“The Church is the hope of the world.” These are the words Bill Hybels has been preaching at Leadership Summits and Conferences, printing in books and writing in articles for many years, but my question is not whether it’s true but if it’s actually being lived out by the church.

On Tuesday morning (1.20.09), Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States under the banner of hope and a promise of change. Obama’s rise from obscurity was nothing short of remarkable, but he achieved this by tapping into the hunger and desperation the country (and the world) was seeking: Hope. Obama’s message was tailored throughout the campaign, and even now in his first few days of office, specifically around the idea of hope which has laid dormant in the hearts and minds of Americans. Ultimately Obama did a tremendous job of exegeting our culture and this masterful understanding not only won him the election but elevated him as the symbol of hope in this country and around the world.

What happened to the church being the hope of the world?

Perhaps a statistic can help us with the big picture. In a recent survey conducted by Lifeway Research, 72% of respondents said the church is “full of hypocrites.” It’s no secret that the public image of the church has taken a major hit, but how did we get to this point?

During the election season, much of the church stood vocally opposed to the election of Barack Obama and his message of hope, sealing the image of the church as destroyers of hope. Despite where you stood in the election, the church’s response to Barack Obama was neither gracious, loving, and least of all hopeful. Perhaps the most startling example was from Focus on the Family in a letter written by Dr. James Dobson entitled Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America [pdf] which declared that the hope Obama would bring is nothing short of the destruction of the Christian faith and unraveling the fabric of American life. In the eyes of the public, the church stood diametrically opposed to hope. This was perhaps the final nail in the proverbial coffin.

For far too long the church has engaged in “hell-fire and brimstone” tactics and strategies that have veered more on the hope-less rather than bringing hope and promise to a world starved for a message of hope. The church’s role is to fill the void with a new hope, however we haven’t and instead of filling it we’ve left a gaping expanse. Barack Obama simply filled the void left by the church.

The church hasn’t done the hard work of listening, of trying to understand what the country is clamoring for (hope-which is exactly what the gospel offers when presented as good news instead of “hell-fire and brimstone”). We haven’t changed our approach to express the hope of the Kingdom of God and as a result Obama has become the symbol of hope reserved for the church because of Jesus. (Never more was this more clear than on Tuesday.) Now we’re left in a position we should have never been in the first place.

It’s time for the church to listen to and learn from Obama, to understand how he speaks to the country and the way in which he communicates a new hope for a new age. It’s time or us not to hitch our train to him, but to ride his coattails and prepare the way of hope by using his language and his rhetoric in ways that communicate the gospel. We can learn from his exegesis of the culture in such a way that eventually we will be able to take up the mantle of hope in the public square once again. Let me be clear: This is not about systematically embracing his political viewpoints and promoting his public policy. This is about learning how he communicates hope to the culture, something we have obviously forgotten how to do.

Remember, in four to eight years Obama, like Bush, will fade into history. Unless the church is there and prepared to pick up the ball of hope and run with it, we’ll have missed our opportunity once again to be the symbol of hope as the bride of Christ. And instead, to the rest of the world, hopelessness will be the banner by which we operate.

“The Church is the hope of the world.”

I stood there with the bread in my hand as person after person came down the line to take a piece and with every person who walked by I recited the phrase, “Christ’s body broken for you,” a deceptively simple phrase to say. As familiar faces strolled past I couldn’t stop internalizing their names as they passed, “Alex, Christ’s body broken for you”; “Justin, Christ’s body broken for you”; “Mike, Christ’s body broken for you,” and on and on. With each name running through my head the harder it became to finish the line out loud. I found myself near tears after 40 people whom I have come to know walked my way, something I wasn’t prepared for during this moment of introspection and celebration.

This morning as we prepared for communion in a more liturgical setting/style we recited The Apostles Creed. At the moment we hit the line, “The third day He rose again from the dead,” my heart leapt for joy within me. This is what communion is about, this is what causes such emotion, this is what causes such joy, this is what brings us together and this is why we celebrate. Christ has risen, and through His resurrection we have hope.

Why then has a majority of the evangelical church forsaken the regular celebration of communion? In many churches I have attended over the years we have gathered to worship in song, in giving of offering, and listening to sermons but these three elements seem to be the only constant whereas communion has fallen by the wayside. Why?

Perhaps this isn’t the proper line of questioning, for there really is no good reason for forsaking the regular participation in communion by the church body. Rather, the proper series of questions should revolve around, ‘What are the consequences?’ ‘What happens to the church who fails to recognize and live as a resurrection community, who looses sight of hope?’

