Blew Me Away

Based on Proverbs 7:10-23 from NewSpring Media on Vimeo.

This blew me away. (ht)  It’s based on Proverbs 7:10-23

Church Unique – Book Review

Summary: Church Unique by Will Mancini is a comprehensive book on creating a mission oriented church that clearly understands where it is going and how it is creating a unique impression that only it can offer.  Mancini has crafted a process for looking deep into the nuts and bolts of mission, vision, values and communication and making that real in the church.

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In a world of cookie cutter models of church that invite us to follow the next guy, just because it’s working over there, Church Unique offers a process for church leaders that carries them through a unique path to creating God’s unique expression for each church.  For this reason alone, every church pastor should pick up and read this book.  It is a clarion call to discover the harder path that allow each church to resonate in a distinct way.

The book is broken up into four sections that all deal with vision: Recasting Vision, Clarifying Vision, Articulating Vision, and Advancing Vision.  Each section offers a detailed understanding of Mancini’s process for creating this unique expression.  My favorite section was Mancini’s concept of “Thinkholes”.  This section alone was worth the price of the book (my copy was a gift by Auxano but I wanted to read it).

Mancini offers a quote that resonated with me for days and one of the central reasons for discovering the Unique DNA of each church.  He says,

“The dramatic irony is that what happens at the conference is the exact opposite of what propelled the host church to be effective in the first place.  Each of these leaders endured a process of self-understanding and original thinking that helped in articulating a stunningly unique model of ministry.”

That is brilliant my friends.  It is essentially the trial and error process, hard work, and resolve around a unique expression imparted by God that makes churches grow.  And those leaders/pastors willing to take that risk usually end up on the stage.

The rest of the book identifies Auxano’s process for helping churches discover their own Unique expression.  These include: Discovering your kingdom concept, Developing your vision frame, and delivering your vision daily.

Mancini’s process is dense and would obviously benefit from Auxano’s help through the process.  I have a background in marketing, communications and business in Silicon Valley and I found I had to set the book down at times to chew on what was said.

There will be those who would easily bash the book for it’s emphasis on the business structure it proposes.  But I would suggest that any church needs to understand it’s own unique expression, the vision and mission it wishes to follow and how to communicate that effectively.  Mancini offers a “unique” process for discovering that.

The Funniest Thing I Heard Today Was

“I’m objective about myself.”

NT Wright On Emerging

I sincerely appreciate what he says at the end of the video.  Truly emerging means going through the shipwreck period that so many of us want to avoid. (ht)

Engaging Reconciliation

Tracy wrote a great blog post over at Thrive on engaging reconciliation through the Thrive process of clearings.  Read it here.

Transform Your Christmas…Give Well

What if you could transform Christmas? Would you?

As Christmas approaches many of us are asking the same questions. We’re no longer interested in the idea of buying for the sake of buying. We’re interested in discovering the redemptive meaning of Christmas.  Are our relationships deepening?  Are we stepping into what it means to love  our neighbor in a restorative way?  Are we giving of ourselves in a way that truly has value?

Americans spend an average of $450 billion on Christmas. That’s 1,485 dollars for every man, woman, and child in America.  And yet are we really experiencing the original meaning of Christmas?  To solve the world’s clean water problem would require only $10 billion dollars.  What that means is the problem is not only solvable, it’s easily within our reach.

We would like to extend an invitation to participate with us this year in transforming Christmas from purchasing and getting to really giving.  Our goal is simple: To transform Christmas by gathering families together and sacrificially purchasing as many wells as we can.

We’re working with Advent Conspiracy and Samaritan’s Purse, an organization that has a long history of working with the poor and oppressed in the world. A well costs about $800 to repair or retrofit.  That’s less than the average spending per American to transform the life of a village. It costs about $2,500 to rehabilitate a non-working well and about $15,000 to drill a large well that serves a large village.

And we’re not asking you to just write a check on top of everything.  We’re asking you to consider working with us as a way of stepping into the deeper meaning of Christmas, a day when love entered the world in a profound way.  We’re asking you to consider giving sacrificially in place of the traditional mad rush of gift giving we typically do.

We’ve also created a brochure to understand what we’re doing, invite friends to participate, dream bigger, and help transform the meaning of Christmas.

Donwload it here.

If you do participate with us, feel free to steal the bug on the right or the banner from this post to spread the word.

Your Sunday Experience

If you participated in some type of community today, how would you describe how you felt during the experience?  And if you didn’t, how would you describe how you felt during that experience?

