You have a decision to make

NOTE:  This post is part of a blog training series on leadership development, originally authored for CTI Music Ministries.     Read the series introduction | view the whole series


“We are to be shapers of our culture rather than allowing ourselves to be shaped by it.” – Phil Lutz


Do you think of yourself as a leader (or potential leader?)

Try to get past the general “everyone can make a difference” positive-thinking rhetoric that our culture promotes, and consider the question seriously: do you really comprehend and believe in the potential you have for leadership?

If not, you might be subscribing to a somewhat narrow and limiting definition of leadership as reinforced by our culture. This definition encourages assumptions similar to the following:

• Leadership means being in charge: directing others to reach a particular goal;
• Leadership requires authority: it’s a position that I need to be put into by someone else;
• Leadership involves teaching others how to do something that I know how to do (which means that I need to know more about it, be more experienced in it, or be more competent than them at whatever it is I’m leading them towards.)
• Leadership is a status earned by putting in my time and good behavior… or a privilege and authority I deserve because of my depth of experience in a particular area. 

Now, some of these assumptions may be applicable to what I refer to as “positional” leadership. You may not think that you meet some of these qualifications, and that may be impacting whether or not you view yourself as a leader. But when we talk about CTI’s vision to develop Christian leadership and character in young musicians, we’re embracing a much broader and more inclusive view of what it means to be a leader. We’re talking about how we choose to use the capacity we’ve been given to shape our culture.

Make no mistake about the fact that you have been given such capacity. Every one of us has. And it doesn’t matter if our individual capacity is limited or expansive… what matters is what we choose to do with whatever capacity we’ve been given.

In Mark 12, Jesus observes people giving money to the temple treasury. Some people gave large amounts, but Jesus commended the widow who gave everything she had, even though it amounted to much less than what anyone else had given. They had given some out of their abundance, but she had given everything she had. She maximized her impact within the bounds of what she had been given. Jesus found this to be significant, and told his disciples that she had actually given more than all the others. (Mark 12:41-44 / Luke 21:1-4.)

Don’t believe for a second that your “limited” capacity to have an impact makes what you have to offer insignificant to Jesus. He’s not at all concerned with how much you’ve been given. He’s interested in what you choose to do with it.

The same is true of your capacity to lead. I don’t believe that leadership is a measure of how much influence you have. I believe it’s a measure of how effectively you use whatever influence you do have… and we have all been given some degree of influence.

If you agree, then you’re on the hook to make a decision about your personal leadership development, because what we choose to do with the potential God has given us is a matter of stewardship:

• Will I choose to look for the areas where God has given me some capacity to influence, or
• Am I too comfortable with not discovering them, since I know that discovering them will cost me something… perhaps everything I have, as it did the widow?

You cannot refuse to choose. Not intentionally making a choice is choosing the latter.

-------------------------------

Week 1 reflection questions:

1. Are you in the habit of thinking of yourself as leader? If not, what patterns of thinking do you need to change in order to start seeing yourself this way?
2. Do you agree with the notion that leadership isn’t a measure of how much influence you have, but of how effectively you use whatever influence you do have?
3. Do you agree with / understand the importance of developing leadership in yourself as a matter of stewardship?
4. Are you already aware of areas where God has given you some capacity for influence? Might there be other areas you aren’t yet aware of?

This week’s definition:
INFLUENCE = our capacity to shape our culture and the people around us.

This week’s quote:
“We are to be shapers of our culture rather than allowing ourselves to be shaped by it.” – Phil Lutz

This week’s assignment:
Reflect on and identify areas where God has given you some capacity to shape your culture and the people around you.

A leadership development blog series

Over the next 5 weeks I will be releasing a series of posts that I have written as part of a leadership development and training curriculum for CTI Music Ministries.  Although they have been written specifically for participants in our fulltime ministry program, I believe that they deal with principles that are essential for everyone who professes a desire to be formed in the image of Christ.  I offer them here in the hope that God may use them to encourage and challenge others on the journey.

Look for the first post this Thursday.


You can view the entire series here.

Update on my ministry

Dear friends,

I’m writing to update you on what I’m doing, and to ask for your help in doing it.

Last October I began functionally leading CTI Music Ministries as our Executive Vice President during a transition period after our president moved on from the organization. In February of this year, our Board of Directors officially named me as CTI’s Executive Director.

I first became involved with CTI in 2000 as a missions team leader, serving in that volunteer capacity for two years before returning to work in private business. In April of 2004, I moved to Willmar, Minnesota to join the fulltime staff of CTI as the Program Director – a position I held until the transition that began last fall.

