How Is The Church To See The Mentally Ill & Reach Out To Them?

The Stigma Of Mental Illness & The Church

I have come to the realization that the church is often a place for hurting people looking to Jesus for help.  They are no different than anyone else other than they are looking to Jesus for the solution to their pain, sickness, troubles, etc.  I have also come to the realization that in almost every church there is someone (often many) who are facing some form of mental illness and are also looking to Jesus for solutions.

In my last blog page, I invited comments and suggestion on how the Church can reach out to those facing mental illness.  During this blog, I want to look at the issue of stigma.

Oxford English Dictionary (copyright 2012) defined stigma as 1) A mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person: “the stigma of mental disorder”; 2) (In Christian tradition) Marks corresponding to those left on Jesus’ body by the Crucifixion, said to have been impressed by divine favor on the bodies of St. Francis of Assisi and others.  Synonyms: brand – stain – taint.

1) A mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality or person – In Jesus time “leprosy” carried the stigma of a disease of social disgrace to the point that the person with leprosy had to announce their arrival when in public since the disease was so contagious.  Not only was it looked upon as a medical disease, but also a social one, for having the disease demanded total social isolation and alienation.  One had to move to a leper colony.  The epic movie Ben Hur so vividly portrayed this event.  The Aids Epidemic was America’s leprosy at the end of the twentieth century, but its stigma has been reduced through progress in medical treatment, education, and social awareness and acceptance.  Mental Illness is America’s 21^st Century epidemic.  The gospels records that Jesus healed the 10 lepers where only one returned to thank him.  The 21^st Century Church needs to address the topic of healing for those fighting mental illness.

2) Marks corresponding to those left on Jesus’ body by the Crucifixion – IPeter 2:25 reads: “for by his wounds you were healed.”  The very stigmatic marks on Jesus’ crucified body should be the very acceptance towards the healing of mental health stigma. 

Often stigma is groomed through ignorance, prejudices, and improper attitudes and judgments.  If a person is diagnosed with a brain tumor, the medical world will ask for brain scans, MRI’s, etc. as part of their treatment, all covered by insurance.  If a person is diagnosed with a mental illness, they are denied brain scans, given only physical medical clearances before being evaluated by a crisis intervention team, a physician, and possibly a judge to determine if they are in a position “of endangering their lives or the lives of others.”  If there is no physical evidence of a possible suicide attempt or a violent action toward a loved one, medical services can and will be denied.  That is stigma. Does a patient have to be in their last stage of cancer before being granted help? No, early detection and treatment is encouraged, but not in the mental health field. That is stigma.

Churches are reeling in trying to learn how to respond to their “high maintenance” parishioners who challenge ethical and moral boundaries when in the depth of depression, the heights of mania, or the whirlwind of a psychotic episode.  The Church can offer hope, but hope in what? Churches have told my wife and I that “we are praying for you”, but what are their specific prays?  Often socially, those fighting with mental illness find themselves isolated or alienated from the very life that could give them hope, healing, and deliverance, but how is the Church to respond?  These are powerful questions being asked of the Church in this century.  Is the Church commissioned to speak on behalf of those fighting mental illness?  If so how?

Glen Close Quote:Stigma comes from “not knowing what to do”, and with mental illness everyone involved eventually discovers themselves in that position of “not knowing what to do”, not knowing where to get help, not finding effective support systems to help one through crisis. 

I have attended a church where many physical handicap people have attended and have been accepted. They have become an integral part of the worship experience that has been healthy for this congregation, but I have also experienced an awkwardness by that same congregation on how to handle mental illness even though there are several people who personally are fighting mental illness in their congregation who are a part of their worship experience.  The “not knowing” has been the catalyst to this stigma: the not knowing of what mental illness really is, a physical disease; the not knowing what to do with one in crisis; the not understanding one’s irrational or “insane” actions when the disease is full blown; the awkwardness not knowing how to fellowship with a person struggling with mental illness. It is not that the church is trying to avoid what to do; it is the “not knowing” what to do, and how to “minister” effectively. In upcoming blogs we will try to unlock the “not knowing”, and begin to try to understand, become empathetic, and eventually feel confident in reaching out to those brothers and sisters in the Lord who are struggling with mental illness.

Mental Illness & The Church: Discerning Of Voices

When The Sound Of Mental Illness Distorts Voices

People battling schizophrenia often battle the sound of many voices in their head, voices real to them, often voices telling them of harm leading to disaster, self destruction, or even violence.  It is a time when you can’t trust the voices in your head. When healthy, you may listen to the voice of one’s conscience, your moral code of right or wrong. When ill, the voice of wrong tries to convince you that it is right. False illusions produce dissolutions.

The Church has taught me that the “spiritual” is about matters of the heart, yet brain research has revealed area of one’s brain that affects the way a person “spiritually” thinks.  I have witnessed what depression can do to a strong faith-believing wife who questions her salvation when in the depths of depressive darkness.  I live with a wife who learned to “listen” to the voice of God, only to have it distorted by mania that super spiritualized all aspects of her life.  Mental wellness produces spiritual wellness, but spiritual wellness has suffered with the lack of mental or physical wellness. 

Yet with mental illness, it is still spiritual faith that helps one weather the storms: that intangible belief that God can heal when there is no physical evidence.  In the mental health world, “recovery” is defined as living the best quality of life that one can under the conditions they are currently facing. Faith goes beyond recovery.

Imagine how difficult it must be for those fighting mental illness to “believe” when they may face a bleak darkness beyond despair, a manic high beyond spiritual normalcy, hear voices that they believe may be the voice of God telling them to do self destructive behaviors, doing destructive actions like self mutilation, hyper sexual relationships, and the ruination of personal relationships only to feel the condemnation of the church for their “sins” when they are already living under self condemnation, hoping to find someone somewhere who will extend grace to them during this time when everything in their life seems to be spinning out of control.

In the midst of their maelstrom of confusion, despair, and out of control behaviors, what is the role of the Church in their lives?  What does the Church have to offer them?  I have discovered that the institutional church is also in a maelstrom over what to do about this issue.  The Church historically looked at mental illness as a spiritual disease, not a mental or physical one.  The demoniac had “a legion” of demons telling him what to do, only to have Jesus cast them into a herd of pigs that stampeded to their death, bringing fear and skepticism to those living around that area.  The locals had trouble accepting the ex-demoniac sitting fully clothed and sane when amongst them and requested Jesus to just leave them alone.  In fact, Jesus does not grant this newly sane disciple to be a disciple to follow him, but tells him to go back to his own people.  I have seen the damage caused by churches who have looked upon mental illness only as a spiritual disease, and have not witnessed the “good fruit” of healing happening among them.

The church historically has started hospitals, developed prison ministries, taken care of the homeless, etc., but currently, at least here in America, the church has delegated those responsibilities to private or governmental institutions, forfeiting the power of the gospel to people needing it.  The church currently has an excellent opportunity to reach out to the mentally ill whose hospitals governments are shutting down because of financial cost, whose prisons now house thousands who struggle with mental illness, and feeding the homeless who quarters are teeming with the mentally ill.  In the 21^st Century, the mentally ill have become America’s “undesirables”, and the stigma has become America’s stench.  It seems no body cares for them; nobody wants to be their advocate or voice; nobody wants to convenience oneself with the inconvenient. 

I will fill you in on a little secret: Jesus cares!  Jesus cares for the homeless, the hungry, the imprisoned, the hurting, and the ill.  He commissions his Church to also care for them “for I was a stranger and …”.  If the Church is an extension of Jesus today, then it MUST reach out to the mentally ill who are homeless, hungry, imprisoned, hurting, and ill.  How long can the church be blind to this dilemma?

The Church needs to reach out to those struggling with a mental illness, but it faces the maelstrom of not knowing how!  I would love to create a dialogue off this blog of comments and suggestions as to how the Church can do this.  You are invited to join me in this conversation.  Please do not give long dissertations of “your story”, but “suggestions” of how the Church can reach out to those who are facing mental illness, physically, mentally, emotionally, as well as being their judicial and political advocates. If you have experienced your church doing this, please share how they did it! I invite you to join in the discussion!

Hearing When There Is No Sound

Dietrich BonhofferApostle PaulMother Teresa

Speaking In The Silent Times

When Moses was in the wilderness for 40 years before he returned to Egypt, what did he hear?  When Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days, what did he hear?  When Paul was in the wilderness being detoxed of all his religious training, what did he hear?  When Deitrick Bonhoeffer was in Nazi concentration camps, what did he hear?  When Daniel was in the Lion’s Den, other than a roar from a lion once in a while, what did he hear?  When Joseph was in prison for a trumped up charge by Potiphar’s wife, what did he hear?  When Mother Teresa sat with the sick and lowly in Calcutta India, what did she hear?  When the disciples gathered, frightened, who were receiving reports that their Messiah who had just been crucified on a Roman cross, what did they hear? When John was exiled on the Island of Patmos, what did he hear in those early days?  Before the days of Samuel, what did Eli the High Priest hear in order to lead his people?

