Putting the Hip in Church Planting Fellowships : The Law of Unintended Consequences

     The other day, my wife (who happens to be one of the most hospitable and generous people I know) made a meal for some good friends of ours who had just welcomed their third child into the world. Now, my wife does an excellent job on two fronts with these meals: 1) She stays on top of caring for others with them; and, 2) She does a very good job of figuring out what kind of meal should be made and then does a great job making it. So, last week, to accompany some well-made soup, she found a recipe for bread that we hadn't tried before, a recipe that had received some good reviews from others. The soup turned out well. The "bread" did not. Accordingly, it did not accompany the soup to this family, whom we care about and did not want to be responsible for breaking any of their teeth. As an aside, if anyone works for a brick manufacturer and would like to find a way to only heat their bricks in a 300+ degree oven (as opposed to the kilns presently used), we have a bread recipe that would substitute your brick recipe well.

     Last week, I began a series entitled "Putting the Hip in Church Planting Fellowships," providing some perspective on what I see as some missteps in contemporary philosophies of church planting. Let me emphasize again that I love church planting as a ministry, which is one reason I hope these posts will resonate with folks. Because I want to see church planting increase and be done the right way. But not only one or the other. They both have to be there. And that leads us into today's post.

     Like the recipe my wife used to make the brick-bread, a philosophy of ministry that fails to incorporate the necessary components will inevitably fail. For whatever reason, the results might be endorsed by a whole host of people. And it might even seem to start out well, like a good recipe would have it. But neither endorsements nor good beginnings avail for a good loaf of bread or, much more importantly, a healthy local church. So my concern here in these posts is to address a missing step in the recipe for planting local churches that, in my opinion, is creating a local church culture in the United States that is out of character for that most precious ministry. It is the "law of unintended consequences" - well-intended tweaks to the nature of a ministry that ends up rerouting things down the road in ways not intended, yet damaging to churches, families, individuals, and the culture at large.

     This post is intended to give you a preview of some of those concerns, which I'll pick up and discuss over the days ahead. Each concern has its place and will have a separate post devoted to it. The list below summarizes the inevitable "unintended consequences" that, in my opinion, the present emphasis in the church planting culture on targeting segments of culture rather than geographic regions are creating, both short-term and long-term:

• A divergence from the biblical pattern of gospel-centered identity inevitably promoting a culture-centered identity among those gathered in the church plant;
• Focus on a segment of culture inevitably gathers a homogeneous group. Accordingly, this group fails to represent the cross-cultural character of the New Testament church that testifies to the supremacy of the gospel. Along with this, the group will find it difficult to pursue the missionary enterprise of the church in pursuit of others, both "naturally" and due to the reinforced philosophy that focuses on people "like them";
• The oft-selected subcultures tend to be widely shared in church planting fellowships. Twenty years ago, it was "unchurched Harry and Mary." Now it appears to be hipster Harry and Harriet or tattooed Tom and Tracy. But this emphasis on targeting subcultures ends up marginalizing such a tremendous percentage of the population that instead of evangelizing a community, it evangelizes a part of the community. And the rest of the community continues to go unreached, though the statistic of a "church plant" goes up, gets us excited, and leaves thousands of people without a witness while zeroing in on a few hundred.
• When emerging or popular subcultures are targeted, an inevitable premium of the church plant ends up being "newness" or "relevance." While this dynamic may "help" some folks who spend Sunday mornings in a bar, it can be a major stumbling block for the large percentage of folks who spend Sunday mornings at churches that proclaim a false gospel. When these people encounter someone from Hipster Church of Cooltown, they stumble over the apparent lack of transcendence accompanying worship and would prefer to stay with something familiar that at least "seems" like a real church. While there's nothing necessarily wrong with being from Hipster Church, why is it okay to justify the "relevance" as the removal of a stumbling block, when a large percentage of Americans are more prone to stumble over the fact that a church plant doesn't even seem like church to them?;
• When we target subcultures, we inevitable shift the focus off of the transforming power of the gospel and the saving power of the Triune God to a subtle trust that our methods are trustworthy enough to hang the church's hat of identity on. "We're not like other churches" shouldn't be the banner flying over a church unless it's because every other church in the community fails to proclaim the glorious gospel of God's grace to sinners through Christ;
• Instead of reconciling natural differences by the gospel and providing occasion for actual application of that amazingly peculiar effect of the gospel within the body of Christ, it can further harden long-held differences that are based on culture, rather than believer/unbeliever. In a culture that continues to demonstrate racism and class warfare as not only de facto, but even pursued for the sake of political gain, there is tremendous opportunity for church plants that embrace a model of ministry holding forth the gospel as a reconciler of man to God, first, and then men to men as a byproduct of great witnessing value;
• Prioritization means time and resources that are diverted from elsewhere. Which means that even the best-intentioned efforts to plant culturally-targeted local churches end up focusing more on sharpening cultural relevance than they should, while diverting resources away from the biblically emphasized ingredients for a healthy local church;
• And, finally, what happens when the targeted culture becomes over-saturated? Not only do we end up neglecting a large segment of the population, but we end up burning over a segment that will, over time, inevitably "die out." Focusing on the hipster crowd today will only last as long as there is a hipster crowd to focus on. The crowd either changes, dies off socially, or dies with the people who comprise it. The church then becomes irrelevant, unless it grows with the group it targeted, which, in my mind, inevitably means that they move closer to what should have been done in the first place: focus on the under-evangelized community as a whole instead of a small fragment of it.

     I hope these thoughts provide some more thought stirring-up in your mind. As I seek to address the concerns individually and expand on the problem and seek to show how a different philosophy of church planting can help avoid the "unintended consequence," I genuinely desire this to be a sharpening and edifying series. Stay tuned.

Book Review : Dangerous Calling : Paul David Tripp

One of the things I appreciate about having a library card is that I can go online and find repair manuals for cars, look at them for free, and save a chunk of money on a) taking a car to the mechanic and b) showing up at AutoZone and buying one. It's a nice perk of the whole public library system, because while I may be eminently unqualified to open my own repair shop, the fact that others know what they're doing gives me some confidence to not consign all of my car repair needs to a "professional." Because frankly, at the end of the day, some of these repairs just aren't that difficult if you follow the manual. You just have to trust that someone actually knows the vehicle enough to tell you what to do.

Paul Tripp writes repair manuals for people. Solidly grounded in Scripture, the man has written some profoundly helpful materials that combine wisdom gained over the years, a readable style, helpful examples, and well-applied exposition of the Word of God. I have yet to find something of his that is not worth consulting concerning the issue it addresses and would unhesitatingly recommend that any Christian pick up a copy of one of his books to work into a better understanding of their own heart and the precious and sometimes painful process of growing in godliness.

I was excited, then, when I saw that Dr. Tripp was releasing a book geared especially towards the issues that face men called to serve in pastoral ministry. And the title of the book hits the sweet spot for communicating the core reality that serving as a shepherd of God's people is not simply about "showing up." Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry is a book that begins to tackle some otherwise sorely unaddressed issues facing pastors (both vocational and "lay" elders, more on that in a bit). Some of the chapter titles include "Big Theological Brains and Heart Disease," "More than Knowledge and Skill," "The Missing Community," "Mediocrity," and "Self-Glory." Those are just some of the titles that give a hint about what's behind the door, while the other chapters get just as involved in addressing issues that pastors face, but are rarely warned of.

In essence, Dangerous Calling is the literary equivalent of a short-term mentoring relationship with a man who has faced these issues personally and seen them unfold as a counselor to both individual pastors and local churches dealing with them. Thinking back on reading through the book, I can almost picture Dr. Tripp sitting down across from me and talking through some of the most perilous issues pastors face with a good dose of personal care and an equal dose of "don't mess this up."

While addressed to pastors - and it really should be, so far as "contemporary" books are concerned, on the syllabus for any pastoral ministry course offered in seminary - the book is also aimed at elders (who are truly pastors of the local church, even if they're not paid for the service rendered), the wives of pastors, and pastoral search committees. For that matter, it would be decent reading for any Christian to understand the unique challenges facing pastors and, perhaps most importantly, what kind of expectations are fair in their relationship to the men called to serve as soul-shepherds.

My goal here is not to go into all the content found in the book because the vast majority of it is both necessary and well-stated. But I want to highlight a major purpose of the book that, in my eyes, should be held in view as a primary purpose of why reading this book should be on the assignment list for folks in the above-mentioned groups for the coming year. That purpose is to provide a biblical and realistic context for understanding the pressures, temptations, and fragility relating to men serving in the office of elder. Because in the final analysis, we all (pastors and non-pastors alike) bring some pretty strange assumptions to the table regarding what it means to keep watch over the precious entity called the local church. With an increasingly bizarre and counter-biblical character, the "evangelical" sub-culture simply doesn't provide a consistent display of pastoral service. And the very real experience of many professing Christians jumping from one church to another with near-regularity, it's just (with great sadness) not realistic anymore to expect deep relationships to exist between shepherds and sheep. Which makes it horribly difficult to expect that a sound regard for the pastor's role and responsibilities should be found among the majority of the folks pastoring and being pastored. It's sad, it's unfortunate, it's scary, but it's a reality that exists in the 21st century American church. And that makes Dr. Tripp's book a healthy dose of medicine to start treating an illness that is literally robbing the local church of health at the pace of an epidemic.

There is great content to be found here, from treating the pastor in his temptation to seek a small empire to the much neglected need for the pastor to see himself as another part of the body that functions by the same grace and according to the empowerment of the same Spirit that all other Christians do. The book is well-worth the time and money to pick up and read and highlight and share. Elders should discuss it together, wives should nab it off the bookshelf, and pastoral search committees should read it together before coming up with a job description and application. This is certainly one of the best books I've read on the heart of pastoral ministry and I highly recommend it. Thanks to the folks at Crossway for providing me a complimentary review copy, with no expectation of a positive review.

Book Review: The Cross and Christian Ministry

I had two endorsements of this book in the back of my mind before even beginning it. The first came from my former lead pastor, whom I remember speaking very highly of The Cross and Christian Ministry. The second is the fact that there has been little, if anything, that Dr. Carson has written and I have not benefited from. So coming to the book, I had expectations that this volume would follow along those lines and be generally helpful and biblically faithful. Without surprise, Dr. Carson's work succeeds at both points.

Let me begin by saying that the Corinthian letters hold, in my opinion, some of the most necessary corrections for the American church today. The nature of the letters as corrective generally lends themselves to addressing "problems" in the life of the church. The problems developing in American evangelicalism increasingly reflect the issues present among the confused Corinthians. Which makes any venture into these letters a profitable one for the pastor/elder or Christian looking to understand what faithful ministry (and Christian living) looks like in an environment hostile to the unique design the gospel supplies to the character of Christian life and ministry. Dr. Carson also wrote a book entitled A Model of Christian Maturity, which takes up some of the issues in 2 Corinthians. Both of these books are very helpful and I would generally recommend both of them as faithful in accomplishing their stated purposes.

The Cross and Christian Ministry takes up various passages in the first Corinthian letter and applies them to the contemporary Christian and Christian leader. Without going into the details of each chapter, it suffices to say that the themes drawn from the letter are more than necessary for any Christian (most certainly the pastor) to have a solid understanding of. The fundamental disparity between the world's values and the gospel's values, between the priorities of fallen men and the priorities of Jesus Christ, are so glaringly evident to us, yet very difficult to leave the former to pursue the latter. And that's where the Corinthian letters, particularly the first, have so much to say to those of us who are tempted to assume worldly priorities and cloak them with Christian garb. Dr. Carson draws out the priorities of a cross-centered life and ministry that necessarily means change on the part of the earnest man of God.

The contents of this book are adapted from addresses delivered by Dr. Carson, which makes them inherently practical. Dr. Carson is particularly gifted in driving home solid theological content in engaging ways. Again, I have usually benefited from anything I have read written by D.A. Carson and this book stands in that line. While the book is shorter than others you might pick up by him, The Cross and Christian Ministry is still well worth the read and should be an assigned as an exit requirement for those graduating from seminary. Seasoned pastors would do well to come back to the priorities Dr. Carson draws out in this book. The Cross and Christian Ministry is a worthwhile book that supplies a much-needed perspective on genuine Christian ministry and living in light of the Cross.

(The folks at Baker Books kindly supplied me with a complimentary copy for review. I was not required to provide a positive review of the book.)