Embarking

(Download a free chapter of Jeff’s book “The Land Between” here:http://www.willowcreek.com/events/leadership/2010/between.asp)

Jeff did a great job of exegeting Numbers 11, and what he calls “The Land Inbetween.”  He equated these time in our lives when we are stuck wandering in the desert between land of blessing and land of blessing to the time when Israel was wandering between fertile Egypt and the fertile crescent of the promise land.  He reminded us that the story of Moses and the people is a real story of real people going through real problems and issues.  He reminded us that the land between is fertile ground for complaint. (Numbers 11:7-9) I laughed hard when he read this passage, and said it had to be read in a “whiny voice.”   The land of between is not only fertile ground for complaint, but it goes further than that to the place of meltdown. (Numbers 11:10-15)  Moses is done, fed up, and says, “Kill me right now!”  We have all been in this place when the finances are gone, we’re jobless, stuck in an unhealthy marriage, nailed with cancer, in a broken relationship, when our friends betray us.

Often we’re prepared for some disappointment, but not necessarily for years of disappointment.  After awhile we just get crushed by ongoing disappointment after disappointment.

And God doesn’t leave Moses alone, but says that he will provide to help Moses carry the burden.  God provides other people to shoulder the load with us in the land between. (Numbers 11:16-17) What if God provides not only for Moses and the Israelites in the land inbetween, but also for us?  What does it look like for us to leave our hands open to let go of the crushing anxiety that is beating us down.  What if he’s good?  What if he provides for us, like he provided lunch instead of a lecture for Moses?

Why do we respond like the Israelites do, thinking we are better off on our own without God?  It’s interesting when the people complain that God responds, and we find that the land between is fertile ground for God’s discipline (Numbers 11:18-20).  Pain, from God, is not to hurt us, but it is for redemptive purposes, to rescue us from something.  He does not hurt us to hurt us.

The land between is fertile soil for transformational growth. But, God says that in order for transformational growth to happen, we have to trust him in the land between.  It is in this space that we learn to pray, to depend, and to trust God.

Jeff used a great metaphor of battling roommates.  Complaint comes unexpectedly into the house and resists eviction.  Trust seeks to move into the house, too, but can’t live with complaint, and eventually, when we begin to trust God, trust is the thing that evicts complaint.

May God bless you int he land between.

May you guard your heart.

May trust grow.

Francis Schaeffer Institute: 30% of pastors admitted to some sort of sexual failure in their ministry

Adam Hamilton had a tough talk today.  He admitted himself that this was not a fun, motivational talk, nor one he delighted to give.  It has to deal with the moral failure that so many leaders fall into – often, and particularly some sort of sexual/ relational failure.  Hamilton himself experienced the moral failure of two of his colleagues who developed an inappropriate relationship with one another.

As he continues to speak right now, let me just mention how close this is to my heart for a couple of reasons.  First, I have several friends who have been personally affected by such a failure by a parent, friend, or close colleague.  Second, I’ve seen the damage in my own denomination and congregations I’m close to who have experienced this very thing.  Third, because it’s not just leaders who struggle with this.  I’m working with a number of couples right now whose marriages are on the rocks because of some major failure… and all of these are within the church.  Lastly, I have had some people close to me and my family that have affected our lives personally.

Here are 4 ways a church or organization can approach these moral failures:

1. Ignore it and hope it would go away.
2. Be evasive and say the two pastors were leaving because of personal reasons.
3. Scarlet letter approach – add more shame and exile.
4. Approach it with transparency, honesty, and compassion.

In such situations, many people look to see how the church will approach these situations in order to a) either reinforce their greatest fears that we really are the Pharisees or b) to be surprised that the church can respond in a way that is human, biblical, compassionate, and filled with truth seasoned with grace.  The hope is that such a defining moment will be lived out in a way that is closer to the second.

What are some things that churches can do to help avoid sexual misconduct among and between staff members?

1. Develop policies and staff covenants
2. Talk about it among the staff.  Have the sex talk with the staff.  We are wired for reproduction, intimacy, and sin.  The combination of these three can often lead us to places of self-destruction.  Even if you have the feelings – even if they’re normal – don’t share them.

