Tag Archives: missional community

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Why Change Fails

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change

If you talk to any leader or pastor, they will tell you stories of changes, new ideas and initiatives failing. Even if, the new program would do better than the old program.

Churches are notorious for change failing.

Why quit having a class when no one comes? Because someone’s grandmother started that ministry 35 years ago. Why add drums or change how worship is done? Why bring in lights or projectors? Why should we change how we do discipleship since the way it is happening right now is not developing leaders or disciples? Because we’ve always done it this way. 

Going right along with this is a failure on the part of pastors and leaders to engage change well.

In his book Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, Carmine Gallo makes this comment:

People don’t know what they want and, if they do, they have a hard time articulating what they truly desire.

The average person, when you ask them if they prefer A or B, they don’t know what they would prefer. They only know what they have experienced.

If your church only does Sunday School and you begin exploring small groups, people who have never experienced them will be resistant. Especially because pastors don’t know how to ask. They ask if “they would go to a home group?” “NO” is the resounding answer.

When a church begins exploring a second service, all people can think of is what they lose if the church goes to 2 services and how it will change their life and bring them a different experience.

Churches exploring multi-site and video preaching run into the same thing. People in your church only have one lens to look through, what they know and have experienced. 

A better way to change something is to ask:

  • Would you be open to trying a small group in a house?
  • Would you be open to going to an earlier service so we can open up seats for guests?
  • Would you be open to attending a church plant we send out?
  • Would you be open to trying a church with video preaching?

Now, when they say no and someone will, you are having a different conversation. Now you are talking about vision and buy in. Now you are talking about idols, resistance to change, what their fears are to new things. You also have an opportunity to help a person wrestle through what they don’t know and helping them see that they don’t know something. This is a great opportunity to shepherd someone into new things and help lead them.

Leaders, we need to learn how to ask better questions.

Four years into the life of Revolution Church we changed from meeting on Saturday nights in a church building to Sunday morning in a school. We had to raise $50,000 to go portable, set everything up and tear it all down and we changed days and times. There was some resistance. But we asked people if they would be open to trying it. Most everyone said they would try it. Same when we transitioned from semester small groups that met for 12 weeks to moving our church to being on mission in missional communities.

Leader, as you lead change, ask better questions to move your people and your church forward.

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The Five Stages of Discipleship

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This diagram was found in Discipleshift: Five Steps that Help Your Church to Make Disciples who Make Disciples by Jim Putnam.

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Here are some ways to know where people in your church or people you are discipling are in the process by what they say or how they live:

Spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1 – 5):

  • I don’t believe there’s a God.
  • The bible is just a bunch of myths.
  • Religion is a crutch for the weak.
  • Christians are just intolerant and homophobic people.
  • There are many ways a person can get to God.
  • I don’t believe in hell.
  • I’ve been a good person, so when I die, everything will be okay.
  • There is not absolute right or wrong.

Infant (1 Peter 2:2 – 3):

  • I need to go to church regularly? I’ve never heard that before.
  • I need to pray and regularly read my Bible? I don’t know how.
  • I didn’t know the Bible said that.
  • Tithing? What’s that?
  • I don’t need anyone else. It’s just me and Jesus.
  • I need someone to regularly care for me.
  • I know Jesus is God, but isn’t karma real too?
  • I just got baptized, but still have problems in my life. I thought Jesus was supposed to take care of all my problems.

Children (1 John 2:12):

  • I don’t know if this church is meeting my needs anymore.
  • Don’t branch my missional community into two. We won’t get to be with our friends.
  • Who are all the new people coming into our church? The church is getting too big.
  • Why we have to learn new songs?
  • I didn’t like the music today.
  • No one ever says hi to me at church. No one ever calls me to see how I’m doing. No one spends time with me.
  • My missional community is not taking care of my needs like they should.
  • I wasn’t fed at all by that sermon today.
  • Why don’t we have a ministry for ____________ (women, men, singles, senior adults, divorced, widowed).
  • I’d serve, but no one has asked me.

Young Adult (1 John 2:13 – 14):

  • In my devotions, I came across something I have a question about.
  • I really want to go to Uganda on a mission trip this summer.
  • I love serving. I can see how God has gifted me and is using me.
  • I have 3 friends I’ve been witnessing to, and our missional community is too big for them, can we start a new one?
  • Someone missed our missional community, so I called them to see if they were okay.
  • Look at how many are at church today – it’s awesome.

