Tag Archives: missions

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4 Questions You Should Pose to Your Church

Over the last six months of my ministry job search, I’ve had to learn that, despite needing a job, and despite desperately wanting to begin participating within a new local church, the inconvenience of “fitting in” is an important caveat. Qualifications aside, not every person fits well with every community, and its up to the grace of God to reveal the right place for each minister seeking to serve.

In the meantime, as I do my best to submit to this lesson of patience and wisdom, I have come to consider four essential questions regarding the kind of faith community I hope to work for. Often, I can err on the side of idealism, so it is always important that the observations instigated by these questions be considered with the proverbial grain of salt. However, if and when I finally do hear from a pastor or rector or search committee interested in calling me on staff, these will be the four questions I will silently ask the church before I accept or reject the place as my new church home.

 #1 – Are you intentional?

I want to work for a church that is about something, that knows it is about something, and is clearly committed and focused on this “something,” whatever it may be. In other words, I want to serve in a church that maintains a clear sense of intentionality regarding its identity. A church that is intentional is one that puts purposiveness over approachability. They are careful not to water down their message and their focus so as to appeal to the lowest common denominator of congregants. Rather, they infuse everything they do – from worship to teaching to pastoral care to outreach – with steadfast determination to holiness, reverence and awareness for the sacred. They want to be relevant and bring people in, of course; however, they do this not by dumbing down or softening the truth, but by working diligently and prayerfully to make the truth compelling.

The intentional church strives to be a place of genuine renewal and authentic, lasting interaction. It is not a community center or a country club. It does not exist merely to exemplify moral living or uphold particular family values. It inspires an honest-to-God devotion to holiness rather than dictating the forced manifestation of “holy” activities. Above all, it spurns conformity in its members, and instead awakens true community.

Which bring us to the second question…

# 2 – Are you communal?

There is an old adage that much of the work of a local church defers to the “80/20 rule.” That is, roughly 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. Whether it’s a mega-church that sees thousands in its auditorium on Sunday, or a tiny country church with an attendance in the mere double-digits, the same sad rule is, sadly, proven true all over the country. The question is, why is this the case in so many churches?

I submit that, like intentionality of purpose, the drive for authentic communal interaction can sometimes take a backseat to peaking the curiosity of visitors and charming its participants with powerful music and/or exciting opportunities. While excellence in what you do is certainly important, I want to be a part of a community of faith that puts interaction between its members – across age groups! – central. Small groups and dinner clubs and Bible classes and ministry teams are all good things, but they can sometimes be nothing more than the default attempt to forge connections and stimulate cooperation between church members. Often, it is the leaders of such groups that do most of the work to maintain the group, once again perpetuating the 80/20 rule.

The church I am seeking to work in is one that energizes all its members, rousing them to determined participation and providing as many opportunities as possible for each person to use his or her own gifts and talents to edify the congregation, not to mention the greater community.

And what about that greater community?…

#3 – Are you missional?

I would be hard-pressed to find a church that does not support mission, through either prayer, financial giving, or even sending out its own, both home and abroad. This is a fundamental tenet of the life of a Christian – representing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a world in need. However, there is a difference between obligatory participation in particular mission opportunities, and infusing your purpose with the spirit of missionality. Often, ministers will divide up the responsibilities of the Christian life into categories like personal devotion, intercession, theological understanding, moral living and missional duty. On any given Sunday, most church services will contain a sermon focusing, usually, on only one of these aspects. The problem with this is that a church’s overall message can become compartmentalized, and, by extension, so can that church’s overall behavior. Without meaning to, a church’s drive toward missions becomes less about a deep sense of compassion existing in its people, and more about prescribed obedience to a mandate.

The church that I hope to serve in is one that recognizes that everything, including our sense of mission to the world, comes from the position of each person’s heart toward God and His kingdom. Therefore, a missions identity must be intricately woven into every aspect of the church, from worship to teaching to activity. Not only so, it must allow for response in a myriad of ways and always be ready to reevaluate its involvement in the world – to consider the fruit that it is bearing.

This is because a true community of faith is never stagnant. It is ever-changing and adapting to the world it is committed to serving…

#4 – Are you alterable?

I want to serve in a church that is self-aware – of their strengths as well as their limitations – and is dedicated to challenging themselves into deeper and more profound avenues of communion with the Holy. This last question may seem unnecessary and the answer a given. After all, we’re talking about a church, here. That’s what a church – any church – is about, right?

Not necessarily. I have known many churches that, if they are honest with themselves, are about little more than doing worship in their own comfortable way, teaching the Bible in their own non-confrontational way, and fellowshipping with one another in their own psuedo-personal way. They may draw visitors in by the busloads, they may have a dynamite children’s program, they may have a multiple Dove award-winning praise band, but when it comes to the question of meaning and direction, they’re fine right where they are. They have established themselves in what seems to be a quality manner, so there is no point in changing things. God forbid some people don’t like the new direction and abandon the community?

Some of the most “successful” churches in America today are actually captives to fear and they don’t even know it. Fear of change. Change means shaking up the standard way of doing things that has been proven (and may or may not be formulaic), and that fills people with anxiety. I’m not talking about change for the sake of change, but rather change because the Spirit is calling a community to be about something they are currently neglecting.