How comes, some of the most powerful spiritual moments of learning and understanding God come when man can’t hear a thing.  What is it about the stillness, the quietness, the solitude of silence. Simon & Garfunkel questioned the essence of secluded solitude in their hit song “Sounds of Silence”: “Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.  Because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping, and the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains… within the sound of silence.”

In those dark moments of despair, of hopelessness, of questionable doubts testing one’s faith, when crying out to the Lord only produces serene silence, “a vision that was planted in my brain, still remains.”  It is during those times that the seeing and understanding the vision of faith becomes more important than the hearing.  In those moments of silence, often God tends to “reveal” Himself to us is ways other than oral.

Hebrews 11:1 states: “Now faith is the assurance (or substance) of things hoped for (or expected), the conviction (or evidence) of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained (or obtained) approval.” (New American Standard Bible).  Ironically faith does not come from our physical sense of seeing nor hearing, only through our spiritual sense of believing for those things one cannot physically see or hear!  When the tangible caused by sight and sound are taken away, what do you have left?  “Faith”, the intangible!

I often wondered how Helen Keller functioned without sight or sound in her life during her early childhood of wonder, exploration, and trying to figure out life.  In the Miracle Worker, Ann Sullivan breaks through Helen’s world of darkness and quietness at a water well, pumping water over Ann while spelling w.a.t.e.r through sign language with her hand.  Something clicked in Helen’s head, and the rest is history as Helen Keller went on to earn a college degree while changing the world.  Jesus breaks through the spiritual darkness and quietness of a Samaritan woman’s life also at a watering well when explaining that spiritually he was the drink, the water of life that she needed to have in order for her spiritual life to be opened to the truths of the kingdom of God. Something too clicked in her spirit, and the rest is history as she brings revival not only to herself, but to her town, family, neighbors, and Samaritan race.

It was difficult, in fact excruciating painful, for Moses to wonder as a solitary shepherd for 40 years after being the favored of Pharaoh, for Paul to have his whole theology thrown out the window after being knocked off his horse for zealously opposing this Jesus who accepted him so gracefully, for Jesus to set aside his earthly agenda for his Father’s heavenly purpose to learn obedience to His heavenly Father, for Deitrick Bonhoeffer to question his faith and purpose when in the midst of the Hell Hole of a Nazi Concentration Camp, for Daniel to lay aside his fear of hungry lions when in the midst of faith, for Joseph to suffer in prison when judged unfairly, for Mother Teresa sitting in the midst of poverty and sickness knowing Jesus is their Provider and Healer but physically not seeing it, for the disciples when their visions and dreams seem to be smashed as their leader faces the cruel death of crucifixion, for John who walked with Jesus, led his believers in this new movement of God, now to be isolated from everyone and everything, for Levi to be the spiritual leader of Israel, yet unable to hear the voice of God for himself.

It is excruciating painful when we, as believer’s in Jesus Christ, go through such times of isolation, times of seclusion, times of trials, times of silence, yet it is in those very moments of darkness, despair, hopelessness, and brokenness that something spiritually clicks, and we obtain a new understanding, a new truth, a new hope, a new purpose, a new vision a new drink of living water through faith.  A vision of faith is often solidified during those moments of solitude. As painful as it sounds, we, as believers in Jesus, must learn to embrace those solitary moments of silence when God seems so distant, not present, not listening, not being evident, for in those moments faith, the evidence of things not seen nor heard, become the vision that anchors our faith in Jesus Christ.

Metamorphosis: The Cocoon Stage

A Time Of Rewiring, Reworking, Remaking, Redoing

Several months ago I wrote about the church going through a metamorphosis process, going from being a caterpillar, cumbersome, slow to change, devouring all it can eat in an effort for growth to entering a cocoon stage where a transformation of structure would occur to be released as a butterfly, a sleek structure ready for flight.  I believed the church was about to go through quite a transformation process because it would literally change the “structure” of the church. I wondered what would take place in this cocoon stage that would create such a dramatic change.

Then I remembered that “we” are the church, so it would have to directly affect “me”.  I thought of the church as a whole, as a structure, as an institution, but not that it would affect me personally. How wrong that assumption has been.  I briefly shared my journey then with a group of people last night, and one participant piped out, “sounds like you are in that cocoon now.” I think he is right.

So what is happening inside it? I can wrap it up in two words: drastic change. I feel like I am in a challenging time; it can be a depressing time. I do not have a “critical spirit” that produces negativity, but I find myself questioning everything the church does, believes, and propagates as well as what I do, believe and propagate spiritually.  It’s beginning to drive me nuts, because it creates an illusion of isolation, not being able to “fit” in to current structures, structures that always gave me assurance, support, comfort, encouragement, structures that use to be the pillars of what I did and what I believed.

It feels like I am being rewired, old out dated wiring being ripped out while newer wire that meet more stringent codes of higher quality and standards are replacing them. I am beginning to sense what an old housing structure must feel like when deemed inadequate or even condemned, then completely gutted, only to be rewired, reworked, and remodeled to newer and higher standards and codes. It must be a painful process to that old building when at first experiences being ripped apart, then reworked and even reshaped, before being repainted.  Often we take “before” and “after” shots of our remodeling projects so we can say, “I can’t believe it looked that way once, but look at its beauty today.” 

The hardest part of this process is the constant challenge of new ideas and ways of thinking by the Holy Spirit to challenge my willingness or lack there of to embrace new mindsets. The way that I did church in my childhood seems so antiquated that it parallels with Puritanical times. Societal norms and culture have drastically changed over the century. My grandfather drove a horse drawn cart to deliver milk, experienced the invention and integration of the telephone, radio, television, and internet.  He took a trolley to town, bought a model-T Ford, and saw the creation of superhighways. He lived in a society life centered around the local community church and the local band pavilion, then changed to school and sports activities, to now embracing social networking. His world started local, being interrupted by a World War, followed by its connection through something called a world wide web. He longed for “the good old days” of a simpler, more local life, but gave way to health care, assisted living, and nursing facilities that lengthen his life by several decades. Even my life span of six decades has seen incredible change.

So the cocoon phase brings death to some old structures, pillars, out dated wiring with outdated codes, and replaces it with new life, new pillars, new wiring with more stringent and higher healthier codes.   The new remodeled building or structure looks nothing like its original although basically it is still built on the same foundation. That foundation is Christ Jesus, the Rock.  The Church is facing a world that is changing, one with a greater global vision, more interconnectivity, one actually becoming smaller, a world that can come to one’s Smartphone in one’s pocket, the way I/we structure Church, do Church, will have to be revamped, restructured, reworked, redone, rewired.  

Church, I propose, we are in that cocoon stage.  The only way to come out of it as a butterfly is our willingness to yield and listen to the Holy Spirit and be obedient to His work as he coordinates this restructuring, rebuilding, rewiring, redoing.  If the creature that enters the cocoon as a caterpillar decides to stay in the cocoon, it means only one thing, death. Life, a resurrected life, is one that is willing to oppose the grave and rise in newness, the butterfly, the new structure, a new life.

I am sure as I/we walk through this stage, even more challenges, more new mindsets, more reworking, more repentance, more dying to self and dying for our fellow brethren will have to take place. The cocoon stage has only begun!

Shepherding And Social Networking: Can The Church Capitalize On This New Technology?

How Do You Prepare God’s People For Works of Service? Part VIII

If shepherding is nurturing, caring, and developing, and social networking and new technology is influencing our current society, the church just needs to look reexamine how it shepherds. I read this week that Google is thinking of invading the television business with major capital investments because the 18 to 34 year olds are beginning to watch their entertainment on their smart phones, or IPad devices rather than having to sit in their family rooms in front of their televisions sets.  This “mobile” society is about to see another paradigm shift away from traditional family time, traditions, and cultures and the way we are use to do things.

My age group attends High School and College Class reunions because we have “lost contact” with almost everyone after graduation except for a select few.  That is not true with the younger age group, for they stay in contact through social media formats and tools.  By becoming “friends” they communicate through Facebook and join “circles” to keep in touch with different groups in their social strata. Every time they are on Facebook, they expose what they are saying and doing. You can almost “monitor” what is happening in their life just by following them on Facebook, or Twitter, or other forms of social media. They expose their backgrounds, share current pictures, and post daily comments.  Even the Foursquare software program allows you to “check in” and gain rewards when you notify where you are currently located. All this information and data about people is available, and they are not even in your physical presence.

Mentoring is most effective when done 24/7, but who can be with the one they are mentoring in their Christian growth when you are not in their presence.  Today that can become a reality.  If you are discipling or mentoring a younger believer in the Lord, you can monitor their social patterns, where they hang out, where they shop, who they communicate with, their interests, hobbies, etc. Availability is crucial in a successful mentoring program, and today’s technologies make that possible with smart phones, that not only let you talk to one another, but also see one another. One being mentored can easily and immediately contact their mentor orally, visually, or through written communications like texting or tweeting. If one needs help, prayer, or advice, contact and help can be immediate.  Interactivity is a key to successful social network connectivity.

