pueblodedioslutheranchurch

Mike Breen

In essence, this is the crux of his argument:

• Christian accountability doesn’t work and is mostly toxic for those who participate.
• It doesn’t work because of lack of grace, bad environments where we are held accountable, we often lie if we want to escape being held accountable (“gaming the system”) and often hurts more people than it helps.
• Therefore, we should get rid of the whole notion of Christian accountability.

Now before you think he’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater (which is how I perceived on my first read), he then advocates for a “different” thing:

• Instead of “accountability”, let’s be “advocates”, people who are fellow supporters and intercessors. He believes a new word is needed.
• These “advocates” should demonstrate radical grace, focus on what people are saying yes to (and not just what they are saying no to), prioritize people and not organizations.
• Lastly, have different environments where people and groups have different levels of access for you to be honest, rather than restricting it to one group and have a “First Call” where there is at least one person who has 100% access to the whole of your life.

First things first, it becomes pretty clear that Mike Foster believes in accountability, he just doesn’t like the word because of the way people abuse it. In the same way that people don’t like to be called Christians and instead call themselves “Christ Followers,” his proposal is probably close to the way that most people would ideally see Christian accountability happening.

What I’d like to do is perhaps push his thought a bit further and add a bit of nuance.

You see, the way that Mike seems to describe the purpose of accountability or advocacy (and the way most people seem to) seems to be making sure you are doing certain things and not doing other things. And there is something I think he taps into. Many Christians approach this life as if there is a giant check-list in the sky of do’s and don’ts. Now to be sure, there are things that we can say are “Godly” and things that aren’t, and we should walk the way of the straight and narrow, but what I’m concerned with is the process of doing so.

The way I hear people talk about it, faith is mostly about doing the right things, as if it’s all about behavior modification, or as Dallas Willard calls it, “sin management.”

But clearly this isn’t the way Jesus thinks about it.

He says, “Most people think about the outside of the cup or dish, but the inside is filthy. I’m telling you to worry about the inside first.” His position seemed to be if you attended to the inside, the outside would certainly follow suit. Over and over again in the Sermon on the Mount, he seems to be saying,

“Guys, I’m talking about a new reality! It used to be about just following the rules. But the problem with that is it never got to the heart of things. The issue isn’t murder or lying or adultery. Don’t do those things, but seriously, what are your motivations? What’s causing your heart to take you to these places? I’m telling you that if you even entertain the thought of adultery, you might as well be doing it. A sin is a sin is a sin. Let’s start working on the heart.”

It’s about a new reality for Jesus.

Now I’m not suggesting that we should ignore giant holes in our life like drug addiction, affairs, lying, etc and draw lines in the sand, but I am suggesting the more we focus on orienting the inner parts of our life towards God and his coming Kingdom, the more our behavior will reflect this change.

That’s why Jesus says in Mark 1:
The time has come. The Kingdom is near. Repent and Believe the Good News!

You Repent, then you Believe.

Repent is the word metanoia, which refers to an inner reality. It’s about changing your mind. It’s about re-orientation. It’s about coming to understand reality and setting ourselves to live in it. Seeing things differently.

Believe (often used for the word faith as well) is the word pisteuo, which speaks to a certainty that results in action. It’s not blind faith, it’s a bit like experienced knowledge. It’s saying, “I believe the sun will rise tomorrow so I’ll set my alarm.” The belief results in action. It’s that your actions tell everyone what you believe. It’s not blindly believing that God is good; it’s about knowing that God is good because you’ve seen and experienced his unending goodness and that changes the way you live.

The problem is that we’ve often reversed it and that’s what I read in Mike’s post. We make faith about an abstract reality, something we believe “out there” and repentance is something we “do.” We’ve flipped it!

Let’s take a common “accountability” example. For men, you often hear about them struggling with pornography and the usual accountability group or teaching goes something like this: “You struggle with porn? That’s wrong. You need to stop. Stop looking at it.” That’s what repentance looks like in this system. But that’s not how repentance is discussed in the Bible. The real question is WHY. Why can’t you stop looking at it? What inside of you that needs to be redeemed, is causing that behavior?  If we don’t address the inside, we end up with Jesus’ parable: A clean dish on the outside (well, at least most of the time) with something quite dirty on the inside.

