Evangelical Untouchables 2: Seeker Sensitivity
I have been doing some writing for the Internet Monk, a very well read Christian blog ran by Michael Spencer. The series of articles that I was asked to write for is called the “Evangelical Untouchables.” It’s basically a group of pastors from a cross section of Christianity that are answering a common question posed by Michael 3 or 4 days ahead of time. He then posts the answers on his blog and you can read 6 or 7 different guys giving their responses to a question that is relevant to modern Church life.
The second of this series of questions was…
“How has the “seeker” emphasis affected your perception of your congregation’s worship services? Are there changes you have made to accommodate and bring back seekers? Are there changes you would never consider, even if it would put more non-Christians in your service?”.
Check out the answers and the subsequent readers comments here.
Also Mark Driscoll blogs about Easter preaching here.
Real Church
I am really excited about what God is doing in our church. I believe that we are really seeing the fruit of our focus on Jesus, authenticity, and masculinity. We’ve been very intentional about these things and it’s really cool to see God using it to reach our community.
What do I mean by these three specific focus points?
1. Jesus – This means we worship Him and not the people. This might mean that some people get offended because the church doesn’t revolve around them. This might men that self-consumed pseudo “Christians” don’t like your church because they don’t get anything out of it. Of course they don’t…it’s not about them and their narcissistic world. It means that every sermon, Bible study, etc. gets to Jesus because anytime the Bible is taught without connecting it to Jesus is not only a complete waste of time it is completely missing the point.
2. Authenticity – Real people, worshipping a real God. I think Tim Chester from the Resurgence says it really well in an article I will quote but that you can read here as well.
“How can we create communities of grace? Let me suggest seven ideas:
1. Make the connections
We need to teach, speak, sing, and pray grace. But we also need to make connections for people. We can believe in justification by faith for the final day, but doubt justification by faith for the next day. On a Monday morning in the workplace we are still trying to prove ourselves, to find identity in our achievements.
2. Welcome the mess
Welcome messy people. Don’t suppress conflict. Don’t hide problems.
3. Stop pretending
Don’t hide your own problems. You’ll need to exercise some discretion: let everyone know you struggle and let some people know what you struggle with.
4. Stop performing
Don’t put on a show. Don’t push people to perform, to produce results, to get it right all the time. Give people permission to fail. We’ve realized, for example, that polished Bible studies and articulate prayers disenfranchise semi-literate people.
5. Eat and drink with broken people
Jesus eats and drinks with sinners. It’s a powerful expression of community. We think we’re enacting grace if we run projects for the poor, but we’re only halfway there. We still act from a position of superiority, proclaiming that we are able and they are unable. The dynamic is totally different when we eat together. We meet as equals, share together, affirm one another, enjoy one another.
6. Give people time to change
How long did it take for you to become perfectly like Jesus? Of course, you’re still changing. There seem to be some sins we’re prepared to work on over a lifetime, but others where we demand instant change. Why is this? The answer, of course, is that we want people to be respectable. We don’t want a messy community.
7. Focus on the heart
All too often we focus on the behaviors we would like someone to stop or start. But Jesus says our behavior comes from the heart (Mark 7:20-23). Our focus needs to be on the heart. Our job is help people find joy in Christ.”
3. Masculinity – I truly believe that if you reach men you can reach the entire community. Even in this age of blurred gender lines the family still follows the lead of the man. If you can engage men you can affect the whole family. Sadly men do not often feel connected to their church. From the building, to the pastor, to the people there is seemingly nothing that resonates with them. In fact the church for many men is an alien world that has little or nothing to do with the world they actually live in. We have tried to break this trend by intentionally making our church masculine. I desire our building decor to make men feel comfortable and not remind them of their grandma’s house. I think about men as I preach by being…1. bold 2. straight forward 3. honest about my failures. This boldness and candor has created a masculine culture in our church that allows men to be men and not some neutered shell of a man.
