Something fun

I know I've been lacking in the posts recently and I've got some stuff brewing but as it simmers I figure this will hold your interest. I hope you enjoy! (Check out their other stuff, it's pretty much all great)

Intentionality

Perhaps one of the greatest pitfalls for churches today is a lack of intentionality.

As a husband I stumble into this pit often and as I slowly crawl out each time I wonder what it will take for me to learn my lesson. When I am striving to be the best husband possible I'm pretty amazing, ask my wife. Being intentional about showing my wife how much she means to me is one of the greatest gifts I can give her because when I am intentional about showing her that love is when the message is received most clearly. My own selfishness leads me to waste my Saturday afternoon on the couch watching the Top Chef marathon but only when I choose to be intentional about loving my wife do I make the decision to do the dishes, make the bed, or clean the office.

Churches and businesses work the same way. Many churches have an expectation that as long as they have singing, a sermon, and an offering they will grow. While growth should never be the end goal of a church when a church is healthy it will occur. But even healthy churches can forget to be intentional. Newcomers need to be greeted, the trash needs to be emptied, chairs need to be supplied when there are no seats, announcements that Sunday school classes will occur after service, or just as importantly where they will be held, and somebody needs to do something, anything with the "communication card" information. Sure, a few of these things will happen by a good volunteer or an observant staff person as the need arrives but it falls to the church leadership to instill these habits into the staff.

Only by purposefully laying down ground rules and demanding that staff greet guests and not friends, or by intentionally having a chair-team, will they happen consistently. And for consistent growth to occur these things must happen. We understand the importance of McDonald's intentionally demanding all staff members wash their hands when they come out of the bathroom, it is a matter of sanitation and health. Rarely do we realize that we could be doing worse damage unintentionally by not greeting those guests who are giving the church one last shot; it is a matter of spiritual health. As the global church we need to all do a better job of being intentional in reaching the lost, anything less is neglectful.

Confessions of a Church Snob #3

Subtitled- (Because some days one post just doesn't cut it).

Why do some churches make their service locations and times impossible to find? I'm researching various churches around the area because I would love to start visiting and meeting with the pastors just to get a feel for the church planting experiencing and I just visited one site where after looking for 4 minutes I swore to myself if I didn't find the info on the next link I clicked I was giving up. Fortunately the next link was a success but the info was tucked to the side of the page in a font color that blended with the background. While this is certainly a very nit-picky complaint, the internet has become the "front door" of the church. If a potential visitor can't find the your service time or location on your website the harsh truth is they likely won't come. It should be on the front page in a prominent place so there is no way a person could visit your site without knowing where and when you meet. Alas...

Confessions of a Church Snob #2

One of my (seemingly endless) church pet peeves seems to happen most often in what many would understand as "contemporary" churches. Any time that a pastor/ church leader/ worship person says any phrase similar to "this isn't like any church you've ever been in" (this is troubling for the too-be-mentioned reasons as well as the fact that it is bad form to end sentences with prepositions) or "this ain't your momma's church" (punctuation added for my own sanity... "Confessions of a Punctuation Snob" to follow), it makes my jaw clench. I have this reaction for two reason: 1) I have spent the last twenty years of my life in churches just like those and 2) those statements imply that the church is focused on being different for difference's sake and not on being different to engage the culture.

I was listening to a podcast from a pastor tonight who used one of the aforementioned statements and as always it led to cringing. While reflecting on how distasteful I find the whole mentality I realized that I may be guilty of the very same thing. See, in seminary I feel like I am constantly having to apologize for my church background and what I understand the mission of the church to be. I often feel that my view of the church is radical by comparison to that of some of my instructors or peers but I think that the impression that apologizing gives is that I believe my views are somehow sub-par, or that I feel that way about their perspectives. That certainly is not the case. I, like any pastor-in-training, simply aspire to plant a church that is going to have the greatest impact in my community and like every church planter ever, I believe that one model is better suited for where and when I am. If that ever changes I hope I will have the strength and the foresight to change direction to a model that works better.

Another pet peeve of mine is poor vision-casting. That same podcast was given the weekend after Thanksgiving and the pastor thought that was the best time to share the vision for the upcoming year. During the message he pointedly admits that only the hardcore church members are there. What I cannot understand is why those are the only people he feels need to hear the vision. The vision for the church is the driving force: it is what defines where the church is going and to what end. Many pastors talk at length about the importance of the vision, that the vision needs to be presented to the people every week in some dynamic way. The Bible even says that where there is no vision the people will perish. I do not understand why a pastor would think to hide such an important element on a Sunday when he knows not many people will show up. If the only people seeking the vision are the twenty who showed up that Sunday your whole church body will not be moving in unison. I just don't get it.