MIM Ezine, January 07, 2009

-- BOOK REVIEW: A Lever Long Enough,by Amy Deardon, reviewed by Teena Stewart.

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“You wouldn't want to go out on a date with me, would you? I mean, uh, you're, uh, probably busy this weekend.”

Thank goodness, I'm not in the dating game anymore. I was never very good at it, but enough of my neuroses.

However, it strikes me that sometimes we leaders approach recruiting volunteers with the same kind of spirit and attitude as someone asking for a date. If we assume the other person would not want to do what we are asking, we will likely communicate it in the way we approach volunteers.

Rev. Sue Nilson Kibbey, Executive Pastor at Ginghamsburg Church, Tipp City, Ohio transforms ministry opportunities from a necessary evil into a divine possibility. At Ginghamsburg, Sue does not use the word volunteers. She uses the term servants. She notes four crippling mindsets leaders need to change in order to enhance the ministries of volunteer servants. For more on those thoughts, see my last column.

Kibbey identifies four perspective makeovers for the effective ministry leader. I share them with you with her gracious blessing.

1. People want a calling, not just a job. What’s the difference? What turns a job into a calling? The effective ministry leader will connect the routine task to the grand mission.

One pastor had a custodian who was passively undermining the ministry when he was not actively blocking it. The pastor who was new to the church took some time to develop a relationship with this staff person and discovered no one took the time to appreciate his work or to invite him to staff meetings. He was treated as an unimportant piece. The pastor invited him to the weekly staff meetings and began to consult him on decisions related to his work. The custodian changed from an obstacle into one of the church's most enthusiastic cheerleaders.

The leader connects daily tasks to the larger vision of what God wants to do in and through the ministries. Plus the leader puts the individual on a team of others whose enthusiasm and energy will mutually encourage others.

Have you heard about the preacher who preached a passionate message for men to respond to the challenge of leadership and service? To his own amazement, 43 men responded to his invitation at the end of the service. He was heard muttering after the service, “What am I going to do with 43 ushers?”

That leader was thinking too small. What ministries could happen if men and women were invited to discover their passions and gifts for ministry? What new ministries would develop if church governing boards took the posture of saying yes to new ideas? A permission giving church would respond to new ideas for ministry by saying, “Great idea. How much money do you need?” A church that does that will never run out of money.

Once a leader recruits a volunteer servant, the leader needs to pay attention to support, training, and evaluation. What would success look like? What criteria do you use for measuring if the volunteer servant is doing well? These could be discussed in a formal setting with written goals and objectives. Or a leader could simply engage the servant in conversation. “I like the way you do such and such.” Noting when the volunteer performs well encourages as well as lifts important criteria in the mind of the volunteer.

If the volunteer servant does not perform well, intervene early. It might not be a good fit. There may be gaps in the volunteer's preparation. There may be obstacles to overcome that require the leader's help. Early intervention can free the volunteer to effective ministry and help the leader to quickly recruit other possibilities.

No ministry can afford to staff all of the ministries to which God has called them. Service is the essence of that ministry. Recruiting and engaging volunteers in se

rvice is the challenge and blessing of effective ministry. Enjoy how God has placed you in a position to enable and empower others to participate in effective ministry.

Tom Hanover is Advertising and Promo Director of MIM ezine. He has served in a variety of pastoral leadership roles for more than 30 years, including seven as a District Superintendent supervising the ministries of more than 100 pastors and churches in southern Ohio. He is currently Senior Pastor of Sulphur Grove UMC, a multisite ministry in Dayton. He has a BA (cum laude) from Taylor University, and the MDIV and DMIN degrees from United Theological Seminary in Dayton. You can contact Tom at hanover@dbmim.net.

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When I start a new year, I like to look backward and forward. What unfolded last year? What worked and what didn’t. If you haven't guessed from previous columns, I am a ‘type A’ personality. Goals, plans, and setting reachable targets for the future are part of my emotional DNA. So as I start a new year, I want to consider these questions, and ask:

“How can I, and why should I actively pursue Intentional Christian Community during the next 12 months?”

