Thursday, December 31, 2009

Reading Scripture Aloud

In Jesus' day, scripture was not read silently and reading scripture occupied a central place in synagogue worship.

Since the worship of the Church was patterned after that of the synagogue, we should not be surprised that reading scripture aloud should occupy a prominent place in our assemblies. Admittedly, the importance of its place in practice ebbs and flows, but any church that doesn't have a spot for the reading of scripture should re-think the matter. Paul was not looking for "worship filler" when he told Timothy to "give attention to the public reading of scripture" (1 Timothy 4:13).

I mean by this also that scripture reading should not be purely perfunctory. I have heard scripture reading on more than one occasion when I had no idea what place the reading had for the assembly. And before the sermon, I have heard entirely too many passages that had nothing to do with the sermon (or perhaps I should say the sermon had nothing to do with it). If the reading of a text has no obvious meaning for the hearers, is it any surprise that, over the years, the hearers come to view the text as irrelevant for their lives?

Here are some suggestions for readers, and those who plan the reading.

1) Length of reading. When Jesus was asked to read in the synagogue, he chose a scant 2 verses from Isaiah 61 (Luke 4:18-19). I'm persuaded the synagogue had no idea where Jesus was going with that passage, but the simple reading of the text made a point. What point do you think people should get from your reading? Read enough to make the point. But it is possible that the length of the reading will obscure the point -- or be too complicated. I have heard -- again, more times than I can remember -- people read the entirety of Isaiah 53 before a communion service. The reading is simply too long to hold people's attention and any number of sections within the chapter can make a relevant point to the communion.

2) Explanation. First of all, be sure you understand the meaning of the reading. Once I asked a brother to read Galatians 3:24-25 before my sermon -- expecting him simply to read. The text says:
"Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law."

The reader began: "In this passage, Paul tells why we no longer need the Old Testament." He didn't understand the passage and I had to spend time not originally allocated to that sermon explaining why his statement was not true.

Second, if you are unsure your audience will get the meaning of the text -- relevance -- take a little time to explain. Be brief. If it takes you over 30 seconds, it's too long. In explaining Isaiah 61 in the synagogue, Jesus took six what turned out to be six verses. The power of his brief explanation is seen in the response of his audience: they tried to kill him! Lengthy explanations are called "sermons," and in today's assemblies, there's only time for one of those.

3) Practice. Far too many people fancy themselves public speakers. Every speech, for them, is spontaneous, in the moment -- and wholly unprepared. I have a pulpit in my home study, and each Sunday morning, I begin at that pulpit preaching that morning's sermon. I go through every sermon twice. Every intonation of my voice is practiced -- and that's just the delivery part. It doesn't count the preparation of the sermon itself. I've been doing this for over 35 years. If you think you can jot down a few notes and "wing it" successfully, you're fooling only yourself.

Reading aloud may be a gift for some, but it is mostly a craft that can be honed. If reading doesn't come easily to you, you'll need practice, practice, practice to get it right. Ask someone to help you with pronunciation if you find yourself stumbling over words. Try committing the passage to memory so the reading will flow from familiarity. You don't have to be reluctant to read aloud because your ability to read is poor. With enough practice, no one will ever know.

Ask someone to listen to you read -- someone who will be honest. Some readers have no trouble recognizing words, but their reading suffers because they emphasize the wrong words. Note the following text from Galatians 6 as an example. I heard it read a while back and the reader emphasized the words I have in all caps: BROTHERS, if someone IS caught in a SIN, you who are spiritual SHOULD restore him gently. But watch YOURSELF, or you also may BE tempted. 2 Carry EACH other’s burdens, and IN this way you will fulfill THE law of Christ.

It was a horrible reading. Try this instead:
Brothers, [pause] if someone is caught in a sin, [pause]you who are SPIRITUAL should restore him GENTLY. But WATCH yourself, or you ALSO may be tempted. 2 Carry each other’s burdens, [pause] and in THIS way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

You may want to listen to a professional do the reading first so you will get an idea what the passage should sound like. Audio Bibles are wonderful tools to help. I sometimes listen to the sermons of popular preachers; not to get a sermon, but to hear it. Preachers are usually heard gladly not so much because of what they say, but because of how they say it. And I have learned from many of them.

Reading the word of God is important. It is His word, they are His thoughts. And you, for the moment, are His voice.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

On Target With Church Business

I do not know Tony Morgan -- but I probably should. Our Youth Minister, Josh Byrd, put me on to Mr. Morgan's website this past week. His article was entitled: "What if Target operated like a Church?" The thoughts were so good I decided to share them with you this week, along with a few observations on my own.

Morgan wrote: If Target did business like the Church:

  • Instead of having men’s and women’s clothing departments, they would be called clever names like Impact and Embrace that are completely meaningless to new shoppers.
  • Each department in the store would have its own logo to go with their clever name. And, of course, all those logos would be different than the logo on the front of the store.
  • The workers in each department would all have their own t-shirts and flyers to promote what’s available in their departments. The youth clothing department would, of course, have the best flyers.
  • The store manager and his wife would be pictured on the front page of the website.
  • You wouldn’t actually be able to buy anything from the website, but each department would have its own page explaining why they are such a great department and the the information would be several months out-of-date.
  • If you are in the shoe department and have a question about flashlights, the shoe department employee has no idea how to help you because it doesn’t have anything to do with shoes.
  • Shoppers would be able to start their own departments so that they can buy the items that they want to buy. Don’t worry…that means there will certainly be a clothing department for singles.
  • Shoppers would also be able to appoint their own store manager and then serve on committees and boards to tell the store manager what to do.
  • The store would only be open one day a week between 9:00 a.m. and noon and on the first Wednesday evening of every month.
Ouch!

Businesses know what their primary purpose is. Good businesses constantly evaluate their actions in view of their primary purpose. Superfluous actions that obscure their mission or inhibit fulfillment of their purpose are discarded.

But not always. Sometimes businesses hold on to outdated models due to tradition or political constraints, or due to self-imposed constraints. When that happens, the purpose suffers -- and you know what happens to those businesses.

The Church, and every congregation should be aware of their primary mission. Every program and ministry should be regularly evaluated on the basis of how they are helping to fulfill the mission.

More about that next week.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Cultivating Leaders

Last week, I wrote about the importance of leadership, and the need to cultivate it within the church. An Elder wrote and asked: “How do we do this?” "Elder training is typically 'on the job' and comes after selection and appointment. But that only exposes new elders to 'meetings' and 'budgets.' How do we cultivate leaders?’

[In the Church of Christ, our highest leaders are called “Elders” and must have specific qualifications – delineated by such texts as 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 to be appointed. But Elders are not the only leaders and what I am about to suggest will apply to all leadership situations in the Church.]

First, there must be PURPOSE. A current leader, or current leaders, must deliberately come to the conclusion they must plan for and cultivate leaders for the future.

Second, there must be UNDERSTANDING, an understanding of what that specific leaders work actually involves. A teacher in the 6th grade Bible school is a leader. She knows what her job is: to present the word of God. She knows what her parameters are: Not to teach the whole Bible, but to teach the section she’s been entrusted with. She must relate to her students, shepherding them, taking an interest in them and in their lives. She must prepare her lessons to make the Bible come alive and impress upon her students how important is its message.

There must be SELECTION. She must be on the lookout for someone else, who just might take the same interest in young people she does.

There must be MENTORING. She should, with her supervisor’s approval, ask that person to join her in the class. She should explain to the teaching candidate what she is trying to do. She should model her understanding and her method, being open to the ideas of her co-teacher, becoming partners and fast friends.

I well remember two of my 3rd grade Sunday School teachers, Sister Hussey and Sister Garmon (we called all our teachers “sister” back then). Sister Hussey was the leader. It was her class and she was serious as a heart attack about it. Sister Garmon was a dear lady who was her ‘helper,’ but later, sister Garmon became my 6th grade teacher. This is the way you raise up leaders.

You may well ask, what does that have to do with Elders?

Everything! It’s just as simple.

Current Elders need to have an understanding of what their job is. It is decidedly not sitting in meetings – though there’s a lot of that. It is first and foremost, watching out for people. Praying for people. Guiding people. Encouraging people. Teaching people. Current Elders should be on the watch for men who might qualify as Elders. That’s purpose. They should identify and select some of them, perhaps telling them: “I believe you can be an Elder one day. I wish you would make it one of your goals.” Why not then mentor them by asking them to pray with you for people in the church? If there are sensitive matters, one need not share everything or betray confidences, but surely there are plenty of other things to pray about and being specifically asked to do so lends an importance to the job. Take the candidate with you to visit members in the hospital. Share the duty of praying there. Take them as you just visit in the homes of members. Talk with them about the budgeting process and take time to explain the difficult decisions you make.

Some Elders will be good at this. Some won't. Those who can, should.

And what if you select someone who is a dud? Some people, despite the fact that they want a ministry and have all the “scriptural qualifications” are decidedly inept shepherds. Others get in the ministry only to discover they are ill-suited to shepherd people. Why not spot some candidates and walk them through it, giving them an understanding of the work as you do, and observing whether they can, and will, really do it?

I can hear your reply: “Yeah, yeah, you make it all sound so simple.”

It IS simple.

It’s just not easy.

Leadership never is.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Cultivating Leadership

Businesses know the importance of leadership, and every major corporation in America is in the business of leadership development. The most successful is the IBM corporation which spends $700 million a year specifically on leadership development. One day of every quarterly directors' meeting is devoted to a discussion of leadership development. (How many Elder meetings are devoted to this?) In a recent FORTUNE magazine article (December 7, 2009 -- p. 72), J. Randall MacDonald, Human Resources chief at IBM likened his business to a race that never ends. He spoke of the competition being "one-half of an inch" behind them. The only thing keeping them in the lead is their leadership.

Our competition, as a church, is not other churches. Our competition is Satan. And whether we are in front of him, neck-in-neck, or behind and losing ground has totally to do with leadership -- or a lack of it. And our "lack" of leadership has to do, most of all, with a lack of purposeful and intentional leadership development. I see it all the time. Churches that once were dynamic, growing and full of life, led by men of vision who could inspire others to see and do the seemingly impossible are now gasping for air, led by the collective consensus of whoever shows up for the monthly business meetings.

What happened?

The leaders died off (or moved away), and no one ever made provision for their replacements. Instead, we THOUGHT the Lord would provide -- and He didn't.

I do not mean to belittle the providential care of God. No one believes more strongly in it than me. But I believe that expecting God to provide leaders this way is unbiblical. God provided Israel a leader in Moses, and Moses led Israel for forty years. When Moses died, the mantle of leadership was passed to Joshua -- an assistant who had spent forty years at leader Moses' side. The result was that during the thirty years of Joshua's leadership, Israel served the Lord. The Elders who stood at Joshua's side led after Joshua died and Israel still served the Lord. But they failed to train leaders to take their place. The story of Judges which follows is the story of the Canaanization of Israel because she had no leader -- a fact mentioned specifically four times in the book. And those judges? Read the book. These are the kind of leaders you can expect when you wait on God to provide them at the last minute.

Every congregation must have leaders who know well what the work of the Church is really about. And by the way, if you see the work of the church as simply "preaching the gospel" or "serving the community," you have yet to grasp its true calling.

We must have leaders who know what is needed in their congregation to accomplish this work -- and it changes from community to community, which is why churches whose leaders adopt the latest and greatest fads because they've been successful elsewhere usually fail.

We must have leaders who will see that the work gets done. It doesn't mean that they have to do all the work themselves, only that they see the work is done.

We must have leaders who will inspire confidence in God among the people of God.

We must have leaders who will be responsible for anticipating the future, knowing where God’s people will need to be in the years to come, and charting the course to get there. That's called vision.

We must have leaders who will guide God’s people to that future and nurture them along the way.

We must have leaders who will model the life Christ calls us all to live so that we come to know it not just by hearing, but by seeing. Paul said: "Follow me, as I follow Christ."

Why would we ever think that God would want to entrust the Church he died for to a happenstance leadership?

He wouldn't.

A recent survey conducted at Lipscomb University asked ministers: "Based on your experience. what studies do you think would be most helpful to ministers?" It's a good question. As a church leader, where do you feel most inadequate? What would help you do your job better? Ask for it. You may have to slot it in the budget. You may feel guilty about asking for a place in the budget for your own development. Get over it. It will be money well spent. You may have to pay for it yourself. Do it. You serve by appointment of the Holy Spirit, and those entrusted to your care constitute the body of Christ for which Jesus died. No cost is too great.

Who will be the next leaders at your church? You should have them picked out. Know their names. Encourage them. Appoint them to tasks that will stretch them and get them ready for the task ahead. Through the years of preparation, some may drop out. Some you thought qualified God may remove from contention. But in the end, the right people will be in place for the right job -- because it was planned with intentionality and blessed by God. And don't forget to teach them to do for others what you have done for them.

Pass it on.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

It's Hard to Have Vision if You Can't See

On a recent Wednesday evening, my wife put on one of her famous "Wednesday Night Outs." It's a full meal, preceding our evening Bible Study to help folks who might not normally have time to leave work, go home, eat supper, and then come to the building, or just make it easier on those who do. I was at the building most of the day.

During the meal, I asked one of our members: "Did you see if the lights in the parking lot were on when you came in?" She looked at me and said: "I never notice those things. I've been coming here for so long that I just don't see stuff like that."

Getting up from the meal, I checked. No lights. Evidently, our power had been off and it had put our timers several hours behind. A flip of the switch, and a twist of the timer dial, and all was well, but at the time -- when we were really trying to make things easier for people who come -- the way to an open door was as dark as pitch.

I understand, I really do. You do something long enough, and you tend not to notice the scenery. But what you and I might excuse as familiarity, others, particularly newcomers, will see as inattentiveness. When my son went to college, he spent a good bit of time looking for a church home. He went to one church, noticed the time of their assemblies on their sign, and returned the following Sunday evening at the appointed hour -- an hour late. Assembly was just ending. The members seemed glad to see him and welcomed him in, but when he mentioned that the sign had the wrong times on it, one of the church leaders said: "Really? Let me see." Confirming the inaccurate information, the leader said: "We need to get that fixed." The last time I checked, the sign had never been changed. That church is a wonderfully warm spiritual family, but it's not growing, and one of the reasons is simply inattentiveness. If they aren't paying attention to the things outsiders see first, they will never get a second chance to make a good impression.

Bob Iger is the Chairman and CEO of Disney. A while back they decided to revamp their stores and Iger called Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple), whose stores are always full of customers, to give them some advice. Jobs said: "Create a statement . . . Ask yourselves what you want the stores to say to people when they walk in."

A church is people, not a building, in the same way that Apple is a product, not a store, but the two, product and store, church and building, are inseparably linked. If your building smells of mildew, if paint is peeling, if the sign outside is in disrepair -- or, heaven forbid, just wrong -- it won't matter what the people are like on the inside, chances are, folks will just keep driving. Additionally, if the building is perfect, but folks don't seem to notice new faces, nor are they welcoming, people still won't be back.

With every meeting of the church, leadership and followship needs to be asking: "What impression do we want people to get who visit with us?" Then, leadership and followship needs to open their eyes to what might blunt that message, and do something about it.

If you cannot see yourself, or at least try to see yourself as others see you, you will be wholly ineffective at casting a vision for the future because you won't know where you are, or where you need to go. Familiarity is like blindness, and both are the enemy of a successful church.

Monday, November 23, 2009

MBWA
I confess, though I feel it is not a flaw, that I have always had a keen interest in business. My undergraduate major was in accounting and even in High School remember reading books about entrepreneurs and major American corporations. In college, Andrew Tobias’ (of “The Only Investment Guide You Will Ever Need” fame) the “Funny Money Game” and Paul Erdman’s “The Billion Dollar Sure Thing” (which he wrote in a Swiss Prison if I remember correctly) captivated me.

None of this means anything really – as my bank account will readily attest. I am, at heart, a preacher. But some recent conversations reminded me of a business management idea first coined at Hewlett-Packard and later made famous by Tom Peters (“In Search of Excellence”). It’s acronym, MBWA, stood for “Managing By Walking Around.”

It seems to me that in the Church, far too many leaders want to lead from their desks or conference tables, with their email or blackberrys. The result is leaders, in a position to make a difference in the congregation, become isolated and increasingly lack influence – in other words, become unable to lead.

Church leaders have suggested all kinds of ideas to me about how to press their vision upon the church: catchy slogans on banners, articles in the bulletin, sermons (everybody wants us to push their issue), fancy bulletin boards, etc., etc. But if you want to lead, you have to do so by being in contact with those you are trying to influence. That means, MBWA. For the church, it means the following (I’ve adapted this list from Oliver Serrat’s article found at http://www.adb.org/documents/information/knowledge-solutions/managing-by-walking-around.pdf):

1) Be among the people as often as possible - especially those on your ministry team. If you head an education department for example, drop by a teacher’s class. Take an interest in how he or she is doing.
2) Be relaxed
3) Share and invite good news.
4) Talk about their interests: family, hobbies, vacations, and sports.
5) Be sincere in your interest.
6) Watch and listen without judgment.
7) Invite ideas and opinions to improve operations and services
8) Be responsive to problems and concerns. Nothing is so damaging to a ministry as a leader who doesn’t seem to care about a follower’s concerns.
9) Look for people doing stuff right and take note of it to others.
10 Project the image of a coach, not an inspector
11) Give people on the spot help.
12) Use the opportunity to talk about your vision and dreams for the church.
13) Make it fun.

You will not find someone to serve on the benevolence committee, or work in the education program, or help keep up the building, or participate in any other area of ministry through passive management (usually characterized by a call for volunteers from the pulpit or in the bulletin). You get participants by going to people personally and asking them to help. You don’t keep people interested in ministry by assigning them to a task and then going off to pursue whatever else you’ve got on your agenda. You have to constantly touch base with your people to let them know they are important, and the work they are doing is important. They don’t feel it because you say it. They feel it because they experience your regular interest in them and what they are doing.

Yes, I know: everyone’s busy. But nothing runs itself very long, or very well. If Christ was so interested in the Church that he gave himself for it, and left His Holy Spirit to indwell each Christian, how can our leadership be anything less than engaged and sacrificial?

Sunday, November 15, 2009

The Purpose of this Blog

I have been a minister with the church of Christ for over thirty-five years. My middle son is now a minister and serves the Church in Maryland. This is his second stint as a preacher. The first was right out of college. This second comes after proving himself as a businessman. We talk frequently. One of the things he tells me is: "Every young preacher needs a mentor. I don't know how they make it without one."

I take it that this comment is a compliment aimed at me, and I am more than a little humbled by it.

But his statement is a true one. How I have made it this long is a testimony to the grace of God and the patience of good brothers and sisters in Christ, to a supportive wife who remains interested in what I am doing after all these years - and to my father, who has been MY mentor all these years.

But having spent this long in this job, I feel it is important to pass along what I have learned, and that's the purpose of this blog. This blog is for Church leaders -- specifically leaders in the Church of Christ. If you are a leader, I hope you will read and comment. There is much to do in the Lord's Church. We must do it together, and we can learn from one another.

Monday, August 31, 2009

Giving It Another Go

Some time ago I tried blogging and gave it up. I was already doing a lot of writing for print and simply couldn't keep up with the demands. Now, I'd like to give it another go. My old blog is still up -- www.gracelines.blogspot.com. Never could remember the password and could never figure out how to delete it . . . so, it is in the blogsosphere forever. I'll do better with this one.