So shepherding can now be 24/7 and connectivity almost instant.  Part of the Smartphone culture is the need to react to the ding, ping, or sound effect that comes from our phone. It is almost like an immediate response, and instant reaction. Connectivity and availability is crucial.

The danger lies what one does with all this data and information about a person.  In the 1970’s the Shepherding Movement from the Fort Lauderdale Five was birthed out of the need to help younger Christians mature under the direction of older more mature Christians. We have learned through them that unfortunately, it is so easy for the mentor to fall into a “control” mode, guiding every decision of the young Christian rather than teaching them how to make decisions on their own. So far, social networking is not about “control” but “contact” and “communication”, the transfer of information from one to another. That “loose” relationship can actually be a healthy one, for you have to allow everyone to “work out their own salvation”, to “walk their own spiritual walk”, and learn to “hear the Holy Spirit for themselves”, because eventually they will have to walk and stand on their own and hopefully mentor others in future journeys.

The church needs to embrace the power of social networking because it has permeated our American culture. The question is what to do with it, how to effectively use it as a tool for communicating the gospel, and communicating with others in guiding them in their spiritual walk. Many churches are making websites basically to “advertise” their worship service and available services, but they must learn how to make their sites interactive.  If Facebook is only a tool to post information about their church and there is no interactive communication happening on that page, then the church has missed the mark of what social networking is all about.

So pastoral/shepherding skills may manifest themselves in new forms as we enter this social media culture of the twenty-first century. The challenge for the church is how to be open to change, technology, and new mindsets of thought and communication.  

If We Could Only Be Like Little Children

The Faith Of A Child; The Theology Of An Adult

An inquisitive event occurred at the church I was attending on Sunday.  The Pastor gave a sermon on Justification By Faith.  In an attempt to show an unbiased look both sides of the “Once Saved Always Saved” versus “You Can Lose Your Salvation” arguments although he let you knew what side he favored because “it was his responsibility to portray the ‘truth’”, a woman broke into the flow of debate, not to ask a question, nor to give an opinion.  She wanted to share a testimony.

Her testimony was that she had had headaches and back pain during the service.  Someone from the children’s department asked if she would come and let the children pray for her.  She complied. The teacher of the children’s class had been teaching the children how to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit themselves. As the children honed in on that still small voice, they began to minister to this lady. By the time they were done, she was pain free.  Here she was now telling the adults about this experience as the children released their "child like faith".

That is the beauty of being a child: having child like faith. Adults were discussing “faith”, debating theology, trying to figure out how faith works while justifying their theological positions. The children? They just practiced their faith!  The adults came to no conclusions that united them while the children produced results, a healing!

When is the adult church going to allow the passions of the children of God to arise, that of an evangelist, a shepherd, a teacher, a prophet, and an apostle, and release the children of God to freely exercise them?  The Holy Spirit resides in the temple of God, the bodies of believers in Jesus Christ. Church, let’s allow that spirit to arise, manifest itself, and be released in resurrected life and freedom! 

When is the adult church going to learn it doesn’t have to be theologically correct or kosher all the time; they just need to have faith in Jesus and listen to his Holy Spirit speaking?  Every religious sect thinks the theological “truth” has been revealed to them, and the rest of Christendom is incorrect or missing an element of that truth? Why does the adult church feel it has to “justify the truth” rather than live by the principle of “justification of faith”? Faith in what?

If we have “faith” in Jesus’ power to heal, then let’s just do it: heal!  If we have “faith” in Jesus’ power to forgive, then let’s just do it: forgive!  If we have “faith” in the body of Christ, then let’s just practice IJohn 3:16 and “lay down our lives for our brethren”: let’s just do it! If we have “faith” in “rebirth”, then let’s allow the Holy Spirit to rebirth! If we believer in sanctification, then let’s allow the Holy Spirit to lead us in caring, nurturing, and developing our fellow believers into the image of Jesus Christ!  If we “faith” that God speaks to his children, then let’s listen and be obedient to what we have seen and heard.

When, as adults, are we ready to scrap our prearranged, highly organized, well orchestrated, music and oral ensembles we call worship services, and allow the children of God who attend to just be “children” who want to play, to romp, to sing, to dance, to be free to skip around bear footed, even puddle hop, and maybe even make mud pies while getting dirty instead of always appearing pristine clean? When are we going to allow their passions in Jesus to arise, to help “develop” towards maturing in Christ-likeness, and to release them to be free in the destiny God has for them instead of prohibiting them, holding them back, and controlling them?

I recently observed a parent, who when haggard by their children’s noises of just being kids, playing, sibling rivalries, vying for parental attention, and being fidgety under the strains of having to be in an adult world while still being kids, completely shut down their activity to have “order” for the sake of adult sanity, suppressing any child like life in them for quietness and control. As adults, we do that all the time to our children rather than joining them.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come unto me,” and “unless you are like a little child, you can not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  I want to enter the lifestyle of that kingdom; I want to be a child again; I want to be able to come and jump into the lap of Jesus! Then I got to divert back to my spiritual childhood with child like faith. I got to quit debating, quit trying to be correct, quit trying to always be a portrayer of truth to prove that I am righteous, and just be a kid again!  In an adult world kids are never right; in a kid’s world they just want the adults to join them in experiencing life.

I just want to heal, to forgive, to love, to respect, to honor, to worship, to grow, grow up to be like Jesus! I just want to experieince continual rebirth, to care, nurture, and develop others, to walk our the Word of God in my daily life, live it, to develop my inner ear to hear the still small voice of the Holy Spirit, to be able to envision the Church as a bride without spot or wrinkle prepared for its wedding day.  As a kid, I want to play, imitating my Father. Ironically, as an adult I have learned to “play church”, but as a child I want to be the church; I just want the freedom and release to just do it!

Is An Interactive Driven Church Service Even A Possibility In Today’s Church Environment?

Have We Become Puppets On A String?

Currently:  Sunday morning Christian church services “enable” those attending: You are given a bulletin of “programs” and “up coming events” when entering; see audio visuals projected of “programs” and “upcoming events” on huge screens in the foyer and/or in the sanctuary; are “cued” when the service begins with music by a professional sounding worship team; told by the worship leader when to stand and when to sit; told what to sing through projected words; because of the “audio mix”, you can choose to sing or not because no one will know if you are singing due to the volume of the professionals singing and playing; are told to sit when the worship leader deems worship has ended; exhorted to financially give to support the staff, the programs, and the system as a continual act of worship; have someone give announcements of “programs” and “upcoming events” because the staff does not believe you read your bulletin nor read the projected announcements; are expected to quietly soak in a professionally developed and delivered sermon which requires no feedback pn your part, so you may actually tune out the speaker if you wish or cat nap as some have been known for doing; asked to respond to selected trained members of a prayer or counseling team in front of the church, join in singing a closing song, or chose to leave the premises.

This is what is required of you to be part of a Christian church service in America today. You do not have to bring your Bible for there is either one under your chair or pew or scriptural references projected as outlined in the sermon to justify the senior pastor’s points.  Even if you brought your Bible, there will be no outlet for you to read it aloud or share from it like the pastor or staff will do for you. You do not have to pray, for the senior pastor or a staff member may do that for you during the service, or a prayer team will take care of that before or after the service.  You do not have to sing, but if you do, all is scripted for you, played loud enough so you might blend in with the background singers if you sing loud enough. You are required to come prepared for one thing: the offering, to give “unto the Lord” to support the professional staff and facilities that is producing for you such a glorious professional production.

What do you learn from this experience? You learned what songs the worship leaders like and the interpretation and theology of the Senior Pastor who delivers the sermon. That nothing is required from you if it does not have financial connections. That the voice of the commoner sitting in the audience or congregation is not important, for you will never hear that voice. You have no idea what their spiritual journey’s story is nor what they theologically believe.  There is no interaction among one another beyond social surface greetings, for you may not see one another again for week. 

We have become reduced to puppets on a string.

What would happen if those who came to the Sunday Morning Christian church service were accountable for daily Bible reading and quiet devotional times during the week, and actually tried to hear the small voice of the Holy Spirit to teach them when reading their Bible and for direction in their lives? If given an outlet to voice what they have read, heard, and understood in place of a professionally delivered sermon, church would begin to be personal and relational.  What if those who are musically or artistically gifted sang, drew, or created during the week? If given an outlet to sing, draw, and create on Sunday, anticipation for creativity by the Holy Spirit may become the norm for a church service.  What if “programs” and “up coming” events were not announced, but instead “relationships” shared by the people attending, sharing their spiritual salvation and sanctification journeys with each other.  You might just now know what spiritual life exists in the members of “body of Christ” who are attending. What would happen if those attending would begin praying for one another on a personal and corporate level, laying hands on one another, releasing one’s faith towards each other? What ministry would that create?  What would happen if community were developed instead of weekly “programs” and “up coming events”, so that the members of the body would intermingle with each other daily or throughout the week, and Sunday morning would only be a corporate sharing time of what was happening amongs them six other days of the week.

