Open Source Continuing Education

Another idea I have been working on as a way to encourage clergy to continue in education while also keeping costs down and using the collective expertise/wisdom of the clergy community of the Central Texas Conference.

You can read the beginning proposal of Open Source Class (a working name) here.

My friend Sarah commented that this idea might work (with modifications) for staff development not just at churches but in any organization.

No one could restrain him any more...

Mark 5:1-20 is the beginning of one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible.  Over the weekend I was able to spend a little Lectio on this wonderful story and came out with an interpretation that deeply spoke to me and where I feel my situation is.  I share it here in case there are others who are like me.

The man lives in a culture that builds up walls and fortifies their position (Gerasene means a place surrounded by a wall).  Perhaps he has been seeking for a way to live his life and many people have come to him and given him advice on how to live.  Of course the advice given is advice to become another wall builder.  So he tries, but it does not work.  As he moves closer to the age where he can have influence, people try to restrain him with chains they have made.  These chains are broken by this man's intensity to find his way to live.  He is told by a "legion" of people to become like them -a wall builder - and he becomes frustrated and angry on these ineffective models.  The man is restless trying to find a model that he can pattern his life after that is not destructive or violent or wall building or fortifying.  His intensity to find a model as well as the pressure of the community to become like them, drives him mad and into habits of self destruction and pain.  

Then Jesus appears.  

The man has become jaded at finding a model when he falls at the feet of Jesus.  He has fallen at the feet of so many people looking for the way to live only to find the advice given is rooted in wall building and violence.  The man cries out,  "What have you to do with me Jesus.  Please do not torment me, don't give me more of the same advice!"  Jesus commands the other models (the legion of demons) to come out in order to make room for a new model that has not ever been seen before in that area of wall builders.  The demons run into swine and do what they do best - destroy themselves.  

The man finds a new model in Jesus and is freed.  But now the community is fearful of not only Jesus but this man who chooses to live not as a wall builder - not like they want him to live.  The community asks Jesus to leave so that no others may disrupt the wall building system.  Jesus leaves and the man pleads to go with him for he wants so badly to be with people who are like him - un-walled people.  Jesus wants this man to go to the other cities, the Decapolis (ten cities) and help break down walls, liberate others and share the new model.

The community of wall builders are amazed - perhaps realizing their way of living (building walls) is not longer functional or healthy.

As I move closer to ordination, I am involved in more and more conversations in which other ministers offer up a model for ministry for me to follow.  I feel that I am being fought over by different camps who want me to be "like them".  I long for liberation from these models that are hurtful for me.  I long for Jesus to enter into my life and show me a way to "do ministry" that is sustainable and fruitful.

This is my prayer as I move toward June.

Grow to the 5th

Recently I have been thinking about a focused mission for the local church I serve at.  At the Church I serve there are a number of wonderful ministries which go on but there is also a great lack of communication and focus.  It is very good to be so diversified, however that diversity comes at a cost of everyone has their "pet ministry" which is allowed to exist with only a loose connection to the overall mission of the local church.  This is not very "connectional" as we say in the UMC and it creates a number of minor to major frustrations.  For instance:

We wonder about the low numbers at some ministries which are really great ministries
We wonder how to help people "plug in" and serve
We wonder how to "pitch" the church's mission to our neighbors
We wonder why we are not growing in ways we want to grow
We wonder why there is a lack of communication between groups and people

We end up wondering about a great number of things which I believe could be alleviated if there was a directly focused mission for the local church to use to plug their "pet ministry" into as well as empower people to create new ministries while knowing they are not standing alone.

So in light of some of this as well as conversations with others and an awareness of some of the amazing work done by staff and two committees of AHUMC, I want to share the idea of "grow to the 5th".

This is not an original idea, rather it builds on a number of other things, those stated above as well as the 5 Practices of a fruitful congregation.

The idea is this:

Each person is given a matrix which has the five practices along the top (Radical hospitality, Passionate worship, Risk-taking mission/service, Intentional faith development and Extravagant generosity).  The are the column headers.  Each column is organized so that all the ministries of the local church are organized to "fit" into one of the columns.  From this matrix people are invited to self assess themselves on a scale from 1 (not engaged) to 5 (fruitful) in each area.

So for instance, you might look at the "Passionate Worship" column and see there are things such as:
Sunday worship
Mid-week worship
Special worship (Ash Wednesday, etc.)
Communion server
Worship committee
Choir
Worship band
Bells 
Choir ensembles
Liturgical dancer
Liturgical reader
Certified Lay speaker
Share a personal testimony 

When you look at this column you might consider how involved you are in worship in light of all the opportunities and give yourself a number from 1-5.  You repeat this process for each column until you have all five of your numbers.

After you have your five numbers, your score might look like this
Hospitality - 3
Worship - 1
Faith development - 3
Mission/Service - 2
Generosity - 2

You are then invited to chart yourself so it might look something like this:

At this point you have a visual tool by which you can then work on "growing to the 5th" ring.  You can choose which areas you want to focus on for a season in order to grow closer to the 5th in that area.  Perhaps you might begin to see that while you might be highly active in the local church your involvement may only be in only one area - leading to an imbalanced spiritual development.

The idea of "growing to the 5th" can also be used to assess the entire local church's ministries.  This can even be a tool for churches in the Central Texas Conference to visually see how close they are to becoming a "5 Star Church" (if you do not know what that is, then you ought to ask your Central Texas Conference minister).

"Growing to the 5th" can also be a tool to talk about and assess how we are doing with the 5 membership vows of "prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness".  Perhaps you want to "grow to the 5th" in your understanding of the 4 Gospels and the book of Acts.  Perhaps you are seeking to better engage 5 spiritual disciples (or any number for that matter) and this would help you be intentional about growing.

Bottom line, "growing to the 5th" is not a silver bullet to cure all the ailments of well intentioned but diluted ministry in a local church. It is however an attempt to focus the efforts of the local church to in order to better increase communication, cross pollination, ability to talk about the "why" of church, and give people goals to work toward (for those of you in the gaming world this functions much like "achievements").

I believe there is a rich mine of ideas in this simple (perhaps plagiarized?) concept.  I invite thoughts on this as well as questions so that we might better begin to shape this into a model which may be helpful for others to plagiarize.