12. Ponies, Pews, and Pipe Organ People

Those of us living in the northwest corner of Missouri should have been among the first to learn the lesson. It was, after all, taught as far back as about 1860 by way of the Pony Express.

The organizers of the Pony Express devised a system by which the mail could be delivered from the western edge of Missouri to the western edge of the country. It was a daunting undertaking that required planning a route, finding quality horses, developing a human resources department that could convince riders to risk weather and safety, and building outposts along the way. Simply making it happen once was a great success. Making it last was even more difficult.

Unfortunately, soon after the developers established the route, the railroad came along. The Pony Express began as a system for delivering mail. However, instead of taking advantage of the new technology, the Pony Express became a useless delivery system. Apparently, it thought is business was the "pony" while its real business had been mail.

Within a few years, the railroads began to criss-cross northwest Missouri. Every seven to 10 miles, small communities sprung up along the path of the rail lines. The railroad was a can't miss proposition. It offered a quick way to transport people, goods, and mail. It was an upgraded delivery system when compared to the Pony Express. It appeared to be the wave of the future.
That only lasted until the gasoline powered family car came along. The railroad should have recognized the new technology as an improved way for it to carry out its deliveries. Had it taken advantage of cars and new roads, it might have become the postal service, Fed Ex, UPS, and a nationwide public transit system all rolled into one. Instead, it allowed its rails to get it off track.

More recently, the postal system has been making news because it is not making money. It is losing customers and revenue to a new technology called the internet. Well, the technology isn't so new anymore. The postal service failed to take notice of a new method for it to do its job. Even though electronic mail was quickly recognized by the public as a way to do what they used to do with stamps, the postal service continued to try to deliver messages by requiring the sender to write a letter, put it in an envelope, out a stamp on the envelope, walk the envelope to a mailbox, and wait a couple of days for the receiver to get the message. That is like trying to get a pony to do the work while a train comes whistling past. The postal service has failed because it kept hiring postal workers rather than computer programmers.

So, what does all that have to do with the Church? Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ who become part of the community of faith called the Body of Christ. For a time in our society, that meant gathering people in buildings that had stained glass windows, pipe organs, and a tower spire out front. It meant putting people in rows of seats so they could listen to the more educated preacher who was delivering the message to them. It meant sending the people off to Sunday School in groups divided by age so they could learn the faith. It meant reserving Sunday morning as church time.

In many of our places, we are delivering our message by way of a system we were using, in some cases in buildings we were using, when the Pony Express began its 18-month venture. While we sit in our pew and listen quietly to the preacher, the people outside our walls are chatting on Facebook, twittering their tweets, and recording four shows at the same time on their DVR. It may well be that when they see one of our churches, they are reminded of the postal service, railroads, and maybe even the Pony Express.

Here, then, is the question: Are we called to be the Sunday morning place where people go to sing the old time favorites and have the sermon delivered on the pipes of an organ, a sermon, and a prayer, or are we called to make disciples of Jesus Christ by using the technologies the people are using to communicate with each other?

11. Chasm Lake

    A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I, and our adult children and their families, spent a few days vacationing in one of our favorite spots, Estes Park, Colorado. During the first four days, we had perfect weather that allowed us to complete our family rituals at the alluvial fan, up Trail Ridge Road, and around Bear Lake.

    The hikers among us hiked, and the non-hikers shopped. The three year-old in the group danced and sang her way around a flat lake trail, taught all the adults a new way of playing pool, and joyfully announced the beginning of the party wherever she happened to make an entrance.

     On the last day, my son, daughter-in-law, son-in-law, and I planned to take a hike to Chasm Lake. The trail to the lake is a 4.2 mile hike in one direction with an elevation gain of 2,300 feet, starting at about 11,000 feet above sea level. That is a huffer and a puffer for us flatlanders.

     If you have ever hiked in the mountains, you know that when clouds start developing you have to be concerned about lightning storms, so it is always best to start when there are no clouds in the sky. Throughout the week, every morning had dawned with beautiful blue skies and no hint of the afternoon showers yet to come.

