Communicating the Gospel - Ministers' School Next Week!

I've been thinking about Missouri Ministers' School this week, because it is coming up next week and I am the Dean of the school this year. Here's what I've been thinking:

It's all communication, isn't it?

When it comes to church, we don't have a product or service to sell to consumers. We're in communications. We have a message, and are supposed to deliver it.

The message is none other than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God can communicate however God chooses to, and one of those ways is to entrust the message to the church. I'm not one to say that the church is the only way that communication happens, though I know there are those who believe so. Rather, I would say maybe that the church is the most significant way. Certainly it can be said that within the church lies the potential for being the most powerful way that message is communicated.

All of which compels the question, "Is the church communicating the Gospel as effectively as we possibly can to those who need to hear it most?"

And along with that, knowing that there are a myriad of means of communication available in the world today, we have to ask the question, "How are individual congregations collaborating with one another to ensure that the communication of the Gospel is a true multi-media event?"

Face it, no single congregation is going to be able to effectively utilize more than a few media. Unless you are a big church with big resources, you probably specialize in two or three. Like maybe Church A has a great choir and a really wonderful mission program. And Church B down the road has a wonderful Sunday morning hospitality program and a killer band. Why should Church A fret about not having a great band, when they should be able to cooperate with Church B in conveying the Gospel through that particular medium? Why should Church B start from scratch in developing a mission program, when Church A could help them out with that one?

Now, I'm not saying that individual congregations should adopt and attitude of "Oh, well" about the things they don't do particularly well. Far from it - I am a pastor serving with Bish Schnay-Z, after all, and I'm all about the 5 Practices being in balance. What I am trying to say is that churches, and especially churches within a connectional system, should understand the ministry of the whole as being a cooperative endeavor, not rugged individualism.

We have a message to share - and the "we" in that sentence is all of us who say we are followers of Christ Jesus, not just me or my congregation or my denomination. The whole body of Christ participates together in conveying the Gospel, which makes it possible to convey in a myriad of ways. The old axiom is true: We can do more together than we could ever do alone.

Whatever the medium - personal visit, worship experience, faith formation event, mission trip, service opportunity, newsletter, newspaper, bulletin, poster, pamphlet, sign, snail mail, website, email, blog, newsfeed, text message, internet social networking group, (and who knows what else) - the Gospel message just begs to be delivered. However, these various media will obviously impact the message itself. No one would ever claim that a text message could mean the same as a personal visit, for example.

Considering how the media we use may impact the message we have to share is going to be a part of next week's Missouri Ministers' School, of which I am the Dean this year. Sometimes I think that we either embrace or avoid new communications technology without taking due time to consider it's impact on the message. I hope next week will give us a little bit of that time.

The church should neither embrace nor avoid a means of communication, just because it is new. We are entrusted with the Gospel, and we ought to do all that we can (all of us together) to share that message with all God's children.

It is all about communication, after all.

iTunes Prayer Book

According to this article, the Pope signs his text messages "BXVI."

I wonder how our Bishop signs his text messages? Hmm...

Giving Permission

Here's one of my favorite parts of Bishop Schnase's book:

First, congregations should give ready permission to those who have the energy for and interest in new initiatives. They ought to reduce the number of hurdles, the layers of organizational reporting and approval seeking, especially by persons who have no particular interest in volunteering themselves. Leadership, vision, planning, soliciting help, and participation must come from those who feel called and eager. Cultivating a permission-giving, rather than an approval-seeking, environment in a congregation has huge implications not just for the planning of missions but for beginning new Bible studies, support groups, and other ministries.

(Emphasis added)

How is the congregation where you hang out a permission-giving rather than an approval-seeking environment? I'm running a poll to that effect - vote today!

We are trying here in Northtown to become more permission-giving, but not everybody agrees as to what exactly that means, especially when it comes to communication and accountability. I sometimes find myself speaking what seems almost like a completely different lanugage than some in the congregation. I want to convey the idea that a lot of what happens in our congregation may not be known by everyone, and that's okay. As long as what is happening is accountable to the mission of the congregation, it's all good. That's a hard thing to understand for some people.

