Intentional Liturgy

A friend asked me recently whether Mission Street Church was a liturgical or non-liturgical church.  By this question, I think my friend meant, whether each week we go through a long proscribed pattern of worship structure which stems back to the time of Alexander the Great (312AD), and which some churches to this day follow assiduously and ritualistically every single week:

Call To Worship
Prayer of the Day
Hymn
Confession
Assurance of Pardon
Peace of Christ
Hymn 
Prayer for Illumination
Old Testament Reading
Psalm
New Testament Reading
Gospel Reading
Sermon
Prayers of the People/Lord's Prayer
Offering
Invitation to the Table
Great Thanksgiving
Communion
Hymn
Benediction

I grew up in a church that had a liturgical tradition like this one.  I can still remember, like it was yesterday, having one of the most senior elders of the church get up in front and start the worship service, while bending a screeching microphone closer to his three piece suite and pocket watch, through a gravely smokers voice:  "This is the Day the Lord Has Made, Let Us REEEJOYCE and be Glad In It.  Now Let us Worship God."

And I can remember like it was yesterday the confession that the whole church read each week, week in and week out as a group, in a somewhat monotoned voice: "Merciful God, We confess that we have not loved one another with our whole heart.  We have failed to be an obedient church."  And I wondered as a 6 year old what it meant to be an "Obedient Church".  I had a hard enough time being an "Obedient Kid"

And I can still remember saying the Lord's Prayer each week, with gelatinous little legs swinging from the wooden pew where I was sitting: "Our Father Who Art In Heaven, Hallowed Be Your Name."  One time I heard someone mix the words up to the Lord's Prayer in a somewhat touching way, "Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, I know You know My Name."

Mission Street seeks to do everything that we do with intentionality and purpose.  To this end, we have chosen not to follow a rote liturgical outline like the one I grew up with (though, of course there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such worship traditions).  Rather, we seek to do what we call:

Intentional Liturgy

Intentional Liturgy is a very precise focus on one aspect of the entire liturgical tradition throughout an entire message series.  Throughout the year, we will take sections of the ancient liturgical tradition and focus the entirety of the service on that one element.  For example, we are right in the middle of a sermon series we are calling, "Creed" about "The Apostle's Creed".  Each week we are intentionally parsing this ancient document down, word by word, and pondering the meaning of each syllibant.  And after the message we are saying, "The Apostle's Creed".  We feel that there is intentionality and meaning behind this approach.

One of the things we are mortally afraid of developing in our new church, is what happens in some church traditions with the repeated recitation of the ancient liturgy, week in and week out - ritualism and mantra.  The same way that driving a car is not, perhaps, as exciting or meaningful as it was when we first sat behind the steering wheel when we were 16 years old, liturgy can sometime lose it's excitement, meaning, purpose and relevancy, if recited week in and week out without thought or intentionality.

This coming Fall, we will do a series on Prayer in which we say the Lord's Prayer together during that series.  In the Spring of 2016 we will do a message series called, "Confession", and focus on personal confessions.  Who knows, one Sunday I might even pull out my old pulpit robe....

Or Not:-)

All For Now,
GB

Does Your Church Have PLANS?

Just this past week, a friend of mine asked me a pointed and direct question: "Is your church growing?"  I was a bit taken aback, but I responded by saying; "Yes, we are growing...we have been tackling many tough topics in our messages on Sunday morning."  "No," said my friend, "Is it growing?"  "Well yes, we had a great leadership retreat last week at a church retreat."  "That's not what I mean," said my friend, "Is your church growing in numbers?"  I figured out what my friend was driving at.  He wanted to know if our church was growing in numerical size.  "Yes, yes it is, I said, but that is not the only growth we are experiencing."

Usually when churches talk about growth they mean one of two things.  They mean growth in terms of Sunday attendance, or growth in terms of budget.  As one pastor once told me, "people vote on your church each Sunday with their butts and their checkbooks."  However, a better sign of growth is a quick acronym that I have recently developed, that measures more than butts in seats, and includes 5 areas of growth:

P = Pastoral Growth

No church can grow beyond its pastoral leadership.  Check that.  No organization can grow beyond its leader.  A pastor must model and lead growth in any church system.  If the pastor has a discipline problem, chances are the church has a discipline problem.  If a pastor has a money problem, chances are the church has a money problem.  If a pastor is learning and growing each week, the church will learn and grow each week.  This past week I did quite a bit of personal growth.  I learned how to build and run Pro-Presenter 5 (a writing program for worship services).  A healthy church needs to have the pastor or pastors leading and modeling growth.

L = Leadership Growth

No church can grow beyond its leadership.  This can involve all kinds of leadership: staff, elders, trustees, deacons, and volunteers.  The leaders of a church must also always be growing.  New ideas, new techniques, new disciplines, new skills, new thoughts, new inspirations.  A healthy church will also have a regular influx of new leaders, new volunteers, new directors, new elders, new deacons.  An unhealthy church generally has the same leaders rotating in and out of leadership each season.

