All posts in Misc

Leonard Sweetisms

by Tim Schraeder on 03/13/2009 in Misc, Notes with 1 Comment

I made a quick trip to my hometown of Peoria to my former church, Riverside Community Church for their Related Leaders seminar with Leonard Sweet.

Len is an author, futurist, and all around incredible thinker in the church world. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know him as a friend and have always been challenged when I’ve had the chance to converse with him or hear him lecture.
His talk was called A Gutenberg Church in a Google World. I’ll write a brief synopsis of what I got from what he was saying and round it out with some quotes. If you know me well you know I can be a bit of a manic note-taker.

—

The Gutenberg Church represents the world and culture pre-1973 (the year the cell phone was invented). The Gutenberg world was impacted by a technology called the printed press. The printed press gave us access to the Bible and opened the door to the birth of an individualistic culture. At one time, books were considered the most anti-social technologies ever invented. Thought and reason, logic and argument were all key in the Gutenberg world.
The Gutenberg mind is very “left brain” dominated. It’s logical and linear. It’s organized, categorized and sequential.
In the Gutenberg world the book was the delivery system for learning.
But we aren’t in a Gutenberg world anymore, we are in a Google world.
The Google world is “right brain” dominated and is all about beauty, meaning, experience and community. The Google world has taken the individualistic culture created by the Gutenberg world and turned it into narcissism. [For more on the left brain vs right brain thing, check out Daniel Pink's book A Whole New Mind.]
The modern church is the result of the Gutenberg world. We learned to do church and ministry through the context of the Gutenberg mindset.
While churches are growing what we are really witnessing is the “Wal-Martization” of churches. Smaller churches are closing and megachurches are growing, but the megachurches are just the smaller churches under a bigger roof. We’ve “built it” and “they have come”, but the people coming aren’t new disciples. Things like the seeker-sensitive movement did a great job of getting crowds but a did a terrible job of making disciples.
Today the church is one of the only places still trying to reach people with words. Today’s marketers don’t spend time or energy trying to sell you with products or words. They use images and stories to sell experiences.

So why in the Church are we still using words instead of story… arguments instead of metaphor? (Why do we memorize Bible verses instead of Bible stories?)

With advances in technology, we are seeing a new way of living, moving and being. A question that the Church MUST answer is “how are we going to incarnate the Gospel in this new world?”
Our words and our mission statements don’t connect with our culture. Instead of spending time on crafting mission statements, we should spend time considering what image or metaphor we are going to present to people.
Building an attractional church isn’t about attracting people to the Church, but to Christ. But too often we don’t trust Jesus is going to drawl people to Himself so we invent and draw on our own ideas to get people there. What we need to do, instead, is find new ways to lift Him up. He’s the main drawl.
The Gutenberg way of doing things in a Google world will render the church irrelevant and obsolete. We MUST change.
Misc One-Liners
  • The Church should be one of the most creative, imaginative places on earth.
  • Holiness is not isolation, it’s insulation.
  • God is up to something and the question we need to answer is, “Do we know God well enough to know what He’s up to?”
  • Churches don’t need mission statements, we already have one. It’s called the Great Commission.
  • One of the worst things that could ever be said about someone is that they were in the presence of greatness and they didn’t recognize it.
  • Pilate was the first postmodernist. He looked in the eyes of Truth and asked what truth was.
  • As the book was the delivery system in the Gutenberg world, the cell phone (mobile technology) is the delivery system for faith and learning in the Google world.
  • Praise music is not meant to be performed but participated in.
  • Illustrate points, animate experiences.
  • In Medieval times, the Church saved arts; in the Google world, the arts may save the Church.
  • It’s not our job to make the Word of God “alive to people” – it’s already the living Word of God. Our job is to help people come alive to what is already living.
  • Image is everything. Jesus Christ is the image of God. How do we lift up the image of Christ to the world?
  • Every Starbucks is an indictment against the church – they’ve created the Third Place that the Church should be.
  • A missions trip is not something you take, it should be your entire life.
  • Oftentimes God is more at work in the world than He is in the Church.  Too often we get in the way of what God is doing when we get into what we are doing instead of what God is doing.
  • The Church should be a place where you come so you can GO.
  • 2/3 of the Word of God is “go.”
  • Our goal should never be numbers or converts, but making disciples.
  • All of our methods of defining a “successful” church are based on consumption standards.
  • The one thing we don’t like to say about Christian leadership is that we are not the leader – Jesus is.
  • Leadership is not a role, it’s an activity.
  • We were made for a mission to be on mission.
  • Many churches need to re-invent and re-conceive themselves.