My work on the program side of our ministry (as both a participant and the director) has kindled in me a passion to see Christ more fully formed in the lives of those who follow him, and to see his Church fully embrace and live out his commission to “train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life” (Matt. 28:19, MSG).

Over the last year, I’ve led CTI through a re-visioning process that has been centered on defining how we as an organization will seek to live out this great commission. Through this process, we have refined our ministry focus with respect to two specific groups of people: those to whom we go, and those whom we send.

It is now our highest aim to “make disciples of all nations” by developing Christian leadership and character in young musicians, training them in servanthood, awareness, and the active sharing of their faith, and mobilizing them in partnership with the church and other established Christian organizations worldwide to support mission and ministry through the impact of music.

I am now building a team of people who will commit to supporting me as I lead CTI in pursuit of this vision, and I would like to invite you to be a part of this team. I’m specifically seeking partners who will support me through regular financial contributions to CTI. My goal is to raise $10,000 in ministry support per year.

There is an exciting reason to contribute to CTI right now: two of our local supporters have stepped forward with offers to match donations made in response to this letter. If you are able to respond to this request,

your first contribution in support of my ministry will be worth three times the value of your gift.

If you are able to contribute, please visit www.ctimusic.org/donate and click “support a team member.”

I would ask you to consider establishing a monthly gift of $15 or more through our secure online site, which allows you to schedule recurring donations with great flexibility. You can also make one-time gifts online.

I’m also seeking people who will pray specifically that God would give me the wisdom, inspiration, vision and courage I need daily to lead this organization. If you would like to commit to being such a person, please let me know, and I’ll keep you informed with specific prayer requests from time to time.

If you’re interested in learning more about CTI, visit our website at www.ctimusic.org. You can also find us on facebook (facebook.com/ctimusic) for pictures, videos, and real-time stories from the field which illustrate the ongoing process of training those we meet, far and near, in this way of life… and discovering along the way that we too are being trained as we work out what it means to live our lives in service to our Lord.

Thanks for your consideration, and may you enjoy God’s blessings this holiday season!

-Chris

P.S. - In non-CTI news, I got married last month! Pictures at facebook.com/careed

Of aprons and crowns

"If you approach the world with the apron of a servant, then you are allowed to go places that you can't go if you approach it with the crown of a king."

-Jon Foreman, lead singer of Switchfoot, as quoted in the Nov-Dec '09 issue of Relevant

wow.

Other life and leadership lessons Foreman offers in the same article:

"I try to remind myself that I am here to serve people. If they want to take what I said and use it then that's an honor and if they don't then it's not my responsibility."

"You can't control what other people are going to do, you can't control what's going to happen, but you can control the way you approach a situation. That's one of the things on one can take from you."

"Ultimately, it comes back to the idea to whom much is given, much is required. That can either be a nail in the coffin, like 'How can I approach anything?' Or you can say 'It's only by the grace of God I am here and whatever He wants to do from here on out is His business"

"I have had moments in my life where I've been naive enough to think I'm going to change the world. And it's a really incredible feeling, the day you discover that's never going to be the case. So I think, ultimately, alongside of that has to be the corollary of truly trusting in the God of the Heavens. It this deity formed the stars and the space and actually cares about me, then as I abandon myself to Him,. there's a hope greater than some form of hope I'm going to drum up within myself."

Influence plus Intention

(why we must develop Christian leadership and character in young musicians)

At the end of May, the year-long stateside ministry program I direct came to a close, and we transitioned to our summer international ministry program.  39 young people will be trained and sent out to share the love of Christ through music and stories of how God has worked in their lives.  They will support worldwide efforts to make disciples of all nations by serving our ministry partners - modeling the example of Jesus, who did not come to be served, but to serve.  And they will do so under the leadership of their peers: 14 other young musicians who have recently completed a year in our fulltime program.

This peer leadership model works because of the principle of influence.  Our fulltimers have spent the past nine months as touring bands, strengthening Christians in places where they gather and bringing the light of Jesus to places where He may not be known.  They have done what our summer team members are just now arriving to do.  Accordingly, they have a great deal of influence in the lives of the young musicians who they are now training and sending out.

But for this influence to become leadership, it must be combined with one other principle: 

Intention.

Leadership is far more than influence alone.  Leadership must involve using that influence to help others achieve a common goal with a focus and competency they would not otherwise be capable of.

Without intention, influence is merely a power trip.  We can influence people without purpose, just for the sake of exerting power and feeling superior.  I can use my position and authority to “make” people see it my way, but that’s not leadership.  And my actions and attitudes might be influenced by strong personalities around me, but that doesn’t mean they are leading me.

