Unlearning Church, Chapter One

Back to my notes on Unlearning Church by Mike Slaughter, the pastor of Ginghamsburg Church in Tipp City, OH.

CHAPTER ONE - BORN TO BE WILD

- "Church growth" was the mantra of the 1980s and 1990s.

- To move forward I have had to unlearn the megachurch and CEO model.

- A one-size-fits-all approach toward growth will definitely not be the most effective model of the 21st century.

- If the emerging church is recognized and valued for anything, it's for a highly effective, indigenous carrying out of the mission of Jesus Christ.

- Anybody God uses to accomplish a miraculous purpose takes risks and dreams out of this intuitive voice of the Spirit that calls within.

- Peter did the impossible (walked on water) because he responded to the voice of Jesus instead of listening to the storms and fears of others.

- If God could speak through Balaam's ass, God can also speak through me.

- Jesus' followers had been with him for three years. Didn't they learn enough about Jesus by watching and copying his work? Jesus claimed that information and imitation aren't enough.

- LIVING FOR GOD IS NOT IMITATION, IT INVOLVES CRUCIFIXION.

- I want to invest my life in those who want to pursue radical Christianity.

- Jesus calls us to self-expenditure, not self-infatuation.

- I don't want to lead a megachurch of people who come together to be inspired to live status-quo lives peppered with Judeo-Christian values. I want to empower radical followers of Jesus.

- My continued quest is to stay focused on the horizon, watching where God is moving. I want to see where God is taking the church next.

- God intends for churches to move much less predictably than most usually do.

- Your church may become hard to label, just as fire from heaven is hard to fit into a box.

CIY 2008 Slideshow #1

Thanks to Brooke, I now have pictures. And now it should work.

CIY Highlights

It's long, but the end of the video is worth it. Dodgeball! Steve's out.

Viva La Vida

I like it a lot.

I would put Coldplay's albums (including the Live one) in this order of favorites:

1. A Rush Of Blood To The Head

2. Live 2003 (the DVD is awesome as well)

3. Viva La Vida

4. Parachutes

5. X&Y

This is not to say I don't like X&Y; it's still better than what most bands put out. I just think it's the worst of the Coldplay albums.

Christ In Youth Conference, Day Five

I don't know if it's because I haven't been in seven years or what, but I was really impressed with the CIY conference.

For one, I thought the speakers were excellent. In my past days at CIY, you definitely got some hits and misses. This year they were all hits. Also, I thought the worship band - Matt Bayless (or as I like to call him, Billy Ray Cyrus, he looks just like him) and his band did a great job.

As for the day:

I went to breakfast earlier than usual because we had an adult meeting before the morning show started. The morning show ended on a good note. Then it was to Encounter and D-Groups again, it seemed like everyone was a little bit tired and quite a bit ADD today.

After lunch, the group went to see a comedian, while I went back to the dorms and worked on some stuff for Sunday. I also went and bought a surprise that I unveiled that night. The reason I didn't go to see the comedian was (1) not a big fan of comedians, I don't know why, never have; (2) I needed to get that surprise; and (3) some of our group were going to be involved in the dodgeball competition during free time.

So those of us who did not participate in the competition went to cheer our group. They lasted a whole minute and 45 seconds in the first round, which was amusing to everyone. Then we went and played frisbee and another group challenged us to Ultimate Frisbee, where we got destroyed again. The good thing is our group are all good sports. I tore a hamstring muscle trying to catch up to a frisbee to knock it down, so for the rest of the trip I was hobbled. But it was all good.

One thing that I think I have failed to mention is that our group has attracted a few people from other groups who have felt out of place from their churches or who don't feel their churches are friendly. We got the comment all the time that we were easy to talk to and that it seemed we were honestly interested in each person. Which is awesome. In fact, one of them is going to visit us and possibly join our group. I was very proud of our group all week long at how they responded to other people (like the kicking us out of our spot incident).

