I’ve finally recovered (I think) from last week’s activities, so I think I can post some thoughts now.

Last week I participated as a staff member at AFFIRM 2010. AFFIRM is a 5-day long youth event sponsored by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Southeastern Synod (SES). This year’s AFFIRM event consisted of 300+ youth participants and 80+ staff worshiping and learning on the campus of Berry College in Rome, GA. It was both exhausting and invigorating all at the same time.

To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect leading up to AFFIRM. I’d heard mixed reviews. My friend over at soulmunchies.com is completely in love with the event, even with its flaws. Other friends had sworn the event off, saying it wasn’t worth the time. I did my best to stay open-minded about it as the staff training weekend approached.

I first heard of AFFIRM through Bishop H. Julian Gordy. Bishop Gordy was visiting my home church a few months ago and I was leading worship at the contemporary service as usual. He stayed for a lunch at the church and I had the pleasure of sitting with him and chatting a bit. He mentioned AFFIRM to me and it definitely piqued my interest. A region-wide synod youth gathering with young leaders from across the southeast? Sure… sign me up.

Most anyone who knows me knows that I’ve felt a bit jaded by the Lutheran church, especially in the southeast. I realize that in other parts of the U.S. where there are larger numbers of Lutherans, things sometimes work differently. But here in the southeast, it seems like most local Lutheran churches are taking small strides backward even as a new generation of leaders is begging to push things ahead. I often feel tension, even in my own church, as suggestions for forward momentum are often ignored or directly opposed. I’ve felt very alone in my efforts, a feeling only recently remedied through some acquaintances made through Twitter and other online communities. Meeting other like-minded young, energetic Lutherans rekindled some hope in our church. AFFIRM served a similar purpose.

For me, AFFIRM served as an assurance that I am definitely not alone in the SES. There are indeed other young, energetic, forward-thinking Lutheran leaders in my synod. Many of them are as annoyed as I am with the way things are in our church, but they haven’t given up. They continue to press ahead and hope and pray for change. At AFFIRM, we were free to shape worship however the Spirit moved us. We didn’t have to deal with disgruntled traditionalist members coming up and whispering in our pastor’s ears. We didn’t have to deal with church councils or staff asking us to “dial it back”. We didn’t have to deal with worrying about our worship being “Lutheran enough.” We went where the Spirit took us without hesitation. It was beautiful.

Back home now, I’m settling into a post-AFFIRM depression. I checked my e-mail yesterday and saw the order of worship for this Sunday in my inbox. It’s another copy and paste from last week, just with slightly different music, dialog, and scriptures. It lacks excitement. It lacks energy. It’s the same thing we’ve been doing for years. I’m trying hard not to let my experiences last week make me feel even more jaded than I felt before, but it’s admittedly tough. I’m trying to look back on AFFIRM with a hopeful eye, realizing that there are others out there like me… expecting great things from our church and willing to press on until we get there.

I’m not alone… I’m not alone…

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?

(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?

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?

It’s funny. I promise.

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.

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?

Navigating the stormy seas of the web...

When I first moved to this city, my wife and I began our search for a church home. I, like many others in my demographic (20-30 year olds), began this search online. Now, I’m biased here because I’ve always been disappointed in church web sites. I have a bit of a background in technology, especially web-based technology, so I admit that my perspective is already skewed. I don’t typically view so many church web sites all at once, so this little binge on church web sites was immensely frustrating. I was literally turned off of some churches based on their web sites alone.

Fickle? Perhaps. But we live in a connected world now, and these churches were failing to connect.

What was wrong with these sites? I’ll let others speak for me. Consider these responses to my “why are church web sites ineffective?” question on twitter:

It comes down to being cheap & perceived unimportance, IMO. (http://twitter.com/manovotny/statuses/2556424452)

Outdated design & content. Too much info. Pics of bldg – not ppl (http://twitter.com/lightenupgear/statuses/2556758121)

no one takes junk sites and trifold brochures seriously, thats for drug awareness campaigns not the places we form our faith (http://twitter.com/joe_makes_art/statuses/2555392201)

There’s been a lot of discussion lately on technology in the church. While I’m obviously a Lutheran, churches across the world and across all denominational divides are struggling with the ever-changing technological landscape. It’s not really a new problem though. Churches have always struggled to adapt to changing environments. In some cases the church struggles because they are too slow to change. In other cases, churches willfully refuse to adapt, claiming that the timelessness of the message should not bend to the latest trends.

