DashHouse.com

Be back in a couple of days.

From Lark News:

PEORIA, Ill. — The "Bigger Church, Bigger Impact" conference wrapped on Friday, leaving participants feeling drained and dejected.

"I came here thinking my church was doing all right. Now I see we're so dinky and dumb, it's not even funny," says pastor Steve Irvine of Reno, Nev., who went to his hotel room and cried after each session.

Skating the thin edge between satire and reality! I still remember the Sunday a decade ago that I returned from a megachurch conference to my small church.

More church laughs (including a Baptist one) here.

It's just after 8:00 on the first morning of the summer break, and already my daughter has told me, "I'm bored."

I'm away tomorrow, so this is coming early.

Happy Canada Day. Still a great country, now 138 years old.

It struck me as I was eating dinner at Costco tonight that I've been at Richview for seven years now (as of July 2). This is a milestone for me in some ways because it is now officially my longest tenure. Sometime in the past month, I passed the time that I spent at Park Lawn.

You could divide my time at Richview so far into two chapters. In the first chapter, things were pretty turbulent but we also had some good momentum. In the second chapter, we rethought some of our approach and lost some momentum. It hit our numbers this past year. Recently, I had to ask myself if I was in for another chapter or not, and I sensed it wasn't time to quit just yet.

There are a whole bunch of us who have moved past the deconstruction stage and are ready to move on to a whole new chapter. I'm already spending a lot of time getting ready for what's coming next, and discovering others on a similar track, at Richview and elsewhere.

I'm also looking in the mirror a lot. I took the Enneagram test recently and it nailed me, good and bad. Ouch.

I heard of a pastor recently who moved on because for the first time, he couldn't think of where to lead the church next. I can relate. It's also exciting to go through that struggle and finally get a sense of what's next and to see God in that.

Lots of challenges ahead, lots of change, and some regrets - and yet I'm ready.

Thanks to those who have been part of the journey with me so far.

Commenting on 2 Timothy 4:13 ("When you come, bring...my scrolls, especially the parchments"), Spurgeon said:

Even an apostle must read. He is inspired and yet he wants books. He has seen the Lord and yet he wants books...He has been caught up in the third heaven, and he had heard things which it is unlawful for a man to utter, yet he wants books. He had written a major part of the New Testament and yet he wants books.

Hear hear!

Exposing and examining those things which are connected to, and promoted by, the 'Charles Spurgeon' movement. Link

via

Weekly teaching can be destructive to creativity.

I don't teach something that has not been a part of me for six months to a year. Think about it, if I asked you to talk about your wedding or something else that has changed you, would you really need notes?

What would happen if on Monday morning you sat at your computer and instead of staring at blank screen, you're already looking at ten teachings that could take place and decidiing which one was the most ready to be taught, or most needed to be taught?

And more insights recorded by Mike DeVries

It's been a busy week:

• I'm on a study break to do some planning for the next year.
• Our office administrator finished work at the church this week. She's moving closer to her husband's work. We knew she was going, but we didn't know when. Not ideal to happen on my study week but we're all happy for her. (I plan on telling people who ask for her, "She's no longer with us. She's gone on to a better place.")
• I've revamped the Richview website. I also tidied up a couple other sites.
• Yesterday, I talked to our denomination's Hamilton-Niagara association about the emerging church. It was a blast (for me, anyway). My outline is here, but be warned: it's a PDF.

FromMark Pierson:

I remain convinced that the future of the Church in the West doesn't lie in the Emerging Church movement. The value of this movement is to influence and provoke the inherited church forms into change rather than to replace them. Still a vital role.

(Via Rev. Mike.)

The Globe and Mail: Ontario Minister will keep his job:

When Mr. Takhar was sworn into cabinet in October, 2003, he was required to put his assets into a blind trust to be administered by an "arm's length" trustee. The legislation is designed to ensure that ministers keep their private interests separate from their public duties.

Mr. Takhar has said he went to the office to discuss the university education plans for one of his daughters. He said he met with his wife, Balwinder, who is president of Chalmers, and with the company's chief financial officer, who also happens to be the trustee for his blind trust.