    That morning, for the first time all week, we awakened to significant clouding. Worried about the likelihood of deteriorating weather, we almost stayed at the house, but decided to drive to the trailhead. By the time we got to the trailhead, it was misting. We almost turned back, but we decided to begin the hike with the hope that the sun would burn through the clouds.

    For the next 2 1/2 hours, we hiked uphill. We never saw the sun, but neither did we encounter any rain. We finally came to a spot where we could see that Chasm Lake was on the far side of a ridge and probably 200 feet in elevation above us.

    We started along the ridge until we came to two snowfields. One that was probably 100 feet in length, followed by another that was double the length of the first. The snow was on a 45-degree angle with a small path carved out by hikers.The pathway was barely wider than the width of one of my feet, so it meant putting one foot in front of the other. One slip meant we would slide downhill until we came to a huge pile of rocks. It looked like death to me. It also brought to mind the warning given us by a ranger the previous day. When we mentioned where we were going, he had told us he had been there just a day earlier. He said, "I wouldn't want to try it without poles and a good pair of shoes." Well, we had one pole among us, and there might have been two good pair of shoes among us, but we weren't really in a position of sharing our resources.

    My daughter-in-law, the adventurous one, went first. I was sandwiched between my son and son-in-law, and I suspect there was an unspoken reason as to why the young ones placed the old man in the middle. I chose not to bring it up.

    After Melissa got most of the way across the first snowfield, she shouted back that she didn't think we should try. I had only taken three or four steps, and was finding is very difficult to keep from looking down the ravine while my body was trying to curl into a fetal position. I gladly agreed with her, and turned around before anyone could disagree. In a short time, we were all back on dry ground, congratulating each other on the fact that the small lake below us was just as beautiful as Chasm Lake anyway.

     A couple of minutes later, a man came along the trail by himself. He was sauntering along as if he didn't notice that he was nearly 13,000 feet above sea level. My memory tells me he had no backpack, was wearing shorts and sneakers, and was barely noticing the scenery. The man could just as easily have been shopping in Estes Park. He greeted us without slowing down and walked across the snowfield as if it was a wide sidewalk.

 

    I guess the reader can draw various conclusions from this story. For me, though, it is that we had to make decisions throughout the day as to whether to keep going or stop. From hindsight, I think we made good decisions in each case, including the moment when we stopped.

    I still want to go to Chasm Lake, but on that day I was not prepared for taking those last few steps. The other man was clearly prepared and seasoned from other experiences, and I tip my hat to him in terms of his ability. Interestingly, though, a few minutes later he came back in an apparent state of confusion. After visiting with him, we learned he had missed a turn, and had headed up that trail for no reason. He was supposed to turn to the right before he even got to the snowfields. Even though he had gone farther than us, he had simply wasted his time going in the wrong, and more challenging, direction. He had the skills, but he failed to read the signs.

    I don't know where your trail is taking you, but I pray that God will grant you wisdom to know when to stop, when to keep going, and when to follow a new trail.

10. Contrary Faith

Occasionally, I run into a congregation that is a bit contrary. Sometimes it is a church that thinks the pastor should work as a volunteer. Or it may be a group of people whose mission is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but a desire to keep the building open. You may find it hard to believe, but there are even a few controlling individuals who have found they can wield power by running a congregation, and they almost always attend meetings the superintendent.

I have to admit that there were also times when serving as pastor of congregations that I was confronted by a person who was a bit hard to get along with. He or she was not usually the best giver in the congregation, or the most compassionate, or even the most fervent in prayer. Nonetheless, the person often felt a need to tell me how to do my work, as well as the need to offer similar advice to everyone else.

On those occasions, I have comforted myself by saying that the Church is just much harder to lead than it was in earlier times. Surely, it must have been great fun to be one of the early disciples when the Church was adding thousands to the rolls every day.

Whenever, I begin feeling that way, I just take a little time to re-read The Acts of the Apostles. The great Apostle Paul began his career by participating in the stoning of Stephen. It turns out that Stephen, the saint and not this blogger, was stoned because he remained true to the faith. Even while being killed, he prayed that those who stoned him would be forgiven. I guess you could say that he was serving one of those contrary congregations!