Reaching Young People
One of my passions is reaching young people, and young men in particular. I believe if we can effectively reach young men we will continue to be successful in reaching future generations with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In light of this I wanted to write some of my thoughts regarding Calvary Chapel as it relates to reaching younger generations.
It is a concern of mine that our movement is becoming increasingly irrelevant to young people. This is not unique in Church history as every “movement” throughout Church history has reached a point that it’s methodology no longer related to the current culture because the paradigm that was created within that movement was rooted in its origination decades in the past.
Calvary Chapel and its culture is rooted in the Jesus Movement of the 1960’s, and unless we desire to die a slow death with the baby boomers we must be willing to change our methods and philosophies in order to be relevant to our modern context.
This paradigm shift will take pastors with guts, vision, and the leadership ability to get older men and women to die to themselves and their ways of doing things in order to reach younger people.
There is a question that is begging to be asked.
Why is it that Calvary Chapel is becoming irrelevant to younger people?
I believe there are three main reasons:
1. Rooted in the past - We have become a movement that is being defined by events that happened 40 years ago. I routinely visit CC church websites and under their “history” or “about us” pages are paragraphs about the Jesus Movement and the events surrounding the explosion of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. Should we be proud of the legacy that’s been handed to us? Absolutely! Is it wrong to include that in the history of a particular CC, no of course not but what is God doing in your church in your local context at this time? We’ve got to move on. Young people don’t care about what happened when their parents or grandparents, in many cases, were young. They crave something fresh, they desire to see God work among them they way He did amongst previous generations.
2. Rules and Regulations – Somewhere along the way our movement has become what it originally set out to change. The Jesus Movement was born out of a need for young people to have the freedom to express their faith in a fresh and relevant way. Now as we fast forward 40 years we have created our own traditions and ironically enough are forcing young people to look elsewhere to express themselves. We must break this legalistic proclivity if we have any hope of reaching young people today. One such issue that is at the center of this legalism is, alcohol. The consumption of alcohol is typically looked down upon in our movement and while certainly the abuse of alcohol that leads to drunkenness is forbidden in the Scriptures, the moderate use of alcohol is actually encouraged. Another such topic is entertainment. We have bought into the world’s rating system as our litmus test for what is appropriate and what isn’t, meanwhile making ourselves hypocrites as we have to explain why it was permissible to view The Passion of the Christ. Young people are taught to think critically about these issues and realizing that there is no biblical standard for much of these rules and regulations is making them flee to churches where there is more freedom in these gray areas.
3. Restriction of thought – “We don’t need no education…we don’t need no thought patrol.”
Pink Floyd is not the only one who thinks this is a bad idea. We’ve got to quit being so afraid of the bogey man that lies behind the pages of books that have been deemed taboo by hack apologists. It’s perfectly acceptable to read books by authors that you don’t agree with! That’s how we learn. It helps us to think outside of the box. Reading books you already agree with does not enable you to grow. Young people don’t want to be force fed their theology by grumpy old men they want to have the freedom to read books by a wide variety of authors and be given the opportunity to make biblical decisions about what is sound and what is questionable or in some cases what is heresy. Good pastors and church leaders will be available to help young people make these decisions, but paranoid pastors and leaders will restrict this type of learning wanting their people to only read “approved” books meanwhile cutting off the stream of fresh thinking that will allow their young people to flourish.
I have written this article out of my love for this movement and with the understanding that many Calvary Chapels are doing a phenomenal job of reaching young people. I speak in general terms in light of what I’ve observed over the last decade or so. I don’t write this to toot my own horn, and while we are reaching many young people in this small and predominantly “older” town I do not claim to have it figured out. I, like many Calvary pastors, simply want to reach as many people as I can before Jesus returns.
Here is a link to a video on “movements” by Mark Driscoll, a pastor who while very controversial is also very passionate about reaching young people and is doing so quite effectively in one of the most godless cities in America, Seattle.
