However, the problem with celebrity comes when we ignore the difference between being famous and being significant. If Jesus was famous, it’s because he was doing something significant. The problem in the church is that many pastors make decisions, develop personas, and define success from the lens of what will make them a famous celebrity. (Often they don’t even realize they are doing this.)

In American church culture, it’s pretty easy to become a celebrity. You just have to grow a huge church. Now all in all, it’s not terribly difficult to grow to be a giant church if you have the right tools at your disposal. But that doesn’t mean the ends justify the means of getting there. Although Jesus was a celebrity in his day, he was willing to say things that ran people off in droves. In fact, the gospel of Mark (from the middle to the end of the book) chronicles the way that people kept leaving Jesus to the point where, by the end, virtually no one was left. No one wanted to be associated with him for fear of the consequences. Being willing to say things that run people off is not something we see too often in American churches in our day.

I suspect that’s because deeply imbedded in the American psyche is the desire to be a celebrity. American pastors are very susceptible to this. Many subtle things happen with people who desire this kind of celebrity status. They can disengage community and isolate themselves, setting themselves up for moral failure. They can make decisions that are numbers driven and not always Kingdom driven. They can skew to a shallow understanding of the Gospel as opposed to a holistic one that leads people to discipleship. They can put the good of their church (their personal Kingdom) over the good of God’s Kingdom.

Think about the culture you are shaping as a leader. In what ways are your decisions influenced by a subtle undercurrent of a hope for celebrity status?

Breen, Mike (2012-05-10). Multiplying Missional Leaders (Kindle Locations 942-958).  . Kindle Edition.

That last line is the one that has gotten my attention. In what ways are your decisions influenced by a subtle undercurrent of a hope for celebrity status? I have had to ask myself that questions (or variations of it) numerous times over the years. I wish I didn’t care about being recognized. I wish that when my friends are recognized for their work and asked to write and speak at conferences it didn’t make a mostly dormant part of my soul light up with a bit of jealousy. I wish that the success of other pastors was simply and always a source of celebration for me. Instead I confess that I can feel the burden of comparison between myself and other pastors instead of the joy of celebrating what my brother or sister is doing in the name of God.

When I began blogging there was no question that it was with mixed motives. I wanted to write and wanted an outlet for my thoughts and questions. But I also new that this was a platform to get my name out there. That somehow this would offer opportunities to go further. Thankfully, 6 years and over 850 posts later, most of that is long gone. Instead it has simply become a tool to bless, a way to grow in my writing, and a way to receive input from others. I stopped caring a long time ago about how many people actually read what I write or being known because of it.

But I am guessing that I am not the only pastor facing these temptations and struggles. As a matter of fact I think I am probably the norm. The celebrity culture of our country and it infiltration into the church has affected most of us i would imagine. Some of the effects are subtle undercurrents and attitudes we might not even recognize. Other effects are pretty clear and transparent. Take time to go to a Christian bookstore. See how apparent the celebrity culture is. How many of the books have a large picture of the author on the front cover? How many Christian leaders can you find with massive sections devoted to everything they have ever published?

I am convinced that so long as I am distracted by a nagging sense of competition or comparison with other churches and pastors I will be distracted from the true enemy of the church. So long as I care about the recognition I receive I will be tempted to make choices in ministry that have my goals in mind instead of God’s. This is a humbling word for me, and I am sure for others.

Father, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven and may you begin within my life and my heart. Grant me the humility to submit all of my plans to you. Grant me the courage to turn aside easy notoriety for the greater payout of seeing the harvest of your kingdom. Strip me of my attachment to the world and all the ways these attachments shape my identity. May I find my worth solely in your great love for me Father. Amen.

Basically, what Doug proposes is that the culture of preaching (or as he calls it speaching) we have created in the church is ineffective, in some ways harmful, and is strangely disconnected from our people and the way we live our lives. Instead he proposes that we engage in what he calls progressional dialogue. This is marked by an interactive preparation and delivery that allows the wider community of the church to participate in, shape, and be shaped more effectively by the proclamation of God’s word.

As I have wrestled with this book I have come up with several questions that are poking at my spirit.