5 R’s for Resisting Temptation

1. Remember who you are:  pastor, father, husband, child of the King.
2. Recognize the consequences of your actions.  ”Will I feel better after I do this?”  ”Will I feel more or less human?”  ”Will I be proud or ashamed?”  ”Who will be affected by my actions?”  ”What will my congregation thing about this?”
3. Rededicate yourself to God.  In the moment, Stop, Drop, and Pray.
4. Reveal your struggle to a trusted friend.  When you share it with a friend, it loses its power.
5. Remove yourself from the situation.  Jesus said, sometimes there are radical things you need to do to avoid sin.

There is really no way to capture the passion we just heard from Christine Caine in notes on a blog.  This is a woman who, as she said, is still “old-school enough” to truly believe that that Jesus is the hope of the world.  She challenged us to live into this moment – our moment in which there are great needs in the world and to step up and be the church that God longs for.

I was moved when Christine was telling a story in which she was challenged by a woman who was just being rescued from sex trafficking slavery who said, “If what you’re saying about your God is true, why didn’t you come earlier?”  She said this amazing statement, and one we should all reflect deeply on:

It is not that God did not hear your cry; but I am so sorry that it has taken me so long to hear it.  I honestly cannot think of anything in my life that was so important that I shouldn’t have come earlier.

There is a great challenge – not only in terms of human sex trafficking – but in all the ways that God’s heart breaks for his world.  Isn’t it true that we are so often so busy with so many things that are merely much ado about nothing and are neglecting the very deep things that moved the Father to send Jesus into the world in the first place?

Towards the end of her talk, Christine talked about hope.  She talked about how courageous her little 4 year old becomes in the middle of darkness with a simple flashlight in her hand – with that little light, she’ll go in darker.  While they were in Walmart buying a flashlight, her daughter said, “Mommy, can we please go find some darkness?”  It doesn’t take much light to dispel the darkness, it simply takes the courage to step in for “Greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world.”

Jim began with one of his famous phrases, made popular in his excellent book, “Good to Great:  Why some companies make the leap… while others don’t“:

Good is the enemy of great.

He also said very importantly that “Greatness is largely a matter of choice, not circumstances.”  That’s a powerful sentence.  Certainly circumstance plays a part, and Jim acknowledged this later saying that pride and hubris shows itself often when leaders don’t acknowledge at all the luck and blessings that have come their way without any of their doing.  However, circumstances alone do not move people to become companies that are built to last, that move from good to great, or become the reasons why the might fall.

Jim focused on the 5 stages in his recent book, “How the Mighty Fall and why some companies never give in” dealing with organizations and leaders who lose momentum and fall from a place of strength and greatness.  What’s really helpful about these 5 stages is the truth that “You can be sick on the inside, but still look strong on the outside.”  It’s important to note that these stages are largely self-inflicted.  Unlike disease, organization decline is more about what you do to yourself that what happens to you.  It’s also important to note that the fall doesn’t come until stage 4, so you’re over 50% on the way before you have presenting issues.

Stages of “How The Mighty Fall”

1. Hubris born of success leading:  The signature of the greatest leaders is their humility.  They had a passionate focus to go after the vision and values with all they have, but remained humble in the process.  Here, Collins spoke of an outrageous  arrogance that does not see the balance between disciplined decisions and the blessings of circumstance and even luck.  Of course, disciplined decision-making is key, but it’s also key to be humble about the things that are out of our control that often contribute greatly to our success.
2. An undisciplined pursuit of more:  More is not bad in itself.  It is the over-reaching, the undisciplined pursuit of more.  Patrick’s Law:  if you allow growth to exceed the ability of the fantastic people to execute, you have been undisciplined in your growth.  If you do not have fantastic people in who fit the 4 C’s (see Bill Hybels), you have to wait and not go after more until those people are in place.  One challenging thing Jim said (which, I think, is true) is that if you do not have the right people in place with the character, competence, chemistry, and fit to your culture, then you must wait for the more for which they are required for execution.  ”Bad decisions with good intentions are still bad decisions.”

