David Kenney

photo credit: antwerpenR

It seems when you ask a group of people of any age for their spiritual questions, the ones that roll in are the same ones you always hear.

• Why is there evil in the world?
• What is God’s Will for my life?
• What is Heaven like?
• Is Jesus coming back soon?
• Can Satan hear my prayers?

And unless you’re R.C. Sproul it seems many of those questions still seem to be unanswerable to the average pew sitter.

Many times a good ploy from the pastor is to do a “ask me any question” series. I remember my previous pastor did it a year ago, he called it “Ask Dr. Bob” and he wore a Doctor’s lab coat. We have done it in youth group before and it’s mostly either questions about sex, or heaven or sex in heaven.

Well recently my Pastor, Chris Lewis has taken it upon himself to answer these age old questions and I can not begin to tell you how thorough and simple he has made these talks. I don’t normally pimp other pastor’s work, but this series is certainly worth a listen. Some of these sermons are literally the BEST I have ever heard on the subject.

1. Can I trust the Bible?

2. Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit?

3. Can You Lose Your Salvation? Armenian vs. Calvinism

4. What God hath joined together - Divorce

(I would also give Rob Bell’s recent Divorce sermon a listen)

5. Just Do Something – How can you know God’s Will?

photo credit: -ratamahatta-

With over forty years experience being an avid and frequent church observer, both as someone who has been in front of and behind the scenes, I consider myself an expert in all things church related. So from time to time, I will be sitting in total communion with my Lord and something will “all uh sudden” erk me to no end. These are things/observances that take place (for some reason) in every church…none of us are safe.

Church Peeves: Worship Ninjas.

The pastor just delivered an amazing sermon and he can think of no better way to end it then by asking the entire congregation into a moment of prayer. How he knew ‘prayer’ was exactly how I wanted to respond to the teaching that morning, I will never know.  But only a few moments into this blessed moment and I hear rustling… movement… that’s when I know the worship ninjas have been deployed.

If you are ever brave enough to do it, you can crack a rogue eyelid open and catch one of them in movement. Like the elusive basalope, the worship ninja is rarely photographed and comes out only when everyone in the facility has closed their eyes. One by one they make their way to the stage and begin picking up their instruments with cat-like stealth so that when the Pastor says “Amen” no pause is noticed before the worship leader can say….

“All right we are just going to stand together and respond…”

As if we are all supposed to say…

“WHOA! How did you guys get on stage? Just a minute ago the pastor was alone and now there are seven of you! Did you guys master the transportation of matter in this church?”

Here is my question: When does the worship team get to pray? Are they handed secret instructions before service to pray alone during the last baseball analogy, or are they just supposed to ‘wing it.’ I guess that if you are serving in the church you technically don’t “need” to pray since you are probably one of those ‘I pray all the time’ types?

But the reality is, probably none of that is true. And it really doesn’t “bug me” that much, but can we really not have a moment of ‘pause’ between prayer and worship? Do we really need to ‘keep things moving’ with the slick and polish of a staged production?

I say let’s mix it up once in a while and let the worship kids ‘worship.’

photo credit: bradleygee

My schedule so far at D-land has been really strange. It seems right after they finished training me for my area, got me all signed off and “official;”  they move me to other parts of the park. Tonight and tomorrow I have two all night shifts working the dance floor for a local hip hop radio station – and then for four or five days after that I am working various routes as crowd control for fireworks and water shows. Each time they move me it requires a different uniform and a random schedule.

What is funny is that the girl who was hired and trained with me continues to get nice steady hours.  She works these nice mid 8 hour shifts and I am sure she is making almost $100 more than me a week. What is weirder is, I don’t know why I care, or why I am so jealous? I mean, this isn’t a career path for me, I just wanted the diversion, the extra money and the chance to say, “I did this.” But now that I am in the thick of it, I want to be more and more apart of it.

I think it has to do with acceptance and feeling appreciated.

More hours equals “we like you” I guess.

It’s the same way in the break room. I work with a lot of nineteen year old girls and the “hip” thing to do seems to be gossip. Who is dating who? Who is a terrible worker? Who is mean? Who is cute? And again… I don’t want to be that involved or that entrenched in this job, but the desire to be included, and spoken to is so high that the temptation is there to talk behind people’s backs.

So for a job that I wanted to be somewhat removed from – I have these feelings of wanting to belong and to be accepted and to be “in” on both a corporate and a personal level; and I wasn’t expecting that.

It’s human nature to want to be in community, I guess.

Take church for instance. My wife and I have been church hopping since “the great divorce” and recently after twenty or so churches, I am calling an end to it. I am tired of it, I want to start fitting in somewhere, and being able to put my son in a nursery where they all know him.

I am taking our family flag out and planting it in the ground.

I want to know some of the parents, I want to go to church events again, I want to take communion with people I love and care about, and more importantly… I want to finish a sermon series all the way through!

You can’t do any of that when you go from church to church. You listen to the announcements with an out-of-body-experience knowing that “this isn’t really your life.” The desire to be accepted, belong and the desire to talk and share and laugh and cry in community I think is a real force that needs to be satisfied.

So after twenty or so churches we have found a new home. Well,  not a “home home” but at least a “foster home” until our real church parents find us. It’s mid-sized, close by and has an amazing teacher (which says a lot for me). They have a terrific campus and a wonderful worship leader.  I’d say more, but then you’d want to go there too and I like to keep things underground for a while.

Hopefully finding community at church will abide my desire to belong at work and I can relax a little.

