Category: church

Last week I went to an in-service for clergy concerning communicating with people who have acquired communicative impairments. I know the in-service was advertised to 90 different ministers in the Point area and I know that I personally sent word to 10 local ministers I know and respect. It was an excellent in-service that I found very helpful. I did, however, find the attendance interesting.

There were 13 of us at the in-service. I was the lone Baptist. There was a United Methodist, and 11 Evangelical Lutherans (ELCA). While my ELCA friends have “evangelical” in their name I don’t think that many of them (Anne & Ben S. please correct me if I am wrong on this) would claim that they would fit in the Evangelical subculture as it is defined in our present culture (i.e. basically theological and socially conservative, which I would fit into).  United Methodists vary all over the spectrum so I’ll not make an assumption with her. I point out my assumptions on whether or not these individual ministers were Evangelical or not (and I acknowledge that they are nothing more than my assumptions of whether someone is Evangelical or not) because I would like to point out something that I think is a tendency among Evangelicals and that is that I believe we tend to do our own things and ignore everything else. In other words, I believe that if this had been a specifically Evangelical group, sponsored by a local Evangelical church, that more Evangelical ministers would have found time in their schedules to make the in-service a priority. Where as, I believe we tend to ignore things that are non-Evangelical in their nature.

Now I’m not calling out the ministers in the Point area because I know most of them and therefore I know they missed for very good reasons. I am sure the ones that didn’t come did so because they were very busy, had already dealt with ways to make sure they communicate effectively with people with acquired communicative disorders, or had other pressing matters. I know one who was planning on being there but was so thrown off by the snow of Tuesday that her schedule would no longer allow her to be at the in-service. I’ve seen the Evangelicals in the Point area in the name of Christ reach out and help those on the margins of society. It is just that it appears to me that we Evangelicals often do a better job of doing this when it is our thing rather than joining others in something good that is already happening. I’m not sure how nice we play with those outside of our Evangelical tribe. I’m not even real sure how well we play with those in our tribe. Seems to me that we are real good at inviting others to join us and not as good as joining others when they invite us. This post isn’t about ministers in the Point area. Instead, this post is just me wondering if this is an Evangelical tendency or not. Have others noticed this? Or am I just reading too much into my own experiences.

Maybe I am wrong. It just seemed odd to me that I was probably the only Evangelical in the room for a clergy in-service that was about helping us to communicate, and thereby share the message of Christ, with those who have communication impairments. Thinking that was odd got me to thinking about the bigger picture and had me wondering if it was a tendency within Evangelicalism on a whole.

If you noticed that their weren’t any Roman Catholics mention in attendance you would be correct. I`m not Roman Catholic though so I don’t have much to say about that circumstance.

Today while meeting some recent guests who visited Tapestry (I try to take everybody who visits Tapestry out for coffee and a conversation) I realized that I have a bit of fascination with what architecture says about our culture and priorities.  I have three examples that I use pretty often.

• Church worship arrangement reflecting the priorities of a church. I think I stole this from Dr. David Kirkpatrick my favorite theology professor at SWBTS. How the room is setup shows what is most important to a congregation.
• The tallest building in town reflecting the priority of a culture. At one time a church was usually the tallest building in town, then it was a government building that was most likely the tallest building in town, and now it is most likely a business that has the tallest building in town. I’m not sure where I originally heard this so I can’t give credit to who it is properly due.
• The place of graveyards reflecting our society’s fear of death. If you look at historic graveyards they are typically in the center of town by the church,  versus the continually segregating of death further and further away from the living reflected now. This came from Jürgen Moltmann.

They are three of my favorite story/illustrations and I use them a ton. I need to do some more reading concerning architecture and a society’s priorities.

One of the regrets I have from when I was a pastor in the traditional church is that I didn’t spend as much time outside the church as I now wish I had. At the time I actually thought I spent a lot of time, maybe more than most, outside of the church. I visited lots of people – students, their parents, people in the hospital, etc. I prepared sermons outside of my church study in coffee shops, hospitals, and other places (even a bus riding around the city once). But that’s part of the problem. You see the VAST majority of time that I spent outside of the church walls I was actually just doing things and visiting people that were within the church bubble. I was cloistered within the church walls even when I wasn’t within the physical church walls. My experience indicates to me that I was not alone in spending almost all my time inside the Christian ghetto.

Now I look back at what I thought I was doing outside the church and laugh. These days I spend the vast majority of my time outside of the church both physically and socially. I think this lends a ton of credence to my words when I ask the “threads” to share the hope they have in Jesus with those around them.

So here’s what I am thinking. It starts with something Google does. As some of you may know Google encourages their employees to spend 80% of their time working on what they were hired for and 20% of their time working on whatever they like that might help the company. Lifehacker describes the 80/20 rule here. This idea has me thinking. What would the modern church be like if she required all her ministers to spend at least 20% of their work time outside of the church ghetto?

What would the ministry staff of a church look like if they were spending at least 20% of their expected work time doing stuff completely un-church related. Working at a retail store (I worked for a friend last year one day and week and I am about to start working for another friend every so often – btw come by and say hello at the Sugar Doll and buy some chocolate because it is good stuff), or volunteering at a local school, or doing something else in the community that has nothing to do with the church. i think it would be awesome. Instead the people we tend to lift up as pastoral leaders are people who spend almost all their time in the bubble of Christian culture. But for a second imagine a megachurch pastor who was doing spending one day a week working in a small boutique shop and getting to know random people. I think I remember a Willowcreek Church pastor who was doing something similar to this. I think this 20% mindset, the equivalent of one day a work week, would change the way pastors relate to those outside of the community of Christ, would change the way pastors talk about people outside the church, and might change the way parishioners listen to their pastors. It could be so good.