1. Denial of risk and peril:   In order to this, the great leaders and organizations have to have faith (optimism, positivity, etc.), but also have to confront the brutal facts (cf. the chapter on this in Good to Great.)  Optimism without the facts is just a wish-dream, and facts without faith alone is less than motivational and won’t move anyone forward.  Failing to look at the real risks and assess the situation, and then take the strong leap of faith with a serious understanding of the risks involved is just plain foolish.
2. Grasping for Salvation:  Disciplined people engaged in disciplined thought and taking disciplined action make deliberate movement in a determined direction move the fly-wheel.  Those who begin to grasp for salvation have lost their intentionality and disciplined approach.  Their energy dissipates and ultimately leads to decline.
3. Capitulation to irrelevance or death:  Lasting organizations had a reason to go endure that is more than just money or success.  They had an answer to the question, “What would be lost if we ceased to exist?”  They are driven by a reason that goes beyond money and success, Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG’s)

To Do List:

1. Take a team/ organizational diagnostic.  Check out http://www.goodtogreat.com for 3 free diagnostic tools for your teams and organizations.
2. Count and account for blessings. When we forget to count all the good things that happen to us, we’re on our way to the first stage.
3. What is your questions to statements ratio, and can you double it in this next year?
4. How many key seats do you have on your bus?  How many of the seats are filled with the right people?  What are your plans to get the right people in the right seats?  Are you on the way up as a team, or on the way down?
5. (missed it… but so did everyone else it appears)
6. With your team of the right people, create an inventory of the brutal facts.
7. What are we disciplined to stop doing?
8. Define results and show clicks/ milestones on the fly wheel.
9. Double your reach to young people by changing your practices without changing your core values.
10. Set a BHAG rooted in your purpose to reinforce that your work is never done.

Bill Hybels had a great opening session.  He started with a simple leadership principle from his journal:  Leaders move people from here to there.  It’s not anything new.  It’s the vision piece, the picture of the preferred future.  It’s the thing you get excited about and say, ”It will be bliss on a stick when we get there.”  It was a really helpful reminder that ”The first play is not to make there sound wonderful.  It’s to make here sound awful.”  That the preferred future begins with a “holy discontent” as Hybels has said in the past.

“Long before MLK gave his “I have a dream speech,” he gave hundreds of “We Can’t Stay Here” speeches.”

He used some great examples, including moving Willow’s food pantry onsite:  ”Imagine if at the end of our weekend services… I could say, go right over there and we’ll give you groceries for the week.”  The reality is, though, that there are many people who say, “there, shmere, what’s wrong with here?”  They don’t want to move.  Hybels has given a number of good talks (I have several in my own journals) on the change process and important steps along the way, and this is another.

One of the other important pieces of leadership is hiring fantastic people.  Bill reminded us that hiring fantastic people requires Character, Competence, Chemistry (cf. Bill’s book Axiom).  He added a new C, that he calls Culture.  Understanding the culture of the organization and the culture of leadership is key to moving from here to there, and is as important at Character, Competence, and Chemistry.

I love Hybels focus on his staff.  Here are a couple thing he said:

“We don’t offer potential staff persons a tidy career opportunity, we offer them a mission they can lay their lives down for.”

“Building teams of fantastic people who fit our culture is one of the joys of leadership.”

“Do you view the assembling of fantastic people as a privilege, as a leadership essential?”

He also said that there are usually 3 reactions when a person resigns.  Bill invited us to imagine that as we sit here we get a text from someone or an email saying they’ve resigned.  Here are the 3 normal reactions:

• Phew
• Aaugh… I feel bad about that, but we’re going to be ok.
• Read the text.  Read it again.  Run into the lobby and vomit because you’ve lost someone who feels irreplacable.

I love the questions that arise out of this for any leader:  what would be your reaction for each person on your staff?  Do you have a staff that you would be in the 3rd category for every single one?  Which of the 3 reactions would your boss have if he or she received the text from you?

So, if you do have some of these fantastic people, how to keep them on your staff, excited, passionate, and engaged?  Here are some things Bill suggested:

• Regularly refill the vision bucket.  With his typical phrase, “vision leaks,” Bill reminded us again that we have to continue to refill the vision bucket with our staff.
• Put mile markers along the way, and celebrate.  What keeps people on the journey is a sense of hope that they’re going to get there someday.  And it’s important to celebrate along the way, not just at the end, even if you have to make up mile-markers.  When is the last time you had a party for progress along the way, not just the destination?