“Oh,” comes the cry, “but there must be order. There would be no order,” is the fear! Order through fear of losing control shows lack of FAITH in the leading of the Holy Spirit by those in leadership. Bottom Line: Who is in control here? God has given “gifts” to “see over” what the Holy Spirit is leading and doing when God’s people gather, instead of man’s control through “offices” “overseeing" what is happening to establish order instead of freeing the Holy Spirit and their congregation to worship.

Whose service is it? Really, the Senior Pastor’s, his staff, and the worship leaders, or is it the people of God’s who have assembled together?  “Where two or three are gathered, there I AM.” God, the I AM, is in the midst of His people, so let’s allow Him to manifest Himself there! That is His desire! That is His plan!  If we truly want to worship God, let’s give Him His desire: to be manifested among His people.

So I ask, “Is an interactive driven church service even a possibility in today’s church environment?”

Are All American Churches “Failing Churches”?

A Result Driven Church?

Rick Warren has had quite a lot of success with his “Purpose Driven Life” book which presents the Christian life as a life driven by purpose. What is the purpose for the Church? Thoughtful question!  It is usually answered by Christians very generally like: to glorify God, to establish His kingdom here on earth, to lift up the name of Jesus, to be the Bride preparing itself for its Groom, etc.  But how do you evaluate the “results” of such statements? Can they be measured? Every Christian church truly feels it is glorifying God, establishing His kingdom, lifting up the name of Jesus, being the bride, etc., but how do they measure their results in reaching these conclusions?  Are they too ambivalent?

We demand “results” from our American public education system, so we “test” everything to collect data to evaluate success.  Data now drives the definition of success in education. Data supposedly “proves” if students are making Yearly Average Progress, if the staff is proficient, if school districts are performing well.  The unrealistic goal is that every student will become proficient no matter of their academic capabilities, and there will be data to “prove” if they are or aren’t.

What would happen if we measure our churches by “results”?

How many people received physical healing at your church this week? (Numbers, data, please!) The Bible states that when people were brought to Jesus “all were healed”. Data results: Jesus = 100%; my church (?)

Sunday church service went long; how many people did the church feed before sending them home? (Numbers, data, please!) The Bible records two such events where at least 4,000 to 5,000 men (not including women and children, a slight data miscalculation).  Data results: Jesus fed 4,000 to 5,000 men; my church (?)

How about longevity attendance records?  Jesus called, nurtured, and developed twelve disciples during a three year internship period. He lost only one, Judas, in order to fulfill prophecy. That is only an 8% loss, a 92% proficiency rate. How many people have left or “church hoped” in your church this year? Data Results: Jesus = 92% proficiency rate; my church (?)

Churches judge success by numbers, usually attendance figures to its programs and financial figures meeting its projected budget. Supposedly a successful church is a church growing in numbers that generate higher financial figures so more programs can be offered and hiring of more professional staff.  A successful church carries a huge staff to support its system. Data Results: My church grew by 35 people this year and increased our budget by $65,000. So numbers, data, does count, huh?

But how do you rate, judge, or evaluate a church’s staff? On performance: how well they speak or preach, if they are people oriented, on organizational skills, etc.?  Public school teachers are evaluated on “student performance” and “student achievement”.  How would the church staff fair being evaluated by “parishioner/congregant performance” and “parishioner/congregant discipleship growth or achievement”? Since most church staffs “enable” their parishioners/congregants telling them when to stand, when to sit, when to pray, when to shake hands and greet, when to financially give, when to receive a church bulletin, when to listen to announcements, when to listen to the sermon, when to take notes, when to respond to the sermon, and when to leave the service, I think most church staff’s would receive “FAILING GRADES” on results.  How many parishioners/congregants are “pew sitters”; how many of them are “active”?

How do you judge results of a sermon? Are people really changed by them? Do those listening really apply what they have “heard” in the senior pastor’s excellent oration? Can they even remember what the sermon was about last week, or a month ago?  To be polite a parishioner says, “Nice sermon” as they shake the pastor’s hand while leaving the church, but how do you measure the effectiveness of a sermon since it is the keynote of almost every church service: on presentation or on results?

Look at your church. Who is doing all the work on a Sunday morning: the staff or the saints?  How many parishioners were actually part of the corporate Sunday service (excluding ushers & nursery providers)? Divide that number by your total attendance; now you know how many were actually participating in “worship”, giving back to the Lord what they have received.  I am sure it would less than 10% of your congregation, and most of them would be your staff!

In America we are quick to label public schools as “failing schools” because of data, measurable data, of supposedly recorded results of how those they were teaching performed.  If we did the same with the American church, we would have to admit that we would also have to label the American church as a “failing church”, for we have to admit that in most churches there isn’t much measurably getting done by those who are supposedly being “taught” how to live the Christian life unless they are a professional on staff!

A Heart Catheterization Has Opened My Heart & Eyes

A Heart Felt Lesson

Monday I go to the hospital for a heart catheterization to explore if there are blockages in my heart.  According to the prognosis of my cardiologist, a balloon angioplasty or stenting procedure may be in order.  Worst-case scenario would be open heart by pass surgery.  They claim that this blockage may have taken years to get to this point although it has appeared that I have lived a healthy life all along.  They gave me a notebook to read to prepare me for all that is ahead.  What I did not like was the latter part of the manual featuring “Lifestyle Changes” and “Healthy Eating” section.  Not only will this be a procedure that will change the length of my life, but also demand a lifestyle change.

Mostly all these blog pages that I have been written have been about the church, where it is now, and where it might be headed in the future.  The church’s condition is so much like my own: looking healthy, but after centuries of history have formed blockages, not allowing free flow of the blood of Christ and His Holy Spirit.  I believe the church is beyond the stenting and angioplasty stage of improvement, needing a complete open heart surgery called REVIVAL, RENEWAL, and a new REFORMATION!  What it also needs to realize is that with this revival, renewal, and reformation will come a “lifestyle change”, in other words, the way we “do church”.  We may have to “bypass” the way we have always have done church that has caused this condition in order to restore free flow of the Holy Spirit again. If we go back to the old way of doing church, we will end up with the same results we are now facing.  If we embrace a new lifestyle change or way of doing church, we will restore the healthy Christian lifestyle of community in the body of Christ.

I believe the church needs to face a “new lifestyle change” by embracing the power of the five fold as outlined in Ephesian 4, not as church offices or positions, but as personal believer’s in Jesus Christ passions, points of view, and voices that will help them mature individually into Christ-likeness while corporately bringing unity to the body of Christ.

If you are new to this blog, I invite you to go back and read the blogs about “retooling the church”, the current “metamorphosis of the church”, the “21^st Century Church”, “the Priesthood of Believers”, “five fold overall”, “new mindsets”, “accountability”, and others in the category section of this home page.  It will expose a new way to look at the church, will require a new lifestyle of community from the church, will demand “grace, mercy, & acceptance as peers” as some of its pillars.  It will demand a drastic “lifestyle” change for the church with a new diet based on “relationships” rather than programs, procedures, rules and regulations, in other words “religion”.  Spiritual life without relationships produce religion, the blockage of the heart of God.

A fragmented body needs not only a restructuring, but also a fresh blood supply.  The Church as a whole needs open heart surgery.  The heart affects all parts of the body giving it oxygen, nutrients, life.  The blood of Christ has always been the central theme of the gospel.  The church does not need a blood transfusion, for the blood is the blood of Christ, but it does need open heart surgery to clear or bypass the blockages that religion has collected inside the Church’s veins. 

I have faith in my cardiologist on Monday that he will perform the procedures that are necessary for normal blood flow throughout my heart and body, and I trust Jesus, the great Healer, through the power of his Holy Spirit to perform the procedures that are necessary for normal blood flow through the heart of the Church to all parts of its entire body to bring revival.  I also trust the Holy Spirit to bring, lead, and orchestrate the “lifestyle” needed to keep the body healthy for centuries to come or until He comes for His Bride.  Who would have ever thought that His Bride would have had to have open heart surgery before her wedding day in order to be healthy, pure, and without spot or wrinkle?  

Leadership: Position or Service? Dependent or Independent?

What We Do Rather Than Who We Are Is Important

I believe a leader is a person who has people following for the purpose of their equipping, growing, and nurturing with the ultimate goal of their release into independence, standing on their own, and begin equipping others to reproduce themselves. Leaderhip IS NOT creating a following of dependency on you.

I know a church that has seen the size of their eldership dwindle substantially over the years and not replace them. They are a church where on Sundays the staff and elders do everything the congregation hardly anything: Leads worship, gives the announcements, greetings, and offertory, and sermon.  If there is ministry to be done during the service in the front of the church, the elders are called to do it because the senior pastor wants to expose his elders to his people.  Being an usher is the only non-staff exposure of the morning, but the staff church administrator does the rest.

In a church that was strongly prophetic in the 1990’s who trained their people to hear God for themselves and developed prophetic presbyteries, today hardly a prophetic utterance is given during any service.  The sanctuary is full, yet I cannot reiterate anyone’s testimony of their salvation experience since I have never heard it.  I have no idea what God is doing among his people, for there is no time for them to share testimonies of what God is currently doing in their lives.  A large amount of time is given for announcements of upcoming church programs and activities, but not for the saints to share what Jesus is doing in their lives. 

