I started learning this concept back in late 1994 just before I moved to pastor my first church in Iowa. I first saw it when I was checking up on that congregation during my interview process with them. (I'll guarantee I did more research into them than they did into me.) I called four unrelated congregations in the area, explained who I was, and asked those churches what they knew about the congregation I was interviewing. Three knew nothing except where it was once I gave the address, and the remaining one didn’t even remember seeing a church at that location. One of the three who remembered it only when I gave the address pastored in a church building about 100 yards south of the one in question – on the same street!
I worked hard at that congregation to make sure it had an identity within the community, but due to their reputation (in some cases a lack of one) I was starting with their deficit. The experience helped me realize how important this concept is.
I put a lot of effort into identity management when Adventure began 12+ years ago. To this day, when people see our logo or even my Jeep, they know who we are, but I've learned about something even better than identity.
I was driving to a meeting at my office one day when I saw a woman parked between the lanes on the interstate (yes, we have interstates in Iowa) with a flat. I made eye contact with her but kept going because I didn’t have time and was sure she’d call someone and be fine. As I pulled off my exit, I felt a pang of guilt and headed back to help her.
I pulled up behind her, got out, asked her to stay in her car, and if she could pop the trunk from the inside. She did, I replaced her flat with her spare, and went up to tell her good bye and to have someone check that spare for her. Her cheeks were wet with tears when I went up to the window. She told me something that shook me: “I saw your Jeep go by, and I saw you see me. I’ve never been to your church, but I’ve heard things, and I knew you’d be back to help me. Thank you.”
Your identity will get you recognized within a community, but your reputation will determine how you are viewed and whether or not you're accepted. Put your emphasis on developing your reputation, not your logo. Think in terms of the reputation and the identity will take care of itself.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Wednesday Planter: Personal Transition #9: People attend where they prefer, not where they are impressed.
I like cool stuff. I've always liked the bleeding edge of creativity. I like being unique. I like doing things that make other people just go "huh?"
I was pushing Saturday evening service as an outreach more than 20 years ago, and the congregation I proposed it to (the one I was pastoring at the time) nearly lynched me. One guy - an elder and a local school district administrator - actually asked me if I really thought the apostles (or any early Christians) would have ever gone to church on Saturday night. So much for the state of public education. :) That's how it's always been for me - a square peg in a round hole.
When I came to Davenport to plant, I was given more freedom than most pastor-types can even imagine in their wildest dreams...and with that came the freedom to be so novel and to be so *"purple" that people would flinch. I still like being that way, but I've learned that being novel and getting people to look at what you're doing and listen to what you saying isn't the same thing as reaching people. It's also not really that good of a goal.
A lot of people knew who we were, but they didn't love us. Being purple got us known, but I still wanted people to prefer us...I wanted them to want to be here with us. We had people, no doubt, but it wasn't until things got boring to me and people still kept on coming that I started to get it.
We were so broke at the time that we kinda gave up on being so unique and just tried to pay the bills. Then when I'd ask new people how they heard about us, it wasn't the direct mail, the (serious waste of money on) TV ads, or even our special events. The truth was that out best outreach was the changed lives they saw in their friends - and it was those changed lives that gave the personal invitation from their friends actual credibility. It was actually accomplishing our goal that made us purple.
That realization caused me to focus more on meeting basic personal needs via our teaching from God's Word and other ministries than worry about being unique. I still like uniqueness (that's part of how God has gifted me), but it's actually about people, about meeting their needs, about seeing their lives changed for the better, and about keeping the focus on those things instead. And now, there's been a different by-product: people not only love our uniqueness, they contribute to it! But better yet, they love us.
And they continue to choose us over many other things they could be doing or places they could be going!
-----
*Godin, Seth (2009). The Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. NY: Portfolio. ISBN-10: 1591843170 / ISBN-13: 978-1591843177
I was pushing Saturday evening service as an outreach more than 20 years ago, and the congregation I proposed it to (the one I was pastoring at the time) nearly lynched me. One guy - an elder and a local school district administrator - actually asked me if I really thought the apostles (or any early Christians) would have ever gone to church on Saturday night. So much for the state of public education. :) That's how it's always been for me - a square peg in a round hole.
When I came to Davenport to plant, I was given more freedom than most pastor-types can even imagine in their wildest dreams...and with that came the freedom to be so novel and to be so *"purple" that people would flinch. I still like being that way, but I've learned that being novel and getting people to look at what you're doing and listen to what you saying isn't the same thing as reaching people. It's also not really that good of a goal.
A lot of people knew who we were, but they didn't love us. Being purple got us known, but I still wanted people to prefer us...I wanted them to want to be here with us. We had people, no doubt, but it wasn't until things got boring to me and people still kept on coming that I started to get it.
