Opportunities

The Sunday before Thanksgiving feels like the beginning of a sprint to January.  It's a great time of year but there is so much ahead for us as a Church. As we look to this holiday season and the new year I see so many opportunities for our Church community.  We have a really inspiring Advent program that, among other things, is directed to assist our mission in Nigeria.  At Christmas we have programs to impact our own community here in Timonium.  In January we are launching something very different that I am very excited about (more on that later). These opportunities got me thinking about what we do with opportunities and why we often miss them.  

1. Laziness: This one is a huge enemy of the Church. Opportunities require action and work.  Some Church leaders get so wrapped up in the way things are they never even consider additional opportunities because doing so would require effort. I know so many Churches that are on autopilot, everybody from the Pastor to ushers could do what they do on Sundays blindfolded. 

2. Fear: God never gives us the complete picture. He never says, “Do this and this…and if you do then I will do this and then that and you will live happily ever after.”  (At least he never did that with anyone in the Scriptures, and he has sure never done it with me.)  He reveals himself one step at a time…and demands that we have the faith to follow him wherever he leads us. 

3. Doubt: All of us have had doubts that God could ever use us to do something great for his name, and when we think like that we're wrong.  Gideon wrestled with doubt until he realized that God didn’t see him as he was, God saw him as he created him to be.

4. Pride: There are some people that are so busy looking for the great and awesome opportunities that they miss the “little things” that God places in front of them every day. Perhaps to acknowledge them would be somehow demeaning because, after all, certain “little things” are beneath people who are pursuing a path of greatness, right? The only real problem with that is Jesus taught the path to greatness is service and humility. God won't even try to trust us with big things until we show gratitude and appreciation for the little things.

5. Unawareness: We lose sight of who he is.  We lose sight of what he can do. He healed the blind, parted the Red Sea, made the lame walk and brought the dead back to life.  We read those stories in the Scriptures but many times fail to understand…he's the same God. He has the same power, he is not limited.  He wants the Church to thrive more than we do. It’s not that he’s not wanting to do great things…but rather than he can’t find men and women who believe in him enough to attempt what he's leading them to do.

In the season ahead I am going to try and cultivate a lively awareness of his power over our projects, keep my pride in check through successes and apparent failures, work as hard as I can, hand over my fears to him and proceed with the sure knowledge that God is in charge and has great plans for his Church.

Questions for Church-world

Friday evening I was with a bunch of Pastors and other Church leaders.  Saturday I spent the morning at a Church conference, for Pastors and Parish staffs.  These recent back to back experiences got me thinking and reminded me of some things I struggle with when it comes to "Church-world" and "Church people." Here are some of my struggles...

Why are so many Church people so critical of other Churches, especially Churches that are successful AND doing things in ways they don't do things.  Why do they need to make fun of what they don't even understand? 

Why are so many Church people so self-congratulatory of themselves and their friends? Why is so much effort and expense expended in the effort to thank themselves for whatever it is they think they've accomplished and brag about what a big deal their contribution is. 

Why do so many Church people lie about their Churches and the success of their efforts and the real (not so good) state of affairs.

Why are so many Churches all about the people in the Church, and really about the insiders inside the Church?

Why do Church people and Church communities continually invest in broken systems that don't work? In the Catholic scene these would include Religious Education and Youth Ministry.  It doesn't matter that we have invested hugely in these systems without the promised or desired results. They do not produce disciples as they are currently operating in most places. Currently about 80% of Churched kids, kids who are in our religious education and youth ministry programs, walk away from Church when they graduate from high school...and sometimes long before. Yet, Churches just keep replicating the same programs year after year. If the system is broken, why not acknowledge it and stop saying its serving God?  It is not serving God, its actually dishonoring God.

Why do so many Churches invest so much energy and money on stuff that doesn't matter and ignore the things that have the greatest impact?  Lets face it, most Churches (yes, most churches) have bad music and all too many have irrelevant weekend messages. Those are the basics and they get them wrong or treat them as unimportant.  Why?  Don't know,  but I do know music and message take disciplined effort and it is much easier to run around and act busy doing lots of needlessly fussy, ultimately meaningless things, like worrying about made up rules and providing 24/7 care and comfort for the demanding few and running programs that don't work anymore (see #3).

