Monthly Archives: August 2012

August 28, 2012 · 11:26 am

Soccernomics & Church: The Wisdom of Crowds

(This is post 4 in a series of blog posts on how a book on soccer, Soccernomics, can teach us much about the American church.)

Decisions can often be made in a vacuum in business, professional sports clubs, and churches. They lack information from a variety of sources that allows them to make appropriate decisions.

The authors of Soccernomics highlight the French soccer club Olympique Lyon, a club that in 1987 was unknown and unloved even by local residents, but now consistently finds itself competing in the Champions League as one of the sixteen best teams in Europe. The rise of this soccer club is largely attributed to their management over their coaching and Soccernomics highlights their use of the wisdom of crowds in decision-making when choosing their players, which is large part of the success of a soccer club.

“Lyon’s method for choosing players is so obvious and smart that it’s surprising that all clubs don’t use it. The theory of the “wisdom of crowds” says that if you aggregate many different opinions from a diverse group of people, you are more likely to arrive at the best opinion than if you just listen to one specialist…If you ask a diverse set of gamblers to bet on, say the outcome of a presidential election, the average of their bets is likely to be right. (Gambling markets have proved excellent predictors of all sorts of outcomes.) The wisdom of crowds fails when the components of the crowd are not diverse enough. This is often the case in American sports. But in European soccer, opinions tend to come from many different countries, and that helps ensure diversity…

At most clubs the manager is treated as a sort of divinely inspired monarch who gets to decide everything until he is sacked. Then the next manager clears out his predecessor’s signings at a discount.” Soccernomics p. 68-69

Lyon’s stability of leadership and method of incorporating a number of voices when selecting a player provides a consistent strategy that leads to success regardless of the manager.

The wisdom of crowds involves incorporating team leadership and cultivating a collective vision. It isn’t easy, but it’s worth the challenging process for guiding people toward a common mission.

Could the American church benefit from using the wisdom of crowds?

The church tends to lack this mentality and can often operate like an English soccer club, where one or two individuals are the divinely inspired voice to make each and every decision. The result for the church is often copying the latest trends, adopting someone else’s methods, and doing little in the way of applying biblical principles to the local community of God.

The Bible speaks to a different way that actually precedes the theory of the wisdom of crowds and speaks to the value of seeking counsel and plurality of leadership. Proverbs 15:22 says “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisors they succeed.” Proverbs 20:18 “Plans are established by counsel; by wise guidance wage war.”

In the New Testament, the church in Acts, the instructions of the authors of the Epistles, and the method of Jesus was a plurality of leadership. It was 12 apostles that Jesus sent out, it was different gifts that Paul pointed to in Ephesus as the equippers of the saints of the church, and elders were always to be appointed to lead in the church. The wisdom of crowds appears to be God’s idea and design.

While the American church agrees with this, it has adopted the CEO model of the business world pointing to the idea of ‘first among equals’ in leadership which tends to place final authority in the hands of one. 9Marks, an organization focused on building healthy churches, has some good thoughts on this here.

While there is inevitably a first among equals that has to make the final decision, does that authority come from the teachings of scripture or from the position? While there can be a specialist on a church staff in community, preaching, mercy & justice, counseling, and even vision, that does not negate the wisdom from other members of that staff and church. The specialist actually improves their ability to lead by listening to other voices, diminishing their pride in their own ideas to let the wisdom of crowds shape a better path going forward.

Sounds like a great idea, but how would this practically function in a church, a small group, or other ministry?

Develop a Collective Vision: Come with a Plan & Open Hands

I can speak to how I’m seeking to incorporate this into my leadership and in leading a small group. I’m a internal processor who likes to think through every aspect of a plan, develop a strategy and assume it’s bulletproof, but as I’ve come to find out (shockingly) my ideas are not always comprehensive, complete or perfect.

So as we enter into a new season of Community Groups, I’ve chosen to solicit feedback and create environments to utilize the wisdom of crowds. I still have a plan, a rather thorough one, but I come with open hands to listen to how the plan may shape out in a particular area or to see what holes I may be blind to.  This is kind of a first draft of a vision if you will. Effort is put into it, but I’m not holding it so tight that it cannot evolve to the ideas and wisdom of other invested members and leaders.

On our church staff, I’ve become known as someone that develops lengthy documents on ideas because I want the document to be the beginning of a brainstorming process. From there it’s been a hard, but good process to let my ideas be shaped, critiqued, and molded by the wisdom of others.

For our community groups, I’ve set up a community group roundtable dinners with different sets of leaders to allow them to ask questions, solicit feedback on what they hear when the vision is set before them, what areas are unclear and how they see this vision being accomplished in their local community. These are often refreshing times for me to listen to what is going on in each community, hear their questions and challenges to incorporate these ideas in shaping the final direction of the vision.

In our community groups, I encourage our leaders to think through how to incorporate our core values of Gospel Enjoyment, Intentional Community, & Prayerful Mission practically in their local neighborhood. After they think through this, I encourage them to discuss these ideas with their community, invite their feedback and form a collective vision and understanding going forward. This collective vision process creates ownership and momentum towards the entire community being on board to implement their vision and not the dictated vision from above.