I fear that many of the problems we experience in the evangelical church revolve around the rare appearance of the Eucharist/Communion/Lord’s Supper in our midst, and our gross misunderstanding of its importance to the health and unity of the body.

Leadership books are worthless. At least that’s what I continued to tell myself most of the way through college, grad-school, and throughout the first 10 years of ministry. They were always the books that everyone pined over, drooled on and referenced at every corner with the goal of helping you take the world by storm. I very much loathed and despised this genre of book and instead chose to skim, push through, or simply ignore them all together.

My thinking on the subject was simple: what does leadership really have to do with pastoring? How is learning business models of leadership really going to make me a better pastor? The church world and the business world are two completely different spheres that narrowly intersect… why waste my time? For many those questions may seem asinine whereas for others its a perfectly valid line of questioning. Today I have moved from one sphere to the other and for the (perhaps) the very first time, I completely understand why pastors seek after these books and strive to understand the issue/subject of leadership.

As a church planter, despite all the assessments, all the training, all of my previous 10 years of experience combined in a variety of settings and roles, never have I felt more unsure and incapable of leading a group of people to start something new than I do on this journey. The questions that keep me up at night are: How do I maintain this momentum (as small as it may be)?; How do I lead our staff team to create the cultural environment that’s only alive in my mind?; How do I balance all these plates that are spinning overhead?; How do I not lose my mind?! So, I have found myself turning not only to my coaches and mentors for advice but diving headlong into leadership books such as Seth Godin’s Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us and Tom Rath & Barry Conchie’s book Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow or Alan Roxburgh’s The Missional Leader. In the pages of leadership books, both far and wide, I have discovered my own reasoning for seeking the wisdom within (and perhaps the reasoning for why so many others clamor after them as well).

I have found they provide me (as an uncertain, confused, sometimes desperate leader) a security blanket to fall back on for ideas, strategies and even a zone of ideological bliss when I don’t know where else to turn. This genre of book has become the leaders version of self-help. (Now obviously this is a gross generalization, and many leaders turn to a few a year not in desperation or self-help but as ways of tweaking and improving their skill.) Whether you agree or disagree with how the leader uses this genre, one thing that’s not debatable: it’s not going to change anytime soon.

As I continue to struggle through, wrestle with and strive to lead a “start-up” church I’m quite certain I will be visiting and re-visiting the leadership section of the bookstore multiple times in the coming years for any wisdom that can help make this dream a reality.

“I was there.” Those are the words that someday I will be able to say to my children and my children’s children. Today marked an amazing day in the history of the United States as President Barack Obama took office as the 44th President of this country. I spent the morning with thousands of other people watching the Inauguration simulcast on a big screen in front of City Hall in a scene that could only be described as surreal. There was a great sense of anticipation, a tremendous amount of jubilee and excitement in what many could only classify as “hope” seized the day.

I remember the party we went to on November 4th, the night the votes were tallied and the will of the people was expressed. There were cheers and shouts of excitement, tears shed as people hugged and sobbed for a new belief in what could be possible at this moment. Today was the realization of that moment 2 1/2 months ago.

As I stood among the crowd I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of emotion that took place. Directly in front of me a couple stood embraced with tears pouring down their face after Obama took the oath of office. Another man to my right openly sobbed as he held his arms high with clenched fists before shouting at the top of his lungs with what I can only describe as a shout of freedom. All throughout the crowd scenes such as these took place over and over again. Never before have I seen so much emotion, so much hope, and so many dreams for a brighter tomorrow than I did today on the faces of the people of San Francisco.

Nelson Mandela wrote a letter to President Obama that was delivered today that masterfully captures the tone that many in San Francisco and around the world are experiencing today:

“Your election has inspired the people around the world more than any other recent event… Amongst many in the world there is a sense of hopelessness that had set in as so many problems remain unresolved and seemingly incapable of being resolved. You Mr. President have brought a new voice of hope that these problems can in fact be mastered.”

Today is a new day, and President Obama’s voice is one for the ages. Let us continue to hope, continue to pray and begin working hard to see the change in this world that we dream possible.

The picture above is the Abdul Kabbia Group, a group of young entrepreneurs in Sierra Leone working to pull themselves and their family from poverty by creating a clothing business. They call their group “God is with us.” I have the privilege through Kiva.org to partner with a number of other individuals from around the world to provide this group with a micro-loan to help enhance their business.

