More and more I find myself taken up with people who want to be safe in their own little pool. They don't want to see the congregations grow because that would change things and make the place uncomfortable for them!
They don't want to see new buildings; and to be honest, neither do I unless the need is real and the members have the vision and drive to make it happen, after all the biggest curse I know of us that of a dogcollar building because they wanted it.
The issues, for me at least, are bound up in people who are wanting to be leaders. What this means is that they want to be in charge! I meet few leaders but many (poor) managers and though this sounds like a put down, it isn't meant to be, it is merely a statement of what is. This is due to the fact that we are so very often caught up in the business of running a business where 'doing' and 'being efficient' are the twin gods of success. I meet so many 'cost effective' clergy who present a bank balance approach to Church and it is here that the problem lies.
We are called to be 'effective', that is to be out there making a difference because of the difference that being Christian confers upon us. We are not called to be sustainable but to be fruitful and it is here that the problems of Church are grounded.
I have had some who want to be 'up the front' because that would fulfil their needs and yet, regardless of how fulfilled they never were, the people remained unconvinced by them and the fruit they produced. Oddly though, others who had neither education or wit or experience (life, Christianity and Bible related) have proved themselves to be willing and effective conduits for the Gospel (despite the often sneering opposition).
As June arrives our tiny church is blessed as we celebrate one of ours ordained this month - our gift to the wider Church. We celebrate as others move along the line to discern their calling and vocation, seeking to bless and serve those around them and to look like Jesus, the Christ.
We are looking to touch those members of the community we serve with the Gospel made flesh - the Church that is made of living stones, not self-seeking and process-heavy but seeking to honour and worship God in all that He is and does to, for and through us.
Recently I was asked for goals, objectives and timescales for a place I had seen for minutes and whose people I did not know (but warmed to immediately I met them) and this holds up a mirror to the problems we have time and time again in the wonderful world of Church. We are a visionary place regulated by God's call and the vision that burns in us - not managers bound by good management techniques and effective processes (and I'm not saying we don't need them - it's all a matter of perspective and balance).
Those who fail to plan might well plan to fail but those who are bound by goals, objectives and timescales are condemned to manage decline and call it sustainability. I don't want to merely exist, I want the Church to triumph and expand. Anyone else ready to storm the gates with me?
Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Saturday, 1 June 2013
Friday, 17 May 2013
Missional - More than a word - seeing with different eyes
Looking at statistics and engaging with people, people of faith and no faith, I am increasing drawn to the desperation, despair, denial and dedication before me. The dedication and commitment of some, their tenacious acts of defiance for the hope that is Christ spur me and inspire.
The vision of hands used to working wood, of nostrils used to the aroma of wood as it is hewn or worked loom, once again, before me. How real was the despair of those around Him as His senses combine to assess, smell, caress that wood; the cross member which was to become for Him a vertical deathbed that led, Narnia-like, into a different world where death is vanquished and sin is rendered impotent and done for.
Every step proclaiming something awful to those whose eyes, whose reality, was grounded in the 'what is'; but surely there were some who gazed upon that scene and saw something full of awe?
Greater love has no man than to lay down his life . . .
Tear down this Temple and in three days . . .
It is written that the Son of Man must . . .
How hindsight informs the past and denies the present; how the present denies the past and fails to live in either the future or the past. How the future is a hope like the hope of those seeking six numbers on the Lottery - the place where all is well; all is at peace.
And so day-by-day, step-by-step, we - the Bride of Christ - sit in the garden of our lives waiting and watching for flowers to appear and bloom even though we have planted none - we wait hoping to benefit from the toil of others, perhaps gone. We look to God to dress the vines and tend His garden so we might be blessed.
God? Watches and waits wiling us to pick up the shovel, the rake and fork; to clear the leaves, remove the litter and pull up the weeds.
How hard it is to see the world with God's eyes; to engage with people with His heart and yet that is our call.
