Now is the Springtime of My Discontent

kinnon —  May 17, 2013 — 18 Comments

With apologies to Will Shakespeare for the title.

Perhaps it is just me — and the things I read — but there is a level of madness in the present North American Evangelical/Christendom landscape that appears to know no bounds.

From the Ridiculous

One narcissist, from his perch as a theological academic of indeterminate stripe, portrays himself as a victim of inverse racism — while another, his former traveling companion, a self-proclaimed “gigachurch pastor” commends himself as a true green arbiter of all things Jesus funny. The two proving the fine line between comedy and pathos.

Through the Painful

In the city that hosts the World that Walt built, three Megachurch pastors resign over adultery — one of them from one of the “10 healthiest churches” in America. A Charismatic voice claims it’s “the spirit of Jezebel” whilst another voice states “it’s probably more related to the feelings of isolation experienced by large-church leaders.”

To the Tragic

— the embarrassing disaster that is Sovereign Grace Ministries led by C.J. Mahaney (no matter what rearranging of deck chairs on the SGM Titanic has recently taken place) and the amended and expanded sexual abuse lawsuit they now face. (Read The Wartburg Watch posts here, here, here and here. They have been more than faithful in staying on top of this story.)

This is a tragedy at so many levels — the worst being what has (allegedly) happened to the victims and their families. Many of their stories first told at SGM Survivors over the six years that blog has existed — for those who had the willing eyes and hearts to read and comprehend.

In July of 2011, well before the lawsuit was announced, I wrote a post entitled C.J. Mahaney & Semper Reformanda or …Not So Much, triggered by the SGM Wikileaks documents;

It appears that Mahaney has both misunderstood & misrepresented the Gospel in his own network of churches while marginalizing or discarding any who dared question his motives, methods & ministry…

And later…

…a legion of wounded SGMers are in recovery from what they’ve suffered at the hands of this “ministry” led by C.J. Mahaney, their lead apostle. And this while Mahaney has trod the conference stage of the Reformed universe – as one of their “humble” super-apostles to be emulated.

In the followup post, Wait! Don’t Look Behind the Curtain I quoted my friend, Dan Gouge (from the City of God team blog),

Al Mohler and Ligon Duncan have both stood up for Mahaney and, in essence, insist that his critics shut up and that everyone else move along.

What’s remarkable about this is that there seems to be a reflex here that is shockingly similar to the one that kicked in at the Vatican when the child sex-abuse scandals started to leak into the media. (Note: Let’s be clear, I’m not saying that C.J. Mahaney is the equivalent of a sex offender.) The hierarchy circled the wagons and went about blaming everyone else while trying to protect itself. Neither T4G nor SGM is a hierarchy like Rome, but there is an undeniable star system at the top of today’s Reformed church world with a handful of powerful men who dominate conferences and bestseller lists, and it appears that they have taken to looking after their interests – the interests of the powerful – at the expense of all those whom they claim as followers. (emphasis added)

Though it has not been alleged that Mahaney was directly involved in sexual abuse, Dan’s comment was prescient in that the Mahaney-led SGM allegedly engaged in coverups not unlike that of the Roman Catholic Church. With mini-Pope’s like Al Mohler defending the honour and integrity of Mahaney, whilst Ligon Duncan cast aspersions on the victims;

I would… encourage you to ignore the assaults of wounded people on attack websites and blogs, and that you discount the opinings of those who have no real knowledge of these matters or relation to SGM or authority to comment upon them, and that you refrain from assuming that you (or they) are in a position to render judgment on these things. (The original link for this in the Reformation 21 site archives does not work — but it’s alive and well at the Wayback Machine.)

Matt Redmond, blogger and author of the very good book, The God of the Mundane, wrote this yesterday in his post, Answering Some Objections I’ve Gotten About the SGM Lawsuit

What I keep hearing is we should wait till the verdict comes in to hear both sides because SGM has totally denied the accusations. Therefore no blog posts and no articles till then. Before the trial of Sandusky, an article “Love Notices Wet Hair” was published on The Gospel Coalition site and distributed widely. That article was posted 7 months before he was found guilty. Either we need an admission of how wrong that was, or we need a similar stance. Really all they would need to do is write a blog post that said, “in light of the accusations against SGM we offer this post.” That would be a start.