The last thing Bill talked about was hearing from God.  He passionately talked about the whispers of God in his own call to faith, to plant a church, and to serve other pastors.  He spoke about hearing from God through the word, lowering the ambient noise, repairing our antennas, and listening and obeying the whispers deep in our hearts.  Bill was right on when he said, “I don’t think you get from here to there without hearing from God in the process.”  This gets at, in my opinion, one of the great failures of many of us who are leaders.  Too often we merely see the picture of the preferred future in the beginning, but we don’t listen to God and his ever-present whispers along the way.  Too often, the initial picture is fuzzy and we don’t fully understand it, and God continues to lead all the way to the end, all long the way.

Some Whispers:

• Step Up
• Take the Risk
• Stand Firm
• Start a Church
• Apologize Now
• Admit Your Mistake
• Make The Tough Decision
• Get Help
• Stop Running From God
• Slow Down (for some of us, velocity is killing our soul)
• Show Your Heart
• Let Others Lead
• Feed Your Soul
• Bless The Team
• Make the Ask (some of you know here “there” is, but you’re just chicken to make the ask)  Courageous
• Do Something Impactful (some of you have been pounding the same nail your whole life)
• Come Clean
• Embody the Vision
• Celebrate the Victories
• Speak the Truth
• Pay the Price
• Count Your Blessings
• End the Secret
• Check Your Motives
• Set the Pace
• Give God Your Best
• Get Physically Fit
• Serve Your Spouse and Kids
• Pray
• Humble Yourselve

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Last week I read And: The Gathered and Scattered Church by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, and am finally blogging a few of my thoughts.

I had heard of this book initially after a few friends were at Exponential this year.  I couldn’t go because I’d just been at the Q Conference in Chicago.  However, I probably should have been there because I’m in the throes of planting Fair Haven’s first multi-site right now called South Harbor Church (a week and a half from the first preview, with launch on 10.10.10.), but I couldn’t give up the Q experience.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, and will recommend it to several people – particularly certain chapters.  Let me begin with a critique, and end with some things I liked.

The premise of the book is basically to stop fighting over different models of the church and honor one another in our differences but seek to use whatever models work in seeking the kingdom.  The book talks often of mega and mini churches, and of missional and attractional.  These are important dichotomies on the one hand – and ones I’ve struggled with myself.  On the other hand, it’s too easy a division to hang a hat on and there are deeper issues than the book goes into.  Ultimately, I love title, but think the book got into too much about Adullam (Halter and Smay’s church), and only scratched the surface of these deeply ecclesiological issues of our time.

“And” does a good job of articulating the need for working together through various models with the same ends in mind, but in my estimation never gets to some of the deeper issues about how much a model influences the end goals.  For instance, Halter does a good job talking about moving people out of consumerism and into transformation and into dying to oneself for Christ.  He nails the issue that disciples are not consumers (chapter 3), but then never really deals with models of doing church these days that promote consumerism of a Christian sort.  In an effort to be unifying, Halter sometimes borders on not being critical enough where healthy critique is necessary.  Other times, though he says that both types of models are helpful, but then tends to tip towards favoring the missional impulse.  One question that would be more helpful to me would be around how the mega church can remain missional enough to be Christian and how does the missional church become attractional enough to stay alive and have an influence beyond a small group.  Overall, I think he tries to be balanced between multiple models, but speaks only out of the Adullum experience.  It would’ve been nice to see a balanced approach in this book with multiple models all expressing the unifying aspects of the gathered and scattered church.

Where “And” does hit the nail on the head in terms of what’s necessary for both the scattered and gathered, missional and attractional, mega and mini is the incarnational community.  Here is how it’s put on page 66:

“Whether you’re starting from scratch and moving down the missional flow or starting from an existing structure and moving up, you’ll notice that the center of the process is ‘incarnational community.’”

By incarnational community, they mean here bands of people with the missional heart of God integrating their lives with those who don’t know Him and are doing something intentional about.  Simplistic, yes, but true none-the-less.  Too many churches lose the core mission of God to reach his people far and wide and lose their very nature as church altogether.

For me, chapter 4, “Spiritual Formation for Missional Churches” was the best chapter in the book.   This chapter really deals with how to move someone from being far from God through the discipleship and growth process to the place of mobilization in ministry (in their words from Observance to Preparation to Participation to Partnership).  This is such a key issue, and one that churches tend not to do well.  We call it a “people pathway” or a “people process” – but who wants processed people!  However, churches today desperately need a pathway of discipleship that includes evangelism, grounds people in the basics, and moves them towards influential leadership in the use of their gifts.  With studies like Reveal and churches realizing their lack of depth, discipleship pathways are getting popular.  Chapter 4 is all about how to go about that, focusing on the transitions in stages, and developing a clear pathway.  I like it. This chapter is one that I will recommend several people read.

