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Posts Tagged ‘Ministry’

  1. Giving up on attractional

    January 30, 2007 by Geoff

    For those of you who don’t know me, haven’t been reading long, or are just not very good at taking hints, I’m involved in running our churches Friday night youth ministry for year 7 – 9 kids. It’s traditionally been you classic youth min setup – Friday night, 7:30 – 9:30 for fun, games, possibly some food, and a little bit of God stuff snuck in, based on the hope that kids will bring friends along and that they’ll get evangelised. And to a point, it’s been working. We’ve had a few kids bring friends along and seen them become semi-regular. It got pretty good for a while, and then dropped off around December. There was a little bit of unrest in my mind, but it wasn’t enough to have me break.

    Then the sunday before last, I had the youth out for the morning sermon time, and just chatted about what they wanted to see in youth this year. And gradually, as the suggestions started rolling in, two very different patterns started to emerge. On the one hand, these kids wanted to have a super cool babysitter for a couple of hours every friday. The other was a much quieter thread, but somewhere underneath all that, there was a push towards doing some serious discipleship. And for involving the kids in running the nights. And having them share what God’s doing in them.

    Which just broke me. Broken by the futility of running a teenager amusement park and shocked at the ever-widening gap between my ecclesiological theology (thanks to Alan Hirsch for the big word) and my practical application of aforementioned ecclesiology, I knew that I can’t keep doing this. So, now everything changes.

    The focus is going to be on discipleship. We’ll have these kids learning how to incarnate Jesus into their English classes, and the only chance we’ve got is if the Holy Spirit comes and does something incredible. But I’m sick of settling for the old way, and sick of feeling like I’m not doing anything for these kids. So, maybe it’s time to put my emergent where my mouth is and actually trust that God wants to use teenagers to speak to teenagers, rather than me. I just get to have a crack at helping them out. It’s a frightening prospect.

    Category God Stuff, Personal | Tags: | 10 Comments

  2. Sorting stuff out

    September 19, 2006 by Geoff

    I’m re-reading “The Shaping Of Things To Come” (Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost) for an essay for Tabor, and found this little gem of a model for sorting through what you keep and what you throw away in re-imagining church models:

    Sphere of Authority Description Degree of Flexibility
    Christ’s Commands
    (The Core)    		 Jesus is our ultimate authority. His commands are unquestioned. No adaptation possible, non-negotiable
    Biblical Principles
    The Substance    		 These are cross-cultural principles drawn from biblical teaching The essence is unchanging. Adapt only to maintain dynamic equivalent
    Apostolic Patterns(The Application) Behaviour, practices, lifestyles of the first century church Interpret or contextualize to fit the culture
    Church Practices
    (The Expression)    		 Established ways of thinking about and doing church Fully adaptable and flexible to the culture

    I loved it: I would be intrigued to hear anyone able to disagree with that as a way of thinking about church, I think it’s about as solid a framework as I’ve heard.

    Category God Stuff | Tags: ,,,,, | 3 Comments

  3. Diversity and the emerging church movement

    September 3, 2006 by Geoff

    Had a thoroughly interesting “Discipleship Training Night” this evening – mostly because it was a chance to engage in discussion around church planting, which brings me back to life every time. Pete (senior pastor for at least another week or two) was talking through where his mind is to do with the whole emerging/missional type movement, which is always very interesting to hear. Lots of the push is to build churches around specific people groups.

    Which brings up the difficulty of building a church that loses the sense of family, and the diversity which is really quite necessary for discipling and growing – I believe. For instance, as we’re growing our youthy types – I want them to be in relationship with some young 20s types, but also with some 30 year olds, and some 40 pluses. I think unless you get an opportunity to see what the christian life looks like in that context, you end up missing lots of what the whole deal is about.

    But these are turning into ramblings, and I really should just go to sleep. Thanks for putting up with my rants :P

    Category God Stuff | Tags: ,,,, | 5 Comments

  4. Does being like Jesus mean taking on his specific style

    August 23, 2006 by Geoff

    OK, this is one that has got me thinking, and given that I’m writing this before I go to sleep (I’m already sitting up in my bed), it probably won’t do justice to it. But after seeing the following quote over on the comments at a post on Jesus Creed (very good blog), something struck me.

