Churches, like companies, cannot disrupt themselves

The current issue of Newsweek magazine includes an article about how GM was unable to allow Saturn to live up to its initial vision of being a totally separate and different kind of car company. This is a terrific case study that illustrates the point made in Christensen's book The Innovator's Solution that companies cannot change in a disruptive manner within existing businesses. The company culture will always treat a disruptive change like a virus and the corporate immune system will attack it. This can only be overcome by setting up a completely separate entity with separate funding, separate management, etc. Saturn had to compete within GM for product development resources, human resources, etc, so the GM immune system attacked it, as did the UAW union immune system. It was doomed from the start by not being a totally separate entity from GM.

This strikes me as similar to what goes on in churches when an existing church tries to make a disruptive change, like moving from a traditional worship approach to contemporary (or vice versa). Unless it does not compete for resources, does not force people to change their style, does not create competition against what was already there, it will be attacked by the immune system. Churches, like companies, cannot disrupt themselves. They can only launch separate entities without creating a cultural crisis.

Should this be? What does this say about the possibility for revival? I think that it is just human nature, and that we should be prepared to launch separate entities or at least separate services for large changes. One of the reasons that America has remained much more religious than Europe is that by not having a state church there have been few barriers to creating new churches or denominations in order to carry out big changes. The Catholic Church is equally (some would say even more so ) unable to disrupt itself and where it is the state church there is no option for disruptive change. So it has just died. But is change necessary in the Church? Isn't the church supposed to be timeless? As our church repeats often, the message is timeless, the methods changable. Nonetheless, human nature doesn't change and disruptive changes in church will continue to be hard to swallow.

For that reason I think it is wrong for a new pastor to come to a church and try to force disruptive changes on a local congregation. If he feels that strongly about a particular approach then he should be prepared to launch a new congregation, not nearly destroy an existing one. To accept the call to a church and then try to disrupt it is not really honest. However, the flip side is that those who refuse to change must be prepared for their congregation to slowly die. In most cases it should be possible to launch new approaches in completely separate services without creating a crisis. It is more work, but it certainly can be done.

The Church is not free from the problems of human nature, but it should be led by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit can revive in either contemporary or traditional settings if we allow it. But new congregations will be needed at times.

Our God concept and freedom

On the last 2 blog entries, both the comments on miracles and on the Church as a consumer item relate to our 'God concept'. Our couples small group (not to be confused with the men's group that is reading the discipleship book) is reading a book by Bill Bright's son, Brad, entitled God is the Issue . We were discussing the first chapter last week and noted that quite often we Christians unwittingly communicating a concept of God that does not exactly match what the Bible teaches. For instance, when asked about why the World Trade Center was attacked we may say something such as its being a judgement of God, that God has removed His protection, or the like. Yet, we don't stop to think that there have been bad things that happened in America since the country was founded, including such calamities as slavery, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, the flu epidemic, the polio epidemic, etc, etc. It might seem to imply that God's protection comes and goes rather often. We unwittingly communicate with these comments that our concept of God is that He exists to protect us, to keep bad things from happening to us. In fact, if freedom is to exist, then it must be possible for bad things to happen. Freedom is very risky. If we are to be free, there is the option of choosing evil, choosing for the bad. Without that, there is no freedom. It may or may not be a sign of God removing His protection that the World Trade Center towers fell. When Jesus was asked about a tower falling and killing a number of people in Luke 13, His response was not that those people were such sinners that God had removed protection; instead, He responded that the question is not why did they die but rather why didn't you die? We all deserve to die because of our sin, and the fact that we don't is purely grace. Similarly, the Islamic terrorists hate Christianity just like they hate America, so they may still have attacked had we been a more holy nation. These are things we cannot know.

When we look at the 'God Concept' that we unwittingly communicate, the larger Christian community often communicates that God exists to serve us rather than our existing to serve Him. We communicate that we became believers so that God would protect us, or make us prosperous, or provide fulfillment, or give us a good marriage. While it is true that God loves us, He also warned that His enemies would hate us, would think they were serving their god when killing us, would persecute us however they could. We are Christians first and foremost because it is true, and that truth has set us free from this world. And that freedom is risky.

MIracles and Easter

Two weeks ago the sermon at our church was about Mark 4 and the miracle that occurred when Jesus calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee. This was one of the miracles that was done with only the disciples present, and was one of the key miracles in building their faith that Jesus was in fact the Messiah, since He could rule over nature. Then last week the sermon was about the Transfiguration, where Jesus was transformed before Peter, James, and John into what may have been His resurrection body, talking with Moses and Elijah. As we move towards Easter, we will be coming to the greatest miracle of all, the Resurrection of Jesus.



