I’ve been reading Mark Batterson’s blog for awhile now (I’ve linked to several of his posts in the past), and following his progress as he was writing and preparing In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. Mark is the lead pastor at National Community Church in DC, which meets for worship in movie theaters around the DC area.

I was already planning on buying a copy, but he mentioned several weeks ago that his publisher, Multinomah, would be giving some copies away at Catalyst. I managed to score a free copy early the first day of Catalyst.

The title of the book, and much of the contents, are centered around a relatively obscure character in the Bible. While not quite as obscure as Jabez, Benaiah doesn’t get much “screen time” in the Bible. But the mentions he does get are pretty impressive:

There was also Benaiah son of Jehoiada, a valiant warrior from Kabzeel. He did many heroic deeds, which included killing two of Moab’s mightiest warriors. Another time he chased a lion down into a pit. Then, despite the snow and slippery ground, he caught the lion and killed it. Another time, armed only with a club, he killed a great Egyptian warrior who was armed with a spear. Benaiah wrenched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with it. (2 Samuel 23:20-21)

Benaiah was eventually in charge of David’s bodyguards, then a commander in the army, then eventually the command in chief of the army of Israel. But his success began when he chased a lion into a pit.

Mark argues that we miss too many of God’s opportunities for us, according to what we focus on:

I think the church has fixated on sins of commission for far too long. We have long list of don’ts. Think of it as holiness by subtraction. We think holiness is the byproduct of subtracting something from our lives that shouldn’t be there. And holiness certainly involves subtraction. But I think God is more concerned about sins of omission – those things we could have and should have done. It’s holiness by multiplication. Goodness is not the absence of badness. You can do nothing wrong and still do nothing right. Those who simply run away from sin are half-Christians. Our calling is much higher than simply running away from what’s wrong. We’re called to chase lions.

What I love about this book is that it captures what I’ve loved about Mark’s blog so well. It’s full of challenges to the church at large to think very differently.

There are basically two approaches to life: playing to win and playing not to lose. Can you guess which camp lion chasers fall into? Too many of us are tentatively playing the game of life as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. We need to take our cues from the early believers who competed for the Kingdom.

“From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.”

There is nothing remotely passive about following Christ. Some of us approach our relationship with Christ like we’re called to play a “prevent defense” when we ought to be in a “two-minute offense.” Some of us act like faithfulness is making no turnovers when faithfulness is scoring touchdowns. Faithfulness has nothing to do with maintaining the status quo or holding the fort. It has everything to do with competing for the Kingdom and storming the gates of Hell…

Jesus commissioned the church in Matthew 16:18: “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it.”

Gates are defenseive devices. Storming those gates requires offensive measures. Think of the church as a battering ram.

This book is a great challenge to move forward, and pursue the opportunities that God places before us.

There’s a good article at worshipleader.com by Robb Redman, that is a review of and response to George Barna’s Revolution. The article is called Revolution or Renewal? and it brings up some good points about the book.

“Revolution” means a clean break with the past and the introduction of something completely new… Historically, Christians have been more comfortable with renewal and revival to describe “radical and pervasive change,” rather than revolution, because they point to the providential hand of God, rather than impersonal forces of history. Those of us who have been around long enough know that the Church in every generation has its “Revolutionaries” who are disillusioned with the local church and yearn for something more… [It's] not a revolution, but a rhythm of renewal and revival in response to the movement of the Holy Spirit among and within ordinary communities of faith.

So what happens to “revolutionaries” who separate from local churches to pursue ministry? They end up starting new ministries. In a sense, Redman is right, that this isn’t about revolution as much as it is renewal. But I think it’s a game of semantics, and I don’t think that Barna would disagree with the heart of what Redman is saying.

I’ve had a pretty long pause on my review of George Barna’s book, Revolution. See The Revolution Begins and Values of the Revolution for my thoughts about the first four chapters.

In the fifth chapter, Barna takes a look at the transitions that are leading the revolution. These transitions reflect massive changes in our culture.

The Changing of the Guard: In our society, power is shifting from the baby boomers (those born before the mid-60′s) to the busters (’65 through ’83) and the mosaics (’84 through 2002). The new generations are “altering the ways in which people relate to each other, the types of outcomes deemed desirable, the procedures used to achieve meaningful results, the values and beliefs that underlie critical decisions, and the role of technology in our lives.”

The Rise of a New View of Life: Like it or not, postmodernism is changing everything. “The threat to the Church lies in the fact that surprisingly few Americans are sufficiently reflective about the implications of this shift to critically assess its pros and cons.”

