new to you friday–my name is jen and…..

A few weeks ago, Christian Standard published an article by Brian Jones on “why churches should euthanize small groups.” It caused a bit of kerfluffle (75 comments and counting–check it out here) and is interesting since Brian is speaking at the Small Groups Ministry Conference at CCU in April.

But irony is fun, and I resonated with many of Brian’s thoughts. Small groups have never done it for me, but a 12-step group might. As I noted in the original post, the radical honesty and equally-radical acceptance demonstrated in many of these groups is crucial to overcoming addictions—and it should be more a part of our journey to overcome sin.

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This weekend I finished reading Lit, Mary Karr’s memoir about her relationship with her husband, her addiction and her God.

Every page was a poem—no wonder the book appeared on dozens of “best of 2009″ lists last month. But what struck me most was her experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. As she gets sober and commits to daily meetings, Karr encounters a corps of unlikely comrades: a well-known musician who brings homemade cookies. A black man with tattoos from the Khe Sanh Combat Base in Vietnam. A classics professor. Hookers and bankers. Rich women in Chanel suits and mechanics picking at the grease under their fingernails and still-drunk lawyers and a young man with schizophrenia who once attended a meeting wearing a helmet made of tinfoil.

Karr joined the group after hitting bottom—ending a professional appearance by drinking martinis and wine and chartreuse until blacking out, then trying to drive home until a concrete road divider stops her progress and shoots her out of the moving car.


“A moment of deep self-loathing makes not drinking seem your only conceivable option,” she writes. “But I know that day how swiftly such moments pass, how cunning, baffling, and powerful my own logic can be….for the first time, the disease idea isn’t just metaphorical.”


Although every person at AA can tell a similar—or much worse—story, each one is welcomed, valued, listened to. Jack, the schizophrenic, created his tinfoil hat because he was “convinced his girlfriend was beaming messages to him through the radio,” Karr writes. “It’s a tribute to the radical equality of the room that I never overheard anybody challenge the reasoning.”

This radical equality permeates the group because everyone acknowledges their lives “have become unmanageable” and they cannot successfully and sanely live life without help from each other and a Higher Power. There is no pretense about being more together or less sick than anyone else. The meetings and the community and the prayer save their lives.

And so I was deeply moved by Karr’s experience and deeply convicted about the different experience to be found in many churches—places that, after all, should have the corner on the Higher Power.

We do not admit our lives are unmanageable; in fact we usually find our faults both manageable and excusable. We do not pray and admit our past wrongs and make amends with the desperation of an addict out of better options. We do not find it impossible to go on without submitting our will in complete humility.

Because most of us have not hit bottom in our addiction to sin.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe your church accepts anger and skepticism and even hostility toward the Higher Power. Maybe your members regularly take a moral inventory and confess “the exact nature of their wrongs” and “defects of character” to one another. Maybe they daily help each other fight the disease of our fallen natures. Maybe Jack and his aluminum helmet would fit right in.

If so, I haven’t been to your church. But I’d like to, because my name’s Jen, and I’m a sinaholic.

good questions

You learn a lot when you write a blog.


One of my friends has apparently moved to Budapest. LOTS of people hate Comcast. And just recently a fellow blogger informed me I am a kidney in the body of Christ. (It’s more of a compliment than it sounds.)

Because I learn so much from you all, I’m asking for your help.


Last week Byron Davis invited me to submit a video for an online conference he’s producing for the new Destiny Leader Magazine. He’s asking each contributor to answer two questions about the theme “One Nation Under ? : Living the Gospel in a Post-Christian America.”

Question 1:  How did we get here? 

Question 2: Where do we go from here?


I told Byron I would be honored to participate, but those questions were just a SMIDGE ambiguous for me. Short of packing my entire liberal arts education (existent but foggy) and seminary training (not existent at all) into six minutes, how does one begin to tackle such a huge subject?

Byron replied that while he intentionally wanted to keep the subject broad, the target audience for the conference was ministry leaders looking to engage non-Christians and equip Christians.

“I am hoping everyone speaks from a place God has ‘disturbed’ them,” he said. “I sense an unrest and I am praying that it’s not just me!”

Hmmm. Well, heaven knows there are plenty of things that disturb me, but I don’t think Destiny Leader wants a video about my dislike of “The Bachelor” or my incredulity at the number of people buying their socks at roadside stands. As I think about some of the more serious issues facing us, I’d love your insights. What is causing unrest in your spirit these days? What would you want to say about living the Gospel in our world?

