I'm not a fan of the incoming President. Unlike the bulk of his voters, I've actually read what he's said and written in his own words on any number of subjects, and as a Christ-follower, as a pastor, and as an American citizen, I'm concerned. I'm gravely concerned.
Having given that disclaimer, I also want to say that I am excited to be sitting here and watching history being made. As one of my African American colleagues said recently, "In this nation, it's always been said that any little boy in America can grow up saying, 'Some day I will be President of the United States,' but not once in this history of this nation has a young black boy ever spoken those words. But now, he can."
I know our nation, like EVERY OTHER NATION IN THE WORLD, has had to work it's way through attitudes of racism and aim for it's goal: a color-blind nation.
(For the record - I've had two good tastes of racism, though they certainly don't make up for centuries of societal racism: In high school, I was beaten in an alley because my two best friends were minorities: one a Native American, the other an African American. I took the beating and kept it to myself, partly because I was ashamed that I could not defend myself, but also because it was my honor to be beaten for doing the right thing. The other was in 1991 when I and my traveling companions were made to get off a full bus at Tokyo's Narita Airport because we were not Japanese, and there were more Japanese waiting to get on the bus. We then sat on the tarmac in the sun for nearly an hour waiting on a bus that never came back.)
Today, when Barak Obama takes the oath of the Presidency of the United States, this is an historic and proud moment for all of us. This is the official closing of the door on an era as well as the final rejection of an accusation that has been bantered about for decades in order to demand entitlements and special treatment. This finally levels the playing field everywhere.
No, I didn't vote for him (and it had nothing to do with his ethnicity - like I said, I've read what he's said and written), but he is now my president, and for better or for worse, I will pray for him daily, starting right now:
Dear Father,
Whose happiness is unaffected by the world's circumstances,
Who is the source of our joy and security, our Maker, our Sustainer,
The Owner of all that is, the One who sets worldly kings upon their thrones,
You have created our nation through the centuries,
Provided for us in times of need,
Preserved us in Your patience even when we have strayed.
You are able, in every circumstance, to meet our nation's needs and struggles.
May we live by our trust in You,
May be honor you as a nation,
May we continue to be a city on a hill whose light offers hope.
Father, today I pray for our new President, given his position of leadership by Your providence.
May he not be a man who claims a form of godliness and yet denies Your right and power.
May Your mercy and truth protect and guide him.
Keep evil men and women from his presence that he might hear Your words within his heart and rule justly.
May he pursue You and Your grace,
May he be known as a man with no goal but Yours.
And, Father, may the leaders of Your people act boldly as his conscience when he fails to honor Your goals.
In the name of Jesus in whom there is no ethnic or economic divide, Amen.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
"Why Is Adventure Here?"
Many people have requested the manuscript of this lesson, originally delivered the weekend of January 3/4, 2009. Here it is so you can have it to read rather than just hear what's said about it. :)
I’m gonna go a different direction from what I had originally planned. I’ll get back to Luke next week. I had an experience at our Christmas Eve service that caused me to think and reflect, and the first weekend of the year is a good day for us to do that together and be reminded what our mission is.
Many of you are new to Adventure, and there are some basic things about us you need to know to understand who we are and why we do some of the things we do. Others of you have been here a while, and quite honestly, we all need to be reminded why we’re here and not somewhere else, or why we don’t do things like Bettendorf Christian Church, or Christ United Methodist Church, or Heritage Wesleyan, or Harvest Bible Church, or Trinity Lutheran or (insert congregational name here). Those are all GREAT congregations and we’re all on the same team and we’re probably 99% in agreement with each other theologically, but you can see some clear differences in methodology. There’s a good reason for that – and it’s not that we’re better or smarter than someone else. It’s just that we’re different. We’re called to different people (which we’ll talk about it a few minutes) and God uses a broad net when He fishes for the souls of men and women in order to catch as many as He can.
The first part of this lesson is for the newer people, and the latter part is for those who’ve been here a while or have been Christ-followers for several years.
I grew up in the Church. All four of my brothers have served as pastors. Our dad was a pastor. He recently retired after 50 years of pastoring.
I was born on Christmas Eve 1960, and I’ve been in Church nearly every weekend since Eisenhower was the president. I became a Christ-follower the week Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The bulk of my growing years was in two congregations, one that was 1 year old when we moved there in 1964, and another we moved to in 1971 (they 150 years old this past fall). That’s where I met my wife. She was in the third grade and I was in the fifth grade, and she was holding an apple pie. It was love at first sight. And I liked her, too.
I was ordained into the ministry nearly 26 years ago. I started as a youth pastor, but I’ve pastored four older congregations. Then God let us plant Adventure, my fifth (and probably final) congregation. Sometime during the last six months of 2008, I preached my 5,000 sermon. For eight years, I hosted an online forum for 60,000+ pastors from all denominations.
I tell you all that to tell you this: When I talk to you about congregations and how they function and what they become, I hope you can see I’m not speaking from a vacuum of knowledge or experience.
