J.R. Briggs
Attempting to behold the miracle long enough without falling asleep
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Archive for March, 2009
What We Want Grads to Know
Several months ago I was asked to contribute to a compilation book that was being published by David C Cook. It’s a great concept: answer the question, “What would you want to communicate and pass on to high school or college graduates?” So I wrote a few sentences of inspiration and wisdom and sent it off to the publisher.
The book is called What We Want Grads to Know
I’m told that my words have made it into the book and will hit the shelves on April 1 (just in time for graduation season).
This week I found out who some of the other contributors are to this book: The Jonas Brothers, Natasha Bedingfield, Vince Gill, Amy Grant, David Crowder Band, Matt Redman, Melodie Carlson, George Barna, Tim Hughes…
Dang.
Why did they ask me to contribute to this project?
I’m eager to receive a copy and read through it. You can check it out on Amazon here.
Random links
Here are several random links for your viewing pleasure. Peruse at your own risk…
Richard Florida writes on How the Crash Will Reshape America.
How to pop popcorn with your cell phone [Disclaimer: we tried this with our Renew launch team last weekend and we were disappointed... But I'm still not giving up on it yet].
This pastor needs to put his bow and arrow away in church or he might get in trouble with the cops again…
Charles Lee dishes on the Future of Denominations.
Audio recordings from the Ecclesia National Gathering held earlier this month in Washington D.C. are now available for your listening pleasure (featuring Darrell Guder, Eddie Gibbs, Mike Breen and Jon Tyson).
Thinking about church planting in the future? This site is an incredible resource.
Tim Miekley discusses the things that should make us angry.
HT: Jimmy Fallon: Ten Celebrity Names that are also sentences.
Andy Rowell writes a thoughtful and well balanced review of Bill Hybels’ book Axiom.
Zach Lind (drummer for Jimmy Eat World) interviews Shane Hipps on the role of technology & community in the Church.
Stephen Redden writes about his new adventure in Denver and his meeting with Hugh Halter.
Helpful tips for teachers
My brother Alan sent me a list of helpful tips that he wrote for the teaching volunteers in his ministry in Colorado. I thought it would be worth passing along to those of us who teach on a regular basis.
The Bible must to central to what we are teaching. While we aim to be interactive and use different mediums we must be based in the Word each time we share. If we don’t do this then we are just sharing funny stories and trying to make ourselves look wise (I have been guilty of this many times)
Be multisensory: We don’t want to just talk a lesson (this is how it has traditionally been done in churches), we want to SHOW them the lesson. We should always ask, “How can I engage different senses as we unpack the Bible?” God-given mandates often use many of the senses (sacrifices, communion, Jesus carrying the cross and dying on it, building altars, hiking up a mountain to meet with God, God’s revelation through creation)
Go for one main point: We are really only able to take ONE thought or nugget of wisdom away from what we learn in the long term.
Give them a challenge to specific action: Challenge students to do something. Often we give a good talk with good info, but we don’t ask them to change their lives at all and to make more room for God during the next week.
Use good questions: Questions evoke learning and discovery while statements close the door on discovery. We want to be a questioning community that engages students and volunteers.
Stories are gold: Personal stories make us very human and reachable and remind them how life and faith intersect. Often you can use small stories of students’ obedience to inspire other students. Take a chance to lift up students and volunteers whenever you can.
Don’t say too much: Sometimes we just keep talking because we don’t know where to end. We should say too little instead of too much.
Leave time for silence: This allows them to think, process questions, and let God speak to them. If we fill all the time then we aren’t leaving time for the Holy Spirit to move in them. We have so little silence in our world today we must provide that time in the Church.
Book Review: Missional Renaissance
The good people at Jossey-Bass caught wind that I was interested in reading Reggie McNeal’s new book Missional Renaissance and sent me a free copy in the mail a few weeks ago. Missional is such a buzzword these days that it almost seems fad-ish. As Reggie joked in an interview recently, “If you want to sell books just put missional in the title and see what happens…”
My brother highly recommended this book to me so I did have some expectation, but I wondered if it might be a bit of a flash in the pan. However, it exceeded my expectations. Jossey-Bass, partnering with the Leadership Network, published another great book by McNeal. I’ve got to tell you: I have yet to read a bad book by Jossey-Bass – or by Reggie McNeal.Several years ago I attended a church leaders’ conference in Colorado Springs sponsored by Fuller Seminary that featured Reggie McNeal. The conference was held at a high end brewery (the only Pastors’/Christian Leaders’ conference I’ve attended in a brewery, for sure) and it was fantastic. McNeal is wise and very sharp guy. To be honest, this book had a lot of ideas in it I was already fairly familiar with, but he gave me a few metaphors and mental coathangers on which to hang some of the clothes that have been lying in a pile on the floor. He’s given me some new language and some new ways of organizing some of the thoughts of missional concepts and shifts. There were three specific insights that stuck out to me the most.
