Philip Jensen on church

I enjoyed this article What is Church for?


It's a challenging read. Our thoughts on church growth etc are so much compromised by ego for those of us in ministry (or married to ministers). 


You should read it. A couple of things that have come out of it for me:


Belonging vs believing.
PDJ argues that the current church growth theories that tell us to get people into church first, let them belong first, and then believe later, are wrong. The church doesn’t give us the gospel; the gospel gives us the church. The church is built by people coming to faith.


This was certainly my experience. I came to faith in Christ (through a SU camp) and immediately felt I was part of the church. So I set out to find a congregation to attend and be a part of. It was natural - and things like size and musical style didn't matter. I was looking for people who believed to learn the bible and pray with.


In the last ten years I think I've had much too much a focus on getting people into (my) church. Belonging has been what I've been aiming at, hoping that believing would follow. And there's been quite a few people who have come along. How it's generally worked (with exceptions) is that they've come along for a while (a year or two even). People have tried to make them feel welcome but eventually they've drifted out. And I've beaten myself up because I mustn't have made enough effort to integrate them. But there was no hunger for God's word there. They were not part of the church because there was no faith in Christ.


I need to do better with this.


Our church uses a connect, grow, serve model for how things are meant to work. It's tidy but flawed. Conversion is hinted at and hoped for somewhere between connect and grow. And also, what did we train for at theological college? To be socially lubricating people who can build a group of people around ourselves? 


Of course there's nothing new here. But I need to refocus.


Church planting
"There’s any number of people who are very keen to plant churches, but they’re not actually planting churches; what they’re doing is founding their own church, which they are going to stay in for the rest of their life as it grows bigger and bigger into a megachurch."


Ungenerous? Truthful? What do you think?


Building my church vs building the church
Accordingly, we shouldn’t be too concerned about which local or earthly gathering is ‘built’ by our efforts. If I evangelize someone and (by God’s Spirit) he is gathered into Christ’s heavenly assembly, it doesn’t really matter which earthly assembly he ends up in (so long as it is one in which he will continue to be built). Or if I pour time into someone to help them grow and develop and mature, and they take their gifts and do their building work somewhere else (not in my church), what does it matter?


Yeah. I think that this is where a ministry like AFES is at advantage to us in suburban churches. With uni ministry you only expect to keep  people for a few years. We expect to keep them and so our desire to see God's kingdom increase is muddied with our desire to see our church increase. Teaching RE is good for me in this. It's a ministry that I can pour myself into, praying for increase in God's kingdom without having any expectation of short term increase in my own church.


Did you read it? Any thoughts?

polity is brilliant

Good polity anyway.

When Andrew graduated from MTC, he came back to Qld to do a year of study to turn him into a Presbyterian minister. One of the subjects he had to study was church polity. I remember huffing and puffing about it. Waste of time, etc.

I don't think so anymore.

This week I've been reading about (another) ministry disaster. Not so disastrous as some (no immorality or money involved) but big and public and messy. And understandable. With this particular set of circumstances, it is obvious that this would have happened sooner or later.

Of course, individuals are responsible for their own words and actions, but in this case they weren't helped by the fact that the church's government was woefully inadequate. There has to be a formal system whereby complaints can be heard and ministers can be corrected by their peers or superiors. There has to be checks and balances in place so that one person is not required to carry too great a load of responsibility or to hold too much power.

This is what well thought out polity is about. It is often what is neglected when a ministry grows very quickly. I think polity should be put in the Christian Thought bag (with doctrine and church history) and given a thorough look at at theological college.

church planting expectations

Mikey Lynch has an interesting link to a talk by Al Barth on church planting in European cities. Mikey makes this comment at the end:

Al Barth admits that most of the church planting work they are involved in is much smaller and slower. Many of their church plants, even in NYC are more like 80-180 people, after 5 years. Nevertheless, we still must stretch and aim higher and more boldly, resisting the urge to pessimism and resignation.

Here's my question. What does it means to 'aim high and more boldly'?

I've heard some high and bold dreams. A couple of keen church planters I know of have spoken of their aims to have 100 people at the end of year one, 200 at end of year two... But how helpful is this? When you've been so vocally bold about what's going to happen, how do you cope with it when things don't go your way? When after 12 months you've got very little to show for your efforts? Despair? Depression? Anger?