The pastor of this church told the congregation that his goals for this coming year was to enlarge the elder base of his church and begin training leaders.  He threw out the comments to the men of the congregation, “Where are you?” implying that they should be coming forth as leaders. One fallacy of this mindset is that if you enabled a congregation to be passive, don’t expect them to become aggressive leaders. If they can’t serve unless they are staff, don’t expect them to serve as leaders.

Those attending Sunday church service have been “enabled” to not do or initiate anything on their own, only follow what has been preprogrammed by the staff: sing along following projected lyrics to loud music where only the lead singer and his backup band can be heard, stand when told, be seated when told, give financially when told, and greet one another when told, then sit quietly but look inventive during the sermon given by staff. It is like those in the congregation are puppets on a string.

I contend that just because they are following everything the people on the platform are telling them to do; the people on the platform are not necessarily true leaders just because they are being followed.  What is the purpose of leadership? According to Ephesians 4 it is to “equip the saints for the work of service.” The goal for leadership should be to equip those following them to replace them!  Reproduction should be the goal!  If you are producing dependent robots on your command, you will just get robots who know nothing else but follow your command. They will not be able to stand, mature, on their own.  One of the main goals of the five fold is to bring maturity, Christ-likeness, to believers: develop a believer into the fullness of Jesus Christ, not create religious robots.

If leadership is leading through service, not dictation, followers will imitate their modeling of service toward maturity, and eventually have to be “released” to stand on their own.  Leadership through service, not dictation, reproduces leadership.  I contend that the Christian church fails miserably in equipping the saints for the work of service opting to trust and rely on their paid professional staff producing complacency.  Those in the congregation will never develop toward maturity if they are not allowed to participate, initiate, and serve one another. 

If It Ain’t Relationships, It Got To Be Religion

Religion Is The Absence Of Relationships

For a belief system based on relationships, Christianity can easily become a religion.  On forms and questionnaires they ask for your religious preference: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, or other.  It has become a way of identifying different beliefs system, categorizing them for institutional purposes, but what would happen if they would just be relationships.

The center of Christianity is the Cross; the center of the Cross is a relationship between a supernatural God and natural man.  At the core of Christianity is the miracle of restoration of rebirth: a broken relationship between man and his Godhead due to sin and the restoration of that relationship through Jesus, God’s son, hanging and dyeing on the Cross to amend the sinful nature of man.  It is a message of hope to the hopeless and life to the dead. The cross conquered death: “Death where is thy sting?” It restored and offered a “living” relationship to man with his Godhead now guaranteed through eternity, never to be broken again.  It is when we, the believers in Jesus Christ, chose to back away from that relationship or sever that relationship that begins to make one’s faith a religion where one “practices his religion”, that is, goes through the motions.  It is all activity, all image, with little if any substance.  I have found myself falling into that category during my life, and often see the church doing the same.  It must have been awkward for Jesus to visit the Temple that no longer had the Ark of the Covenant, God’s Presence, in it, yet its priesthood still “practicing” the customs of Moses, still going through the motions. God’s Presence through His Son Jesus was in their midst, yet their “practice” prevented them from a relationship with their living God, thus the verbal venom Jesus displaced with the “woe to you scribes, Pharisees, and lawyers” of his time who were “practicing” their religion rather than developing relationships.

The other relationship restored in the Cross was the horizontal relationship between mankind.  Ever since Cain and Able man has been fighting one another.  There is always a war somewhere on this planet bringing devastation between mankind. The Cross was the beginning of the end of that broken relationship, for the New Jerusalem, the new heaven and the new earth, eternity in Jesus is pictured as the lion laying beside the lamb, the cobra beside the ox, enemies now brothers.  Where is this restoration to be birthed? I believe in the Church, for we have a Savior who, while hanging on the Cross, proclaimed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus stopped mankind from playing the “blame game” the core of most conflicts; He extended grace, mercy, and unconditional forgiveness in relationships to, through, and from mankind to one another.

So churches (we) need to stop blaming other churches (them) as not being true to the Christian faith because there is little if any relationships between “opposing” churches in the Body of Christ.  Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is for the unity of the body of Christ, not its demise.  Churches need to do more than “network” and “tolerate” one another, but lay down their lives for each other in relationship.  Within local bodies of Christian faith, believers in Jesus Christ must begin to lay down their lives for one another in relationship if their faith is to produce life.

What better way to do this than through the five fold, where you have different points of views, different passions, different voices, but when “laid down” in “sacrificial, unconditional love” are the very things needed to bring unity and life into the Church!  Evangelism through birth or rebirth comes through a relationship between a believer and nonbeliever in Jesus Christ. Shepherding develops nurture, care, and spiritual growth through relationships between believers.  Teaching thrives on the “experiencing” of one’s living faith rather than just “knowing about it”.  The prophetic develops the relational communication skills needed between God and His people, and the apostolic is all about relationships, tying together, networking, and releasing all this different points of view, passions, and voices in one direction in unity for the spiritual development of its believers into the image of Christ Jesus and for the unity of the entire body.

Without these relationships we can fall in to “practicing our religion”, just going through the motions where one has lost their passion, feel their point of view has been snubbed, and who thinks they have no voice.  I find much of the church “practicing” their “religion” when they corporately meet on Sunday mornings, for there sure isn’t a lot of relationships going on vertically or horizontally, but a lot of “practicing”, going through the motions.

Without relationships we end up with religion. Church let’s quit “practicing our religion” but live out our relationships with our God and with our fellow brothers and sisters in the faith, for Jesus has made a way for that to happen. Church, let’s begin listening to the Holy Spirit in how to “work out our salvation” with our God and “work out our relationships” with our brothers and sisters in the faith. When we are serious about doing this, we will witness true revival, rebirth, and renewal through relationships.

Women Can Understand The Five Fold

There Is A Little Bit Of The Five Fold In All Of Them

When you think of the five fold not as offices, but as passions, points of views, and voices, you begin to recognize it in every day life.  It is not necessarily a religious thing; its just a fact of life.  It is not a foreign concept, but a common one.

You see women know about the birthing process.  It comes natural to them.  They know the process and challenges they face during pregnancy. They know that the birthing process is a painful one, yet a rewarding one that makes one to forget the pain after the fruition of birth, and after a birth they are willing to move on and have more children.  That’s the evangelistic spirit.

You never seem to prepare to become a mother, but when a woman becomes a mother the nurturing process occurs naturally.  She focuses her efforts on the nurture, care and development of her children.  She spends a great amount of time with them in their infancy nurturing, spends hours as a confidant through puberty with care and development, and spends even more hours on their knees praying once they have “released” them into adulthood.  This is the pastor/shepherd spirit.

Even though she never earned a “degree” in parenting or motherhood, she teaches her children throughout their life, not necessarily about academics, although school work is important, but through walking out life with them, teaching by example, by using life’s experiences. That’s the true spirit of a five fold teacher.

Mother’s have a spiritual side that is precious.  A rebellious child can never stop a godly woman from praying for them.  The turn around of many lives have come through mother’s prayers. Mothers have a spiritual sensitivity, and spiritual intuition, a hunger for spiritual intimacy men do not possess.  Not only do they dig deep in their spiritual wells of faith, but try to teach their children how to listen to God for themselves for the time when they are released as adults and hopefully will teach their children. The prophetic spirit is imbedded in motherhood.

Networking is a craft mothers specialize. Not only have they experienced the birth, the nurture, care, and development, the teaching, and the spiritual training of their children, but are able to “release” their children when it is their time to fly.  They “know” each child, and encourage them to do the birthing, nurturing, teaching, and spiritual developing for others.  In her gentleness, in her sensitivity, in her love, she encourages those younger than she to be released into their callings, their destinies, their hopes and dreams, releasing them to become independent and eventually reaching out and reproducing others.  This is the five fold apostolic spirit.

All this is embedded in each woman created by God.  I do not think it “coincidental” that the church is “the Bride of Christ”, an image of a female, for imbedded in her, the Church, are all five entities of the five fold ministry to equip those younger, to develop them into maturity of being like the Groom, and to bring the entire family of God into unity.  The five fold is part of the Bride’s DNA, her make up.

If the five fold is so natural, then why do we, the Church, spend so much time and effort suppressing it instead of releasing it? Why do we fragment it bringing division instead of embracing it to bring unity?  Why do we know so little about it when it is the moral fabric of our being as a Church?  Why don’t we listen to the “mothering” of the Bride of Christ and just release it?

Without Relationship You Are Bound To Get Religious!

Church Is About Relationships!

It has been quite a while since I have blogged.  The past blogs I wrote about the caterpillar to butterfly stage of the metamorphosis stage of church development I wrote in book form, centering on the cocoon stage, the transitional stage.  How do we get from an organization to an organism, from religion to relationships, from an institution to peer acceptance?  