• How much do I allow others into the formation of a sermon and how do I encourage other voices to be heard in proclamation?
• Does the act of preaching stand in sharp contrast with the way we believe spiritual transformation best takes place?
• Do I control the worship service, sermon, and the direction of God’s Word in a way that not only removes other voices that should be heard but also limits the work of the Holy Spirit?
• How do you reshape a culture within a church to bring the community more fully into this process

Here is the thing about the way I preach. I like it. I am good at it. Other people like it and affirm me in it. But, none of those things in and of themselves make the way I preach the best way to preach. I have always worked hard to make my preaching a conversational style, to make it relevant, to make it captivating, and to deliver sermons in such a way as to make me more approachable. But, this style still elevates me, as the preacher/pastor, to a place of elevation in the congregation. Most of the congregation are simply recipients of the sermon. They do not help shape it, they do not prepare for it, and they do not get to add their voice to it.

Over the years I have tried to change that a bit, especially through social media, to encourage others to add their voice to the sermon preparation process, but it has been largely unsuccessful. I loved preaching in a community of preachers where we shaped worship together, but that really isn’t any different either. It is still just the clergy shaping the preaching experience. Well there are so many questions about this that I will continue to wrestle with, but I think that Doug is clearly on to something. If we are to overcome what Mike Breen calls Spiritual Feudalism within our churches, the proclamation of God’s word and the worship experience in total has to move from a group of elite performers with a captive audience to a vibrant participation in worship. I am still not sure what this would look like at DCC in the end, but I am very challenged by the idea.

Thoughts?

Mike Breen’s new book is called Multiplying Missional Leaders. I just grabbed an e-copy and I am sure that there will be blog posts to follow as I read over it. But one thing that Mike and the 3DM crew have shaped my thinking on this past year is the idea of leaders vs. volunteers. The difference is really significant.

A volunteer is someone who gives their time to fulfill a specific role that supports the larger work of the church. This role has been shaped for them by someone else and their vision. In many churches there is a singular vision, cast from the senior leader, the truly shapes all volunteer positions. Every church needs volunteers. Someone needs to help clean, to greet, to usher, to sing, to teach classes, to help set up, to help tear down, to run the sound board and a host of other activities. These roles are vital and necessary. But, they can be limited in their impact on the individual.

In a volunteer role your task is handed to you. Success is simply defined by your completion of the task. They are sometimes roles that push us out of our comfort zone, but usually we volunteer in an area we are interested or already willing to serve. Most churches have systems in place to produce volunteerism among their congregants. This is very different than leadership development.

Leaders have very different tasks than volunteers. Leaders shape vision. Leaders recruit others to their vision. Leaders are forced to step outside their comfort zones into the unknown. This is where faith is stretched, the Holy Spirit empowers us and lives are reshaped. Very few churches have an effective process to produce leaders.

Our partnership with 3DM has radically changed the leadership pipeline of our church. For one, we actually have one now. The discipleship process we have in place is already paying huge dividends for us in our ability to grow leaders. Two years from now the culture of leadership development will be light years ahead of where it was when we began.

We still need volunteers, but for the first time as a pastor I can say that we are truly growing leaders in an intentional and reproducible way.  So what about you? Are you recruiting volunteers or are you developing leaders?

Your post covers good ground, but leaves unsaid where you stand. One potentially isolated and confused group you don’t address are Nazarene teens and preteens. While I 100% agree that our tone should be gracious in all settings, are you saying Christians can’t make clear public statements opposing same-sex marriage for fear of damaging the psyche of teens who self-identify as gay? This leaves our own kids without much cover in the sea of cultural relativity. As the first part of your post states: bedrock is bedrock. I think we do need to take a public but loving stance on this. My own daughters have faced some ridicule for stating their views in class. They’ve most often been in the minority and have felt attacked when they were simply stating that it’s too simplistic to say that there are no victims in a polygamous culture, for example. My girls have not taken aggressive stances and have some gay friends, with whom they are honest about their views, but still loving. The harshest treatment has been from more liberal-minded heterosexuals who want to control how everyone else thinks. It has caused some pain.

My friend is right, there is more to be said, especially to Christians who are actively trying to live out the radical optimism of the gospel in a gracious and welcoming manner. For many Christians this debate has been a source of pain for them because they are trying to do the work of God. This is especially true among the younger generations where the acceptance of homosexuality is far more prevalent than in the older generations. Here any view that does not fully embrace an individual’s sexual choices as acceptable is considered intolerant and hateful. The irony being that those who preach tolerance are often horribly intolerant of those who disagree with them.

Let’s not pretend that there are easily defined sides of right and wrong in this debate. That is not to say that there isn’t a truth about this issue. It just means that all sides of the debate are filled with broken people who do hurtful things. In my last post I expressed concern about how a negative social environment impacts homosexual teens and young adults in profound ways. Well the other side of that is the environment many Christians teens face on the other side where holding to a belief that homosexuality isn’t part of God’s plan for holy living is met with an oppressive derision and intolerance. It is simply reality that people who are holding to truth on both sides of this issue, be it in their desire for justice and grace or holding onto the standards God puts forth for holy living, behave in ways that undermine their beliefs.

For Christians this too often shows itself in behavior that is un-Christ like. We proclaim the truth of God in a manner unbefitting the children of God. On the other side, great proponents of justice and tolerance act in very intolerant ways to people with a different view point to their own. All of these acts of hypocrisy have made this debate contentious and damaging to many.

I have stated clearly my beliefs on a number of occasions. I can find no argument from scripture nor any witness within the Spirit that living out a homosexual lifestyle can be consistent with the call of God to holiness. But, this issue has become far too large of an issue. I don’t fear same sex marriage because I believe that its effects on marriage are minimal at best. Marriage is already under attack in our culture and it has nothing to do with same sex marriage. The failure of marriage in this country has to do with an ill formed understanding of the purpose of marriage and misshaped individuals who get married for primarily selfish reasons. I do see issues of injustice in our country regarding the homosexual community. My heart breaks for those who have suffered at the hands of others because of their sexual orientation.

I have gay and lesbian friends. I have gays and lesbians as part of my church. I have had very good relationship with gays and lesbians who have been my neighbors. This shouldn’t be a remarkable or difficult thing. But behaviors on both sides of the debate have made it a very difficult thing for so many. But, I have no doubt that if Jesus were walking the earth today, he would undoubtedly spend time with those in this marginalized part of society.

An issue with this much emotion attached to it simply requires a huge does of God’s grace to help us navigate the conversations and think about our actions and how they affect others. There are huge group of Christians in our country who are trying to do exactly this. In all the debates within our media let us not lose sight of this group and the difficulties they are facing as well.

Knowing at leas a little bit about both of these churches I was very impressed by how accurate both of those statements were. In a couple of times worshiping there he had identified some major characteristics of each church and their culture. So if someone walked into your church today what would they notice about your culture? Here are some questions I think about when I think about the culture we want to create at DCC.

• How are people greeted? Are they noticed when they walk in? Does anyone act like it is important that they are there?
• Is grace celebrated and offered during our worship services? Can people leave there with hope?
• Do people seem excited to be there? Does it feel like a chore or like joy to be gathered together?
• What do we celebrate? Are we celebrating numbers, money, programs? Are we celebrating stories of transformation? Are we celebrating people?
• Are people being challenged? Is there an opportunity to reimagine their life while they are there?
• Can you feel the presence of God? Is there room for the Holy Spirit to show up and do what the Spirit wants?
• Does it feel real? Do our interactions feel authentic and warm or forced and temporary?
• Did those who were leading the worship service display excellence? Was what we were doing important enough to be prepared and to do it with the best of who we are?

Those are some of the questions I ask about our worship gatherings and the language we use as a church. What other questions are important to ask about our cultures? What will people notice about your culture when they encounter it for the first time?

Here are some of my pastoral ramblings in no particular order of quirks, joys, or annoyances. I won’t even categorize them, you can try and do that for yourself.

- The smell of new born babies. I get to go to the hospital and hold brand new human beings.

- Dead people – on the other end of the spectrum I hang out with dead and dying people more than I ever thought I would. I never imagined hanging out in rooms with people in various states of death (recent, cremated, chilling in the casket, etc..)