I also tell you this because the story you are about to hear is also a part of your story, and I think you should know these things.
Since the late 1980’s, though we didn’t wanna do it ourselves, Steph and I have carried a burden for starting new congregations, helping with fund-raising, visitation, teaching, and so on. In 1993, I joined the staff of a medical mission as their International Project Director because it allowed us to be a part of planting new congregations all over the world. You can go to my FaceBook page and see all the countries I worked in.
The excessive travel schedule and internal problems within the mission’s leadership took their toll on my health and led me to resign, and it left our family wondering what God had in store for us. We still had a burden for planting new congregations, but our options came down to moving to Nicaragua to assist in a Church planting there, or a return to the local ministry in the states.
The Lord led us to an older established congregation in the Des Moines on January 1, 1995. There was an immediate concern that caught our attention: It’s was I call “The Graying” of Midwestern congregations. In other words, congregationes had more gray hair than any other color (except maybe that funky blue some old ladies like). There’s nothing wrong with gray hair. It pretty much happens to everyone in some degree (it’s why I went from a goatee to a fu). And while those gray congregations were all very stable, they were also too stable. They were not attracting younger people, so two harsh realities pop up immediately:
First, it was simply a matter of time until those congregations literally died of old age.
This happened to my grandmother’s congregation. They refused to allow change, and it ended up being a handful of widows who could no longer afford to keep it open. It’s gone now.
Second, there seemed to be no serious effort being made to reach the younger generations.
True, nearly all congregations admit the need to reach young people, but in reality very little effort is being directed toward them. New people are welcomed to the congregation only if they dress like the older people, sing like the older people, and behave like the older people, but congregations are not generally willing to do any changing themselves to make that happen.
In 1995, I was asked to serve on the Board of Directors of the Christian Evangelistic Mission of Iowa (CEM) and had done so for several months when the other board members asked if we’d be interested in planting a new congregation in the Quad Cities. We had never heard of the Quad Cities and had no idea where they were.
About that same time, I had driven to Kansas City to participate in a Church growth conference to learn what I could do to help break our older Des Moines-area congregation through this seeming numerical barrier. I loaded up all of the information I could gather about our congregation and the area including stats, newsletters, and maps and headed out to be there when the doors were unlocked at the conference site.
The conference speaker was C. Peter Wagner (a pleasant and energetic “Colonel Sanders” look-alike) who is considered the leading expert in Church growth through-out the world. We hit it off and spent several hours over the next day-and-a-half laying out a growth plan for our congregation. At the end of our visit, Mr. Wagner said, “You know, it's gonna be very hard in an older congregation to do the things you need to do and make the changes you need to make to reach the people you need to be reaching. Older Christians in older congregations have a vested interest in keeping things they way they are. Have you ever thought about planting a new congregation?”
I told him I wasn’t interested in that, and he told me, “Well, I think you should consider it. You’ve got the right ideas and approach. If I were you, I’d find a way to start a new congregation with the new style.”
I returned home with a plan which was generally accepted by the eldership but soundly rejected the congregation’s board at the behest of a couple of overbearing men who enjoyed pushing the board around. I went home ready to leave the ministry behind. Steph and I began praying about what to do because we were convinced the status quo was not the Lord’s will for His Church.
You see, we believed the congregation had it backwards. We believe that the Church is the one organization that exists for the benefit of its nonmembers. So once a person becomes a part of the Church, the way they have their needs met is by helping those outside the Church. Many congregations believe they exist for their members, their “share holders”, and they confuse evangelism with getting more share holders.
We didn’t see it that way then. We don’t see it that way now, either.
Within about ten days, Steph and I received unsolicited inquiries about planting new congregations in California, Texas, and Colorado, which we were now becoming open to, but our love for the Midwest drew us to investigate CEM’s suggestion for a new congregation in the Quad Cities.
One of the first things I did when I first came to the QC to have a look at it was to visit a dozen different congregations to talk with them about their ministries. I found that the group absent from most congregations in town was those who are between 18-39 years of age with families. It became clear to me that they were to be our target.
One of the key traits of Adventure, from its inception, is that we have not kept it any secret that we have a specific target group, and we make no apology for it. Some older Christians recoil at the thought of a congregation having a target group, but the reality is that all congregations target someone even if they don’t admit it. God has always had target groups for His workers. Always.
Jesus Himself said the He had come for the Lost Sheep of Israel. He accepted everyone, but His focus remained on Israel.
The Apostle Paul’s focus was on the Gentiles – the non-Jews. The Apostle Peter’s focus was on the Jews. We talked about this with the Gospels: Matthew was targeting Jews; Mark was targeting poor Gentiles throughout the Roman Empire (the same people Paul wrote to in the book of Romans, which is why so many of the names are shared between the two books); Luke was targeting educated Gentiles through his friend Theophilus; John was targeting Greeks who questioned the deity of Jesus.
And I can go into any congregation in America and sit through five minutes of their worship service and tell you who they are targeting whether they admit it or not. (One of the dirty secrets of many congregations is that they are targeting people from other congregations, something we have never done, do not do, and will never do.)