Intention is what separates leadership from mere influence.  Influence only gives us the opportunity to be heard.  Intention means using that opportunity to deliver a message worth hearing.  Intention says “This is where I’m going.  This is where my focus is.  This is what I’m trying to accomplish.”  Leadership adds “come with me, and let’s accomplish it together.”

The choices we make about how to use our influence will define our leadership.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the story of three servants who had been entrusted with some property by their master.  Two of them were intentional about what they did with that property, and so increased their master’s profit.  The third was not intentional with what had been entrusted to him.  He therefore did nothing to increase his master’s holdings. 

When we think about the concept of stewardship, we tend to think of money and possessions first.  But what about opportunities?  What about the influence God has given us?  Aren’t these also resources over which we should exhibit good stewardship?

This world is full of young people who have influence over their peers.  Unfortunately, it does not seem to be full of others who will disciple them and help them to intentionally use that influence to impact their generation.

This is why I am passionate about developing Christian leadership and character in young musicians.  I have been given influence over this community of young people.  And I know that the world will be impacted by what I choose to leverage that influence towards.

The Master has entrusted each of us with some of His most precious treasure:  influence in the lives of others.  Will we be intentional in how we use it to lead them?  If so, we can count on hearing these words from the master:  “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!”  (Matthew 25:23)

Full Circle: The Church and Completeness of Purpose

For those of you who never clicked through to the discussion "what is church?" on Jeff Goins' blog, here's how I responded to his question:

I envision "the church" as the localized fellowships of Jesus-followers around the world who come together for the purpose of forming each other in the image of Christ, equipping each other for ministry and evangelism, and then returning to the world to live out those values in practical reality.

I'm not keen on the idea that church is the place to "do" this ministry and evangelism... I think of it more as the context in which we equip and encourage each other to these ends. But the church only fulfills its divinely ordained purpose - to "train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life" according to Matt 28:19 (msg) - when it scatters and intersects with all humanity so that it might bring the light of Jesus there.

Coming together is important. But unless it is coupled with a subsequent going out, the church is incomplete in its purpose.

What is Church?

I'm inclined to believe that while the people who make up the church may be imperfect, that when we come together in genuine community (whatever that looks like), there is something perfectly beautiful about that, which, I believe, pleases God.
-jeff goins

My friend Jeff is hosting a blog discussion centered around the question: What is "Church"? You are invited to contribute to the discussion on his blog.

The absurdity of selfishness

As I shut off the lights in my house and headed to bed this evening, I was, for reasons I don't understand, overwhelmed by an uncommon sense of gratitude for what I have. I felt strangely free, not to compare my situation in life to anyone else's... to judge what I had or had not by some aggregate of what others have... but for a brief miraculous moment, to see everything as a blessing... a gift from God.

For that moment... for the first time that I can recall... I could have truly rejoiced in seeing God take everything away...because in that moment I was struck by the absurdity of selfishness... in striving to hold onto things that won't last, and aren't even mine to begin with. It's like trying to capture the awe of a sunset or vanishing cloud or a rainbow in a photograph.

Does God get angry about my ingratitude, or does He instead weep for me, for all the bounty of life that I fail to experience? Whose is the loss when I fail to recognize blessings in my life?

I realized for one moment tonight that the tragedy doesn't take place when the blessings end or pass. The sun sets, the clouds change, the rainbow vanishes. The tragedy is in trying to preserve them and, in so doing, missing the fact that they were ever there to begin with.

To be a witness...

You may have either (1) read elsewhere on this blog, or (2) tolerated my incessant ranting in person about my belief that we, as Christians, often tend to focus on the externals of being a living witness as though evangelism were some sort of a formula by which, as long as the net result in our lives is greater than the average level of morality in society, we're doing it right and people will come to know the Lord.

As usual, there are many people out there who have expressed this point much more succinctly, artistically, and with a more hopeful outlook than I have been able to.

I have come across such an expression recently... two sentences that I can really grasp... that help me remember and communicate this concept:

To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.

-Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard
as quoted by Madeline L'Engle in Walking on Water

L'Engle adds to this thought the following quote from turn-of-the-(19th)-century Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, who observes:

Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.

Forming concrete

I have a passion to see people embrace ministry and discipleship as a lifestyle. I also have a vision of a church that equips them to do so.

I get to live out a little microcosm of this vision each year through my work with CTI Music Ministries. Each August we are joined by about 14 young people who sign on for a year of encouraging the church, challenging Christians to loving action in response to Christ’s call to “make disciples of all nations,” and sharing the hope of Christ with those who may not know Him.

It is our desire to see the lives of our team members shaped as radically as they hope to shape the lives of those they meet on the road.

