A NEW WEBSITE - CHOOSE TODAY

A new web site has been set up by a colleague, Dan Masshardt. He first hit me with a comment by Dave Kraft of "Seven Habits of Ineffective Leaders." One of the important decisions a church must make is to cooperate with a pastoral leader to allow him to develop a leadership effectiveness that enhances their fruitfulness as a church in mission. Check out this site and see how you fare on those habits.

http://choosetoday.wordpress.com

YOUNGER ADULTS ARE LOOKING FOR OUTREACH

Heather Berkshire is a United Methodist pastor in Indiana. She is one of my ministerial children. Some day, with her permission, I will share the story of her personal redemption on call. She recently sent this article. Here are some highlights from this article by Joey Butler in the United Methodist reported, initially quoting Jamie Dunham of Nashville TN:

"For many years, Mr. Dunham says the dialogue has been about “what type of music was played in the worship service and what type of clothes you wore. The real discussion is what place does church have in our culture and community. This younger generation is looking for things that allow them to get outside the church to do things.

“The churches that I think have the healthiest approach today put emphasis on the actions that show they are people trying to solve problems in the community rather than trying to insulate themselves,” Mr. Dunham says.

Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, call Generation Y “the most civic-minded since the generation of the 1930s and 1940s. . . . This is a generation of activist doers.”

The more opportunities Millennials have to get their hands dirty, the better. Churches need to look into their communities and see what needs are there—perhaps a pancake breakfast for the homeless, a Habitat build or a community cleanup.

When designing ministries, remember young people in entry-level jobs and paying college loans often don’t have as much money to contribute as older members."

I encourage you to go to this link and read the full article:



http://www.umportal.org/main/article.asp?id=6485

WISE COUNSEL FROM EUGENE PETERSON

Today Scot McKnight posted an important observation from elder statesman and translator of The Message, Eugene Peterson. So often Peterson's perspective has kept me personally rooted in the reminder that the church is a supernatural organism. - Steve

http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2010/02/eugene-peterson-practice-resur-1.html#preview

Scroll to the first comment and you can see my particular response to Peterson.

CROSS CULTURAL PARTNERSHIPS

I cannot understate the importance of cross-cultural partnerships for a missional congregation seeking to develop an outward focus. When I first arrived at Landisville in 2001, a group of persons were already preparing to undertake a mission work team trip to Haiti. They were bound for our Pierre Payen Clinic which was building a hospital across the street. 10 of my people (most of whom were over the age of 60 at the time) were going to help with electrical work and other "finish work" jobs so that the hospital could be opened.

Later that year, I answered a request from our Commission on Missions to have Landisville enter into a sister church arrangement with our Navajo congregation located at Tsaile AZ. In 2003 we sent our first Vacation Bible School team to work at Tsaile. We made this a "family mission trip" taking 35 persons (age 10 through 80) to staff the VBS. In 2005 we sent an "encouragement team" to spend some time with the Tsaile Church as it had just lost a Beleganah missionary pastor and was transitioning to a new pastor (ultimately their first Navajo pastor, Everett Teller). We also went to plan a 2006 VBS trip, trying to incorporate the Navajo leadership in our planning and decision-making instead of a parachute dropping a team into their midst. 25 people went the next summer (older teens and adults). We saw a tremendous evangelistic result - 25 Navajo youth and adults became Christians - which sparked a spiritual renewal back home. We also coupled that with a work team which built much needed showers and a new porch to handle drainage for the church itself. In 2007 Pastor Everett and his wife Mary visited us. Two Christmases we assisted them with an outreach to their community families by providing Christmas gifts. Then in 2009 we took another 18 people to do still a third VBS.

The result has been that between Tsaile and Haiti, plus smaller groups going to Brazil, Dominican Republic, and Mexico - more than 20% of our congregation has now been on a cross-cultural mission field.

People who have taken this step are never the same - and the church has moved even further into a passion for outreach as a result.