That doesn’t mean anyone outside that age group isn’t welcomed. Everyone is welcomed here, but our target is 18-39 year olds. I love the fact two of our most consistent attenders were in their 90’s, yet they fit in here. Like Jesus with the Roman Centurion or the Caananite woman, we welcome everyone, and will minister to everyone, but we still have as our primary focus unChurched 18-39 year olds, and we won’t change or sacrifice that target.
My research on 18-39 year olds revealed they like to spend time with friends, like live music, enjoy the outdoors, enjoy the social atmosphere of pubs and coffee houses, feel safest in informal settings, and they don’t waste time on what they don’t need.
The book of Acts tells us that the Church is to come together for four things: fellowship, prayer, teaching of the Apostle’s doctrine, and the breaking of bread. But it doesn’t tell us how we have to do those things, so we worked to find a way that fulfills those four points for our target group. That’s what we’ve designed here: a comfortable place with practical teaching that lets you take something home to practice each week.
Eight years ago, the Church had a surprise birthday party for me at the Armory on Brady. It was my 40th birthday. Get this: It was part of celebrating my departure from the target group. At that party, several people asked me, “So, is the target group 18-40 years old now?” I told them, “No. It’s still 18-39. In ten years, it will still be 18-39, and 100 years from now, it will still be 18-39 years of age.”
That, in a small nutshell, gives some of you noobs you some of the history of Adventure.
Now, for those who you who have been around Church for a long time…
I turned 48 years old on Christmas Eve. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not with yourself, but the older I get, the stiffer I get. Things I used to be able to do don’t come as easily as they used to. And there are other things I’ve noticed, like how I don’t much like change. I like my routines. I like what I like, and I don’t like anything else.
Steph and I are only two years apart age-wise (I graduated high school in 1979, she graduated in 1981), but it’s enough to reveal a difference: We once went to a mall, and while she was heading out to shop for clothes, I was headed to the sporting goods places, and we parted with the comment, “Hey, we oughta get a Chicago CD while we’re here.” We met back at the car a few hours later and headed for home, and we laughed when we realized we had each found and bought a CD. I had bought Chicago’s Greatest Hits 1972-1981, and she had bought Chicago’s Greatest Hits 1982-1989. (Those are more descriptions than exact names of the albums, but you Chicago fans know exactly what I mean!)
Her choice wasn’t better, and mine wasn’t worse. They were just a difference in personal taste.
We’ve raised kids since then, and they’ve brought a lot of joy our house, but if you come to our house, you’re more likely to hear Five Iron Frenzy or Miley Cyrus or the Cheetah Girls or the Jonas Brothers than Chicago. Why? Because unlike the Amish, it isn’t our desire to demand that our kids pretend they live in the 1870’s OR the 1970’s just because we enjoyed it when we did.
I hafta confess: I really enjoy “That 70’s Show.” I grew up with those guys! But make no mistake: those were good days me, they were our days, but they are not today. I refuse to live my life wishing for the past or for time to stand still. That’s not fair to my kids whom God has called to live their lives. Living in the past doesn’t honor God. In Jeremiah 8:5, God laments that His people keep going backwards and hold on to illusions. He laments that they refused to change!
The average lifespan of an American is about 76 years. Did you know that the average life span of an American congregation is also about 76 years? The difference is that you and I can’t help our physical age. My age increases daily with incredible regularity (if only other parts of my life were as regular)! David reflects on that reality in Psalm 39…
Psalm 39:4 (NLT) - “Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered—how fleeting my life is.”
Why remind me of my mortality? That seems like such a downer! But it’s so I can make the best use of my time and my life while I am here. I don’t know about you, but as of my 48th birthday, I’ve quit counting how long I’ve been here and have started counting how long I have left! It’s about being responsible for my attitude and priorities. You see, I can’t necessarily control my own life expectancy, but I can control my attitude and my priorities as I age.
One of my life verses is this:
Psalm 71:17-18 (NASB) - O God, You have taught me from my youth, And I still declare Your wondrous deeds. 18 And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me, Until I declare Your strength to this generation, Your power to all who are to come.
That has been the driving verse behind my life for the past 15 years. I wanna share God’s glory and strength with this generation, and I want to set the stage for that same news to be shared with the following generations, too.
Proverbs 13:22 (NASB) - A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children…
That is just as true of a spiritual heritage, too! If I don’t leave a congregation that can outlive me, then I have failed my grandchildren! It’s all a matter of keeping my focus on my purpose, on my attitude and on my priorities...making sure those honor God, not that they keep me comfortable.
While humans die a physical death in old age, congregations, however, don’t die at 76 years of age because of physical death. They die a spiritual death. They die because of poor attitude and selfish priorities among the people. They die because they become self-centered, their own target group, their only focus, their only concern.
You may be thinking, “What’s this got to do with anything? We’re not old. We’re a Church plant.” FYI:
A “Church Plant” is a congregation less than five years old.
A “Young Church” is a congregation 5-10 years old.
