Blog Archives
Leadership Styles
Over the last year I have led a few different courses for people in the congregation which talk about styles. Most people who have done them have found them helpful. First we did Bill Hybel’s Contagious Christian course, which talks about different styles of evangelism. It was a great relief to some to realise that they didn’t have to be a Billy Graham standign up in front of many, or even a person who squeezes God into every situation, but with a ‘serving’ style they could witness to God through their actions until the opportunity arose for a conversation on a matter of faith, or an invite to a Christian event.
Others found the course challenging as they could no longer hide and say they ‘couldn’t do evangelism’.
More recently we led a version of the Networks course on spiritual gifts. Again people found it helpful as they they had some idea about where to start in offering their gifts to help the church – start with the gifts they have been given. This usually involves doing things that you are good at and that you enjoy.
Now I’ve just seen a new set of styles about leadership. I guess I knew about them anyway, and they are related to spiritual gifts. They come from Craig Groeschel, pastor of lifechurch.tv in Oklahoma. Here they are:
The four styles I most often observe include:
1. Relational leaders: These leaders motivate others through personal connections.
2. Visionary leaders: These leaders move people by painting a picture of what “could be.”
3. Administrative leaders: These leaders move the ball forward by organizing groups of people with clear boundaries, expectations, and accountability.
4. Innovative leaders: These leaders find new ways to accomplish old objectives.
None of these things should be pro-scriptive – they do not define the person with the style. But they can be helpful when they are descriptive – they help us begin where to look, where to start leading or serving from.
For the record, I’m probably relational, and not at all adminstrative.
Make Me A Christian
This week I watched the channel 4 reality tv series “Make Me a Christian” (it was aired a number of weeks ago on Channel 4 UK and I only just got around to watching it on the internet). The unofficial website is here. It took a dozen fairly normal people who were searching for faith and put them through 3 weeks of ‘Christian book camp’ – some time of teaching, mentoring, worship, and a number of other activities designed to help them understand the Christian faith. In many places it was painful watching. It portrayed Christians as moralistic people who are only interested in sex (and not having it). As the mentors met with the participants individually, it was very difficult to watch as the mentors seemed to judge them very early on in their acquaintance.
Now, I’m sure that part of the obsession with sex was due to the editing of the producers who dictate exactly what will go on the air, and that the participants did a whole lot more things than the show revealed. One mentor was reported to have asked for her scenes to be cut out. But I think my uncomfortableness came from the expectation that the participants should live as Christians (by going along with Christian morals) before they’d actually believed. Surely this is the wrong way around and that is why it ended up feeling judgmental. The old expression goes “belong, believe, behave”. It seems the shows mentors were expecting them to behave before belonging or believing.
When people come into contact with Jesus, only then are they changed with the help of the Holy Spirit. I’m not sure whether we should force Christian morals on people from a quite different worldview.
Having said that, all of the participants were changed in some ways. It was very interesting to see Laura, described on the channel four website as “a lesbian who sometimes sleeps with men”, to visit a gay church in London and see right through their pick n’mix theology. Martin, described as an ‘athiest biker’, was challenged when he went to help in the Salvation Army soup kitchen for a day. Sarah and her family discovered the benefits of having time to rest out of their busy schedule, and it certainly seems to have brought their family closer together. Whilst none of them became beleivers (I think) they were all changed in some way. Overall though, I’m not sure a reality tv show is the best way to introduce people to Christianity.
Total Church (vi) – Mission
Chapter 6 of Tim Chester and Steve Timmis’ book, Total church talks about the church’s need to engage in world mission. Mission, they say, is an activity of God – it is right at the very centre of his actions, from his decision to choose a people for himself who would be a light to all nations, to the Great Commission given by Jesus at the end of Matthew’s gospel.
