1. Leadership Network released the article Taking Your Church Missional: What does it cost the leader? by Lois Swagerty, heavily drawing from Reggie McNeal’s missional writings. The article name direct-links to the .pdf of the article.

2. Ed Stetzer posted a video of his teaching on Missional Small Communities from the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma’s One Day initiative.

3. Wired Magazine published the infographic American Vice: Mapping the 7 Deadly Sins. Most interesting are the captions that describe how each sin was plotted. Via @bryannelson on twitter.

4. Although I’m usually not one for theological debate, John Piper posted some interesting (I am being generous here) comments on the tornado that struck Minneapolis during the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s national convention.  Worth reading if only to follow up with Greg Boyd’s response. Via @jgulden on twitter.

5. I’ve been enjoying Kary Oberbrunner’s posts at Recovering Pharisee about The 10 most common misconceptions about women which leads to sloppy theology, based on one of his recent sermons.

So, what else happened this week that I missed? Leave a comment and share your own link.

One of the major themes I see discussed in the pursuit of a missional mindset is the gap between clergy, those who have been recognized as the spiritual authority and tend to “do God’s work,” and the laity, everyone else. Our institution of church, built over centuries, is one where most Christ-followers  aren’t fully living out what they can do for the Kingdom. Here are three ways that I see our current methods widening that gap.

1. Overemphasis on religious education

Now, don’t get me wrong, although I feel there are some aspects worth examining in Christian College/Seminary education, I am very glad it exists and very glad it was part of my own life. Nonetheless, in the non-denominational church I’ve noticed that we have traditionally “sold” Bible College to our young people as the ultimate step of faith and path to vocational ministry. The result is a two-class system in local church leadership, those that have the “official” training and those who do not. This flies in the face of the kind of ecclesiology Alan Hirsch describes when talking about missional DNA, where every Christ-follower has in the Holy Spirit the basic elements to bring the gospel the his or her community.*

My question is this: if this higher education is so important, why do we make it so hard to attain? Most Christ-Followers don’t have the time or resources ($200+ per class, just to audit) to get that kind of education.  The path of high school»bible college»vocational ministry may have made sense in the 20th century middle class church, but what about other contexts?

The good news is that some schools are starting to release their teaching for free. While we are far from an open-source methodology when it comes to Biblical instruction, here are some links to the kind of resources that could lead us in that direction (iTunes audio links):

John Weatherly’s Intro to the Gospels course from Cincinnati Christian University (the same one I took, I highly recommend it)

John Goldingay’s Biblical Hermeneutics course from Fuller Seminary

2. Ordination

The ordination of ministers is at best an impractical tradition that needs redefinition, at worst one that creates an institutionalized, limited transfer of spiritual authority. While some churches rightly view ordination as an endorsement of (and commitment of ongoing support for) a leader in their community, generally it is an inconsistent and unregulated process that just produces confusion. I’ve heard folks outside the vocational church world talk about ordination as if it is some sort of magical assessment by a council of wizards that bestows the power to “marry and bury”.    There are a lot of traditional (and some legal) aspects to ordination I don’t have the opportunity to address in this post– maybe in a future article I can dig deeper. For now, I just want to question the value of our current take on ordination if we truly believe that all of those who God saves are also those who God sends.

3. Celebritizing church leaders

It is no secret that a lot of folks give undue attention to the people who lead them… but the church on a whole tends to emphasize this. Pastors often illustrate their messages with stories where they are the hero, or they are the star of the latest funny church video, or they make sure only certain key people get to have an audience with them. As soon as we idolize ministers as extraordinary people, we cause ordinary people to doubt their ability to minister. Likewise, a church that is based on a singular personality is built on a shifting foundation. Many pastors truly are worthy of our utmost respect, but we can’t forget that Christ is the head of all.

* Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006), 77
Post thumbnail photo by Rep. Virginia Foxx on Flickr

Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with church planting, and as a young man too inexperienced to plant a church myself, worship became a way to stay involved in new church work.  I was able to be a part of the launch or early years of four different new church communities. ..  Each one grew by leaps and bounds and I got more and more satisfied with my involvement in the church bubble.

Wait… no, that last part isn’t right. The deeper I went into vocational ministry, in bigger and bigger organizations, the less satisfied I became. Passionate worship got traded for something insulated, something lesser– and I let it happen. Even when our gatherings became relevant (what I would describe as “accessible”), there was still something missing.  The churches I was a part of said things like, “we are going to do a few things well rather than a lot of things poorly”– but it seemed like all churches agreed that one thing, the weekly worship gathering, was their number one priority.  My problem was that the more I thought, prayed, and studied, the less I felt that these gatherings were what following Christ was all about… yet I was the one tasked with making those gatherings excellent!

