This was the card we created and gave to every firefighter along with the meal we served them (if you’re interested in doing something like this, leave a comment below and I’ll email you the graphics for this card so you can print them off).

After one of our luncheons, the firefighters asked us if we wanted a ride in a firetruck. Uhh, of course!!

It was pretty sweet rolling through our neighborhood in a huge ladder truck. I found an extra helmet to put on to add to the “cool factor.”

The kids loved hanging out with the firefighters and learning all about their job and equipment.

All in all we were able to connect personally with and serve meals to all 50 men and women in all the shifts of our Westfield Fire Department over 3 days. These guys are the real deal. It was so much fun hanging out with them and thanking them for everything they do to keep our community safe.

Have you had a chance to participate in any kind of outreach to the civil servants in your community? What did you do?

I’m not saying we need to always have the answers to tough passages in the Bible. Sometimes the best answer is, “Man, I really have a hard time with this verse and don’t really understand it.”

For example, here’s a couple of passages we have all read a lot from Acts 2 and Acts 4 about the founding of the early church:

And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person’s need was met. They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved. (Acts 2:42-47)

The whole congregation of believers was united as one – one heart, one mind! They didn’t even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, “That’s mine; you can’t have it.” They shared everything. And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy. Those who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The apostles then distributed it according to each person’s need. (Acts 4:32-35)

It’s an amazing and powerful passage about the impact these early believers had on their culture but it sounds rather idealistic, doesn’t it? Selling possessions and pooling resources to create equality among everyone? Nothing being owned individually but everything shared equally? Some might call that socialism or even Marxism.

Without getting caught up in political tangents or nasty discussions I’d like to know…

Do those verses apply to us today? Were early believers socialists?

In the traditional understanding of the church today in Western culture, the church is a physical building, a place where people go to “do church” – whatever that means. It’s most commonly held on Sunday mornings and it’s “what you do” if you’re a Christian or fulfilling spiritual obligations.

We’ve taken this institution of the church and have dressed it up to make it attractive as we can to unbelievers. We use edgy marketing techniques to get people there and incorporate cool creative service styles and current music to keep them once they’ve come (none of which I have a problem with by the way). Most every week the pastoral staff or creative team sits down to evaluate the service and plan future messages. We ask tough questions about how effective our greeters were in making people feel welcome, how smooth the transitions were during the service and how many people made professions of faith. I wonder though, how often in these meetings do churches ask what I believe is the critical question, “How are we doing at making disciples?”

You see, nowhere in the Bible do you see Jesus telling his disciples to start churches. He does, however, give them a mandate to “go into all the world and MAKE DISCIPLES.” (Matthew 28:19) Disciple-making is our ultimate benchmark of success as a church – not attendance, offering, or even salvations for that matter (there’s a big difference between a person who has made a profession of faith and a disciple).

When our first priority becomes getting people to go to church instead of making disciples we are missing the heart of what Jesus called us to do. Where along the way did we lose sight of our true calling? We’ve become great at starting churches that people want to go to. We have it down to a science. There are books and conferences for ways to enhance our creativity and pump up our services. Don’t get me wrong, I love creative service planning more than anyone and I want to see many people come through the doors of our church but I DON’T WANT THEM TO STAY THERE. I want them to move from Sunday morning worshipper to full-on disciples of Jesus, walking close enough to be covered in the his dust (if you haven’t already check out the amazing Nooma video called “Dust” about discipleship).

Disciples aren’t made on Sunday mornings. They can’t be manufactured through well-crafted programs. They are grown through intentional relationships with people who pour their lives into someone else and then teach them to do the same.

I love the church and I’m passionate about seeing it impact our culture but it’s a means to the end, not the end in itself. I’m planting a church in order to make disciples, not attenders. I’m excited about planting this church but I’m committed to growing disciples.

This short film was made to accompany the lead article in Christianity Today by Ghanaian scholar Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, exploring the forms the prosperity gospel takes in West Africa. Our Western prosperity gospel, exported and preached in many Pentecostal African churches, has found fertile soil in the hearts and empty wallets of these impoverished people.

This documentary does a good job of looking at the issue from inside the churches in Africa who are being peddled this message of attainable health and wealth that is within their grasp. For an added perspective, check out this excerpt from a message by John Piper on the subject (ht: @ChadWright).

What are your thoughts after watching this film? Have we exported a dangerous gospel to our African brothers and sisters? Or is there value in the message?

.

As we’ve spent time talking to people who aren’t currently in a church today, I’ve found many reasons for their lack of spiritual development – busyness of life, irrelevant messages, bad experiences. And of course, there’s the age-old turn-off: money.

We in the church have gotten quite good at asking for it. We’ve written books and created consultants to help us ask better and get more of it. We cloak the ask behind Christianese lingo by calling it a “Capital Stewardship Campaign” to make it sound less like what it really is: asking people for money.

Before I get any further, let me emphasize a couple of things. First of all, we need to be generous people in the church and give back to God what He has so richly blessed us with in both tithes and offerings. Second, there is nothing wrong with building church buildings or even stewardship campaigns for that matter.

