Distracting the Church

Recently, I was involved in a discussion with a group of youth ministers about what the church should be doing.  (We are reading Think Orange by Reggie Joiner and the discussion in chapter 2 of how we move our light as a church brought this discussion up.)  This conversation got me thinking about a post I wrote back at the height of the healthcare discussion.  The question I asked at that time was, “What should the government do?”  What I was trying to get at is the question of what are the necessities.  All the stuff that didn’t make the list I would consider distractions. The purpose of today’s post is to ask the same question of the church.  What is it that we should be doing?  All the other stuff is a distraction.

• Evangelism – Just to be clear evangelism means telling people the message that Jesus died for our sins.  Our success in this is not determined by how many decisions we see, but how faithful we are with the gospel message.  I would call this the most important function of the church
• Corporate Worship – From the earliest days of the church there has been corporate worship.  Corporate worship is important.  Though it can occur at a rally or at a parachurch function, it is best when done well in the body of local believers.
• Discipleship – The point of the Reggie Joiner book is that discipleship of youth/children lies with the family, but there is no question that the church should be in the business of trying to lead people closer to Christ.
• Ministry – Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:27)  I am not for one second promoting the social gospel.  Helping people with physical needs is only temporary.  Telling people the truth about eternity has eternal consequences.  But the fact is that it is the job of the church to minister to those in need.  It demonstrates the Love of Christ in the world and it is the command of the Bible.

That is my list.  I will be interested to hear your thoughts on this list and what you think I left out.  I may write a post next week about the many things that we do in addition to this and why those things draw our attention.

Book Review: ApParent Privilege

ApParent Privilege is written by Steve Wright and Chris Graves and is the Companion book to reThink. (which I reviewed here) The thesis of ApParent Privilege is that the privilege of discipling children in the faith falls to Christian parents. It is not the job of the church, youth minister, or school. Those entities are supplementary.

To build the case of the book the authors begin by citing multiple studies, both religious and secular that all agree.  There is no more powerful influence in the life of a child than his or her family. The Bible agrees with this position as well which the authors establish thoroughly.  They then follow up with their own study which said that students wish their parents would be more proactive in their lives spiritually.

After establishing the thesis, ApParent Privilege moves into the reasons why biblical parenting is more important than ever.  The world is changing but not the true job of parents.

“Biblical parenting is more than keeping our kids from having sex, using drugs, or going to jail.  It is about fostering an awe of God in our children.  It is about showing our children their need for a Savior and introducing them to Jesus who alone can rescue their lives from sin and give life that lasts forever.”

This quote, my favorite from the book, echoes the thesis of the greatest Christian parenting book ever, Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp.

The book continues with a more how-to approach to Christian parenting.  This includes a word directly to fathers, practical ideas for developing and discipling children, and ways for the church to supplement rather than supersede parents.

It would be difficult for me to give higher praise to a book than to this one.  It is well-written, easy to read, simple and straightforward.  The authors make their case thoroughly and offer practical advice on how to become biblical parents.  My only criticism of the book is that it is entirely too expensive for such a small book.  This is not a problem particular to this book, it plagues the entire publishing industry.

I strongly recommend ApParent Privilege to any parent of a school-aged child.

Best Web Junk (July 31)

I know last week's most popular video, the dancing wedding party was fun But about 30 seconds in I remember saying to myself this is definitely not a Baptist church.  I guess this reporter was thinking the same thing.  Here's an interesting story about how few churches would allow this kind of thing. A second interesting thing from that video which now has about 13 million views, is how it shot the song "Forever" up the sales charts (#4 on iTunes) even though the song is a couple of years old.  Just think, if the publishers had issued a takedown, like they normally would they would have lost all that money.

By far the best video I've seen this week.  This is fun

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDx-mQqzYNw]

My Recent Redesign pt. 2

Yesterday I began writing about the recent redesign of our church website, what platforms I considered and how I chose Joomla as our CMS.  Today I thought I’d write about the actual process of the redesign and move to Joomla.*  I will share the challenges and the things that made the move easier. Challenges

I should say that most of the challenges didn’t remain challenges for long, because the support for Joomla is truly amazing.  On 2 occasions I twittered about my frustration before I went to bed and when I woke up, there were @ reply answers.