Parent (2 Timothy 2:1 – 2):

  • I wonder if God is leading me to invest in Bill and help him mature in his faith.
  • I want to help this guy at work. He asked me to explain the Bible to him. Pray for me as I spend time in the Word with him.
  • We get to baptize someone in our missional community today.
  • Our missional community is going on a mission trip. I am praying for God’s wisdom as I give each person a different responsibility to help them grow.
  • The most important discipleship is with my children.
  • I want to be conscious of the influence of my words and actions around others.
  • There is someone in my missional community I’ve been disciplining who is ready to lead their own missional community.

The amazing thing in the list is how many people in most churches are not anywhere close to mature.

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4 Ways to Maintain Community

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community

There is no doubt that our culture desires community. This is why Facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest and other social media sites are so popular. We even put social in the name to emphasize how much we want community from them. The problem is that these sites bring connectivity to our lives, but not community. Those aren’t always equal. It is deceptive to the point that people think because they are connected and have 1,000 facebook friends, lots of twitter followers or instagram likes, they have community. They have connection, not necessarily community.

In Ephesians, Paul lays out what the church in Ephesus knew in their heads, but struggled to know and live out in their hearts. We easily do this with community. We know what it takes to have community, know we should have community, yet we struggle to live that out. Paul gives us 4 ways to maintain unity in relationships, whether that is a church, a missional community, a marriage or family. The interesting thing he says is not to create unity, simply maintain it (Eph. 4:3). It is given to us by Jesus through our relationship in him.

Because of this change in our lives, finding our identity in Jesus alone (Eph. 4:1), we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to maintain unity through:

  1. Humility. This is the basis of the Christian life. To follow Jesus, one must humble themselves and admit they are broken and that without Jesus, they continue this way. Relationships are destroyed because of pride. Pride elevates one person over another, elevates one agenda over another. Keeps people from serving each other. Pride keeps people from receiving help when needed. I can’t tell you how many times people have complained about their struggles and when I ask who they’ve asked for help from, they say “no one.” Pride.
  2. Gentleness. This is being caring in a relationship. Not berating someone, not bringing up history in a relationship, not reminding someone what they’ve done wrong in the past. This is caring for the other person, seeking their best, not yours. This gets into how you speak to someone. If you say something and immediately have to say, “I was just kidding” that’s sin. You weren’t kidding, there’s some truth in that statement.
  3. Patience. Community will require patience. People will let you down, intrude in your life. You can’t have a relationship and always get your way. I meet so many people who are alone and the reason is because they aren’t willing to give up what they want. Patience also requires you to allow people to grow and change. If Jesus is the basis of our relationships, then we believe He is powerful enough to not only save us and those we’re in community with, but also powerful enough to change them. Stop trying to change those around you, let Jesus do that through you.
  4. Love. Biblical love is not an emotion first. In our culture that’s all love is. This is why people tell me right before they sin, “You can’t choose who you love.” Biblically, you can. Love is an act of the will (a choice), followed by an emotion. One author said, “To love means you start loving a person and on the way to loving that person, you begin to feel that love.”

While these 4 things are incredibly basic and all of us know them. They are difficult to live out. If they are lived out, the gospel is seen clearly. Community is one of the most powerful pictures of the gospel because people in our culture do not stay in relationships long. Lasting in relationship, often is one of the best ways to show the gospel has a changed a group of people.

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Before You Criticize Your Pastor

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pastor

The longer I’m a pastor I’ve realized something about churched people. When I say a churched person, I mean someone who has been attending church for any length of time and is a follower of Jesus (pretty broad definition). Many people in this category, while they love their church and want to see God do incredible things in their city, they also have the idea that they are smarter than their pastor or at least could do his job better than he’s doing it.

Now, they may be smarter than their pastor. There are lots of people at Revolution more educated than I am and smarter in a variety of disciplines than I am. There are people who may be able to do my job better than I can, but aren’t called to it.

I’ve written about criticism and how to handle it as a leader in other posts that you can read here and here. What I want to focus on here is before you criticize your pastor,

Here are some questions you should ask yourself before criticizing your pastor (or anyone):

8 questions to ask before criticizing your pastor.

