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 David Posthuma
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The Church's Greatest Asset
David Posthuma @ Nov 12, 2008 12:02 PM
Introduction Psychologists have commented for years that humanity utilizes approximately 11% of our brain capacity. Based upon this assertion, many people have speculated about human potential…the great things we could accomplish if only we could access the unused 89% of our intellect. The same could be said of the Christian Church. Most local churches mobilize only 10% to 20% of their human resources into ministry service. Just imagine what could be accomplished for Christ’s Kingdom if we could raise the mobilization percentage to 80% or even 90% of our membership? I believe this incredible goal is achievable. However, if this goal is to be achieved, pastoral leaders must learn to respect the ministry temperaments of each congregation member. When we learn to respect our people, and the manner in which God designed them for ministry service, we discover that the Church’s greatest asset is its human resources. Incredible Human Potential God created humanity with phenomenal potential. In the biblical account of the Tower of Babel found in Genesis 11:6, we learn why God confused human language: “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them” (NIV). God openly acknowledges that nothing is impossible for humanity to accomplish when we are unified. I believe God introduced verbal disunity, not because he wanted to limit human potential, but because He desired that we find our unity and capability through Him. Paul emphasizes this theme of renewed unity in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6…There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men (NIV). The Holy Spirit has restored unity within humanity…at least for those who follow Christ…that was essentially lost at the If the local church is to mobilize the majority of their members into ministry service, church leaders must first believe in the incredible potential of the human resources that God has given them. They must view their people as having far greater potential than being mere “helpers” to the pastoral staff. In addition, they must help their human resources to also understand and act upon their incredible potential. Sadly, this is often not the case. Pastors constantly lament to me that “they can’t get their people to do anything”. Or they claim, “My people are so lazy”. I believe these negative attitudes are the result of a dysfunctional mobilization methodology. In practice, most pastoral leaders make repeated public announcements regarding volunteer opportunities, yet very few people respond. Recently I was speaking with an associate pastor of a 700 member church about this very issue. For nearly two months his church had been advertising for a fourth-grade children’s small group leader with very little success. The few people who had responded to the advertisement were good hearted servant-types, but were not properly gifted by God for this position. A foundational problem with advertising ministry opportunities is that such advertisements communicate the organization’s need…to have a service hole filled…but neglects to consider the emotive dynamics that inspire individuals to see this opportunity as anything more than additional busy-work in their life. People do not want more busyness in their life…but they do want their life to have meaning…to have kingdom impact. God has embedded within our
God created me with a deep desire to create effective and innovative strategic plans and to help those plans become a reality. If Planners belonged to your church, and your leadership did not empower them to serve in a manner that honors God’s design and ministry intent for their life, then how long do you think the Planner would support your church? Answer: Probably not very long. Let’s illustrate this point using the church advertisement for a fourth-grade small group leader, mentioned earlier. The church website listed the following “Volunteer Needs”: current VOLUNTEER needs Welcome Team - Email the Discipleship Pastor
Children & Family - Email the Children's & Family Pastor
If you would like additional information about these volunteer opportunities, please email us or call the church office at These job postings are listed in terms of prioritizing the programming “needs” of the organization over the “needs” of the people within the church to make a significant impact for Christ in this world. The listings make no effort to appeal to the heart’s cry passions that naturally inspire people, nor do these job postings convey the Kingdom impact potential of serving in these various capacities. So how could we convey this website posting more effectively so that the right kind of person would respond? Begin by reviewing the sixteen heart’s cry statements. Out of the sixteen listed, which profile best fits the core purpose of a small group leader? The Guide profile is likely the best fit for serving as a small group leader because his or her passion is to “help people grow spiritually”. I would suggest the posting could be better conveyed as follows: Kingdom impact opportunities Are You Passionate About Helping People Grow Spiritually? If your passion is to disciple people so that they can discover and mature in their faith in Christ, and if you want to invest your life in a manner that can have a Kingdom impact for generations to come, then an exciting opportunity exists for you to influence the emerging generations to discover and follow Christ. For more information, please contact the Pastor of Discipleship. An even more effective strategy would be to avoid advertised postings all together. Whenever pastoral leaders advertise a ministry opportunity, it places church leadership in a very dangerous position. People will respond to advertised postings with a desire to serve. However, many respondents will not be properly gifted or sufficiently mature to serve effectively in the advertised service role. This means that pastoral leaders are forced to either reject the candidate…a leading cause of back-door exiting of people from our churches…or accept the candidate knowing they are not properly suited for the ministry role and will likely have minimal ministry impact, or even fail. People who have had minimal ministry impact, or who have failed in ministry service will rarely volunteer to serve again. This is why it would be beneficial in our current example to have a database listing all the Guides within the church. Even better, what if the database could search for Guides who were skilled in serving children? We could then identify the leading ministry candidates who would serve well as a small group leader within the children’s ministry. This information empowers Pastoral leaders to proactively identify, affirm, recruit, and deploy the new small group leader knowing that church has the right person in the right service role. AssessME.org is designed to help make these important mobilization connections. I believe that a church’s greatest asset is its human resources. However, when we advertise “jobs” or “workers needed”, we belittle to our people. People do not want more work or more busyness within their lives. They do, however, want to make sure that their lives make a significant and positive impact upon this world. When pastoral leaders view their people as “workers” or “helpers”, the result is that ministry mobilization becomes difficult at best. However, when pastoral leaders tap into the heart-cry passion of every person within their church, incredible kingdom ministry is the result. We should always remember that God called pastoral leaders to help their congregation members become effective in ministry service, He never called congregation members to help the pastoral leaders to be effective in their ministry programming (Ephesians 4:12).
An Oxymoron: The Equipping Church
David Posthuma @ Oct 8, 2008 08:40 AM
The Oxymoron: My Experience:
A Book in Progress: In Need Your Help:
Two Principles that Guarrentee that You will Lead with Style
David Posthuma @ Aug 12, 2008 06:38 AM
Every pastor naturally desires to be an effective leader. So why do some succeed and others fail? Every church desires to thrive in its ministry efforts, so why do some churches seem to “do no wrong” while others can’t seem to “do much right”? These are complex issues. However, if pastoral leaders and their churches adopt two foundational Leadership Style principles and adhere to these principles faithfully, leaders will come to love their place of service and ministry organizations will overcome barriers that have held back their ministries for years.
Principle #2: Principle 1: Lead According to Your Leadership Style
The unfortunate result is that over time, people who God made to be Builders received the message that who they were, and what they contributed to the ministry, was no longer valued. The result is that virtually all the Builders left the church. Any Builders who may still exist within the membership are likely resentful and distrustful of the church leadership.
Overcoming Mission Myopia:
What Kind of Leader Are You?
David Posthuma @ Aug 12, 2008 06:21 AM
NOTE: Portions of this article were published in the July/August edition of REV! Magazine and in David's new book, Made for a Mission. At the 2007 Catalyst leadership convention, Andy Stanley passionately proclaimed: “Leadership is always ‘follow me,’ it is never ‘follow we!’” The context of Andy’s statement was his rejection of leadership by committee. I agree with Andy that committee-based leadership is not a healthy leadership paradigm. Yet, “follow-me”, when applied inappropriately, can also be detrimental to the health and vitality of a ministry organization. God designed numerous styles of leadership influence. Each style is good, created by God, and intended by God to be used for Kingdom purposes. However, when we fail to recognize or appreciate our personal leadership style, only surround ourselves with people who possess similar leadership styles to our own, or impose our leadership style upon those who serve under us, devastating consequences can result. What is It may surprise you to learn that even though the Bible is abundantly clear about the many parts of Christ’s body, when it comes to building ministry teams, many Christians and Christian leaders somehow forget that God created human diversity. It should be self-evident that not every Christ follower will look, sound, nor act like every other Christ follower. However, leaders often suffer from what I call “mission myopia.” The Oxford American Dictionary defines myopia as: “1) nearsightedness; 2) lack of imagination or intellectual insight.” The problem of mission myopia was illustrated quite profoundly to me some time ago when I received a phone call from a pastor asking if I would be willing to meet with him. As we sat and talked, he began to unload his frustration with his church board. He felt his church board was lacking in integrity, failing to fulfill the ministry obligations to which they had agreed, and that he may now have to remove most of the board members. Over my years of pastoral ministry and consulting with ministry leaders, I had come across some difficult and even unhealthy church boards; however, the prospect of removing an entire board seemed quite extreme. As I asked him more about his situation, it became clear that this pastor had led his church leadership team through a strategic planning process that advocated and blessed only one ministry style…the pastor’s…as the required methodology for each one of his board members. In theory, the board members had agreed that the method outlined by their pastor was very important for their church. But in practice, it soon became clear that most of the board members were incapable of sustained personal ministry using the pastor’s methodology. I asked this pastor to describe specific personality attributes regarding each board member. As he did so, it became very clear to me that this well-meaning pastor was violating God’s ordained mission for each one of his board members. This ministry board consisted of individuals who were strong visionary leaders and project administrators. They were task-oriented and systems-oriented people. In contrast, the pastor’s personal style was “relational,” focusing on one-to-one or small group interpersonal ministry. This pastor did not mean to sin against his board, but in fact, by trying to treat each board member as an “eye”...to see and do things his way...he was violating each board member's divinely inspired ministry temperament. I tried to help this pastor realize that his ministry goals could be more effectively accomplished if he were to mobilize his board according to each person's unique personality. I encouraged him to ask his board for forgiveness and to repent of his judgmental attitude toward them. This was a crisis of the pastor's own making...he had forgotten to honor each part of Christ's ministry body. He was suffering from mission myopia.
