StretchyChurch

I just came across two diagrams that distinguish between a typical church (regardless of worship style) and a missional church. Notice that the typical church focuses all its energy on the weekend worship service, using that as the foundation for everything else; while the missional church focuses its energy on the mission of the church, which leads to all the other minstries, including the weekend worship service.

I found the diagrams on the Uplake Church blog, though the diagrams are apparently originally from Tall Skinny Kiwi. Let me know what you think.

Presbymergent just announced “Always Reforming: Emergence in the Presbyterian Church,” a gathering for Presbyterians with a leaning toward the emerging church. You can find more info on the gathering here and here.

I met with Northminster’s Transition Team on Monday night to continue our discussion of Roxburgh and Romanuk’s The Missional Leader. At one point in our discussion I said, “I am so glad the days of the pastor as CEO are coming to an end because I’m just not a CEO.”

I used to think that I wouldn’t be a good senior pastor because I didn’t have CEO tendencies—y’know, come in with the plan, lay out the strategy, tell everyone what their jobs are in accomplishing the plan, etc., etc… (at least, that’s my impression of the CEO pastor). But the more I read about leadership in a missional church, the more I discover that I don’t have to be a CEO.

In The Sky is Falling!?!, Alan Roxburgh proposes four types of missional leaders: the leader as 1) Poet, 2) Prophet, 3) Apostle, and 4) Pastor/Teacher. And then he adds one final leader—a leader of leaders really, which he calls the Abbot/Abbess.

I’ll describe each one briefly.

The Leader as Poet: The poet is a leader whose calling is to help people begin to understand who they are, what they are feeling, where they are, and where they might go. “Leadership at this point is about cultivating an environment that will give voice and meaning to events that seem to be determining people’s lives” (p. 163).

The Leader as Prophet: The prophet is similar to the poet, but focuses more on getting people to move in a certain direction based on what the poet has helped them become aware of. “As the poet calls people to an articulation of their pain and loss, the prophet pushes them toward a vision of how and where God is shaping them at the moment. The poet gives language to people’s experience; the prophet brings them back to the words of the narrative, addressing people with the decisions and direction of the Spirit’s future” (p. 170).

The Leader as Apostle: The apostle says, “Based on what we’ve learned under the poet and prophet, here’s how we can put this into action.” Apostles tend to push the envelope—highly creative, out-of-the-box thinkers. Because of this, they may be seen as a threat and tend not to be welcome in more traditional/liminal forms of church. As a result, “such leaders have tended to move outside these systems (joined the Emergent tribe)” (p. 175).

The Leader as Pastor/Teacher: This is the leadership role that we tend to think of when it comes to church leadership. The Pastor/Teacher “has been the primary and almost only form of church leadership for almost two millenia. The Reformation didn’t address or change this form of leadership, but shifted some of its functions from priest to teacher/care-giver…. Pastoral leadership can function as the primary role identity of leaders only within long periods of cultural stability. We are far from such a period at the moment. This does not mean the pastoral role is unimportant. It remains essential; but it must be seen in relationship to the other leadership types and not as the sole type of leadership to be desired” (p. 176, italics added).

Then Roxburgh adds one other leader—the Abbot/Abbess. This person is a leader of leaders, helping the other four types of leaders to work together, mentoring them and helping them to grow in their gifts as they help the community of God’s people grow.

So which one am I? I’m not sure yet. But I suspect I’ll figure it out as I begin leading Northminster Presbyterian Church. In reading these descriptions, I’m leaning toward somewhere between poet and prophet. And I think that’s exactly what Northminster needs at this time.

My prayer is that, given time, all four types of leaders will eventually be in active leadership at Northminster. And notice that these leaders don’t have to be ordained clergy! That’s the exciting thing about missional leadership!

I just started reading The Blogging Church by Brian Bailey. I mentioned that book about a year ago just before it came out and am finally getting around to reading it. And I gotta say, it’s giving me some great ideas for the soon-to-come redesign of Northminster’s website.

But before I get into that I wanted to share some thoughts on The Sky is Falling!?! by Alan Roxburgh, which I just finished reading a few days ago. There are two things I really liked about this book: 1) his emphasis on the need for “Emergents” and “Liminals” to come together to discover God’s future for the church and 2) his proposed leadership typology for the transition that our culture is in.

I’ll talk about the first one in this post and the second in a soon-to-come post.

One of Roxburgh’s primary emphases in The Sky is Falling!?! focuses on the need for what he calls different tribes of Christians to come together. He argues that there are basically two kinds of Christian leaders today who are trying to cope with the massive changes that our culture is undergoing.