Miracles are an interesting topic. On the one hand, God created nature and so it makes sense that He has power over nature. On the other hand, God is unchanging and consistent, and therefore He does not contradict Himself: to the extent that nature is made in God's image, as man is, God would not contradict Himself by doing something that is out of agreement with His own nature. That is to say, when God does a miracle, He does not do it in a way that contradicts Himself. He would not simply overrule nature and do something completely inconsistent with Reality. Of course, nature is only a small part of Truth, or Reality, since God is greater than nature. Reality includes nature, but also includes more than nature.



In light of this, C. S. Lewis has offered the idea that miracles simply do fast and up close what God is always doing slowly and out-of-sight. As an example he uses turning water into wine. God is always turning water into wine through the miracle of photosynthesis, taking water that carries minerals, sunlight and air and turning it into grapes. For Jesus to make water into wine was not inconsistent with nature, but did it much faster. God is always healing people through the miracle of our immune system, so when Jesus healed people He was not inconsistent with that. He did much faster what happens every day slowly.



But what about calming the storm? And the Transfiguration? Raising Lazarus? Does Jesus simply contradict nature here? I think not. Storms always end, so the fact that Jesus ended one very quickly is consistent with C. S. Lewis' proposal. And after the Resurrection, Jesus again appeared in a new and different body, so this was again consistent with the greater Reality mentioned above. Raising Lazarus is perhaps the most difficult case, since he did not return with a resurrection body; but if God will raise us all to a new body, then raising us to a 'used' body is not inconceivable.



The resurrection body of Jesus was apparently very different from our earthly body. In the garden, on the Emmaus road, and on the shore of Galilee were all instances of His going unrecognized by His own disciples. This greatest of miracles will apply to us as well, we are promised, and so we cannot ever 'walk away' from miracles as an inherent, fundamental part of our faith. Lewis points this out as well. Christianity is based on miracles and especially the miracle of Christ's resurrection, and with hope of a coming miracle for ourselves.

This is one of the issues with faith and science. We are having an ongoing discussion about evolutionary theory and faith in our family, and there are a couple of things relevant to both Easter and scientific theory:

• Miracles are fundamental to our faith, especially the miracle of Christ's Resurrectoin. There is no escaping from miracles in Christianity. However, God does not act to contradict Himself or Reality in His miracles.


• God does not contradict natural law, but natural laws are only a portion of Truth, of Reality.


• To the extent that scientists insist that there are no miracles and that science somehow 'disproves' miracles, we must part ways; to the extent that Christians believe that God does miracles that are inconsistent with His own design of the universe and that Reality which is beyond this universe, we must question ourselves. God does not contradict Himself.


• In all things we must seek Truth.

Easter is all about the Truth. Again as Lewis points out, I am a Christian (as he also was) because it is true. I am not a Christian because it is socially acceptable, a convenient way to keep social behavior under control, or any other sociological hogwash along those lines. If Christianity is false, then it should be abandoned. And that is where the key conflict arises with the materialist scientists , which is by no means all of the scientific community, who argue that there are no miracles and promote evolutionary materialism. They ultimately are insisting that there is nothing but matter, energy and chance. Easter is the demonstration in history that there is more.

The Church as 'Consumer Goods'

We are reading and discussing Greg Ogden's book Transforming Discipleship in our Monday morning men's group at the moment. This morning we were discussing the author's thoughts on why there is not a clear focus on discipleship in most evangelical churches, even those that do some amount of talking about discipleship. We only got through the first of 8 potential reasons in the book today, but the discussion did help clarify some thoughts I have also wondered about in regards to why the megachurch has arisen in the past 25 years or so, and why more recently there have been changes to more of a 'worship' focus (I put 'worship' in quotes because the focus is mostly on music, and 'worship leaders' are music leaders; this strikes me as a very limited view of worship). In the book, one of the reasons for lack of discipleship in churches is that pastors have been diverted from their primary calling of' equipping the saints for the work of ministry. Rev. Ogden sees this issue as being that both pastors and members see pastoral care of the members as the top role of pastors. Our discussion this morning concluded that we in our small group felt this was true of an older generation (that fits with my observations of my parents generation); that my generation, though, has viewed preaching as the key role for pastors, and that my childern's generation sees worship as the key role for pastors. Not the only role, but the key role, for each of these.