I would also like to see a public announcement about the need for any and all named parties to stop speaking at conferences. This would benefit everyone. I want you to imagine what it must be like for a victim of abuse to continually hear about the speaking engagements of those who enabled the abusers or were themselves an abuser. To see them rise in popularity. To see them above criticism. When the Reformed community does not see any problem with CJ Mahaney speaking at conferences because he has denied the charges against him and none have to be proven in the courts, our cult of personality has reached an apex. (emphasis added)

Zach Hoag, another gifted blogger and author, wrote this in his post A False Gospel of Reconciliation yesterday

I’ve written before about the current lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries and how it represents a rapidly approaching counseling cliff for the evangelical church at large – a cliff especially perilous when conservative churches deal with matters of abuse. Well, this week, more allegations were filed against SGM, and they are horrific. And, as of now, the major evangelical institutions that are closely connected to SGM – namely, The Gospel Coalition (where C.J. Mahaney, a defendant in the suit and founding leader of the SGM movement, is a council member) and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (major supporter/ally of C.J. and SGM, with President Al Mohler as close friend and staunch defender of C.J.) – have not issued anything in the way of cautionary or even concerned statements regarding the man or the movement (that I am aware of). There has been total silence about a celebrity preacher and an organization that is now literally inundated with accusations of sexually and physically abusing children and conspiring to cover it all up over many years. Nor have any/many connected big-name individual leaders, themselves also institutionally powerful, come out with words of warning or grieving. Instead, powerful men like John Piper have made gestures of support in the midst of C.J. and SGM’s legal troubles.

The silence is deafening.    (emphasis and links in the original)

The attitude of many who purportedly swim in the same spiritual streams as Mahaney et al, is either that the rest of us are out to get SGM because we don’t like Mahaney, or we simply hate the beauty and truth that is NeoReformed theology.

In a Twitter back and forth with Spiritual Sounding Board’s Julie Anne Smith, me and fiery writer & Calvinist gadfly, Frank Turk (who, despite our profound theological differences, I consider a friend), Frank made this Tweet comment about the present debacle

@kinnon @DefendTheSheep Like I said: I admire the starch it takes to find a sex offender when the charges of spiritual abuse can’t work out

It would appear that Frank and many of his NeoReformed brethren see the lawsuit as simply another attack on poor C.J. — and their shared NeoReformed/Complementarian doctrine.

And therefore the tragedy is compounded as many of the NeoReformed appear most concerned about protecting the belief in the veracity of their doctrine. They don’t appear to really care about what happens nor what has happened to the victims of the cult-like behaviour of C.J.Mahaney and Sovereign Grace Ministries.

Whether they mean to or not, they seem to be saying,

‘Screw the victims, C.J. believes the right stuff.’

In Church
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Of Sheepdogs, Shepherds & Metaphors

kinnon —  May 16, 2013 — 1 Comment

There's a dog, and it's chasing sheep.

Somewhere in the past few months, while whiling away unavailable time on the interwebs, I read about how sheep farmers in the English-speaking world tend to use sheepdogs to control sheep, rather than the middle-eastern method of almost exclusively employing human shepherds.

And.

Of course.

I saw a metaphor in this.

Reading the quote below brought the metaphor into sharp relief ( at least for me ),

All herding behavior is modified predatory behavior. Through selective breeding, humans have been able to minimize the dog’s natural inclination to treat cattle and sheep as prey while simultaneously maintaining the dog’s hunting skills, thereby creating an effective herding dog. (emphasis added)

Sheepdogs bark and nip at the heels of the sheep to force them go where their masters want them to go. And it’s amazing to see the kind of sheep shows ( shown below ) you can create under the control of the sheepdogs.

To steal boldly from the Phoenix Preacher, Michael Newnham — make your own application. ( And buy Michaels’ book here. )

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Here’s the video referenced above:

This post first appeared at kinnon.tv on May16th, 2013.

In Church
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Church Livestock

kinnon —  February 27, 2013 — 28 Comments

Rev. Dr. Muttonbutt

My buddy, Dave Fitch responded to another friend, Ed Stetzer on Ed’s “assault” on the “mega church sheep stealing critique”.

I love’em both, but probably agree with Fitch’s argument more than Ed’s.

But.

That’s not what this post is about.

