Who Is Your Church?

• How can you expect members to behave and treat each other, both intentionally and spontaneously?
• What beliefs does your church take strength in during times of stress?
• What is the metaphor, “song in the heart” or vision that excites and inspires your church and the local publics?
• What is the strategic mission you hope to accomplish in 3-5 years, which you align all activities of the church along?

Answering these will spare your congregation from redundant committee management and oversight, trust issues, directionlessness and dithering, conflicted leadership, lack of volunteer interest, budget crises, and a host of other problems.

Be clear about your identity and align it around your purpose.  Drill it into every volunteer and staff leader (from the board to the secretary to the greeters to the custodian). If you can’t articulate your church’s identity, how are the spiritually hungry publics going to find you in the sea of other faceless churches?

Church Discipline

Discipline is the side of accountability church leaders don’t like to think about, let alone practice. If a church sets boundaries on leadership initiative and a leader steps over them repeatedly, a stern talking-to just doesn’t cut it. You’ve got to back those boundaries with consequences.

The point of discipline isn’t retaliation, it’s accountability. A boundary isn’t meaningful if it isn’t enforced, so odds are you’re doing the transgressor a favor pointing it out. Discuss the infraction and punishment privately first, then make it known only to other leaders. Make it clear the one being disciplined is to be treated with all grace and respect, because it can be a humbling experience.

The punishment itself should never be personal, but the aftermath should be highly so. The goal is to help the transgressor grow through the experience. Being disciplined can leave a person feeling very exposed, which is the most critical time to stay intimately close. Let them know they are loved, and encourage all leaders to do likewise. If some can’t, you’ll have the opportunity to uncover and discuss outstanding conflict privately without a blow-up.

Asleep at the Stern

The gospel of Mark is where I first met Jesus two years ago. I haven’t read it since, so I picked it up recently. I just got through chapter 4, with the venerable story of Jesus calming the sea. It hit me that it perfectly described the plight of the modern church. Check out the first part (Mark 4:35-38):

On that day, when evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

Here is what it means. The other side is the new mission field of the suburb that cropped up in post-war America about 50-some-odd years ago. The boat of disciples is a new church plant, and it wasn’t a lonely affair since other boats went along, too. The windstorm is the surge of un-Christian spiritual views, ranging from athiesm to Buddhism to Wicca, and even a slew of brand new spiritualities (compare to the violent wind of Pentecost). Now the church is swamped with the worldly waters it was supposed to be separated from, a mish-mash of competing doctrines.

The crowning moment is the next piece though, Jesus was asleep on the cushion. Our churches are drowning in conflict, judgmentalism, ingrowth and spiritual malaise. Where’s God? Why do we feel so alone and forsaken? Why do people have an easier time finding spirituality on their porch or in a bar? Is it possible our Lord Jesus Christ is asleep?

Yes, I believe it is possible.

So what do you do? Well, the disciples chose to wake him up (Mark 4:39):

He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased and there was a dead calm.

Whew! All’s well if we bang hard enough on God’s door to wake him up. Right? Check out verse 40:

He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

Rebuked. Jesus commands us to go to the other side, and sometimes halfway through everything goes straight to hell, and no matter how we plead we can’t seem to feel God’s presence. We feel abandoned.

God cares that you are perishing, and he won’t let that happen. Sometimes though, following Jesus means going through the hardest places on earth. There’s no telling what will happen in that storm if you let go of your fear and ride it, but I believe after the storm you’ll make it to the other side Christ called you to, more ready than ever to meet his mission.