A = Area Growth

You can always tell a really healthy church from the neighborhood and surrounding area around the actual church complex.  A healthy church not only is a great body of believers, but it impacts the surrounding community in positive ways.  The businesses around a healthy church improve.  The streets around a healthy church become more uplifted, are more economically robust, are more improved.  One of my favorite examples of this is South Barrington, Illinois, where Willow Creek Community Church is located.  Once a rural, sleepy suburb of Chicago, South Barrington is now one of the most robust neighborhood communities in all of suburban Chicago.  In a sense, the church brought the neighborhood up.

N = Numerical Growth

A church that is healthy grows numerically.  The book of Acts says that in the first church in history, the "Acts 2" church, "The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved" (Acts 2:47).  If a church isn't growing numerically, day by day, there is a problem.  Just as a healthy child must grow day by day, so should a church.  I have found that the reason that most churches don't grow is not because of a lack of friendliness, but because a church has an emotional or spiritual space that is being occupied in an unhealthy way by a handful of leaders who have always "done it a certain way." All churches are basically living organisms.  If a living organism isn't growing it either isn't alive, or it is being impeded in some unhealthy way from growing.

S = Spiritual Growth

This is the hardest dynamic to gauge.  Spiritual growth cannot be put on a chart and measured like a numeric equation or a set of numbers.  Spiritual growth is elusive and hard to nail down.  However, you know it when you have experienced Spiritual growth.  Have you ever had a really hard day, but you didn't really know why that day was particularly difficult?  Chances are your day had some Spiritual dynamic which made it very challenging to work through. Spiritual growth is hard to measure, but it's real!

So, those are my 5 indexes of a healthy church.

P = Pastoral Growth
L = Leadership Growth
A = Area Growth
N = Numerical Growth
S = Spiritual Growth

So, here's the question....Does Your Church Have....PLANS?

All For Now,
GB

What's Up With Starbucks?

Now that our big first Easter service is over (Easter @ the Stadium), and a week of reflection time has passed, not to mention recovery time, I am asking myself a perplexing question:

What's Up With Starbucks?

So, in an effort to get the word out about our Mission Street Easter service, I personally visited about 150 stores in the Camarillo area.  These visits are great opportunities for me, as a new pastor in town, to get to know more about the local economy, meet people, get the word out about our new church, and hang banners in the windows of stores.  Most of these encounters go something like this: "Hi, we are having an Easter celebration at the stadium, can I hang a banner in the window about it?"  "Sure, what is it for?"  "Mission Street Church, a brand new church starting, we are in our 25th week, and our main theme is No Perfect People Allowed."  (After scanning the banner and seeing that it is attractive enough to hang) "Sure, sounds good, hang it over there."  For about 148 of these establishment visits, the encounter was very easy, kind and engaging.  Ironically one of the unfriendly places I visited was a Christian potpourri and teddy bear store.  A vast majority of these stores were kind, and welcoming.  I even got a warm reception in several cigarette and liquor stores.

However, when I visited Starbucks, the epicenter of culture and conversation, I received a different answer.  "I'm sorry, we have just received a corporate memo that no religious banners can be hung in our stores."  Noticing that every other type of banner (lost kittens, Relay for Life, a taxidermy advertisement) was hung on the clip-board next to the waning CD collection and peppermint gum, I asked, "Why?"  "Don't know," said the manager.  "I guess it's an attempt at being more religion neutral I guess."  "But this isn't really a religious banner, it's more of a holiday celebration recognizing the divine power of life in the world through a God who loves us," I attempted.  "Sorry," said the embarrassed manager, "No churches!"  And so, I left with my banner and a burning question in the back of my mind:

What's Up With Starbucks?

Several years ago, I attended the video site of Willow Creek's Global Leadership Summit.  The CEO and founder of Starbucks Coffee, Howard Schultz, was slated to speak.  We were all excited about hearing about Schultz's radical and captivating vision about transforming America and the world into a community of coffee shops.  Right before he was to speak, Schultz issued a public and declarative statement that he would, in fact, not be speaking at the Summit because of Willow Creek's position regarding same sex marriage and relationships.  Remember, The Summit is the same place that Bono, Condi Rice, Bill Clinton and David Gergen had spoken.  And the thing was that Willow didn't really have a public position on same sex relationships.  Though the church demurely and quite mutedly is conservative on the issue, they have never made a big deal about it or even spoken much about the topic in any pubic forum.  It was clear that Schultz and his team were looking for a venue to make a widespread public declaration about religion and society.  And everyone left the conference with a burning question:

What's Up With Starbucks?

It is clear that Starbucks has become a culture forming bastion of new American culture.  The tell tale green and white insignia signs can be seen in cities, and every street corner literally around the world.  Starbuck's management style, efficiency, pensions benefits, and even interior design (most architects and interior designers immediately know what a person is talking about when they say they want a "Starbucks feel").  Starbucks has, of course, become something so much more than just coffee.  The question is what is that thing?

