Archive for November 2007
Pic of the week [Koi Pond]
This pic was taken outside my parents house. They have the coolest fish pond with waterlilies, and about 10 gigantic kois!
Check out more pics here.
My Megachurch Confessions [8/8]
And, thus we conclude our series on My Megachurch Confessions!
Sjoe, personally it’s been two weeks of digging deep, and figuring out precisely what it has meant for me to work and worship in a megachurch environment the past three years. Come February 2008, it’s been three years exactly since I started serving in and around this ministry, and I still learn new stuff everyday, whether good or bad.
May we all never stop learning in the context of our own ministries!
Anyway, to conclude this series I just have two thoughts to share:
- If you work and/or worship in a relatively smaller congregation, use your relative smallness to your advantage in building great relationships, knowing everybody your work/worship with to the best of your ability, and in the process foster a strong, involved community, where you can all do life together, while all the way glorifying Christ!
- However, if you work and/or worship in a megachurch environment, use the incredible resource at your disposal for the edifying of the entire body of Christ! Leverage your technological, human, financial, economic, real estate and political resources to such a way that your church’s bigness makes sense, not only to the greater church, but also to the unbelieving community around you.
If you have any comments, please feel free to post them here, also feel free to submit any online resource on the subject!
Next up: Money Matter$
My Megachurch Confessions [7/8]
Jack Of All Trades
Everybody knows that by juggling too many axes, you will end up losing an arm, or more, some time or another!
My realisation in the megachurch environment is that wider application to a broad spectrum of people groups and their interests, leads to a lack of focus in the church, as a general rule.
You end up catering to all kinds of people with all kinds of demands, creating a hundred or more different ministry departments and/or programs. Normally these ministries don’t necessarily tie in with, or compliment, each other, and they usually end up doing just the opposite: competing with each other for resources such as time, money, volunteers, marketing opportunities and venues, to effectively run their programs.
The harsh truth is that if you want to say yes, and really mean it, to a certain vision, focus or direction, this implies that you have to say no to a bunch of other stuff! This other stuff may even be great opportunities, good plans or well-intended volunteers or ministry leaders.
- Whatever God’s dream about man may be, it seems certain it cannot come true unless man cooperates.
- Stella Terrill Mann
I guess the problem is just that it is so difficult for a leader to say no to somebody who has a genuine good idea, even if that idea has got totally nothing to do with God’s vision for that specific organisation. We try so hard to be everything to everyone, but ironically, we end up being nothing to nobody, really.
Focus brings strength, momentum, vision and constant forward motion. Without saying no once in a while, it is near impossible to say yes!
What say ye?
My Megachurch Confessions [6/8]
The American Dream
Everybody knows that with stuff comes more stuff to maintain the stuff. And then that stuff needs even more stuff to maintain the first stuff. Very soon everything is way complicated and everbody’s confused.
Well, big churches aren’t very different…
My experience of working and worshipping in a megachurch environment is that one of the downsides is this: sooner than later the leaders, staff, volunteers and general congregation gets sucked into a corporate, institutionalized mentality. It’s not wrong of itself, God knows that the size of the monster warrants good organisation and structures. I just don’t know if it is the best thing for a community of faith to operate in that arena.
Example: more congregation members = more programs = more volunteers = more full time staff = more salaries = bigger human resources department = more financial personnel = a dedicated communications department, etc, etc. I guess my point would be this: the bigger the institution gets, the more people witn non-ministry related roles (and missions?) is needed to keep the boat afloat.
The biggest danger of this is that, eventually, the non-ministry related departments start dictating what is and is not possible, and relevant, to the ministry related departments. And before you now it, your church becomes an institution driven by corporate values, instead of ministry values, where the tail is wagging the dog, so to speak!
The challenge then would be to let your church grow in numbers, but also in effectiveness in ministry, becoming more of a movement and less of a monument (kudos, Erwin.)! To not let the corporate side of such a big organisation bog down the fluidity, creativity and immediateness that is such an integral part of ministering to our culture today.
The churches where this is working seems to be the exception, though.
What do you think?
Here is some funny but true quotes on committees and their downsides. If they struck a chord, check out these.
