New Life Assembly

After You Believe - Book Summary

This week I finally finished a book I'd been looking forward to reading for quite some time - N. T. Wright's After You Believe:  Why Christian Character Matters.  I was looking forward to it for two main reasons.  First, I basically love everything that Bishop Wright writes.  He has a superb intellect, but is capable of writing in a way that engages me on a practical level.  I'd read the first two books in this series (Simply Christian, and Surprised by Hope) and thoroughly enjoyed them, so I knew I'd like this as well.  Secondly, I have adopted the framework for my own pastoral ministry that discipleship really has to focus on the development of character.  I've been working on my own manuscript of a book that focuses on developing character, and I thought I would gain some encouragement, challenge, and new ideas from this book on character.

I wasn't disappointed on either score.  In fact, at one point early in the book, I looked at my wife and said, "I think N. T. Wright stole my book idea."  He was saying some things that I've written and said before, and just the affirmation to come from that was enough to really encourage my own writing and thinking on the subject.  As to the actual content of the book, it was as brilliant as I'd hoped.

His premise seems to be that there are two competing streams of thought when it comes to what we're supposed to do after we become followers of Jesus.  On the one hand you have those who teach that, essentially, there is a strict, fixed set of rules that we are to abide by at all times.  On the other hand you have folks who argue that really Jesus has come to set us free from rules and instead replace the rules with a pursuit of authenticity and "being true to yourself".  Wright argues that both fall short of Jesus' vision for his followers, and that instead we should focus on the development of a virtuous Christian character that would result in us being fully human in the way Jesus desires us to be (and as he himself was).

You can download my summary of the book here:  Download After You Believe - Review

Late Bloomers

A couple of weeks ago I finished up a collection of essays by Malcolm Gladwell entitled, What the Dog Saw.  I've read all three of Gladwell's previous books, The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers.  I have never failed to be amazed by his ability to bring insight and perspective to seemingly obscure and unrelated topics.  Maybe it's the amateur psychologist in me that Gladwell appeals to, or maybe it's the part of me that believes that sometimes it's the little things that are significant, and that everything really is related.

Either way, the most compelling (because it felt personally relevant) piece in the book was called "Late Bloomers".  The essay endeavored to take on the cultural truism that genius is generally considered the exclusive province of youth, particularly in creative enterprises like art and poetry.  For examples, we were presented with the very different stories of the artists Picasso and Cezannes, interwoven (as Gladwell does so well) with the story of an author named Ben Fountain who quit his day job as a lawyer to stay at home with his young son and write.

That there are geniuses who start young and burn brightly for a time before diminishing is true.  That there are also geniuses who start young, and toil away for years in relative obscurity before ever achieving any kind of success is also true.  Gladwell writes to say both are brilliant, just in different ways.  To say this, he draws on the research of a University of Chicago economist named Davd Galenson, who theorized that there were two kinds of creativity:  conceptual and experimental.  The conceptual creatives are the ones who burst on the scene, while the experimental creatives are the ones who bloom later.  This is more than just a matter of the same kinds of creativity under different circumstances, but rather a fundamental difference in the way some people create.  So he writes, "late bloomers bloom late because they simply aren't much good until late in their careers."

The experimental creatives blooom late because it takes them a long time to hone their craft, to find what they are seeking in their creative efforts.  They are the ones who rip up canvases, burn the first drafts of their books, and then start over.  They seek understanding through the creative process, and eventually come to the place where their expressions are finally able to be realized - what they see in their mind is able to come out on the canvas, the page, or, in my case, the church community.

The reason I was so compelled by the essay is that I found myself identifying with the experimental creative.  I can't preach the same sermon twice, and I seem to have trouble even teaching the same class twice because I have this insatiable desire to change what I did the last time.  I tweak.  I adapt.  I edit.  I am relentless in my commitment to never do the same thing the same way twice.  Even as I lead the church, I often feel that I am experimenting with ideas, with concepts and even with practices in order to get to a closer approximation of what I feel the church is supposed to be.