I suppose I was worried all this time that if I found a place to belong, eventually I would have to remove myself from it. I’ll have to say ‘goodbye’ to everyone at work and the closer we get to church friends the harder it will be to say ‘goodbye’ to them as well. Community has its costs.  But now, after having not been in community for so long, I think the distant protection thing I was doing, hurts more.

It hurts more to be on the outside than it does to say goodbye.

It hurts more to be alone.

One last thing, and don’t get me wrong – this new church isn’t so great that they reached out to us and welcomed us in. I still don’t think ANY church we have visited in all of this time has been exceedingly welcoming. So it wasn’t the hospitality that made us feel at home. Which is sad – because it should be. No, we are finding a home here out of a sense of tiredness and urgency. But it reminds me all the more how important it is to reach out to the guests among us.

So many verses in the bible talk about how to treat guests, the traveler and the stranger amongst us. I think we forget that we’re not a community unless there is a friend on our right and on our left.

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photo credit: The Cleveland Kid

So it has been six months since my wife and I moved out of our house and almost ten months that I have been without a calling. I scan the various resources I have almost daily looking for a church to call home and to date I have applied to almost one hundred churches across the United States.

Recently, I ran across an article from USA Today on the Protestant Job Market and that added fuel to something that has been mulling around inside of me for a while.

Consider this: There is a pastor who lives in my area who happens to know my situation and he knows “a little bit” about me.  He, like me, recently stepped out in faith and began looking for a new calling and within months – landed a sweet job. This same guy has made the comment to my wife and a few others that my problem is that…I don’t “market myself well.”

That phrase has been ringing in my ears this past month.

“David doesn’t market himself well.”

So that makes me ask the question… how should I be marketing myself? This isn’t a hypothetical question and I don’t have some poignant life lesson to tag on to the back end of this, I am generally curious, is there something else I should be doing?

I am ordained with my denomination and my peers know I am out of work and they toss my name into “the hat” when Jobs in my denomination become available.

I am also registered with ABC.USA and my profile is available to be downloaded by any potential Baptist churches across the United States.

I visit all the local church staffing websites and my online resume can be downloaded from at least ten of those sites including secular sites like Simply Hired and Monster.

I use my Facebook profile, Twitter account as well as my dot.com to promote myself.

I have business cards.

It’s true I am not going to “meet and greets” like conventions or local pastor bars looking to make connections. I wanted to go to Catalyst West Coast this last time around, but could not afford to go.  And no, I don’t make friends with the powerful or popular pastors looking to get in on the “inside track” either.

I’m just sort of …. me.

I guess I was counting on God to find the right place for me and my family, and I wasn’t planning on forcing God’s hand in the process. I am not worried about an opportunity  ”passing me by,” because if it was meant to be – then it will happen.

Maybe this is a little bit of the predestinationalist in me coming out, but I hope that God has this all figured out and that I can relax a little.

Matthew 6:25-34

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? …O you of little faith. So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

But I would really like to hear your opinion… what else should I be doing? How would you “market yourself” in this economy? Am I not worried enough?

Should I run off another 500 business cards? Should I get a second dot.com that points to this one? Should I be making short sermon vignettes on youtube? Should I make a spinning arrow sign and stand on street corners or buy an inflatable-air-dancing-tube-thing that stands out in front of my house?

Think of me frantically coming up with more ideas like these as your write your response.

photo credit: bfhoyt

Sometimes I will be at D land and I will see a guy and I will think to myself, “Hey, I have that same shirt… where is it?” and then I remember, “Oh yea… it’s in a box.”

Whenever my Son asks where his drum set is, we always tell him, “it’s in a box.”

Our whole life is in boxes right now.

When we moved in January, everything went into paid storage while a few remaining boxes went with us to my Mother in law’s house. Since then my wife and I have slept on an inflatable air mattress and my son has slept on the floor on a toddler mattress in the same room. The three of us each have a few boxes of clothes and possessions.  My son has a single box of toys and I have a single box of books. In fact, out of the 3 of us – my wife probably brought the least of her possessions with her.

We had packed for a three to four month stint, much like the castaways thought they would be on a three hour tour.

So during this time of transition, it has been interesting to see what we have needed, and what we have not – and also how easy it is to begin accumulating more stuff.

But I guess it’s weirder to think that we own “other” stuff, furniture a tv, a couch (more clothes) that we have not seen or used in half a year now. It makes me wonder… why do have all that stuff anyway? I mean sure, we have that stuff because currently we share my Mother in law’s possessions – she has that stuff and that’s how we get by now – but it’s interesting how life has made us all hoarders of “individual” possessions.

Nobody gathers down at the barber shop anymore to hear the town gossip, we all own our own televisions, so now we just watch TMZ.

We no longer go down to the Rutherford’s house to listen to the Mystery Hour on their radio, because now everyone has their own radio (even though now we all stream Hulu or Pandora).

I would argue that even meals with extended family is getting more and more of a lost practice (especially home cooked ones).

When do we naturally break into community in our week? When we go to work? The coffee shop? Church?

But how many of us work from home or own our own business? How inexpensive is it to brew delicious Starbucks coffee from home? And how simple is it to even download church services to our ipod?

You’re probably too young to remember the movie The Net with Sandra Bullock. It was a movie made in 1995 about a woman who lived on the internet, and only had “web chat” friends, subsequently her whole life was “deleted” and she quickly found out that nobody in “real life” knew who she was. Remember, this is back before “identity theft” and this was basically a “horror movie” about one author’s projected dangers of the internet.

