Small

It's a huge world, but a truly postmodern church may begin to draw a lot of people. But it must remain small for the sake of community. It should either be physically small or have some sense of smallness about it.

I am a big fan of tables at church. Tables are built to get people into a small circle with one another. Usually this happens with family, friends or co-workers, but at church they allow you to engage with all sorts of people you never would have before.

I recall my first time at a church that had tables in the sanctuary. The middle of the sanctuary was rows of chairs but the sides were lined with tables, 4 on each side I believe. There was a family at our table (Mike and I), and we were able to meet all of them and even get to know the two little girls a little bit during the service. Discussion time was held at the table. Jokes were laughed at together. Worship was done in such a way you were conscious of these newcomers into your little realm. At the end when we were pulling out of the parking lot, the two little girls waived at Mike and I, 23 year old single males who typically never would have gotten to know a family there. Maybe eventually through some special event, but not regularly.

Tables naturally, by their nature, set you up for more success when it comes to community. It does not take a table to make that community happen, but it is a handy natural facilitator. It helps to keep things small.

Small groups are the other obvious way to keep things small when a community comes together. Other ideas will be listed this weekend, but does anyone have any more ways to keep things small?

Apples, apples, who wants some apples?

Thank you Kristi for that catchy title.


Our internet has been down at home so I wasn't able to post this weekend. I could have made a special coffee shop trip or something, but, well I didn't. So we begin again.

I just wanted to talk about macs for a sec. At my work I support PCs and Macs. In the last few years, I have purchased maybe 15 new PCs and there have been maybe 3 mac purchases. I support roughly 70 PCs and 8 macs. Guess how many times I've had to get the PC parts fixed? (bad screen, CD-ROM, memory, hard drive crashed, etc). I would say maybe 2? I believe the same number applies to the macs.

Macs are not immune from having failing pieces! In fact, from my experience, they are more likely to!

Yesterday I spend over an hour replacing a CD-ROM on a MacBook, over an hour! On a PC it takes 2 minutes. Unreal. An employee here had her personal macbook hard drive crash after 4 months I believe, everything lost. I just wanted to let everyone know that macs are not perfect, they are not amazing. If you are going to buy one, buy as much Applecare as you can!

That being said, Christy and my next computer will probably be a Mac.

Open Minded

This weekend Christy and I went up to Fargo for a day to visit her brother Mitch. We had a romantic night with them at the bowling alley, a movie and then midnight pizza. Back to an effective postmodern church...

This may be one of the most difficult ones to picture. Bear with me.

An effective postmodern church does not depend on doctrine as its unifying theme. At the core must be one doctrine, to love Jesus, and after that everyone must love one another in all of their differences. This will easy for some and very difficult for others. I am suggesting that the same church allows someone to talk about why homosexuality is wrong and the another time someone else is allowed to share about whey they think it's okay. Many voices, one God (I had a book called that once).

I was at a church in town called Solomon's Porch. I met a man through the 5-10 minutes greeting time and began a discussion with him on why he was at this church. He said that he had been going there for a few months and that this was the only church that "let him believe" how he believed. I thought "Is this possible? A church let someone do this?" Not only could he believe differently (what's the big deal you ask), the church let him share his varying doctrine and discussed it with him. A discussion. Open dialogue. Today's church is looking for dialogue, not another parent. People aren't going to believe "because they should" like a 12 year old in Sunday School anymore, they have very serious questions that the church has failed to answer for them. Genetics. Evolution. Theodicy, or the problem of evil. The depths of the atom, the reaches of the universe. We need some serious dialogue.

Do you believe its possible for a church to have people who believe in remarriage with those who do not? Can those who believe in predestination worship next to Free Willy? (just made that up) Can those who read the Book of Prayer daily help the guy who raises his hands every song move to a new home? I think it can happen, it is happening. Thank God, it's about time.


This is not a knock on doctrine, I believe it is a step to make doctrine understood and ultimately more intimate with those in the church. Thoughts?

Not music driven

There are too many pieces to a church service that people have to pick through in finding a church. I constantly hear (and say myself) "Oh the teaching is so good there, but I don't like the music," or vice versa. We pick or don't pick our community so often based on musical tastes. Is this even close to where we should be as God's hand to the earth? Are we crazy? But no, it's about us. We make it about us. Christy and I have been looking at a church lately and I don't want to go there because I don't want to sit through the music for 30 minutes but I like the teaching. I have this inner battle about it.

But the truth is community should not exist around a show. Anyone here a member of the Stomp community or the Cats community? (You would be if tradition and God had a thing to do with it) The worship experience is much more than music. I do not want someone's words of a time 6 years ago when he was effected by God in such in such a way to be my expression at that moment. Songs are meant to inspire and be a guide (and often a teacher), but they are not the worship experience. Musical talent at a local church should not dictate a church's growth. I often even wonder if we should have music because of the division it often brings. If a major goal of the church is unity ("May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.") then this should matter to us. But it's such an effective tool at times, I have to believe music is important for community worship at times, not every time.

And please read Susi's post in the previous post, right on. I can not focus for a second while someone is playing behind the prayer. It's the one time in the service where we allow the Bible or message to speak to us and to challenge and change us, and then there is soothing music behind it. Can we let God change us please! Reminds me of David playing to sooth Saul, but there are times when God doesn't want us to be soothed at that moment.

Phew, longer one (and I deleted like half of it to keep it shorter).

Climax

(Reminder: My goal is for this to be a dialogue. If you have any comments, thoughts, rebukes, please post, thanks. Also there are those who need get your mind out of the gutter concerning the post title...you know who you are)

Whether you know it or not today's service is set up for a climax. In the Roman Catholic church, the climax is the Eucharist/Lord's supper/Communion. That is it, that's what it's all about, partaking of the bread and the wine. The typical climax of the protestant church is the sermon. Ever heard "God, bless the words of the pastor, may they come from you?" Let's be honest for a second, everyone that God calls is not a good speaker. If the words are from God then God sounds like a bumbling idiot sometimes. We have made our climax someone speaking for 35 minutes (while the average attention span, due to television, is around 17 1/2 minutes or something).

I believe a postmodern church's climax should not be sitting around listening to someone speak (see Engaging post from yesterday). The climax of the true church is communion with God. This may take place around the Eucharist, but it needs to take place in other forms. Meeting with God is the number one thing a community of believers can do (not feeding the poor, although I believe that desire is a natural bi-product of knowing God). This may include silence, this may include confession, this may include public prayer, or reading of Scripture, there are a number of things that this could look like. But I tell you this, give me 3 minutes of serious connecting with God each week with my community and you'll probably have a faithful church member.

I'll cut this one short too and save the other piece for tomorrow.

Engaging

As mentioned on an earlier post, I will be mentioning a number of things that I believe will be crucial for the postmodern church.

The first, and in no particular order, is that it has to be engaging. Today's church does not engage its constituents (members, crowd). It is more of a program or a show than a community. As someone whose struggled with a "call" in his life, I can tell you that I've never felt called to be in drama. Today's church is set up like a Greco-Roman amphitheater. To take the style of an ancient amphitheater and decide "Hey, this will be the best possible scenario for an engaging community" is to deceive ourselves. Long gone should be the day where you come to a church community and hide in the back. Long gone should be the time where you don't know the person sitting next to you or their family. There should be interaction with everyone, because, here is the idea, YOU MATTER. If you come to church, it matters. People should miss you when you are not there because you bring something unique to the table and that's important! Never let anyone tell you likewise. Today's church should engage your head and your heart. It's time to stop being professional showmen and professional pray-ers and time to start being professionally honest.

The church today needs to set itself so that it is engaging by nature. The engagement that exists in a small group is the engagement that we're talking about. The connection. The interest. You're understanding of the Native American woman next to you and her past and you help her and she helps you. The way we meet needs to change, the approach we bring needs to change. When someone leaves a church community meeting, they need to typically think "I could not have missed today, thank you God." Trust me, that can happen.

This one has been a bit of rambling and I want to preach now. I'll stop here and continue on tomorrow.

Upcoming...

For the next week or so I'm going to be blogging about some of the things that I believe are critical for the Church's success in our time. Not only do we have your typical generational gaps to deal with but you add in a paradigm shift and you have a church that doesn't fit the identity of it's members. It's like going to a baseball game listening to the organ and wondering if they'll still play those same songs in 100 years when kids won't even know what an organ is. We are going to need some changes, not tweaks (as is the generational gap custom), and some beliefs that we will need to hold dear. I hope to present a number of possible beliefs for the church. My hope is that people will respond with comments and questions that will allow for a running dialogue. I also hope that this spurns your relationship with God and belief that a relative community of believers is possible, even inevitable. May God bless this time.

Dental Visit

"Why is this happening to me?"