At the beginning of the year, team members embrace this vision readily… mostly because they’re told by us that it's what they’re supposed to be doing. So, in a sense, we make those choices for them. As the year continues and things become less new and more routine, they each begin to work through the process of deciding whether or not they will make these values their own. As their stated time of commitment nears an end, the back-pressure of compulsory ministry begins to ease, and team members begin to live out the personal choices they have made through the process.

Some see the impending end to this time of ministry that has been structured for them and realize for the first time that they really do want their lives to be about the things we’ve been striving for together during the year. Because it becomes their personal choice (instead of ours,) these team members tend to leave the program with a high desire to continue living that vision out. They discover and innovate their own ways to make ministry, discipleship and evangelism part of their daily lives once the ministry structure that CTI has enabled is lifted. They do this because these things have been formed in them as life-values, and they have chosen, independently, to embrace them.

There is also another path. If team members have not made the personal choices to value ministry (as we've defined it anyway,) then there is nothing to keep them going in it once the structure that enabled and compelled them is removed. Since the motivation to continue strong must now come from within, those who are not so motivated will not continue strong.

I've started to think of this process in construction terms. Each August we grade the lot, dig our foundations, lay the rebar and set up forms. As the year progresses, we pour concrete into those forms. By January, all the concrete has been poured and begins to cure. As spring approaches, we begin lifting the forms off. We remove the constraints and structure that has told the concrete where to be and what shape to take.

If the concrete has cured well, it will hold its shape once the forms are removed, and it will be suitable for building upon. If it did not cure well, it will lose its shape as the forms are removed. It might deform a little, or it might crumble entirely. Yet regardless of the outcome, the forms must be removed, and the object (or person) being formed must be given sovereign choice about whether or not they will keep the shape that they were formed into during this time.

I must confess how much it hurts when team members take that second path because, like I said, I have a passion to see people embrace ministry and discipleship as a lifestyle. I place a high value on the way those around me are formed. I rejoice when they make choices that align with these values, and I am saddened... almost personally hurt, in a way, when they choose a path that undermines something that is important to me. But values that are only compulsory values are no values at all. They only become values when they are chosen as such. And God gives to every person the right to choose. He has given this right to man since creation. And we have often chosen in a way that has hurt or violated Him. Yet God knows that if He were to force us to love Him, the very character of love would cease to be love.

I struggle, sometimes, to remember that each person must be allowed to choose for themselves. I can (and should!) continue to love them without necessarily condoning the choices they make, but once I’ve had my say in their life, I must not stand in the way of their sovereign choice.

God's ultimate plan for humanity has not been thwarted by the choices we have made, though many of them have broken His father's heart. Neither should we allow the choices of those around us to discourage the visions that He has given us for our lives.

Or theirs.

A mobile blog?

Yes, you're all in trouble now - I can blog from my phone!

I've created a separate blog on which to share random pictures and thoughts from daily life - check it out at chrisreed-mobile.blogspot.com.

You can still find my more serious thoughts here on "exploring the edge"... on the rare and random occasions when I share them!







[edit:  once facebook began supporting photo uploads directly from Sprint phones, this blog became obsolete.  My random pictures from daily life can now be found on my facebook page.]

Optimist/Pessimist

This is apparently a famous saying. I've never heard it before. If it isn't completely true, it's at least something I can appreciate:

Pessimists are usually right. Optimists are usually wrong, but most great changes were made by optimists.

I don't know what to make of that, other than to chuckle and go... "yeah, probably so."

But I doubt the optimists would have survived to make their great changes without us pessimists around (and apparently, I'm usually right.)

I marvel at the symbiotic nature of creation.

Asthma and Amazing Grace - a "testimony"

I consider “testimony” to mean a recounting of any time in my life in which I can identify where God’s story has intersected with my own. I therefore have many “testimonies,” because God has made Himself known to me by intersecting the story of my life in many different places, times, and ways. Here is one such story.

I’ve been aware of the concept of a loving God since before I can remember. Growing up in a Christian family provided me with a foundation of faith on which I have been building and remodeling ever since. But being raised in this environment has also meant that I have no understanding of what it is like to live without the awareness of a God who loves me. I believe it is because of this fact that I have struggled to comprehend the reality and depth of God’s grace – the character quality of God through which He gives me gifts of life which I cannot earn.

