Teens Encountering Christ

Posted by mike in Uncategorized on January 19, 2010

This past weekend I finally caved to pressure from some of our church youth and attended a “Teens Encounter Christ” TEC weekend. I had practically no expectations going into the weekend. Prior to attending, I’d simply heard a lot about it from some of our members and had been encouraged to go.

TEC is a pretty unique experience, I have to admit. As a youth growing up, I went on countless retreats and trips with our youth group. In most cases, these events had huge numbers of youth and really only a handful of leaders and supporting personnel. Similarly, in my experiences as a leader on such trips, I’ve found that same paradigm to be true. Leaders are typically overworked and under-resourced.

TEC, on the other hand, seemed completely lopsided by comparison. As the weekend progressed, I realized that the event is “supported” behind the scenes by a seemingly countless throng of people. One such supporter told me that the ratio is nearly 4-to-1. 4 supporting personnel for every attendee.

This particular TEC experience was based on a Lutheran modification of what began as a Catholic youth ministry. While the “liturgy” of the weekend was Lutheran, several churches from several different denominations were represented. What a great model for ministry:  a diverse body of Christ gathering together for a single united purpose, led and supported by laity with only a guiding hand from the ordained.

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Martin Luther Rap!

Posted by mike in Uncategorized on November 23, 2009

Irreverent. Yet awesome.

Oh snap, hes messin with the holy communion.
But I aint never dissed your precious hypostatic union!

(h/t to @JesusNeedsNewPR and jesusneedsnewpr.blogspot.com!)

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Self-Centered Worship?

Posted by mike in Emerging Church, Lutheran Church, Worship on November 16, 2009

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I’ve been thinking a LOT lately about worship services and I’m admittedly uneducated about the whole topic. In a way though, I’m sort of glad I’m uneducated about it. When I talk to other people who are perhaps more educated on the topic (pastors, church leaders, etc.), I get the impression that the education has tainted their impression of worship services. They’re so integrated with the services they’re a part of that they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a church visitor, looking for a church and a worship experience that is appealing.

Yeah, I said it. I used the word “appealing” in the context of worship.

I bet some people just stopped reading.

I typically get a lot of backlash when I use words like “appealing” to describe worship services. Usually the argument is something like this: “Looking for an ‘appealing’ worship service is a self-centered approach and worship is supposed to be God-centered.” My problem with this argument is that while a worship service may be created as a God-centric time, the choices made while designing the service are based on human appeal and preference.

Let me describe what I mean. Some churches I’ve been to have fancy (ostentatious?) lecterns or pulpits from which readings and preaching take place. Other churches have little to no supporting “props” to support such activities. One extremely large and very local church (it’s maybe a mile from where my wife and I live) typically has just a simple stool and a small table where the pastor is able to lay his Bible down while he’s preaching. Is either approach more “God-centric”? Is either more worshipful? What drove the decisions to choose such decor?

Another example is music. The church I mention above uses loud, energetic, contemporary worship songs complete with drums, electric guitars, huge projection screens, moving lights, etc. Other churches use pipe organs and choirs. Which is more “God-centric”?

Yet another example is language. Some churches employ flowery or archaic words when they craft (yes, craft) their prayers or select their opening call and response texts. Others use simpler or more modern (more straightforward?) language.

Is an organ holier than drums?

Is a robe more Godly than jeans and a t-shirt?

What role do personal preferences play in designing a worship service? How much do the personal preferences of church leadership and members influence a typical worship service? If personal preferences drive the choices we make when we design a service, does this make our services self-centered?

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Perplexity From The Puplit

Posted by mike in Emerging Church, Lutheran Church, Thelology on October 20, 2009

(Thanks to @somelutheranguy for sharing this with me!)

It’s like 5 minutes of your time. Just watch it already! :)

This is fantastic:

Part of it is making the pulpit a place where perplexity, where doubt is spoken and shared in the community. Where we really face darkness together, where we really stare down darkness in the thickness of life. [...] I think part of the reason younger populations of people don’t hear much in preaching is because they don’t hear anything that’s at stake and there’s no one that seems to, in this moment, bare reality.

I find myself thinking a lot about relevance and what it means to be relevant. Specifically, what it means for a church to be relevant. There have been a few blog posts over the last couple of weeks to address what young people are looking for from a church. Obviously, items like modern worship made the list. But oddly enough, theology seemed to play an important role. Young people seem to crave not just cultural or generational relevance, but theological relevance.