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  1. Why does this matter? At the end of the day, some of the things that bother us simply are not that important. In marriage, your spouse does all kinds of things that drive you nuts (Katie doesn’t do anything that drives me nuts but I’ve heard other people complain about their spouses). Sometimes it isn’t that big of a deal. It might be a situation where you just need to let it go.
  2. What do I hope to gain from this? What is the end result? Do you hope your pastor will say you are right and they are wrong? Do you hope to help your pastor grow or simply point out his faults? Do you want any recognition in this process?
  3. How would you feel if you didn’t criticize your pastor? What if you didn’t say anything? How would that affect your heart? Would it drive you nuts or would you forget about it?
  4. What if nothing changes? This gets to the heart for many, what if your pastor doesn’t do anything with what you say? What if they disagree with you and tell you nothing will change? How will handle that? Your answer to this question will reveal a lot of your heart and if there is sin there.
  5. Is your criticism actually from the Bible? Pastors hear all kinds of things they are doing wrong or that their church can do better. Most of the time those criticisms simply come from people who would rather things were done differently. Is your problem actually in the Bible? Is your pastor sinning?
  6. Have you talked to anyone else? If you have, you’ve already sinned and you need to repent to God and to your pastor. Don’t bounce it off someone else, don’t do a veiled prayer request.
  7. Is this consistent with my pastor’s character? Could he have just been having an off day? Many times criticism comes from things that are not who your pastor is. If your pastor consistently does the thing or sin that you see, then talk with them. It may just be that something is going on in your pastor’s life that is tough, he maybe didn’t mean anything by what he said or you may have misheard him.
  8. Am I jealous of my pastor? Maybe you want his job, the upfront attention he gets. Many people think being a pastor is easy, glamorous and fun. At times, it can be those things, but it is usually hard work. Often, criticism comes from a place of jealousy, either for their pastors job, attention, status, relationship with God, or marriage. When I meet with someone who is upset at me or Revolution, half of the meeting will be the person venting about their spouse or another area of their life that they are taking out on me or our church.
8 questions to ask before criticizing your pastor.

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At the end of the day, disagreeing with your pastor is okay. Pushing back on something you think is a sin, wrong or don’t like is okay. The problem is in how it is often done. In veiled prayer requests at a missional community, a blog post, gossiping without talking to the source. Sometimes though, you need to not say anything. Sometimes it isn’t a big deal. Sometimes you need to give your pastor the feedback you are holding on to.

You also need to be prepared for your pastor to disagree with you and do nothing about it. This is when the heart issues will pop up for you. What if you believe something is wrong or should change and your pastor does nothing with it? If it is a sin, you should talk to other elders, but let your pastor know that you think this should happen. If it isn’t a sin but is just a difference in theology or how things are done at the church, if it is a big deal for you, you should leave and find another church. Here are some things to work through and keep in mind if it gets to that point.

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Kids Take Their Cues from their Parents

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kids

I’m often asked how to change a child. How do you make a child follow Jesus? How do you make a teenager make better choices?

There are a few realities of parenting I’ve learned. One is, you can’t change a child or a teenager. The Holy Spirit can. I’ve talked before about how you need to be praying for your child, but there is something you can do beyond that.

What is important to you often becomes what is important to your child. Think about it, there is a good chance you have a hobby because one of your parents had a hobby. Maybe you like working on cars because you used to do that with them. You might like camping or hiking because they did.

What is important to you often becomes important to your child. Choose wisely.

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In our house, our kids have a deep love for music, for nature, sports in general and the Steelers. Why? Because Katie and I love those things. We pass on what we love.

The reality of parenting is that if our kids are not growing in their love for Jesus, the first place we need to look is our own lives. It isn’t the church’s fault, it isn’t our kid’s fault, the fault often lies with us. If Jesus isn’t important to us, why should we expect it to be to our kids? They pick their cues up from us.

I remember talking with two dads a few years ago who each had teenage kids. One of the dad’s was lamenting that their kids were seniors in high school and wanted nothing to do with church or God. The other dad looked at him and said, “How can you be surprised? You’ve spent the last 6 years skipping church and missional community for basketball and soccer. You’ve taken your kids all over the state for competitions. You’ve spent 6 years telling them that sports are more important than God, they are just doing what you taught them.”

Those words have stuck with me; they are just doing what you taught them. Our kids do what we teach them. They pick up their cues from us. If we tell them something is more important than church, reading your bible, praying, giving, attending a missional community, they will learn that lesson.

Here’s the question to wrestle with:

  1. Are your kids growing in their love for Jesus?
  2. If your kids left home right now, would they be reading their bible?
  3. Would they look to join a missional community or do they not know how important biblical community is?
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Preaching to Believers & Seekers

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preaching

I got asked last week and I’ve been asked this by leaders from time to time, but the question goes like this, “How do you preach to believers and seekers?”