If you participated before you can see all the responses here.

Overheard In A Coffee Shop

“Maturity is growing into the awareness of our ignorance.”

God’s Creativity

I never ceased to be amazed at the creatitivity, simplicity and elegance with which God designs the universe and the world we live in.

The Matrix on Windows

As a life long Mac guy, I have never owned or had to use a PC.  And I love when stuff comes out like this.  It’s just plain funny.

The Missional Transition Into Chaos

I’m reading Will Mancini’s book Church Unique and he has a very interesting history on the transition from church growth movement to a more missional movement.  Very interesting stuff so far.

But his comments got me thinking.  The former’s intent, which is based in a modern approach, was bent towards “getting people converted and into heaven.”  It was simple, concrete, straightforward, and could be broken down into steps.  These steps eventually became the basis of a very defined “sinner’s prayer”.  The specific contents of that prayer may have varied in different circles but the intent was the same.  The focus was on a specific moment of belief.  It focused on attracting people in and leading them to one specific action.  The rest of the spiritual formation process leading to maturity unfortunately became secondary and to a large extent got lost in the last fifteen to twenty years.

The missional approach has a much different intent. It’s focused on engaging the Missio Dei and is geared toward restoration and reconciliation. It’s not simple, or concrete, nor straightforward.  It’s chaotic, squishy, oriented towards relationship, engaged in the practice of following Jesus, and is both inward and outward in its activity.  It’s specific “act” is following Jesus, which can be defined but not in the same way as the sinner’s prayer.  Instead it focuses on constant activity that is restorative, engaged in the world, surrounded by community, and focuses on love and trust.

This shift into the chaotic and uncontrolled is hard for people.  The large shift towards missional is interesting for people.  They know they want it but they don’t know yet “how” to engage it.  The parameters have yet to be set and people are still trying to figure it out.  And yet to engage the chaos is to encounter peace that surpasses the chaos.  It just takes a little while to get there.

As a side note, what is interesting to me, in reading some of Generation We, the current millenials were raised in this chaos.  They are used to it as a way of life.  And this is creating an awkward transition.

Where do you find yourself in the transition?

A Church Quiz

Please let me know in the comments how you did.

1. I would rather go to a church that:

(A) Had great worship

(B) There was love.

2. I would rather go to a small group that:

A: Had cool people.

B: There was love.

3. I would rather participate in community that:

(A) Had lots of programs

(B) There was love.

4. I would rather attend a function that:

(A) Was hip and entertaining

(B) There was love.

5. I would rather be lead by:

(A) A really smart person.

(B) Someone who loved.

Sound off

Restoration Observations

At first glance this is likely going to seem like a really strange post but I promise you it’s actually an observation on restoration of the human soul.

Recently my son was playing some games on the web.  I decided to join him and found this game called Death Row.  The name immediately intrigued me and so I clicked on it to play.  The purpose of the game is to “reform” the prisoner, discover clues to his innocence and get him pardoned before he is executed, all within fourteen game days.  To successfully accomplish the mission you have to reform the prisoner by increasing his health, mood, respect, and worth ethic, which is no small feat.  Accomplish the mission quickly and your score goes up.

The prisoner begins the game very angry.  He’s been hardened to the point of rage and lets you know it immediately.  He is no one’s friend. In order to find the hidden clues you have to purchase items (rug, desk, linen, computer, etc) that fill out the cell.  To make money, you send him to work, trying different jobs in order to find the one he likes.  When you do he makes works harder.  To make money faster, you have to increase his work ethic.

What I found interesting in playing the game several times was the pattern that emerged in reforming the prisoner.  First I had to increase his health by feeding him well.  As silly as this seems it made a big difference.  Then I had to buy a toilet, sink for hot water and then a mirror.  Once this is accomplished, I could have him look at his image in the mirror and his work ethic and mood went up incrementally.  Once his work ethic was at a sufficient level, he worked harder.  And this allowed him to make money faster, which then allowed me to buy more stuff faster and win the game.

It was really interesting to me that the makers of the game understood the basic role that our dignity and self-image plays in our own restoration.  When the prisoner looked at his own image in the mirror and his health was low he hated himself and his mood and his respect for me went down.  During one game, I irritated him mercilessly, dropping his respect for me to zero.  He hung himself in despair and the game was over.  But when I helped him take care of his basic human dignity he improved dramatically.

