This Present Future

Friday, February 25, 2005

Reggie McNeal - South Carolina Baptist Convention

God loves new

The people of God have been in captivity for years. Some long for the good old days; others grew up in captivity and never knew their parent’s world.

In the middle of this, God speaks a word through Isaiah: “Forget the former things. Don’t dwell in the past. See, I am doing a new thing” (Isaiah 43:18-19).

When God says he is doing a new thing, he says something important. God is always doing something new. A lot of people think of God as old and old-fashioned. This impacts everything we do. We think God likes old music. It affects our prayer life; we tell him what is going on. (If we spent more time listening in prayer instead of talking...maybe we are the ones that need to catch up with God!) God loves new. Creation was a new thing. Throughout the Bible, God does new things - including doing old things in new ways.

When God does something new in our lives, it sometimes looks like a detour (e.g. crossing the Red Sea after leaving Egypt). The dry-ground crossing took a response of faith (step in before the water is stopped). Every generation needs its own dry-ground crossing. Faith does not have battery packs. Faith is a verb, not a noun. It is always an active response, not intellectual assent from the head up.

The Incarnation is another example of a new thing. We see it clearly looking back, but nobody was looking for it. Who could make up the fact that the God who made the universe would choose to sweat, get cold. The bread of life needing milk; the light of the world crawling through a birth canal. God dying. Who could imagine this type of thing?

Other new things: Pentecost. We have a new birth; God is making a new heaven and a new earth; he gives us a new name. “Behold I am making everything new.” From Genesis to Revelation, that is the book on God. He is always up to something new.

We’re going to be looking at the new world that is emerging. There are people who think that the new world is threatening God. He is not caught off guard by it. Can we have the courage to say yes in this context? When new worlds emerge, people are always scared that we have lost God in the transition. He is way ahead of us.

Present Future

The future is not something God is working toward; it is where he is working from. The future is a virus that is looking for any way to break in. God starts from the end back. He works back from the future. We never see God coming; we see him going.

The future is invading the present. God is not caught off guard. We need to talk about futures that have already happened. Because God is not off guard, he has already made provision.

John 4: the disciples were in the bubble. Insular. Verses 34-35: four months more and then we’ll get serious about mission. Our strategic plans are sometimes nice ways to say no to God.

What do you look at? Problems, tasks. Jesus sees opportunities. Whatever we see determines what we’re working on.

Jesus did what he saw his father doing. What are you seeing God doing? Are you responding to that or your job description, people, etc. We’ve been taught in the modern era that we see God in a book. He is there, but our vision needs to be mightily expanded.

We are insular. We’ve built a parallel universe. Instead of intersecting all the avenues of culture (arts, government, finance), we’ve built a separate domain. We have our own music awards, radio stations, bookstores, cruise ships. We eat with people like us, vacation with people like us. We go in for port calls but we scramble back.

We need the capacity to see beyond ourselves (John 4:34-35). The biggest problem the disciples had was they grew up in church. Most of us need to get over our church experience. In a lot of Christian crowds, there are relatively few new disciples. This should scare us.

If God had given the Pharisee’s line, John 3:16 would say, “For God so loved the church...” The Pharisees talked about the kingdom of God too, but they thought it was all about getting enough people to behave. People who think we will bring in the kingdom by fixing the culture - only Pharisees think like this.

Pharisees - “You want God, come and get it.” Religious people are always a problem for God. Dress like us, become like us. Pharisees had their own subculture. We are the Pharisees. Everything we love to hate about the Pharisees is what the culture sees in us. They don’t associate Jesus with his followers.

There are people who come to every seminar I teach looking for a better way to do church. That is NOT the point.

Present Future One:
The collapse of the church culture

It is not all about the church. Jesus did not pray, “Thy church come.” There is a reason for the church, but most people in the church don’t know it. The church is not the destination.

Factors influencing the collapse of church culture:

1. <1925 - this generation accomplished something important; fought war; created retirement (a temporary thing)

2. 1926-1945 - builders share common values with previous generation; more cultural consensus; built cities and transportation

3. STARTING HERE: rise of generational cultures - 1946-1964 - Boomers - you have a break from the values of the previous generations - new music, they didn’t create the experience economy but they rode in on it; from a manufacturing to a service economy; they began to outsource the cake (we now outsource the party); when you used to go a mall you ate before you went - no food courts or roller coasters; it takes years to sell a million copies of Knowing God; takes months to sell a million copies of Experiencing God; also a search for belonging; believe we can do it better, if they build a perfect church they will come

