Texas Here We Come; Plans are Finalized

 

Getting to Texas:

Well, it's official we will be moving to Texas during the week of December 18th.  I will be starting classes at A&M on January 19th.  I'm going to try to load my classes on Tuesday and Thursday and substitute teach on Mon. Wed. and Fri.  Both of these avenues should give me the opportunity to build lots of relationships with people in College Station.  Our hope is that Kellie can get on at the University as an academic advisor.  This is the job I want to get when I complete my degree next year.  We feel like there is no better bi-vocational gig in town for a church-planter than working at the University.

The Initial Strategy

My plan for launching the church is to begin with starting several "Discovery" bible studies within strategic relational circles in the Bryan/College Station area.  The Discovery Bible Study is a type of small group that is bearing incredible fruit in the third world specifically in the 10/40 window.  I've experimented with them in Chattanooga myself and have been impressed with the results (impressed enough that I'm willing to use it as part of our gathering strategy).  The idea is that you take the bible (we will be using the gospel of Mark) and you gather three or four people.  In the study you read a passage of scripture and ask a couple of questions.

1.  What does this teach us about the God

2.  What does this teach us about the human condition.

3.  What is one concrete action that I can do this week to demonstrate obedience to what I've learned

4.  Who does God want me to share this truth with this week

Its a very simple inductive bible study strategy.  It requires one resource, the bible and the goal is to get each person in the group leading their own group within 6 months.  The groups can meet anywhere.  I do mine in coffee shops at 6:30 in the morning.  It's a disciples making disciples strategy.

In conjunction with this we will begin with a low key worship service run out of a home initially.  We are going to really try to capitalize on the relational strength of a small church plant.  We will do a potluck breakfast, low key acoustic worship, and a time of equipping and training, followed by Vineyard style ministry of course.  As we out grow the home we will move to a larger venue, and with each move up we will create the systems that accommodate the larger gathering (greeting, children, assimilation, ext.). 

We will also host parties on Friday nights, at least once a month (possibly even more frequently than that) the idea behind these parties is that will be low key relational events where people can invite their friends and the different folks who are part of the church will have an opportunity to connect with each other's friends thereby building relational connections.

This is the strategy to gather the first 100.  Once we get to that size our structures will begin looking more like a small church. 

My heart is to build a really solid foundation based on disciples making disciples and strong Christ-centered friendships.  I'm intentionally using an inside out model of church planting.  Which means that we use relationships to gather people not a highly produced worship service.  It might be a little slower on the front end but the foundation is more stable, and the depth helps reproduce depth.

Prayer Needs and Need Needs

Our first need is financial of course.   We need people who are committed to seeing a church planted in College Station who will financially partner with us to see this happen.  I am not a spring chicken just beginning life, I'm 47 years old with two daughters in college, and my youngest son will be joining their ranks in the not to distant future.  The Vineyard Chattanooga is not able to do much for me at this point.  We just finished a major building campaign and the church is trying to get its financial feet back as it walks through the transition of losing the only pastor its known in its 16 year history.  So I need people who love A&M and the Vineyard to financially partner with us to make this dream a reality. 

The Vineyard College Station has a financial board made up of:

Raymond McDonald - Senior Pastor of the Cleveland Vineyard

Michael Lehman - Senior Pastor of the Trinity Vineyard

Geoff Bynum - Senior Pastor of the Katy Vineyard

Jeff Anderle - Senior Pastor of the Chattanooga and soon to be College Station Vineyard

Brian Fox - Executive Pastor of the Cleveland Vineyard

Steve Anderle - My father who is an accountant with over 50 years experience

This board is in place to oversee the financial and ethical integrity of the church.  You will receive quarterly giving statements and all gifts are tax deductible.

Make checks payable to:

The Vineyard College Station

20226 Needle Walk Lane

Spring, TX 77379

One of our greatest needs at the moment is a reliable car.  I have not had a car payment in over a decade but our minivan has 291,000 miles on it.  I have kept it well maintained and my plan was to save up and get a new one after our building at the Chattanooga Vineyard was built.  Well the building is built but my income has changed dramatically.  A good reliable vehicle would be a great help.

So Pray for a car, for cash, and for favor as we get ready to launch this new work.

Thanks and God bless,

Jeff Anderle

A Phone Call From God

I know that many of you were not able to stay for the potluck we did nearly two weeks ago, so you might not have heard from my mouth what the Lord has been up to in the life of the Anderles.  God has called Kellie, Joshua, and I to go and plant a new Vineyard church in College Station Texas, the home of Texas A&M.

Let me start by saying that we did not seek this out, this is something God has orchestrated.  We are not mad, we are not frustrated, and we are not leaving to take a larger church or a larger salary.  As a matter of fact The Vineyard Chattanooga is in the healthiest place it has been in years.  We are growing again.  You guys who stuck with us through the “school days” are like 101 Airborne; we have truly become a band of brothers and sisters.  You guys are the saltiest, battle tested, most wonderful people a pastor could ever hope for. Kellie and I are secure in your love for us and we love you very much!