I find what Andy Root says here to be quite significant. How often do you hear real perplexity or doubt or darkness shared from the pulpit? These are things that are plaguing young people on a daily basis, and yet are often missing from the sermons of many pastors and preachers.

One word that keeps getting lodged in my head is accessibility. Today’s young people are amazingly accessible. They’re on Twitter and Facebook and blogs. They’re used to sharing openly and they expect such openness from others. Consider this from a 2004 article on the subject of the online disinhibition effect:

It’s well known that people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn’t ordinarily say or do in the face-to-face world. They loosen up, feel more uninhibited, express themselves more openly. Researchers call this the “disinhibition effect.” [...] Sometimes people share very personal things about themselves. They reveal secret emotions, fears, wishes. Or they show unusual acts of kindness and generosity.

This new generation is comfortable online. As a result, they’re more open and accessible than any generation before them. How open are we, as a church? How open are we when we preach Christ? Are we tackling real issues head-on? Are we embracing perplexity from the pulpit? Are we facing the doubt and the darkness?

Are we speaking out of the thickness of life?

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Making Shift Happen

Posted by mike in Emerging Church, Lutheran Church on October 15, 2009

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Justin over at BeDeviant.com recently posted an entry titled What the Needs of Young Adults Will Mean For Your Church. It came on the heels of an entry where he asked what young people look for in a church. Justin summarizes what young people want from a church in one word:  community.

He expands on this a bit by providing the following “five quick predictions” on what the church will look like once today’s young people find themselves in church leadership positions:

  1. Home groups, cell groups, mid-sized gatherings will move to the forefront as the primary evangelistic tool for churches.
  2. Large group gatherings will still have a place in the local church, but they will be seen as “icing on the cake,” instead of the cake itself.
  3. Because of the shift towards smaller communities, pastors will take on bi-vocational roles for A.) budgetary reasons, B.) evangelistic reasons.
  4. Denominational seminaries will become a thing of the past. Most theological learning will move online or become highly contextualized and internalized by the local church itself.
  5. “Sinner’s prayer” evangelism (i.e. “linear” evangelism) will give way to a more messy form of discipleship that includes dips and valleys; doubts and discussion.

This tiny list of prophesies speaks volumes. I wonder how many churches understand the shift that’s taking place even as we speak. You don’t have to look hard to realize that there is a new generation of eager young Christians just chomping at the bit to get their shot.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “catalyst” lately, and what it means to be one. What I’m finding is that the more people talk about what the church will look like at some undefined point in the future, the more I want it to happen now.

I want the shift to happen.

I’m getting tired of just talking about it though. I want to take action. The shift is already happening, but I think we can find ways to give it a push. I have some ideas for specific actions I can take to become a catalyst for change.

What ideas do you have?

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And Now For Something Completely Different

Posted by mike in Emerging Church, Funny on October 14, 2009

Ganked from Catalyst 2009.

It’s funny. I promise.

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Lutherans And “Blendered” Worship

Posted by mike in Emerging Church, Lutheran Church, Music, Worship on October 14, 2009

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My wife and I managed to get married without receiving a blender as a wedding gift. I know I know, you’re shocked. Ultimately, we ended up buying a cheap one which we use very rarely. I mean really, how often do I need a mush of multiple ingredients? We use it for fruit smoothies on occasion, but that’s about it.

The thing about a blender is that what you pour out of it is only as tasty as what you put into it. A fruit smoothie is good because the flavors you’re putting into it are complimentary to each other. All the blender does is combine them.

Blending, in and of itself, doesn’t produce positive results. The results come from combining flavors that work well together.

“Blended worship” is a phrase which is often overused, especially in the Lutheran church. For a church that’s historically slow to change, blended worship sounds like a great idea. You take aspects of a contemporary service and aspects of a traditional service and combine them for a tasty frappuccino of worship goodness. It’s a compromise. Everybody wins, right? And, it means we don’t have to commit! We’re not contemporary, so we don’t scare off the traditionalists. We’re not traditional, so we should see droves of young people flocking to our services any day now.

Seriously! Any day now. Really, any moment. Just wait, they’re coming… No really, they are!

What happens if you take a banana, a handful of strawberries, and a jar of pickles, and blend them all together? All are fine on their own, but combining them might not produce appealing results. Worship is much the same. Worship music, song lyrics, dialog language, prayers, sermons… all can have various and unique flavors. Combining them in a way that encourages worship requires similar skill and instinct as that of the chef knowing what ingredients to combine and, more importantly, what ingredients not to combine.

Many churches seem to move to this blended approach because they’re trying to make everybody happy. The end result, at least from my experiences, is the exact opposite. Nobody is happy. The folks over at stuffchristianslike.net bring up this phenomenon in #424 of their list of stuff Christians like. The author hits the nail on the head when he mentions that both parties lose when you compromise. I sense more frustration in blended worship services than I do in worship services that seem to commit to a single consistent style and language.

To make matters worse, I’ve seen many Lutheran churches claim to have a contemporary service only to walk in and find a blended one. This seems to happen a lot as these churches try to transition from traditional to contemporary. Many of them create an additional service for the contemporary approach but a combination of factors might prevent it from reaching its full potential. It may be that they have worship service planners who still think traditionally. It may be that they have a mixed bag of attendees at the contemporary service and they feel the need to cater to all of them. It may be that they just don’t understand what “this contemporary thing” is all about.

Whatever the reason, I often see these services becoming a confusing mix of language, music, lyrics, and “vibe”. The best advice I can give is this:  commit. If you’re helping to plan a contemporary service, start fresh! Don’t just take your traditional service and add a few Hillsong tunes and call it a day. Don’t just take your traditional responsive readings and try to spice them up. Think creatively. Find other creative people in your church and get them involved. Take risks!

Don’t blend things that shouldn’t be blended. Some flavors are better on their own.

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Would God Vote “Yes” On Your Church Budget?

Posted by mike in Lutheran Church on October 13, 2009

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I had a couple of interesting conversations today over Twitter. For me, it started with @troyneujahr tweeting the following from a pastor’s conference:

“Money given by people in the pews is largely spent on the people in the pews.”–David Buegler #MIpastors

I mentioned in response that I often “flag” my offerings to the church for specific ministries that I see value in, a comment that sparked some discussion.

It got me thinking about church budgets and how ministries or projects in churches get approved and funded. I know from my own experiences that a lot of money is spent on what I would call “ineffective ministries”. In churches I’ve been a part of, I’ve seen some very odd “projects” soak up a lot of dollars. As a member, I just scratch my head and think of how that money could be put to much better use.

My own passive-aggressive method of dealing with this is to divert my own offerings to ministries that I see as having more value within the church. Some still goes to general, but the bulk I flag for ministries that I feel are more deserving. @rayjgentry called me out on it:

@newlutheran could that be a way though to keep control of your money? that you don’t completely trust the church?

I thought about trying to defend myself but I had to be honest. The answer to both questions is “yes”. It’s definitely a means of controlling “my” money. However, I don’t see it as being any more controlling than choosing to give to my local church as opposed to some other ministry. The second question he asks was much more profound though. And I have to answer:  no, I don’t completely trust the church.

If I could write a check directly to God, I would. But as it stands now, I put my offering in the hands of people. I’ve seen what people do with money, even well-intentioned Godly people. There are a lot of moving components in the financial machinery of a typical church congregation. I’ve seen how church projects and ministries get funded. I’ve heard silver-tongued committee members weave a stories about how whatever it is they want to fund is somehow tied to the ministry goals of the church. I’ve seen ministries get line items in the church budget year after year, with very little fruit to show for it.

So I ask:  if God was a member of your church, would he vote “yes” on your budget?

My guess is that He’d want to trim the fat and cut out nonessential and ineffective “ministries”. How much of your church’s offering money is distributed to ministries that have little impact on the community around you? Are we diluting our effectiveness by stretching our congregational resources across ministries that don’t bear fruit? Are our churches becoming jacks-of-all-trades, but masters of none? Are we trying to do so many things that we do none of them well?

Imagine what could happen if your church completely cut off ineffective ministries and limited themselves instead to just a handful of mission-driven efforts. I urge you to take a long hard look at your church budget next time you get a chance. Pray over it. Ask yourself what God would do if He could get his hands on it.

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Are We Missing Out?

Posted by mike in Emerging Church, Lutheran Church on October 9, 2009

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So, Catalyst 2009 in Atlanta came to a close today. The Catalyst site has this to say for itself:

Catalyst was conceived as a Next Generation Leaders Conference in 1999 by Andy Stanley, Reggie Joiner, John Maxwell, Lanny Donoho and several young leaders. Catalyst was created to meet the felt need that existed within the church leader space for a leadership event that was focused on a new generation of church leaders. Everything within this space seemed built around a forty to sixty year old mindset and medium. This team was convinced that this needed to change.

The focus, then, for the Catalyst team, was to create a leadership conference specifically for church leaders (ordained, laity, and everything in between) under 40 years of age. What a wonderful opportunity for young church leaders to gather and seek and learn from others. This year the list of speakers read like a who’s who of modern churchdom:  Andy Stanley, Rob Bell, Chuck Swindoll, Louie Giglio… the list goes on and on.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t there. You know who else wasn’t there? Pretty much every Lutheran I know.

Lutherans, on the whole, seemed to be woefully missing at the event. Twitter was a decent indication of this. For the duration of the conference, I followed the #cat09 hashtag on Twitter, a hashtag established to track posts related to the Catalyst 2009 conference. Throughout the day, the #cat09 hashtag bloomed into a fully trending topic on Twitter, meaning that it gained such popularity and momentum on Twitter that it became a featured topic. It generated buzz, even among people who had no idea what Catalyst was all about. I noticed many tweets in the #cat09 stream from people that were just trying to figure out what Catalyst even was. (As a side note, it was awesome to imagine people clicking on the trending topic just to get a face-full of Jesus for their trouble!)

In addition to following the trending #cat09 hashtag, I also currently follow hundreds of people directly through Twitter. Most are Lutheran. Most are leaders. Many are young. Of the people I follow directly through Twitter, only a handful were attending or talking about the conference. Of those, only one was a Lutheran.

12,000 in attendance, yet finding a Lutheran was like finding a needle in a haystack.

I tweeted to this young Lutheran to ask if she knew of any other Lutherans in attendance. She replied that she’d only seen one:  the person she had come with.

So I ask:  are we missing out? There seems to be a nation-wide movement to empower young leaders within the church, yet Lutherans seem to be on the outside looking in. The site soulmunchies.com is maintained by the one Lutheran I managed to track down at Catalyst. Her Catalyst-related blog posts are representative of the types of experiences I’ve had at similar events:  moving worship, challenging scriptures, energized young people, and the clear presence of the Holy Spirit. Why are we not flocking to events like this?

The author of soulmunchies.com summed my feelings up best:  “if we combined this creativity with Lutheran theology we could rock the world”. I couldn’t agree more.

I can only think of a few reasons why the Lutheran church is largely missing from events like this. And sadly, none of them are good.

It’s possible that we, the Lutheran church, are simply unaware. It’s possible that we just don’t know about events like this. It’s possible that somehow we’ve just missed the boat and that, given the opportunity, Lutherans would jump right into an event like this. Yes… it’s possible.

But it’s also possible that we’re purposefully isolating ourselves. Lutherans like to stick together and don’t often cross-pollinate with other denominations (unless our synods are forming “full communion” partnerships of course). We have our own Lutheran conferences and assemblies right? What could some non-Lutheran conference possibly teach us? What if their theology is lacking? What if they lead our young people astray? Valid concerns I suppose, but false prophets can be found everywhere and we must trust in the Holy Spirit to help us discern truth from lie. Do we have so little faith in your young people (or in the Holy Spirit) that we want to shield ourselves from “non-Lutheran teachings”?

I believe it’s also possible that we’re scared of this new generation of leaders. I mean come on, they’re loud, right? They’re full of energy. They play the drums. They have tattoos. They’re blogging and tweeting. They lol and brb and ftw. They don’t even know all the lyrics to A Mighty Fortress Is Our God! They’re everything Lutherans usually pride themselves on not being. Is it possible that we don’t even want to be a part of something like this because it doesn’t look like the Lutheran church that we’ve come to know and love?

Are we missing out?

Worse still, are we missing out on purpose?

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Open Letter To The ELCA

Posted by mike in Lutheran Church on August 25, 2009

Mike, a young and relatively new Lutheran, sends greetings to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and all those who feel impacted by recent ELCA decisions:  whether you are joyous or disheartened, may God’s grace and the peace that passes all understanding be with you during this time of turmoil.

I thank God for the ELCA and its impact on my life. This church’s members, lay leaders and clergy live out the Great Commission on a daily basis, making disciples locally through congregations, regionally through synods, and across the globe through world missions. In congregations all over the world, ELCA churches minister to both members and their surrounding communities. In churches I’ve personally been a part of, I’ve experienced the love of Christ through both members and leadership, laity and ordained. I’ve observed and been a part of community projects where the love of Christ has been spread to surrounding areas. I’ve personally born witness to and participated in the ELCA’s active fulfillment of Christ’s call to serve throughout the world. The hungry have been fed. The sick have been healed. The naked have been clothed. The outcasts have been loved. “God’s work, our hands” has been more than a mantra, it’s been a state of mind within the ELCA for as long as I’ve been a part of it.

Debate and division now threatens the ELCA. Decisions made during the recent church-wide assembly are already creating a rift both within the ELCA itself and within the larger body of Lutheran believers. It is too early to tell the full scope of this rift, but some have already drawn their lines in the sand. Some are thrilled at the outcome. They are overjoyed that the church can be inclusive in the spirit of Christ’s love for all people. Others are saddened that the church is seemingly ignoring historic scriptural interpretation and embracing what they see as unrepentant sinful behavior.

The social statement produced by the ELCA addresses the rift directly. Both views are supported by an argument that they are derived from conscience-bound scriptural interpretation. The social statement makes it clear that “consensus does not exist”. In other words, the social statement addresses that the division already existed in the church. Last week’s assembly didn’t create the division. It may be a surprise to some of you, but if you’re a member of an ELCA congregation, you’ve already been living in a house divided. And even with this division existing among you, God’s work has been done through your hands.

I was blessed by the grace and peace exhibited during the assembly, both by ELCA leaders as well as speakers on the floor. Brothers and sisters in discord on a single issue, yet united as one in worship and prayer. It was beautiful. Not so beautiful are the conversations that inevitably surfaced among observers both during and since this assembly. Many of these conversations lack even a hint of the grace and peace demonstrated by assembly members. Strong emotions exist on both sides of the divide and, as a result, strong words are being used. Some of these words speak to the heart of the matter, but many are completely out of place. Let me address some of this rhetoric directly.

Agendas. I heard many people chastise and disregard speakers at the assembly for ‘having an agenda’. The truth is, we all have agendas. We’re human. We have both intellect and opinion. The question is, what do we do with these agendas as we discern truth from the scriptures? I fear the reality is that many people seek support for their own opinions through scriptures. The emotion and angst I hear from some of you is a testament to this. If people were simply seeking truth without regard for personal opinions and agendas, would such emotion be evident? Is it even possible to read scriptures through a transparent and spotless lens? Fortunately for all of us, the Holy Spirit is just the spotless lens we need. I pray we all set aside opinion and seek truth from the scriptures through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Abandonment of scripture. Both sides of the divide are using scripture and their conscience-bound interpretation of it to back their arguments. I could pick a side and easily argue for or against it using the same Bible. For those who say that the answer is clear in the scriptures, it’s obvious that it isn’t or we wouldn’t be having this discussion as a church body. Each side believes the answer is clear, and yet each side arrived at a different answer than the other. Neither side is abandoning the scripture.

Inclusiveness. I beg you to put aside talk of inclusiveness. The ELCA already includes people of all sexual orientations, a fact made even more evident with the result of last week’s debate and subsequent votes. People of all sexual orientations have already been members and lay leaders of ELCA churches. If you’re a member of an ELCA church, you’ve already been a part of a church who is ‘inclusive’ of people of all sexual orientations. If you’re considering leaving the ELCA now, perhaps you should ask yourself why you haven’t left already. Likewise, if you’re joyous now, perhaps you should ask yourself why it took you so long to become so.

Love and compassion for others. There are those who say, ‘God calls us to love all people,’ and they’re right. But to use a statement like this to attack someone else as being hateful is just wrong. Not everyone who stood behind a red microphone is a ‘hate monger’ just like not everyone who stood behind a green microphone is a ‘liberal crackpot’. Yes, hatred exists in the world and even in the church. But there are many who love our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters yet still believe they are sinning based on conscience-bound interpretation of scripture.

Rhetoric weakens us. All of us. Rhetoric is the language of politics. It’s the language of generalization. It’s the language of marginalization. It’s the language of assumption. It has no place in Christ’s church. Rhetoric weakens us because when we no longer see Christ in the brother or sister we disagree with, we can too easily tear them down.

Worse yet is that many of us are no longer even trying to see Christ in the brother or sister standing across the divide from us. How must God feel to see His children ripping each other apart?

I beg of you all:  rise above such behavior. Do not conform to the patterns this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. The world may bicker and squabble and throw stones across the divide. The world may point fingers and call names. The world may turn its back and walk away when disagreements arise. But we are not the world.

I pray that we learn to set aside our own agendas. I pray that we learn to set aside rhetoric. I pray that we learn to seek out Christ in others, even if we disagree with them. May we remember that our church was divided and broken before these votes were cast. May we remember that our hands are called to do God’s work regardless of our brokenness. May we remember that it is He who unites us, not that which divides us, that makes us the church.

May we learn to accept our brokenness and get on to the work we are called to do.

“Now may the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.”

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