1. What place does intentional community hold in relationship to current social trends?

2. At this time, why does ‘small group,’ ‘home church’ or ‘cell group’ models within the church seem to be so effective?

4. How can I pursue intentional community in light of what I discover from these questions?

I will consider the first two questions this month. The conclusion will be printed next month.

If we measure today’s social trends in comparison to significant social shifts of the past few decades, what would we find? Too often I fear the church can get caught up in the ‘next great move of God,’ and how we can become a part of it. The Emergent Church movement is one such trend. We say “God is doing this in our church – it’s new and it’s fresh. Everyone should take notice, and they too will be apart of God’s fresh move.”

Solomon said that there is nothing new under the sun, and he wrote several thousand years ago. So let’s set down our own tendency to collect around whatever is ‘new and fresh’ and ask this question from a larger vantage point. What is, and what can be the Church’s influence through intentional community in light of our current social trends. If this isn’t a “new, fresh and some kind of emergent transition,” why is it working?

The term postmodern has been bantered about as a way to describe the 21^st century, as well as the digital generation, and the information age. Yet via wider informational connectedness, society has grown further apart, not closer together. Information streams trans-globally in nano-seconds, but under the info-flood, each of us has become more disconnected from his neighbor. We know more, but don’t know or really connect with others any more. It seems, and this is my opinion, that a great amount of the net’s social networking is about getting others to know me.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a web site, multiple blogs, and can be found on myspace and facebook. These are necessary promotional and informational tools in today’s digital age. But do I, and does our culture use these to connect with others, or do I try to get others to connect with me? Blogs are all about me, my ideas, my values, and my experiences while at the same time the LCD glow of my laptop provides a measure of anonymity. Those who accept me, I will be likely to hear from (Just click here) while those who reject my ideas I will never see. Is it just about me?

The 60’s were the first me generation. The wider social order was typified by assembly line factories, schools, fast food chains and churches, until it was challenged by people crying out for personal recognition. The 70’s continued the trend until in the 80’s individuals found that they could earn significant incomes from personal contributions to the larger collective.

Then, somewhere between the 80’s and 90’s the baby boomers gave birth to Generation X’ers. The social restrictiveness of the 50’s and early 60’s, which left a youthful generation crying to be individually recognized, gave birth to a generation that was equally disconnected. Their older counterparts had little energy left over for personal connectedness after a successful career and the ‘stuff’ amassed by seemingly endless financial appreciation.

One of my favorite authors, Walter Brueggermann, describes our current society this way. Take time to unpack these words. Savor them like a perfectly prepared steak. I find these two paragraphs meatier than many 45 minute Sunday sermons.

The community of faith, of course, never lives in a vacuum. It is always in the midst of cultural reality, which is thick and dense and powerful. . . The reasons why our time is commonly judged to be a season are not difficult to detect. It seems evident that technological individualism coupled with unlimited and unbridled corporate power and corporate wealth (emphasis from the author) that appear to be beyond the governance of the nation-states has created a set of cultural values which are aggressively antihuman. There are times when the church and cultural context can live in some kind of mutuality; but this is not one of those times, for gospel rootage requires resistance to such aggressive antihumanism. Such resistance in turn requires great intentionality, embodied in concrete disciplines of body, mind and heart. For without such disciplines, it is evident that the church community will be either massages and seduces until it is co-opted, or it will end in the powerlessness of despair (^{^[1]} Brueggermann, W. (2000) Words that Linger, Texts that Explode. Fortress Press, Mn. p. 73).

Our culture, for all its financial success, and promotion if individual rights, no longer promotes the connectedness that we need as people. We have forgotten, not because we don’t know, but because we have not experienced the healing touch that comes from personal touch, commitment to a friend, and the security of social compacts with friends who value the same ideals I hold dear.

Internet social networking offers a community of the similarly disconnected. Yet each is looking for the same thing, genuine community. The digital generation, birthed by successive and increasingly narcissistic generations, has no experience with community, connectedness, or intentional community’s healing touch. This is the church’s call, and the most significant plank, which supports the success of the intentional community platform.