Do we believe God has gifted every believer or is that just rhetoric?

For the American church, and likely the global church, we have to confront whether we truly believe what the scriptures say about the gospel of Jesus Christ. The New Testament clearly states that every person who has placed their faith in Christ and seeks to live their life following His ways is empowered by God the Holy Spirit with gifts that are used to build up the body of Christ. Every church leader cognitively believes this, but not every church leader practically believes this.

The professionalization of the ministry and mission of God tends to lead to a separation between church staff and church attenders. The staff has been given by God to spend their energy listening to God and forming a plan, but incorporating and empowering the members of the local church to shape, finalize and join the mission of God to love, care for, and speak into their neighborhood with the gospel.

The wisdom of crowds is not merely a sociological idea, it’s the design and gift of God as He gives the church a community to establish their collective vision for extending the good news of Christ to their city. When the church moves beyond rhetoric and begins listening to the empowered believers in their church, it will benefit greatly. It does not negate the value of church staff, but rather enhances their leadership.

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August 23, 2012 · 1:32 pm

Soccernomics & Church: Relocation Assistance in Moving People to Mission

Soccer clubs in professional leagues often spend millions of dollars purchasing the rights to players from other teams. This results in the soccer player often moving countries and adapting to new cultures. While they spend millions to get them there, they spend nothing to help them adapt to their new environment.

The transfer market is largely a gamble and a rather costly one at that. The transfer market is different from the free agent market that we are used to in American sports where a player chooses where to take his talents. At the end of the season, soccer clubs make players available for transfer, letting the league know he’s available and then soccer clubs pay each other for the right to sign the player. Most teams are awful at the transfer market, but Arsenal seems to have figured it out (Go Gunners!).

Soccernomics highlights that Real Madrid paid $35 million to Arsenal for Nikolas Anelka in 1999. Chelsea paid $44 million to Olympique Mareseille for Didier Drogba in 2004, then a record. Both of these players are cited in Soccernomics as being transferred to a new team, a new city, a new culture and given no assistance in helping them or their families adjust. Drogba succeeded despite the challenges his family faced, but Anelka struggled tremendously and was quickly moved to Paris Saint-German.

Soccernomics highlights that these players and many others face significant challenges off the field when they relocate and that influences the way they play on the field. The authors argue that simply hiring one employee to assist players in relocating would increase the success of these players involved in the transfer market. This assistance would include helping them find housing instead of a hotel, learn about school options for their family, and generally being available to new players. Nike & Adidas seem to agree because they send assistants to players they sponsor when they transfer to insure their investment is a success.

The Church & Relocation Assistance

Teams that provide relocation assistance often see the greatest benefit from transfers. The issue for the church is that we live in a transient society as people move jobs, churches, and try to adapt in transition. The church not assisting people in transitioning from what they are familiar with to their new context and environment hinders the mission of God in churches. This is largely because of false assumption and lack of effort from the church.

False Assumptions

“What if you had a clean slate?”

At an Acts 29 Regional back in April, I was asked how I would lead a missional community if I had a clean slate, meaning starting from scratch with people. It’s a nice idea, but a terrible assumption.

No one comes in with a blank slate about church and God’s mission. Everyone has a preconceived or imagined idea unless they are hearing the gospel for the very first time and even then typically have a stereotype of a Christian. Some people come from a highly programmed church background and feel as if there is less for them to do in a missional community church leading them to feel less connected. Other people assume what they have come from is missional and do not assess what needs to change to join the mission of their new church.

While this is happening with current Christians, there are newcomers or those exploring Christianity who can gather an unclear picture of the overall mission and direction Christianity and the church. Insider jargon, lack of communication, and not expecting to come alongside people in transition is unhelpful. We have no choice but seek a better way to assimilate and care for new people in the church.

“They just need time in our church”

This is the assumption that learning must take place by osmosis in being around the community, but nothing can or be done to teach it. Ultimately, this provides the depth of understanding, but assumes too much of the culture of your organization’s ability to communicate without direct language.

People feel comfortable enough connecting on their own

Most churches have a connections environment and a connection card where people fill out their information. It connects with some people, but not everyone feels comfortable putting themselves out there and connecting with people. The church often puts it on the visitor to figure everything out rather than providing environments and encouraging people to help a new face understand how things go.

Here was Anelka’s situation on day 1 that can mirror a newcomer’s experience at church.

“On Day 1 the shy, awkward twenty year old reported to the club, and found there was nobody to show him around…As he said later, all Real had told him was, ‘Look after yourself.’”

This can sound similar to someone new to church that is never greeted by anyone or never invited to have a conversation beyond hello. The Sunday gathering has become too comfortable for Christians to focus on being taught and not enough on Christians seeking to welcome people into the loving family of God.

What can the church actually do?

While the answer for soccer clubs is simple, spend less than 1% of the transfer fee and hire a relocation specialist, the churches solutions are a little different.

