The Unfaithful Bride?

The pastorate can be one of the most frustrating, and yet also rewarding vocations. If you were to survey the pastors you know, most if not all, would say that they would never choose to be a pastor, but only put up with the unique demands and frustrations of pastoral ministry because of God’s call on their life.

One of the chief frustrations for many pastors is inconsistent attendance by church members for Sunday morning worship. According to Barna, “47% of American adults attend church in a typical weekend, not including a special event such as a wedding or a funeral. (2005)” Also research indicates, that “58% of protestants,” and “55% of Catholics” attend a worship service each weekend. This information suggests that just over half of all “Christians” (I know that term is a can of worms in and of itself) in the U.S. attend worship on a given weekend. Below is just a short laundry list of reasons why members at my churches were inconsistent:

· Traveling for family vacations
· Youth athletic games (#1 culprit – soccer)
· Family reunions
· Hunting
· “ I don’t have to go to church to be a Christian”
· Personal Theology (i.e. My personal salvation is not dependent on the church)
· My commitment is to the Lord, not the church

I could go on, but you get the point. The most frustrating point for me was my most committed church members always seemed unfazed by the inconsistency of their brothers and sisters in Christ – the lack of commitment. In fact, often they (committed members) would often make excuses for their (inconsistent members) absences. I can hear it now, “Relax pastor don’t take it so seriously! Don’t make it personal! They’re not rejecting you!”

The problem with most churches (the people, not the architecture) is their own self-image or identity. Most Americans see church as something you do. It is just one more thing you write into your calendar, and it is easily erased if something better comes along. As a result, we choose Sundays to travel, catch up on rest or schedule family reunions – because it is just something we do!

But if we think ecclesiologically and theologically how can I and “they” not take it (the lack of commitment) personal? Most church members fail to realize that they are not rejecting the pastor, nor the church service, but actually them – “true church.” Throughout Scripture the most profound metaphor used to describe the church is that of a “bride.” Matrimonial covenant language has been used throughout Christendom and scripture to describe the relationship between Christ and his Church and also between church members.

Now the radical individualist might argue that his undying commitment is to Christ (the groom). However, the bride metaphor is clear; it is not the “part” but the “whole” that forms the bride. We must remember the exhortation of Paul, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church (not the individual) and gave himself up for her. (Eph. 5:25)” Our relationship with God although personal, has always been corporate in nature.

So, is it just a coincidence that nearly 55% of all Christian marriages end in divorce? How can we be faithful to our spouse when we can’t be faithful to Christ and his bride or vise versa?

America's Protectors of Free Speech

Below is an interesting email I received from the American Family Association:

Brittany McComb was the valedictorian at Foothill High School recently. She graduated with a 4.7 GPA. She earned the right to address the other graduates at Foothill, located in Henderson, Nevada. She gave a copy of her graduating speech to the school administrators. It contained some Biblical references and even mentioned (one time) the name “Christ.” The school administrators censored some of the biblical references. They also censored the single reference to Christ.

Then the school officials handed the speech over to the ACLU for approval and/or more censoring. After getting the OK from the ACLU, Brittany’s speech (minus the censored references to the Bible and Christ) was approved. Brittany was warned that if she deviated from the ACLU approved language, her mike would be cut off.

Then came the moment for the big decision. She would not bow down, she decided. She would go with her original version. She stepped to the mike and began her speech. But just before she could utter the name “Christ,” her mike went dead. School officials silenced her. The crowd of 400 jeered for several minutes, angry at the action of the school officials. The ACLU was happy. They had silenced another Christian.

“I went through four years of school at Foothill and they taught me logic and they taught me freedom of speech. God’s the biggest part of my life. Just like other valedictorians thank their parents, I wanted to thank my lord and savior,” Brittany said.

Because she refused to bow down to the ACLU’s idol of gold, she did not get her wish. She was censored. This young heroine deserves praise and a thank you from those who believe in free speech.

I find it ironic, that the very organization that is supposed to protect "American values" and "rights" which claims to abhor any type of censorship are perhaps the greatest censors of all. Additionally, it is ironic that they will defend ABC's right to use the name of Jesus on national television a curse word and yet, if Christian uses it as a means of praise it infringes upon ones freedom of religion.

According to the ACLU's website they serve as "our nation's guardian of liberty. We work daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States. Our job is to conserve America's original civic values: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights."

Would the ACLU protect a Christian whose rights are being infringed upon (I think we already know the answer)? How can you claim to be "America's watchdog" and yet have your very own agenda? But what about Brittany's rights?

Charles Finney!

Who are you theologically? According to this survey, I scored as a Charles Finney. According to the photo, I resemble him in more than one way. Here are my results:

You're passionate about God and love to preach the Gospel. Your theology borders on pelagianism and it is said that if God were taken out of your theology, it would look exactly the same.