- People call you by your spiritual gift. This is especially true for me here in Indiana. People call me just Pastor or Pastor Greg frequently. I rarely here anyone called Apostle, Evangelist, Teacher, or Prophet regularly. I am thinking of instituting this for people in my church. “What’s up Prophet (insert name here) how was the basketball game last night?” I think it works.

- People break up with you. It may happen in the context of people leaving your church or leaving church in general but it always feels like someone is breaking up with you. I especially love when I get the, “You know it is you, it isn’t me” talk.

- People love to hug pastors

- People love to tell you, just after you hug them, “Oh Pastor I sure am glad I made it here today I have been sick with the stomach bug all week.”

- People believe that you are an expert not just on the theology and history of the Christian church but on all major world religions.

- I am constantly amazed that people pay me to do a bunch of things for which I have no formal education. These include – snow removal, artistic design, contract negotiations, budget management, web design, social media promotion, graphic design, and break dancing. (In fairness no one has ever paid me nor asked me to break dance, if I do so it is solely of my own volition.)

- People want to tell you details of their life that they don’t tell many others. Sometimes these are the most amazing details you have ever heard, sometimes they are heart breaking and sometimes they fall under the category of TMI. But you can’t really tell people that they have crossed over to the category of TMI. That is a pastoral snafu.

- You have what feels like a final exam every week. Each sermon and every worship service feels like the completion of a major creative, design, communication and writing project. The real kicker is that there is one every week!

- I get to see the glory of God at work almost every day of my life.

- Beef Jerky- I have a great guy name Bill who brings me homemade beef jerky all the time. I am pretty sure this is a pastoral perk!

- The look on people’s face who meet you for the first time and ask the fateful question, “What do you do Greg?’

- The look on a visitors face when you seek them out of the crowd and talk to them for the first time and they known they have been found out as a visitor.

- Doing the children’s message

- Potlucks

- Baptizing new believers

- Blessing and praying over people hungry for God

- Preaching the Word of God

Those are some of my reflections. I would love to hear some other thoughts from you pastoral friends?

Being a pastor requires you to handle quite a bit of conflict and crisis. (At least being a good pastor does. There are plenty of pastors who are so disengaged from their congregations and community that they experience little of this.) There are lots of conflicts that I can only describe as gut wrenching. They are born out of holding someone accountable, from addressing sin, or out of your involvement in people’s life. When you are facing one of these conflicts you prepare. You bathe your life in prayer. You call on wise friends for counsel. You go to the word of God and look for truth to guide you through this process.

Beyond these conflicts are the unexpected tragedies of life that pastoring thrusts you into the middle of. An unexpected phone call awakens you in the middle of the night with a sense of dread. You get a visit from someone you care about because of a diagnosis they have received or a tragedy they have suffered. Something happens on the local, national or global scene that throws life into turmoil. These moments are unexpected but with enough experience and knowledge of the Father you learn to handle them. One of the good parts of my personality and general demeanor is that I handle these moments well. (The bad parts of my personality are too numerous to cover in one blog post – let me just leave you with this thought – there is a part of me that wishes I had spent my adolescence mastering the art of battle rapping)

What takes it toll on me as a pastor, however, are all the little, surprising moments that I write off as inconsequential. These moments begin to pile up and fester on my soul. They seem trivial in comparison to the conflict and crisis that life brings, but they aren’t trivial. They are insidious. They can fester and become and infection that steals your vitality from you. They are little paper cuts, that hurt for a moment but seem to linger. They come at you under the radar and you write them off as insignificant and then all of the sudden you wonder why everything hurts. You wonder where your energy went. You wonder how the smallest tasks of ministry began to loom with an ominous sense of doom over your life.

I am emerging from a long season of continual paper cuts. It wasn’t until the last week or so that I realized just how much they have effected me. One of my strengths has always been my ability to shrug off slights and complaints and to hold onto the big picture of what God has called me to. But there it was, sneaking into my life in a growing and increasingly problematic way – doubt. Doubt about my identity, my worth, my calling, our vision, and ultimately God’s work in our midst, doubt began to erode so much. What blew me away about it was that it came from small things. An email here, a letter there, a small comment made in passing, a season of disengagement from some of our congregation, the tangled web of gossip and rumor sprouting up in unwanted places, all of these things continued to extract energy and health from my soul.