Why do Church people have such animosity for people who aren't like them?  Sinners liked Jesus and he liked them, even though he was nothing "like" them. But in "Church world" why do we have to have such contempt for people who are not where we are theologically, dress differently than we do in Church, like different kinds of worship music, do Church differently than we do.  Our Host Ministers from time to time will get a visitor who says "Is this a Catholic Church?" But the contempt in their voice reveals they're not asking a question, they are delivering a judgment.  Why in Church world does different mean wrong, bad, evil.

Why do Pastors and Church leaders listen to people who tell them what they should be doing...but have never actually done it? Of course there are people who walk into Nativity every weekend and know what a Church should be and what I should be doing as a Pastor. 

But  they really don't know anything, they're giving voice to their opinions.  Why do Pastors and Church leaders listen to people who don't know what they're talking about?

I'm just asking.

More on Money

Most all of us want to be generous.  Even if you don't want it, you want to want it.  You want to be a generous person. That word, "generous" means to act with nobility.  We'd all like that, we'd all like to act with nobility.  And that's what God would like from us too.

But, we're born blind, naturally ignorant of other people's needs and selfish when it comes to our own.  If we want to become generous people, or more generous people, we have to practice generosity.  It takes work.  We have to be headed in the direction of generosity. We have to be walking that path. 

To be walking that path, I need a plan.

I need to plan my giving. Besides a budget or spending plan, I need a giving plan. If I fail to plan to give, I'm planning to fail to give. So I need a plan.

To be walking that path, I need to make my giving a priority.

That means I give away money before I spend it.  If I don't give first, I'll forget about it, or spend the money away and no longer enjoy the opportunity to give. Besides, generosity means giving from my substance, from my core, from my heart...not just from what's left over at the end of the month. To make giving a priority, it needs to rise to the top of the list of what to do with money.  The basic priorities are giving and then saving and then spending or living.

To be on that path, my plan has got to be a priority and my priority has got to be a percentage.  I need to be giving a percentage.

God doesn't care about the amount we give, the amount doesn't count.  He doesn't care about the amount, he cares about the percentage...because the percentage reveals my heart, and he cares about my heart. What percentage should I give?  The Bible says at least 10%.  And as hard as that is to hear, that is just the basic level of giving in the Bible. In picking a percentage, 10% is the goal. But, an even more important goal is to get started with some percentage, really any percentage.  To be a percentage giver.

To do what God tells me to do with money, I plan my giving, make it a priority and give a percentage.  Those three.  One other thing I need to to if I am doing all that...I need to think about progressive giving.  That means that every year, I evaluate what I have given and look for ways to give more, especially if I am not yet giving at 10%.

Generosity, especially in the area of our finances, doesn't come naturally to us.  We have to work at it.  The paradox of giving is that we always get what we give.  And when it comes to giving to God and what God cares about, we can't out-give God.

There is an unmistakable correlation in the Bible between the blessings God distributes and the obedience he is given. Over and over again he asks his servants for obedience in little things and then turns around and does great big things. Obedience is desired and required. Blessings happen on the other side of obedience. 

Obedience To What God Tells Us (about money)

We are into the second week of our annual Stewardship Series.  This message is so important in any Church setting, but especially in a Catholic setting.  In Catholic Churches the message of giving has been confused with fundraising for schools and capital projects, rendered less critical because Churches were staffed with free labor (and Catholics got used to free), and probably other reasons too. But the main reason its a problem for Catholics is that, as far as I can see, there has never been an obedience to what God tells us about money and giving.

As a result, Catholics usually rank at or near the bottom when it comes to giving patterns among religious groups.

For the past few years we have been trying to lay out a clear and consistent Biblical message about Stewardship and how it fits into the correct approach a Christ-follower has to their total financial picture. 