We went to dinner where the dinner was actually good - for once, although all the lunches and breakfasts were good - and then it was on to the last main session. It was great. The speaker was from Flatirons Church, which is where my brother plays on the worship team once a month. He was awesome - he said things that have been resonating within me for the last few years, and I thought he tied in the whole week very nicely. At the end, we had four commitments: two rededicated their lives to God, one person dedicated themselves to ministry, and one person gave their life to Christ. Praise God! Afterwards everyone said goodbye to the people we met, and then we went to our youth group time, where we ate more ice cream, talked about our decisions and what happened during the week, and then we prayed. As we were praying for the student who gave their life to Christ, a funny thing happened (he'll have to tell you), and we all laid down on the basketball court and laughed for about fifteen minutes.

And I can't forget the surprise: we now have a student ministry mascot. And I'm going to say its name and what it is, and nobody will get the inside jokes except for our youth group. I presented "Smessica the Unicorn" stuffed animal to our group last night, and it was quite honestly the perfect ending to a perfect conference.

I have realized how much I truly have missed youth ministry. I feel like I'm making an impact on lives again through the Spirit. I love worship ministry and I'm glad I get to do it, but I think there's been a void in my soul because even though I guess it has an impact on certain people on Sunday mornings, I feel like I'm gifted through God to help bring change in students' lives. Although I'm much older than when I started youth ministry (which is good and bad, let's just say it's going to take me two weeks to recover from this past week), and sometimes I feel out of touch and place, I feel like I can make a difference.

Now we'll see what happens with our students, as we continue to challenge them to grow and MOVE from even where they left CIY to what God has in store for them this year.

Christ In Youth Conference, Day Four

Didn't have a chance to update last night, because we got in late.

I did not see the rest of the students until our Encounter time, because I didn't feel well. But Encounter went well, and then we did our D-Group, which also was a good time. After D-Group, we all went to the gym to hear a speaker talk about his ministry called Heart Support, which helps people with addictions. The guy got up to speak - he wasn't a very dynamic speaker - but he looked exactly like Rob Bell, and it made me think that he was copying what Rob Bell looked like which I thought wasn't very original.

Yeah, he's Rob Bell's brother. Silly me. No wonder he looks like him.

For our free time after lunch, we went to downtown Durango to hang out. I bought a Durango shirt and hat and a shirt for my daughter, we went to lunch at Beau Jo's.

The night session was amazing. We got to see the video called "Baht", which is a story about a girl who was kidnapped by sex traffickers and who spent over a year in the sex slave industry in Thailand. It's an amazing sad story. I felt physically ill watching the video, because of the statistics and everything. The first $25,000 of the offering for Christ In Youth conferences this summer goes to a place called Rapha House, which is a place in Cambodia that houses girls who have been rescued from the sex trafficking industry and teaches them how a trade so that they don't return to a life of prostitution - forced or unforced. After worship, the youth minister from Mars Hill - his name is Steve Carter - talked about Stephen from the Bible and how we are called to be bold.

For our youth group time, we actually went over to a spot by the guys' dorm, because we had snuck ice cream out of the cafeteria to eat at night. We laid down on the basketball court and looked at the stars for awhile. Thankfully, the spiders and snakes were finished with their basketball game so we could use the court (sorry, inside joke - that one's for you Elisa). We talked about what we could do in order to help combat the trafficking problem in the world. I think our youth ministry is ready to make a difference, to go beyond ourselves to help people definitely less fortunate than we are.

Friday is our last day at CIY, and we don't want to set it on cruise control and just coast the last day for tomorrow. My prayer is that everyone stay focused and listen to how God wants them to MOVE.

Christ in Youth Conference, Day Three

It was another beautiful day in Durango.

If it wasn't six and a half hours away, I could really see myself coming here and hanging out. It's absolutely beautiful. The picture above is a view looking towards Fort Lewis College where we're staying (on top of the plateau).

Today started out kind of late for myself and one student because we woke up late. No running today.

