charlieDEAN’S Blog

Title: The Realities of a “post” world

Tim set up the rest of the lectures here by talking about how we orient ourselves and suggest three points of triangulation:

1. context/culture
2. gospel/theology
3. structure/system

He then talked about context/culture by illustrating how our culture is postmodern, post-enlightenment and post-Christiandome.  I didn’t take a lot of notes, because this is stuff that is pretty common to emergent writings and if you’re interested, you should just read the literature.

notes are very sketchy…but here they are: Intuitive Leadership Conference: Session 3

First, the setting:  We’re meeting at Jacob’s Well, which meets in an old church building that was built in the 20’s, I believe.  I had forgotten how hard pews are on the butt!

Anyway… here’s a link to a .pdf of my notes from session one:

Title: A World in Flux: Location, Navigation, and the Dynamics of Being “Lost”

intuitive-leadership-session-one

Okay, so in my last post I alluded to the fact that I found myself last night in Kansas City, MO.

The real reason I’m here is for The Intuitive Leadership Conference (Wed - Friday) followed by Brian McLaren’s Deep Shift Tour.

I’ll have a lot to post later on…Internet connectivity has been sketchy, so it may be next week, though

I’ll just say, so far it’s very engaging to me.  So much of what Tim has taught resonates with who we are becoming as a church, and so it’s all kinds of stimulation for us in how to think differently.  This is definatley not a “we’ll tell you what we do so you can go copy it” conference.  It’s much more of a “here’s how we think about things, and hopefully you’ll be inspired to radically engage with your world” conference.

Cool!

Well, I’ve been thinking about this post all night, and for the last 45 min. as I cleared my driveway of the 7-8″ of snow that we got last night (I love snow storms!).  It’s hard, because I don’t want this to be a “slam Mark Driscoll session.”  I really desire to be more gracious than that.  Here are some wrap-up thoughts.  If you really want to know more, you can always take me out for lunch or coffee:

• Kudos to Riverside for bringing national-known leaders to challenge local pastors.
• I was a little disappointed in the overall content however.  I thought the day was supposed to be about “preaching to postmoderns” a topic that I’m very interested in.  Instead, it was “Theories of Atonement 101.”  It’s not that I’m not interested, only that it felt like a 1st-year seminary class.  I didn’t take a ton of notes.  Good reminders, though.
• I really don’t want to get all Paul vs. Apollos here, but I really don’t know what to do with Mark Driscoll.  There are some things that he says that I absolutely love, and some things that he says that I vehemently disagree with.  As one fellow conference-goer and friend said to me, “he would probably take that as a compliment.”  The trouble is he doesn’t leave you any room to disagree with him.  It reminded me of my undergrad, where I always perceived that the attitude of the faculty was, “if you disagree with us, you must either not be reading your Bible enough, or you don’t really love Jesus.”
• I don’t trust the intentions or motives of people that don’t smile much and look down all the time and make digs at people that are supposed to be funny but are actually kind of rude.  This might be my problem, but in terms of the “Blink factor” (cf. Malcolm Gladwell) it sets off internal alarms for me.
• I loved that he reminded us that good preaching should always take people back to Jesus.  We’re Christians after all, not just monotheists.
• I usually hate the question and answer time, but this one was pretty good.  It dealt with more of the stuff I was interested in.  I really liked what he said about how they deal with alcohol, marijuana, couples that live together, small groups, technology, etc.

Okay, he’s continuing the list of theories of atonement from the last session.  I’ve missed a few…Actually…I missed most of them… Session Four is a Question & Answer… you’ll have to pony up $35 and attend the conference if you want the Q&A.  It’s too hard to take notes on! Grace & Peace…enjoy the snow! 

Cross-Centered PreachingIt seems that the intent of this session is to talk about the differing theories of atonement.  He’s arguing that we hold all of them as true & relevant to pastoral ministry and not pit one against another

•  you’re not preaching Jesus until you preach his death 
• “I believe that across the world, the doctrine that is most under attack is the doctrine of the atonement.”
• Paul was not speaking hyperbole when he said, “I seek to know nothing, but Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2)

1. The big idea of the cross is the penal substitutionary atonement, and nothing else.
2. “Christus Victor” — Jesus defeated Satan
3. Christ is our redemption – 
4. Jesus is our new covenant/sacrifice
5. Jesus is our justification  (on N.T. Wright: his stuff on the kingdom and the resurrection is amazing…but when it comes to justification it’s “swing & a miss.”  Wright tries to marry the reformation doctrine of justification and reconcile it with catholicism.)
6. Jesus is our propitiation (God’s wrath is averted because of Jesus.)
7. Jesus is our expiation (he takes away the wrong done to us…cancels all sin)

I’m at Riverside Community Church in downtown Peoria today for a one day conference with Mark Driscoll.  As normal, when I attend a conference, I’ll take notes here.  For the most part, I’ll simply record what he’s saying, and then wrap up with some of my own thoughts later.