“The term mission, [Karl Barth] pointed out, was originally used of the sending of the Son by the Father and the sending of the Spirit by the Father and the Son. To this was added the sending of the Church by the Trinity. The Triune God is a missionary God. The church, then has a mission because God has a mission. The role of the church is to participate in the mission of God. The value of this perspective is the way it roots mission in the doctrine of God rather than relegating is to allied theology”
Mission should be part of a church’s DNA. In Romans 15:19, Paul says that “from Jerusalem all the way round to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ”. In what sense is that true? Paul preached extensively, and set up new churches, but by no means had the whole area been won for Christ! What Timmis and Chester suggest is that Paul has fully proclaimed Jesus to them. This is at the centre of mission. The rest of the work of growth, encouragement, preaching and planting was the responsibility of the local churches he left behind. Jesus was at the centre of their formation and consequently mission is part of their DNA. By no means should it be left to large mission organisations, as this simply distances the local church from the action of mission – which is part of their fundamental being. He cites the example of China – in 1945 all the mision agencies were expelled from the country, essentially leaving the task of mission to the local house-churches with no outside influence. Christianity boomed through their efforts, and because it is God’s mission.
Locally, the church engages in mission by being the community of grace and embodying the gospel of grace in the local society. On a more global scale, Chester and Timmis give examples of many local churches partnering with others around the world, or sending mission partners to various places to plant churches. All done in straight-forward ways by very ordinary people.
Total church (v) – church planting
Continuing the series going through the book, Total Church, by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.
Chapter 5 of Total church talks about church planting. Chester and Timmis claim that at the centre of the apostolic vision of mission was church planting – this is what Paul and his companions were doing all throughout the New Testament. The church is the agent of mission and as such, church planting is the primary form of mission.
Of course, by church, Chester and Timmis are not talking about the church as an institution of as the universal church. They are talking about the church as a loving and close knit family – as the early church congregations were. The early churches met in households, running a church was compared to running a family. Once this family of the church had outgrown the size of the household that they could meet in, they split into two smaller congregations. (Timmis and Chester giver references for this from Acts).
Local church congregations therefore are to look out and care for each other, to have the gospel at the centre, and are deeply integrated in their local community. Mission and evangelism, then, are part of the DNA of the church as they care for each other and for the community.
Why doesn’t this happen in most churches today? Total church claims there are a number of factors. One is that the church slips into ‘maintenance mode’. As a church gets bigger it starts providing programs and courses and so on, all of these create jobs that need to be filled in the church. The focus of the church then becomes keeping these programs going, rather than reaching out in new ways to the local community.
I guess the main focus of the chapter is simple: that the mission of God involves engaging with the surrounding community and planting communities (church groups) where God’s grace can be lived out and witnessed in the community. Quite simple really.
Total Church (iv) – social involvement
The 4th chapter of Total church concentrates on social involvement. How much should a church be socially involved. Often in the past, doing good works has been seen as an either/or with evangelism.
Tim Chester and Steve Timmis point out that Jesus not only went to the poor and marginalised, he considered them equally worthy to have community with him as anyone else. By sitting and eating with, say, Zacchaeus the tax collected Jesus invited him into him community. The poor don’t just need their lived improved, they need the gospel. Cleaning up someone’s house, for example, is a great example of how communities can love the poor, but this act needs to point to something. Without the gospel of grace it would equally point to a gospel of works or social betterment. This is not the gospel that Jesus taught. All need to hear his words and respond to him in repentance and receive grace. The poor are poor for all sorts of reasons, and very few of them have to do with lack of resources. By introduction to and welcome into an authentic Christian community, they will have the support they need.
However, Christian community has not always been welcoming to the poor. Timmis and Chester are also critical of how churches in the UK (particularly evangelical churches) have traditionally neglected problem areas. The successful ones are full of middle class, upwardly mobile, wealthy people – people just like each other. For some reason, the working classes have not been welcomed or have not felt able to go there. The Christian community was lacking. This, they claim, is not only doing the poor a dis-service, but the rich too, as it communicates a message that Jesus wasn’t teaching – one where status and wealth do matter (even if this is unspoken). The gospel of grace is a gospel for all, rich and poor, and I can’t help thinking we are lacking something of authentic Christian community if we neglect either group.
Total Church (iii) – whole community evangelism
Continuing on their discussion of church being a place where gospel ad community meet, Tim Chester and Steve Timmis move on to talk about evangelism in their book Total Church.
Too often evangelism is seen as something difficult, for individuals to engage in, and as something else that a Christian needs to slot into their life. They argue that if the church took the call to be a radical loving community seriously, this needn’t be the case. People become Christians and start asking questions, they claim, when they see the intersection between faith and the community of faith.