Rather, its about the imagery. Of livestock. As a metaphor for the people in the pews.

“Hey, Kinnon. It’s biblical.”

Indeed, madam. You are correct! Sheep as a metaphor for God’s people is, in fact, to be found in the Scriptures.

Sheep were highly valued. Then.

Think of Jesus’ story of the one lost sheep, and the shepherd who left the 99 to search for that one.

How quaint.

I would suggest we view sheep with much less value today — if we view them at all.

And what of the shepherds? Well, then they were were possibly the lowest of the gainfully employed. (Think of Jesse not even considering having his youngest son, David, the shepherd, come to be consecrated by Samuel.) Shepherds lived with their sheep. They smelled like their sheep. They knew each one by name. A single shepherd tended no more than 100 sheep in New Testament times.

Today, returning to the church livestock metaphor, a shepherd (or pastor, in its latinate form) with only 100 sheep would be considered a failure. And how could any “successful” shepherd be expected to know all of “his/her” sheep.

Might I suggest the metaphor breaks down in its present usage within the church. And that this misused/misunderstood metaphor is responsible for much damaging separation between those who call themselves shepherds and “their” sheep — as if the shepherds are their owners. (Sheep cannot be stolen — except from their owners.)

Might I further suggest that the use of the phrase “sheep-stealing” is particularly bizarre amongst those who call us to be missionally-minded.

The reality is that we are all sheep. Or none of us are. (Shall we save the goats for another conversation?)

UPDATE: My buddy and City of God blogger, Dan Gouge ramps this up a notch or eleven with The Factory Farms of Christianity.

In Church, Consumerism, Leadership
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Discipleship is Conspiracy – Extended Immanuel Version

kinnon —  December 19, 2012 — 4 Comments

I love Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of John 1:14,

The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighbourhood.

This is the season we sing of the coming of the new born King – Immanuel, God with Us.

The shocking concept that the creator of the Universe comes as a babe to be with us — to be in our midst — he moves into, and grows up in our neighbourhood.

And when he grows up, he is accused by both the religious authorities and the occupational rulers of conspiring to overthrow their power — conspiring with his disciples.

Coffee Chat Discipleship Conspiracy

Conspire, as stated in the previous post, at its latin root means to “breathe together”. Jesus and his disciples in deep relationship with one another, ‘conspired’ — they ‘breathed together.’

Discipleship, in its truest sense (as practiced by the One we claim to follow) is life lived together in conspiracy — ‘breathing together.’ There is an intimacy that is not reflected in the Western pedagogical sense of classroom with teacher/pedagogue, and multiple students listening at their desks.

Jason Blair tweeted this, this morning:

“American discipleship has a lot of ‘talk’ and ‘study’ but not a lot of ‘do.’ Why do we expect anyone to listen to us, and why do some?“

I often read of pastors/church leaders conducting Sunday morning “discipleship classes.” I believe they are mistaken. Perhaps these are catechism classes — which some might be shocked to know I believe are important.

But. Discipleship cannot be taught in a classroom setting, it can only be caught from lives lived together.

As “discipleship” begins to replace “missional” as the subject du jour, I think it critical we look at how Jesus discipled.

And ask him to help us ‘conspire’ to build his kingdom.

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And it wouldn’t be Christmas at the Kinnon abode without a little Rob Mathes Music – When The Baby Grew Up…

In Church, Discipleship, Neighborhood, Uncategorized , ,
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Discipleship is Conspiracy

kinnon —  December 9, 2012 — 6 Comments

Conspire: to breathe together.

Discipleship is conspiracy — lives “breathed together.”

In Uncategorized
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An Apocryphal Story of Spurgeon, Holiness & Milk

kinnon —  November 30, 2012 — 6 Comments

I’m not sure where I first heard this story. And I really can’t confirm the main characters. Though I remember Charles Spurgeon as the protagonist — without any Googleable proof, unfortunately.

But.

The apocryphal story goes like this:

Spurgeon was at a conference with many people of different denominations. One of those people was a man quite taken with the holiness movement.

Pitcher of Milk shadow

In fact, he professed to actually having achieved holiness. And he kept referring to this throughout the many days of the conference.

Finally, at breakfast on the last morning, Spurgeon took a full pitcher of milk and poured it over the holiness fellow’s head. The man screamed at Spurgeon, “You idiot, why would you do this to me!”