Leadership Styles The graphic below portrays a continuum of leadership styles, ranging from highly task-driven entrepreneurial leaders on the left, to highly relational and task-avoidant leaders on the right. This broad continuum is divided into six basic “styles” of leadership influence, which are grouped into three general categories: Builders, Managers, and Nurturers.
The Builders The Builder category consists of Pioneers and Strategic Planners. Pioneers are designed by God to develop new ministry programming, systems, and churches. They are strong dynamic leaders who value risk-taking for the Strategic Planners are designed by God to be the “architect” for new ministry development, and established ministry refinement. They are designers of systems and are highly task-oriented. They are the most “prophetic” of leadership types, in that they are able to perceive every major step that will be required to implement a ministry vision. However, they often assume that other people are also able to perceive these steps, and will appreciate the scope of the plan they wish to set in motion. Unfortunately, many other leader-types quickly become overwhelmed by the vast design details offered by the Strategic Planner. Strategic Planners can experience frustration and personal rejection when their “master plans” are not adopted, or are altered without their input.
The Managers The Manager category consists of Administrators and Team Leaders. Administrators are highly task-oriented and love to address the many operational details associated with any mission or project. They generally are not good at multi-tasking, preferring rather to work from a check-off list in their Day Planner or PDA. They gain great satisfaction from checking off accomplishments that provide resources and support to other team members, from their list. Administrators are able to implement and address the many operational details identified within a strategic plan. They are faithful, loyal, hard working individuals. However, they tend to associate their self-worth with the tasks they accomplish. If they “drop a ball”, which is rare, they will often internally punish themselves harshly. They may have difficulty delegating tasks to others, mistakenly assuming that “if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself”. Team Leaders are unique. They are the only leadership style that has one foot in the task-oriented world, and one foot in the relational world. This unique ability to “bridge the two worlds” enables Team Leaders to be both mission-driven and sensitive to relational dynamics. Team Leaders are very mission driven. They naturally gather around themselves people to “go do” some mission or event. Team members often develop deep loyalties to their Team Leader because of the Team Leader’s ability to help each member accomplish a significant mission for Christ, while also affirming each team member emotionally and spiritually. Team Leaders can make excellent pastors and staff. However, Team Leaders do have a significant danger associated with them. The Team Leader profile is the leadership style commonly associated with a church split. In such cases, the Team Leader can point to many mission successes that have earned him or her loyalty from a significant pool of team members. Praise and admiration from team members can lead the Team Leader to become prideful, like King Nebuchadnezzar who said: “Is not this the great [ministry] I have built as [my church], by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty” (Daniel 4:30)? Prideful Team Leaders may feel that they are personally responsible for the various ministry successes within the church, and that if only they could be unencumbered by the restrictions of their superiors, they could be unleashed to accomplish even greater things. For this reason, Team Leaders should be surrounded with healthy accountability people to address any pride issue while it is small and manageable.
The Nurturers The Nurturer category consists of Pastoral Leaders and Encouraging Leaders. The Pastoral Leader is relationally-driven and task-task avoidant. The Pastoral Leader is generally concerned about the emotional and spiritual welfare of the group, team, or congregation…internally they ask themselves, “How are WE doing” emotionally and spiritually? Pastoral Leaders need significant interpersonal time with people. Administrative office duties will likely depress a Pastoral Leader. Similarly, vision casting, strategic plans, and organizational structures are all task-oriented skills the Pastoral Leader will likely be unable to implement effectively. In some cases, Pastoral Leaders may even devalue and dismiss systems and organizational structures as unimportant. Pastoral Leaders often wonder why everyone doesn’t simply minister as they do…person to person. The Pastoral Leader generally values small groups, recovery ministries, one-on-one discipleship, home visitations, hospital visitations, and social gatherings. The Apostle John was a classic Pastoral Leader. His repeated appeal to love God and love one another within his letters portrays his pastoral passion (1 John 3:11). The Encouraging Leader is our last leadership style. Like the Pastoral Leader, Encouraging Leaders are highly relational and task-avoidant. However, they are different in their overall ministry focus…While the Pastoral Leader asks “How are WE doing”, the Encouraging Leader asks, “How are YOU doing” emotionally and spiritually? Encouraging Leaders are generally gifted at analyzing people. They are very self-aware of the emotions of people around them. This leadership-type is seldom showy or public. Often Encouraging Leaders work behind the scenes informally. They shy away from programs and administrative duties unless these enable the Encouraging Leader to spend quality time investing into individuals. Encouraging Leaders generally make excellent councilors, spiritual formation mentors, prayer warriors, and recovery ministry leaders. They may also function well as small group leaders if the small group members are able to “go deep” with one another, spiritually and emotionally. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, was a classic Encouraging Leader, so much so that the Apostles gave him the nickname Barnabus which means, “Son of Encouragement” (Acts 4:36).
Conclusion: It is important that we not only understand our preferred leadership style, and utilize that style effectively, it is also important that we appreciate that God has given us ministry partners who possess differing styles of leadership. Our challenge as leaders is to learn to value these differing leader-types, and to partner with them not merely as our “helpers”, but as co-workers for Christ. Below you will find a simplified Leadership Style assessment I utilize within live seminars and workshops. The online version hosted by AssessMe.org is far more accurate, but the results of this simplified assessment will give you significant insights into your personal leadership style. I encourage you to have other staff and lay leaders take the Leadership Style assessment so that you can build a more effective ministry team, positioning each team member according to their divinely designed leadership style.
A Simple Leadership Style Assessment
This simple assessment is designed to help you identify your dominant Leadership Style. Please respond to the statements below, scoring each statement from 0 – 5 (0 = Does Not Apply; 5 = Strongly Applies). Try to avoid using the score of 3 if at all possible. Once finished, total your scores for each category, and plot your category scores on the graph below. Connect each of the dots with a line to create a trend-chart. (See AssessMe.org for a more accurate assessment and report). Please respond to the statements below, scoring each statement from 0 – 5 (0 = Does Not Apply; 5 = Strongly Applies). Try to avoid using the score of 3 if at all possible.