People’s most common remarks when they come and visit our church these days is that we are a very friendly and authentic group of people, and that they feel that there is a spiritual depth to our church that they have seldom seen.  As far as Chattanooga is concerned we love the city more than we ever have.  Living in our little apartment on the Northshore has made us feel like we are living in a resort.  We agree that Chattanooga is one of the most beautiful and amazing cities in the U.S.  If we were going to bail on Chattanooga because it was hard or because we believed the grass is greener in Texas we would have done it sometime ago.  The Lord knows we were content to live in Chattanooga and pastor The Vineyard here for the rest of our lives. 

To go to College Station means we will be walking into a situation with no guarantees.  We are being called to risk it all to go into a situation where we will be starting from scratch, again.  Why would we be willing to do such a thing?  Simply stated, because God has asked us too.   Let me tell you how he asked us.

In April we hosted a night of worship at The Vineyard.  As Kellie and I were worshiping that evening, the Lord reminded me of a prophetic word that had been given to the Vineyard by a member of The Sugarland Vineyard the week we moved out of HCC, the week before we went into Tyner.  The letter said that the Vineyard Chattanooga was a ship that was going to hit a reef.  That the ship was going to be completely ripped apart and that out of the broken wreckage would be built a second church that was much stronger than the first[1].  Well if you were there during the “school years” you know that is exactly what happened[2], but since being in our new building things have turned around.  But as I was worshipping that night the Lord reminded me of that word and said, “You know, Jeff that word was true for the Chattanooga Vineyard[3], but for you it’s going to be true of the church I want you to plant in College Station.”

The word was pretty overwhelming to the point that I teared up.  I leaned over and whispered into Kellie’s ear what I believed the Lord was saying. She looked at me and laughed.  So I thought maybe not… must have been the bean burrito.  But it stirred something in me and it began to be part of my prayer times. 

During the second week of May.  I sat down in Coolidge Park and told the Lord I felt double minded.  I told him I didn’t have the emotional energy to do this anymore and I needed him to make it clear to me what he wanted me to do.  I told him I was willing and happy to stay in Chattanooga for the rest of my life if that was what he wanted, but if he wanted me to go to College Station he was going to have to make it really clear, so clear that even I could comprehend it.  I then said a phone call would be nice.

The next day I’m driving to pick up Kellie from work when I get a phone call from Raymund McDonald.  Raymund pastors the Conroe Vineyard and is the new regional rep in the southwest for Multiply Vineyard[4].  Raymund said that the Bryan/College Station Vineyard was being laid down and that they were going to begin the close out process with the region, but that morning when Raymund was praying about the church God had told him to not file the paper work until he had first talked with me.  I had only had one fifteen minute conversation with Raymund before that point, but God told Raymund to get in touch with me about the church in College Station.  Well, I got my phone call from God.

I sat Kellie and the kids down and asked them what they thought.  They said we needed to do it.  I then invited the elders into the decision, I told them the story and asked what they thought.  They all thought it was the Lord.  I asked our Regional Leader our Area Pastor, my mentoring pastors and some of my close peers, they all said they felt like it was the Lord.  They confirmed what I already knew.  God was calling us to plant a Vineyard in College Station.

What Does this Mean for Me?

I know what many of you are thinking.  Great Jeff, but what about us?  What about the Chattanooga Vineyard?

God has not been caught by surprise.  I was, but not God. God is moving in this, and if he is calling the Chattanooga Vineyard to send out its ninth Vineyard church plant then he has already formed the plan for who is going to succeed me.  I like that word succeed, because I think it completely frames my heart in this.  I believe God is going to bring our church someone He wants to lead it for this particular time.  My prayer is that he/she succeeds me in every way.  That they take the church farther and deeper than I have ever been able to take it.  I believe they will.

We are in one of the most beautiful cites in America.  We have a great team of people who love Jesus.  We live in one of the most beautiful and coolest cities in America.  We are going to have no problem finding candidates who want to pastor this church.  We are going to have to hear God’s voice so we are able to choose the best fit for our culture out of many great candidates. 

So first I would say do not worry.  This is going to work out great. Second, I would say for the next 6 months very little is going to change.  We are going to be gathering your feedback on what you love about the Chattanooga Vineyard.  We will be asking why do you enjoy making this your church home?  What about The Vineyard do you want to preserve in the future.  I will also be out for a couple of Sundays because I’m in Texas getting things ready.

In the fall we will bring in candidates whom we will interview.  We will be getting Vineyard USA’s help.  They offer succession assessments that help churches identify the right person to fit their culture.  You will probably see several faces preach that we haven’t seen before.  We will tell you if these folks are interviewing.  