Churches that I have seen do this well provide consistent early entry environments to give people specific information about the church and next steps for them to be engaged with the church’s mission. They also have some sort of membership process to allow for more depth than the early entry environment.

Mark Dever, the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in D.C., advocates for an intensive membership process including an interview to confront any assumed agreements so that long term agreement and understanding is established. While lengthy, it does go through the hard work of clearly articulating the unique culture and methods of mission of his church.

What about going a little further to help people with God’s mission? What if the transition for the entire family or outside influences of the cultural context affect the ability to be on mission? How can a church address those?

Relocation Assistance: Moving People to Mission

Manhattan is 60% transplants and is constantly seeing new people come to New York. There are unique benefits, challenges, and quirks to living in Manhattan, especially if you have children. The space is different, the school system is unique, and the pace of life is different. Until people move from transplants to residents and begin calling New York home, they will never care for the city like Jesus does.

While every city, town, or neighborhood doesn’t have the transient nature of New York, each has their own unique issues that both highlight the beauty of God and need the gospel of Jesus Christ to heal the brokenness.

What is the church provided contextual assistance, listening and learning from their neighborhood, and provided an overview of the area to newcomers?

A relocation assistance brochure or class on the city/neighborhood/town would communicate about the purpose of the church, the concern and the enjoyment of the neighborhood.  People need to be shown how they could generally live in an area if they are ever going to be on mission there. In addition the church can highlight the ways they are seeking to benefit and bless the neighborhood.

As much as we assimilate people into the church, we need to assimilate them out of the church and into the mission of God to care for their neighbors.

Is it about the church or about people?

In Soccernomics, a relocator was quoted as saying of the soccer clubs “I guess it comes down to the fact that they see the players as merchandise.” The players are merely pawns in their game to make more money and win more games. Despite this reality, soccer clubs don’t see their value increases through concern for the players through assisting them be better on the field.

The church has to confront that they may be more concerned with numbers inside their church than helping the people attending the church care for their neighbors. The church can become a place where people are merely cogs in their machine of religion, rather then equipping them to be bearers of God’s love on mission. God’s mission is about people and He’s chosen to use people to accomplish it.

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August 21, 2012 · 12:11 pm

Soccernomics & Church: Why England Loses & Others Win: Benefits from a Broad Network

(Yesterday, I began a series of blog posts on how a book on soccer, Soccernomics, can teach us much about the American church.)

England is the birthplace of soccer, has the most popular soccer league and yet finds itself in recent decades failing on the global stage of soccer. Soccernomics highlights that England is in denial of this reality and finds ways to be disappointed in assuming their team will come out on top in the next World Cup. As the authors analyzed it though, you can bet on England falling short in Rio.

Soccer has become the most popular global sport. We can largely thank the British colonization for this, though it didn’t take off in America, as we hated all things Britain after our independence, but have recently returned to our anglophile ways. Despite originating in England and have the English Premier League, soccer’s dominance has found a home in continental western Europe, from the world’s greatest players, most obsessed fans, and even the style of soccer.

How could this be? How can the birthplace of soccer not remain the most dominant force in soccer? Soccernomics highlights that this is the result of England lacking and at times neglecting a diverse network in proximity, which influences the spread of ideas.

Diverse Network in Proximity: How Ideas Spread

In analyzing England soccer’s decline, Soccernomics highlights the benefits of a broad, diverse network to learn the latest best practices, be inspired to expand on those practices, and then spread your own ideas just as quickly.

“Just as the brain works by building new connections between huge bundles of neurons, with each connection producing a new thought, so we as individuals need to find ourselves in the center of the bundle in order to make more connections.

Networks are key to the latest thinking about economic development. Better networks are one reason some countries are richer than others. As it happens, networks also explain why some countries have done better at soccer than England. The country was too far from the networks of continental western Europe, where the best soccer was played.” Soccernomics p. 24

The spread of ideas from a diverse network in proximity can shape the status of a soccer team, but also an economy and an organization. This happens most effectively in Western Europe.

“Western Europe excels at soccer for the same fundamental reason it had the scientific revolution and was for centuries the world richest region. The region’s secret is what historian Norman Davies calls its ‘user-friendly climate.’ Western Europe is mild and rainy. Because of that, the land is fertile. This allows hundreds of millions of people to inhabit a small space of land. That creates networks…

For centuries now, the interconnected peoples of western Europe have exchanged ideas fast. The ‘scientific revolution’ of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could happen in western Europe because its scientists were near each other, networking, holding a dialogue in their shared language: Latin…the proximity of many thinkers in western Europe created an intellectual ferment. That is why so many of the great scientific discoveries were made there. These discoveries helped make the region rich.

Centuries later, soccer spread the same way.” Soccernomics, p.25-26

The authors go on to discuss how the proximity led to two world wars, but following World War II, the region again began to share ideas quickly, especially for soccer. The world’s best players and best coaches were packed together in Western Europe leading to the best soccer being developed and refined there.

A World Cup has not lacked a western European country in the finals in almost 50 years and the majority of the World Cups have been won from those countries over the same time period. They are great at soccer and their diverse, dense network provides that success.