I am also in the midst of redoing this website so that it will not just be a blog site, but will also offer manuscripts that I have written over the last thirty-five years, tutorial courses on the five fold, and all kinds of interactive possibilities. Stay tune for the upcoming big change.  I will be offering my Metamorphosis E-book at that time!

During this break from blogging, it has become even more apparent to me than ever that Church is all about relationships.  If we are “God’s people” then we must begin to act like “people of God”.  We have to grow and mature into the likeness of Christ individually and corporately.  The institutional church has “enabled” those who attend their structural programs for far too long into becoming passive Christians; the church needs to nurture, care, and develop the believers in Jesus Christ, the priesthood of believers, and then RELEASE them to be active in their destiny in Christ. As this blog site proposes, it can be done through the five fold!

In an age where networking is part of the fabric of our culture, the Church needs to look at how to retool itself by developing a network among believers, not only within the local church walls, but geographically as well as world wide.  Church is about relationships.  Isolation brings religion, sects, divisions, and close mindedness.

So, thanks for your patience during the absence of my writing, anticipate newness to this web site, and continue to build relationships with those who know Jesus Christ as brothers and sisters and those who do not know Jesus Christ, so you can share the gospel with them.

THE NEED FOR TRUE CHURCH COMMUNITY: THE FIVE FOLD

The Five Fold Build On Communal Relationships

In the last two blogs we have looked at a young girl’s cry for a relationship in church she called “life together.”  This life would be a horizontal relationship of community among peers, not a hierarchal community of professional and nonprofessional people.  The church has created “offices” out of the five fold, nouns, titles.  The five fold is usually adjectives describing what believers are doing, verbs.  What today’s generation is looking for is not professional titles and offices, but a vibrant, living community of faith built on horizonal relationships among peers, Christians.

If we begin to look at the five fold relationally, we can see the passion and point of view of a spiritual gifting that is unique to the individual, but can be supportive, supplemental to the other four to fulfill their callings.  There strengths are usually the individual’s weakness, and together they can fulfill the “full” calling of Jesus Christ.  It is a relation built on peer acceptance and peer service, one giving to the other and accepting what the other has to offer.  It is a reciprocal relationship, that over time builds an accountability system of trust, honor, and respect.  It is far better to do something and accept discipline out of trust, honor and respect as nurtured in a horizonal relationship verses out of fear because of one holding power above another.

The church needs to recognize the power of five very strong passions of birthing, nurturing, instructing, guiding, and overseeing, and how, if they work together on a horizontal plain of acceptance and trust can be a very powerful and effective tool of ministry in the maturing of the saints into the fullness of Christ (individually) and bring unity to the body of Christ (corporately).

Up to now, the church has not allowed the five to “live together”, opting for their confinement and separate callings, offices, professions, and institutions, thus bringing division among them and division to the church.  If the five fold was looked upon relationally as five different, strong passions and points of view that were willing to lay down their lives for the other four by serving one another as well as receiving from one another with grace and humility, a bond of trust, honor, and respect would be developed.  We would experience a community, a fellowship of faith of “life together.”  This would produce a “full life” in Jesus Christ, a maturity of being in his image individually, as well as a “full life together” as a unified body of believers, a holy priesthood of believers.

That “full life together” that birthed the church in Pentecost under the guidance and leading of the Holy Spirit needs to be renewed and “released” back into the church.  The church needs the “full life” of an evangelist who gives, receives, and submits to a shepherd, teacher, prophet, and apostle; the “full life” of a shepherd who gives, receives, and submits to an evangelist, teacher prophet, and apostle; and so forth.  This giving, taking, and submitting creates an accountability of trust, honor, and respect with the obedience of the leading of the Holy Spirit that would create a true Christian community of “life together.” 

The gifting and calling of each of the five fold will take on a different look than it has under a structural institutional church format, for it will be based on horizontal relationships of laying down one’s life for one another for the sake of “life together” in Christ.

I know it is a different mindset than from the past, but we as Christians, owe it to the Father, his son Jesus, and to the precious Holy Spirit, for redeeming the Church vertically, but now we need to allow them to develop the Church relationally horizontally among the brethren.  This is the cry of the young girl in my previous blogs, and the cry of my own heart personally.

THE NEED FOR TRUE CHURCH COMMUNITY: YOUNG ADULTS – Part II

Reaction to “The Generation Of Contrast”

Recently, when reading a Christian blog page about the five fold ministry, a comment by a young lady to the article caught my attention.  It read:

"The church that I attend is unusual in that it teaches organic community, but it seems to me that the only organic community that is happening is with the staff who are together just about everyday. They are the ones who get to do “life together”. Sure we have small groups, but, none of the small groups that I’ve been apart of have ever actually done “life together” which is difficult meeting just once a week or twice a month. I’ve tried to “do life together” with people, but everyone is so consumed with their individual lives, work, family, etc. I often wonder ‘do I HAVE a life?’ They all seem perfectly okay with meeting once or twice (1 week day for small group & Saturday or Sunday for church) a week.

I was being discipled by one of my pastors and we used to meet once a month. But we haven’t met on a regular basis since last August. I wondered why, until I saw that she was “doing life together” with a couple of staffers at the church. I was becoming jealous because I wanted that, too. But, reading your blog, I just realized that what I am really longing for is organic community where I can know and be known completely without the titles of pastors, leaders, etc."

Ephesians 4 exhorts the church to “equip the saints” for the work of “service”, not “equip the staff.”  In the above excerpt, I could not help but to hear this young lady’s cry for meaningful relationships through her church, not sporadic, professional, set a weekly or monthly appointment, relationship with a “staffer”.

It did not take this young lady long to realize that in a huge mega-church, it is hard to establish meaningful “life together” relationships. In reality, she could only get a professional/client relationship.   She also realized that since the staff saw each other daily, their relationships reflected that.  She too seeks a relationship that is not just sporadic: a Sunday morning worship service where there are only casual relationships is a huge crowd, or in a small group that probably was more of an organized Bible study than a group to build meaningful daily relationships.

This young lady’s need for “life together” relationships exemplifies the desire of this generations need for horizontal, linear, and meaningful relationships.  Staff to laity/congregant relationship is looked upon as “doing church” rather than a horizontal, relation of “life together”.  I have witnessed a situation where a need was shared to a senior pastor who began to look for a solution as a “human resource” perspective of which staff member should become involved rather than looking to the saints within his church to minister horizontally to each other.

What this generation is looking for is not a “professional” relationship when it comes to church fellowship, but a cordial relationship among peers that would deepen with time and commitment, a sense of community.

THE NEED FOR TRUE CHURCH COMMUNITY: YOUNG ADULTS – Part I

Reaction to “The Generation Of Contrast”

Recently, when reading a Christian blog page about the five fold ministry, a comment by a young lady to the article caught my attention.  It read:

The church that I attend is unusual in that it teaches organic community, but it seems to me that the only organic community that is happening is with the staff who are together just about everyday. They are the ones who get to do “life together”. Sure we have small groups, but, none of the small groups that I’ve been apart of have ever actually done “life together” which is difficult meeting just once a week or twice a month. I’ve tried to “do life together” with people, but everyone is so consumed with their individual lives, work, family, etc. I often wonder ‘do I HAVE a life?’ They all seem perfectly okay with meeting once or twice (1 week day for small group & Saturday or Sunday for church) a week.

I was being discipled by one of my pastors and we used to meet once a month. But we haven’t met on a regular basis since last August. I wondered why, until I saw that she was “doing life together” with a couple of staffers at the church. I was becoming jealous because I wanted that, too. But, reading your blog, I just realized that what I am really longing for is organic community where I can know and be known completely without the titles of pastors, leaders, etc."

During the first century, the church broke break daily, integrating their daily lives culturally, economically, and socially through their new found faith in Jesus Christ.  It was all about “relationship”, a community of fellowship of faith, daily, seven days a week.  Christians met in homes, shared what they had, sold lands to help those in need, etc.  There was no hierarchy of leadership and power yet, only leadership through horizontal relationships of service and hospitality.  Somehow throughout history, the church has lost doing “life together”, at least that is how the young adult generation of today sees it. 

This generation is hungering for relationships.  Not only are they looking for future mates, spouses to share “life together”, but communal, corporate relationships with peers their own age and older.  This generation so drastically wants “to belong.” 

When my one son reached his late teens and through his twenties, he cried out to the church for an older male to “mentor” him, but few older men could afford the 24/7 demands and late nights that are part of hanging out with twentysomething life style.  Today’s young adults are looking for relationships that go beyond just Sunday morning services with their hand shakes and pats on the back, or a young adult church program that meets once a week. 

My daughter drives me nuts because she is a social creature who wants to “hang out” with someone every moment she gets away from her strenuous, daily, demanding job that is helping her to become self sufficient.  She yearns for fellowship, but finds herself swallowed up in her job, her work, in order to pay her bills at the price of a “social life”.  Opting to work on Sundays for financial reasons of survival, she has lost contact with the local church, who has not reached out to her.  She sees that the expectations is that she is to “go to church”, not the church “go to her”, particularly when she is in need. Like the girl above, she too yearns to find a church whose believers practice “life together”. 