As long as I can remember, I have been taught, and have believed, that what the Bible says is true: mankind has strayed from God’s design for His creation, and that none of us, by our own power or choosing, can live up to the perfect standard that His design demands. But I have also believed, since living up to that standard is a requirement for “salvation” (spending eternity in fellowship with God rather than in separation from everything good,) that He has provided a way to cover our imperfections. That way is grace.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. -Ephesians 2:8-9

I have always lived a relatively tame lifestyle- not really believing that I was “saved” because of that lifestyle (the above passage asserts that I am not saved by “works”) but, to some degree, feeling obligated to continue in that lifestyle because I have been “saved.” So I grew up knowing, and maybe even believing, many of the spiritual truths that comprise my faith, but without an understanding of grace, I lived few of them out.

Neo, someday you will learn, just as I did, that there is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path. -Morpheus, The Matrix

Without an understanding of grace, I had no comprehension of God’s love. The word "love" was so over-used, and yet under-emphasized in my church that it ceased to have any meaning for me. I didn’t understand the depth of God’s love, because I had never lived outside of it. John 3:16, that great Bible verse that is the very keystone of the faith of many, became cliché to me: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

It didn’t mean much to me that God had given His son for me, because I never knew what life was like without that gift. The reality of His love was as mundane and factual as breathing to me: I’ve never been unable to breathe, and I therefore have very little appreciation for the value of breath. In the same way, I’ve never not known about the love and grace of God, so I have no idea what it would be like to live without it. I’ve never had the spiritual equivalent of asthma.

I went to college in this way… not having any reference for life without God’s love…not understanding the significance of His grace… but still feeling obligated to live a “good” life because I knew I was saved from the prospect of eternal separation from that love (whatever that meant!) I looked for ways to reinforce the convictions I held. I sought validation for my beliefs. I tried to be better at the lifestyle that was itself becoming the object of my faith.

When I thought I knew all the answers, God began to show me how little I knew.

When I thought there was a “system of salvation” that I could understand, God showed me that He cannot be confined by the human mind.

When I thought that my lifestyle defined my commitment to Christ, He introduced me to non-Christians living a more godly life than I ever had, or probably ever would.

I began to wonder why I was “saved”, and they, at least as far as I could tell, were not.

And so God began to reveal to me the depth of His love through an increasing understanding of His sovereignty and grace.

I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. -Isaiah 65:1

The sovereignty of God (His right and power to define all reality) has been one of the most difficult concepts for me to understand. I think this is because in order to understand God’s sovereignty, I truly have to embrace the reality that it is not my own lifestyle which has saved me. There is nothing I can do to influence the fact that God has chosen to love me as one of His children.

It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. -Romans 9:16

I did nothing to save myself (that is, to secure my salvation.) I can do nothing to earn it. I cannot pay for it. God chose to save me not because of who I am, but because He wanted to. It was His sovereign choice.

It is even harder to understand when I look around and see people who are so much more worthy of this gift (in the eyes of the world) and realize that many of them may never know the love of God.

Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. -Romans 9:18

It’s a mystery… a paradox that I will never fully understand. A loving God… a God who is described as “merciful”… choosing who will be saved, and who will not. This does not seem like a hopeful concept… and yet, understanding it has done much to show me how unworthy I am. And once I began to understand my own unworthiness, I began to start to comprehend the depth of God’s love. John 3:16 began to have meaning to me. His love grew from being mundane to being the source of true joy for me!

Now I can understand why so many born-again Christians, fresh from a life without the knowledge of the love of Christ, are so struck by His love, and passionate about sharing it with others. Their asthma has been relieved! They have seen the full depth and measure of God’s love, and I am only now beginning to look over that ledge.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!

That used to be cliché too. Understanding what I have been saved from, and something of how I have been saved from it… but not understanding why God chose to save me, has made it a sweet sound after all. And even though He has the sovereignty to choose who will be saved and who will not, I know that He will shower this amazing grace upon anyone who seeks it. After all, the same Bible that recognizes His sovereignty also declares Him to be the God who “is patient… not wanting anyone to perish” (2 Peter 3:9) and “who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” (I Timothy 2:4)

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. -Matthew 7:7-8

CTI releases new CD

You may or may not be aware of the fact that I've hardly left my house in the last two months. The reason for this is because I've been busy producing CTI's new album. The whole thing was tracked, mixed and mastered at my house (which we've affectionately dubbed "studio 14".) We sent the master off for duplication at the beginning of this week. Below is CTI's press release about the new CD.

You can order a copy through the links at the right, or by visiting CTImusic.org.

---------------------------------------------------
We're proud to announce the release of Speak Without Sound, our new studio album for 2008!

Featuring members of our 2007 - 2008 fulltime ministry teams, Speak Without Sound is a concept album that we hope will take each listener on a journey, encouraging them as they seek the God that we serve and the life that He calls us to live.