And I don’t want this to be just another talking head pontificating to a video camera, so I’d love some creative ideas for scripting and shooting it.


You are a smart, creative bunch who regularly give me good stuff to think about. I’d love your help on this one—but no kidneys, Joel.

more at stake

There is a perception out there that the Christian Standard avoids the hard issues or publishes a “party line” of predictable opinions. As one leader said, “It is narrowly focused in the ghetto of the Restoration Movement.”


I find this ironic because I also read the many letters and website comments that roll into the CS offices criticizing the topics the editors choose to cover or the positions they take.

Here’s a sampling just from current stuff:

“Anyone who would shun small groups, I believe, is of a legalistic nature and is looking for attention” (in response to Brian Jones’ “Why Churches Should Euthanize Small Groups”).

“I am disappointed that Christian Standard would choose to publish or consider this divisive and false doctrine” (in response to Glen Elliott’s “What Should We Believe About Hell?”).

“Why would you even print such a story? Oh, I know, you want to present all sides of an issue…..This time, perhaps you pushed the envelope just a bit too far” (in response to John Mark Hicks’ “God, I Hate You”).

And that’s before you go back into the last few years’ archives for the many articles on creation care, politics, nationalism, Calvinism, the role of women, racial issues, and theology.

In each of these areas, talented authors have explored a variety of perspectives. In fact, I think many of those who spout the Standard’s “protectionist” tendencies actually haven’t read the thing in years.


But more important than defending the magazine to those who have already made up their minds is finding new ways to lead the discussion. There are issues we could be addressing and discussions we need to be having, and younger leaders (who are already grappling with these ideas) from whom we can learn.

To paraphrase one of my colleagues at a planning meeting last week, we can’t gripe about people not coming to the table if we haven’t set a place for them.

So consider the table set.


In its February 6 issue, Christian Standard will launch “Stake,” an every-other-week part of the magazine dedicated to “credentialing the heretics”—the many Christian risk-takers who have not accepted a party line and are asking the tough questions about faith.

The website is already live and packed with great content from our leader, Brian Mavis, and a team of “Stakeholders” including Vince Antonucci, Jim Tune, Troy Jackson and Mark Moore. We’ll be publishing more new stuff each week (sometimes each day) and we’d love your contributions.

Will we address things that shake up our regular readers? Will we attract some new voices? Yes, if we’re doing our job right. But as Brian says in the first issue, “Stake is not about being hip. This is not a place to rag on the Restoration Movement. This is not about dishonoring or discounting our heritage. Though it may be provocative, it is not about being controversial.”

Instead, the point is to provide that place at the table for anyone interested in asking questions, taking risks, discussing ideas, and pointing to Jesus as the Way. We’ll have roundtable discussions (I’ve already completed two; anyone have the spiritual gift of transcription?), videos, and links to resources.  Occasionally there will be a cheesy Christian illustration for a caption contest.

We’ll be encouraged toward unity and discouraged away from legalism. We’ll probably argue a bit. We’ll be challenged to “turn our theology into biography” (which means Brian will regularly suggest new risks for us to take).


I’m really excited to be part of this—I hope you’ll contribute a blog post or two, comment on at least that many, and join the conversation here. There’s a lot at stake.

new to you friday—book it

This week I was reminded once again that I really need to make more time for reading.


I spent Tuesday through Thursday in sunny Orlando with the Christian Standard contributing editors team (arriving home just in time to scrape an inch of snow off my car at the airport). As always, I was challenged, inspired and encouraged by our time together. As always, I left with the names of six more books I need to read.

As long as I’m updating my list, I’d love to hear your suggestions as well. What magazines and blogs consistently give you new insights? What are the three can’t-miss books from the year we just ended?

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December always brings lists; Time magazine just released an entire issue devoted to the “top 10 everything of 2008″ and many other magazine and blog authors create their own best-of lists this time of year. These always sell well—with the incredible amount of information available to us, it’s helpful to sort out the events, people, movies, music or activities worth our time.


We also enjoy these lists because they provide new insights into our culture. (This year the top two Yahoo! Searches, ahead of any presidential candidate or news story, were Britney Spears and the wrestling league WWE. No wonder the rest of the world hates us.)