We are a Movement – Mark Driscoll teaching at an Acts 29 boot camp for church planters.
little church that does BIG things (Part 2)
I think there are 3 main reasons why pastors and churches don’t look beyond their 4 walls to reach their community. And in reality #1 leads to #2 and 3.
1. No vision
2. No money
3. No help
In other words no vision perpetuates itself whereas sensitivity to the Lord, unique ideas, and thinking outside of the box is contagious and infuses excitement into the body. A lack of vision also leads to the lack of funds and help. Why would people want to give their money or time to a church or pastor that has no vision?
Pastors are funny people. We tend to complain about problems that we’ve created. It’s kind of like marriage…men complain about their wives but what they fail to realize is that she is a reflection of them. If your wife is a nagging control freak then take a good long look in the mirror my friend because she is a product of your own stupidity.
But I digress…
I found that when I quit worrying about why soccer families missed so many services and why the church wasn’t growing and I just began to disciple the folks that were there and look beyond the 4 walls the problems that seemed so big to me actually disappeared.
It was during this epiphany that we began to do what for us were some big things…I detailed one of them in part 1 of this post. Some large outreaches that were way over our heads. In the summer of 2005 we began a summer festival called SonFest. My heart in this idea was to create a comfortable atmosphere where families could bring their kids and listen to some music and hear the gospel. We bring in 4-5 bands that play throughout the day. We cook up some hamburgers and hotdogs. We put on a mini-carnival for the kids with jump houses, water slide, petting zoo, and tons of games and candy. This year we added dramas with a clear presentation of the gospel after each one. We hold SonFest in a highly visible downtown park and typically we have 2 to 3 thousand people come throughout the day. We then hold our Sunday morning service in the park the following morning and we usually have about twice our normal Sunday attendance.
In addition to SonFest we also took over a local soup kitchen about a year ago. The former directors were real tired and decided that it was either time to find someone else or shut the doors. They approached us and asked if we would be interested in taking over the management of The Oasis. Initially I thought to myself, “are you kidding! We don’t have the man power or money to take this on.”
But after seeking the Lord and discussing it with our leadership we felt like it was the right thing to do. However the only way we thought it would work was if we hired a person from our church to manage it. At the time the current leaders (husband and wife) were volunteers but I knew that if we tried to go this route we would end up in the same boat they were in eventually. Immediately I thought of a women in our church who had just closed down a restaurant that her and friend ran together. She had food preperation and management experience and she has a tremendous heart for the Lord and people. She jumped at the opportunity and has been doing an amazing job. The Oasis serves lunch to about 50 people a day, 6 days a week. We also give away food boxes and financial assistance through that ministry. It has been a huge step of faith for us but God has provided and we are privileged to reach out to the “least of these” in our community.
In addition to these larger outreaches we have done some smaller scale events and projects. Some have been great successes; like a leaf raking outreach we did a few years ago where we went to different neighborhoods and raked leaves for people and then shared the gospel with them as they looked on dumbfounded.
Some have been pretty major failures, like the “equine clinic” we put on about a year ago…horses are a big deal here so we thought we would be relevant and reach out to the horse people 
We brought in a guy who uses horses and horse training as a means to introduce people to the gospel. First of all I don’t know anything about horses so I asked a guy in the church to oversee the event. He pretty much flaked out and dropped the ball on most of his commitments. I had to pick up the slack and things went from bad to horrible. The horse outreach guy did a fair job of communicating the gospel with horses but it came across a bit canned and pretty cheesy. But what was really bad was the concert that followed. We invited this country band to come and play for us to follow up our good ol’ time. Well the problem was that nobody (and I mean nobody) from the community stayed for the concert. We literally had 9 people stay for the concert and all of them were from our church; people who felt obligated to be there. The lead singer of the band kept inviting people to church the next day and then finally realized all 9 of us were members. It was a disaster.
