The Church as Creature of the Word, Part 3

by: Trevin Wax

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How do we practically get consumer driven churches to shift their “culture” to experience transformation and to become a Creature of the Word?

Part 3 of this series, The Church as Creature of the Word, continues with a discussion among authors Eric Geiger, Matt Chandler, and Josh Patterson.

Josh: Truth be told, our church has a lot of consumers too. The irony is that the more we hit the consumeristic culture, the more people come to consume that message. This is a battle in the culture of our society, not just our church. The great thing is, God has brought transformation. People say, “I once was this, but now I’m moving towards this.” You always want people to walk away with the aura of Christ, not the personality of the person witnessing.

Matt: If you’re the lead pastor, what you’ve got to do is point to things that are of first importance. I want to bring as much attention to Jesus Christ as I can – not to me, not to us, not to our church, etc. There’s a certain baseline for comfort here. I want us to be lean as we seek to plant other churches and point people outside of us.

If you’re on staff or a lay person at a consumer driven church, know this: almost everyone has an opinion on what the pastor ought to be doing. Adding your voice probably won’t get you anywhere. People I listen to are people who I know love me and are in the trenches with me. They’re not in the stands judging how I’m fighting, but they’re fighting along with me. Be your pastor’s biggest fan. Serve him and walk alongside him and then float him stuff. There’s a way to respect and honor the position while being honest about what you hope God will accomplish through him in that place.

For guys considering joining church staffs, you’re not hired to set culture or theological positions. Deflect as much as you can and point to Jesus always about everything.

How do you bring about change when a practice is no longer effective, but for some, is a matter of theology?

Eric: Theology, philosophy, and practice matter, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have the same culture in every church. Think in terms of a house. The foundation is theology. The philosophy is the walls of the church. It needs to be in harmony with the theology, but there is some freedom in the philosophy of the church. “What are we going to value most?” You can move the walls in your house, but it’s hard and takes time. The practice is the finishing and furniture. You can move it around. You’ve got freedom.

What are we changing? Theology? Philosophy or practice? We need to know the difference. For philosophy, we need to know that it’s challenging. We’re moving the walls. To do it in a healthy way, you have to tie the philosophical change to the theology. We’re making a shift philosophically because of this, because of what we believe. 

You can dissect the culture by looking at heroes and stories. You can change a culture by heroes and stories. Is Jesus the hero of the church? What is celebrated is cultivated. Point to the things you want to see happen more. Celebrate the stories of people living on mission, living in community, etc.

Josh: I think this is the pivotal piece of the book. If there’s a disconnect between the theology and practice, then the people don’t know how to put the pieces together.

Eric: The older we get, the more humbled we are. When you “move the walls,” affirm anything that is affirmable. Find values in the former culture you want to move over to the new culture, brag on them, and show how they’ll be better realized in the new culture. Affirm the past. Don’t just assume that everything is broken. Point from the wall to the foundation. “You built this because you believed this. We’re going to build another wall because we share the same heartbeat.” Then, have the discipline to stick with it despite the criticism.

Matt: Every church is different. Wisdom is, “you honor what is old.” You talk about opportunity rather than making it seem like everything is broken and doesn’t work. I know young guys who make things worse by their rhetoric, ignorance, and arrogance. We refused to “pasture” the older saints. We had coffee with older men and said, “We need you.” We moved as slowly as we could, to honor the past while pushing forward into the future. Don’t define yourself by what you’re not. Have a compelling vision of what Christ is calling us to do.

What is a resource for examining what your church culture is? 

Eric: We’re going to launch in January on the Creature of the Word FaceBook page an annual audit. We’ll go through it for a year, making it private, but helping church leaders assess the culture of their church over a year.

This series concludes with Part 4. You can read the previous parts of the series here: Part 1; Part 2.

Read more from Trevin here.

Tags: Church Transformation, Eric Geiger, Josh Patterson, Matt Chandler, Scripture, Trevin Wax

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The Church as the Creature of the Word, Part 1

by: Trevin Wax

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Part 1 of a 4-part series.