The first tribe is what he calls the “Emergents.” Emergents tend to be younger (Generation X and Millenial) and are comfortable with change because they’ve grown up in a world of change. Their response to the culture is to throw off all forms of what church has been and do something completely new. They may lead house churches, organic gatherings that meet at coffee shops and pubs, focus their Christian life around living in intentional community, and so forth.

The second tribe is known as the “Liminals” (for an anthropological explanation of this word, click here; Roxburgh suggests that the church is in a liminal phase at this time). Liminals are those who work and serve in traditional churches (by traditional, I mean any church that revolves around meeting in a building on Sunday morning—they could be traditional or contemporary in style; they could be 100 members or 10,000 members). They have had success in reaching the culture in the past, but are beginning to realize that the world is changing and their form of church is no longer effective in today’s society. They are struggling to discern how to be a church in this time of discontinuous change.

Typically, these two groups tend to be at odds with one another to some extent. Emergents look at Liminals and don’t know why they continue to try to do ministry that is, in their eyes, so ineffective. Liminals look at Emergents and see a bunch of reactive radicals who are turning their backs on historic Christianity.

These are, of course, generalizations. And the way they see one another is filled with misperception.

But Roxburgh’s hope is for these two tribes to come together and work together to discover God’s future for the church. All of us, Liminals and Emergents, have something to contribute to this discovery. And only together can we truly follow God’s lead in this time of change.

I LOVE THAT!!

That’s what I want to be a part of. And I feel like I have been a part of that. While I lived in Cincinnati, I met with a group of young pastors, a mix of Liminals and Emergents. We were in leadership in traditional Presbyterian and Methodist churches, small independent church plants, emerging church communities, and organic gatherings.

And what a blessing it was to be able to share our hopes and our frustrations together. What we learned is that we’re all simply trying to lead the people of God through a time of cultural change. And the best part is that we liked each other!! Meeting with them was almost always the best part of my week!

My hope is that as I begin my life in San Diego, I’ll be able to become a part of a communitas (as Roxburgh calls it) of Liminals and Emergents seeking to follow God together.

Any takers out there?

I just discovered an video on the Allelon site where Alan Roxburgh (author of The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World) interviews Ryan Bolger (author of Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures).

It’s a pretty good interview–helps clarify some stuff about missional and emerging church. Some of the things they talk about include:

–what the missional church is
–Bolger’s own journey
–what the emerging church is
–the connection between the missional church and the emerging church

Bolger offers some helpful distinctions between the missional church and the emerging church (and he admits he is speaking in broad categorizations). Here’s one of the differences between the two (not an exact quote):

The missional church asks, “How do existing churches begin to truly live out the mission of God in the world?”

The emerging church asks, “How do we live as an authentic community of believers in this culture?”

Click here to see the video.

Adam Walker Cleaveland at Presbymergent just posted a link to an article in The Presbyterian Outlook about the Mainline Emergent/s Conference. Just FYI, it sounds like the conference involved more than just Presbyterians, but since the Outlook is a Presbyterian publication, it tends to focus on how Presbyterians responded to the conference. Anyway, the article is posted here as a pdf.

I just posted a brief article on Presbymergent titled, “Presbymergent or Presbymerging?” Check it out here if you’re interested.

Kyle posted some comments/questions about my Launch Conference notes that I think deserve being addressed.

First of all, I need to confess that I definitely don’t have all the answers. I never have and I don’t think I ever will.

I’m drawn to the postmodern/emerging/incarnational approach to ministry. And I wish I could say I was 100% there because I think that this movement really is meeting the needs of people in my generation.

At the same time, I’ve begun to discover that there’s still value in some of the older approaches to ministry (funny–by older, I mean 25 years…). There are millions of people in this country who would get a little freaked out by the idea of becoming part of an “intentional community.” I, personally, understand the value of that kind of community, but for many people when someone says “Community,” what they hear is “Commune.”

Anyway, I say this because over the last year or so I’ve realized that it’s not that “seeker” is “out” and “emerging” is “in.” Both are “in,” depending on the context and the culture that a particular church is trying to reach. Heck, even old-school, mainline, traditional is “in” for some people.

So, let me address Kyle’s comments/questions:

1. Yes, the Launch Conference definitely came from a “purpose-driven, seeker-attractive” perspective. In fact, Nelson Searcy was open about the fact that he used to work at Saddleback with Rick Warren and continues to use the purpose-driven aproach with The Journey Church.