We are hoping that by the turn of the New Year we will have identified our new pastor and then we will begin the process of transitioning the church over to them.   Kellie, Josh, and I will be here until Memorial Day Weekend of 2016 helping the church transition into this new season.  Then we will be taking a two month sabbatical to get rested up and then we will hit the ground in College Station.

How Can You Help?

    

1.  Don’t Freak Out.  Many of us are not big fans of change.  I promise you that no one has more skin in the game for seeing this new leader succeed than I do.  One of the consistent practices of ministry in this church through the years has been my consistency in giving ministry away.  I am fully committed to finding the leader who is the right cultural fit for our church and who can take the church beyond where I ever could.  I will be visiting Chattanooga either during Thanksgiving or Christmas every year and I want to see a healthy Vineyard Chattanooga.
2. Tithe.  The only thing that is preventing our church from achieving all that it is capable of right now is weak finances.  There are many of you giving at a sacrificial level, thank-you.  There are many of you who are not.  Being a church is about each family or individual coming together to see the kingdom work of the gospel go forward.  We each partner with each other through using our money and our talents to create a beautiful community.  If you don’t do your part, someone is picking up your slack.  Don’t be a consumer.  Be generous.
3. Serve.  We need everyone to step up to the plate.  Find a job and do it unto the Lord.  We need greeters, parking attendants, coffee hospitality folks, children’s leaders, youth leaders, and administrative people.  We need craftsman and carpenters and artists and visionaries.  We need small group leaders and teachers…you name it we need it.  So this is a time to increase your serve.
4. Invite.  Let’s grow during this season.  We are a church planting church.  That’s what we do.  So let’s invite as many people to come along for the ride as we can.  This is going to be a fun season.  I’m excited for every part of this next year.  Let’s bring as

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[1] I know…real encouraging word.

[2] We moved into one of the lowest performing schools in our city, because we felt like that was what God was calling us to do.  During that time we turned over almost the entire church and got a peek at the subtle racism that permeates America’s middle class.  We also got to see the ugliness of American consumerism up close and personal.

[3] That those who walked through the “school days” were forming a much stronger church than the one before.

[4] Multiply Vineyard is Vineyard USA’s church planting arm.

Redefining Success

He looked at me and said, "You get all the big things right, but you suck in the things that make a success...I've learned all I can from you so I'm leaving." He was but one of the hundreds who left after we moved our church out of a cushy facility into a low performing urban school.

The tough circumstances had highlighted all of my deficiencies as a leader, which I'll be the first to admit that there are many. But I also know, through experience, that people are willing to give you all sorts of grace when you're perceived as a winner but when things go south...well it's not quite the same.

Fast forward a few years.   I'm studying the gospel of Luke with some dear friends at Chick-fil-a and I have one of those spiritual break-through moments.  You know, where there has been something there in the text that you've seen a thousand times but the Holy Spirit sharpens your focus and all of a sudden you see something with greater clarity than you have ever seen it before. Well, I was confronted with how Jesus' life seems to turn our concept of what it means to be successful on its head.

Luke's Sermon on the Mount

20 He lifted up his eyes and looked at his disciples, and said: “Blessings on the poor: God’s kingdom belongs to you! 21“Blessings on those who are hungry today: you’ll have a feast! “Blessings on those who weep today: you’ll be laughing! 22“Blessings on you, when people hate you, and shut you out, when they slander you and reject your name as if it was evil, because of the son of man. 23 Celebrate on that day! Jump for joy! Don’t you see: in heaven there is a great reward for you! That’s what their ancestors did to the prophets. (Luke 6:20-23)

I want you to picture the scene.  Jesus has just chosen his 12 disciples.  When he comes down off the mountainside with them a multitude of people come to him and he begins to pray for them and heal the sick. These people are the broken. I like to think of them as the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely.  As the rule and reign of God's kingdom begins to break forth upon them through the ministry of Jesus they begin to discover hope.  You can imagine the scene.  It was a scene of joy, victory, and possibility.  It was a scene of fresh starts, fresh hope, and the reconciling love of God flowing freely.  You can imagine the tears of joy, tears of relief, peals of laughter, gasps of astonishment, people emotionally coming undone at the manifest power of God...coming undone because God had come near.  At this moment of victory, at this moment when his disciples are thinking, "Yes!  This is what I signed up for," Jesus raises his eyes and looks straight at them and says what we just read.

Blessings on the poor - Yes, Jesus, the disciples think, we can see that happening right here before our eyes.
Blessings on the hungry  - Yes, Jesus, we have never felt more satisfied!
Blessings on those that weep - Yes, Jesus, look how their mourning has been turned to laughter.