A couple weeks ago, I reviewed the book Creature of the Word: The Jesus-Centered Church by Matt Chandler, Josh Patterson, and Eric Geiger. Many books today encourage pastors to be focused on Jesus in their preaching and teaching. But Creature  goes beyond the teaching ministry and instructs church leaders on creating a gospel-centered culture in the church, a culture that shapes all levels and areas of ministry.

Today, I’m glad to welcome Matt, Josh, and Eric to the blog for a brief conversation about the book.

Trevin Wax: The subtitle of the book is The Jesus-Centered Church. “Jesus-centered” is going to be new language for a lot of leaders who are used to hearing about “gospel-centered” everything. What do you hope this book’s focus on Jesus will communicate to pastors and leaders?

Matt Chandler: Our hope in using the term Jesus-centered is to create some distance between a phrase that has been used so much it’s become a junk drawer in many ways. We want to remind people that Christ is the head of the Church, and everything about how our church functions and operates should reflect the new life we are given in Jesus.

Trevin Wax: I pointed out in my review how this book benefits from having three authors with unique gifts. How did your particular strengths and weaknesses as leaders influence the insights you each contributed to the book? How has the Lord challenged you personally through the “iron-sharpening” process of working together?

Josh Patterson: We all enjoyed the process of approaching this book as a team. God has designed His Church to be made up of various members, all essential, to the building up of the body to maturity. We wanted this variety represented in the book.

All three of us have different gifts, strengths and weaknesses which helped us form this book in a unique way. We hope it has resulted in a balanced perspective on the nature, design and function of the Church both theologically and practically.

Personally, it has been a rewarding and edifying experience. We spent a considerable amount of time dreaming, talking, praying, pushing back on one another, and shaping our thoughts and words. In short, the entire process solidified our brotherhood as friends and encouraged our hearts to love the Church even more.

Trevin Wax: Many pastors are talking about being focused on the gospel in one’s teaching and preaching ministry, but this conversation hasn’t always made it past the pulpit and into important conversations about a church’s culture. What happens when ministry philosophy and church practice is disconnected from or in contradiction to the church’s theological commitments?

Josh Patterson: The phrase, “Jesus is the most important part of my life,” is uninformed at best. If we read the New Testament correctly, then Jesus doesn’t get relegated to a part of piece of life. He has come and boldly proclaimed that He is life, not a slice or sliver of it.

So, in the same manner, a church cannot compartmentalize Jesus to a certain aspect of her life and function. Ironically, many churches preach and teach Jesus from the pulpit or in Sunday School, but find Him strangely absent from other areas. We wrote in the book about the need to have a clear understand of how theology drives philosophy, which in turn informs the church’s practice.

We all face the temptation to let our pragmatics or practice drive our ministry philosophy. The danger here is that we can begin to drift theologically. But, the more immediate implication is that our people cannot see how our theological convictions are relevant to how we actually operate and function as a body. All of this has an impact on the church culture.

A church culture that is saturated in the gospel of Christ rightly understands that He is the life and breath of the Church in each and every aspect from theology to daily practice.

Trevin Wax: You give attention to the role of community in the church fulfilling its purpose. Some churches tend to fluctuate between an “authenticity” that excuses sin or a “righteousness” that breeds hypocritical living. How does being Jesus-centered challenge both those cultures?

Eric Geiger: The best way to answer this question is to look at the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry. He repelled hypocritical Pharisees and attracted sinners who recognized their need for Him.

In the same way, when a congregation is focused on Jesus, it becomes the kind of place where sinners come and find transformation. It’s a safe environment for people to be honest about their ongoing battles with sin. At the same time, we don’t excuse sin. We fight it fiercely.

The church that fails to focus on Jesus will excuse sin – either the sin of legalistic self-righteousness or the type of rebellion seen in the prodigal son. Gospel-centered community exists with the grace-filled tension of receiving sinners while simultaneously making war on sin.

Trevin Wax: What is your hope for pastors and other church leaders who read Creature of the Word?