We were so broke at the time that we kinda gave up on being so unique and just tried to pay the bills. Then when I'd ask new people how they heard about us, it wasn't the direct mail, the (serious waste of money on) TV ads, or even our special events. The truth was that out best outreach was the changed lives they saw in their friends - and it was those changed lives that gave the personal invitation from their friends actual credibility. It was actually accomplishing our goal that made us purple.
That realization caused me to focus more on meeting basic personal needs via our teaching from God's Word and other ministries than worry about being unique. I still like uniqueness (that's part of how God has gifted me), but it's actually about people, about meeting their needs, about seeing their lives changed for the better, and about keeping the focus on those things instead. And now, there's been a different by-product: people not only love our uniqueness, they contribute to it! But better yet, they love us.
And they continue to choose us over many other things they could be doing or places they could be going!
-----
*Godin, Seth (2009). The Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. NY: Portfolio. ISBN-10: 1591843170 / ISBN-13: 978-1591843177
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Wednesday Planter: Personal Transition #8: From perfectionist to friend.
I'm a perfectionist. When I was in high school, I often spent 30 minutes just on my hair! I think I was the paleontological ancestor of the metro-sexual. Ha! (I'm sure I would hate that kid today if he were still around!)
I think my perfectionism hurt me in my early ministry days. No. Actually I know it did. I didn't call it "perfectionism." I called it "excellence" because that made it God-honoring and sounded professional, but it was still perfectionism - something that masks the fear of not being accepted by others. Doing things “polished and shiny” was my goal. Then I had an epiphany in a really strange location.
It was a restaurant called "Meers" outside of Lawton, OK. It’s a dirty, out-of-the-way, greasy, dilapidated building (last time I was there it was insulated by being wrapping in plastic - the WHOLE building). I went there twice with a friend. The first time, the waitress addressed him by his first name. The second time, she addressed me by mine. It was a strangely welcoming event. I felt as if I were with friends.
I barely remembered her, but she taught me a lesson: People skipped Red Lobster and the Beefeater with their servers in starched and pressed uniforms and drove 25 miles into nowhere to eat in a plastic lined shack because the server knew their name. Their decision was made by personality preference - over quality, by choosing welcomed over catered to. They were choosing where they were comfortable over what made a better social impression. They simply wanted to like where they were.
In reality, the food was just "okay" at Meers, but it was the atmosphere of friendship and the preference people had for that atmosphere that caused the half-hour drive and the sale. Whoa.
Too many of us want the church experience to be perfect rather than comfortable. You can’t have both.
So I've worked hard to put my perfectionism to rest and instead worked to create a place that people would choose to enjoy. Things are still done well - competently, but I'm not so anal about perfection. And guests are greeted on their first visit with the words, “Welcome home.” Some smile. Some cry. Some don’t get it until later. But it works.
I think my perfectionism hurt me in my early ministry days. No. Actually I know it did. I didn't call it "perfectionism." I called it "excellence" because that made it God-honoring and sounded professional, but it was still perfectionism - something that masks the fear of not being accepted by others. Doing things “polished and shiny” was my goal. Then I had an epiphany in a really strange location.
It was a restaurant called "Meers" outside of Lawton, OK. It’s a dirty, out-of-the-way, greasy, dilapidated building (last time I was there it was insulated by being wrapping in plastic - the WHOLE building). I went there twice with a friend. The first time, the waitress addressed him by his first name. The second time, she addressed me by mine. It was a strangely welcoming event. I felt as if I were with friends.
I barely remembered her, but she taught me a lesson: People skipped Red Lobster and the Beefeater with their servers in starched and pressed uniforms and drove 25 miles into nowhere to eat in a plastic lined shack because the server knew their name. Their decision was made by personality preference - over quality, by choosing welcomed over catered to. They were choosing where they were comfortable over what made a better social impression. They simply wanted to like where they were.
In reality, the food was just "okay" at Meers, but it was the atmosphere of friendship and the preference people had for that atmosphere that caused the half-hour drive and the sale. Whoa.
Too many of us want the church experience to be perfect rather than comfortable. You can’t have both.
So I've worked hard to put my perfectionism to rest and instead worked to create a place that people would choose to enjoy. Things are still done well - competently, but I'm not so anal about perfection. And guests are greeted on their first visit with the words, “Welcome home.” Some smile. Some cry. Some don’t get it until later. But it works.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Wednesday Planter: Personal Transition #7: From my head to my heart.
This post will be twice as long as usual because of the scope of the struggle and who it affects.