Blessings when people hate you, shut you out, slander and reject your name as evil because of the son of man

I bet they didn't even hear these words or if they did hear these words they failed to register until the moment the Spirit brought them back to them after the resurrection.  Why? Because we fail to hear them today.  Yes, Jesus is describing the condition of the hopeless when his rule and reign breaks forth upon them, but he is also describing what his life is going to be like and what the lives of those who follow him will be like.

By the end of Jesus' ministry he will be numbered with the poor and criminal elements of the world. Jesus will be hungry and thirsty. Jesus will weep. He will be hated, shut out, slandered, rejected, and considered evil. This is the future he knows that is coming,  Not only does Jesus know this future is coming, he knows it's God's plan.  God's plan is going to look very different from how the world views success and so from the very beginning he teaches his disciples that they have to redefine success.  From the perspective of the world, at his death he will be considered a failure and foolish, but from the perspective of his Father, obedience and faith, even in the face of suffering and humiliation, is the way this broken world must be healed.   

No one on the first Good Friday considered Jesus a success.  To the world's eyes Jesus was a failure.  

The disciples watched the Kingdom of God breaking forth all around them but they only saw and heard what they wanted to.  They didn't understand.  Neither do we.  

The Son of Man

The title that Jesus used most often when he referred to himself was the "Son of Man".  The "Son of Man" was a title dripping with messianic significance to first century Jews.  Listen to how N.T. Wright, the leading biblical scholar of our age, describes it:

In the New Testament the phrase is frequently linked to Daniel 7:13, where ‘one like a son of man’ is brought on the clouds of heaven to ‘the Ancient of Days’, being vindicated after a period of suffering, and is given kingly power...by the first century some Jews understood it as a messianic promise. Jesus developed this in his own way in certain key sayings which are best understood as promises that God would vindicate him, and judge those who had opposed him, after his own suffering (e.g. Mark 14:62). Jesus was thus able to use the phrase as a cryptic self-designation, hinting at his coming suffering, his vindication, and his God-given authority.  

- Wright, T. (2008). Acts for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-12 (p. 210). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

You see the book of Daniel describes the Son of Man as one sent by God who suffers at the hand of the satanically inspired systems and governmental structures of this world which are depicted as monsters.  After his suffering at their hands he is vindicated by God and given great authority to judge evil and set things to right.  This is how Jesus saw himself.  He saw himself as the one who had come to suffer and that God would vindicate that suffering.

Not only did he see himself in that light but he also saw that this was the way forward for those who would follow after him.  That's what he's telling them when he says they will be blessed when people do all sorts of mean and cruel things to them.  He's teaching them an important lesson about the Christian life.  He's teaching them that victory must pass through defeat.  He's teaching them that our success is not measured through worldly standards of success, but through obedience.  He's letting them know that faithfulness to God and the world's view of success are often very different things.

The disciples heard his words.  They witnessed the Kingdom of God breaking forth all around them but they didn't understand...Neither do we.

The Jesus Bell Curve

The life of Jesus would be interesting to map out on a bell curve measuring success by worldly standards. He began his life at the bottom of the bell curve, The son of two teenage peasants with questions surrounding whether he was the legitimate child of his earthly Father Joseph.  Born in a stable, hunted by Herod, living his first several years in hiding in the land Egypt.  Scary times; this was the bottom of the bell curve.

After Herod dies things began to look up, he has a normal life when they return to Nazareth after their sojourn in Egypt.  We get a few glimpses of his potential as he is questioned by scholars of the law in Temple.  The line of the bell curve begins moving in an upward trajectory.  When he is in his thirties he bursts on to the scene like a rock star and has a meteoric rise to success in the worlds eyes.  He is healer and says pointed things to the establishment.  People think he's a rebel and that he wants to shake up the power structures of the world.  This is when he tops the bell curve and thousands are following him.

But they begin to listen to what he is saying.  Many realize he has no intention of taking on Rome in a military manner, others hear his critique of the compromised temple system, and his actions and words seem to undermine the whole foundation of what it means to be the chosen people.  People begin to grumble.  People begin to leave.  The bell curve begins it's decline.  Yet Jesus doesn't seem to care.  He says harder and harder things.  People become more and more angry and disillusioned.

In one story Jesus tells his followers that unless they eat of his flesh and drink of his blood they will have no part in his Kingdom.  He doesn't qualify this statement in any way.  People are grossed out, people wonder if he is calling them to be cannibals.  His followers drop like flies.  So many leave that Jesus turns to the 12 and say's what about you guys are you gonna leave too?  They say no...but they are wondering.

On the night that he is betrayed he begins by saying one of you tonight will betray me and the disciples response to the last one of them is, "Is it I Lord, Is I?". By the time the night is over all of them but John will have scattered like sheep.  On Golgotha, the place of crucifixion, outside the city gates of Jerusalem , Jesus dies almost utterly alone.  Only his Mom, a few women, and his best friend are there to witness the passion of Jesus.  The absolute bottom of the success bell curve.  Jesus had said this was the way to the blessed life but...  