Chapter 5 is also very helpful in describing the difference between modalities (structures focused on caring for those already in the church) and sodalities (those that push toward those on the outside).  This is a helpful chapter, finding its roots in the missiology of Ralph Winter.  This is where the book gets closer to living up to its name.  I think if the book had moved this chapter earlier (after the biblical foundation of Chapter 1) and then built upon it, dealing with the centripetal and centrifugal forces necessary for the gathered and scattered church to remain in balance, it would’ve felt more balanced and helpful.  This chapter is one that I will recommend several people read (like church planting interns, student and children’s ministries staff, seminarians, etc.)

I mentioned in an earlier post on the book “Multi-Site Road Trip” that I had the opportunity to meet Dave and Jon Ferguson several years back.  I remember meeting with them, and Dave Dummit, as they were considering a site in Brighton, Michigan.  They had graciously met with Dan Reeves and myself to share their wisdom then on multi-site and the Big Idea in a time when very few people were talking about it.  I later was able to hear from them again at Third Reformed in Kalamazoo (now CenterPoint), and also had a chance to visit the Big Yellow Box and bring some friends along while I was in Chicago back in 2005.  What’s been really cool is to see these guys stay so focused on the mission that God called them to long ago to reach the city of Chicago, and to do it consistently and yet creatively.  So much has changed in their movement in terms of the creative energy and leadership they’ve brought to multi-site, and yet in some ways, so little has changed.  The heart of the message to see people find their way back to God is consistent, persistent, and powerful.

All that to say that I’ve just finished reading Exponential:  How you and your friends can start a missional movement.

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This was a fabulous read for me.  First, something personal.  I’m embarking right now on Fair Haven Ministries’ first site called South Harbor Church that will launch on 10.10.10 in Byron Township in south Grand Rapids, Michigan(along with many others in the 10.10.10 Initiative).   In fact, this morning I’m headed to hand out free cookies and lemonade at a local Little League to meet people and learn about the community.  Anyway, this book right now for me is a God-send in the sense that it affirms so many things that God is doing out of our church right now and also gives incredibly practical handles for being lead by Jesus, leading and reproducing leaders, tribes, communities, and movements.  What I love about how Dave and Jon wrote the book, was that it’s written with deeply biblical values, immensely practical, tested, and proven in the trenches of missional multi-siting.  I also love the real-life stories of real people and real churches.  The story of Community Christian (and all it’s sites) and many of its leaders is woven throughout the pages and gives you a sense of the messy reality of a true movement as well as the powerful stories. This isn’t just ideas… it’s the real deal.

For the past 5 years, a couple of my responsibilities as a spiritual formation pastor at Fair Haven have been leadership development and small groups.  I’ve been to many conferences and read many books and tried to implement many theories and ideas in both of these areas.  What’s awesome in this book as well to see is how small group life really works in this church, and especially how the leadership development pathway is integrated with not only small groups, but also with missional communities and in the raising up of artists.

This is probably one of the best books I’ve read on the practical side of the church multiplication movement.  It’s a must read for any church that is serious about multiplying leaders, churches, sites, disciples, and influence.   This summer, we took on 4 interns in church planting and we also have an on-site venue with a Campus Pastor.  We just talked this past week about all of them reading this, and I hope we can make that a reality.

Here are a couple of great tid-bits you’ll find:

• Real practical help on the leadership development people pathway and the importance of apprenticeship.
• Great illustrations of vision and strategy on napkins!
• A wonderful passage on scripture reading and journaling and how it affects leadership and vision for Dave Ferguson (see my recent post on YouVersion and LifeJournals)
• A great chapter on coaching, its importance in leadership development, and practical questions and a format for coaching.
• Encouragement that you, too, can really be used by God to multiply disciples, leaders, teams, sites, and churches.
• A focus not just on church growth, but on being missional.
• Much more.