But Jesus gives us a fantastic picture of how we should address this. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount he closes with the well-known parable of the wise and foolish builder. The foolish person isn’t the person who doesn’t hear what Jesus has to say; he’s the person who hears but doesn’t do anything with what he hears. Both the wise and the foolish man hear what Jesus says, but only one does something with it.

It’s not management of sin, it’s the development of wisdom. The whole of Matthew 7 is about accountability. If you’ve heard the word, you ought to do something about it.

I think it’s incredibly harmful to boil accountability down to a list of things we should/shouldn’t do. That’s behavior modification and sin management, not faith in our Lord Jesus! It should include questions of integrity and character, but it’s missing an important element, an element that Jesus introduces in this parable, the two fundamental questions of Christian Spirituality:

• What is God saying to you right now?
• What are you going to do about it?

It’s a posture of recognition that God is speaking to us, he’s inviting us more fully into his Kingdom every single day…and are we going to do anything with that?

• Maybe God is saying he’s never been more proud of you. What should you do about that? How will life be different in the next week because he’s said that to you?
• Maybe God is saying you to forgive your Father and now is the time. What should you do about it?
• Maybe God is saying that job promotion isn’t right for you even though it’s more money. What are you going to do about it?
• Maybe God has put a vision in your heart for your neighborhood. What are you going to do about it?

God is constantly speaking to us and is inviting us to himself and his unfolding Kingdom. His desire is that the words he speaks deep into us will change the way we see the world around us (Repentance) and result in us living differently (Belief).

What if much of the way we build our structures for accountability revolved around those questions? What if it revolved around the idea that God wasn’t always looking crossly at us, but was reaching out to us, inviting us into a different way of living? What if accountability was more about stepping into the Kingdom because God has spoken something fresh and new to us and we want to make sure we take those steps?

What if it was about the inside changing and then the outside following suit?

As I think about this, one thing comes to mind mind:

• It would mean people would need to learn to hear God. Most people I meet really have very little idea how to listen to God, hear what he’s saying…much less respond to what he’s asking. But the word “disciple” means learner, in the original Greek. So that’s good news for us! It means we can learn to hear the voice of our Father, even if we are starting off at a place where we hear very little.

http://mikebreen.wordpress.com/

As promised, for all of you out there who observe the season of Lent (or would be interested in trying!) as we head into Easter, we have released a Lent teaching series  (Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, is February 22) that you can download and use in your church/ministry community. This picture is the series slide and the official name of the series is LIVE FAST (yes, a clever double entendre). You can download it from our Room1228 download portal by clicking here. See below for all that the download includes, but here’s the series intro video. Personally, I think the visual storytelling by Blake Berg is absolutely brilliant.

The teaching series will include:

• Teaching notes
• Series video
• Background slides
• Small Group discussion guides
• Small Group leader guides
• + a few more extras

You can download it from our Room1228 download portal by clicking here

http://mikebreen.wordpress.com

If you’ll remember, a few weeks ago I posted a question asking what you thought the church would look like in the next decade. You can read the post here (we had a number of really good responses).

Recently, Sam Rainer and the Rainer Research Group released a futurist study on what they believe to be 10 unexpected trends in church-life by the year 2020. I’ve posted those trends and some of their thoughts with it.

When you read it, what do you think? What connects for you? What misses?

The heterogeneous church explodes
Perhaps the most important, this first trend involves not only pragmatic issues, but theological issues as well. As the younger generation ages, they will not be represented by the homogeneous unit principal that was championed in the early years of the church growth movement. Basically, this principal states that people desire to worship and serve in church with similar people, and the best way to reach people is with others who are similar.

Boomers began to change this thinking. Many sought diversity — they intentionally championed it. For many Millennials, diversity (or heterogeneity) is normal. In the future, homogenous units will still form — there’s a reason why people attend Star Trek conventions (though it is lost on me). People with common interests, characteristics, life stages and languages will still gravitate towards each other. The difference with the younger generation is that these divides will not be as distinct, specifically in ethnic terms. The United States will be minority white by 2042 — preschools much sooner, by 2021. The Millennial generation will gravitate towards heterogeneous churches because they represent what is normal in their generation.

