Thoughts on Leadership

Three Kinds of Poverty

Poverty is usually thought of as 'not having stuff.'  But this is a fundamentally materialistic and consumeristic way of defining the term, and falls far short of understanding the plight of the poor, or the various ways in which poverty can be manifested.  For this reason, I am exploring these ways of describing poverty, although this is tenuously affirmed, and I would appreciate feedback on the ideas...

Instead of thinking of poverty as a lack of stuff, lets try thinking about it as a lack of access to systems of power.  This actually helps us to make sense of the different forms of poverty that we see in the world around us.  After all, most of us recognize that poverty is very real in our country, and yet, it is very different from poverty in other countries...

Deprivation
This can be defined as individuals or groups who lack access to systems of economic power.
These are people who are not having their most basic needs met.  They are without food, shelter, clean water, or health care.  This is what we think of as the 'global poor,' or the 'third-world poor.'

Opression
This can be defined as individuals or groups who lack access to systems of social power.
These are people who are abundantly fed, warm, and entertained, but have no control (real or perceived) over their own destiny, or that of their community or the world at large.  This is the 'urban poor' and the 'rural poor' of America.  People who have little access to education, to health care and healthy food, or to networks of economic, social, and political power.

Alienation
This can be defined as individuals or groups who lack access to systems of meaning.
These peoples needs are met, they have power to control individual destiny, but there is no larger sense of what is to be pursued.  These are people we are not likely to consider poor, yet, they have a clear lack.  For them material wealth and power are ends in themselves, instead of means to something more meaningful...

In all three of these categories, the resultant poverty can be the result of an actual lack of access, or a perceived lack of access.  Both are equally problematic.  If a family starves because there is a famine, and literally no food exists within range of their table, that is neither more nor less a problem than an individual who suffers from mental illness and literally starves with food in their pantry.

Is Suburbanization Evil?

In my mind, there is no question that it is.

It is only the conservative values ingrained on the mind of the evangelical church that blinds us to this. The suburbs were formed when technology gave people the ability to commute; and hence to choose to live apart from where they work. People were beholden to the cities for jobs and economic infrastructure, but did not want to live with the problems that such environments create. In moving to the suburbs they could have the benefits of the city without the problems. They could share in the resources of the City without taking responsibility for the City.

Were this all there was to suburbanization it would be bad enough...

Unfortunately there is an explicitly racial component to the entire structure as well. The suburban environment is vastly different than the urban one in terms of ethnicity. This means that our economic system treats people of different ethnicities vastly different. Conservatives argue that it is okay that we treat minorities worse than whites because we don't treat minorities bad because they are minorities; we only treat them bad because they are poor.

It is the same argument used to disenfranchise minorities historically. "We aren't preventing blacks from voting, only illiterates!" Intentionally ignoring that blacks largely couldn't read because our nation had set up the educational system to educate whites and not blacks...

The real question is, will we see that no matter what has caused the problems the poor face, whether that is the actions of evil men with power, or well-intentioned but ignorant men with power, or the apathy and sin of the poor themselves; as Christians it is our duty and our joy to be among them!?

Systemic Evil

Thanks to Chris Lamm for getting me back in the saddle...

Comfort Anesthetizes the Conscience of Justice...

(...sorry about the foul language!)





Good movie, this scene is a great illustration as to how the consent of the willfully ignorant majority is the power that enables a fundamentally unjust system to perpetuate itself. We live in a world where "two-thirds of the world is starving to death, while the other third argue about sex;" we are the top of the food chain, and our cultural prestige is maintained by the efforts of those at the bottom.

Sure, we don't do it intentionally, sure we don't see the injustice. ...but intuitively we know. Our whole system is fundamentally unjust but we try to maintain the status quo by shunning those who question it. We keep our hands over our eyes, and our fingers in our ears, and we get mad at those who try to pull our hands away. We talk about 'individual responsibility' while we shop for sweat-shop-manufactured-goods. We deify 'personal property rights' in an era with the highest rate of slavery in world history. We talk about 'social mobility' when the American poor grow up in the midst of violent neighborhoods, sub-standard medical care, twinkies and doritos for dinner 5 nights a week, and illiterate parents.

"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."
Rabbi Yeshua bin Yusef
(tortured to death in Palestine for threatening the status quo)

"When I feed the poor they call me a saint, when I ask, 'Why are they poor?' they call me a communist."
Bishop Romero
(assasinated in El Salvador for speaking out on behalf of the oppressed)

Broken Tomato Cages pt III

I have a dear friend, (they are actually stereotypical of many) who's spiritual formation has been inhibited by the very Institution that was supposed to foster it. They are an herb someone has treated like a tomato plant. This has inhibited their ability to grow, so now they are outside of the Church. They haven't abandoned Jesus, but they have left behind much of His plans and purposes, because they are sick of tomato cages, and the gardeners won't stop using them!