To which Spurgeon replied, “I was simply testing your theology, good sir.”

My memory of this story prompted by Mark Galli’s review of a book I doubt I will ever read.

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Apocryphal — of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated

In Church, Story Telling ,
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Twitter as Interstitialed Narcissism

kinnon —  November 15, 2012 — 5 Comments

(This post was prompted by a Twitter conversation between Aaron aka @culturalsavage and moi from earlier this afternoon, Nov-15-12.)

In the 20+ years that Imbi and I owned a post-house in Toronto (an editing, graphics and post-audio facility called Scene by Scene®), we worked on thousands of interstitials for broadcast clients including Canada’s two largest private television networks, CTV and Global. These were the on-air promos for “Coming up Next”, or “Thursday at 9pm”… you get the drift.

5, 10 and 15 second attention grabbers meant to keep you connected to the network, or anticipating future viewing pleasure. (Forgive me for having participated in promoting prevarication.)

Interstitial image KTV

On-air promos/interstitials are the primary way networks reinforce their branding.

Our company was paid well to produce high quality brand promotion for broadcasters. (As an aside, I will always remember when the 1st Gulf War started, as I’d just finished creating 36 CTVNews promos for the Gulf Crisis when Imbi went into labour with Kaili. The day after Kaili’s birth, I was back changing them all to Gulf War.)

At one level, Twitter is a broadcast medium. Depending on the ratio of following to followers, it mimics the one-to-many communication of a TV network — primarily seen in the every-moment-tweeted Kardashian/Beiber/Kutcher inane celebrity universe.

LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME — their tweets demand. They aren’t interested in a 140 character-at-a-time conversation — they simply want followers — ones who will buy what they’re selling.

I don’t tend to follow these Twitterati. They add next to nothing to my social media engagement. Their tweets simply reflect the dominant pathology of celebrity — narcissism.

Twitter to me is most engaging as way to discover new ideas and arguments — as well as new production software and technology. :-) My particular bent.

I have no problem with writers who point to their own writing — as long as that’s not all that they point to.

What I find particularly odd in the Twitterverse, are Christians who view Twitter like CTV viewed on-air promos — as a place to simply promote their wonderful brand.

We are told to “stay tuned for a big announcement.” Or ReTweet to win prizes — their books or tickets to their speaking events. They highlight every great thing someone else has tweeted about them. They let us know exactly where they’ve shared their great wisdom — to the applause of the gathered multitudes.

But, sorry, they really don’t have time to engage with anyone who hits reply to one of their tweets. (Followers really need to learn their place.) They’re on to bigger and better things that they’ll tweet about momentarily.

So.

In my never humble opinion, when the primary focus of one’s Tweet output is you and what you are doing, then Twitter has simply become interstitialed narcissism.

[The image above is from the rebranding we did for Global when they went from KidsTV to KTV in the previous millennium. Scene by Scene® is a registered trademark of Medri Kinnon Productions Limited.)

In Celebrity-Driven, Church
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Zero-Sum Games & the Church

kinnon —  November 5, 2012 — 14 Comments

ZeroSum Games w 3D Shadow

a zero–sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which a participant’s gain (or loss) of utility is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the utility of the other participant(s) — Wikipedia

I Win! You lose! It’s a zero-sum game.

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This is, effectively, an extension of a previous blog post from January of this year, Theology — Is It a Bloodsport? It came out of a heated “conversation” Jared Wilson and I had on Twitter. One that may have not been the most productive. What I found most disquieting in that discussion was the language of team sports as a metaphor for interaction regarding Christianity’s different theological positions.

In that post, I spoke about my own lack of indoctrination into what I see is the idolatry of sports.

”I make no bones about the fact I’m not into sports. From the time I was 8 until I was 13, I lived in Europe on Canadian Air Force bases. My family didn’t have a TV and neither did any of my friends’ families. If I listened to any sports, it was on Canadian Forces Network radio—a week tape delay of Hockey Night in Canada. And as much as I love the sound of Foster Hewitt’s voice, I rarely listened to him. So I guess I was never predisposed to view life through the lens of professional sports.

I, therefore, don’t find what appears to me to be the language / actions of team-loyal sports fans being applied to theological discussions as particularly helpful.”