His disciples didn't get it. The Kingdom of God was breaking forward into the world with a cosmos altering deliverance, but they didn't understand.  Neither do we.

Redefining Success

Jesus lived his life to an audience of one.  He was not trying to please men but God who tests our hearts. His first priority in life was being faithful to God.  It wasn't keeping up appearances, he wasn't being thought of as the world's greatest leader, or being considered a success in the world's eyes.  His heart was set on being obedient to God through self-giving, self-sacrificing love.  He trusted God even as he hung on the cross dying.  I love the fact that he quotes Psalm 22 while he hangs on the cross.  He cries out "My God, My God Why have you forsaken me".  That Psalm is amazing because it describes the crucifixion scene.  Yet the Psalm ends with an affirmation of the goodness of God and how he has power to vindicate the one who suffers.  This psalm was on Jesus mind moments before he died.  He trusted that God was going to redeem his humiliation, suffering, and defeat and turn it into a beautiful victory.

For the follower of Jesus, success is not found in numbers, money, physical beauty, popularity, admiration or any of the other things the world puts forward to us as signs of success.  For the follower of Jesus, success is found in being obedient to the will of God no matter what the outcome.  Sometimes, many times, success is going to look like the cross.  

It is so important that we understand this concept so that we are not deceived.  If we don't understand this idea that is central to the Christian faith then we will be tempted to take the easy path.  We will look at situations that don't look like success from the worldly perspective and we will run thinking God could not possibly be found there, when that might be the exact place where we should expect to find Him.

In a society that values entertainment, comfort, and ease above all things, in a society that worships success and celebrity, Jesus' redefinition of success will seem foreign, counter-intuitive, and simply wrong.  But that is because our way of doing life has blinded us to the truth.

Jesus first disciples had a very hard time grasping this concept, and it wasn't until they saw the cross through the lens of the resurrection does victory through defeat begin to make sense.  Only through the lens of the resurrection can we begin to have the courage to live like Jesus lives.  This was hard for the first disciples; it's going to be hard for us.        

We Must Tell New Stories

Maybe we celebrate the wrong things.  For several years I was on the church planting team for the Southeast Region of Vineyard USA; I even headed it up for a couple of years.  When you are in the position of coaching church planters you get to hear all their dreams and hopes for the church God has placed in them. They all believe their church is going to be that one that explodes.  Their church will go from zero to a thousand in a year.  Why? Because those are the success stories we tell, those are the things we celebrate.

You might not be a pastor, but we tell the same stories no matter what line we are in.  We love our get rich quick schemes and business start-ups, and self-made men and women.  We love numbers, we love money, we love celebrity, we love beauty, we love power. 

But how do the stories we tell line up with the greatest story ever told?  How does our picture of success line up with the Kingdom view of success?

I kinda think the stories that will be celebrated when Jesus' kingdom breaks forth in all its fullness will be the story of the little guys and gals, those who faced great opposition but were faithful.  They will be stories we have never heard because the world doesn't care about their obedience.  No one celebrates the pastor who faithfully shepherds a hundred or so people all of his or her life.  No one celebrates the people who never give up and never give in.  No one celebrates people who live lives of simple self-giving, self-sacrificing love every day.  Nobody celebrates the person who risks everything for the sake of the Kingdom doing what's right, only to end up looking foolish or like a failure.  But part of the crazy message of Jesus is that God sees all these things.  The scriptures even state that we are not trying to please men but God who tests our heart. And this God, who has revealed himself to us in Jesus, sees all these things that the world ignores.  He cherishes them in his heart, and his promise to us, which is as strong as the resurrection and ascension of Jesus is that what we have done in secret, what the world does not celebrate, will be celebrated and vindicated by God.

Maybe we need to tell more stories about people whose lives looks like Jesus.  People who are willing to look foolish for God.  John Wimber, the founder of The Vineyard Movement, liked to say, "I'm a fool for Christ, whose fool are you?"    

Maybe the Kingdom is breaking out all around us through thousands upon thousands of unheralded acts of obedience every day.... maybe we have a choice, through obedience, to join in with that Kingdom movement. It might mean we look like a fool in the eyes of the world. Jesus certainly did.

Early one Sunday morning at a tomb where the stone was rolled away it all began to make sense.  The followers of Jesus began to see the world in a different way; hopefully...so will we.  

Is Gross Consumerism the Key to Having a Successful Church?

WKRP's Illustration of the Absurdity of Gross Commercialism & Materialism

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When I was a kid one of the most popular television shows on TV was WKRP in Cincinnati, and the most beloved episode was one that lampooned the gross commercialism of the holidays by secular institutions  such as radio stations for publicity reasons.  In the episode they dropped  a hundred live turkeys out of helicopter to the people below. 