I don't know how you can claim to have an arm's length relationship with a company when you're married to the president of said company. Just another thing I don't understand about politics.

"How was work today, hon?" "You know I can't tell you."

When I was a kid, I remember wondering how the world could have let the Holocaust happen. I think I understand a bit more now. We repeat this mistake all the time.

I'm watching Hotel Rwanda tonight. I've procrastinated because I knew it would be brutal. The most haunting line so far comes after a U.S. journalist films people being massacred. The following is an exchange between the hotel manager (Paul Rusesabagina) and the journalist:

Paul Rusesabagina: I am glad that you have shot this footage, and that the world will see it. It is the only way we have a chance that people might intervene.

Journalist: Yeah, and if no one intervenes, it's still a good thing to show?

Paul Rusesabagina: [Surprised] How can they not intervene when they witness such atrocities?

Journalist: I think if people see this footage, they'll say, "Oh God, that's horrible!" and then go on eating their dinners.

The Bible is a book about God. It is not a religious book of advice about the "answers" we need about a happy marriage, sex, work, or losing weight. Although the Scriptures reflect on many of those issues, they are above all about who God is and what God thinks and wills. I understand reality only if I have an appreciation for who he is and what he desires for his creation and from his creation. (Haddon Robinson, The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching)

I spent last night at Queen's Park, Toronto with people a whole lot smarter than I am. The event was called To Change the World, and it was put on by the Work Research Foundation, a fascinating organization. It was a stimulating evening.

To Change the World has been on the road all across Canada. The speaker was Dr. James Davison Hunter, whom I liked instantly. I can't do justice to what he said, but I will give you the short version here. It's still long but it's all good stuff that could stimulate thinking for some time.

Waving or Drowning?: Insanity III:

In the best tradition of the Make Poverty History campaign, lets fire up an email campaign with the goal of encouraging the Government of Pakistan to end the detention of and all travel restrictions on Mukhtaran Mai.

In 2002, after a near-fatal heart attack, megachurch pastor Walt Kallestad began to look for a successor for his 12,000 member church. As he consulted other pastors, he was surprised by what he heard:

It was in Washington DC that I felt the ground shaking all around me. "Why would anyone want your church?" a pastor there responded. "Anyone who is serious about ministry today does not want to be stuck raising money for maintaining buildings and mortgages. They want to be on the cutting edge making a difference." As hard as it was to hear, I knew what he had just said was right. (The Passionate Church, p.23)

The church had grown to the point where they spent as much on landscaping as they had on the entire church budget in the early years.

Kallestad also realized that things were not well at the church. Although outwardly successful, something was missing at the core:

In the yearlong leave of absence from his duties at CCOJ, Kallestad found himself reflecting on the spiritual emptiness he was experiencing, and the growing realization that the megachurch he had helped to create was "missing the mark" in transforming people into disciples of Christ. CCOJ attracted a lot of people, but was there much real spiritual growth happening?

...Kallestad slowly become certain that the church-growth methods he knew, wrote about in his doctorate, and used to build a megachurch, weren't working anymore - not even cutting-edge methods of entertainment evangelism..."In my spirit, I knew that old principles and practices, including those for seekers, weren't working anymore. I was dying inside." (Rev Magazine, May/June 2005)

The Passionate Church describes what's happened next. Kallestad discovered a church (Baptist and Anglican!) in the United Kingdom that was reaching people, especially in their 20s and 30s, building authentic community, and transforming the area where they lived. He visited, and Mike Breen, the rector and team leader of that church, ended up joining the team at Kallestad's church.

Kallestad admits that several people (including long-term leaders) of CCOJ have wondered whether he's "gone off the deep end" with a midlife crisis brought on by a severe heart attack. When asked that question directly, he smiled and said, "Yes, I have gone off the deep end - I've gone deeper into God than ever before. God didn't cause my heart attack, but God had to reshape my heart, my vision, to do a new thing in my life and at this church. Since we opened our new campus in 1998, fewer people in our area are now going to ours or any other church. How does it profit one to build a great church, but lose the community?" (Rev Magazine)

I met with a pastor last week who, like me, has wrestled with the building and program expectations of maintaining churches. This isn't a new struggle; Eugene Peterson was writing about this decades ago.

