Rethink Mission: What would you say to a local church that had a desire to engage artists in their city or cultivate the arts in their church? Where should they start?

Michael Winters, The 930
If a church wants to engage artists in their city, put 2% of the annual budget into visual arts commissions. This might turn into artwork for your sanctuary or the kid’s area, or it might turn into a photography class that focuses on trying to see things as Christ sees them, or it might turn into creating a classroom space with lots of art supplies for the public to come and use one night a week to explore creativity.

Or without spending a penny, just start an informal group that goes around to all of the major art events in your town and meets the artists and learns why they do what they do. Contemporary artists create great case studies that challenge our understanding of the world. Then, go grab lunch together afterward and try to figure out what God thinks of the exhibit you just saw. Pray for the individuals you meet.

By no means do I think every church needs to run an art gallery, but I do think every church needs to acknowledge the creativity that is in all of us and equip the church to encourage creativity toward Christlikeness in their friends, family, and neighbors.

James McAnally, The Luminary
Before you attempt to start a ministry for artists, spend time at other (non-church) artist groups and get to know artists on a personal level. You have to know the artistic culture of your city before you try to engage with it. Learn the language. Find out the galleries that affect your city’s culture. Understand the art world before attempting to transform it.

Also, plan for the long-term. By this I mean to go about things with the sense that you will be working with these artists, galleries and communities for decades, so you need to lay the groundwork for long-lasting relationships. It is difficult for a church to gain the trust of the art community-they see through falsity very quickly (as do most groups of people churches minister to). Maybe the best thing you can do is financially support another institution or to engage in areas already in place and working. Think outside the (newly created) box. If your church is called to serve artists, it will arise out of love and understanding and a desire to see people succeed and grow, which can lead to all kinds of unexpected opportunities and partnerships you could have never created on your own. If you can serve someone/something with no strings attached and no expectations placed, how much more powerful a statement of concern and sacrifice could you make than you would if you simply open a gallery in your church or host monthly networking meetings? Working from that paradigm, then perhaps you can take the next steps and actually create a stand-alone organization.

Grace Hwang, SALT
I would first express my enthusiasm for their desire to foster within their communities what makes us fully human!  Then I’d encourage them to look at precedents that already exist in their communities and articulate a vision that enlarges the capacities of each of their missions.  And I’d strongly advise committing to a budget and staffed positions to oversee it.

Back in the 1950s, the Judson Memorial Church allowed artists free reign of their basement space to put up exhibitions in their gallery space – and championed uncensorship.  Because of the risks they were willing to take they have built a reputation as an authentic place for modern art.

A local church with this desire should pursue a ministry because it rises from within the local church body, like The Light Church in Baltimore that serves the MICA neighborhood and puts on great shows or the Church of the Messiah in Brooklyn which hosts an alternative arts funding event called FEAST in Brooklyn.

I also think that engaging artists in the city and cultivating arts in the church are two separate things – both equally large tasks that require taking risks, giving freedom and setting aside money and means to accomplish.

Engaging artists in the city means listening to their needs and giving them space and a platform to pursue their visions and dreams.

Whereas cultivating arts in the church is providing a safe space for artists to work out their beliefs and doubts in ways that are beyond a well-designed brochure or singing a song.  The community of The Haven, hosted by Calvary St. George’s is a parachurch ministry of Priority Associates that curates evenings of community, fellowship and artistic interpretations of worship that might not fit within the confines of a church service.

Joanna Taft, The Harrison Center
The HCA uses a community based approach. We ask what our community needs and respond to those needs by leveraging our resources with those of our partners. Here are 3 examples of how we have met artists needs: First, emerging artists told us that they couldn’t afford market rate studio rents, so we created very low cost studio options (our average artist pays $125 a month). Second, when we first opened, both gallery owners and artists across the city didn’t seem to be working together or even know each other. We helped found and now house the office of the Indianapolis Downtown Artists and Dealer’s Association to bring better communication and collaboration between the gallery owners and artist cooperatives in Indianapolis. This bringing together of the arts community resulted in the creation of city wide First Friday events and many other successful initiatives. Third, our artists told us they felt like they needed to move to a major city to make a living as an artist. They needed art patrons. To begin growing patrons for our artists, we developed a successful monthly exhibit series that averages 800 in opening night attendance and attracts many first time buyers.