Loved the book, and look forward to re-reading it and reviewing it with more care for some direct implementation in our new site.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

That’s not exactly how he phrases it, but James Davison Hunter in his recent book To Change the World: Irony, Tragedy, and The Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World questions the possibility of Christians really changing the world through intention.   It’s not nearly that simple, particularly for this brilliant sociologist, but Hunter argues – among other things – that changing the world is a long, complicated process involving cultural elites and centers of power, particularly in politics, that run contrary to the biblical vision given to us by Jesus.  I’ve been reading this book over the past couple months and have finally brought it to conclusion, although I think I’ll read it again.  In a nutshell, Hunter challenges the assumption that aggregated individuals through grassroots efforts can make any lasting or significant change in culture, particularly without wielding the very power of coercion that Christianity rejects.

I think Andy Crouch from the Christian Vision Project sums it up well when he says, “The irony is that there is no phrase more beloved to a certain kind of Christian than ‘to change the world.’ But in Hunter’s persuasive account, the strategies those very same Christians have pursued are, by themselves, woefully incapable of changing the world…”  ”…the very idea of ‘changing the world’ is rooted in a quest for dominance that fundamentally misunderstands the Christian gospel and the way of Jesus.”

Hunter goes on to critique the Christian Right (conservatives), The Christian Left (liberals or mainliners), and what he calls the “Neo-Anabaptists” made up of folks like Hauerwas, Yoder, Claiborne, and the New Monastics.  In this critique, Hunter betrays his philosophical (or sociological?) postmodernism in agreement with the likes of Foucault, Nietzsche, and others about language, power, and the coercive nature of culture creation.

There are several people who engage Hunter’s work, not the least of which are Andy Crouch and Chuck Colsen (see the posts below) who ask some great questions.  What I found interesting was that nowhere (I’m sure it’s out there somewhere) have I yet seen someone challenge the philological, linguistic, postmodern philosophical assumptions of Hunter’s work.  Don’t get me wrong, I actually agree with Hunter on these points about power and cultural transformation, but he doesn’t fully tip his hands about the philosophical foundations of those ideas, choosing instead to shroud them more spiritually in the non-coercive, non-violent leadership of Jesus.  I happen to think these two things are very compatible, but haven’t seen much work done to connect the two (which I’d love to do if I had the time).  Hunter does his sociological work as a Christian within a postmodern philosophical framework, but only acknowledges his indebtedness to the likes of Foucault at a cursory level hidden in the endnotes (yes, some of us do read them, cf. endnote 1, Chapter 4, Part I) and to Nietzshe with a short explication ofressentiment from Nietzsche and its relationship to Christianity in Chapter 7 of Part II.  Generally I find most Christians merely lambasting postmodern thought and philosophy without a) really understanding some of the seminal thoughts, b) seeing the ability to be a Christian and acknowledge some of these realities, or c) understanding how deeply these ideas affect issues of hermeneutics, missions, and even contextualization.

Don’t get me wrong, there are serious problems with postmodern philosophy, postmodernity as a cultural project, unthoughtful “postmodern churches” and edgy “postmodern pastors”.  But some of the more serious questions about our embeddedness in cultures of understanding based on would help us think through contextualization in mission, understanding of  power and language might help us avoid our sometimes coercive tendencies (in marketing, preaching, the use of guilt, etc.), and a greater honesty about our presuppositions and framing stories might help us get closer to real conversation with people about basic beliefs without mere condemnation and help our evangelism.  Recently Tim Keller told a group I was a part of that we need a new approach to apologetics, and I think this is part of it.  Hunter, in my opinion, opens the door to some of these conversations in a different (and potentially less volatile) way than Brian McLaren.

So, here are a couple wrap up thoughts on Hunter’s book:

1. This is a wonderful, scholarly work on how cultural change actually functions.
2. This work requires additional study on these issues by Christians and non-Christians alike.
3. There is much more work to be done in helping Christians to wrestle with some of these underlying issues of power, language, and culture (which, honestly, postmodern philosophy is mostly about).
4. This analysis is extremely helpful in understanding many of the drawbacks of the Christian Right, Christian Left, and the Neo-Anabaptist approaches and their rooting (or not) in ressentiment (which, interestingly enough, was the subject of one of my senior seminar papers in 1994 dealing with Neitzsche and the will to power.)

Enough of that for now.  I have more to say, and if I find the time I’ll write more.  Here are some helpful articles that give some more information about the book and Crouch and Colsen’s responses.