It's exciting to see new churches form with a missional focus at the core. It's also exciting (to me, at least) to see pastors of existing churches go off the "deep end" and move away from maintenance to mission. May their tribe increase.

Text of Commencement address by Steve Jobs :

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

weblog :: jordoncooper.com:

It's Wendy and I am posting on Jordon's weblog...the reason I am here today is that Jordon won't be blogging here until he feels better and right now he is steadily getting worse and worse and it is harder and harder for him to post here. Keep him in your prayers.

Jordon is the reason a lot of us started blogging, and he's become a friend. Please keep him in your prayers. More info here and here.

Christina's school held a fundraiser today for orphaned children of AIDS parents today. The funds went via the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Sounds like they are compassionate but let me tell you, their compassion doesn't extend to old mostly deaf and blind dogs with foul breath.

The fundraiser was a dog show. We entered Teeki in two categories:

Best senior dog - Teeki placed in this competition; she came in third. I would have felt better, though, if there were more than three dogs entered.

Best personality - This sounds like the category for dogs that can't make it in any other. Because of this, everyone and their dog entered. Teeki didn't place.

We could have won in the category of best dog-owner look alike. We were guaranteed second place because only one dog entered. Somehow I missed that.

The money went to a good cause but it will be a likely be the last time we have a prize-winning dog. Still, for now, we're number three!

P.S. We won a copy of Walter the Farting Dog, complete with a plush Walter that makes fart sounds when squeezed. Seems appropriate somehow.

From The Passionate Church:

Our culture, and as part of it the church, has developed into a management-oriented society. We want to manage growth, manage productivity, and manage human resources. In times of crisis, however, people do not turn to managers for help. In those times, we need leaders...

That is what the church is crying for today. Dan Kimball puts in this way: "Leadership in the emerging church is no longer about focusing on strategies, core values, mission statements, or church-growth principles. It is about leaders first becoming disciples of Jesus with prayerful, missional hearts that are broken for the emerging culture. All the rest will flow from this, not the other way around."

We need leaders who will step out of "doing church" and lead us to be the church. We need those who are not afraid to dive headfirst into our culture with the message of God's unconditional love and his incredible buy-back offer of redemption. But we in the church have failed to train men and women to lead in the style of Jesus. Perhaps we are ignorant. Maybe we are afraid. Whatever the excuse, we now have churches full of managers but lacking in leaders.

Pernell book tagged me. If you don't know what a book tag is, it's the Internet version of a chain letter. I have to answer the question and pass this on to five other friends. If I don't, Pernell will experience sewage problems or something, so I had better do this.

Number of Books I Own:

Just shy of two thousand and growing - I'm running out of bookshelves

The Last Book I Bought:

The Likeability Factor by Tim Sanders - Sure I need to read it but I was also thinking of giving it to Stephen Harper

The Last Book I Read:

Post-Rapture Radio by Russell Rathburn, a quirky little book with some fantastic insights

Books That Mean a Lot to Me:

These are not the deepest or most scholarly books I have read, but they have all made an impact.

1. Rebuilding Your Broken World by Gordon MacDonald - This book was written by a pastor who had an affair, someone I admired early in my ministry. This book opened came at a formative time in my life and made me a lot more realistic about weakness and a lot more appreciative of grace.

2. Building the Bridge as You Walk on It by Patrick Quinn - On choosing deep change over slow death.

3. Soul Salsa by Len Sweet - This was just a really fun book with some fantastic quotes and a good emphasis on orthopraxy.

4. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - Anne is too vulgar for some but I enjoy reading her thoughts on writing and on life.

5. Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol - A challenging book on poverty and social justice.