Then Paul saw the light and began carrying the Gospel message around the world. He had a wonderful opportunity to meet people from many walks of life. His witness brought many people to the faith. There is no other person who did more to spread the Word, tell the story, and encourage the growth of the Church than Paul. Sounds like a romantic and exhilarating life.

Well, it depends on how you look at it. Paul was imprisoned, hauled into court, and threatened with death—and those were some of the good days. He was also beaten, dragged out of town, and badgered by people who made up stories about him just to get him in trouble. In some cases, the people ran him out of town, then when they heard he was in a neighboring community, they went to that town to pick on him there.

While reading his story recently, I started wondering what kept him going. One would think that you don’t have to be left for dead on the side of the road too many times before you start considering retirement. In spite of the good days when people came to faith, there must have been times when Paul woke up with anger about what he had endured the previous day. Surely, his prayers occasionally voiced a desire to let someone else do it. Paul didn’t have a pension program to worry about, neither did he have reason to mark off the days until Social Security kicked in. Paul, in fact, didn’t have a career to sustain, or a job to keep. He could very easily have just stopped preaching and gone back to making tents.

So, why did Paul stay on the road? Why did he hightail it out of one town to save his life, and then calmly walk into the next filled with confidence and conviction? Why did he wake up every morning and go back to the same job? I don’t think it was because it was deeply satisfying, nor was it because of other great rewards. Rather, I think it was because it was the only thing he could do and be true to what he believed.

He didn’t tell the story to make people happy; he told the story because it was the Truth. He didn’t live the missionary life because of the retirement program—at least not the one in this life. Instead, he traveled the world because to not do so would have been a betrayal of his calling.

Similarly, pastors today don’t preach because they love being in front of people; they do so because God keeps pushing them out front. They don’t comfort people in hospital rooms or confront people in church council meetings because of a desire to either be compassionate or prophetic; they do so because it is the only thing they can do in that moment.

We serve a risen savior who is in the world today. In good days and in bad, in sunshine and in rain, we follow where he leads. Where else could we go?

9. The Mission Field

Two of our Pony Express pastors, Terry Cook and Jenn Klein, participated in a panel discussion during this year’s session of annual conference. Both were invited to the panel because they have shown tendencies to be willing to share their faith with the people who are “somewhere out there.” While the entire panel was excellent, I took a little extra pride in listening to Terry and Jenn.

Interestingly, both of them seem to intuitively understand and assume something that I have just learned in the past few months. In fact, I have been trying to figure out how to articulate and communicate this new insight around the district in a way that would make sense to people. It turns out that I only need to take Terry and Jenn on the circuit with me to do the interpreting.

During the panel discussion, Terry commented that he is not just the pastor of the Hammer Memorial and Star Chapel congregations, but he is pastor to the King City community. It was clear that he sees the family living in the farmhouse down the road, or the man walking down the street are his parishioners as much as are those who sit in the pews come Sunday morning. Other panel members agreed, then asked lay persons who were present to encourage their congregations to intentionally give their pastors permission to focus their energies on those who are outside the walls of the church.

Later in the weekend, Bishop Schnase commented that the Cabinet has begun asking similar questions when making appointments. Rather than just asking whether a specific person is a good fit for church members in a potential appointment, we now ask whether the pastor is a good fit for the mission field that surrounds that church. It is in some ways a small and subtle shift, but it is a significant one that can have major implications in how pastors spend their time, and in how they understand their ministry.

Throughout my career of serving local congregations, I have always planned the worship service with an eye toward those who already attended the church. The Bible studies I led were designed for church members I invited through the church newsletter. I could just as easily have invited neighbors or held the studies in the homes of church members who had invited their neighbors.

It occurs to me now that I have always assumed that those who pay the bills (Put money in the offering plate) are my customers; yet, the Gospel teaches us that those who give gifts are trying to be extravagantly generous. They are giving out of gratitude rather than expecting something in return. Donors should not be expecting to also be the benefactors. If that happens, it just becomes a circular activity of give and take it back, give and take it back.

