Earlier this month I filmed a commercial for a course I am teaching
in the Spring semester at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. It is truly a new world when academic courses
come with video commercials to help students decide what to take in a given
semester.
As I wrote out what I wanted to say to invite students to the course, one big idea emerged: every leader that I coach and every student that I teach - teaches me! This means I coach the next person a bit differently, and teach the next class a bit differently - because of the impact of my ministry conversations. Sometimes 25 or 30 hours of coaching calls in a month flow like a single river, like one extended, meandering conversation. The voices from Tuesday echo in conversations on Thursday, even when the Tuesday client has never met the Thursday person. I work with amazing people - often early in their ministry journey or innovators whose hunches have yet to be fully confirmed. They are often invisible to the power players in their judicatory and sometimes discouraged in their interactions with them - because my clients are constantly trying new things, testing new paradigms, and coloring outside the lines. These people are reinventing the church.
When I think of the book that Beth Estock and I released in 2016 (Weird Church) or the book that I will release early next year (Multi) - I realize that without these innovative pioneers that I talk to several hours each week - such books would never be written! When I think about my finger prints on the ministries of hundreds of churches, I realize that it's not only my finger prints, but those of hundreds of others. It is the cumulative conversation that shifts the riverbed. I constantly hear back from clients how helpful are the examples I share from other churches, other pastors, in other cities - facing similar issues and trying out certain strategies.
It is life-giving work. I help to scatter great ideas from one innovator to the next - sort of like the sower. Except with my people, I am almost invariably sowing these ideas on to very fine soil.
I work part time with the Path 1 team that resources church planting for the United Methodist Church. My title recently changed to Director of Church Multiplication. I am focused on helping effective multi-site churches teach others how to do what they do so well. It is a ministry of orchestrating holy copy-catting. I remain convinced that the best church multiplication strategy is not a giant pyramid scheme, officed in one place with a bureaucracy - but rather, a platform whereby brilliant and elegantly simple ideas can be copied and adapted by others. We don't have to manage them, control them, franchise them - none of it. Just share the ideas, and invite our neighbors to take them, adapt to their context and run! Is this not what was going on in the Book of Acts?
One of my favorite Pauline quotes from the New Testament is this: "I have had my conversation with the world." (KJV) Paul saw his ministry as a conversation, a single river flowing from one city to the next. Amazingly, Paul's ancient conversation, often expressed in epistles to a church that closed its doors 1500 years ago, still animates our ministry conversation today.
I love my innovators - my restless souls more in love with the possibilities of the gospel than with the trappings and benefits of church as it currently exists! They are more apostles than managers! And because of them, our future as church - and as a global community - is infinitely brighter than it would otherwise be!
Holiday blessings to each of you!
As I wrote out what I wanted to say to invite students to the course, one big idea emerged: every leader that I coach and every student that I teach - teaches me! This means I coach the next person a bit differently, and teach the next class a bit differently - because of the impact of my ministry conversations. Sometimes 25 or 30 hours of coaching calls in a month flow like a single river, like one extended, meandering conversation. The voices from Tuesday echo in conversations on Thursday, even when the Tuesday client has never met the Thursday person. I work with amazing people - often early in their ministry journey or innovators whose hunches have yet to be fully confirmed. They are often invisible to the power players in their judicatory and sometimes discouraged in their interactions with them - because my clients are constantly trying new things, testing new paradigms, and coloring outside the lines. These people are reinventing the church.
When I think of the book that Beth Estock and I released in 2016 (Weird Church) or the book that I will release early next year (Multi) - I realize that without these innovative pioneers that I talk to several hours each week - such books would never be written! When I think about my finger prints on the ministries of hundreds of churches, I realize that it's not only my finger prints, but those of hundreds of others. It is the cumulative conversation that shifts the riverbed. I constantly hear back from clients how helpful are the examples I share from other churches, other pastors, in other cities - facing similar issues and trying out certain strategies.
It is life-giving work. I help to scatter great ideas from one innovator to the next - sort of like the sower. Except with my people, I am almost invariably sowing these ideas on to very fine soil.
I work part time with the Path 1 team that resources church planting for the United Methodist Church. My title recently changed to Director of Church Multiplication. I am focused on helping effective multi-site churches teach others how to do what they do so well. It is a ministry of orchestrating holy copy-catting. I remain convinced that the best church multiplication strategy is not a giant pyramid scheme, officed in one place with a bureaucracy - but rather, a platform whereby brilliant and elegantly simple ideas can be copied and adapted by others. We don't have to manage them, control them, franchise them - none of it. Just share the ideas, and invite our neighbors to take them, adapt to their context and run! Is this not what was going on in the Book of Acts?
One of my favorite Pauline quotes from the New Testament is this: "I have had my conversation with the world." (KJV) Paul saw his ministry as a conversation, a single river flowing from one city to the next. Amazingly, Paul's ancient conversation, often expressed in epistles to a church that closed its doors 1500 years ago, still animates our ministry conversation today.
I love my innovators - my restless souls more in love with the possibilities of the gospel than with the trappings and benefits of church as it currently exists! They are more apostles than managers! And because of them, our future as church - and as a global community - is infinitely brighter than it would otherwise be!
Holiday blessings to each of you!
Thanks for this great message Paul
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