Matt Chandler: My hope is that our theology (rightly understanding who God is) will drive how we organize and operate as a church. I fear that at times our practice drives our philosophy that in turn shapes our theology. This is backwards and dangerous. Our right understanding of God and His revealed word should shape our philosophies of ministry which should in turn determine our practice. I hope this book helps church leaders in this area.

Read Part 2 of this series here.

Read more from Trevin here.

Tags: Culture, Eric Geiger, Josh Patterson, Matt Chandler, Scripture

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The Church as Creature of the Word, Part 2

by: Trevin Wax

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Part 2 of a conversation with authors Eric Geiger, Matt Chandler, and Josh Patterson about their recent book, The Church as Creature of the Word.

This post is features Eric Geiger, vice-president of the Church Resources Division at LifeWay.

Eric is putting forth a leadership challenge about the atmosphere and culture of your church.

Opening illustration: The culture of mountain climbers at Mount Everest. It takes weeks and months of planning and preparation. The mountain-climbing culture turned bad. A man, David Sharp, was hiking his way back down from Everest, through the “death zone.” He sits down to rest in Green Boots Cave (named for a man who perished there with green boots). 40 mountain climbers making the ascent, seeking to achieve their dream, pass by David Sharp, who is dying. All 40 passed by him, but left him to die in order to not abandon their journey. The mountain climbing community was riveted by the events. Some blamed systems (lack of evacuation plans, rescue teams, etc.). But the founder of Everest mountain climbing said it was the culture of the mountain climbing community that was wrong.

You can tell what is of first importance, not by looking at the confession, but at the culture. It’s not your confession of faith of your church, but the culture of your church that reveals what is of first importance.

There’s a difference between simply believing the gospel in your confessional statement and standing on the gospel in your church culture.

Culture is massively important. It’s the overpowering alpha male in the room. If there is a conflict between your confession and your culture, the culture typically wins.

If your confession says the grace of Jesus is big enough for any issue or any sin, but your culture is closed and cold and looks with disdain on people who open up about their struggles, then people needing grace will not find it.

If the confession says we will live as missionaries, but the culture of the church determines success by how many events take place at the building in a week, then the culture will trump the confession.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” – Peter Drucker

Your church’s culture is your church’s personality. It’s the values and shared beliefs that drive the behavior of your people.

The church in Galatia is a good example. They drifted from their confession in their culture. Any time we seek to supplement the grace of God, we supplant the grace of God. They moved toward a culture of creating “levels of righteousness.”

A true, healthy church culture has alignment between the confession and the practice of the people.

You’ve got to inspect your church, to see if the gospel has made its way into the fabric of the church. An example: Budgeting season. Discussions about giving are good. Is the gospel impacting that discussion? If people are not being generous, then perhaps the culture is drifting from our confession that “though He was rich, He became poor for your sake.”

Another example: You need volunteers for children’s ministry, etc. You can do a campaign and a ministry fair. But what if we should first ask, “What’s the culture of our church?” Have we brought people back to the reality that God stepped onto this earth, grabbed a basin and a towel, and served us by washing our dirty feet?

The need is to come back to the gospel in order to influence the culture of the church. The culture is always teaching. We need more than a confession immersed in Jesus. We need a culture immersed in Jesus.

Read Part 1 of this series here. To read Part 3, go here.

Read more from Trevin here.

Tags: Eric Geiger, Josh Patterson, Matt Chandler, Scripture, Trevin Wax

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4 Keys for Church Hospitality

by: Eric Geiger

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As my family visited churches upon moving to Nashville, we were blown away by the differences in hospitality to first time guests. In some churches we knew exactly where to park, were graciously welcomed, escorted to the children’s area to drop off our kids, and introduced to several helpful people. In other churches, we had no idea where to go and had no one welcome us.

While I know some churches have over-swung the pendulum and become so guest-driven that they lose focus on Christ in their hyper-attractional attempts to draw a crowd, others have over-swung the pendulum the other way and are almost ignoring guests as a badge of their spirituality. Both miss the mark, as hospitality is both deeply biblical and deeply spiritual.