I know many pastors are finding new meaning in the missional/incarnational church movement, and I am one of them. For now, I have distanced myself from the worship leading role with the exception of the occasional article here where I will explore how worship could develop in a missional community. Beyond that, my wife Patti and I are exploring what missional church planting would look like for us.  I want to invite our friends and family and anyone else finding themselves at a crossroads to come alongside us in this journey via Warm and Well Fed and whatever conversations it spurs.

Ten years later, God isn’t letting me lead worship anymore, at least in the form I have known for the last decade; in its place he has given me a mission and reminded me of what it means to be sent… an even better deal, I believe.

Part 1: A little something the missionaries figured out…

A note before I begin this entry: First, this series is an expansion of an article I originally posted on my original blog (WiredForWorship.com, a URL I no longer own) back in ’02. After reading through it again, I realized I still have a lot to say on the subject (and could say it better now than I did seven years ago).

Although the majority of my decade in “vocational” ministry has been creating worship experiences and working with artists, my training was in urban/international ministries (basically my college’s missions program). Although sometimes I wished I had a music degree on my wall, the filter of thinking “like a missionary” served me well in church planting… after all, whether in Northwest India or Northwest Indiana, aren’t we still contextualizing the Gospel, like the Apostle Paul, so more people can know their Creator?

As missionaries went out into the world from their native countries, they discovered something: many indigenous peoples speak at least two languages; one, a trade language used in the market and in dealing with foreign traders, and second, their heart language, the language spoke at home, an essential part of their culture. Although the trade language is typically the easiest to conquer, most missionaries find they can’t truly relate to people until they understand the depth and meanings of the heart language… thus the many linguists dedicating their lives to translating the Bible into a community’s mother tongue.

America, as a true “melting pot,” has a variety of literal heart languages to go along with our trade language of English. But what if we use trade language/heart language as a metaphor? It brings up some good questions: What is America’s trade language—what is common and easy? What is our heart language—what speaks to our core? And possibly the most important question—is the church speaking that language, or have we mistranslated? I’ll suggest some answers in the next few posts in this series… and I would love to hear your take on these questions, so feel free to leave a comment below!

Ok, so we’ve all experienced it… you’re in a worship experience, praying corporately. You open your eyes and… POOF! the worship band has suddenly appeared, ready again to lead us musically. I’d like to a look at the common modern worship tactic of the band entering (or leaving) the stage during prayer. Now, your own church may or may not employ this technique, but I know mine have… often under my own leadership.

And why not? When the band uses a prayer for stage entrances and exits, it helps our service flow, and removes awkward pauses that could take our worshipers out of the moment. That said, we have to think about how we design our experiences from the perspective of what it communicates to the Church body– and I think “worship team teleportation” might communicate some things we don’t want. Here are two important questions we need to ask:

1. What does it communicate about prayer?

We teach our communities, and rightly so, that prayer is important, a time of focus… so meditative, in fact, we’ve created a worship culture where the expectation is to keep our eyes shut and bow our heads. I’ve heard friends describe it as looking like a room of extraordinarily depressed people. But I digress. The question is (particularly concerning the preChristian who worships with us), what they will think when they open their eyes and realize that the band who is about to (or just has) led them in worship has decided not to participate/pray in the expected way, but instead to set up instruments, reposition mics, etc.?

Another real danger is that prayer simply becomes a chance to transition between one part of service to another, which again, communicates something about the sanctity of prayer we might not like.

We also make assumptions when we enter or exit the stage during a prayer… that people won’t hear the footfalls, the bump of a guitar strap against the strings, the rustling of chord charts. If they do (or simply have their eyes open), then we have distracted them from their conversation with God and the reason we’ve snuck on/off of stage is defeated.

2. What does it communicate about creativity?

And here is, I believe, the reason we really transition this way: it is easy. Now we, as worship leaders, teachers, musicians, etc., can find ways to modulate between songs in vastly different keys, make the offering introduction tie in thematically to the message, and partner melody and truth to bring Christ-followers along in their relationship with God. So why can’t we find a way to enter the stage without stepping on the prayer time?

Perhaps it is as simple as the pastor giving a set cue for the band to come out and set up, or even just saying “I’d like to invite the worship team to back out as they pray with us.” Maybe he or she could invite the band back onstage after the prayer but before a reading of scripture in response to the message. If yours is a community that values video and media, elements like these can create a time of transition while still providing meaning. There are solutions out there that retain service flow but don’t communicate the wrong thing about prayer or our own creativity. Maybe “the show” will be lesser, but the worship will be greater for it.

So, am I nitpicking? Am I right on? Have you found particularly good ways to transition the band to and from the platform? If so, let me know with a comment below. Now, I’ve got to get up and walk away from the keyboard. Could you close your eyes?…