Saturday Night

I signed in to the blog to write a new post about something that's been on my mind since this morning, but decided against it for the time being. (It was going to be about an article I read on a proposed legislative change in Maine that would require non-profit organizations to pay property taxes, but I'll save that for another day. It's probably not as disinteresting as you might imagine, and it has potentially much more profound effects than you may realize...) In any event, I decided to write a brief note on what I do on Saturday nights. 

Saturday nights are about brain rested and engaged, all at the same time. If it's been a good week, and I'm well-prepared, then I've just gotten done with my two-day weekend, starting on Friday morning and going through the day on Saturday. Sunday, my week starts up again, and it starts up with a bang. It's my busiest day, and it requires by far the most mental energy, for at least two reasons. I'll preface this by saying that this isn't intended to be a "woe is me" story. It is just how things are.

The first reason that Sunday requires a lot of mental energy (if you care about the people in your church) is that most people are coming in on Sunday and they are burned out from the week. They are tired, they are in need of encouragement, they want to hear what God has to say, they want to be built up, challenged, equipped, and then sent on their way, and the expectation is that it's my job to do that for them, or at least, to do my best. Because I care about the people in my church, I want that for them. I want to take the Bible and explain it to them in a way that matters for the real, everyday life. I honestly believe that if "Christianity" is just something you do on Sundays, then it's worthless. It has to have traction in the rest of your life; it has to have as much meaning when you show up at work on Monday as it did to you on Sunday. In other words, I don't think that Christianity is something that you do to make you feel good. I don't think it's something that "works for some people" but doesn't work for others, as if religion really is just a pick-one-that-makes-you-feel-good affair. I think that Christianity either has to offer a meaningful and rationale explanation for why things are the way that they are, so that it actually offers real answers that matter or it's really nothing. To say it another way, what we believe has to ultimately touch every square inch of our lives in some fashion; hence, there is no square inch of life that cannot be explored, examined, and considered.

The second reason that it requires so much mental energy is that to actually offer that meaningful insight into life in a way that matters means that physically speaking, you are going to engage a significant percentage of your brain. There was a Mythbusters episode that sought to prove (or disprove) the myth that humans only use about 10% of your brainpower. As they tested, they noticed that there were ways that would engage a significantly greater percentage of brainpower, as in when you were doing multiple things at the same time. For example, if you were walking around, reading, speaking, and recalling a story all at the same time. Anyone who has every done any public speaking already knew that experientially, but it's actually backed up by science. If you've ever wondered why you are so exhausted after speaking to a group of people (even if you enjoy it!), this is the reason. It requires far more coordination of various brain functions than most people realize.

This is the reason that a Saturday night is both simultaneously about resting and engaging all at the same time. It's like stretching. Or mental yoga. Yoga, because I try to focus on what it is that I'm going to say on Sunday. Stretching, because I'm trying to warm up my brain just enough so that it's ready to go, but not so much that it's already tired.

At the end of the day, though, the reason I try to engage/rest on Saturday goes back to that idea that tomorrow, I feel a burden for the truth of God and for the people of our church. I want to make the connection between those two things: here is what is true, here is what that means for us when we get out of here. I have enough confidence in God's power, and enough trust in our church, that even if I totally blow it and whiff (or, as I've thought in the past, if I Charlie Brown it) I know that they are going to be okay and they are going to come back next weekend. There's more than enough grace to go around!

On the other hand, I know that I've got 30 minutes. And then for most of us it's back to the grind. Back to real life. Back to figuring out what God and Jesus and the Bible actually have to do with my bills, my family, my work, my co-workers, my neighbors, and everything else that sucks the life out of me during the week. Here's to hoping that 30 minutes is time well spent.

Tullian Tchividjian on His Old Sermons →

“So, if we read (or preach) the Bible asking first, “What would Jesus do?” instead of asking “What has Jesus done” we’ll miss the good news that alone can set us free. Evangelicals desperately need to recover the truth that the overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. This means that the Bible is not first a recipe book for Christian living, but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our unchristian living.”

— Tullian Tchividjian on pastortullian.com

The second time I've come across WWJD this week, and thankfully, the same result. Stop it.

The Last Act of Leadership at Mars Hill

“If something happens to me, these all become autonomous churches and lead pastors become primary teaching pastors. So the whole thing is built for me to back out.”

— Mark Driscoll

Several years ago I watched a recorded conversation between Mark Dever, James MacDonald, and Mark Driscoll in which Mark Dever asked Mark Driscoll what the plan was if he were to ever leave the church that he founded, Mars Hill. (I think the question may have been "what happens when you die?") The question was about leadership succession; not so much what would they do if Mark got hit by a bus, but what Mark would do when he was getting ready to retire.