It's God who gives the growth. There is a point where growth projections are presumptuous - telling God what he is going to do. He may give your congregation growth, he may not. You may do everything right - plant good quality seed and water diligently - but God may withhold growth. Or he may give growth to someone you think doesn't deserve it. That's his choice.

I care about the gospel going out. But I fear for a generation of church planters who in their zeal for the gospel may have unrealistic expectations. Ministry is long and hard and exposes all our weaknesses.

So how do we aim 'higher and boldly, resisting the urge to pessimism and resignation' while keeping our feet on the ground and our pride in check? How do we trust that God will build his church (like he's said he will) while remembering that he hasn't promised to build it in my patch or through me?

Thoughts?

hymns of the lukewarm church

Thanks Nathan for pointing this out.



My favourite ones are Be Thou My Hobby and Take My Life and Let Me Be.  Which ones appeal to you?

slavery to sheet music

Craig has written a piece for Sydney Anglicans on directing music at church. This bit touched my heart:

Another major challenge, for my church at least, has been managing the sheet music. It is continually going missing, or winding up in the wrong folder, and we spend precious minutes at rehearsal trying to track it down.

So true, so true.

Sheet music is dreadful stuff.  It tries to rule my life.  Before church on a Sunday I just want to get on with practicing.  But I have to search for the sheet music first, and make sure there is a copy for everyone.  During church I want to play in a key in which the congregation can actually sing.  But the sheet music says G major, so what can I do?  And I don't want to play 4 different chords per bar but that's what's written!  After church I want to go talk to people.  I don't want to do the tedious task of filing stupid music away.  But I have to.  I am a slave to these little black dots on A4 pieces of paper.  I need them so I have to obey them. And what they scream out is 'FILE ME!' and 'PLAY ME!'  But I don't want to do either.

I need a solution. 

Here are my options:

1. We put a nice little ipad on each music stand. 
I think there could be a system with CCLI where when song owners publish a song, we send it electronically to CCLI - both sheet music and a recording (we already do this - but we could do it in a way that it could easily be put on a website - Scorch or whatever).  Then CCLI chuck it up on a site and churches can pick their songs and play them from the screen.  If ti was done in a decent program, we could transpose it easily and have just a melody and chords, just chords and words, or a full piano score.  The program could keep a track of what music we are using and bill us accordingly.

Pros

• Clean.  After the initial registration, there would be no paperwork.  No CCLI returns to put in, no sheet music to lose.  No paper, no mess!  
• Useful. You could do transpositions or whatever with a single click!  You could play a demo of the song so you know what you are aiming for. You could use whichever version of the score was most helpful to you: chords and words, melody and chords, full piano...

Cons

• Non-existent. Such a system doesn't really exist yet.  Someone would need to make it.
• Expensive.  Hard to justify the expense when there are people starving in the world

2.   We ditch sheet music all together and memorise every song instead.

Pros

• Cheap.  Saves money on photocopying.
• Educational.  Memorization helps you understand the music better - if you understand it better, you'll improvise better and transpose better.
• Freeing.  Most sheet music (for modern songs at least) was never intended to be played.  Not having it there will free people up to play what they should play
• Clean.  No mess to clear up.  No music to file.
• Cooler.  You can play with a fan blowing in your face and the music won't fly away.
• Helpful.  Will show the drummers that we are as clever as they are.
• Satisfying.  Great adrenaline buzz at the start of each song. Excellent feeling if you make it to the end together.

 Cons

• Scary.  Suggesting this would freak people out.  
• Dangerous.  Higher possibility of major musical catastrophes... 

3.  We continue our lives of slavery to printed music.  
But who wants to?

Which option should we take?

Vagueness and 'Mighty to Save'

A fun discussion is happening over here on Peter's blog.

A commenter said this:


“I’ve grown a bit tired of songs that are like a theological treatise and afraid of getting personal with God.”

I hear this all the time.  Mostly I say nothing.  Not this time.  Here's what I wrote. 