I think the reality today is, of course you can’t have your whole life “deleted” by “the man” of “the feds,” but the irony is we delete our own lives by not living in community.

The irony is I miss all of my stuff that is stuck in a box somewhere, stuck in a warehouse, stuck far away. But the bigger box was the box I was always living in – the one that kept me in my own house, with my own television and my own books and my own barbecue.  This same box kept me from knowing the people who lived next door to me for years. This same box had me believing that I didn’t know any lost people because I worked for a church. Or the box that told me that I was a boring person anyway, so why would anyone want to get to know me.

In 2008 Jim Carrey made a movie called Yes Man, and I think the premise of this new movie would have solved Sandra Bullock’s identity theft problem. By saying “Yes” to each new opportunity, Jim’s character is forced out of his box and out into the world, where he has new experiences and meets new people.

Imagine that, meeting new people.

“We should be inviting more friends to church,” says the pastor.

“All my friends are here,” thinks the church.

Well, I guess there is nobody left to save.

Luke 10

The Lord appointed seventy-two disciples and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and every place where he was about to go. Jesus told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go!”

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As a young man marries a young woman, so will your Builder marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.

~ Isaiah 62:5

Have you ever wondered why God refers to himself as the “the groom” (Matthew 25: 1-13) and his church as “the bride?” Why did he chose that imagery? What is God trying to tell us?

First, I guess you would have to think about what comes to mind when you think of a groom….not just a husband mind you, but a man “not yet a husband,” a man who is awaiting to be married.

To me, this brings to mind a God who is joyful, a God who is on fire with affection, and at the same time tender and sensitive to vulnerabilities.  A “bridegroom God” sees his fiancé as something radiant and beautiful and who longs for her with passion and anxiousness.

Wedding language is certainly poetic and romantic. It has a certain energy and feel about it, don’t you think?

But is this the same God we talk about at church?

Do you feel like a bride who is courted and wooed by her groom? Would you describe your church worship as “light-headed” or “captivating?” And yet we were created by a passionate God who longs for us and who wants us to long for him.

Many Christians today will use “buzzwords” to talk about church revival; they use words like “radical” and “extreme,” but what about “lovesick?” Can you remember ever being lovesick for someone? That’s when you’re so much in love that it physically hurts you to be apart.

We probably were lovesick once in our walk with God, so how do we reclaim that lovesick affection? I guess the same way a bride does with her groom – she has “encounters” with him (no, not those kind of “encounters”).

I think, as God’s bride, we should be excited about the days that we meet with him – and no, not just at “the end of days,” but each and every day that we come before him in praise and worship. Encountering God and escaping away from the cycle of everyday life will be what drives your passion for the creator.

And the good news is, you already know how to do it…

• Prayer
• Reading the scriptures
• Worship
• Tithing
• Evangelism
• Fellowship and the breaking of bread

We should all long to have our weekly (if not daily) rendezvous with the Lord!

Lord, may we be the prize of your heart and may we burn with passion as your cherished bride. Give us a heart for what you have a heart for and stir within us that lovesick drive that brings us back into your waiting arms. ~ Amen

I love the movie Office Space….well, who doesn’t? It’s been a cult-classic since 1999. The struggle of the blue collar office worker who adopts an “I don’t care” attitude towards his company and infects his corporation with a Macintosh virus.

Is that even possible?

There are so many great lines from the movie; and everyone has their favorite.

“You’ve been missing a lot of work lately…” “Well I wouldn’t say I was missing it….”

I know people who have been Lumburgh (the coffee drinking boss) for Halloween. And even thought it didn’t exist before the movie, Swingline now carries red staplers as part of their inventory.

Every once in a while the show comes on TV and it’s always entertaining to sit and watch a of couple scenes. How do you beat a cast like Jennifer Anitson, John McGinley (Perry from Scrubs) and Diedrich Bader?

Anyway…

So the movie got me thinking the other day, Office Space is very funny, but I bet a lot of people think about the church that way. I mean, feeling unchallenged, unmotivated, just “phoning it in.” If I got called into the board room, what would I tell the “Bob’s” if they questioned me?

“I’d say in a given Sunday I probably do about 15 minutes of real, actual worship.”

And if we were to question people as they passed by us on the way out of service, would they have a hard time answering, “Exactly what is it that you do here?”

For some of us it’s been our tradition, (or habit) for so long that I am sure if without challenge and effort, could easily feel like going to “work.”

But the surprising thing of the movie, is that the main character, Peter Gibbons, decides that from now on, he’s just “not going to go.”

He’s not going to quit mind you….

He’s just not going to go in anymore.

So later on when he’s questioned by a team of efficiency experts, Peter is open and honest; he’s candid about his work flow, his bosses, and what is asked of him… and in a way, he becomes more confident in all respects.

He asks Joanna on a date

He takes down his cubicle walls… with a drill.

You could almost say his “outlook” has totally changed.  The more you think about it, there are so many great parallels.

Maybe you are sick and tired of the way you have played church your whole life? You’re asking if this all that there is; all that you can look forward to?

Would your church care if one day….you decided not to go anymore?

And what would change if you decided to be honest about how you felt? What would happen if you were unafraid? What walls need to come down there?

Granted, what Peter did was outside the norm, and some of the things that he did were slightly illegal. It is a movie after all…..meant to entertain and make us laugh.

And no, this is not another “feel bad because you don’t do enough in your church” article, (I hate those). I’m just looking down the road a bit and feeling like I am probably going to sit in this pew for another forty some odd years (God willing) and I don’t know how I feel about that. I don’t want to become like Peter to the point where one day I wake up and I simply don’t want to go anymore.

