Off the Agenda: Conversations for Building Church Leaders

This is a highly unscientific observation, but I stand by it: In my scouring of bookshelves in pastor’s studies and church libraries, I regularly find volumes from the corporate world about how to be an effective leader and efficient administrator; studies from the humanities about human psychology and sexuality; and manuals from the financial and legal sectors about budgeting, zoning, and liability issues. What I seldom, if ever, find is fiction. And I think that’s a shame.

For much of their history, many evangelicals have considered novels to be either immoral or simply a waste of time. (To be fair, there are a good many novels that are both.) But good fiction (an entirely subjective category, I admit) can help a minister better understand the people to whom he or she is ministering—people struggling with doubt, addictions, or questions about calling and vocation. Here’s a list of a few novels I think every minister should read, along with a few reasons why.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde —a great look at how a person’s spirit can be tormented by secret sin.

Wealthy and conceited Dorian Gray wants to be young forever. He commissions an artist to paint his portrait. Then wishes that his portrait would age and bear the evidence of his dissipation and loose living, but that he would stay young forever. He gets what he asks for. His struggle with sin is powerful (and never explicit, by the way).

My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok —a moving story of a young man’s struggle to decide how best to serve God in his vocation.

Asher Lev is a gifted artist living in Brooklyn during the Second World War. His father, a Hasidic Jew, works to bring Jews from Europe to the United States to avoid persecution. Asher wants to pursue art for a living—and he believes God has gifted him to do it—but he is expected to take over his father’s job. Asher wrestles with what it means to be faithful to God, how to best use one’s gifts, and how to honor his family in the process.

Silence, by Shusaku Endo —an unsettling story about what it means to be a faithful Christian in the midst of persecution.

A Portuguese priest is on the run from the authorities in sixteenth-century Japan. Since his arrival, the underground Christian community has been relentlessly persecuted, and the governors tell him that all he must do to end the people’s misery is renounce the faith. Should he apostatize to save countless peasants from a horrific death, or should he be a model of courage in the face of persecution? And how can he decide when God seems to remain silent?

The Chosen, by Chaim Potok (He makes the list twice. He’s just that good.) — a beautiful account of how two deeply devout people (one “liberal” and one “conservative”) can learn to respect the other’s convictions and religious commitment.

Reuven Malthers is the son of a Modern Orthodox and intellectual Jew; Danny Saunders is heir of a Hasidic rabbi. Although their fathers more or less despise one another, the sons are good friends. Each one tries to be faithful to God—and to the other—as they become men in different traditions.

The list could go on, of course, but this is a good start. Happy reading.

We’ve all been there: patiently biding our time as a team meeting, board meeting, or committee meeting rolls forward. Old business is being reviewed and discussed; new business, tossed back and forth; the agenda is moving from opening remarks to closing prayer, no surprises in sight.

And then divine lightning strikes. You have an epiphany that can change the course of the week, the year, your church, perhaps it can even usher in the kingdom! You raise your idea, excitedly presenting what is no less than a revelation. As conversation begins, enthusiasm mounts; others are buying into your vision.

And then someone older and, possibly, wiser begins to speak. He (or she) judiciously probes the weaknesses of your idea; soon it is no more impressive than a deflated birthday balloon.

Bad memories and emotions aside, the moments in which a good idea dies are some of the worst for team morale. My church recently conducted a business meeting in which a great idea (in my opinion) met vigorous opposition and soon gave up the ghost. The main weakness of the idea had nothing to do with the concept. Rather, it became palpable early on that the groundwork of highlighting the need for this new idea was virtually untouched. Without a foundation, the idea had nothing left to stand on, and it soon fell to strong—and at that point justified—resistance.

In the spirit of protecting your next idea to fight another day, here are three structures that General Henry M. Robert built into Robert’s Rules of Order. They won’t get a bad idea through a committee meeting (I hope). But they can give a good idea a fighting chance—whether you rigorously follow the book of order or not.

Continue reading "When a Good Idea is Under Attack"...

In our last post, Scot McKnight shared his first four marks of a robust gospel. To read those, click here. To continue on with his thinking, refresh yourself with this summary before you dive into points five through eight.

I sometimes worry we have settled for a little gospel, a miniaturized version that cannot address the robust problems of our world. But as close to us as the pages of a nearby Bible, we can find the Bible's robust gospel, a gospel that is much bigger than many of us have dared to believe:

The gospel is the story of the work of the triune God (Father, Son, and Spirit) to completely restore broken image-bearers (Gen. 1:26–27) in the context of the community of faith (Israel, Kingdom, and Church) through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Pentecostal Spirit, to union with God and communion with others for the good of the world.

The gospel may be bigger than this description, but it is certainly not smaller. And as we declare this robust gospel in the face of our real, robust problems, we will rediscover just how different it is from the small gospel we sometimes have believed and proclaimed.

1. The robust gospel is a story.

2. The robust gospel places transactions in the context of persons.

3. The robust gospel deals with a robust problem.

4. A robust gospel has a grand vision.

Continue reading "The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel—Part 2"...

I sometimes worry we have settled for a little gospel, a miniaturized version that cannot address the robust problems of our world. But as close to us as the pages of a nearby Bible, we can find the Bible's robust gospel, a gospel that is much bigger than many of us have dared to believe:

The gospel is the story of the work of the triune God (Father, Son, and Spirit) to completely restore broken image-bearers (Gen. 1:26–27) in the context of the community of faith (Israel, Kingdom, and Church) through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Pentecostal Spirit, to union with God and communion with others for the good of the world.

The gospel may be bigger than this description, but it is certainly not smaller. And as we declare this robust gospel in the face of our real, robust problems, we will rediscover just how different it is from the small gospel we sometimes have believed and proclaimed.