An “Established Congregation” is one that is 10+ years old.
We’re no longer a “Church Plant” or a “Young Congregation”. We are an established congregation. In other words, we’re not a kid any more. We’re an adult congregation. So now we have some adult choices about personal attitude and corporate priorities and what our legacy will be. That’s what we’ve got to grapple with, but we can’t grapple long. We must act.
Let me phrase one of those choices like this: Do I demand that my kids keep listening only to Chicago (1972-1981), or do I allow them to listen to the Jo Bros?
This applies across a broad spectrum, but let me stay with the music thing for a second since we’ve added the joy of a new band this weekend. You who have grown up in the Church or been around Church for very many years know that one of the most divisive issues in a congregation is not the theology, not the budget, not the kids program, but the style of music in worship. I think Satan likes that because his position in heaven, before he rebelled against God, was that of chief musician, and he will use his old occupation to drag down any weak Christ-follower in that area.
Let me come at this from a different angle:
When I was in Albania in 1994, the Albanians had only been free for a few months. I was meeting with a group that had been a small underground congregation during the Communist era. They had been forced to meet in secret because Christianity was punishable by imprisonment in the mines, and many people died in the mines, but now they met openly and had become a large group with many brand new believers.
They began singing a song together, but it was in Italian, not Albanian. The few missionaries that had been there had been Italian and insisted people sing in Italian. Most of the people knew what the song was about, but they were singing in a style that wasn’t theirs, in a language that wasn’t theirs, with words they didn’t understand.
One of the girls there was a professional translator, so I asked her to take Psalm 42, in Albanian, and set it to the tune of some Albanian song everyone would know. When we went back the next day, she had already set it to the tune of some old Albanian love song and was teaching it to people. I watched them sing this song over and over for about 90 minutes. First they sang it slowly with tears, then faster and faster with dancing. It was a celebration. For the first time in their lives these young Christ-followers were singing these words in their own language to their own tune:
Psalm 42:1-2 (NASB) - As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God?
An appropriate passage for people who had risked death daily for the Gospel. The tears flowed from my eyes as I watched them worship God in their own language for the first time. I’ll be honest with you: Albanians can’t sing. I’m serious. It’s like bad gypsy music. It left a lot to be desired by my American ears. But I enjoyed watching them sing in their own language, and I would NEVER honestly disparage someone else’s praise language toward God. Why shouldn’t people be free to worship God in their own cultural language?
When my boys were little, we were having bed time prayers. Josh was praying and said something Caleb felt needed to be corrected out loud, and Josh rebutted him in his prayer with a shout, “I’m not talking to you, Caleb!” The Albanians, whether or not I enjoy their music, were not talking to me, but it was beautiful to God’s ears.
It’s not appropriate for me, as someone who claims to love God, to criticize someone else’s musical style when they are singing praise to God. They’re not singing to me! If they ever are, I’ve may have some words of advice for them, but until then, it would be pretty narcissistic to think I hafta approve of how they praise God musically.
Now, we’re TEN years of age. The congregation can’t control the passing of time, but the congregation can control whether or not it gets old. I’ve said from the beginning that someday Adventure is gonna have one of the coolest bunches of old people to ever be a part of a congregation. I can already see the prayer request: “Please pray for our Seniors Pastor Liston. He broke his hip rappelling in the Palisades, but says to tell everyone the Maquoketa Caving trip for 70’s and older is still on next weekend.” And we are gonna cheer on those younger generations who follow us and we are going to empower them and treat them so well that they will want to be us!
You see, the struggle the Church at large has failed to win (as it ages) is one of having the attitude and priorities of Jesus. We have allowed people to selfishly redefine the mission of the Church away from a place to serve God and others to a place where they feel entitled to having people serve them and do everything with their approval.
In one of the older congregations I pastored, there was a family who told me if I didn’t wear a tie when I was in front of people, they would leave the congregation. Another family warned me to keep a tie and jacket and wingtip shoes handy in my office at all times in case of an emergency or they would leave the congregation. I never really understood that because the only emergency I could think of would be a fire, and I’d think throwing the tie and jacket and shoes on the fire would only make it worse!
Yet another family told me that if we ever changed the music, they’d leave because they’d already left one congregation and weren’t afraid to do it again! I can’t explain how ashamed and embarrassed I was for them that they weren’t embarrassed by their own childishness! Again, in the book of Jeremiah, God lamented that His people had gotten so selfish and so self-involved that they’d forgotten how to be embarrassed when they were stupid.
Can I confess to you that one of my goals is to someday retire from here and leave this place behind with music I am not comfortable with? Why? Because it will mean that the congregation has kept reaching out to new generations and grown beyond me. Why would that make me happy? Because it’s not about me.
Many of you have chosen Adventure because we’re not the norm. You like the differences in how we do things, how we say things, and how we look at things. The danger for you and me now is that we can destroy the very things we love by not being vigilant to protect those things and by letting laziness or self-comfort get in the way of our god-assigned mission and our godly priorities.