We know it's kind of an odd title for an album (especially for one produced by a ministry that seeks to use music as a primary way to communicate our message!) But we also recognize that music simply provides us with an entryway into worlds that we would not have an opportunity to interact with otherwise. But it only opens the door. On the other side, our very lives must speak without sound if our message is to be understood and believed, for we know our words will be void if the fruit of Christ-likeness is not evident in us.

What opens the door for you?

The song from which the title is drawn goes on to proclaim "Your love is so loud!" How amazing and true it is that something as intangible as love is demonstrated most clearly in ways that speak louder than any message we can communicate audibly!

At CTI, we recognize that our greatest ministry takes place beyond the music, in the moments when we speak not through microphones, but through who we, as individuals, are striving to be. And that's a ministry opportunity that is available to everyone.

Saint Francis of Assisi admonished those under his charge to "preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words." We hope you'll join us in discovering the ways that we are all called to speak without sound.
---------------------------------------------------

Everyone’s got an opinion (and I’m getting tired of mine)

I’d cut myself a little slack if it was at all in my nature to do so. But here’s a problem I’m running up against in my own life: sometimes I’m all talk.

By that I don’t mean that I don’t believe what I say, or that, given the opportunity to practice it, I don’t. But I just seem to express a lot of opinions about the way I think things should be without giving people much of a reason to listen to them.

Perhaps it’s a problem of credentials: no one knows, or really cares to know, who I am. And who can blame them? There are plenty of people in this world with well-articulated opinions, and many of them have worked long and hard to earn the platform from which they opine. So why listen to someone like me who doesn’t seem to have earned as much of a right to be heard?

This past month I spent a week traveling with each of our two fulltime ministry teams for the purpose of helping them work out what, exactly, they had to share with our audiences. As the Program Director for CTI Music Ministries, I’m the person responsible for coming up with the central message we deliver to our audiences each year, but they’re the ones responsible for delivering it. Talk about a tough job - these teams have to take a thematic challenge from someone else, somehow make it their own, and then try to impact the church in the US with it! And this is all predicated on my ability to formulate my own thoughts well for them!

Fortunately for me, the back-pressure that I needed in order to solidify my thinking on the subject for this year was presented by an invitation to speak at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. The school really wanted a sort of “sermonette” as part of the chapel service that the team would be giving. It seemed like a good opportunity to model something for the team, so we had decided in advance that I would deliver the message that day. I spent a couple of weeks refining my thoughts and distilling them down to fit into a 7-minute time slot. (You can read the text of my message here.)

It was well-received by the students, but I felt a little awkward about the fact that all I did was passionately highlight my own opinions about what it means to be “relevant” and what I think it looks like for the church when relevance goes wrong. I concluded with my thoughts on what the church should be in response, and the student body of 1,000 or so applauded politely as I left the stage. I think it opened some minds, but it lacked anything that made it more compelling than just another person’s opinion.

A few days later, one of the team members was addressing a crowd at a Christian high school about essentially the same subject. She started by talking about someone she had known – someone whose life had been an inspiration to her. She shared what it was, specifically, about his life that impacted her so much. Then she shared about his unexpected death. She shared how that event had rocked her, hurt her, and caused her to seriously evaluate how she spent her own brief time on this earth. The students hung on her every word. By the time she was ready to deliver her central challenge to them, they were ready to listen to what she had to say.

She used the few moments she had with them to build a platform of credibility by sharing something more than her opinion. The fact that she had an opinion mattered because of her personal experience.

I desperately want the things I say and challenge others with to carry the weight of personal experience. Because everyone has an opinion. Blogging and conversing are fun… but I’m growing tired of having an opinion, and I’m not blaming anyone who is getting tired of hearing about it. I want to leave a legacy of action, not words.

My friend Jeff has been after me for some time to write another article for the online magazine that he publishes called Wrecked for the Ordinary, so the whole time I was developing this message for Northwestern, I was thinking about whether or not it could be adapted to share with the readership of Wrecked. Jeff is not one to let my thoughts go unrefined, however. As our discussion evolved, I came to the realization that Wrecked was a platform for sharing spiritual discovery that had been made through the adventure of life, not so much for preaching at people in a way that was detached from personal experience.

Jeff’s response to my discovery was “You’re right. We tell stories that exemplify radical Christian living. It’s not a soap box. We’re trying to be just a little bit unique in a market that is inundated with opinions. If we had young people write about what they thought sucked in American culture, we wouldn’t run out of articles, but we also wouldn’t be able to compete with a whole slew of other mag’s.... Preaching without application is over-done and produces even less fruit.”

