The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story this past week highlighting San Francisco as the most walkable city in the United States. As I began to look through the website it links to, I noticed that not only is the city extremely walkable, but the neighborhood we’re moving into (South of Market shown above highlighted in blue) is tied for 5th in the whole city.
We arrive in the city in just a little under 3 weeks and plan to walk and utilize as much public transportation as possible! It’s a great city, and we can’t wait to get out there!
Last Sunday was my final Sunday at the Shorewood Campus and Community Christian Church. I must say that it was bittersweet, however I can’t imagine a better place to have served.
When I started at Community 14 months ago I was in a completely different place than I am now, fresh off a gut wrenching and soul draining experience—in short a hellish year of ministry (somehow even those words can’t quite sum it up). Tracy and I came to Community extremely wounded, limping in on our last legs and expecting the impossible from the people and staff of Community. We came in expecting them to restore our hope in the church, to restore our wounded psyche, our broken hearts, and help us on the road back to wholeness. What was unfair on our part—we didn’t tell them of these expectations.
What’s amazing about the staff at Community and in particular the people of the Shorewood Campus: they didn’t bat an eye, were completely unfazed and immediately surrounded us with an amazing presence of love, support and encouragement like we have never experienced before. It’s the same sort of love, support and encouragement that they give to everyone—yet for us it hit the spot and did more than we could have ever hoped or imagined.
Fourteen months later I am leaving with a renewed sense of hope and faith in the church, a firm belief that the church can actually be a healthy, vibrant, world changing force. This post doesn’t come close to giving Community its due for how it has shaped and impacted me over the past year, but I am far different and a far better person because of how this church pushed towards the mission every day. Thank you Community… I wouldn’t be heading to San Francisco if it hadn’t been for you.
Zondervan—Church & Ministry | Church Life | Church Growth
Although the early church started out with this beautiful concept of the priesthood of all believers—with every member an active minister and good works carried forth in all directions—during the last couple of centuries, most churches have retreated to the Old Testament model. Here’s how it often plays out:
A group of a hundred people get together, decide to form a congregation, and “hire a minister.” …Then they say to their new minister… ‘Preach. Teach. Marry. Bury. Make hospital calls. Visit members. Counsel the confused. Evangelize the community. Raise money. Print the bulletins. Do announcements. Pray for the sick. Then, come year end, we’ll get out our report cards and determine whether you have met our expectations. If you have, we’ll sign you up for another year. If not, we’ll hire someone else.’
…The congregation hires “the clergy” to do the ministry.
So the church ends up with a few overworked professionals, paid by the tithes and offerings of the congregation ot fulfill the whole gamut of priestly functions, while everybody else remains passive observers, their gifts and talents atrophying from disuse.
This is the most widely practiced ministry paradigm in existence today—and it doesn’t have a shred of biblical support. Tragically, this approach has left many contemporary churches in shambles: weak, unorganized, and powerless. And unfortunately, it’s a tough mindset to change. (pg. 62)
When I read these words in a book written by Bill Hybels I was a little taken a back because if you didn’t know who wrote it or aren’t aware it could sound very much like something from Emergent Village. Hybels published this book back in 2004. It makes me wonder how much more we have in common with each other than we truly realize. From much of the rhetoric that gets thrown out in bloggy-land you’d think we were arch-rivals. Hopefully we can begin to find more of a middle-ground and set aside our differences for the greater good of the Kingdom.
I was impressed with this book and although at times it felt “elementary” and “simple” it was a good refresher with great reminders not only for myself but for the church at large. I enjoyed many of the stories and it certainly gave a great glimpse into the world that is Willow Creek Community Church.
David Cook Publishing—Religion | Christian Ministry | Evangelism
239 pages
This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting… although admittedly I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I picked this book up at a Borders after browsing the shelves looking for another book. This one in particular caught my attention because I had seen it laying around the office at Community and figured it must be worth a read, so I snatched it up and paid for it with a gift card.