This question begins with what I believe is false thinking, that believers and seekers have different needs.

I want to be clear, believers and seekers are in different places on their spiritual journey. A person who walks into a church who has been walking with Jesus for 30 years compared to someone who has walked in for the first time, are in different places. They ask different questions. They’ll even tell you they have different needs. But in reality, they are looking and asking the same thing, just in different ways.

Those who do not yet follow Jesus are asking, “How can I save my marriage? Communicate with my teenager? Get my finances in order? Find happiness in life?” They may even be asking deeper philosophical questions like, “Why did God allow that to happen in my life? Is God real or is this just a cosmic accident?”

Those who are followers of Jesus are asking, “How do I grow in my relationship with Jesus? How do I pray? Read my Bible?” They are also asking, “How can I save my marriage? Communicate with my teenager? Get my finances in order? Find happiness in life?” They may even be asking deeper philosophical questions like, “Why did God allow that to happen in my life? Is God real or is this just a cosmic accident?”

Each person who walks into a church on the weekend or a missional community during the week wants to know if John 10:10b is true. Does Jesus promise life? What is this life? How do I get it?

Now to be clear, no one has ever walked up to me and asked this question, but underneath the questions people ask, the prayer requests people list, the hurt in their eyes as we pray over them at Revolution, they want to know this. Is there life? How do I get it?

In the end, believers and seekers are asking the same thing, they are asking a gospel question.

This is one of the reasons I love preaching through books of the Bible. Every single week I will have multiple conversations that start like this, “how did you know that was exactly what I needed to hear” or “how did you know I was wrestling with that this week?” The funny thing about that is we plan our sermons 12 months in advance.

Now, when you preach to each of these groups, you will have to do some things differently. Believers will give you the benefit of the doubt. Often if you say something is in the Bible, they’ll believe. Seekers are more skeptical. They want to know why they should trust you, believe you. They often think you have something up your sleeve, like you are selling them a bill of goods.

This is another advantage to preaching through books of the Bible. You simply preach the next line in the book, the next verse, the next topic. They are able to open the Bible and see where you are, that you aren’t making it up.

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Time Management Through a Strategic Lens

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time management

I was talking with another leader today about how to use your time as a leader. As a pastor, there is a lot to get done. People to meet with, sermons to write and preach, growing as a leader, developing leaders, counseling, walking with others. Throw in being married, a parent and the list continues to grow.

The same can be said about any job. There typically is more to do than time to do it in.

The question then becomes, “What do you do? How do you decide what you do?”

The answer to this question determines a lot about your effectiveness as a leader, spouse, parent, friend.

Typically, we do what is urgent or is a need. For many pastors, they meet with the people who are the loudest, the ones who are clamoring for attention. They might also meet with the ones who ask the most or people they want to keep happy.

As a leader, you need to continually ask yourself a series of questions about how you spend your time:

  1. What do I do that adds the most value to my church or organization?
  2. What uses my gifts and talents to their fullest extent?
  3. What do I love to do that energizes me?
  4. What can’t I give away?
  5. When am I most alert, creative, awake to do those things?
5 questions to use your time wisely

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For me, the elders have determined that I add the most value to Revolution through preaching and then developing leaders (through the staff and missional communities), and connecting with new people. There are others leaders at Revolution who fill in gaps in other areas.

This means, I need to block out time for my sermon prep. I need to make sure it gets prime time for when my mind is alert, I’m creative and can get some quiet. For me, that is Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. I’m most awake in the morning. I can clear my calendar in the mornings, etc. This means I don’t check my email until lunch on those days. I stay away from breakfast meetings on those days (unless I need to schedule one).

Think in terms of percentage, not hours. This is a helpful idea for me. If you think about something you do, you might think, “I only spent 5 hours on it this week.” That might be true, but if you worked a 45-50 hour work week, that means you spent 9% of your week on that one thing. Was that strategic? The best use of your time? Was that a good way to use almost 10% of your week? I don’t know the answer to that. But thinking in terms of percentage of time instead of hours has been a helpful change for me.

Needs are real and will always be there. Some needs can wait, most needs are not as pressing as they first seem. Someone else may be able to meet the need in your place, and may do a better job than you at meeting that need.

I keep coming back to how can I be more strategic, how can I use my time to get the most value for the kingdom out of it, how can I steward my time well.

How to be more strategic in how you spend your time

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