When a small group of a half a dozen people wants to do some ministry project, and they put it together, organize it, implement it, and generally make it happen, we want to celebrate it and give God thanks for the energy and initiative this little team has taken on behalf of Christ. What we don't want to do is add so many layers of reporting and approval that it bogs the whole thing down and it loses effectiveness, fruitfulness, and impetus.

And it may require that I admit I don't know exactly what's going on, too! I have often heard myself answering inquiries with, "I don't know" when someone asks, "Hey, what are So-and-So doing with the This-and-That?"

"I don't know," I'll say, "But I know So-and-So, and I trust that whatever they're doing, it's going to be pretty cool!" The key, as with so many things, is the development of loving, grace-filled, trusting relationships among fellow disciples. Minus the development of those relationships, you really can't do much.

But when we are truly seeking a relationship grounded in the love and grace of Jesus Christ, when we live in that love and grow closer to one another and to God all the time, when we put aside our need to know and control what's going on and release ourselvews from that paralyzing tendency, God will truly amaze you at what might just happen.

So I'm interested - vote in my little poll and then leave a comment about your faith community. How is your spiritual home a "permission-givining" congregation?

Other Way 'Round?

If to quote Bishop Robert Schnase to someone else is "to Schnase," then being quoted by Bishop Schnase would be what?

Maybe "inverse-Schnase"? "Retro-Schnase"?

Check out who Bishop Schnase is quoting these days on his blog - click here.

5 Practices - the Whole and the Parts

The Missouri Conference has launched a pretty snazzy new website that is centered on the 5 Practices of Fruitful Congregations. I hope that everyone checks it out, and that it becomes a place where congregation leaders visit frequently about churchy stuff. Bish Schnay-Z is going to keep a blog there, some links to other places, and a section with some good potential to generate some buzz called “Ideas that Work.”

I think there should be another section there, too, titled “Ideas that Pretty Much Sucked,” but that may be why I’m not put in charge of these kinds of things! But I think there is real value in learning from trying things that just simply don’t work, and I have plenty of examples to share. Remember the quote attributed to Edison? Something like, “I haven’t failed, I’ve just learned 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Here in Northtown, as we revamp things around the 5 Practices, we have uncovered a potential pitfall that I’ll call “over-compartmentalization.” It arose in conversations about budget and staffing for next year. We discovered that we were tending to make very sharp contrasts among the 5 practices, to the point of trying to assign staff members to particular practices exclusively. However, we don't really have the staff needed to organize like that, and I really wonder if it ever is a wise thing regardless of staff numbers. Rather, we have a part-time staff member who works with adults on all 5 practices, another part-timer who works with youth in all 5, and another (a volunteer) who works with children in all 5 areas.

So then we were trying to figure out “what goes where” in the budget of ministries. Is Sunday night Youth Fellowship a “Faith Formation” thing? Yes. But it also involves inviting new youth to join (Hospitality), worshiping together, mission trips, and giving to the church (the youth generously tithe their fundraisers to the general fund of the church). When the conversation drifts into such hair-splitting, we are guilty of over-compartmentalizing.

The intent is not to create five departments – a “Hospitality Department,” “Worship Department,” “Mission Department,” “Faith Formation Department,” and “Generosity Department” – like the congregation is just another business like any. It is tempting to do so, to be sure, and maybe it would have worked a few decades ago to organize a congregation like that. But we are living in the post-everything generation, where everything is “post-this” and “post-that” and “post-theotherthing” and this time (karios moment?) resists that kind of rigid separation into categories.

Instead, 5 Practices calls us to look at the local congregation as a whole and see how the entire community is engaged in ministry. To be sure, the ministry will rotate around a core group of people whose responsibility it is to facilitate the congregation’s ministry in a particular area, but we’ve got to tightrope that walk so that we don’t fall into the over-compartmentalization trap. It is tricky, but doable.


Also posted here.

A Two Schnase Day!

