It seems to me that a lot of people think following Jesus comes down to exterior compliance. Performance. Behavior.

We tend to equate discipleship with activities first. Attend this event. Participate in this program. Learn this material. Practice these five steps to maturity. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

But, in teaching folks to work, give, go, do, we’ve neglected the simple fact that this is not how Jesus taught people. This is, quite simply, one of the most frustrating things about Jesus: He rarely gave us an outright command. More often than not, Jesus told us how things are and expected us to internalize that thought and adjust our behavior accordingly.

Jesus taught people to follow him from the inside out.

In that order.

Adjust the inside, address the disorder of your heart and mind first. Then, with a new heart and a renewed mind, allow that internal reality to work its way out through your behavior.

The sad truth is, performance-driven discipleship has not produced courageous, healthy, self-starting followers. Instead, it’s created disillusionment and apathy.

The gospel must first be allowed to impact the inside of us — the self, the ego, the libido, the imagination, the ambition, the passion, the soul — what Gordon McDonald calls “the life below the waterline” — if it’s ever going to provide the lasting change it promises.

We must wean ourselves from this obsession with superficial, performance-based cosmetic changes and learn to follow Jesus again from the inside out if we want to be that city set on a hill like Jesus wants.

But how do we do that? And why is that so counter-intuitive?

We’ve talked about this before around here, but let’s re-visit that conversation.

Why do so many preachers fail to teach the way Jesus did? Why are sermons so full of tips on how to change your behavior but so empty when it comes to new ways of thinking?

When it’s all said and done, it all comes down to leadership. Show me your leader, and I can know an awful lot about you — even if your leader is yourself — which is what most of us prefer.

Clearly, one of the problems in our world today is a lack of real leadership. Strong, courageous, competent, visionary leaders are so few and far between they almost seem non-existent. And there may be some societal reasons for this. The biggest reason is probably the shortage of people willing to be followers.

We live in an age of 51% majorities. Increasingly, it would seem that public opinion polls determine policy. Politicians who are not leaders stick their fingers in the air to see which way the winds of public opinion are blowing on nearly every issue. It seems like this is what makes a person electable nowadays: their willingness to follow the lead of the people back home. Consequently, leaders have become followers, and followers have become leaders.

Should one of our elected officials suddenly sprout a spine and stand in opposition to one of our whims — even if it is the right thing to do — we’ll just run that person out of office at our earliest convenience.

This is not good. It’s created a state where leaders no longer trust their followers, and followers don’t trust their leaders. With a few rare exceptions, the only thing either side can be counted upon to do on any kind of consistent basis is to do what they feel is in their own best interests.

What is terribly alarming to me personally is that this is not limited to the realm of politics. It has seeped its way into churches — the one place in all the world where we should be able to find a healthy example of how leaders should lead and how followers should follow. Following the greatest Leader of all is what Christianity is supposed to be all about, after all. When Christians can’t get leadership and followership right, what’s the world to do?

Let’s talk about this for a while. Let’s take our time and be courteous and respectful, please. But let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on with this issue. And let’s start with the most basic premise of Christianity:

Have we misunderstood what it means to follow Jesus? What do you suppose following Jesus looks like? And how have churches and Christians missed the mark on this one?

To my knowledge, I’ve never actually met Darin. If I have, I apologize for not remembering. Darin’s a pastor, and we’ve had some interesting discussions here about things related to church and Jesus and how the church can look more like Jesus. He’s got his own blog where he talks about this kind of stuff, too.

Anyway, in my last post I asked the following question: “Do you know of any places where they’re actually doing something different and it’s working?”

Darin wants to know, “How do you define working?”

Now, I’ve written about this a lot. You could probably click on the “Church” category over there in the sidebar and read a lot about my ideas of how churches can, do and should define “success”. But I’d rather have some dialogue around here. It’s been pretty good lately.

So, let’s hear your ideas. What does it look like when a church “works”? How does your church define “success”?