This essay was a motivation for me to continue my pursuit of the church that I believe could be and should be in Wakefield, Rhode Island.  At the beginning of the year I confessed my desire to spend the next 30 years of my life here, and with God's grace I will do that.  Throughout that time, I imagine I will be experimenting with creating ways to connect people into a genuine, meaningful relationship with God, and with creating paths for people to grow spiritually.  I hope that with every passing experiment we'll get closer to what I see in my heart that I still can't fully express in words. 

But my creative process doesn't mean there aren't others out there who are the conceptual creatives, the ones who have these flashes of brilliance that burn brightly for a while.  They're out there, doing great things for God's Kingdom.  In fact, they're the ones you've probably heard of before.  I'll never be them, and it's good to know that God doesn't intend for me to be them. 

What about you?  Are you the conceptual creative or an experimental one?

2010 Sermons in Review (Part 2)

If you're following the Twitter/Facebook experiment, thanks for playing along!  If you're coming here to the blog for a look at the 2010 sermon tweets, thanks for coming back.

Here are the twitterized versions of my sermons from May-August:

8/22/10: What if the church stopped taking an "us vs. them" posture towards our community, and instead began to think "us FOR them"?

8/15/10: It is the job of servants to use the talents we have been given to expand the work of the one who has given us the resources.

8/8/10: In the cross we see the tremendous value that God places on us. In our service to others, we show them their value to God.

8/1/10: Jesus' service at the cross transforms us from selfish human beings into a community that serves God and our neighbor.

7/18/10: If we choose to trust God in the ordinary aspects of our lives, the accumulation of those choices will be a most extraordinary life

7/11/10: God does not promise that we will never be exposed to fear again. He only promises that he will walk with us through it.

6/27/10: What will you do that cannot be accomplished if you do not trust in the God who made heaven and earth, and is completely faithful?

6/20/10: It is possible to sing, as U2 famously did, “I will sing, sing a new song” even as we ask “how long?” in our cry for help. #40

6/13/10: When you trust in God your savior to lead you on the path to new life, he vindicates your decision to walk that way with him.

5/23/10: The goal of the growing church isn't uniformity, but true unity around the life-changing gospel at work in every unique life.

5/16/10: People who work hard and work together to accomplish God’s work form the core of a church that impacts its community.

5/9/10: The church can only move forward and grow when we respond to growth and change sacrificially, unselfishly and with true generosity.

5/2/10: The church grows when we submit fully to Jesus, allow the Holy Spirit to empower us and allow leaders to lead.

2010 Sermons in Review

Yesterday I decided to try a little experiment using the power of Twitter.  If you're not familiar with Twitter, it's a social networking application that allows you to share your thoughts or activities, but requires you to do it in 140 characters or less.  I had been listening to a recent sermon just to take the time to evaluate myself, and as I wrote some notes to myself at the bottom of the page I wrote this:  "can you sum it up in a tweet - 140 characters?"

It got me thinking.  Could I summarize an entire message into 140 characters or less?  Are my messages concise and concrete enough to be reduced to that single, defining point?  Of course 140 characters can't do justice to an entire message, but I'm guessing that what people remember (if anything) of a sermon is not the 30-35 minutes of words, but one main idea that keeps coming through.  So I decided that as a year-in-review for myself, I would reduce all of my messages into a single tweet.  It has been a challenging exercise, but one I think I'll continue because it forces me to distill the message down into its most basic and memorable form. 

Below (and running backwards from the April to January) are the tweets I created to summarize the messages.  I'll probably post the remaining ones tomorrow, or you can follow the updates on Twitter or Facebook.  Both services require an account, but both are free.

4/25/10: Grace from our lips is like salt seeping into the heart of our community, it penetrates through even the toughest exteriors.

4/18/10: because Jesus is risen, work becomes a sacred thing, a place where the kingdom of heaven may break into this world by our actions.

4/11/10: our responsibility is to order our family around the risen Christ, keeping him ultimate when so many things compete for that title.

4/4/10: In the moment of Jesus’ resurrection the unstoppable force of life breaks the stronghold of death, crumbling its strength forever.

3/28/10: the way of Jesus offers both the freedom to follow him to the father, and the restraint to keep us from going our own way.