I would state, rather categorically, that if there is a state religion in the U.S., that religion would be organized sport. The level of angst that exists for the success or failure of one’s team is more than a little disconcerting – especially when the fan is a Christian, or a “Christian leader.”

”Pascal put his finger on the problem of human life when he saw how entertainment had come to occupy a place, not as the necessary and momentary relief from a life of work, but as an end in itself. When entertainment becomes more than a pleasant and occasional distraction, when time and income become devoted to entertainment and to pleasure, when sports teams become more important to us than people—even the people to whom we are close—then something has gone badly wrong. The frothy entertainment culture in which we live is a narcotic: not only is it addictive, so that we always want more; it also eats away at us, skewing our priorities, rotting our values as surely as too much sugar rots our teeth.” — Carl Trueman, Fools Rush In Where Monkeys Fear to Tread, Page 111.

In my childhood, I was taught the lie, “it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” The truth is closer to, ‘it doesn’t matter how you play the game, it’s whether you win or lose.’

Trueman again,

”For many, though, sport has become an integral part of their identity, and, more often than not, it is watching sport, not actual participation, that does this. The success or failure of a team becomes the vicarious success or failure of the supporter. In other words, sport becomes a means of finding authenticity and value. Other areas of life can be neglected, malfunction, or simply go to the dogs; but as long as “the team” is doing well, all is OK with the world. Indeed, in good “opium” fashion, we can be enduring all kinds of garbage being dropped on us; but the “team” gives us hope—albeit specious and illusory—of fulfillment and happiness.” Carl Trueman, Fools Rush In Where Monkeys Fear to Tread, Page 123.

Many, if not most North American children are indoctrinated into their particular team fandom at a young age.

Rachel Held Evans, in her latest book, talks about her Roll Tide addiction,

”I grew up in the great state of Alabama, which journalist Warren St. John deems “the worst place on earth to acquire a healthy perspective on the importance of spectator sports.” 1 In Alabama, the third most important question after “What is your name?” and “Where do you go to church?” is “Alabama or Auburn?” So soon after I learned to identify myself as a nondenominational, Bible-believing Christian named Rachel, I learned to identify myself as an Alabama fan. My little sister and I knew what intentional grounding was before we’d acquired the dexterity to play with Barbie dolls, and as kids we liked to imitate my mother, who had the habit of willing an Alabama running back down the field by moving closer and closer to the TV set the longer he stayed on his feet. By the time he danced into the end zone, the whole family—Mom, Dad, Amanda, and I—would be huddled together around the TV, screaming our heads off, nervously looking for any yellow flags on the field.” Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Page 2

At it’s very worst, this American obsession with winning teams is exemplified by what was allowed to happen under Joe Paterno’s leadership at Penn State. Winning at any cost — even if that cost was children sacrificed on the altar of pedophilia. UPDATE 3: View this graphic. And weep.

But I would suggest that for most Americans, the worship of sports is milder than that, but perhaps more insidious.

Trash Talking

One of the manifestations of this is the prevalence of trash talking that began in sports but has become a very noticeable part of social interaction. It’s roots may be in the rather innocent, “Hey batter, batter” of baseball but the language is far stronger today — and much more destructive.

I note these two stories on American President, Barack Obama, known as a hyper-competitive player. From CNN,

Reggie Love, the man by President Barack Obama’s side for two years in the White House, said the president leads like he plays basketball… …“He’s a competitor, and I think when you compete … you can’t spend all your time sort of being overly emotional or reactional to what’s going on,” Love said.

Obama trashing Rubio2

And then from Politico,

It is Obama’s own burning competitiveness, with his remorseless focus on beating Mitt Romney — an opponent he genuinely views with contempt and fears will be unfit to run the country…

Obama is sometimes portrayed as a reluctant warrior, sorry to see 2012 marked by so much partisan warfare but forced by circumstance to go along. But this perception is by most evidence untrue. In the interviews with current and former Obama aides, not one said he expressed any reservations about the negativity. He views it as a necessary part of campaigning, as a natural — if unpleasant — rotation of the cyclical political wheel.