That being said, I wonder if some churches would be better “stewards” of their “capital” by downsizing instead of upgrading? Do we really need a bigger structure or do we, perhaps, need to multiply to reach our city through multiple smaller communities of faith?

Sadly, many churches, in an attempt to reach more people, built large, elaborate structures that they are now dragging like a ball and chain behind them. Instead of opening up new opportunities for ministry, they have found that their ministry now consists of making desperate appeals on Sunday to bring enough in to pay the utilities.

Steve McSwain, a former minister turned religious skeptic, said in a column in the Huffington Post:

Go into many churches today, and instead of finding an institution interested in saving the world, what you may find is an institution vastlymore interested in saving itself.

Ouch.

While 40 million people died of starvation in the last decade, churches spent $10 billion on campuses. I just have to wonder, is there a better way to be the church today? How can we have built more churches over the last 50 years than any other country in the world and yet still be growing slower than countries where churches where hundreds of thousands of people meet in homes and portable structures?

Again, because I know that this is a sensitive topic let me again make it clear, I am not in any way condemning or pointing fingers at churches with large buildings. Some of my favorite churches to attend while travelling have multi-million dollar structures with projectors that cost more than my house. Some have even found ways of utilizing their building resources throughout the week.

I’m not in any way saying large buildings = bad and small portable churches = good.  I just worry that we’ve lost sight of what it takes to reach the unreached here in America. Have we made it difficult it is to find God among our theatrically lit stage and sprawling campuses? Has our need to pay the electric bill overtaken our need to reach the lost in our community? Do the people we’re called to reach come before the programs we build to get them there?

I don’t have the answers but I do know that these are the kinds of questions we need to be asking more of to find them.

Your thoughts?

While I’m not negating the need to cast a compelling vision, I wonder if we’ve perhaps placed too much emphasis on getting people to follow our vision instead of finding ways to help them achieve theirs? Erwin McManus, always the wordsmith, says it much better than I could:

We need to reclaim the movement of Jesus Christ – it’s not the place where people are forced to conform and be standardized, but a place where people are seen as unique and find their originality in Jesus Christ. I think those of us who have been entrusted as followers of Jesus must not simply cast vision and call people to it. We must create visional environments where those who work with us and serve under us have their dreams and visions ignited and set free.

Erwin McManus

Creating “visional environments” is a whole lot messier than simply casting great vision. It means that we need to spend time listening to those who serve alongside and under us. It means we need to discover their buried dreams and hidden passions and find ways to cultivate them.

The strongest leaders, I believe, are the ones who can cast a vision for their team that allows everyone’s dream to grow and flourish, not just the leader’s. Regardless of your opinions about Obama, this one quote he made during his campaign sums up that kind of leadership perfectly: “I’m asking you to believe – not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington – I’m asking you to believe in yours.”

Your thoughts?

Over the course of visiting different churches with my family I’ve learned a lot of things but one thing has stuck out to me. I found that people may visit your church for a number of reasons but one of the biggest reasons they visit (or stay) is because of their children.

Here in the Midwest, few people are truly “un-churched” in the common definition of the term. Most are what we would call “de-churched” meaning that they grew up in the church but rarely attend anymore (if at all). In most scenarios it goes something like this:

Jack begins attending Sunday School with his parents or Grandparents when he’s a little boy. He continues attending through grade-school but somewhere between High School and College he abandons church attendance altogether in favor of drinking, girls, parties and other things the church doesn’t offer. That lifestyle of fun and frivolity continues through his mid-20s until he meets Sally and settles down. They buy a little home in the suburbs and have a couple of kids. The overwhelming responsibility of raising children in a messed-up world begins to sink in. Jack and Sally quickly realize that they want more for their kids than the care-free, anything-goes college lifestyle they lived.

And so Jack and Sally go to church.

That scenario is repeated countless times at countless churches across the country every week. Young families with little children in tow are all thinking the same thing when they darken the doors of a church: I’d rather be out at the lake right now but I want my children to be raised in a good home with Christian values.

Jane Roper, a self-confessed religious skeptic, had this to say in an article on Salon called Why I Finally Joined The Church.

I want to expose my children to good, old-fashioned community in a world where, increasingly, community happens only in virtual spaces. I’m a huge fan of blogs, Facebook and Twitter, but I don’t think there will ever be a substitute for sharing the same physical space with a group of people — having conversations, making music together, offering each other a handshake, a smile, or a word of sympathy. I know how earnest this sounds, and the cynic in me cringes to type the words. But the rest of me believes this is the stuff that matters.

Sure, we like to think that it’s our fancy mailers with catchy photographs or dynamic, relevant messages that attract these young families to our church. We see the moms and dads walking through our doors walking hand-in-hand with their kids. Those parents may look like they’re the ones taking their kids but those kiddos are the motivating factor that brought them there. The truth is, most parents are scared to death of the questions they know their kids will ask that they haven’t been able to figure out yet themselves.

