Henriet's Blog

Calibrate NW 2010: A Great Experience

Have you heard about Calibrate NW? Semper Vita was one of the sponsors and exhibitors at this conference. Around 800 church planters, pastors and students attended to hear speakers like Francis Chan, Alan Hirsch, Richard Stearns, Mark Driscoll, Judah Smith and John Bishop. The focus was Jesus. The conference focused on helping leaders to realign with Jesus. After all, it is his church!

Several people stopped by our booth and expressed interest. We look forward to partnering together as we seek to follow Jesus, love people in his name and be the church together.

Re-framing Christianity

Could it be that the only people going to church are those who already know about God? Could it be that everyone else has little or no interest in spending an hour on Sunday morning to participate in a gathering with strangers? Do you think we need to re-frame what we're doing? Hmmm.

I suspect that if I had invited someone at Starbucks last Sunday morning to come to church with me that I might have had various responses:

"What's my value add to attend church?" (A friend of mine actually asked this question once upon a time.)
"I don't know anyone there."
"Church isn't for me." (What's the implication there? Who is it for?)

Recent research indicates that people think Jesus is cool but church and Christianity is not. In general, people like Jesus and think that he is loving and approachable. Christians on the other hand are viewed as judgmental, critical and exclusive.

Maybe Christianity needs a re-branding campaign. I'm in a "Theology and Pop Culture" class at Fuller this quarter. We were given the task of re-branding Christianity. Here's one of our ads (what do you think?):

Sunday at Starbucks

Last Sunday, Fred and I walked to our local Starbucks. We enjoyed our coffee while there...then walked back. Nothing unusual per se except that normally on Sunday mornings we're at church.

Going to church on Sunday makes sense for Christians, right? However, those who do not yet know Jesus aren't there. The place to meet people looking for Jesus is, well, possibly at Starbucks.

Have you ever spent a Sunday morning out and about-at Starbucks, in a restaurant, on the golf course? I hope you have. What did you notice?

When I attended the Off The Map Conference last November, Earl Creps (featured on my blog) talked about starting a church in Berkeley, Calif. He found out, as he walked around on a Sunday morning, that the streets were deserted. People were sleeping--Berkeley happens later in the day or at night.

If we want to hang out with the people who are looking for God-we might want to meet them where they are when they're there. What do you think?

Richard Twiss Rocks

Have you heard of Richard Twiss? He captured my imagination at the Off The Map (Nov. 1-3, 2007 in Seattle) conference in various ways. He's a native American and the president of Wiconi International. Wiconi is pronounced "we-cho-nee." I said it wrong when I asked him about it--oops.

He's an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe. He's fully native and fully a Christ-follower. He's also pursuing his Doctorate in Missiology at Asbury Theological Seminary.

He's funny and provocative. Funny: "The good things for us native people is that we know that when the chips are down the buffalo is empty." I love that.

Provocative: he talks about how Christianity has been put on native peoples and with it a cultural oppression. Do you have to leave the Indian ways to be a Christ-follower? Do you have to accept the cultural bias of Western Christianity and accept the colonial oppressive version of this faith to be a true Christian?

He asked: "Does God have cultural, linguistic, musical, and architectural preferences?" Obviously not. He reminded us that English is not the language of heaven.

We all have a culturally conditioned world view. Is my world view to small? Am I a Christian bigot? I hope not! However, I confessed (quietly to God) some of my pre-conceived notions and biases that surfaced as he spoke.

He wrote "One Church Many Tribes." I'll write a review on my blog of the book. I'm going to be following this guy!

Collaborative Capacity: life, faith and Jesus

Life, Acts and school have kept me busy these past few weeks. I'm completing week four of the "Collaborative Approaches in Ministry" class at Fuller (online). We've discussed various topics and concepts, including identity, organization, and developing collaborative capacity.

For this class, we work together in a group activity and have to come up with twelve word definitions--based on the reading, research, personal experience and the lectures.

Definitions of Identity and Organization

Our group defined identity as: The essence of being known that embodies uniqueness, negotiation, compromise and agreement. 

We defined organization as: Collection of people vision driven towards common goal, adapting & impacting its changing environment.

Collaborative Capacity

It's amazing how much more you can discover and produce together than alone. That's one of the concepts behind collaborative capacity. As your radar grows and your horizon expands, you can see more and together do more.

Life, Faith and Jesus

This mirrors my experience as we study the book of Acts with a group on Sunday mornings at Timberlake. The early church discovered, experienced and learned together what it meant to follow Jesus. Church is not an hour on Sunday listening to a preacher and singing some songs. Church is connecting with others trying to do life, exploring our faith and learning to follow Jesus--together.

