Big Church III

I find the rapid growth of my church both exciting and worrisome. On one hand growth does indicate that they are bringing people to God. However, an important part of a church is the connection and fellowship of its body. It seems to me that without great care, the very growth model that the church leadership is pushing and driving can make the church a building filled with individuals where there is no presence of the Holy Spirit.

Across our nation there are a growing number of seemingly dynamic churches whose growth rates are staggering. These bodies tend to be comprised of folks mainly in their 20s or 30s. They typically are led by a young, high energy, charismatic pastor. These folks are driven and many have inked publishing deals that require them to bring a new book to press every 12 to 15 months. Some of these folks like Mark Batterson, Rob Bell, Craig Groeschel, Joel Osteen, Max Lucado, Andy Stanley, and Francis Chan fall into this mold. The mold of the celebrity preacher. The pressures to produce weekly sermons and write books and lead rapidly growing churches must be immense. Yet this slope of popularity is treacherous, and without great care with each step, a pastor can easily be led to worship his God less and himself and his celebrity more. When is enough enough? Is better the enemy of good enough? Is rapid growth and a sizeable following something to be deeply worried about? The din of popularity can so easily squelch that still small voice. When that happens, the shepherd cannot lead his flock to the rich meadows that they need for survival and growth. Beware the numbers game if that is the only metric that you consider.

There is another aspect of rapid growth that concerns me at a very deep level. When churches grow they take on significant debt in the form of mortgages or leases and increased staff salaries. They must then ensure that they maintain their number growth so that they can continue paying the bills and continue expanding. When that happens, I worry that in order to placate and soothe and mollify the masses, the message of the gospel can start to be compromised. Preaching on the crucifixion of our Lord and his death for our sins or our inherently sinful natures apart from a relationship with Jesus can be harsh and put some people off. Better to soften the message and stay away from areas that might tend to push people away. Keep things light and entertaining and feel-good. Make it a show, bring in some jugglers and magicians and stilt-walkers. Why not some give-aways and door prizes? Make it about the laughter and the spectacle and the lights and the music and the positivity. After all, the congregation must continuing growing at all costs.

Of course another staggering aspect is the amount of money it requires to build the church building itself. Sanctuaries of large churches can run from $20 to $50 million dollars! After all, inlaid marble and imported mahogony and teak wood don't come cheap. Aren't there more important things to invest God's money in? Maybe we're really just building a grand idol to ourselves.

(Part 3 of 4)

Big Church II

I find the rapid growth of my church both exciting and worrisome. On one hand growth does indicate that they are bringing people to God. However, an important part of a church is the connection and fellowship of its body. It seems to me that without great care, the very growth model that the church leadership is pushing and driving can make the church a building filled with individuals where there is no presence of the Holy Spirit.

During the "campaign" to raise the funds for our church's move to a multi-site model to enable us to increase our capacity and reach, our pastor really had to press and push to relay to his congregration his vision for this development. He needed to overcome the obvious palpable initial resistance and reluctance of his sheep. I suspect most folks felt like I did that rapid growth and radical models to deal with it can really change the feel and approach of a small-town, cozy, intimate church. I remember in one of his sermons he repeated the phrase, "If you are against increasing capacity in the church, you are telling others to go to hell."

This statement was meant to be provocative to be sure, but the message was clear. Our job as members of the church and members of the body of Jesus, was to spread the message of the gospel. If we are working to actively keep people out of the body or discouraging them from even hearing the good news, then we are keeping them on a path to hell. However, to my ears, I also sensed by his tone and timbre, something else in his words that I wrestled with. Perhaps it was the drive and passion of a man and his vision that was overshadowing or competing with the compassionate message of Jesus regarding his followers, his body of the righteous. Jesus told his disciple Peter to feed my sheep (John 21:17). This is an active and ongoing process of those who already are set aside as righteous. Without being properly fed, there is no depth and learned understanding. There is no sanctification, only shallow, dime-store religion that does not bring true salvation.

I wrestled with my pastor's message then and I wrestle with it still today. Am I following the teaching of Jesus and working to bring new distant and disconnected members to the body or am I being selfish in my resistance to get what I feel I need and others need to be properly fed? My thinking is that the role of a pastor is to fulfill the role of shepherd and teacher. Yet as the numbers grow and grow, there is no way for the shepherd to know his sheep. As well, a teacher who does not interact with his students in an intimate relationship is simply a lecturer or a figurehead. Without relationship, there is a danger of growing numbers masking a hollowness and shallowness and emptiness in the flock.