My first one was in the sermon - I was preaching on being "ashamed of the Gospel" as in the Timothy reading for the day. Toward the conclusion, I Schnasied the congregation with my current favorite: "At some point, followers of Jesus must decide whether they will listen to the wisdom of the world or to the wisdom of God." I equated being ashamed of the Gospel with listening to the wisdom of the world. I think it worked pretty well. The Gospel makes some doctrinal claims and expects some discipleship responses on our part that seem pretty outlandish, even silly, when evaluated according to the wisdom of the world.

My second Schnase du jour was during the finance team meeting when somebody said that we needed to put together a budget so that people in the congregation would know what their money is supporting. I said something like, "Well, actually I don't think that's exactly right. Bishop Schnase says that people give because they want to make a difference in the world, to support a vibrant mission, or to foster positive transformation, not so much out of loyalty to an annual budget." Our lay leader then astutely noted that the leadership of the congregation might need to see a budget, but the people in the pews probably don't.

People are wondering just how to bring the 5 Practices stuff to life in a real congregation - small group discussions, book studies, websites, and things like that. But there is a risk of "gimmickry" with that approach, isn't there? We run the risk of thinking that, if we have a few book studies and slap a few ideas onto the internet, we've addressed and accomplished our task. But really (and I'm about to Schnase you here), "Answers will not come in easy-to-use new programs, through quick fixes, or by adopting new slogans." (p. 129) In other words, the answers we seek are not to be found in gimmicks.

Rather, the idea is that the "5 Practices of Fruitful Congregations" will be absorbed into the "congregational culture" which will then be characterised by "genuine hospitality, authentic worship, meaningful faith development, life changing outreach, and extraordinarily selfless generosity." (p. 130) This absorption may be one of the most difficult things a congregation takes on, and no amount of programming will make it happen. It must be an emergent, organic process that is spread person to person, team to team, class to class. Only then will there be an abiding, long-reaching change rather than a frantic scramble to find the "easy button" answers.

"Effective congregations change, improve, learn, and adapt to fulfill their mission, and [this book pushes] us to rethink our basic congregational culture, organization, and practice." (p. 9)

Sounds like a little more than a few book studies, huh?


Also posted here.

Bish Schnay-Z?

Around our congregation, we have a new verb: "Schnase." To "Schnase" someone is to quote or paraphrase from the book, "Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations." So if you say something like, "Of course, people who give with extravagant generosity do so because they want to make a difference, not just support a budget," you can then say, "...and you've just been 'Schnasied'!"

My friend Adam and I are having an ongoing Schnase-off, to see if we can work a "Schnase" into any given conversation. He's pretty good, and I'm playing catch-up most of the time. He is more of a subtle Schnasier, with an uncanny ability to weave the Schnase into the conversation so that you hardly notice he's doing it until ... wham! You've been Schnasied before you know it.

My preferred technique is to give advance notice, as in, "Get ready, I'm about to Schnase you." This brings the added excitement of giving the hearer an opportunity to guess what's coming and maybe preemptively Schnase me before I can get to it. Just adds a little drama to the situation. There's nothing more exciting than the preemptive Schnase.

Here's the latest snippet I've been mulling over: "At some point, followers of Jesus must decide whether they will listen to the wisdom of the world or to the wisdom of God." (p. 114) I'm just waiting for the right moment to Schnase someone with that! It's a good one, isn't it?

I imagine the scenario playing this way. "Pastor, I just don't see how we can put that in the budget next year, with the market acting the way it is." To which I calmly respond, "My friend, you are about to be Schnasied! 'At some point, followers of Jesus must decide whether they will listen to the wisdom of the world or to the wisdom of God.'" Beauty.

And now, I'm bringing the practice of Schnaseing into the Methoblogosphere. Certainly, in order to make it most effective, y'all have to order the book and read it. Only then will you be able to Schnase with the best of 'em. (Not to mention the little extra fringe benefit of a healthier congregation, of course.) Soon the Missouri Conference is going to lauch a "Five Practices" website where we can exchange ideas and thoughts about fruitful congregations, and then the Schnaseing will be all over the place. But I'm not waiting, I'm starting now!

Avoid the rush, start Schnaseing your friends and neighbors today!



Also posted here.