The night of the Christmas Eve Service, I was stressed out. I was worried about the weather and if anyone would come. I was worried about some techno issues we were having with getting the lyrics on the screen. I was worried about the sound system. I was a bit apprehensive for Matt and his friends playing for the first time. I was a bit apprehensive about not having a teaching time. None of those deserved the worry time I gave them, but that’s a weakness I’m still working on.
It was during the Lord’s Supper time in the first of the Christmas Eve services when it all came back into perspective for me. We had it set up in self-serve format to allow people to come up with their family and share before going home for Christmas. I was standing up here watching over the trays for the Lord’s Supper when a man whose face was wet with tears came and stood between the trays and thrust his shaking hand up to me to shake in greeting, and he said, “Pray for me, father.” That told me a lot about him already. I said to him, “Sure, dude, what’s up?” He said, “This will be the first Christmas Eve as an adult that I will be able to remember.”
I congratulated him, and suddenly, all my stress about technology and music and weather and people’s approval all melted away and I thought, “This is why we keep coming back week after week. This is what it’s all about.
- This is why we wipe tables even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we sweep floors even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we clean toilets even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we prepare food even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we practice music even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we make worship folders even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we work in the nursery even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we teach kids even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we do any number of other things even if no one says thank you.”
It was a matter of my regaining focus, re-establishing priorities, and being mature. You may be having that same struggle. I wanna invite you to commit to those three things in your life, today:
Refocus
Reprioritize
Regain my maturity
I’m gonna go a different direction from what I had originally planned. I’ll get back to Luke next week. I had an experience at our Christmas Eve service that caused me to think and reflect, and the first weekend of the year is a good day for us to do that together and be reminded what our mission is.
Many of you are new to Adventure, and there are some basic things about us you need to know to understand who we are and why we do some of the things we do. Others of you have been here a while, and quite honestly, we all need to be reminded why we’re here and not somewhere else, or why we don’t do things like Bettendorf Christian Church, or Christ United Methodist Church, or Heritage Wesleyan, or Harvest Bible Church, or Trinity Lutheran or (insert congregational name here). Those are all GREAT congregations and we’re all on the same team and we’re probably 99% in agreement with each other theologically, but you can see some clear differences in methodology. There’s a good reason for that – and it’s not that we’re better or smarter than someone else. It’s just that we’re different. We’re called to different people (which we’ll talk about it a few minutes) and God uses a broad net when He fishes for the souls of men and women in order to catch as many as He can.
The first part of this lesson is for the newer people, and the latter part is for those who’ve been here a while or have been Christ-followers for several years.
I grew up in the Church. All four of my brothers have served as pastors. Our dad was a pastor. He recently retired after 50 years of pastoring.
I was born on Christmas Eve 1960, and I’ve been in Church nearly every weekend since Eisenhower was the president. I became a Christ-follower the week Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The bulk of my growing years was in two congregations, one that was 1 year old when we moved there in 1964, and another we moved to in 1971 (they 150 years old this past fall). That’s where I met my wife. She was in the third grade and I was in the fifth grade, and she was holding an apple pie. It was love at first sight. And I liked her, too.
I was ordained into the ministry nearly 26 years ago. I started as a youth pastor, but I’ve pastored four older congregations. Then God let us plant Adventure, my fifth (and probably final) congregation. Sometime during the last six months of 2008, I preached my 5,000 sermon. For eight years, I hosted an online forum for 60,000+ pastors from all denominations.
I tell you all that to tell you this: When I talk to you about congregations and how they function and what they become, I hope you can see I’m not speaking from a vacuum of knowledge or experience.
I also tell you this because the story you are about to hear is also a part of your story, and I think you should know these things.
Since the late 1980’s, though we didn’t wanna do it ourselves, Steph and I have carried a burden for starting new congregations, helping with fund-raising, visitation, teaching, and so on. In 1993, I joined the staff of a medical mission as their International Project Director because it allowed us to be a part of planting new congregations all over the world. You can go to my FaceBook page and see all the countries I worked in.
The excessive travel schedule and internal problems within the mission’s leadership took their toll on my health and led me to resign, and it left our family wondering what God had in store for us. We still had a burden for planting new congregations, but our options came down to moving to Nicaragua to assist in a Church planting there, or a return to the local ministry in the states.
The Lord led us to an older established congregation in the Des Moines on January 1, 1995. There was an immediate concern that caught our attention: It’s was I call “The Graying” of Midwestern congregations. In other words, congregationes had more gray hair than any other color (except maybe that funky blue some old ladies like). There’s nothing wrong with gray hair. It pretty much happens to everyone in some degree (it’s why I went from a goatee to a fu). And while those gray congregations were all very stable, they were also too stable. They were not attracting younger people, so two harsh realities pop up immediately:
First, it was simply a matter of time until those congregations literally died of old age.
This happened to my grandmother’s congregation. They refused to allow change, and it ended up being a handful of widows who could no longer afford to keep it open. It’s gone now.
Second, there seemed to be no serious effort being made to reach the younger generations.