About the Author David Posthuma’s leadership style consists of a Pioneer/Strategic Planner blend, with a Planner ministry temperament. He is the founder of E-Church Essentials and the chief architect of the AssessMe.org online ministry mobilization assessment program. David has served as a church revitalizer, church plant pastor, church consultant, and since 1998, has designed software solutions for the ministry market. This article is adapted from his book, Made for a David resides in
Intentionally Engineering Ministry Structures for Maximum Impact, Part 1: An Introduction
David Posthuma @ Apr 30, 2007 04:03 PM
Every church organization exhibits a unique organizational personality. An organization’s personality type enables its leadership to effectively recruit and mobilize people with some ministry temperaments, while impeding the recruitment and mobilization of others. At this point it may be helpful to distinguish between the big “C” universal Church, and the little “c” local church. Within Christ’s universal Church, you are a vital member with an essential ministry role. However, the local church is not always so inclusive. When people don’t know how to fit within their local church, it is important to discern between the responsibilities of the individual and the responsibilities of the organization for addressing this problem. The local expression of Christ’s Church may at times have difficulty including and mobilizing differing people into ministry. This may be the result of unique institutional dynamics that inadvertently prevent people from participating within the mission. When this occurs, people have difficulty knowing how to serve and support the ministry of their local church. Sadly, pastoral leaders often blame their congregation members for the lack of ministry participation, criticizing their membership as “uncommitted,” when in fact, the organization’s structures may be inhibiting committed people from knowing how serve. Not finding a place of effective ministry service within their church, these committed people will generally develop their own personalized and isolated ministry. Christ never desired his followers to minister in isolation. He always sent his disciples out in teams consisting of two or more members (Luke 10:1 NIV). Similarly, the Apostles always had at least one or two support staff. Remember, we all need each other, and together we best represent the God who created all of us in his image. Our ministry temperament was designed to integrate with other ministry temperaments so that together, we can accomplish for Christ far more than we could ever accomplish individually. It may surprise you to learn that even though the Bible is abundantly clear about the many parts of Christ’s body, when it comes to building ministry teams, many Christians and Christian leaders somehow forget that God created human diversity. It should be self-evident that not every Christ follower will look, sound, nor act like every other Christ follower. However, the Church often suffers from what I call “mission myopia.” The Oxford American Dictionary defines myopia as: “1) nearsightedness; 2) lack of imagination or intellectual insight.” For example, the pastor of one church I was asked to consult with expressed that the biggest problem facing the church over its two decade history was that the church started many good programs, but had difficulty sustaining them. A simple assessment of the Senior Pastor and his board revealed that all the dominant leaders possessed entrepreneurial profiles…they were start-up people; this explained why they started many good ministries but were unable to sustain them. The church leadership needed to learn how to better identify the people within their congregation who excelled at establishing self-perpetuating ministry structures, as well as people who were gifted in managing ongoing ministry programs. The personality of a ministry organization has a direct bearing on its ability to mobilize people for ministry and build effective ministry teams. In fact, the personality of a church often dictates who may serve within the ministry. In the case of the church just mentioned, people who possessed entrepreneurial temperaments easily found places of service within the church. However, people who did not possess such profiles had difficulty knowing how to support the ministry. The principle of mission myopia, that people will naturally gather around themselves others who are like them, inhibits other people-types from participating effectively in ministry. Often, these disenfranchised Christ followers feel like there simply is no place of ministry for them within their church. They may have tried earnestly to find a place of ministry fit, but in the end, they have been made to feel rejected and devalued. I am confident that no healthy church leadership team desires to communicate to people that they are devalued. However, this unintentional communication occurs none the less. For church leadership, the principle of mission myopia infers the following: · Most all church ministries suffer from some level of mission myopia. · · When people cannot find a place of ministry service within their church, they tend to feel devalued and unwanted, and ultimately leave the church. Intentionally Engineering Ministry Structures for Maximum Impact, Part 2: Cultural Modification
David Posthuma @ Apr 30, 2007 04:02 PM
Unlike human ministry temperaments, which can mature but cannot be altered, organizational personalities may be intentionally modified. This is accomplished by positioning the appropriate people, who possess the necessary ministry temperaments, into key positions of influence. The goal in this culture-modification process is to broaden and deepen a church organization’s ministry impact by intentionally including more of the various parts of the body of Christ within its mission. A healthy and mature ministry culture seeks to include every willing servant of Christ associated with their church organization into an appropriate ministry position. Broad-based inclusion of many differing people, possessing many differing ministry temperaments, will likely challenge the organization’s established ministry culture. So, how can an established ministry organization position itself to be more inclusive of all ministry temperaments? First, culture modification is always a top-down process. Organizational leadership will want to evaluate the ministry temperaments of each person of influence, at each functional layer within the organization. For example, it is common in many churches to have three distinct leadership layers: · Layer #1 – Executive leadership team · Layer #2 – Support staff · Layer #3 – Lay leadership When you assess each leader for ministry-fit, and evaluate the cumulative results, you will discover that your organization displays a “temperament theme”. A temperament theme is defined in terms of “shared-quadrant-values” (e.g., Independent vs. Social) and not by the dominance of a specific ministry temperament (e.g., Protagonist) represented throughout the organization. Please refer to the four assessment quadrants PDF. Each assessment quadrant (i.e., Relational Style, Information Style, Decision-Making Style, and Environmental Style) contains two opposing values. For example, the Relational Style category scores individuals (or organizations) along a continuum that ranges from Independent to Social. Temperament themes define the culture of a church as it matures through the various phases of its development. The simplest church model emphasizes a single quadrant-value; typically the “Social” value from the Relational Style quadrant. As the church grows and its ministry requirements become more complex, church leaders will incorporate additional quadrant-values at each stage. Although growth patterns will vary from church to church, this principle can be illustrated by walking through one common church growth scenario. The Churches typically develop in stages, according to their ability to incorporate and emphasize additional quadrant-values. A small church, at or below the 150-member barrier, will generally emphasize the Relational Style quadrant, and uphold “Social” as their defining cultural value. At this stage in the ministry’s development, the church functions much like a family with members who know and care for one another. There is little need for structure or programs. I recently visited with a family friend who pastors a family-feel church outside of the The Warm-Hearted Church If the leadership of the Family-Feel church believes God is calling the ministry to grow beyond the family phase of development, the church will then need to adopt an additional quadrant-value that will compliment and expand upon their established social-relational value. Often, the church leadership, without knowing it, will implement the Decision-Making Style quadrant and seek to position people who have a high “Heart” value into positions of leadership. This new value readily compliments their established social-relational value. Since the current structures and programs are small and simple to manage at this stage, these relational leaders will excel until their ministry responsibilities grow in size and complexity. The church is now positioned to grow beyond the 150 barrier, and will likely stagnate at around 600 people. The Structured Church The 600-person barrier represents the most significant cultural adjustment the church will have to make. At this stage, the church organization will need to define program systems led by leaders who possess administrative and team building skills. It is not uncommon that these administrative leaders are imported from outside the ministry. This is because the highly relational values which have dominated the church to this point may have alienated task-oriented people. Without realizing it, the church leadership will adopt an additional cultural value found in the Environmental Style quadrant, and seek to introduce into the established church culture a “Systematic” value. It is at this point that many relational people within the church begin to fear that the church is losing its “family-feel.” Relationships are no longer defined in terms of the entire church body, but in the context of service and common interest sub-cultures, as well as shepherding small groups. The relational leaders they have known and loved are now being re-positioned or replaced by people who possess strong administrative and team building abilities. I recently observed a 450-member church struggling with the difficult adjustment from Warm-Hearted to Structured. Its children’s ministry was led by a director who possessed a Protagonist ministry temperament. The Protagonist is charismatic when in front of people and thrives in a non-structured environment. The Protagonist is not skilled as an administrator or team builder. While this ministry temperament likely served the children’s ministry well in the early stages of its development, the non-structured culture was now impeding the children’s ministry from growing into excellence. The people who valued “winging it” rather than planning and preparation were able to function within the various roles required by the children’s ministry. However, people with ministry temperaments that valued administration, team building, planning and preparation could not find a place of ministry fit within the “wing-it” culture defined by the Protagonist leader. If the children’s ministry was to reach the next level of development, the Protagonist culture would need to be replaced or modified. The ministry temperaments that will be required to take the children’s ministries program to the next level are the very people that the established culture had until now been alienating. (Side note: A Protagonist’s ‘wing-it” values can always find a place of ministry service within a structured team-based culture. However, a structured team-based person can rarely find a place of ministry service within a “wing-it” culture.) When a Warm-Hearted church is able to transition to a Structured church, and include people who identify with and can implement the new “Systematic” cultural value within the church, they will find that a new army of systems-oriented people can finally be unleashed to serve within the church. These people have not known how to fit and serve effectively in the Family-Feel or Warm-Hearted church. But now, a new team-based synergy liberates strategic planners, administrators and managers to find places of ministry service, and to serve effectively. The Structured church will thrive until it reaches approximately 1,500 people. The Hierarchical Church The Structured church transitions into a Hierarchical church when it consolidates top-tier authority structures, while at the same time integrating a new quadrant value…the “Concrete” value found within the Information Assimilation style quadrant. The ministry now focuses upon providing many concrete and practical ministry services. Generally, there is a unifying thematic value that binds these many services together. Common unifying themes include: Outreach, Seeker Targeted, Seeker Sensitive, Life Purpose, Global Impact, etc. Because of the complex network of team-based ministries, literally thousands of people, of all ministry temperaments, can find a place of ministry service and rise up in status and influence within the ranks. Relationships are nurtured in the context of serving within a ministry team, joining with others around a common interest, or through participation in a small shepherding group. In recent years, the trend has been to break the Hierarchical church down into small functional and relational units. This process has given rise to regional satellite churches…one church meeting concurrently in various locations, via internet streaming from the mother church. With the new millennium, a post-modern reaction to the modernist Hierarchical church has given birth to the Intentionally Engineering Ministry Structures for Maximum Impact, Part 3: Beginning the Engineering
David Posthuma @ Apr 30, 2007 03:58 PM
It is impossible for churches to perfectly balance all the opposing values in each personality quadrant. If this “perfect” balance could be found, then all churches would simply be clones of one another, and so would look alike, function alike, and serve alike. The goal of cultural modification is not to make every church alike. Rather, the goal is to allow diverse ministry temperaments to play appropriate and supportive roles within the ministry’s unique mission and organizational development. Those ministry temperaments that have been kept outside of positions of influence within the organization may indeed provide the exact values, insights, and resources the ministry requires to mature to the next level.
