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Mission

50 First Dates of the Church

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My wife loves the movie “50 First Dates” & I enjoy it quite a bit as well. It is one of the few movies we actually own & will still watch on television when it comes on.

So if you want a cute love story comedy then this is our family suggestion.

The premise of the movie is that Drew Barrymore’s character has a rare amnesia that keeps her from remembering anything past a date when she had a car accident. So every day for her is relived the same over and over again. Adam Sandler’s character falls in love with her and when coming to understand her condition continues to try and woo her. As well, he also tries to help her live with her condition. This sets up some really funny and cute scenarios.

One of the scenes in the movie the couple are having a beach campfire, hanging out with many of friends of Barrymore’s character. One of the ‘friends’ played by Maya Rudolph, asks in puzzled amazement, ‘So you work everyday to get her to fall in love with you, and then do it again the next day?’ This questioning is met with a nodding “Yeah.”

What if the church were to work so hard and so passionately to the goal that it’s community were to fall in love with, not the church, but the God & Christ that church represents.

What would that look like? What would the church be doing if it did that?

Why isn’t Youth Ministry a Mission?

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I was just thinking…

Why isn’t Youth Ministry a Mission of the church?

That might sound trite, or stupid question, but think about it. If you go to any church website I will, 99% of the time, guarantee you that ‘youth ministry’ or ‘student ministry’ will be under a heading of ‘programs’ of the church.

Does putting it under a ‘program’ heading fundamentally change the expectations of the ministry? So some thoughts on Program & Mission…

Program

  • ongoing
  • works for those within organization
  • routine
  • safe

Mission

  • evolving – reshaping to needs
  • outreach – taking message outside organization
  • challenging
  • sacrificing

Now, there is nothing wrong with program, as long as those are the expectations and goals behind a program. However, if we really want our churches to reach out, introduce teenagers to a radical Christ, and take on the passion of our Lord.. then wouldn’t our youth ministries be more of a mission category?

What to do with Giving?

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I was intrigued by this news across the newswire.

A struggling Baltimore parish received a surprising donation two Sundays ago, when a Maryland Lottery Cash Craze Crossword scratch-off arrived in the collection plate. The ticket, which was already scratched revealing the win, was discovered by the church’s pastor when tallying the day’s contributions. “I’m not too familiar with these tickets,” said the pastor. “I asked somebody if it was a winner.” The response was “It looks like it’s a winner to me.” With this affirmation, the 55-year-old church leader brought the ticket to Lottery Headquarters, where the largesse of an anonymous individual was confirmed.

“I have no idea who did this,” the pastor declared. “I really have no clue.” The church, which has been experiencing financial difficulties, will use the money toward operating expenses, but the pastor also wishes to give some back to the people. “We have a lot of people in need,” he said. “Hopefully, we can give some back, especially since this is the way we received it.”

Although this unexpected windfall is much-appreciated, the church still faces financial challenges. With that in mind, the smiling pastor said that he intends to buy $5 worth of Mega Millions tickets for Friday night’s drawing which has a jackpot of $312 million.

I know my United Methodist tradition has issues with lotteries. I remember when I was in Alabama, back in the 90’s, our church went against the lottery legislation then as well. That one never passed surprisingly.

The axe to grind against the lottery is one that says that they prey on those who are in poverty situations. Statistics can be bent around to prove this true or not true. In my anecdotal experiences it seems true to me that it is the case more than not. Maybe some folks playing the lottery may not be in abject poverty, but you generally do not see those who have solid financial positions playing games of chance where the odds of winning are astronomical.

With that in mind, is there an issue with taking lottery money if it is against the mission of the church? Obviously this pastor does not have a problem with it and will have his go at the scratch game sometime in the future at least once. Would it have been more of a story if the church refused $30k because of the method of it being attained from the people?

Is there another story here that has to do with someone capturing the imagination of the news giving away $30k to a church in the form of a lottery ticket?

Or is it that someone has bad luck and didn’t realize that they had a winner? I know I wouldn’t know, those things are just confusing to me.