Charles Finney 87%
Anselm 80%
Augustine 73%
Karl Barth 73%
Friedrich Schleiermacher 73%
Martin Luther 60%
John Calvin 47%
J?Moltmann 47%
Jonathan Edwards 33%
Paul Tillich 27%

Take the survey and tell me how you scored? Do you think this is a very assessment of your theology?

The Invisible Church

Yesterday, I had the privilege of preaching at one of the “flagship” churches in the denomination I serve. I arrived early and participated in an adult Sunday school class. This was the best adult Sunday school class I ever been apart of. There were eighty or more adults (primarily seniors) who were actively engaged in the lesson. The teacher was articulate, animated and dynamic; so much in fact, I wondered to myself if he had missed his calling! It was amazing to me, in age when Sunday school is a dying breed, this church had it right! Or so it seemed.

Once I assumed the standard position on the platform for the worship service, I began surveying the congregation as they moved into the sanctuary from their respective Sunday school classes. I was attentively watching the rear doors to see how the sanctuary dynamic was changing with the arrival of the different age groups. As I watched, in walked a few children, some more youth, the Sunday school teachers and the typical late arrivals (as the Sunday school superintendent called them – signifying those who do not go to Sunday school). The congregation swelled slightly.

Typically, the moments prior to proclaiming God’s word are very exciting and euphoric (similar to my playing days on game day) but on this day my heart broke when the people stopped trickling in. And no it wasn’t due to pride or arrogance wanting a larger crowd (even though all preachers do want big crowds). It was because an entire demographic of people were missing. I found myself asking, “Where are they? Are they coming?” With my eyes, I scoured the congregation looking for anyone that shared my likeness and there was none! I very much, like Moses, felt like “a stranger in a strange land.” Incredible, in a large, “successful” congregation there were only handful of people age 18-35!

In the moments before I spoke, we had an elongated testimony time! In which, three testimonies were about wayward children. Below is summary of one such testimony that went something like this:

“Pastor, would you pray for my son and his family! Recently they purchased a camper. They weren’t happy with their church! So they left, but they didn’t look for another church. They just stopped going all together! Now they just travel, and camp on weekends! They are really going through some tough times. But, praise God they are selling that trailer! Maybe now they’ll come back to church. (Almost word for word)”

At the conclusion of each testimony the congregation gave some hearty amen’s. Is this a testimony we should amen? Should we pin our hopes on the selling of a camper for our children’s salvation? This is not an anomaly. In fact, at the vast majority of American churches, this demographic is missing entirely or greatly reduced! Why is this happening? Can we just chalk it up like some who’ll say, “well wander for while, but they’ll come back when they have children?” But is this acceptable? Is it even excusable?

What do you think are some of the reasons for this? How can we as churches overcome this crisis? I’d like to see your thoughts on this and dialogue.

Food For Thought

Today, I was given a book to read by my good friend and colaborer Doug Thompson who happens to be an Emerging Church apologist (kidding). Below, I have included an excerpt from the opening chapter of Dan Kimball's Book, Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings for New Generations. I believe he hit the nail on the head with his analysis of current worship practices in "successful" evangelical churches.

“We usually call the weekend time when a church family gets together a “worship service.” Ironically, this term used to mean a time when the saints of God all meet to offer their service to God through worship and their service to others in the church. Over time, however, the title has slowly reversed. The weekend worship “service” has become the time of the week when we go to a church building much like a car goes to an automobile service station.

Most people view the weekend worship service as a place where we go to get service done to us by “getting our tanks filled up” at the service station. It’s a place where
someone will give a sermon and serve us with our weekly sustenance. In automobile terms, you could say it is our weekly fill-up. We come to our service station to have a song leader serve us by leading us in singing songs. All so we can feel good when we emotionally connect through mass singing and feel secure that we did “worship.”

We go to the weekend worship service and drop off our kids – that way they too can get served by having their weekly fill-ups. We are especially glad that our weekend service station now serves coffee in the church lobby – it’s as convenient as our automobile service station’s little mini-mart.”

Improve By Making Deliberate Mistakes?

In my brief ministry experience, I have served as youth minister (twice), associate Pastor (once) and senior pastor (twice). In addition, ever since I have been given the title of professor, on several occasions I have been invited to a number of ministries and or churches to act as a consultant assess the ministries strengths and weakness while making suggestions for improvement.

What has been amazing to me is that no matter the context, people of all ages are resistant to change – even though change is necessary part of life. Below is an article where the resident "ministry expert" at Rev.org where he suggests making mistakes on purpose to learn from them based on some business practices cited the Harvard Business Review. Below is an excerpt from this article.