So hopefully the answer lies somewhere in the middle; I don’t want to not care about attending church, but maybe I need to stop caring about some other things….maybe it’s what people think, or what people expect of me, or what limitations I feel that I have.

Maybe once I become more uninhibited, and once I let go…worship will become more… well, just MORE.

I mean, we should think this out first, don’t you think? Not make any rash decisions.

First I’m gonna go out to dinner, and then I’m gonna go back to my apartment and watch kung fu. Do you ever watch kung fu?

I love kung fu.

I’m starting to wonder if there is a difference between being a Christian and being a follower of Jesus. And before you pass judgment on this article as something you have read before, hang on a tic. For the sake of explanation, I am going to define “Christian” as someone who is a typical church attender – this is someone who prays, reads the bible, is in a bible study, goes to church on Sunday, tries to obey the 10 commandments, tithes and earnestly tries to live a good life.

Becoming a Christian is easy.

John 6:28-29

Then they (the disciples) asked him (Jesus), “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

Jesus flat out says that the “works” of Salvation is simply belief in him. He repeats this in his infamous dialog with Nicodemus

John 3:16-17

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

This same idea is repeated in John 11:25-27, John 17:2-3, and Romans 10:13

And this almost becomes the “selling point” of Christianity; that becoming a Christian is as simple as three simple steps: belief, confession and acceptance. Each of us is saved by grace and the “work” Christ did at the cross.

But what about being a Jesus follower? A Jesus follower is usually defined as someone who tries to “live out the teachings of Jesus.” In other words when Christ said to “do” something – they try to do it (go figure). These would be things like: loving your enemies, caring for the people in the fringes of society, visiting those in prison, feeding the hungry and protecting the rights of widows and orphans.

So despite the fact that “doing things” doesn’t save us… Jesus did in fact tell us to “do things.” And even more surprisingly, Jesus didn’t tell us to do most of the things that Christians “do.”

So here is my segue…

Lately I have spent a lot of work on my résumé.

Since I have been out of work for so long, I tend to wonder if maybe my résumé is lacking (I have been accused of not selling myself well). So I pour over statistics and quotes wondering how best to “prove” I am the best man for the job. On any résumé you want to list your good works that will show someone who doesn’t know you – the evidence of your qualifications.

So think for a moment about some of the things that you would list on your Christian résumé. What “proves” you are a Christian?

• You attend church meetings.
• Lead a bible study
• Read Beth Moore books
• You’re on the fellowship committee
• You preach sermons
• You leave bible tracts for your waitress at restaurants.

You could certainly list many of those things to show your pastor or another believer the evidences of your “Christian” life. But what if the one reviewing our résumé was Jesus? Then what would you list?

What proves you follow Christ?

Because I would argue that becoming a Christian is easy, but being a Jesus follower is hard.

And I will be the first to admit: I rarely do any of those things that Jesus said to do. My life doesn’t interact much with prisons, or orphans or widows. Maybe once a month I come across a homeless person, and when that happens, I usually don’t have any cash on me and I have to shrug and apologize.

I wonder if that’s what Jesus would do to? Just shrug and say he was sorry.

I picture Jesus visiting my life for the week and he sits in the back of my Kia as I go about my daily routine.

“Are we going to a prison now?” he asks excitedly.

“No, we’re going to Trader Joes.” I smile. “We are out of milk.”

“Well afterwards can we go to a bar?” Jesus asks. (Jesus ate and drank with sinners, remember?)

“Um, we’re NOT going to a bar,” I sternly shake my head. “Do you know what kind of people hang out there?”

But I am sure he DOES know who hangs out in bars… that’s why he associated with people who drank. And before you interject, TGI Fridays and Applebees are NOT bars.

Jesus purposefully put people in his life who needed him. Think about what all of these people have in common…

• Prisoners
• Drunks
• Orphans
• Widows
• The hungry
• The naked
• The homeless

They all needed an outside force to enter into their lives to improve their situation. And because Jesus fed the hungry and healed the sick, because he filled the needs of the broken in his community, thousands would come out to see him.

I wonder how often churches create programs to fill the needs of those already within the church instead of programs that bring peace and wholeness to those on the outside? I wonder if Jesus came to my church he’d be sad that after the sermon I got in my car and went back home, because I know sometimes I am.

I am often reminded of what Jesus said in Matthew 28

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Jesus says a disciple isn’t someone who goes to church or tithes their ten percent. In the great commission he defines a disciple as someone “who obeys” his commands.

The term “shooting fish in a barrel” usually refers to something that was super easy . . . and perhaps a little cruel. It’s used when Carney folk sucker rubes into a game of chance or when unruly hill folk swindle city slickers into purchasing their snake oil (or so I have heard).  And I would offer that it would be just as easy to catch fish in a barrel using your hands, or even using a fishing rod, but to use a gun… seems a little lazy… don’t you think?

Heck, if the fish are in a barrel all you gotta do is drill a hole in the bottom and slowly let the water out; in a few minutes you’ll have dry fish.

This last Sunday my wife and I went to a new church, and I could easily say that everything was nice. The sanctuary was nice; the music was nice the pastor did a nice job. And my wife and I both did our best not to be uber critical, but I couldn’t help but notice something.

Shouldn’t greeting guests be like shooting fish in a barrel?

I always get ahead of myself, let me back up.