Dismissing the Irrelevant: “Excellence is less meaningful to [the post-Boomer generation] because it sometimes reflects the slickness of exploitation and manipulation… they [also] have little patience for anything based on tradition, customs, ease, or social acceptability.”

The Impact of Technology: Pretty self-explanatory, but should not go without saying: new technology opens new possibilities for churches.

Genuine Relationships: Personal authenticity. “In ministry and other areas, we will emphasize personal stories and experience instead of principles and commands.”

Participation in Reality: “People expect to be active and creative participants in developing the reality of their experience. Fewer and fewer people are willing to sit back and endure what the world throws at them; rather, they are seeking the means to exert greater control over their lives.”

Finding True Meaning: Struggling to discover meaning is nothing new, but Barna notes that “society’s complexity and fragmentation have only served to heighten the struggle to make sense of our place in the world. One of the most startling signs of growth, though, is Americans’ accelerated openness to understanding themselves through two components that have been largely ignored for many decades: sacrifice and surrender.”

Barna then analyzes how these trends will affect what elements of society will have influence on spiritual growth. Currently, about 70% of the country express and experience their faith primarily through the local church. About 5% through some type of alternative faith-based community (such as a house church), another 5% primarily through family, and another 20% through the general media, arts, or culture.

Barna predicts, based on his research, that these numbers will look vastly different in 20 years: the local church will be at about 30-35%. Alternative communities will be at about 30-35%. Family will be about the same at 5%, and media, arts, and culture will grow to about 30-35%.

In other words, Barna is seeing the decline of the influence of the local church.

We have to ask the question: what is it about alternative faith-based communities that will draw so many believers out of local church organizations? The answers to this question are at the heart of what Barna calls the Revolution, and the answers lie in the previous chapters I’ve already covered. But keep in mind this quote from chapter 2:

[Revolutionaries] are seeking a faith experience that is more robust and awe inspiring, a spiritual journey that prioritizes transformation at every turn, something worthy of the Creator whom their faith reflects. They are seeking the spark provided by a commitment to a true revolution in thinking, behavior, and experience, where settling for what is merely good and above average is defeat.

The third book I’m reviewing is Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings for New Generations, by Dan Kimball. This book is a sequel of sorts to the previous book I reviewed, Kimball’s Emerging Church. As I mentioned in that review, his previous book wasn’t “too heavy on practicality.”

This second book, while not recommending any specific approach, is much more practical. The first half of Emerging Worship is about laying the foundation — asking why changes are necessary, and thinking through critical issues before making any changes. To me, this is where the best stuff in the book is. The second half of the book takes a look at several churches (including two groups of house churches) that have implemented “alternative” worship gatherings.

Kimball lays out a very convincing narrative in the introduction:

I’ve had numerous conversations with younger people who told me they left their church to be a disciple of Jesus in a way that makes sense to them. They aren’t abandoning their faith. Many choose to form small faith communities and meet in homes among friends. They are waiting for the larger, more organized church to change. This is no cop-out, either.

Virutally every young adult I have talked to sincerely tried to change their church and brought suggestions to the church leadership before leaving their church. Most volunteered to start something new. But the suggestions fell on deaf ears with a predetermined view of what emerging generations should be like in relation to “church.”

The closed minds in their church leadership eventually made them choose to leave.

The story told in this narrative is something I’m seeing more and more in my peers. Some have turned to house churches, but I do believe that long-term, the house church trend will grow into something larger and more organized. Why can’t existing organized churches start doing something now? Do we have to start from scratch? This is a question I’m struggling with right now.

Church leadership must recognize that there are distinct types of people that we are hoping to connect with. Kimball describes them in this way:

Pre-Christian: Someone who was raised with a basic understanding of “God” and a Judeo-Christian worldview. They may have had some church experience growing up that was primarily boring or dead ritual. So when a church provides a contemporary and relevant church worship service, they return to the church and trust Jesus Christ (or recommit to him). Most megachurches and growing churches today are reaching this group of people.

Post-Christian: Someone who was born and raised outside of any church influence and is now heavily influenced by our pluralistic culture and values. Generally few of their values, morals, or convictions are based on a Judeo-Christian worldview. “Church” either means nothing to them or they dislike it. Spirituality is subjective and individualistic, often an eclectic potporrui of the world’s religious beliefs. They usually oppose the idea of joining any organized established religion. They often have strong anti-evangelical sentiments and a lot of stereotypes against Christians in general. Yet they are usually very spiritually-minded people.

Disillusioned Christian: Someone who grew up in a modern evangelical church, who left the church dissatisfied with the current way most churches function (with their emphasis on the big weekend worship service being the “church”). A rising percentage of younger people are not drawn to the megachuch philosophy or to the church structures and values that they grew up in (even in smaller churches). They desire to experience a different kind of church and different kind of Christianity than they grew up with.