When it comes to the finances of this Church, I have a serious responsibility, and I need to take that responsibility seriously.  I am happy to say that our finances are in solid shape. We are doing well in view of what is going on around us and in a time when so many Churches are failing financially. We are not hosting a "money" series because we're planning to spring a "great gotcha" at the end and lay out all kinds of financial woes and troubles.  How counterproductive is it to preach about money and then admit that the management of the Church hasn't followed sound practices itself?  We will be ending this series with our annual Stewardship Sunday making our case and inviting support and stewardship in the coming year from our members, but not because we have financial problems.  We don't have financial problems, we have financial needs. And as a growing Church, we have growing financial needs.  If anyone is interest in learning about our finances, we have an annual business meeting on Stewardship Sunday run  by the members of our Financial Council. 

The past two years I haven't even attended myself, and neither does anyone else, beyond a handful of the curious and those actively involved in our finances.  I think that is a sign of Church health...we have a Church that is transparent about finances and a congregation that trusts Church leaders to take care of it.

And that trust is well placed: we have no debt, we have a modest cash reserve, we have a balanced budget and we are on budget for the current year.  All of this is no thanks to me: we have a financial team that includes staff, the Financial Council as well as our "Corporators" (Church of the Nativity is a corporation and two of our parishoners serve with me as officers of the corporation).  They look after everything and keep me updated on how they're doing.   

That said, we do have financial needs.  The most pressing one is staffing: for a Church our size we are dramatically understaffed. I would love to have a full time staff person for service and outreach, young adults, pastoral ministry and recovery ministry...and that would just be covering the basics.  We could also use more support staff (we do not even have a full time secretary, nor do I have an assistant at this point).  Besides staffing, we need to continue to work on staff salaries, to provide fair and living wages. We are critically short on space and we have a 40 year old church nave that is going to start needing some work at some point.  So we have our needs.

But the biggest need is to help more and more people understand what God is calling us to do with the money he had given us. And giving in our place of worship, as an act of worship has to be a priority. Obedience to what God tells us about money is key to financial health and financial blessing.

Desired and Required

There is an unmistakable correlation between the miracles God accomplished throughout the Bible and the unusual and sometimes seemingly unnecessary or even banal commands he gives to his servants.  Over and over he asked his servants for obedience in little things, as a prelude to some big thing he is going to do.

Obedience is desired and required. 

Miracles occur, when they occur,  on the other side of obedience. 

Abraham had to leave his familiar surrounds (little thing) to become father of a nation(big thing).  Moses had to stretch out his hands over the Red Sea (little thing) to save a nation (big thing).  Bartimaeus had to throw his cloak aside (little thing) in order to receive his sight (big thing).  Peter had to cast his net on the other side of the boat (little thing) to become the first leader of the whole Church.  

Sometimes little things look like big things, but they're not in light of the really big thing God wants to do: Noah had to build the Ark (looks like a big thing) to save his family and humanity from the flood (real big thing).  David had to go out and fight Goliath (looks like a big thing) to become the greatest king in the history of Israel (really big thing).  Paul had to stop persecuting Christians (looks like a big thing) in order to bring the Gospel to the gentiles (real big thing).

Either way, obedience is desired and required.  

Where is God calling you to obedience in some "little thing" or some "little thing that looks like a big thing?"  I was trying to think of that in the context of our Church and the planning we are currently involved in.  

I think that there are probably a lot of little things we hold on to because we like them, but God is calling us to bigger things. We had a successful high school program on Sunday nights for several years.  Just having a high school program kind of set us apart from many churches, much less a successful one.  And we got a lot of good publicity for that program. Why touch it, right?  This fall, Chris, our Student Director, moved the program to Thursday nights, because we believe it will work even better on that night. I will have to get back to you on how that works out...but could be a little thing for a bigger thing.

An example of a "little thing that looks like a big thing" would be our Advent Giving Program. In fairness, the Program was big, it was huge, if you ever saw our annual Display of Giving, you know I'm not exaggerating. But this year we're not collecting toys and gifts, instead we're working on water, clean sustainable sources of water for two communities in Nigeria. Maybe you could call that a big thing for a great big thing.  