Obama’s trash-talking competitiveness, a trait that has defined him since his days on the court as a basketball-obsessed teenager in Hawaii, was on display one night last February, when the president spotted a woman he knew was close to Sen. Marco Rubio in a Florida hotel lobby. “Is your boy going to go for [vice president]?” the president asked her. Maybe, she replied. “Well,” he said, chuckling, according to a person who witnessed the encounter. “Tell your boy to watch it. He might get his ass kicked.” [emphasis added]

Obama is simply a product of the dominant culture.

His team will do anything to beat the other – and that sentiment is reciprocated. To a Democrat, Republicans are knuckle-dragging fools who hate women and want to return to the 50’s. To a Republican, Democrats are Socialists who will steal the election in order to worship Stalin or Satan, take your pick.

The trash-talking, zero-sum gaming of U.S. Politics is in danger of destroying the American nation.

But.

I’m more concerned about what it’s doing to the church.

Matthew Lee Anderson, in his review of RHE’s new book, says this at the end of his rather long (but must read) review:

…I am increasingly saddened by the state of our Christian discourse online, including my own involvement in it.

I’m no Roman history expert, but I take it that it was their love of entertainment that led them to the Coliseum. It’s a bloodthirsty idol, entertainment, for it knows no boundaries nor respects no persons. Over the past two years, Christians have engaged in a variety of controversies—which they have been doing for a long time, but which seem to be coming and going with a greater rapidity while being discussed at a significantly more shallow level. I think of Rob Bell’s book, Jesus>Religion, Mark Driscoll’s book, the Wilson dustup, and now this conflagration. And there are, I think, others I am forgetting.

In each, the form of arguments have rarely been commendable and the level of discourse ennobling. We have increasingly, it seems to me, been taken by these controversies and fought for pageviews in the midst of them. And that has meant mostly fighting each other, clashing verbal swords and letting the digital blood flow in the streets. I know well that there is a time to disagree and to draw lines. And I also know that when the controversy is upon us, the drumbeats of war always beat the loudest, and it is usually in such moments that we should speak of peace. Perhaps we would all do well to wield our intellectual swords with a good deal more care.

One of the reasons I’ve had such a hard time blogging in these past six months, is what went down this summer on The Gospel Coalition blog of Jared Wilson’s when he used a Doug Wilson quote on his Fifty Shades of Grey Post, now deleted – and the Internet blog storm that was created — the Wilson dustup mentioned by Anderson, above.

I’ve known Jared through our relationship with the late Michael Spencer, for probably five years. I’ve held him in high regard for most of the time. But I was shocked by his response to the people who were profoundly offended by his blog post, particularly in the way he trash-talked them on Twitter, as well as in the comment sections of the multiple posts he wrote based on his first post.

If you follow Jared on Twitter, you’ll know he’s a huge sports fan — especially football. I honestly believe that Jared was engaging in social media debate in a manner little different than what he would do amongst his friends known as The Thinklings. His responses were simply representative of the perspective formed by the culturally dominant world of sport. Trash-talking being a normative response.

Jared is hardly the most egregious example of Christian trash-talking. And its not limited to his fellow Calvinists.

Some of the stuff I read from Christian Progressives in response to Evangelicals and other Christian conservatives is really little different from how Democrats feel about Republicans — only its shared with less love and affection. (That’s sarcasm, by the way.)

As I bring my own, too long, post to a close, I realize that perhaps all this is a plea like that of the late Rodney King, “Can we all get along?”

So.

Perhaps, we could all simply become less resounding gongs or clanging cymbals — the ones Paul, the Apostle spoke of here.

UPDATE: Read Michael Kruze’s post here: America’s Increasingly Tribal Electorate

UPDATE 2: Todd Littleton advances the conversation much further.

In Church, Sports
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Releasing the UnLeader!

kinnon —  September 20, 2012 — 18 Comments

The tag line for this site is, “the issue isn’t leadership, it’s discipleship.” Just in case you missed it. :-)

But. Though many claim to agree. The reality is that LEADERSHIP REALLY IS THE ISSUE™.

Whether a missional church plant in the heart of a major North American city, a growing megachurch in the bible belt, a male-dominated, “gospel-centered” church in the DC area or a struggling church south of Lake Ontario — the issue is leadership and the apparent solution is more of the same. Better leadership, trained at the hundreds of leadership conferences available almost any day of the week will be the key to the successful growth of your church. Let me offend as many people as possible – this isn’t just bullsh__, it’s heresy.