4. 1965-1983 - Gen-X; they think the boomer worship services (orchestrated) are lame; they don’t want everything flowed and scripted; two biggest words: authenticity and relationships; fewer but deeper relationships; saddest thing is to walk in on Gen-Xers doing boomer worship services; biggest struggle is between Boomer and Gen-X relationships (boomers work 90 hours a week; it takes 90 hours and two careers to attain our perception of a middle-class culture; Boomers see Gen-Xers as slackers; Gen-Xers are not career people, they are portfolio managers; as they look up the corporate ladder they see Boomer rear-ends and they don’t like the view; they don’t work for the company, the company works for them; boomers complain but Gen-Xers don’t say much, they even check out of church quietly) - to minister to these people, need to ask how I’m going to hang out with them

5. 1984-2000 - Millennial; the first truly digital generation; didn’t have to unlearn anything to be digital; doing homework for them is to sit at the computer with the TV on and two MSN conversations going while listening to illegal downloaded music; these kids come to church where we are all doing the same thing at the same time; they are bored out of our minds; there is a reason they quit coming as soon as they can

6. 2000 on - Nexters

You have different cultures even within one ethnic group. In the old world, we put everyone in the same room. In the old world we worshipped together and separated for “Christian education.” In the new world it is the opposite. We will worship in our heart language and do spiritual formation inter-generationally.

We have to change the conversation. We keep coming up with the same answers because we keep framing the questions the wrong way. The wrong question is how we do church better, but that is the question most of us are trying to answer. The only reason church attendance has been holding up is because people are living longer.

We are trying to sell bottled river water beside the river. People want to go right to the river.

The newer the generation, the less effective we are with them (lots of boomers, fewer Gen-Xers, even fewer Millennials)

The real question: How do we de-convert from churchianity to Christianity? Instead of doing church, how about asking how to be church?

This is what happened in the book of Acts. The book of Acts is about the people trying to catch up with God. They were clueless; they were playing catch-up. This should comfort us because we are still playing catch-up. We are even playing catch-up to culture.

If you want to learn how to pastor in North America, don’t go to a conference. Go to Indonesia or India.

Besides generational cultures, the other factor leading to the collapse of the church culture is the postmodern transition. We have templates in our minds from the modern era (denominations, linear thinking, idea of dissecting to understand, tearing up Scripture in order to understand it - breaking everything into constituent parts - people today looking for someone to put it together, not tear it apart). We are in a quantum world; all about relationships. Postmoderns believe that the things you don’t see are more real than the things you do.

Everything from apologetics to communication to being has changed. Postmoderns don’t know why they need to leave work or home to find God in another silo of their lives. They see church as something for church people. We’re not on their screen. They see them the same way as we see strip clubs; we don’t pass by wondering if we should turn in.

I go to a McDonalds when I come to town and ask the Millennial behind the cash where a church is in the neighborhood. They don’t have a clue, even when I ask in full view of the church.

In the postmodern world, it isn’t about getting them to come and see. The old world was about program development. It is now about people development. It is about being on mission rather than being members.

Present Future Two:
The switch from church growth to kingdom growth

The wrong question: how do we grow this church? All our church-growth stuff has just repackaged the people we already had. We have shut down the mom-and-pops and gone to the wholesale clubs. It used to be that smaller churches reached people and funneled them to the large churches. We still try drive-by evangelism shootings.

We have no impact because we don’t have relationships with pagan people, and postmoderns won’t listen to people they don’t know.

Tough question: How do we transform our community? How do we get out of what we are doing? If God sucked your church out of existence, who would notice?

We budget money for church stuff. We hire staff for church people. In the new world, the scorecard is changing. It’s going to be about turning the church inside out.

“Thy kingdom come.” The church is not the destination; the kingdom is. God is always at work beyond its people. God gave his image to people - not to church people only. God doesn’t need a special group of people to love. God created a people through Abraham to bless the nations of the world.

If you change your conversation, you change your world.

There is no special love of God for his people. Pharisees go crazy listening to Jesus’ stories of God’s indiscriminate love. Religious people would let the elder brother of the prodigal son finish the speech. God blesses people who aren’t right, who aren’t like us. We can afford to bless people we don’t agree with. If we blessed them more, we would have more opportunity to have conversation with them.

Stories like Jonah and the prodigal son are all about church people not liking what God is doing. People outside the lines often keep God’s people in line. This drives Pharisees nuts.

God created a people through whom he could bless the world. We get a chance to participate in God’s mission in the world. God is always at work in the world; the question is whether God is at work among his people. Culture is more spiritual than church; we have running church figured out without him.

The question is if we will catch this wave. If you want to find God and see what he is doing, get out of church to where he is active.

Present Future Three:
A new reformation: releasing God’s people

Congregations who get it (mission) have more in common with those of other denominations than with other churches in their denominations who don’t get it.