Final thoughts: While this is all a bit scattered, I think the message is clear. The world is changing while the church has remained the same, and we’re beginning to see the devastating results as the younger, Google generation is moving away from the church. This isn’t about being relevant, hip or cool… it’s about incarnating the Gospel in a culture that is looking for beauty, truth and meaning. Our job is to translate the Gospel in a language that is connecting and to provide experiences for people to encounter the Living Christ.

ECHO Quotables : Mark Batterson

by Tim Schraeder on 08/19/2008 in Misc, Notes with No comments

Mark Batterson serves as the lead pastor of  National Community Church in Washington DC. One church with many locations, NCC meets in movie theaters at metro stops throughout the DC area. NCC also owns and operates the largest coffeehouse on Capitol Hill, Ebenezers Coffeehouse. Focused on reaching emerging generations, 73% of those attending NCC are single, twenty-somethings and 70% were unchurched or de-churched before attending. Mark is also the author of In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day and Wild Goose Chase.


Mark’s blog

  • We tend to try to reach people the way we were reached.
  • Movie screens are modern day stained glass. We use images to
    communicate the Gospel.
  • We need a lot of different churches because there are a lot of different people.
  • Jesus teaches us to live dangerously and to take risks.
  • Truth is often found in the tension of opposites.
  • Sometimes we need to get out of our context and check or motives.
  • If you do the right thing for the wrong reason it’s not right.
  • If you had to describe yourself in one word, what would it be?
  • It’s ok to be a visionary to and have goals, but often we care more about
    numbers than we do about people.
  • You can do ministry by faking it or out of the overflow of
    what God is doing in your heart.
  • We can do what we do really well and forget why.
  • We need to have contextual intelligence.
  • We need to read the time, seize opportunities and incarnate the Gospel in a way
    that people connect with.
  • Most pastors get “A’s” in Scriptural exegesis and “D’s” in cultural exegesis.
  • When you fail at cultural exegesis the Gospel suffers.
  • The future of the church depends on technology.
  • Martin Luther said that printing was God’s highest and extremest form of grace
    in spreading the Gospel.
  • With modern-day technology we have an unprecedented opportunity to fulfill the Great Commission.
  • We need to leverage technology for God’s purposes.
  • We need to stop doing ministry out of memory and start doing
    ministry out of imagination.
  • The greatest danger ahead of us is people who were on the leading edge of what’s already happened.
  • Our website is our front door to the world.
  • There are ways of doing church no one has ever thought of yet.

the gods aren’t angry | Rob Bell

by Tim Schraeder on 11/05/2007 in Inspiration, Misc, Notes with 12 Comments

Like him, love him, hate him, disagree with him… think he’s right on, or think he’s off the rails, no matter what you think, Rob Bell is a prolific thinker in the world of Christianity today. From podcasts of his messages at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, to his NOOMA video series, and his best-selling books Velvet Elvis and SexGod, Rob is part of re-shaping the way our generation is approaching God and the Christian faith.

Tonight he kicked off a 22 city tour here in Chicago at The Vic to a sold-out crowd, and I was fortunate to get in… and get on the fourth row!

He did a similar tour a year or so ago… which you can catch on DVD from Zondervan… Everything Spiritual.

With a makeshift stone altar being the only prop, he preached in about an hour and a half what was probably one of the best message I’ve ever heard.

I know that might be extreme to say, but I’m for real. He (and what he had to say) totally blew me away.

I took some wild notes, so here is my late night processing of them…

If the tour is coming anywhere near you, if it’s not sold out, GO…and don’t read these notes!

He started way back in the beginning of time and how mankind and civilization (assuming we all started as caveman) began to recognizes the different forces of nature and of life… the cycles of the sun, moon, and stars, the cycle of life, and began to name the different forces. The forces became gods who were up in the sky, separate from mankind.

