Category: Books

Learning Burnout Before its Too Late

Posted on November 2, 2014

Remarks about “celebrity pastors” are everywhere (mind you it takes “celebrants” to reach such status). Unfortunately, some of these pastors have followed a tragic, Aristotelian arc–starting in a good place, gaining influence, and then falling. Before joining the scoffers, we do well to heed the wisdom of Solomon,

“I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense, and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns; the ground was covered with nettles, and its stone wall was broken down. Then I saw and considered it; I looked and received instruction” (Prov. 24:30-32).

It is foolish to mock those “who lack sense,” but it is wise to watch and learn. This is true and helpful for everyone, not just pastors.

Learning the Signs of Burn 

A few years ago I began watching pastors burn out and leave their churches. Some left out of exhaustion, others out of moral failure. Aware that, I too, could face a similar fate, I began reflecting on my own motivations for ministry and evaluating my habits. During this time I read Leading on Empty, which helped me identify the physiological warning signs of burn out. It helped me understand that a general lack of motivation may be the result of overworking and under-resting, which depletes serotonin levels. We’re not made to run full throttle for long. As a result, I stepped away from speaking engagements for about a year. I focused on my family and church.

It was also helpful to read about the tendency to withdraw from things the pastor finds difficult, such as counseling or preaching, depending on the pastor. Burnout is accompanied by a malaise that dulls a person’s senses. He begins to lack excitement for anything. Natural strengths slowly become weaknesses. A couple of these warning lights lit up, which with my fresh understanding, helped me make changes. Burnout is preventable. And the pastor is responsible for how he responds to ministry pressures, congregational expectations, and outside demands. Most of all, he has to be aware of God in Christ, to walk in the Spirit. Studying about God is not the same as walking with God. Awareness is very important.

Reactivating Devotional Habits

In addition to these warning signs, I reacquainted myself with life-giving habits. Knowing my soul lifts when I spend time in creation, I began to walk the quai next to Town Lake, praying out loud and listening to God. I returned to one of the two devotionals I read, Near Unto God by Abraham Kuyper. While most of his writings are theologically robust, his devotional takes those seeds of strength and waters them with contemplative reflections, all relating to the necessity and goodness of being near to God. It was in this season that I fell upon a quote that flies me:

Love for God may be fine sentiment. It may be sincere and capable of inspiring holy enthusiasm, while the soul is still stranger to fellowship with the eternal, and ignorant of the secret walk with God.

In essence, Kuyper is saying that it is possible to love the ideas of God without loving God himself. While we may be tempted to judge this slicing the theological bread too thin, this warning is not without warrant. After all, it was Jesus who warned “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (Matt 7:23-24). You can preach, perform miracles, and grow a church all in the name of Jesus without Jesus even knowing you. This led me to some deep repentance, and the quote continues to pop up and correct me. I recently preached a sermon on this.

I also reread some of Eugene Peterson’s grounded, incisive, and pastorally enriching books. These things helped me revalue time with God for a season, as well as adjust some habits. I began to pray on my knees more, where I sense God’s greatness in a way that is hard to grasp sitting or standing up. My devotional line continued to be jagged but evened out a bit. The sense of God’s nearness rises and falls but he remains ever-present and with me. Faith has to lean forward or its not faith. It has to grasp at promises that are true, not be bullied by feelings that moor in untruth.

Then, this summer in the midst of a difficult season, I retreated to the Avon valley in Colorado, where I collapsed on a bed and began reading Clay Werner’s On the Brink: Grace for the Burned-out Pastor. I’ll pick up with some of the gems from Werner’s book in my next entry.

13 Quotes on Parenting

Posted on October 20, 2014

Dr. Michael Goheen served as the Jake and Betsy Tuls Professor of Missiology, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids; a Senior Fellow of the Newbigin House of Studies, San Francisco; and is currently focused on his work as Director of Theological Education and Scholar-in-residence at Missional Training Center—Phoenix. He is also known for his writings on biblical theology and mission.

His book The Drama of Scripture is, in my opinion, the best single volume book summarizing the big story of Scripture. 

With all his great academic credentials, I’ve been pleased to get to know him also as “Mike.” He and Marnie are humble in presence and earnest in faith. They just love the Lord. It shows. When Mike and his wife Marnie spoke at our parenting seminar, they shared from their mundane and funny experiences, as well as insightful reflections on raising four children. We also had several couples from our church with grown children sit on a panel. The evening was littered with wisdom. I’ve collected a few of the quotes for you.

