The Shift in Evangelical Thinking

The New York Times magazine had a feature-length article this weekend on the changes occurring within the Evangelical movement that I read while closing things out at Cloud 9 (which was an awesome retreat...great job Donnell and team!).

Jim Wallis does a good job of excerpting the article, describing the shift as a "Real Awakening" so I won't do so here. Suffice it to say, the article certainly reflects my own personal experience in my faith journey and a surprising number of those I know. Clearly the Spirit is doing something.

A complementary read, much shorter and perhaps more to the point, is this post provocatively titled Willow Creek Repents? in which Bill Hybels reflects on the results of a comprehensive study his mega-church conducted on the effectiveness of their programs in making disciples:

Speaking at the Leadership Summit, Hybels summarized the findings this way:

Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn’t helping people that much. Other things that we didn’t put that much money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.

Having spent thirty years creating and promoting a multi-million dollar organization driven by programs and measuring participation, and convincing other church leaders to do the same, you can see why Hybels called this research “the wake up call” of his adult life.

Hybels confesses:

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

In other words, spiritual growth doesn’t happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. And, ironically, these basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage.

The blog post also has links to the full video presentation by Hybels.

It's great to see so many streams starting to run together.

Business Models for Making Social Media Work

I've been thinking about ways to use the Internet to promote books lately. There are the obvious things to try, a website, MySpace/Facebook/Name-your-favorite social network, a blog, etc. But its clear that the choice of venue for your efforts is not the most important decision. You need to pick the combination of things that works both in terms of your resources and your audiences predilections.

That said, I really like the model Ariana Huffington employs at the Huffington Post. Here's an excerpt from an article from Fortune describing it in a nutshell

Unlike a conventional newspaper that devotes the majority of its resources to basic newsgathering, the Huffington Post instead devoted its scant editorial budget to hiring a few key editors, staff bloggers, and political reporters who post links to the day's stories and imbue the site with a dishy and slightly indignant sensibility, while giving the endless parade of invited bloggers co-star status on the Arianna Show. To date, some 1,600 bloggers have accepted Huffington's invitation to write. They are given a password to log into the site's publishing system and blog at will.

It's an ever-changing stew. On a given day John Cusack, Deepak Chopra, Nora Ephron, Bill Moyers, Al Franken, Bill Maher, Governor Bill Richardson, John Kerry, and scores of other politicos, actors, activists, and academics take to the digital pages of the Post with their views, causes, and beefs.

This model of drawing together a collection of interesting voices into an ever flowing "collage" of opinions and ideas characterizes many of my favorite web sites over the years. A good example I like to point out is worldchanging.org.
Gotta run to the fall festival...

The Dread Cancer of Stinginess?

I recently took over leadership of the missions ministry at my church, the Ann Arbor Vineyard, and one of the issues we're dealing with is how to balance the need of our sister churches with the fear of creating a dependency. As John Rowell points out in the beginning of his article The Dread Cancer of Stinginess | John Rowell | The Christian Vision Project

Few principles have been as central to the modern missions movement as the "three-self paradigm." This seminal framework was popularized in the 19th century by three notable leaders: Henry Venn, Rufus Anderson, and John Nevius. It proposes that truly indigenous churches should be self-governing, self-propagating and self-supporting. For 200 years the three-self ideal has been nearly axiomatic. Modern missiologists have placed particular emphasis on the last point, interpreting it to emphasize financial independence and developing a whole stream of thought trumpeting "the dangers of dependency." These missiologists want to prevent the unhealthy dynamics they presume are unavoidable when outside funds are introduced into any newly developing indigenous movement.

Indeed, a desire to avoid dependency is also a core part of the "Missiological Assumptions for The Vineyard—USA" which states:

Dependency exists when churches in another culture are not able to function on their own without assistance. The most common form of dependency is financial. While we recognize that some level of dependency is likely during the pioneering stage of church planting, we are committed to avoiding long-term dependency among our churches.

But like Rowell, I think there is a real danger of misapplying this principle due to biases inherent in our western mindset toward the world.

To be clear, I'm not in favor of indiscriminate handouts driven by guilt at having wealth. The ability to create wealth is a gift from God and I don't feel guilty about it. At the risk of heading down a rabbit trail I'll add that I have to balance this with a strong dose humility when I realize that my ability to build a business may be dependent in large part on structural imbalances in the world. Never the less, as Don Bromley so eloquently said from the pulpit this summer (and I paraphrase from memory): "It's great if you know how to create wealth...now go give it away to help the poor!"

But how do we do that without creating unhealthy dependency? Rowell proposes a “more interdependent” model where, quoteing Samuel Escobar, "churches from rich nations add their material resources to the spiritual resources of the churches in poor nations in order to reach out to a third area." He then points to YWAM as one example of such a model.

All well and good, but it doesn’t seem to me to address the core issue: How to avoid dependency? For me, answering this question has to overcome a number of ingrained biases.

Living in a wealthy society, we’ve all had experiences where we realize we were taken advantage of. The world is full of con-artists and people “working the system,” isn’t it? Likewise, for most of my adult life I had been a Reagan, trickle-down, “the welfare system propagates poverty” Republican. I emphasize “had been” because I’ve come to see that too often this perspective fails to address the real justice issues that exist in how our society is structured. Never-the-less, the fear of creating yet another systematic imbalance through hand-outs is legitimate.

But I really think we need to carefully check the prescription for our glasses when we we’re looking at poverty issues in the world. It’s too easy to forget the yellow-tint that’s formed from seeing the local dysfunctions within our own system. Regardless of your perspective on the US welfare system, it doesn’t compare to the endemic poverty that exists in much of the world. For the most part, we’re not talking about giving someone extra money they might use to by a Nintendo instead of food. Many of our brothers and sisters don’t even have running water, much less televisions!

So what’s the answer? I’m no expert and I’m only musing out loud, but over the coming months, here’s what I’ll be pondering:

Can we trust local leadership? Can we get on the same page with them regarding the problem of dependency?

If we’re dealing with an area where Christians are persecuted, should we give more? Or give less because the perception that they’re beholden to “western” money endangers them?

Is there a way to give that fosters economic development such as micro-loans, etc.?

And finally, if dependency is such a big deal, why didn’t Paul address the topic in his letters? He clearly did on the local church level, but when talking about intra-church giving his advice was to give generously. Period.

A great TV Commercial

I watch so little TV that I miss out on all the good ads. This one is a few years old but I'm just now discovering it. I love it (and so did my son, Robert).

Sony BRAVIA - Balls - The Advert