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know that this is the story I’ve been telling for a rather long time. The last post (from over 3 months ago) was Captain America and the Gospel of Leadership

My inbox is constantly spammed by Christians pushing the next great leadership conference or offering the next great leadership book to review.

‘Come hear the latest megachurch pastor reveal the secrets to his amazing success — and if you buy his book(s), DVD(s) or subscribe to his podcast(s), you might just be the next one up on a stage in front of people who are just like you are now.’

The heresy is in the belief that Jesus has called you to be a leader. He hasn’t. He’s called all of us to be servants and disciplers – while being discipled ourselves. (Matthew 20:25 and Matthew 28:19—20.) If you don’t believe me, listen to someone with much greater, earned authority, Christopher Wright. (Which I’ve pointed to many, many times — in the hope that more folk will listen… and learn.)

Unleader Lance Ford’s book

All of this to say, there’s a book I’d like you to read. Written by a friend of mine, Lance Ford. It’s called Unleader, Reimagining Leadership, and Why We Must. Lance says this at the beinning of his book:

The largest church leadership conferences each year include talks from corporate business world stars and world famous CEO’s who make no claim to be followers of Christ whatsoever. The bookshelves of most pastors and church leaders are filled with a solid collection of New York Times bestselling books on leadership, authored by corporate business gurus and political figures. Furthermore, twice as many books on the subject of Christian Leadership are available on Amazon.com as compared to titles on Discipleship. Leadership making has not only trumped disciple making, it has trampled it and left it in the dust. Regarding servantship, look for books on it and you are up the proverbial creek without a paddle. I have not found one Christian book on serving as a coveted position in and of itself. When they do get close to it, every author in the Christian leadership field (in my research) cannot help themselves but to use the phrase Servant-leader. Leader seems to always get squeezed in. Mere servantship is considered not enough.

Perhaps the biggest snafu concerning the current leadership obsession is that Jesus himself directly contradicts much—if not most—of what is being imported into the church under the leadership mantra. Better put, much of it is expressly forbidden by Jesus. Can you imagine the Apostle Paul hosting a leadership conference for the early church with a lineup of speakers such as, Roman Governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus; Revolutionary Leader, Simon bar Giora; John Philip Maximus, owner of the Roman Traders Market (I made up this last guy). Ridiculous, huh?

Most disconcerting is the fact that Jesus himself is not our first choice when it comes to the one whom we model ourselves after as leaders. When the character and persona of Jesus is washed out through so-called strategic initiatives and sound leadership decisions a clash of kingdoms has manifested. And in large part these are the coordinates being followed by most pastors in today’s evangelical church circles. (I apologize that I don’t include page numbers as I’m working from a pre-release document.)

One of the largest peddlers of the CEO leadership culture in the church can be found in the Chicago area. I’m struck by the reality that in spite of this “great leadership teaching center” and all the other megachurches in the Chicago area, Illinois politics are some of the most corrupt in North America. I then ponder the Welsh Revival and its impact on that country’s culture — as compared to the ever growing empires of Christian “leaders” in the Chicago area — and the rather surprising lack of impact on the local political culture. Thoughts?

Where it might seem I would probably be happy taking the word “leader” out into the street, setting it on fire and then kicking it, Lance seeks to redeem it:

This book is not about eliminating leadership in the church. Far from that, it is about redefining and recalibrating leadership according to Jesusian coordinates. To borrow a phrase from my Aussie mates, “What am I on about?” It is to say that the only acceptable leadership moves we make in the church must be made by following Jesus himself. If you are stepping off the path of following Jesus in your leadership methods and means then you are not followable yourself. You may be quick-witted, smooth tongued, and a strategizing whiz kid. But if you use those skills in contradiction to the person of Jesus your leadership way is not worth following.

I’m convinced that Lance’s book is critical for the church in North America today. I’m also convinced that those people already atop the leadership heap will ignore it. But that doesn’t mean you have to. In fact, I’d suggest it’s very important you do read the book to hopefully innoculate you from the dis-ease of the North American Church Leadership CULTure. (Intentional)

Einstein has been quoted as defining insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. (It probably wasn’t him, but…) As we burden the church with more and “better” leadership conferences, books, etc we keep expecting different results — expecting the church to grow in love, impact and number of conversions. Allow me to let you in on this insane little secret. IT ISN’T WORKING!

