charlieDEAN’S Blog

At New Community tonight, Cal proclaim that THIS is a defining moment for our church (trust him on this one…some big changes are coming for the better), but before things change, we must consecrate ourselves to being used by God (Joshua 3:5).

He challenged us to have unwavering confidence in the WORD of God, to have an unapologetic sensitivity to the WHISPERS of God, and to have uncompromising integrity in our WALK with God.

This really lays the foundation for all the teaching at New Community this fall. In September we’ll be talking about the WORD, in October the WHISPERS, and in November our WALK.

And then…most likely in January, Cal will begin unpacking for the congregation his vision for the next 15 years at Northwoods!

Well, Jennifer and I are now the parents of school-aged children! Caleb started his first day of school this morning!

Couple of thoughts:

• Neither one of us cried — we were just too excited for him! It’s so good to see him growing up — he’s SOOO ready for this!
• We had a really cool moment Sunday night, where Jennifer, Gavin & I laid hands on him and prayed for him (Jaxon worked on spitting up carrots). It was fun the really pray as a family for something!
• Gavin’s going to have a hard time with his best friend/brother gone all day!

Q&A to start the session:
Reformation of the church is not a big enough dream, because God wants to change the world. And there are times in the history of the world, where God works more in the world than he does in the church.
“Hugely significant” book: David Bosch — Transforming Mission (1993)
Our job is not to create new things, but to make old things new.

“To talk about the church as family makes me nervous, because the goal of family is to take care of each other. So you have to be careful about this metaphor of family because it works against a missional mindset.”

MRI: Relational
“from propositional to relational”
The issue is NOT “do you have the right view of Scripture” but “are you in the right relationship with the Word of God.”

Christianity has a “weird” understanding of truth compared to the rest of the world. Every other religion has a view that truth is propositional (certain principles that you believe & practice). For Christianity, truth is supposed to be found in the relationship with Jesus Christ (”I am the way, the truth, the love”). (The truth is a person who calls us into relationship.)

Len’s nightmare: replacing the “modern” church with a “postmodern” church — we should be seeking to be a biblical church!

Notes from Session One with Leonard Sweet: (I’m sitting next to Holly…check her blog for her thoughts).

God is in the process of ‘defragging’ his church.
The 3 sessions today correspond to Sweet’s thoughts about the MRI church (missional, relational, incarnational).

Today we practice APC Christianity (APC is an ailment that is better known as post-traumatic stress) APC in Sweet’s world - attractional, propositional, colonial.

“I describe Christianity as a GOOD religion, as in a “get-out-of-doors” religion. Christianity could be described as the first non-temple religion…Christianity is, by it’s nature, and outdoors religion. Name me one thing in the gospels that happens indoors…the upper room is the only one.”

We’ve turned Christianity into what Jesus was trying to free us from — an “in here” religion.

Every mission statement is about getting people in (attractional), and not about creating better people that will go out (missional). This is an area where the chuch needs MAJOR defragging.

Part of the MRI deal is getting better at hearing God and following rather than casting vision for people to follow.

The future is coming, COD — change or die.

Change, if you read the literature has almost been reduced to a formula, and it’s a simple idea, but it’s not easy. The key to change is reframing (creating a new metaphor), a big dream, and emotional engagement (emotional markers where a decision for change took place).

REFRAMING — if you have the power to change the metaphors, you have the power to change the world! Metaphors that are killing the church: “refuge,” “harbor,” “safe haven,” “sanctuary.” The primary language of our culture today, is not words, it’s images.

Q&A to end the session (I’ll post my thoughts later today.)

I’m sitting at Riverside Community Church today, for a one-day conference called Related Leaders. There’s about 200 people here for 3 sessions with Leonard Sweet (you can look at his website for all his books). As with Leadership Summit, I’ll be taking my notes right onto my blog.

Session Three — at lunch we had a little Q&A…it was okay…I wish this thing were a little smaller & focused…it’s really hard for me. The questions I want to ask, aren’t relevant to 95% of the people in this room, and so I don’t tend to ask questions. Maybe, I’ll just email Len.