In your attempt to be a little church that does BIG things you will win some and lose others but don’t ever get discouraged. Keep praying, keep seeking God for wisdom and creative ideas as to how you can reach your community with the amazing gospel message.
If there is any way I can help you to implement some of your ideas into your church don’t hesitate to call or shoot me an email.
blessings,
ryan
(541) 416-9009 (office)
ryanATcalvarycrookcountyDOTcom (email)
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little church that does BIG things (Part 1)
My wife and I came to Prineville in the fall of 2001 to start a Thursday evening Bible study that would ultimately become Calvary Chapel Crook County. (we named it that because the area is known by the county more than the city)
Our first Sunday morning service was held on May 5th 2002. We had about 30 people that first Sunday and we quickly grew to 50 people crowding into our little elementary school library (the chairs were Lilliputian made for people without years of carbs in their backside).
After our move to Crook County Middle School in the fall of that year we grew to about 75 people and like most church planters I thought we were going to have a mega church in no time.
However after a few years in the Middle School, and several original families gone for one reason or another, we were still about 75 people and I was getting discouraged.
Why isn’t the church growing? Why do new people come once and never return? Why do key families have to leave the church? Why is this so stinkin’ hard?
It was about this time that the Lord spoke to me and gave me the focus and vision that is at the core of who we are as a church to this day. A vision that looked beyond the 4 walls of our church to a lost community that would much rather sleep in and watch football on Sunday than sing songs to a God they don’t know and listen to some young punk teach a book they don’t believe.
The Lord showed me that He doesn’t need a lot of people to accomplish this plan. He could reach our entire community with a few people who were on fire for Him.
“I am the Lord, and there is no other; there is no God besides Me.” (Isaiah 45:5)
He began to put big ideas upon my heart that we didn’t have the man power or budget to pull off.
One of the ideas was an outreach to sportsmen. Hunting is huge here…(shocking right). For this area where less than 10% attend church hunting is the god of choice. I would say that 80-90% of the men (and many women) in this community hunt. Therefore what better way to reach this community with the gospel than by appealing to what is closest to their heart. Quest Outdoors was born out of this vision and several conversations with one of our leaders, Shawn Jones, who owns and operates a hunting/fishing guide business called Go West Outfitters.
Shawn and I had the idea of creating a banquet that would look a lot like other sportsman’s banquets (like Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, or Oregon Hunters Association).
The first Quest Outdoors banquet was held in 2004. We put together an awesome catered dinner, a top notch speaker in the field, world class taxidermy and thousands of dollars in prizes. There was no way a church of 75 people should be able to pull this off. But not only did we pull it off but we had about 250 people come our first year and it has doubled since. Each year men and women who would never darken the door of our church come to this event and hear the message of the gospel in a way that meets them right where they’re at.
This local outreach which has become a yearly event has motivated our church to do several other events and outreaches in our community…and has given our church the reputation of the “little church that does big things.”
I remember when I first heard someone describe our church this way. I was offended. Calling a church planter’s work small is like kicking him in the groin. But as I thought about it I realized that it was perfect because people were giving God the glory as they recognized that our little church with puny numbers and a tiny budget couldn’t possibly pull this off without divine intervention.
1 Cor. 1:26-31
Over the years our church has grown but we continue to take steps of faith taking risks for the sake of the Kingdom.
Many of these outreaches and events have bombed big time…some of them have been incredible successes. I will talk more about these things in Part 2 of this post.
grace…ryan
Interview
Stewart, our worship leader, and I put together an interview today regarding the history, vision, and philosophy of ministry of Calvary Chapel of Crook County. Go here and click the play button on the home page.
You can also listen to the interview here on the teachings page of the church website or in iTunes under Calvary Chapel of Crook County.
Vision
I’ve heard this word tossed about in Christian circles for years. “What’s your vision?” “That isn’t part of the vision God has given me?” “Sharing your vision” “Vision Casting” (that’s always sounded wierd to me)
But what is vision? Is it necessary for a successful leader, pastor, or church planter to have vision?