Review of Post Modern Pilgrims (rated 4 stars)
Post-Modern Pilgrims: First Century Passion for the 21st Century Church
by Leonard Sweet
You can go wrong reading Leonard Sweet, but you can’t go far wrong. I never know what I’m going to get from this Christian futurist/theologian, but this was a good read.
Post Modern Pilgrims outlines what he’s been saying for years about the need for the church to be EPIC:
- Experiential
- Participatory
- Image-driven
- Connected
I’ve heard Sweet speak at several conferences when I was in campus ministry, and the book was like a refresher course. Of all the books he’s written and that I’ve read, this was perhaps the most readable. (Apart from A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Cafe)
About experience, Sweet encourages the church to quit being so heady and to engage people completely. This postmodern generation is thirsty for real, authentic, piston-charging experience.
It’s marked in extreme sports, video games, and reality shows. Sweet notes, however, that one has to be sensitive when creating a church climate of holy experience:
Experiences can become idolic as well as addictive. Postmoderns collect “experiences†like moderns collected “stuff.â€
I love how Sweet later affirms that for the believer in Christ, whether modern or postmodern, experience must always submit to obedience.
Saying yes to the moment does not mean letting the moment define the yes.
When Sweet talks about participatory, he points to festivals like Burning Man as an example. The postmodern generation (and everyone else, I think) is no longer satisfied with sit and soak church. The very nature and vibrancy of being a follower of Christ demands that we vacate our classroom-model churches and model community, service, incarnation, and love to the world.
People want to be involved. They do not want the entire reason for the church membership being to keep the machine running and to pay the light bills. He says one church attempting to provide experience is Community Church of Joy. Regardless of the fact that it’s name gives me the eebie-jeebies, I think that since his book’s publication, many, many more churches are amping it up with it comes to offering participation-focused ministries. I think it’s scriptural. After, Ephesians 4 tells us that ministers are to equip God’s people for works of service.
Sweet’s chapter on being image-driven is equally fascinating. Why is it that so many Protestant churches (and especially new church plants) are so, well, visually dead? Sure, they splash a nice Powerpoint every now and then, but art, beauty, architecture and majesty are simply absent. Sweet (and others) point to the Reformer’s emphasis on how many of the ascetic features of the Roman Catholic Church had become ungodly. Millions were spent on church edifices, while the poor and hungry lived in the shadows of the steeple.
However, I agree with Sweet that the pendulum swung too far. God is beautiful. He said about the world he created, “It is good.” The church today needs some sprucing up, and it needs to encourage and facilitate and produce rich, meaningful art. One church doing a good job with image is North Point in Atlanta. Their website uses the images of Foyer-Living Room-Kitchen to help communicate the progressive stages of relationship.
As far as web sites go, Sweet talks about the importance of a church being connected. While he means much more than just the internet, Sweet says that a good website is like a watering hole. Everyone should go there for refreshment. He uses phrases throughout the book that surprise and delight you unexpectedly like…
- As for me and my mouse, we will serve the Lord
- Word of “mouse” communities
Though written in 2000, Sweet says that at the time, 85% of churches now offer some type of cell group opportunity. That was a little shocking, and there was no footnote or documentation for the assertion. I tend to disagree with that. I don’t think that just any smallish group of folks gathering inside or outside the church classifies as what most of us who are seeking to model small group ministry would call a “cell group.”
Sweet takes a great parting shot at churches (I really chuckled out loud) and other organizations when he decried the silliness of websites that are merely brochureware. It’s not hard to imagine what he means – one page jobbers that are more like a digital poster than an interactive experience. For a great example of a site that encourages much of the above, check out theooze.com.
All in all, I’d recommend Sweet’s book (and mine is available for borrowing) as a good stab at a postmodern primer.
See more about Post-Modern Pilgrims: First Century Passion for the 21st Century Church
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Shawn has a great post and a wonderful little graphic (shown below) related to resisting temptation.
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. (1 Corinthians 10.13)
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Reggie McNeal led this session. He related that while working with a church staff, he gave them the following:
Assignment: Leave staff meeting and find a Starbucks, mall or park bench and simply pray, “God, help me to see what you see.”
They came back and shredded the church agenda. It changed the church because it changed the staff. They realized that what God was concerned about was not what they had been concerned about.
What we discover when we go out “there” to bless people is that God has them lined up for us to relate with, influence, and be transformed by. I’m not trying to help you do church better but to simply get involved with what God is doing in our world. Get out there where God is doing things!
Continue reading »
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i2 Conference: What are you looking at? (plenary session)
It’s Thurday a.m. at the i2 Conference at Fellowship Bible Church. Reggie McNeal is speaking today and is the author of several books and and is a Missional Leadership Specialist in Leadership Network in Dallas, Texas.
“Helping Christian leaders live more intentional lives (or persecuting them) is a subtext of my life.”