What does this mean for the American Church?

Often the church has been close-minded to a broad network, limiting who we will listen to by determining our denominational boundaries and refusing to listen to others with a filter. My generation of church-goers (though shrinking supposedly) is honestly tired of the denominational battles and prideful exaltation of secondary issues as primary.

The Christian blogosphere is a microcosm of that affect. A writer posts an article and apparently that’s a signal for forming into battle lines, choosing sides and fighting an online war that looks foolish to the outside world. Why have we decided to read everything without a filter and take an all-or-nothing approach to online bloggers?!? Am I the only one that thinks this is foolish?

Are we unable to read with a filter, extend grace in perceived errors like we have received from God in Christ?

There are a few main issues and hurdles that the American church needs to move beyond and then I can foresee partnership and the exchange of ideas that could move us forward.

Lacking Close-Handed Issues, Differing Theology is Seen as Heresy

The first I ever heard of close-handed and open handed issues was from Mark Driscoll (cue battle lines being formed). The idea being that Christianity has close-handed issues, fundamental issues that deal with the gospel of Jesus Christ and the ability for someone to be saved through His life, death, and resurrection.

The open handed issues are things that differ between denominations, churches, and Christians. These are issues like baptism, though the Presbyterians & Baptists different in their theology, you won’t (for the most part) hear them claim the other is not Christian. There are issues of ecclesiology (how the church is structured) and missiology (what’s the mission of God’s people) that are also secondary, open-handed issues.

Now, I’m not naïve enough to think that even these that I have called secondary issues, are secondary for everyone. But that’s the problem. Christians have spent much time, energy, and money fighting over these issues while the world around us breaks apart with no effort from the church to help. I’m aligning myself as guilty here as well.

This is easily the biggest hurdle for many denominations and churches. An additional issues that needs to change must be the willingness to share ideas for the greater good. A number of churches and denominations draw unnecessary lines that prevent partnership. In doing so they assume this helps them, but it ultimately is killing the church. Only when we view the gospel moving forward as success rather than our church growing will this change.

The good news is I’ve started to see a change in the American church that gives me hope.

Partnering for Gospel Mission to Help The World

In New York, where I live, I’ve honestly never seen church unity like I do here. Pastors praying together regularly, encouraging transferring church-goers to reconcile or at least discuss their reasons for leaving before doing so, and seeking to learn from one another. I don’t see fighting between churches, I see celebration of the gospel and it gives me hope.

I see similar things at conferences like Verge. There was quite a diversity of theological distinctives at Verge, but a collective desire to make the gospel primary and learn from one another how to do so.

These types of partnerships display the unifying work of the gospel, not the unifying work of discussing unity. Jesus declared that our unity and love for one another will declare to the world that we are His followers. This also creates a willingness to freely share ideas in hopes of benefitting the larger community of faith beyond our church walls.

Not only are we failing at the declaration and demonstration, but we’re hurting the American church by cutting off a lack of new ideas that can fuel our mission to love the world. Our shrinking network that often lacks diversity of race, denominational affiliation, and methodology is matching England’s shrinking network of soccer ideas. We can follow England’s soccer slide to mediocrity if we continue to due so.

I highly recommend Soccernomics, you can buy it here.

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August 20, 2012 · 1:25 pm

Soccernomics, The Church, & The Mission of God

My wife recently described me as someone who loves to talk about sports, missional communities, and the church and will indulge any conversations that involve any of these 3 ideas. It’s true. I’m also fascinated by organizational health and leadership, something that plays into success in sports and the mission of God through the church.

This explains why the book Soccernomics, essential Moneyball for the sport of soccer, fascinated me. It evaluated why certain countries are great at soccer (Germany & Brazil) and why others choke on the world stage (England), but went on to evaluate professional soccer leagues and why soccer is the global sport.

I love how businesses, sports, or other organizations can inform our understanding and approach to church. While many would object that the church should be different from all of these (true), all of these are organizations of people driven by a vision & values with a strategy to accomplish the vision. The church is similar.

As I read the book, I couldn’t help but see parallels and connections to the church in terms of leadership, organizational health, and how the community of God extends the mission of God. Since I process my thoughts through writing, I’ll be sharing my observations over the next few weeks on how the ideas of Soccernomics can be applied to the church.

So over the next 2 weeks, here’s what I will be writing about on this blog, as I believe the American church can learn much from the health & dysfunction of “secular” organizations around the world.

Why England Loses & Others Win: Benefits from a Broad Network

England is the birthplace of soccer, has the most popular soccer league and yet finds itself in recent decades failing on the global stage of soccer. Soccernomics evaluates the spread of ideas and how England often doesn’t benefit as a result of listening to a smaller network of ideas.

Often the church has been close-minded to a broad network, limiting who we will listen to by determining our denominational boundaries and refusing to listen to others with a filter.

Relocation Assistance in Moving People to Mission

Soccer clubs in professional leagues often spend millions of dollars purchasing the rights to players from other teams. This results in the soccer player often moving countries and adapting to new cultures. While they spend millions to get them there, they spend nothing to help them adapt to their new environment often leading to failure in the transfer market.

