All posts tagged lessons learned

Growth

by Tim Schraeder on 04/06/2009 in Personal with 4 Comments

Change is an inevitable part of growth. Things that are growing change.

And while change and growth are good things for some, for others it’s something they don’t understand, something they are resistant to, or something that they are fearful of.

One of the things many of our pastors at Park Community Church say is that the city changes you (for better or for worse).

I definitely can attest to that.

Recently, I was hanging out with some friends that I haven’t seen in awhile, and not long after heard back from a couple of them and they were concerned. They said I didn’t seem the same. They said I had changed.

It wasn’t too long after that I heard a pastor speaking on spiritual transformation and he said (my translation) that if you are in the same spot you were a year ago, you’re living in sin. Now, that’s a bit dramatic, but I think there’s truth to it. If God is truly at work in your life, if the Spirit is alive in you, you will change. You won’t be the same.

I’ve grown a lot in the past two years…moving to Chicago has changed me.

I am definitely a more aggressive driver. I think my patience and attention span is shorter. I tend to thrive in chaos. I think I’ve become a city snob. (Ok, so those things may be negative…) But for real, though, I think the change the city brought to my life has caused me to have a deeper, more intimate  relationship with Christ, has made me value biblical community with other brothers and sisters in Christ, and has made me more dependent and reliant on the Spirit’s leading and strength.

I’m not who I was. I mean, I’m still “TIM”, but I’m not.

I’ve grown up. I’ve matured. I have changed.

And I think if all of us are growing, we should be changing.

So, how are you growing? How have you changed?

And if you’re not, what needs to change?

(Isn’t it ironic that in order for there to be change, change needs to happen.)

“When I was a child, I spoke and thought and  reasoned as a child. But when I grew up,  I put away childish things.  Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” – 1 Cor 13:11-13

Uh huhs and Ah Ha’s!

by Tim Schraeder on 03/30/2009 in Church Communications, Principles with 6 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I’ve found myself having a lot of “uh huh” moments
lately.

Uh huh can mean many different things, but for me it can translate to mean

  • Yeah, I get that.
  • I agree.
  • I’ve heard that before.
  • You are preaching to the choir.

Urban Dictionary defines “uh huh” as: a bored grunt of agreement.

I guess I’ve just been bored. Uninspired.

I haven’t had many “ah ha” moments lately. You know what I’m talking about?

  • Moments where you hear something new and insightful.
  • Thoughts or ideas that spark a creative nerve.
  • Someone flips on the lights for you in an area where you’ve been in the dark.

It’s been awhile since I’ve had one of those moments.

Could be my fault, but regardless, it made me wonder…

I wonder what the next “ah ha” moment will be.

And I wonder if in our churches, we are creating “ah ha” moments for people to come alive and see Christ, or if we are just saying and doing the same things and getting the obligatory “uh huh.”

Right and Left-Brained Thinking: It’s Apples to Oranges

by Tim Schraeder on 03/19/2009 in Church Communications, Principles with 2 Comments

Left-brained thinking is linear and logical, focusing on details, facts, and figures. It makes silos. It’s segmented.

It thrives off of hard facts and bottom lines. Left-brained thinking is methodical and compartmentalizes ideas or thoughts into definitive categories. Left-brained thinking expresses itself in thoughts and words.

For the last century or so, left-brained thinking has dominated our culture. It has impacted every arena of life from the workplace to even our churches.

Right-brained thinking is very different. It’s experiential. It’s imaginative and creative. It’s abstract. There’s no clear lines or dimensions. Right-brained thinking values design and aesthetics. At its core, right-brained thinking thrives in the context of relationships.

Right-brained thinking expresses itself in images, experiences and metaphors.

And more and more in our hyper-connected culture, right-brained thinking is
dominant.

While left-brained thinking creates a product (example: a cell phone), right-brained thinking buys a relationship (the connectivity and experience that the cell phone will provide).

Right-brained thinking dominates the way that we are advertised and marketed to. Marketers don’t use words to convince us like they used to, they use images and experience. That’s why a half-naked person sells a pair of jeans, cologne, a car, or a toothbrush.

When you think about right and left brained thinking it’s a lot like comparing apples to oranges.

To eat an orange you first have to peel it. Once you peel it, it’s compartmentalized, and segmented. Neat. Orderly. To eat it you have to pick it apart.

To eat an apple you just take a bite. It’s messy. It engages all of the senses. It’s something that’s consumed.

Now let’s look at how we tend to approach the word of God…

Left-brained thinking is like reading/studying the Bible like it’s an orange. It peels layers away. Compartmentalizes everything by chapter and verse. It is logical. It defines everything (think of all of the –ologies that are out there). It’s black and white.

A lot of churches treat like Gospel like an orange and communicate its message with words and thoughts. It’s one person talking and a lot of people simply listening. The service is judged by the performance (of the band or pastor) and the quality of the message.

Right –brained thinking approaches the Bible like an apple. It’s not segmented or compartmentalized. It consumes. It experiences. It lives and breathes. It’s explored fully to get to the core.

Right-brained churches communicate the Gospel using images and experience. It’s judged by the context of relationship and experience, and is all about the participation. Worship isn’t about a band performing but of a community of believers participating.

So… how are we, as the Church, presenting the Gospel? Are we apples or oranges?

It’s not our job to make the Word come alive to people, it’s already the Living Word of God. Our job is to help people come alive to what’s already living.

The Church of today MUST use captivating images, compelling stories, engaging experiences, and creating space for authentic community for people to truly engage with the Gospel and encounter the Living Christ.

I think there’s a reason Apples are so popular these days.

(Thanks to Leonard Sweet for his inspiration.)

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.