I used to be a legalist. It comes from my perfectionist personality and my spiritual heritage of being from a group who loved their reputation as “People of the Book”. When you're a legalist, you learn to esteem knowledge with great sincerity and enthusiasm. However, legalists tend to believe the more they know the stronger they are in their faith. They subtly trust in head-knowledge rather than heart-faith (not necessarily mutually exclusive, but not the same thing). My faith was in what I knew, not what I trusted in. (Btw, a legalist will readily object to what I am saying and accuse me of disrespecting God’s Word. If you’re doing that right now, the alarm sirens going off in your head are about YOU, not about me.)
Two things helped my knowledge become actual faith by making the leap from my head to my heart.
The first came when I met a severely mentally handicapped young man. I don't even remember his name or the circumstance of our meeting. I just remember that he talked about how much he loved God, how'd he given his life to him, and how he loved living every day for him. That really bugged the snot out of me. That kid had something I had not yet experienced, and that was beyond my ability to understand. This kid could barely speak, let alone understand the Christian snob languages of Greek and Hebrew. In fact, he couldn't read at all! All he could do was listen to what he was taught and believe it.
It forced me to be honest with myself: I didn't love God so much as I knew He was Sovereign and gonna get His way anyhow, so I didn't have a lot of choices but to do what He said. Doing the right things were my defense, not actually loving Him. I figured a lot of people "loved" Him and yet weren't gonna be in Heaven.
The second came when I was studying a rabbinical commentary (like any good MacArthurite legalist – or disciple of Rob Bell! Ha!) and read the footnotes on the story of Abraham and Isaac. I'd always thought that God had flatly ordered Abraham and that he had no choice but to offer Isaac. After all, God was sovereign. Abraham had to obey or he was toast. "Take your son..." Yeah, let him be the toast instead.
Then I learned about a little participle in the Hebrew: na'. When na' is added to the imperative command in the Hebrew, it "softens the command to an entreaty" (The JPS Torah Commentary on Genesis, 1989, page 151). It makes it a request between friends. "Abraham had absolute freedom of choice. Should he refuse, he would not incur any guilt" (ibid). So it hit me that a hero of the faith actually demonstrated trust because of the relationship rather than the fear of punishment. Wow. And had Abraham chosen not to offer the boy, God would not have counted it against him as guilt.
I heard a guy say once that most people will miss Heaven by 18 inches - the distance from the brain to the heart - but it was only then that I understood it. Strange that a character from the OT would introduce a student of the NT to grace.
I'm not discounting "fearing" God. One of my favorite scenes in the movie Evan Almighty is when God (Morgan Freeman) shows up in the car Evan's in and Evan (Jim Carrey) jerks and screams in terror. God laughs and says, "It's okay, son, that's the beginning of wisdom”. :)
The thing is, under the New Testament, God calls us "friend." Who fears a friend? Remember this verse?
John 15:15 - "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you."
Friend. God is still sovereign, but I actually like Him - no, make that LOVE Him - and while I still respect God extremely and profoundly, I don't live and act out of fear of Him. Maybe that's what the Bible means when it says:
1 John 4:18 - "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love."
I think I really like being a Christ-follower. And I love that I don't hafta be fearful to be one, nor do I hafta fear God or what He wants from me. In fact, it's not scary at all anymore.
I used to be a legalist. It comes from my perfectionist personality and my spiritual heritage of being from a group who loved their reputation as “People of the Book”. When you're a legalist, you learn to esteem knowledge with great sincerity and enthusiasm. However, legalists tend to believe the more they know the stronger they are in their faith. They subtly trust in head-knowledge rather than heart-faith (not necessarily mutually exclusive, but not the same thing). My faith was in what I knew, not what I trusted in. (Btw, a legalist will readily object to what I am saying and accuse me of disrespecting God’s Word. If you’re doing that right now, the alarm sirens going off in your head are about YOU, not about me.)
Two things helped my knowledge become actual faith by making the leap from my head to my heart.
The first came when I met a severely mentally handicapped young man. I don't even remember his name or the circumstance of our meeting. I just remember that he talked about how much he loved God, how'd he given his life to him, and how he loved living every day for him. That really bugged the snot out of me. That kid had something I had not yet experienced, and that was beyond my ability to understand. This kid could barely speak, let alone understand the Christian snob languages of Greek and Hebrew. In fact, he couldn't read at all! All he could do was listen to what he was taught and believe it.
It forced me to be honest with myself: I didn't love God so much as I knew He was Sovereign and gonna get His way anyhow, so I didn't have a lot of choices but to do what He said. Doing the right things were my defense, not actually loving Him. I figured a lot of people "loved" Him and yet weren't gonna be in Heaven.
The second came when I was studying a rabbinical commentary (like any good MacArthurite legalist – or disciple of Rob Bell! Ha!) and read the footnotes on the story of Abraham and Isaac. I'd always thought that God had flatly ordered Abraham and that he had no choice but to offer Isaac. After all, God was sovereign. Abraham had to obey or he was toast. "Take your son..." Yeah, let him be the toast instead.