Helpful insight # 1: Three shifts
McNeal focuses the entire book around three missional shifts. He speaks first in theory, then he gives engaging stories of what that looks like and practical ways to make the shift. The three areas are:
-from internal to external in terms of ministry focus
-from program development to people development in terms of core activity
-from church-based to kingdom-based in terms of leadership agenda
Helpful insight # 2: From Destination to Connector
I think in terms of pictures and metaphors and Reggie gives a fantastic one toward the beginning of the book. He writes about the church in terms of flying:
“On a fairly routine basis, airports get confused about what they are there for – and for whom. They think that if a bunch of planes are on the ground, close to the hub, and the concourse is full of people, they are winning. They apparently think they are the destination. Of course, when this happens, it means a bunch of people aren’t getting where they want to go…
“The airport is a place of connection, not a destination. Its job is to help people get somewhere else. An airport-centric world of travel would be dull and frustrating, no matter how nice the airport is. When the church thinks it’s the destination [i.e. just get people to come to church] it also confuses the scorecard. It thinks that if people are hovering around and in the church, the church is winning. The truth is, when that’s the case, the church is really keeping people from where they want to go, from their real destination… The church is the connector, linking people to the kingdom life that God has for them. Substituting church activity as the preferred life expression is as weird as believing that airports are more interesting than the destinations they serve” (45).
What an unbelievably helpful metaphor for me – and for every church that intends to be a sending church…
Helpful insight #3: The Scorecard
This is the most important element in the book – and why I believe that every church leader that desires to take cultural engagement seriously should read it. He uses the mantra “what gets rewarded gets done.” While many missional and/or emerging churches often claim “we really don’t care about numbers,” Reggie states that we should care about numbers. The problem is that we have cared way too much for way too long about the wrong types of numbers (attendance on Sunday, square footage of our buildings and dollar amount). He writes in the introduction:
“The typical church scorecard (how many, how often, how much) doesn’t mesh with the missional view of what the church should be monitoring in light of its mission in the world. The current scorecard rewards church activity and can be filled in without any reference to the church’s impact beyond itself” (xvii).
The concept of changing the scorecard (i.e. redefining how we view success in our churches) was worth the read alone. Instead of embracing the “numbers don’t matter to us” approach, his encouragement to embrace different sets of numbers rang true with me. Instead of measuring the ABC’s of modern church success (Attendance, Bodies and Cash), he challenges readers to embrace different metrices like:
-number of growing relationships with people who are not Jesus followers (or church attenders).
-number of personal relationships with other community leaders and influencers
-number of venues for intentional personal service in the community
-number of hours of personal service in the community each month
-number of mentoring relationships
-number of stories of external, missional experiences used and referenced
And then he suggests that our Sunday gatherings should be little more than celebrating the work of God in the past six days and allowing space to tell some of those stories of where we’ve seen God at work and how we joined him in it.Check out another review of this book done by Aussie/Anglican priest/church planter/friend Josh Dinale.
If you’ve read my blog enough you know that I recommend the book The Tangible Kingdom to church leaders and pastors everywhere (last week I finished reading it for the third time). So after you are done reading that book, pick up Reggie’s book. I’m already thinking of a few pastors and leaders I want to lend the book to next…
The Rhythm of our House Churches
I just posted a few thoughts on the “monthly grid” of our house churches at Renew. Click here to read.
Create-a-caption contest
Here’s a good way to start a Monday: I’m in search of the best caption for this picture. The one who makes me laugh the most wins.
[UPDATE: And the winner is Dan Harney: "Zaccheaus WAS a red neck!!!!"]
Guder: Reading the Bible from a missional perspective
Darrell Guder, dean of Princeton Theological Seminary and (God bless him) the man responsible for coining the phrase missional, spoke recently at a gathering I attended. He said that when we read the Scriptures we are to ask three questions:
1. What is the good news in this passage?
2. How does this passage continue the formation of the witnessing community – and how does it do that today?
3. How does this text send us? [What is the missional mandate]
Imagine if we read our Bibles with these questions at the forefront of our minds. The implications are tremendous.
Random links
A fascinating rendition of Psalm 19 put to music.
Ricky Gervais conducts a hilarious interview with Elmo.
My stomach will hurts from watching this video. This is the best prank I’ve have ever seen anyone pull off. Hands down.
Forget facebook: you really need to sign up for Twitter.