The diverse church will explode in growth over the next 10 years. And instead of looking at this trend through the lens of pragmatic church growth practices, I believe it needs to be viewed as a picture of the Gospel. What man segregates, the Gospel unifies. Get on board with this trend not because it will grow your church, but rather because it was God’s plan for his church from the beginning.

Church attendance continues to decline
People do not wake up one Sunday and decide to leave their church. They phase out; they begin by attending less frequently. This problem is pervasive throughout the North American church. While myriad individual, spiritual reasons exist why people attend less, decreasing frequency of attendance is the single biggest macro reason for overall church declines. For example, a church has 400 people that attend four out of four weeks. This attendance frequency equates to an average attendance of 400. But if this same church has 400 people that attend two out of four weeks, average attendance is cut in half to 200.

To reduce the problem of declining attendance frequency, church leaders will begin to track not only how many attend, but also how frequently they attend as well. I am not advocating legalistic superciliousness — that every time the church doors are open people must be there. But the family that once attended almost every week and now attends 10 times a year is gradually leaving the church.

The conservative drift draws more
While the overall attendance decline will hit churches of all types and denominations, growing churches will typically be the more theologically conservative congregations. The Millennials will either go to conservative churches, or they will not go at all.

Deep teaching gets more popular
Coupled with a theologically conservative drift, many growing churches will get deeper theologically and more popular. Many young adult dropouts left the church because they desired deeper teaching. The superficial anomalies will most likely still exist, but churches that challenge people to greater biblical depths will proliferate while others languish in their own shallowness.

Boomer ministries boom
Boomers will be a different type of senior. In fact, don’t call Boomers “seniors.” They are not part of their parents’ generation — they aren’t seniors. How senior adult ministry was done with the previous generation will not be as favorable with the Boomer generation. There is just as large a generation gap between the Boomers and the Greatest Generation as there is between Boomers and their children. Boomers don’t get on buses and visit places with their friends. If you’re wondering why your “senior” ministry keeps getting smaller and older, and no “fresh faces” are joining, it’s because Boomers don’t want to be lumped in with their parents.

Ministries to families grow
The largest generation is no longer the Boomers. The Millennials now lay claim to that title. According to LifeWay Research, the number one priority among the Millennial generation is family. Millennials desire to stay connected with not only their immediate family, but their extended family as well. Ministries to families have always been important but will increase as this youngest generation begins their own.

Staff positions evolve
For churches to remain healthy, staff structures will change between now and the next 10 years. As children’s ministries become more diverse, children’s ministers with experience in and a passion for diversity will become more important. As multi-site churches become more prevalent with more sites, administrators will need to become more skilled at managing a network of ministries. As churches refocus their programs and activities around a tight discipleship process, the old paradigm of hierarchical structures will fade as a plurality of local church leadership emerges.

The importance of the church building is renewed
The church is not a building, but a building is where the church meets. And buildings are the most expensive part of discipleship. In North America people go to buildings to do things — they go to the game in an arena, to the doctor at her office, to school in the classroom, and to the movie at the theater. Part of our culture is the expectation that things happen in buildings. This cultural expectation is true of the church — people go to church to be discipled.

Not all churches have buildings, nor am I advocating that they should. But church facilities are one of the most expensive and most critical tools church leaders use in shepherding God’s people. In short, buildings are important pieces in God’s mission of building his kingdom. Many building and design firms are becoming more intentional about creating space with the purpose of making disciples. In the next ten years, this focus will continue to grow. And churches will begin to view their buildings as part of their discipleship process.

Charismatic leadership becomes less prevalent
Charismatic leadership is based on the personality and charisma of a senior leader. Transformational leadership is based on the collective vision of an entire group. Both have their place, even in the church. A popular teacher should not lessen his or her charisma to detract followers. When the entire ministry structure is in place to elevate the leader, however, is when major problems arise.Charismatic teachers and leaders will always exist, but transformational leadership will become more popular in the coming decade.