Today's topic was community, and of course we had problems with our little community, the group of students and myself who went. One student wasn't getting along with another student and it was affecting our D-Group time, so I ended up getting all the guys together in one of the rooms and we hashed it out for about 45 minutes. In the past, as a student minister, I was not very good about confrontation and helping students solve problems. I'm not a confrontational person at all, although I'm trying to be better - and I figured that this time with the guys duking it out would help us actually be a better community. The amazing thing is that it worked.

After our D-Group, I had promised the guys in the group that we could go to Walmart down in Durango, because one of the guy students wanted to be in the talent show they were having later on. He's a spray paint artist, really neat stuff. I wasn't really sure that it would work in this context of a talent show - usually it involves mostly singing and playing instruments. Plus I was wondering if they would really give him the time to paint his picture. He went and performed - and he painted this amazing space picture in three minutes! Everyone was amazed and he became quite the popular guy on campus today. Which is awesome.

I'm going to go ahead right now and brag on the youth ministries I've been part of. In some way or another, every single one of my student ministries has made me proud at CIY and other trips. I remember my first student ministry, we went on a missions trip and we went to this beach event put on by the college that I went to, and they had a beach competition. Our youth ministry, which was located in a state pretty darn far from the beach (that would be Colorado), won the beach competition. The group I took to CIY from Dallas in 2001 had a bunch of musicians, and people from other churches would come and hang out with our music people and sing songs all night. And now, with this group - we have some talented students and because we're a small group, we've already "attracted" one girl from another group who has been hanging out with us because she gets "lost" in the large group she's with.

Anyway, during free time I got to spend some time with a youth ministry friend - I grew up with her husband, and they've been youth ministers of a church in Flagstaff, Arizona for 12 years. It was good to get caught up with her.

Tonight, the same guy who spoke last night came up and spoke about community. He talked about the stories of Achan in Joshua and Ananias and Sapphira in Acts and how these were examples of people who had the potential to destroy the community of people who believed in God - but that they instead were killed because God takes these kind of things seriously. Then he told us of four different community killers: (1) Make it all about you. (2) Lie to your leaders (in other words, tell them you're fine when they ask you and don't open up to anyone). (3) Never confront anyone. (4) Believe that cheating God is no big deal. Of course, we all thought it was interesting that #3 was the issue today, and our students resolved some issues and created actual community.

Tonight, before we talked in our youth group time, I took everyone to Baskin Robbins and treated them to ice cream. It was a fun ending to a great day.

Christ In Youth Conference, Day Two

Day two started out with a bang - actually a run, as three of us guys got up at 6:30 a.m. to go running. We didn't go very far, considering 1) two of us don't usually run very often, and 2) we are in Durango, which is 7500 feet up. But it felt good to do a little exercise to start. When we walked out of our rooms, we saw three guys doing some kind of Tai Chi or something and when we came back they were still doing it.

The theme of the day was The Holy Spirit, which I thought was a good theme. Unfortunately, for the most part, the "brotherhood" of churches I've grown up in and that CIY is part of has not done a good job teaching about the Holy Spirit. He's kind of that uncle that everyone has that no one talks about because 1) We don't know a lot about him, and 2) He's kind of weird when we get around him. Our brotherhood has emphasized the Word of God way over the Spirit of God, emphasized reasoning and logic over feeling and emotional responses. So I was glad that we were able to spend a day learning about the Holy Spirit.

Our youth group time and D-Group place* (see below for what happened) is this rock garden area that opens up to a circle that's perfect for a group. So for our discipleship group we talked about the Holy Spirit, and I had this great illustration about letting the Holy Spirit work in our lives, but the two glasses that I was going to use were stuck together and we spent about ten minutes trying to get them unstuck, so I had to modify.