Installing Joomla – I didn’t really know what I was doing and had never used Joomla at all.  So I started with the “Getting Started” articles on Joomla.org and I read the absolute beginner’s guide.  It was helpful.  I was originally planning to move our host, so I was reading up on other shared hosting when I happened across this article.  This made installing Joomla so simple it was unbelievable so I stuck with Go Daddy.  It would have been easy to do manually, but a bit more time consuming.  My only real fear was setting up the MySQL database.  The moral of the story is, Go Daddy set up Joomla for me.  All I had to do was tell it what directory.

Choosing a template – I said yesterday that there is a staggering number of free templates available for Joomla.  And there are several that cost just a few dollars.  I chose the template called Jamba from Joomlashack because I liked the modules and because it seemed very flexible.

Learning my way around the template – This was really the most difficult part of the entire process for me, things were just not quite as intuitive as I expected.  Mostly it was an exercise in trial and error.  I would change one parameter and reload the page to see what it did.

In particular I had great difficulty figuring out how to edit the footer.  Reply #5 on this post was helpful to solve that problem.

The only outstanding problem I have is in the twitter feed module.  It makes improper line breaks within web addresses and often flows over the boundaries of its enclosure.  I’d be glad to accept any help I can get for that one

Making iFrames and javascript work – This was by far the most frustrating issue I dealt with during the redesign.  Our messages page has a javascript player built in to each entry.  Joomla’s default was not to allow any code.  So the code of the script and the player’s parameters were just showing up as text on the page.  I read great things about a plugin called jumi.  All I can say is that it didn’t work for me.  It would hide the code from the script, but it didn’t actually process the code.  One night I twittered about this and went to bed.  When I got up I had a reply from @saadiallan recommending a plugin called Sourcerer.  It worked perfectly allowing me to embed the javascript player as well as the google map and calendar.

Installing plugins – I did not realize just how powerful joomla really is.  There are plugins to allow almost anything I desire and it is amazingly customizable.  If you use the dashboard, then installing plugins could not be simpler

Moving to the root directory – This was by far the most frightening thing to me in the site build.  Once I got to the point that I was ready for the public to see the new site I needed to move it all from the test directory to the root.  I copied everything to my hard drive then I moved the entire database to the root directory.  Then I edited the configuration.php file.  (there are many instructions in many forums about how to do this, but basically I edited every line that had http://domain/olddirectory to just say http://domain/)  It was also necessary to clear the cache, but with only one small panic I got it working.

Helpers – This is where I received the help that made everything do-able and pretty smooth

• The forums at joomla.org are teh awesome
• Ryan Thomas who designed our logo and generally gave design guidance
• Paula Durand our church secretary who is keeping the Google calendar up to date and keeping content current
• The readers of this blog who gave me editorial advice.  Especially Caroline who gave me 4 pages of copy edits which I am still not finished with
• churchwebsitehelp.com who did a review of the site.  I haven’t implemented all his suggestions yet, but the review was very helpful and it was free.

* I know that much of this post is written in gibberish for most of my readers.  I'll try to get back to writing in English tomorrow.

Great Commission ressurgence needed

I am frustrated as I write this, so the tone may not be what I am hoping for.  It may come across as a polemic rather than an illustration about the need for a great commission resurgence within the SBC. I’ll begin with some context.  Just over a year ago, the city of Fayetteville’s Dogwood festival passed a ban on all booths that promoted “religious or political views.”  Effectively this shut out all churches from the festival.

So last year the churches of greater Fayetteville made a big deal about not being allowed into the Dogwood festival.  We even held a political action rally.  This rally did not exclusively address the Dogwood Festival, but that decision was the impetus for the rally.

In response to the outrage, the board, rightly in my opinion, reversed the decision.

Political action working, right?  Yep.  We got the desired result, churches are now allowed at the festival.

Obviously then, this year, there were many churches there representing Christ, giving out free water (rather than selling beer) and telling people the life changing message that Jesus saves.  Right?  Wrong.

Three churches participated. They include, the largest church in town, a small Presbyterian church (PCA), and one church that was apparently fundraising.

There are 100 churches in the Baptist association which encompasses Fayetteville.  Many of these churches were represented at the political action rally last year.  Now let’s do the math, 100 churches in the association, zero churches participate in the festival after they hear our voice and change their policy.  That number, again, was zero.  Now, to be fair, not all 100 were at the rally, but many were.

Here’s the question; does that make us look inept, or hypocritical, or like we only want to cause trouble?  I’m afraid it sends the message that we have no time to witness because we are too busy complaining about people who will not let us witness.

To me it definitely says that we are not nearly as concerned about the gospel as we pretend to be.

By the way, my church was at the rally but not at the festival, so I am not merely casting stones.  Actually I want someone to tell me why I'm wrong to think this way.  I believe in political action, I’m glad the board reversed its decision, and I don’t expect every church in Fayetteville to be there.  I do, however, believe that we put way too much energy into fixing social issues and not nearly as much effort into spreading the gospel, even though it is the greatest message that could ever be told.

I believe that this is the perfect example of the need for a great commission resurgence. We need to have churches that focus on what's really important, the gospel.  It seems that we are currently out of whack.

(BTW - I really wanted to post this comic here because it is funny and goes with the last line.  But usage rights cost $25, which is ridiculous whenever you can just follow this link and see it for free.)

Technology and the Church (part 2)

I said that today's post would discuss some specific ways you or your church can use technology to enhance your ministry.  But since I have already written about RSS and Twitter, you can just go back and read those posts.  I will focus today on your church website. So here's the question - Is your church website important?

The answer is yes and no.

Yes it is important, because it demonstrates to both your church members and prospective members that you are not complete luddites.  Why on earth would people assume that the church is made up of luddites?  Let's have a look at David Kinnaman's unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters.  This book is written around a survey of the unchurched and their views of the church.

Number 6 on the list is that the church is out of touch with reality. Now, we know this not to be true, every member of every church lives in the real world.  We have the same struggles and difficulties as everyone else.  We just have our faith to carry us through these difficulties.   But the fact is, everything has a website.  Every book, movie, elementary school, hospital and teenager has a website.  If a church does not have one, they are somehow disconnected from the reality of the world.

Number 4 on the list is that the church is old-fashioned.  Read the previous paragraph.  What better way to prove the old-fashionedness of your church than to be stuck in an era before the internet.

I said that the answer to this question was yes and no, so let's briefly deal with the no.  In reality, no website is going to bring hordes of people to your church.  The lack of a website will certainly turn people off, but even the greatest church website ever will not bring people to your church.

Interested people will visit your website and they will want to learn as much about you as possible.  I personally believe that they would rather visit your website and learn about you anonymously than to be visited on Tuesday night as part of church visitation.

So what must any good church website include?

Who we are What we believe Info on Church programs Directions Staff information Current Information

By far, the most important of these is current info. Having a badly out of date church website may be worse than not having a church website.

Feel free to tell me in the comments how wrong I am. That your church is awesome without a website, or that the church website is directly responsible for doubling your church size.

Book Review: Chasing Daylight

Chasing Daylight: Seize the Power of Every Moment was written by Erwin McManus the pastor of Mosaic church in Los Angeles.  Before reading this book, my only familiarity with McManus was that I saw him speak at the SBC pastor's conference in 2006.  And now that I think of it, I believe I saw the profile of his church done by NAMB on TV on a snowed out Sunday morning. The reason for choosing to read this book is that it is on a few of my friends' Facebook lists as favorite book.  Also it was the theme of the Annie Armstrong offering for 2008, and it is similar to the book Wild Goose Chase which I recently wrote a review of.  It has been sitting in my queue of books to read since March (during the AAEO).

The main idea of Chasing Daylight is that Christians have been called to actually do something.  Most of us sit around doing nothing waiting to hear God tell us what to do, but God would have us doing something.

I found this book to be very engaging.  I wrote in the margins (my way of interacting with the book) numerous times in agreement and occasionally in befuddlement.  I would not put it in the class with my very favorite books, but there is no question that I heard the voice of God as I read it.  And it was a great reminder that we are to be doing something for God.  One thing is for certain, we only have a limited amount of time and how we use that time determines our effectiveness.

McManus reminds us that we are the products of our choices.  He then points out some of the problems of the western variety of Christianity.  The main problem is that we hide behind piety and make that an excuse for doing nothing for God.  He says "I am convinced that the great tragedy is not the sins we commit but the life we fail to live." (p. 36)  In other words, we use our comfort at our own level of righteousness as if it were a great accomplishment for God.  He also has a word of warning about materialism.  I will just say that he is exactly right about our stuff owning us.  Also that we must lay aside everything that comes between us and God, even if we think those things are "blessings" from God.

I was particularly struck by a an application he makes from Luke 14:15-24.  I have always viewed this passage as being about salvation only.  But he relates it to opportunity.  He would say that if we do not do the ministry that God has given us while we can, God will use someone else.

One of the weaknesses of this book is common in a lot of recent Christian books.  It is the use of the word "community" to replace the word "church".  I think I'll write a post about that later on.  Maybe it's just a personal issue, but it bothers me.

Also in the weakness category is the "Perils of Ayden" sections used between chapters.  These short vignettes of some fictional story did nothing to make the book clearer or better.  They were confusing and written in a nearly unreadable font.  (Seriously, that font is a major fail.  I was hoping I could link to the Amazon.com preview of these sections, but they are not there.)  Maybe I'm just too left-brained to get it, but I was somewhat befuddled.  Fortunately these sections didn't harm the book or its message.

I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who is searching for how to know God's will for his or her life.  I would put it ahead of Wild Goose Chase by an order of magnitude and say it is worth the short time it takes to read.

October is Pastor Appreciation Month

Adam did a post like this yesterday, and I am nothing if not unoriginal, so here goes. I appreciate my pastor.

I have been on staff at LaGrange for nearly 4 years, and Pastor Weeks has been a wonderful pastor to me.  I have had the opportunity to get to know him both personally and obviously as my co-worker and boss.  I could not ask for more from a pastor or a friend.

I can be quite critical and rarely point out what I appreciate in others which is why I am taking this opportunity to express my appreciation even though he will likely never see it.

He loves the Bible and the church.  He does his best to communicate God's message to us weekly.  And any member of our church with a need can count on his prayers and a visit.

More than any other pastor I have ever had, he is dedicated to missions.  He wants to see the Gospel spread throughout the world.  He tells us all if we are not willing to Go then we should give, and we should all pray.  There is a reason that a church in the bottom half our association by size leads in giving to Annie Armstrong, and is in the top few of giving to Lottie Moon.

Thanks for allowing me to ramp & rave :-)

Book Review: Wild Goose Chase

A while back Adam sent me a free copy of Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson.  Since Adam thought the book important enough to give away, I though I would respect that and write a review it for you all.  I just finished it last night so I'll review it while it's fresh on my mind

I'll start by saying that I've never heard of Mark Batterson before I got this book in the mail.  He is the pastor of National Community Church and he also wrote In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day.

The thesis of Wild Goose Chase is that Christians (in the West, I assume) are not followers of the Holy Spirit, but rather we have told the Spirit to follow us. Therefore, we are bored in our Christianity. He then suggests six “cages” that limit, and keep Christians from following the Holy Spirit. The cages are responsibility, routine, assumptions, guilt failure and fear. The balance of the book is discussions of each cage, why it limits, and how to escape from the cage so that we feel free to be fully devoted followers of Christ.

About the title - the best way to explain that is just to quote from the first paragraph of the book:

The Celtic Christians had a name for the Holy Spirit that has always intrigued me. They called him An Geadh-Glas, or ‘the Wild Goose.’… The name hints at the mysterious nature of the Holy Spirit. Much like a wild goose, the Spirit of God cannot be tracked or tamed. An element of danger, and an air of unpredictability surround Him. And while the name may sound sacrilegious at first earshot, I cannot think of a better description of what it’s like to follow the Spirit’s leading through life than Wild Goose chase.

That’s the explanation, and throughout the balance of the book I don’t think he ever refers to the Holy Spirit again – only the Wild Goose. For me it was quite distracting. I believe with the explanation over, he defined his title and could simply call the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit.

As far as the content of the book I would describe it as good. (How's that for vocabulary skills) For me it was nothing revolutionary but I believe he is on to a lot of truth and has probably rightly diagnosed the major woes of Western Christianity. I particularly agreed with the following quote from the chapter on the cage of routine. “If you’re in a spiritual slump, let me give you a prescription: Go on a mission trip. There is no better or sure way of coming out of the cage of routine.” (pg.50)

I was also very intrigued by his thoughts of vision as a cure for sin. He puts it this way.  "The way you stop sinning is by getting a God-sized vision that consumes all your time and energy." (pg 160-1)

I wrote approximately 10 notes throughout the margins of the book. (I do that to interact with the book.) Most of the notes were agreement or that I found a point interesting. That’s about once every 18 pages. Quite a lot less than I interacted with say Simple Church, but more than I often write.

If you find yourself bored in your Christianity or if you believe that you are particularly trapped in one of the cages I would recommend this book. It is easy to read, probably about a 3 hour book, clear and interesting.  It would be worth your time.

Ramblings about Youth Ministry and Other Stuff

363 days ago I wrote my first ever "blog post" it was on MySpace and not really meant fully for public consumption.  Now I have a real blog, several regular readers (literally tens of people every day) and the same motivation for posting.  First I present to you that old post

Youth ministry

I have been in youth ministry for almost 10 years now and there is no other job I could be happy doing.

Sometimes it is incredibly frustrating.  Students won't listen or they don't seem to care what you are teaching, or they refuse to do something very simple like bring their Bibles to church with them.

But other times are truly rewarding.  Today was one of those times.  This was youth Sunday at our church and that means that our youth lead in every part of the service.  They taught adult Sunday school classes, they filled the choir, they took up offering and prayed every public prayer.  Also today we watched a video of Brandon's [who has moved to Texas] Baptism, and Derrick  gave his testimony.

It was a wonderful experience and I am proud of all of them

Thank you to my youth group.

Yesterday was again youth Sunday but yesterday had a different feel than previous years.  Our students taught all the adult SS classes, filled the choir and, led the music, etc.  Normally our main speakers are the graduating seniors, but we had no graduating seniors, so I, as the youth minister, decided to be the main speaker.  My message was very simple.  I simply explained the gospel clearly and thoroughly.  In the past, youth Sunday has always, been about the students.  But as I shook hands with people as they were leaving I could not help but feel like it was different.  I felt that I somehow took away from the emphasis on the youth.  I am proud of them, they did an excellent job and deserve whatever credit they get.

Regarding my message, I have listened to it, and I am still convinced that I am not a preacher, nor am I likely to be one.  It was my first time ever in the pulpit since I began in the ministry, and it was not terrible.  I was clear, and people seemed interested.  (Only like 4 people had their eyes closed.)  Essentially I went slow and repeated myself often.  I have way too many uhmms and okays, to be a good public speaker.  I have included the message in this post if you want to listen to it, or you can download it here.  It's long, so carve yourself out a good chunk of time.

[audio=http://lagrangeparkbc.org/audio/08.17.08.mp3]

The Elusiveness of Revival

I wrote this post a while back and am just now posting it.  I have rewritten it, I welcome your suggestions, and your feedback on this one. Our country is in desperate need of a great awakening.

My church could use a good revival.

I need a revival.

Except for prayer I have no control over the first two, but I can do something about the third.

Every Christian has experienced a time of spiritual dryness. It happened to the prophets of the Old Testament, the great church fathers, 18^th century giants of the faith and certainly it happens today. Sometimes it seems that God is hiding Himself, though I am certain that that is not the case.

I recently confessed to three of my friends that I have been in somewhat of a spiritual lowpoint lately. While I’m in the midst of this lowpoint, feeling distant from God, I am aware of my situation. I know that I am not where I should be, but it feels as if I’m powerless to fix it.

Here is the question of this post; why is revival sometimes so hard to come by? One thing I do know is that the major problem in a time of spiritual dryness is sin. I know without a doubt that anyone with unrepentant sin will not emerge from such a condition simply by accident. I also don’t believe that God will just yank us up out of the funk without clearing up the sin that we seem unwilling to let go of.

For me, the major symptom of being in this condition is a lack of regular quiet time. When in this condition my quiet times are either sporadic, or low-quality. They sometimes feel like drudgery. Under normal circumstances I enjoy reading my Bible and my time alone with God in prayer is the best time of the day.

This all leads to the next major question; if I realize that sin is what has me in this rut, why can I not simply cut out the sin? I want to stop, I realize that is my major problem. Why is it often difficult to just repent. That is, of course, the key to it all. I can take some comfort in Romans 7:14-25. And I can of course conclude as Paul did ²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! God provided both forgiveness and way out.

Letter to City Council

I'm planning on sending this as a e-mail to the city council later this week. I would like you, my brilliant readers, to critique it, and let me know how it could be improved.

Fayetteville City Council, and Mayor Chavonne:

My name is Jeremy Mathis, and I am writing, regarding the rezoning of the property at the corner of Reilly Road & Telfair Ave. I live in within the notification range and also am a staff member of LaGrange Park Baptist Church

What are the concerns of our church? In other words, why would we care enough for me to send you this letter?

First, we are concerned about the potential for business that might move in. I have not seen any plan as to what may open up in the property, there are no restrictions over what kind of business may move in. To put it plainly there are certain things we as a church do not want to have right next door. And regardless of what it is planned as now, once it is rezoned, there is no controlling what it might become in a few years

Secondly, we want to be the LaGrange Park Church. We are not interested in becoming between the Fast food restaurant and used car lot. Help us prevent what has happened to the Yadkin Road churches.

Thirdly, we desire to be an advocate for our community, at least to the degree that it's desire is moral. Very clearly, the will of the neighborhood is to keep that property zoned residential. It will suffice to remind you that the city council is elected, and the count in the zoning board meeting was about 20 opposed and 3 (consisting of the 2 property owners and their lawyer) in favor.

Fourthly, the only entrance to the property is from Telfair Avenue. There is no Reilly Road entrance. Therefore the only way to enter any future businesses located on this property would be to enter the neighborhood. This moves traffic further back into the neighborhood, and closer to our homes and children.

The lawyer speaking in favor, Mr Charleston, will say…

that a property owner has the right to the “highest & best” use of his property. – I honestly do not know what he means by “highest.” But as to “best,” we would all be in agreement. A property owner is entitled to the best use of his or her property. Best, however, is a contextual term. If one buys a residential property, it seems that the best use of it would be for residential. The owner can sell it, rent it out, or improve upon the property. But the best use of a residential property is residential. I definitely don’t think that this council wants to begin to say that all property is best used as commercial.

that the character of Reilly Rd is commercial. – I submit to you this photograph. Although, three of the properties in view in this photo are commercial, the character of the road is not overwhelmingly so. As you look towards the church, you see trees rather than buildings. The only sign is the one for the nail salon.

that the church is essentially a commercial property. – I would argue that we are not commercial. We are not commercial in terms of mission or function, or for the purposes that affect this council. We meet on Sunday mornings and evenings. Low traffic times on Reilly Rd, and we therefore have little impact or effect on the traffic footprint. Otherwise on Wednesday evenings we meet at 7:00 p.m. and the rush has long since dispersed when our traffic is generated.

that there is no opposition from adjacent homes. – I say there are at least three currently empty homes in the circle. Furthermore, at least 3 of the homes in the circle are rental properties, the owners do not live there, so of course they do not care if traffic is moved closer to their homes. And there are 3 representatives of properties within the circle, here speaking in opposition.

many similar properties all over town have been rezoned - I say that those do not matter, we are only dealing with one property now and should only look at the case in hand. My mother would say, "if all your friends jumped off a cliff would you?" Please don’t jump off that cliff.

You may be thinking the die is cast, and that Reilly Road is destined to become a commercial zone. I submit that you are the holders of the die, and it will only become what you, the council, allow it to become. I would like to think that you had a very compelling reason to overrule the entire neighborhood, by rezoning this property. I urge you, don’t do it.

Did you ever get the idea that the preacher was talking about you?

Sunday my pastor dropped this little off the cuff aside as part of his Easter sermon [audio http://lagrangeparkbc.org/audio/WebSavvy.mp3]

I'm pretty sure he's talking about me, and my blog where nobody gives a flip about what I think anyway. I hope he comments on this to express himself to the world.

Do yall think this is directed at me?

(This clip sounds like the chipmunks on some computers, I don't know why.)