We touch on hospitality in our new book, Creature of the Word. Here is a section taken from the book:

Every church sends a message with their strategy for hospitality. Those with no system for greeting new people, welcoming them, and pursing them in a loving way send the loudest message: “our theology has not affected how we treat you.” Clear signage and friendly people go along way in expressing God’s welcoming heart in a tangible way. Your context will dictate a lot about your hospitality, whether you train greeters to shake hands, hug necks, nod, or fist bump. But by all means, have a plan to express hospitality. Some of our reformed brothers need to understand that having a sign and friendly greeters to direct a new family to the children’s area is not doctrinal compromise. To the contrary, it can be an expression of doctrine beyond the pulpit.

Hospitality is included in the necessary qualifications for an overseer (1 Timothy 3:2) because hospitality is a direct and tangible link to the gospel. What has God done in the gospel if not welcome strangers? We were all strangers to the family of God and the household of faith. We were enemies, but God in His great mercy welcomed us. He has practiced hospitality toward us. Therefore, we must accept one another as Christ has accepted us (Romans 15:7).

When I consult churches with Auxano, we begin or conclude with an “anchor weekend” that includes an evaluation of the hospitality expressed to guests. Some of the things we look for are:

• Are there signs in key decision places? Look at your worship service through the eyes of a first time guest. When a guest pulls into the parking lot, does he know where to park? That is a decision he needs help with. Are there signs helping him know where to go next? Help him decide where to walk. Are there signs pointing him to the children’s area and then the worship center/sanctuary? No signage is bad, but signage with too much information is overwhelming. Have clear and visible signs that direct people to the next point.
• Are the right people in those same places? Signs can direct a guest, but only a person can shepherd a guest. Signs are important, but without people they feel cold and stale. It may be helpful to divide the first few minutes of a guest coming to the service into waves or sections and then staff with people appropriately: parking, outside greeters, inside greeters/ushers, etc. Sometimes churches view these roles as “anyone can do them” and thus they merely fill slots. For strategic hospitality, the right relationally savvy people with grace-filled hearts to welcome guests must serve in these critical roles. In other words, those roles are more important than we often realize.
• Is there a central place to get information? Hopefully first-time guests will want to grab some additional information on the church. Be sure there is a clearly marked place where that can happen, and that gracious and knowledgeable people are there to serve.
• How does the children’s space feel? Perhaps the most intimidating moment for a first time guest is dropping the children off in a new place with new people. If the only leaders in the room are un-engaged teenagers who just want to skip “big church,” a family will not be welcomed properly. The area should feel clean, safe, and properly staffed with consistent volunteers that love children. When the same leaders are in the childrens’ rooms each week, the children benefit from the consistency. They get a picture of faithfulness and are able to know and be known by godly adults who care.

When a church has a system to provide relational touches to guests, they reveal that hospitality is an important value to them. No system for hospitality reveals that biblical hospitality, in light of Christ’s welcoming of us, is not embedded in the culture of the church.

Want to learn how to create an EXCEPTIONAL Guest Experience at your church? Check out Auxano’s Guest Experience Boot Camp in Cincinnati, OH on August 7-8.

Tags: Assimilation, Eric Geiger, Guest Experience

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7 Sabbatical Insights for Pastors

by: Eric Geiger

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The church I served as executive pastor for eight years (Christ Fellowship) graciously gives their pastors a sabbatical. Mine was scheduled for six weeks in the summer of 2010, but I was not quite sure I was going to make it until then.

In January of 2010, some signs of exhaustion were clear. I was struggling to sleep at night, always thinking about some issue or opportunity as I tossed in bed. I felt impatient and numb. I would completely crash on the couch on Sunday afternoons, barely move until Monday morning, and wake up still very tired. I was transparent with Kaye, my wife, and told her I thought I could make it until June–the start of the sabbatical. But in April, I hit a wall. I was in a simple meeting with our business administrator looking at a budget report, not something that usually stumped me. But I could not make sense of it. I was gone, toast. There was nothing left.

