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monvee will Reshape Spiritual Formation

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to sit around a table at Panera and talk about the future of spiritual formation in local churches. I heard the vision from Mark Bankord, the Directional Leader and co-founder of Heartland Community Church in Rockford, Illinois, and Eric Parks, the Chief Creative Officer of monvee.

Here are a few things that distinguished monvee from anything else I’ve seen to help people growth in their faith:

It’s web-based. People can access it at any time.
It doesn’t involve the creation of new church programs, but it connects people to their local church.
It walks people through a discovery process to identify their personalized spiritual growth plan. This is not a one-size-fits-all strategy or program.
It recommends resources and practices to help people experience growth through their time, their mind, their experiences and their relationships.
Even though this is a web-based solution, it helps bring people together.
It is built to get smarter and recommend better resources as more people use the system.
It measures spiritual growth rather than ministry participation.
It has helpful dashboards built into the system to help church leaders monitor their spiritual growth of their people.
Oh…and it doesn’t hurt that guys like John Ortberg and Dallas Willard have been involved in shaping the solution.

monvee is in beta right now. In fact, your church may be interested in participating. If so, church leaders can learn more about the beta phase and apply to join.

I’ll try to keep you posted as I learn more about this new tool to help churches help people grow spiritually.

Church Unique

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On my flight down to Miami, I wrapped up the book Church Unique by Will Mancini. Will is a new friend of mine. We share a similar passion to help churches embrace their unique potential.

Among other things the book outlines a process for helping churches identify their unique mission, values, strategy and measures that contribute to a unique vision. Here are some of Will’s thoughts that grabbed my attention:

Congregations have been “gravitating toward adopting programs and mind-sets that work elsewhere. Leaders today have not clearly discerned the uniqueness of their church.”
The “ministry treadmill” is “set in motion when the busyness of ministry creates a progressively irreversible hurriedness in the leader’s life.”
“It is not uncommon that the most accomplished people in the room are the least receptive to new learning”
“When I walk into a church, it usually takes five minutes to identify the last conference the staff attended.”
“The assumption is that more information will produce clearer direction, but just the opposite is true.”
“Too many goals threaten to make any one goal unclear.”
Larry Osborne of North Coach Church: “People like it small, but leaders like it big.”
On Max Lucado and Chuck Swindoll, “Both of these men have not only worked hard to keep vision central; they have sacrificed easy attendance by removing their face from the church brand.”
“If people are emotionally attached to the method, they will resist change. If they are emotionally connected to the core value, however, they will not only embrace change but might insist on it.”
“In the battle of souls, the intellect will go only so far; the heart must be captivated by a love beyond reason.”
Jesus “leaves us with a picture that egotism and arrogance are blemishes on the face of a kingdom leader.”
“The greater the mission, the more simply it can be stated.”
“Unfortunately, many churches think that being more effective is simply a matter of trying harder, being more obedient, or praying more.”
“Programs don’t attract people; people attract people.”
“If your church is more than four hundred people, I would caution against hiring a person without the demonstrated spiritual gift of leadership.”
“If we propose to advance the gospel in and through the culture, we can’t afford to see the cultural use of communication as an enemy but as an ally.”
“The church gathered is actually a time of preparation for ‘being the church’ outside of its walls.”

Will is a former pastor and the founder of Auxano, a consulting group that works with churches and ministries.

Update on My Next Adventure

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Folks have been asking about what’s happening in my life. I’m continuing to have conversations with people about my next steps. My family and I still don’t know exactly what’s in store for us, but we’re really excited about our future.

In the mean time, I’m staying busy. My calendar is essentially full through mid-August. While I’m in transition, you may be interested in one of these opportunities:

Coaching – I’m launching a new coaching network in July with Ron Sylvia that’s designed for teams of Senior and Executive Pastors.
Speaking – I have several engagements including the Killing Cockroaches Summer Tour with stops in six cities.
Consulting – I’m working with a number of churches throughout the country.

Just let me know how I might be able to serve you and your team. Act soon. My guess is my fall calendar will fill up quickly.

The New Traditional Church: Web Strategy

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I’m amazed at the number of churches that still view the web as primarily an advertising mechanism to let people know who they are and what they’re doing. Go ahead. Visit several church websites. Really doesn’t even matter what size the church is. With few exceptions, you’ll find their web strategy is essentially a bullhorn approach. The church is standing on a streetcorner of the web yelling at the people passing by:

“Come to our services on Sunday!”
“Let me tell you about our men’s ministry!”
“Join us for the golf tournament or fishing derby!”
“Serve on one of our ministry teams!”
“Give money to our church!”
“Here’s what we believe!”

It’s a one-sided relationship. The church views the web as a place to promote their agenda. No interaction with the audience. No stories of life change. No solutions to help people experience community or discipleship online. At best, you may be able to watch a video of a service, but you certainly won’t have the opportunity to engage a conversation with others about what you’re watching.

Essentially we’ve taken the Sunday service bulletin and we’ve put it on our website. That’s the web strategy for the Church today. “Here’s who we are and what we’re doing. Join us!”

The rest of the world views the Web very differently. For example, outside of the Church, people go online to:

Meet other people and build relationships
Share what’s happening in their life and tell their story
Get a taste of the experience, primarily through video, with the opportunity to interact
Have the ability to share slivers of content with others (3-minute clips, not 45-minute messages)
View content on demand on their time
Create content to add their contribution to the bigger story

Rather than looking at the Web through the eyes of a Facebook and YouTube and Twitter user, though, we’re still looking at the Web through the eyes of a Sunday bulletin reader. That approach works for the people who are already attending our churches. It completely ignors the people who we are trying to reach.

And that’s the problem. We view the Web as an add-on. After we’ve figured out how we’re going to do ministry, then we want to know how to use the Web to promote our ministry.

Instead, the churches that have influence within our online culture look at ministry differently. They assume the people they’re trying to reach are online. They assume the people who are connected to their ministry are online. Rather than looking at the Web as an add-on, they consider their web strategy as a fully-integrated part of how they help people take steps toward Christ. They are a church online as much as they are a church in a building located on the corner of First and Main.

The website isn’t something the “web monkey” maintains. It’s a place where the youth pastor, worship leader, children’s director, small group leader, senior pastor and every other person of influence help people to connect and grow. It’s an environment where the entire church engages the community and encourages each other to take their next steps. It’s as much their story as it is our story.

Of course, this approach to the Web would require far more time, resources and leadership. It would be much less expensive than building a new building, but it would require a shift in thinking and a shift in focus. Because it’s new, it would be hard. Because the staff and volunteer leadership team would have to embrace this new approach, it would be challenging.

We’d rather stick with what we know. It’s a lot easier to maintain our online bulletins. And that’s another reason why we are the new traditional church.

__________________

The New Traditional Church: Community

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One thing that has always intrigued me about the Church is the apparent need to organize friendships. In every other area of our lives, people find their own friends. But, for whatever reason when it comes to church, we think the church needs to find us a friend.

For good or bad, churches have taken it upon themselves to do just that. We have created all kinds of ministry programs to bring people together who I guess are unable to meet friends on their own once they step in the doors of the church. We organize Sunday school classes and small groups and men’s and women’s ministry programs. We create events and weekly gatherings to help Christians meet fellow Christians. By the time it’s all said and done, people eat, sleep, parent, work and meet with other Christians multiple times during the week. And that ends up being the model for how we’re supposed to live out our faith.

It makes me wonder, though, if we’ve unintentionally done a few things:

Have we made people too reliant on the church for putting them in relationship with other people?
Have we made people too reliant on the church for “growing them” in their faith?
Have we pulled people into relationship with other Christians at the expense of their relationships with people who need Jesus?

It just strikes me as odd that people seem to be very capable of finding friends outside the church. In fact, the social networking craze has made it even easier to connect with people both face-to-face and virtually. I wonder if social networking has any clues for the Church when it comes to biblical community. If we create the right framework for relationships to happen, will people find their own friends? If we create the right environments, will people take that step on their own?

What would happen if we put less attention on organizing relationships and more attention on giving people something to organize around? For example, what if we focused on serving opportunities? Would people naturally gather around those initiatives to serve others? What if we focused on the content we were generating to help people better understand the Bible and its application to our daily lives? Would people naturally organize around that content for conversations together? And what if we embraced social networking to encourage people to find their own friends…like they’re already doing? Would people initiate their own relational connections?

It seems that there must be a way to decentralize the way people connect relationally while keeping the Gospel and a biblical leadership structure central to how we organize as churches. When people have the freedom to gather in community without relying on the church to place them with other people, that’s when the Gospel will spread like a virus. When people start focusing less on how the church needs to serve them and more on how they need to be the church, that’s when dramatic transformation will take place in people’s lives and in our communities.

Until that happens, we will continue to rely on the church to find our friends for us. And that’s another reason why we are the new traditional church.

___________

Unlearning Discipleship

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This thought occurred to me yesterday as I was driving home from Atlanta. When Jesus began calling the first disciples into ministry, he used this phrase:

“Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!”

For whatever reason, I started thinking about what Jesus didn’t say to those first disciples.

He didn’t say: “Come, follow me, and I will teach you spiritual insights!”

He didn’t say: “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to worship together!”

He didn’t say: “Come, follow me, and I will gather you together in a home group!”

He didn’t say: “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to pray!”

He didn’t say: “Come, follow me, and I will make you members of the church!”

I think we can all agree that Jesus was a fairly insightful guy, so I think it’s interesting of all the things he could have said, he chose to put the focus on ministry to reach other people.

And, of course, that got me thinking about how we “disciple” people in the Church today. Rather than putting the focus on ministry to reach people, we prioritize different things. Not that the other things are wrong. I just wonder if there’s something significant about the initial vision that Jesus shared with these first disciples.

In other words, maybe discipleship is really more about helping people serve God by serving others. Maybe it’s more about disciples making disciples. Maybe what we really need to do is unlearn how we do discipleship in the church.

How would the Church look different if we approached the discipleship process on “fishing for people?”

Incredible Work of God

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A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by Rev magazine about what’s happening at NewSpring. They asked about all the people who have received Jesus in recent months (1,124 people in less than 4 months). They also asked about what’s unique at NewSpring that might explain what’s happening. Among other things I shared:

“I know in my life, when I accepted Christ and experienced life change, I didn’t keep that to myself—I wanted to tell others about it. I think that’s what we’re seeing here. People are experiencing life change. We’re seeing practical things like healed marriages, winning freedom from addictions, freedom from financial challenges. Because once God gets hold of your life He brings order to it. When that starts to happen, people tell their friends about it.

“I sometimes get frustrated when people talk about our church being too big. I ask, ‘What do you want us to do? Do you want us to tell people that they can’t tell their friends about us any more?’”

You can visit Rev magazine’s website to read the rest of the article.

Easter Impact Survey

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I think this will be interesting. We may discover something new. I’m curious to know the impact of Easter services across the country, but I’d like to consider it from a unique perspective. I’m curious to know how Easter influenced what happened after Easter.

If you’d like to participate, please complete this quick survey. For this analysis, I’m going to compare the weekend before Easter and the weekend after Easter. Don’t worry, I won’t share the specific data from your church. I would, however, like your contact information in case I have follow up questions about what happened at your church.

Want to join the fun? Fill out the form below:

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Please forward this to your friends in ministry, so we can get as much participation as possible. I’ll compile the results and then share the summary later this week.

Are You Trying to Sell the Liver Meal?

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As I was driving out of town recently, I noticed this sign out in front of the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. The sign has been out front of the restaurant for quite some time. As you can see, they’re advertising a liver meal for $2.99. Fortunately for all of us, it’s an “everyday special.”

It seemed odd to me that Kentucky Fried Chicken would be promoting a special on liver. I thought Kentucky Fried Chicken sold chicken. Apparently there’s a high demand for liver in this area of the country. I can’t imagine any other reason why, among everything else on their menu, they’d choose to promote their liver special.

If I had to list some of the things the church “does right,” I’d suggest our “chicken” might include being:

a place to find new life
a place to find your purpose
a place to receive unconditional love
a place to find forgiveness
a place to heal
a place to find community
a place to help others
a place to change the world

I think our chicken can be pretty tasty. But, to be honest, I sometimes get a little fed up with churches that promote the “liver” instead of the chicken. For example, I’ve seen too many churches promoting things like car washes (saw another one this weekend), bake sales, political agendas (in today’s news), theological agendas, boycotts and business meetings. And then there are the more subtle dishes of liver that sometimes get disguised as ministry programs. They may start on target, but they end up just being a drain on people’s time and energy and not really encouraging people to eat chicken.

That’s just my opinion. You don’t have to agree with it. I would suggest, however, that you need to identify what your “chicken” is and make that your everyday special. Instead of promoting the liver special, “do something right” that’s going to help people meet Jesus and experience a new life in Christ. People don’t need our liver–they just need to see life change.

Take a look at your weekly bulletins and platform announcements and newsletters. Study your programs and events on the ministry calendar. Are you really pointing folks to Jesus and helping people take their next steps toward Christ? Or…

Are you trying to sell the liver meal?

Hot Strategy Topics

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My next coaching network meets for the first time a week from Friday. Before we gather, I asked the guys involved to rank the strategic topics we might discuss. Here’s how they ranked the proposed topics:

Personal Development
Leading Up/Laterally
Discipleship strategy
Growth Strategies
Volunteer strategy
Communications
Structure
Staffing
Multi-site
Financial stewardship
Series planning

Want to know something funny? With the exception of possibly financial stewardship, I probably would have ranked those topics completely the opposite way. Isn’t God funny? He pulled together a group of guys that are going to stretch me. Needless to say, I’m probably the one who’s going to do the most learning over these next six months.

By the way, what topic do you think is missing from the list? If you were going to talk with a group of your peers about general ministry strategy, what would you want to discuss?

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