Bye Bye Boomers
David Posthuma @ Jul 18, 2005 08:43 AM
Wayne Jacobsen, in his book entitled “The Naked Church”, has an interesting critique of the Boomer-driven church-growth ministry model. Using the writing genre of CS Lewis and the Screwtape Letters, he describes our growth-driven churches from the perspective of one of Satan’s henchmen…. "Trying to keep it small hasn't worked - let's make it big!" All the other devils gasped, thinking that old Screwtape had finally bolted his sanity. "Make it big? What do you think we've been working so hard to prevent?" "Hear me out, colleagues: We can kill it with its own success. What would happen if the church suddenly became acceptable?" " "But what would all those people do to it?" Screwtape replied with a smirk, then, sat back as he watched their minds churn. One-by-one the others began to see the brilliance of his scheme. "Many would come just for social reasons. They would quickly dilute those who are really in God's clutches." "And imagine all the programs and activities they would have to plan to keep those people happy. Nothing chokes out intimacy as well as busyness." "A crowd like that would have opinions so diverse and disruptive that the power of the gospel would be compromised in just a few short years." "The church would eventually become a machine, chewing up individuals instead of loving them. Programs would take over where personal ministries now flourish. And everyone knows how easy it is to kill a program." "Hear! Hear!" they all yelled. They couldn't possibly teach all the followers to walk with God personally, so they would soon substitute rules and guidelines for his ever-present voice." "The machine would have to be run by professionals. The others would become nothing more than spectators and bill-payers." "And that leadership would waste most of its time tied up in administration, which we know benefits almost no one." "Who would have time for individuals? They would have to try to disciple people by regulations, and the cracks in that are so wide we could go on vacation." "And best of all," Screwtape spoke up again, "they wouldn't even know what had happened to them. They would think themselves successful beyond their wildest dreams. They would be pillars in the community and stand before huge crowds. We would let them keep all their Christian terms, but we would substitute our own meanings. It's foolproof!" "But size alone won't do that, Screwtape," Satan himself finally said. "They could still teach all those people what it really means to follow God and they could still love people one-by-one no matter how big it got." "True, O Wicked One," Screwtape waggled his index finger, "but do you think they would?" Do you think they would risk losing all those people or would resist the corruption that such power and influence would give them?" Satan smiled in whatever ecstasy hell allows…"Of course not!" He slammed his fist on the table, "Let's do it!" I have to admit, that when I read such words, my spirit responds with an emotional mix of sadness and exhilaration. I feel sadness, not because these words hurt me in any particular way, but rather because everything described by However, I also feel exhilaration because before an unhealthy problem can be cured, the illness must first be diagnosed. Once the illness is diagnosed, steps can be taken to improve the health of the body…in this case, Christ’s Body, the Church. So there is hope…and we know that there is always hope for the Body of Christ because Christ is the head of His Church, not any particular institutional pastor. I believe the Boomer generation, born following 1946, has been greatly used by God to impact this world for the sake of Christ. However, I believe that the Boomer generation has left us not only a great inheritance…but also a great dysfunction. The task before Christ’s emergent Church is to now strip away the dysfunction that has evolved over the past decades, and to value the healthy inheritance the Boomer generation has left for us. A Healthy Inheritance 2006 will mark the 60th birthday of the true Boomer. As our Boomer leaders prepare for retirement, it is only appropriate to thank them for their faithful service and to remember what positive influences they have had upon us and Christ’s Church. Our positive inheritance includes, but is not limited to:
The Jesus Movement of the late 1960’s and 1970’s was inherently anti-establishment and anti-institutionalism. It was not so much about “rebellion” as so typifies that generation, but about a desire by many to have a real and vital relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and to exist in authentic Christ-centered community. The Jesus Movement was a spiritual revival. It was a grassroots spiritual movement that was not orchestrated by any organization, but rather by the Holy Spirit. Many postmodern ministry leaders today see parallels between the values and goals of emergent postmodern ministry, and the values and goals of the Jesus Movement decades ago. This parallel, I believe, is not merely “70’s-retro” spirituality, but a call by God’s Spirit to return to the place where Christ’s Church was once healthier. It is interesting to me that it is often the Boomers, whom themselves participated in the Jesus Movement, that today are the ones criticizing the emergent postmodern Church for seeking to lay claim to the spiritual values and goals they once espoused.
The Charismatic movement was a direct outgrowth of the Jesus Movement. The Church had finally re-discovered that God was real and active within His creation, and within the life of the Christ Follower. God was not dead institutionalism. God could not be contained in a human “plan” or a “routine” program as typified by so many church services then and now. God had His own purposes, and it was an amazing honor that He would be willing to move in and through His people, to accomplish His good work. The Church of that day learned that the supernatural should be expected…it should be the norm…after all, our God is supernatural. God cannot be constrained or put into a box. The Charismatic movement crossed denominational boundaries. People were Charismatic, not churches. Yes, there were Pentecostal churches, but the Charismatic movement applied primarily to a spiritual revival among people within non-Pentecostal mainline Churches. This influence led to renewed sensitivity to the work of the Holy Spirit within the life of the local mainline congregation. Yet, today, many of our churches put God into a one-hour highly programmed and performed box, designed right down to 15 second increments. We have often programmed the spiritual passion right out of God’s people and simultaneously quenched the Holy Spirit. What the
The Charismatic Movement made the Church aware of Biblical teachings regarding spiritual giftedness. In addition, the Biblical scholars working on the NIV Bible in the early and mid 1970’s discovered that Ephesians 4:12 had often been mistranslated. They now realized that it was the job of Pastors, Teachers and Evangelists to equip the laity so that the laity could do the works of service. Everyone’s spiritual job description was now being re-written. The spiritual job of the leaders was to “equip”. The spiritual job of the people was to “do works of service” according to their God ordained giftedness. Suddenly Spiritual Gift Surveys began to proliferate within the Church. Finding one’s gift or gifts was considered essential to spiritual maturity. This movement was not birthed in an effort to fill holes within exotic church programs. This was a movement in which ministry service was often devoid of programs and structures. Only later did church leaders deviate from the God ordained role of “equipping” and begin to “administrate” programs that artificially utilized people’s giftedness. Rather than permitting God ordained giftedness to define the ministry, today we have programs that require particularly gifted people, and exclude people who are not gifted according to the needs of our programs. Furthermore, our churches have often established artificial and subjective standards of “professionalism”. People who cannot meet these standards are often discarded by today’s church. Even if it can be argued that professionalism is a legitimate value, the church must come to terms with the reality that very little “equipping” ever occurs to help the lay person become more “professional”…let alone more become effective and obedient to the call of Christ within their life.
It was the Boomer generation who first taught the Church that worship was not about forms or liturgy. Worship could be real, heart-felt and authentic. Gone was the pipe organ. Enter the culturally-relevant Hammond B3 organ, Fender Rhodes, guitars and drums. Worship songs by the thousands were written and distributed, all without a commercial music distribution market in place. The songs were simple, but they helped turn the hearts of people to their God. Worship services often went on for hours. It was not about performance. Even the band members were typically more concerned with worshiping God than getting everything down perfectly. The simplicity of the music may have freed the musicians to focus less on themselves and their instrument, and more upon God. Boomer worship in the early days was like a flowing and unstoppable river…a great movement of God’s Spirit within His Church, calling the hearts of each worshipper to His heart. It gave birth to theological applications such as “Worship Evangelism” by Sally Morgenthaler. But this does not describe what today woefully passes for “worship” within many churches. Our bands typically seem more interested in performing…gigg’n, rather than worshipping. Our services have become so programmed, that it is now possible to go from church to church (and many people do) and know exactly what is going to take place without ever looking at a service program. Week after week, service after service, the process is spiritually stifling in its redundancy and routine.
In the early 1980’s, the North American church began to leave its disorganized roots founded in the movements previously listed. Some may rightfully claim that all these diverse movements were only perspectives of one great movement of God’s Spirit. The very thing that the Jesus Movement Boomer earlier reviled, institutionalism, now began to be the driving force for the North American Church. Some of the responsibility for this shift in values should rightfully go to Willow Creek, who so aptly taught American churches how to institutionalize like a corporation and program like a Broadway production. Now, I must be clear that I am not anti-Willow Creek. God has used Willow Creek in many positive ways. But as the historic Israelites traded leadership by God for a human leader with human structures, so too has the Boomer church traded surrender to God’s Spirit and direction for human institutional church-growth models. For a while, the church-growth models seemed to justify the trade by their apparent effectiveness. Churches began to grow in greater numbers than ever before. The mega-church movement was born. However, the trade came at a great price. The mega-church soon learned that it paid a serious price in relational intimacy…even to the point that leaders did not know enough people to mobilize and run their huge institutional programs. In seeking a solution, mega-churches turned to the small group models originating out of Today, there are many healthy small groups, but far fewer healthy small group ministry programs. It is common to find small group programs that do not equip the small group leaders at all, or provide minimal equipping at best. Most small groups exist as isolated spiritual islands in a vast sea of institutional programming. It’s Time to Strip Away the Dysfunction As I have described the five ministry movements above, each movement began in simplicity and authenticity, and became corrupted over time by man’s desire to program and institutionalize the good things that God had set in motion. Now, it is time to strip away the dysfunction and, following the lead of the prophet Nehemiah, re-construct the true spiritual walls of Christ’s Church that have been broken down. How can we continue to follow dysfunctional church leaders who can no longer separate the work of the Holy Spirit from the institutional life of their organizations? A case in point is Wayne Jacobsen’s response to Tim Stafford. Tim asserted in a Christianity Today article: “There is no healthy relationship with Jesus without a relationship to the church.” I found What many of us have found on the outside offers more connection, more transformation, more opportunities for ministry than we ever found inside. Does it ever bother you that if Jesus wanted us to be part of these institutions with morning services, he did nothing in the Gospels to prepare his disciples for it? On the contrary his example and words were far more de-centralized than that. Love each other as you’ve been loved. Where two or three of you get together I’ll be there with you. He didn’t envision church as a building, an institution or a service. He viewed it as a company of people following him, sharing his life with each other and serving the world with compassion and humility. For the first 300 years in the life of the church believers met in homes and would never have conceived of the Lord’s Supper being served any where other than the family table? I know our Christian institutions are fading and the last thing they want anyone to believe is that we can flourish in the life of Jesus and in real connections with other believers outside its influence. But I’m afraid the tide has turned. People are beginning to awaken to a reality of God’s life together that cannot be contained by any institution. Those who claim otherwise sound like bankers in the 1920s trying to assure people their money was safe inside so they won’t all try to withdraw it and find out otherwise. What was begun by God within the Boomer generation was awesome in its vitality, scope and impact. But that same generation’s desire to package God’s work into something manageable and reproducible…and then enshrine the package within a giant building campaign…has resulted in corruptions that will impact the The Church has Paid the Price, Now Who Will Pay the Mortgage?