I agree with Dan’s analysis that most churches are reaching “pre-christians”. In terminology consistent with the modern/post-modern discussion, these would be the people who would be classified as “modern.” I also think that we will encounter more and more people who would be classified as “post-christian”, or “post-modern.”

But I am more and more convinced that the next generation of church leaders are primarily in the “disillusioned” category. They are not disillusioned with Christianity — they are disillusioned with traditional church methodology. They do not believe that all it takes is a good kids’ program to grow the church. They do not even believe that “growing the church” is a priority. They see that what we are lacking is growing disciples of Christ. We are lacking the growth of community among believers.

If any specific church does not attract a new generation of leaders, within the next generation that church will die.

We tend to ask the wrong questions when analyzing our worship services and programs. We tend to ask about how well an event was attended. Whether the transitions were smooth. Whether people sang loudly and clapped. Whether people responded to the sermon. Kimball explains that in the emerging church, we need to ask the following questions:

1. Did we lift up the name of Jesus as the centerpiece of why we gathered?

2. Did we have a time in the Scriptures learning the story of God and man? Did we invite everyone to be part of his story today through kingdom living?

3. Did we pray together and have enough time to slow down and quiet our hearts to hear God’s voice and yield to his Spirit?

4. Did we experience the love, joy, and encouragement of being together as a church?

5. Did we take the Lord’s supper together as a church regularly?

6. Did we somehow remind everyone of the mission of the church and why we exist?

7. Did we enable people to individually contribute something as part of the body of Christ?

Overall, the highlights of what existing churches are doing was interesting. But the one scenario that I would be interested in wasn’t convered. In all of the existing churches that were highlighted, they added a new “alternative” gathering in addition to the one(s) they already had. I see two big problems with this:

1) Most small churches do not have the resources to start a new “alternative” gathering and keep the existing gatherings going, while doing both at high quality. Personally, I simply could not do both a morning “modern” gathering and an evening “emerging” gathering. If I was a paid worship pastor, it’d be doable. But as a volunteer worship leader, I’m simply not going to split my available time up that way. Small churches are working with a handful of leaders, and similarly need to focus their time and energy.

2) I feel that the changes that need to be made to connect with the post-modern culture need to be made to save the church from extinction. We’ve spent too long ignoring missions. Too long accepting passive participation as legitimate worship. Too long not challenging people into deeper intimacy with God. By starting an alternative worship gathering where you focus and what we’re supposed to focus on, and leaving the existing gatherings unaffected, you leave the people who wouldn’t attend an alternative gathering in relative mediocrity. Is this what the church is supposed to be about?

So in my particular situation — how do you transition an entire church into a completely different model of ministry? More importantly, can it be accomplished? Has anyone tried it and had any success?

I’m also a little confused by the degree to which the “alternative” worship gatherings that are described are full of what, to me, appear to be “trendy” elements. I agree with the theory behind “multisensory” worship. But a lot of the descriptions I read about it sound awfully trendy, and when talking about alternative worship gatherings, I think people are distracted by discussions of prayer tents, art stations, journal stations, etc., and end up missing some of the critical points.

To Dan Kimball’s credit, he ends the book with a chapter that questions whether we’re just going to create a new brand of consumer Christians, ones who are as devoted to “multisensory” worship as some people are dedicated to the popular hymns of the 1950′s. I know people are hungry for new things, and the multisensory stuff will feel fresh and engaging for a while. But we need to be focusing on who the church is, and what we do in a missional context, not the trendy things we incorporate into the gatherings.

I’ll end this post with a table from Kimball’s book, one that I think does a good job of talking about how we should view the church. But even as I review this now, I feel a sense that this isn’t just for reaching post-modern generations — it is for reaching all generations.

Last week I talked about Post-Modern Pilgrims by Leonard Sweet. This week I will continue the discussion, and talk about the next book I read: The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations by Dan Kimball.

While the two books both cover a discussion of the postmodern culture, they are quite different in how they approach it. As I mentioned last week, Sweet’s book was written early in the discussion of how postmodernism affects the church. As such, it’s written more to explain the feelings behind postmodernism, giving examples of how we can see postmodernism affecting culture, and it asks a lot of great questions about how the church needs to change its thinking.

Dan Kimball’s book, on the other hand, was written in 2003. While only separated by three years, Dan’s book is written more as a reflection of his and others’ experience with attempting to engage the postmodern mindset. But the book isn’t too heavy on practicality. He purposely stops short of making strong suggestions on how to conduct worship gatherings, because each group needs to determine their own specific direction.