Admittedly, this person has chosen to walk away from things they know to be crucial; they are partly culpable in their own circumstances. However, we too, share in the culpability...

When the structures of the Institutuional Church are broken, we might actually begin to reimagine the true purposes of Church...

And so we smash the cages! Then we aren't tempted to use them! Throw off the old structures, experiment, try new ways, dream new dreams.

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But at the same time, trying to learn how to garden without tomato cages is frustrating when everyone coming to you for food only wants tomatoes! I give them carrots, lettuce, basil, peppers, potatoes, but they aren't interested, and keep talking about how my garden doesn't look like what they were expecting.

"Where are those metal structures? Isn't a real garden supposed to have those?"

Let's Play

Ray Hollenbach framed part of the conversation by essentially asking 'where exactly is the playing field?'

I'd like to continue in that vein:

Just who is 'everybody?'

This is largely a strength of the Vineyard. When we say everybody, we really do mean it. We make a real effort to train and include laity in ministry; women and men, even children, people of all backgrounds and social classes.

The only real 're-thinking' I see necessary at this point is in the inherent tension between 'excellence in ministry' and allowing the visibly broken to play. I have seen new Christians, non-Christians, those with drug problems, and even those presently under the influence of drugs, all ministering in Vineyard churches in some capacity. However, there is a real attempt to prevent these types of people from engaging in 'real' ministry. We will let them hold the door (if they're pretty enough), or let them print fliers, or play the drums (if they're capable enough), but there are real boundaries we place upon just what they are allowed to do.

For the record, I am not advocating placing drunk agnostics in the pulpit, I would certainly agree that there are standards for Christian ministry. The question that must be grappled with is this:

Is the bar we set for Christian ministry about 'excellence' or is it about 'health?' Do we prevent some from certain places in ministry and Church life because they are unseemly, or because they would hurt themselves or others?

I contend that Scripture has no value for 'excellence in ministry' that is ultimately a cover for excluding those people who might make things slower, uglier, or technically flawed. Our decisions to include someone in ministry should be based on whether the individual is healthy enough to step into a particular role, not whether they are skilled enough.

This decision has tremendous communicative properties...

Just what do we mean by 'play?'

It is here that we must give significant energy to re-thinking current practices.

We largely conceive of ministry in terms of practices and care/direction given to Church members or performed on their behalf. Ministry is preaching and teaching, ministry is playing musical instruments, administrating the needs of the church, leading Bible-studies, praying for people, even maintaining church buildings and running technical equipment, etc.

The results of such a definition is manifold, the most problematic are the two following: 1) Christians who are deeply engaged in ministry yet have little or no involvement in mission, 2) Christians who view 'real ministry' as being done by the professionals while viewing their jobs as distractions from Kingdom work.

We must rethink this conception.

Play must fundamentally mean mission! Leaders should be player/coaches who equip others for ministry to the world.

As a pastor I am naturally focused on the local faith community of which I am a member/leader. This must not be allowed to divert my own focus from the wider community that is the object and context for the Church's mission. This must not be allowed to 'leak down' onto the church, causing the stale atmosphere of spiritual inbreeding that is a result of a church that ministers to itself.

Play must include the entire scope of human activity. Almost all occupations can be Christian vocations.

As a pastor I am resourced to take future church leaders through an equipping process. I can teach someone how to lead church activities. I am competent to teach people how to live a life of spiritual disciplines. But when it comes to the single largest fact of most peoples daily lives, I am left with one of two options for discipleship. 1) Quit your job so you can do 'real ministry.' 2) Pray for and witness to your co-workers while maintaining personal integrity at your workplace. What is largely missing is any sense of training people to view their occupations as their vocations.

Scoring Goals

It is here that the Church has the largest problem, and hence, the largest need for re-imagination. Our system rewards and reinforces a view of ministry that is largely out of sync with our stated philosophy of ministry. We say everybody gets to play, but the rules of the game, and the way in which we 'score goals' (ie incentives and definitions of success) are set up to prevent everybody from playing. Of course this is unintentional, but still true!

A 'winning' church (to continue the metaphor) is defined by characteristics that have nothing to do with 'everybody getting to play.' Because of this we simultaneously recognize a need to have everyone play, while attempting to keep the star players in the game as long as possible; in our system you can't score goals with mediocre performance. Because of this, we give some attention to the idea of workplace ministry, but it somehow never really makes it into the playbook; you can't score goals by practicing law, or building bridges, only by proclaiming the gospel or praying for people. In short, our definition of success prevents us from implementing this value more fully.

Our most essential task is to create a system of in which 'everybody gets to play' is itself one of the markers for success, is itself defined as one of the ways in which we 'score points.'

