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.

How and why has the role of pastor changed?

This question could go in a variety of different directions, so I thought I would start by asking some further questions (feel free to explore more through related posts, comments and emails):

1. How has the recent trend of multi-site churches affected or will affect the role of pastor in these churches?
2. Because the church has shifted over the last 25 years or so to larger congregations, how has this change affected the role of pastor?
3. How has the transition to more multi-staff churches with more specialized roles (in comparison to the past that saw smaller church congregations with a more general role of the Pastor) affected the role of pastor?
4. How has the media and internet affected the perception of the pastor? It is a unique phenomena in the history of the church that the average person in the pew compares (consciously or unconsciously) their pastor with the best preachers, leaders, administrators and counselors in the world?
5. How has pastoral specializations based on age/genre affected how we understand the role of pastor (youth, children’s, women’s, young adult, etc.)?
6. Has the church modeled much of its ministry and the role of pastor after the business world – where more and more pastors see the metaphor of their role as CEO rather than shepherd? Is this problematic?
7. Has the change of roles affected the contemplative nature of pastors – where there seems to be more and more expectations and less and less time to devote to prayer and the study of Scripture? Is this a problem?
8. Has the growth of multiple paid-staffs contributed to the the decline of lay-leadership and ministry?
9. How has this change of role affected theological education?
10. Is what the Bible teaches on pastoral ministry supportive of these changes, contrary to them, or ambivalent to them?

I am not making any judgments or remarks on particular models of ministry. I am just fearful that we are not asking any of these and other questions. Any change we make to how we “do church” will have short-term and long-term affects. I think we are often guilty of making changes without proper and adaquate reflection. I also get the sense that many of my colleagues are asking these question and there seems to be inadequate answers for them, if any at all.

How should we define success in pastoral ministry?

This question begins a series of questions on the theme of pastoral ministry for this week. I am asking this particular question because sometimes we misunderstand success as we evaluate our ministry as pastors.

Here are some ways that we traditionally evaluate “success” in ministry?

1. Numbers – how many people are coming?
2. What are people tell us – comments after sermons, ministry events, etc.?
3. Length of pastoral ministry in a particular location?
4. Size of building?
5. Size of church budget?
6. Debt load?
7. Number of ministries?
8. Baptism and Membership numbers?

These are a sampling of ways we can define what “success” is in ministry. Any others that you can think of and the problems you can see with some or all of them?

Taken together, they are all important in overall evaluation but this traditional list is still lacking a dimension that we too easily ignore. This dimension is the subjective, less quantitative characteristics that are often neglected but are often what distinguishes healthy and successful churches. Therefore, I think we should evaluate our churches with the following questions (along side the traditional objective questions above)?

1. Do we have open arms that reflects the love for others that Jesus demonstrated?
2. Do we have good relationships among ourselves?
3. Do people know there spiritual gifts and are they using them?
4. Is it difficult to find and identify ministry leaders?
5. Do we have openness for disagreements and can we handle conflict with love and respect?
6. Do we, as a community, enjoy being together?
7. Does the average church member have good healthy relationships with people in the community who are unchurched?
8. Do our worship services have an element of excitement about them?
9. Do our pastors, elders and leadership get along and enjoy each other?
10. Do people participate in the worship service?
11. Does our budget reflect our values?
12. Do we know, and are we doing, something about the needs of our community?
13. Do we show a heart for missions and is it reflective in our actions?
14. Is laughter a common sound in our foyer, classrooms and sanctuary?
15. Is our teaching engaging, biblical, contextual, etc.
16. Are we compassionate to others? Do we mourn with those who mourn?
17. Are people’s lives being changed by the Spirit of God and do we, as a community, celebrate those changes.
18. If our church ceased to exist would our community notice? If not, why not?

I understand that these qualitative questions may seem idealistic and problematic, as they are difficult to track and report on, but don’t they reflect a deeper level of success than our traditional quantitative questions?