But Jesus is the Way as well as the Truth. The way the gospel is conveyed is as much a part of the kingdom as the truth presented. Why are pastors experts on the truth and dropouts on the way?

- The Contemplative Pastor by Eugene Peterson (p. 35)

Seminaries are good at training scholars or, like Peterson writes, “experts on the truth.” But should pastors really be scholars? Don’t get me wrong, I love the depth of theology, the paradox, the complexity. Seminary students need to be challenged to think deeply and critically so we don’t turn into the next Fred Phelps, Terry Jones or Pat Robertson but do we really need to be theological experts to see that God is not calling us to hate gay people, burn the Qur’an or do anything that Pat Robertson says?

After only one semester of seminary courses I can see I will probably not be a scholar in biblical studies or church history or hebrew or systematic theology. Instead…

• I want to learn to be humble: I will never know everything.
• I want to learn how to translate what the scholars are telling me into ideas that normal people can understand (including me).
• I want to learn how to lead and not just how to learn.
• I want to be immersed in The Story…and claim my place in God’s narrative.
• More than anything, I want to grow as a follower of The Way, a disciple of Jesus.

What happened to those dreams?  Did they come true?  Were they tempered?  Abandoned completely?

Sadly, so many of our big dreams are lost as we grow up.  Reality strikes, the naysayers get to us, we settle for less than our big dream once demanded of us.

This doesn’t just happen in our personal lives.  I believe it has happened in the Church too.

Jesus proclaimed his mission in Luke 4 to free captives, heal the sick and preach to the outcast.  If you read further in that passage of Isaiah he was quoting you see the big dream that was attached to that mission, “They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.” (Isaiah 61: 4)

After his resurrection, as Jesus was preparing to go into heaven, he commissioned the disciples to fulfill the big dream.

Luckily, the early church was getting it: they were living radically different lives that focused on loving God and neighbor.  But then the Church started to grow up.  The boundless dreams of childhood faded away and reality set in.  The naysayers got to us and we settled for less.  We stopped believing God’s power at work in us could do more than we could imagine or dream.

When will the church reclaim God’s big dream?

Take 2 minutes to get some inspiration from this video by Dan Stevers, one of my favorite church motion graphics guys.

What I loved about that sermon starter video – more than the solid production values and great storytelling – was the message it shared.

Instead of re-reading our original instruction manual we have been trying to produce a discipleship harvest by pushing and pulling the Church under our own power. We have created programs and structures that distort the true purpose of faith communities and box in the Holy Spirit. What began as a command to “go make disciples” has turned into “go build a building and make the disciples come to you.” As Mike Slaughter points out, the church today must be “actively moving out and engaging the world in the places of greatest need rather than marketing the world into the church.” (Mike Slaughter, Change The World, p. 2)

I love the Message translation of John 1:14 lifted up by Pastor Nettle in the video, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” And just as God the Father sent Jesus, Jesus is sending us…into the neighborhood.

It’s in that call that Rivertree Church is heading out – through Go Communities – to love God and love their neighbors…and transform their neighborhoods to do the same.

Learn more about the missional church and missional communities movement by reading some Alan Hirsch or Alex Absolom or Mike Breen.

Was the video helpful for you? Why? How is your church moving into the neighborhood?

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Image © Rivertree Church

In a class at Luther we have been talking about leadership in the church and the idea of vision coming from the community instead of single leader/pastor.  It’s a good conversation and I believe the power of community “sensemaking” should not be overlooked. (“Sensemaking” is a term Dwight Zecheile uses when talking about “deep, relational conversation of listening and speaking” in “The Trinity, Leadership and Power”)

But here’s my question: how does visionary leadership from a single person fit in?  Certainly there have been many leaders who have abused and over focused power in their leadership positions (Eddie Long is the first name that comes to mind.).  My worry is that we are trying to overcorrect for these kind of abuses by totally ignoring the Holy Spirit’s work through individuals.