If we’re still playing the church game, we can’t release God people. It’s not about releasing people into church to make it better. It’s about releasing people FROM church so the community can be transformed.

People don’t have time to be both good club members and missionaries.

Wrong question: How do we turn members into ministers?

The hair-ball in God’s ability to pull this off is the clergy. We don’t need people to fill church jobs. We need heart-on-heart transformation, and to help people understand how to be missionaries.

Tough question: How do we turn members into missionaries?

Wouldn’t it be just like God to disguise missionaries like businesspeople, teachers, etc.? We need to change the scorecard. We reward people for doing church bulletin boards. There is a reason people aren’t lining up for ministry positions: they don’t have time to run churches or to hang out at the clubhouse.

This can’t happen if the church leaders aren’t spending time in the community. How many organizations are we working with? How many strategic alliances are we forming? Get out of the silo.

In the new world, community service is the door to relationship, not seeker services. We need to figure out how to be church at Tim Hortons, board rooms, hockey rinks. They don’t even need the mother ship.

The answer isn’t a model. Modern people look for models. The Bible is not a book of models; it is the rehearsing of radical obedience. There is only one Abraham story, one David story, and one of your stories. We are trying to clone something that didn’t have life in the first place.

Where the kingdom of God lands, there is a church multiplication movement (not a church planting movement). It takes the Spirit to multiply churches. It’s not our job to bring in the Kingdom of God; we petition him to do this. God does it; he just cuts us in on the deal. If we got that, it would relax us. Our evangelism doesn’t work because people feel the pressure, like we’re out to get quotas.

Many of the large churches of the world, we haven’t heard of. They’re in Indonesia and India. The house church movement is part of what is happening in the kingdom. Another sign are prayer movements, not in the clubs but in the streets. Also high lay prominence, not just in support but in leadership roles. Women usually have a much higher priority than in the North American context. It’s all about street ministry and community transformation.

Where the kingdom of God is springing up, there aren’t a lot of programs. It’s not a parallel culture. It may be about economic development (a missionary understands that helping a village get pigs can lead to spiritual transformation); education, etc. “What this group needs is a good pig farm” not “vacation Bible school.” If a village most needs a well, we expect the missionary to work on that. We live in the largest English-speaking mission field in the world.

Community transformation doesn’t bring in the Kingdom, but the chances are higher that we will build relationships. We don’t do ministry in order to evangelize people; that makes people feel used. It’s like inviting people to a party and springing a sales pitch for fire alarms on them. We come across like a commission salesperson.

The idea from Peter is that people come to us with can-openers to find out why we are different, rather than us going to people with can-openers to pry them open.

We reduce the Gospel to only salvation. It is much bigger than that. It is about the Kingdom; about God blessing people. It’s about more than destination. It’s about life and peace. If you experience the abundant life that Jesus talks about, you’ll have to beat people off with a stick.

The Gospel is not about the minimum requirements for escaping hell. The devil can sign off on the sinner’s prayer. There is no sinner’s prayer. We have made salvation about signing off on doctrine; the devil can do that. Jesus’ call is, “Follow me.” Following Jesus means hanging out where he is hanging out. He is not hanging out at the clubhouse.

Apologetics: you don’t have to convince postmoderns of the existence of God. They already believe in that and UFOs and whatever.

The Gospel is, “God is for you!” We are not Christians - the conversation is over because the world isn’t interested in Christians. We are followers of Jesus.

In the church, it’s our job to get them signed up and tithing. In the kingdom, it’s our job to be scattering seed.

One of the problems is that we’ve brought people into leadership who have a need to gather people for their own significance. Apostolic leaders don’t gather people; they send people. To be apostolic, we have to release people all the time. That takes a lot of psychic strength.

This whole kingdom thing has implications for our buildings. If you don’t have a building, think long and hard about getting one (depending on your culture). I’m not telling any churches not to build buildings anymore. The question is what does the community need; if you build anything, build something for the community, not the church. e.g. “How can we turn that spot into the backyard for the neighborhood?”

If you want to run a Sunday school or a church, hold it in a restaurant on a Sunday morning rather than the church building. There may be people who will never go to the red-brick church who can experience God when you’re in the restaurant.

We substitute activity for vitality, because it helps keep us in denial.

Your church will NEVER vote to be missional. They will always vote to go back to Egypt, to the problems they’re comfortable with. You create this by creating venues for people to practice these values. Whatever you want people to do, you do first. We will behave ourselves into this, not learn ourselves.

People are starving to death to touch other people. Jesus told us we would find our lives if we gave them away.

Whatever gets rewarded gets done. Make conversations about lives being changed. When conversations change, you know the culture has changed.