While the latest technology may be a trend in and of itself, the concept of the web will not go away any time soon. We’ve opened a huge can of worms. People are more connected than ever before. The world is shrinking. We are becoming, more and more every day, a global community. While facebook and twitter may be replaced six months from now with some other trending technology, the constant crave for connectivity reflects a paradigm shift in human interaction. Never before has it been so easy to spread a message or connect to someone across the globe. Whether church leadership embraces technology or not, the church is already online. Your church members are already e-mailing, instant messaging, tweeting, and facebooking. Why, then, are so few churches successful when it comes to their online ministry? How do you even measure this success?

I’m a geek at heart, so I’d love to just start a run-down of current technologies and explore their applications for a church. But, I feel the need to address a few underlying issues that I see. Mainly, what causes the struggle between the church and technology? Is online success for a church as easy as creating an account and logging on? Are there any prerequisites for online ministry?

For churches that want to be online but can’t seem to make it work, what are we missing?

We’re Missing Vision
I really think it’s all about vision. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

I first started this blog and twitter account about a week ago. Blogging and twitter are not new to me. In fact, I’ve been blogging and tweeting through other accounts for quite some time now. I started this particular blog and twitter feed based on a handful of goals. One of my goals was to foster discussion on a broad range of topics in the Lutheran church. I feel like that’s already happening and it really hasn’t even taken very long. (So, a big THANK YOU to those who come back to join in on the discussion!)

When I read the Bible, I see examples of such discussions. In fact, I see significantly more discussions than sermons. Even when Jesus is preaching, it often seems conversational in nature (Nicodemus comes to mind). It’s as if these people are figuring it all out together, seeking, asking, and sharing as a group. I believe this is the way it was meant to be. The faithful gathered together asking the hard questions and struggling for answers.

Binding. Loosing. Praying. Discerning.

It was this vision that prompted me along. I didn’t look at blogging and twitter and say to myself, “wow, these are popular tools, I should be on them.” Instead, I recognized that I had a vision and that these tools could potentially help me achieve this vision.

Churches can look at these tools the same way… as tools. When I have a project at home I don’t select a tool based on its popularity. I don’t pick up a hammer when I’m looking at a screw. I pick the right tool for the job. The web and social media can be viewed in the same light. Don’t look at the newest social media craze and think “how can our church get in on that?” First, figure out what your church’s mission and vision are, then figure out if the newest social media craze can support this mission and vision.

Businesses are in the same sort of struggle. There are a lot of businesses using tools like twitter successfully, but I’d argue that there are many more using it unsuccessfully. The key difference is vision.

We’re Missing Identity
Churches, overall, are terrible at marketing and identity. I know I know, nobody wants to hear the word marketing when it comes to churches. And yet, we complain as we lose members and close church doors.

The dynamic of losing church members can (and often does) function similarly to a business losing customers. Some churches want to chalk it up to Godlessness or point their fingers at younger generations being “lost”, but the reality is that many of these people flocking out of one church’s doors are flocking into another church’s doors.

Nobody wants to hear it, but churches compete. All you have to do to be aware of this is visit a Lutheran church in the southeast, where Baptist or nondenominational churches seem to dominate the landscape. I think I hear a snarky joke about Baptists at least once a week, even occasional ones from the pulpit! Usually it seems to be about beating them to the restaurants for lunch. But I digress…

My point is this:  if one church is declining, I can find another one nearby that’s growing.

As I browse church web sites and see faltering attempts at injecting technology into the church landscape, a glaring lack of identity is quickly revealed. As the tweet above mentioned, I see more pictures of buildings than people. I see outdated design that, to me and others like me, tells me that your church is out of touch with my generation. I see sites saturated with irrelevant content, yet sorely lacking in spiritual food.

I see trifold brochures converted into web sites.

I see sites clearly made in Microsoft Frontpage by some poor soul a committee chose because they could spell H-T-M-L.

I see static, stale web pages that were behind the times before they were published… and they aren’t getting any newer.

But mostly, I see a lack of identity. Fortunately, we visited a church that had a bad web site. We ended up joining based on a number of factors. There was a youthful energy in the congregation that was contagious. This energy and vitality could be extended online, but there was seemingly no attempt to link the design and content of their web-based identity to the identity the church has created for itself behind its doors.