We had about four hours of free time after lunch, which I used to work (after all, I'm also a worship minister who does all the media stuff) and take a short nap. Dinner was not good. I wish the Holy Spirit had told me not to eat the pork chop, because it really affected me later on. Then we had the evening session, which was really good. The worship band played three of my favorite worship songs (From The Inside Out, Consuming Fire and Mighty To Save). The speaker was Chris Duncan, someone I spent a couple of weeks with back in my ILYGD (stands for Impressively Large Youth Group Days) - and all the students really felt that his message impacted them. He talked about the Holy Spirit and then we did this neat exercise where a third of us sang with the band, a third read scripture, and a third prayed a prayer on the screen, and then we rotated. After that exercise we spent some time allowing the Holy Spirit to move in our lives and guide us.

Which was my favorite part of the day. I have been for the past year been bombarded with God telling me to do something with the whole human trafficking problem. But I keep getting busy and I don't allow room for God to work in my life to make a difference somehow, even though he keeps telling me this. Case in point: I had not listened to Mars Hill's podcast in over six months. Three weeks ago I decide to listen, and they had a guest speaker. Guess what he talked about? Human trafficking. And today we saw a video about - guess what? - human trafficking and sex slavery. God is convicting me - now I just need to get serious and specific about what he wants me to do.

* Least favorite part of the day - session gets out and we go to Youth Group time, to our spot - the spot we had last night, the spot we did our Encounter and D-Groups at - and someone has already taken it. We tell this person that we have been using that spot, and he throws out the ILYG card by saying, "Well, our group is big and we need a bigger place for us to meet." So we lost our spot. Not cool. It made me think if I would have done the same in my ILYGD. I'm not sure. Probably. I didn't think much in those days about smaller youth groups, although we did plan things to do with a couple smaller youth ministries.

Anyway, that was the day. The guys' supply of Cheetos, Oreos and Mountain Dew is disappearing rapidly. We may have to stock up again tomorrow. And oh yeah. My jaw is going to be sore tomorrow, since I got hit with a frisbee we were playing with in the dark. I know. Genius.

Christ In Youth Conference, Day One

So I thought it would be kind of cool to each day at the end of the night share my experiences of that day at the Christ In Youth Conference. For those who don't know, eight high school students and I are in Durango, CO at Fort Lewis College. We are at the Move Conference, a summer event that takes place on college campuses all over the country. This is my first CIY adventure in seven years, so I'm not sure what's different going into it.

It's a six and a half hour drive from Aurora to Durango, so we left at 8:00 a.m. and for the most part had an uneventful trip. We get about twenty minutes outside of Durango, and they're doing construction, and we wait in a line for over an hour. We got out of our van and skipped rocks in the creek. We finally get to Durango, we eat, we fumble around trying to find our rooms and where to get the keys, I miss an important adult leader meeting in the process, and then finally there's the evening session. By the way, the girls totally got shafted in the room department. They actually are in guys' dorms (there aren't any guys in there during the summer), and the guys are in nice apartments. The girls all have to share showers with their hall - each room in the guys has its own shower.

Anyway, the session starts. The worship leader is pretty good, I had never heard of him before (remember, it's been seven years!), but I find out he was there last year as well, which is why there are a lot of screams when they come on stage. They do several worship songs - most of them I know but some are unfamiliar to the students because we haven't done some of them yet. Then the conference director - Nate Karnes - gets up and says some interesting words, words that made me think. He talked about the way we judge people even when we get to the conference, and he even brought up how youth leaders do the same - they look at a large group, and think "they must be shallow" or they look at a small group and say "that church must be lame."

The last few years I went to Christ in Youth, I was regularly taking 50 plus students every summer. I remember being one of those "large churches". I remember the pats on the back. I remember one of my youth ministry friends comment to me, "Wow, you really have done well in your ministry. You have one of the largest groups here." I remember being proud because there was only one youth ministry that brought a larger group than we did one summer.