When things would go bad, men assumed the gods were angry, and so recognizing that the gods, the unseen forces, were behind the cycles, they established a system of offerings (or sacrifices) to appease the gods. To make them happy. And they made an altar, a place to offer their sacrifices to these gods.

If you had a good crop, you made a sacrifice to give thanks. If you had a bad crop, you sacrificed in hopes you’d appease the anger and in turn, get a good return.

If things were good, the gods must be happy… but if things were bad, something wasn’t right. You needed to offer more.

It was a vicious cycle that became deeply rooted in mankind. And it got extreme. When crops or animals weren’t enough men began offering their own blood, their own children, and in some cases their manhood (not joking). Nothing could satisfy… no sacrifice was good enough.

Then Abraham came along and introduced a God who spoke to him. It was an actual God, speaking to men. And this God wasn’t demanding of sacrifice – He was offering a promise and a blessing. It was revolutionary thinking. That a God would be involved in space in time, calling men into an actual relationship with Him.

The God of Abraham introduced a whole new sacrificial system… there were your normal offerings, your sacrifices for forgiveness of sin, but even sacrifices to bring peace between yourself God, and yourself and others.

The system worked for awhile, but then it became an institution.  It was time for another revolution. That’s when Jesus came onto the scene.

He went into the Temple, into the very place where people were making their offerings, and said, “I’m here. I’m greater than the Temple. You can tear me down, and I’ll rebuild it in 3 days…”

He, in essence, said that there’s a greater way to know God than through ritual or sacrifice.

He asked the people what their God was like…

Rob shared stories of people he’s encountered in his ministry… a businessman who is a slave to work to prove his worth, to live up to the approval of his in-laws, wresting with the sense that he’s not good enough. Striving for validation, success, and approval. Then, young girls who are cutting themselves as a way to escape pain or emotional trauma. To overcome words of hurt and negativity.

In bringing up all of these he asked: “Do we have the same old gods, and we’ve just given them different names?”

In Hebrews, the author talks about the sacrifice Christ made by giving His life, and how His life was the final sacrifice to reconcile God and mankind. He did away with the old system and ushered in the culmination of the ages so everyone could understand the ultimate reality… that they could see God in a whole new way.

God made peace through Christ with all things on heaven and earth. He changed everything for everybody.

Then Rob talked about the whole point of sacrifices. Did we (and do we) sacrifice because God needs something from us?

According to Psalm 50, God isn’t pleased with our sacrifices…in Micah it says God isn’t pleased with 1,000 rams… the list could go on but the point is the sacrifices weren’t for God, they were for us.

We have a hard time trusting good things, so sacrifice area a reminder and ritual that keeps us knowing that God wants to bless us and not ask us for more.

There’s never been an effective religious deed in all of humanity.

What is repentance? It’s not “I repent and THEN God does THIS.” Repenting is not bargaining. God made peace with all things. He’s already done it. All that is left for us to do is celebrate. Repentance is acknowledging what God has done and living differently because of it.

A ritual is not something that you to get God to do something else – a ritual should be what you do to better celebrate what God has done. If a ritual doesn’t tap into the peace that’s already been made it’s not Christian. If it beats you up, asks for more, or brings you down, is not right.

The ‘altar’ was done with Jesus, but there’s one more sacrifice we need to make… ourselves. We need to live our entire lives in thankfulness to God for what He’s done. We need to put flesh and blood on it for others – we need to share it. We need to live the peace we’ve experienced and known.

He shared more stories…. One of a man who asked a woman who had been seeing visions of Jesus to ask him what sins he had committed…and the woman told him Jesus said, “I don’t remember.” He told a story of a woman who had been violently disfigured in an accident and her husband, when seeing her mangled face for the first time, kissed her and said, “I like it.” Telling a girl who had brought shame to her family, “You don’t embarrass me.” That’s Christ, that’s the nature of God.

He doesn’t remember. He likes you. He doesn’t hate you. The very air we breathe is His love for us. We have no need to impress, give more, improve, or perform. We don’t have to live the like that. He came. The sacrifice has been made. At the culmination of the ages, Christ stands… and God isn’t angry. God is love.