A question in my Reform of the Church class today struck me, “Would the Reformation have happened without Martin Luther?”  For me the answer is, “No…or…at least not in the same way.”  It’s likely some reforms would have come about because of the many voices and forces pushing for change.  Even so, the vastness and boldness of the reforms may have been tempered or even lost without Luther’s bold voice acting as a catalyst for the movement.

Visionary leaders inspire and challenge beyond what the community might be able to see.  I wonder how the people of Ginghamsburg Church in Ohio would have responded to the immense needs in Darfur if it wasn’t for Pastor Mike Slaughter challenging people.  Without his leadership would a congregation in one of the ten fastest dying cities in the country have been bold enough to risk investing more than half a million dollars in Sudan every year? (Sudan Project Video)

I don’t want to discount learning and engaging with the community but I also don’t want to forget how important the voice of one leader can be in shaping vision.  With all that said, I have yet to see a church engaged in mutual community vision casting that is producing world changing results.  What am I missing?

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Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/onigiri_chang/

Poverty is not a part of God’s will but much of the time we live as if it was.

We live ignoring the fact God established the first welfare system: “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 23:22)

We live ignoring Jesus’ witness to an even greater form of biblical welfare:  “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Mark 10: 21)

Luckily, some churches are getting it.  Slowly but surely we standing up and saying, “It’s not about us.”  We are putting aside our likes, our dislikes, our comfort, our safety, our futures all because God needs us to get to work.

Here’s a video I made to share the story of how my home church, Spirit of Joy in Orlando, has been standing up and getting to work for God:

There was a time when the church was very powerful…in those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators”‘ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven.” Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

I knew of MLK the great civil rights leader but I didn’t realize he was also a modern day prophet, foreseeing the great decaying of the American church.  Are you willing to sacrifice church as you know it?

• part of society
• safe, comfortable
• an entertainment destination

• an assembly of outside agitators
• dangerous,uncomfortable
• a mission outpost

Had the opportunity to travel to Haiti with a team from Spirit of Joy in Orlando and Advent in Boca Raton. The poverty in Haiti (just 90 miles or so from Florida) is comparable to Burundi, the small, war torn and forgotten African country I’ve been to before.

The most powerful and yet unsettling part of the trip for me was visiting an orphanage for mentally and physically disabled children called Little Children of Jesus.  The orphanage is run by a Haitian lady in her 60s that came out of retirement in Canada to run this program.  My first reaction when seeing these kids was to be angry for them.  It’s tough enough to be a kid in Haiti let alone having a mental or physical disability.  Many of these kids are dumped at the front gate to this orphanage and forgotten.  How could God allow this to happen?  It’s a hard question and one I still don’t fully understand.  What I do know is that as I was selfishly standing off in the corner while everyone else was dancing and singing with the kids God said to me, “It’s not about you, Josh!”  Get over yourself and be a witness of my Love for these kids.  My love will give them eternal freedom from even the worst this world has to offer.

The main goal of the trip was to help with a Vacation Bible School program for kids at the school run by Village of Hope, an organization supported by many Lutheran churches in the US.  Village of Hope provides over 400 kids with education and a meal everyday.

The school system in Haiti is dominated by private schools (1 in 10) and while parents do have to pay a little something at the Village of Hope School (if it’s free in Haiti, it’s not valued) those costs are minimal. It was a lot of fun to try and communicate the Good Samaritan story to these kids. Carrying around the camera gear always made me a popular person but it was fun to put that away and try and learn a little more about these kids.

On the trip we also toured the site of the new health clinic that Village of Hope is opening in 2012, got to see some of downtown Haiti and drove everywhere in the back of a truck (awesome but bumpy like you have never experienced) and met with the Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Haiti, Joseph Levinson.

According to a UN officer we talked to at the airport Port-au-Prince has been improving post earthquake but the challenge was huge even pre-earthquake (the city’s infrastructure is designed for 300,000 and there are 5,000,000 living there). By far the most surreal part of the trip was visiting the earthquake memorial and mass grave site outside of Port-au-Prince where hundreds of thousands of bodies were brought by the dump truck and buried.

I am currently working on a video about the Village of Hope Health Clinic and the Lutheran Church in Haiti and hope to have those done by mid August.