A Critical Mistake

Many churches make a critical mistake in ministry when they confuse activity for effectiveness.

In this line of thinking, the busier a church is, the more it is doing for God. So the goal becomes to fill up the calendar and clutter up the bulletin with as many events, projects, and emphases as you can. Because surely all that stuff will lead to more impact.

Actually, it just leads to exhaustion. As I speak with church leaders and read church material, it becomes more and more clear to me that there is an inverse relationship between activity and effectiveness.

So in church land in the 21st Century, the more you do, the less effective you are.

I know it's true because I've lived this truth.

So as we become more diligent at Good Shepherd, we make every effort to become less busy yet have greater impact. It's why we pour so much energy into First Serve and Pathfinder. Those ministries are how we approach servanthood and group life. Not ten ministries for each area. One. For each.

If we get it right, it's less activity and more effectiveness.

First Serve At Hoskins Park

Last Saturday night, my son asked me, "Dad, why do you have paint all over yourself?"

Because I'd spent Saturday morning painting one of the homes at the Hoskins Park Ministry in northwest Charlotte.

You should check Hoskins Park out. They do deep work with a smallish group of previously homeless men.

Their goal is not to house hundreds of men each night. It is instead to rebuild the lives of dozens of them, one man at a time & one day at a time.

I believe they are on to something, and I'm glad they are one of Good Shepherd's partners for First Serve.

Speaking of First Serve . . . we set another record on November 6-7: over 300 people got out of their seats and into the city to give a positive witness for Christ. Nothing makes me feel better as a pastor than to see all those people gathered together on a Saturday morning, encouraging one another in worship and then fanning out into the city to serve.

What Happens In The Corner Campus

We showed this towards the end of my sermon yesterday. It gives a glimpse of the kind of life-giving ministry happening in our Corner Campus:

Take a special look at the student in the UCLA T-Shirt -- that's my son Riley.



What I appreciate most about our efforts to open up that space: many people gave to the project who don't have teenagers.

Sacrificial giving to a ministry from which they receive no direct benefit.

That's the heart of The Treasure Principle.

The Treasure Principle

Every time we finish a series, I have a sense of grief. Usually, I'm not sure we can live up to what we just did with the next one.

That's how I felt after Still. And after Piece Of Work. And after Rubber, Meet Road. And after The Fight Of Your Life.

But each time, it seems, God comes through and takes our meager preparation and does something bigger than we expected with it.

So even though I'm going to miss The Fight Of Your Life (and preaching from a boxing ring!), as we move into the Treasure Principle I am confident God will magnify himself through our efforts.

It's a series about priorities, perspective, money, and eternity. It's based on Randy Alcorn's book of the same name, though while I was preparing the messages God kept sending me in unexpected directions.

So I pray he'll do something unexpected in your life and mine through what we do.

It starts with a message called "The Treasure Principle." Kind of like the title song on an album.

Sunday.

8:30. 10. 11:30.

Things I Didn't Learn In Seminary

While I loved my three years in seminary, I realize now there are some pretty important things I didn't learn there. Or . . . I wasn't paying attention when these things were taught.

In no particular order, here they are:

• The Framework Theory Of Genesis One. Reading the first chapter of the bible with an eye to its structure and its art, you realize that the realms are created in Days 1-3 of creation and then those realms are populated in Days 4-6. Once you read the Creation Story this way, you'll never see it the same again. Not only did I not learn this in seminary, I didn't learn it until I'd been in full-time ministry for 15 years . . . when my friend James-Michael Smith joined our team at Good Shepherd.
• The fact that the Babylonian Exile is in many ways the central event of the Old Testament. It's described in 2 Samuel 24-25 and then lamented by prophets and poets throughout the rest of the Hebrew Scripture. In fact, much of the OT is put together to answer two questions: 1) How did we land in exile? and 2) How do we make sure it never happens again? Thanks to the original Disciple Bible Study for that one.
• How to design a modern praise and worship service. Of course, considering that my seminary years were 1987-1990, very few people had even heard of "contemporary" worship.
• That my primarily responsibility is not to please people. It is to lead a community. Seminary does an excellent job of training congregational chaplains; not such a good job of raising up genuine leaders.
• How to say "no" to good ideas for the sake of better ones with a sharper focus.
• How to do a performance evaluation.
• How to lead a capital campaign.

And those things I didn't learn in seminary? I'm still trying to learn most of them.

When You Can't Articulate

A couple of weeks ago, I posted on the Class Matters training seminar we hosted at Good Shepherd.

Of all the statistics and anecdotes regarding the differences between those raised in chronic poverty and those raised in middle class comfort, this one has haunted me the most:

Vocabulary of a three year old in a professional home: 1,116 words

Vocabulary of an adult in a welfare home: 974 words

As mind-bending as that statistic is, its implications are even more troubling.
When adults can't articulate what they feel, they DO.

So when adults with limited vocabularies cannot give verbal expression to feelings of rage, grief, passion, and despair, they act out in unhealthy ways: drugs, violence, promiscuity, and self-destruction.

(By the way, this is why we believe funerals are such vitally important events at Good Shepherd -- they provide space and language for grieving people to "feel" their feelings in healthy ways.)

So what will I do with this statistic that won't leave my head?

I haven't figured that out yet. It certainly gives insight into people's behavior.

It also makes me ever-more committed to help young parents see that their children need a lot less screen-based entertainment and a lot more text-based interaction.

How are you passing on vocabulary to the young ones in your life?

Overheard

In my almost-20 years of full-time ministry in the United Methodist Church, I have overheard some "you can't make stuff this up" remarks come out of the mouths of United Methodist people. Preachers, usually.

Most of what follows is first-hand, with a smattering of reliable second-hand quotes as well.

• A pastor to his youth pastor: "You shouldn't do so many altar calls in youth group. It might make kids doubt their confirmation."
• A District Superintendent to his flock of pastors: "Has anyone ever heard of this Gordon-Connell (sic) Seminary? Is it legit?"
• A DS to a pastor in the 4th year of a first appointment: "It's time to start thinking about moving up the ladder. You don't want to stay where you are too long."
• A pastor to a PPR Committee in a church considering multi-site worship: "Where I come from we call that a two-point charge. And I'm not being paid enough to pastor a two-point charge."
• A parishioner during praise & worship: "This clapping's not Methodist!"
• A parishioner to a long-tenured pastor: "I think preachers ought to move every three and half years. That's as long as Jesus stayed on earth, after all. Then his humanity started to show and God had to call him to heaven."
• A Methodist seminarian regarding a youth group: "If the kids start talking about getting saved, I'm going to have a real problem with that."
• A pastor to fellow pastors as part of a continuing ed event: "I like Jesus. But he's not my Savior."

Fred Craddock has written expansively on overhearing the Gospel.

Sadly, there are times within Methodism when you overhear something altogether different.