"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!!!" -- Arthur Carlson, WKRP in Cincinnati

The TV "Drop"

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a serious miscalculation. The poor birds plunged to earth, never even having a chance. Their tragic "last flight" was relayed to WKRP listeners by reporter Les Nessman:

"It's a helicopter, and it's coming this way. It's flying something behind it, I can't quite make it out, it's a large banner and it says, uh - Happy... Thaaaaanksss... giving! ... From ... W ... K ... R... P!! No parachutes yet. Can't be skydivers... I can't tell just yet what they are, but - Oh my God, Johnny, they're turkeys!! Johnny, can you get this? Oh, they're plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenburg tragedy has there been anything like this!"

The idea was to create an over the top scenario, that was so ridiculous that people would react to the critique with laughter and think WOW, how society has gone over the top in it's crazy attention grabbing materialism and consumerism.

A Cringe Worthy Article 

This week, somewhere in America, there was an article written about new church plants and their attempt to establish Easter traditions.  This is an excerpt from the article, all names have been removed to protect the not-so-innocent.  

The church threw a huge Easter festival with a helicopter egg drop... 

The pastor,,,said he doesn't want to set any traditions, because he thinks he'll always want to out-do whatever he did the year before. While this year's Easter festival had 50,000 eggs dropped from the sky, next year he hopes to have 200,000 eggs and fireworks. 

"We're always going to go bigger,"..."Our tradition is to break tradition."...  

Today's services will open with a light show and a rock band playing the song "Roar" by pop star Katy Perry. It will be followed by a video and a performance by a spoken-word artist.

Maybe I'm just getting old and out of touch; that is definitely a possibility, but as I read this article there were a few things that  struck me, first, this could have been me 15 years ago.  For a critique to work we have to see ourselves in it.  This young (I'm assuming because I don't know him) leader is doing this because it draws a crowd.  It is what people want and if you want to be thought of as successful as a pastor there are a few things you need.  You need numbers, you need big buildings, and you need money, but what you want most of all, is you want numbers.  You want a lot of people listening to you as you speak.  

Drawing a crowd is no mystery.  I've done it and many I know have done it.  The best way to draw a crowd is to entertain them and their kids.  If you pour gasoline on yourself and light yourself on fire people will come to watch you burn. 

But here is my question, how in the world does appealing to people's basest consumeristic dreams form the character of Christ in them?  I know that when I did things like this I rationalized it by saying, we'll draw the crowd and then we'll teach them the exact opposite - that it's not about them, that they need to live by the upside down values of the Kingdom, we'll call them to live sacrificial, self-giving lives.  The problem is that approach does not work.  

What you get when you attract people this way is the herd of the superficial that migrate to whatever the newest thing in town is.  They come hoping that this consumeristic longing that they have for fulfillment can be met in the newest and flashiest, and when it fails to produce the result that it could never deliver. they are on to the next thing.

This is really the saddest part about all of this.  This consumerism that has saturated every layer of the church from the leadership to the smallest rugrat leaves everyone miserable.  Pastors hate being Jojo the Circus Clown.  After several years of this most of them drop out of ministry, many with nothing left of their faith in God or in people.  They do this because they realize what they were knocking out their brains to create was little more than a show.  For the average person this way of approaching church life keeps them shallow and when the inevitable hard times of life come they are totally spiritually bankrupt and have no resources to draw upon to help them move forward with God and life.

What Kind of Spirituality Do We Need?

You see the deep sustaining faith that we need doesn't come from light machines, helicopters, or Disney style entertainment.  It doesn't come through slick marketing, free coffee, or our favorite pop music that serves as an illustration to a spiritually centered entertainment.  Real sustaining spirituality takes (all my hyper-reformed brothers close your eyes for this sentence) work.  It requires effort on our part. The first place you are going to need to expend some effort is in developing a biblically centered worldview.  This will not come from the sermons on Sunday morning.  It means that you need to get in a good class that will take you through both the Old and New Testaments.  It will require that you actually read and reflect on the text and will involve discussing the themes with other people at various stages of their walk with Christ.  It will require making this type of study and reflection part of your life for the rest of your life. You have to go beyond the surface to the nitty-gritty faith sustaining meat.

It will require that you learn to pray, really pray and dialogue with God through all types of prayer. Meditation, reflection, intercession. worship and celebration, confession, spiritual inventory, thanksgiving all need to be part of the line of communication that opens up between you and the Holy Spirit.  If when I say,  "You need to learn to hear God's voice" makes you think I'm psycho or that is not possible you need to learn a lot more about prayer.  

Community, and I don't mean getting involved in a small group.  That can certainly help, but I mean choosing to do life with people.  Choosing to walk through conflict and not walk away, learning to really communicate and be a team, a fellowship, learning to extend and receive grace.  Being in a place where you are known and known by others.  Relationships based on mutual interdependence and the bond of Christ.  If you are always seeking for yourself and hop from place to place to place, you will never experience this and never really grow.  You will be like a leaky cup that no matter how much water is poured into you, you will never be full.