It seems to me that the rise of preaching as the key role instead of pastoral care helps explain the rise of the mega-church. Smaller churches, such as my parents saw as the norm, were much better at pastoral care and were more accepting of mediocre preaching. My generation has been more demanding of excellent preaching, and then willing to accept the less personal pastoral care situation of a mega-church in return. My children seem much more interested in the worship experience.

None of this, however, makes discipleship the key role of the pastor and the local church. All of it, in all 3 of the generations mentioned, seems to be consumer oriented, though the targeted item for consumption has been changing.

One comment in the book hints at this when he observes that (p. 39 in my edition) 'in fact, the majority of participants in the (church) view their membership as optional, not a necessity for living by its principles'. That has also been striking to me in recent years; as churches become 'community churches', instead of specific denominations, membership is de-emphasized and viewed as optional. I see this 'church as optional' viewpoint more and more, first in my generation and more so in my children's generation, and this strikes me as another indication of our consumer mentality. The church is not a community of disciples depending on each other to be developing 'self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Christ' (his description of a 'disciple'), it is rather an optional consumer good. This has a lot of causes, from membership being devalued by accepting anyone who walks down the aisle as a 'member' to wanting to be 'seeker sensitive', but to me it also shows how very engrained the consumer mentality has become in all of us.

Of course, there are varying degrees of consumerism among people. Seeing Christianity as 'fire insurance' in which we seek to be 'covered' but only just enough to be be safe is a classic example. This often shows up as CEO Christians (Christmas and Easter Only). That is not my concern here. The concern is that most churches, even if they say that their mission is to make disciples, end up making preaching,worship, or pastoral care their focus. All of those miss the point of the Great Commission of Matt. 28:18-20.

Daniel Boone, the Appalchians, and a certain kind of man

As I rode the airplane to Wisconsin this week I began reading Boone by Robert Morgan, a biography of Daniel Boone. The Fess Parker version of Boone on TV was the myth I grew up with, but he was also still talked about by my dad and the folks where my dad grew up in eastern Kentucky. My dad's hometown, Williamsburg, KY, is along the Cumberland River not far from Cumberland Gap. Daniel led many groups of settlers, including Abraham Lincoln's grandfather, across that Gap, and as a 'long hunter' he made many hunting and trapping expeditions into the area where my dad grew up. Boone most likely ran trap lines along Jellico Creek and Beck's Creek in same areas where my dad later trapped muskrat, raccoon, and the occasional mink.



Reading about Boone has been somewhat like reading about my father. Morgan comments at one point in the first chapter that 'there was almost a Franciscan humility and reverence for life in the young Boone, yet he was a hunter, a killer of wild animals.' That description is true of a great many hunters I have known but especially of my dad. Later Morgan comments 'the young Daniel often demonstrated a tendency to wander off without much concern for the worry his absence might cause others'. When on a hunt or out fishing, that was certainly true of my dad, and also of my brother, who would wander off for hours some times when we were in high school, wandering through the woods until my mother thought he must have been in an accident or something. Later, Morgan quotes Thoreau from Walden saying, "There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are 'the best of men', as the Algonquins called them". I think this concept of the life of an outdoorsman like Boone as the best life, the life most in tune with God's world, resonated very much with my dad.



The book makes it clear how in Boone's day when game was plentiful this could also be an economically viable life. I had read of how the Appalachian settlers had pursued a 'farm and forest' economy where hunting trapping and farming were both vital parts of their income. The book points out how, during a winter hunting/trapping trip that might last several months, Boone would return with hundreds of deer skins and beaver/muskrat/mink/otter pelts that would provide as much income as an entire year of business for a blacksmith or weaver. By my dad's time, however, that kind of harvest from the woods had long since ended. Nonetheless, that ideal of the woodsman providing vital income lived on though the reality had died out.



That vision of the woodsman as the best of men and the best provider for his family never resonated with me as it did with my brother. Yet I can relate to it and understand it from having seen it so vividly in my dad while growing up. In some ways my dad and all those who share that vision must feel like they were born into the world at the wrong time. Yet I think that very balanced view of the natural world, both revering it and harvesting it at the same time, has an important lesson in it that both the environmentalists (who revere without harvesting) and the industrialists (who harvest without revering) get wrong. So I am grateful for having seen that view of nature lived out before me as I grew up. It is a very Biblical point of view.