Transformational leaders inspire people to reach for a common goal. They develop, train, and mentor future talent. They empower people to accomplish tasks. Creativity, transparency and authenticity are valued. Leaders and followers alike know what the goal is and how to achieve it. These leaders show everyone the big picture and why it’s important. The next 10 years will bring a fresh focus on local pastors leading local churches to become focused on a local mission.

Growth in video-venues slows down
The trend towards more transformational leadership will quell the popularity of video-venues in which a single teaching pastor is projected to multiple sites. The Internet and podcast boom brought with it a cultural wave of electronic teaching. While this trend has been positive — more sound teaching is readily available (for free) than ever before. Eventually, however, the wired generation will desire a more local, personal touch than the man-on-the-screen. By 2020, more campuses at multi-site churches will feature a campus pastor who teaches, and more people will seek out this type of local connection.

by David Walker

I’m a worship pastor.
It’s what I do,
what I know,
who I’ve been created to be.

But as of late, some things have been stirring inside of me that leave me unsettled.

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you are. “

Over the last 4 months this has been the phrase resonating in my life. What does it mean to invite and then give someone access to your life? I was raised to think in order to have someone enter your life you had to be this engineered version of yourself.

This concept transfers even to dating relationships. Being on your “best” behavior was something you’d do to potentially win over the one. If they were impressed enough with this well-mannered perfect version of yourself you would begin the dating process. Once you got engaged then married, slowly but surely you discover who the person really is. You discover the routines or the lack of routines in his or her life. You begin to discover where this person’s time and energy goes outside of living from event to event. You’re enlightened to the small states of being that actually define who the person is.

I’m beginning to let people see who I really am. It’s not that I’ve yet to do this, but it has now become me making the decision to do it intentionally. It’s easier to simply pass on information and never let people see behind the curtain of where the information is coming from.

The true calling of discipleship leads to someone actually wanting to imitate the patterns of Jesus in your life. Paul puts it this way: “Imitate me as I imitate Jesus.” Some of the big questions I’ve been asking myself are the following:

-Is my life worth imitating?

-Would it benefit the world to have people imitating my life?

-Would the Kingdom of God advance (people saved, healed, delivered, loved?)

-And in the same vein…”Who do I have in my life that I’m imitating?”

The goal of discipleship isn’t to have an army of robots like me walking to and fro on the earth. The goal is for people to begin to do what Jesus did through their own unique personalities. He did the works of His Father.

My good friend Elizabeth Paul put it like this: “I want to invite you into my life. Follow the patterns in my life that look like Jesus and the ones that don’t look like Him, don’t follow those. I may not be a perfect example of Jesus but I am a living example of Jesus.”

I’ve been leading worship for almost ten years. It is a gifting that I have. I have developed this over the years because it’s something that I place immense value in. I want to continue to lead and write incredible songs in and for the Church. I want to see people saved and made new through God using what I do. These are all incredible things to desire and I believe it’s the heart of God.

But it can’t just be about leading worship on a stage a couple of times a week.

When I read the scriptures, I believe at the end of this life when I’m old and grey, I want to look back most of all and identify the small amount of people that had intimate access to my life and because they did, they did the same, and disciples were made and the Kingdom of God advanced. And then those people made disciples…and the Kingdom of God advanced. And then those people…well…you get the picture…

If I’m honest, really honest, I’d have to say if I stay on the current trajectory I’m on, I’m not sure I’ll be able to say that with the assurance I’d like to.

But I want to.

And I’m cashing in all my chips to make it happen…to ensure that discipleship is the primary thing my life revolves around. That I’m making sure someone who is further along in this journey is investing into me, but, likewise, that I am doing the same thing in discipling others.

Over the next year, I will be chronicling this journey here on my blog.

I’d love if you joined me.

Many Blessings,

David

http://davidwalkeronline.com

Mike Breen

In my last two posts I’ve tried to make the case why I think extended family (oikos in Greek) is crucial to understanding how God created the church to exist and function and began to explore what might need to start happening in our staff teams and laity if that’s to happen. We’ll do more posts like that in the near future.

