Posts from — December 2007

Do Something… how ’bout now

"Something good is about to happen!"

Those are the words to more than one famous song, and those are the plans that came out of these two days together. 

I won’t spill the beans completely – indeed, the plans aren’t yet complete, but suffice it to say, a major city in the U.S. will be targeted this summer (2008) and about thirty of us will converge there to see what we believe will be some amazing things in the realm of evangelism. 

I am not the deepest student of Church history, but I am not unaware of the topic either…  I have never heard of a single city being targeted in the evangelistic cross-hairs by thirty veteran, fruitful evangelists for a 10-14 day time frame (at each their own expense!).

This event will certainly stir up positive national, mainstream media attention – to the counter flow of a long, uninterrupted stream of super negative articles on "Tele-evangelist" failures (big difference between ‘tele-evangelists’ and evangelists, btw!).

I am excited about this for many reasons – near the top:

Everyone present agreed we must lead the way here with acts of generosity, kindness, love that is done without strings attached. 

One guy from New Zealand stood up at the end with tremors in his voice to say he was recently on a long flight.  Out of curiosity he asked several dozen people on the plane, "Who is the most influential Christian in this generation in your opinion?"  He said there were only two people mentioned.  Every single non-American replied, "Mother Teresa."  Each said she was one who did what she talked about.  Every American replied the same as well – "Billy Graham."  When asked why they said, "He’s a nice guy…"  This Kiwi and all non-Americans in the room had a look on their faces like, "Do you Americans get it?"  I did – I have lived outside the U.S. for a number of years. 

I suspect Billy Graham might well be in the Mother Teresa fan club as well honestly. 

Without the integrity of the ‘do’ all the words in the world mean less than nothing.  "Why ‘less’ than nothing?" 

Because words become a cancer at that point that erode people’s capacity to believe anything said.  Words become a vulnerability that cause others to doubt anything spoken eventually. 

It’s first grade all over again, folks.  It’s show and tell time.  First we show.  Then we can tell – actually, we just answer questions.

Disconnect Between Pastors and Evangelists

The matter of evangelists connecting with the local church was raised – with great emotion. 

I consider myself to be something of an oddball, frankly.  Clearly I am a pastor, church launcher, a coach of church launchers and perhaps above all one who stirs up evangelism.  Thus I understood the frustration dynamic these highly passionate people feel that exists between their role in the big "C" Church and the local church that is nearly always led by maintenance minded people.  (Not one bit of a criticism intended in that statement – a simple long-term observation…  When the flywheel of a system is created – buildings, budgets that feed salaries that families depend upon… there is a huge emotional dynamic involved that pushes against much of what people generally consider the spontaneous ‘move of God’s Spirit.’) 

Couple of observations from these fresh discussions: 

1.  These renowned evangelists have a huge heart to work with the local church

2.  Almost no local churches can handle the presence of a dynamic, highly gifted evangelist unless such a person when present is on ‘vacation mode’ and not stirring the locals up… to do the latter is to cause nearly all pastors great consternation and suspicion, or ‘Okay, what is up here – is this person trying to start a church?’  In reality, an evangelist would be utterly frustrated if they were to end up leading a church – especially a church made up of long-term believers… such people are highly unlikely to ever become suddenly outwardly focused after long-term inwardness.

3.  Part of the ministry call to serving as an evangelist is a willingness to be misunderstood by the local church

Disconnect Between Pastors and Evangelism

One of the big questions discussed: 

After this was batted around a bit, I tossed my two bits into the mix. 

"We are presenting to our people a model for inviting that is completely unrealistic – I.E., the ministry of Paul.  Jesus clarified that his life and approach to people is to be our model.  Somehow we have made Paul’s debating – reasoning – arguing style of matching wits the model.  Some can indeed pull this off.  I am in fact wired this way.  Not many pastors can do this. 

Certainly very few people in church attendance can relate to this model.  Jesus always intended to serve as our model for connecting, inviting, accepting (not necessarily approving of behavior) people into the kingdom."

