Category: church

Church Fantasies

I recently read an article in the Midwest Covenant Messenger, the newsletter of the Midwest Covenant Conference. In the article, Dr. John Wenrich was quoted from a conference held this year. In talking about church growth, Dr. Wenrich stated there are two fantasies present in many churches.

  • The first fantasy is that there can be growth (numeric and otherwise) without change.
  • The second fantasy is that there can be change without some degree of pain.

I’ve been in a number of meetings and conversations, especially recently, where the subject of church growth (specifically, numbers) has come up. No one, though, is talking about making painful choices. There’s a fantasy that growth will just happen, I guess. It’s as though people are saying, “Let’s continue doing the same things we’ve always done, but just do them better!” According to Dr. Wenrich, that’s a recipe for stagnation, not growth.

My wife has a saying which has been speaking to me. She’s even drawn it up on a little poster. The saying is:

Dreams can quickly become fantasies if we are not willing to risk and bleed for our future.

I’m resolving not to have any dreams that I’m not willing to bleed for. How about you?

You can read the whole article in the Covenant newsletter here.

Anything worthy of praise

I don’t want to end my thoughts about the Willow conference on a down note. The theme was “what’s good in the world”, and I really appreciated this. The conference planners said that they understand that artsy people (and it was an arts conference) can tend to be a depressed lot. The idea was to look at the things that are going right.

I don’t consider myself an artsy guy, but I also want to look for what’s right with the world. Paul gave us the same advice, to look for anything worthy of praise.

Besides, they gave us cool wristbands that had a USB drive in them. Who couldn’t be happy with that?

Willowburn

I’m at Willow Creek Community Church this week, attending a conference. I really don’t like it here.

I don’t hate Willow. I like Willow. I like their goals of reaching people and training churches. That’s all good. I just feel so uncomfortable when I’m in the building. I think it must just be me. In my job, I regularly attended conferences, so I’m rather jaded, I suppose.

But there’s something else going on. I’m feeling so awkward now around wealth, I guess. I notice big houses more than I used to, I notice expensive furnishings and how people spend their money. It’s not comfortable to be this way. I feel like a poor man trapped in a rich man’s body.

So why am I here? I’m not really sure. Our director of programming approached me and offered to have the church pay for the registration fee. I knew that it would still cost me a bundle for transportation and lodging…but when she said this, I felt God saying that he would cover the rest of the cost. He did, too.

So that’s why I’m here, because I got the idea that God wanted me here. So I’m just guessing as to the specific goals God has — which is kind of typical. I decided that maybe there’s someone around I need to meet. I’ve already met a couple of young guys in ministry, so maybe that’s what it’s about for me.

Which makes it ok to be here. I’m just stumbling along with my eyes open. Me, a rich guy on the outside, being with other rich people, funded by rich people, at a rich church. I feel so out of place that I wonder if it shows.

Center Stage

Tim Schmoyer’s post of a post about worship teams resonated with me. There are two thoughts there; the one I am interested in here is the way we present the worship team. (Although the cross icon really bugs me, too).

I noticed it when I first started attending this seeker-sensitive church. The three or four singers stood across the front of the stage, and sang the songs while making eye-contact with the audience. I say audience, not congregation, because it really did seem like a concert to me.

When I joined the worship team as a musician, I heard one of the singers encourage the rest to make this eye contact, and engage the people. This also seemed weird. It was weird, I guess, because the tradition I came from did things so differently. In that tradition, the worship leader would be close to center stage, but the other singers would be off to the side. The leader would often focus on the audience, but the backup singers never seemed to do that.

It struck me as odd that when singing words like, “we give you glory,” the singers would be looking straight out at the people. Where should they be looking? I don’t know, but whatever you do, don’t look at me!