True, nearly all congregations admit the need to reach young people, but in reality very little effort is being directed toward them. New people are welcomed to the congregation only if they dress like the older people, sing like the older people, and behave like the older people, but congregations are not generally willing to do any changing themselves to make that happen.
In 1995, I was asked to serve on the Board of Directors of the Christian Evangelistic Mission of Iowa (CEM) and had done so for several months when the other board members asked if we’d be interested in planting a new congregation in the Quad Cities. We had never heard of the Quad Cities and had no idea where they were.
About that same time, I had driven to Kansas City to participate in a Church growth conference to learn what I could do to help break our older Des Moines-area congregation through this seeming numerical barrier. I loaded up all of the information I could gather about our congregation and the area including stats, newsletters, and maps and headed out to be there when the doors were unlocked at the conference site.
The conference speaker was C. Peter Wagner (a pleasant and energetic “Colonel Sanders” look-alike) who is considered the leading expert in Church growth through-out the world. We hit it off and spent several hours over the next day-and-a-half laying out a growth plan for our congregation. At the end of our visit, Mr. Wagner said, “You know, it's gonna be very hard in an older congregation to do the things you need to do and make the changes you need to make to reach the people you need to be reaching. Older Christians in older congregations have a vested interest in keeping things they way they are. Have you ever thought about planting a new congregation?”
I told him I wasn’t interested in that, and he told me, “Well, I think you should consider it. You’ve got the right ideas and approach. If I were you, I’d find a way to start a new congregation with the new style.”
I returned home with a plan which was generally accepted by the eldership but soundly rejected the congregation’s board at the behest of a couple of overbearing men who enjoyed pushing the board around. I went home ready to leave the ministry behind. Steph and I began praying about what to do because we were convinced the status quo was not the Lord’s will for His Church.
You see, we believed the congregation had it backwards. We believe that the Church is the one organization that exists for the benefit of its nonmembers. So once a person becomes a part of the Church, the way they have their needs met is by helping those outside the Church. Many congregations believe they exist for their members, their “share holders”, and they confuse evangelism with getting more share holders.
We didn’t see it that way then. We don’t see it that way now, either.
Within about ten days, Steph and I received unsolicited inquiries about planting new congregations in California, Texas, and Colorado, which we were now becoming open to, but our love for the Midwest drew us to investigate CEM’s suggestion for a new congregation in the Quad Cities.
One of the first things I did when I first came to the QC to have a look at it was to visit a dozen different congregations to talk with them about their ministries. I found that the group absent from most congregations in town was those who are between 18-39 years of age with families. It became clear to me that they were to be our target.
One of the key traits of Adventure, from its inception, is that we have not kept it any secret that we have a specific target group, and we make no apology for it. Some older Christians recoil at the thought of a congregation having a target group, but the reality is that all congregations target someone even if they don’t admit it. God has always had target groups for His workers. Always.
Jesus Himself said the He had come for the Lost Sheep of Israel. He accepted everyone, but His focus remained on Israel.
The Apostle Paul’s focus was on the Gentiles – the non-Jews. The Apostle Peter’s focus was on the Jews. We talked about this with the Gospels: Matthew was targeting Jews; Mark was targeting poor Gentiles throughout the Roman Empire (the same people Paul wrote to in the book of Romans, which is why so many of the names are shared between the two books); Luke was targeting educated Gentiles through his friend Theophilus; John was targeting Greeks who questioned the deity of Jesus.
And I can go into any congregation in America and sit through five minutes of their worship service and tell you who they are targeting whether they admit it or not. (One of the dirty secrets of many congregations is that they are targeting people from other congregations, something we have never done, do not do, and will never do.)
That doesn’t mean anyone outside that age group isn’t welcomed. Everyone is welcomed here, but our target is 18-39 year olds. I love the fact two of our most consistent attenders were in their 90’s, yet they fit in here. Like Jesus with the Roman Centurion or the Caananite woman, we welcome everyone, and will minister to everyone, but we still have as our primary focus unChurched 18-39 year olds, and we won’t change or sacrifice that target.
My research on 18-39 year olds revealed they like to spend time with friends, like live music, enjoy the outdoors, enjoy the social atmosphere of pubs and coffee houses, feel safest in informal settings, and they don’t waste time on what they don’t need.
The book of Acts tells us that the Church is to come together for four things: fellowship, prayer, teaching of the Apostle’s doctrine, and the breaking of bread. But it doesn’t tell us how we have to do those things, so we worked to find a way that fulfills those four points for our target group. That’s what we’ve designed here: a comfortable place with practical teaching that lets you take something home to practice each week.
Eight years ago, the Church had a surprise birthday party for me at the Armory on Brady. It was my 40th birthday. Get this: It was part of celebrating my departure from the target group. At that party, several people asked me, “So, is the target group 18-40 years old now?” I told them, “No. It’s still 18-39. In ten years, it will still be 18-39, and 100 years from now, it will still be 18-39 years of age.”
That, in a small nutshell, gives some of you noobs you some of the history of Adventure.