So, the better way to think of our ministry process is that church members give gifts so that their church can reach into the world and offer the love of Christ. Our gifts pay the pastor so that she or he can pass the love of Christ along. Our gifts build buildings for the ministry of Christ’s love to be offered to others. Our gifts are passed along to be joined with the gifts of others to do a larger ministry than we can do by ourselves.

There is a kicker to this. On Monday morning during the session of annual conference, Bishop Schnase asked a question for each of us to answer. He asked, “If everyone in the congregation—the pastor, secretary, Trustees chair, Sunday School teacher, person in the pew next to us, etc.—acted just like me, would the church be growing or shrinking?” In other words, do I bring others to Christ? Do I invite others to participate in the ministries of the church? Do I tell my faith story at work, or in my neighborhood, so that others desire to know Christ?

As it turns out, it isn’t just the pastor who is appointed to the mission field. It is also you and me. As the bishop suggested, it is time for us to get a “go out” attitude and let go of our “come to” attitude. Come to think of it, Jesus said it first. “Go into all the world,” he said, “and preach my Gospel to every nation.”

8. How Would You Answer

The pressure is on. You are in a city council meeting for your community. One of the members of the council has just asked you to stand and give a report. The Council person says, “What benefit does the property on which your church stands provide to the city?”
What is your answer?
Time’s up! Did you have a ready response? Is there one answer, or do you have a host of possible answers?
In the book, “The Externally Focused Church,” the authors tell of such an experience for Tom Shirk, pastor of Calvary Bible Church in Boulder, Colorado. He was able to tell that his church had built a Habitat for Humanity house, renovated a house for runaway teens, and the church building served as an overflow homeless shelter for the city. Not a bad response.
How about your congregation? Most of us aren’t in congregations large enough to have a list that long, but all of us should be able to demonstrate that we are an active and vital part of the community we serve.
While it is good for us to worship each week and provide Christian education for our members, all of that only amounts to taking care of ourselves. Jesus commanded us to love God, but Jesus also told us to love our neighbors.
As it turns out, there is ample opportunity for loving. We can do simple things such as hosting funeral dinners in the community without charge or hosting Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts in our building. We can take it up a notch and offer our Christian education space as a day care during the week even though the children scuff the floors and scratch the paint. We can go outside of our building and into the school to do tutoring, or over to the clothes closet to keep its doors open during the week.
In our society’s current context, we can hold career fairs or hold classes about balancing our financial checkbooks (Financial Peace University is a popular offering these days). Here in north Missouri, we have a need to work with community leaders to stop the meth labs that set up in our communities, and we need to help create business that will add to our population in the community. Our teens need healthy and safe places to gather, and we need to help improve the quality of housing for those who are moving into our communities.
As I travel across northwest Missouri, I often hear church members say that the new people in the community don’t want to come to church. I am told that the newcomers are different from the old-timers, and they don’t care as much about the community.
It could be that our problem is that we keep thinking those new people should be coming to us rather than us going to them. Perhaps they are not interested in our churches because they don’t see us making a difference in the lives of people. It is normally true that people will participate in what they value and where they find value. The more we can do to make a difference in the lives of others the fewer excuses our members will have for being in other places each Sunday.
Are our people too busy to be in church these days? Do they often say they have just gotten out of the habit? Do they seem to make it less of a priority? If so, our best bet for getting them back in the habit is to turn them on to serving others. If the new people in our community don’t want to come in our doors, it may be that our best way to get them involved is to wander over to their house to see how we can help them.
When we do that, we will always have a ready answer when the questioner challenges us to show how we are making a difference.