6. The Present Future by Reggie McNeal - How to de-convert from churchianity.

7. The Church in Emerging Culture ed. by Len Sweet - I loved the interaction between the contributors. More books should be written in this format.

8. Unfreezing Moves by Bill Easum- Helping a church move beyond growth or even health to join Jesus on the mission field.

9. The Art of Pastoring by David Hansen - The subtitle says it all: "Ministry without all the answers." Eugene Peterson says, "This is the freshest and most honest book on pastoral work you're ever likely to come upon." I agree.

I'd list more but I have to stop sometime

Tag 5 More:

1. Charlene Dash

2. Ed De Freitas

3. Bene Diction

4. Rachel Cunliffe

5. Rev. Mike

and because it's hard to stop

6. Andrew Hamilton

7. Mark D. Roberts

Last night, our small group got together for its final meeting. We had a great time eating and talking. One of the members of our small group this year has been Dr. Hal MacBain. Dr. MacBain is now in his late eighties. He was a church planter, innovator, and the first president of the Fellowship.

Dr. MacBain has every right to criticize those of us who are younger. I'm sure I will never do a fraction of the things he was able to do. I'm sure those of my generation baffle him a little, yet he has chosen to be gracious. He is supportive, honest, and frequently has a twinkle in his eye. He zinged me a few times last night and had us all laughing.

Somehow we got talking about a controversial Baptist pastor of Toronto from years ago, T.T. Shields. I was talking about how he dismissed deacons who didn't agree with him and expelled 300 members of his church and picked fights with the prime minister of the day. I can talk the history, but to Dr. MacBain it is not history. It was his life.

He spoke last night of his own relationship with T.T., and his own leadership in the early days of the Fellowship. When Dr. MacBain was president of the Fellowship over fifty years ago, he was 37 like I am now. In his own way he was dealing with an emerging culture and moving courageously into new areas of ministry without knowing how it would all turn out.

I don't mean to write a hagiography here. Dr. MacBain is human like all of us. But once in a while you get a glimpse of the type of person you'd like to become if God ever gave you the grace. It's humbling to see someone in his late eighties model the type of faithfulness and integrity and courage that I can only aspire to at this point.

From emergesque:

Facts Every Christian Should Know

Every 3 seconds a child dies from disease.

Every 7 seconds a child dies from hunger.

11 million kids under 5 die every year from malnutrition.

Poverty kills 20,000 every day.

There are 6.4 billion people in the world.

The "developed world," of which the US is a part, comprises less than 1 billion people.

1.2 billion people attempt to live on less than $1 a day.

I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.

Psalm 140:12

Link

Not found via LT but he wanted a link anyway.

My daily Google alert brought me this comment today from Thinklings Weblog - comments on 'The Threat of the Emerging Church':

3. Darrel

I read a blogger by the name of Daryl Dash who is a great Batist preacher in Canada. He had a great evaluation of the EC. I don't know how to link but here its is:

http://www.fellowship.ca/theology/emerging/article.pdf

His normal blog is dashhouse.com

Thursday, May 19, 2005 @ 9:43 am

Great Baptist preacher in Canada? Guess they don't know me, huh?

TallSkinnyKiwi: Mud Slinging Over. Time to Fly:

...I really don't have the time to go around sticking up for everyone. How much better for all of us if we recognize our true enemy is probably not sitting on a pew in a different church than us...

And I am not saying that we should stop the discipline of examining ourselves daily or welcoming constructive criticism, but I am saying that I think a lot of us have done enough explaining and defending to feel like we are freed up again to get back to the mission of helping God reconcile all things to Himself, and not to feel dampened.

Or in other words, the harvest is ripe. The season is now. Jesus is with us. Its time for young people to rise up with wings likes angels, time to FLY (as my old pastor Chuck Swindoll said once) . . . and don't let anyone clip your wings!

Well said, Andrew.

I don't think we ever move beyond needing kindly rebukes, and we should stay open to that. But I've never forgotten this quote I picked up in a comment related to EmergentNo:

Don't you remember what Gandalf said to Theoden? "even now Wormtongue plays a cunning game and wins a throw, by delaying us from our tasks..."