The first half of the book is “deconstruction.” It explains postmodernism rather well — in fact, a lot of the summary I gave of postmodernism in my last post came out of this book, not Leonard Sweet’s book. But more than that, he analyzes problems the postmodern mindset has with the modern church. The second half of the book is “reconstruction,” trying to get a glimpse of what the emerging church will look like — where it is that we’re going.

Another term I feel that I need to discuss is this “emerging” thing. Like “postmodern,” a lot of people aren’t really comfortable with it, and I’m not sure I like the term, either. But it represents the transitional point at which we are at — we are not fully out of modernism, and we are not fully into whatever “postmodernism” represents. We’re somewhere between the two. Likewise, we don’t really know where the church will end up in all of this: it is all a work in progress.

So “emerging” refers to the idea that we don’t know exactly what the church will look like once it’s “emerged” into postmodernism. “Emerging” doesn’t specifically refer to any style of worship, in terms of music, or liturgy, or schedule. It refers primarily to changing our church culture to move away from the “seeker-sensitive” model of gatherings into a more “vintage” model of gatherings — one that represents our rich heritage, and incorporates deep spirituality and building strong community as focal points of our gatherings.

But as Kimball explains, “rethinking the emerging church involves rethinking almost everything we do. The worship service is but one part of it.”

“Postmodernity and the spiritual relativism it brings completely pulls the rug out from under most of our current, modern ministry strategy and methodology.” What does this mean? It means that we can take nothing for granted. (Sound familiar?) It means that we can’t assume any of the programs or approaches that we used to use will still work.

Most who read that sentence will know that I’m thinking about how that applies to things like how we schedule our gathering time, what styles we use, etc. But we also have to be willing to think about that in terms of the approach we’re used to taking. Do we need flashy high-production-value presentations in the postmodern culture? Kimball would say no. I’m starting to agree. They might not hurt so much, but they might not help so much, either. If we have it, no big deal, but in terms of what we pursue, it has to be something different entirely.

Our pursuit has to be discipleship — being an apprentice of Christ. Our pursuit has to be worship — being obedient and submissive to God. Our pursuit has to be community — serving each other in love.

For too long we’ve been heading down the road of the church being a vendor of religious goods and services. We must shift that mentality to that of the church being a group of people who are sent on a mission.

Kimball had the following table, about how the values of the church need to shift, that I think is important enough to include in its entirety.

Some of the shifting values in this table really resonated with me. I really connect with the shift from the “need to break the stereotype of what church is” to “need to break the stereotype of who Christians are.” To me that speaks volumes. It would also make a great slogan — not breaking the stereotype of church, but breaking the stereotype of Christians.

There were more tables in the book that were also excellent, but the following is a combination of what I think is the best parts of them. These were more values that we need to shift, but there were separate chapters (and tables) on preaching, evangelism, discipleship, and leadership. Below are some of the best elements from the chapters on evangelism and discipleship.

The irony is that the changes we need to make, as individuals and as churches, have little to do with being culturally relevant, and everything to do with reconnecting with our original mission and calling. For example, while postmodernism will demand that we shift evangelism away from an “event” to a process that occurs through relationship, the reality is that this is how it is supposed to be anyway. The very things we need to do to connect with postmodern culture are the same things that would have worked better in the modern culture. The postmodern culture will force the church to be the church. This, I think, is a good thing. But the question is how do we get there, and what will it look like?

We must begin by no longer measuring our success with the three B’s – buildings, budgets, and bodies. Kimball writes:

Success is more than having an alternative worship gathering that has become the hottest thing in town, attracting hundreds of younger people. The emerging church must redefine how we measure success: by the characteristics of a kingdom-minded disciple of Jesus produced by the Spirit, rather than by our methodologies, numbers, strategies, or the cool and innovative things we are doing.

It’s clear to me that if we hold onto our current programs for the sake of the programs, and we hinge our idea of success onto the success of the programs we’ve generated, we won’t get where we need to go. Instead, let’s make room for God to work. Let’s encourage each other on our journey as we seek God deeper. Let’s be the community we’re called to be, so that even outsiders will “bow down before God and worship him, declaring, ‘God is really among you.’”

Dan Kimball has a blog where he shares a lot of great stuff, if you’re interested in this stuff (you must be if you’ve read this far!) check it out at www.dankimball.com.

After revealing my thoughts over the past month, Pat brought a few books over for me to read. I’ve finished the first two, and it’s just swirling more stuff around in my head. Consider this a book report of sorts.

The first book I read was Post-Modern Pilgrims: First Century Passion for the 21st Century World by Leonard Sweet. This book was published in 2000, and as such was relatively early in the post-modern discussion.

