Honestly...Mediocre vs. Honestly Mediocre

There’s an author and blogger named Carey Nieuwhof that pastors a large church in Canada and has become one of the leading voices for church leadership and growth in North America. I read his blog regularly and he often provides helpful thoughts about pastoring, leadership, and being a healthy church. But I also find many of his articles focus way too much on size, greatness, and success.

There’s a blog post he wrote recently that is making the church leadership rounds entitled Seven Signs Your Church is Honestly…Mediocre. In the article, Nieuwhof essentially argues that “many churches are neither great at things or terrible at things. They’re just…mediocre.” He proceeds to provide seven causes for mediocrity in the church, with the understood assumption that mediocrity is bad. But the “mediocre” ministry he’s referring to are things like mediocre worship music, poor quality live streaming of worship services, and lame church websites.

But if church “success” means having professional quality music, technology, and websites, then count me out of trying to be “successful.” Those aren’t the organizational values that I would use to measure success. Sure, I want to do ministry with excellence. Absolutely! No question! But I’m more interested in our church being true to who we are as a church, even if the rest of the church world would call our ministry mediocre. I’m only interested in us being who God has designed us to be as a local body of Christ.

So, in that sense, while Nieuwhof calls many churches “honestly…mediocre,” I’m more than fine being honestly mediocre (that phrase must be read with no pause and an emphasis on the honesty part). As long as we’re being honest to who God has made us as a church family—not trying to look and act like the cool church down the street—then I’m totally fine being called “mediocre.” Let’s stay consistently committed to growing as disciples of Jesus and to reaching out into our community with his good news, and let the chips fall as they may. If we grow as a church…awesome. If we never get big and “successful”…that’s okay too. Let’s try to be excellent in the organic, natural, honest ministry that God has called us too—and be okay if the world calls that “mediocre.”

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If you're interested, HERE is a critique of Nieuwhof's article from Michael Frost

An Open and Ready Spirit

I devote a pretty massive part of my life to my work at the church—my official ‘ministry’—but I also have a life outside the church. There’s family events, kid activities, and my own hobbies. There’s parenting groups and soccer teams, basketball friends and school functions, softball teams and work colleagues. We keep pretty busy with non-church events.

It’s crazy how often, however, that these activities turn into opportunities for ministry.

Yesterday, for instance, our kids’ swimming lessons became an opportunity to talk with another pastor family about ministry, connect with a different family that is new to Bozeman and looking for a church, and meet another family that lives in our neighborhood and attends school with Zoe. All in the hour spent at the pool. And today, a quick lunch at Costco before stocking up for our church picnic, unexpectedly led to sharing a picnic table with a student who recognized me from The Rock. I couldn’t find a place to sit and he graciously invited me to share his table. We had a great conversation about his impending senior year, his plans after graduation, and the church he attends. All while just grabbing a slice of pizza.

But these encounters rarely happen unless we are ready, willing, and open to sharing our lives with others.

For each of my fun, encouraging, and unexpected encounters, I’m sure I miss dozens of opportunities. I’m not always ready and open to engaging with others—especially when I’m ‘off the clock.’ My eyes are not always open and my heart is not usually tender enough to recognize the potential for ministry and engagement right in front of me. Or even if I do see them, I’m not always courageous enough to act on those opportunities.

So, here’s to having an open and ready spirit for community and connection as we enter the world. Here’s to always being ‘on-call’ when it comes to engaging our world. Here’s to eagerly putting ourselves ‘out there’ and welcoming the dozens of opportunities to befriend, encourage, and bless others that greet us each day. May we have eyes to see, hearts to care, and the courage to act on those communal possibilities.

Fine With Failure

This past Sunday I tried something a little different with my sermon—a bit theatric. For those who weren’t present, it was a bit risqué!! I preached on a passage in Colossians where Paul invites us to strip off the harmful, sinful ways of life we too often wear and to clothe ourselves with the values of Jesus’ new kingdom. So, to make my point, I literally stripped off about 8 layers of bulky, sweltering clothing and replaced them with new clothes, labeled with the values of God’s new way.

I don’t normally do stuff like that, though. I don’t consider myself overly creative and my sermons are normally pretty straight forward. There’s nothing terribly cool about our church, my ministry, or my preaching.

Sometimes, however, a passage of scripture is just begging to be proclaimed in a different, more creative manner. Some passages feel more visual or tactile than academic and cerebral, and demand a more visual and tactile presentation.

And when those passages arise, I’m so pleased to be pastoring a church that allows me the freedom to be playful with scripture. I think my sermon from Sunday went well, but my point is, even had it not, you all would have extended massive amounts of grace and understanding. I love the liberty you have afforded me to try some unusual things from time to time, even if they crash and burn.

The freedom to fail is an important element of success in all forms of life, including ministry. So, let’s continue to try new things, work hard to make them successful, pray that God would use our efforts mightily. But then, if failure results, let’s shake it off and keep trying to minister to and bless our church and our community.

The Discomfort of Scripture

that's what I'm afraid of!

Yesterday, in my sermon, I called out both capitalism and democracy as potentially idolatrous! Yikes…I’m surprised to still be typing this as a First Baptist employee!

Now, to be clear, I didn’t comment on partisan politics in any way. And I didn’t universally critique the economic model of capitalism, but specifically named the ways we allow this neutral economic system to become corrupt. But still, I’m well-aware that those subjects have become taboo in our culture and I was saying some things that probably made people squirm.

But it’s not my fault – Paul made me say it!

The beauty of critiquing these staples of Western culture within the framework of a sermon series on a book of the Bible (in this case, Colossians) is that I simply get to blame the author (in this case, Paul) for making me say what I said. Throughout Colossians, Paul is constantly critical of the corruption, oppression, and abuse of the Roman Empire. It’s an incredibly political and revolutionary letter. So, if Paul didn’t want me to critique the economic and political systems of our day, then he shouldn’t have done so himself –  boldly critiqued the hollow and deceptive philosophies that were trying to take the Colossians captive.

It’s not my fault – Paul made me say it!

And I absolutely mean that. For the first time in my brief preaching career, I am committed to not watering down the gospel and sanitizing scripture to make it more palatable for myself and my congregation to digest. As Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat say in their profoundly brilliant book Colossians Remixed, “Any rehearing of a biblical text in a different cultural situation must attempt to maintain the audacity and offense of the original text." If a passage of scripture is political, challenging, and/or offensive and we don’t read it and preach it in a political, challenging, and/or offensive manner, then we are doing a great injustice to the text and aren’t reading, interpreting, and living it the way it was intended.

And for me, the preacher of that text, it probably means I’m being a coward.

So, no more cowardice from me. If the text is challenging and hard and would have ruffled 1^st Century Roman feathers, then I need to communicate this feather-ruffling truth as accurately and faithfully as I can for our contemporary culture. I’ll try my hardest to never take sides. I’ll work to keep my bias out of the pulpit. But I won’t apologize for reading the Bible accurately and faithfully and the telling the truth each Sunday – even when the truth is hard to hear and even harder to live.