A stimulating paper (warning: PDF format) examining how local congregations in the early church spent their money, and the implications for today:

While reading some patristic documents recently I was startled to discover that the Church Fathers are univocal in their insistence that the bulk of the revenue collected by a local church belonged by right to the poor. There was no exception among them that a large percentage of what was collected by a local congregation would be used for its own maintenance and ministry. In fact, to do so would have been viewed by them as a misappropriation of funds.

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Dan Kimball: A day at the Gay Parade with my very heavy computer bag:

There were thousands of people here on a Sunday morning , who weren't in church meetings happening at the same time. Can't we do something about all this? How will a church be Jesus to our community and those outside of our churches, gay, straight, whatever people are. But there is such a disconnect between people and most of our churches today.

I don't know what to do. But, I want to do something. I want our church to "be" something. But, my back and shoulders aren't hurting as much because the weight of the bag is now off me. Lord, help us know what to do, and what to be.

When I was in a small church I couldn't wait to get to a bigger one. I may have been in too much of a rush. According to this, small is the new big:

Small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change the business model when your competition changes theirs.

Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.

Small means that you can answer email from your customers.

Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others, while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell stories to people who want to hear them.

A small law firm or accounting firm or ad agency is succeeding because they're good, not because they're big. So smart small companies are happy to hire them.

A small restaurant has an owner who greets you by name.

A small venture fund doesn't have to fund big bad ideas in order to get capital doing work. They can make small investments in tiny companies with good (big) ideas.

A small church has a minister with the time to visit you in the hospital when you're sick.

Is it better to be the head of Craigslist or the head of UPS?

Small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big.

Don't wait. Get small. Think big.

I know this is written for business, but lots of studies suggest that small churches (including house churches) really are more effective than big ones. Worth thinking about.

From Life Together, some adapted blogging rules for Christians:

Hold their tongues, refusing to blog or comment uncharitably about a Christian brother or sister;

Cultivate the humility that comes from understanding that they, like Paul, are the greatest of sinners and can only blog in God's sight by grace;

Read "long and patiently" so that they will understand their fellow Christian's need;

Bear the burdens of their brothers and sisters in the Lord, both by preserving their freedom and by forgiving their sinful abuse of that freedom;

Blog God's word to their fellow believers when they need to hear it;

Understand that Christian authority is characterized by service and does not call attention to the person who blogs.

From Christianity Today:

Spurgeon broke with tradition and convention; he would not preach stilted sermons. As pointed out he spoke in common language to common people - in a dramatic, eloquent, even humorous way. He painted word pictures.

If there was "newness" about Spurgeon's method, it was that he strove to be a communicator. Spurgeon never forgot that if a preacher fails to communicate - regardless of ability, sincerity, theology or natural gifts - a preacher has failed. So he addressed people where they were and spoke simply to their deepest needs. That is innovation at its best and would make a preacher effective in any age.

For those of us who know a little about Spurgeon, it's easy to forget that he was considered crude and relevant in his day. Not a bad model to follow overall.

I spent this week listening to five messages from James MacDonald. James and I are very different. He is a megachurch pastor; I am not. He is not emerging; I appreciate parts of the emerging church conversation. He has an entourage; I do not. Mostly, we differ a lot on style and personality, which really isn't that important.

Here's what I learned from him this week, and why I appreciated him:

1. We are not unique - James loves to confront the church on where it has accommodated culture. He did a great talk on how we are not unique and we need to stop our self-absortion and quest for self-fulfilment. He made some good points here. No matter how much we critique our therapeutic culture, we still carry some of that into our faith. This was a good reminder that it really isn't about us.

2. Don't soften the hard edges - Sometimes you get the sense that we try to soften the hard edges of the Bible. James refuses to do this. I think (and I could be wrong) that some of us have become comfortable challenging churches with hard truths, but we're not as comfortable stating hard truths to the culture at large. We need to be able to do both. I learned and saw this in James' life. He doesn't soften the message for anybody.

