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May 23, 2007

 

 

 
Dear Pastors,

Best Practices is a newsletter that I hope will connect us NAD pastors. It comes from Vervent, which is another name for the NAD Church Resource Center.

I know your mailboxes are full of stuff, and here is one more thing! While I don't want it to be just an announcement sheet, I do want you to know what's out there for you; your tithes and offerings provide resources that you might not be aware of. We hope that you find it worth a look.

Loren Seibold
Editor
In this Edition:
Thinking Aloud: Comfort vs. Change
Best Practitioner: Mike Fortune of Toledo Central
Resources & Ideas
Events
Thinking Aloud
Somewhere between comfort and change there's a church we can live with
by Loren Seibold

It occurs to me that our congregations may not always have the same expectations of the church that you and I do.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I have a sneaking suspicion that for most church members, the church is a place to find comfort. Comfort from hearing the Word, comforting friends, comforting songs, comforting prayers, comforting hugs and handshakes, comforting rituals.

We, on the other hand, if we're doing our job, are constantly trying to stir things up. In a productive way, of course. We leaders simply can't be content with the organization we lead slowly spiraling into self-absorbed entropy.

I remember once (many years ago) telling my small church we were going to do an evangelistic event. One member said to me, "Oh, good heavens. I thought I'd finally gotten acquainted with everyone in church, and now you want to bring more people!" Few say it quite so bluntly, but some think it, or at least feel the discomfort of it.

How do you create a church that provides comfort, but is still going somewhere?

I've known (and so have you) pastors who stir everything up all at once. He or she goes to some leadership conference, and suddenly the church simply must look like Saddleback or Willow Creek. This week, if possible; next week at the latest. It usually doesn't work, and is sometimes a disaster. Others of us incline toward a rather too cautious pace of change, sometimes missing the potential for exploiting transformative moments.

As many before me have pointed out, it's no accident that the megachurches are all startups with their original pastor; it remains to be seen what the next generation of Willow Creeks and Saddlebacks will look like. Wanna bet they'll go through some of the same stuff we do when successors want to do things their way?

Comments on change? Write BestPractices@ameritech.net
Best PractitionerMike Fortune
Mike Fortune is one of my favorite young pastors. He's just become the senior pastor of the Toledo, OH church; he's married to Jackie, with whom he has Joshua, 7 and Lydia, 5. Mike seems always to be examining new was of doing ministry-the kind of stuff that wouldn't even cross the minds of most of us. Here, Mike tells about Kindness 2 Go bags. LGS

I was talking to a pastor friend of mine, Kumar Dixit at the New Hope Adventist church in Maryland a year ago. In his church, he does this thing where he invites guests at worship that morning to stay after the service for 7 minutes or less. He gives them a gift bag full of goodies and then explains some stuff about their church. I liked what he did so much that I decided to steal it. But instead of giving the gift bags just to guests, we decided to line the stage with them once a month on "First Serve Sabbath" and call them Kindness 2 Go bags. At the end of our service, we pray over those bags and the conversations and questions they generate and then invite every guest and member present to come forward all together and take a bag home with them-as long as they promise to give it away to someone else during the following week. The next Sabbath, I interview a few folks in church who did so simply asking them what they said before giving the bags away and what their friend's response was.

I'll never forget what one college student told me. I had told him he could say, "This is our Kindness 2 Go bag. My pastor told me to give this to you for Jesus sake." But when I interviewed him, what he said he said to his friend instead was, "This is a Kindness 2 Go bag. My church is giving these away for some reason. So take it for Christ's sake." And he did! And a couple weeks later, both of them were in church.

You see it really doesn't matter what you say or even how you say it. Because being normal and ordinary like Jesus is way more effective than being technologically advanced. Acts 4:13 [NIV] says it this way. "When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus." So let's keep it normal, people. And your outreach ordinary. Because small things done with great love still change the world.

One day Jackie and I decided to go to IHOP for breakfast. Knowing we were headed into the International Mission Field of Pancakes, we decided to bring our Kindness 2 Go bag with us hoping we could give it away to someone inside. So before we finished our pancakes, I picked up the Kindness 2 Go bag that had been sitting on our table the entire time and said to our waitress, "Amber, this is our Kindness 2 Go bag. We'd like to give this you to brighten your day."

She looked a little startled, but immediately broke into a big smile. Bigger than any she had given us when we sat down or after she delivered our pancakes. She said, "Really? That's sweet. That does brighten my day. Thanks!"

Jackie, as way of explanation, added "We just moved to the area. My husband is the pastor of the Toledo First Adventist church down the road. He's got everybody in church giving these bags away. It's fun. We hope you like it." She confirmed some location details of our church and before she left, smiled real big, thanked us again and said "It's good to know there are still some good people left in the world."

This Ordinary Outreach Moment was brought to you by the Hop.

Write Mike Fortune at mike4tune@gmail.com. Mike also has an excellent blog.
 
Resources & Ideas

To Read:
  • Check out Bob Mason's great e-mail blog, Open i-Science. Bob (pastor in Ceres, CA) scours the web for some fantastic nature stuff that gently builds a case for intelligent design. Get on Bob's list by writing him at pbobmason@sbcglobal.net.
  • Are you on the list for Signs of the Times e-newsletter for pastors? Good source for sermon illustrations. Write dalgal@pacificpress.com
  • Cutting edge book: The Sky is Falling: Leaders Lost in Transition, by Alan J. Roxburgh. Point:Change is tough. Key word: Liminal, the state of being at the threshold of change. Pros: Roxburgh takes change seriously. Cons: You can get lost in the jargon. Why you should read it: Where a lot of these church-change books are written by pastors who've started their own church from scratch, and are a lot more charismatic than you and I are to boot, this is about people like us managing change in existing churches.

To the Point:

  • "Most people lack imagination much more than they lack good will. If someone points out what can be done and what oughtt to be done there is usually someone to do it." Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, p.81.
  • "The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up." G.K. Chesterton
  • "There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way." C.S. Lewis
Events
NAD Church RESOURCE Center

Best Practices is an e-publication of Vervent
NAD CHURCH RESOURCE CENTER
Editor: Loren Seibold
E-mail: Best Practices
Vervent
Website: Best Practices
Vervent