Long Live Church Programs

A quick post just to remind people that I do still exist in the blog world. Something cool hip and trendy that has found its way into the DNA of the cool hip and trendy pastors starting cool hip and trendy churches that look like cool hip and trendy cults is the mantra that says, "People don't connect with programs." Programs are not organic church, emerging church, authentic church, relevant church, relational church, church 2.0, or whatever the heck church....programs are to be distrusted, scrutinized, and reek of institutionalization.......or so the cool hip trendy non-conformists would tell you.

But...Is a program anything more or anything less then intentional relationships? Programs are intentional relationship - are they not? Anyhow, end rant.

Collectively Dubm...I mena dumb,

One of my favorite things about this emerging cultures appetite for ‘power given to the masses’ is that it allows for the masses to control popular thought and opinion. Wikipedia is a great example of the collaborative muscle of our culture working together to create something that is far greater then itself. We love the idea of having control and access to information that has traditionally been behind closed doors, in files marked ‘confidential’, and held by higher ups who can wield and manipulate it to suit their needs and wants. It’s a great idea. The cheese-eating-cigarette-smoking and topless French peasants thought it was a great idea too…that is until they had control and decided that they, like their predecessors, did not want to share. Not too terribly surprising.

At present, our intellectual elite are progressively becoming only side notes in history as psychologically and intellectually we are becoming more and more Marxist-like in our thirst for information. Anyone with a computer and a wifi connection has access to the same information jamming us all into an information and technological middle class. But really, who cares.

Anyhow, my point is this: ‘nobody is smarter then everybody’ is a bit of an ideal way to live and teach. We are deceived by this cute little collection of words because it plays to the thing that we very much want – anti-authority, or, more precisely, our own authority. That said, there are some great times where using this statement and viewpoint in life is very helpful; i.e. in the realm of ideaing, brainstorming problems, collaborative learning, and creativity the more perspectives applied to said problem the better. However, the ‘nobody is smarter then everyone’ cliché breaks down the moment it comes to applying specific skills to specific tasks.

Do we let everyone with a seat on WestJet flight 178 from Abbotsford to Saskatoon to visit the in-laws give advice, suggest flight patterns, and take a crack at flying the jet…or, do we leave it in the hands of the pilots who, after many many hours of skill and knowledge development, fly the jet? We trust the pilot.

Do we let everyone with a seat in a church take a crack at teaching and preaching…or…do we trust the teacher who has spent many hours in study, prayer, and preparation? We very much want to trust a pilot; why not a teacher?

Collectively we can come up with some amazing ideas; collaborations and innovations that come only as a result of people getting together co-creating and co-developing something magnificent. However, collectively we can also become dumb and ignorant in our quest for anti-authority.

The Death of Sermons?

Communication, as we in the church know it, is under attack.

As a communicator I am constantly trying to learn how to become more effective in preparation, truth telling, story telling, persuasion, stimulating thought, conversation, and delivering compelling anti-conclusions. I genuinely enjoy studying and looking for seemingly unrelated bits and pieces of truth to link together to shape worldviews, beliefs, and lifestyles and I love the challenge of trying to find the language that speaks most relevantly to the people I am communicating to.

One of the aspects of church liturgy that the emergent church has called into question is how we, as communicators, most effectively communicate this life altering story of Jesus Christ to the emerging generation. On one extreme, there has been an almost violent reaction against the didactic “pastor as authority” teaching that has been so prevalent in churches for centuries in favor of conversation, dialogue, and narrative/experiential learning. On the other extreme, we find young pastors deciding against the 20 minute seeker-friendly sermons in favor of much longer and indepth teaching that moves the listener from theology to doxology to biography.

My personal response to this has been to take a little bit of the good from each of these to create a method of three part preaching that I don’t actually do very well. The upside is that I have the space and time to be constantly experimenting with how it actually could work. I have begun writing my definitions and ideas for these three parts but, before I post it here, I’d love to read your thoughts on this. Following are three numbers, six pieces of punctuation, and six words that make up the calcium malnourished skeleton of this teaching idea.

1) The Prologue.

2) The Dialogue.

3) The Epilogue.

If I had to get an idea across and these three are the variables of how I accomplish this; how should I do this?

-Jer