Don’t get rid of the church; make it sending agency rather than a base to hold people. In the new world, there will be a polyglot of forms for the church to take.

Present Future Four:
The return to spiritual formation

Tough question: how do we develop followers of Jesus?

Jesus and the woman caught in adultery: Grace includes telling the truth (stop doing that, it’s going to kill you); it begins with love. Jesus put himself at risk with her; he could be hit with stones too. He identifies with her to speak truth into her life.

You can champion people without endorsing their beliefs. People are drawn to people with convictions.

You’ve got to decide whether you believe in God or if you believe God. Those are two different things.

In the old world, we taught people and sent them out to validate their experience. In the new world, we help people make sense of what God is already doing in their lives. We help them develop vision to see God.

God is at work everywhere. The real task is to help people see it (John 4:34-35). Help people find God not just in book studies but in life. The Bible does not change your life. The Bible is not a member of the Trinity. Spiritual formation will be life-based and learner-driven rather than text-based and text-driven; speaking to people about their lives from the Bible rather than from the Bible to their lives.

When I read my daughter’s notes, I hear her voice and see her face because I have a relationship with her. I could hand it to someone else and they would learn about my daughter but they wouldn’t know her. We don’t read God’s Word to know about God. The goal is not to know about Him, it’s to know Him. The Pharisees did very good Bible studies.

When you get people to love Jesus, you don’t have to worry about getting them to read the Bible. They will tear it apart.

Treat spiritual formation as a marriage enrichment seminar. Work on the relationship side. Help people identify what they would like to see God do in their lives. They will then start to look for God in their lives.

If all your references to God are in historical texts, your people will think that’s where God is at work.

Present Future Five:
The shift from planning to preparation

The wrong question: How do we plan for the future? You will probably get what you plan for.

The better question: How do we prepare for the future?

God is the only one who has been in the future. Do you want to be the one planning to get there, or do you want God to steer you there?

I would rewrite this chapter. There are a lot of people who are fashioning vision statements who can’t see squat.

Personally, I would ask what the next chapter looks like - what do I see God doing? I try to help identify what their heart-hopes are. God is whispering to them all the time about the future. The next chapter is already present in your people.

We don’t come up with the vision. God comes up with the vision. It’s mostly about listening to him.

Another part is values (behavior). Take the belief word out, because we’ve screwed it up. It’s about behavior. You behave what you believe. Everything else is just religious talk.

If you don’t know what your values are, ask your husband or wife. In the church, it’s what you reward.

Results - the scorecard issue. Unless you change the scorecard, you can’t be missional. The old scorecard is stuff like how many people show up. We have to start counting differently: conversations more than conversions - multi-dimensional. Counting how much money we give away rather than how much we collect.

If you go missional, you will lose people. Can you live with this when you lose 25% of the people? It will get worse before it gets better, if it gets better at all.

Strengths - The North American culture focuses on what we’re not good at. We’ve all had our noses rubbed in the talents we don’t have. Your best shot at your best contribution is to do more of what you’re already good at. Balance is a myth. People were not built to be balanced. Your passion is where you are not normal. We will not be held responsible for talents we don’t have. You are not a problem for God to fix.

North American perfectionistic church culture tells you that you need to be good at everything. If you believe that, you won’t make your best contribution.

The stuff you’re good at are also your needs. You need to do it. It also makes you need others and their strengths. “When I run I feel his pleasure.”

It never occurs to a lot of us that we can bring a smile to the face of God (Psalm 149:4a).

Most ministry burnout is not moral failure; it’s from dealing with prolonged trivia. It’s about dealing with ministry out of your skill set, like being nibbled to death by a toothless piraña.

Learnings - what do I need to know? Most of us don’t know what we don’t know how to do. We need to get over that. Initiatives - do stuff you don’t know how to do to jump off the incremental curve. What are the initiatives you need to take, even though you don’t know how to do them yet? You’ll never learn how to surf until you get out there and get wet.

Present Future Six:
The rise of apostolic leadership

The world is a lot closer to 33 AD than 1970. What type of leadership will help us?

Wrong question: How do we develop leaders for church work?

Tough question: How do we develop leaders for the Christian movement?

Best strategy is simple (not easy): where has God already placed you? Do an influence audit. God has already positioned them as teachers, business leaders, soccer dads.

God is working back from the future. God is not caught off guard by the fact that you are a leader at this point. This should give you confidence.

God could have dropped you into leadership at a different point. He’s put you here right now. He has risked this movement on you. John the Baptist was the greatest transitional leader in history. If you don’t have doubts, you aren’t paying attention. Put your doubts don’t disqualify you from leadership if you look around and see God and what he’s doing.