If you haven’t already, you need to check out Christian Standard’s recent list of books that made a difference to our contributing editors this year. They include history, theology, business leadership and current events and I’ve added several to my own must-reads list for 2009. N.T. Wright’s books, of course, were already there, but some others—including Nancy Karpenske’s mention of God Talk: Cautions for Those Who Hear God’s Voice and Doug Priest’s recommendation of Saving God’s Green Earth—are books I will benefit from and wouldn’t have found on my own.

Let me know what books influenced you this year. But if they involve Britney or professional wrestling, keep it to yourself.

new to you friday–face the music

Since I first posted this, my buddy John (who, interestingly, is a super talented musician) has started monthly gatherings for “This Church,” a church using comedy and conversation in its worship instead of music and singing. I’m so proud of the way he’s trying what God has asked him to try, and I’m interested in hearing your thoughts. Worship is more than music, we say—so what’s our response to a church that doesn’t use any?

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In Christian circles we like to quote Romans 12 and say worship is a lifestyle and not really about music at all. In fact, my blogging comrade Arron wrote a good post about this last week, and I agree with the points he makes.

However, while we say this, we plan “worship services” which usually include mostly music and a sermon. The budgets for “worship” and the “worship staff” and “worship programs” are often some of the largest in the entire church. And many meetings, conferences, blogs, and books revolve around rehearsing, resourcing, and relevant-izing these 15-30 minutes of music each week.


One of my friends plans to start a church that moves away from this focus. In fact, he plans to include no music in their weekly gatherings at all; instead he’ll include observational and improvisational comedy that he believes will connect more easily and more genuinely with a non-Christian crowd.

He asked me to join a small team for a day-long meeting to brainstorm about this new project, and I’d love to hear your thoughts before I fly to California next week. Why has singing and playing music become the only method for corporate worship? Is it a problem for us to know that worship is an attitude of honoring God in every moment but to talk like it’s singing—preferably with ecstatic emotion—for 20 minutes on the weekend? Are there other, equally biblical ways to “do church”?

new to you friday—hot topics

My original post sparked a great discussion so I planned to revisit it at some point. I chose this week, however, because of an article the Barna Group posted on Monday with the six megathemes emerging from their research in 2010. These include “The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate” and “Growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life.”

Should these realities affect the way we plan services and sermons? Do we give churchgoers what they want or what they need—and what is that, anyway?

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I prefer to study an entire book of the Bible instead of topics.

However, judging from most church web sites, I’m in the minority. Most churches do series after series—sometimes on practical issues (finances, marriage), sometimes more theological ones (the names of God, Jesus’ parables).

I agree it can be important to study topics occasionally, especially if they address real issues going on in the life of the church or the larger culture. (A study of the biblical qualifications and expectations for elders enriched my own church’s elder-selection process last summer.)

But I wish topical studies were the exception rather than the norm. I much prefer working through a book, Old or New Testament, chunk by chunk. I want to learn about the author and historical context, the meanings of words in Hebrew or Greek, the way the original audience would have interpreted the text.

I want to get a sense of the Biblical story, not its application—in verse-size bites—to the much less interesting narratives offered by our culture.

I wonder why most preachers (at least in our churches) don’t do this. Is it easier to preach topically? Do we think audiences (um, I mean, church goers) aren’t biblically literate and mature enough to benefit from it? If the latter, how are they going to grow to maturity through a steady diet of Bible sound bites?

Pastors, what influences your preaching calendar? Educate my ignorance about your strategy.

And pew people, am I alone in this? Which type of message do you prefer?

what’s your 20?

My life is completely about me.

It’s an occupational hazard of being single and childless; from spending my time to spending my money, I rarely have to consider anyone else. I even work at home, so I “miss” the conflicts and compromises of office life.

This can be fun, of course (yes, that was me buying a $4 peppermint mocha on Saturday) but it can also create a very self-centered existence. One way God grows our character and maturity is through living in a family or community; although I have lots of friends, I don’t have a daily responsibility to sacrifice for someone else, and I’m probably worse off for it.


So this year I’m participating in Restore Community Church‘s “Big Give.” I heard about the project when interviewing church leaders about their Christmas outreach plans for a future Buzz. (Read all about it in the December 19 issue.) Restore’s “20 for 20″ challenge seemed like the perfect way to intentionally think about others this Christmas.

