Church Planting Economics 101: Paper clips

So I was digging out some old sermons from the filing cabinet today and kept finding these annoying little paper clips holding each sermon together. I hate little paper clips and believe they are wrong in every way. Paper clips are meant to be big and thereby useful!

So I started wondering why I had not used real paper clips back in 2001 and it suddenly hit me: I couldn’t afford them. We were into year one of planting Grace Fellowship Church and since I had to work to support myself and there was no real church budget yet, I bought the cheapest clips I could find.

Thankfully, we can afford real paper clips now and they afford me weekly joy.

Let that be an encouragement to you, Church Planter, if you are working hard with little money in those early days. That kind of frugality will teach you much and the fact is, you will live; even with little wannabe paper clips.

Besides that, who knows? Maybe one day God will prosper the work enough to buy the real ones.

Book Review: The Measure of Our Success (Shawn Lovejoy)

I am trying to picture Shawn Lovejoy sitting in my office with me as I write this review. I felt as if his book, The Measure of Our Success, was doing the very thing it was arguing against. And the more I read, the more frustrated I got. So, if I picture that brother sitting here, it makes me less inclined to vent.

The premise of Lovejoy’s argument is that we pastors tend to measure success by all the wrong criteria – number of bodies in the pew, budget size, growth rates, etc., and with this I can heartily agree. But, it seemed to me that the book spent just as much time defending those criteria in the end. What was even more difficult was the fact that every chapter was completed with another pastor’s interaction to what Lovejoy had just written. Tellingly, all of these pastors were of the celebrity type. I longed for some unknown, country church bloke to write one of these responses! If we are not supposed to try and be like the mega-church dudes, why are they the only ones whose opinions seemed to matter?

Admittedly, I gave up on the book about halfway through, so my review cannot be considered as thorough as I would like. But as I sped through the second half I didn’t see anything to change me evaluation.

This book would have been greatly helped by a robust and convincing “tearing down the idols in our hearts and lives” (27) that so plagues ministers of the Gospel. From what I could see, that never happened.

A far better read in this vein is R. Kent Hughes, LiberatingMinistry From the Success Syndrome.

(This book was provided courtesy of Graf-Martin Communications and BakerBooks in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: The Art of Neighboring (Jay Pathak and Dave Runyon)

Some books make me feel very uncomfortable. Jay Pathak and Dave Runyon have written one of those. The first paragraph wrecked me and it went on from there.

“When Jesus was asked to reduce everything in the Bible into one command he said: Love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as yourself.  What if he meant that we should love our actual neighbors? You know, the people that live right next door?” (15)

That is the essential premise of this book, and the authors make a compelling case that we have lost sight of this most simple of duties.  Without getting preachy or condescending, they carefully move along a course of argument that argues that at the heart of it, we have stopped loving the people who live nearest us.

When I got the book, I assumed it was something akin to a social Gospel manifesto and was ready to critique away. But this was not the case. What you basically get is the story of two guys who decided to relationally engage the people who lived around them.

The crisis moment for me in this book came in chapter 7:

“We want to be clear about something when it comes to the art of neighboring. This is not an evangelism strategy. And if evangelism is your only motive, then you won’t be a very good neighbor.” (99)

That statement set off all my alarm bells, but I think they convinced me of their point. You really need to read the book to get the full argument, but what the authors suggest is a careful distinction between ulterior and ultimate motives. If the only reason I am befriending people on my block is to “bait-and-switch” to the Gospel, I am not really loving them. If love is my great motive to the relationship, the Gospel opportunities will come, be real when they do, and the relationship will not hinge on my neighbour’s response. I can keep loving the guy who is, so far, rejecting the free offer of God’s grace.

This was very liberating to me. And it resonated with so much of what I have been thinking about lately. Sometimes my mouth is closed with the Gospel with my neighbors for the very reason that I don’t want to be another salesman in their world. It cheapens the Gospel! What Pathak and Runyon did for me was remind me of the higher motive: love. I need to re-boot my love for my neighbors.

The book contains other chapters on the how-to’s of this kind of neighborhood love. Mostly they deal in the realm of motive and were very helpful. The book is not about starting new programs (thankfully!) but about getting out of your house and meeting people that live 30 feet from you. They also tackle some of the obstacles to this kind of relational investment that are likely more evident in the West: busyness, fear, etc.

Are you ready for this kind of read? Let me whet your appetite by suggesting you complete one simple task. On a piece of paper, write down the first and last names of the 8 houses/apartments/farmhouses closest to yours. If you can’t do that, buy the book.

(This book was provided courtesy of Graf-Martin Communications and BakerBooks in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: Emergence Christianity (by Phyllis Tickle)

Phyllis Tickle has written her fourth book on the emergent church aptly titled, “Emergence Christianity.” A sympathetic look to the non-movement movement, she does an admirable job of assimilating and distilling in about 200 pages where things have been, where they are and where they might go.

If that sounds a little vague, welcome to emergent.

Tickle suggests that we are living in the age of The Great Emergence across the world. Quite a bold claim, especially for one living in the middle of it! And this book seeks to describe how a certain group of “Christians” are adapting to it.

It won’t surprise you that a book that repeatedly identifies Brian McLaren as “the Martin Luther of Emergence internationally” is not going to be my favorite. Yet, I found one section near the end surprisingly encouraging.

Tickle, against the consensus of most observers, suggests that Emergence Christianity is not in decline, but in a stage of reconfiguration, even maturation. As she describes the influences on this process, she notes the place of the New Calvinism.  Of that movement she writes:

“As such and because of its sheer size, it will also be a participant in, or at the very least a potent influence upon, the events and decisions that, during the coming decades, will determine the shape of Emergence Christianity in its full maturity.” (189)

I found that sentence strangely hope-giving. I most certainly do want to help shape Emergence Christianity! And I think the New Calvinism (which is not just the Old Calvinism, but the message of the Bible itself) is uniquely gifted to do just that. The world of Emergence Christianity that Tickle describes is like the early creation, “formless and void.” But those who take the Scriptures at face value are able to speak the Word and see something of real good come out of it.

For more information on all things emergent, you can read some slightly outdated information here.

(This book was provided courtesy of Graf-Martin Communications and BakerBooks in exchange for an honest review.)

Are your needs special?

My son was born missing some 25 genes on the 7th chromosome in every cell in his body. He lives with Williams Syndrome. That diagnosis changed a lot of things in my life, one of which was a greater awareness of the massive world of disability and the burdens and blessings families experience as they care for their children with special needs.

Maybe it has to be that close in order to take notice. I wish that weren’t so. I always hope that other people would be more attentive and caring than I was before his diagnosis.

In that spirit, here are a few items of interest from the web today.

• My pal Justin Reimer (The Elisha Foundation) wrote this excellent article here. 

• Desiring God has a great conference I hope to attend coming up in November.

• Another pal, Roger Bergs, is enjoying watching his beautifuldaughter become an Internet ballet sensation!

• The Toronto Star has a moving piece here about a family thathas been broken up and needs help.  This is far too often the case.