Are positive feelings the only evidence of an experience or encounter with God? Is it equally possible that feelings stemming from conviction or rebuke could be of equal evidence of such an encounter? Interestingly, throughout Scripture the common feeling or expression from someone who had a personal experience with God or an angel was fear. Maybe we are missing out on identifying what God is doing (in our lives and in our churches) because we have limited the spectrum in which we understand how God operates. I think there are times when our “encounters with God” may be awkward, inconvenient, convicting, etc ., yet I think they are equally profound and holy moments.

Have we simplified theology in the Evangelical Church so much that we have settled for a cereal box version of God that robs Him of His mystery and transcendence?

Are the things we normally see as limitations, gifts instead?

We are culturally trained to believe that our limitations (the things we are not talented at) are liabilities, but what if we have the wrong perspective? What if we viewed the fact that we may not be the most gifted musician, singer, writer, speaker, counselor, painter, techy, or administrator as a gift from God instead of a liability? What if we celebrated our limitations instead of lamenting them? And if we thought this way, maybe would we learn something about our God given need for others and therefore community.

God has not simply gifted us with what we are good at, but He has also gifted us through our limitations. We will never be able to experience the gifting of others until we embrace our limitations and the need for them in our lives.

Why is Church discipline rarely practiced?

• Is it because there is a general fear of conflict in our society and so the belief that “ignorance is bliss” prevails?
• Is it because of legal fears?
• Is it because we are so entrenched in individualism that the idea that the community would have anything, or any right, to speak into someone’s life is seen as absurd?
• Is it because we are unaware of when and how to do it biblically?
• Is it because we are afraid that if we speak into someone else’s life, they might look and speak into ours?

I am not sure of the full answer but think that all of these sub-questions are part of the reason. Whatever the direct cause, the sheer lack of its occurrence is symptomatic of something greater in our often misunderstood and dysfunctional concept of community. I am not proposing that Church discipline should be a flippant occurrence, but its dramatic silence in our contemporary Church deafeningly communicates something.

I’ll end this post with a quote from the classic, The Reformed Pastor, by Richard Baxter written in the seventeenth century. Baxter was convinced that pastors should…

…set themselves, without delay, and unanimously so, to practice Church Discipline. For it is a sad situation that so great a duty is so often neglected.

How does teamwork play out in a staff at a church? Does it matter?

This question stems from a post my friend Brad did yesterday on his blog and thought I would address my thoughts on it. If you get a chance give his post a read, he does a great job with expressing the issue.

Brad hypothetical example, which you can read in his entry, illustrates the issue that teamwork seems to be a fading virtue in our individual culture and in the church. That being said, teamwork, in my opinion, doesn’t mean everyone works for the senior leader as his minions, ignoring their own thoughts, gifts, passion and goals. Instead, teamwork is about working together using those gifts and passions in pursuit of the communal vision. This effectively means three things. First, the vision must be a communal vision rather then an individuals vision. Healthy vision is not the vision of one person, such as the Lead Pastor, who tells the church and staff “where they are going” and “how they are going to get there.” Vision is more communal and corporate then this. This doesn’t diminish the role of the senior leader; in fact, it charges it and makes it more challenging as they lead the church through the vision process and a community. Second, as Brad identified, there will be times when the team does not all agree with direction to this point where participation of the team is not possible or productive anymore. As such, some of the staff (paid and unpaid) may need to go and find a ministry that is a better fit (a process that could be done a lot healthier in churches everywhere, but that is a post for another day). Thirdly, the teamwork process requires several shared values to occur throughout the ENTIRE team: sacrifice, respect, humility, hard work, support, loyality, courage, etc..

I have seen the ugly-side of broken teams in various locations and it is never successful and always ugly. However, I have also seen, on rare occasions, the beauty of healthy teamwork as people have been lead with the values of sacrifice, respect, humility, hard work, support, loyalty, courage, etc. towards a goal they all viewed as important.

Teamwork is like a rare gem that is possible to find/build and more of them are needed in our broken world – a world that needs the church to be led with courage and boldness.