In having the chance to visit so many churches these past months, it’s very apparent that every church is operating with the same set of blocks. Somewhere, sometime when a church decides to be a community, they buy a starter kit that comes with a big cross, a set of communion trays, offering bags, a box of pre-beaten hymnals and then each church gets a set of “service order blocks” that they can arrange in any order:

□        Worship

□        Sermon

□        Offering

□        Announcements

□        Welcome

□        Communion (optional)

Then somewhere during the week the worship team and the pastor arranges these blocks in a particular order and they begin to get ready for Sunday. So when I as the visitor come in and sit down, and as the service gets on its way, I begin to notice “what order” the blocks are arranged in. “Oh, I like how they had announcements during the offering,” I whisper to my wife.

The bottom line for every church has been the same: I leave talking about the sermon and the music because those are the only elements that I as a visitor interacted with. We judge churches by the arrangement of the blocks and the effectiveness of the “performers.”

But that should not be the sum total of a guest experience. Churches I visit begin to blur together because I only remember the colors of the walls, that one pastor with the cool glasses, the worship pastor who clapped through every song or the church with the bulletin that I couldn’t figure out how to open…

I do have one advantage however; I have a toddler. And this is where my point will begin to solidify so get ready. Lately I have begun to remember the churches based on the nursery – but not because of program or service. I remember nurseries because that is where a church member is forced (I chose that word purposely) to talk to me. I remember churches based on where I was spoken to; and at the nursery you are forced to say, “This is Timmy (not my son’s real name) and it’s our first time here.”

… and then here comes the “shooting fish in a barrel” easy moment…

“Well Welcome.” says the nursery worker.

That couple just gave your entire church an infrared bull’s-eye for the rest of the morning. Get on the CB and call the welcome squad! Don’t wait for them to make initial contact again…

□        Someone bring them coffee

□        Go get the pastor from backstage to come out and welcome them.

□        Find an age appropriate couple to walk over and say, “hi.”

□        Someone from the welcome table bring them a welcome packet.

□        Give them a tour of the church after service

□        Offer to buy them lunch

A visitor just walked onto your campus of their own volition without any provocation from you – and you are just going to let them wander around and leave without first saying something?

C’mon! It’s like shooting fish in a barrel!

A retail store wouldn’t let that happen. Even if a customer says, “I’m just looking” a store clerk will continue to ask questions, and stay close by.

They came to you – it’s too easy!

“But David,” you might be thinking. “…not every visitor has kids. How can I as a good church member begin to acknowledge visitors? I am too afraid I am going to ruin someone’s experience or misdiagnose who is a guest and who isn’t.”

That’s ok made up question asker; it’s not your fault.

It’s the fault of your leaders.

Greeting guests can be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, but if your leaders have not given you the gun – then you’re not equipped. So do me a favor… run and go get your church leaders and bring them back here to read this article… ok? I will wait….

You got them?

You need to equip each church member as a “minister” of the church. Ephesians 4:11 says, “It was Jesus who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers..” notice that every word in this verse is plural. There is no single apostle, no single teacher and no single pastor. The church is filled with men and women who serve. If you empower people and give them tools, they will be emboldened to take risks and to act on their own.

Here are my suggestions for greeter training.

1. Every member is a greeter and a member of the hospitality team: if this were your home, you wouldn’t let strangers walk around; and you wouldn’t feel nervous about asking them questions. It’s every member’s job to help lost people, crying kids, answer questions, and direct foot traffic.
2. Every member is a trash picker-upper. Again, if this were your home you wouldn’t walk by a random magazine or crooked picture. Every Sunday guests are coming over, so everyone is in charge of keeping the church looking good.
3. Every member should know where to find the information. This doesn’t mean everyone knows all the answers, but they should know how to find the answers. Maybe designated greeters and ushers have cheat sheets in their pockets, maybe there is a centralized map with times, maybe the bulletin has the answers, or maybe you have a welcome booth –  regardless. Never say to a visitor, “I don’t know” and walk away. Every member should be able to say, “You know, I am not sure, but I know exactly how to find out for you.”
4. Give members permission to eavesdrop and look for non-verbal cues. Teach your members what to look for. The couple with the baby walking past the nursery, the person reading building signs, and the guy holding the church map upside down. Also feel free to eavesdrop – if the people in front of you look new… stop talking and lean in… what are they saying? If you can decipher that they are new – ask them if there is anything you can help them with, or if you can answer any questions.
5. Designated greeters and ushers should always be smiling, standing and using open and welcoming body language. These people need to be the most obvious and the most assessable. This means greeters who are not talking about the party last night, or sitting in chairs, or wearing dark sunglasses, or reading, or straightening paper work…
6. Always use visitor friendly language from the stage and often talk about how to get involved or how to become a member. Visitors may not be up on your “insider lingo” so always preface things with an explanation. “In a few weeks our culture vulture group is getting together, and this will be a special time for our ladies over 60 who enjoy…”

(Do you see what I mean? Before I said who the event was for, you wanted to go didn’t you?)

The most important person in the sanctuary is the person you have not met; so everything needs to be done with them in mind. You need to build a community that is welcoming, friendly, over communicative, and clean. In fact, I am willing to bet that a church could grow at a healthy pace solely through an organized program that targeted the people who physically walked on campus.

And more people walk onto your campus then just Sunday morning. Every Wedding and funeral is a chance to shoot fish in a barrel. Yes, I am serious. More often than not these are people who rarely set foot in a church. Now more than ever is your chance to have a clean campus, have volunteer welcomers in the parking lot directing foot traffic (wearing church name tags). Clean out the pew racks and place special  “getting to know us” leaflets in the pockets.