WARNING: THIS MAY BE HARD TO FOLLOW…I can’t get everything I’m thinking (and he’s saying) down fast enough…so I’m short-handing a lot.

MRI: Incarnational

100 years from now, when the history of the early 21st century is being written, it may be told (like generations before) in terms of it’s music — hip-hop. The question is whether or not the church will respond to how the winds of the Spirit are moving in today’s culture instead of waiting a couple hundred years before excepting what God is doing.

We are living in a culture where opposite things are happening at the same time, and they’re not contradictory (see Allen Pink’s “well-curve” — think opposite of a “bell-curve). Middles are going away. For example, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is dying (screens are getting bigger - think tv’s, and screen are getting smaller - think iPod. This makes it a challenge to be incarnational as a church. But the church, by it’s very nature is not about bunching up in the middle — it’s all aboout paradoxes (God is one, God is three; Jesus is fully human, Jesus is fully divine)

Christianity has been breathing for too long out of only one lung, the western lung and it’s time we start breathing out of our original lung, the eastern lung. (Pope John Paul)

The eastern “lung” that Jesus was the master of is more of a “both/and” lung, while the western lung is more either/or. When you think “either/or” you end up in the middle (bell curve), while “both/and” thinking accomodates and communicates to the seemingly opposites.

When you connect the extremes, connecting the poles through the gospel, you have power.

Here’s a solid example of what all this is saying:

Habitat for Humanity — you connect people who need help, with wealthy people in a meaningful experience. (Or a more local example: John King, pastor of Riverside, talked about his vision for The Dream Center, where he was fearing for where the $$ would come from, and he heard God saying to him, “you take care of the poor, and I’ll bring the rich to your church.”

I haven’t posted much this week, because I’ve been engaged in some offline discussions that have been rich & meaningful. I tell you that because I’ve been thinking over the past couple of years about communication & intimacy, especially as it pertains to email.

We have a problem in our organization (and if my conversations with friends and family are any indication, we aren’t the only ones) that people assume that email is the best way to communicate, period.

However, some conversations are simply inappropriate for print, because communication is more than just words on a screen, it’s about body language, tone, posture, eye contact, volume, etc.

And so, in our organization, we’ve talked some (not near enough, if you ask me) about how to determine what is appropriate for email and what is appropriate for face-to-face.

All that to say: I love this blog, because I love having a place to capture my thoughts. But some conversations are better had away from this forum. For example, last week, in the debacle of the A Fan from afar… post, the best conversation was not on the blog but was found in the long conversations that Chris and I had, and a challenging email from my friend Laura.

In conclusion (this has gone on longer, than I anticipated), if you see something here, that you want to hammer out…let me know…I’d love to talk.

AND, if you know of any books, articles, etc. pertaining to the “appropriateness” of electronic communication, I’d be interested.

Here’s my confession: I am a people-pleaser, and this is not a good thing.

I care too much about what people think. I want people to like me. Not because I’m an ego-maniac and not because I think “everything is about me.” More likely it’s because I’m not sure I always like myself — or at least I’m unsure of who I really am, and so I seek the approval of others.

One of the things that I’ve had to deal with as a public-figure-on-a-very-small-scale, is that there will always be people that don’t like you. And so, one of the things I’ve been consciously working on, is growing a thicker skin. I’m not sure that I really know how to do this, but I think it comes from having a more disciplined mind, and by filling my mind with the idea that at the end of the day, I’m God’s kid, and I’m still growing up.

What kills me, and here’s what started this post, is that the thing that drives me crazy is when I don’t know where I stand with people — when it’s not clear whether they are friend or foe. I’m not sure how to deal with this one.

Anyway, just felt the need to get this off my chest.

I grew up in a tradition where this kind of stuff, wouldn’t have been considered unusual.

I don’t think this way, obviously

What if someone’s biggest objection to the gospel is that they lived next to a church? And over the years of fighting traffic and maybe some noise, and perhaps even a fair amount of construction dirt, they’ve just tuned out to what the chhurchh is really there for?

Today, our staff did something in an attempt to foster a good relationship with our neighbors. We went door-to-door and distributed 1 gal. jugs of washer fluid and a coupon for some free gas at a local gas station.

It was a blast!