Redefining a Successful Local Church: Planting Churches that Plant Churches

The Lesson from Evolutionary Biology

People often have difficulty grasping one of the basic tenets of biology. It is simple to understand, and once you 'get it' it becomes the most obvious truism. The difficulty lies not in the complexity of the thing to be understood, but in the conceptions we already hold that predispose us to other ways of thinking. We are so used to thinking about things in a certain manner, that it becomes difficult to conceive, much less think critically, in any other manner. This difficulty has to do with the evolutionary fitness or 'success' of a particular organism.

More specifically, it is the definition of evolutionary fitness that is difficult for people to see. An organism's biological 'success' is determined solely and completely by its ability to reproduce. Reproduction is defined and measured by the ability of the parent to produce viable offspring, the greater the number of viable offspring, the greater the success of the parent. Viability is, of course, defined by the ability to reach mature reproductive age and produce yet another generation of offspring.

The reason this can be difficult to grasp is that our own conception of success is so radically different. We are used to thinking of success in terms of strength, size, skill, power, intelligence, virtue, even pleasure; in short, we are used to a definition of success that thinks solely in terms of the well-being of the parent organism without any regard for the relationship of that organism to the future of its genetic code.

The parallels to the Church should here become obvious...

A Successful Church

My main contention here has to do with our definition of success. While it would be pushing the analogy too far to suggest a one-to-one correlation, I contend that our definition of church success must share the same emphasis on reproduction that we see in evolutionary biology. There are of course, other concerns when it comes to church health and faithfulness to our King; love and devotion to Jesus, deep and powerful ties to each other, practical initiatives to peace and justice in the world; but these can perhaps be seen as the content of the genetic code, whereas success is conceived as perpetuating those Kingdom genes.

We must be explicit and clear on this, a successful church is one that produces other churches, in short, it is imperative that we tie organizational success to reproduction.

Competing Paradigms

This is not, however, the definition of Church success that we have inherited. The Vineyard (and those within it) come squarely out of the 20th Century American Evangelical tradition. We have differentiated ourselves in significant ways from that tradition (without repudiating it), but have yet to significantly differentiate ourselves from the ubiquity of 'Church Growth' methods and theories that hold sway within that tradition. We still largely define success as our American Evangelical cousins do: the strength, size, skill, power, intelligence, virtue, even pleasure, that is present within the local congregation. In short, we are used to a definition of success that thinks solely in terms of the well-being of the parent organism without any regard for the relationship of that organism to the future of its genetic code.

I know of too many 'mega-churches' with no value for church planting. They are the envy of all of the churches and christians in the area, yet they are like a wealthy, elite, but aging, suburbanite wife, who has produced no children, and is growing more and more concerned with bridge games, botox treatments, and social events. No one seems to notice, nor to point out, that these healthy churches are not healthy at all. They are sterile...

No one I know would point to a young woman who was biologically incapable of becoming pregnant as a model of health, yet we have little difficulty thinking the Bride of Christ is healthy, while remaining barren. So how is it that we can divorce health from reproduction?

Practical Methods for Redefinition

The real problem, is that we hold these churches up as models to replicate in our own location, when they are incapable of replicating themselves! We are blinded by the sheen of consumerism and the glow of individualism to the reality of God's vision for the church.

We must begin to hold up different models.

We must stop buying books from large church pastors, we must stop reading their blogs, we must stop placing them in places of denominational leadership, we must stop inviting them to teach at conferences. We must stop counting Sunday attendance, we must stop talking about these numbers. We must stop using these as measurements of success.

We must start spotlighting individuals and communities who are planting churches! We must read their books and blogs. Invite them to speak at our conferences and lead our denominations. We must start counting the number of church plants sent out, and the number of church plants that have planted others.

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For those of you interested in some further reading, I have attached a link to a series of posts exploring three other metaphors for Church that deal explicitly with reproduction and missional success. They came out of a sermon I preached at a friends church a few years back intended to spur on the cause of New Church Planting:

Apples, Dandelions, and Horse Manure

Institutionalization...

I had someone tell me that psychology has taken the place of the elderly in our society. What we used to look to our grandparents for, we now pay someone $100 dollars an hour to do for us (and of course we pay someone to take care of our grandparents in the process as well...), and I don't think we are better of for the 'professionalization' of wisdom at living.

We have taken essential aspects of society and 'trained' people how to 'do it better' and then watched as society is no longer capable of adressing these aspects...

We have schools that don't educate effectively, a criminal justice system that perpetuates criminal behavior, and a social welfare system that creates poverty; this is due to the underlying assumption that professionals are better at doing it than community is, and so undermining community in the process.

No wonder we have seen the atomization of families, the failure of community services, etc. there are professionals to do those things for us...

...do you think we are better off?

Quotes

"When I feed the hungry, people call me a saint; when I ask, 'Why are they hungry?' people call me a Marxist."

- Bishop Oscar Romero

"The defeat of evil in this world depends upon human beings actually stepping forward to use the Kingdom power and authority that is given to them."

- Dallas Willard