I am also grateful for the love of the woods though I am not a hunter. Boone's love for the Appalachians in particular is shared by most of the people who live there. Growing up I both loved and hated the place. I hated the poverty that was so rampant, the lack of education and the lack of basic facilities even. I was in junior high school before my grandfather's house got indoor plumbing, and going outside to the outhouse in the dead of winter was no fun! Yet there is something about the mountains, the forests, the woods that still draws me to the place. I am awed by the American West, its canyons and majestic peaks. But there something about the Appalachians that seems to be in my blood. It was in my dad's blood, too, and in Daniel Boone's from what I can tell. From the Smokies in the south to the bluegrass in the north, it is a special place. I can understand why the Cherokee viewed as almost sacred.

Change you can REALLY believe in

President Obama has been speaking today about how 'we can't keep relying the failed policies of the past' in regard to the economy. He is talking about tax cuts as a stimulus as the 'failed policies' as opposed to his 'new', enlightened approach (which is remarkably like FDR's, which was equally discredited). In reality, both the tax cut approach to stimulate consumer spending (as in last's years check's mailed to homes) or the current over-sized proposal, both fail to deal with the problem. The problem is one of a phony economy based on spending more than we earn. Until we adjust down to only spending what we can afford to spend, artificially trying to spend more than we have money for only prolongs the time when the real adjustment has to happen. No matter what, we cannot indefinitely spend more than we have. At some point we have to adjust downward in spending to allow positive savings (as opposed to the NEGATIVE savings rate of 2% the last few years). This is to say that we have to repent of our evil ways.

Repentance is not something we hear much about. In the broadest sense it simply means to renounce our bad behavior and change for the better. We most often think of it as a purely religious term--repenting of our sinful behavior and turning to God for a new way of life--but it applies to the economic mess as well. We have to change our ways. Our greediness, our demand for instant gratification, our refusal to live within our means all must change. Both parties have ignored this, they have just ignored it in different ways. Whether we send tax money back to households to spend a brief time longer, or create new government programs to 'create jobs', either way we still have to change our ways or when the spending ends we still have the same problem. We have just deferred it. The economy will still have to downsize to the amount we can actually pay for, not the size that has significant amounts of bad debt built into it. The portion beyond what we can pay for is the 'phony economy'. That can never be more than temporary.

Government is not the answer. Getting our personal and corporate finances right, to live within our means, is the adjustment that must happen. The question is when. That is the only change that will turn this around for the long run.

Baptism and the Office of 'Christian'

A couple of weeks ago I made mention of the fact that both marriage and Christianity are an office as well as a relationship. Today at church we had a very special worship service in which those who had professed faith in Christ but had not been baptized since that profession of faith were invited to be baptized right then, in that same service. Provisions had been made for changes of clothes, robes, towels, make-up, etc. The response was terrific, with 32 folks stepping up for baptism during the early 8:30 am service, and many more in the other services that followed. (Addition on 2/2/2009: there were 226 baptisms across the 5 services!) It was really a wonderful thing to behold. Some were professing faith publicly for the first time, but most had been sprinkled as babies and had never been baptized after coming to a personal faith commitment.

I was pleased to be there and to hear this renewed teaching on baptism, since it is not often discussed from the pulpit or in Bible classes. As with marriage, we talk lots about the relationship but not much about the office to which we are commiting ourselves. The relationship is the prerequisite, of course. We do not get married, in our culture, without first establishing the love relationship before hand. It has not always been this way, though. Marriages have been arranged for people by parents in many cultures for much of history. It is debatable whether marriage by choice results in better marriages. However, even in arranged marriages the paricipants have to make a choice: will they choose to love this person they have married or will they simply co-habit without love? Some choose to love; some do not. But this choice still comes as an adult, as one capable of choosing. In some ways the choice is much more deliberate in an arranged marriage. When you are confronted on your wedding night by this person someone else has chosen for you, you are immediately confronted with the need to make a choice. When people fall in love, they often assume that 'love is all we need', and don't really come to the point of making a deliberate choice until, as they say, 'the honeymoon is over' and they realize that this marriage thing isn't so easy after all. As C.S. Lewis says about falling in love, 'Eros makes promises she can't keep'. Love ISN'T all we need. We need a personal commitment as well, a choice, a marriage., indeed a marriage that includes vows. In the end, that is what the wedding ceremony is all about:making a commitment.

Baptism is to Christianity as a wedding is to marriage. That is why infant baptism is similar to infant weddings. That is also why today's service was so special.