What was also surprising to me was outside of food, the other functional objects in the room made little difference in improving his work ethic.  Items like a blanket or television set did little other than affect his mood.  In other words, stuff didn’t really matter in his restoration.

Once I had accumulated enough money I could purchase a computer for his cell.  Again the makers of the game seemed to understand the basic role of dignity in our humanity.  The computer allowed the prisoner to take an online course in law, economics and computer design.  Each of these skills dramatically increased his work ethic at exponential levels.  In other words, when he could participate in his own restoration he reformed at unprecedented levels.

My total score was how reformed he was based on the four categories.  In other words, I to score really well I had to affect the whole person.  I couldn’t just focus on one category and leave the rest.  I had to restore all of him.

I say all of this because in Thrive, understanding the role of dignity and the whole person was huge for us.  It was central to understanding the love was the restoring or holding of the person’s dignity, which was established by God in the act of creation. It wasn’t something ooey-gooey or codepently sticky sweet.  It was in fact deeply courageous and restorative. And as human beings we aren’t just a body, or mind, or a soul.  We’re all three.  We can’t just fill people up with information and assume we had done our job.  We had to create a space that allowed people to work through stuff and deal with not just what they thought but how they felt.

How often do we assume that following Jesus is simply about memorizing the right verses or serving on the right committees?  Jesus came to heal, not to create some religious program that led to boredom, yet how much of what we do leads to the latter?

A Pastor Abandons His Church

Posted an interesting article that I posted over at Emergent Village. It’s called “Pastor Abandons His Church.”  Love to get your thought on it over there.

Your Sunday Experience

If you participated before you can see all the responses here.

If you participated in some type of community today, how would you describe how you felt during the experience?  And if you didn’t, whow would you describe how you felt during that experience?

As a side note, I am realizing over the last eight posts we’ve been doing this that so much happens in these communities we meet with.  There is so much passion, drama, contemplation, frustration and weeping that happens when we meet together.

A Must Watch

Generation WE: The Movement Begins… from Generation We (ht)

See it as it happens. BTW, Read Bill Kinnon’s take.  It’s important.

Straight From The Horses Mouth

“You cannot hear (revelation) without heading it.” Peter Rollins (ht)

I think one of the great lies festering within the church is that hearing is enough.  We can easily leave people with the impression that you can hear the Gospel and that is enough.  We don’t communicate well that it is the the fruit (heading) that is always the evidence of that hearing.  One proves out the other.  But we don’t always tell people that.

52 to the 48

I wish I had thought of this idea.  It’s things like this that make me realize we can work together. (ht)

Javaluia

I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a while. (ht)

The Tangible Kingdom – Book Review

Summary: The Tangible Kingdom, Creating Incarnational Community, by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay is a great starter book for those looking to create the initial framework for a missional type community that goes beyond the walls of traditional Sunday church.

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The Tangible Kingdom begins with a rather compelling story of Hugh finding his own transition out of traditional church and into a more missional approach.  He engages what many would call an epiphany moment of being Jesus to the least of these.  Hugh recounts meeting Fiona and the rest of a late night crew in a Irish Pub and realizing that it takes love to reach people.

This beginning captures me right from the start.  Hugh’s own journey out of traditional community and into what it looked like to start his own “incarnational” community took time and patience.  The book will serve as a practical reminder of not just the tangible expressions of this type of community but also the emotional roller coaster that those who attempt it will encounter.  But Hugh makes it very clear that it was definitely worth the ride.

Most of the book is Hugh’s journey in starting Adullum. Adullum appears to be an emerging community that is really taking to heart what it means to be missional in a community. Matt is referenced but seems to contribute only the questions at the end of the chapter.  Hugh has some great conversations about what it means to be missional that serve as great starting points to reaching out to those in your community.  His ideas on “posture” and “missionary as advocate” should be Reading 101.

Hugh makes it very clear right from the beginning that he is confrontational in style.  His critique of Christendom is well founded but will, as even he admits, rub many the wrong way.  If you let this get in the way of the book, you’ll be missing some real juicy stuff.

The one critique I have of the book is the lack of perspective on discipleship.  Hugh does little to let us in on how he is helping people follow in the the footsteps of Jesus in a smaller context.  But, many would rightly argue that just created an incarnational community as a church context is a great start.  My hope is that Hugh would address this in future books.  And let me be clear that this in no way a knock on the book.

The target of this book, which was published by The Leadership Network is clearly pastors. Hugh and Matt are talking about a model for churches.  But I would offer that those who are leading small groups or communities could learn just as much from the book.