In the coming year, we are going to get way out of our comfort zone and into our community, with a program of evangelization in Lent and Easter...that's a little thing for a big thing. And we know there are some important decisions ahead about direction for the future, that are going to require effort and sacrifice.  We need to rely more on God and pray for his direction and courage to be obedient.  Obedience is desired and required.

Wise Planning

We are finishing up our first series of the season and we've been saying that our heavenly Father wants to put us on the right path in life.  God wants to direct our steps and lead us down the path of a successful life.  Sometimes when we take the wrong path, we blame God for our decisions.  But the decisions are all ours.  We can learn from these experiences of course, but we can also choose to learn in ways that are less painful and more efficient.

Successful people, people who like where they end up, aren't successful because they know it all, or even because they know everything they need to know to succeed.  Successful people know what they don't know, they know what they need to learn and they know where to go to learn.  That's wisdom.

The Bible talks about the reliable sources of wisdom: God, the community of the Church and the wise people around us.

Currently we are involved in a planning process that hopefully brings together all three.  Last spring we gathered together a large group of our parish leadership and talked about where we are and what's ahead, as far as we have an ability to see ahead.  We spent the day discussing the challenges and opportunities ahead and even casting some vision.  Coming out of that meeting we formed five teams of leaders and professionals to look at five broad areas we could use to organize those challenges: buildings and campuses; technology; finances; human resources, which we have called "talent" and a category we called "teaching church." Those teams have been meeting through the summer and fall to sort through the massive amounts of information and ideas those categories encompass.

Today Tom and I met with the leadership team for the whole strategic planning process and had an excellent mid point discussion.  They hope to be able to present some form of a report to the whole parish in the new year.  

For any plan like this to be wise, we must first rely on the wisdom of God, we need God's hand to get us started, his direction to proceed and his blessing to succeed.  We need to desperately want what God wants for us and all our efforts.  And because the religious landscape is changing around us so quickly, complete obedience to God is the only wise path. Next we need the wisdom of the Body of Christ, which means close association with our Archbishop and Bishop and other pastors, even other Christian churches, if they are willing to talk to us. But our planning should be closely united to and reliant on the wisdom of the people in the pews, and at this Church there is a lot of wisdom and expertise out there.   From time to time we will be reporting back on the path ahead. 

How we're doing

In whatever organization or group you're leading its not only important to keep focus on what you're doing but also how you're doing it. I know I am interested in how well everyone on our team is progressing and what kind of success they are experiencing.  But I also want to know how they are doing it. Here are five points (there are more but this is a start) for evaluating that:

Are we authentic?

Are we who we say we are?  Are we doing what we've promised to do?  We cannot begin to maximize God's potential if we are pretending to be Church, or playing Church or lying to one another. Transparency and authenticity must be core values.

Are we communicating?  

Do we communicate well between departments or agendas or personalities? Healthy communication is consistent, its multi-formed, its clear and honest and timely and it is a an absolute must for team work.  I admit, I am not good at this one, it is too easy for me to deal with an issue with the person or people involved and then move on, leaving everyone else in the dark. Its not respectful and its not helpful.  It could easily lead to problems like silo ministries.   

Are we being attentive to the details?

When things that were once important slip into the unimportant category, as they sometimes do, are we noticing?  It could be a sign of apathy.  Details matter, because our organization is just the sum total of our details. So we want to keep track of what, specifically, we are doing.  

Are we generous as a team, do we have a culture of generosity?

Is our instinct toward generosity?  If we are serving Christ and the Church of Christ we need to always be looking for ways to include others, remain open and accessible, and generous in in our approach to people.

Are we focused on God's direction for our next steps?

We love to start meetings here with the prayer, "Lord, we don't know what we're doing. Amen."  Its a great prayer, but do we believe it?  Do we remain focused on the Lord and what he is doing in this place, and what he wants to do through us? Are we attentive in prayer to his voice, are we desperately looking for his direction in our next steps?