Any song that sings like a theological treatise is probably just a bad song. But I’d love to know what songs you put in this category. We sing stuff that is quite meaty… but also engaging and moving. I don’t think I’d want particular songs on my church playlist if they had the emotional impact of a text book. But maybe we are all different on this, and songs that I experience as moving leave my sister in the next pew cold.

The other question I have is about ‘getting personal with God’. What do you mean by this? Is it through confession of sin, telling God how much you love him, hearing about and feeling moved by God’s love for you, or something else? I don’t have a problem with any of these things – it is just worth exploring what it is that you want a congregational singing experience to give you. I was chatting with a friend the other day and realised that what she wanted from congregational singing was a feeling of nearness to God that could be achieved without the drudgery of daily bible reading and prayer and patience with her children. And I want this too. I’m human so the song that builds for the first 3/4 and then climaxes before finishing with a string of whispered sweet nothings appeals to me. There’s buzz in that. Is that what you mean by getting personal with God?

What do you think?

community movie night

We're just home from an activities afternoon and movie night that our church ran in the park. It was great. Lots of people came and everything ran smoothly. I painted kids faces for over two hours. Full on. I was meant to be on balloon modelling, but face painting seemed a more desperate need*. There were four of us doing it. I specialised in Dalmatian and Spiderman faces. Not so good with pretty things like flowers and butterflies. Here's some of my work. It looked better before dinner.

* face painting also leaves you with some feeling in your fingers, unlike balloon modelling. Thanks Kutz.

come to our movie night!

And check out our website.

trivia

Our church is having a trivia night tomorrow. Andrew and I are doing the questions - which is good because I'm bad at trivia and hate losing. A frustrating combination. I usually spend my time at such events trying not to look like a sore loser. Hey everyone, it's only a game isn't it! [Grrrrr.]

Much better that I get to ask the questions.

But my questions are good. I know all the answers. Andrew wrote the questions for the history/geography, sport and current events sections. I wrote questions about TV and the bible. There's also a creative section, just to freak everyone out.

For those who are coming, I recommend you brush up on your American drama, crime shows, reality tv, star wars and disney princess knowledge. And, read your bible. If you have time, also learn to write, sing and draw.

900 AV men for Jesus?

Nathan speaks about it here.

Similarly, I listen to Mark Driscoll but can't help thinking this is revoltingly egotistical and idolatrous.

How can this not end badly?

interesting

Today I was at church but not available to play piano (I was teaching Sunday School). No other pianists were available either. So there was no piano - just guitar and drums. As a congregation we sang better than we've sung for ages. More volume, more enthusiasm.

[Trying not to take it personally.]

Maybe we try too hard.

Why have we stopped talking about evangelism?

Doesn't seem like evangelism's the thing to talk about anymore. 'Missional' is the hip word now.

Is there any difference between being 'missional' and being 'evangelistic'?

My hunch is that evangelism is a more a person to person thing, but missional is a how-you-do-church-to-facilitate-large-scale-evangelism thing. Am I right?

In this post below, Phil Nicholson comments

"I think the danger of the church planting buzz is that we all want to be involved and will claim that we are doing it but without actually doing more evangelism than at present."

What do you think?

two bonhoeffer quotes on singing

There are some destroyers of unison singing in the fellowship that must be rigorously eliminated. There is no place in the service of worship where vanity and bad taste can so intrude as in the singing. There is, first, the improvised second part which one hears almost everywhere. It attempts to give the necessary background, the missing fullness to the soaring unison tone, and thus kills both the words and the tone. There is the bass or the alto who must call everybody's attention to his astonishing range and therefore sings every hymn an octave lower. There is the solo voice that goes swaggering, swelling, blaring, and tremulant from a full chest and drowns out everything else to the glory of its own fine organ. There are the less dangerous foes of congregational singing, the "unmusical," who cannot sing, of whom there are far fewer than we are led to believe, and finally, there are often those also who because of some mood will not join in the singing and thus disturb the fellowship.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from LIFE TOGETHER, translated by John Doberstein, Harper and Row, 1954, p. 60.

"It is not you that sings, it is the Church that is singing, and you, as a member of the Church, may share in its song."

Bonhoeffer, p. 61.

What do you think? Is unison singing superior? Are you guilty of adding a harmony part?