PLAYING CHURCH

As I write this, I am staying as a guest in the home of Jeff Petrillo and Beth Estock in Portland, Oregon.  Beth is a coach with Epicenter Group and a collaborator with me, reflecting on the challenges of Christian ministry in the twenty-first century.  Beth and I are working together this week, talking through the major ideas and movement of a book, to be released in 2016.  The book concerns the future of the church - what will it look like by mid-century.  Many prophets of doom remind us (correctly) that the sky is falling.  Beth and I agree with that assessment, but we also have a strong sense of what is emerging!   Indeed we believe that the church has a very bright and wonderful future - albeit a future that may seem weird by twentieth century sensibilities.

HOW TO GET THE MAXIMUM BANG OUT OF A LEADER RETREAT

It's January and the season for leader retreats. New board members, new lead team members, and established teams needing to vision for another year! We have all suffered through some lame and tedious retreats. And most of us have been involved in some really productive ones.

CATCHING ON TO ADVENT

Advent has long been a somewhat puzzling season to me. We start out focusing on Second Coming (of all things), and then switch to Mary and Joseph narratives, and finally bring out the Wiseman the week after the Christmas tree comes down. Most mainline Christians are not oriented to keep an eye open for a literal Second Coming of Christ.   But we are oriented to a shopping season that introduces Nativity images and Christmas Carols around Thanksgiving... and so it all just gets kind of fuzzy-weird.

THE POWER OF TWELVE

In a couple of my coaching calls this month, I have been told (by very talented leaders) that they were struggling to get a committed core of people for their new church project. In both cases, their work focused on 20-something adults, who admired the new church, friended the pastor and liked the church on Facebook, and were even willing to pitch an hour of volunteering occasionally. However, in both cases, almost no company of highly committed persons came together at the core. Yet.

I DON'T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH - BUT A DINNER PARTY SOUNDS INTERESTING

Zach Kerzee is one of my new coaching clients this year. This past summer, Zach set out to do something that should be almost impossible: to plant a church, from scratch, in one of the most church-averse parts of the nation. On top of this, he had no team ready to help him. It was what we call a parachute drop church plant. I agreed to coach him, thinking to myself, "Bless his heart."

WHEN IT COMES TO CHILDREN'S MINISTRY - MAKE IT WORK!

On the Sunday after Labor Day, I found myself at an old-fashioned Rally Day at Ebenezer United Church of Christ near Buffalo, NY. It was worship on the church lawn, under a big white tent, dinner on the grounds, and start-up for all the children's Sunday school classes. Kids were everywhere! I visited with many of their teachers - some of whom have been in the classroom for more than 50 years; one twenty-something was picking up teaching for her grandmother, to carry a tradition forward. For all the tired, dead Rally Days out there, Ebenezer still knows how to throw a good fall party and rally the neighbors and their children!

WHY REVITALIZATION IS NOT ENOUGH

Most American denominations are now in free-fall. We have tried everything we know to encourage and help local churches adapt to a new world - and we have produced several excellent resources and processes which are bringing real renewal and hope to hundreds of congregations. And yet the death tsunami seems to swallow all our anecdotal victories in a collective plot-line of ecclesial annihilation. This thing is so far beyond "adaptive leadership" that I am apt to throw something the next time I hear that term benignly tossed about as a solution to our present situation.