I’ve painted with a wide brush. Generalizations are never meant to be a polished mirror image, but rather a reasonable representation. So you can likely poke holes in my logic, and find pockets which may contradict this picture. I’m not proposing a law or doctrine, only commenting on what I see. If this characterization is largely accurate, the answer to the question of “why small groups, and why now?” should leap out of the fog. Intentional community as a method of ministry is successful at creating disciples because practicing intentional community in our facebook rich, relational poor world is like throwing a pork chop into a kennel of hungry dogs. We need community, and the cultural influences of our time are at best devoid of the experience, and at worst antagonistic.

God created us to experience and flourish when we walk together in community. He created us to walk together in community - which we learn from walking from Him. He joined Adam in the evening cool of the garden. God walked with man face to face, and man knew he was loved an accepted. In that place, we found wholeness, healing, and what it meant to be real, human, redeemed.

At no time since history began has mankind created so many ways to hide. The digital generation has created a cacophanous drone. We are digitally entertained to the place where quiet becomes threatening. Just as Adam hid from God fearing rejection, we hide from each other, cowering in the same insecurities. We are not only separated from our God, but also from each other.

When practiced in our relationally starved generation, intentional community is the salve that sooths our culture’s most severe wounds, and counteracts its aggressive antihumanism. Intentional community demonstrates acceptance of the individual without the demand of perfection. We find we are loved when we can expose our weaknesses, and find out they remain our friends. We are strengthened when we discover, sometimes quite by accident that our experiences communicate love and healing to another.

God designed this purpose into our cultural and spiritual DNA, and described the same when he wrote the following through Paul.

Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. (Eph 4.11-16, NLT)

God designed us to work as a body in connected, intentional community. Each of us has been given gifts to use in ministry. Each of us has unique gifts. When we take the risk of loving others in intentionally community, each part does its own special work and the entire body grows healthy, into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, healthy and full of love.

Timothy Burns lives in West Michigan, and has written professionally for six years. Timothy’s writing reflects a deep connection to cultural influences, Christ centered living, and how often unwritten patterns can influence our behaviors and beliefs because while people differ by continent and decade, human nature does not. The ability to identify the human element or organizational culture sets Timothy’s work apart from what can be otherwise commonplace copy. His writing spans topics of Christian living, apologetics, and the hidden benefits that often surface through personal trials.

A strong opposing religious faction called The Way is all that stands between a modern united Israel. Having exhausted all resources for squelching the sect, the Israelis turn to science to achieve their goal. Political hopes are pinned on a four person Israeli military team led by Benjamin Feinan.

Benjamin’s team must travel back in time in a space capsule-like pod set to arrive during the time of Jesus’ betrayal and eventual crucifixion. The team has only 72 hours to capture video footage of what they believe to be the truth--that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, rather, his body was stolen. This evidence will then be used to convince the members of The Way that their cause is a misdirected and ill-informed one.

The meticulously planned mission, however, goes awry from the start. Someone attempts to sabotage the pod which the team is to take. Benjamin barely escapes with his life. He and his crew successfully embark in the pod and land on the outskirts of ancient Jerusalem. But during entry, a mishap causes Sara, one of Benjamin’s teammates to blackout. While still incoherent, Benjamin overhears Sara murmur something that causes him to suspect alliance with The Way. He’s already developed feelings for her and wants to trust her, but when she announces that they have landed in the wrong time period—nearly three years after the alleged resurrection, he suspects her of deliberately sabotaging the mission.

Problems escalate. As Benjamin tries to move his team out to gather scientific evidence they are watched and followed. While trying to escape capture, David, another teammate is seriously injured. Benjamin must find a way to complete the mission while trying to save David, but one mishap after another threatens to thwart the mission.

While all this is happening, back in modern time at the military base, the mole who originally sabotaged the mission remains at large. The more clues that are found hinting at his identity, the more the intrigue grows. The spy will stop at nothing, even murder to keep his mission on track and his identity secret.

Amy Deardon’s first novel is exceptionally well done. Her historical facts are captivating and she intertwines them well into her scientific and medical knowledge to keep you turning pages. If you like suspense, sci fi, or religious history, this book is an excellent choice. Better yet, Deardon has left the door open for more to come in this series. After having read this one, you’re certain to wait anxiously for her next release.

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DBMIM January 07, 2009

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