Within the next ten years, most of the Builder generation will die, and the Boomer generation will move into fixed incomes. Obviously, these are the not the generations that will build the future of the church. Although the current financial base of most churches is likely the Boomer generation, even this fact will change drastically within the next ten years as the Boomer generation enters retirement and fixed income living. Retirement will take its financial toll on our inflated budgets…inflated due to expensive buildings, expensive programming and expensive staff. Within the next ten years, churches must either come to depend upon the Echo-Boomer generation, or they will die. But wait a minute: do we realize that most of our churches have very few Echo-Boomers in attendance, let alone in key leadership roles? The young adult between 17 and 35 makes up approximately 35% of our population nationally, but within our churches, most are lucky if they average 10%. This is not a foundation upon which to build the future of our ministries! Echo-Boomers are abandoning the institutional churches they were raised within. Barna tells us the mass exodus is as high as 65% by age 29. We also know from every study and focus group that the unchurched Echo-Boomer abhors and greatly distrusts organized institutions. So while the Echo-Boomer’s interest in spirituality is at an all-time high (spirituality is the #1 search category on the internet according to 2004 Pew Internet and American Life Studies) what the Boomer generation is passing down to the next generation as a spiritual inheritance is likely to be rejected. Institutional Churches should expect their membership demographic to significantly age and decline over the next ten years. Disproportionately, church budgets will also need to decline. Churches that do not pay off their mortgages within the next ten years are at serious risk for bankruptcy. Even those institutional mega-churches that do find a way to financially survive, will struggle with ever-shrinking attendance within their cavernous walls. Is There Hope? There is always hope for Christ’s Church, because Christ is its head. However, hope for man-made institutions is a whole other matter. If churches are willing to stop their model chasing, stop their service programming and stop their performance…and return to the simpler and more authentic values God displayed when He gave birth to the Jesus Movement, the Charismatic movement, the Laity Reformation, the Worship Reformation, and seek to truly deconstruct the institutional church into small relationally authentic expressions of Christ’s Body…then there may be hope. But to do this takes real faith…faith in God, not faith in ministry models. It requires that we step out boldly in faith and humbly in spirit. It requires that our leadership humbly admit to God, to themselves and to their congregation that they have been leading the church down an unhealthy path. It requires that we re-think how we “do church” entirely. It’s time to say goodbye to the Boomer-driven church. We thank you for the positive inheritance you have given us. However, we also recognize that much of what God initiated within your generation as positive has degenerated as you tried to package and replicate the work of the Holy Spirit. Our goal now is to return to the core spiritual values that God initiated early in your generation, while looking forward to the new work the Spirit of Christ has in store for this next generation. I pray that God would protect the emerging generations from repeating the mistakes committed by our forefathers. What Ever Happened to Unchurched Harry and Mary
David Posthuma @ Jul 18, 2005 08:42 AM
 A Philosophy that Influenced a GenerationMarketing 101 I first heard about Unchurched Harry and Mary way back in the late 80’s when I was attending seminary in Lee Strobel helped the American church learn how to be more seeker-sensitive. The Willow-inspired practice of that day was to survey your community door-to-door so that your church leadership could learn first hand what were truly the community’s spiritual needs and roadblocks. Armed with this data, the challenge was then to design church services accordingly. In reality, the principle of Unchurched Harry and Mary was nothing more than Marketing 101…the American church needed to learn how to market its self more effectively. The result was that many churches indeed became more culturally relevant…at least to the culture of the 1990’s. Something happened over the last twenty years. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but somewhere along the timeline of the past two decades, many of our churches seem to have stopped asking Harry and Mary about their lifestyle, needs and spiritual hang-ups. The church culture has become one of model-chasing…always looking for the next latest-and-greatest techniques for “doing church”. Our Since 1991, the adult population in the Clearly, The way we are “doing church” is not working. What’s Your Marketing Niche? Years ago I was on a business trip when I drove past a failed hamburger restaurant. I couldn’t help but notice the burger-joint’s big sign along the road. It consisted of a large golden crown. Below the crown was the name of the restaurant: “Burger Queen”. This is an example of poor niche marketing. Yet, across The basic premise behind the principle of Unchurched Harry and Mary was that through the use of surveys, unique community distinctives would be discovered. The result would be that how one church designed its ministry in one community would likely be very different from how another church, in another community, designed its ministry. In marketing terms, you must first know your market, and then devise a market niche. Your church’s niche is what makes your ministry very different and uniquely attractive from all the other ministries in your community. In theological and spiritual terms, pastoral leaders should seek from God His will regarding the ministry calling of any particular congregation. I doubt He calls every church to “do church” in virtually the same way, using the same popular techniques. One of Christ’s greatest attributes is His ability to be creative…through Him all things were created. So if we are the body of Christ, His representatives within this world, don’t you think that some of that creativity should have rubbed off by now? What Would the Survey Look Like Today? If your ministry conducted the Harry and Mary survey today, I think you would find that the survey results have changed significantly from the results that were typical twenty years ago. Among the differences that churches must now seriously consider, is the cultural impact of the internet. Twenty years ago, the Harry and Mary surveys could not consider internet influences…because the internet did not exist. Today, there is no greater cultural influence in Relationships Evolve Differently For all the talk that comes out of many of our churches today, telling us that relationships are central to our spiritual development, this “value” is not typically modeled by the leadership through their highly programmed and performed Sunday services. In fact, there is nothing relational at all about the way we “do church” today. Twenty years ago, we learned that Unchurched Harry and Mary did not like being noticed….visitor anonymity was considered a positive value. Today, in 2005, Unchurched Harry and Mary will not likely step foot inside your church walls until a relationship of trust has already been established. The evolution of relationships today often begins online, and moves to face-to-face interactions once relational trust has been nurtured. The idea of attracting unchurched people into your service is now culturally obsolete. The front door to your ministry is no longer the Seeker-Sensitive service. The front door to your ministry is your personal computer. Meet and greet people online. Build relationships online. Allow people to get to know you…the real you…not your institutional organization with its many programs. Build an online community where Seekers and Christians can interact and relate. After all, the internet today is all about relationships. Look at the results of this Pew Internet & American Life Study and notice what the #1 purpose for using the internet is today: (view full report)
These results are already four years old. All available information suggests that if the study were conducted today, Relationships would score at least ten points higher. The internet of 2005 and beyond is predominately a venue for relational bridge-building. Interpersonal relationships now exist in reality and virtually at the same time. If your ministry is at all serious about reaching out to your greater community relationally for Christ, you had better come to grips with the fact that 65-75% of young adults today build relationships online…often long before they are willing to meet one-another face-to-face. Does your ministry have an online relationship strategy? I have no doubt what-so-ever that if the Apostle Paul were ministering today, he would have an incredible online ministry program. The Church Must Be a Family, Not Target Families Over the past two decades, the typical church has focused heavily upon being family-friendly. While this is not inherently bad, the Unchurched Harry and Mary of 2005/2006 is more likely to be statistical singles, without children, than was true of the Unchurched in 1990 and before. The 2000 census, the Barna Report and the Pew Internet and American Life studies clearly demonstrate that young adults are staying single longer. George Barna demonstrated that singles make up a disproportionate percentage of the unchurched population. Corresponding to their younger age, the survey also found that unchurched people are more likely than other to be single and to never have been married. Whereas one-quarter of American adults (26%) are single-never-married, nearly two-fifths of the unchurched fit that definition (37%). Complicating the matter further, many of our ministries today either have no ministry or social programs for singles, or relegate single’s ministry to the lowest level of ministerial importance, signified by limited budgets and staff. According to Kris Swiatocho of The Singles Network, literally 50% of our nation’s population is currently single, yet most churches continue to neglect today’s Unchurched Harry and Mary. (view video) Today’s Unchurched single Harry and single Mary are more distant and allusive than ever. They do not want to participate in church programs: Barna noted that to unchurched people embracing church life is both counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. Reaching out to unchurched people is difficult for born again Christians because the two groups have such different viewpoints and lifestyles. Born again adults are more excited about a church’s strengths and more forgiving of its weaknesses, more disposed to spiritual growth, and less skeptical of theological and biblical claims. They neither see nor understand the obstacles that impede the unchurched. Addressing the reticence of the unchurched takes more than prayer and hard work: it requires a lot of deep reflection to see the world and the local church from a completely different angle….The rapidly swelling numbers of unchurched people may be forcing existing churches to reinvent their core spiritual practices while holding tightly to their core spiritual beliefs. It will take radically new settings and experiences to effectively introduce unchurched individuals to biblical principles and practices. One “radical new setting and experience” that I continually stress to churches, yet most churches choose to ignore, is an effective internet ministry that is relationally-based. If the majority of unchurched world will resist coming to your church, then don’t you think it’s time that your church goes to them? Presentation is Passé In the 1980’s and 1990’s, the cultural surveys stressed the importance of “quality” and “presentation” within the church service. Image was everything to the Boomer generation. Today, however, presentation holds very little spiritual value to the Unchurched Harry and Mary of 2005, particularly if there is even a hint of performance or if the service lacks a sense of human authenticity. Today’s Unchurched Harry and Mary are media savvy. To them, “presentation” feels like spiritual fakery. They know marketing and packaging when they see it. They expect such spam on television. But just as they will not abide spam on the internet…spiritual spam is totally unacceptable. While quality presentation may be important in a sales meeting…a church is not about sales, but salvation. If you must present anything to the congregation, present Christ through the authentic spiritual lives of your people, displayed through their dynamic worship, and expressed through their personal stories and missional ministry. What the Christian community does in the name of Christ…love in action…is a much more effective communication tool to the Unchurched Harry and Mary of 2005, than what the church “presents”. Conclusion The pendulum of values swings from generation to generation. While some established values may carry over to succeeding generations, as a general rule, the emerging generation always discover aspects of the previous generation’s value-set that they will reject. And, let’s be honest, they may have good reason to reject those established values. In this article, I have been able to touch on only a few pendulum-swings. If we recognize, as Barna has demonstrated, and as today’s generation innately knows, that the current ways of “doing church” are a miserable failure that have resulted in a 92% increase in Unchurched Harry’s and Mary’s, then we must agree that letting the pendulum swing in the direction of postmodern ministry methodology can only be an improvement. As the old saying goes: “If you keep doing what you’ve always done you will get what you’ve always got”. It’s time that the church begins to learn how to build relationships in an internet culture. It’s time that the church started being a family, rather than targeting families. And it is time that the church stopped putting on a show, and started putting on the full armor of Christ.