3/21/10: the issue is not what might have happened if God had showed up earlier but what he will do now that he's here. #lazaruscomeforth

3/7/10: We would expect the Messiah to preserve himself, but instead he gives himself away for you. His sacrifice shows your true value.

2/28/10: Jesus is not a prophet, a philosopher or a religious and cultural leader, he is God who came in human form to bring us freedom.

2/21/10: when we choose to follow Jesus his life comes to enter us and begins to give light to our whole life.

2/14/10: Every other place we looked for bread to satisfy the soul has left us wanting, but in Christ our souls are satisfied.

2/7/10: we do not find salvation en masse, but in a deeply personal way because we drink deeply of his living water offered to us.

1/24/10: The gospel is not a sterile accumulation of objective truths but an invitation to consider whether or not Jesus is the truth.

1/17/10: The fairy tale gospel says that who you are now is not who you will always be - Cinderella hides under the ashes.

1/10/10: The gospel is summed up in the comedic picture of a well-dressed father embracing his filthy, pig-stink covered son (Luke 15)

1/3/10: The gospel strips us and shows us for what we are – naked, poor, pitiful and blind - but it does not leave us that way.

Book Summary - Made to Stick

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I recently purchased a new supply of books to read through in an effort to grow in certain areas of my leadership.  One of the areas I wanted to grow in was my communication - both my public, Sunday communication, as well as the other kinds of communication I do, via the blog, email, etc.

I decided to read the book, Made to Stick:  Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath.  As I did with the last book, I'm posting my brief summary of the book:  Download Made to Stick - Review.

Absentee Monday

Yesterday our whole family was absent from New Life and present with Common Church in Boston.  It was  a little odd for each of us in our own right to be away from our physical and spiritual home.  And yet it was a powerful reminder to me that, as much as I love what God is doing at New Life, he is also at work in other places, with other people who are doing the same work of creating community and advancing the message of the gospel into the world.

Rather than giving a long discourse on the differences between New Life and Common Church, I'll just bullet point some observations I made before, during, and after my time there that may (or may not) shape some of what we do in the future.  These are in no particular order, and none of them should be taken as criticism of either church or its people :)

• Everyone who had a part in the service - announcements, closing prayer, music team, preacher - had a "walk through" of the service before hand.  They practiced making the transitions, made sure mics were live when they needed to be, music was playing when it was supposed to be, videos were done at the right time.  They were very thorough and, as a guest walking into the situation, it made me feel very comfortable that I would know what to do and when to do it.  I think that probably translates over into how a guest of the church itself would feel. 
• They started on time.  For those of you who have been living on "New Life" time for the last umpteen years, you know that this is distinctly different from us.  I'm considering a "New Year's resolution" churchwide that we'll start when we say we're starting.  But, that may change.
• They had a time of greeting and welcoming similar to what we do - lasting about 5 minutes.  It was friendly and warm and I enjoyed saying "hi" to different people.  It was nothing like our greeting time in that it was much quieter and more subdued however :)  I personally think a big part of the difference is that we have had so many years of building community that it's now a natural overflow of who we are as a church, and they just haven't had the time to build all of that up yet, being just a year old.
• Their order of service put one song up front, followed by greeting time, announcements and right into the message.  They saved the bulk of singing (another 3 songs) for after the message.  It felt odd to go right into the message for me - we were maybe 15 minutes into the whole service at that point, if that - but I did like the extended time of worship after.  I felt like it set a great tone for reflecting on the Scriptures and the music was done in such a way that you felt you had the time and space there to respond to what God was speaking to your own heart.
• All of their communication was simple and clean - no clutter anywhere.  Connection cards were very basic and to the point - just a name and email address.  I liked it and think it probably fits perfectly with their culture.  I personally think it's valuable for us to get the mailing address because it allows us to send our guests a personal note at the beginning of the week, and in an age of virtual communication, I think a handwritten card means more than ever.
• Teaching to a group of people that you don't know very well is very, very hard!  I take for granted that I'm so familiar with our crowd that I know the way the sermon is going to flow, how they'll respond (for the most part) and how I can connect with them.  I felt like I spent 10-15 minutes yesterday just figuring out how to connect, and hopefully was able to do it well enough that the message spoke to someone's heart there.
• Last note.  Last night as I laid in bed with each of my kids to talk about the day and pray for them I asked each of them what they thought of the service, and what they remembered of the message.  I was shocked when Jacob essentially repeated the flow of the conversation back to me, even remembering that there were 6 commandments Jesus talked to the young man about (Matthew 19:16-22 if you want to read my text).  Aislinn had it nailed as well, and it just reminded me that kids can probably absorb more than we think they can, and even if we don't think they're paying close attention - they're probably getting more than we imagine!

I'll be back at Common Church next week, so Jason Ferando will be teaching one more Sunday at New Life.  I'll finish up Conversations with Jesus on the last Sunday of November, and then we're diving right into a four week Christmas series.  This year we're going to talk about the idea that in Christmas we hear the promise that everything changes, but the reality is that everything changes in very, very small ways.  It's my hope that we'll see this Christmas season as preparation for personal and congregational change, and focus on the small ways that change happens in us every day.

Catalyst Day 2 (Craig Groeschel)

Sorry for my delinquency in posting my Catalyst notes from Day 2.  I've been trying to do a better job of getting some of the administrative tasks done that I usually put off, which means I've had less time for writing lately. 

So, without further ado, here's the scoop from Craig Groeschel's talk on generational tension:

Craig Groeschel:  Generational Tension

• The tension between generations is good because we need each other - we stand on the shoulders of someone else who goes before us
• To the older generation:
  • Don't resent, fear and judge the next generation because they are different
  • They are not the future church, they are the church of today
  • That attitude is often related to insecurity
    • Maybe my best days are behind me?
    • Then you start pretending like you know it all and have everything figured out to compensate for the insecurity you feel because you're not cool or hip anymore
  • Delegate tasks and create followers, but delegate authority and you will create leaders
  • You still have assets (age and wisdom) to offer, so please use them!
  • If you're not dead, you're not done
  • Become a spiritual father to the next generation of leaders
  • Psalms 71:18 - let me live long enough to declare your works to the next generation
• To the younger generation:
  • One word used by older generation to describe you is "entitled" - you expect to have all yor parents had by the time you are 25
  • You tend to overestimate what God wants to do in the short run and underestimate what he wants to do in the long run - don't get discouraged when things don't move as quickly as you think they should
  • Honor the older generation - because you are entitled you fail to honor them
    • Andy Stanley - honor publicly leads to influence privately
    • A lack of faith and lack of honor go together - Jesus was unable to do miracles in his home town because of their lack of faith and their failure to honor him
    • When we honor Jesus for real, we will learn to honor those who are in authority over us
    • When you honor someone you can help him rise to that level of your honor, to that level of anointing
    • Respect is earned, but honor is given

Catalyst Day 1 (Seth Godin)

With apologies to the following speakers (Christine Caine, Beth Moore and Francis Chan), all of whom were excellent in their own rights, I'm just going to post my notes from Seth Godin's session on the first day of Catalyst.  To be honest, with each of the three aforementioned speakers, I felt that their effectiveness in communicating was more a function of their passion and presence than the content they shared - and passion and presence don't necessarily translate into a lot of notes.  So while I had about 3 pages of notes from Seth Godin, I had only about a page from all of the other 3 combined.  If you're looking for their sessions, your best bet would be to either purchase or borrow the cd's of their talks.

Seth Godin (Author, Blogger and Business/Marketing Guru):

*Confession - Seth talks about 800 miles per hour, and I did my best to write down everything he said, so there may not be a lot of flow to these notes....

• We find tension because there is a difference between what is and what you are expecting
• The way our economy works drives our culture - because the economy has shifted, culture has shifted, and as culture has shifted so has spiritual life
• Ford and the Factory
  • Ford's goal seemed to be to build an organization with interchangeable parts, and ultimately interchangeable people - if you don't show up to work, they can replace you
  • Factories led to schools which were invented to train our kids to be obedient, sit in rows and buy the right kinds of stuff to fit in and be part of the crowd
  • The factory wants you to fit in so they can ignore you
  • In our economy and culture, competence is no longer scarce - you can always find someone to do the job who will do it cheaper, cut another corner - it becomes a race to the bottom
• The New revolution is destroying the Industrial Revolution
  • What can you count on in a new economy and culture now?
    • You should make a difference and do work that people will miss if you stopped doing it
    • We will move from being more obedient to being more graceful - be the person people would be sad to see leave the room
  • The factory created a world of compliance (school, work, politics, church)
    •  
      • Now with such a connected world, you can't force compliance because people can just leave and go somewhere else
  • If you want to succeed you must be prepared to fail
    • No one wants to join the boring tribe
    • It's about creating a movement - Apple has created a movement surrounding their products, and the people who buy them buy the movement, not just the product
    • Boring doesn't work, doesn't get people to talk - people will talk about you because you are a genius, a person who knows how to solve interesting problems
  • Without a boss, who sets your agenda? 
    
    • At the heart, it is your Art that sets the agenda
    • Art is a human act that changes someone else and it cannot be sold - at best you can sell the souvenir of the art (the painting, the music, etc.) but art is a gift and the giving of the gift is what changes people
    • In a connection economy you need to create your art, you need to think for yourself and seek understanding rather than just thinking someone else's thoughts
  • Art is emotional labor
    • It is a labor of nuance, of risk and self-exposure but we need original thinkers, provacateurs, people who will risk
    • What are we rewarding?  Are we attracted to just doing what we did last week?  The more change we make the more likely people will join the tribe
  • Change is made by people who stop seeking deniability, take on more responsibility and are not concerned with getting the credit
  • Can we move beyond creating an "us v. them" system in our tribes?  Is it really important to prove that we are better than everyone else?
    • It's the difference between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset - when you believe that there is an abundance you can give gifts rather than fighting over resources

And then, as if to underscore his final point, he gave us resources - a small little book he called "Graceful", with excerpts from his latest book, Linchpin.

Catalyst Day 1 (Andy Stanley and Daniel Pink)

The hardest part of any conference is coming home and trying to sort through what you learned and how you can possibly begin to integrate any of it into what you're facing in your current situation.  I find that sharing what I've learned is a big step in that process for me, so even if no one else is reading, I'm going to think out loud on what I heard at the Catalyst Conference last week.

Initially I intended to blog the whole first day in one post, but then I started typing and realized how massive a task that would be.  So I'll probably post the notes from 2 sessions per day.

Session 1:  Andy Stanley, Pastor and Author

• Everyone has appetites, and the only word an appetite knows is "more"
• Leaders have heightened appetites for, among other things, progress, responsibility, respect, the win, growth, fame or recognition, achievement, and to be envied
• 3 Things to remember about appetites:
  • God created them, but sin has distorted them
  • Appetites are never fully and finally satisfied - they never go away completely
  • Your appetites always whisper "now", and never "later"
• Genesis 25:29 and following
  • Story of Jacob and Esau
  • Who would trade their birthright and their future for a bowl of stew?  You would, and I would if it was the right bowl of stew
  • There was no one standing there with Esau to reframe the appetite for him - he makes the exchange and ends up writing himself out of God's story for generations to come
• Ask yourself where you want to be ten years from now
  • Reframe your appetites in this perspective - will this choice keep me from it?
  • The clearer, bigger and more defined the frame, the less grip your appetites will have on you
• What is your "bowl of stew"?
  • What is it hard to say "no" to?
  • What are you talking yourself into?
  • What are you considering that you know you would warn someone else about?
  • What are you contemplating that your spouse is uncomfortable with?
  • What are you doing that is not illegal or immoral that you wouldn't want everyone to know?
• You have no idea what God wants to accomplish through you, your children, and your grandchildren, but God does, and you are going to want to be there for it!

Session 2:  Daniel Pink - Author, Drive and A Whole New Mind

• Three thoughts about motivation
  • We are more than our biological drives
  • We respond to rewards and punishments
  • We also do things because they are the right thing to do and they will make a contribution to the world
• Many organizations and companies stop at the motivation of reward and punishment and don't ever tap into the third drive
  • If _________, then __________ rewards work well with simple mechanical tasks, but not for creative solutions to complex problems
  • If we are doing creative and complex work of trying to create something new, we need more than just the if, then rewards
• How do you motivate people to do creative work?
  • Autonomy
    • Management is a technology for organizing people into productive capacities - it is designed and built for compliance, but we want engagement not just compliance and people tend to engage better when they get to the result on their own
    • They want autonomy over their (1) Time (2) Task (3) Team, and (4) Technique
    • He mentioned one company that created something called the "FedEx" day in which they would set their employees free to work on any problem or product they wanted from Thursday afternoon through Friday - the only condition was that you must deliver something on Friday afternoon to your team
  • Mastery
    • We have the desire to get better, there is something inherently satisfying about progress
    • Studies show that people are most satisfied on the days they believe they have made significant progress
    • The only way to move towards mastery is through feedback, but it should be more regular and intentional than the annual performance review
    • He suggested a do it yourself performance review where you evaluate how you have progressed towards the goals you set for yourself
  • Purpose
    • There are limits to the profit motive
    • When profit motive detaches from a sense of larger purpose, it can become dangerous all around
    • Great leaders can be summed up in one sentence that describes their purpose - what is your one sentence?

Catalyst Reflections

As I mentioned in my regular Monday morning post yesterday, I returned from the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta on Saturday afternoon with my head spinning from the great content, and my heart and soul stirred once again with a deep passion to change the world, starting with my own inner world, and spreading out to the wider world around me.

There werre 55 pastors and church leaders who took the journey together from our district (MA, CT and RI).  We stayed in the same hotel, shared meals together, shared vans to make the drives and in general acted like a sounding board for one another for the few days we were there.  On Friday evening, after we polished off our pizza and Krispy Kreme donuts (insert your joke about overweight pastors here) we sat down together for a debrief, where we shared in small groups the answers to three questions:

1. What did you hear at the conference that was a new idea?
2. What did you hear that was old information but was good to be reminded of?
3. What one thing do you need to change?

For today I'm just going to answer those three questions, and then perhaps over the next few days I'll unpack the highlights of each session.

1. The theme for the conference was "The tension is good", developing the idea that there are tensions in the life of any leader that are absolutely necessary to our growth personally, and ultimately for the churches or organizations that we lead.  Andy Stanley's final session was a bit of a revelation for me in this regard:  he said that "Every organization has problems that shouldn't be solved and tensions that shouldn't be resolved."  That's new information for me, because by nature I tend to be a guy who wants peace, and wants harmony and wants to keep things in balance.  Andy's big idea was that if you resolve some tensions, you will create new ones in their place, and the ones you create may be worse than the ones you had. 
2. As far as the reminder goes, this one was also an Andy Stanley moment as he opened Day 1 by talking about the story of Jacob and Esau, particularly the moment that Esau sells his birthright for the bowl of stew made by his brother, Jacob.  I've heard countless sermons on that passage, and thought about the ways we can trade the immediate gratification for the future payoff of what God wants to do in us.  But at one point Andy said he wished he could drop into the story and say to Esau that if he sells his birthright for the stew, that he is essentially writing himself out of God's story for generations to come.  I'd never heard it from that angle, but it certainly hit home with me that there could be any number of ways in which I would sacrifice the future for some present gratification, but that if I do, I'll be writing myself out of the story of what God wants to do with my life (and the lives of my children, grandchildren and generations to come after me).
3. The one thing to change came from the redneck preacher (his words), Perry Noble, who simply went after us with some old school preaching about whether or not we will trust God and his direction for our lives.  At one point he said that if you can explain everything happening in your church, then perhaps it isn't God that's doing it.  It struck me because I tend to manage things as closely as I possibly can, but I was reminded that, in the end, the success and growth of New Life is not going to be the result of my expertise, my skill, or my abilities, but the work that God does in us and through us that can't be explained by marketing, great music or relevant sermons.  So for me the change I need to make was an attitude and mindset shift that I think was already underway in my heart and mind, but was just deepened by the word spoken that day.