In an upcoming blog I will share more on what God has been doing to shape my own congregation because so many people have found their way to a mission field on these short term assignments.

And God Created Football - Books & Culture

A fair amount of recent scholarship argues that American football—and perhaps American sports in general—has become a religion. What's interesting is that the very people who have a vested interest in this issue seem uninterested, or at least unconvinced. A recent article in Books and Culture by Mark Galli has some interesting thought about the past time that seems to have such a powerful draw on our culture and which Christians sometimes see as a rival to be excoriated instead of understood. For the full article, I would encourage you to read: And God Created Football - Books & Culture

Two quotes from the article, I believe help us learn about reaching out to our communities and still maintaining our integrity and witness as the Body of Christ.

"Miracle and Rees quote anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who believed that religion acts to "establish powerful, persuasive, and long lasting moods and motivations" by "formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the morals and motivations seems uniquely realistic." They conclude, and Hamilton seems to concur, that "Sport has done this for American culture in a way that traditional religion could not."

Galli concludes: "Some Christians do practice civil religion, and for some, football has become an idol. Such is the nature of the human heart, that desperately wicked thing (Jer. 17:9). But one reason many Christians are not concerned about football as religion is that what seems to make it a religion to some scholars is precisely the thing that makes it another sign of God's presence in the world, a sign that comes in the most mundane ways—through ritual, physical sacrifice, a sense of brotherhood, shared joy and despair over little things (like if our team wins or loses).

This is the reason Christians participate freely and fully in all of life. For we, of all people, have eyes to see and ears to hear God's elusive presence, to discern his handiwork and love everywhere. The clearest revelation of God's love comes to us in the preaching of the Word and the sharing of the sacrament, but it is precisely because we've learned to make out the outlines of the God-man Jesus with repeated participation at these specifically religious events that we can spot him in a glass of fine wine, in the startling lines of a skyscraper, in conversation with friends, in a timely block or a well-executed screen play.

EVANGELISM IS CONTAGIOUS

Steve Sjogren is one of the high impact leaders for the whole concept of the Outward Focused Church. In particular, Steve, then Senior Pastor at the Vineyard Fellowship in Cincinnati, popularized the concept of Servant Evangelism. We continue to use his classic Conspiracy of Kindness in the School of Evangelism of our Eastern Regional Conference. Recently Steve posted an article at on-line site of LEADERSHIP JOURNAL.

Steve writes: "There's an upward spiral effect, an enthusiasm that builds. People start laughing and telling stories and evangelism becomes easy because the courage is contagious. I think in our day there's a chronic shortage of joy in evangelism. The whole idea of having fun and high-fiving each other is almost completely foreign to us. But it is out there. We just have to find people that are willing to go out with us and find joy in doing these things together."

For the complete article you can visit: Courage is Contagious | LeadershipJournal.net

As my own Church of God of Landisville began looking at an outward focus, we found that making OUTREACH our brand through servant acts to the community, created a tremendous springboard for connecting people to Jesus Christ.

In my first summer at LCOG, I offered the training class Becoming a Contagious Christian At that point we were averaging perhaps 165 people in worship, but 14 of them signed on to participate. Armed with the understanding, tools, and passion to build redemptive relationships (Mittelburg and Hybels approach to evangelism), servant evangelism became the vehicle to get people out of the "box" (literally) and into the community in practical ways. As those ministries created relational intersections, it became possible for people to actually begin building redemptive relationships and introduce their new friends to Jesus Christ in an effective way. Outreach partnered with building redemptive relationships helped make evangelism both contagious and a joy.

RICK RUSAW ON EXTERNAL FOCUS

I received an email encouragement today from Rick Rusaw, who two years ago shared a powerful time of teaching on the Externally Focused Church at the sessions of our Eastern Regional Conference. He was very supportive of the Servant Church Conference that my congregation attempted offer (unsuccessfully) to our area churches. I thought you'd benefit by his reminders. - Steve