Family Life

We always played hard with our kids after dinner for half an hour. They still remember it.

Your best disciples should be in the home.

Give your kids lots of unstructured time. Play is a gift to kids; it sparks the imagination.

Our kids don’t need to try everything. Our kids are too busy.

Don’t rob your children of play by forcing them into sport.

Missional Community is a family gathering so bring your family to the gathering.

Discipline

It’s important to make the distinction between rebellion & childishness.

I want to befriend my children before discipling them.

There’s a cruelty to not helping our kids obey.

Discipline is a fence, keeps our kids from the thorns & cliffs. If stay this side you’ll be more fully human.

End discipline on a positive note, talk about things they enjoy or play with them.

Gospel

Our children said it made them feel special to be part of Gods big story, to have a calling in his world.

The big picture of our relationship to God as Father helps our children makes sense of discipline.

40 Seekers Considering the Resurrection!

Posted on October 17, 2014

raised-190x282A local pastor sent me a very encouraging note yesterday. His church has mobilized for mission by inviting 40 non-Christians into a Raised? Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection study!

They begin meeting this week to consider the plausibility of the resurrection of Christ. Would you take few seconds to pray for them, that God would give the leaders wisdom and sensitivity, and that the seekers would uncover the beauty and necessity of the risen Christ?

If you’re interested, there’s a great film on Doubt to Faith and extra resources at www.raisedbook.com

A Book on Missional Community?

Posted on October 16, 2014

I’m considering the idea of doing a book on missional community. This might be in a chapter. If you think we need any of this in print, let me know. I should note that Brad Watson & I just finished Called Together: A Guide to Forming Missional Communities. It’s more of a “how to,” whereas this book would be a “what, why, and a bit of the how.”

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If you’ve been following the Missional Church movement, then you’ve bumped into the term missional community. If you haven’t, then you will appreciate this observation. The funny thing about “missional community” is that the name isn’t really “missional.” It doesn’t translate for un-churched people.

Consider walking next door to your new neighbor and saying: “Hey, neighbor, wanna come over and hang with my ‘missional community’?” How inviting! Depending on your context, the term “missional community” can sound awfully foreign, technical, or even cultic. Or if you’ve been around Christianity for a while, missional community may sound like a new name for small groups, a rebranding to go with all the “missional church” buzz. What is missional community? Are missional communities really any different than small groups? These are the questions we will answer in this chapter.

The Missional Church

The missional church is not a church with a mission. All churches have a mission. Stated or unstated, all churches practice some kind of mission. It may be keep to the immoral out, to keep sound doctrine in, to pray for revival, or to send missionaries to the nations. Each of these churches is an example of church with a mission. The missional church, however is church as mission. In the words of Darrell Guder, the challenge “is to move from a church with mission to a missional church.”[1] What then is a missional church? Guder writes: “With the term missional we emphasize the essential vocation and nature of the church as God’s called and sent people.”[2] Missional churches are missional in nature and vocation.

In other words, mission is the blood and breath of the missional church. Mission is not a tack-on to your life; it is your life. It flows through you, pulsing at various strengths but pulsing, in order to give breath to sharing and showing the gospel of Jesus Christ. It changes how you check the mail, how you structure your week, how you relate to neighbors, how you do your work, how you read the Bible, where you live, how you live, how you make your everyday decisions. Missional is radical, like taking up your cross and following Jesus. Missional church is a gathering of cross-bearing, Jesus-following disciples who are committed to his mission. Missional church requires nothing less than a rethinking of our identity and our practice, of who we are and what we do. Therefore, in order to effectively embrace the challenge of moving from church with a mission to church as mission, new ecclesiastical structures such as missional communities are absolutely essential.

Missional Community

A missional community is a church structure that gathers and sends groups of people on a common mission, i.e. to engage artists in the city or to help the homeless downtown. This church structure is derived from a particular view of the triune God—a divine community on mission. The Father sending the Son, the Son sending the Spirit, the Spirit sending the Church into the world to share and show the gospel of Jesus Christ. Missional communities, then, are an ecclesial expression of the missionary and communal nature of God. They are small communities of people participating in the mission of God. Technically, the term is spot on.