Now, for those who you who have been around Church for a long time…
I turned 48 years old on Christmas Eve. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not with yourself, but the older I get, the stiffer I get. Things I used to be able to do don’t come as easily as they used to. And there are other things I’ve noticed, like how I don’t much like change. I like my routines. I like what I like, and I don’t like anything else.
Steph and I are only two years apart age-wise (I graduated high school in 1979, she graduated in 1981), but it’s enough to reveal a difference: We once went to a mall, and while she was heading out to shop for clothes, I was headed to the sporting goods places, and we parted with the comment, “Hey, we oughta get a Chicago CD while we’re here.” We met back at the car a few hours later and headed for home, and we laughed when we realized we had each found and bought a CD. I had bought Chicago’s Greatest Hits 1972-1981, and she had bought Chicago’s Greatest Hits 1982-1989. (Those are more descriptions than exact names of the albums, but you Chicago fans know exactly what I mean!)
Her choice wasn’t better, and mine wasn’t worse. They were just a difference in personal taste.
We’ve raised kids since then, and they’ve brought a lot of joy our house, but if you come to our house, you’re more likely to hear Five Iron Frenzy or Miley Cyrus or the Cheetah Girls or the Jonas Brothers than Chicago. Why? Because unlike the Amish, it isn’t our desire to demand that our kids pretend they live in the 1870’s OR the 1970’s just because we enjoyed it when we did.
I hafta confess: I really enjoy “That 70’s Show.” I grew up with those guys! But make no mistake: those were good days me, they were our days, but they are not today. I refuse to live my life wishing for the past or for time to stand still. That’s not fair to my kids whom God has called to live their lives. Living in the past doesn’t honor God. In Jeremiah 8:5, God laments that His people keep going backwards and hold on to illusions. He laments that they refused to change!
The average lifespan of an American is about 76 years. Did you know that the average life span of an American congregation is also about 76 years? The difference is that you and I can’t help our physical age. My age increases daily with incredible regularity (if only other parts of my life were as regular)! David reflects on that reality in Psalm 39…
Psalm 39:4 (NLT) - “Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered—how fleeting my life is.”
Why remind me of my mortality? That seems like such a downer! But it’s so I can make the best use of my time and my life while I am here. I don’t know about you, but as of my 48th birthday, I’ve quit counting how long I’ve been here and have started counting how long I have left! It’s about being responsible for my attitude and priorities. You see, I can’t necessarily control my own life expectancy, but I can control my attitude and my priorities as I age.
One of my life verses is this:
Psalm 71:17-18 (NASB) - O God, You have taught me from my youth, And I still declare Your wondrous deeds. 18 And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me, Until I declare Your strength to this generation, Your power to all who are to come.
That has been the driving verse behind my life for the past 15 years. I wanna share God’s glory and strength with this generation, and I want to set the stage for that same news to be shared with the following generations, too.
Proverbs 13:22 (NASB) - A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children…
That is just as true of a spiritual heritage, too! If I don’t leave a congregation that can outlive me, then I have failed my grandchildren! It’s all a matter of keeping my focus on my purpose, on my attitude and on my priorities...making sure those honor God, not that they keep me comfortable.
While humans die a physical death in old age, congregations, however, don’t die at 76 years of age because of physical death. They die a spiritual death. They die because of poor attitude and selfish priorities among the people. They die because they become self-centered, their own target group, their only focus, their only concern.
You may be thinking, “What’s this got to do with anything? We’re not old. We’re a Church plant.” FYI:
A “Church Plant” is a congregation less than five years old.
A “Young Church” is a congregation 5-10 years old.
An “Established Congregation” is one that is 10+ years old.
We’re no longer a “Church Plant” or a “Young Congregation”. We are an established congregation. In other words, we’re not a kid any more. We’re an adult congregation. So now we have some adult choices about personal attitude and corporate priorities and what our legacy will be. That’s what we’ve got to grapple with, but we can’t grapple long. We must act.
Let me phrase one of those choices like this: Do I demand that my kids keep listening only to Chicago (1972-1981), or do I allow them to listen to the Jo Bros?
This applies across a broad spectrum, but let me stay with the music thing for a second since we’ve added the joy of a new band this weekend. You who have grown up in the Church or been around Church for very many years know that one of the most divisive issues in a congregation is not the theology, not the budget, not the kids program, but the style of music in worship. I think Satan likes that because his position in heaven, before he rebelled against God, was that of chief musician, and he will use his old occupation to drag down any weak Christ-follower in that area.
Let me come at this from a different angle:
When I was in Albania in 1994, the Albanians had only been free for a few months. I was meeting with a group that had been a small underground congregation during the Communist era. They had been forced to meet in secret because Christianity was punishable by imprisonment in the mines, and many people died in the mines, but now they met openly and had become a large group with many brand new believers.
They began singing a song together, but it was in Italian, not Albanian. The few missionaries that had been there had been Italian and insisted people sing in Italian. Most of the people knew what the song was about, but they were singing in a style that wasn’t theirs, in a language that wasn’t theirs, with words they didn’t understand.