They see a three-strand approach to evangelism: Building relationships, sharing the gospel, and introducing to the community. And, they claim, it doesn’t matter which one comes first. This makes evangelism a role of the whole community, not just of the individual who first meets the seeker.
Some people are simply not good at speaking to strangers and forming new friendships. One of the practical benefits of the three strand model of evangelism is that it gives a role to all of God’s people. By making evangelism a community project, it also takes seriously the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit in distributing a variety of gifts among his people. Everyone has a part to play: the new Christian, the introvert, the extravert, the eloquent, the stuttering, the intelligent, the awkward. I may be the one who has begun to build a relationship with my neighbour, but by introducing him to community, it is someone else who shares the gospel with him. That is not only legitimate; it is positively thrilling!
If this is the model, evangelism does not become an extra thing that an individual needs to do, but it is a gospel intention in the way a community lives out its life. As it goes about what it usually does, inviting people into the community should become second nature.
Weekly roundup – evangelism
Scott McKnight makes some good points on evangelism in post modern society, from two books he’s read including James Choung, who I wrote about earlier.
Time magazine has an article about what evanglicals beleive in America at the moment. They claim that increasing numbers no longer beleive that Christianity is the only way to God.
There is lots of stuff going on in the Anglican Communion at the moment, with the GAFCON meeting in Jerusalem and the lead up to the 10-yearly Lambeth conference. One blogger sums it up clearly and humourously here.
An over-zealous Christian out on the streets misses the point of the gospel
Evangelism and gospel outlines – what is the gospel?
… and which gospel outlines should we use? I have just been reading an article on Christianity today by James Choung who challenges the traditional gospel outlines.
Gospel means good news. The word is used to sum up the plan of God from creation to new creation, centred on Jesus. But this plan is big, how should we communicate it?
But first – there are a number of gospel outlines that can be useful in our evangelism. There are many, and none of them are perfect. One of the favourites taught in America seems to be the four spiritual laws. This outline concentrates on the sinfulness of mankind separating us from God, and the cross providing the way back. In many ways this is similar to the bridge illustration developed in the UK – this is one I like to use occasionally.
These are both useful, and get over one of the central messages of Christianity, that sin separates us from God and that Jesus has dealt with our sin on the cross of open up the way back to him, and that each of us can now approach God by accepting this gift of grace from God through Jesus. It deals with reconciliation of man to God, and atonement. One of the problems, however, is that this is all these outlines deal with deals with – a very personal decision of deciding to accept Gods grace. They focus on heaven as the reward and they do not say much about how a Christian is to live until then – maybe apart from individually thing to be a better person. It is also individual – a personal response – neglecting the other further reaches of sin which affects relationships between people, creation, and ourselves.
Another very simple outline is Do vs Done, which challenges the misconception that all religions are about trying to get to God. Religion is spelled D-O – doing things (rituals, prayers etc) to try to get to God. Christianity is not like that. Christians realise that, because of sin, we cannot get ot God on our own. Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E, as God has come to earth in Jesus and done everything required to get to God.
But the thing I find most difficult about them is that they start with personal sin. Let me be clear, personal sin is definitely a part of the gospel, but does it have to be our starting point? I have spent many conversations in the pub or over lunch with atheist friends trying to convince them that they were sinful (in the nicest possible way!), only to realise that most non-Christians these days do not have a concept of personal sin. And the concept of heaven (of Christians and non-Christians) is often cloudy. With a cloudy concpet of heaven – will people actually want to go to heaven anyway? Is there a better place to start?
In the UK, students are taught Two Ways to Live. This approach has many advantages, such as it talks about God begin the rightful ruler and creator of the world and that everything comes under his Kingship (kingdom appears a lot in the gospels). So, people can either live under the kingship of God or live under their own authority. This second choice is descibed as ‘sin’. It also talks about death as the consequence of not living under the kingship of God. This is good as it gets away from sin being just about bad things that we do, and there is an expectation that once poeple decide to follow Jesus (i.e. live under his kingship), it will have consequenses on how they live. However, the illustration is still very individual, focusing on the personal, and I have always found the 6 steps a little difficult to remember.
So what is different about James Choungs outline. In the article he doesn’t paint out the outline exactly (you probably have to buy the book for that) he starts with a concept of sin that is more real and ends with an immediate hope as well as a heavenly one.
