[There is a] weakness inherent in the word not. Consciously or unconsciously, the reader is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; he wishes to be told what is. (19-20)

What holds for good writing also holds for good churches. Unfortunately, too many a congregation defines itself only by what it’s against instead of proclaiming what that congregation is actually for. Consequently, churches can easily be mislabeled by outsiders as narrow-minded fundamentalists saddled with whatever-phobic leanings that only reinforce the public’s illusion of them. Primarily defining oneself by what one is against is especially tempting for young church planters; many of who entered planting because they were dissatisfied with the status quo of their prior church experience.

That’s why in listening to them describe their church plant, ministry philosophy, or even weekly sermons, a person tends to hear information framed more in the negative than positive. From “We’re not a seeker church,” to “We’re not a pipe organ-playing, choir-singing, suit-wearing type fellowship,” pastors limit the impact they so desperately desire by reducing what they think or do to only the negative. Why? Like readers, listeners are “dissatisfied with being told only what is not, [they] want to be told what is.” Pastors may needless turn off countless numbers of people who walk through their doors each Sunday not because those people didn’t want want something different but because they never heard what that difference was.

Maturing churches (and the maturing pastors who lead them) spend more time clearly explaining what they are for (e.g., gospel, forgiveness, holiness) than what they are against.

Do you define yourself more by what you’re against or what you’re for?

]]> http://blog.yanceyarrington.com/2011/11/21/what-are-you-for/feed/ 1 http://blog.yanceyarrington.com/2011/09/15/christian-hipster-how-to/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=christian-hipster-how-to http://blog.yanceyarrington.com/2011/09/15/christian-hipster-how-to/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:07:17 +0000 Yancey Arrington http://blog.yanceyarrington.com/?p=1871 While I know it’s easy to poke fun at those who are simply trying to be stylish in 2011, this is too funny for those of us who vacillate between being trendy and not so much. After watching this I think I better check my faux-hawk at the door. Also, I noticed the shoes “pre-hipster” the guy was wearing are the shoes currently on my feet. I guess I’m only half-hipster (maybe even one-quarter hipster). Naw, probably not even that much. 

HT: Tim Challies

Best Ministry Book – Christ-Centered Preaching by Bryan Chapell. I had the privilege to sit under Bryan’s teaching at Covenant Theological Seminary. He is a brilliant, humble and genuine person. I read this book in preparation for his doctoral seminar on the same issue. I probably have read five or six books on preaching in this year alone and believe Christ-Centered Preaching was the most helpful. He gives the preacher sage and practical ways of putting messages together that display the grace and glory of God in Christ without doing violence to the text or trying to conjure up a message that amounts to a parlor trick of ‘finding Jesus in this passage.’

* Honorable Mention – Total Church by Steve Timmis and Tim Chester. This book actually rescues the church’s mission from the myopia of both fundamentalism and liberalism. Total Church hearkens the church back to gospel-centrality while displaying the ways that centrality should impact the church for the world. Having spent some time with Steve Timmis I can tell you that this book isn’t a product of ivory tower thinking but something forged from real-world ministry. This is a book every pastor should own.

Best Fiction – Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. For years my mother has chided me for being a Texan and still not watched the TV miniseries. I told her I wanted to read the book first. So, when one of my closest friends told me he was reading Lonesome Dove and was blown away by it, I knew it was time to pick it up. The only thing I can say is, “Texas, I apologize for waiting so long to read ‘Lonesome Dove.’” McMurtry’s novel is a masterpiece of Texana and the love of friends. It evokes deep and good feelings in me – of friends, of our ranch in the Hill Country, and much more. In a Texas Monthly interview (July 2010) McMurtry said he wanted Lonesome Dove to demythologize the West but wound up increasing its legend all the more. Lonesome Dove is not just the best book I read in 2010, it’s one of the best modern novels I’ve ever read.

* Honorable Mention – No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. Having read McCarthy before (e.g., The Road), I knew him to be a master of the written word. His storytelling is powerfully engrossing and unparalleled today. So, after watching the Coen’s brothers wonderful movie adaptation, there was no question the book would one day fall upon my shelves. The book is gripping and engulfing as it brings the reader face to face with evil, mortality and our ability (or inability) to stop what’s coming.

Best Fiction (Short Story) - Revelation by Flannery O’Connor. Yes, I added the ‘Short Story’ category because Revelation deserved to be mentioned. Actually, I could have put it under the best ‘Christian’ book because O’Connor’s short story about a privileged Southern white woman and her (mis)understanding of God’s grace better illuminates the glory of the gospel than tons of books filling up the local Christian bookstore. The revelation she receives at the end of the story is devastatingly beautiful. A story I likely will never forget. You can find Revelation in O’Connor’s Collected Works.

Best Album – The Medicine by John Mark McMillan. Confession: While I love music, I don’t buy a lot of it. When I do it’s because I think I’ll enjoy it a lot. Thus, I tend to think the album which merits ‘Best Album’ is the one I listened to more than anything else throughout the year. The Medicine was that album for me in 2010. McMillan’s distinctive voice coupled with music dripping with lyrical beauty and haunting guitars (ala U2) makes The Medicine stand out amongst its peers. From the majestic chorus of ‘Skeleton Bones’ (‘Son of Glory dressed in love‘) to the rapture of ‘How He Loves’ (the popular song McMillan authored), The Medicine easily tops the list of the albums I bought this year.