Paul clarified the the content of the message of the kingdom – Romans, Galatians and other letters.  Paul was a debater. 

Many mainstream – secular historians such as Will Durrant place Paul in the top handful of intellects of all history.  Who can reproduce what he did?  Very very few. 

Jesus foresaw this.  Thus he came announcing the kingdom by usually meeting needs with one hand and explaining verbally what this kingdom was about on the other.  Jesus’ was a ‘Show first, then explain second’ approach.  Anyone can love, serve, show kindness – then bring them along like Jesus.

Whose People Are We Anyway?

Gifted evangelists absolutely blow pastors out of the water with their gifting and charisma.  Thus, they scare pastors.  Pastors don’t know what to do with an evangelist unless said evangelist is just ‘passing on through.’ 

Evangelist are generally not very welcomed as a part of a local church for long for obvious reasons.  When a ’10+’ communicator is present next to the week-in, week-out guy, it is difficult, as they say, to follow that act. 

There is no act, obviously.  But human pettiness, jealousy rears its head invariably around gifted evangelists. 

Such a person is a huge threat, unfortunately, to maintenance-minded pastors who see those present as ‘their’ people. 

Observation:  With every church I have launched, the message has come through loud and clear from nearly every pastor locally that my presence was ‘interesting’ (how can a move to a city be ‘interesting’?).  They appreciated my ‘enthusiasm’ but there were already plenty of churches in the city. 

Translation:  ‘This is my city / my part of the city / my geography… If I hear of one person leaving to attend your place – well, you don’t want to know what will happen.’ 

Some reading this, honestly, have been on both the receiving then oddly, the giving end of such communications. 

When first in a city that is far under served by existing churches, you were clearly not welcomed (understandable) – but when you got up and running did you begin to send the exact messages to new church launchers? 

To quote Tom Cruise, who offered us one of the great lines in live TV history when on The Today Show, "Matt (Lauer), you don’t want to take me on regarding this issue.  This has to do with psychology.  I know a lot about psychology.  I have studied psychology." 

Good ‘ol Tom was right on to bring that point up.  After all, he eventually did get a certificate of graduation from high school.  Also, he regularly reads Psychology Today magazine and all of L. Ron Hubbard’s sci-fi novels. 

Point: In our brokenness, we cannot speak out of one side of our mouth today, and the other side a bit later and continue to think we have integrity.  Without integrity we have nothing. 

Such behavior clarifies we are in need of deep healing from God. 

Without this healing, we will continue to see a drip of evangelism instead of the flow of the river Jesus has in mind.

Sometimes a strong word can be overused and thus neutered.  As an American I am especially aware of this tendency in the U.S. culture.  If everything is ‘awesome’ pretty soon nothing is awesome. 

A friend of mine wrote a book with the word ‘Revolution’ in it a few years ago.  Many of his friends encouraged him not to use that word for the very reason here – it was an overstatement of the points he attempted to make.  Ultimately, his friends were correct.  The word was weakened.  Once again, a voice in the U.S. Church world printed a rally cry and nothing happened. 

IDEA: Let’s call a moratorium upon overstatements

- before we need to find a new language other than English that we have worn out…

Turns out the Beatles were onto something after all…

A gathering / summit was held the past few days in Orlando of what organizers consider the thirty most influential voices in the world of evangelism today.  (Somehow I was accidentally invited.) 

There were the people you would expect to be at such at event – from all over the planet – Africa, South America, Europe, Asia and even the U.S. 

There were some press people present but no pictures were allowed. 

The event was moving, stimulating yet a wake up call at the same time – a wake up regarding just how out of touch and ineffective the Church at large is honestly, right now. 

All in all – there was a lot of call to stop the ‘hodabadah’ (read past postings if you don’t understand that term)

- to move on

- and let the Spirit have his way with the inviting of the google of people he is massively head over heels in love with…

Let’s drop the ‘This study reveals that…’ stuff that has paralyzed so many

- observe the obvious (did Will Rogers say that originally?)

- and let the holy party commence (‘Party’ is spelled R-E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N)