Tom Ward dishes on the five questions the Church has a hard time answering.
Over 80% of Americans believe they should write a book. If you’re like 4 out of 5 Americans, Don Miller gives you what you need as he shares on how to write a book on his blog.
JR Woodward compiled a comprehensive post of all the new information regarding recent studies on the decline of religion in America. Valuable resource.
Seth Godin goes in search of dolphin leather.
Thelma’s Smile: A Lesson in spiritual formation
A few weeks ago I rolled out of bed early to head to the gym to run on the treadmill and lift. I normally love doing this, but that morning I was exhausted and bleary-eyed, complaining on the way over that I should have enjoyed an extra hour of sleep.I finished my time on the treadmill and was in the middle of my reps in the weight room when I saw an older woman walk in. She caught me eye because she stuck out. Really stuck out. She didn’t belong in the weight room. She was in her mid-sixties. She was dressed in normal street clothes. Rather than wearing a t-shirt, shorts and tennis shoes she was wearing dress pants and a turtleneck. But it wasn’t just her age and dress that made her stick out: she was crippled, walking ever so slowly with the assistance of a cane. And she had a huge smile on her face.
She plodded along around the weight room, slowing moving from machine to machine, placing the pin in the hole of the weight she desired, which was usually the first notch – ten pounds.
I sat there resting between my reps and watching her, utterly aware of the contrast: here I am, with a healthy body in my twenties, complaining that I had to get up and work out… and watching this woman in her sixties, crippled and moving only with the assistance of a cane – with a smile on her face.
I sat there with my iPod earbuds in with tears in my eyes, confronted with my own ungratefulness and the awareness of my lack of perspective. Talk about a humbling experience. My complaining thoughts left me embarrassed.
Between reps I went over and introduced myself to this woman and told her that I had been watching her and that she was inspiring. Her age and physical condition didn’t keep her from coming and working out – and she did it with a genuine smile on her face. I told her that she had made my day and had challenged me to be grateful for the many gifts that God has given to me and that I had so profanely taken for granted.
She told me her name was Thelma and that she comes in with her husband Harold every other day to work out. She and Harold were in a motorcycle accident in 1977, which left her leg practically ripped off. The only thing keeping her leg attached to her body was her calf muscle. The doctors reattached her leg, but told her that she would never walk again. Now she walks…and works out. Three times a week.
She told me that I had made her day by coming and talking to her.
Her husband came over and Thelma introduced me to Harold. After we said goodbye, I put my ear buds back in and went back to lifting and watched Thelma finish her workout. As she finished, Harold offered her his arm as a groomsman does with a bridesmaid walking down the aisle at a wedding ceremony.
And the two of them slowly walked out of the gym, arm in arm with smiles on their faces.
Thelma didn’t just teach me the importance of thankfulness. She also taught me about spiritual formation; that despite our brokenness, we come in with others in great thankfulness to discipline ourselves to work hard. And we leave leaning on the arms of others who choose to walk with us in life.
While most people come to the gym with a mindset of narcissistic comparison and evident individualism, Thelma came unafraid of her condition and full of gratitude to use her broken self and leave with the help of another. She wasn’t embarrassed about her crippled state. She didn’t compare herself to the other fit and strong people in the room. Instead she offered all that she could and relied on the assistance of another to finish out her time.
Thelma gave me a clear picture of spiritual formation. And that is beautiful picture of the body of Christ actively at work.
Imagine the power of the gospel actively at work if we came in, aware of our brokenness but free of comparing ourselves to others’ progress and growth.
Imagine if we could work together (not out legalism, but out of joy) with the Spirit towards formation.
And imagine if we received the help from others who would walk with us into the week ahead.
Isn’t that the point of this concept called church?
Renew Launch team meetings
I love our weekly Renew launch team meetings.
There’s so much excitement and potential and care and concern for one another. Each week there are always stories of where our team has seen God at work and how we’re blessing the neighborhood. We participate in Worship. Teaching. Praying with and for one another. Planning, processing, discussion and praying for what type of community God wants us to become. It truly does feel like a family.
Most of the time I lead a good portion of these meetings, but this past week there were so many people who stepped up and wanted to lead – worship, teaching, prayer, sharing their story, announcements, updates, etc – I realized late last week that there was no need for me to up front – which is fantastic.
So on Sunday I decided to help out with our children’s ministry and watch some of the kiddos in order to give one of the volunteers a break. Here are some pictures I took on my phone from the back of the room when we first started by reflecting on Psalm 25. You can’t see him, but Carter was sitting on my lap when I took it…
…and then through the glass while the team was meeting in smaller groups.
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