Sent Out By Reggie McNeal To Go Missional

Today's the day that I'm saying good-bye to Reggie and to my 19 fellow students. We've learned a lot...and hopefully have become a little more missional. "Thanks Reggie!"

Great Moments...

• Each day had significant "a ha" moments.
• Reggie's understated, low key humor.
• Personal transformation.
• Leadership transformation.
• Food brought by Jerry. "Thanks Jerry!"
• Father Justin's Byzantine wisdom.
• Getting to know a great group of fellow leaders.

Reggie-isms...

"Take my book back and get his book."

"It is about you."

"Faith is not a battery pack." (You cannot store it.)

"Heaven is not furnished with antiques."

"What if Jesus was telling the truth?”

“If we run the church like the YMCA we’d come drink coffee, eat donuts and watch Jason workout.”

"Fast forwarding the future."

"Self-select into greatness."

Calling our youngest student (age 30) "Karl Jr."

It's been a great week! Thanks to all of you and especially Reggie McNeal for pointing us to the advancing future.

Add your own Great Moments or Reggie-ism.

Going Missional With Reggie McNeal

This week I'm taking a class at Fuller in Pasadena. I'm actually auditing a D.Min. (Doctor of Ministry) class taught by Dr. Reggie McNeal.  This class will count toward my MAGL (MA in Global Leadership) degree.

Professor Bob Freeman will supervise this class as an Independent Study. I've read several books for the class including Present Future, Practicing Greatness, Jesus Creed, Spiritual Leadership, Off-Road Disciplines and The Heart of Change. All great books.

Today I'm focusing on Reggie...we're going missional! Advancing into the Present Future. One of Reggie's premises is that God is always up to something new.

Key to taking your church missional is asking the right questions. Reggie reviews six wrong questions, and then asks six tough questions:

1. How do we 'deconvert' from 'Churchianity' to Christianity?
2. How do we transform our Community?
3. How do we turn members into missionaries?
4. How do we develop followers of Jesus?
5. How do we prepare for the future?
6. How do we develop leaders for the Christian movement?

If you've not read Present Future order one today! Read it and let Reggie take you missional. His humor, thoughts and tough questions are sure to fast forward you to your future today.

Living Jesus' Way?

"Isn't being missional simply doing what Jesus said to do in the first place?"

Someone asked me this question in response to Wednesday's post. I'd like to answer: "Exactly!"

The second part of the question read, "By attempting to do this missional stuff, are we trying to earn brownie points by increasing our 'good deeds' or are we showing up because we realize that we aren't doing what Jesus told us to do?"

The distinction matters greatly. Doing good works so that we feel better becomes about "us" and is self-serving. To the recipients of these "good deeds" it smacks of charity.

Living genuinely missional means 'loving your neighbor as yourself' in response to God's love for us--without an agenda. It means showing up and living Jesus' way.

How do you see it?

Genuinely Missional

Rapidly achieving buzz status, the word missional shows up everywhere. Churches schedule 72-hour service projects. Ministries and leaders create missional programs. Missional books featuring the missional concept proliferate.

As human beings, especially in the West, we tend to embrace the next thing so tightly that we squeeze the life out of it. Are we at risk of squeezing the genuinely missional out by our well-meaning enthusiasm?

Pastor Tim lives a genuinely missional life. I doubt that he's read many of the books. He just lives it. Tim's harvesting, fighting fires and responding to medical calls because he loves people and wants to serve them in Jesus' name.

I want to be genuinely missional. Living in Jesus' name and showing His love because it's the right thing to do--all the time.

What's your view of living a genuine missional life?

On Mission With Tim

The second week of each month, I will focus on people who live missionally--on a daily basis. This week meet Tim:

This summer you're likely to find him him driving truck alongside a big Case combine, catching the 3.2 bushels per second being released from the grain bin.  To do his job he needs to drive the right speed as the grain dumps out because the combine keeps going. If he miscalculates, the grain spills costing the farmer money.                                                                   Case Combine

When he's not driving the truck to help during the harvest, he might respond to a medical call. Tim also serves his community as an EMT.

Tim also serves his neighbors, the local wheat farmers, in another capacity. When fires break out in their fields, he answers the call of duty as one of the local volunteer fire fighters. He might drive the wild land fire truck or be part of the crew manning the
"Tim's" Fire Truck                 hoses atop the truck platform.

None of these tasks, truck driver, EMT and fire fighter, are  Tim's real jobs. His neighbors know him as Pastor Tim. His church is the local Christ Lutheran Church.

He befriends his parishioners and neighbors with his jovial manner and heartfelt hospitality. His attitude and authenticity make him a great pastor, friend and leader. His desire to serve makes him a great neighbor. He lives missionally, intentionally--showing his neighbors the love of Jesus in practical and meaningful ways.