McNeal said, “I’m here to get you out of the church business; there’s not much future in it. I want to get you in the kingdom business. The single biggest development since the Reformation has also started overseas. It was news to a group of Lutheran pastors I spoke to a few days ago. People who “get it” have more in common with other people who “get it” from any tribe than people from within their own tribe who don’t. The movement is the rise of the missional church. People confuse the missional church with the emerging church, but it’s not about a new methodology.”
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I2 Conference: Team Ministry (consultation workshop)
Afternoons at Fellowship’s i2 Conference are oriented around “Consultation Workshops” with the main leaders at Fellowship. However, there was only one of me and 11 workshops, dadgummit. I chose the one on Team Ministry led by Teaching Pastor Bill Parkinson. Bill is also the main Team Building Leader at Fellowship.
Any pastor who has served one church for 30 years is to be applauded and revered, but when you have three co-pastors who have served in one church for 30 years, it’s a phenomenon. Bill Parkinson, Bill Wellons, and Robert Lewis have raised the bar so high for team leadership in American churches that it may not ever be surpassed. However, for those that would claim that the concept of team leadership does not work, one doesn’t have to look further than Little Rock.
It’s hard to detail Parkinson’s session this afternoon simply because there was so much content, so I’m going to try to hit some high notes. First of all, he highly recommended two resources, one as preparatory and one as preventative. The preparatory material was George Barna’s The Power of Team Leadership. The preventative material was The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. The latter was also recommended yesterday by Executive Pastor Ken Dean. Get the feeling that these leaders are on the same page and reading the same stuff?
Parkinson began by relaying people’s unbelievable expectations on church leaders in the 21st century. They are expected to be experts in everything, evangelists, community servants, adept at Bible teaching, full-time ministers to every member (and members’ extended families), well-read, active in community life, present at all church events, informed politically, socially proficient, entertaining behind the pulpit, ready to be a cheerleader for every pet cause that comes around… well, you get the picture. However, studies have shown that 62% of pastors say that their primary gift is teaching. Only 12% claim that their primary gift is leadership.
Parkinson said the options for the church are few…
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i2 Conference: Bridge Building (plenary session)
Tim Lundy began by showing us an incredible video produced about The Call, which is a ministry seeking to mobilize foster parents in Central Arkansas led by some inspired lay leaders in Fellowship. It is one example of the way Fellowship seeks to build bridges of hope, love and ministry into the community. The Call has a powerful mission: To have no waiting children in foster care in Central Arkansas by 2008.
Types of Bridge Building…
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I2 Conference: Past, Present, and Future (plenary session)
Tim Lundy shared in both of this morning’s main sessions. In this session on Past, Present, and Future, he shared the central model of I2 (Irresistible Influence), noting that it is based on Ephesians 4.11-13.
It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Pastors and leaders are given to the church to equip God’s people to do the work of the ministry. Unleash the people. The central leadership model is one of team. No one person can fully equip the body of Christ.
In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5.16)
Scriptural Overview: It starts with Jesus.
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Tuesday night’s opening session was powerful. While most of us expected some kind of high-powered, high-octane message related to Fellowship’s theme of a church of irresistible influence, Tim Lundy, Directional Leader and Teaching Pastor, offered a much more personal, and I think profound approach for the 400+ attendees.
With pastors, staff, and lay leaders present from more than 30 states and 7 countries, Lundy addressed to personal, spiritual life of the leader. Laughing about the fact that most of us probably came for “answers more than we did for questions,” Lundy posed the following four:
- Do you have a personal or a professional relationship with God?
- Are you living the Spirit-filled life? (from Ephesians 5.18-21)
- What do you do with your doubts?
- Do you still have hope?
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I was hoping to do some liveblogging from the conference today, but those of you sitting on the edge of your seat at the 2:00 p.m. start time were sadly disappointed. As was I. Although there was a wireless signal, I didn’t think ahead of time to get a password, so here I am now typing in notes from this afternoon’s plenary session.
Entitled Strategic Planning: Turning Vision into Reality, the session was led by Ken Dean, Fellowship’s new (as of October) Executive Pastor Ken Dean. Ken was brought on board to help steer and direct the church administratively.
Though much of Ken’s session was full of principles that I’ve read (or even thought) before, it was still helpful to be reminded and to hear it from him. Part of leading any organization, I think, is the challenge of continual communication.
New people come into the organization (in my case, our church), and because they missed what has gone on before, they pick up in midstream, but although they look and sound like everyone who is already there, they do ot have the collective experience or knowledge of the organization’s history and culture.
Leaders, unfortunately, seem to develop organizational amnesia too often, forgetting the urgency and necessity of communicating again and again to old and new folks alike the culture, values and vision of the organization.
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Notes from the Trail
The Personal Blog of Jeff Noble
Info: From the misty hills of Virginia, "Notes from the Trail" seeks to encourage you on your journey. Written by a graphic designer-pastor, this blog is a blend of humor, insight, and faith discovery.
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