The institutional church has tried to target young twentysomething adults through ministries and programs.  A church plant in a movie theater targeted this group, but when relationships among these twentysomethings began to be entangled, and became a breeding ground for dating, then break ups, causing strained relationships because everyone was in their twenties, “life together” crumbled.  How does the church face the mindset of “hanging out” of the later teens and early twenties age group to become “life together” corporately to young struggling adults who are trying to find meaning in life, direction in life, and acceptable peers in which to share relationships. 

So the battle of these mindsets, and the desire for “life together”, and the need for social acceptance has caused this age group to questions the validity and definition of what is “church”.  They wish to keep their faith in tact, their personal religious convictions, but struggle in how to do it corporately.  It is hard enough for them to find an individual to spend “life together”, but they are also finding it extremely difficult to find a group corporately to spend “life together”, which they would redefine as “church”.

CURRENT CHURCH TRENDS AMONG YOUNG ADULTS

Reaction to “The Generation Of Contrast”

I found reading “The Generation of Contrast” in Relevant Magazine (Issue 53, Oct. 2011, pages 80-87) very insightful, for it was written about trends among the current young adult generation. Under the subhead “Faith” David Kinnaman & Aly Hawkins writes:

“Which brings us to our generations’ turbulent relationship with the church. More than half of the 18-to-29 year-olds with a Christian background say they are less active in church than they were at age 15. Dropping out of church has, for our generation, become the norm.

The first, and smallest, group of dropouts have left the faith entirely. You probably know someone who fits this scenario – he was a passionate Christian coming into college. Then he heard facts that challenged his paradigm and made him question his faith. Or maybe he saw some of the harmful ways Christians have sometimes addressed broken people. Either way, he came to the conclusion that his Christian faith was impossible to hold on to.

For most young Christians, however, walking a way is more like going on walkabout. About 4 out of 10 twentysomething believers are not sure how important church is for their lives but are not ready to sever all ties with Christianity. This is the person who was active in church and youth group during high school but has kind of drifted away. She’s not anti-church – its just that it’s hard for her to see how its relevant to her daily life. Plus, she’s so busy doing work – good work – at her secular job, it’s difficult for her to understand where God is in all that.

A third group is struggling with church involvement for more nuanced reasons. This group is driven by passionate faith to question the priorities, assumptions, and methods of the established Church. (It probably goes without saying that these questions, however well intended, are not always appreciated b y the church.)

These people often feel stuck between the safe world of church and the broken world they feel called to change. This is your friend who serves 3 times a week at the homeless shelter & has Matthew 5 memorized but doesn’t come with you to Sunday services because, in his words, “It makes me crazy.” He deeply invested in the redemption mission of the Church, and can’t understand why so many other churchgoers doesn’t seem to share his drive to help.”

Why are we losing our youth whom many churches have heavily invested in through their youth groups and youth programs? I’ve seen youth groups and youth conferences be “Rah-rah Sessions To Win Their School For Christ”, yet never teach nor equip their youth in how to do that!  What do church youth groups do for Senior High School students to prepare them for culture shock they are about to experience as college freshmen?  What do they do for those who do not go to college to prepared them from going from their pristine, protective church environment into the culture of the work place with profanity, vulgarity, and in appropriate sexual and racial slurs and innuendos?

Three things are very important to this young adult generation: their culture, relationships, and peer communications.  Most church structures fail to train and prepare their youth to be launched into the secular culture, opting to believe that they will maintain to stay in the safe church culture that protected them. That is not happening to over half of them.  At their age, they are looking for relationships, but are finding them outside the protective shell of the church, wanting to reach out and be part of their culture rather than being a Christian introvert apart from their culture.  They also seek peer communication through their Smartphones, IPads, tweets, texts, emails, blogs, etc. not just to their Christian friends, but to an expanded “world” available to them. 

The church has also failed to nurture a true sense of community to their youth.  Youth group was a place to “hang out”, “be cool”, “be accepted”, not a place that taught the values of true community, thus when a young adult is thrust out into the world, into a foreign culture from their youth experiences, they struggle for the relationships that true community has to offer.

Today’s young adults dream of impacting their world, a changing world politically, economically, and socially, but are not allowed to “challenge” the church who also needs to face change, so in frustration they leave it and focus on the changes they feel they can be a part of, then fail to understand why the church isn’t by their side facing the same issues.

This generation has been told that they “are the church”, but are tired of “playing” or “doing” church, while looking for the meaning of “church” in their lives, trying to redefine “church” in their culture and relevant to their generation.  They are facing change and challenge, but do not see the institutional church doing either, thus questioning the church’s validity.  If the church wants to “recapture” the glory of “its youth”, those young adults in their midst, they need to be willing to make changes and face those challenges.  If not, more will be lost.

MISSIONS: RELATIONAL OR STRUCTURAL?

 The Clash Of “Mindsets”: Structural Versus Relational

The way one looks at church, structural verses relational, will effect they look at missions.

Most of us, who have grown up in the Church, look at missions as a place “missionaries” go or a thing do.  Missionaries are people who go around from church to church to raise (actually forced to beg for) money, so that they can be a “professional”, having an income to free them financially while “ministering”.  Unlike Paul, who was a tent maker on his missionary endeavors, a missionary goes forth as a paid professional.  What he builds is a kingdom that depends on him, for he usually remains atop of the pyramidal structure he creates.  A true missionary, like Paul, would move one, allowing those he “equipped” locally to maintain the new work, freeing himself to move on and start, plant, or birth a new work.  A good way to tell if missionary endeavor is relational or pyramidal in structure is by seeing who is leading.  Is the missionary over them, or are the natives ministering relationally to their native neighbors, brothers and sisters, families, and communities.  If missions were structured as a pyramid or hierarchy, the structure will want to stay to keep its structure and maintain its positions.  If the structure is relational, then there is no need for a hierarchal, pyramid, institutional structure because spiritual life flows horizontally among the participants.  The banned underground Church in China is an excellent example when placed beside the institutional Church in China that the government permits.  There are no westernized missionaries “overseeing” the spiritual life of the Chinese Church today, yet it is a vibrant, living organism rather than a highly structured organization partially due to persecution.   A persecuted church is often forced to abandon its structure for survival.

As a person growing up in the American church, I believe that missionaries eventually open up either missionary hospitals or Bible Schools.  The Bible Schools are to train future “pastors” to go out and start, develop and maintain new churches.  That is structural religious thinking.  Relationally, I believe, Ephesians 4 outlines how we are to “equip the saints”, not “equip a staff”, for the work of “service”, not necessarily paid professional service, to bring “maturity” to the saints in being more Christ-like, into the image of Jesus, and to bring “unity” to the body.  Bible Schools preach the doctrine of the churches that finance the endeavor and propagate their uniqueness and correctness of theology doctrine compared to other “sects” of the Church, bringing division in the Body of Christ.

If someone came in and relationally developed and released those believers in the body of Christ to be evangelistic, reaching those in their culture who are lost to find Jesus in terms that their culture understands, to be shepherds, caring physically, mentally, and spiritually to the context of their cultural community, to be teachers of the Word, the Bible, by not only interpreting, but applying the written word to their culture world (in a way like Wycliffe Bible Translators do today), to be prophets so the native people in their own land can hear the voice of God for themselves and claim God to be the God of their nation, region, and community, to be apostles releasing their own people according to their spiritual gifting to their own people in the culture of their own country but under Biblical principles, written and living.  Someone has already done that: Paul, and how he did that is recorded in most of the books in the New Testament after the four gospels.

Saul, like us, first went to where he was familiar when entering a new town, a new culture.  He went to any existing synagogue, to God’s people like his own, only to be rejected by most of them, often thrown out, even stoned by some thinking him dead.  Rejection forced him to then look to the native culture, the gentiles, who accepted his evangelistic message, received and developed his pastoral, shepherding care towards one another, got grounded in the written scriptures of his day through the unified message of the “apostles’ teaching”, grew in the intimacy of a personal relationship with their God through Jesus prophetically, and acceptance the “seeing over” what the Holy Spirit was doing through the apostolic.  Then as one of their “apostles”, Paul “released” them to do the work “of service” for which he had trained and equipped them and moved on.  Other “apostles”, “prophets”, and “teachers” in the body of Christ would pass through to help to continue to “equip” THEM and “release” THEM.  Never did Paul nor any other apostle, prophet, teacher, etc. rule over or control them, or remain there to dictate “apostolic oversight” that controlled a pyramidal, hierarchal, institutional structure, contrary to what the Roman Catholic, pyramidal, institutional church claims.

Paul set up relational “networks” throughout his known world at his time with whom he loved, nurtured, encouraged, and longed to see and be with, but whom he never “controlled”, opting in allowing the Holy Spirit to flow freely and birth, develop, and maintain His Church in a culture through those living in that culture.  The “relational” mission mind is far different than the “structural” mission mind, and the Church needs to allow the Holy Spirit to “teach us all things” in how to birth, maintain, and develop such endeavors through His people in His/their locality.