This has fundamentally impacted how I think about my own life and experiences. Instead of relating the personal convictions I have come to through experience, I’m now trying to focus more on relating the experiences themselves. It’s like starting over, in a way. I’ve still got a lot to say, but it’s taxing a completely different set of muscles to learn how to say it in this new way. I feel like I need to get back in touch with my own life. I don’t necessarily remember all the experiences that have brought me to the convictions I hold so strongly, and I need to re-discover the art of telling the stories, not the endings. Because the stories are the reality, and the endings are interpretive.

After all, everyone’s got an opinion.

So Many Christian Infants

Another recent article challenging the church to action among it's own (translated "discipleship" or "spiritual formation.")

This one's by Gordon MacDonald. He's asking the question:
"Why are we so good at leading people to faith and so bad at prodding them to maturity?"
So Many Christian Infants

Escape from Consumer Church

My friend Paul just pointed me to this article. It says a lot of what I have wanted to express, so I'll let it speak for me until I have time to come back to this subject:

Escape from Consumer Church

Awaken

As our CTI teams travel around the US this year, they’re engaging their audiences with this theme of awakening, which is an exhortation to us, the church, to awaken in passion to our responsibility and privilege of taking the Spirit of God that lives in us to the world.

The following is the text of an address that I gave in a chapel service at Northwestern College on September 14, 2007 while traveling with one of our teams on the Awaken tour.

---

Do any of you read Relevant magazine? I recently received the latest issue. The cover sports a photo of folk artist Ben Harper and advertises articles inside including several artist interviews, a story on the aftermath of Katrina two years later, and a rundown of this fall’s TV shows. Relevant has a pretty in-depth website too, and a podcast – both of which you might assume, based on the name of the magazine.

Their tagline is “God, Life, Progressive Culture”. If I had to identify their primary mission, I would say it was to draw attention to spirituality, both within “Christian” media and “secular” media. In fact, I doubt that the Relevant editorial staff really believes in differentiating between the two. The point seems to be that God exists in the music, writing, personalities and art of our culture, regardless of whether or not they are deemed exclusively “Christian.”

But I’m not here to endorse the magazine, nor am I here to defame it. I just want to draw attention to both the word and the concept of being “relevant” because the term has been getting a lot of press among younger Christians within the last few years.

I think it’s become our cultural buzzword for the concept of being “in the world, but not of it.”

Have you heard that phrase, “in it, not of it?”

I’ve heard it over the years – back in 2000, the CTI team that I was on covered a song by Avalon called “in not of.” Somehow I just assumed it was taken from scripture, I guess.

So I spent some time looking for it while I was preparing for this message. I was surprised by how difficult it was to find those words in the Bible.

In fact, I couldn’t find the phrase “in the world, not of the world,” or anything like it, anywhere that I looked.

What I did find, however, was a lot of scriptural support for the fact that we aren’t of this world. It’s not so much a command as it is a reality that we need to embrace.

As an example, while praying for his disciples in John 17:16, Jesus said that they weren’t of the world just as he wasn’t. And in I Peter 2:11, we read “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.” And there is more scriptural support for the fact that we are not of the world.

As for being “in” the world, Peter goes on in verse 12 to instruct his audience of “aliens and strangers” to “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

Drawing it all together is the Romans 12:2 exhortation: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

So we’ve got some scriptural basis to stand on as we talk about this issue of being relevant to the culture we live among as aliens and strangers – in effect, being “in the world, not of the world.”

But sometimes, it seems like our efforts to be “in the world, not of the world” have prompted us to create a completely separate world. And we’ve stocked this separate world with every Christian alternative we can come up with… inventing “patterns” of our own world that resemble the ones of the world outside, and then we conform to those patterns instead.

And in the end, our zeal to be “in the world and not of it” has led us totally out of the world, yet left us totally of it. We can be very worldly, having everything that the world has, though the version in our separate Christian world is often viewed as sanitized.

And relevance has often become the term we use to define doing all of the things we can do to our separate world to make it more appealing to “them.” We think of it as the gravity of our separate world – the force we hope will draw people in. We reason that, if we use enough video, lighting and rock music, and then have a softball team on top of that, they’ll be attracted to our world, because it will look like theirs.

Have you ever walked into a Christian bookstore and found something that tries to persuade you that “If you like this secular band, you’ll like this Christian alternative”?

If you like Weezer, you’ll like Bleach.

If you like Gavin DeGraw, we promise you’ll like Nate Sallie.

If you like Avril Lavigne… well… maybe we don’t want you in our world that badly after all. (But if you really must come, we suggest checking out Jessie Daniels.)