2. I, personally, am not planning on planting a church in Northern Kentucky. I am considering planting a church in another metropolitan area in another part of the country. But that’s still up in the air. I’m also in talks with an established church. I had three reasons for attending the conference: 1) Learn about church-planting (in case that’s what I do), 2) learn some things that will hopefully be transferable to an established church situation (in case that’s what I do), and 3) get some clarity on whether or not I’m called to church-planting (which I’m still wrestling with).

3. It’s true that there will probably be a different kind of spirituality in a “seeker” type of church than in an “intentional community” kind of church. But I think one of the reasons is because of the people that each type of church attracts. Regardless of what you believe, “intentional community” kinds of churches attract a certain kind of person. Likewise, “seeker” kinds of churches attract a different kind of person. And regarding a “core” vs. a “launch team,” one of my upcoming posts will explain why they suggest going with a launch team rather than a core.

Like I said, I’m still on a journey. I’m still trying to figure things out. And I think that’s why I still like the word “stretchychurch.” The church fits all kinds–emerging, seeker, traditional, mainline, protestant, Catholic, conservative, liberal, fundamentalist, evangelical, etc., etc., etc.

The question isn’t, “Are they doing it right?” The question is, “Are they helping people become followers of Jesus?”

Well, I finally finished reading Velvet Elvis. I know… some of you are wondering, “What took you so long?! The book’s not that long!”

Ok, I was supposed to be reading it together with some friends who shall remain nameless (Chad and Wes), but whenever we got together to discuss the book, we never really discussed the book.

Don’t get me wrong. We had great conversations–and many of them were deeply theological–they just didn’t focus specifically on the book. So, I took my time reading the book, waiting to see if we were gonna discuss the chapters we had read.

Never happened. Or more accurately, rarely happened.

I got to the point where I just wanted to finish the book, and that’s what I did a couple days ago.

I know that I’ve been a little hard on Rob Bell in the past (mostly in terms of how he comes across), but I have to admit that his theology really resonates with me. I’ve been listening to his sermons on the Mars Hill website and I’m always enlightened and/or convicted by the time I’m done listening.

While I don’t necessarily want to be another Rob Bell, I do hope and pray that my own faith would continue to grow in the direction that God seems to be taking it–namely in the direction of truly living out the Gospel of Jesus not only in word, but also in deed. That is, in the way that I live my life in the world as a follower of Jesus. (Check out Ted’s post for more of this in regard to Rob Bell.)

Thanks, Rob, for challenging me in that direction.

I’ve got a lot to share about my time at the Revolution Conference, so I kinda feel like I need to be selective in what I talk about–just so don’t drone on forever. If you want to know about the specifics of the conference, the main sessions, the seminars, and so forth, you can look at the Revolution Conference Blog.

One of the things I noticed was that it seems like a lot of people who are a part of this “revolution” that George Barna describes in his book–it seems like they come from a very fundamentalist/conservative evangelical background. As a result, a lot of their interest in this “revolutionary” kind of church is a reaction against a theology and spirituality that was strict, pushy, judgmental, narrow-minded, etc., etc., etc.

This was not my background. I know I complain a fair amount about my denomination, but as Presbyterians, my family was not particularly fundamentalist and I’m grateful for that. We did fall on the conservative side of Presbyterianism–but the even conservative Presbyterians look pretty liberal to a lot of other Christians.

So, my interest in the “revolution” has nothing to do with my background. It does have everything to do with finding more effective ways of helping people connect with God in a way that is deep, meaningful, and lifelong (I realize that this is also what drives those with a fundamentalist background).

The problem with a person’s interest in the “revolution” being reactionary is that the pendulum can swing too far.

This is why I appreciate Brian McLaren’s comments on this topic. I know that Brian’s latest books have been fairly controversial, but at this conference Brian provided a source of groundedness and centeredness.

Here’s a paraphrase of what McLaren said in one of the question-and-answer times:

A lot of times, when we react to something in our past we have a tendency to go too far in the other direction. Sometimes, because our past taught us not to drink, we start drinking more and more. But when we start drinking too much alcohol we become dangerous. Sometimes we react to stringent rules on sexuality by going too far in the other direction. But then we start damaging people sexually…. What the world doesn’t need is a bunch of pastors who drink and cuss a lot.

I was so happy to hear him say this! There were times when I felt a little out of place with the crowd at this conference, but hearing Brian McLaren provide wisdom and act as a guiding light for all of us gave me great hope for the future of this “revolution.”