Teams that provide relocation assistance often see the greatest benefit from transfers. The issues for the church is that we live in a transient society as people move jobs, churches, and try to adapt in transition. The church not assisting people in transitioning from what they are familiar with to their new context and environment hinder the mission of God in some churches.

Wisdom of Crowds

Decisions can often be made in a vacuum in business, professional sports clubs, and churches. They lack information from a variety of sources that allows them to make appropriate decisions. The result for the church is often copying the latest trends, adopting someone else’s methods, and doing little in the way of applying biblical principles to the local community of God.

The wisdom of crowds involves incorporating team leaderships and cultivating a collective vision. It isn’t easy, but it’s worth the challenging process for guiding people toward a common mission.

Lack of Innovation in Soccer & The Church

From hiring practices to game strategy, soccer clubs love to do what has always been done which leads to unprofitable and unsuccessful soccer. The church is also notorious for lacking innovation in methods and this lack of innovation would be foolish in a culture that is changing the way they interact, plan their lives and engage with the wider society.

British Army vs. American Army’s Approach to The Green Zone in Iraq

In Iraq, the British & American Army’s use different tactics in working local officials in the Green Zone during the war. These tactics reveal the way influence can be used or abused. The spread of soccer as the global game also can be attributed to relational influence as the means for creating culture.

The church has often aimed for positional influence in the culture and often finds themselves on the losing end. There is much to learn from the British Army.

City Sizes & Soccer Prizes: The Size/Type of Your City Changes Church

The size and type of city often influences the success and popularity of a soccer club in their local context. The size and culture of city should change your approach to living as the community of God.

Living in New York City is different than living in Austin and church life reflects that well. Context doesn’t drive everything for a church, but it would be foolish not to consider it.

Fandom & It’s Influence on Christianity

Soccer fans are similar to every other sports fans, they jump on the bandwagon of the latest champion. Fandom has had its influence on sports, but also on the way people live the Christian life. It’s important to evaluate how fandom has shaped our approach to different areas of Christianity.

Tangible Physical Needs for Success

In one of the chapters of Soccernomics, the writers evaluate South Africa and the influence that apartheid had on its soccer teams. In the same chapter, the writers evaluated many of the most successful soccer players coming from poorer areas of their countries and world.

This assessment led to some conclusions about how tangible, physical needs being met provide a greater opportunity for people to thrive and eventually excel in society. The church has an opportunity to wake up to the physical needs of their city and see the spiritual mission of God connected to meeting tangible needs. If we don’t, we offer a verbal blessing to people dying of physical hunger, which does not mirror the goodness of God to His people.

Why This Now & What’s after it?

I love the American church and I want to see it embody the gospel of Jesus Christ to the rest of our society. When the church seeks to understand and connect with people outside of its walls it has the opportunity to learn and adapt their methods in extending the unevolving and unchanging gospel of Jesus Christ.

The world is need of organizations that care for more than those inside their belief camp and the church has the ability and the leader (Jesus) to do so.

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August 14, 2012 · 12:00 pm

Entering into Missional Community Messiness

Last week I intended to complete this small series on missional community messiness that every community will face. Last Tuesday, I focused on the 3 bad and 3 good reasons missional communities get messy and today will be about engaging this messiness.

Engaging vs. Ending the Missional Community

Many people would prefer to simply end the missional community and then move on to the next one when messiness arises. While that seems like an easy solution, it doesn’t address the root issues that will eventually repeat themselves and it doesn’t model the gospel of Jesus Christ at all.

The gospel of Jesus Christ informs us that Christ came to us specifically because we were a mess and his love for us compelled Him to enter into our world. He then took our mess on Himself on the cross, enduring the punishment our mess caused so that we wouldn’t have to face it. In His resurrection, we have hope that our mess can be addressed and transformed. God did not end the world, but sought to redeem it through Jesus.

This gives us hope when we find that our missional communities are messy and dealing with challenges.

Engaging the Bad Messiness Through a Missional Reset

Bad messiness in missional communities is the result of undefined or unshared leadership which usually leads to unclear vision and direction so the community lacks mission and is no longer seeing new people added to their community.

The best way to address these issues is to have a missional community reset. Take a few consecutive weeks to redefine the intent and direction as a community. This involves the leaders developing their general vision and then inviting the community to speak into the overall direction. (I plan on elaborating on developing a collective vision in the coming weeks.) Spend time as a community bringing to light the dysfunction. This freedom to face dysfunction comes from the gospel because we don’t have to pretend perfection; the gospel shows us our imperfection. This allows us to embrace our weaknesses, bring them to the community and address them collectively.

There may be natural times to do this like the beginning of a new season of community groups or it may need to be done in the middle of the season so the messiness won’t continue. The aim of the community to embody Jesus in His holy life and compassionate action needs to be clear or the community will sacrifice one while embracing the other which is unsustainable.