•  ”our church does a lot of things, but the teaching of the Word is the tip of the spear”
• how you preach will be driven by what you think about the Bible
• there are different ways of teaching (expository, textual, topical) and they’re all fine, but make expository (working through books of the Bible) your bread & butter.
• Questions to ask about preparing a sermon:
  • What does the Bible say?  (Not what do I want to say?)
  • What does it mean? (This is where you start into commentaries…for the first question you meditate, pray, read the Bible, etc.
  • What will make this memorable?
  • What will the objections be to this truth?  (Assume resistance — assume that people will make excuses in their mind.)
• What does this mean to the gospel?
• How is Jesus the Savior?  (Say the name of Jesus all the time.  Everyone defines “God” in whatever way they want.)

If you want to catch a feel for some of what Leadership Summit is like, go here and you can watch video highlights.

So we end where we began…with Rev. Hybels.  I’ll admit it, I’m a Bill Hybels fan.  Someone I was talking to during a break said it this way and I can’t say it any better:

   “Every time I want to be cynical about Bill Hybels, and write him off, he tells us about how the way he did things in the past wasn’t good enough and how he’s growing and learning and changing how he leads.”

List of Bill’s recommended leadersip “must-reads”

“Whatever you do, inspire me!”

They’re starting with a powerful video about a man and his handicapped son, and everything he does to help his son succeed.  The son (patrick henry hughes) is now playing the piano and singing on stage…he’s good! 

Worthy organizations deserve to be inspired by their leaders.  Here are four questions Bill is seeking to answer about inspiration/motivation:

1.  How much does it matter if someone is inspired?

• there’s a lot of variance in the research in regards to this question — but it’s pretty apparent that inpsiration/motivation has wide-ranging effects on individuals, from fewer sick days, higher qualilty performance, etc.

2.  Whose job is it, to keep me, as a senior leader, motivated?

• “early on in my career, I was pretty sure that it was someone else’s job to keep me motivated”  All that changed when in read about King David in 1 Samuel30:6 where everyone is abandoning him and the text says, “he went and encouraged himself in God.”
• Bill realized it was his job to stay motivated — no one want to follow someone that’s mopping around
• how to stay motivated?  1) stay crystal clear about calling — “when I’m not crystal clear about why I’m doing what I’m doing, I feel like I’m moving dirt piles from one side of Willow’s campus to the other”  2) make sure I’m leveraging my spiritual gifts to the degree that God gives them to me  3) make sure the players on my teams are inspiring people — Ken Blanchard told Hybels once, “if you want to stay motivated over the long haul, surround yourself with people who give you a jolt when they’re around  4) I pay attention to the books I read — I read stuff that is inspiring and tell stories of victory.  5) Rub shoulders with “exceptionally inspiring people” now and then. 6) Participate in events that are exceptionally inspiring 7) paying attention to my physical disciplines: running, diet, etc.  pay attention to my working environments — make spaces that lift my spirits  9) have an inpiring recreational pastime outside my work 10) by practicing daily spiritual disciplines that keep my faith fresh

3. What’s the best way to inspire the people around me?

• “the single most powerful way to motivate the people around you is to live a motivated life in front of them.”  So basically…in doing #2, you kill 2 birds with one stone.
• few other ideas: 1) connect everyone you lead to a compelling cause 2) you speak the “inspiration lanuage” of the people you lead 3) identify and reduce every de-motivating dynamic that we can — even your best employees will leave your organization when de-motivating dynamics aren’t addressed 4) celebrate every sign of progress towards your team’s shared goals

4.  What would a church look like if every single person in it were inspired?

• Acts 2 — everyone was inspired

Session nine is another interview, this time with President Jimmy Carter.  Apparently, by Bill’s introduction, there’s some controversy about this session.  (Of course some church leaders have their panties in a bunch over his being a democrat, or not having the same theological positions that they have…IMHO, get over it.)  Sorry for the brief rant, but I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that Bill has to defend himself here, but he’s really going after the audience, challenging them to increase their “learning bandwidth” — to learn as much as they can from as many people as they can.  (Sidenote…the phrase “underwear in a bunch” was just used by Bill!)

Building Humanity

First off, I got to tell you that the more I know about Jimmy Carter, the more respect and admiration that I have for him — especially in his involvement with Habitat for Humanity and the fact that despite his success, he seems to remain a “regular guy.”

I’m really not good at taking notes on an interview (I’m sure you’ve noticed!), but here are some memorable quotes:

• “You get single-focused” when you have a bunch of sychophants around you telling you want they think you want to hear.”
• This speaks to my inner “wannabe” pacifist — Carter is talking about his most proud moment, the day the hostages came home, and he negotiated it without violence or threats of violence.  (Side note: one of my first “world events” memories was the Iran hostage crisis, and when they came home…I was six.)
• I didn’t realize that Harry Truman desegregated the military almost 10 years before Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus.
• “There is a severe absence of real generosity in the church.” (He’s not saying this in a nasty way…in fact, he almost seems to include himself in this indictment.)
• Carter insists that the #1 issue in our world today is the growing gap between rich and poor - Hybels is pushing on this a little, but Carter is quite insistent.

Bill’s Wrap-Up:

• Bill is talking about how, after this interview, it unsettled him how little he has called the people at Willow to pray for peace.
• Another thing that stuck Bill was Carter’s gentleness (my thought: you can’t be a peace broker, unless peace rules your own heart)

Bill is closing in prayer…Kirk Franklin is closing out with a song while they pass offering bags for a collection to raise money to broadcast theh summit in other countries.