I called Kaye, and she quickly called a family in the church who let me stay at their house in the Florida Keys for a few days. Kaye came down at nights to have dinner. I slept, read, ate, and slept again each day for two days. God used those few days to get me through to the sabbatical and to show me how much I needed the time that the church was going to graciously give me in just a few weeks.

The sabbatical was incredible. Kaye and I planned it with great intentionality. And the Lord used it deeply in my life. I read entire books of the Bible in one sitting and felt overwhelmed with the grace of God. I played for hours with our girls, took Kaye on tons of dates, never once answered my phone, and exercised almost every day. When I came back to my ministry role, I was refreshed spiritually, physically, and mentally.

Here are seven lessons learned from my sabbatical:

1) Leave your cell phone behind. I bought a cheap disposable cell phone with pre-paid minutes on it. Only two people had the number, my assistant and my pastor. They both knew only to call in extreme emergencies. We defined what those would be beforehand, and only a few rare things made the list. The phone did not ring one time. It took me almost two weeks to stop occasionally reaching into my pocket to pull out my iPhone, which was not there.

2) Leave town. If I had not left town, I would have inexorably been drawn into needs I sensed in the area.

3) Open the trip with activities. We spent two weeks on a remote beach, but these were not the first two weeks of the trip. If I had opened up the sabbatical with stillness, my mind would have been preoccupied with the ministry back home. Instead, Kaye and I toured New York City non-stop before going to Kansas City to teach a class at a seminary. And while some would say the teaching was not rest, it was different from my normal routine, and my kids were able to stay on campus with me. We played each afternoon and evening and had a blast.

4) Know the cost is worth it. Some churches cover the cost of a sabbatical; others cover the cost of a sabbatical if the purpose is study or ministry preparation; and others leave the cost to the pastor without any expectation for study or preparation. If the cost is on you, realize that you get this opportunity rarely in your life. Realize what you spend is an investment in your ministry, your faith, and your family.

5) Ask others to help. My parents were invaluable during the sabbatical. They watched the kids for us for multiple weeks so that we could do several things alone.

6) Mentally resign. The only way I could completely disconnect was to resign, in a sense, from my role at the church. I never told anyone I was resigning. I did not submit a letter of resignation or make plans for another role. But I completely released the ministry to the Lord, something I should do continually, I know. I thanked Him for the season He had given me at the church and in my mind walked away. And it was so healthy. He reminded me through the process that He is the One who builds His church. I am not the one who is ultimately responsible. He is. He has invited me to serve His bride because He wants me, not because He needs me for anything. The mental resignation made the trip so liberating and refreshing.

7) Ease out and ease back in. Instead of having a hard stop to my responsibilities, I put my vacation email responder on about four days before my sabbatical would begin. During that time, I still checked my email and responded to ones that were critical. It was a way to give staff and others one final opportunity to have a conversation before I was going to be away for many weeks. In the same way, I re-engaged about 3 days before my sabbatical was going to be over. I wrote down key lessons from the time away and some goals for the next season of ministry. I replied to all of my emails and then saved them as a draft so as not to alert people to send me new emails. On the eve of my first day back, I sent all the emails. I was ready to hit the ground running the next day.

Two years later, Kaye and the kids still remember and talk about the sabbatical. And I remember some of the sweet times of fellowship I enjoyed with them and with the Lord. Reading Romans on the beach as the sun went down was very centering for me. Pastors, if the Lord gives you an opportunity for a sabbatical, take full advantage of the opportunity. It will be a blessing to you, your family, and the church.

Read more from Eric here.

Tags: Eric Geiger, Leadership Engine, Margin

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Choices and Your Announcements

by: Eric Geiger

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Tags: Attention, Communication, Eric Geiger, Less is More, Next Steps

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Culture in Your Church

by: Eric Geiger

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Tags: Culture, Eric Geiger, Kingdom Concept, Vision Frame

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