7. Keep it Simple

It is simple.
At least that is what Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger concluded in their book, “Simple Church.” They contend that we struggle as congregations because we make things too complicated. We try to do too many things. We wander in too many directions, and we have trouble keeping our focus.
I suspect they are right. Over the years, we have tried to be many different things in our society. We once thought we were the ones to start the hospitals and colleges across the land. At another time, we initiated the pre-schools, day cares, and Parents’ Day out programs. We went through a phase of thinking we were responsible for building the recreation buildings on behalf of the communities that surround us. Early in the 20th Century, we considered ourselves the social gathering spot where folks could get together and catch up on the news in town. Soon after that, we thought our task was to offer the place where people could get together and salute the flag and talk of patriotism.
And that is just a partial list of the phases we have gone through in the United States. It seems that the Church is constantly tinkering with its mission as we try to figure out what we offer the world. Looking back at the list, we have done much good for our society. None of those phases were bad when they started because they started as an outgrowth of our mission. In several cases, though, they quickly became our mission and we took our identity out of their success rather than measuring their success by how they helped us accomplish our mission.
Rainer and Geiger call us back to a simpler approach. They suggest that all we really need to do is 1) Know, believe, articulate, and live out our mission, 2) Implement a step by step plan for accomplishing the mission, 3) Align all of our resources toward carrying out that plan, and 4) maintain focus to the point of choosing not to do many of the good things that are not helping us accomplish our mission. Each part of this process is vital to the success of the others.
Our mission is simple. Though we spend many hours writing mission statements and trying to use just the right words, all we really need to do is go back to our Book of Discipline. It describes our mission as “making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.“ Our mission is not to have the nicest building, not to take in the most money, not to keep church members happy, and it is certainly not to keep the doors open until we die. Rather, our mission is to seek out those who don’t know the love of Christ, offer them this life-giving love, help them mature in the faith, and send them forth offer that love in the world.
Our process of implementation is simple. It often doesn’t seem like it because we try to do so many things. However, our process doesn’t have to be complicated. Some have said it is Know God, Love God, Serve God. Others would add some connecting steps between those three. However, we might express it, though, we simply need to know the steps and be sure we connect them to one another. We should keep asking, “where does worship fit in the process,” “what are we doing to help people mature in the faith,” “what opportunities are we giving for people to reach out to others in the community?”
Alignment is simple. Every employee and every volunteer should know her or his role in carrying out the process. As long as each person knows that they are helping the congregation carry out its mission in a specific way, he or she can be more effective. Do we offer Parents’ Day Out? The answer doesn’t lie so much in whether the community would benefit from it as much as it lies in how it helps the church make disciples for the transformation of the world.
Focus is simple, but hard. Over the years many of our congregations have begun projects that are worthwhile and sometimes profitable. They may have helped accomplish the mission when they started, but more recently they have simply become something we always do. Focusing requires us to have the courage to quit doing them. Is that fall sale helping us make disciples, or is it simply the project that helps us pay the bills? Is the day care program bringing new people into the church, or is it simply draining the energy of those who might be able to focus on something else. If we are going to get back to simplicity, we have to know what God calls us to do and be and what God is not calling us to do and be.
Keep it simple. Make Disciples. Nourish their growth. Send them out to transform the world.

6. The Lost Sheep

I attended worship in one of our country churches last Sunday. I arrived a few minutes early and found they were having Sunday School in the sanctuary, so I waited in the entry area for it to end. I waited along with about 50 of my closest friends, or so they seemed after huddling in that tight space for a few minutes.
I learned about the local basketball scores, found out that Dan was back in church for the first time in months after receiving a new pancreas, caught up on who expected the Steelers to win the Super Bowl, and that sort of thing.
Eventually, the doors opened and we found our seats in the sanctuary. The pastor walked up and down the aisles greeting people while neighbors checked in with one another. The pastor’s wife saw me and took a seat beside me as a sign of welcome. By the time all had settled in there were about 100 of us.
Then I noticed a quiet flurry of activity behind me. I looked back and saw that an older gentleman was having what appeared to be a diabetic seizure. The pastor was already at the spot and was working with family members to give assistance. The Sunday School superintendent called for an ambulance, then invited the congregation to enter into a time of prayer.
During the prayer, a member came from a back room with grape juice for the man. Someone else happened to have some Coke to give to him. Perhaps it is the old preacher in me, but I believe it must have been the grape juice and the prayer that did the work. Within seconds the man began to become alert again. Still, for a few more minutes, the congregation cast aside the intended plans for worship and attended to one person’s needs while waiting for the ambulance.
I was struck by the fact that in that moment 99 of those present were healthy and fully capable of carrying out the task that had brought them to church. Only one person was out of sorts. I thought of the Parable of the Lost Sheep while the 99 waited for the one to be restored.
Eventually, the man was feeling a bit better, so worship continued. The ambulance finally came while the congregation happened to be singing “How Great Thou Art” and praying the Lord’s Prayer. By the time the prayer had ended, the man was in the ambulance and getting his vital signs checked. The pastor mentioned that if he ever needed an ambulance, he hoped it would happen while a congregation sang “How Great Thou Art” and prayed the Lord’s Prayer. I had to agree with him.
The service continued, but I think worship had already happened. The congregation had been about the work of worship all along, joining together as a community, praying for one in need, caring more about their neighbor’s need than their own, acting to bring healing while trusting God to act, living out the Scriptures they had come to hear proclaimed.
Often we think that worship is an orderly process, defined in advance, printed in a bulletin, and requiring certain words or actions. We think that the Word is only proclaimed when it is pronounced from the pulpit by an inspired orator.
Truthfully, though, the definition of liturgy is “the work of the people.” Sometimes, God finds a way to proclaim the Word to us at a moment and in a way that surprises us. Often, worship is not the result of what is printed before us; rather, it results when our hearts take over, we forget about time and schedule, and we become a community in the presence of God.