My first loan through Kiva was in December of 2006 and I’ve seen the site grow with more an more new lenders joining the ranks. In fact, some of the stats this week: nearly 14,000 lenders made a loan with over $897,000 dispersed… there was a loan made every 23 seconds! With each passing loan I am more and more excited about what can happen around the world when a few band together to help others change their lives economically.

I’ve written about Kiva in the past and have even seen a few of you join in to “change the world one loan at a time.” I can’t think of a better way to help people I’ll never meet rise up out of poverty and hopefully connect in someway to the Kingdom of God.

Tim Keller writes a striking statement in his book The Reason for God (p.152), “If there is no God, argues Nietzsche, Sarte, and others, there can be no good reason to be kind, to be loving, or to work for peace” (emphasis mine). This is an all-or-nothing statement, that if proven true, radically changes the landscape of atheistic perspective. Every time someone, Christian or not, performs an unloving, unkind, or un-peaceable act we promote an atheistic perspective to the world. Simply put, this is how you can be an evangelist for atheism.

The flip side to this statement pre-supposes that love, peace and kindness are the sole-possession of theism, particularly a Christ-centered Theism as in Keller’s case. That last statement alone makes this idea hard to swallow if you focus on the outward fruit of many who call themselves Christian in our global village.

This makes me wonder, has the church really become a place of “Evangelical Atheists”? Obviously that’s a strong statement, and immediately I’m forced to backtrack and say that there are many congregations and many Christ-followers throughout the United States and around the world who would not fit into this category, however I think it’s safe to assume the majority of our society believes the stereotype of Christianity as judgmental, fear-mongering, war-mongering, right-wing extremists. How did we get to this point? Certainly it didn’t happen overnight?

Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote this back in 1919 in his essay The Sense of God’s Reality, “Atheism is not our greatest danger, but a shadowy sense of God’s reality. We do not disbelieve that God exists, but we often lack a penetrating and convincing consciousness that we are dealing with him and he with us.” Is the problem outlined by Fosdick after the turn of the 20th century the same at the turn of the 21st century, or perhaps magnified to a greater extent?

What I find interesting about Fosdick’s statement is how it presents itself in the prayers of the Christian. It seems without fail, whether in distress or painful circumstances at dinner or in small group we throw in the line “God be with us” or at the beginning of our worship services the prayer is heard “We welcome you here Lord.” I wonder how ridiculous those statements seem to an omni-present God who is already there, already comforting, already working and moving. I believe what this shows us more than anything is how right Fosdick was, that we live in the greatest danger of all: a shadowy sense of God’s reality… we don’t experience a perpetual presence of God’s reality.

Has the church lost its voice, its power because of our own atheism, our own practice of the absence of God? Have we, as Jesus stated of the Ephesians, “Forsaken our first love”?

About a year ago Bret Koontz shared an idea with me he had devised for connecting pastors and church planters with people in the community in more of a 2.0 sort of way. Immediately I was intrigued, especially considering my introverted nature when it comes to stepping up to strike up conversation with a stranger.

Our culture has quickly shifted to what I’d call the “facebook-friending” culture (perhaps soon to be replaced by the “twitter-following” culture) where people perform Google searches and Facebook friend requests in an attempt to check you out before really wanting to pursue some sort of deeper friendship/relationship. The utilization of technology into “interviewing” potential friends/relationships is a good way to speed up getting to know someone and dive deeper into a relationship. (I’m continually amazed at how much more connected I feel to people and how much more I know about a person because of their Facebook status updates and Twitter updates.) So, enter a church-planter or pastor who is new to an area and looking to strike up conversations and develop relationships in our highly networked 2.0 society.

Bret’s idea was to create a physical connect that blends both 1.0 in-person conversation with 2.0 web networking, therefore the advent of the ‘personal network card.’ A business card that has nothing to do with business, but rather everything to do with who you are as a person and ways to connect with you online. You can hand them out to people you meet, or simply leave them in places you frequent, hand them to a barista or waiter in restaurants and coffee shops you frequent, the possibilities are endless… and the potential for new relationships is great!

Now don’t get the idea that this is a business card, because it isn’t… it looks different and functions differently. I recently designed my first one, had them printed up at VistaPrint and they arrived today:

On the front of the card is a design of sorts and different adjectives to describe who I am by my interests (mac enthusiast, coffee junkie, teacher, photography, runner, baseball fanatic, etc.) Then at the bottom is my name and 3 online ways that people can check me out and connect with me: aaronmonts.com | twitter.com/aaronmonts | and my gmail address. The back is simply my name along with the same design from the front.

As connecting with people becomes more and more of an online sport, I hope this will give me an edge and the ability to meet and network with people that once before couldn’t have been possible.