Books @ Leadership Network

New Forms of Church?

Several months ago I led a workshop at a national organic church conference. Most of the leaders had been, or were committed to house church forms. The increasing disinterest away from traditional or contemporary ways of church has given thousands of US leaders enough curiosity to look for alternative ways to worship, do church, and engage the world. As Missio has been focusing on incarnational ways of church, we’ve seen an increasing number of people ask us, “what do you think about this trend toward house church or simple church?”

To be honest, we’ve reserved the right to make any judgments at this point. We hold our tongue for several reasons. One, if there’s ever a time to experiment, deconstruct, and reconstruct, it’s NOW! When you know your cruise liner is taking on water, it doesn’t make much sense to judge those who are strapping on their life preservers and hopping in the little dinghy’s! To those who blindly disregard this new direction, we would ask, “on what grounds does the attractional church have to judge any other form of church at this point in our history?” When we’re losing approximately 2% of our present churched population every year, and we’re not reclaiming much new conversion growth, I believe the responsibility to prove or defend certain methods of ministry fall not on the experimenters or research and developers, but on the present forms to prove “why they should get to keep doing the same thing, if it’s not working.”

Yet, to those who blindly accept new forms as the next great thing…BEWARE. It’s not as easy or “simple” as they say, and it is causing as much tension in the lives of these leaders as we see in the lives of existing church pastors.

I chose to entitle our session, “Incarnational Community…what if it works?” I did so because of the over-optimistic stance many young and old leaders take when the shove off from the dock to sail these new “simple” seas.

To begin the session, I asked, “why did you come to this session?” There were a few moments of silence, and then one young man, said, “I left a normal church a few years ago because I just couldn’t take it anymore, but after three years of house church, it just doesn’t seem much better.” Once he chimed in, others shared the same pain.

Over the last five years, we’ve heard this same tension over and over. From house church, to simple church, to mega-church.

There are a lot of issues all webbed together that are causing this global tension, but let me highlight two important observations were making.

First, IT AIN’T ABOUT WHAT FORM OF CHURCH YOU DO! To try to reproduce mega-churches is as dumb a notion as trying to reproduce house churches. Why? Because people outside of our churchdom aren’t looking a for ANY type of church. The systemic issue of why something works or not (working = people coming to faith and re-orienting their lives around the mission of god) is about how God’s people embed themselves into the muck of the world to influence hearts towards God’s alternative kingdom. That’s it! House church people can be as exclusive and non-missional and non-incarnational as any other form of church.  Add to that the painful fact that many of these leaders have now given up their salary and now have to work 50 hours a week at Home Depot and then try to be incarnational. It’s just not that simple.

Secondly, “It” working has almost nothing to do with gathering people together in corporate times together.

It was interesting that even in this organic church conference, they invited a worship team to lead the 250 people in corporate worship. Yep, the reality is that believers love to worship and be together as long as they’re committed to a cause together. Some said, “It seems to go against the values of house church people to have corporate worship.” But why? Does having a gathering of Christians relegate those people to living non-missionally? Sure, it can, if it’s communicated that it’s the main thing. But what if corporate gatherings aren’t the main thing? What if corporate gatherings are so people can gather? That doesn’t seem so bad does it? We don’t think so.

Again, it’s not about how you gather or when you gather, or what you do when you gather. It’s about who’s in the room when you gather and how they found their way to the gathering. Believe me, if they find you through a website, door-hanger or because you offer free donuts, then you’re probably missing it. But if they have stumbled and bumbled their way in through the long term relational networks of community and benevolent action they experience through your people on their street, then it will not only be okay to gather them, but beneficial to the entire mission.

I pray that house church takes off as a legitimate form of mission, and I hope the leaders of these movements allow for as much flexibility and creativity as they deserve.  But I also hope they don’t fixate on the form of gathering at the expense of mission.   I hope mega-churches can find ways to be more incarnational. I hope millions will gather someday on Sundays, Monday, and whatever days make sense to them. But I pray that we as leaders finally realize that church working has nothing to do with “church” but how the people of God live an alternative story on main street usa.

Hugh Halter

Will Mancini's Just Released CHURCH UNIQUE

It's rare to visit a church, read its mission statement and then conclude, "What a great match!" For that to happen, the church's vision must be clear, appealing, and most important, truly reflective of the unique culture demonstrated by the church.

Back in 1992, when churches were just beginning to think about vision statements, George Barna wrote a highly popular book called Power of Vision. In it he defined vision as "a clear mental image of a preferable future imparted by God."