And there are lots of other ways to get people to walk onto campus of their own free will. Offer free classes to the community, offer empty classrooms to local schools, Cub Scout groups and AA meetings. If your campus sits dark at any time – it is a resource your church has that is going unused.

Find creative ways to bring more people to you; and then always have a clean campus, friendly people and obvious keys to help people get more information. And I bet you’ll find it’s exactly like shooting fish in… ya you get the picture.

I’ve never been one who “hears a voice from God.” I have always envied those people who tell stories of their amazing prayer life where the Lord spoke to them in a dream and they just picked up their family and moved to Tulsa. But my interaction with God has been a cross between “gut feelings” and following the river in front of me. I have always felt that if I stay close to God -then he will always lead me.

This leads me to my next story…

Sometime last year when we were back in our house, I was upstairs and in bed for the night and reading a book when my wife came in late with a smile on her face, “I think I found it” she exclaimed.

“Found what?”

“The church where you’re going to work.”

Now, let me freeze frame her smile and say something… this is what I am talking about… those “feelings” people get that they are so confident that they can tell someone else. It’s like when people say that they saw their future husband and they “just knew” and then leaned over to tell their girlfriends, “I’m going to marry that man.” The story is then told by the maid of honor at the wedding and everyone smiles and hits their glasses with spoons….

But what about the predictions that don’t come true? I am sure someone has leaned over to their friend, said they were they were going to marry the glowing stranger, … and then it didn’t happen. Nobody remembers those stories because they don’t come true. You never hear at a wedding, “You don’t know how many times Steve leaned over to me and said he was going to marry ‘some girl’ or another and it never happened.. not until Stacey.”

That would be a terrible story. It ends in Stacey crying in her wedding dress and Steve punching his best man in the shoulder.

Oh sorry, I left my wife frozen didn’t I?

I was surprised my wife was so confident and I was beginning to feel like I was hitting my head against a wall applying to jobs and then being rejected… so I got excited…

“What – where? Where did you find it?”

“I left the browser open for you downstairs,” she was folding laundry I think, “but it’s a little church in your home town and they look nice.”

Turns out it was a little church back in my home town (just like she said) and the next morning when I went through their church profile – they did look nice (just like she said); and my excitement grew. Could my wife be right? Could this be “the one?” It certainly would make a good story. So naturally you begin to do what you do in situations like this; you pray.

I was praying all of the time. Every day I took my son for a walk to either put him to sleep or take him to the park, I was praying… praying my guts out. I can’t explain it better than that, but do you remember when you were a kid? Whatever you did with all of your being was described as doing it with your “guts out.” When we ran to school we “ran our guts out.” That’s what it was like. It was all my energy and all my focus.

And then when I wasn’t praying my guts out; I was planning. I was literally day dreaming about the church and mapping out what my next steps would be.  Probably the only thing I didn’t do was go down to the Home Depot and grab paint swatches.  And the more each day passed, the more in depth my ideas became. I rehearsed what I would say to the search team, and I began thinking about my first sermon on candidate weekend. If there was a “zone,” I was in it.

Looking back I was probably a borderline “church stalker.”

I had relatives that lived near this little church and I sent them in on a reconnaissance mission one morning. They came back with a detailed report and gave me insight into the positives and negatives. I called the church secretary and asked when the search team met, so I could pray on those days. I contacted the denominational representative in the area and introduced myself, I even told him I’d be willing to drive the six hours just to meet him for lunch.

Months went by with no information.

I was going stir crazy, so my wife and I planned a trip to my hometown. It was a great idea; we could visit the family, my son could see his grandparents and my wife and I could scope out this little church for ourselves. I called the church secretary and let her know I was coming “just in case anyone from the search team wanted to meet me.”

Turns out they didn’t.

Nobody really knew we were coming, I met the church secretary and her family, but it was just a typical Sunday at a church we didn’t belong to. People politely shook our hands and smiled, but nobody really noticed us. We left that morning even more excited and more on fire for the little church,  but looking back, the signs had been there that the river wasn’t flowing that direction and I was fighting against the current.

Up until that point I had always allowed the Spirit to guide me in a natural fashion. I didn’t give too much thought to my direction and I had simply followed the current of the river. But it seems with this little church that I was “trying too hard.” I had turned into the annoying guy who follows the girl around saying, “can’t you feel this connection?” While she is running away smiling politely.

I was acting on an “idea” that I had fabricated and to be fair, my wife had just found a church that she thought I would be interested in and as I got more “into it” she did also. It wasn’t her job to listen to the Lord for me. I was supposed to be learning patience, but instead I was fighting the current and trying to forge my own path.

Well, the good news is, I didn’t get a rejection letter. A few more months had gone by and I called the church office again and asked how the process was going, the church secretary acted more nervous than usual and indicated to me that they had indeed “found their man” …and it wasn’t me. She said I should receive a “thanks for trying” letter soon, but I never did. The little church hadn’t been a sign or a detour or anything, it was just another church in the long list of churches. The only thing that made it special or stand out, was my own wishing.

And I could get mad and say, “Why did you do that to me God? Why did you get my hopes up?” But the truth is – I did it to myself. I can’t actually say that I was being moved by God during this time.

The Bible talks a lot about trusting God, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5) It also says that “He who trusts in himself is a fool. . .” (Proverbs 28:26).  But that doesn’t seem to stop most of us from trying to blaze our own trail. There are so many accounts of men and women in the scriptures who were supposed to wait for a promise from the Lord, but instead took the initiative.

