111 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 9-20-17”

  2. Good morning! Here is a copy and paste from early this morning:

    Yay! AJ and peeps made it home. And we now get to travel vicariously through his photos! Fun lizard to begin our journey.

    This discussion on churches is very enlightening. It is especially helpful as my church looks at options going forward.

    Concerning ordination, I know of a same sex couple who had arranged for an ordained minister to perform their ceremony. The person backed out and they had to scramble to find someone else. They were able to find a person willing to become ordained through something offered on the Internet. So, as in the case of other sacred words, ordination does not always carry the weight of its traditional meaning.

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  3. As for a personal observation concerning a flaw some established denominational churches seem to have is that wealthier members seem to be given a sense of ownership because of all the support they give to maintain buildings and programs. Has anyone else noticed this?

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  4. I wonder if Chan dealt with that in his mega church in a wealthy area of CA. I have no idea about that, and it is pure speculation. I do not know if house churches have that to deal with.

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  5. I haven’t noticed any sense of ownership in any church I attended. But I think I noticed some political influence in FBC Columbia. It was an influential church in the state capital. And the place where the Confederacy was formed.
    i.e. S.C. voted to leave the union.

    I have noticed that large churches, like FBC Columbia and Travis Avenue BC in Fort Worth have sub-churches. That is everyone attends the same worship service, but the associations break down to groups. e.g. college classes, seminary students, older folks, etc.

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  6. We missed you AJ! Glad you’re back. Hope the vacation was memorable.

    I have no experience with home churches but I understand how they might appeal to some, particularly as our society has become more fragmented. The churches in the NT sent representatives to each other’s homes and cities, and helped each other. So maintaining fellowship would be important regardless of the size or place of meeting or organizational type.

    Mumsee commented the other day that we know what radical Islam is, it’s people who read the Koran and take it’s words seriously, but what is radical Christianity. When I read that I thought, ‘Mumsee, just go to the bathroom mirror and open your eyes and look. There’s a radical Christian.’ Stretching yourself to do the work that Christ gives you to do, whether it’s exciting or mundane (care-giving can be both) is radical. Rejecting the consumerism that inundates our culture and politics, is radical–and actually takes a lot of commitment.

    I know nothing whatsoever about Francis Chan. I do know that for years, many ministers have been caught up in the lingo and methods of the consumer culture and have built large followings based on the personal charisma selling requires. That can be very disillusioning. To this day, I still remember where I was standing when I realized that ‘it’ had come to my church too. I was 16 and taking a class on church growth at my church. The learning material equated witnessing for Christ to marketing and it taught selling techniques. I believe it’s a big mistake to ‘sell’ Jesus. It can bring in a crowd and build a megachurch, but over time it ends up turning salvation into just another discrete, transactional event, rather than a Biblical relationship with the living Christ and His people (the Church).

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  7. Our pastor says he specifically does not want to know anything about who gives what to the church so he’s left out of the collection and tallying process altogether. We are solvent but not rich. We least our facility. I suspect the wealthy influence has been more of an issue with the older, mainline denominations that perhaps rely on certain families who have gone there for generations.

    Mega churches have given rise to the small group movement (we also have home groups in our church though we’re hardly “mega”) which I think is good. Prayer groups, book study groups, Bible study groups, simply fellowship groups. But they aren’t a substitute for the church.

    And yes, anyone can buy an ‘ordination.’ A co-worker of mine (a lapsed Jew who seems to be agnostic at most) did that and has “officiated” at the weddings of a few of our colleagues through the years.

    To be ordained by a recognized Christian church/denomination, however, carries a weight within those denominations that says those men have been recognized by that body of believers.

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  8. Francis Chan–if I remember correctly–had a “regular” church in the Simi Valley area of LA. Some of my outlaws attended that church and liked it. He decided, however, that it was too comfortable in that very comfortable area and moved up to the San Francisco area to either join or begin a new church ministry.

    I have not heard of any red flags concerning him, but then I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention. He doesn’t get a lot of media up here in the Bay Area and, frankly, that suggests to me he may be carrying out his commission properly.

    Yeah, Debra is right, a radical Christian or two lurks at Mumsee’s house.

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  10. Ah yes, the “church growth” phenomenon of the 1980s and 1990s. The evangelical Quaker church I belonged to for a number of years (sang in the choir, I loved that church) — went that route when I was going to be moving & leaving anyway. When our pastor retired & we had called the youth pastor into the pulpit full time and were asked to organize into groups to seek and bring in what he’d decided should be our ‘target’ demographic — young to middle-aged professionals.

    It all bothered me at the time but since I was just about to move out of the area — and I’d been following more of a Reformed theology route for several years already anyhow — I knew I’d be changing churches soon. It all struck me as so artificial and forced.

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  11. And most of the close friends he’s marrying (it’s marrying season in his age group now), are from his years at a good Catholic all-male school.

    An interesting bunch of young men whom I met at aforementioned nephew’s wedding (which he did not conduct himself). The ones who spoke to me–and there were a number who talked with either me or my husband over the course of quite a wedding–were earnest with a social conscience. Most were lawyers who worked in programs with children or the DA office. None were high priced, high flying corporate seekers, but then they were all about 28 and just starting.

    They were well spoken and I liked them. I also have never spoken to so many lawyers in such a short period of time in my life . . . Nuclear engineers have been a dime a dozen in my life, but lawyers? LOL

    I think my nephew paid $25 and mailed in an application to the state of California. They mailed back the license almost immediately . . .

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  12. Is it Willow Creek–the church in Illinois–set up the mega church/small group church twenty years ago. The idea was the big church services on Sunday morning were “seeker” services, designed to (I don’t want to use the word but it makes sense) lure in the unchurched for a taste of Jesus.