Faithfully some wait, tenaciously, but 'what is faith without works' and yet 'what are our works without faith; without prayer and vision'?
I hear time and time again the words, 'those who plan to fail fail to plan!' The problem is that many who do plan fail to involve the author of all and merely set the scene for well-meaning dissipation.
So what do we do and how do we do it?
We seek the Lord and discern that which we, individually and corporately, are called to be [the dreaded 'mission statement'].
We imagine that which we will see if we are living out the mission [the equally dreaded (and dreadful) 'vision statement'] and discern the ways we can make it real.
We convert these into reality [goal setting] and get others to work with us too!
Why do we really make it all so difficult - it's as easy as picking up a piece of wood ;-)
The vision of hands used to working wood, of nostrils used to the aroma of wood as it is hewn or worked loom, once again, before me. How real was the despair of those around Him as His senses combine to assess, smell, caress that wood; the cross member which was to become for Him a vertical deathbed that led, Narnia-like, into a different world where death is vanquished and sin is rendered impotent and done for.
Every step proclaiming something awful to those whose eyes, whose reality, was grounded in the 'what is'; but surely there were some who gazed upon that scene and saw something full of awe?
Greater love has no man than to lay down his life . . .
Tear down this Temple and in three days . . .
It is written that the Son of Man must . . .
How hindsight informs the past and denies the present; how the present denies the past and fails to live in either the future or the past. How the future is a hope like the hope of those seeking six numbers on the Lottery - the place where all is well; all is at peace.
And so day-by-day, step-by-step, we - the Bride of Christ - sit in the garden of our lives waiting and watching for flowers to appear and bloom even though we have planted none - we wait hoping to benefit from the toil of others, perhaps gone. We look to God to dress the vines and tend His garden so we might be blessed.
God? Watches and waits wiling us to pick up the shovel, the rake and fork; to clear the leaves, remove the litter and pull up the weeds.
How hard it is to see the world with God's eyes; to engage with people with His heart and yet that is our call.
Faithfully some wait, tenaciously, but 'what is faith without works' and yet 'what are our works without faith; without prayer and vision'?
I hear time and time again the words, 'those who plan to fail fail to plan!' The problem is that many who do plan fail to involve the author of all and merely set the scene for well-meaning dissipation.
So what do we do and how do we do it?
We seek the Lord and discern that which we, individually and corporately, are called to be [the dreaded 'mission statement'].
We imagine that which we will see if we are living out the mission [the equally dreaded (and dreadful) 'vision statement'] and discern the ways we can make it real.
We convert these into reality [goal setting] and get others to work with us too!
Why do we really make it all so difficult - it's as easy as picking up a piece of wood ;-)
Friday, 26 August 2011
Ideals are great when you're young
Speaking to someone about what you in life and how you regard study I was drawn back to a conversation with a passionate young ecologist whose dream was to go to university and then get out and change the world. As time progressed and the 'A' Levels came onto the horizon the passion remained.
Off to university and they studied stuff in the first year that would enable them to live their dream and to become the difference. Then came a second year and there's talk of the 'milk train' coming to town and opportunities to be taken up by KPMG, Andersen's and other big and important management and financial organisations. By the beginning of the third year every conversation came to harbour in a bay marked £kkk and the potential for earning should they get a first or a 2:1.
Foolishly I asked what had happened to the earlier passion for ecology and green things and received my comeuppance! "The only reason to go to university is to maximise earning potential and expand the opportunities within the marketplace. The better the grades the more chance there is of being given an internship," (where you work your 'nads off only to find that the successful person is a relative of the CEO or some other incestuously related worthy - my addition).
Should we really be teaching our kids that education is all about 'earning potential' and maximizing things? I don't give a monkey's what our children do as long as they are happy doing it and derive some pleasure from making a difference in the world around them as they do it. But I do detest schoolteachers who spout tosh about education and earnings and academics who remain within their shiny white towers gazing up their behindsides whilst promoting education as a means for making money (which of course they do, but that's for another day children).