So What is the Way Forward?

I think for a season our churches will have to become much smaller.  I think we will have to realize that in many cases our growth has been false growth.  I think we will have to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work of disciple making that does not happen in a factory, one size fits all setting.  We will have to stop whoring ourselves out to the culture using gimmicks and the grossly secular to inspire growth.  It might mean that many pastors have to go back to being tent-makers or live simpler life-styles.  We will have to produce out of our churches leaders with the character of Christ that reach two to three people that they are discipling every couple of years and teaching to do the same.  This is not church growth, quick fix, kind of stuff, but the longer I've been in ministry the more I believe it's the real deal and the only way forward.

I'm praying that God will allow us at The Vineyard Chattanooga to structure our church in such a way that it can become a living embodiment of these values and serve as a model for the way forward.    

A Reflection on the Cross: The Confession of a former Pastor to the Hipsters

Vineyard/Urban YoungLife Leading Lock-in @ our School

When I first became a senior pastor I used an illustration with my congregation that I had picked up from John Wimber the the founder of the Vineyard movement.  The illustration was that I was a nickle in God’s pocket and he could spend me however he might choose.  At that time it didn’t take a lot of faith to make that statement.  I was pastoring one of the fastest growing churches in the city of Chattanooga.  We were reaching young Christian college kids from the Christian universities around us that were looking for a cool band, an ireverant approach, and free bagels and cream cheese; all of which we had in abundance.  

At the time we had a monopoly.  We were the only blue jeans and rock and roll church in the midst of what Barna describes as the most Bible loving city in the United States.  We had been able to land a deal with a Seventh Day Adventist Church that had just built the most contemporary worship center in the city so we embodied young religious folks naughtiest dream of a church.  We opened our doors and they came in by the hundreds.  Its a heady thing to preach to hundreds of people every week.  Its a heady thing to have people want to be close to you because they think you're a success.  Its a heady thing to be sought after to speak at different conferences or to be thought of as somebody.  All that to say, I was happy to be a nickle in God’s pocket because I absolutely loved the way I was being spent.  There was no cost to being God’s nickel at that point in my life.

But is that they type of pastor that the american culture needs? Do we need pastors that indulge the entertainment centered, celebrity obsessed, coddled beyond belief, consumeristic, materialistic population of the United States?  I might have been the type of pastor America wants but I wasn't the type of pastor my community needs.

God in his mercy rarely gives us what we want but always provides us with what we need.  

The first century Jews wanted their Messiah.  They wanted a King like David to ascend to the throne of Israel.  They wanted him to crush all the foreign governments that had used them and their resources over the years.  They wanted Rome and Rome’s Caesar to become their Messiah’s foot stool.  They wanted Jerusalem to be the city that all the nations of the world looked to as the world power.  They wanted the judgement of God to fall on all the unrighteous Gentiles and the status of the faithful Israelites to be elevated so that they were the envy of all other peoples of the world.  That was the Messiah Israel wanted not the one they needed.

Six years ago God began to lead me on a journey.  Our church had grown to the place where we felt like it was time to leave the Adventist Church where we had grown so significantly.  We wrestled with the option of whether to go the route of building a campus on the growing edge of suburban Chattanooga or to walk a road less traveled that seemed more in line with our mission to reach the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely.  

I had been invited to listen to a speaker that had come to Chattanooga by the name of Stanley Tam a Christian business man who had deeded his business over to God in the 1950’s.  During that time Tam capped his salary and diverted all the business’s profits into funding different Christian ministries around the world.  Over the next 60 years the business he gave to God has given over 100 million dollars to missions all over the world.  At that meeting I felt like the Lord was speaking directly to me through Tam.  I felt like he was asking me to give him back his church.  I felt like he was asking me to try the risky thing.  I said O.K.

Our church decided to not build at that time but to instead purchase a portable church system and move into one of the poor performing schools in our community.  It gave us the ability to direct the majority of our facilities budget into our mission by helping a school rebuild it’s library (Today the school has the type of library a well funded suburban school would have). The amount of effort required to set up and take down the church every week meant that we needed to mobilize most all of our people into ministry, undoing the 80-20 principle that most churches operate under. I was excited.  I thought people would see how our church was making a radical move to fulfill it’s mission and it would lead to even further growth.

I could not have been more wrong.

Jesus mission was a costly one.  At first when the people heard Jesus was proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was breaking into the world through him they were excited.  They saw him doing signs and wonders that had not been a part of Israel’s experience since the time of the prophets. They saw him attacking the power structures that had compromised with Rome.  They followed him by the thousands.  