It seems like we want to stand on our own cleverness and the things we have created, instead of relying on the overpowering attraction of the Spirit of God. We’ve forgotten that we have nothing to offer.

Remember, Peter said to live such good lives among the pagans that they may see our good deeds and glorify God… not for us to live in separation, and bid them come to us.

And Jesus, through his final recorded address to his disciples as recorded in Matthew 28:19 commanded us to “go, make disciples of all nations…”

Eugene Peterson renders it this way in The Message: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life.”

And so it strikes me that the only way to be relevant is to go,

to live our lives among the pagans,
to train those we meet, far and near, in this way of life,
to erase the fictional divide between the “Christian” and the “secular,”

and to remember that our words, our efforts, our lights and video and rock-and-roll praise bands are nothing to them without the reality of Christ and the Spirit of God.

As our CTI teams travel around the US this year, they’re engaging their audiences with this theme of awakening, and this is what that’s all about: As an organization, we long to see us, the church, awakening in passion to our responsibility and privilege of taking the Spirit of God that lives in us, and going to the world instead of waiting for the world to come to us.

After all, the presence of the Spirit is the only thing that really makes our world any different anyway.

What is church/the church/a church?

I've been consumed with this subject for a while now, and have been formulating and sketching through my thoughts, intending to eventually work them out here as I have other streams of consciousness in the past. Look for that in October, which is currently calendared as the next chance I have to breathe.

I'm reading through Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell right now (thanks, Miles) and have tripped across a section that gets me so keyed up I just have to share the essence of it here with you. It's exactly where I'm headed in my own thinking, though I want to elaborate on it in a different way. Check this out:

My understanding is that to be a Christian is to do whatever it is that you do with great passion and devotion. We throw ourselves into our work because everything is sacred...

...this is why it is impossible for a Christian to have a secular job. If you follow Jesus and you are doing what you do in his name, then it is no longer secular work; it's sacred. You are there; God is there. The difference is our awareness.

This truth has significant implications for how churches function.

...A church is a community of people who are learning how to be certain kinds of people wherever they find themselves so they can do whatever it is they do "in the name of the Lord Jesus." The goal isn't to bring everyone's work into the church; the goal is for the church to be these unique kinds of people who are transforming the places they live and work and play because they understand the whole earth is filled with the kavod of God. ["Kavod" is the Hebrew word that we translate as "glory."]

...Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there. It is almost as if being a good missionary means having really good eyesight. Or maybe it means teaching people to use their eyes to see things that have always been there; they just didn't realize it. You see God where others don't. And then you point him out.

...That is why the best teachers are masters of the obvious. They see the same things that we do, but they are aware of so much more. And when they point it out, it changes the way we see everything.

Happy teaching, friends.

The way of love - Part the last: Practical steps towards resolution

A relevant and timely excerpt from Dallas Willard’s “The Great Omission”:

We should not only want to be merciful, kind, unassuming, and patient persons but also be making plans to become so. We are to find out, that is, what prevents and what promotes mercifulness and kindness and patience in our soul, and we are to remove hindrances to them as much as possible, carefully substituting that which assists Christ-likeness.

Many well-meaning people, to give an example, cannot succeed in being kind because they are too rushed to get things done. Haste has worry, fear, and anger as close associates; it is a deadly enemy of kindness, and hence of love. If this is our problem, we may be greatly helped by a day’s retreat into solitude and silence, where we will discover that the world survives even though we are inactive. There we might prayerfully meditate to see clearly the damage done by our unkindness, and honestly compare it to what, if anything, is really gained by our hurry. We will come to understand that for the most part our hurry is really based upon pride, self-importance, fear, and lack of faith, and rarely upon the production of anything of true value for anyone.

Perhaps we will end up making plans to pray daily for the people with whom we deal regularly. Or we may resolve to ask associates for forgiveness for past injuries. Whatever comes of such prayerful reflection, we may be absolutely sure that our lives will never be the same, and that we will enjoy a far greater richness of God’s reality in our lives.

In general, then, we “put on” the new person by regular activities that are in our power, and we become what we could not be by direct effort. If we take note of and follow Jesus in what he did when he was not ministering or teaching, we will find ourselves led and enabled to behave as he did when he was “on the spot.”

The single most obvious trait of those who profess Christ but do not grow into Christ-likeness is their refusal to take the reasonable and time-tested measures for spiritual growth. I almost never meet someone in spiritual coldness, perplexity, distress, and failure who is regular in their use of the spiritual exercises that will be obvious to anyone familiar with the contents of the New Testament.

That reminds me of the Richard Foster quote that I used as my prelude post to this series.

I doubt that I’ll have anything different or better to say on this subject for a while.