3. Don't complicate simple issues - James can be faulted, I think, for sometimes oversimplifying complex issues. I could be faulted, I think, for overcomplicating simple issues. I think I can learn from him.

4. Live what you say - James was talking about personal integrity and holiness. He said that he has filters on his computer and his home TV has a code that only his wife knows. It was nice to see someone talk about this and to admit that he's put stuff in his own life to prevent him from doing things he preaches against.

5. Don't confuse style and substance - James is conservative in doctrine but quite flexible in style. It was good for him to demonstrate that we shouldn't confuse issues of style and substance. The two don't go together.

6. Appreciate those who are wired differently - Despite James teaching that we are not all unique, it's quite clear that James could be nobody else but James. One of the best moments of self-awareness came when he outlined three styles of teaching, and acknowledged that any one style (including his - prophetic and confrontational) needs the others. I was glad to see James realize that he needed others with different styles. This is a good insight for all of us.

7. Communication styles are changing - I don't know what this means, but James is the more old-style tell-it-like-it-is preacher, and isn't primarily conversational. He seems to have a strong following among younger generations. Maybe there is a shift away from conversational speaking styles back to proclamational. This might be a trend worth watching.

8. Love your wife - James gave the best message I've ever heard to men on marriage. It would be hard to walk away and not be challenged in a positive way.

9. Make room for men in the church - James doesn't seem to lack testosterone. He might go the other way, but he made some good points about churches being more feminine than masculine (flowers, sappy songs). Worth thinking about.

I think we can learn from those who are different from us. These are some of the ways I benefited from someone this week who is very different than I am.

We offer this in response to recent criticisms, with the hope that it will cause some to better understand us and others to find hope in a document that they can sign on to.

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After a good week in Muskoka, I'm back home.

This was my first foray into denominational life since the decision on gender. I think it's still fair to say that there is a strong undercurrent against the decision that was made, but I continue to be surprised by how different the Fellowship is outside of urban centers like Toronto. It's almost like there are two Fellowships.

I'm surprised how many people mentioned they read this blog within the Fellowship - more than I thought.

I'm encouraged by some of what I see going on. There are lots of struggling churches, and the denomination overall is flat-lined, but there are some signs of hope. A couple of things really encouraged me this week - good people being considered for important positions.

I'm also encouraged that Heritage came to a good decision re: Bill Webb's book, Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals. There was some pressure to sanction the book as falling outside the school's doctrinal statement. Webb is a professor there. The board met the other night and have concluded that the book doesn't fall outside of their doctrinal statement, whatever the book's merits. That was good news.

I was really curious to hear James MacDonald after hearing so much about him. James is sort of like Dr. Phil only meaner (no offense to James or Phil). His favorite phrases are "flat out" and "straight up". I really enjoyed his teaching overall. He is a little on the confrontational side (a little????), and sometimes is guilty of oversimplifying complex issues, but he is clear and he had some good things to say. He especially had a good talk on marriage this morning.

I could tell a lot of funny stories about James' teaching. He made an off-handed comment about hating floral decorations in church, and you should have seen them scramble to remove everything remotely girlie from the stage. When the alpha dog barks the beta dogs listen.

I'm glad I went. I needed a few low-key days away. But am I ever glad to be back home with my family.

A great post by LT:

After experiencing a couple of house churches I'm became convinced that I didn't want to go back to a larger congregation. I've tried very hard not to use language that condemns more traditional models. I'm not convinced everyone should be in a house church. I wouldn't advise traditional churches to convert. Nor would I say that ministry that is conducted in other forms of church are invalid.

Despite all this I think that a house church is better fit to help us do what we are called to do as a church.

LT makes his case, but also concludes with a great paragraph:

There are a lot of pastors who see the deficiencies of what they work in and are attracted by other models. I’d be very hesitant to make any major changes in church for people who are very used to functioning in church in a certain way. It may not be ideal, but it can still be very fruitful. There are people called to minister in all sorts of different situations. They should not be judged based on what model they use, but their faithfulness to God and their calling.

Jordon last Sunday:

LT last year: