echoes of redemption | steven dilla

Here is a quick update on everything in my world (for the moment):

Update: Well, it’s the end of the day, I shot this video nearly 12 hours ago… first video blog was incredibly difficult to get on the web - but it’s up! Enjoy.

I recently read a post that combined the names of the top five largest churches in America into one church name. The author was making the point that a few churches carry the most influence on younger, developing churches.

Let’s just use numbers as a way to measure impact for a second. A 2005 study in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion found that there were about 335,000 churches in America. Another study found roughly 40 churches in America have an attendance over 10,000 each week.

The congregants for these 40 largest churches represent about 700,000 of the roughly 56 million people who attend some type of church in the US throughout the year. So, here is the breakdown: the 40 largest churches in America,

• reach 0.00125% of Americans who attend church annually.
• represent 0.00012% of churches in America.

That said, a few observations:

• No church has the corner on the kingdom of God. The 40 largest churches in America (combined) are reaching only a small fraction of our world.
• If you try to copy a small part of the body and replicate it, you will miss the opportunity to become the part of the body God intended for you to be. When we look at these churches, we’re looking at 0.00012% of the body of Christ, in America, at this moment in time. So really, we’re looking at a more infinitesimal part that that. Trying to replicate these churches without vision in place is futile.
• Stop the church worship. Each year a list is released of these 40 largest churches - how crazy is that? Christian’s ranking Christians. As Ed Young pointed out on his blog, many of these churches are guess-timating, estimating, or padding their numbers anyway. It’s not about the numbers - it never has been.
• We can learn immensely from these large churches. (Photocopying and learning are different things.) Most of these large churches have systems and processes in place that get the administration and business end out of the way of ministry. They know how to make decisions, lead people, stay fresh, take care of themselves, expand their ministry and tons more. Not to learn from the wisdom and experience these churches have to offer would be foolish.
• Stop playing hate. I have been a pat of Fellowship Church for three months shy of a decade now. I have also attended Bible College, Seminary and visited many other churches throughout the country. There is a tremendous amount of tension toward large churches. Why? Because the ear wants the hand to be an ear.

It’s that simple. Large churches play a single part of the body during a single time in history. They area not inherently bad simply because of size. On the flip side, a small church isn’t inherently ineffective because of it’s size.

Each church, each pastor, each leader, is called to play one part. I don’t hold you accountable for your part, and neither do you hold me accountable for mine. It is the freedom of grace. We are saved to be free, to lead like we feel we have been called, and to minister to a lost and dyeing culture.

Learn from those who have gone before you, pray your heart out for vision and build the Kingdom in your city.

(for more information on the stats, click here)

I had all the intentions in the world of posting last week - and this weekend - but it’s been a wild ride of a week. To see what I’ve been up to you can check out my pics.

In a few minutes I’m headed out to meet with our volunteer build team. They are the men and women who create the FC Kids environment each year. We are blessed to have the team we have and it has been one of those experiences where you see that excellence breeds excellence.

Walt Disney caught on to this a while back and realized if he kept his parks clean (don’t sell gum anywhere on property, don’t allow smoking, keep the trash picked up) then his guests would help keep the park clean.

In my case, when a group of talented people come together for a project, the talent of the team is attractive to people who are more talented. They join the team and the next project is even greater.

This requires creating an environment where people have room to grow, experiment, fail and move forward together. If the culutre is rigid, the same people will end up doing the same things and get the same results. Creativity, flexibility and grace lead to growth, experimentation and forward motion.

Interesting conversation going on at flowerdust.net.

If you’ve been following the Scripture links out of my posts the last couple of days you noticed I switched to YouVersion for my online Bible.

Really it’s more of an online community around the Bible. You can highlight a verse (or verses) and post links, videos, comments, audio files, etc all to the verse.

Check it out -> YouVersion.com

I asked the simple question in staff meeting the other day - who are you following? Or, who is influencing you?

It was interesting, we went around the room and everyone had a list of people. Ministry leader. Parents. Marriages. Creative gurus. Pastors. There was no shortage. Some people had lists of two or three people from different periods in their life.

Chances are, we all have someone we’re following - someone influencing us.

But let me turn the tables.

Who is following you? Or, who are you influencing?

People are following. You are influencing. The question is, are you doing it strategically?

All too often leadership (vision based) turns into management (task based). We don’t strategically connect with people. We are leading them, but we aren’t trying to take them anywhere.

I’ve been working for a week or so to write down some names, pray over them and think about how I can strategically partner with them to see God’s vision for their life unfold.

Who are you influencing? Is it on purpose?

In silence we find ourselves uncomfortable. There is too little going on. Every day, a host of distractions vie for our attention - threatening to take passion, energy and attention from our worship.

This has always been the case.

In the Old Testament the player’s weren’t TV, nice cars or adrenaline rushes - they were idols. Little statues that demanded time, required sacrifice and incited desire.