A church is a living thing. Remember the little rhyme – “open the door and see all the people.” It is people who make a church what it is, who define it and collaborate within it and administer God’s love through it. The only way it can do these things is if the people are ready to be whatever God wants them to be at whatever time He wants them to be it. This is called readiness. Awareness.

May more and more faith communities strive to be exactly what they were always meant to be.

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Ist dieses das Ende von meinem deutschen Traum?

Just shy of three years ago, I wrote a blog post infused with all the pent-up anxiety and intrigue of what it was going to be like to leave my home in America and go work in the semi-exotic foreign land of mystery and sordid history that is Germany. I was scared and excited and intimidated and overconfident and ambitious and underqualified all at the same time, and the last three years have taught me that this mix of emotions never really changes or goes away. Sometime we feel one of them, but most of the time we feel a little bit of them all, all at once – life demands a lot from us, and the only way we are able to cope is to keep our quivers full of arrows, even the ineffective ones.

And so, I return to the land of possibility. At some point tomorrow, I will descend in that big iron bird somewhere over that big iron lady (she’s made of iron, right?) and I will feel a mixture of emotions, some of which are not a far cry from tired and poor and yearning for freedom.

But I return with a sense of newness. The last three years have been a joy in the midst of struggle, and a lesson that there is no real joy without struggle.

It will be good to come home.

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Is This the End of My American Dream?

The thrust of a 777 at take-off causing its passengers to pull that one G is part of the deal your body must make with the plane whenever you fly anywhere. The force of lifting off from the runway seems to suck you back into the seat. If you are seasoned flyer, however, you probably rarely notice this anymore, but go on reading your book, flipping through the Sky Mall or perusing whatever travel magazine the airline provides. Some of the most seasoned may already be asleep. Yet the less experienced flyer notices this, and if he or she is a nervous flyer, such a rattle and pull from the seat can be unsettling. So you close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and tell yourself that it is a good thing to be taking this trip and that everything is going to be all right; the journey will be a successful one. 

I imagine this force I will experience on Sunday evening as Leigh and I take-off from the Houston airport, bound for Europe, bound for Kandern, Germany and a different life as missionary teachers. I think about the feeling of being pulled back against the seat as if it were the spirit of America clinging to us, trying desperately to impede our departure from this land, this dream. Over the past few months, we have navigated our lives through the stressful business of packing, selling, storing, shipping, and the always wearying process of fundraising. All of this came from the decision to relinquish our lifestyle in this country for something different, something else. I do not imply that the journey we are preparing to embark upon is a more noble one than that which we lived in Houston, nor am I asserting that by moving to Germany as missionaries my wife and I are somehow more in tune with God’s will than we were before.

Yet it is easy to get lost in the midst of the American Dream. It is difficult not to drop your guard and find that a tsunami of misplaced ideals and skewed passions has crashed over you and stripped away all that has made you really you. This summer, I proved this danger to be real every time I stood before a collection of boxes and debated myself regarding what I needed to take to Germany versus what I wanted to take there. In a Dreamless reality, the list of needs is a short one. But it is hard to shake the Dream, and therefore hard to shake the lie that what I want is synonymous with what I need.

The American Dream seems a wonderful thing at the outset. Indeed, much of the pro-war talk in this country today (whether or not you appreciate it) reminds us that we must seek to “preserve” the American Dream. This Dream that says we have a right to be safe, to be rich, to be independent, to be free, that our philosophies and ideals and beliefs are no better nor worse than those held by anyone else. This Dream that reminds us, “If you want something, go get it. Work hard, and reap the reward. Follow the Manifest Destiny for your own life.” We are told that our lives are being threatened at home and abroad, therefore we must strive to preserve our American Dream. Even in some of our more “popular” churches, such a message is being preached as God’s will for our lives.

And so the wave washes over us, and we become so disoriented in the flood that we do not stop to consider the value of swimming against the flow, of trying to separate ourselves from this rolling wave. Before we realize it, our lives are hopelessly tangled within the Dream, and, yes, a threat to the Dream is a threat to our lives as we know them. And we are slowly sucked down into the swirling, surging chop.

There is another way. Another reality. An alternative. 

There is a Kingdom, and while it can seem like more of a dream than the American Dream, it promises a freedom that is not conditional, not held together by the heavily guarded boundaries of a Dream that always seems to find itself in peril. And while this Kingdom does not promise us safety, or riches, or complete independence from others, it does offer us freedom. It is a different kind of freedom, yes, but one that far exceeds the hopes and desires of the one it calls us to leave behind.

So, on Sunday night, perhaps it will not be just the thrust of the engines as the 777 roars into the air at take-off. Maybe it is this desperate Dream clutching at us, working to pull even some part of us back, to delude us into maintaining its ideals even as we remove ourselves from its physical landscape. It is true, such a danger is real. All I can do is close my eyes, take a few deep breaths, and tell myself it is a good thing to take this trip. I will tell myself everything will be all right. The journey will be a successful one.