A (slight) distraction from blogging...

Though I plan to continue using my blog as a medium for communicating my ongoing cultural observations, research (which, admittedly, I haven't done much of up to this point), and other random quips, I have begun writing a screenplay, which will inevitably demand more of my time and creative energies than regular, consistent blogging would allow. I may provide details about my screenplay sometime later on, but at this point the narrative is really just a sketch, and I'm mostly concerned right now with profiling the major characters in the story. I would love to dialogue with some of you about the possibilities for the characters, themes, and overarching narrative...let me know if you're interested! Burke has already helped immensely in sparking some thoughts and inspiration for characters, setting, and story. Who knows, maybe you'll get "Written By" credits when it is made into a Hollywood blockbuster...

Hirsch is preaching to me once again

"...We need to ask ourselves [the question]...What is the irreducible minimum of the faith? What can be done away with? What is too complex and heavy to carry into a new missional situation and an adaptive challenge? We, too, need to eliminate the things that don't matter."
"Take for instance the predominant idea of attractional church in the church growth mode. If we wished to start a church plant on the assumption that need to look like the local megachurch, with all its polished professionalism, great worship bands, exceptional communication, fully staffed children and youth ministry, effective cell programs, and all around attractive appeal, then for the most part, it is simply not reproducible - at least not by the vast majority of average Christians. Whether we intend it or not, the implicit message of this medium says that if you want to start a church, then you will need all of these things if you wish to be effective. Well, the fact is that most people can't put together a show like that - and it is a fact that we have had church growth and megachurch for well over thirty years now and the overwhelming majority of the 485,000 church in the United States remain under eighty per congregation, while laboring under the guilt of failure to perform like the bigger churches. Let's face it squarely: it is darn hard to reproduce a Saddleback or a Willow Creek, as remarkeable as those churches are. A church like that, with all its professional departments, charismatic leaders, large staffing, and financial resources, simply cannot be easily reproduced. If we put this up as the sole model of effective church, the net effect will be to marginalize most people from ministry and church planting, and it will effectively put a contraceptive on the reproductive mechanism of the church. It will certainly stifle genuine people movements, because it necessitates a professional concept of ministry with massive buildings and resources."

Hirsch continues to smash my head through the wall of my own preconceived notions...

The Implications for Church Planting seem pretty significant...

From Seth Godin's blog:

Not so grand

Grand openings are severely overrated. So are product launches and galas of all sorts.

Make a list of successful products in your industry. Most of them didn't start big. Not the Honda Accord or Facebook, not Aetna Insurance, not JetBlue or that church down the street. Most overnight successes take a decade (okay, four years online).

The grand opening is a symptom of the real problem... the limited attention span of marketers. Marketers get focused (briefly) on the grand opening and then move on to the next thing (quickly). Grand opening syndrome forces marketers to spend their time and money at exactly the wrong time, and worse, it leads to a lack of patience that damages the prospects of the product and service being launched.

Non-profits do the same thing when they spend months planning an elaborate gala that takes all the time and enriches the hotel and the caterer. Far better to spend the time and money building actual relationships than going for the big 'grand' hit.

The best time to promote something is after it has raving fans, after you've discovered that it works, after it has a groundswell of support. And more important, the best way to promote something is consistently and persistently and for a long time. Save the bunting for Flag Day.

Comfort=Joy?

I am becoming more and more convinced that the extremely high premium our culture (and, subsequently, I, myself) places on comfort, as an end in and of itself, flies directly in the face of a following-of -Jesus-way-of-life. It doesn't take much searching to see how pervasive the pursuit of comfort as an end in and of itself is in our society. So many products and services are marketed, seemingly with great success, purely on the merit that they will provide the consumer a greater amount of comfort, and I'm sure anyone reading this can fill in here with an appropriate example. Consumers themselves invest great amounts of time, energy, money, and searching into increasing the amount of comfort in their lives, once again, as an end in and of itself. But is this a worthy pursuit? Is comfort something that should be placed so high within our values systems?

C.S. Lewis said this:

"Comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."

While Lewis was talking specifically about a "false gospel" that appeals to one's desire for comfort without confronting them with the harsh truths of sin, law, and condemnation, I think that the principle he presents reveals a broader truth that applies here: that the pursuit of comfort is detrimental and contradictory to any number of other, far more worthy values: truth, integrity, love for your neighbor, stewardship, and, above all, Christ-likeness.

Jesus himself said, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head..." (Matthew 8:20). Pursuing comfort as an end doesn't exactly seem to fit into Jesus' value system when he didn't even have a bed to sleep in. And he wasn't just saying this as a statement of his current situation. Instead, he was saying it to make it clear to a would-be disciple that following Him is not an easy way, nor a comfortable life. Instead, you can expect that at times you will find yourself without any of the trappings or comforts that so characterize and consume the lives of others...

This is definitely an issue that we must wrestle with, because if comfort is too high in our personal priorities, it will undoubtedly prevent us from "stepping out of the boat," so to speak, and really following Jesus. Jesus, after all, doesn't just live in your own personal comfort zone.

So, as his followers, how do we integrate this truth into our lives, despite our culture's coaxing much to the contrary? Does it demand a complete renouncement of earthly comfort, in favor of pain, restlessness, or insecurity? The individual's conscience will ultimately have to dictate how they live out their Christ-followership, but I think that pursuing the opposite-of-comfort is as much off-base as is pursuing comfort itself. None of these hold much value in and of themselves, neither comfort, nor pain, restlessness, or insecurity. Perhaps the pursuit of higher values, namely "justice, mercy, and faithfulness" (Matthew 23:23), which may or may not result in comfort (or pain), will yield far greater results in terms of personal satisfaction and joy, and, ultimately, lead to greater Christ-likeness.

Like a locomotive engine plowing over an unsuspecting pedestrian (but in a good way)

Still gathering my thoughts after getting blindsided by this book...

A quick thought (quote) about the church

A quote from Alan Hirsch's book The Forgotten Ways:

"A combination of recent research in Australia [where Hirsch is from] indicates that about 10-15 percent of that population is attracted to what we can call the contemporary church growth model. In other words, this model has significant 'market appeal' to about 12 percent of our population. The more successful forms of this model tend to be large, highly professionalized, and overwhelmingly middle-class, and express themselves culturally using contemporary, 'seeker-friendly' language and middle-of-the-road music forms. They structure themselves around 'family ministry' and therefore offer multigenerational services. Demographically speaking, they tend to cater largely to what might be called the 'family-values segment' - good, solid, well-educated citizens who don't abuse their kids, who pay their taxes, and who live, largely, what can be called a suburban lifestyle."

He goes on to say this:

"Thus, in Australia we have the somewhat farcical situation of 95 percent of evangelical churches tussling with each other to reach 12 percent of the population. And this becomes a significant missional problem because it raises the question, 'What about the vast majority of the population (in Australia's case, 85 percent; in the United States, about 65 percent) that report alienation from precisely that form of church?' How do they access the gospel if they reject this form of church? And what would church be like for them in their various settings? Because what is clear from the research in Australia, at least, is that when surveyed about what they think about the contemporary church growth expression of Christianity, the 85 perfect range from being blasé ('good for them, but not for me') to total repulsion ('I would never go there'). At best, we can make inroads on the blasé; we can't hope to reach the rest of the population with this model - they are simply alienated from it and don't like it for a whole host of reasons.'

Does this describe us? Is that who we are as a church? Are we catering to and consisting of mainly the "...solid, well-educated citizens who don't abuse their kids, pay their taxes and who live, largely, what can be called a suburban lifestyle"? Hirsch's solutions are yet to come...