcing the people in optimum settings of growth with tools to enable them. The focus in these movements were human beings.

Here are some questions that can help define reality:

• Do people mostly refer to your building as the “church?”
• What does the design of our space tell us about where and how we see the maximum growth happening?
• What does the allocation of the dollars you spend on your space indicate about your priorities? Is it where you want it to be? How does this jive with movements historically?
• How does the Internet reshape your values towards space, especially since the emerging generation doesn’t see a difference between their on-line and off-line life?
• When people look at the design focal points of your facility, what do they feel you focus upon? Is this where you want the primary focus to be?
• What creative space around you—outside the walls of the facility you rent or own—can you use for free or very low costs?
• Do you need pastoral offices?
• Can we show better stewardship in how we share space with our people?
• Do you have a room for innovation? In the past, people created “WAR rooms”. I think it may be time for some new metaphors as well. How about rooms for Creativity, Innovation, Research, Design and Development? Can you think of new rooms or spaces that would clearly articulate what you value?
• Are you reduplicating what Disney can do better? Is it necessary?
• Do the spaces in your church represent a passion for a Volunteer Revolution? How?
• What parking space do you park in at your facility? Where is it?
• What building or space are we to focus on designing anyway?

There was an incredible statistic an entrepreneurial kingdom-minded friend, Bernard Moon, sent me. Did you see it? Here it is: The church spends an average of $347,000 per baptism.
Okay, I know souls are priceless. But this number begs for us to look at how we may have gone down a road we didn’t really want to take. Nike spends $100 per customer for what they call customer acquisition costs. What do you spend to see a life radically transformed?

Flip the Script
What if we turned this thing around and understood the primary buildings we are called to build are the living temples walking around us? What would happen if we put as much emphasis in actually equipping our people with customized assessments, close mentoring, residencies, tools, and other experiences that may not be captured primarily inside a weekend experience or a large group setting or one space?

Maybe it’s time we do a hard assessment of what we’ve already designed and let an outsider or a group of them come in, people who aren’t Christians and ask them as they walk around your facility what does your space say about your values. You may be surprised at how your design really does reflects/defines what you believe.

Artists and Puppets

Posted on June 23, 2009

“Artists and Puppets” by Marlon Hall of the Awakenings Movement in Houston, Texas

I go to the Breakfast Klub a lot to eat wings and waffles and meet with folks throughout the week. It’s known in Houston as a haven for young urban professionals, musicians and artists, whose progressive works are often featured in the restaurant. One such artist, Nathaniel uses objects he finds on the street to create beautiful sculptures, telling stories of tragedy and triumph in urban life. In fact, he’s more of a ghetto documentarian than an artist.

The owner of the Breakfast Klub introduced me to Nathaniel, because he believed the young artist had great spiritual potential, but was falling short due to hypocrisy he’d seen in religion. He said Nathaniel knew that God was around, but earnestly believed He could not be found in religious organizations.

When I met Nathaniel for the first time, I had the church planter’s itch to use a five point plan and lead him through the doors of our church by convincing him I was a cool and relevant exception to the religious rule. If Nathaniel came, then a whole group of meaningful artists might follow him.

But I had to shut up the opportunist in my church-planting mind. The end of our conversation could not be church because the Church does not exist for itself, but for a lost world. The dissonance between the mind of church-planting Marlon and world-changing Marlon grew louder. I could almost imagine the two Marlons of my conscience, battling from my shoulders like a classic angel and devil.

On my left, instead of an angel, stood a naked and vulnerable Marlon puppet with no church-planting agenda and only a fig leaf of protection. On my right stood something far more dangerous than a tiny devil: a little Marlon puppet with a Vintage t-shirt, designer jeans and a cool wood-grained Bible in his hand.

Nathaniel and I had been talking for a few minutes when out of nowhere I felt the urge to give him an invitation. Not an invitation to our church or one of the small groups. It wasn’t even an invitation to paint a portrait during one of our worship experiences. I gave him instead an invitation to use his art as an inspiration for—and not just a reflection of—life in the ghetto.

The Vintage t-shirt Marlon puppet began to laugh, telling me that I was only as good to Nathaniel as I was cool enough to bait him into the Christian experience, but I ignored his taunts. I wanted to call Nathaniel out of spiritual paralysis to change the world from the inside out. The naked and vulnerable Marlon smiled his encouragement.

I challenged Nathaniel to understand that his God given gift of art came with instructions to be a social servant of our community. As a servant, he would discover a deepened creativity that could only be realized through service. Only if his hands were dirty and planted firmly beneath the surface of the community in service could he produce flowers of art in the garden of Houston’s northern Third Ward.

At this point the Marlon puppet who used his cool Bible as an accessory scorned me with a holy frustration, telling me I was not trying hard enough to get this great asset of an artist connected to our worship community.

But Nathaniel had already begun to respond, a clinched fist over his lips. He became emotional as he let me know he’d just begun his latest work around the issue of hypocritical pastoral leadership in our city. He let me know he would accept my challenge, but that it would not stop him from finishing his untitled piece meant to challenge Christian authority in the city.

Now, it’s been a year since we first met at the Breakfast Klub, where two puppets battled on my shoulders. And while Nathaniel’s still not a Christian, we’ve grown a friendship and have collaborated in the community on levels beyond my expectation. Nathaniel and his family even come to our worship experience sometimes, and he’s sent a number of folks to our church who are now followers of Christ. There are huge victories with Nathaniel, but the biggest victory of all can be discovered in the progress of his still untitled piece on the hypocrisy of church leaders.

He hasn’t painted even one more stroke toward its completion since the day we met.

 

“Art of Gleaning” by Mark Batterson

Posted on June 19, 2009

“I’m going out to glean among the sheaves.” Ruth 2:2

This is one of the most significant decisions in the Old Testament.

Let me explain.

As I read the book of Ruth this morning I was so impacted by Ruth’s willingness to glean. Gleaning was good old-fashioned manual labor: gathering leftover crops after a field had already been harvested. In a sense, it was the ancient welfare system. But it wasn’t a free hand-out. It was back-breaking work. And it took a spirit of humility. There was nothing glamorous about gleaning. But Ruth was willing to do it.

Can I borrow that metaphor? Leaders are gleaners. They glean everything they can from everyone they can! It harkens back to something that has been attributed to everyone from Ben Franklin to Thomas Carlye to Ralph Waldo Emerson. I’m not sure who said it first, but it’s such good advice: “Every man is my superior in some way, in that I learn of him.”

Back to Ruth.

You know the rest of the story. Boaz sees that Ruth has been working since sun up. Some people are attracted to people because of their personality or their physique. For Boaz, it was Ruth’s work ethic. Long story short, they fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Oh yeah, and her Great Grandson, a shepherd named David, becomes King of Israel.

Here’s how I see it: David owes His existence to a Great Grandmother that was willing to glean. Those who glean will one day rule kingdoms. Or their Great Grandchildren will.

Glean everything you can from everyone you can!

Living Wide Awake

Posted on June 17, 2009

“Living Wide Awake” by Erwin Raphael McManus

Recently, I was having dinner with one of Hollywood’s gifted cinematographers and directors. In the course of the conversation, he asked me what my newest book, Wide Awake, was about. At first, I simply said it is about finding a dream that fits your life. He looked interested, so I pressed ahead: “You know the narrative known as the Gospel? I think it has been demeaned. It has been reduced to this, ‘Come to Jesus so that your sins will be forgiven and you can go to heaven and not hell.’ For me this is the most narcissistic and self-preserving message I have ever heard. Wide Awake proposes that Jesus lived the ultimately heroic life by giving Himself as a sacrifice for all of humanity and that He now calls us to give ourselves away for the good of the world.”

As soon we left and began walking the streets of Hermosa Beach, he remarked after much thought, “The Gospel has never made sense to me. It is such a narcissistic narrative. But this idea that it is about provoking us to the heroic—this is intriguing to me.” Then he asked me a question I will never forget: “Is it possible that Christianity has rejected this Gospel because it demands too much of us?”

Sensible.

History is made up of the heroes of their times. Yet, somehow we miss this when we put on the lens of the Scriptures. Through this lens, we are able to see the activity of God in all of history. We must never forget that. But somehow we also become blind to the heroic culture that permeates the Scripture. Just like human history, the heroes who rise up and call the masses to something greater write biblical history. This is how God works—by calling out greatness from each of us.

It is the creative and enterprising spirit of people that is indispensable. Everything else is supplemental. It is the human resource that must be valued, developed and maximized. What would the world look like if we all lived our most heroic life? What would our communities of faith become if we were committed to mentoring each person until they found the dream that matched their life?

When researchers try to break down what is happening at Mosaic, far too often they see the skin and miss the heart. They see nine gatherings in seven locations, and so we are a multi-site congregation. Or they see more than 50 nationalities, and so then we are a multi-ethnic church. They see a community whose average age is 25, so we are postmodern. Or they are captured by the fact that we meet in a downtown L.A. club called the Mayan, defined by the thousands of pagan gods that cover the entire complex, and label us an emerging church. The most ironic is that when they listen in on our conversation with an unbelieving world and discover that our community is overflowing with people far from God —and they conclude we must be emergent.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know what we are. We are constantly learning and growing and changing. We are really an experiment. We are endeavoring to discover if a community of faith can exist purely for the good of others. Can the Church become the greatest humanitarian movement on the planet? Can we become the epicenter of human creativity, innovation and compassion? Can we create humanity’s next great culture? We think to ask what kind of church we should become is not only the wrong question, it is boring. We should be asking… what kind of future do we want to create?

At the heart of all of this is that every human is created in the image and likeness of God. We are broken and fragmented images—the material from which a mosaic can be formed. We are committed to calling out of every person the greatness that lies within. We are a disrupting sound breaking the silence of the mundane, awakening the hero within us all. This call is not in conflict with the glory of God but in fact brings God the glory He is due. We have fallen far short of what we were created to be, but in Christ all things are made new. Jesus came to bring us life in abundance—we’re just trying to flesh that out in community and in the world.

A world where everyone is fully alive … that’s what makes me lose sleep and dream wide awake.

“Conversational Futurist” by Steve Saccone

Posted on June 15, 2009

House is one of my favorite TV shows, and even though Dr. House is so mean, us fans can’t help but love him. What makes him stand above the rest in his medical profession comes down to one thing—he doesn’t merely diagnose, he prognosticates. In other words, he sees where a disease is going and gets ahead of it.

House isn’t satisfied with facing off with an illness as it presents itself, as many of his colleagues are. Rather, he wants to outsmart it, outrun it, beat it. This drive ultimately leads him to saving patients’ lives. It’s almost as if he enters a time machine and goes into the future to see the trajectory of the disease before anyone else sees it.

When it comes to relating to one another through conversation, is it possible to do the same? Can we step into a time machine and peek into the future awaiting us, helping to pull others to that future through the vehicle of our words?

The answer is a resounding yes. Conversational futurists like Dr. House don’t merely diagnose (understand the fundamentals of dialogue), they prognosticate (see where the conversation is heading). They know how to get ahead of where a dialogue is going and outrun it. Conversational futurists realize that every conversation is alive with potential, and has the capacity to move forward and create impact. They’re driven to evolve a dialogue with intention and progress, and are able to use their words as a medium. As a result, they bring vibrancy and momentum to people. They are the Dr. Houses of conversations.

Evolve The Conversation

A conversational futurist is someone who refuses to stall the dialogue or even re-circle the same subjects simply by using different words. They shift gears out of neutral and increase their speed. They do not use speed to accelerate the pace of their words, rather to accelerate the depth and breadth those words bring.

Conversational futurists see the power of evolution as it relates to dialogue and lead their conversations toward new dimensions of life and growth. When this happens, a new future is experienced through the portal of conversation, and the past is left where it should be—behind.

Every leader can help make this reality of evolving their dialogues happen in their relational spheres. But too often they find themselves being what I call conversational backtrackers rather than conversational futurists. Instead of being a futurist who helps bring forward movement, conversational backtrackers fall behind and find themselves always trying to catch up.

The obvious dilemma with falling behind is that it results in being unable to lead. The dialogue ends up leading us rather than us leading it. If we’re always following behind, we won’t create impact through the words we say and the direction we could potentially steer our conversations. By getting ahead, we make room for true impact.

Outrun The Present

As leaders, many of us face obstacles in our effort to become conversational futurists and effect change in our relationships. We struggle to drive the dialogue in the way that brings life and evolution. It’s not that we lack intellect or something substantial to contribute. Rather, most of us simply haven’t practiced increasing our speed of thought, as well as our speed of articulating those thoughts in a way that catalyzes conversational momentum.

For those of us who struggle with conversational speed, we may wonder if it’s even possible to become a conversational futurist. It is certainly possible to learn to consistently get ahead of our dialogues and evolve them with intentionality. The primary solution comes down to practice, which means there’s room to strengthen the conversational futurist within you.