In some ways I began to picture myself as walking around with all sorts of paper cuts on my hands and I was trying to avoid getting anything in the wounds and everyone I shook hands with had just eaten a bag of salty chips or had just made some fresh squeezed lemonade. It stung and it hurt. But then it happened. As I questioned my identity God responded powerfully by reminding me of who I am. It happened on Easter especially as I preached about the identity exchange of the cross. Christ took on our identities on the cross so that as we are immersed in his grace we can take on his identity as the Children of God. God reminded me that my identity is shaped by only one thing, that I am his child.

And so the soothing balm of grace began to flow from God over the wounds. It flowed from my lovely wife who offered me the encouragement that the person who knows me best can offer. The soothing presence of tremendous friends showed up when I truly needed it. It happened last night as my friend Pam prayed over me using Psalm 23 and prayed that God would anoint my head with oil and remind me that I want for nothing.

Ultimately that is the gift we all have as the children of God. Our Father’s grace flows into our life and like the Balm of Gilead it heals, it soothes, and it invigorates. So regardless of whether or not you are a pastor I encourage you to seeking out the healing touch of grace on your life. Hand over your doubts, your pain, your unexpected loss, your broken relationships, and all the paper cuts that make you question your identity. Hand them over to Christ and all him to

That is one of the primary questions that I went into our European expedition asking. It is a question I have been pondering for some time. When we began to talk to people about this trip, I kept coming back to this idea that there were really important lessons to learn from spending time with our brothers and sisters in Europe and hearing their stories. The primary passion in my desire to partner with these churches was honestly selfish. There are undoubtedly ways we can bless them and help them in their ministries, but frankly there has been a selfish desire from the start to learn from our partnership. The desire of my heart is to better understand our context here by understanding better their context.

The whirlwind immersion we experienced for 14 days began this process of learning. I am deeply thankful for the pastors and missionaries we spent time with for sharing their stories, visions, passions, and struggles. They not only taught me a great deal but inspired me as well. Here are some of the reflections from this experience, specifically about what we can learn from the European church.

We take the advantages of our context totally for granted

Almost everyone of the pastors we talked with were bi-vocational. They simply marveled at all of us being able to devote ourselves fully to ministry. Think of how much our plans for churches would differ if all of our staffing were bi-vocational. Beyond that our government actually protects (in most cases) and provides opportunities for churches as non-profit organizations. Every country we visited the government was standoffish at best and down right hostile at worst towards churches. Ministry in this context is radically different than in our own.

I kept coming back to the prophets and their words to a people in exile when talking to these pastors. They are exiles in a culture that does not desire them and is not open to them. Living as exiles is a radically different posture than our lives in North America where we can still count on a good portion of the population to respect or at least understand us as Christians.

We have so many resources. The pastors there had very few resources available for Bible study, theological education, ministry and worship. This is really true of their people resources as well. When we want to figure out lighting, technology, music, preaching, leadership development and so on there are an army of consultants and ministries competing for our attention and money. They have so little help in these regards.

One of the most difficult choices we have to make as North American Christians is which fully staffed, highly programmed church with a well trained staff, gifted preacher and beautiful facility do we wish to attend. The people we encountered there were traveling for 45-90 minutes one way, on public transportation to go and worship at these churches on a Sunday. That means that they have a very difficult time living life together or getting together beyond Sunday morning. How do you disciple people you only get to see on Sunday morning? That is a difficult reality to face.

Growing the kingdom is way harder than shuffling sheep

As the pastors I met marveled at the open ministry contexts in which we pastor I kept feeling pangs of guilt/shame/insufficiency. With all of these advantages the church in North America isn’t prevailing. It has been in decline for a generation. Most of our churches that are growing, if we are truly honest, are growing by a reshuffling of sheep far more than the conversion of the lost. As our culture has begun to shift away from the church we have gotten extremely good at getting the church people who are still left and gathering them in one highly efficient and well run location.