This missional community reset provides the arena for the community to share their desires for change and invite full engagement in the future direction together. Despite this messiness being a result of bad leadership, it is easier and quicker to address than the good messiness.

The Good Messiness Requires the Long-Suffering Love of God

Confession & Transformation

When the gospel sinks deep into the lives of people in community, they begin to share long-term struggles they wish would go away. These can often be tremendously challenging and habitual issues that require long-term care from the community. If we are honest with ourselves, we’d prefer not to long-suffer with people when there is no end in sight, but nothing can convey the love of God like long-suffering with others for transformation.

Jesus redeems us from our sin by faith (theology term: justification), but also promises to make us more like Him over the course of our lives (sanctification) until death when we fully become like Jesus in the life everlasting (glorification). That’s a long process, but God chooses to use His people to help us through that and the community that assists one another through trials, struggles, tragedies, and transformation from sin will know a depth of the gospel love of God that others don’t. Throughout this process they will also proclaim to the world that the power and love of God is greater than the mess of this life.

Raw Questions from Exploring & Potential Believers

A community that can endure the raw and messy details of life will likely find themselves faced with people exploring Christianity or new believers who have genuine questions about how faith shapes the world that will be incredibly challenging. We all want easy black and white questions and answers, but most raw questions deal with questions about Christianity’s encounter with our current culture.

This is when issues of sexuality, work and faith, theological convictions that separate faiths, and Christian values conflict with the norms of culture. In some cases, the missional community leader won’t know the answer and that’s ok, as long as they join the community in seeking the answer together. In other cases, the answer will confront the norms of the lives in the community that are shaped by the culture instead of Christ.

We’re not comfortable with this type of confrontational grace (though some are too comfortable with confrontational culture wars) that extends love by way of truth presented with gentleness.  I recently had a conversation where “all the cards were put on the table” and the disagreement was clear, but the result was not separation and end of friendship. The result was a continued commitment to explore these ideas together. I was very encouraged by that and I have seen the same thing occur in a number of our communities.

Each missional community can create a gospel-centered culture where rawness is embraced over always being right. It’s challenging, but it reflects the work of Jesus in our own lives, as God peels back layers little by little to reveal His desires for our lives over our own.

Inter-Generational & Racially Diverse Convergence

The church community can unfortunately be more segregated than the rest of the world. It was not supposed to be as evidenced by the scriptures speaking of a gospel that reconciles beyond age and race. For the missional community to seek to be gospel-centered in a way that embraces diversity, the community must be aware that diversity brings its own challenges. Our unspoken preferences can often be shaped by our culture, race, and age in ways that we have not confronted or acknowledged.

Living with a community of people dissimilar to you in life circumstances, but similar because of Jesus will bring these things to light. Embracing diversity allows us to see the beautiful design of God in culture, age, and race that fully magnify Him with their uniqueness over sameness. There may be times when conflicts arise, but letting the grace of God that is extended to us in Jesus guide our response will lead to a healthier community. The wisdom and strength of a diverse community speaks powerfully of the gospel of Jesus Christ to move beyond preferences and maintain God’s glory as the goal.

Every Missional Community will face messy seasons, but the gospel of Jesus Christ defines our response so that our community can continue to proclaim the good news of Jesus to the world.

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August 7, 2012 · 11:47 am

Good & Bad Messiness in Missional Communities

Every community faces messy seasons where things are not perfect in the community. This is true in group therapy, where they call this the storming phase of group development, and this is true of every small group in the church. This is an important phase for a community and especially for a missional community in the church.

For the church, when messiness arises in the missional community, there needs to be an assessment of whether this is the result of good or bad messiness. Identifying the reasons for messiness guides the response, whether celebrating messiness for good reasons or seeking to change things for bad reasons.

Below are 3 good reasons and 3 bad reasons for messiness in missional communities.

The Good, Gospel-Centered Reasons

Gospel-Centered Confession & Transformation

Yesterday, I outlined the majority of this idea. When a community is centered on and celebrating the gospel of Jesus Christ, people bring out past hurts, current sins, and struggles to the community to seek transformation and change. This is to be celebrated, but can be difficult to recognize as good because of a false understanding that morality equals spirituality.

Raw Questions from Exploring & Potential Believers

Another good reason for messiness comes from people exploring Christianity, either new to the faith or exploring it for the first time. This typically leads to raw questions that are unfortunately uncommon in church settings, but must be dealt with as people explore how Christianity truly affects life. These questions can cause messiness because they confront people’s beliefs, their values, and way of life.

This is what missional communities are intended to be. The best place to explore Christianity amongst people that love God and seek to live for Him. One thing we encourage our leaders to be aware of is the desire to always have the “right” answer. We encourage our leaders to be comfortable in saying “I don’t know, but I’ll try to find out.” It’s better to seek out the gospel-centered scriptural truth, than feel pressured to share personal advice. Missional communities have the best opportunity to cultivate this type of messiness as people from all walks of life are invited to explore Christianity.