We must practice thinking before we speak, speaking with clarity and direction, and listening with internal alertness and full engagement. If we implement these key actions, we will become like Dr. House who gets ahead instead of falling behind, who leads rather than follows and who ultimately creates impact rather than leaving interactions unchanged.

When we focus on seeing past the present and into the potential evolution of dialogue, we face the great possibility of outrunning the lifeless strand of words that are fighting to set the tone of countless conversations. By pulling dialogues forward with intention, we can cultivate healthier relationships and bring people in our spheres of influence to life through conversation—our most elemental way of relating to one another. Along the way, we’ll find ourselves engaging a new way of being smart and increasing our relational intelligence.

*Excerpted from Relational Intelligence. Copyright © 2009 by Steve Saccone. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.  Steve serves as one of the Co-Pastors at Mosaic in Los Angeles.

Conference Call with Erwin McManus

Posted on June 12, 2009

Erwin McManus, lead pastor at Mosaic, author, and speaker answered questions during a conference call a few months ago about several topics including:

• what’s new at Mosaic
• the future
• Wide Awake
• raising up leaders
• politics
• the Scriptures
• The Origins Project

Listen here!

Third Culture Short Film

Posted on June 11, 2009

From Newsong:

“Being third culture means having the mindset and the will to love, learn, and serve in any culture, even in the midst of pain and discomfort. As we mature in knowing Christ’s character, we discover that he has called us to love and serve cultures and people unlike our own — may it be racially, or socioeconomically.”

Third Culture Video – Short from Newsong Media on Vimeo.

“The Suicidal Missionary” by Eric Bryant

Posted on June 5, 2009

“The Suicidal Missionary’ by Eric Bryant

Have you ever found yourself knowing what you ought to do, but you don’t want to do it?

Let’s get more personal since most of us are probably church leaders: Have you ever seen someone needing help, but you know they are just too much trouble so you avoid them? Have you ever known you were supposed to love someone, but you have a hard time even liking them?

I recently read a familiar story that included some surprising details I somehow had missed over the years. The story revealed that a very successful missionary, in fact one of the most successful missionaries ever, was not simply reluctant, he was suicidal. Jonah would rather die than see the people of Nineveh forgiven by God.

We all know the story. We’ve all seen the flannelgraphs or maybe the Veggie Tales re-enactment. Somehow the fact that Jonah wanted to be thrown off the boat to drown in the sea rather than simply asking for the boat to be turned around wasn’t included in these Sunday School versions. Only after reconsidering for three days in the digestive tract of a giant fish, did Jonah finally share the message of warning from God to the people of Nineveh.

Remarkably, 600,000 people asked God for mercy and forgiveness, yet Jonah was beyond irate and beyond depressed at their willingness to turn to God. Jonah wanted to die (again).

Jonah prayed: “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 3:10-4:3).

This moment shows such a stark contrast between a loving and merciful God and His angry and judgmental messenger. Jonah may have shared God’s message for the people, but he did not share God’s heart for the people.

Why did Jonah have such hostility towards the people of Nineveh? Simply put, Jonah saw the people of Nineveh as his enemies. He despised what they had done towards his people in the past. He hated their religion, their politics, and their lack of morality. As a result, Jonah placed a limit on who God should love.

Whether we have intended this or not, the world tends to see people who follow Jesus as sharing the same attitude that Jonah did.

Rather than being exclusive and judgmental, we have to work that much harder to become inclusive and loving. We cannot show the world God’s love if we do not truly love the people in our world.

One of the most important changes we can make to overcome this perception would be to create communities in which people are allowed to belong before they have to believe. Rather than being considered and even treated as outsiders, we need to invite our family, co-workers, and neighbors into our lives and into our communities as friends.

I know I have been hard on Jonah, but in the end, after Jonah was rescued, he went into the city.

Maybe our question is: where will we go now that we’ve been rescued?

Conference Call Audio with Skye Jethani

Posted on June 3, 2009

Eric Bryant hosted a conference call  with Skye Jethani from Leadership Journal, Out of Ur, author of The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity, and the creative team of The Origins Project.

The topics included breaking beyond a consumeristic culture in our churches,  innovations in reaching out to others, as well as thoughts on The Origins Project.

Listen to the Audio of the Conference Call Here.

The next Conference Call will be with Scot McKnight, New Testament professor at North Park University and author of The Blue Parakeet and JesusCreed on July 7th at 1pm (P.S.T.).

Sign up for this free conference call (interview and Q&A) here.