charlieDEAN’S Blog

Here’s a great little behind-the-scenes video with Rob Bell.

Two things that resonated with me:

1. not an exact quote, but Rob is talking about the act of teaching and how sometimes he thinks that there will be this profound moment, and it’s a dud while a toss-off aside will electrify the room.  so true.  this is why i’ve been moving more towards an extemporaneous style versus a manuscript.  (of course the danger, for me at least, is sloppiness when i don’t have a manuscript, but i’m working on that.)
2. “it all begins with content.”  and by that he means, that everything begins with what scripture teaches.  that’s a good word.

[ht: eric]

We tend to glorify leadership success. (maybe “tend to” is a little weak) And when I say “success” it’s almost always numerical. Leaders that make the most money for the business, athletes who command the highest salaries because of their batting average, ERA, or completion percentage are the ones who write books and speak at conferences.

The same is true in the church world. We clamor to hear stories of the leader who transformed their church from 30 people to 3000 or the leader leads the church of 30,000.

I think this is instructive: after 40+ years of leading the people of Israel out of Egypt (success!) and then to Sinai to receive the 10 Commandments (meanwhile they were worshipping a golden calf — failure!), and then across the desert to spy out the land (failure) which led to 40 years of wandering that was marked by complaining, Moses says this to the people he’s leading:

“I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are…I know that after my death you are sure to be utterly corrupt and to turn away from the way I have commanded you.”

And yet…despite mostly failing, Moses is considered perhaps the greatest leader in Israel’s history. Why?

IMHO? faithfulness. Moses wasn’t ultimately responsible for the people…he was responsible to God…and he was faithful.

On the Swerve blog, Craig Groeschel just wrapped up a series called “The Challenge of Ministry Relationships,” which is quite good.   In particular I really liked the last two posts, “Becoming Friends with Your Pastor: Part A & Part B.”  I don’t agree exactly with all 15 points, but a lot of them are spot-on for me.

Early on in my ministry I remember hearing someone say that a pastor really shouldn’t have too close of friends in his/her church because there are just too many complications.  But that just seems so inauthentic to me.

Then this past fall, I heard someone say something to the effect of, “it’s okay for pastors to have ‘best friends,’” the idea being that most pastors are so afraid of being accused of “showing favoritism” that they work hard to stay at the same shallow level with everyone.

whaddya think?

Last week, I talked about being a “vision collector.”  And before I throw you this quotation about that idea, make sure you read the comments…Brandon’s is great with additional catagories of “vision filter” and “vision reminder.”

Anyway, I’m almost finished with Tim Keel’s book Intuitive Leadership, and in chapter seven, “Being Here, There and Everywhere,” he spends considerable time interacting with Richard Florida’s book, The Rise of the Creative Class (which is now on my “to read” list, for sure).  He’s talking about theories of emergence and emergent thinking and talks about how ideas and creativity isn’t a one-way street — that they should come through a dynamic flow & interaction between “top-down thinking,” and “bottom-up” thinking.  Keel quotes Alan Roxburgh in his book, The Sky is Falling!?!:

“…the role of leaders is to cultivate environments that release the missional imagination of the people of God.   Leadership as cultivation is about creating environments within which God’s people shape their own missional life.  This accounting of leadership takes seriously the biblical understanding of the people of God as the place where God’s Spirit is most specifically at work.  It is in and through God’s people that God’s future emerges.”

Here’s where the rubber hits the road.  For me, as I lead our leadership team at Imago Dei, some of the questions that I think we have to come back to over and over again, if we’re are going to create an emergent environment, are these:

• What is God doing in our community?
• Where do we see new, creative ways of thinking/doing things in our church?
• What is capturing the attention of the prophets, artists, musicians and people who are “in the trenches”?
• How do our young members of the community think?  (I’m convinced that God often stirs the hearts of young adults first.)

In a recent meeting, a friend used this phrase “vision collector.”  I can’t remember what he was referring to specifically, but that phrase really stuck with me.  Here’s why:

When you read stuff about leadership, you often hear that “the leader” is to cast vision for “the people.”  It’s very stratified.  If you’re the big dog, you get to determine what all the “troops” will be doing to accomplish your vision.

What if my job as leader isn’t to always be the one who comes up with the vision, but the one who collects the collective vision of everyone in the church?  What if my job is to listen to stories and hear different people’s passions and then figure out how all those visions, put together, create THE vision.

It seems like it would be hard work — but, I wonder if it’s much more faithful to this verse, than one leader as the “vision creator.”

Now, I’m not saying that my vision for the future in inconsequential…obviously, as the lead pastor at Imago, my dreams/desires/vision for the future is a significant piece…I’m just trying to say, I don’t think it’s the only piece.

“Christianity was birthed in Galilee as a relationship.  It spread to Greece and became a philosophy.  It spread to Rome and became an empire.  It spread to Britian and became a culture.  It spread to America and became an enterprise.”

– Richard Halverson, former congressional chaplain

Agree?  Disagree?  Is this too cynical?  (be kind)

I came across this section in A Testament of Devotion this morning, where Kelly is talking about the idea that when we are living in such a way that we are “drowned in the overwhelming seas of the love of God,” that we see other people differently.  Then, he goes on to talk about seeing church leaders in a different way, and he says this:

In some [church leaders] we regret a well-intentioned, but feverish over-busyness, not completely grounded in the depths of peace, and we wish they would not blur the beauty of their souls by fast motion.

Wow!  That speaks powerfully.  It hard to think of any church leaders (myself included) who don’t constantly battle “well-intentioned, but feverish over-busyness.”  Even when I try to be grounded in the “depths of peace,” there’s a constant voice, screaming in my head about the ever-present “to-do list.”