    Would Jesus use PowerPoint?

    The comment is innocouos enough, and I’m not that sure that there was heaps of thought gone into it, but it put to the front of my mind a bit of a dilemma. Specifically, how much of following Jesus means actually taking a very stylistically similar approach?

    Because in the past I’ve sub-consciously accepted that the way Jesus did things is exactly the way I should do things. That we should be modelling ourselves on the models that Christ used. But if we accept that Jesus was a person, with his own personality, then how much of the way he operates comes out of those inherent instincts, and how much is specifically “the God way to do things”?  To give an example – Jesus taught mostly in parables. Is that because it was the best way to teach to people, or did he teach in parables because he was naturally a storyteller and so he felt more comfortable speaking in stories?

    I might need to re-visit some of this, and there’s no doubt a significant influence of culture on these questions as well. I might need to cogitate over this a little more.

    Category God Stuff | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 1 Comment

  5. Boys will be… wait, where’d they all go?

    August 14, 2006 by Geoff

    Very interesting post from a guest contributer over at Jason Clark’s blog (always worth a read) asking what the church needs to do about the noticeable imbalance between the genders in todays church (there just aren’t that many blokes in churches).

    I know that in my experience so much of the comments in the article ring true. We’re peddling a message (if you’ll excuse the crudity of the terminology) of how great it is to be in love with Jesus, and missing the call to action – we’ve lost the adventure that this Christian life is supposed to be. Which is perhaps why we’re seeing the opposite issue in the Emerging church arena (particularly in leadership) – the people who are most disillussioned by the way church is working at the moment, are the people who are getting out there and doing stuff.

    Worth thinking about.

    Category God Stuff | Tags: ,,,, | 5 Comments

  6. Generational Change

    August 13, 2006 by Geoff

    I found myself struck with some mixed feelings about a quote I read from Dan Wilt’s blog after the Canadian Vineyard national conference thingy:

    I’m left with this possibility, given our leadership team and its quest for faithfulness. We just may successfully navigate a course that has caused great stumbling to every movement/denomination since the time of Christ. What a bold statement. We may be able to successfully pass Kingdom values off to another generation without demanding the same forms, or even the same name. We’re poised to try to counter the historic tide. I’ve been skeptical for years, but I think we may be doing it. Hmmm.

    The first feeling is certainly one of excitement. Something in me jumps at the thought of this. That Vineyard wouldn’t be stuck in what Wimber created, in terms of form and structure and just how the whole thing looks, but instead that the heart of what Vineyard is about would instead just be applied directly to the culture that we live in in the year 2006, and in the year 2016, and 2056. And that we won’t look the same as we do today, and it won’t be constrained by having to look “vineyard” in a 1980s kind of way. But instead that we would catch the heart of what Vineyard is, allowing us to be a flexible and dynamic kingdom movement.

    But the second feeling is one of ” but, but, but….. I like the way things are now”. And even more: “We’ve put so much effort to getting our church looking like this”. (Although if you’ve seen our youth room, you’ll understand that I’m not talking about our building) As much as this makes me sound much older than my tender 22 years, part of me wants to stay with what we “had in the glory days”. There’s something so appealing about sticking with a winning formula, going with what you know (and plenty of other cliches).

    I do feel like the revolutionary in me is winning out (if only because I don’t want to turn into an old fogey just yet :P ) but in lots of ways it’s a battle. I’ve spent so much time growing up in what has always been a pretty solid example of Vineyard culture. It’ll take some effort to wean me off some of those. And to sort out the heart from the niceties. But it certainly is a fun thing to start being a part of….

    Category God Stuff | Tags: ,,,,, | 1 Comment

  7. Serving, Becoming and Belonging

    August 6, 2006 by Geoff

    Saw this on Way Out West, and loved the analogy, and think that it makes sense for how we do ministry, and working out that we’re not going to fit everyone into a simple model. It comes from “Breaking the Missional Code” by Ed Setzer and is a representation of the way that the path from searching to disciple isn’t going to take the same path for different people, and providing pathways for people to enter in different ways is such an important part of the kingdom. Which perhaps is why the missional/emerging church might not have all the answers, and where it does, it needs to find a way to provide these opportunities.

    believing.jpg

    Category God Stuff | Tags: | 1 Comment

  8. Ain’t no story like a Mona-story?

    July 24, 2006 by Geoff

    (and yes – I do know that’s not how you spell monastery)

    A bit of a provocative article over at “Out of Ur” (quickly becoming my favourite place for exploding my theological ideas) entitled “Spiritual Formation: We’ve already got a proven method, but do we want it?“  Pulls no punches:

    After a few warm-up questions, they got to the heart of the matter: “What would you recommend for spiritual formation in our time?”

    “The monastery,” I said.

    Although the unpacking does allow for a little bit more understanding, I was caught by this statement too:

    I do think that as evangelicals we consistently underestimate the power of culture, and our attempts to “be relevant” usually end up as our weakness rather than our strength.

    I’ve already left my comments over there – so get on over, check it out, and if you comment over there, please copy and paste it back here too! Certainly provokes a reaction. Let me know what you think.

    Category God Stuff | Tags: | 1 Comment

  9. It’s on!

    July 8, 2006 by Geoff

    Well, in the words of Homer Simpson – “my brain hurts“. I’ve spent the whole day at the induction for the Master of Arts in Church Practice – the course I’m starting at Tabor. Although I won’t actually be spending any time on campus, it’s much too cool a course for crazy things like actually attending the college. For more about the course, either go to the Tabor site. I’m too lazy to re-explain.

    It’s going to be pretty full-on. There’s some pretty bright people doing it, and there’ll be a fair bit of work in it – but I really do love the whole emphasis of the course – “theology in context as it relates to the local church”. Can’t think of any better way to approach bible college type study. And I’m still equally enthusiatic (well, proabbly even more enthusiatic) having met the people I’ll be doing it with.

    There was an interesting thought brought up, and my mind is still trying to wrap itself around all that we were chatting about. But this stood out: that our theology needs to be considered against the context it is in; in light of our own experiences and the church tradition. So we don’t do theology in a vaccuum, but instead have to consider any questions against what we have done in the past: filtering out the non-essentials and keeping the quality, and  recognising that the needs of today are not the needs of yesterday.

    I think I’ll need an early night tonight – to cope with the expansion of my brain.

    Category God Stuff, Personal | Tags: | 8 Comments

  10. Forgetting about results

    June 24, 2006 by Geoff

    Deeply ingrained in our scientific, research-based mindset is the feeling that we need to be measuring how we are going in ministry. That we need some way of quantifying the results of what we do, because otherwise we’re worried about not being strategic enough, or not going where God wants us, or something like that. This is particularly true, it seems to me in mission, specifically local community mission.

    We do servant-evangelism type stuff, so that we can let people know that the church is getting out there and meeting the needs of people. We want to be measuring church growth and getting statistics on how many of the people in the church have become new christians at the church and all of these things so that we can know that we are “being effective” and hitting the right spots. Everyone does it, and the motivation behind it is good – we want to be bringing the good news of Christ into the lives of as many people as possible.

    But I’ve been having something of an internal dialogue, prompted mostly by cogitating over “Velvet Elvis” (which I’ll write some more detailed thoughts on soon) and “A Generous Orthodoxy” (which you can read all my thoughts on here) that maybe we aren’t focusing right. So here we go: I know this isn’t new and revolutionary thinking – much smarter people than me have come up with these theories before me, I’m just expressing what I’m thinking about. Maybe, bringing the kingdom of God, “on earth as it is in heaven”, is about more than flat conversions. Maybe bringing the kingdom of God to earth is about making earth more like heaven, in other ways than just making Christians. (more…)

    Category God Stuff | Tags: | 5 Comments

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