One of the key players in the Old Testament is the culture of the Philistines. The Philistines were as culturally rich as they were powerful, and controlled much of the Ancient Near East for large periods of history. One of the Philistine’s key gods, if not the key god, was an idol named Dagon. Half fish and half man, Dagon was said to rule over the other Philistine gods and be the source of their harvest each season.

His record in Scripture is intriguing, to say the least:

• Dagon is first mentioned in Judges 16 just after Samson is captured by the Philistines. They gouge Samson’s eyes out and drag him to one of their temples to worship Dagon - who they credit for Samson’s capture. In the end of the chapter Samson destroys their temple and kills the thousands who have come to celebrate Dagon’s victory over YHWH’s servant.

• 1 Samuel 5 may be my favorite Dagon story in the Bible. The Ark has been captured by the Philistines and they take it to the temple of Dagon. As with everything they give their god credit for, they set it at his feet and leave him. The Bible says the next day the Philistines returned and the massive idol of Dagon was laying prostrate before the Ark. The Philistines stood him up (don’t you hate it when you have to help your god stand up?) and left him a second time before the ark. The following day they returned to find Dagon, again prostrate, this time decapitated and with both hands severed from his body. Tie this in with what we know about the Philistines from 1 Chronicles 10 and we have quite a story unfolding…

• At the end of Saul’s life (1 Chronicles 10) the Philistines came upon his body. As was their tradition, to demonstrate the total destruction of their enemies, they decapitated him and hung in head in the temple of Dagon. Extra-Biblical accounts record that the Philistines were known for the decapitation and severing of both hands of their enemies to demonstrate their victory over them and to account for their success in battle.

YHWH totally destroyed Dagon. He declared victory over the idol and completely incapacitated him.

Have the things that take my attention from God been totally destroyed or do they still stand in my temple?

Where do I spend my time? What am I sacrificing for? What desire is the strongest in my life? These places are where I will find my God.

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This post was adapted from my previous blog (I liked it too much to leave it…)

It is a problem that plagues ministry today. A disease that destroys. An epidemic.

Burned out pastors.

Mark Driscoll did the research a while back:

Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.

Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.

Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.

And perhaps the most devastating:

The majority of pastor’s wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.

How screwed up is that?

I won’t pretend to be an expert on burnout, I’ve only been doing full time ministry for a few years, but I have seen and heard some stuff I use to focus my ministry.

Scripture would point us to the story of Moses and Jethro. Moses was trying to do everything - Jethro came along and basically said “delegate!” Ultimately Moses’ obedience in delegation was what paved the road for one of Israel’s most defining moments - God delivering the law to the people.

Bottom line in Scripture - Delegation creates space for God to move.

I’ve sat under Ed Young for nearly a decade now and one thing that has remained a constant is his foundational belief in the power of volunteers. Keeping a small staff forces us to utilize volunteers. It is moving the ministry to the masses.

Bill Hybels would point us to self-leadership. My duty to keep myself on track. I am a follower before I am a leader. I need to ask myself, am I having my quiet times? Eating right? Exercising? Creating time to dream?

Is my life operating in such a way that I can be the leader God designed me to be?

Ultimately all of these steps can (and will) be met with excuses. “I have to do it myself.” “It’s just a season.” “I don’t have the volunteers/staff.”

However, I have not been able to find a pastor who has created space for God to work, pulled others in ministry around them and made the leadership of self a priority and is still burned out.

See all of Mark’s post: Death By Ministry. | Check out the website for Anne Jackson’s book: Mad Church Disease.

I was talking with some friends today about the spiritual warfare that has fallen upon our staff at the church recently. There is this general understanding in the Christian community that when the spiritual warfare is high, “something big is going to happen.”

Many people spend their lives looking for “something big” and miss out on everything God is doing around them.

When we are involved in this movement of Christianity, every step we make is something big. The act of  Christ giving His life for us while we were still sinners is something big. The idea that we are His chosen people is something big. The opportunity we have to restore people and bring redemption to the world is something big.

When you live your life with God, everything is sacred. Everything is big.

Really, what was once extraordinary is, in a sense, ordinary. It is common. It is part of the thread of our lives. It is what we experience every time we breathe. It is what we experience every time we use the bodies, gifts and abilities God has given us. The extraordinary is ordinary in the sense that it is ever-present in the daily life of the followers of Jesus.

So, when spiritual warfare comes - something big is going to happen - but something big doesn’t necessarily mean something out of the ordinary.

(For more see: Romans 5:8, Deuteronomy 14:2, 1 Peter 2:9-10, 2 Corinthians 5:18.)

(He) is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. Ephesians 3:20  

So many times I find that God has blessed me beyond what I could have imagined.

It’s the project that went exceedingly well. It’s the relationship that leads to great things in ministry. It’s the change that opens doors to opportunities I’ve never dreamed about.

It’s the answer to the prayer I never knew to pray.

How blessed are we that He wants to bless us beyond what we know to ask? How much joy it must bring Him to blow our socks off. How amazing it must be for my relationship with God when I take time to notice the blessing and thank Him for it.