OK, so now I’ve introduced a new term that some of you might not know — so here’s my summary of “Post-Modern.” In the 20th century, we looked at history and, for Western thought, saw three categories, each defined primarily by their worldview. Ancient history (up to around 500 A.D.) is characterized by the dawn of civilization, authority placed in kings, prophets, and oracles, and limited historical records. Medieval history (about 500 A.D. through about 1500 A.D.) is characterized by the authority being placed in the church, and the growth of the Judeo-Christian worldview, and the explosive growth of written manuscript. Modern history (about 1500 A.D. through the present) is characterized by the pursuit of and authority in knowledge and understanding (basically, the Enlightenment), and the explosive growth of the printing press.

For most of the 20th-centurty, it was taken for granted that we had “arrived.” The “modern” worldview was as far as we were going to get. The term itself sort of insinuates this. But as early as the 1940′s, and especially during the 1970′s, people started noticing a shift in culture. In was a shift to personal experience, suspicion of authority, and a willingness to accept conflicting ideas. In each case of the worldview changing significantly, it was aided by a significant technological change. In the 20th-century, with the explosive growth of radio, television, and especially the internet — a huge shift in communication by any standard of measurement — the change is happening much more rapidly.

We are moving into what is best called, at this time, “post-modernism.” I don’t know anyone who “likes” the term, but we’re kind of stuck with it for now. “Post-modernism” reflects an experience-based worldview. Spirituality is not real unless it is experienced. Large organizations are not to be trusted, as they have hidden agendas.

Most importantly, the post-modern mindset has a high distrust of Christians. They are mostly aware of Christians based on their experience of boring church experiences — perhaps good music or great preaching, but nothing really spiritual about it — or worse, through negative church experiences. The media, and perhaps rightly so, portrays Christians as hating gays, getting upset about the ten commandments, yelling at people walking into abortion clinics. We’re dogmatic, closed-minded, and unloving. They like Jesus, they just don’t like Christians. As Mahatma Ghandi said, “I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” This is how most of the post-modern world views the church.

What does this mean for the church? How are we going to survive?

Back to Leonard Sweet. In his book, he uses the word EPIC to convey the shifts we need to make.

First, we need to move from a rational approach to an experiential approach. In the shift to a post-modern world, we are seeing the growth of “experience” industry — tourism is perhaps the ultimate experience industry. Sweet says that “in postmodern culture, there is no interest in a “second-hand God, a God that someone else (church tradition, church professionals, church bureaucracies) defines for us. Each one of us is a Jacob become Israel: a wrestler with God. The encounter, the experience is the message.”

Descartes’ famous quote “I think, therefore I am” — what is considered by some to signal the start of the Enlightenment and the modern worldview — was simply the beginning. He was attempting to prove God exists by reason (and did a pretty good job, I might add). But the post-modern mindset doesn’t care. You can “prove” that God exists, but until they experience God, the post-modern mindset won’t believe it.

Second, we need to move from a representative approach to a participatory approach. This kind of flows with experiential, because you can only experience something when you really participate in it. But more directly, we no longer want guidance, we want choices. We no longer want to belong to an organization, we want to participate in a community.

This is why democracy will thrive in the post-modern world — we want to participate in government, not just be ruled by it. The same could be said for how the post-modern mindset approaches religion.

Third, we need to move from a word-based approach to an image-driven approach. In the modern world, the focus was on knowledge and understanding — so naturally our words (what we said) had to convince and explain.

Image-driven is partially literal — using images to convey meaning — but it also involves making use of metaphor, of story, to connect with the post-modern mindset. “One Coca-Cola executive is said to have declared that the company could survive the loss of all of its assets… providing it kept posession of the Coca-Cola logo… If… the greatest resources anyone can ‘own’ are images and stories, Christianity ought to be the biggest brand around.”

Finally, we need to move from an individual approach to a connected approach. This may seem at odds with the post-modern mindset — but in reality, the post-modern mindset is not that truth doesn’t exist, it’s just that it is difficult to find it. And we don’t trust organizations to tell us truth, but we will trust our friends, and form a community, to journey there together.

But we also want to be respected as individuals — so it’s not just about communal, it’s about individual-communal.

Overall, Sweet’s book asks a lot of questions, without providing the answers. This is important, because we still don’t know exactly where post-modernism will end up (which is also why we don’t have a better name for it yet). We also don’t know exactly where the church will end up, either. But the reality is, that for churches to thrive in a post-modern world, huge things need to change. But the biggest changes will need to be within us.

More on this in Part 2, where I will discuss the next book, and get a little more into how we need to change, both as individuals and as churches.