Response to Dan's Post on The Simple Church

Hey Dan,

This book did change how we are doing church. It surprises me to say so. I read it by accident. I'd never have picked it up on my own. Here's a quick summary:

1. Each month is themed from a Classic Scripture (one everyone knows about and should read for themselves). And all themes fit into our four basic mission pieces -- Love God, Love People, Serve Locally, Serve Globally. This month's theme is Blind Obedience and the story of Abraham. Next month is Forgiving Abuse and talking about Joseph. March is The Cross. These are simpler stories than I have been using. These are the basics, though they are tremendously deep.

2. Twice a month - home groups meet. We started three. I think this is the actual key to the whole thing. Not so much that home groups are the key, but that the three people I would pick as reproducible leaders all said "yes" to leading a group. They meet with me weekly and are both the leaders of the church and the leaders of dynamic home groups. Two of them are also highly involved -- one locally and one globally. The other is an older man who provides maturity and stability and encouragement to our leadership.

3. Monthly Community/Global Focus -- this month it was our New Life for Haiti Banquet. February is a Men's conference on Fatherhood that one of our guys has put together. March is a fundraising for a scholarship for a graduate of the high school for behavior disorder kids. I highlight the daylights out of these events.

4. I've made bookmarks with specific Bible readings for the congregation. They need to read 10-20 chapters per month. Very doable was my goal.

5. The first Sunday of the month is followed by a potluck lunch.

6. The youth groups have picked up on these themes as well. I suggested it to them, but also told them it may be too much to ask.

I'm writing this more for me than for you. In other words, I'm not telling you how to do it, rather I'm reflecting on what just happened. I'm as amazed as anybody.

A couple of questions arise.
1. Why didn't I do this earlier? I don't know. I think its too simple.

2. What was the key to it happening this time? I don't know. I would say the three leaders being available. I've invested in leaders since the beginning, but I've seen little to no reproduction. Could be right place, right time.

3. Could this work in other churches? I don't know. I think a lot of things can work if you have reproducible leaders and you put them in a position to reproduce.

Buechner on Incarnation

The Word become flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not touching. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God... who for us and for our salvation," as the Nicene Creed puts it, "came down from heaven."

Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast.

Via Danno from Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary.

The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass is a new children's movie based on a book trilogy called "His Dark Materials" by Phillip Pullman. Normally, I don't like warnings about books or movies. It was interesting to read the Davinci Code. The holes in the logic seemed obvious, not necessarily the history or the plot, but that sex is at the core of life as opposed to God. It seems the same is true in The Golden Compass.

In a telling and pivotal moment in the series, a former nun named “Mary Malone,” who is a central character, poignantly reflects upon her realization that God does not exist: “There’s no one to fret, no one to condemn, no one to bless me for being a good girl, no one to punish me for being wicked. Heaven was empty. I didn’t know whether God had died, or whether there never had been a God at all.”

...

Still, like so much else in our culture, Pullman’s aversion to God would appear to boil down to sex. Mary Malone explains that her desire for sex was her primary purpose for abandoning the God in whom she no longer believes. “And I thought: Am I really going to spend the rest of my life without ever feeling that again? And I took the crucifix from around my neck and I threw it in the sea. That was it. All over. Gone. ... So, that was how I stopped being a nun,” she recounts.

The problem here is that these are children's books. I might let my teenage children read them, but they would need to know what they were getting into.

I have a feeling (and I haven't read the book nor seen the movie) that the movie may just be very adventuresome. I have heard that it is the least offense of the three books. But it does feel like an odd place to be placing our children's thoughts. I wish they would have made a better Eragon movie.

Book suggested by Fran

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good [BARGAIN PRICE] (Hardcover)
by William Easterly (Author) "UNITED KINGDOM CHANCELLOR of the Exchequer Gordon Brown is eloquent about one of the two tragedies of the world's poor..." (more)
Key Phrases: homegrown development, postmodern imperialism, possible reverse causality, World Bank, United States, Latin America (more...)

Christmas Gift Ideas

The Nine

Heroic Conservatism

Apple 30 GB iPod Photo M9829LL/Aß(4th Generation) Used

Garmin StreetPilot i2 Vehicle GPS Navigator

2006 Books

OctoberThe Radical Reformission by Mark Driscoll - I had bought this book some time ago, but was so disappointed in Rob Bell's book Velvet Elvis (it was ok, but I thought there has to be more substantial reading out there) that I refused to read another "popular" new book. I was reading an old Cutting Edge magazine and saw a review of the book that sparked my interest. Cutting Edge by the way is FANTASTIC.

Radical Reformission is excellent. It may be the next read for my vision team. Driscoll fully understands that he lives in a pagan land (Seattle) and that he must be blunt and specific to help them understand how to live. It still left me asking a few questions but overall it is an excellent read.

Move Your Church to Action by Kent Hunter - Hunter is the consultant we hired to help us tune-up our denominational region. This is the book that he gave each church to read with their leaders. I'm going through it with our vision team now. It is a good primer for starting to rethink the health of your church. It lays a foundation that Radical Reformission might need in order to be heard.

The Book of Acts by FF Bruce -- This is one of three commentaries I'm using to preach through the book of Acts. Bruce is super solid with great details about the text and the culture.

Acts by Jaroslav Pelikan - Pelikan is a theologian and tries to give you a theological perspective of Acts. It is often helpful and often not.

Acts by James Montgomery Boice - Boice is a preacher and it sounds like he simply published his sermons on Acts. It it helpful and a good commentary to round out the other two.

Summoned to Lead by Len Sweet - I started reading this again as I thought about postmodern leaders. At times, I wonder what his point is and at other times, it is crystal clear. The book, unlike other Sweet books, is requiring discipline from me to finish it.

From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman - The book is divided into two sections - Beirut and Jerusalem. I've finished Beirut and have a much better picture of Lebanon then I ever did. It gave me some insight into the coming Civil War in Iraq. I'm going to set it aside for a break and then come back later and read Jerusalem. Friedman is a terrific writer.

September
Finished The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus by Brennan Manning. I saw an excerpt on a blog about pioneer churches vs settlement churches. My new friend Pastor Lew Button mailed me the book when I expressed interest. The book is ok, however I found that the excerpt was based on the book Western Theology by Wes Seeliger. There wasn't much more than the excerpt. Thanks Lew!

Started reading From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman. Friedman was a NY Times reporter in Beruit and Jerusalem and a fantastic story teller, he gives the reader a feel for Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, (so far. It is a LONG book, but worth the read if you'd like a feel for the people and problems in that part of the world.)

August
Finished Perelandra by CS Lewis. I loved Out of the Silent Planet so much I knew I wanted to read the rest of this science fiction trilogy. We were vacationing at our friend's Ben and Sherri Tobias' house and they have the best book collection I've ever seen. Lo and behold, the rest of the trilogy, which I scooped up. Perelandra starts REALLY slow, but half-way steam rolls into an amazing treatise on Adam and Eve. Admittedly, being science fiction, you have to set some things aside, but the images of Adam and Eve and the tempter, were well worth the read. Highly recommended.

May, June, July
I guess I didn't read much in the summer.

April
Read about half of Good to Great by Jim Collins. I wasn't expecting much and was actually blown away. It really made me think about a couple of key issues for the church -- what do we count? and the difference between a genius leader with a lot of followers and a leader who raises up leaders. Need to finish and think through.

March
Just for the record, I haven't finished Divine Conspiracy. Finished Tipping Point. Not sure what is next. Books are piled in my office calling to me, "Me next. Me next." We'll see.

Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. This has been one of the most talked about business books so I decided to read this one, as well as Good to Great and Leading Change, which I haven't yet started. Tipping Point is interesting... but I guess not that interesting. His premise is to figure out how to "tip" an epidemic, such as sales. He uses a lot of different examples -- disease, Sesame Street and Blues Clues, smoking, crime in New York, and so on.

The biggest take-away I had was that it isn't a matter of tipping the masses. It is a matter of tipping a few people who are very influential. These people are the 1) connectors (people who connect people to different people), 2) mavens (people who are known as knowledgable about the issue and who people trust when making their decisions), and 3) salesmen (people who make you want to buy in).

He spoke of an experiment that tested the idea of "Six Degrees of Separation." They found that yes, it was true, but it isn't just everybody who is connected to everybody; it is rather a few who are heavily connected that connect everybody to everybody. It is important to know who those networked people are.

Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis -- I found this in a box. It has my middle brother's name in it. I wonder if he read it. It is a shorter piece of science fiction that portrays creation and angelic beings in outer space. I really liked it and plan on reading the next two in a trilogy. It really is an amazing piece of fiction when you think it was written in 1938.

The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard -- Recommended by Fran Leeman for my Sermon on the Mount preaching series. So far it is excellent, but I'm not finished. There are many times I want to quote it.

February

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer -- Loaned to me by Lisa Orr

February was obviously a slower reading month. This book chronicles the murders of a young woman and her infant daughter by two fundamentalist Mormons. Some might look at the book as anti-mormon; but I read the book as what can happen as you try to discern God's will and God's truth. A bit scary.

January

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller -- encouraged by Jill Eastin
Freakonomics A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt -- A gift from my brother
Making Movies by Sidney Lumet -- A Christmas gift last year that I asked for.
Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul by Staci Eldredge -- Preaching a series on men and women -- Didn't finish it. It may have changed through the end of the book, but the beginning felt so much like Wild at Heart that I felt like I was reading the same book.

Fran Reads

Fran sent me this picture. He took his daughter and her new husband back to school in Michigan. While he was there, he took a few minutes to sit by the water and read. Looks great doesn't it?

Book Survey

I've been tagged for this Book Survey thing. So here are my answers:

1. One book that changed your life: The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, also Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
2. One book that you’ve read more than once: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
3. One book you’d want on a desert island: The Bible
4. One book that made you laugh: Without Feathers by Woody Allen
5. One book that made you cry: Movies make me cry, not books
6. One book you wish had been written: Any of them really. I dream about writing.
7. One book you wish had never been written: I can't answer this with the purpose of searching for goodness.
8. One book you’re currently reading: Perelandra by CS Lewis
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
10. One book you’d like to write: A Gallon of Milk and a Coke (You'll have to ask. I may not tell you.)


Now tag 5 people: Tom Toner, Lance Finley, Rob Smith, Danelle Miller, Alyssa Miller

Perelandra

CS Lewis wrote three science fiction novels. I happened to find the first one, Out of the Silent Planet, in a box from my childhood, or probably from one of my brother's childhood. I doubt I would have read it, except that it was written by CS Lewis. It is an odd story about Dr Ransom who is kidnapped and taken to Mars. Sounds cheesy, and it was, but I liked it. Now I'm reading Perelandra, which I found on the bookshelves of our friends Ben and Sherri Tobias. They have a lot of good books on their shelves. It isn't striking me, but like the first book in the trilogy, it is picking up steam.

I'm including this excerpt because it struck me metaphorically the way I feel with God. Lewis says at the beginning, this book is NOT allegory. But see what you make of this excerpt, the beginning of chapter 6.

As soon as the Lady was out of sight Ransom's first impulse was to run his hands through his hair, to expel the breath from his lungs in a long whistle, to light a cigarette, to put his hands in his pockets, and in general, to go through all that ritual of relaxation which a man performs on finding himself alone after a rather trying interview. But he had no cigarettes and no pockets: nor indeed did he feel himself alone. That sense of being in Someone's Presence which had descended on him with such unbearable pressure during the very first moments of his conversation with the Lady did not disappear when he had left her. It was, if anything, increased. Her society had been, in some degree, a protection against it, and her absence left him not to solitude but to a more formidable kind of privacy. At first it was almost intolerable; as he put it to us, in telling the story, "There seemed no room." But later on, he discovered that it was intolerable only at certain moments -- at just those moments in fact (symbolised by his impulse to smoke and to put his hands in his pockets) when a man asserts his independence and feels that now at last he's on his own. When you felt like that, then the very air seemed too crowded to breathe; a complete fulness seemed to be excluding you from a place which, nevertheless, you were unable to leave. But when you gave in to the thing, gave yourself up to it, there was no burden to be borne. It became no a load but a medium, a sort of splendour as of eatable, drinkable, breathable gold, which fed and carried you and not only poured into you but out from you as well. Taken the wrong way, it suffocated; taken the right way, it made terrestrial life seem, by comparison, a vacuum. At first, of course, the wrong moments occurred pretty often. But like a man who has a wound that hurts him in certain positions, Ransom learned not to make that inner gesture. His day became better and better as the hours passed.

20 Big Lies in the DaVinci Code

Here is an excellent breakdown of 20 major historical inaccuracies (my preferred title wouldn't have "big lies" in it).

DaVinci Code

_The New Testament.

Brown's version: "More than 80 gospels were considered for the New Testament" but Constantine chose only four. His new Bible "omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up and burned." The Dead Sea Scrolls and manuscripts from Nag Hammadi, Egypt, were "the earliest Christian records," not the four Gospels.

Critics: Historians say Christians reached consensus on the authority of the first century's four Gospels and letters of Paul during the second century. But some of the 27 New Testament books weren't universally accepted until after Constantine's day. Constantine himself had nothing to do with these decisions.

Some rejected writings are called gospels, though they lack the narrative histories that characterize the New Testament's four. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were earlier and won wide consensus as memories and beliefs from Jesus' apostles and their successors.

The rejected books often portrayed an ethereal Jesus lacking the human qualities depicted in the New Testament Gospels the exact opposite of Brown's scenario. Gnostic gospels purported to contain secret spiritual knowledge from Jesus as the means by which an elite could escape the material world, which they saw as corrupt. They often spurned Judaism's creator God and the Old Testament.

On the question of mass burning of texts deemed heretical, Ehrman of North Carolina says there's little evidence to support that claim. Rejected books simply disappeared because people stopped using them, and nobody bothered to make new copies in an age long before the printing press.

The Dead Sea Scrolls? These were Jewish documents, not Christian ones. The Nag Hammadi manuscripts? With one possible exception, these came considerably later than the New Testament Gospels.

There is more at the website. Interestingly, it is just Yahoo news not a Christian rebuttal.

How We Got the Bible

Good link on discussing how we got the Bible and non-canonical works for my Davinci Code series.

Confront the Brutal Facts

Good to Great

How do you create a climate where the truth is heard? We offer four basic practices.
1. Lead with questions, not answers.

Leading from good to great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.

2. Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion

3. Conduct autopsies without blame

4. Build 'red flag' mechanisms

Indeed, we found no evidence that the good-to-great companies had more or better information than the comparison companies. none. Both sets of companies had virtually identical access to good information. The key, then, lies not in better information, but in turning information into information that cannot be ignored.

How to be Rigorous

Three practical disciplines for being rigorous rather than ruthless from Good to Great.

1. When in doubt, don't hire -- keep looking.
2. When you know you need to make a people change, act.

Your point about "getting the right people on the bus" as compared to other companies is dead on. There is one corollary that is also important. I spent a lot of time thinking and talking about who sits where on the bus. I called it "putting square pegs in square holes and round pegs in round holes."... Instead of firing honest and able people who are not performing well, it is important to try to move them once or even two or three times to other positions where they might blossom.

3. Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

Indeed one of the crucial elements in taking a company from good to great is somewhat paradoxical. You need executives, on the one hand, who argue and debate -- sometimes violently -- in pursuit of the best answers, yet, on the other hand, who unify fully behind a decision, regardless of parochial interests.

Level 5 Leadership

Surprisingly, I'm finding so much good stuff in Good to Great.

The emphasis on luck turns out to be part of a pattern that we came to call the window and the mirror.

Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factos outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly.

The comparison leaders did just the opposite.

Genius with a Thousand Helpers

In contrast to the good-to-great companies, which built deep and strong executive teams, many of the comparison companies followed a "genius with a thousand helpers" model. In this model, the company is a platform for the talents of an extraordinary individual. In these cases, the towering genius, the primary driving force in the company's success, is a great asset -- as long as the genius sticks around. The geniuses seldom build great management teams, for the simple reason that they don't need one, and often don't want one. If you're a genius, you don't need a Wells Fargo-caliber management team of people who could run their own shows elsewhere. No, you just need an army of good soldiers who can help implement your great ideas. However, when the genius leaves, the helpers are often lost. Or, worse, they try to mimic their predecessor with bold, visionary moves (trying to act like a genius, without being a genius) that proves unsuccessful. -- p 46, Good to Great

Good to Great - First Who

To be clear, the main point of this chapter is not just about assembling the right team -- that's nothing new. The main point is to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor needed in people decisions in order to take a company from good to great.

"First who" is a very simple idea to grasp, and a very difficult idea to do -- and most don't do it well. It's easy to talk about paying attention to people decisions, but how many executives have the discipline of David Maxwell, who held off on developing a strategy until he got the right people in place, while the company was losing $1 million every single business day with $56 billion of loans underwater? When Maxwell became CEO of Fannie mae during its darkest days, the board desperately wanted to know how he was going to rescue the company. Despite the immense pressure to act, to do something dramatic, to seize the wheel and start driving, Maxwell focused first on getting the right people on the Fannie Mae management team. His first act was to interview all the officers. He sat them down and said, "Look, this is going to be a very hard challenge. I want you to think about how demanding this is going to be. If you don't think you're going to like it, that's fine. Nobody's going to hate you."

...

Dick Cooley and David Maxwell both exemplified a classic Level 5 style when they said, "I don't know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great." -- pp 44-45 Good to Great

Good to Great

In Searching for Goodness, I'm reading Jim Collins business book "Good to Great". Maybe I will have to change the blog name to Searching for Greatness. The book starts with the sentence, "The enemy of great is good." Here is my initial problem. Sometimes good is great. Sometimes great isn't worth the sacrifice. It depends on who is defining great. I love my life. But many wouldn't call my career great.

But I read on and I've found the book pretty interesting so far. I wanted to record some quotes.

Speaking about Level 5 Leaders, page 25-26

Dave Maxwell, like Darwin Smith and Colman Mockler, exemplified a key trait of Level 5 leaders: ambition first and foremost for the company and concern for its success rather than for one's own riches and personal renown. Level 5 leaders want to see the company even more successful in the next generation, comfortable with the idea that most people won't even know that the roots of that success trace back to their efforts. As one Level 5 leader said, "I want to look out from my porch at one of the great companies in the world someday and be able to say, 'I used to work there.'

In contrast, the comparison leaders, concerned more with their own reputation for personal greatness, often failed to set the company up for success in the next generation. After all, what beter testament to your own personal greatness than that the place falls apart after you leave?

In over three quarters of the comparison companies, we found executives who set their successors up for failure of chose weak successors, or both.

Interesting Conversations

My friend, Joe Lockhart, dropped by for a cup of coffee this morning. Joe has a unique interest in all thing Egypt, the early church fathers, the Catholic church, the Bible, and other intersting ancient documents.

He's currently read The Masks of God by Joseph Campbell which compares the heart of religious thought throughout history. It sounds really interesting.

My friend, Cal Smith, a elder in the Mormon church, had a really interesting conversation about Mormonism in America.

Saturday night, I heard my friends' band, Suede (Myspace site), at Common Grounds. They sounded great. They have a new CD I can't wait to get my hands on. Rick does an old song called Eugene Pratt by Mason Profit. It's a Vietnam anti-war song that tells the story of Pratt. I can't get it out of my head.

My friend, Nathaniel West, and I have been discussing forgiveness in all it's depths.

Friday night, we went to our friends the Ridgley's and played games. I hadn't had that much fun in a while. I can't wait so long next time.

The Davinci Code News