One of the girls there was a professional translator, so I asked her to take Psalm 42, in Albanian, and set it to the tune of some Albanian song everyone would know. When we went back the next day, she had already set it to the tune of some old Albanian love song and was teaching it to people. I watched them sing this song over and over for about 90 minutes. First they sang it slowly with tears, then faster and faster with dancing. It was a celebration. For the first time in their lives these young Christ-followers were singing these words in their own language to their own tune:
Psalm 42:1-2 (NASB) - As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God?
An appropriate passage for people who had risked death daily for the Gospel. The tears flowed from my eyes as I watched them worship God in their own language for the first time. I’ll be honest with you: Albanians can’t sing. I’m serious. It’s like bad gypsy music. It left a lot to be desired by my American ears. But I enjoyed watching them sing in their own language, and I would NEVER honestly disparage someone else’s praise language toward God. Why shouldn’t people be free to worship God in their own cultural language?
When my boys were little, we were having bed time prayers. Josh was praying and said something Caleb felt needed to be corrected out loud, and Josh rebutted him in his prayer with a shout, “I’m not talking to you, Caleb!” The Albanians, whether or not I enjoy their music, were not talking to me, but it was beautiful to God’s ears.
It’s not appropriate for me, as someone who claims to love God, to criticize someone else’s musical style when they are singing praise to God. They’re not singing to me! If they ever are, I’ve may have some words of advice for them, but until then, it would be pretty narcissistic to think I hafta approve of how they praise God musically.
Now, we’re TEN years of age. The congregation can’t control the passing of time, but the congregation can control whether or not it gets old. I’ve said from the beginning that someday Adventure is gonna have one of the coolest bunches of old people to ever be a part of a congregation. I can already see the prayer request: “Please pray for our Seniors Pastor Liston. He broke his hip rappelling in the Palisades, but says to tell everyone the Maquoketa Caving trip for 70’s and older is still on next weekend.” And we are gonna cheer on those younger generations who follow us and we are going to empower them and treat them so well that they will want to be us!
You see, the struggle the Church at large has failed to win (as it ages) is one of having the attitude and priorities of Jesus. We have allowed people to selfishly redefine the mission of the Church away from a place to serve God and others to a place where they feel entitled to having people serve them and do everything with their approval.
In one of the older congregations I pastored, there was a family who told me if I didn’t wear a tie when I was in front of people, they would leave the congregation. Another family warned me to keep a tie and jacket and wingtip shoes handy in my office at all times in case of an emergency or they would leave the congregation. I never really understood that because the only emergency I could think of would be a fire, and I’d think throwing the tie and jacket and shoes on the fire would only make it worse!
Yet another family told me that if we ever changed the music, they’d leave because they’d already left one congregation and weren’t afraid to do it again! I can’t explain how ashamed and embarrassed I was for them that they weren’t embarrassed by their own childishness! Again, in the book of Jeremiah, God lamented that His people had gotten so selfish and so self-involved that they’d forgotten how to be embarrassed when they were stupid.
Can I confess to you that one of my goals is to someday retire from here and leave this place behind with music I am not comfortable with? Why? Because it will mean that the congregation has kept reaching out to new generations and grown beyond me. Why would that make me happy? Because it’s not about me.
Many of you have chosen Adventure because we’re not the norm. You like the differences in how we do things, how we say things, and how we look at things. The danger for you and me now is that we can destroy the very things we love by not being vigilant to protect those things and by letting laziness or self-comfort get in the way of our god-assigned mission and our godly priorities.
The night of the Christmas Eve Service, I was stressed out. I was worried about the weather and if anyone would come. I was worried about some techno issues we were having with getting the lyrics on the screen. I was worried about the sound system. I was a bit apprehensive for Matt and his friends playing for the first time. I was a bit apprehensive about not having a teaching time. None of those deserved the worry time I gave them, but that’s a weakness I’m still working on.
It was during the Lord’s Supper time in the first of the Christmas Eve services when it all came back into perspective for me. We had it set up in self-serve format to allow people to come up with their family and share before going home for Christmas. I was standing up here watching over the trays for the Lord’s Supper when a man whose face was wet with tears came and stood between the trays and thrust his shaking hand up to me to shake in greeting, and he said, “Pray for me, father.” That told me a lot about him already. I said to him, “Sure, dude, what’s up?” He said, “This will be the first Christmas Eve as an adult that I will be able to remember.”
I congratulated him, and suddenly, all my stress about technology and music and weather and people’s approval all melted away and I thought, “This is why we keep coming back week after week. This is what it’s all about.
- This is why we wipe tables even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we sweep floors even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we clean toilets even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we prepare food even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we practice music even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we make worship folders even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we work in the nursery even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we teach kids even if no one says thank you.
- This is why we do any number of other things even if no one says thank you.”
It was a matter of my regaining focus, re-establishing priorities, and being mature. You may be having that same struggle. I wanna invite you to commit to those three things in your life, today:
Refocus
Reprioritize
Regain my maturity
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