When I was helping long-term unemployed back into world (Note for 'back to' anywhere or anything people - you need to have been there to be going back - a thought for thoughtful evangelism?) I was telling people how the Institute for manpower Studies would point to five distinct careers between first and last job. We would be given reports that showed how we were going to go where sent, when we were sent, in order to bring home a wage - so the idea hit me; Why not do something you might enjoy?
It worked (Rick are you still a sport's reporter?) because people realised that when you have nothing before you then anything is worth having and if it is what you want, how much better can that be?
If we did education for money and maximising potential then who would rescue people from fires, preach to the lost, heal the sick, stand with the broken and change our ecological thinking?
If you have a dream or an ambition or a hope or a wish and you're unemployed, then what the hell have you got to lose? Go learn that subject, write that book, visit that place or be the person you want to be - after all, if you have little what is there to lose and how much more is there to gain?
If you have a dream, then pursue it - I'm sick and tired of deathbed revelations that the dyee always wanted to be something or other but their Mother wouldn't let them. We have but one life here (and then hebrews tells us we die and then we get judged) so why don't we stop living for the man and live with the Man (God) and find ourselves in Him and us in our realised dreams and ambitions.
God didn't make us to make money - He made us to touch each other, care for ALL of HIS creation and to be happy (within His laws, sorry - not a caveat to behave as you'd like outside of His will).
NIKE - JUST DO IT!
Pax
Off to university and they studied stuff in the first year that would enable them to live their dream and to become the difference. Then came a second year and there's talk of the 'milk train' coming to town and opportunities to be taken up by KPMG, Andersen's and other big and important management and financial organisations. By the beginning of the third year every conversation came to harbour in a bay marked £kkk and the potential for earning should they get a first or a 2:1.
Foolishly I asked what had happened to the earlier passion for ecology and green things and received my comeuppance! "The only reason to go to university is to maximise earning potential and expand the opportunities within the marketplace. The better the grades the more chance there is of being given an internship," (where you work your 'nads off only to find that the successful person is a relative of the CEO or some other incestuously related worthy - my addition).
Should we really be teaching our kids that education is all about 'earning potential' and maximizing things? I don't give a monkey's what our children do as long as they are happy doing it and derive some pleasure from making a difference in the world around them as they do it. But I do detest schoolteachers who spout tosh about education and earnings and academics who remain within their shiny white towers gazing up their behindsides whilst promoting education as a means for making money (which of course they do, but that's for another day children).
When I was helping long-term unemployed back into world (Note for 'back to' anywhere or anything people - you need to have been there to be going back - a thought for thoughtful evangelism?) I was telling people how the Institute for manpower Studies would point to five distinct careers between first and last job. We would be given reports that showed how we were going to go where sent, when we were sent, in order to bring home a wage - so the idea hit me; Why not do something you might enjoy?
It worked (Rick are you still a sport's reporter?) because people realised that when you have nothing before you then anything is worth having and if it is what you want, how much better can that be?
If we did education for money and maximising potential then who would rescue people from fires, preach to the lost, heal the sick, stand with the broken and change our ecological thinking?
If you have a dream or an ambition or a hope or a wish and you're unemployed, then what the hell have you got to lose? Go learn that subject, write that book, visit that place or be the person you want to be - after all, if you have little what is there to lose and how much more is there to gain?
If you have a dream, then pursue it - I'm sick and tired of deathbed revelations that the dyee always wanted to be something or other but their Mother wouldn't let them. We have but one life here (and then hebrews tells us we die and then we get judged) so why don't we stop living for the man and live with the Man (God) and find ourselves in Him and us in our realised dreams and ambitions.
God didn't make us to make money - He made us to touch each other, care for ALL of HIS creation and to be happy (within His laws, sorry - not a caveat to behave as you'd like outside of His will).
NIKE - JUST DO IT!
Pax
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