Also, I did ask more than one question the other day. I also asked, “What’s the difference between a reactive church and a proactive church?” In my opinion, that’s a really, really important question that few churches have resolved well.

One last video of the conversation between Dave Fitch and Ed Stetzer. Their topic this time is about how churches need to tell better stories.

Missional Conversation (Part 3)

As I mentioned in the last post, I really appreciate Ed’s work and the way he approaches this whole conversation. He refuses to make it into an either/or argument and insists on making it both/and. God can, has and will continue to be at work in megachurch settings and in house church settings, in huge gatherings and in small groups, in places where there are rocking worship bands and fog machines and in places where they sit in the round and sing a cappella.

Ed talks about how it’s easy to think of those who advocate more missional churches — particularly those who self-identify as “emergent” — as “the angry, white children of evangelical megachurches”. In my experience, many of the “emergent” guys I know fit that profile pretty well. They grew up in the suburbs, going to their local “Mall of Jesus” on Sunday mornings, never seeing beyond their own zip code except to take that summertime mission trip with the youth group. At some point in time, they developed a conscience that calls them to do something to help alleviate the mass of suffering in our world and apply the gospel to something more than just getting into heaven when you die. Now they have equated suburban apathy and excess with that megachurch upbringing. In fact, some I know have made the latter the cause of the former.

The problem is that being missional or emergent or whatever you want to call it has just been reactive in many places and has not developed into a proactive movement. There are a few examples we could point to, but, by and large, that’s how it appears. They know what they aren’t; they don’t know what they are. At least they don’t know how to articulate it yet.

This is, I think, what Ed is talking about when he says we need better stories. People do not gravitate towards whoever is right. Nor do they gravitate to whoever is loudest. They gravitate towards whoever presents the clearest picture. People are drawn to clarity. This is why traditionalists so often “win” in these arguments — at least on a corporate level. The traditionalist can point to the way we used to do it, and people can see it clearly in their heads. Upstarts who say, “Well, I don’t know what it’s going to look like because we’re just going to let the Spirit lead us” often find people respond by saying, “I appreciate that sentiment, but I’m not going to give you any money.”

Michelangelo once said, “Criticize by creating.” In other words, let’s stop bashing the church, announcing what’s wrong with this model or that model, and let’s start creating a biblically-driven, missionally-engaged alternative that thrives, that flourishes. Then, as people and communities are truly transformed by the power of the gospel at work in, among and through that new model, let’s celebrate and tell that story of how God has created something different, while still acknowledging that God continues to work in ways that are familiar to all.

Okay, some questions now:

Why do you think this conversation so often becomes an either/or instead of a both/and?

What’s the difference between a reactive church and a proactive church?

Do you know of any places where they’re actually doing something different and it’s working?

With apologies to JamesBrett I’m linking here to the second part of this conversation between Dave Fitch and Ed Stetzer. Their topic of conversation this time is a doozy: Can Megachurches be Missional?

Missional Conversation (Part 2)

Some quick thoughts from me:

Ed was preaching at First Baptist Church of Hendersonville, TN, at the time. He says he was the interim pastor for them — a megachurch of just over 9,000 people — 94% of whom were involved in small groups. That’s remarkable and commendable.

Ed also accurately diagnoses one very big reason why Christians are often attracted to megachurches: they feel the need to hide and heal. This is important and can be healthy. However, Christians are not meant to hide and heal forever. Perhaps it’s appropriate for a season, but who is in a position to tell these people, “It’s time to get back in the game”?

I also think Ed gets it right when he says that asking if “megachurches” are good or bad is the wrong question. The better question is, “Are there good megachurches and bad megachurches?” The answer to that is, obviously, yes.

I love Dave’s statement that the goal many people have of turning their church into a megachurch — or, worse, believing that mega is the only way to be effective — is misguided. Ed’s response is classic Ed: “I want those pastors to have a multiplying vision, not a mega vision.”