But the more they listened to him the more they came to realize his vision of what it meant to be the Messiah and their vision of the Messiah’s vocation were very different things.  He said that being part of God’s people was no longer based on participation in worship and sacrifice at the temple but was mediated through our response to him as king, that God’s word through Torah was superseded by his word, that no longer was being a child of God based on whether you were part of the people who had been chosen to inhabit the land of Israel but simply based upon your response to him as king. They began to realize the battle he came to fight was not against Rome but a far different and older enemy who held the power of death.  He was not the Messiah they wanted but he was the Messiah they needed.

His way of defeating this enemy required two things.  It required that as a man he walk in perfect obedience to God; by faith trusting the path God had him on even if it meant his death.  Jesus trusted that God could make a way even out the other side of death and that his obedience would be vindicated.  This faithfulness was the call of the old covenant, and humanity and Israel had not been able to fulfill its requirements, not until Jesus.  For the Old Covenant to be ended and a new one inaugurated required the death of the covenant originator.  For an everlasting covenant to end it required the death of the everlasting one (God himself).  So Jesus as fully God went to the cross and died putting to death the Old Covenant and through his resurrection inaugurating a new one.  He was not the Messiah they wanted, but he was the one they needed.

Now through Jesus suffering and death and through his resurrection a way to the Father has been made by the Son.  To all those who choose to follow Jesus as King the blessings of his Kingdom come raining down.  Those blessings include forgiveness of sins, life everlasting, inclusion into the people of God through the church, and the ability to live by the rule of the King in the present. Jesus wasn't they type of Messiah Israel and the world wanted but he was the type of Messiah they needed.

But to gain this victory for us it meant that Jesus had to live a life that looked like defeat.  As a man he had to fully identify with the human condition; this condition often involves suffering.  In the end all but a few friends had walked away from Jesus.  Though he was a king he was mocked as a common criminal.  Though he loved he was despised.  Though he was the deathless one he tasted death. Though he was the sinless one he became sin.  He died publicly humiliated almost utterly alone.  Yet he trusted God through it all and was obedient to the will of the Father.  Jesus wasn't the type of Messiah Israel and the world wanted but he was the type of Messiah they needed.

As we think about the cross of Jesus and what it means, I think we also might get a picture that challenges our perception of what Christian leadership looks like.  Maybe just maybe Christian leadership looks different?  Maybe Jesus gives us a different picture of what the Christian life looks like? Maybe just maybe if we want to be a nickle in God’s pocket to be spent how he chooses, he might spend us in a way that looks different from the world’s picture of success; he might choose to spend us in a way that is hard but, in a mysterious Kingdom of God sort of way, increases the value of the nickel he’s spending into something priceless and beautiful ?

We left the 44,000 square foot, 2 million dollar state of the art worship center and moved into a low performing high school, and week one we mobilized 80 percent of our people to serve.  Within 6 months we only had 40 percent of those people left.  Each week they dropped like flies.  Within five years we had turned over the entire church except for a very few, very faithful people.  Friends that I thought would be with me forever left and did not leave well.  People have questioned my leadership ability (I have questioned my leadership ability!), I have been told that I’m a horrible speaker, that I’m lazy, that I've squandered a great opportunity, that I’m out of touch, that I’m a loser.  Last year the enemy came after my family.  My name has been trashed, we are constantly under financial pressure, The stress has been almost unbearable at times and I probably came as close to a nervous breakdown as I’ll ever come last summer. In my darkest moments I wonder if I really did hear from God or was I just over spiritualizing.

But I've noticed something.

I've noticed people are watching.  People whose pain and suffering far outstrip the minor inconveniences I've faced over the last several years.  They’re watching to see if I’ll last.  Will I remain faithful.  They are watching to see if life can come from death, if glory can come through humiliation, if joy can be found on the other side of suffering. They are watching to see if obedience and faithfulness will be vindicated.  

To be honest I’m watching too.

But I've come to suspect something.  As I look at the cross of Jesus and the wisdom of God, I’m starting to see a bigger picture emerge.  Maybe what my community and country needs is not more pastors who are celebrities, maybe they don’t need more pastors that model the picture of western success, maybe they don’t need more pastor’s who use the authority given to them to build their own Kingdom. Maybe we don't need more pastors who could have been world class CEO’s and can build mega-institutions.  Maybe just maybe the world needs more pastors whose lives look like Jesus.  Maybe they need to see faithful obedience walked out even when the cost is unbelievably high.  Maybe they need to see faith and hope where all signs point to hopelessness.  Maybe the pastors we need aren’t the pastors we want.  Maybe their lives look more like the cross than the crown.

I look to the cross of Jesus this Holy Week and I feel hope.  Because the Messiah I need is the Messiah I got, and somehow he is transforming the painful broken things in my life into beautiful, wonderful examples of his victory and grace.  I’m happy to be a nickle in your pocket, Jesus.  Thank you, Lord.  Thank-you for the cross.

Happy Easter.

Pastor Jeff