(Part 2 of 4)

Big Church I

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." These words form the Great Commission of Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:18-20) to his disciples to go out and spread his word to everyone. They represent instruction that is meant as much for us today as it was for his disciples some 2000 years ago.

It is natural when pursuing a goal to keep track of progress. For the church, one standard measure of success in carrying out its charge is to quantify and track the number of attendees from week to week. As the numbers grow with time, churches celebrate their success. Resolve to continue to grow and strive for more and more, pushes church leaders to devote effort and resources to ensure the positive feedback loop continues.

The church that I currently attend has every reason to be proud of their efforts given this measure of success. The church officially started about 8 years ago with a group of about 50 folks. For five years they met in the gym at the local YMCA and slowly and consistently grew until they averaged an attendance of 500 each Sunday and were having two services. They then expanded to two locations and three service times and continued to grow to an average weekly attendance of about 800. Starting about two years ago they built their own building on their own property, and are now averaging about 2000 folks each week in five Sunday services. Next month they will join the growing ranks of churches operating in a "multi-site" mode. The church leaders forecast that their growth trend will continue and they plan to continue seeding the area with separate "campuses" and will continue to push their metric of success, namely growing their weekly attendance.

I find the rapid growth of my church both exciting and worrisome. On one hand growth does indicate that they are bringing people to God. However, an important part of a church is the connection and fellowship of its body. It seems to me that without great care, the very growth model that the church leadership is pushing and driving can make the church a very impersonal building filled with very separate individuals. Individuals who are in danger of living not in the breadth and depth of the Word, but skimming along on the surface, ignorant of the truth.

(Part 1 of 4)

Your Best Life

Some of my all-time favorite books have been recommended to me by friends whose opinions I respect. In them I usually find value, enjoyment, and personal enrichment. Thus I looked forward to reading the book Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen. My anticipation was elevated because of the impassioned recommendation of my friend, but I did have some significant levels of pessimism and reluctance based on what I know of Mr. Osteen. Mr. Osteen is a televangelist (a term with a strong negative connotation for me) and I have watched his program a few times. I have found that his sermons are all essentially the same message with the same feel. I would describe Mr. Osteen as slick, a sort of made for T.V. personality. He is always smiling and talking about claiming our victory in God. His message is consistently "feel good" and "rah-rah" motivating. On the other hand, Mr. Osteen is the lead pastor at Lakewood Church in Houston, which boasts the largest congregation in the country. So, certainly Mr. Osteen is selling something that the public buying.

As I expected, his book Your Best Life Now is peppy and motivating. This man is so upbeat and joyful as to be almost saccharine, yet I get a sense that Mr. Osteen genuinely lives this type of life. His approach to leading our best lives on earth include:

• Enlarge your vision
  
• Develop a healthy self-image
  
• Discover the power of your thoughts and words
  
• Let go of the past
  
• Stand strong against opposition and adversity
  
• Live to give
  
• Choose to be happy

As I have found with his sermons, each chapter in this book is essentially a restatement of the previous chapter. There is a lot of repetition, but his simple bottom-line message is "Think positively so that your actions will move you toward success and away from defeat." Now, I will not deny that his approach at a high level is reasonable and his style has a somewhat infectious appeal to it. But ...

You know when someone says something positive about you but follows it with a "but", it means that there is more to the story. In nearly every chapter of this book, my "spider senses" were tingling as I read, telling me that the theology I was reading was not right. I was troubled that his teaching was not based on the Bible that I know. His focus in every chapter is centered on me; what do I have to do to get the stuff of my dreams. A bigger house, a better job, a good parking spot at the mall. Even his section on giving is couched in terms of give today and you can expect material goods tomorrow. This book is about a formula for getting what we want in this life. More stuff, better stuff, bigger stuff. Well, I for one will raise the danger flag high. Something is quite amiss here and it overshadows whatever good advice he has to share.

Reprogramming

Each of us can be associated with various habits. Habits represent an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary. They are a part of who we are. Of course, habits in and of themselves are not necessarily bad. For example, holding doors open for others coming in behind you or saying thank you when someone has done something for you. Other habits, like smoking or drinking or gambling, on the other hand, have a long and well chronicled history associated with them.

Anyone who has tried to break themselves of a habit understands how difficult it can be. There are psychological, physical, and chemical aspects involved. Sometimes separating ourselves from bad or undesired habits can be just a matter of education and awareness. Other times this separation can be absolutely torturous for mind and body. It has been shown in clinical studies that it takes about 3 or 4 weeks for our mind to accept a new behavior and make it part of our normative programming.