Then I learned about a little participle in the Hebrew: na'. When na' is added to the imperative command in the Hebrew, it "softens the command to an entreaty" (The JPS Torah Commentary on Genesis, 1989, page 151). It makes it a request between friends. "Abraham had absolute freedom of choice. Should he refuse, he would not incur any guilt" (ibid). So it hit me that a hero of the faith actually demonstrated trust because of the relationship rather than the fear of punishment. Wow. And had Abraham chosen not to offer the boy, God would not have counted it against him as guilt.
I heard a guy say once that most people will miss Heaven by 18 inches - the distance from the brain to the heart - but it was only then that I understood it. Strange that a character from the OT would introduce a student of the NT to grace.
I'm not discounting "fearing" God. One of my favorite scenes in the movie Evan Almighty is when God (Morgan Freeman) shows up in the car Evan's in and Evan (Jim Carrey) jerks and screams in terror. God laughs and says, "It's okay, son, that's the beginning of wisdom”. :)
The thing is, under the New Testament, God calls us "friend." Who fears a friend? Remember this verse?
John 15:15 - "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you."
Friend. God is still sovereign, but I actually like Him - no, make that LOVE Him - and while I still respect God extremely and profoundly, I don't live and act out of fear of Him. Maybe that's what the Bible means when it says:
1 John 4:18 - "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love."
I think I really like being a Christ-follower. And I love that I don't hafta be fearful to be one, nor do I hafta fear God or what He wants from me. In fact, it's not scary at all anymore.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Wednesday Planter: Personal Transition #6: From self-focused to Kingdom-focused.
I've worked in a string of several very shallow, very selfish congregations. That sounds harsh, but it's true. It's also true that each of those shallow, selfish congregations had a shallow, selfish pastor at the time I was there. So, honestly, we both got what we deserved. :)
We live in a me-oriented society - so people (including Christians) are trained to be selfish from their first breath. That carries over into the church-at-large, too. Many Christians believe that the Church exists to serve and cater to them, but not to actually grow them or challenge them.
Rather than baptize people when they made their confession of faith, I saved up those baptisms until Sunday when we could do them in front of the church and people could say, "Man, that pastor's sure doing a good job getting those people baptized." You know, it was job security - as I've said before, I didn't see those people so much as additions to the Kingdom as I saw them as job security, the proverbial loaf of bread.
I had to move from fulfilling a perverted personal need (the need to be liked and affirmed) to instilling a kingdom motivation inside me: the desire to be like Jesus. Unfortunately, my unhealthy need for approval was burying the healthy choice I needed to make. I was trapped in a life-paradigm I couldn't get out of.
A pastor friend I admired finally confronted me: "I don't know what to do with you. You're so concerned about what people think. You're so locked into doing rather than being. You wanna do what the apostles did, but you don't wanna be what the apostles were. Ministry wasn't a career for them. It was a lifestyle. It had nothing to do with a paycheck. They would have done it - and did - for free while doing other things. Until you come to that point, you're never gonna get it."
Those were some of the most painful words ever spoken to me, and it took me several more years of professional abuse and quite a few hours with a Christian counselor before I could start to get it. Honestly, I know that I still don't get it, not at the level I should, but at least I've headed in that direction and away from my own phobias and insecurities. That feels good.
We live in a me-oriented society - so people (including Christians) are trained to be selfish from their first breath. That carries over into the church-at-large, too. Many Christians believe that the Church exists to serve and cater to them, but not to actually grow them or challenge them.
Rather than baptize people when they made their confession of faith, I saved up those baptisms until Sunday when we could do them in front of the church and people could say, "Man, that pastor's sure doing a good job getting those people baptized." You know, it was job security - as I've said before, I didn't see those people so much as additions to the Kingdom as I saw them as job security, the proverbial loaf of bread.
I had to move from fulfilling a perverted personal need (the need to be liked and affirmed) to instilling a kingdom motivation inside me: the desire to be like Jesus. Unfortunately, my unhealthy need for approval was burying the healthy choice I needed to make. I was trapped in a life-paradigm I couldn't get out of.
A pastor friend I admired finally confronted me: "I don't know what to do with you. You're so concerned about what people think. You're so locked into doing rather than being. You wanna do what the apostles did, but you don't wanna be what the apostles were. Ministry wasn't a career for them. It was a lifestyle. It had nothing to do with a paycheck. They would have done it - and did - for free while doing other things. Until you come to that point, you're never gonna get it."
Those were some of the most painful words ever spoken to me, and it took me several more years of professional abuse and quite a few hours with a Christian counselor before I could start to get it. Honestly, I know that I still don't get it, not at the level I should, but at least I've headed in that direction and away from my own phobias and insecurities. That feels good.
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