- A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. – Sir Barnett Cocks (1907 – 1989)
- A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members. - David Coblitz
For some more perspectives, see if you can get your hands on Erwin Mcmanus‘ book on church life, An Unstoppable Force. Also check out some other articles with interesting views on the matter here and here.
My Megachurch Confessions [5/8]
One Of Many
With this post, we start moving towards the not-so-good part of working and worshipping in a megachurch environment.As we start to talk about this negative side of big churches, please remember our premise when we started out on this series: that with everything there usually are two sides of the coin, and that the real truth is to be found somewhere in the balance between the good and the bad. Life isn’t always as simple as being black and white, and mostly not so when we talk about matters as abstract as faith, church and a life in ministry.
That said, let’s continue…
For me personally, one of the biggest drawbacks of worshipping on Sunday with about 7 000 other people is just that, the loss of the personal touch. It becomes just darn near impossible to actually have any kind of personal interaction when you are overwhelmed with so many people at ministry events, worship services, meetings and various other programs. Research has shown that a normal human being are capable of fostering a close, personal relationship with 14 people at the most, at any given time. This number includes friends, colleagues, family and fellow worshippers.
Even Jesus modelled this when He chose to change the world with 12, and even then there was still one who fell away!
I guess my confession would be this: in a megachurch environment there will always be that one person or family, that just falls through the cracks, that nobody notices or just keeps getting overlooked by church and ministry leaders.
Have you ever felt like a number at church? Speak up!
If you want to read up some more, read this post by Les Puryear at his blog.
Help is on the way [3] – Top 30 Blogs
For this edition of HIOTW, I thought I’d share with you the 30 top blogs and sites I visit and read on a daily basis. You might like all or some of them, so go ahead and try them out. I didn’t include a detailed description of each, since it’s going to take forever, and I have better things to do, like read up on some great blog content!
Looks like you’ll just have to click and find out for yourself!
Say It Again [War]
Some quotes on war, as I was inpired by The Kingdom movie…
One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.
Agatha Christie (1890 – 1976), Autobiography (1977)
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955), (attributed)
War is not nice.
Barbara Bush (1925 – )
The Kingdom | Movie
Here is just a couple of thoughts I had after going to see The Kingdom last night. The movie stars Jennifer Gardner and Jamie Foxx, and uses the American-Saudi oil partnership, and the current war on terror, as a backdrop for an FBI investigation on Saudi soil.
I couldn’t help but think about the call on our lives to serve in the kingdom of God, and here is some principles I picked up during the movie…
- When you sense an injustice about something in your heart, you will always be confronted about the real danger involved in doing something about that injustice;
- There will always be those who will say it is better to be safe, than to be exposed to danger when working in the kingdom;
- Expect resistance not only from the enemy, but also from within your own ranks, when you start to do something radical and direct;
- To facilitate real change, you have to leave your world, and head for the rocky places;
- Sometimes, if you sense the call to go, you have to proceed in spite of what everyone else is telling you!
If you are a ministry or business leader, go and see the movie through the eyes of your own context, and try to recognize some of these principles.
Also, let me know what you thought of the film!
Pic of the week [2]
Help is on the way [2]
Some more resources for your surfing pleasure…
- Dries Lombaard, local church consultant and Strengthfinder Coach, just launched his site for their community of faith, Journey With Others. Worth a visit!
- While on the subject of new local faith communities, have a visit with Pierre and the guys of 3rd Place – a not-so-new, though still very fresh bunch of Jesus followers!
- Just for kicks: Busted Tees. You’ll laugh your shirt off.
- You MUST go and give Coen Slabber a visit at his blog. Coen is involved at ekerk, and also serves as a church consultant. Everything I don’t have time to read up on myself, I get from his blog!
- Amazon just launched it’s new digital reader device, the Kindle. The whole idea is to enable Amazon to sell you books in a digital format, which will be faster and cheaper, eliminating shipping time and costs. Read more here.
- And lastly, for all you webmasters and designers out there, check out these test results on how peole react to different webpage layouts and designs, courtesy of Seth Godin. Read his post here, and even more here.
We will take a break from the My Megachurch Confessions series for the weekend, and continue again next week.
Chat soon!
