MIM Ezine, September 14, 2009

-- In the Huddle: Discipleship through Intentional Community - Countering Isolation, by Tim Burns.

-- Book Review, "Heaven and the Afterlife," by James L. Garlow, reviewed by Teena Stewart.

From time to time, I read Todd Rhoades from Monday Morning Insight (www.mondaymorninginsight.com). He recently quoted from Marian Salzman who American Way Magazine calls a trend spotter. She works as the Chief Marketing Officer for Porter Novelli, a global public relations agency. Recently, Salzman identified 10 major trends that are affecting all of our culture. You can find the whole article at www.americanwaymag.com. It is the May 15, 2009 issue.

Let me pick on a few and think out loud how this affects ministry in the 21^st century. I welcome your ideas and observations.

One of the opportunities this creates for ministry is the openness to consider partnerships that would not have existed before. A church may partner with a fitness club to share parking space, or maybe even building space. A church connects with a statewide agency to provide advanced screening for state benefits. These kinds of relationships are unfolding in many places.

As our culture blurs more and more of the old boundaries, new possibilities will emerge. Effective leaders will look to reframe their old references for what is proper and look at what is possible.

Consequently, old categories are losing distinction. The differences between ordained and lay leadership, between elected and emerging leadership, and between professionally trained and learning-on-the-job leadership may become less and less important. While professional training and education are valuable, they may be a luxury many ministries cannot afford. Furthermore, as the pace of change quickens and the style of professional education lags behind; some degree programs may be viewed as irrelevant to the current ministry leadership needs.

And what about the communities or target populations we sense a call to reach? The past distinctions about how we arranged our ministries are becoming blurred and dissolved as well. Is it simply youth ministry any more? Most communities have a wide variety of youth groupings and no one fits perfectly in any one. There are those who excel in academics and those who passionately pursue athletics. There are those who wear clothes of any color as long as it is black, unless it is metallic and includes several body piercings. There are those who love technology and those who are never seen without a skateboard. And there are probably many other groupings I have never heard of.

The old categories no longer fit, and as soon as we define a new grouping, the distinctions and lines will blur even more. How do we do ministry for and with such changing distinctions.

Let me push one step further. If our people (and us, too) live in a world of such blurring distinctions, we will also experience the blurring and dissolving of the lines between the sacred and the profane. Some of our older members may complain about the loss of the old “blue” laws where not much happened in the community on Sunday morning, and perhaps even Wednesday night. These were “sacred” times for people to participate in church.

Those days started disappearing several decades ago. Most people under the age of 35 years are amused at such a notion. While the profane has invaded the time slots reserved for the sacred, some ministries have turned the tables by invading the time reserved for the profane. Some churches have intentionally designed programs for the entire week. Others who are using internet technology have become round the clock ministries.

At the same time, innovative ministries have not only moved ministry out of the sacred time slots, but also out of the sacred spaces. Ministry happens in malls, schools, businesses, bars, and homes. Ministry in Motion’s founder, Teena Stewart, and her husband are launching an innovative ministry in a coffee shop. Other ministries are locating in YMCA’s, schools, theaters, warehouses, and more. Many of these are moving beyond simply renting space to collaborating in ministries and programs that are mutually beneficial.

What are the possibilities in your community for emerging partnerships? Perhaps the blurring of old categories can free the Spirit to work in new ways.

4. Stretching and molding time: Everything happens faster now, so we’re living life in rapid bursts. The ultimate luxury act is the slow dance, the slow meal, the slow seduction.
Some of our worship services are designed to quicken the pace so we do not lose many of our high octane worshippers. Some of our ministry participants are stretched so thin, that a 45 second silent prayer in worship will find many of them falling asleep.

On the other hand, worship could be a luxury! Here is an hour of quiet moments to reflect and meditate. It could be like a spiritual spa for rest and renewal. Stepping off the speeding train for a few minutes may equip us to maintain our cool when we have to step back on. Could some worship experiences be designed that way?

10. Wellness messaging: “Globesity” may be the death of companies associated with extra-large indulgence. Watch for h themes: health, holistic, hydrate. Should water be free and accessible to all or still peddled as a gourmet side dish? (The great debate on water will upstage oil in some circles.)

Many of our ministries would do well to do a check on what kinds of messages we are sending about our health. While the preacher is wrapping up a sermon on our bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit, the hospitality people begin setting up the calorie bombs for the after service coffee hour. Our culture is becoming more and more health conscious. This should be familiar turf for us. Churches can help people live healthier lifestyles by combining learning about exercise and diet with learning the disciplines of spiritual health. A simple soup and salad lunch may be a more appropriate fundraiser for that Haiti mission than buckets of fried chicken, fourteen dishes of baked beans and macaroni casserole topped off with 26 “death by dessert” dishes.

Next month I’ll pick up a few more of Salzman’s trends. I welcome your insights and observations.

Tom Hanover is Advertising and Promo Director of MIM ezine. He has served in a variety of pastoral leadership roles for more than 35 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.

In the Huddle: Discipleship through Intentional Community - Countering Isolation

What happened to the Christian culture that formerly described mainstream America? Social commentators and pastors agree that we now live in a post Christian culture. What caused the soil of American culture to stop growing Christian influence and sprout the weeds which have overgrown American religious and cultural heritage?

Like sowing good seed and brambles at the same time, a number of events contributed to a slow directional shift of American culture. One of the first, (which I personally believe is the most significant) was the 1963 Supreme Court's decision banning prayer from public schools. Within a few years, a quagmired war, an explosion of drug use, and disconnected subcultures emerged on the American home front. Families were fragmented under the strain by social pressures and liberal divorce policies. And inner city race riots sprouted like the biblical “tares among the wheat.” All of these were more than just temporary events; these forces squeezed American culture like Playdoh through a fun factory. By the turn of the 21^st century, we weren't too sure how we got here, but we knew, “We weren't in Kansas anymore.”