His response was that, when he left, all of the campuses of Mars Hill would become independent, autonomous congregations. He was confident that they had appropriate leadership at each campus who could carry the mantle, even if he were to go away.

One of the questions I've often considered in pondering the multi-site church movement is what happens when the lead preacher moves on. As far as I know, we're still in the "first generation" of Pastor's of video based multi-sites. These multi-sites have been built on the recognition that they have a particularly gifted preacher, and that it makes more sense for the mission of the church to attempt to replicate the preacher via video. In some cases, there is more to it, but there is never less. I haven't heard of any video-based multi-site churches with a boring preacher.

To be clear, I don't necessarily think there is anything wrong with that. We must be willing to admit, though, that the risk of a personality cult is extremely high. Without careful succession plans, you are either setting the church up for disaster or you are setting the next preacher up for disaster, and probably both.

Mark's answer to the question struck me because of it's honesty. It was a tacit suggestion that no one else could do what he does. No one could be the "next Mark Driscoll". No one could fill Mark Driscoll's pulpit. No one could carry on the banner, even in the best of circumstances, when he presumably had time and opportunity to train a replacement as he approached retirement. Of course, that's precisely the reason that the question of what you do when the lead guy leaves looms so large.

The truth is that all churches, large or small, go through a similar difficult transition when a long-term, loved, and gifted pastor retires or leaves. I know a church who had a well-known, well-spoken pastor for years, and even though he retired nearly two decades ago, and they are on their second pastor since then, he is still revered as the one who was there during the golden years. The church has been shrinking ever since he left. The point is, it's not just large churches who have a difficult–if not impossible–time replacing the leader. The difference is in the magnitude of the problem.

The larger a church gets, particularly when it gets large under a single leader, the harder it's going to be to find someone with the ability and the skill set to "take over". And again, that's in the best of circumstances. Let alone when someone leaves suddenly.

Unfortunately for Driscoll, he was hit by the proverbial bus in the form of endless allegations and a little bit of his own unraveling. Regardless of how much of it was justified (and who are any of us to say, unless we were there?), the fact remains that by the time things were said and done he felt like the best thing to do was to walk away. So he did.

Fortunately for Driscoll, he had put a contingency plan in place at Mars Hill, and it looks like they pulled the rip chord on it. The last major act of leadership at the church (barring building sales, etc.) is that all of the campuses have an opportunity to become independent, autonomous congregations. Because no one can do what Mark did, and maybe no one should even try.

Becoming Galilean

“It took Jesus about two seconds to become a human. It took him around 30 years to become a Galilean.”

— Robert Guerrero

I was at a fundraising banquet for a non-profit where I serve on the board (New Hope Community Ministries. Check it out: http://www.newhopecmnj.org) when the guest speaker dropped the bomb quoted above. I've been processing it for the past week.

When I arrived in North Jersey and at Restore, I had a lot of thoughts about church planting that turned out to be mostly wrong. It's not that they were incorrect, per se, it's just that they didn't fit the context that I was planting in.

North Jersey isn't like the other contexts that I've been in. It's faster-paced than Miami, but much more community-centric than upstate New York and the capital region. It's a delightful blend of fast-paced-cut-your-throat-to-get-ahead New York City and old-timey New England, where if we don't know you and you didn't grow up in this here town, we don't trust you. It's not exactly either of those things, but it has elements of both. It's regional, but it's not. We commute to work, then come home, park our cars, and walk to the park. My town is better than yours. Welcome to North Jersey.

I remember hearing about a dude who was planting a church in New York City and for the first year, when people asked him what he was doing, he said something to the effect of, "learning the people." He may as well have said, "becoming a New Yorker". That's what he was doing, and he was right for doing it.

At the time the comment struck me as somewhat silly–again, not because he was wrong–but because it seemed like a waste of time. It seemed to me like a better approach would have been to take a person who was already a New Yorker and have them plant a church in New York. At least it would have been more efficient. Of course, raising up indigenous leaders is (or should be) the long term goal of every church planter in New York and elsewhere. But unless that is happening already, or until it does, a church planter is going to need to take some time to learn the context if we are going to preach the Gospel well.

The good news about the good news is that it doesn't stop being good, no matter what context you are in. But, if you want to make sure that the people you are preaching to hear it as good news, you better learn to express it in a language that they can understand, addressing the real needs that they already know that they have, or setting them free from the real bondage they already experience. And that requires becoming one of them. Like Jesus became a Galilean.