Inter-Generational & Racially Diverse Convergence

This has been common since the establishment of the church as you see this type of convergence in the book of Acts and later Paul explains to the Ephesians church the benefit of racial diversity as a celebration of the gospel. This type of messiness results from misunderstandings and pretenses that can arise from interactions between different races and generations.

It can get messy as pride, ignorance, and poor understanding come to light that most of us can be unaware of. The gospel of Jesus Christ invites us to put down our preferences (conscious or subconscious) to value everyone based on God’s value of them, not their contributions, life stage, or race. Paul celebrates this in the church at Ephesus that their unity is based on faith and not racial preferences or similarities. It’s a mark of the gospel because the greatest treasure in a community.

The Bad, Avoidable Messiness

Undefined And/Or Unshared Leadership

Missional communities demand that shared leadership and defined leadership exist. A community needs multiple voices to guide the aspects of their community to insure that the community is cared for and the gospel is extended. It cannot be on one or even two people to accomplish all that a missional community is made to do.

When there is unclear leadership, things get messy. Despite some people’s ideas of organic-everyone-lead missional community life, a community naturally recognizes who is the leader over time and needs direction to be centered on the gospel. When leadership is not shared, it gets messy because it can feel as though the leader is simply inviting people to accomplish their ideas, instead of the community forming around a collective vision.

Unclear Vision & Direction

Another bad reason for messiness comes from a missional community that has not set the direction or vision. For some communities, this is about setting the aim for honoring God as Christ followers through the lifestyles that we choose to live while others involves setting the direction in extending the gospel so that the community is on mission together rather than a collection of individual missionaries.

Lack of Mission & New People

The last, but certainly not final, reason I want to highlight for bad messiness occurs from a lack of new people and mission. This typically results in a inward focus, trying to perfect the community, and eventually plays out in cattiness between people in the community. When new people come into a community, they can break up some norms that result from dysfunctional relationships that have formed.

Often people are nervous about including new people that come with new ideas and questions, but these new people often bring the community into a healthier life stage. Lacking mission will eventually be the death of the gospel-centered community because the gospel was intended to move outward to the rest of the world. It was not intended to be hidden and much frustration can result from a lack of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.

What does a missional community do with all this messiness?

These are simply a few of the reasons messiness exists within missional community and each community could likely expand on these and tell specific stories. As each community faces this type of messiness, they must return to the gospel of Jesus Christ to explore how to respond.

On Thursday, I’ll take a look at how I have and would recommend missional communities respond to messiness.

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August 6, 2012 · 12:28 pm

Your Missional Community Will Get Messy

Every gospel-centered missional community goes through a life cycle of forming and then having a time period of fun as they seek to enjoy and extend the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Eventually, the community will find themselves in a period of messiness. Every leader I have known and I myself have felt like a failure when the messiness comes into the community. When I speak of messiness, I mean the difficulties in the lives of people who are a part of the community coming to light.

Most missional community leaders think of the ideal community as strong people on a powerful mission affecting the lives of others. We have a tendency to paint this picture in the stories we tell about the communities we hope will exist. The problem is that the gospel of Jesus Christ explains to us that we are a broken people extending a perfect gospel to other broken people. None of us are perfect and our perfection is not our qualifier for being on mission, though too often we think our moral record justifies us before God and other people.

So when the ideal community we hope for ends up being people with past hurts or filled with people struggling to move away from habitually destructive behavior in their relationships or private lives, as leaders we think the community should end.  Leaders tend to see this as failure, but the messiness reveals the exact opposite.

The Gospel Freedom to Share Flaws

A gospel-centered community is a group of people built upon the belief that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true and affects the rest of our lives. It is believing that Christ chose to die for our imperfect lives and give us His perfect record so that we could know God and live for Him.

While it can be easy for all of us to see the flaws of others, we also see the flaws of the person in the mirror every day. We do our best to hide those flaws from the world as a result of believing the world’s acceptance is contingent upon our perfection. Maintaining a perfect reputation eventually becomes exhausting because the effort is too much, depressing because we can’t attain it and leaves us longing to bring down the façade. We are looking for acceptance from imperfect people by presenting a perfect self.

A gospel-centered community establishes the environment where people feel most comfortable sharing these flaws. The gospel of Jesus Christ frees us from this pursuit of perfection acceptance from others because we have more acceptance than we can imagine in the perfect God of the universe through the gospel. Not only this, but God promises acceptance as you are and assistance in processing and overcoming your flaws and sins over time.

Eventually, the people in your missional community begin to take this truth seriously, believing that change is possible they confront and share their flaws. The gospel freedom to do this inside of a community is part of the aim of the missional community in making disciples. Disciples of Jesus Christ continually experience freedom in sharing their weaknesses, temptations, and failures in sin and by confession seek forgiveness and strength to overcome the power these things hold on our lives.

It’s Messy & It’s Good

The freedom side of this idea sounds amazing, but the initial stage of revealing hurt, pain, mistakes, and errors make things a little bit messy. The messiness is good for all of us because it becomes the path to be empowered by the gospel. When we let the truths of God established through Jesus Christ transform us within a community, the community celebrates the gospel of Jesus Christ by extending it to others.