I'm not one who laments the loss of 1950s Norman Rockwell Americana. Yet I see a common thread through these events that has resulted in the loss of Christian influence more than any other single issue. Like creating ripples in a pond, the stone that disturbed the waters in our families, neighborhoods, schools, and cities was individual and collective personal isolation.

Conflict and broken relationships led irresistibly into personal isolation. During the past 4 decades, social conflict has repeatedly pitted one group, class, race or age of people against another. Consequently, our collective focus shifted. We no longer believe in working together for the wellbeing of the community out of a principle of love and duty which was built from a Christian heritage. We are now a people pursuing and defending self in order to get what we have a right to be, do or have.

Awash in the pain created from evolving narcissism, we continued to pursue self in order to protect ourselves from more pain. The theory that “I can't be hurt by you if I push you away before you take from me.” The cycle repeats, becoming more entrenched in each generation’s collective psyche. Isolation is no longer foreign. It has become our homeland, our common experience.

What does this social lament have to do with my faith life and my relationship with Christ? Glad you asked!!

We are called to influence the world toward Christ. We are salt and light, a preservative that defends against cultural rot. We are a power that dispels darkness so that our God can be seen. To fulfill this call, like Christ we must be counter-cultural. We cannot change a culture which we imitate. We are called to communicate and connect with our culture. Yet we must be different, holy, set apart, the called out ones (see 1 Peter 2.9-12). Only then we expect to affect transformation that defines the properties of salt and light: bringing cultural life out of decay, light into darkness, forgiveness to isolated peoples.

Our culture has been damaged by increasing isolation and broken relationships. In order to affect transformational influence on our world, the church must exist in intentional opposition to these destructive personal trends. We must be different to lead those who don't know Christ to him. If we are the same as the world around us, we can only offer a new cognitive personal paradigm, or the latest belief system d' jour, not the transforming power of Christ.

1) The life of Christ is built from our intimate relationship with Him. In order to be influential and lasting, a relationship must be intentional and treated with value by those so engaged. This description of our relationship with Christ, should also describe our relationships with those in Christ's family. Our modern culture promotes individualism, and personal achievement. The early church, and God's people throughout time lived in close community. None of their needs were unmet. They intentionally built, valued and invested in accountable relationships as the outgrowth of their love for their God.

2) Intentional community is not built from the top down, but from the bottom up. A current political voice is engaging political rhetoric into mainstream American life under the guide of “the collective wellbeing.” Top down forced community devolves into one group imposing it's will on another, creating unsustainable social chaos within a people whom God destined to be free. Intentional community means voluntary giving up my rights to my personal space in order to make room for you. Intentional community is Phil 2.5-8 kind of living.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Jesus willingly and intentionally pursued a shared lifestyle. He picked actions he knew would bring about success in his Father's plan – the revelation of God in the flesh and the opportunity for salvation for anyone who believed. We pursue career goals. We pursue financial and retirement goals. If we are to be like Christ, we should also intentionally pursue kingdom goals.

What are you doing to make room for intentional community in your life? Is your church involvement only social, or habits you keep once or twice a week? Are you allowing Christ's life to affect important relationships? Are you intentionally building, and valuing relationships into which you give and receive Christ centered advice and accountability?

If you are not pursuing accountable, transparent relationships, spend time identifying a few friends with whom you could take this experiment. If you are in a small group, or Sunday school community, take the risk of being more vulnerable. We should follow Christ's lifestyle, developing his character as well as intellectually assenting to his teaching.

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.

James L. Garlow with Keith Wall (2009, Bethany House, 270 pages, ISBN #9780764205767)

Is there really a hereafter or does everything just end when we die? Dr. Jim Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Church in San Diego and a national speaker and multi-published author Keith Wall have paired up to tackle questions about the afterlife.

Their book provides ample examples which strongly indicate there is something beyond our finite existence and may even interface with us while we live on earth. Included are stories from those who have walked through death’s door only to be revived. Some have tasted heaven while others went to a place of torment eerily similar to descriptions of hell.

The authors look at both good and evil phenomena in the spirit world which include the possibility of ghosts, communication with spirits, visitations from departed loved ones, accounts of angels, Satan and demons, heaven and hell. One particular account of a man who died while undergoing a stress test is chilling. As the doctor and his staff fought to bring him back only to lose him several times, he was literally crying out for help while undergoing demonic torment in the mouth of hell. Not only did the patient survive the ordeal, he committed his life to Christ as did his atheist doctor.

Each chapter of the book starts by noting a spiritual phenomenon or belief which is examined in the light of witnesses, theological history and opinions. Then scripture is referenced as to what it says about this phenomenon. In each case, the authors look at many possibilities, but always point the reader back to what the Bible says regarding the subject.

This is a very interesting book mainly because the accounts are well researched and well documented. It would be a particularly good tool for reaching seekers or those with an interest in the spirit world who might be undecided on the Biblical standpoint. Even Christians with strong Biblical knowledge may find themselves rethinking their positions on heaven and hell based on the evidence presented.

Teena Stewart is married to an ordained minister and is a published author, ministry consultant and coach. Her most recent book is Successful Small Groups from Concept to Practice. For more info see http://www.serendipitini.com or http://www.ministryinmotion.net/teena_stewart.html. You can learn more about her coffee shop ministry at http://www.javajourney.org. You are welcome to email her with questions or comments at smartwords@embarqmail.

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DBMIM September 14, 2009