Willow Creek Repents?

For those that know me well enough, know that I really cannot stand Willow Creek. I've never liked their methods, their shallow practices, and the fact that they charge outrageous prices for their materials.

Anyways, I came across this article this morning about how they decided their programs were just wrong. A direct quote from Bill Hybels:

"We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own."

It's an article from last year, but still worth the read. Read the rest here.

Church Membership Sucks!

Church photo directories frustrate me.

They're a great tool and all, but everyone comes out of the woodwork for them! I saw a family last night that I haven't seen in church in the 3 years that I've been here, not even for Christmas Eve or Easter.

I remember a conversation I had with a lady a couple of months ago. It went something like this:

"You're the youth minister at Reddington? Well I've been a member of that church for 45 years! I haven't been there in about 30 though..." And this was a woman who was able to get around well but for whatever reason, she had chosen not to go to church.

So that raises the question: What makes you a church member?

Some people think you join a church to get that recognition, "I'm a part of this organization."

Some people think you join a church because their whole family does.

I think too many take church membership too seriously.

Who cares about membership!

What about servantship?

You can quote me on this: I feel a lot more respect for the dedicated Sunday school teacher than I do the dedicated tither. It's easy to throw money in and feel like you're doing something good. Don't get me wrong, we all need to take part in growing God's Kingdom financially...but I think God is more in to serving others on a more practical level than by giving money to a church/organization.

So that's my rant for today.

Benevolence

I have 4 lessons to write today because it's been a busy week and I haven't gotten around to it. So while I'm having trouble with my lesson writing, I thought I would procrastinate with this question.

Lately we have had a flow of people contacting the church asking for help and assistance with hotels rooms and food and such. Food is easy, we have a food pantry that we can either take food to people or they can come and get what they want. Generally, our Senior Pastor deals with all of the benevolence requests but as he's been out this week due to surgery I've had to talk with some of these people.

The question I have is, what do you do? I talked to a woman on Sunday who I felt had a genuine need and had kids so I paid for their hotel room with our church credit card and found a generous person to give them money for food that evening. Yesterday a man came into my office with the same request. He had contacted the church on Sunday and asked for help and to my knowledge the elders had said they would pay for his room but lost contact with him (his story). So I (on behalf of the church) agreed to pay for his hotel room and give him a ride back to town.

I found out this morning that this man had contacted the church on Easter and one of our elders agreed to pay for his room and did so. The Sunday that he had "lost contact" with the elders was in fact a lie, they paid for his room for that Sunday evening. So here was a man that was taking advantage of the system. Two completely different situations.

How would you approach those situations?
Do you decide to cover all that ask and open yourself up for people to take advantage of the system or do you turn away people who potentially are in genuine need?
The age old question: What would Jesus do?

Jesus was fairly straight forward with his message of loving your neighbor as yourself. James echoes the acts of faith:

"Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." - James 4:17

But Paul warns against being idle:

"We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat." - 2nd Thessalonians 3:11,12

To be honest, I'm completely torn on this issue. Me and Carrie have talked about it a lot this week neither of us can come up with a satisfactory answer. It's a difficult thing to wrestle with. Your comments and insights are appreciated.

Homosexuality and the church

Jeremy Zach is having a great conversation on the topic of homosexuality and the church and what is to be our response to homosexuals in the church. I point you in that direction to take part in the conversation.

Lil' Markie

I found this little diddy over at Marko's spot. Word's cannot express this video. You have to watch the whole thing. Notice the awkwardness of the audience...

Prepare to have a faith crisis

Yesterday, while going through some of my random searching of the web, I came across this blog about a particular painting that sparked a controversy in the Portland area.

The controversy has now spilled over into 'blogland' and I submit it to you for your evaluation and personal reflection.

Please..no huggie

The Christian Standard had some really good articles a couple weeks ago about how to be welcoming in your church. In an age where we are constantly trying to bring people to church, people jump from church to church to where they feel the most 'welcome'.

Now, I'm not going to get in a large discussion about how to make people feel welcome in your church. It's pretty straight forward: Go up to someone you've never seen and introduce yourself. That's pretty easy.

But one thing that is absolutely critical...and I mean ESSENTIAL that you absolutely DO NOT do: hug people as they come in the door.

Let me repeat that: DO NOT hug people!

It's weird and violating! I have a personal bubble! Respect it please! Let me give you a short story to illustrate this:

The year is 2006. We have our High schoolers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at a fairly large Baptist church. We bring our students to this church because it's Sunday and we need a place to worship before we head on our way towards New Orleans.

We have several young girls in our group ranging from 14 to 17 years old. As we approach the building I saw him. He was about 60 years old and heading straight towards us. No big deal, I'm familiar with larger churches and their greeter policies. But as he approaches our Senior Minister, he gives him this great big bear hug then proceeds to hug each and every one of us. His hugs linger a little too long for my liking on our young girls. I was a bit uncomfortable (I tend to be the overprotective father type when it comes to our girls).

So please, if you want someone to feel welcome, do it with a hand shake. Hugs are not necessary. Hugs are for relatives and good friends. Not for creepy old men and young teenage girls. Make someone feel welcome with a hand shake and remember their name!

Ex-Religion Journalist has a good point

This morning I came across this article on a religion journalist who was walking out on his faith. The reason? He was sick of all the scandalous things that went on within the faith community.

But that's not the reason I found this article interesting.

"Bates, who says he still regards himself as a Catholic, said he was turned off by the intolerance he saw towards gays and the self-righteousness of Christians who “pick and choose the sins that are acceptable and condemn those – always committed by other, lesser people – that are not.”"

Bates is certainly right! We do pick and choose sins. We will fight pain and nail to get things like abortion banned, but we do nothing with vagrant disregard of our environment. We need to branch out a little.

Ministry To Men

Let's face it. The American church caters to women. Walk into any typical church today and you will notice some of the following things:

1) Decorative paintings
2) Floral arrangements
3) Love songs to Jesus
4) Flowery furniture and accessories
5) Quilts and banners and bows
6) And other miscellaneous things.

Now, don't misunderstand me, I don't believe these things are bad or that we need to trash all this stuff. What I am saying, is that we are inadvertently repelling men.

Compare the following lyrics of worship songs:

"A mighty fortress is our God! A bulwark never failing." - A Mighty Fortress is Our God

"I'm feeling like the eagle that rises. Flies above the earth and it's troubles." - Abba Father

The first song, written by Martin Luther focuses in on God and applies terms that a man can identify with: Fortress. Bulwark. Strong terms that men can identify with. The second song focuses in on feelings and emotions. Notice the very second word of the song is "feeling" and how that relates to things that are immediately surrounding the song writer. Again, nothing wrong with that, but from a man's perspective he just isn't comfortable singing love songs to Jesus.


That's my personal peeve, and thankfully our worship music at RCC fits the bill, but when I was in college we would always make fun of the brand spankin' new worship songs that would come in. We often made up our own lyrics such as "I want to buy you a rose Jesus".

Anyways, we're missing men in today's church. I used to have a ton of statistics on this matter, but you don't need stats to look around and see that only a few men are coming to church and getting involved.

This was further proven to me during this last church leadership election. Absolutely no man would stand up and be "Chairman of the board" and we only had 1 addition to our elders. But we had about 15 women want to be deaconesses (and power to them!) This isn't just a problem in our church, but nationwide. Men are no longer coming to the church and we need to find a way to get them here. Even better, go out and get them.

Promise Keepers is an excellent program designed to disciple men. More churches need to get involved in this great program. They have an excellent article on this subject that you can read here. They say it a lot better than I can.

How about the Football night bible study. Watch the game, bible study at halftime, finish the game. Complete with pizza and *gasp* beer.

If I didn't know Jesus that would get me to church!

Ever wonder how much ministers get paid?

If so, don't go here. Well...I'm sure the survey is accurate, but certainly doesn't represent any ministers I know.

The youth ministers they surveyed came up with an average over 3 times what I make. Crazy!

Give your money so we can bless ourselves!

Few things make me as nervous as huge church building projects and churches going 'in a new direction'. Too often I think, our voices of greed and selfishness are heard louder than the voice of God.

Our church is getting ready to embark upon a new building program. The church building has been in existence for 20+ years and in all honesty, we are busting at the seems. Which is a good thing. So, don't think that this post has anything to do with our building project because...well...I was on that committee and gave my $0.02 on what our needs are. Does it make me uncomfortable? Yes. But I honestly believe that if this is something that God does NOT want us to do, it won't happen. At least, thats what I keep asking God to do.

But back to my point. Being in such a culture where bigger and better means success, churches so often fall to this mindset that in order to be a successful church and fulling the mission of God, we have to build bigger and better things. If church attendance is going up, and people are joining the Church of God, that equals success! Not!

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. - James 1:27

I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward. - Mark 9:41

My prayer is that we don't give our money because of our selfish ambitions or vain conceits (Philippians) only so we can receive bigger and better things plus donuts. So, when are we going to give to the glory of God so that others may be well fed and taken care of?

The video is from TheChurchYouKnow.com and the site and videos are definitely worth checking out.

Plastic Jesus

Church was good yesterday. When you work in the church...Sunday is often more of a workday then a day or worship and rest. Yesterday was different though and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

The discussion from Sunday school got me thinking about how we market Jesus. I read a lot every day. Not so much books, but blogs. I like to read what other people in ministry are writing about and thinking about on a daily basis. I read a lot of Mark Oestricher from Youth Specialties. I read a couple of professor blogs from various Christian colleges. But I read one that is interesting. Church Marketing Sucks has me divided a lot of the time. Sometimes they say a lot of good stuff that I agree with and think "Wow! That's cutting edge and I think thats what the church needs!" and there are times when I'm like "What? You might as well call yourself Wal-mart Christian Church!"

Their most recent article didn't set well with me and of course I was compelled to comment.

The problem with church marketing today is too broad of a topic to cover in just one short post. But one thing that sticks out to me is that it makes Christians lazy. A statistic that I heard over and over again in Bible College: 90% of the work done at a church is done by 10% of the people. Why? I think a couple of reasons. 1) because they are used to having their ministers and other paid staff do it 2) lack of spiritual maturity and 3) the church "markets" stuff so people don't have to do it!

I'm all about trying to make our church more visitor accessible, but not to the point where we are abstaining from our personal responsibility as Christians to bring the Gospel to other people! When we "market Jesus", we are making things easier to the point that it encourages laziness and we don't even know it!

Let me give a fictional example. Let's say that Easyroad Christian Church says "We want to bring more people into the church" so their answer is "Let's have a Christmas Musical! We can have a big complicated program and bring the unchurched in that way!" So they do, and they have an altar call and 10 people come and accept the Lord! A couple of questions: How committed are those people that came to know Christ? They're in a mass of people they don't know. No relationships to keep them grounded, committed and accountable. How are those people going to be taught and discipled? Most of the time what happens is "Hey! You're a Christian! There's a party going on in heaven! See you on Sunday!" and thats it!

No individual had to come and form a relationship with that person. That baby Christian has no foundation.

We need personal responsibility in each Christian to fulfill Matthew 28. It is not the "church's" job to evangelize, but the individual Christian.

Did Jesus say "Go into all the earth, bringing people to church" ? No. He said "Go and make disciples".