I looked at the seating chart this year, and our group is the smallest. There's a church in Arizona that has over 300 students at the conference. Our small group, highlighted in blue, is very obviously small. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Thankfully God has changed my heart in this regard. To me it doesn't matter how big or small a group is at CIY. I'm extremely excited about the group God has led from our church to come to CIY. I'm excited to get to know our students and for our students to get to know each other.

Oh, and before I get ultra-spiritual, I just had two of our students knock on the door and moon me.

We'll see what God has in store for us tomorrow.

Unlearning Church, Introduction

I'm reading through Unlearning Church by Mike Slaughter for the tenth time, I believe. It's a great book and I would encourage you to read it. But if you just want the Cliff Notes, just read the next several blog posts to see highlights from each chapter:

INTRODUCTION - TIME TO UNLEARN

- this book is about leaders in churches, old and young, daring to leave the status quo and fearlessly stepping out into God's promising and yet unknown future. It's about "Unlearners" on the cutting edge of how God works best: through unique personalities localized to their context. It's about the prophetic witness to Christ's presence in individual communities with a ripple effect reaching around the world.

- I'm 'unlearning' the model of cloning someone else's blueprint.

- God's Kingdom is not best represented by franchises of McChurch.

- The Holy Spirit is empowering transformational leaders who demonstrate the kingdom of God in unique ways in each different community.

- Every church leader has a specific call and distinguishing base of talent. You already have the God-given gifts you need. Your mission is to use them to excel in a local implementation of the overall mission of Jesus Christ. Your effectiveness in the future will be measured by how well your church demonstrates the Kingdom of God in unique ways to your indigenous community and beyond.

- Today's emerging churches are anchoring themselves in the ancient truths of biblical authority, yet they're operating in an atmosphere of innovation and change.

- Armed with a strong sense of "first causes", they're forming distinctive communities of faith. They are safe spaces for spiritually hungry hearts, environments of deep connection, experiences of community, and centers of involvement in the pursuit of social justice.

- THE CALL IS TO UNLEARN - TO BREAK THE RULES OF CONVENTIONAL WISDOM IN ORDER TO TRANSLATE GOD'S ANCIENT PURPOSES TO TODAY'S POSTMODERN WORLD.

- It's time to go beyond knowing and believing God's truth to experiencing and demonstrating God's presence.

- God is calling people to develop faith communities that effectively reach unchurched populations for Jesus Christ in a postmodern, post-Christian world - radical disciples abandoned to the purpose of evangelism.

How He Loves Us

I love finding new, different worship songs. Each one is kind of like discovering a treasure.

A few weeks ago I found one that I think is incredible. It's called How He Loves Us by John Mark McMillan. I'm not sure if I am going to use it for worship at the church I'm at, but I definitely have been using it for times of personal worship.

Here are the lyrics:

He is jealous for me
Love's like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

Oh, how he loves us so,
Oh, how he loves us,
How he loves us so.

So we are his portion and he is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes,
If grace is an ocean we're all sinking.
So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest.
I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way...

He loves us,
Oh how he loves us,
Oh how he loves us,
Oh how he loves.
He loves us,
Oh how he loves us,
Oh how he loves us,
Oh how he loves.

When I first heard it, the whole "sloppy wet kiss" part really bothered me, but I've decided that it's okay to be uncomfortable in worship sometimes.

Here is the song done by Kim Walker and Jesus Culture. I think it's an excellent rendition.



And if you want to see something that will blow you away (at least it did me, I lost it watching this), take a look at how another church used the song.

Designing A Website Is Long, Tedious Work...

but I'm getting there.

I'm putting together a student ministry website for...get ready...my student ministry. I like it so far, it needs some work, and as of right now only the pictures link and the calendar link is up and running. Hopefully by the end of this next week, it will be fully functional. You can check it out here.

Gotta Love The Onion...

Right now their most popular video is "New Wearable Feedbags Allow People To Eat More, Move Less" - as I was watching the video I wondered if that really was the CEO of Yum brands (the company that owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, etc).

Watch it here. It might make you laugh.