Let’s not panic about the “spiritual but not religious”

Posted on January 31, 2011 by admin

I just read this great article in which Larry Peers urges us to resist the urge to hit the  panic button everytime someone tells us that they are “spiritual, but not religious.” These are the people who tell us that they love God, but not the church. And when they tell us that, we can almost hear the next shoe dropping with “that’s why we are leaving the church.”

Here is my summary of the hope Peers offers:

  1. Some of the people who drop out of church will be back later on in life
  2. If we listen, we will often find that people’s complaints are tactical, and can be easily resolved.
  3. The deeper criticisms we hear serve us well when we use them to examine (really examine) whether our actions are living up to our ideals.
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Future Helps the Church

Posted on January 29, 2011 by admin

Patrick Dixon is a world-class futurist — one of the top 20 most influential business thinkers in the world. What he has to say about the future in this video should excite the church about our opportunities to impact the next generation.

While talking to school teachers and college instructors, Dixon proclaims that what everyone in the world wants more than anything else is successful relationships, and because they don’t see any modeled, most people have no idea of how to build a successful marriage, friendship, or parent-child relationship. Then he turns to a room filled with educators and asks, “Are you doing anything in your classrooms to help your students build successful relationships?”

For all my life, the church has bragged about promoting families. Yet, I get the sense that what we mean is “when you join our club, you’ll have to change your interests to something weird–families.” What most unchurched people hear us say about families is that we’re pushing an agenda on them that they’re not currently interested in.

I know a few churches approach family/relationship teaching as “here is the answer to your deepest longings.” In light of Dixon’s video, it makes sense that those churches are thriving.

I hope that more churches catch a vision for the tremendous evangelistic appeal in the Bible’s sound principles for relationship-building. Here is a message we believe in, here is a message most church folks practice, and here is a message the world is listening for.

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New resources for today’s struggles

Posted on January 27, 2011 by admin

Yesterday I had an inspiring visit with a new pastor friend about hope. We were both wondering if the Biblical sense of “hope” was not just assurance of heaven, but conviction about God’s activity on our behalf today.

My Bible reading this morning expanded that thought with a definition of hope from Ephesians 1:18:” I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (NIV).

Our hope is about something already given. Bible scholars have a tough time deciphering the last phrase about inheritance, but it seems to be something “rich” which gives us confidence. My guess is that Christian hope should at least include a confidence in the face of overwhelming odds, since we have the riches of an inheritance from God at our disposal.

In other words, hope means that I no longer tackle life’s setbacks with just my personal resources. Now God expects me to put all of heaven’s resources at work to solve, resolve or redeem life’s struggles.

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How far must love go?

Posted on January 27, 2011 by admin

In my devotions this morning, I read Ephesians 1:15: “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints” (NIV).

I was startled by the way “love” was qualified. It was not a love for Christians like me, or for those in my group, and certainly not for those Christians who agree with me. The love of the Ephesians was a love for all the saints.”

In chapter two, the author touches on how hard it was to get to that universal love. The Ephesian saints were originally split between those who came from a Jewish background, and those who did not. Yet, they had matured to where they loved across those theological, cultural, and ethnic divides.

The arresting question that came to me this morning is “does that mean my ‘love’ is not really love unless it is a universal love — a love for all the saints?”

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Teaching, Dancing, & Problem-Solving

Posted on January 18, 2011 by admin

Books I’m reading today:  The Online Teaching Guide by Ken W. White and Bob H. Weight, The People are Dancing Again: The History of the Siletz Tribe of Western Oregon by Charles Wilkinson, and Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton.

The Online Teaching Guide stresses the importance of making the online teaching environment a social environment. I’m supposed to keep the discussion board warm by using humor. Hmmm, have to see if I’m up for that one 😉 Oh, I’m also directed to use emoticons, like \\//_ (think Spock).  The chapters are short and helpful, which I think is modeling how my lecturettes should be.

Charles Wilkinson is an Anglo, asked by the tribe to write the history of the Siletz confederation of tribes. The basic outline of the book is 1) a long period of aboriginal normalcy, 2) promises by the American government followed immediately by 3) treachery by the American people followed eventually by 4) treachery and promise-breaking by the American government, ending with 5) restoration of dignity by forces outside and inside the tribe. One of the largest groups of the “Siletz” tribe comes from the Rogue River Valley, where I grew up, so this is interesting to me on several levels.