Thinking longer term, we created a public charter high school to grow a new generation of art patrons. Many of the 450 students who attend are naturally artistic, but the school is designed to grow patrons–well educated, well rounded citizens that will serve our community in many ways. The school offers a classical liberal arts curriculum which follows an art history timeline. Students begin 9th grade with the study of Africa and Asia, 10th grade is ancient Greece and Rome, 11th grade is the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and 12th grade the age of exploration to modern times. The school is academically rigorous and racially/socioeconomically diverse (about 50/50 white and minority populations). These student will become art patrons for the city of Indianapolis, but will be much more—our voters, philanthropists, artists, teachers, moms, lawyers, and citizens. These are just several examples to demonstrate our approach in engaging artists and cultivating the arts, but the key point is that our model starts with identifying the community need and then creatively addressing it.

Rethink Mission: What pitfalls that you would warn a local church to avoid in creating a ministry for artists?

Michael: I’ve seen a lot of churches get into doing things with art, but not really understanding why they’re doing it.  Somebody just told them art is a good thing.  I think it’s valuable to experiment with incorporating art into the life of the church, but don’t do it for the art.  Do it for the mission of Christ.  Think about the mission of your church and then see how artists might be able to serve that mission.  You’ve got to have gospel-centered reasons for incorporating art into church.  To develop this, I’d recommend Art for God’s Sake by Philip Graham Ryken and Unceasing Worship by Harold Best.

I’d also say that you shouldn’t let an arts ministry just be something that happens in the church basement without strong leadership.  Elders (pastors) need to be on board.  Elders (pastors) need to oversee it.

We’ve got to remember that for the most part the protestant church has completely un-learned how to think about art.  We’ve never had an agreed understanding on what role visual art should play in church life, and the state of contemporary art just makes the intersection of church and art just that much muddier, so there’s some brain-power work that needs to be done.  I say all this only because I want people to know that it makes a mess when you try to bring artists into the church.  But, it’s worth it and it needs to happen.  Just don’t expect it to be easy or ‘pretty’, though by God’s grace your hard gospel-motivated work with artists will be beautiful.

James: It has become a bit of a trend to engage with artists in new church plants. I advise anyone I talk with to really search themselves and their gifts and callings as a body to discern whether or not working with artists is the right path for them. It is an area in which you have to be “all in ” so to speak and know that it is what you are passionate about giving yourself to. Not every community is called to serve artists in particular. We should all seek to develop a sound theology of art and be sensitive to it in our midst–that, I feel, is a general calling to the churches in our culture. However, the undertaking of a ministry uniquely created to engage with artists is a specific calling that should be weighed in each context according to the people and resources already present in your body.

Last word of advice–expect to forever be in the tension between serving Christ and serving the art world. No one has a simple answer on how to best manage questions of content and appropriateness, transforming the culture vs. being transformed, when to speak boldly and when to listen, and the pure antagonisms present to what you will do. Not even Harold Best, and that is saying quite a bit.

Grace: I think each organization/ministry has to answer the question, “Why arts in a church?”  Especially in a city like New York where there are hundreds of museums and galleries, it’s important to identify and reclaim church as a public space to explore qualities of art, justice and beauty.

The arts and faith have this in common that they are both approaching the same large task of expressing the unseen.

When we started as a small group last year, we started by identifying shared values and understandings about art:

1) Art making is a pleasure that is the pursuit of knowing ourselves and what makes us uniquely human.  2) Art is about pursuing questions that seek Truth, not a right answer.  3) The arts have a transformative power to move someone from a state of complacency to a spirit of compassion.  4) That an examination of one’s creative process reveals insight to what we believe and fear.

Joanna: I think there is a temptation among churches to associate with the arts for the purpose of being seen as hip and to attract a young congregation.  I think that is a dishonest use of the arts.  Instead, the best thing a church can do to engage artists in their city is to love artists.  In our community, I have two favorite examples:  one is a family who provided an attic apartment to one of our artists for $100 a month for five years, making it possible for the artist to put his resources into the pursuit of his craft.  The other is a family who stopped spending their friday nights at the shopping mall and began taking their teenage daughters to art openings.  They built relationships with the artists and began to love their artwork.  They became regular, monthly buyers until there was no more wall space left in their house.  Today they continue to buy regularly, but do so in the form of purchasing art gift certificates for weddings and birthdays.  There are many other examples of people donating cars, inviting artists into their homes for meals, visiting their studios/taking a genuine interest in their craft, and buying art.  These families are caring for the artists of our community without an agenda and with appreciation for the beauty they bring.
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See: Part 1 of the interview

Rethink Mission: Tell me about the vision or philosophy behind your arts center or gallery.