But when that is not an option, when there are no Christians to shuffle about, growth is slow and take really hard work. The soil of Europe is not fertile. The people are inoculated against the church. This is a totally different soil than the soil of Africa, South America and Asia where the church is exploding right now. That soil is being cultivated for the first time. The soil of Europe is having to be cultivated after many years of over use. It is stripped of its vibrancy.

Most of us in the North American context haven’t invested into the difficult and slow moving process of cultivating the soil of the difficult to reach because it is still so much easier to reach the previously churched. It is a lot more fun to reach a bunch of people who are looking for a church right now than it is to spend years working to reach a far smaller number of those for whom the church is a mystery or is seen as and adversary.

The pastors there are facing the challenges that we will increasingly face in our country over the next generation. Hopefully through a long term relationship with these pastors we will better learn together how to cultivate this difficult soil.

There really is only one Father, One Son, One Spirit that unites us all

I think it was in the worship service with the Haitian congregation in Paris that it really hit me. They had just finished a time of prayer and offering and the church broke out into the Doxology. I might not have known the words in French, but I understood clearly the voices and the Spirit involved. It is so true that we, like all versions of the church before us, tend to paint the picture of God in our minds in our own image. But standing there listening to those voices the diversity and wonder of God hit me in a different way. I just needed that reminder. I needed to hear stories about the the same God from other voices in other languages. I needed to hear the same passions from pastors in other countries. I needed to be reminded of the power of the Word of God in any language. God is so much bigger and more wonderful than we take time to notice.

So today I offer some reflections on the holy and trivial alike as I try to wrap my head and schedule around what is to come.

The Holy

This has been a strange Lenten season for me. With so much focused on the trip I was to take and the rhythms of my life getting so out of balance there hasn’t been a consistent spiritual discipline to mark this season. In some ways I have really missed that. I haven’t fasted from anything or read the whole Bible in 60 days or fasted from meat as I have done in the past couple of years. But I have been very prayerful about recognizing the presence of God. My Father has simply felt very near during this season. I feel no less joy approaching Easter than I usually do, but I do feel a bit less prepared. I have missed the prep work.

It was really nice to be back preaching at DCC yesterday. Preaching with a translator is difficult enough, but preaching to people you don’t know at all is something I find very difficult. I think that one of my strengths as a communicator is knowing the people I am preaching to and knowing how to communicate directly with them. I did fine preaching the past two Sundays but I will always preach my best when I preach to the people that I live my life with.

One of the most difficult tasks I have discovered as a pastor is having the ability to hold onto the big picture and not panic at the immediate reality of what you are facing. I couldn’t be more excited about where we are going as a church and I can see who we will be and what we will be doing 2, 3, and even 5 years from now. What is hard is to not allow the discrepancy between where we are now and where we are going to stress me out. At least once a week I feel the weight hit me of what we are trying to do. I look around and all I can see is what we are not. In these moments I reach for the grace of God and try to saturate my life in it. Right now I am in a desperately saturating moment and I am fine with that.

The Trivial

Typically I like to root for the under dog. I don’t like front runners or dynasties. But for tonight’s championship game between Kentucky and Kansas I am completely rooting for Kentucky. I am not a Kentucky fan, nor have I ever really been. But I simply like this team. I love Anthony Davis the National Player of the Year and keep dreaming about how good he would look in a Wizards uniform. I really like most of the players on Kentucky’s team and find this an easy team to root for. I like the way they play.

Strangely I find myself even kind of rooting for John Calipari. He is an easy target for what is wrong with college basketball but he seems to have actually turned into not just a good coach but a good mentor of young men. His former players adore him. He seems genuinely concerned for his players and invested in their success. He is an easy target because he seems especially good at mentoring and investing into young men who are clearly NBA talents. But someone has to invest in these guys and he actually seems to do a good job of it. His former players have done very well. I am perfectly comfortable rooting for him to get a championship tonight.

I am not anti-Kansas, I just don’t have any inclination to root for them. They already exhausted my rooting for them capacity when I pulled for them so hard to beat Ohio State. Mission accomplished, so now I don’t care about them again.

After 5 days my internal clocks seem back to normal. I am actually sleeping through the night and staying up later than 8:30. This is good for everyone.

Alright that is way more than I intended to write on this Monday morning. May your Holy Week be blessed!