Pirate Latitudes includes several examples of solving problems by deciding to look at an unsolvable problem from an entirely different perspective. No one can capture the fortress by sea, so the hero thinks outside of the box and attacks it from land.

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Why Did Paul Write Romans?

Posted on January 12, 2011 by admin

For years, scholars have taught that Paul wrote Romans as his last and greatest theological exposition. In other words, the purpose was theological.

“Wait a minute” asks David A. DeSilva in An Introduction to the New Testament. Maybe Paul wrote Romans for the same kind of reasons he wrote his others letters: to respond to problems within churches and to strengthen his relationship with churches.

DeSilva  expresses the first goal for Romans  this way: “standing in awe of God will allow Jew and Gentile to worship together in one Body” (p. 599). He then suggests that the second goal might be “to overcome doubt about the virtue of the gospel so that the Roman Christians will accept him as a missionary worthy of their support” (p. 602).

Embracing a couple of situational goals doesn’t mean one has to disregard the fine theological argument of Romans. In fact, it shows how a good theological argument can be central to a pastoral appeal.

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Digital College

Posted on January 11, 2011 by admin

I’m in the second of eight weeks of training to be an online college instructor. Barclay College is starting an online bachelor’s program in Bible. Once I’m through with this training, I’ll be teaching classes online.

The first thing that surprised me was how intense the program is. Students (and, therefore, instructors) are required to log on to the discussion board five days every week. Some days they will post assignments; every day they should respond to the posts of other students.

Second, I am amazed with the vast number of powerful research tools that are available. Most of them are costly, and only available to students/profs, but some are free and accessible by everyone. The advanced search engines make Google look weak by comparison.

Third, I was startled to discover the geographical diversity of the little class I’m in. I think there are about six students living in Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, and Tennessee. Two of the students will spend the spring and summer in Brazil, where they’ll continue to take online classes/

Finally, I’m glad that Barclay is intentional about building a cyber community out of each of its classes. I haven’t been part of the system long enough to know how well it works, but they make a deliberate effort.

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Change while you can

Posted on January 4, 2011 by admin

The first part of Temporary Shepherds describes a prevalent problem for which Intentional Interim Ministry is a wonderful solution.

The problem: churches are slow to change, and slower to admit what change they undergo. This results in churches that are shunned by the American public as dinosaurs incapable of helping 21st people.

The solution: when churches are in between pastors, there is a short period of openness to change. A skilled and caring Interim Pastor can use this time to comfort the grieving church, resolve a few long-standing conflicts, and help the church re-vision itself for fresh ministry.

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Shepherds & Pirates

Posted on January 4, 2011 by admin

I started re-reading Temporary Shepherds by Roger S Nicholson today. From my quick survey, this book seems to be the pre-eminent text on Intentional Interim Ministry (if you know of a similar or better one, please let me know!).

I’m re-reading Temporary Shepherds with a red pen, so I can underline those parts most helpful to me in my consulting work with the Evangelical Church

Yesterday, I started reading Michael Crichton’s Pirate Latitudes. Its a novel about . . . (wait for it . . .) pirates. Crichton was famous (and rich) for writing sci-fi novels that educated and frightened all at the same time. He did not publish this pirate book while alive, but it was discovered as a complete novel upon his death. Instead of fearsome velociraptors (Jurasic Park), Pirate Latitudes gives you the creeps about life in the 17th century Caribbean.

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New Job!

Posted on January 1, 2011 by admin

I have a new part-time job. I’ve been hired as a consultant by the Pacific Conference of the Evangelical Church http://www.pacificecna.org/. They want me to develop a conference-wide Intentional Interim Ministry program for their conference of 50 churches. This is a part-time job, concluding with a presentation in late July. This concludes 5 months of unemployment.

“Intentional Interim Ministry” is relatively new form of pastoral ministry, which I learned and practiced the last two years. It is interim because the pastor is in between long-term pastors. Its intentional for two reasons: the pastor commits to staying for just 1 or 2 years, and the pastor & church agree to several short-term goals. Those goals usually include healing of relationships, modifying structure, and fine-tuning the church’s sense of purpose.

This job will be energizing, but short-term. Because it is about ¼ time, it allows me to continue with my plans to teach in Barclay College’s on-line program.

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