Churches, know who you are and who you want to be and project that through whatever means you have available to you. This takes more than a “web strategy”. It takes more than a committee and a member who knows HTML. It requires a long and prayerful self-assessment. Are you wanting to reach my generation? You may need to take a look at your identity and update it accordingly. I’ve said before that the message of Christ is timeless but the packaging of that message may not be.

When I graduated from High School, one of my graduation gifts was a New International Version (NIV) Study Bible. My grandparents (one a music pastor, the other his church pianist) knew this had been given to me. They were there when it was given. They witnessed it first hand and yet, a week or two later, they gave me a Scofield Study Bible.

King James Version.

Black leather. Gold-edged pages. Red letters. Completely outdated text.

My grandparents’ unspoken admonishment of the NIV Bible was easily heard. They viewed the King James Version as “the real” version of the Bible and all others as inferior or lacking. Yet the message of Christ is in both versions. Now I know some argue that there are verses with debated accuracy or authorship, etc., but the primary and most obvious difference between these two versions is the language. If “thee” and “thou” are no longer commonly used, why do I have to trip over them when trying to read the Word of God? When God speaks to me through prayer, He doesn’t talk like that. Why should He talk like that in my Bible?

Whether we like it or not, packaging can hinder us from hearing God.

If your church wants to reach a demographic that you feel is slipping away, consider your identity. Is your identity as a church in-line with your outreach goals? Are you speaking the same language as the people you prayerfully want to reach? Is your church’s language spoken consistently across all resources, weather web-based or brick-and-mortar?

We’re Missing Community
Even if your church has nailed down your vision and identity, you may still be missing the big picture of current online trends:  community.

Current web technologies such as facebook, twitter, dig, friendfeed, and the like all have community in common. Twitter is a great example. Twitter is simply a tool for people to broadcast and share ideas or current events… even mundane ones. The very fact that someone takes the time to type out “going to the grocery store” or “eating a sandwich” and submit it to Twitter is borderline silly. And yet, it happens. The last number I saw was that Twitter is updated at a rate of 201 “tweets” per second.

The heavy hitters on twitter, the folks who are truly driving the technology forward, are the ones who frequently engage others in conversation. Are you listening, churches? Our generation wants community. We want to be engaged and to engage others. We want to share ideas openly. We want to ask lots of questions. We want to seek truth.

When looking at the web and social media, is your church’s goal to “create an online presence” (an often-quoted phrase in the 1990s web development era) or to extend your church community? Yes, the web can be a good way to “get the word out” about your church to potential new members, but what of your current church family? They’re certainly on the web at some point. Where are they going if not to your site? Who are they engaging online if not their church family? The connectivity we are failing to provide as a church is being provided through some other means… and with some other message.

I’ve received pushback from churches when the subject of online community came up. At one church, discussion of online forums or discussion groups was immediately stifled when concerns of privacy came up. The risks of online communities exist regardless of the intent of the community. Privacy can be compromised. Feelings can be hurt. Rudeness and callousness can occur.

It’s funny how sin can crop up anywhere.

What needs to be understood is that these risks already exist both within your church walls and in other online communities that your members are already a part of. People are flawed, and regardless of where a community exists (whether online or within a physical structure), these flaws will manifest themselves.

My current church is in the middle of a building campaign. They just broke ground for a new facility (they’ve even posted pictures on their facebook page). They spent a long time in prayer and discernment to determine the correct course of action. The decision to build was not one they took lightly. It was based on genuine needs within the church body and is a testament to the growth our church has experienced recently and to the future growth expected of our ministries.

Churches have a wonderful history of undertaking projects like this. It seems like there’s always a “building fund” to contribute to, regardless of what church you go to. Why is it that we can be so good at building brick and mortar structures to support our ministries and yet fail so dismally at extending these ministries through technology?

We have the potential to reach far more people online than will ever set foot on our property. We have the potential to infiltrate our membership throughout the week wherever they are. We have the potential to foster discussion and debate. We have the potential to generate and maintain a stronger (and broader) sense of community.

Before you create an account or log on or attempt to generate friends or followers, ask yourself why you’re doing it. What’s your ministry strategy for these new technologies? Is your church connected? Are you meeting people where they are? Has your church put as much prayer into their technological expansion as they have building projects and mission trips? How can the latest and greatest technology serve your vision, identity, and community?