Continue reading "The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel—Part 1"...

We need something we don’t yet have. We need a new racial reconciliation conversation rooted in biblical truth that reflects the flexibility of racial identity in our present world. This conversation needs to happen in the body of Christ if we are to be effective in 21st-century ministry.

Let me be clear. I am not saying that we need to stop having racial reconciliation conversations. I am saying these conversations should morph into racial reconsideration conversations. In our globalized society we must talk beyond black vs. white racial dynamics.

Continue reading "Racial Reconsideration"...

Beware of any literature that starts with these words: “Jesus was the greatest leader of all time.” The sentiment behind those words may be true, but the point they make is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if Jesus was the greatest leader of all time. Jesus is our leader (and, in a holy sense, we’re stuck with him).

The issue at hand is far from nit-picky. Evangelicals have long been accused of domesticating Jesus—making him one of “us” (often white, middle-class, socially respectable, and politically conservative). The glut of Jesus-as-leader books runs a tremendous risk as it attempts to introduce Jesus into the economy that surrounds 21st century leadership.

Jesus the leader endangers our view of Jesus the savior. Frankly, Jesus the leader is less threatening. He’s an organizational director that would fit in wearing business casual and sitting in a conference room. I believe wholeheartedly that Jesus wants to control how I behave, think, and lead when I’m in the conference room, but I don’t have much confidence in Jesus as the teacher of strategic leadership lessons.

Continue reading "Jesus Is Not a CEO"...

About four years ago, I bought a little flowering vine and planted it in my yard. The first year it sprouted a few flowers, then it appeared to have died, but then it sprouted again. And every year since it has grown bigger. It’s starting to take over, and soon will need to be trimmed back.

Like that Clematis near my house, another vine is taking over my life and the lives of most people I know. It’s called information technology. When it began to grow, only a few years ago, we all watched in amazement. Since then it has created millions of new jobs, made communication much easier, enabled us to do library research from our homes, and made it possible to communicate around the globe instantly, without cost, and even with video images. PDAs, iPods, cell phones, BlackBerries and additional pieces of technical gimmickry are ever-evolving and increasingly sophisticated. They let us make purchases online, pay bills, access information, download videos, and even exchange text messages or check baseball scores during sermons in church.

Continue reading "Trimming Technostress"...

My second ministry position was a lesson in the danger of being a visionary.

The church was a two or three-year-old plant when I joined the staff, and it was full of life. We held services in a coffee house. Our music was intimate and unpolished. Our preaching was relevant. We staff members had a very clear picture in our minds of the ideal congregation, and everything we did helped move church members toward that picture. We were a testimony to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s observation in Life Together, that the zealous minister “set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it.”

I only wish I had read Bonhoeffer then. He goes on in the first chapter of that wonderful little book to explain the danger of vision for a church:

The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly…He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself…

Continue reading "Thus Says the Lord?"...

Seven months ago, the editors of BuildingChurchLeaders.com launched this blog to connect church leaders through conversations about ministry, leadership, and spiritual formation. Watching Off the Agenda step into this space has been, and continues to be, very exciting.

However, this blog is only one branch of our ministry. To become further involved in the ministry of equipping and inspiring church leaders, you need to check out the articles, discussion panels, and more than 400 leadership training downloads available in our store.

Full access to those training downloads—the cornerstone of our ministry—is available to BCL members. We’ve set up a special offer for Off the Agenda readers to enable you to join this community of church leaders for $20 off the regular price. Use this link to become a BCL member for the reduced price of $79.95.

If you’re interested in acquiring five or more memberships—in order to equip a multi-site church, a district, or even a denomination with these resources—send us an email and we’ll give you the details on how you can sign up for as low as $39.95

I haven’t seen MTV in years, with no regrets, but I recall a show on the network that impacted me like a train wreck. It was awful, gruesome, and terrible—but I couldn’t look away. “Celebrity Deathmatch” featured clay-animated celebrities in a wrestling ring where they pummeled, grinded, or dismembered each other into a bloody pulp of scarlet Play-Doh. It wasn’t exactly wholesome family entertainment.

We can pick apart the moral depravity of the show (which is all too easy), or we can talk about why it was so popular with the young (which is probably related to its moral depravity). Let’s simply draw this conclusion—the younger generation isn’t enamored with celebrities. They aren’t cultural gods to be worshiped and respected. They’re more like rodeo clowns trying not to be impaled by the paparazzi beasts we unleash to devour them for our own entertainment.

The anti-celebrity sentiment of the younger generation, and of the culture as a whole, may be taking root in the church as well. Among evangelicals, there are two seemingly opposite trends occurring that relate to this. One is the movement away from hierarchical leadership structures. The other is the movement toward hierarchical leadership structures. Let me explain.

Continue reading "Church Celebrity Deathmatch"...

My wife and I were visiting Southern California on vacation when we decided to stop by Mission San Juan Capistrano—an adobe chapel complex founded by Franciscan monks in 1776. In the back of the mission was a small replica of the gardens that produced much of the monks’ food for hundreds of years.

As I walked through the garden, I noticed a large sign tacked in front of a particularly leafy bush. It read, “Please don’t chase or catch our lizards. They lose their tails if you grab them.” Sure enough, looking down at the bush I noticed several lizards lounging camouflaged against the leaves. They were ordinary, as lizards go—small and dull-green, which flecks of white or yellow streaked across their slim bodies. Nothing flashy.

But you can probably guess the first thought that went through my mind after reading that sign and getting a look at those lizards—I would like to see a lizard’s tail fall off…. If I hadn’t been with my wife and young (impressionable) son, I’m sure I would have reached out right then and there and grabbed at a lizard just to see what would happen next.

Thus the danger of unintended curriculum.

Continue reading "Beware of Unintended Curriculum"...