A QUESTION OF HAVING “VOICE”!

Caterpillar to Butterfly: Voice By Position TO Voice By Your Identity To Jesus

From Caterpillar to Cocoon to Butterfly – Part XVIII

In this series we have been asking the question, “What happens with metamorphosis during the cocoon stage?”  How, structurally, do you get a butterfly from what once was a caterpillar? In my Aug. 20, 2011’s blog, I listed several forms of transformation that I see occurring inside the cocoon of change for the church.   Today we will look at the principle: Identity lies in who or what you are in the system (Caterpillar) TO Your identity lies in who or what you are in Jesus individually & corporately (butterfly).

Caterpillar: In the church today, position means political influence.  Who you are, or better yet, what you are in the church’s pyramidal system determines the influence you are allowed to have in the institutions programs, development, and leadership structures.  In every church, the youth have a voice, but usually not influence in the affairs of the church.  Those older too have a voice, but also have influence because of financially supporting the church system.  Often the lack of vision, and not listening to the voice of youth bring decline, decay, and eventually devastation to the local church.  One of the greatest frustrations among laity is that they have a voice, often are allowed to voice it, only to be ignored, snubbed, or rejected.  Those in “position” have the power of influence, affluence, and supposedly become the “voice” of the church, forgetting that those there are preaching to also have a voice. 

Butterfly:  Voice is also important to those seeking a relational, horizontal, peer accepting linear church structure.  In fact that is what their whole social networking world is about, having a voice that is as valid as everyone else’s voice.  This linear flow of communication has no hierarchal filters to limit it, control it, dictate to it, nor censor it.  Freedom of Speech is a legal right in American because of the Bill of Rights, but the internet is expanding the scope of that freedom to go beyond America’s borders to a world wide audience.  Your identity “on line” will not be by office or position, but in who you are.  How will you conduct yourself among your “peers” of believers in Jesus Christ and your peers of non-Christians who are also “on line”?  How can relationships be established beyond surface communications on line to deeper levels of serving others and receiving back from them? 

The Differences: Old Mentality:  Voice determines who and what you are in the church system.  Who “speaks” from the pulpit, or “speaks” with power and influence a church board meetings, is determined by position and office, not relationships.  In a pyramidal structure people do not want to give up their voice, for fear they will lose it and become with those who have no voice, thus fighting to retain power.  New Mentality: Having “voice” gives one the power of persuasion, dialogue, and distributing facts which is what the linear, horizontal peer relationships are all about with social networking through the internet.   

Implications Today: Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”  I would ask, “Who are you?” One thing this linear communication does is expose who you are through your biography, photos, Facebook comments, tweets, texts, emails, and blogs.  If you are a Christian, I would ask, how do you portray your self individually as a believer in Jesus Christ and corporately as a member of “the priesthood of believers”?  If you don’t have a hierarchy over you, then how do you conduct and portray yourself as a Christian?  How are you presenting the gospel (the Great Commission) to your peers relationally?  How can you project your “voice” to be corporate as a member of the body of Christ, the priesthood of believers through the internet?

Conclusion:  The way a Christian uses his/her “voice” is dramatically changing the church scene of who and how the gospel is presented.  The “voice” of the church, historically, came from those in power and influence, not those in the pews with little power or influence.  With the social media and networking world, “voice” is now defined by anyone and everyone on a linear, horizontal plain.  With that new freedom also come the responsibility to every believer, every member of the priesthood of believers, to speak properly, effectively, and with the gospel of truth through Jesus Christ.  There is now a new challenge for every believer to fulfill the Great Commission by sharing their faith stories, telling their faith journey, and networking with others in their efforts to walk out their walks and journeys, creating their own stories.

WHO DEFINES WHAT WE ARE TO BELIEVE? – THE WIKIPEDIA PHENOMENON!

Caterpillar to Butterfly: Systematic Definitions– TO – Relational Definitions

From Caterpillar to Cocoon to Butterfly – Part XVII

In this series we have been asking the question, “What happens with metamorphosis during the cocoon stage?”  How, structurally, do you get a butterfly from what once was a caterpillar? In my Aug. 20, 2011’s blog, I listed several forms of transformation that I see occurring inside the cocoon of change for the church.   Today we will look at the principle: Definitions that have been created by scholars (caterpillar) TO the Wikipedia phenomenon (butterfly).

Caterpillar: The institution has defined one’s belief systems over the centuries.  Councils, church leaders, scholars, historians, patriarchs, and others have labored over their tenants of faith, attempting to place on paper what they believed.  The Jewish faith wrote the Talmud to interpret the Torah, their central text of faith.  Christianity has filled libraries with commentaries and theological dissertations to interpret the Bible, their central text of faith.  The Bible, a collection mainly of letters, poems, proverbs, and historical works, became books, chapters, and numbered verses for the purpose of organized scholarly study.  Many versions of the Bible have been translated from Latin, Greek, and Hebrew to be used in present day culture.  The westernized influence of producing learned scholars has fueled the need for Bible colleges and seminaries throughout Church history.  Denominations script official “church papers” to define their beliefs and stands on many social, cultural, and religious matters.  During sermons you will hear the pastor quote great church theologians.  Definitions of what you believed defined the difference between different religious groups or sects.  You knew if you were a Calvinist or Armenian, a pre-, post-, or mid-tribulationist, a pacifist, a predestinationalist, a fundamentalist, or an evangelical, or Pentecostal, or main line denomininational, etc. by how you “defined” your statement of faith.

Butterfly:  With the linear, horizontal, relational internet crowd of today, peer communication and linear acceptance is the norm.  This has affected the world of “definition”, no longer controlled by unabridged printed dictionaries and volumes of encyclopedias.  The “Wikipedia” phenomenon has hit where definitions are presented, not just by scholars, but by anyone.  Footnotes at the bottom of pages give the text some validity, but a slanted scholarly approach is not set in stone as “the” definition, as others with personal experience and personal knowledge on the topic can also add to the definition.  As an educator in language in the public school system, I warn my students of the accuracy and authenticity of Wikipedia, but students go their first because of electronic convenience.  I tell them that Wikipedia is a “starting point” for internet research to other websites, passages, links, blogs, etc. to dig deep into the true meaning of the definition.  Today, this linear crowd of peers not only relies on Wikipedia for their definitions, but helps define them.

The Differences: “Definitions” use to be compiled in printed dictionaries, abridged if shortened, unabridged if a large volume.  Definition of words were compiled by “scholars” of language, linguistic, etymology, etc. The “highly educated” P.H.D.’s did the defining for us.  We only had to look up their definitions in dictionaries, something everyone owned.  Today “scholars” are still fighting for literary and historical accuracy by citing sources, but definitions through Wikipedia, an –ebook compilation of definitions from various sources, also allows average individuals to be part of the defining process in helping to define words, events, famous people, etc. from a personal, or cultural level. Today, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, has over 3,724,00 different articles or definitions in its unabridged source. The question becomes “who is the authority” in the process of defining?

Implications Today: I feel the Wikipedia phenomenon has a huge impact on the way people will look at Bible interpretation in the 21^st Century.  For centuries the masses of believers have counted on the interpretation of scriptures from their pastors, priests, rectors, parsons, etc. as the official “word of God” as delivered from their pulpits or from scholarly interpretations from the great theologians of their day.  Interpretation of belief was always dictated to the laity from the clergy.   Today, believers in Jesus Christ, can read for themselves the Bible, while relying on the Holy Spirit for interpretation of how those scriptural truths need to be applied and activated in their daily lives rather than just being a academic exercise.  Sharing beliefs, relationally, horizontally, through written form, verbally, or electronically, now holds weight.  My interpretation is looked upon as being as valid as yours as we communicate them back and forth to one another.  We can share our experiences that have come out of our scriptural studies and how it has affected us culturally, personally, and corporately.  Collectively we, together, have begun to “redefine” our definition. 

Conclusion:  I believe we, as a church, are in a process of change where what we believe and how we are to live it out will not be dictated systematically from those in leadership above to be followed without question or opposition.  The “priesthood of believers”, those who believe collectively in Jesus Christ, will begin to “redefine” much of what has been historically instructed to us hierarchally, flushing out dogma in a quest to simplify the gospel and go back to the roots of simplicity of the apostle’s teaching. Instead of every wind of doctrine being blown around us by every different theologian, pastor/teacher, or religious group claiming their point of view to be “THE” truth, there will be an united, corporate effort for simplistic truth, shedding religious interpretation of the past. This will be a radical transformation, a radical reformation in the way we will build our corporate belief systems. I personally believe that the points of view of the five fold (evangelist, pastor, teacher, prophet, apostle) will be a powerful in the way we teach, apply, and oversee our beliefs, as well as preserve scriptural “truth”.  Redefining will keep the truths of its historical past, but will add a flavor of the “culture” to which it is impacting.  Paul “redefined” many beliefs as he traveled throughout different cultures in his known world during his time period. The same is about to happen today, but on a grandeur scale.