I predict Will Mancini's Church Unique (2008, 271 pages) will succeed Barna's classic as the go-to book for church leadership discussions because it does even more than help you articulate a vision for your church. It goes further. It helps you "cast vision, capture culture, and create movement," as the subtitle forecasts. The book affirms that your church is "stunningly unique," and then helps you turn your church's one-of-a-kind potential into a model of ministry that leads to a redemptive movement. It understands that each church models a culture reflective of its particular values, thoughts, attitudes and actions. Using numerous specific-church examples, it walks you through the process of vision focus and alignment within the context of your church's unique culture.

Mancini, a former pastor and now church consultant, also explores pitfalls that often trap churches, such as adopting the latest conference technique or following a Band-aid approach to addressing deep-set issues.

CHURCH UNIQUE will benefit any type of church leader, whether megachurch or church plant, mainline or non-denominational.

The book is release #25 in Leadership Network's series with Jossey-Bass. It references in several places another excellent Leadership Network book -- Culture Shift by Robert Lewis and Wayne Cordeiro with Warren Bird (Jossey-Bass, 2005).

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Warren Bird, Ph.D., is Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 19 books on various aspects of church health and innovation.

Lencioni and Leadership

I recently had the honor of spending a couple of days under the instruction of Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and other leadership fables.  I love his writing style and in person, he is even more engaging and powerful.  One of Patrick's strengths is his gift of distilling big ideas into simple, sticky concepts that can drive to increased results, and in kingdom terms - impact. 

The training session was launched with the following statement:

There are two requirements for success - being smart and being healthy.  He said, and I agree, that the smart part is the easier side of leading for success.  Strategy, marketing, finance and technology are tangible and in your face enough that in a sense you are forced to engage for success. 

The more difficult part of the equation is to lead for health.  Organization health requires minimizing  polices and confusion and maximizing morale and productivity.

The team at Leadership Network is very virtual which makes the health thing even more challenging; we have team members from coast to coast and even a Canadian, hey!  Though not perfect by any stretch of the imagination we are beginning  to use a couple of tools that we believe are minimizing and maximizing and developing greater health as a result.   They include a weekly team webinar and individual team member work plans.   The team webinar is a quick 30 minute check in that includes some fun, some announcements and some celebrations from the previous week's work.  Some weeks we also drill down on a particular issue related to our work that needs team input.  We use GoToWebinar technology - not perfect works and is cheap.  The work plans are simple 6 month rolling documents that capture the objectives and major tasks of each member of our team.

What are you using with your team to ensure health?

Greg Ligon
Vice President and Publisher
Leadership Network
greg.ligon@leadnet.org

Revisiting a Great Book

Creative Ministry by Henri Nouwen

You know a book is good when you read it at least a couple of times, and that seems to be the case for most of Henri Nouwen's books.  Nouwen had the unique gift of saying very powerful things in a very short amount of book space.  And this book is no different.  This is a book that I have read a couple of times and each time I read it I learn new things from him.  Nouwen's main concern of the book is "the relationship between professionalism and spirituality in the ministry."  With this concern in mind, he focuses on five key areas:

1. Beyond The Transference Of Knowledge: Teaching
2. Beyond The Retelling Of The Story: Preaching
3. Beyond The Skillful Response: Individual Pastoral Care
4. Beyond The Manipulation Of Structures: Organizing
5. Beyond The Protective Ritual: Celebrating

Even though this book was written in 1971 it is as timeless as ever, and Nouwen appears more and more to come across as a prophetic voice in these important times.  Nouwen critiques his own book near the end, obviously stating that these five areas are not the only ones that are important to ministry, but I think they cover a pretty expansive spectrum of the life of ministry.  I especially found helpful the chapters on preaching and organizing.

I recommend that every preacher read the chapter on preaching, and I guarantee that you will walk away, or should walk away with some conviction in this area of ministry.  This specific quote really stuck with me:

Perhaps the greatest temptation of the preacher is to think that only he has a theology and to believe that the best thing to do is to convert all those who listen to his way of thinking.  In this way, however, he has failed to realize that in a very real sense he has not loved his neighbor as himself, since he has not taken their views and experiences just as seriously as his own.  When this is true, in fact, many of those who listen to his viewpoint will become indifferent or irritated without exactly knowing why.  And the preacher who spends a great deal of time studying books and preparing his sermons will himself become more and more disillusioned as he starts feeling that nobody wants to listen to the Word of God.  All the while, however, he has forgotten that God's Word does not have to be exactly the same as his own.  When the preacher addresses himself to non-existent feelings and is anxiously preoccupied with his own theology, he tends to increase instead of decrease the already existing resistance against the message (pp. 33).

boring title. great insider info.

Tony Jones' got a new book coming out this month titled "The New Christians: Dispatches From the Emergent Frontier". This subtitle is a lot more interesting, but when I had only read the main title, "The New Christians", I thought that was just so generic and disinterested.

But when I came across this blog series, The History of Emergent by Jason Mitchell [disclosure: a former staff @ Leadership Network; via faithmaps knightopia], I had to add the book on my wish list. Here's what Jason'd blogged:

• Part 1 - brush with glory
• Part 2 - postmodern transition
• Part 3 - Leadership Network's bit part & Driscoll too
• Part 4 - a naked conversation
• Part 5 - Tony & Doug meets John Piper
• Part 6 - Danielle pastors Journey
• Part 7 - why Brad Cecil is genius
• Part 8 – The end of Certainty
• Part 9 – Killing Dualism

This blog entry is not a book review, I've not read it, and didn't get a preview copy either. But here's what I've found out about this intriguing book, as it "pulls the curtain back" to give the readers at an insider look at how this whole "emergent church" conversation started and developed over the past 5 years or so.

Fascinating! Chapter 1 is available as a free download. Plus, read these published reviews of the book and blog reviews of "The New Christians" aka TNC. That should sate your curiosity.

Would you believe this history book has someone inviting people for a book study as well as a deconstructing TNC book blog?

--- DJ Chuang, Leadership Community Director @ Leadership Network

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Many people have read and been inspired by Good to Great, a fantastic book which presents principles which can help an organization move from mediocre to successful. Another remarkable book by Jim Collins which is too often overlooked is Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (click here for a free book summary).

A visionary company stands the test of time and endures the hardships and leadership transitions which often derail other companies. By comparing visionary companies with good companies in the same industry (American Express and Wells Fargo, Ford and GM, Walt Disney and Columbia, etc.), Collins and Jerry Porras discovered how to create a visionary company. Here are some of the principles:

1. Clock Building, Not Time Telling - more concerned with long-term health and effectiveness rather than just a short-term payoff

2. Genius of the AND (No “Tyranny of the OR”) - “the ability to embrace both extremes of a number of dimensions at the same time” such as pursuing profit AND purpose, conservative at the core AND willing to risk, Big Hairy Audacious Goals and incremental progress

3. Core Ideology - “Core values are the organization’s essential and enduring tenets, not to be compromised for financial gain or short-term expediency.” Profitability is seen as necessary for survival but not the goal or purpose of visionary companies.

4.  **Preserve the Core/Stimulate Progress - the essence of a visionary company
“If an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except its basic beliefs.” Thomas J. Watson

Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs), trying a lot of stuff and keeping what works, plus a mindset that “good enough never is” all stimulate progress.

“Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt, 1899.

Cult-like cultures and home-grown management preserve the core.

5. Alignment may be the most important principle in the entire book. Alignment means “all the elements of a company work together in concert within the context of the company’s core ideology and the type of progress it aims to achieve.”

As we say alot at Mosaic - it is just as important who and what we say “no” to as who and what we say “yes” to.

Eric Bryant

The Church in the Workplace

By Peter Wagner

I quit reading Wagner several years ago when he went off on what I felt were ‘spooky’ tangents.  So when a friend of mine suggested that I read his new book, The Church in the Workplace, I was reluctant to pick up the book.  But for some reason I did. Now my recommendation is for you to read this book. I gave it five stars which is my highest rating. It is a fascinating look into the difference between the rules of ministry in the church and the workplace.

Why should you read this book

• It will help you better understand the workaday world of the business people in your church.
• It will show you how to minister effectively to business people.
• It will open your eyes to the growing world of what Wagner calls the  extended church.
• It will show you how to minister so you will have more business people in your church.
• It will show you how to allow high power business people to be a vital part of your congregation even though they seldom show up at worship.
• It will greatly expand your understanding of the scope of  ministry.

Jesus for President

I'm working my way through Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw's Jesus for President right now.  It's especially interesting in light of the presidential campaigns right now.

The book is a phenomenal read.  Not quite as random as Irresistible Revolution, but just as powerful. 

Jesus for President is a project in renewing the imagination of the church in the United States and those who would seek to know Jesus.  I love quotes like this:

A great paradox and humor of God's audacious power:  a stuttering prophet will be the voice of God, a barren old lady will become the mother of a nation, a shepherd boy will become their king, and a homeless baby will lead them home. 

The book walks through the narrative of the Scriptures with a political, grassroots lens from the margins.  It's such a contrast from how I was exposed to the biblical text early in my Christian journey.  I'm encouraged on every page and feel honored that I've inherited such a wonderful Story as I read it.

The biggest thing with the book for most will probably be the packaging.  Each page is uniquely designed and arranged.  It definitely appeals to the senses.  My only problem is I love writing and underlining throughout all the books I read, and this one is just too beautiful to mark up.

Lon Wong, http://solarcrash.com

A book sampler

I have been reluctant to fulfill my promise to post on this blog because, frankly, I am not as sharp as the others who post here. They tend to read deep books and actually understand what they mean while I tend to read simple books and struggle with the big words. Normally I read what I'm in the mood for or what happens to be on the nightstand by my side of the bed. (One night it was my wife's copy of O, The Oprah Magazine. That's where I draw the line.) Having made that disclaimer here is what is currently on my nightstand:

The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard
I realize that I am the last pastor on earth to read this book, but I have been concerned that it might contain too many big words. (See disclaimer above) Actually it is very readable. Willard's take on the Sermon on the Mount is one of the most life changing, down-to-earth applications I have read. He gives the best definition of prayer I have come across:

"I believe the most adequate description of prayer is simply, 'Talking to God about what we are doing together'...Prayer is a matter of explicitly sharing with God my concerns about what he too is concerned about in my life."

While I realize that 98.4% of the people who read this blog have probably memorized all of Willard's work, if you are a laggard like me you need to get busy. Be prepared, however, it will take awhile to get through. I have been working on it since January. You can only read a page or two without stopping and reflecting on God is saying to you through the book.

When Answers Aren't Enough by Matt Rogers
Rogers is the co-pastor of a church on the campus of Virginia Tech and the murders there last year set the backdrop for this poignant book. When Rogers found himself asking, "Where is God in all of this?" he went on a quest to find out what others had experience God as good in the midst of tragedy. He knew the pat answers that all pastors have been trained to give, but what do you do when answers just don't work anymore. This book is not only a reflection on what Rogers found, it will be a good resource for people in our lives who encounter unexplainable tragedy.

Bringing Down the House: The Inside Stories of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich
(Caution: This is NOT a Christian book. At all. By any means. It is also the basis of the soon to be released movie 21)

Mezrich tells the story of a group of brilliant students from M.I.T. who figured out a system to beat the game of blackjack and to win millions of dollars from Las Vegas casinos. More interesting than the actual story is the greed at the heart of the scheme and the effect on the players. A Vegas insider gives the best description of the power of greed, "We are all the same. You are here to take our money and we are here to take yours." Through the book you watch as the greed slowly eats away the souls of the students. While it is not the intention of the author, Breaking Down the House is a great morality tale on the destruction of the lust for more. More money, more pleasure, more of whatever becomes the center of my life.

by Geoff Surratt

If You Believe People Need Jesus…This Book is for You

The book is called, Choosing Your Faith in a World of Spiritual Options.  Mark Mittelberg (author of Becoming a Contagious Church and co-author of Becoming a Contagious Christian) has done a masterful job of writing a book that will help people move forward on a journey through the vast array of spiritual options presented in our pluralistic world. 

I know a book is practical and helpful when I find myself identifying specific people (and groups of people) I would love to have read it.  This happened on three levels as I read, Choosing Your Faith. First, I began thinking of friends and family members who are spiritual seekers or intellectual agnostics who would be greatly helped by this book.  Then, as I read on, I thought of some new believers that could be fortified and encouraged by the content of Choosing Your Faith.  Finally, as I was wrapping up the book, it struck me that I gained a great deal from the content and vision of the book, and I have been a follower of Jesus for about three decades!  I will also recommend it to pastors, Christian leaders, and mature believers. 

What Mark does so well is that he covers valuable information with a refreshing balance of engaging life-narrative and solid intellectual data.  Mark explains the meaning and impact of Logical Positivism, quotes broadly from respected atheists, summarizes classical philosophical arguments for God, and maintains intellectual integrity through the whole book.  At the same time, he weaves in stories of mountain biking, a life-threatening  journey of teenagers camping in the badlands of North Dakota, he quotes from recognizable rock songs, and communicates as a friend really wanting people to find their way through the labyrinth of spiritual options.

Mark adds a new and unique twist to help people choose their faith.  He presents six paths or ways people tend to choose faith:

·        Pragmatism and Relativism

·        Tradition and Truth

·        Authority and Reality

·        Intuition and Knowledge

·        Mystical

·        Logic, Evidence and Science

After walking through each of these he gives twenty different arrows that point to the integrity of embracing faith, and the Christian faith specifically.  He builds a cumulative case that spans topics such as intelligent design, the trustworthy nature of the Bible as a historical book, the evidence of archeology, fulfillment of biblical prophecy, the resurrection of Jesus, the lives and deaths of Jesus’ followers, and much more.  Each of these twenty arrows that point to the Christian faith could be a book in and of itself.  But, Mark gives brief but compelling summaries that carry the reader along (then he gives resources for those who want to dig deeper into these topics).  Finally, Mark focuses on a dozen barriers to belief and and helps the reader identify ways to get over or around these.  Again, the sections are brief, readable, and get to the heart of the matter.

Near the end of the book Mark presents the Gospel and offers a chance for people to respond in light of the evidence.  I believe this book will be a powerful tool to help spiritual seekers and strengthen believers for years to come.  I am confident there will be many people who will read this book and end up choosing to follow Jesus for this life and eternity.