For JamesBrett (who has a hard time downloading and watching video because of the cost of bandwidth where he is in Tanzania), here are some links to articles written by Ed and Dave:

“Missional Churches and MegaChurches” by Ed Stetzer

“Can A Megachurch be Missional?” by Dave Fitch — If you read this article, please read Dave’s last paragraph — the part where he says, “I believe the work of the mega-churches is valid and has its place in the Kingdom: the ministry to the dormant unchurched of Christendom.” If we’re going to have this conversation, let’s please be charitable toward those with whom we disagree, okay?

BTW, if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m firmly in Ed’s camp (though I completely agree with everything Dave says about the dangers of video church). Ed has actually written about this as well in an article challenging many of the assumptions of multi-site churches.

Okay, there’s a lot of thought-provoking material in there for us all. Thoughts? Comments? Observations?

Here’s an interesting video of a conversation between Ed Stetzer and Dave Fitch — two guys who both love Jesus and both love the church. It’s a little long-ish, but I think it’s very worthwhile. They talk about some of the stuff we’ve been talking about around here lately.

A Missional Conversation (Part 1)

Here are some of my thoughts (in no particular order):

I love Ed’s perspective that missional isn’t about our own preferences but about getting on board God’s mission.

I love Dave’s perspective on incarnational evangelism as opposed to what we’ve traditionally known as evangelism. I’m writing a lot about that in the next book.

I also love how Ed nails down the fact that movements like attractional and missional often end up spending too much time and energy recruiting other Christians to their model.

I also really like how they both challenge the assumption first stated by Frost & Hirsch but echoed in lots of places (including on this blog) that ecclesiology simply flows out of missiology which flows out of Christology. There’s a lot in that idea I like, but I have some reservations — maybe some of the same reservations Ed and Dave have.

Your thoughts?

We took a stab at trying to define “attractional” church. Personally, I wonder why we feel the need to add -al to the end of everything these days, but there it is. Attractional. Missional. Incarnational.

Anyway….

The term “missional” is being used a lot nowadays, but very few people know what it means. It’s become kind of a junk drawer for everything people would like to see fixed in local churches. Some people talk about adding culturally relevant music to their Sunday morning gatherings and say it’s important because they’re trying to be “missional”. Others talk about serving the poor as a way of being “missional”. I have a friend who is not planting a church; he is planting a “missional community”.

It seems to me, though, that a group of people who are committed to joining God on his mission to redeem and restore the world might do things like…I don’t know…gather together regularly to worship corporately and learn from one another and encourage one another and pray for one another and other things that might look an awful lot like…I don’t know…a church.

Has missional become the new inconceivable (“You keep using that word — I do not think it means what you think it means”)?

What is a missional church?

We covered this territory back in March of 2007 when I was reading a book called The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. It’s come up again in light of our recent conversation. Plus, we’ve added so many new readers to this blog in the last two-and-a-half years, it might be beneficial to revisit topics like this every so often.

JamesBrett has been hinting around this thought, but let’s go ahead and state it explicitly. There is a movement among church leaders towards a more incarnational approach to ministry and away from an attractional model of ministry. In other words, these leaders believe we ought to do less “inviting” and more “investing” — less “come and see” more “go and do” evangelism.

At least, I think that’s what the whole attractional vs. incarnational thing comes down to. Am I missing something.

Let’s start with this question: Why is attractional so bad?

Well, perhaps we should try to arrive at a definition of “attractional” for those who haven’t read Frost & Hirsch’s book. So, okay…two questions:

1. What is an attractional model of church? Did my description above get it right, or did I miss something?

2. Why is that model so bad?

Every generation it seems wants a silver bullet. They want the secret formula for instant church growth. Do this. Say that. Play these songs. Preach those sermons. And…voila! You’ll be doing four Sunday services just like the big boys do!

Yeah…it doesn’t work like that.