God promised Abraham and Sarah a son of their own bloodline.  But it was over 20 years before this promise was fulfilled exactly the way that God had said. In the meantime, it was hard for them to trust God and they often tried their own paths to make the promised son come true (Genesis 15-17).

The truth is, we’re not good at waiting.  We want what we want – and we want it now! It’s hard enough for me to wait for my order from Amazon even when I have a tracking number, so you can imagine how hard it is to wait for even bigger things like a career or a calling.

But this isn’t another chapter on patience or impatience. Rather it’s about discerning God’s will over our own. I can’t make my life happen any more than Abraham could “make a baby boy.” If Abraham and Sarah had just allowed the river to quietly move them down water, they would have arrived where God wanted them to. But instead they chose to fight the current and “make” God’s plan happen.

When we do that the only voice telling us to “act” is our own, so in the end the only one to blame is ourselves.

And if we don’t realize that – and take a really honest look back on our lives – we can end up feeling bitter towards God and resentful of his promises – when he didn’t actually do anything.

I also think that even when we create these side diversions, God doesn’t allow our energy to be wasted, nor does he allow the opportunity for learning to pass by. When we take the wrong stream or go through the wrong door, God still works through that and makes his will be done.

When Hagar and her son Ishmael are tossed out with the garbage, God stepped in and didn’t allow these two innocents to pay the price for Abraham and Sarah’s haste (Genesis 21). He even promises Hagar that he will make her son “into a great nation.” And that is ultimately the story of the entire bible – regardless of the human agent, God’s will is done.

So I am not worried that the opportunity will come and pass me by.

God isn’t going to kick the air and shout, “Oh you missed it!”

He knows how to move the river, he’s been doing it for thousands of years.

[LAST] [NEXT]

This may sound weird for a pastor to say, but short of Christmas service, I love Good Friday service the best. I guess that is why my wife and I have always had one. Getting out of the car last night on our way into church – we both commented how weird we both felt. We were going into the service, but we were not “in the moment.” Preaching a sermon prepares you for the event. The study and the planning is the “lead in” to the experience, so that when Good Friday comes you are… well…. ready.

I walked into the church hoping that the leaders had worked to help me get into that moment.

The reason why I love this service is because it’s the preamble to Easter morning. How can you get excited that Christ rose from the grave, if you have not first considered that Christ died? It’s like watching Empire Strikes Back without having first watched A New Hope. (you’d be so lost)

Good Friday is an important part of the story because otherwise Jesus was just a teacher and prophet. If he didn’t die for the sins of the world, then he just came to say some nice bumper sticker sayings and to pose for his twenty minutes of fame.

Good Friday is a pinnacle of the bible story because the moment his blood was shed, a new covenant was created. I think a lot of us would agree that Jesus is also our high priest, but do we understand what that means and how it relates to how we live in the new covenant?

Look at Hebrews 7:12-13

For when there is a change of the priesthood, there must also be a change of the law. He of whom these things are said belonged to a different tribe, and no one from that tribe has ever served at the altar.

Jesus was from the tribe of Judah, not the tribe of Levi. Traditionally only men from Levi were ever high priests, so the author of Hebrews reminds us that our high priest is a key indicator that: new priest = new change in the law.

Typically we think of the bible in two parts: the new testament and the old. But in reality it’s broken more visibly by the cross. Everything that takes place before the cross (including Christmas) is under the Old Covenant – but everything after the cross takes place in the New Covenant.

Read verse 18 and 19

The former regulation (the law) is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.

That verse is more crucial than most of us realize. With a new priest and a new law brings a new covenant, but sadly most Christians still try to live with parts of the Law in their lives. We preach the importance of following the 10 Commandments and the importance of the 10 percent tithe as if THOSE were the things that we can “do” to complete our salvation process.

But the gospel is only GOOD NEWS if we realize that Christ DIED to absolve us of a broken system. How can you can I live in the joy and freedom of today if we are still held to the rule(r) of yesterday? It’s like Jesus gave you a brand new, off the show room floor, Jaguar XK series, but rather than drive it … you have it in the garage on blocks trying to “fix it.” And Jesus is out in your drive way saying “Let’s GO!!!!!”

Still not convinced? Read…

²³Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; ²⁴but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. ²⁵Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.

Jesus is able to save… completely. How? Because he always lives to intercede for us.

I know you want to cling to the law because it’s a nice livable standard. We like rules and boxes, it makes everything so much easier. (or so we think) but it also cripples at the same time as it defines. Phillip Yancey says,

“Legalism stands like a stripper on the sidelines of faith, seducing us toward an easier way.”

But really if we call ourselves Christians and Jesus is our High Priest, then we need to live within the “red letters” of the bible and “Figuring out just how to relate those radical red letters in the Bible to the complex issues in the modern world will be difficult, but that’s what we’ll try to do.” ~ Tony Campollo

The equation for your salvation is Jesus + nothing. This Good News should change every aspect of the way you live. We are children of the new and free and joyous gospel of Christ and perhaps if you still allow your sin to control you, perhaps if you don’t feel compelled to tell others about Christ, then consider this dismaying observation…

You have never fully understood what you were set free from.

Sometimes I feel like we tell people that saying the sinner’s prayer saves us from Hell. So then our goal becomes rescue workers for people who don’t see the the upcoming cliff. But the problem then becomes a lot of people don’t even believe the cliff exists – so why do they care that they be saved from it? If salvation is all about after you die…then what does it matter to how we live today?