5. Get Motivated

One of the more frequent complaints pastors have had over the years is that many of the lay people seem unmotivated. “The folks are too lackadaisical,” the pastor will say. “They just come when there isn’t anything more interesting for them to do, and it is like pulling teeth to get them to take a position of leadership.” Truthfully, I also know lay people who have the similar complaints about their pastor.
Those grumblings came to mind as I was reviewing the book “Good to Great,” by Jim Collins, recently. He wrote, “Spending time trying to motivate people is a waste of time and effort. The real question is not, ‘How do we motivate our people?’ If you have the right people, they will be self-motivated. The key is to not de-motivate them.”
Hmmm, I thought. All we need is the right people. That is easy for Jim Collins to say, but who are the right people. The question was ruminating as I thumbed backward in the book—something left-handers are apt to do. Suddenly, I found Collins’ answer: “Whether someone is the right person has more to do with character traits and innate capabilities than with specific knowledge, background, or skills.”
So, all this time we have spent trying to get our people excited has been mis-spent. Rather, we should have been spending our time in search of the right folks. I wondered whether this would pass the “Jesus” test. That is, would this be a description of how Jesus did it?
Strangely, as I thought about it, I began to realize that Collins might be right. Jesus picked 12 people to be his closest associates. Many have wondered why those 12 were picked. They came from outside the set of religious leaders. They appeared to have little education or wealth. They didn’t appear to be well connected in their community. They hadn’t been to seminary, so they had poor backgrounds and little skill development for starting the Church.
A few of them, as it turns out, were out fishing on the lake rather than listening to Jesus teach when they got the call. Think about that. Jesus had a multitude of onlookers wanting to hear what he said, but he turned away from them and picked out the folks who were ignoring him.
We, of course, have to guess at what character traits Jesus was seeking. Maybe it was a person like Thomas who would say, “Let’s go to Jerusalem and die with him.” He might have liked the questioning mind of Nathaniel who dared to ask, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Jesus might have preferred a disciple like Peter who was willing to cast a net in an apparently fruitless attempt to catch fish just because Jesus gave the command.
For whatever reasons Jesus picked these 12, we also know that he chose not to pick other more obvious choices. He did not pick Nicodemus, a member of the top religious leadership at that time. He did not pick those who thought they already knew the answers. He didn’t pick people simply because they followed him around looking for signs and miracles. He didn’t pick those who were in the synagogue every Sabbath making sure no one else sat in their spot.
All of this suggests to us that we may have been looking for motivated people in the wrong places. It is possible that we have a number of strongly motivated leaders in our communities. Our problem is that they could be the ones who are working at the gas station we pass on the way to church. Or they might be the ones who are in the fields on Sunday morning because they have concluded the church is for other people. All that is missing for them is for someone representing Jesus to come by and invite them on the journey.
Pay attention to who you meet this week. It might just be one of those people who has just the right character traits to become the highly motivated disciple of Christ your congregation needs. Take a moment to invite them to cast their net on the other side of the boat. In doing so you may just find the motivated leader you have been seeking.