• Executive Summary of Is There a Culture War:  A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in 2006 featuring Michael Cromartie, Alan Wolfe, James Hunter, and others.
• Andy Crouch’s response Hunter and I Agree on Culture Making (He just seems not to know it) in Christianity Today and How Not to Change the World in Books and Culture.  I read Crouch’s book last year, and really enjoyed it.  Crouch takes issue with Hunter’s cursory overview of his book, and having read it, I agree with Crouch.  I ran into him at the Q Conference a few weeks ago and ask him, “What did you think of Hunter’s challenge to your book,” to which he responded, “Have you read my review in Books & Culture?”  Thanks for the tip, Andy, and it was good to meet you.
• Chuck Colsen responded in his article More Than a Faithful Presence in Christianity Today.
• Interview of Hunter by Christopher Benson Faithful Presence in Christianity Today.

6 or 7 years ago, Dan Reeves introduced me to something called the LifeJournal produced by Wayne Cordeiro at New Hope Church in Oahu.  Back then, I was part of a network of pastors in the Detroit, Columbus, Toledo, and Cleveland areas and Dan was doing some consulting with our network of RCA Churches.  It’s a simple little book that helps a person be more disciplined in their daily Bible reading.  Apparently, Wayne has used this with his whole church to much success.  We started using it for our daily devotional time, but also as a way to do some prayer and Scripture work together as a group whenever we would meet, seeking what God might be saying to us at that time.  We were literally, on the same page of scripture every day, and then when we came together, we had a chance to share what we heard as well as hear some interesting parallels with one another.

Here’s how it works.  If you’re familiar with a reading through the Bible in a year plan or a lectionary readings, you already know most of it.  Basically, Wayne has put together a Bible Reading plan for the year.  He then provides a little explanation of how, simply, to approach the text using the acronym S.O.A.P. – Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer (simplified Inductive Bible Study).  Wayne talks about looking that day for what the Holy Spirit has highlighted in the chapters for you that day, trying to see it, understand it, and apply it.  There is space to write down a scripture, and journal out your observation, application, and prayer.  There’s also a section to keep a prayer list.  That’s it.  Simple.

Sometimes I realize that all I really need is some simple organizational help to get me going on something I’m undisciplined about.  This is a great way to get into the Bible daily, create some accountability (if you do it with friends), and keep a record of what you see.

Since that time, I’ve moved on from my leather bound paper journal to an online version.  If you haven’t seen YouVersion produced by Craig Groeschel’s team at LifeChurch.tv, you have to check it out.  It’s an online (and mobile phone) app that gives you a ton of different translations, the ability to make notes – public or private – and to tag scriptures, etc.  It also has a bunch of Bible Reading plans that will help you track your progress.  They even have some built in accountability tools if you want to use them. They’ll email you, or a friend, to remind you of your reading.  You can also do online journaling as well as see how the passages have affected other people.  Be careful… this is an open application, so you have to listen to people’s interpretations and check them out.  Taking them at face-value could get you in trouble.  This kind of media is great for a lot of reasons, but it’s also great for spreading misinformation or misinterpretation.  (Of course, that happens in real life, face to face encounters just as well!)

It’s official.

Today we announced in church that I will be the new Campus Pastor at our first site – South Harbor Church.  We’re really excited as a whole family about working on a new church start.  God has been in this process as we’ve prayed about it and He has confirmed over and over again His desires for us.  I’ll continue on as the Cultivation Pastor at Fair Haven Ministries, but of course, some things will be changing.  A lot still has to be determined, so we’re listening to God and trying to learn as we go.

South Harbor Church will be located on the M6 corridor on the south side of Grand Rapids near the Byron Center exit (click here for a map).  If you’re familiar with the new Metro Hospital or the Saint Mary’s Southwest you’re not far.  The church is located on the south side of M6 just east of Saint Mary’s in Byron Township.   This is a wonderful community that is growing quickly and steadily.

If you’re from the south side of Grand Rapids, we’d love to have you join us as we launch this new church.  We’ll be putting together a launch team by the end of June.  Here’s the schedule as we move towards launch:

• 8.1.10 – Preview Worship Gathering
• 8.29.10 – Preview Worship Gathering
• 9.26.10 – Preview Worship Gathering
• 10.10.10  - Launch of Regular, weekly worship

Let me know if you’re interested or know someone who is.