The good news of the cross is.. no more sacrifices, no more atonement, no more apologies to God for screwing up. That system doesn’t work.  As soon as you confess your sins to God and say “I won’t do that ever again…” you wait all of four seconds before you sin again.

The purpose of the law for us today becomes a measuring rod for those on the outside of God’s grace. Can you measure up? Can anyone? Nope. And I would argue that even people who don’t believe in Heaven or Hell, still believe in living a “good life.” But the problem is … we can’t.

Nobody can.

So we live lives of self-defeat. Dr. Phil makes millions because he understands that none of us feel good about ourselves. We all have issues – and whether people know it or not it’s the issue of trying to “measure up.” Sadly the world is desperately trying to live to be “good enough” when Christ already died to make us perfect.

Here is the rest of Hebrews 7

²⁷Unlike the other high priests, (Jesus) does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. ²⁸For the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever.

Read this:

Your sins are forgiven

All of them

Forever

God doesn’t see them

Your relationship with God is perfect, no matter what you have done – or will do.

You are not being measured.

New High Priest

New Covenant

Good News

Take the keys and drive!

What is the church? Do you tend to idealized the earliest churches? But do you neglect then the deformities of those same churches?

“Church,” says Peterson, “is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity.”

“So, why church? The short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of heaven in the country of death” (11-12).

Read the rest here: Practice Resurrection 2

Read the first article here: Practice Resurrection 1

I love Twitter. I follow several pastors one of whom is Tom Rainer – today I noticed that you can also follow two of the books he has written:

Essential Church

Simple Church

I have only read Simple Church – and I loved it. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to solidify what their church is doing and begin moving forward to a goal. One of the posts that stood out to me today was this one…

“Pastors must lead their churches to reach others–especially this young adult group that is leaving at an alarming rate.”

And I would agree, but right now there seems to be a lot of “target audience” out there. When I was an associate pastor, I heard from a lot of potential applicants and they often said that “husbands” were the key target for church growth.

“Get the Dad = get the family” said one. I have seen other churches who pat themselves on the back for being “family friendly” and all of these things are good things….

But who is the target? I would argue everyone and nobody.

As soon as your have a target – you loose focus on everyone else. When our church was looking to hire an associate, the older generation felt snubbed because the job description said, “reaching out to the younger generation.”

“Who reaches out to us?” they asked.

When we had a “family service” we had people complain that – if they didn’t have a “family” were they not invited?

The church has to be careful that once they decide they have a focus, they exclude others.

The church should have one goal – more Christians – better Christians.

I think with that goal – everyone is included.

Tom is right, we need to reach out to the younger generation, but I would argue the reason why we have done a poor job in the past is because we have been too concerned with what games we are going to play, and what camp we are going to for summer – instead of being as concerned with making sure our High School students are “better Christians.”

Young people drop out in college – because in High School they didn’t get a solid ground to stand on. We are content to push them through the process without calling them to something higher.

But this applies to everyone – of all ages.

Challenge your church congregation. Hold them accountable – create obtainable goals – move them through a discipleship process. If you do that for everyone – [husbands included] then your target becomes “creating disciples” and not one specific age group.

You either know, or you don’t. You’re either in or you’re out.  Lost is not a TV show. Don’t kid yourself. Lost is an epic grand scale mystery wrapped in a darhrma coffee can and slammed into a magnetic hatch. Lost is a communal puzzle. What I mean is, you can’t watch Lost alone. You just can’t. People who watch lost, have to be in groups, they have to gather in forums, visit blogs, read websites, devour books, do research, have lost parties – and if you see us in public, you’ll know us by our questions…

“Did you see the…”

“Did you notice that one guy…”

“Did you hear the….”

“When did you first realize….”

“When did you first suspect….”

“Was it always that way from the beginning?”

“Didn’t you love the….”

“What is going on?”

That’s the number one question through five seasons… many have speculated, most are wrong…..Trying to solve the LOST puzzle. And the difficult thing is – we’re all watching it together, all getting the same pieces to the mystery at the same time…. but J.J. Abrams is brilliant, at least that is what all of the LOST fans are hoping for… a brilliant ending.

No “it was all a dream” or “they were all dead” endings  – please. I think I speak for all who are watching, but we are all hoping for something…. more. That’s why we are all watching… all putting the clues together… hoping… crossing our fingers….

I think our congregations want that as well… something more.

Too many churches spend so much time winding the knob and increasing the tension that “something” is going to happen, but with no pay out. Nothing happens – this year is just like last year.

I think a lot of church frustration is this “no payout” feature. [my wife and I feel that way with the NBC show Heroes]

We want to know the smoke monster has purpose and it wasn’t there just as a plot device to create tension. Don’t just wave it away and call it a” temple guardian.”

People want to be a part of something bigger – they want to know their lives have made a difference – and the local church can help with that. It only makes sense….

We tell the congregation each week that God wants us to be agents of change – to feed and clothe the world – to shelter and protect the orphan and the widow and to advance the Kingdom of God

So naturally…

The church should partner with its congregants by allowing them to DO those things.

Perhaps why we have high turnover in local communities, or empty seats – isn’t the teaching, the worship or even the color bulletins.  Maybe it’s that they are tired of being a part of something that doesn’t pay out.

Mission statements are like corporate Hallmark cards. Often written in a bland cursive font and plastered conspicuously at headquarters, these aspiring epigrams are pretty words in Air Supply — like rhythm. Sometimes they’re created at a retreat in the woods, between the trust fall and the passing of the speaking stick. Vigorous fights over semantics last for hours, even months.

[read the rest here]