    The “real” work of the church went on in small group Bible studies during the week where you got to know a small group of people and were accountable to them. I’ve enjoyed the small groups we’ve been in over the years but I’m not sure how well they work for families. I had a standing babysitter on Thursday nights and off I went. With the craziness of life these days, I know very few people who use babysitters–which is another reason why teenagers don’t work–in the evenings. There just isn’t time with everything else going on.

    I’m convinced busyness is the source of a lot of problems in our society these days. Satan has had a field day removing both parents from the home and expecting quality life to happen.

    Time to make coffee and calm down the kitten.

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  13. It has been in the long time well established mainline churches where I have seen the ownership phenomenon. It diminishes the feeling of what church is suppose to be even if the pastor is excellent.

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  14. I stepped on Annie last night, what a shriek came out of her. Cats get right under your feet, especially when they’re hungry and you’ve just gotten home.

    She didn’t break.

    I remember Willow Creek, they were the cover story more than once on Christianity Today. I suppose it was that model — almost a business-based model — that your young Quaker minister was emulating at the time in the early 1990s. Have a church “plan,” have a target demographic, and go after it.

    Apparently our current church has stayed pretty much the same size for years now, around 300-400 people, though quite a few new members are coming in over the next few weeks. But our pastor laughs about having the same number of people as we’ve always had as others move away, pass away or otherwise leave.

    We’ve addressed the warmth & “clique” issue frequently, it came up in our SS last Sunday, there certainly is a natural tendency for us to band together before and after services with those we already know. Someone suggested the “5-minute” rule — don’t talk to anyone you already know for 5 minutes after the service ends; instead, go find people you don’t know or recognize. (Sometimes it’s embarrassing when you realize you just haven’t met someone who has been coming also for many years, they just sit in an area away from where you normally sit.)

    On our pastor’s birthday, the congregation decided to surprise (and please) him by telling everyone to sit where they normally don’t sit, pretty funny. We do get into our Sunday ruts and need to be shaken loose from that frequently, I think.

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  15. Speaking of Christianity Today in the early 1990s, how odd to think I once had (and relied upon and read, thoroughly) newspaper and magazine subscriptions back in the dark ages. 🙂

    Part of what our news group is struggling with is how to get a “loyal” and more steady readership, not just to attract people to click on a random story here and there and then go away. But the Internet is so conducive to flittering from one thing to the next. Our habits have really changed in the way we “consume” and gather information for ourselves.

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  16. Another co-worker leaving Friday from the buyout. 😦 I need to find a goodbye card we can pass around. That’s now a weekly activity and will be for a few more weeks. Very depressing to be there these days. 😦 Talk about a room just emptying out. When we moved to this building 9 years ago we had 13 reporters which was a far cry from only a few years earlier when we had 20+ along with a full copy desk and several city editors.

    Careening madly downhill into the abyss, we’re at the point where our hands are now covering our eyes, not wanting to see where it’s all headed (we all kind of know the answer to that already anyway).

    Apparently, though, the hedge fund that owns us is still managing to rake in a 25% profit. They like the staff cuts just fine.

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  17. Chan, yes, he had a church there and thought the Lord was leading him out of the comfortable place into something a bit more challenging. And he could come across as judgemental in that he says it is not okay to do what is right in your own eyes, as in San Fran. And very judgemental when he says we are killing our babies just like in the days of Molech though we label it with a prettier name.I think he is doing a good job at encouraging believers to remember their first love and people who believe with their minds (even the demons believe) but not with their hearts, to ask God for help. He does say it is a miracle performed by the Holy Spirit that makes us alive in Christ.

    I am taking Roscuro’s concerns and listening for them.

    But I have been in many churches where that was not the message so much as ….well….I don’t really know what their message has been. And I am not saying mainline churches are bad, I don’t have enough experience with them.

    And I think he started his big Simi Valley church as a home church but I don’t know if they are what would be considered a plant by some denomination. I don’t know the accountability. I liked what Debra said about the NT churches sending leaders from home church to home church to watch for error and encourage. I don’t know if home churches do that though I like it when churches I have been in have had leaders from other churches come by and preach and get involved. It shows a unity that matters.

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  18. Mumsee, did you read the link I posted on Chan’s talk to Facebook yesterday evening? I find it seriously concerning that he criticized, using blanket statements, the former church that he planted while speaking in front of a very secular, yet very lucrative and popular, social media corporation, a talk that was shared by Facebook on their platform. Maybe some people in his old congregation were greedy and just there for the ride, but in my experience with large churches, there are many who are also living sincerely. My mother’s family was instrumental in planting what has become a very large Baptist church in a city near Toronto. There are hypocrites among the congregation, but also many who work hard for the Lord. If you just look on the surface it is easy to see the hypocrites, because the sincere people obey Christ, and do not sound a trumpet before their good deeds. You have to know the sincere people personally, as I do, to know what they are doing. That is another problem I have with Chan’s talk to Facebook, that he told them all the wonderful things he was doing, like donating the proceeds of his book. Now that’s sounding a trumpet. It reminds me strongly of Gothard’s humble brags before thousands of his followers about living on a low salary and driving the same car for decades.

    Janice mentioned wealthier members of mainstream churches developing a sense of ownership of a church. I have, or had, a great uncle, an uncle, a second cousin, and two first cousins who were or are involved in pastoring in a variety of churches, so I’ve heard the stories of the members who think they own the church. My second cousin developed a serious and ongoing emotional breakdown as a result of such people in the church. Since my extended family on my mother’s side almost all attend churches and they live in different areas, I’ve also heard of pastors who develop a sense of ownership of their church. Both are destructive.

    In the case of my family’s tiny church, the split I’ve mentioned that happened many years ago involved a family who had donated a significant sum of money to the church and thus felt they could control it. They had turfed several pastors whom they disagreed with, including their own son, before we joined the church (we only learned of the pattern of getting rid of pastors by reading the notes of past church meetings). When they realized that the young pastor who was there when we joined, had become convinced of the Doctrines of Grace (Calvinism) they tried to get rid of him, but those who supported him were greater in number. They left, and slandered the church to the community, a slander which continued after that young pastor left for another church and Pastor A was called. Pastor A ended up having to publicly confront and reprove the patriarch of the family to stop the slander. The church barely numbered ten families at the time and it is smaller now.

    When that family left, they demanded the sum of money they had given the church be paid back. Just at that time, my father had received an insurance payout from the serious accident he was in. My parents, ever generous, provided the church with the money – they gave away most of that money to people who needed it. They have never presumed on their donation to the church. My father was deacon for a time, but gladly resigned that position when someone younger came along that seemed able to fill it. When he was deacon, Pastor A retired, and that new pastor who later resigned was called. The new pastor named another deacon, who, it must be said in all honesty flattered and fawned over the pastor, as head of the board. My father cared not a whit. In doing their good deeds in secret, my parents only followed the example of my mother’s parents and her grandparents, who were silent pillars of the large Baptist church afore mentioned, also generous and hospitable despite not being wealthy. You won’t find plaques to my ancestors and extended family anywhere, but the good they have done is pervasive (I can say that because I won’t be rewarded for their good deeds). I wonder if Chan ever took the time to get to know all the people in his congregation?

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  20. Sorry, Roscuro, I managed to miss the link though I read the post! Interesting that you and I took totally different things from the same article.

    As to your question of did he get to know the people. That is what I got out of it, he did not. That was his whole point. He was saying that he was not doing church right, just preaching and not getting involved in the hurts and cares of the people. He did not know them. He was not saying they were wrong at all, just that his heart was wrong and God was correcting him by taking him out of there. He understood that he was not serving God, he was serving himself and had lost that initial love. He often, in his sermons, talks about the old church and how well they are doing now that he has stepped out of the way and let others use their gifts. Something we have addressed on here. If somebody is feeling like they can’t take on one more thing, perhaps they are not supposed to. Perhaps God has somebody in the wings waiting to step up and use their gifts.

    As to the comment on making money, I believe that was a direct answer to a direct question and it would be reasonable to have people thinking he is getting paid for his work. And it is reasonable for him to say no. Didn’t Paul say that at some time?

    And the comment on people not being generous, I thought he meant in previous churches and with himself. Not the specific church. It is difficult, I am sure, to give an interview like that. Which is why we should be praying for all of our leaders.

    Lest anybody think otherwise, I am not advocating watching Chan’s sermons in lieu of being involved in your own church. I am suggesting listening to some as an encouragement in the Lord to become more active in your own church. For years, I have done little more than attend and attend Sunday School. I felt I was doing my part in raising these children. That was a season of life, now it is time to move forward and those sermons are an encouragement to me to do that. I even attended lunch with the church a couple of times without my husband. How is that for stepping up?

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  25. Roscuro, I suspect so. But often we put ideas out here to encourage one another. Books, magazine articles, FB comments. It is just another idea of what others might or might not find encouraging.

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  26. Churches are messy, both big and small — because they’re populated by & run by human beings, of course. 🙂

    I do think there are distinct pitfalls in very large and very small churches.

    I suppose the impression I have been left with about Chan is he still seems to be front and center (of now a “new” movement he’s founded) as a personality. I went to the site (we are church?) and there he was, in the banner photo (albeit the back of his head, apparently). I guess that always gives me pause about a minister when it seems to be too much about “them.” I don’t know enough about his teaching to say yay or nay or (most likely) it’s in between somewhere, some good, some questionable.

    The church will always be imperfect and flawed. But that’s why I put more trust in those churches with oversight and strong (and broad-based) connections and leadership, all accountable at some level (and, of course, all accountable always to God), where no one person in leadership is dominant.

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  27. That was his complaint about the church he started in Simi Valley, it was all about him. These home churches each have two pastors and he is just a visitor. He is not a regular speaker, apparently. The site I pointed to is the Francis Chan site, a compilation of his sermons. Sort of like if I go to the Desiring God site, I will expect to see John Piper preaching.

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  28. I vaguely remember my elementary school being cancelled when I was a kid once or maybe twice — when it rained and rained and rained and the water was flooding up over the curbs and sidewalks (this was when most of us still walked to school every day and most families had only 1 car that was usually taken to work by the dad every day).

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  35. It seems to me a little odd that Chan went from megachurch to house church . . . it seems like an overcorrection, and maybe someday he’ll see it as that.

    The current house-church movement in the US scares me a bit.

    I remember a time on this blog (when it was World) that we had one recent convert to Orthodoxy and two house-church-only members, all of them saying “our church is the only biblical church,” and the models could not be more different! The house church members used Paul’s choice to waive his right to be paid for his ministry (a right he acknowledged and that is clear throughout Scripture) as proof that paying a pastor is wrong, that we should be paying missionaries instead. (Which is nonsense if you even think about it for a moment–we can pay for people to plant churches overseas, but not locally?) And apparently Barna and another man came out with a book (Pagan Christianity) that attempts to prove that nearly all elements of the “institutional church,” from pews to paid pastors, are pagan and came from Roman Catholicism. So he’s home-church-only now, or so his supporters on the blog kept saying.

    Thing is, I haven’t trusted George Barna for years, ever since I finally opened a couple of those books that fellow students kept checking out of my college library (where I worked) and discovered that his book on Marketing the Church was in favor of the practice! And when he wrote of The Frog in the Kettle, he seemed to be endorsing changing as your culture changes, not warning of such. His ecclesiology has never been correct, and I’m not inclined to follow him to a new fad.

    And you know, I strongly suspect that many house churches get going by minimizing doctrinal distinctives. In Nashville, for instance, it humored me to imagine that someone wanted to get a house church started. Three houses in a row held Christians, and I knew of another Christian a few doors down. Between us: an elderly Baptist couple, a late-middle-aged Pentecostal couple, a middle-aged maiden Presbyterian, and an elderly widow who was a Nazarene. We could have had a home Bible study, and we can and did speak to one another as fellow believers. But we could not have formed a church, because we would not have been in agreement on several foundational principles, such as whether or not we could have a woman as pastor and who was to be baptized (infants or believers), or whether speaking in tongues was permitted and/or encouraged. We were all believers, but we couldn’t have been more different in our beliefs on some matters. And we hadn’t even added in an Orthodox believer or a Roman Catholic! The Pentecostal man was actually ordained, but he was a fan of Joyce Meyers and maybe even Benny Hinn; I could not and would not have sat under any “preaching” he might have done (and was never 100% sure he was a believer).

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  36. Nope, we had school cancelled by fog. Two-hour delays are common for that, but not full-day cancellations. But the fog was pretty dense until after 11:00, and a two-hour delay isn’t sufficient for that.

    I don’t imagine many children were complaining.

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  37. This is from a review of a different book by Barna’s co-author, citing some of the text (again, this isn’t Barna, but the main author of the book, one of many books he wrote opposed to the “institutional church”): ”
    “Paul modified his gospel to make it more acceptable to Gentiles.
    Paul’s gospel is deficient.
    Paul had the arrogance to rebuke the apostle Peter to his face.
    Paul is inconsistent in his views. … He adapts his gospel to his environment.”

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  38. It might be an overcorrection. But he does appear to be making an attempt to listen to God, through the Word. As opposed to God told me to go jump off of a cliff to prove the angels would protect me or some such notion.

    And he does say that all Christians are unique and will be unique in their walk.

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  39. Oh, fog. We had epic fog when I was growing up, you could hardly see your hand in front of you while walking to school and, when we were in high school, the horror was that it made your hair curl. The worst thing. Ever. That could happen in the late 1960s when one HAD to have long, rope-straight hair.

    I shudder thinking about it. We’d tuck our long hair under our coats and hunch up our shoulders in defense.

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  40. We are foggy this morning, but I don’t think anybody talked about canceling school. In fact, that is what is going on here, which is why I have so much time on my hands lately. Other than cutting eleven year old’s hair. He prefers scissors to clippers so I do that. Husband will fine tune later or not. Son is happy with it, I am happy with it.

    They are writing paragraphs now. And sixteen year old is working on assignments between videos.

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  41. We had heavy fog up here on the ridge this morning too. I have always loved fog, but it’s a guilty love because I also know how dangerous it can be for those who have to drive in it. One of the first times I went kayaking it was very foggy. You couldn’t even see the banks of the river. I kept thinking how magical it was because I could be anywhere in the world—I could be paddling down the Thames River in London, or the Rhine in Germany or the Amazon River…. and then I realized my companions were listening to me rattle on and looking at me oddly like I was a nut case. Oh well, I guess for some people, fog is just fog. :–)

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  43. I wasn’t planning to pursue the discussion the other day because I know we all have different theology and there’s no use arguing about it. But it seems like the “Chan” deal is proving the point that God or the Holy Spirit does not direct people where to go and what to do. Our Pastor tells the oft-repeated story from the Seminary that a student showed up one day and said, “God spoke to me last night and told me to register” to which the registrar replied, “God spoke to me last night and told me not to accept your registration.” It is very easy for someone to justify his own wants or decisions by saying that God directed (or told) him to do something.

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  44. Linda, it appears he is getting his guidance from reading the Scripture, not necessarily from that still small voice that might not be the Holy Spirit. He saw that he was in error and by reading the Scripture, is attempting a different direction. And in it, it appears he and the folk in the churches are ministering to the broken people. That appears to be a good thing.

    I looked at DJ;s site, We Are the Church, which is actually Scriptural also, and tried to track down some accountability. There was a Bible reading program that they are connected with out of Portland and it listed a number of organizations, some sounded vaguely familiar but I could not attest to any of them as I am not versed in church stuff. Western Seminary. Trinity Fellowship. Bible Gateway. Etc.

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  45. In Kim’s neck of the woods:

    http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/09/coyotes_blamed_for_pet_deaths.html

    _____________________________________

    Coyotes are being blamed for missing pets in central Mobile, and the city is bringing in a specialist to respond.

    Hold the roadrunner jokes: The city says that more than two dozen pets are missing and that residents in the Llanfair and Yester Oaks neighborhoods have sighted coyotes on their property. Game cameras also have captured photos of the elusive canids.

    These are not outlying subdivisions by any stretch of the imagination. They’re between I-65 and Spring Hill, bordered by the Airport Boulevard commercial corridor to the south and Dauphin Street to the north. But portions of the area are wooded, Eslava Creek runs through from west to east, and there also are two golf courses in the vicinity – Spring Hill College to the north and the Country Club of Mobile to the west.

    “Some of these urban coyotes have lost their natural fear of humans and are increasingly entering into the backyards of residents and killing small family pets, such as dogs and cats,” said James Barber, director of public safety for the city. …
    __________________________________

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  48. I didn’t look closely at the “we are church” site, but yes, I would think there should be a doctrinal statement of some kind. Otherwise, I can see these groups as good fellowship and/or study groups, perhaps, but not sure about a church alternative per se.

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  50. What are the marks of a healthy church (historically)? Reformed churches hold to these 3 marks of a true church: preaching of the Word, Biblical church discipline and proper administration of the sacraments.

    A website proposes 9 marks.

    https://www.challies.com/articles/9-marks-of-a-healthy-church/

    ____________________________________

    Expositional Preaching
    Biblical Theology
    Biblical Understanding of the Good News
    Biblical Understanding of Conversion
    Biblical Understanding of Evangelism
    Biblical Understanding of Membership
    Biblical Church Discipline
    Promotion of Church Discipleship And Growth
    Biblical Understand of Leadership

    On the whole I think these marks are, indeed, the essentials for healthy churches and certainly have not received due attention in the contemporary evangelical churches. Traditionally Reformed doctrine has spoken of three marks of a true church – preaching of the Word, Biblical church discipline and proper administration of the sacraments. These nine marks fit quite closely with the traditional three: Marks one through five parallel the first traditional mark; Marks six and seven parallel the second traditional mark; Marks eight and nine stand alone, though eight could probably fit into the first traditional mark. Glaringly absent, then, is the emphasis on the proper administration of the sacraments. Mark Dever of 9 Marks Ministries explains this by saying that most churches still place sufficient emphasis on the sacraments. Therefore that is not a “lost” mark that needs to be rediscovered.

    I would suggest that while churches still emphasize the sacraments (or ordinances if you believe “sacrament” is too strong a term for Lord’s Supper and Baptism), many of them have either de-emphasized the sacraments, thus making light of them, or perform them improperly. This is part-and-parcel with the loss of the marks that have been emphasized above. In many churches the sacraments (Lord’s Supper especially) have been removed from the worship services lest they serve as a stumbling block to “seekers.” Instead they are celebrated in groups which do not have proper oversight to ensure that they are being governed in a Biblical way. Baptism is often opened up to people who live in open rebellion to God which should call their conversion into question. So I think it may have been wise for the gentlemen of 9 Marks to include the sacraments in their marks.

    Despite that small quibble, I think the 9 marks are all important marks that have been lost to many evangelical churches. I continue to spend lots of time on 9 Marks’ site reading, listening and learning.
    _________________________________________

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  53. It depends how you view church. I see the differences in many churches as worship styles–coming out of their doctrine, of course. For that reason, as Cheryl showed above, a small home church could be problematic. I also see Roscuro’s point that the opportunity to unduly influence could go up without an overseeing body.

    I’ve also sought spiritual authority over myself when teaching Bible study. While I was leading a neighborhood Bible study in Hawai’i, it bothered me none of the women asked me what church I attended, thus under whose authority I taught. I could have been anyone, any cult member, for all they knew.

    I finally went to the local chaplain–who lived in my Navy housing area and whose wife taught at the local Lutheran School–and explained my dilemma. I brought my Bible study books with me and asked him if we would accept oversight/ authority for my group.

    He looked at what I had and said no problem. That made me feel a lot better. We were in a Calvary Chapel at the time. Six months later we switched over to the LCMS where the chaplain’s wife taught and have been happily there pretty much ever since.

    The chaplain, BTW, died on an aircraft carrier while doing relief work for the Indonesian tsunami. His widow was our current pastor’s wife’s roommate in college. The world is small.

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  54. This is about the only thing I could find:
    Francis mentioned theological/leadership training for his staff. Is there a book list that he uses?

    Our primary source is the Bible, but this past year we have used Bible Doctrine by Wayne Grudem, Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer, Instruments in the Redeemers Hands by Paul Tripp, Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Total Church by Tim Chester. In addition, Francis is currently working on a seven-part video series on leadership training.

    Like I said initially, I don’t know anything about the guy, my Baptist preacher called him a good guy, my son (active in a large Baptist church in Virginia) recommended him, and I was asking for input from you all. Sounds like we all have some preconceived ideas of what works.

    Our preacher also recommended a guy, I googled the name and listened to about twenty seconds and decided that was not the preacher he was recommending.

    I am not a very technological person but with all the time people spend on it, I wondered if there was anything good on it (besides our little corner of course).

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  58. Time will tell with Chan. [I do wonder, Mumsee, that if he realized it was his problem that he didn’t know his congregation, why he didn’t stay and take time to get to know them? It might have been a difficult task, but he preaches that difficulties are to expected in the Christian life.] “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” The fruits I have seen of his teaching, as seen in the relatives I mentioned, have been hitherto negative. It is hard to express what I’m seeing in terms that will be understood, but James 3:13-18 warns that if one’s wisdom leads only to bitterness and strife, it is the wrong kind of wisdom. The effect of Chan’s wisdom seems to have made my relatives harsh in judgement, quick to think ill of others, and somewhat self-righteous.

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  59. Were they that way already? I suspect in a local church you will find the same thing. Some will be encouraged in a positive way and others will hear something else that might look a bit ugly.

    His congregation was very large, as I understand. And there was not a lot of action on the part of the congregants. He thought they were relying on him to be the church so stepped aside. Of course, that is just his opinion of what has happened. Could he have taken the time to get to know them? Difficult to do in such a large body and maybe he could see that as an exercise in futility. How well can you know somebody in one evening out of three thousand or whatever the number?

    Which is why it is best if we worship with those we know and can see their lives. Though even that is not sure. But, again, as a source of encouragement?

    That is why I have watched several of the videos, to get a feel for what he was actually teaching. It would be better if I knew his neighbors and heard what they had to say. But I don’t.

    So, should we then not read any theological books, because we don’t personally know the author? I don’t know Francis Schaeffer but I get good stuff from his writing. I don’t know JIPacker but I like his book, Knowing God. I don’t know CSLewis but I like Mere Christianity. I don’t know John MacArthur but I use the study Bible he put his name to.

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  60. I’d never heard of Francis Chan until reading about him here this week. I don’t know enough about him to comment, except to wonder, as Roscuro does, why he wouldn’t just try to get to know his parishioners better, instead of leaving them and bemoaning that he didn’t care enough about his flock to get to know them while he was there. I may be be wrong, but it sounds a little like he knew his failures and just wanted out, and, voila, God “called” him to leave.

    Seems funny (not ha ha funny, but strange) that he now seems to sing the virtues of home churches compared to mega churches, yet, according to his talk to the Facebook group, we’re told, “He’s hoping to double the number of house churches every year so that in 10 years, there would be 1.2 million people in We Are Church.”

    1.2 million sounds pretty mega to me. He wants to escape “that weird celebrity thing,” but hopes this new endeavor of his brings in over a million people? That doesn’t make sense.

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  62. I’ve never been part of a house church, but two of my closest homeschooling friends (one now deceased) went to a home church led by a minister who left our synod and preached independently. As far as I know, my deceased friend’s widower and his second wife still attend the church, but the other friend and her family have left. The family had questions about baptism (they were rethinking what they’d always been taught about baptism, based on their reading of scripture) and wanted to discuss the subject with their pastor, but he refused to sit down with them to study scripture on the topic. He didn’t want to look at it any other way than what he’d always believed, and there was no other leadership in their home church who could address their concerns.

    That is one problem I can see with home churches, where the minister is not accountable to another human authority. He can pretty much preach as he pleases, and if he refuses to discuss matters his church wants to discuss, there isn’t anyone else to whom a member can turn for direction.

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  63. Here I am defending this guy I never heard of two weeks ago.

    Anyway, perhaps he envisions the passing of the baton to all these other pastors who will have home churches and the pastors will interact for accountability (and perhaps he has that with a supervisory church, I don’t know) but believers all over will become more active in the body. I am certain there are a lot of believers like me who do nothing with the church but attend on Sunday. I would love to know the people better. But I go, and then I come home. My little life is busy. But that means I am too busy for my neighbor???
    I did try that bowling thing last year, with some church members but that did not work. I used to take my children to Wednesday night prayer time but as it is now after their bedtimes and I don’t have a babysitter, it does not work. Various of the church members go to China for three weeks but I don’t see that working with my life either. But there was a call for somebody to lead a teen group for discipling some children who expressed interest from VBS….

    Perhaps he is trying to reverse some of this The State will do it attitude and get back to the church body helping each other as the hand of God meeting the needs of His people.

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  64. Six Arrows at 4:28. too funny. That is exactly what happened to me at the other church we were attending. The pastor would not discuss any of the concerns we had. He just believed it was the way it was because that is what he believed. Husband and I like to discuss things with the pastor. We are not there now, but due to other things. The mold in the flooded basement and son’s allergies was a big part.

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  66. Mumsee, how shall I put this? All of us are naturally inclined to think more highly of ourselves and more poorly of others – that is why Christ and Paul and Peter and John continually warn us about that tendency. But when teachers of some repute begin to say that some judgement is justified, and to tongue lash their audience, and criticize others behind their back – Chan’s statement to his church when he left was just that he was called elsewhere, but he told Facebook what he was really thinking about the church when he left – those who follow such a teacher begin to justify their own natural tendencies. It isn’t so much that I’m seeing those tendencies, as that I’m seeing that they feel justified in displaying them for a righteous cause.

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  67. To me, a church of 5,000 is too large for anyone, even the pastor, to know the people.

    So wouldn’t the pastor of all people be in a good spot to meet with the elders about breaking the church into smaller, more manageable churches? Our own church already has its eye on the idea that as it grows to 150-200 people, it’s time to plant another church. Now, I’m guessing that most of the people who attend a megachurch like the anonymity and like either being in charge of a huge program or helping in that huge program or doing nothing, and that breaking a 5,000 member church into 25-50 smaller congregations would be easier said than done, especially when half the people come for the “big-name” pastor. But walking away to the opposite extreme just seems odd. And it doesn’t seem like he is walking into anonymity, but into being one of the founders of the next new trend.

    I’m guessing that like the megachurches, and the affinity-group churches, and the emerging/emergent-church churches, house churches will have their day in the spotlight and we’ll move on to the next back-to-the-New-Testament, really-this-time trend. It makes me seasick just reading about it all, and I’m glad enough not to be in it.

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  68. Absolutely. I am just not seeing the judgemental stuff or the tongue lashing and you and I saw something different on the FB interview. I heard him say he was the problem, you heard him say the others were the problem.

    I do see that he is warning people of God’s coming judgement. I don’t think that is a negative. It is how I became a believer, and no human told me that. I had never been around people who believed in heaven and hell but I was fearful of hell for many years before coming to know Him. I know some people say you can’t be scared into heaven, those people are wrong. It may not work for everybody, but it worked for me. I did not know Him and asked HIm to keep me from hell. He did.

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  69. Cheryl, but you are in it. That whole Reformation thing?

    I don’t know if he was belligerent when he left or if he was just trying to quietly slip away or some place in between. He appears to be one of those people who loves to teach. Those tend to be powerful speakers and people tend to back off and let them. He seems to see that as limiting in the church and could see no way of changing how he was perceived. It appears these home churches are independent of him and yet he is speaking as a guest. The other pastors are running the show in the individual churches. Again, we only have a glimpse.

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  70. On the topic of fog:

    I had an appointment to go to a few weeks ago, and I drove through thick fog to get there. Part way into my drive, the public radio station I was listening to started playing the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (the Choral Symphony). I’ve heard this music many times before — a grand, moving work — but to hear the voices of the singers as I drove through the fog was almost ethereal. (Hoping that description doesn’t sound all new-agey and out there.)

    When I arrived at my destination, about 17 minutes after the music had started, I sat in my car in the parking lot (I’d arrived early, having left home early to allow for extra driving time) and heard this music as I’d never experienced it before. The fog gradually dispersing, the singers’ voices seemed to slowly break through the shroud.

    I was struck by the gift God gave Beethoven, that he could compose such a work after he’d gone deaf.

    This link starts around the 16-minute mark. If you listen for about two minutes, you’ll hear the part that especially captivated me, particularly around 17:25 when the sopranos come in. Now imagine hearing that in the fog.

    Maybe it’s one of those “you had to be there” moments, but the experience captivated me.

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  72. Hmm, maybe the link doesn’t start around the 16:00 mark, but at the beginning. More to enjoy, if you want to hear the whole movement. 🙂

    By the way, there’s about eight minutes of applause at the end, so if you don’t want to listen to a video over 30 minutes, well, this music is only about 24 minutes long. 😉

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  73. We’ve also committed to planting a new church if numbers begin to rise (rather than getting much bigger ourselves).

    A number of our families and a few elders were asked to move to our smaller sister church across town, in fact, in order to help them out in getting re-started (it was the church I formerly was in 10+ years ago). Many have chosen to remain there and we’re glad for that though we miss them. The pastor there is young (our former staff intern) and the church has long been in need of growing its membership in what is a racially mixed community.

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  75. Mumsee, I’m not “in” the church movements where one year the “thing” is all on churches aimed at those just out of college, and another year they’re all seeker friendly, and the next year big and loud bands are the only way to bring people in.

    The times in my life I’ve been among people who love change for its own sake, I’ve found it whiplash-inducing. I attended for a few months–out of a few years at that church–a church where every week members getting out of their cars in the parking lot would muse “I wonder what they have changed this week?” They did away with the pulpit, moved chairs into a semi-circle, moved chairs into a different configuration, bought a transparent small pulpit . . . every week it was something new and exciting, and every week families were leaving. It coincided with my own move out of my mom’s house, into a different suburb, and I used the excuse that I was now driving too far to church for a car with a 13 mpg if I used the air conditioning (in Phoenix) and working a job a bit above minimum wage, and that was truly part of it–I couldn’t afford an hour’s pay for each commute to church. But I also was getting whiplash.

    I once lived with two roommates who attended the same church, and one evening I went with them. I was in my late twenties, no one in the room under 20 or over 40, but I have never felt so out of place in my life and could not wait for the service to be over. It wasn’t church, it was youth group. My roommates, for reasons I didn’t know, asked me to be the one to drive (though it was their church and they both had cars). Who knows, maybe that was part of their church’s “seeker” strategy that if someone drives there themselves, then they know how to find the church again. At any rate, if they weren’t with me, I might not have stayed through the whole service, it was so fundamentally jarring to be in a building with several hundred white single people in their twenties and thirties. Church is supposed to include married people, seniors, children, and my own church at the time was very racially mixed. (Actually, they might have had some minorities, too, I don’t really remember. I just remember the “youth group” feel in an age group that is supposed to be marrying and having children.)

    When we were leaving, a friend of theirs came with us, and my roommates said I could drop the friend off at her house or take her to our house and one of them would drive her home. It was raining heavily, I didn’t know how to find the defroster on my new-to-me car, and frankly I was rather frightened driving three people home when I had to keep wiping at the windshield to be able to see at all and they were all talking and laughing around me. I don’t drive well after dark anyway, never have, and I was after dark in the rain, with fogged-up windows and a car full of people. I chose to take her to our home. My roommate drove her friend home, and the moment she came in the door at home later she yelled at me for being so selfish I couldn’t even drive that woman home. It was like “Say what? Why am I offering all the transportation to and from your church? And you offered two options, and I took one of them. Might it be better to ask why I chose the option I did, rather than to yell at me for it?”

    I also went to Willow Creek once, for a Christmas program. Other than that, I’ve largely stayed out of trendy churches. I’m the woman who had a home built in the 1950s and I never updated it and the only one in my eighth-grade class who didn’t wear blue jeans; I’m not the person who wants this week’s style.

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  76. I chuckled at your stories of the changing churches, sounds like public school with their, everybody sit at a table and work together idea. Let’s see, who is going to do the work?

    Yes, churches are people and people come up with interesting ideas and there is nothing new under the sun.

    Isn’t it amazing how God uses us anyway? Or because? He is infinite in His creativity so I doubt it is too challenging to work with us, and probably enjoyable!

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  77. haha “it was so fundamentally jarring to be in a building with several hundred white single people in their twenties and thirties.”

    No kidding. 🙂

    “Trendy” churches — I’ve visited a few, including the church pastored by Chuck Swindall (back in the day — they had parking attendants all over the parking lots to direct you to open places and a gazillion options in adult SS classes based on age, career, marital status,parenting status, you name it); and I went to to Jack Hayford’s church for Good Friday one year, I believe. Some others, including a huge Friends church in Yorba Linda that had thousands of members and even a star Dodgers pitcher attending.

    I also attended a Saturday night (LOUD) contemporary church service at a Grace Brethren church for a while in the 1990s, when Saturday night services were all the rage. (I also was going to my own home church Sunday mornings, though, and eventually I grew weary of the Saturday night routine, although for a while it was fun to do with some friends who also went as we’d grab a quick meal afterwards for some fellowship).

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  78. I was thinking I had never been to a trendy church. But you mentioned an athlete in one so that means the church in Utah was trendy? There was a really tall guy, apparently a Utah Jazz player. I don’t know what kind of game they played but he was tall so maybe basketball? I don’t remember what color he was, but he stood way over everybody else. I think it was an E Free church. Am I a trendy church goer now?

    Most of the churches I have attended, either we were the only ones under sixty or it was a mix of ages.

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  81. We attended Calvary Chapel Honolulu for about 8-9 months and finally left behind the church was too large and they didn’t need us. We found our way to a much, much smaller Lutheran church who really did need us and we stayed the rest of our Hawai’i tour.

    Our current church is shrinking, many older worshippers, and we’re down to about 250 in two services. We prefer a church 250-400 in size. You get to know many people, there are lots of opportunities for fellowship and different ministries and sufficient people to cover the needs of the body.

    Beyond that, it’s just too big, IMHO, no matter how good the preaching. And isn’t that where some of the problem begins? We’re supposed to “do” life together in the body, but that means you have to really know each other. It’s too easy to get “lost” or wander away in a large church.

    The only people who noticed we were gone from Calvary Chapel Honolulu were the folks in our small group and we explained to them what we were doing when we left. Never heard from anyone else again.

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  84. And I am lost in churches over one hundred. Though I have been in some nice ones, even served in some nice ones. Our current is about fifteen besides us but it is a nice serving group of folk who love the Lord. We had three baptisms about three weeks ago, down at the river.

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  85. Kim, yes, alarming as we all seem to be surrounded now (although coyotes haven’t yet made it to the state of Hawaii, though they’re in all the others).

    News of their getting into backyards is what unnerves me, I can deal with it if they’re “out there” in the canyons and parks around my neighborhood, but coming into my fenced backyard makes me just a whole lot more nervous.

    We have someone I’m doing a story on who is thinking 1,000 pets with flashing LED light collars will do the trick and keep cats and dogs safe and coyotes unharmed. He wants me to go on a night prowl with him in the hills to watch the coyotes (whom he seems to be quite fond of).

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  87. I dearly love my church, it is home to me.
    The only problem I have is the two services. It feels like there are two different churches. The early church, when a bunch of us go to Sunday school, is the more contemporary music. Most of those folks have children in children’s sunday school. Then they go home. So those children are never experiencing church, just their sunday school class.

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  88. I like my children in Sunday School with me and in church with me. Even if they are not obviously learning or interested in learning, it is an opportunity for them to sit relatively still for an hour and be polite. But then, somehow, they pick things up and really do learn stuff.

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  89. I think you have to wear them. And they must be torn at the knees.

    Look at this photo on the link. (Reality LA is linked in with 1st Hollywood Presbyterian, it apparently was a split from that church a few years back of people looking for something cooler and hipper — but now they try to coordinate some holiday services jointly at 1st Hollywood)

    Los Angeles Churches Make Worship…Hip?

    ________________________________________________

    LOS ANGELES — Just before 10 a.m. on a sunny Sunday in November, a crowd gathered in front of a white modernist building here on Hollywood Boulevard. An inscription on its side, “H/N,” short for “Here and Now,” stood out from a block away.

    Twenty- and 30-somethings spilled onto the steps and the lawn, dressed in crop tops, moto jackets, and jeans torn deliberately at the knees.

    “How was your party last night?” a young woman in a shirt dress and bootees asked a guy in aviator sunglasses and a swath of chains. “I heard it was amazing.” He replied: “Girl, can you stop losing weight? You’re going to disappear.”

    They sought not physical but spiritual nourishment. The building? Mosaic, a church that counts thousands of young people among its congregants, offering sermons rife with pop-culture references, musical performances that look like Coachella, and a brand cultivated for social media. (Church events are advertised on Instagram; there’s a “text to donate” number).

    … This being Hollywood, famous faces are among the faithful. Joe Jonas has been to Reality LA, a new-age church in Hollywood that meets in an unadorned high school auditorium. (There, congregants send prayer requests via text messages.) Viola Davis is a regular at Oasis, a neon-hued service inside a Koreatown cathedral. Justin Bieber supports Hillsong.

    … “What we’ve found is that this generation, particularly the millennials, they don’t want to know the theory,” said Holly Wagner, Mr. Wagner’s wife, who founded Oasis with him in 1984. (It was born out of a Beverly Hills Bible study that counted Donna Summer among its attendees). “We make the Bible very practical and helpful and find humor in it. To the best of our ability, we’re trying to have fun while doing this.”

    … Reality LA is not particularly welcoming to openly gay members. “We have lots of people who say that they experience same-sex attraction but who are not acting on it because they’re following Christ,” Mr. Treat said.

    Mosaic is more accommodating. “We have people in our community who are gay and live openly gay lifestyles,” Mr. McManus said. “We have people here who would say, ‘Homosexuality is clearly against the scriptures and is wrong,’ and we’re teaching them how to walk together. Our position is, you have to be for each other.” …

    Despite the neon lights, social media accounts and the casual style of dress, these churches preach about the same God and the same things that, as Reality LA’s Mr. Treat put it, “most Christians have believed for the last 2,000 years.” But they can scramble the signals of traditional churchgoers, even young ones.

    “I think it kind of bedazzles people,” said Mr. Bakhtiari, who once brought four foster children he works with to Mosaic. “When I first mentioned it, they were like, ‘I don’t want to go to church.’ But they were into it. They were super-confused in a cool way.”
    ____________________________________

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  92. Behind, but jumping in because I was just reminded of something I’ve meant to ask.

    Are any of you familiar with Trevor Lund? I’ve been receiving emails from his organization/ministry for a while now, but rarely read them. I don’t even know how I got on his list. (Yes, I know I can unsubscribe, I just haven’t gotten around to it.)

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  94. I’ve always said I like 250 or so . . . but my last two churches (the last 14 years) have been in churches under 100, which I never thought I would like. My Nashville church may have been over 100 at some point, but it seems to me it was more commonly around 80. I sat in church one Sunday and thought about it, and I could name at least one heartbreak for every family I saw: this couple had only miscarriages, this couple lost both of their boys in infancy, this couple has a daughter living with her boyfriend, this woman is fighting cancer . . . it was sobering and awe-inspiring to know that I knew every single household in the church, and knew their deep griefs.

    Now I’d be inclined to say no more than 250, but probably something like 75 and up. Fewer than 75 and you have limits on what you can do and likely a “gap” of some missing age bracket, more than 250 and you’ll find a lot of people in the church you don’t know.

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  95. I went to a “mega” church in Tucson, but that term wasn’t used in the 70s. It had around 400 when I started attending and close to 2,000 when I left 6 years later.

    Now I attend a house church with 9, including an infant and toddler. It’s too easy to get lost in the crwod at a big church, and too hard to in a small one.

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  110. I see your 100 and my 100 were both at 9:52, so it must have been my taking the time to bold the 100 — as in, look at me with my clever use of 100 in my sentence on a relevant topic for today — that kept me proudly standing in the roadway a bit too long. 🙂

    By the way, FIRST for September 21!

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