Most of us realize that we learn most from our failures. The goal, therefore, is to fail fast in order to speed up the learning process. The difference between smart mistakes and dumb ones involves identifying our assumptions, selecting assumptions for testing, ranking the assumptions, executing the mistake, and then learning from the process. (3)

So what does this mean for a local church? Let's say we want to challenge our assumptions about outreach, especially because we want to create several events a year and our track record hasn't been great in this area. For example, we believe that people from our community should be motivated to attend a special parenting seminar, but we don't want to invest advertising dollars to promote it. Therefore, we put on the event.

Sure enough, only thirteen people show up, two of whom are not from our church. We survey participants on how it is they found out about the event and what motivated them to attend. Then we gather the leaders together to debrief. Who came? Who did we think would come? How much money did we spend on advertising? What did it cost us to pay the presenter, open the doors of the church, copy the fliers, handouts and provide refreshments? What might this tell us about the way we're going about doing outreach events? If we're going to do this in the future, how do we determine what topics interest people in our community? How do we go about strategizing getting the word out to the people most apt to be interested in it? What is a way to better strategize our objectives, such as follow-up, staffing, measuring effectiveness, and raising marketing money?

While it may seem silly to put on an event for the primary purpose of analyzing a mistake, the potential benefit is that we'll learn how to do outreach events more effectively in the future. That fact that we're placing our assumptions and processes under a microscope means we want to be good stewards of our outreach dollars as well as become more effective at connecting with our community. We're no longer satisfied with doing business as usual, sweeping mediocre results under the rug or chalking it up to "how difficult ministry is."

So, what do you think? Is this a logical argument that we should try to implement in our local context? Do most pastors even have the job security to attempt something like this?


Harvard Business Review; June, 2006. "The Wisdom of Deliberate Mistakes," by Paul J.H. Schoemaker and Robert E. Gunther, 108-115.
(3) Pages 113-115

Alan Nelson is the Pastoral Ministry Champion and Executive Editor of Rev! Magazine at Group Publishing, Loveland, CO.

West Meets East

Simply a must read! Unfortunately you have to sift through several pages of advertisement.

West Meets East

Introduction to the Emergent Church

For those of you who are in the academy, the local church or the youth pastorate have no doubt come in contact with with such terms as postmodernism and the emerging church. The emerging church is one movement with in the protestant church that is attempting to address ministering in a postmodern culture. Due to the newness of the emerging church, the verdict is still out on its effectivness along with its theology. As a result, there have been numerous critiques both positive and negative on this movement.

For those of you new to this movement, I am posting The Emerging Church by D.A. Carson.

D. A. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. This article was adapted from his new book Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Zondervan, 2005). It is excerpted here by permission of the author and publisher.

Say What?

In my feeble attempts to stay culturely relevant I often common upon some interesting websites. I came upon this blog whose purpose is to help churches promote themselves, or in a business sense - market themselves. The site has plenty of interesting articles with some pretty pragmatic advice.

The websites mission:

Our mission is to frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ. Church Marketing Sucks is a part of the Center for Church Communication, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the church matter.

Frustrate.Something's wrong with your church. Something's wrong with the Church. Church marketing efforts and communication in general suck. We've got the greatest story ever told, but no one's listening. The church has a problem
communicating, and it's time to change.

Educate.We love the church, but it needs some help. Typos, cheesy logos, and bad clip art aren't helping the cause. But snazzy marketing won't save this ship, either. It's not about being perfect, but there's a better way to communicate. It's authentic, it's loving, and it knows how to spell.

Motivate.This isn't simply about putting butts in pews or selling glossy postcards. It's about helping the church be the Church, and seeing lives changed as a result. If helping the church communicate better allows one person to finally glimpse the Gospel, then our work has been worthwhile. It may be fuzzy math, but God can worry about that.

One thing the site makes clear is the it offends people, primarily because of their name. It seemed that no matter how much I surfed their site the name stuck out at me like a sore thumb - Church Marketing Sucks!

Before I knew it up, the name of the page became a stumbling block to me. All I could here were the words of a wise old sage (Ron Smith) who once told the "Zoo" on Johnson Hall (My residence in college) in reference to our language, "suck what?" Those words have haunted me since, and to this day I can not use it.

So, a question must be asked. What language is permissible for a minister of Jesus Christ? Should we conform our language to signs of the times to be cultural relevant? Are those who won't use the common vernacular or slang (i.e. suck) that is common with teens and college students just prudes?

Or is there an expectation to be "unique and peculiar" as one "who is called to live worthy of the calling?" Are there just certain ways that ministers or Christians for that matter don't talk? What do you think?