 

 

Naming it.. We’re stuck in between Pastor Roles

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The other month I was a church communications conference and had the privilege to meet Dr. Craig van Gelder. Now, Craig (cause we are close buds now) wasn’t on my radar per se, but we were both speaker peeps at this thing and he sat in on my session & I on his and we got to chatting in between times. I really enjoyed the guy.

Anyways, his main keynote went through a history of roles for the pastors of churches. It was rather fascinating to see how he broke it down. How I’ll break it down for you is this, in the earliest histories of the church the pastor was a “resident theologian” (the guy who did all the study and translation for the individual church) or maybe the “civic leader” (you see this in movies how the pastor is always one of the town leaders, or main leader). Fast forward and you get into the 20th century and the pastor role has shifted to the “pastoral counselor” (we want mainly pastoral care as well as a good sermon). But today’s church has moved into more of this “entrepreneurial pastor” role (we want a pastor who can build, and build big.. as well as give a good sermon).

All this swirled in my head as I started reading this posting by Mark Meyer on what the church can learn from business. Mark has some fine points for record, I wouldn’t argue out that they are thoughtless or anything like that. I will say, they do reflect this new culture of pastoral leadership, this ‘entrepreneurial pastor’ type.

The problem here is that many of our pastors and those who have grown up to be a pastor came into the calling with a ‘pastoral counselor’ identity. They want to give guidance and assistance to people, they were not necessarily called to build big temples and have huge audiences (though some believe they were, that’s fine). The trip here is that our congregations are stuck in some limbo that they can not name. And it is that tension that exists because people don’t know how to examine and name that cultural set up we have.

Truth be told, business is taking over way more church practices than church needs to take from business (the base of Stick Sheep, go read it!). Churches are already well versed in business world practices, they’ve been around for a few centuries or more.. not sure many businesses that can claim that. Mark’s issue & many others is just that the church doesn’t want to become entrepreneurial again..

So I’m naming it, in my own UMC we’re stuck in this in between of a culture of pastors taught to be pastoral counselor when yet, our culture is telling our congregations that we want a pastor who will come in an be an entrepreneur. It’s a real pickle to be in and has been the torture of some really great pastors.. that unfortunately were not called to an entrepreneur.

being a Christianity that mandates sacrifice

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The other night it was rather quiet in our house and I was perusing my list of news feeds. I kept running across two news stories that had me sick to my stomach in a “we just don’t get it” type of way. The ‘we’ being us who claim Christianity in the United States and the ‘get it’ had to do with the sacrifice that I feel we are compelled to as followers of Christ.

The stories that had me sick were the reports of Christians in Iraq and those others around the world that went to worship services as church with a degree of threat on their life (in Nigeria this particular day it cost many their lives). Contrast that with the reports of our American Megachurches who were closing for the Sunday after all their Christmas service festivities.

I put my thoughts out there in a twitter posting.

And had a few responses. My friend Adam Mclane put together a much more articulate exploration of this contrasting practice of our same faith.

“For a large part of the world loving Jesus is tied closely to suffering. Many are expelled from their families for following Jesus. Some are sold as slaves. Some are imprisoned. Some experience economic inequity. Many are breaking the law by meeting– even in private. Many are left as outcasts. Many go hungry while their neighbors do not.

..

For a large part of the United States loving Jesus is tied closely to convenience. We do things when it works for us. But when it is more convenient to not do something, we pretend like we don’t even see it.

To summarize: In some parts of the world people risk death threats to worship while in other places in the world we’re taking the Sabbath off so we can spend time with family.”

I certainly am guilty of the convenience part of my church culture. It is probably why this compelled me so much to point of feeling ill.

I’d like to think we are compelled by Christ so deeply that we sacrifice our well being our conveniences to be part of his church, whether that be a house church, mega-church, parish church, para-church, etc.

The convenience we treat our church communities with reinforces to me that critique that church acts more like a country club, or some store of consumer goods than a place of holy worship and life giving community.

What do you think?