Today, I want to pause in that discussion and give some practical handles on how to begin doing this in your context. I promise, this will be short and sweet.

It should also be noted that I didn’t come up with these 6 principles, my good friend Kheld Dahlmann is entirely responsible for these. So here are some principles for creating an oikos:

1. Shared vision (What do we exist for? In other words, in what way is this community going to bring heaven to earth?)
2. Shared resources
3. Extended family (= more than a nuclear family, we’d say a minimum of 15-20 people, max of 50)
4. Mom/Dad (leaders in “fathering” mode)
5. Prayer
6. Common meal

We show this video a fair amount at the Learning Communities that we do, but this is a window into the hunger that our culture has for these kinds of family expressions. It’s a short advert done by Walmart and Coke that one of the current team members in Pawleys led out two years ago with the advertising agency she was with.

http://mikebreen.wordpress.com/

Mike Breen

The past few weeks I’ve been working with the 3DM Content Team on material for our new book on how to multiply missional leaders (coming out in April, 2012). I wanted to share a little preview of some of the things we’ve been discussing.

You see, I am absolutely convinced that 100 years from now, many books will be written on the phenomenon that is the late 20^th Century/early 21^st Century American church. And I am fairly certain that it will be with large degree of amazement/laughter that people, in reading about it, will say to each other: “You must be joking! Seriously???! People actually thought it was a good idea to structure the Church as if it were a business? Honestly?!”

Perhaps we don’t have the perspective necessary to see how funny or strange this really is, but I promise you, if you run your church like a business, it’ll never be a family and families are what have changed the world. Bill Hybels was right about the local church (as the Body of Jesus) being the hope of the world…just not as we are currently seeing it.

Efficiency has replaced effectiveness. Many churches are organizationally efficient, but we aren’t affecting the lives of people the way in which Jesus imagined a family would do.

We’ve created a corporate America-like church, somehow buying into a false dichotomy between a Leadership Culture which produces leaders and a Discipleship Culture that produces disciples. Here’s what I mean: In American businesses, it’s about moving people from A to B, but has nothing to do with making people. We have one guy with the vision and a culture of volunteerism to help that one guy get his vision accomplished. It’s the genius with a 1000 helpers. So while churches may claim to have “leadership development programs,” what they really have are “volunteer pipelines” that are run by managers, not leaders.

In doing so, we run the campus, but don’t expand the Kingdom. We’re keeping the machine of the church running (which, much to some people’s chagrine, I think is needed if done in a lightweight/low maintenance kind of way), but doing practically nothing to expand the Kingdom.

This is what we’ve created:

Clearly there isn’t quite the black and white dichotomy as this matrix illustrates, but I still think it serves the point. Often we have churches that are great at making disciples, but not terribly effective at mobilizing these people into God’s mission in the world (yes, I’m overgeneralizing). Or, on the other side, we have churches that are great at moving people to do things, but are pretty poor at making disciples, creating a culture of volunteerism, implemented and run by managers of the leader.

What we need is a way of making and moving people so that as we make disciples, we release them into their destiny of pushing into new Kingdom-frontier.

Corporate church doesn’t do this. Strictly organic church doesn’t do this. I would argue that in the whole of church history, there is one thing that does this, but is largely lost to us in Western culture.

EXTENDED FAMILY.

The Oikos.

A group of people, blood-and-non-blood, about the size of an extended family, on mission together, often times networked with other extended families.

Why the extended family?

• Because it’s small enough to care, but large enough to dare.
• Everyone gets to play.
• Sociologically, people locate their identity within the extended family size (known as the Social Space). We’re hardwired for it.
• To function well, it’s a beautiful combination of both the organic and the organized
• It’s the perfect training ground for future leaders

I believe, with everything in me, that until we embrace this reality, we will continue to struggle to be the fully functioning Body of Jesus.

Why might this be so difficult for overachieving Americans?

Because as J.S. Bryan has said, Many men can build a fortune, but few men can build a family.

My next 4 posts will be about building this kind of family at the center of everything that you’re doing.