What a great reminder from Kelly that busyness blurs the beauty of a soul!

Tonight CBS is running a documentary called “In God’s Name,” where they looked at 12 leaders of major faiths and asked some of the biggest questions of our day. I’m sitting here watching…here are some of my impressions as I watch:

• The impetus for the film was the spiritual void felt by the filmmakers in the wake of Sept. 11. So they decided to pursue the answers to some of their questions by seeking out these various leaders.
• Interesting how many of the 12 leaders sensed a “call” on their lives in their childhood. I probably most resonated with Dr. Rowan William, Archbishop of Canterbury when he said that he doesn’t remember a moment of calling, but in a sense felt it as long as he remembered and yet it has strengthened with time.
• Maybe I’m just overly harsh towards my own tradition, and yet it’s almost comical to hear several leaders talk about getting up at 2am or 3am to pray, hours before they arouse anyone else in their household, and then the leaders who most represents my tradition and talks about getting up at 6am, reading his Bible, and then heading to the gym. Sometimes, I’m afraid that my tradition comes off as so shallow. (I really need to do a whole post on this sometime.)
• “I think for me, as for any priest or religious leader, there has to be a sense in which if I can’t be true to God in my personal and famliy relations, then I can’t do the rest of my work.” — Dr. Rowan Williams
• “There are some things in this world that are not up for the approval of public opinion. They are either right or they are wrong. We believe there is a clear path, there is a right way.  I would fight and die for my country. I would fight and die for my family — quickly, easily. But primarily I would fight and die for my faith in Jesus Christ.” — Dr. Frank Page, President, Southern Baptist Convention. Ummm…not sure that Jesus called us to fight for our faith. Die, yes. Fight? I believe he told Peter to put away his sword. I guess if I gave him the benefit of the doubt I would guess he’s speaking metaphorically, but his examples are of physical fighting. This is exactly the kind of language that causes people to distrust and dislike Baptists.
• I guess, in the end, this was kind of a “feel good” documentary — “No matter what faith one prescribes to, we’re all earnest seekers of God.” And yet, there are significant differences. And yet, sometimes, especially in my tradition all we talk about is the differences and who’s right. And yet, and yet, and yet. Complicated stuff to talk about.
• I really liked Dr. Rowan Williams. There were a couple more quotations from him that I didn’t include here that were very thought provoking.
• PS: It’s really jarring to watch something like this…and constantly get interrupted by commercials — it creates a lot of dissonance inside of me.

I don’t ever want it to be said of me, “he a ‘Rob Bell-ite’” or ”he’s of Ortberg” or “he’s an emergent this or that.”  One of my favorite quotations ever — that has driven me in my ongoing search for calling comes from Soren Kirkegaard:

“The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do.  The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.”

I think that’s true of me personally – I think it’s true of churches.  You don’t become a great church by copying everyone around you.  You get inspired by other churches, then you figure the truth that God is calling you to — you become uniquely you. (there a great post about this idea on the leadership journal blog, Out of Ur)

So, with that disclaimer, I present the following churches that have inspired me — and the team of people that I’ve been talking to — as we’ve been asking ourselves what our church might look like.

• Mars Hill Bible Church
• Solomon’s Porch
• National Community Church (particularly Ebenezer’s)
• Gateway Community Church

And here are some of the books that have inspired me personally and how I think about church (I’m sure that I’m leaving something out — but these come quickly to mind):

• An Unstoppable Force – Erwin McManus
• No Perfect People Allowed – John Burke
• A New Kind of Christian & Everything Must Change – Brian McLaren
• They Like Jesus, But Not the Church – Dan Kimbell
• The Search to Belong & Organic Community  — Joseph Myers

(next up: What’s in a Name?)

I thought I’d give y’all a little bit of the journey that brings me to this place in my life.  Of course I’m leaving out a ton of conversations, but here’s the journey in a nutshell.

It was almost a year ago (actually it will be a full year next friday) that I got the call to lead LifeBridge, a Northwoods church plant, on an interim basis (here’s the post about that).  For three months I pastored that church until a decision was made by our elder board to shut it down.  I remember the last service, as everything was clearing out, saying to Cal, our senior pastor, “you know, I could really enjoy doing this.”  And he just smiled at me and said, “I know.”

So, over the course of the last year, I’ve put my resume in at a small church in Denver, CO, and talked to a couple of different denominations about church planting here in Peoria, but nothing really panned out.

At the same time, for the last 15 months I’ve been struggling with this question: “Does God call anyone to a geography anymore,” because the more I talked and prayed and thought about my life, and did some writing, the more I’ve gotten the sense, that at least for this time in my life, God has called me to Peoria.  (To me, this is a really interesting discussion…I can think of one person who was highly affirmative, and another who basically told me that staying in Peoria was a result of me not really going “all in” for God and choosing to remain comfortable.)

So, in August, I was in Cal’s office talking about a worship service that I was leading, and we got off-topic about target audiences, new churches, etc. and we started talking about church planting — and he encouraged me — that if I was feeling like this is where God was leading to ask the elders.

I sat on my letter to the elders for a months — praying, talking to some close friends & mentors until finally on September 25th, I submitted the letter…we’ve been talking…and here we are!

One last thought on a way-too-long post: it’s cool to sit at a place like this in your life, and look back and see how over the past months/years, God has begun preparing you and getting you ready for something — and you don’t quite know what it is, but you know he’s working…and he’s faithful…and eventually it gets clear!  Praise God.

  (coming next, Inspirations)