When I came across this notion of the necessity of "reprogramming" our minds to break us free from bad habits, it really was the first time that I thought about it in this light. In my life, when I have worked to break free of bad habits, my reprogramming normally takes several distinct steps:

1. Awareness of the problem.
   
2. Understanding of the impacts of the habit on my life.
   
3. A resolve to make a change.
   
4. Development of a strategy for victory.
   
5. Attempt to change and subsequent setbacks.
   
6. Modification of strategy.
   
7. Vigilant personal monitoring and attention.
   
8. Change accepted by mind and body.
   

Sometimes changes can occur quickly and this is quite a boost to moral. Other changes can take much longer to be fully brought about. Sometimes just when we start to think we have something licked, an old issue or behavior can manifest itself. In these situations it can really seem that despite all of our efforts, we are back at square one. One habit that I would dearly like to overcome at times like these is that of being too hard on myself and thinking of myself as a failure. I would much prefer to take ownership of what I did and work to get back on track with renewed vigilance and care and patience.

FAQs

In today's hi-tech society, most folks have come across the term "FAQ". FAQ stands for "Frequently Asked Questions". In fact you can typically find a page of FAQs in most owner's manuals and on most computer help pages. The typical FAQ is written for, well let's face it, a complete idiot. To wit, from my television manual FAQ page, "Q: What do I do if the television does not come on when the power button is pushed?, A: Be sure the power cord is plugged into the outlet." Geez, why didn't I think of that?

As a Christian living in a world surrounded by so many complexities and problems that crop up on a daily basis, I have frequently wished that there was a useful FAQ page for me. Many preachers and pastors and clergy-type will tell you that the Bible is the ultimate and definitive source for the answers to all of life's questions. Well, as someone who has read and studied the Bible very carefully, I can say that they are all full of bean dip. The Bible provides the outline and boundary conditions, but it does not truly get into providing specific answers to the specific questions that come up in my life. I wish there was a FAQ page in the Bible (perhaps in the "Newer Testament") that would give me direct answers or suggestions in the areas of:

• Money and finances
  
• Personal interactions with people that aggravate me
  
• Dealing with relatives
  
• How and when to talk to my child
  
• Saving for college
  
• Lust and sexuality for the single man
  
• How to make consistently tasty pancakes
  

To be more specific, I would like a website written by God where I could go and type in a username and password, say http://www.directfromGod.com/FAQs. Perhaps then I would be able to make wiser decisions and get along better with the people around me.

Every Man's Battle

I mentioned to a friend of mine that I have taken steps to deal with controlling my lustful thoughts. Tempering such an insatiable beast takes determined and purposeful measures. The Bible says "For this is the will of God ... that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust." (1 Thess. 4:3-5) As a result of our conversation, he lent me a copy of the book Every Man's Battle by Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker. The subtitle of the book is "Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time".

As I worked my way through each chapter of this book, the thought that kept circling around my mind is that there was something very familiar about the book's layout and message. Although I had never read this book before, it is very similar to other book's about Christian men and their trials and tribulations dealing with sexual immorality. For example, Pure Desire by Ted Roberts and Out of the Shadows by Patrick Carnes. These books all spend several chapters describing the downward spiral brought on by the ever-increasing pull of sexual immorality and our lack of sexual integrity, followed by several chapters telling us how wrong it is and how draining its presence can be in our lives. The strategy for our ultimate and complete victory in this arena is then uncovered at the end in a big reveal ... "Just stop being addicted or impure!" ... ta-da.

Now perhaps I am over-simplifying these works a little bit, but I sometimes think that many authors in this genre are either naive or have an approach that works better in a clinical setting but does not translate well into a self-help book. Some books seem to claim that one day you will look at a Playboy centerfold and the next you will be a serial rapist. Others claim that even a passing glance at a good-looking woman on the street and you are a marriage-destroying devil. Now I am all for men taking ownership of their moral weaknesses and working to make improvements in their lives. I find this commendible, honorable, and biblical. So, reading a book like this might help folks to develop their own personal plans. However, I think that these strategies would be more successful if they did not come with a biblical brow-beating. Our sexual desires are both innate (hormonal and instinctual) and learned. The learned part was developed and inured over the course of decades and it takes time and patience to develop new thought and behavior patterns. I'm just not sure that any of these books has found a path that makes full sense to me.