Are they furtively forming a cultural community that is totally separate from faith and belief systems?  Is it a neutral coffee house where any conversation is acceptable except conversations around questions of religion and God?  Is Starbucks attempting to create a kind of utopian notion of society and culture that is totally separated from any notion of God, but rather bases itself on a different kind of holy Trinity all together: Grande Late, Bran Muffin, and Coffee Mug?  As a faith leader, who is generally open to conversations with people of any religious perspective or opinion, I am forced to ask a basic question?

What's Up With Starbucks?

How can any institution, who seeks to re-form a culture, neglect the central role of religion and religious expression in that conversation?  The great 19th century social philosopher, Alexis De Tocqueville, a man who studied and understood American culture perhaps better than any other once observed; "Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other."  In less than 100 years after this basic notion was observed, has American culture really changed so profoundly, or is it obliquely and obtusely being transformed away from religion and faith issues by corporations like Starbucks?

Don't get me wrong.  I will still regularly visit Starbucks and order my weekly fix of a - Grande Cafe Americano with Soy, and a Sausage Breakfast Sandwich (I have my priorities:-).  But I will do so with a growing sense of unease about an institution that seeks to guide and form a new way of life for an entire generation of young Americans.  A Venti Machiatto without whip or God...

All For Now,
GB

The Greatest Church Builder Has Died

I was planning on waiting until Monday to write this blogpost, but I am compelled on a Thursday evening (this Maundy Thursday), to write a few words about the person that is probably as responsible for my entrance into the ministry, and becoming a pastor, as any other.

Robert Schuller has died, at the age of 88.

I can still remember the evening in December of 1988, as if it were yesterday, when I headed out into the winter packed avenues of Salt Lake City, Utah, for an evening run, with my Sony Walkman headset (for those younger than me, that is a cassette player system that had actual wrap around head phones), on a crisp weekend evening, as the moon was casting a glistening sheen on the crystals of newly fallen snow, and listening to Robert Schuller's message about his ministry.  Schuller talked about how the, "greatest churches in the history of the world haven't even been started yet."  He talked about, "the power of possibility thinking."  He said that God could turn your, "scars into stars."

I was transfixed.  As a 16 year old, I knew instantly what I wanted to do with my life.  I wanted to be like Schuller.  (Let me qualify that).  I wanted to have a life and a ministry that was as expansive as Robert Schuller's.  (Let me qualify that even further).  I wanted to have a ministry that had the same heart as Shuller's.  I wanted to try to reach unchurched, dechurched people.  I wanted to do something new, like Schuller.  I craved a significant life that was out of the box, like Schuller's.  Schuller began something that was revolutionary for it's time.  Rather than focus his ministry on "in the box", "pre-existing relationship with God" people, Schuller focussed on those who did not know God and definitely did not like church.

Whether Bill Hybels, of Willow Creek Community Church, or Rick Warren,  of Saddleback Community Church, will admit it (the two glacial movements of ministry that stemmed from Robert Schuller, and the Crystal Cathedral), their ministries were deeply influenced by Robert Schuller.

Schuller helped to usher in so many great musicians.  The Waldowskis, a couple in ministry and in song, were such compelling artists.  Ken Medema, one of the great Christian musicians of all time, was a product of Robert Schuller's ministry.

The first new church that I had the opportunity of starting was Highlands Church, in Paso Robles.  Highlands continues to be a great and thriving church in so many ways!  The very first elder of that church was a woman that is such a capable and remarkable leader, Nancy Richardson.  Nancy has gone on to bigger and better things from her days in Paso Robles.  However, Nancy's father was the founding elder of the Crystal Cathedral.  I met him a few times.  He was such a remarkable man, full of faith, and hope and charm and humor and grace.  Schuller knew how to pick great leaders.

When I was 21 years old, and very much confused as to what I was going to do with my life, I had the opportunity to meet Robert Schuller.  Schuller was doing a pastor's preaching conference for a few select pastors (my father being one of them), and don't ask me why, but I was a part of the group.  At this point, I was very lost, very confused, very unsure about what my future would hold, if any.  Schuller spent about ten minutes with me.  He asked me what I wanted to do with my life.  I said, "I want to be a politician."  He said, "Don't do that, that 's a waste of time."  I said, "why?"  He said, "Graham, a politician is only an effective leader for a few years, and then you have to term out.  But a pastor, a pastor, you can do that for life, and have an impact on a million people.  Don't waste your life in politics.  Be a pastor," he said, with a wide brimming grin, "like me!"

I'm soo grateful for the life of Robert Schuller.  I don't care what the critiques say.  He helped me pastorally and personally.  I am a pastor because of him.

All For Now,
On this Maundy Thursday Evening,

GB