Missions

Fran and I have talked about how we want to do missions. We want two things. One, direct involvement from the people of our church (not just money, but hands on. We live in glocal world. We can afford to go ourselves.) And two, a direct relationship with a foreign community.

Doug Pagitt describes exactly what I'm looking for.

Shelley and Michon are going to Guatemala with a group from church today. They will be in the village of San Juan, la Laguna on Lake Atitlan.Picture 030
The group of 16 people will build 5 houses and a public latrine.
We have been a friendship with the people of San Juan since 2000 and have built nearly 30 homes in the village. We construct simple one room houses but they are step up from what they currently have. Most importantly they allow the families to own something of value, often for the first time in their family history. Picture 005
We also have a partnership with the Christian School in the village.

I am so excited that Michon is able to go. She was last in Guatemala when she was 4 but doesn't remember it. Michon being 15 is one of 3 high school aged people on the trip. I think it is so great that adults and teenagers are integrated at church and on these trips.

The will return home on Tuesday, the 29th, so it is just the boys around the house. And yes, meals are being accepted.
The group will be gone over Easter which is a bummer, but Easter in Guatemala is a real treat.
The group will stay in homes the first day or so and in a simple "hotel" the remainder of the time in the village.

Young Message

Statistics show that most people come to know Christ at around the age of 15. This has caused numerous churches to focus their evangelistic efforts on young people. The other statistic is that something like 85% of youth leave the church during their college years. What it makes me wonder about is our message.

When Jesus wrote in the sand and suggested the sinless ones cast the first stones, the oldest ones left first. It seems to me, an appropriately presented Gospel would have its greatest affect on 40 year olds.

Are we presenting the gospel effectively?

The Problem of Accountability

This is an excerpt out of an interview with Dr Henry Cloud in the Spring 2004 edition of Cutting Edge, a Vineyard church planting magazine. Cloud runs an intensive where he brings in church leaders and makes them focus on developing themselves personally so they are better leaders. When they leave, they need to develop a group around them to help them integrate their journey process.

That requires a lot of maturity from a church. How do you suggest a pastor go about finding those people?

One thing is that they need to have a template of what they are tying to build before they go about it. It is important for them to put some thought into what specific things they want to have happen. If we look at it propositionally, "What areas of God's truth do I need to structure into an ongoing experience in my life?"

The main one you hear about -- and it is kind of sad in the way it is taught and used -- is "accountability." But it's something of a problem, because all ac-count-ability does is count things. I say to people in the business world, "Have you ever had an accountant that solved all your problems?" Of course not. An accountant counts the numbers and tells you that you are "doing well" or "you have a problem." What an accountability group does is count how many times you have been good or bad this week. It's like driving your car when the red light comes on; that's an accountability structure for your oil pressure. Now what do you dod? Accountability doesn't answer those questions! What most people do when their red light is flashing is tell their accountability group, "I'll do better." But the red flashing light is not going to actually fix the oil pressure problem. What you have to do is take the car to a garage, and the mechanic does certain things to the car to make the car itself different.

With a structure for personal growth, there is accountability and correction and confrontation -- but there is also support, modeling, building up of weak areas, and healing. There are a lot of different growth elements that a leader needs to have on their menu other than just somebody keeping score. One of the problems I see in leadership is that everybody is really glad their leader has an accountability group, but when the numbers come up wrong, where's the garage you are sending him or her to? That's the big issue. There are people around the pastor who could do this, but it's not part of the church culture to value this.

The full article is here.