Discipleship: A Common Error Within Modernist Churches
David Posthuma @ Jun 15, 2005 04:43 PM
I recently had the opportunity to meet with a senior pastor and his leadership team. They wanted to learn more about the enterprise ministry software I had designed. During our meeting, I stressed that I believed any healthy church would value three basic ministry functions:
During the course of our discussions, the senior pastor made a very firm statement that is reflective of many (but thankfully not all) modernist ministries…he said: “We don’t care about discipleship…people already know more than they practice” I believe the devaluation of discipleship by the North American “modernist” church can be traced to two church culture errors:
True Discipleship: The western church culture has been seriously influenced by Greek philosophy…so much in fact, that often the contemporary church no longer understands what the Biblical authors meant by their use of specific terms. “Disciple” is one of those concepts lost among many modernist churches, yet it is being re-discovered by healthy postmodern ministries. The modernist church tends to equate the word “disciple” with the Greek word gnosis, meaning “knowledge”. This perspective toward discipleship was also reflected by my undergraduate school, If discipleship was nothing more than “feeding the mind”, then I would have to agree that most Christians are educated well beyond their level of obedience. But this is not the rabbinic understanding of “Discipleship”. The rabbinic and Biblical understanding of discipleship is that the student becomes like the teacher, not merely in knowledge, but in action…in lifestyle…in spirit. If our teacher is Jesus, then we should rightly desire to be like Him…not simply “know about” Him. The emerging generations, who have unfettered access to information, more and more are realizing that knowledge does not make a person truly spiritual…there is something more important…it is the character of the person, molded through a true and dynamic relationship with God. It is not knowledge “about” God that many young adults seek, but rather to truly know God…to experience God in all fullness and power within this world, and through that relational knowledge, to be transformed by God more and more into His image. The passion to “know” God, to “experience” God, and to be “transformed” into His image extends far beyond the modernist practice of discipleship. So is it any wonder that the Echo-boomer rarely shows up for a modernist Bible study or Sunday school class? The Modernist teaches about God, about doctrine, about life and living, and about church history and modern institutional structures (i.e., Our History, Our Values, Our Mission, etc.). In the presence of such spiritual distractions, the emergent Church cries out…”God where are you? How can I really relate to you?” The Modernist Seeker Service Drains Away Discipleship Resources: If you had met me ten years ago, I would have been a strong proponent of the Willow Creek and Saddleback ministry models. And I still admit that these models have strong appeal at building crowds…but the breakdown for me has been the inability of such models to consistently nurture biblical discipleship. Virtually all the church’s human, financial and time resources are poured into creating an “event-experience”…but this experience often has little to do with helping people to relate to God and be transformed into His image. The experience usually talks vaguely “about” God, “about” life, and “about” our need for God. But the emergent generations already know that they need God…the #1 search category on the internet is “Spirituality and Religion”. What they hunger for…what I hunger for…is to find true Christian leaders who will stop the spiritual performance and become authentic spiritual disciple-makers. The Modernist church may take issue with my assertions…and many do…they believe that discipleship occurs within small groups. But let’s be honest, while some small groups can be highly effective, most small group leaders have never themselves received Biblical discipleship from their church leadership. If this is true, then how can we expect our ill-equipped small group leaders to be the Rabbi to their Disciples? Most small groups degenerate into relational cliques. While I highly value relationships, and believe ministry happens best in the context of authentic relationships, the relationship between Rabbi and Disciple is not the experience found in most small groups. It Takes A Paradigm Shift: There’s an old saying: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got”. It is interesting to me that the Great Commission directs us to “Make Disciples”…not “make converts”. Conversion, without transformation, is a spiritual void…misrepresenting the Christ-life as empty and powerless. The paradigm-shift that is needed today is a move away from talking “about” God, to helping people experience the reality of God…the reality of God in the moment. Let’s take an analogy from every day life to clarify what I mean. Consider for the moment that I wanted to introduce you to my brother at a social gathering. I share with you his name, and facts about him. I even share with you the kind of lifestyle he prefers to live. Do you really know my brother? Of course not! To know my brother you need to hang with him, spend time with him, and relate to him. Now, if you really want to get to know my brother, then you have a choice to make: Will you begin relating to him right then-and-there…in the moment? Or will you wait to connect again at some point in the future? I hope the analogy drives the point home. People today want to meet with God, not merely His representatives in this world, and they want to meet with Him in the moment, to relate with Him, to experience Him and to be transformed by Him. In some postmodern ministry circles there has been a move back to the use of icons and candles. Ministry leaders are in error if they perceive these practices as merely staging…the latest gimmick. While I am not pro or against the use of icons and candles within a service, I believe the heart of the matter regarding their use is the desire to re-capture a sense of the sacred and divine. If our pastor’s and worship leaders would make their top service priority the goal of enabling people to relationally meet with God in the moment, sacrificing all performance and event-mentality for the higher value of authentic disciple-making, then I believe we all would experience an Acts 2 empowerment of Christ’s Church in our present culture…the real flame of the Holy Spirit, not just an MPEG1 version on the video screen or a waxy substitute. Why Every Pastor Should Blog
David Posthuma @ Jun 15, 2005 02:32 PM
As I speak around the country and conduct ministry workshops, the #1 question I encounter is “What Is a Blog”? Blogs have totally transformed the internet. In fact, if you poll the young adults within your ministry and ask them which would option they would prefer to view…a website or a blog…you would likely find that nearly 100% would respond that they prefer blogs. You would also likely find that many of your young adults already have their own blog. So what makes a blog so special that I would suggest that every pastor ought to have one? You Are Reading a Blog To better understand what a blog is and how it functions, take a moment and look at this newsletter…for if you are reading this article, you are visiting a blog. Unlike a website, a blog is an excellent platform for writing articles, devotions, and Bible studies. Blogs can also be highly personal, reflecting the thoughts and heart of the blog author. For pastors and staff who seek to inform, educate and inspire their people, a blog is the perfect communication platform…especially if you desire to attract and communicate with young adults who are the very future of Christ’s Church within this world. The Perfect Communication Platform So what are the traits of a blog that make it so perfect for pastors?
By encouraging your people to download a free News Reader, and pointing that reader to your pastoral blog, you will find that you can have direct interactive communication with your ministry base. In particular, you will have a communication platform that the young adults your ministry so desperately needs to reach, will value and respect. Alternatively, you may also create an email newsletter jump-page that will direct the people within your database to specific articles within your ministry blog. Where to Get a Blog? Text-only blogs are often available on the internet for free. One popular example is www.blogger.com . But for a blog that can support MP3 audio broadcast, video broadcast (also called “Vlogging”) and Flash multimedia, you will likely have to pay a very small monthly fee or put up with annoying advertisements. E-Church Essentials provides full multimedia blogs for only $7.99/month. Postmodern Ministry Takes Us Back to the Bible
David Posthuma @ Jun 15, 2005 02:27 PM
If you ask most church leaders what trait most typifies the Echo-Boomer generation (ages 15 – 33), the likely response will be that the current generation does not believe in absolute truth…that the young adult decides for themselves what is true. Repeatedly, I have heard church leaders regale against the current relativistic generation because they tend to perceive such young adults as de-valuing Scripture. I believe this perception is inaccurate.