On Sunday, the church asked members to give a gift to someone—money or time, pricey or not—each day from December 6-25 and share the stories on the Big Give Facebook page.

Yesterday I began by donating $20 to buy a Bible for someone in the CCSI program; in future days I plan to donate to some local causes, randomly pay for other peoples’ $4 coffees, sing carols at a Salvation Army kettle with friends, and just stay open to what opportunities each day brings.

In fact, I’m torn between keeping these to myself (because the only thing less attractive than self-centeredness is regaling others with tales of your sporadic generosity) and sharing them (because the only thing more fun than helping other people is reliving it with a good story).


So how about this: join me!

If you start today, your 20 days will end on the 26th, and it’s high time we began observing Boxing Day in this country, anyway. Then share your stories here and on Restore’s site.

I can’t wait to hear how you bless your neighborhood and your city this month. Or even your office. Now there’s a big give.

new to you friday—give a little

Here are some startling statistics: Americans spend $450 billion each Christmas, lack of clean water kills more people every day than any other cause, and the worldwide water crisis could be solved for just $10 billion.

Starting with those facts, the Advent Conspiracy movement encourages people to spend time with loved ones instead of purchasing gifts and to give that money away in the name of Christ. AC partners with Living Water International to dig wells and provide clean water in Africa, India, and South America, and churches across the country are collecting special offerings this month to benefit Living Water.


Here are some more numbers to get your attention: the amount of money spent just on candy, during just three months of the year, is more than the annual budgets of The American Cancer Society, The American Heart Association, and Habitat for Humanity combined. Redefine Christmas doesn’t ask you to stop all gift-giving or redirect your candy money toward clean water (although it does add a whole second layer of guilt to that Snickers bar, doesn’t it?). Instead, they urge you to give to family, friends, and charitable causes at the same time by donating to organizations reflecting the interests and passions of the recipient.

For instance, Jen Gherardi, a Christian Standard reader who wrote to tell me about Redefine Christmas, suggests you honor the parent or grandparent who read you countless bedtime stories with a donation to First Book or another charity dedicated to improving literacy and providing books to needy children. Your sister who loves to cook might be touched with a donation in her name to a ministry dedicated to alleviating hunger, your animal-loving brother would appreciate a gift to the ASPCA, and your best friend who adores So You Think You Can Dance could enjoy knowing you made a gift to the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation.

(If enough of us gave to that, these reality shows might eventually go off the air—and that’s what they mean by a gift that keeps on giving, folks.)


Redefine Christmas provides links to all these groups and hundreds more and provides a personalized card for you to announce each gift. You can also purchase gift cards for the recipient who might enjoy choosing her own charity and “gift baskets” with assortments of charities united by a topic like mentoring children, planting trees, or working for peace. The site even offers ecards for you to request donations to your own favorite organization in lieu of gifts for yourself.

My family stopped giving gifts to each other a few years ago. While I’d like to say this decision was driven by philanthropy, the more pressing reasons were the cost of buying them and the hassle of schlepping them around the country. (A holiday tip: If you ever have the opportunity to check a bag and fly the red-eye at 12:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve from LAX to Cincinnati, just……don’t.)

But it’s not too late to redirect some Christmas dollars toward improving the world, and this year I plan to join the conspiracy and redefine my Christmas by giving to a worthy cause. I may start with Alvin Ailey.

brotherhood, can you spare a job?

We’ve all heard the statistics.

Thousands of churches close each year, 1500 pastors leave the ministry each month, and 50% of pastors would leave if they could. (Good stuff at the link, including a typo about “abstinent elders.” Pretty sure they meant obstinate. What are the stats on bloggers who can’t spell?)

Many groups have formed to solve these problems, including two new ones within our own fellowship of churches. The Just One Challenge, spearheaded by the presidents of our 33 colleges and universities, encourages church leaders to preach on Matthew 9:38 and asks church members to pray for “just one” more kingdom worker. Restoration Revolution is a ten-year initiative focusing on prayer, church planting, developing resources and equipping more Christian leaders.

People are responding: the Revolution launched with a service at last weekend’s National Missionary Convention, and the Christian Standard enews has been full of stories about churches participating in Just One.


But after we reported some of these success stories, I received an email.

The church I attend embraced this challenge and set aside some time to pray for the young people in our congregation. There are several potential servant leaders that could accept a call into vocational ministry and for them we are hopeful.

Now a personal and painful observation. I graduated from one of our Bible colleges with honors and I have been visiting the Christian Standard’s “Needs of Churches” section every week and sending resumes for well over three years now. I have a collection of letters indicating that I am underqualified to serve. In networking with other Bible college and Christian college graduates, I know I am not alone.

As I’m sure you’re aware, a four-year degree program is expensive. Though I treasure what I learned and experienced in that process, today I struggle to repay the loans. I work three part-time jobs seven days a week, most weeks, just to make ends meet.

Please don’t misunderstand this as a “woe is me” dialogue. It is not. Though I am saddened and somewhat discouraged that I cannot secure a full-time ministry, what I want to share with you is this:  we want our young men to pursue vocational ministry, but it is not always easy to find a place to serve. I want to encourage our young men and women to pursue education in Christian ministry, but cannot assure them it will be easy to find a job.

I love the church, I love the Kingdom of God, I love the King. But I have a deep desire to serve in full-time vocational ministry that remains just out of reach.

I’ve never met this guy, so I can’t vouch for him. It’s certainly possible he’s lazy or unskilled or hard to get along with. But this email makes me think that’s not the case. Instead, I think there are very few churches willing to hire a young man without any experience. No church wants to be someone’s first church—understandable, but then how are these guys (and gals) supposed to turn the statistical tide?

Just One and Restoration Revolution are great efforts to “raise up a harvest” of new Kingdom workers. But there’s a second challenge we must take just as seriously. If our current leaders don’t mentor, coach, and hire them, how will these thousands of new recruits live out the commitments we’re asking them to make?

new to you friday—jen-in-the-box

In his book Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare, Jeremy Butterfield lists ten of the most irritating phrases in English, including “it’s not rocket science,” “with all due respect,” “fairly certain,” “I personally,” and “shouldn’t of.” (It’s shouldn’t have, folks, as in “I shouldn’t have slept through so many English classes.”)

I’d add another to his list: “out of the box.” The phrase isn’t just a cliche; I think it’s also become counterproductive.


All creative endeavors require boundaries—rules, even. In addition to correct grammar (shouldn’t have), effective writing requires various elements: paragraphs have topic sentences, sentences have nouns and verbs, and an English sonnet is always fourteen lines of ten syllables each. Music, whether it’s Beethoven or Beyonce, involves time signatures, rhythms, musical keys with specific sharps and flats, and much more. (So much more that I had to get a tutor to pass music theory in college.) Painting, photography, filmmaking—every creative enterprise is grounded in certain parameters.


Research backs me up; if you’ve read Made to Stick, you may recall the Israeli research team that asked three groups of novices to brainstorm ad campaigns. One group received no training, one participated in a two-hour free-association class, and one was trained for two hours on templates the research team had already identified as central to 90% of award-winning ads. Then each of the groups submitted their ideas to an independent creative director who had no knowledge of each group’s training.

Who created the best ads—the team without any boundaries, the team with two hours of encouragement to think outside those boundaries, or the team with instruction in six boundaries? You guessed it—the CD rated the third group’s ads 50% more creative. A few carefully-chosen boxes produced the most out-of-the-box results.


This means if you are leading a worship arts team planning Christmas services, the least helpful thing you can do is convene a brainstorming meeting and ask your team to think “out of the box” with “no bad ideas” and a “blue-sky” approach to a “blank page.”

For one thing, even as you urge this you already have an idea, however vague, of what you want Christmas at your church to look and feel like. You might even be one of the lucky few whose senior minister decides what he’s going to preach on before December 21. So if the two of you are thinking about a retro “Peanuts” Christmas feel with a straightforward gospel message, why waste 45 minutes of everyone’s time sharing ideas about how other cultures depict the incarnation? 30 minutes of discussion about favorite Christmas movies is fun, but only helpful if it’s on theme. And if you know the service will have an acoustic vibe, why burn brain cells figuring out where to rent a harp?

In other words, establish the box to channel creativity productively, not to stifle it. Of course, if you don’t know what key idea you’re going for, you’ve got bigger issues—figure that out alone or with a smaller group, then bring it to your team for brainstorming. With all due respect, I personally am fairly certain that’s the way to go, because it’s not……well, you know.