Missional communities have been referred to as: Clusters, Gospel communities, or even Trash Groups.[3] Missional community, however, has become the most common term in Missional Church literature. Hence, we will refer to them as missional communities or gospel communities.[4] We refer to them as City Groups. The primary reason we chose to call them City Groups is based on contextualization, a principle of missional community. Contextualization is the intentional process of communicating the historic gospel of Jesus Christ in appropriate cultural forms.[5] We will return to contextualization when we address mission.

What a Missional Community Isn’t

Perhaps it would be helpful to clarify what a Missional Community is not. The missional leaders of Soma Communities, Jeff Vanderstelt and Caesar Kalinowski, have helpfully distinguished missional communities from various other church structures by stating what they are not.[6] They are primarily not:

  • A Small Group
  • A Bible Study
  • A Therapy Group
  • A Socially-Minded Small Group
  • A Weekly Meeting
  • A Cell Group

While missional community retains aspects of these types of groups, it is not defined by one of these characteristics alone. Missional communities should study the Bible, often reflecting on a sermon or a passage of Scripture. They should provide gospel-centered counsel (not therapy) for one another. They are socially active, frequently engaging the social needs in their part of the city. They do meet for more formal gatherings, but their community is not restricted to a meeting. Like a cell group, City Groups are evangelistic; however, they practice evangelism within a much larger understanding of the mission and nature of the church. It is this understanding of mission and the nature of the church that sets missional communities apart from the list above.

Recall that a missional community is a church structure that gathers and sends groups of people on a common mission. In order to carry out this mission, each missional community needs to identify the specific mission God is calling them to. If mission is the problem, it is up to the community to embody and communicate the solution. The “problem” of mission is incredibly diverse—human trafficking, neglected elderly, dilapidated projects, homeless transients, drug addicts, work addicts, porn addicts, artists on the eastside, homeless women and children, broken social, political, and cultural systems, urban gentrification, rural bigotry, suburban idolatry, environmental crisis, and hell-bound sinners who, apart from the hearing the gospel of grace, will spend a Christless eternity. This is the problem of mission.

The Missional Cycle

An effective missional community raises the problem of mission; addresses it with the solution of the gospel, in the context of community. This is the Missional Cycle—gospel, community, and mission all working together to push the mission of the church forward in the hope of redemption. The Missional Cycle is cyclical because the problem of mission will not go away until Christ returns. It’s not something we do once, but something we do over and over again. We will explain the Missional Cycle more in chapter four. At this point, it is important to understand that missional community combines three essential elements—gospel, community, and mission—in order to address the problem of mission. Missional community, then, is more than a church structure but requires structure in order to effectively address the problem of mission.[7]

Refining our definition of missional community, we might say that missional community is a church structure that gathers and sends people on mission to share and show the gospel of Jesus Christ to one another and the world.

Gospel, community, and mission are the three essential elements for healthy missional communities. Mission is the problem. Community is the context. The Gospel is the solution. The goal of the missional community is to raise the problem of mission, address it with the solution of the gospel, in the context of community. In the next three chapters, we will unpack missional community by examining each of these three primary elements. We will begin with the solution—the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

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[1] Darrell Guder ed., The Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, 6. This was a landmark book for the missional church movement in North America. Many missional leaders and organizations can trace their roots to Guder’s seminal influence on American ecclesiology.

[2] Guder, The Missional Church, 11.

[3] Mike Breen may have formally coined the term “missional community” while serving as pastor at St. Thomas Crookes parish in Sheffield, England. Breen developed a particular type of missional community also known as “clusters.” Clusters are technically mid-sized missional communities that range between 25-65 people, but bear the same essential qualities of a missional community. Hopkins and Breen, Clusters: Creative mid-sized Missional Communities, 10-28.

[4] Gospel Communities is the term we have decided to use for our resource organization the GCM (Gospel Communities on Mission) Collective: www.gcmcollective.com.

[5] A broader and more technical definition of contextualization: “the attempt to communicate the message of the person, works, Word, and will of God in a way that is faithful to God’s revelation, especially as put forth in the teaching of Holy Scripture, and that is meaningful to respondents in their respective cultural and existential contexts.” Hesselgrave and Rommen, Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models, 200.

[6] Vanderstelt and Kalinowski, “Developing Missional Communities” I have adapted their list.

[7] Note the various missional communities throughout church history, especially the missional communities of the Early Church and the Irish.