Evangelicals have traditionally assumed that we have to start every gospel message by helping people see they’re sinners. If we don’t, then we can’t move on to salvation or how Jesus gives them assurance that they will be in heaven when they die. It’s not that this message isn’t true, but the approach is jarring. We haven’t created any common experience or authority so that our message will have any weight. We just come out and say it’s the truth. And in a postmodern setting, that sounds arrogant. How do we know it’s the truth? Have we ever been to heaven?
So at the beginning of the Big Story, we instead talk about our common perception: the world is not the way it’s supposed to be. We all agree with that. And we all agree that it makes us sick to our stomachs when we think about it. No one thinks that our world is great as it is. We hunger for a better world. And up to this point, there is no disagreement. We all experience this.
So whilst he doesn’t outline the approach, I imagine it goes something like this (Im not quite sure how the circles will fit in…). We see troubles, hardships and difficulties all around us. There are wars and conflicts, relationships between nations and individuals are broken. The world is broken, sometimes creation seems to be playing against us (tsunamis , floods, famines). Many people are not even satisfied with themselves, they have a low self-confidence, or try to ‘fix’ their bodies or minds. We hope for better. Everyone can agree with this. This is not how it is supposed to be. The world is broken because creation (including us) is broken and separated from God (This is all in Genesis 1-3 – maybe explain the fall here).
The good news is that we were created for better. God has a plan to restore his creation to what it was supposed to be, and it is centred on Jesus. He came to show us how to better relate to each other through his teaching and life, to enable us to better relate to God through his death and resurrection, and to enable us to begin to become the people we were created to be (bringing confidence in self-identity). His resurrection also shows us that we are created for a better world. By following him we can have the hope that there is something better to come (heaven and a restored creation) and start living that hope now – bringing that promise for the future into the present (how we should live now). We are not to just sit around waiting and hoping for what God might do next, but to actively participate in ‘kingdom’ actions.
This seems to have a much more rounded picture of the gospel in it, which begins in a place people can relate to, and has all the essential ingredients of the gospel in it.
It is always useful to have a gospel outline or two in our minds, to help us structure a conversation when someone asks. I like Choungs approach, but it seems to me that the best thing is for Christians to know the message of what God has done for us so well, and to continue learning and living it out, so that any response can be individually altered to the character of the speaker and the one who is listening.
Mormon missionaries
There has been a number of mormon missionaries hanging around the shopping centre of my town over the last few months – young boys from Utah sent across the Atlantic to talk about Mormonism to passers by in the shopping centre. I’ve spoken to one on a couple of occasions for a couple of reasons. Firstly to engage with them by trying to discredit the book of mormon – the fact that it just appeared on some plates which came out of the sky is troubling, and there is no evidence to show where it came from, and the plates no longer exist. And secondly becuase, if the missionaries are talking to me, then they’re not talking to someone else.
Their whole premise of discerning whether Mormonism is true is to read the Book or Mormon, and then pray to God if it was true or not. They were quite confident that God would show us that it was.
Last night at our (Christian) church, I met a young guy who had come to church for the first time – never been to church before. A few months ago he met one of these mormon missionaries on the street and decided to try out the mormon church for a few weeks. I guess he did exactly what the mormon missionaries had asked him to do – to try it out and ask God if it was true. Well, he decided it wasn’t, came to church for the first time in his life, and is now exploring the Christian faith for himself. Wonderful. Thanks mormons for being the first step in his path towards God!
David Jackman on evangelism
David Jackman writes in “The Authentic Church” (his commentary on the letters to the Thessalonians), about whole-hearted evangelism. The comments are taken from his commentary on 1 Thess 2:1-16.
“When the correctness of what we say becomes more important than the nurture of those who hear us, they are not as dear to us as they ought to be” (p62)
“Spreading the gospel is not spraying large numbers at arms’ length with a diluted solution of the message, like insecticide on roses. New Testament evangelism is loving friendship that shares the life as well as the message… If we want to be remote from people, we have chosen the wrong religion. Christ’s servants wash people;s feet, they are devoted to fellowship. It is about sharing our lives as a way of introducing our Lord, and both our speech and our actions are vital” (p62-3)
This makes evangelism easier, in that we don’t all need to fit into a pre-described methodology, and harder, in that it requires genuine love and sacrificial service of God and others.