* Honorable Mention – Piano Sonatas, Vol.2 by Dustin O’Halloram. Only piano. Only songs titled with ‘Opus’ and a number. Only one of the most beautiful collections of music I’ve heard in quite some time. This is my default study music. I have probably written more sermons this year listening to O’Halloram than anything else. For a taste, watch the beautiful video to my favorite track, ‘Opus 23.’

Best Movie – I don’t see a lot of movies. It takes quite a bit for me to go a theater and shell out the equivalent of a down payment for a car to see a two-hour movie. Of the movies I did see this year, none of them merited a ‘Best’ award. (Sorry, I haven’t seen Toy Story 3 yet) I did finally see the Lonesome Dove miniseries (after reading the book, of course) and now see why people raved about it. Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones alone are worth the rental, which should run you a lot less than what you’d pay at the box office for any flick this year.

Best Trip That Wasn’t Fandango – Forget it! My annual Fandango trip was at Winter Park, Colorado, this year and tops the list over other 2010 journeys. Good food, great scenery, and better friendships just can’t be beat!

Best Moment of 2010 – Publishing my first book, TAP: Defeating the Sins That Defeat You. Seeing my book pop up on Amazon was an unforgettable moment. Actually, that entire day was a little surreal. Friends giving their kind words to promote it, others tweeting and posting about it, and congratulatory notes and phone calls to top it off made it a day I will never forget. I had scores of people coming up to me over the following days saying, “Hey Yancey, how does it feel to be a real author?” I would just smile and shake my head. It felt ordinary and spectacular all at the same time. While the steady flow of notes from people, pastors and churches who are impacted by the book both humble and bless me today, easily the best moment of 2010 was the day TAP was published.

That’s it for now. What are your “bests?”

Who are you?

Maybe you’ve seen those sites. The pastor’s face is anchored everywhere – blog, sermon series, Facebook, Twitter, men’s retreat, even women’s retreat – ad infinitum, ad nauseum. In addition to his omnipresent image, how he’s portrayed also raises an eyebrow or two. This is pastor as celebrity - highlighted hair well-streaked and coiffed, a mouth full of veneers so perfectly aligned and incredibly radiant that his smile can be seen from 40,000 feet, and decked out in the latest and greatest offering from Urban Outfitters. In other words he looks just like the people he shepherds, right? Now before someone reminds me of my glass house address,  let me say that I’m not suggesting pastors who really love Jesus are those who look like they stepped right out of a time warp, caring nothing about their appearance. I’m also not saying that churches shouldn’t ever leverage the personality of their pastor. Consumers have always better related to a person than a product (e.g., Bill Cosby’s Jello, George Foreman’s grill, etc.). It may be very well that churches use this cultural inclination advantageously for the gospel. I simply wonder if the advantage is really about the gospel or just the pastor. Is this for Jesus or simply to fulfill his desire for fame? After a few minutes on these types of websites, one gets the feeling that the senior pastor is the most important part of the church. Like the sun to the the solar system, he is the person (or should I say persona) about whom everything in the church revolves.

This, I’m afraid, is the pastor-centered church.

The problem though is that the center of the church isn’t the pastor, it’s Jesus. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to be. The apostle Paul summarized his message to the church in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 saying,

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

The message, and center, of the church is “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” In other words, it’s the gospel. We don’t want to have pastor-centered churches. We want to have gospel-centered churches.

Now, let me shift gears here. I think in reading my over-generalized and  poorly parodied description of a pastor-centered church many readers who are lead pastors of blossoming new church plants have connected with what I’ve said and think, “Yup. Those kind of pastor-as-celebrity churches truly are pastor-centered congregations. My church isn’t like that at all.” Indeed, you may have felt led to plant a church because you wanted to offer something in direct contrast to those types of churches. Good! But can I add that yours can be a pastor-centered church too? And you don’t even have to buy veneers. In fact, you don’t have to do anything that fits the description I offered earlier. The reason is because there are other roads that lead to the pastor-centered church.

For example, take your leadership. Another way to have a pastor-centered church is to lead in such a way that you never really “pass the ball” of leadership to others. You make all the final calls, remind everyone the buck stops with you, and spend more time making decisions instead of developing decision-makers. You are a pastor-centered church when you spend more time working in the ministry than on the ministry. Now, it’s one thing to endure this type of pastor-centeredness when you are starting a church. Frankly, it’s likely necessary for more reasons than this post will allow. But if over time, you’re not willing to expand the circle of leadership responsibilities to include others (and yes, this includes preaching), then it doesn’t matter if you buy your clothes at Walmart and sport a $5 Pro-Cuts mullet, you lead a pastor-centered church. This goes for churches of 70 to 7,000. Think about it, if Pastor [fill in the blank] suddenly dies, will his church “die” with him? Will people leave in droves to saddle up with the next latest and greatest pastor? If so, maybe the reason is due to the fact that the church built its ministry around the wrong person?

So take heed when you see a church website that looks more like the pastor’s personal brochure, you may be doing the same thing by the way you lead.

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
- 1 Corinthians 3:5-7

What kind of church do you lead? What kind of church do you attend? Is it gospel-centered or pastor-centered?

When it comes to Star Wars versus Star Trek there is no comparison, SW destroys ST every time!

LITERALLY…

HT: Mike Anderson