Daddy, why do people kill each other?
Mommy, what happens after we die?
Daddy, did my fish go to heaven?

Like I said, we’ve visited a lot of churches. But I’m not convinced every church gets what I’m talking about here. If they did, maybe they would have different people behind the children’s ministry check-in desk. Maybe they would make the check-in process a little easier and more secure to put the parents at ease. Perhaps they would invest more in the children’s area environments, equipment and curriculum instead of sinking the majority of their budget into their sanctuary.

You may see moms and dads driving their children to your church this Sunday but make no mistake, their children are bringing them.

Frustrating enough to make you go and do something like this:

…or this:

[images: PassiveAgressiveNotes.com]

We laugh at those pictures but we’ve all been there. We’ve all been so frustrated with a person or company that we want to print our frustrations in 95-point letters on a billboard in the middle of town for everyone to see. We’ve all trusted a company with our time, reputation or possession only to realize too late that we had made a “big mistake.”

Unfortunately, the church and many Christians who go there have been guilty of cultivating plenty of hurt, frustration – even anger…

It’s the new visitor who decides to visit a church only to be ignored by the two ladies behind the children’s ministry check-in who are chatting about last night’s small group bowling party.

It’s the neighbor who feels like a sales quota number to his Christian neighbor next door who is constantly giving him books and inviting him to church instead of actually getting to know him as a person.

It’s the hurting person who goes out on a limb and decides to join a small group in his church only to put their walls back up after discovering hypocrisy in the people who pretended to have it all together when they don’t.

It’s that caring person who decides to become a volunteer only to become burned out and overworked by church leaders who see her more as a commodity than an actual person.

Most of those people will never advertise their disappointment on their car or t-shirt…

…but they will carry that hurt and frustration with them, in many cases for the rest of their life. It’s no wonder that Paul very clearly warns, “Give no occasion for stumbling” (1 Cor. 10:32)

We have no idea what hurts or disappointments people are walking through the doors of our church with when they visit. We don’t need to add more. Please, don’t be someone’s “big mistake.”

Thoughts?

Of course, most churches would never call another church “the competition” outright. It’s just more of an unspoken posturing, the unconscious “sizing up” that happens when you see an ad for another church or read about a special event they’re hosting.

Sure, we know that we’re all on the same team but we don’t always play that way, do we? Especially when a new church pops up down the road that might pull some of “our” people?

Some churches get it though. Pastor Jeff Moore and First Presbyterian Church in Aurora, Illinois made this video to play at the grand opening of a new church launching in their community.

[ht: Todd Rhodes & Dave Ferguson]

I love this. Instead of feeling threatened or worrying how many people they were going to “lose” they celebrated the win of another church coming along side them to help them serve their community.

Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?

This isn’t the first time that fringe “Christians” have gained media attention with outrageous and insensitive accusations – whether it’s the late Jerry Falwell blaming the ACLU, Abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians for the September 11 attack or the radicals from Wesboro Baptist Church who picket at soldier’s funerals and claim that “God hates fags.”

For the vast majority of loving and Bible-believing Christians, these situations and remarks represent an extreme source of frustration. We work so hard to live out Christ’s message of grace and forgiveness in front of our neighbors and co-workers and then Pat Robertson makes comments that supports the stereotypes so many people have about Christians.

It only takes a relatively small number of people on the fringe to undermine the image and standing of the majority.

A Christian Response to Pat Robertson

Here are a few things to remember when things like this happen.

1. Carefully consider what you say when you respond. Calling Pat Robertson an idiot or moron (or worse) is a poor representation of God’s love and grace.
2. Remember, we’ve said plenty of stupid things ourselves – we’re often just as much of a monster as the one we’re pointing a finger at.
3. Sometimes, the best thing to say is…nothing.
4. Our best response as the church is to do what we already do so well – simply live out God’s message of love and grace in a way that dispels all doubt.  You can’t watch the news without hearing some story of how Christians are serving and helping in Haiti. We were already there before this tragedy and we’ll be there long after the news cameras have left.

It may only take a small number of people to undermine the image of the majority…but God’s love is so much bigger. Love demonstrated in deed is louder than a few fringe wackos.

**Update: Don Miller wrote an excellent article on this subject for Relevant Magazine – read it here.

“One truth that gives me a more grounded perspective on Pat Robertson is that he really doesn’t represent most conservatives. I come from a politically and religiously conservative family, and many, many of my friends are very conservative, and all of them would be in shock at Robertson’s statements. The media would have Robertson represent all Christians, or perhaps all conservatives, but the idea is absurd. It’s also important to let people know we think it’s absurd…” [read the rest of the article]

**Update 2: From a more satirical point of view, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune published a letter from Satan to evangelist Pat Robertson, responding to his comment that Haiti’s persistent troubles, including the earthquake, are due to a pact the nation made with Mephistopheles. You’ll laugh and cringe at the same time (ht: Scott for the link). [read "The Devil Writes Pat Robertson A Letter"]