The most effective strategy (ironically, it’s the most biblical strategy as well) for evangelism will always, always, always be one-on-one, one person telling another person what God has done in and through his life.

Sorry.

Jesus told his followers to be witnesses — to just get out there and tell folks what they’d seen and heard. And that’s precisely what they did. Theologian Michael Green says the message of the gospel spread in the first century like gossip over the back fence. That’s how they turned the world upside-down in a generation.

At North Point – perhaps the most innovative and techno-savvy church I know – they call that strategy “Invest and Invite” (I know — how lo-tech can you get?). Regular members just invest in other people and wait for an opportunity to invite them to a church event. That’s it. No smart lights or high-speed internet connection needed. Andy Stanley isn’t even involved in most of it.

It’s old school and unsexy, but it works to the tune of, like, 500 baptisms per year at the Alpharetta campus alone. And it’s worked consistently like that for the last decade.

If any other church had a program that boasted numbers like that, we’d be knocking down their door, begging them to put it in a box and giftwrap it for us. If First Baptist of Podunk, Utah, had a Halloween Trunk-or-Treat Hell House Extravaganza that brought in 500 new people each year – if Trinity Presyterian of East Bumble, New Mexico, came up with a personalized automated email marketing software that got around all those pesky spam laws and guaranteed you one new member for every 25-30 current members – we’d be screaming to the top of our lungs: SHOW US HOW TO DO IT! WE DON’T CARE HOW MUCH IT COSTS!

But this? This involves things like people…having conversations…with other people…who don’t go to church. And that might be…uncomfortable.

Give us doorhangers to hang on people’s doors. Give us postcards to mail to people’s homes. Give us clever slogans we can put on our church marquees. Better curriculum. More creative programming. Cooler music. A better website. Give us a spiky-haired preacher wearing a long-sleeve striped shirt untucked and $300 jeans.

But please do not ask me to go next door and ask my neighbor if he needs help with anything. And, if you do, you better pray he doesn’t ask me anything about Jesus or God or the Old Testament or gay marriage or why I voted the way I did.

I’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time among the cool churches (you know…Willow Creek and Saddleback and North Point and all their buddies who make fun of churches like yours). I’ve gone to their conferences and listened to their pastors. Some of those guys are my friends even.

And, while I have some pretty serious reservations about some of what they’re doing (especially video church), you can’t deny the fact that they do evangelism pretty well. These churches baptize hundreds of people each year by creating a safe place for people to bring their spiritual questions and explore their faith. They’ve figured out ways of presenting timeless, biblical truths to people in timely and relevant ways.

But I’ve never one time heard anyone in a church that’s really evangelizing the lost say, “It was Vacation Bible School that really put us over the top.”

Can we be honest about something? You may (like Jeff told about in his comment) have gotten saved at a VBS in the 70s, but it rarely works like that anymore. More often than not, (like Iz said in his comment) VBS is just free babysitting for people who already attend church somewhere.

I’m not saying it’s wrong or bad or evil. I’m just saying it’s not outreach. Or, if it is, it ain’t working because these churches have been teaching kids the motions to Father Abraham the whole time while the percentage of Americans who self-identify as “Christian” has steadily declined.

In the past quarter century, the combined membership of all Protestant denominations declined by 10 percent, while the national population increased by nearly 30 percent. In that same time period, the average size of the average church in America dropped 10 people. In an average year, half of all churches do not add one new member through conversion growth. Most churches average one new convert per year for every 85-90 regular adult attendees.

I may never ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery or fly o’er the enemy, but I know the Lord’s army (“Yes, sir!”) isn’t making much progress here at home. At some point, don’t you think we ought to look at this honestly and say, “Maybe we should stop what we’re doing that isn’t working and try something else”?

This is a consistent problem that isn’t just limited to VBS. It applies to Sunday School and door knocking and a whole host of other things that used to work but don’t anymore. Why do we have such a hard time admitting that something doesn’t work anymore? And what do we do when it stops working?