It is very true that today’s young adult wants to judge for themselves what is true…and this includes the process of knowing God. The Echo-Boomer has no love for the know-it-all pastor who tells the congregation what to believe and how to live. At the same time, the Echo-Boomer displays little long-term appreciation for topical talks we label as “Seeker Services”. They know intrinsically that God is much more complex than these feather-weight talks convey. The Echo-Boomer, above all things seeks authenticity. They are marketing savvy. They can smell a packaged presentation a mile away…they have trained themselves to disbelieve any thing that does not display true authenticity.
A Severe Impact Upon Church Services The impact such cultural distinctives will have upon our worship services are severe. The presentational and programmed model of ministry that has been so prevalent over the last 35 years is now finding waning support among young adults…particularly those who have not been raised within a Christ-centered faith community. As one young adult communicated to me some time ago: “It doesn’t take a real Christian to put on a Christian show”. And, from the perception of many Echo-Boomers, that is what many of our churches have become…merely a show, a performance, filled with a live band, drama, multimedia, lighting and entertaining talks.
If It Was Good Enough for Us, then…. Ministry leaders make a fundamental error in believing that the model that was good enough for the Boomers must be good enough for the Echo-Boomers. The labels themselves should help us understand that the two cultures are very distinct from one another. An “Echo” occurs when sound bounces off from another object. In the case of the Echo-Boomer, there are many facets of the Boomer’s values that the Echo-Boomer reacts against (i.e., bounces off from). Below are but a few documented traits:
Postmodern Ministry has Raised Discipleship from the Dead
Today’s generation is starving for God. They want to know God intimately. In April of 2004, the Pew Internet and American Life study demonstrated that the #1 search category on the internet was “Spirituality and Religion”. In fact, 65% of online Americans have used the internet for spiritual research purposes. Today’s generation seeks God, but they highly distrust packaged religion. If your ministry seeks to “package” God and the Christian life in every Sunday service, the young adult will avoid your ministry. But if your ministry can adopt an attitude and atmosphere that communicates “we are all learning together”, and are able to facilitate Biblical learning…by allowing the Bible to speak for itself…then the young adult will have open ears and open hearts.
Facilitation also implies personal participation. To facilitate Biblical training and application requires that our services become much more interactive. A common methodology utilized is in-service journaling. Through the use of journaling, while providing moments of quiet introspection, prayer and reflection throughout the learning process, the participant has an opportunity interact authentically with God. The old preaching paradigm told people how to live and expected them to apply the teaching once they exited the church doors. The postmodern preaching paradigm enables the individual to spiritually participate in the immediacy of the moment.
An excellent example of a postmodern "Biblical Facilitation" ministry is Mars Hill of West Michigan. Much has been written about this 10,000 attendee ministry and its bleached blond, barefoot pastor, Rob Bell. But if you were to visit this church, you would be taken back by how basic and raw everything is. The atmosphere is warehouse like. The band plays on the floor and there is no visible worship leader. There is no drama, no staging and no special lighting effects. The heart of Mars Hill is Biblical facilitation. Rob Bell will open the Bible and guide the participants through lengthy passages of Scripture. He permits Scripture to speak to Scripture. Rob is also an excellent facilitator. He consistently utilizes journaling and participatory dynamics to enable the individual to meet with God in the moment.
Below I present an MP3 of a teaching by Rob Bell. I present this teaching for one purpose alone…to illustrate how radically different postmodern Biblical facilitation is from the Seeker-Sensitive Topical Talk model so prevalent within our churches today. I encourage you to listen quietly and reflectively to the entire teaching. Do what Rob asks you to do. And when the teaching is concluded, consider for yourself whether you feel as if you not only learned about God, but more importantly, met with God. I believe that if our pastor's can re-educate themselves to utilize Biblical facilitation, they will find that both young and old, as well as seeker and leader, will highly value and appreciate the methodology. Additional teachings can be found on the Mars Hill website. Most Churches Are Dead...They Just Don't Know It Yet
David Posthuma @ Jun 15, 2005 02:25 PM
I recently drove past the Chicago-land church I was contracted to re-start way back in 1990. In those days, the church had fallen from a high attendance of 550 people down to 35 people. The average age was 63 years old. I remember meeting with each individual privately and asking them one simple question: “What’s the problem”? The consistent answer was: “All the young people have moved away”. Well, being new to the area, I thought I had better verify their perception, so I did a demographic study of the community and found that the average age was 26 years old, predominately young married couples with infant children. Furthermore, there were over 500,000 people with a ten minute drive of the church! The problem was not that the young people had moved away from the church, the problem was that the church had decided long ago to move away from the young people. With God’s help, the ministry grew 400% in that year…all in young adults. Ten adults accepted Christ through the ministry in that year. But when my one-year contract was concluded and I moved on to plant a new church in I believe churches die for one primary reason: they become self-serving rather than Christ-serving. No church ever has to die. However, as you are reading this article, the vast majority (some believe 98%) of churches in The problem is really quite simple to nail down and fix…our Boomer controlled churches must stop deciding to move away from the young adult. Just because our Boomer model of ministry worked for us does not mean that it suffices for the emerging generations. If our church leaders find it politically dangerous to transform their current presentational/program-driven ministry model into a postmodern paradigm, then I have two recommendations: 1) Plant A Church. Let your Boomer-model ministry die in 20 years, but give life to as many postmodern child-churches as possible. 2) Start an Online Ministry. A complete online ministry can run concurrently with your established church programming, without forcing the current programming to change. The online ministry will also provide your ministry with the young adult core you require to plant child-churches. Our nation is one generation away from paganism. I pray that God would enable your ministry to be a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem.
Podcasting the Gospel
David Posthuma @ Apr 29, 2005 11:27 AM
In previous eras, broadcasting the Gospel of Jesus Christ was first accomplished through the written word, then radio and finally television. But all these mediums had limited distribution capabilities. Today, however, there is a new broadcast medium that has incredible broadcast capability through the use of MP3 audio files and RSS/XML directories and news feeders that have MP3 audio distribution capability. The concept of blogging audio has been around for a few years, but has been made popular of late due to the IPOD from Mac, and it's ability directly download MP3 audio files from a blog. The result is that the process of using audio-based blogs is now commonly called "PODCASTING". However, you do not need an IPOD to listen to MP3's from an audio-blog. You can use your own PC or Mac, or any number of other MP3 players on the market. Below is a sample of a sermon from Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel in MP3 format. Chuck is teaching on the great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13:
A Webinar: The Philosophy Behind Online Ministry
David Posthuma @ Apr 9, 2005 08:40 AM
E-Ministry Happens Best In the Context of Authentic Relationships
David Posthuma @ Mar 20, 2005 11:13 PM
Online ministry is highly relational. I realize that many Boomers and Busters may find that hard to believe, but the internet is all about peer-to-peer and mentor-to-peer relationships. The use of virtual classrooms for learning communities, team-exclusive meetings rooms and community forums all assist the development of online relational community. Leonard Sweet recently reflected upon the nature of online relational community. I found his musings on Ebay to be intriguing as I also could relate to his perception of postmodern community. Read Article
The e-Harvest Is Plentiful, but the Laborers are Few
David Posthuma @ Mar 8, 2005 10:14 AM
Yet, most churches are not even trying to labor in the online mission field. One recent study of church websites discovered that 94% of church websites contained no online ministry at all. These websites are merely online brochures advertising the church institution. Since when did it become more important to our churches to promote themselves rather than Jesus Christ? Those very few online harvesters, who seek to promote only Christ, are reaping a harvest that is literally 100-times greater than the harvest experienced by even our largest mega-church institutions. The Truth Media Internet Group is an excellent example of online ministry that is reaping an incredible harvest. Truth Media, a Canadian division of Campus Crusade, created ministry-only websites designed to target four distinct people-groups. Truth Media publishes their monthly statistics on their website as a wake-up call to the Church. In December of 2004, God enabled Truth Media to reap the following harvest:
In January, 2005, Truth Media experienced:
In a very different online ministry, Spencer Burke, ex-pastor of Mariner’s Church, a 10,000 attendee congregation in There are many other online ministry success stories that could be told. So why is it that most campus-based church institutions would rather help a handful of people come to Christ each year, rather than reap a harvest in the many thousands? The answer to this question is multi-faceted. Problem #1 - There is intense pressure on today’s pastors to fill the pews. Pastors are expected to be the primary leader, a strategic planner, an outstanding communicator and a highly relational servant. When pastors fail to be all these things, they often find themselves forced out of the pastorate or “called by God” to another ministry venue. These unfair and inappropriate pressures often cause pastors and church leaders to look to the latest ministry models that help increase attendance. Church institutions have devolved from an emphasis on “Church-growth” to an emphasis on “church-growth”. Once a ministry model is discovered that seems to work, church leaders are very cautious in the process of change, in part because they legitimately fear for their vocational stability. Problem #2 – Church Leaders Are Too Old George Barna recently address the issue of why so many young adults are abandoning the institutional church. Out of several observations, one primary point was that only 4% of twentysomethings were ever in any kind of leadership role. The number-one age category for leaders in our churches today is the 50 year-old spectrum. Generally speaking, people in their 50’s do not understand or value the internet. Leonard Sweet refers to people’s embrace of technology as belonging to three groups…the Natives, the Emigrants and the Foreigners. When Emigrants and Foreigners to the online culture dominate the decision-making within a church, it is no wonder that online ministry is not recognized as a high value. The Native has never known the world without the internet. For the Native, the Internet is a way of life, and they spend an average of 3 hours a day online. Natives are generally 12-33 years of age. Please read carefully the words of two Natives, from the Pew Internet and American Life focus group that depict the typical young adult’s attitude toward the internet: “I think the reason that we use the internet so well and that we know so many things about it is because when it happened, we were there. So, it’s not like it is some foreign language that we have to learn. It is something that we know, and we can apply what we know to find more things and then learn.” Another young adult states: “I think most of us are just accustomed to using it. I mean we just think it’s there for us. And, I’m not sure if I’ll phrase this right, but it’s like we’re…addicts. We need it and when you take it away it’s not…it’s a little bit harder to live without it.” For a young adult to admit that they are “addicted” to the internet and that they “Need it” is to clearly portray a cultural-shift that the Church must acknowledge. Since there is little hope of healing our young adults of their internet addiction, would it not be better for the Church to redeem the internet for the sake of Christ? Emigrants have had to adapt to life with the internet. Rather than seeing the Internet as a lifestyle, they may view the internet as a “tool”. Tools may be used or rejected based upon one’s skill with the tool and the perceived value of the tool to the ministry context. Emigrants are generally 34-50 years of age. The final category is the Foreigner. The Foreigner simply does not get the internet and has no desire to understand or value it. Even using email makes the Foreigner nervous…they would much rather use the telephone or snail-mail. While there are exceptions, most people 51 years of age and older are Foreigners to the internet. Those who are in positions of control and influence within our institutional churches are Foreigners to the internet. Without realizing it, their ignorance and lack of passion regarding online ministry is costing the body of Christ potentially millions of converts each year. Many Foreigners will likely justify their disdain for online ministry as not “relational” and may site the ineffectiveness of the church’s present brochure website. In many cases, young adults find that just like the Boomers claimed in the 1960’s and 70’s, the “older generation simply does not get it”. In April of 2004, George Barna wrote an open letter to pastors addressing this problem. Although I have quoted only a few excerpts, I encourage you to select the link to read the entire letter. Hey, fellow Baby Boomers. Can we talk? For many years, we have sweated, argued, fought, manipulated, analyzed, partnered, prayed and strategized to get our own way. We wanted the nation’s values to reflect our own. We wanted to have our fair share (or more) of the decision-making authority. We wiggled our way into key positions as soon as possible. After a period in which we said the system was the problem, we took over the system. Today, we are the system, and there are two generations following us who see that as a serious issue.
(go to http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=Perspective) Problem 3 – Satan Does Not Want the Church to Wake Up Satan cannot stop the Church, and so his strategy has always been to make it as ineffectual as possible. Regarding young adults today, and global impact, Satan’s efforts have been succeeding. As always, Satan’s strategy is deception.
Just because there is a mass-exiting of young adults from church institutions, does not mean that there is a mass-exiting from a desire to know and serve Jesus Christ. For many today, institutionalism is the problem. In fact, a 2005 focus group study conduct by CBS television polled young adults, ages 17-29, on their level of trust toward organized institutions. The result was 0% trust. Not a single young adult in the focus group held any value or trust toward organized institutions. The perception is that such institutions “use” people for the benefit of the organization and its top leaders. Over the past two decades, commercial and ministerial organizations have demonstrated their clear lack of moral integrity. In contrast, the #1 search category on the internet is “Religion and Spirituality”. People are hungry for Christ. The fields are white unto harvest, but the harvesters are few. Let us pray to the Lord of the harvest that He might send out more e-harvesters into the fields.
Paul tells us that when he was a child, he spoke like a child, but when he became mature, he put away childish things. In the 1990’s the internet was in its infancy. Email and website brochures were all that was possible…these are childish things by today’s online standards. Now the internet is in its young adult phase. It’s time to put away the childish things, and allow online ministry to mature and have its full impact upon the
The Cyberchurch Is Coming
David Posthuma @ Mar 4, 2005 03:00 PM
The Cyberchurch Is Coming:
1 (Source: Barna Research Group, Ltd., The Nation's Pews Might Be Emptying, But the Internet Is Bursting With Believers
David Posthuma @ Mar 4, 2005 02:51 PM
By Abraham McLaughlin
New Way to Preach Ministering on the Internet requires a whole new approach, one that relies on empathy and authenticity. The ability to listen and discern spiritual issues is more important than presenting doctrine clearly. By being a forum for listening as much as preaching, some say the Internet’s greatest contribution to religion will be that it boosts religious literacy: As people listen to each other, they’ll learn more about other faiths — and have to be more clear about their own. And for those who might want to venture into the online religious realm, the Web master of Microsoft’s site, Lynne Bundesen, has this advice: “They should go in with the greatest humility and not expect to sell their religion the first time they open their mouths in a chat room.” In this world, she says, “people are drawn to humility, not self-promotion." Reformation All Over Again, And Again, And Again...
David Posthuma @ Mar 4, 2005 02:28 PM
As culture changes, the ministry paradigms that we find as being effective also change. The advent of the printing press transformed the Church and helped spawn the first reformation of the church. Since that time, there have been numerous other reformations.
There was the great Awakening of the late 1700’s to mid 1800’s. The radio communication reformation begin in the 1920’s (includes television). It transformed ministry communication from merely a local paradigm to a global paradigm for the very first time in history. In the late 1960’s and 1970’s the Church experienced the Jesus Movement reformation. This reformation gave birth to contemporary worship service styles, the charismatic movement, and the rise of mega-churches. In 1970 there were fewer than 100 churches with over active 1,000 members…today there are many tens of thousands. Related to the mega-church movement, and likely a direct instigator of it, was the development of the New International Version Bible in 1976. Prior to the publication of the NIV, there was a serious theological debate regarding how to properly interpret Ephesians 4:11and 12. Tradition, along with some prominent Bibles of that time, had emphasized the role of the pastor, teacher and evangelist as being responsible for doing the work of ministry. The authors of the NIV argued that this was an erroneous interpretation, and that indeed it was God’s mandate that the “people do the work of service”; while the pastors, teachers and evangelists played a training and equipping role. Now that the Church was properly armed with a healthy ministry mobilization model, the Church began to explode with new and creative ministries. An explosion of transformational ministries that emphasized lay ministry leadership began to appear, from Evangelism Explosion, Willow Creek, Small Group/Cell/Meta-Church ministry and more. While all these diverse ministries had significant value, there existed no clear ministry philosophy for uniting and integrating what these valuable ministries had taught the Church about how to do effective ministry. Each ministry appeared to target a particular kind of person, or a particular stage of spiritual development. In the mid 1990’s, the work of Tom Patterson (Living the Life You Were Meant to Live) and Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Church/The Purpose Driven Life), was about to once again reform the Church. These men of God emphasized holistic ministry health. They stressed that the Church should not focus upon one ministry area, or one stage of spiritual development, but rather that the Church was responsible before God to provide a balanced ministry that emphasized five Biblical principles: Worship, Evangelism, Discipleship, Personal Ministry and Fellowship. They argued for a “Spiritual Formation” ministry model that would “process” people from spiritual Seeker to spiritual leader…and all the steps between. The Spiritual Formation model was a wonderful ideal. However, many ministries struggled to develop healthy leadership and structures to support each stage of spiritual development. Often, ministries would place the burden of “Spiritual Formation” upon lay small group leaders who were ill-equipped to support this overwhelming mission objective. As ministries began to emphasize Sunday service attendance, small group participation and personal ministry involvement, many churches began to see an attendance decline in traditional Sunday School and Catechism. The established educational models were now either no longer appealing, or people simply did not have enough time to “do everything”. In many contemporary and postmodern ministries today, systematic and intentional biblical instruction is virtually absent. The Purpose-Driven model by Rick Warren appeared for many churches to be the solution to failing educational structures. Yet, as ministries tried to implement the model, many were unable to maintain participation momentum beyond the 201 level. It was common for many ministries that on-campus classroom environments encouraged participation of people over 45 years of age, while those under 45 seemed to stay away. The challenge before the Church today is how to attract, Biblically train, and mobilize young adults for healthy and effective ministry. e-Church Is a Solution I believe one option for encouraging and supporting the spiritual formation of young adults and emerging generations, is the use of the e-Church. Some call it cyberchurch, or virtual church. George Barna conducted a major study of eChurch potential released in 2001. That study clearly demonstrated a huge potential for eChurch ministry. E-Church is so much more than websites…it is e-Learning, online assessments, ministry team mobilization, ministry team management and global communication. At this point, most ministry leaders object: “but our ministry can’t even maintain a decent website!” Ministry is about people, not technology. So if eChurch is to become a reality…and an effective ministry tool…it must be packaged in a manner that non-technical people can utilize. While there may always be a place for “The 1st |