Starving Jesus was the dream of xxxchurch.com founder Craig Gross and his associate J.R. Mahon born out of numerous rants about the church. It certainly takes on the form of a rant in its writing style, however in the middle it takes a major shift away from what’s wrong with the church towards the spiritual discipline of fasting—particularly 40 day fasts.
I’m not quite sure there was a cohesive theme that ran throughout the entire book, and if there was one I completely missed it. However, if you see each chapter as a sort of essay tied around the hope of what the church can be then it hit the mark. There was deconstructionist tones towards the beginning that found themselves muted at the end, lost in the conversation of fasting. I’m not sure there was a great deal of understanding that I gained from the book, however if you’re looking for something to explain fasting this can certainly be a good start ripe with story and testimonial that I found to be somewhat helpful. Otherwise, I’m not sure there’s anything in this book that I haven’t read or heard elsewhere.
Energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens has created a new campaign aimed at solving the energy crisis in the United States. I’ve seen his ads on tv for the past week or so talking about a new alternative for solving our dependency on foreign oil and I finally took the time to watch the video on his website. It’s pretty interesting and although doesn’t claim to be the solution, he does claim that it will reduce our dependency on foreign oil enough to buy us some time and solve the problem down the line.
I must say I am extremely intrigued, however I’m just not quite sure how it will be completely implemented in our oil-based economy…
Last week while spending time at the North American Christian Convention I was able to make my way into a session on Spiritual Formation led by Dr. Neal Windham of Lincoln Christian College. A few of the statements that Dr. Windham made led me down a particular path of thought that juxtaposed our current emphasis on leadership with our lack of emphasis on spiritual formation as necessity.
I have had the opportunity throughout the past couple of years to spend some time at various conferences throughout the country focused specifically on being the church and bettering yourself as a leader. However, I have never found it odd that spiritual formation was never mentioned in the same breath as leadership until Dr. Windham said this:
Ministries can become small, shallow and confused when we neglect the doxological life.
In other words, leadership is important, vision is important, but without a leader who walks with God they are worthless.
It seems as if in our conferences and even in many of our churches we almost assume that spiritual formation is happening even though we do not have the necessary means of measuring or examining the inner life in accountable relationships. Leadership, it seems is all we’re focused on learning about and growing into.
There must be a radical transformation among the people and specifically the leadership of God’s church… yet, in our conventions and conferences the emphasis sits squarely upon the idea of leadership. It is great leaders we bring in to teach us and speak about leadership issues but we rarely, if ever, bring in a great person on spiritual formation to speak to the masses. I do wonder how many leaders, when looking underneath the mask, truly struggle and are unaware with what spiritual formation truly is and how to go about it.
As a church we need to recover a new attentiveness to the Other, a new understanding and emphasis on formation by the work of the Spirit not only in our people but perhaps more especially in our leaders.
I believe the emphasis on leadership has been extremely effective without it I’m not sure we’d see some of the amazing ministries that are on the landscape today. As a result, I’m not advocating we reduce the notion of leadership or reduce our emphasis on it. Rather, I believe what we need is to elevate the role of spiritual formation in our conversation and practice to the level or above where we currently hold leadership. It will be then and only then that the church will begin to move forward into a new realm of revival.
Leadership and spiritual formation is not an either/or issue… it’s both/and.
I don’t get why parents are always complaining about how tough it is to raise kids… You just have to joke around with them, give them pizza, give them candy, let them live their lives, they’re adults for God’s sake. ~ Michael
I blogged my thoughts throughout this book and overall found this to be a very refreshing book. I believe I’ve grown tired of the continual deconstructionist thought that never offers up a solution new or old, that never moves us forward as a church in any direction but simply mopes about calling us a failure of mission and calling us to change–but to what? Halter & Smay are a breath of fresh air combining deconstructionist thought with solutions and offering up their own reconstruction of the Kingdom in their cultural context that can help spur us own towards creativity and solutions in our own contexts!
Take a walk through the posts listed below and pick up the book… it certainly won’t disappoint!
When you are ready to see the sales office, the sales office will present itself to you. Your journey begins now.