Joanna Taft, The Harrison Center
I first want to clarify that I am not a church leader, although I am an active member of Redeemer Presbyterian Church.   I am the Executive Director of the Harrison Center for the Arts, which rents space from and has a synergistic relationship with Redeemer Presbyterian Church.  While the Harrison Center is not a faith-based organization, its philosophy has been shaped by the Christian concept of the cultural mandate.  The cultural mandate (Genesis 1:28) is the idea that the human race is called to continue the work of creation by building cities, creating beauty, and bringing order and healing to a broken world.  The Harrison Center considers this a very high calling and through its mission strives  ”to be a catalyst for renewal in the City of Indianapolis by fostering an awareness, appreciation, and community for art and culture.”

Michael Winters, The 930
The overall mission of Sojourn Church, which operates The 930 Art Center, is to see the gospel transform everything – individuals, the church, the world.  So, the 930 supports that mission by seeking to see the gospel transform artists, the work they make, and the local scene in which they work.

Our philosophy of ministry for the 930 gallery really leans on the idea of ‘imago dei’.  All humans are made in the image of the Creator God, so we each have creativity in our nature.  An art gallery can become a hub for that creativity and hopefully reveal something about human nature and a shadow of God’s divine nature.  Art can deal with all the issues of life, so it’s very useful for creating an intersection between the church and the world.

The 930 Art Center causes an intentional complication in the public’s understanding of what a church is and how the church relates to the surrounding neighborhood and city.  Our building is not sacred space and it is not secular space.  The ministry of the 930 shares the difficult relationship to culture that we also should have as individuals.  We are ‘in the world, but not of the world’.

James McAnally, The Luminary
The Luminary was started from the premise of working with artists directly to meet needs that were not being addressed elsewhere. By approaching the development of an arts center from the perspective of emerging artists who need resources, opportunities, and a supporting community in order to successfully fulfill the unique vocation of being a working artist, we let those needs shape our vision. At the outset, we thought we would be a community art center that focused on offering an affordable option for public studio space and basic classes and workshops. Over time, we found that the needs in our context were best expressed in the areas of professional development and dedicated one-on-one support for artists.

Likewise, in terms of our programming, our operating philosophy is one of inclusion and participation in which viewers who are not necessarily “gallery literate” are able to find new avenues in which to connect with contemporary art.

Grace Hwang, SALT
SALT is a flexible gallery, performance and gathering venue re-imagining spaces for art, work and sanctuary.  We started in June 2008 with a small group of artists in the offices of The Gallery Church and continue to grow in our vision as a contemporary community art space with their support and partnership.

The philosophy behind SALT is to re-imagine how public, private and religious communities collaborate with each other in creative, economically sustainable ways.  So practically, it houses the congregation of The Gallery Church on Sundays; while during the weekdays it’s a shared work space for coworking and in the evenings we host events, classes and meetings.

The intended impact is for individuals in the local and global community to engage with each other by creating and sharing what is worth preserving in our culture, and how we can enhance the flavor of our everyday lives.  I’m drawn to what Michael P. Farrell describes as a “magnet place” that he identifies as a precondition for collaborative circles.  My friend Kenyon Adams from Redeemer’s Center for Faith and Work introduced me to the title and I love the idea of a space that would attract people and produce art or work collaboratively that they might not otherwise have been able to accomplish individually.

The arts have an inherent need to be seen and experienced in order to be fully realized as agents of hope, healing, and unity. Artists are increasingly challenged to find studio and exhibition spaces to make their art accessible and relevant to the public.  Limited still are the venues to display projects that are socially conscious – an alternative to commercial galleries and spaces.

I also find it valuable to preserve space that honors the creative process – from ideation, to making, to problem solving and culminating in celebrating.  There is so much we learn about who we are, what’s important to us and how we were designed when we examine our own process of creating and reflecting.