Over four decades of marinating in church growth theory has left the vast majority of evangelical denominational and local church leaders wandering in the weeds of a consumer church field. It has created a clergy crop that views the church from the perspective of marketers and businesspersons, and a Christian mass that views itself as clientele.

It isn’t working because it isn’t actually Jesus-centred. (I avoid using gospel-centered as I see it too easily being manipulated into whatever the author believes the gospel to be – unless they choose to call it the King Jesus Gospel, of course. For too many, their gospel appears to be rules, commands and control — all supported by specific scripture verses, of course.)

Under the heading, Cultures of Dominance, Lance tells this unfortunately typical story. (I’ve received far too many emails with similar stories myself.)

I recently shared dinner with a young man who had just recently been fired from a church he had served for several years. He made the mistake of sending an email to the upper echelon—the “Executive Leadership Team”—that questioned the decision of following through with a costly building program for a wedding chapel in the midst of a season of staffing cutbacks. He merely requested a dialogue among the entire staff to get a consensus of thought concerning the situation. His email was written in a very respectful, and humble manner. The day after Devon19 sent the email two members of the Executive Leadership Team showed up at his office to inform him that he was being let go, effective immediately. The reason he was given for being fired was that he had “incited negative morale and displayed lack of cooperation.” When Devon asked why he had not been given the opportunity to at least discuss the situation, per Jesus’ Matthew 18 instructions on dealing with conflict, one of the two “execs” told him he shouldn’t be surprised. “If this was Sprint, or another business, it would be done just like this,” she replied.

What is the problem with this scenario? It is that the church is not Sprint, nor any other business. The church is the body of Christ and has a manual of protocol. It’s called The Bible. And if these “leaders” were following Jesus they would never consider such behavior or tactics. The thing that should terrify us is that this type of scenario is a commonly accepted practice across the landscape of evangelical churches and denominations.

Lance does not write his book as one how has never been called a “successful leader” in the eyes of our present church-leadership culture. On the contrary, we could just as easily be reading a book on building a “growing, successful church” if (as I believe) the Spirit hadn’t intervened.

It was not that I didn’t love people. The problem was that I was more into building a church than I was into building the people who were the church. Like so many other church planters I was consumed with developing my “vision” of church. And though I constantly preached that the church was the people, my obsession with developing the systems, organization, and expansion of our church betrayed what I really believed in the basement of my heart. I was a leader, not a servant. I was building a leadership culture, not one of servantship. Not one of followership.

In our attempts to create Jesus in our own image we often think of him as a great leader. Many pastors have read the Laurie Beth Jones book, Jesus, CEO. But neither Jesus nor God ever labeled him as such. No, Jesus was a great servant—the greatest servant of all—and he embraced the status of a servant.

After not writing for a rather long time, I’ve spent too much time writing a rather long post. I apologize… sort of.

Buy the book.

Read it.

Let me know what you think, if you have the time. :-)

In Church, Leadership
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Captain America and the Gospel of Leadership

kinnon —  June 13, 2012 — 20 Comments

I’m thinking of asking my Missional ’Gator friends (they know who they are) to join me in a Missional Avengers team. Our mission will be to seek out and destroy the Loci of church leadership ideas like this one from that great church ecclesiologist, Teddy Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I’ve seen this pointed to by a number of people as relevant to church leadership. The last straw was when a good friend — a person I love dearly — who is planting a church in Toronto, ReTweeted a link to it.

Marlboro man as Pastor 2

I deal with this ridiculous and, in fact, dangerous belief in the mythic super hero as church leader/planter at length in my post, Jesus and the Marlboro Man.

This is the myth of the rugged individual and it is one, I’d suggest, that has done more damage to the church in the west than we care to realize.

And that damage includes both those who have attempted to “build” a church this way, as well as those who have attempted to work with said solo builder.

In light of my response here, please read this post from Lance Ford, based on his upcoming book, UnLeader: Rethinking Leadership… and Why We Must —  a book you just might want to pre-order. (Part One of his “Refutable Laws” posts is here.)

And if or as you disagree with me, help me understand how Teddy’s thoughts line up with Luke 10 or Matthew 20:25. I’m just saying.

In Church, Leadership , , ,
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