Gospel transformation leads to mission because experiencing joy from freedom in Jesus overflows in telling others of that in which you have found joy. When the gospel is applied to our communities and it sinks in deep, sin is confessed and brought out in the open ruining any power it has in hiding. This causes delight in Christ for those revealing their mess, but also for the community that walks through the mess with them.

This can be such a good and unique time for the community to value and treasure Christ most because they are not merely enjoying each other for the fun and ease of social events and bible discussion. They are caring for one another to see God bring hope, joy, and love to an area of life where none has existed. It solidifies the love of God in a community and the love of God naturally finds expression in loving others.

Bad Messiness & What to Do When it Gets Messy

This type of messiness for a community can be really healthy as it expresses a depth of the gospel, but there is other messiness that can be bad for the community. Whether a community finds themselves in good or bad messy seasons, they also need to know how to move forward together.

In lights of this my hope is to discuss the good and bad messy areas for a community tomorrow and then write about how to address the messiness in missional communities on Thursday.

Check back then and feel free to add feedback, questions, or your own experience below.

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August 2, 2012 · 2:59 pm

The Chief End of Missional Communities

This Sunday, our church concluded a series titled This is Our God. For the past 3 months, we’ve looked at the essence, nature, and character of God. As we ended our series, we spent time looking at responding to God through a special service that included corporate prayer, extended praise and worship, proclaiming our faith through the Apostles Creed and celebrating communion and generosity.

It was a special service and different from what I am used to, but as I prepared for it, I found myself reading the Westminster Catechism. It is one of the most famous documents to come out of the English Reformation, developed in the 1600s and used to educate people on doctrine and belief.

It is a series of questions and answers. It starts off in this way:

Question: What is the chief and highest end of man?

Answer: Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God and fully to enjoy Him forever.

It references so many scriptures that speak to this reality and I’m a big advocate for enjoying God as the aim of the life in general and especially for the Christian.

As I thought through this idea and continue to listen to the missional community conversation, there seem to be mixed messages about the chief end of missional communities.

If this is the end of man, to glorify God and fully to enjoy Him forever, why would it be different for a collection of Christians pursuing the chief end together?

Mission is only fueled & sustained by joy

Often the missional community conversation is characterized by describing the lack of mission or ranting against the over-focus on the community as the motivator for change towards extending the gospel.  These things are true; the church has lacked being on God’s mission to extend love, grace, mercy and fix the brokenness of the world. A lot of this is due to an inward focus on caring for the community at the detriment of mission.

These truths point to a deeper issue regarding motivation. We can move people to action by pointing to the lack of it or open their eyes to see beyond their own community, but these ideas alone won’t sustain or increase mission. Mission is the result of joy. If mission is lacking, it’s because joy and delight in God are lacking.

What we enjoy, we will discuss. What we enjoy, we will do. What we enjoy, we will give our time, resources, and lives to. This is true of ever idea, cause of mission that exists and it is true for the Christian in joining God’s mission.

When we grasp the acceptance, love, forgiveness, mercy, justice that is the character of God revealed most gloriously revealed in Jesus living an amazing life, teaching astounding truths, and then dying on the cross for the mistakes and sins of the whole world only to resurrect 3 days later. It’s a pretty powerful truth and when it sinks deep within you, there is a joy that you want to share. It is compelling beyond guilt or duty.

The love which God has given you moves you to want others to know it and experience it. This is the motivation, the fuel, for mission and it’s the only thing I’ve seen sustain mission. Duty can get people started, but extending the love of God through selfless sacrifice can exhaust us out of duty-based living. Returning to the gospel repeatedly to be reminded and refreshed by the love of God reminds us that our selfless sacrifice is minimal compared to Jesus.

There is also a peace that comes from remembering and hoping for the good news of Jesus Christ. It propels the Christian to embody Jesus to the world through action and relationships.

Joy Comes From Mission

Glorifying God through embodying Him to the world also is a cause for greater joy in God and in life. It requires that you give of yourself for someone else’s benefits, often not out of calculated thought, but reaction to caring for others as Jesus as cared for you.

Isaiah 58:10-11 says “if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched laces and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”

It seems counterintuitive. Giving of yourself can be one of the greatest gifts to yourself. Light shall rise in the darkness and gloom will be like midday. Self sacrificing is life-giving. Joy comes from being on the mission of God caring for others more than yourself.

Lead People to the Chief End

Forming missional communities that sustain their love for others on the mission of God requires that we lead people back to the chief and highest end first. We can get people to start doing something by pointing to their lack of missional activity, but that does not change their motivation, only their actions. We can also pound the drum against community, but we’ll only hurt the community in our efforts to move it beyond itself.

Leading people to the chief end of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever will accomplish the types of missional communities we long for our churches to be. Places where the love of God flows freely from those experiencing the love of God given to them freely.

This is a longer road than many of us want to take, but we do are not looking for a splash of mission, we are looking for restoration of broken relationships with God, people, and the world. Restoration takes time and the only sustainable motivator is enjoying God fully.

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