Rethink Mission: How practically have you gone about fulfilling that vision on a daily basis? How do you engage artists in your city?

Joanna We work with two populations: emerging artists and emerging patrons.  We serve emerging artists by providing below market rate studio spaces in which to create art, 3 galleries in which to display art, and opportunities to grow as an artist.  28 artists have studios with us, but hundreds more throughout the city call us home for exhibit opportunities and community.

We serve emerging patrons by providing monthly art exhibits in a non-intimidating atmosphere (often multi-sensory or interactive), an annual Independent Music and Art Festival which attracts over 6000 attendees, and year-round programming with Herron High School (which we created in 2006).   In addition, we have a project based internship program which trains high school and college students to be cultural entrepreneurs.

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Next week: How to start a gallery or art center through your church.
All comments will be entered in a drawing to win a copy of Andy Crouch’s Culture Making.

Two weeks ago we started a discussion (Pt. 2 is here) with the Executive Pastors of three very different but fast growing churches: Kevin Peck, Steve Miller, and Josh Patterson. This week we talk about the qualities needed of executive pastors in missional churches.

Note: This is the last part of this series, so if you have questions, be sure to post them, and I’ll ask the guys to interact here.

Rethink Mission: Some people think the exec pastor role is second place for guys who can’t preach.  What would you say to an energetic young pastor or church planter who is drawn to the power or prestige of being the up-front leader, but is starting to realize that he’s not that guy?

Kevin: Many executive pastors can preach. And from my experience, executive pastors at innovative, growing church are often very good preachers. They are serving in their capacity in joyful obedience to Jesus.  I serve where and how I serve because my King has commanded me. Anyone who is feeling led to lead the bride of Christ needs to come to a place of honest submission to the will of God. It is an incredibly dangerous thing to try to lead the body of Christ in an effort to gain power or prestige. God will not yield His glory to another. He actually opposes the proud. This should be terrifying to any would-be leader.

Steve: I would rejoice that he’s realizing that now, and then tell him to repent of his power or approval idol that’s driving him to want so desperately to be a front man. I would then encourage him to meditate on Romans 12:3-8. There Paul is calling us not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought, but rather with sober judgment, meaning we need to get a right view of who we are. In the rest of that passage he explains we are a body where not all have the same function, which includes pastors. We need to use the gifts God has given us so He can be famous, not so we can be famous. If a pastor reading this is struggling with what his role should be, may God give him a humble confidence to be able to ask godly leaders in his life what they honestly see in him (strengths and weaknesses), helping him embrace how God has wired him so ultimately the gospel can advance.

“I have found that a lot of guys lack self-awareness and are blinded by self-righteous pride. They desire the power and prestige of being the up-front leader more than they desire to see Christ’s Church move forward in power and prestige.” -Josh Patterson

Josh: Again, the role is different at each church.  Some executive pastors can’t preach and shouldn’t preach.  Some of them can preach and should preach.  Some lead pastors can’t preach and shouldn’t preach.  Some of them can preach and should continue to preach.  The reality is that the Holy Spirit has gifted each believer according to His sovereign will.  These gifts manifest themselves and engender edification, repentance, encouragement, direction, understanding, etc in the body of Christ.  If you think you can preach, but nobody else does then it should be pretty clear to you…this is not your gift.  If you think you can lead and nobody follows, then you can’t lead.  If you think you can teach and everyone always leaves confused, then you can’t teach.  It doesn’t mean you are a bad person or less than anyone else… it means that the Holy Spirit did not sovereignly decide to gift you in that way.  But, He has gifted you and you need to walk in this.  Self-awareness and the affirmation of the body is essential.

I have found that a lot of guys lack self-awareness and are blinded by self-righteous pride.  They desire the “power and prestige of being the up-front leader” more than they desire to see Christ’s Church move forward in power and prestige.

Rethink Mission: What qualities do you think are important for an executive pastor of a missional church to have?

Kevin: XPs for missional churches must have a deep, driving commitment to the church being primarily a people on mission.  He must have violent allegiance to the mission of God being accomplished rather than the local church growing in budget, prestige, etc. If the executive pastor is ambiguous in this passion the church will quickly becoming nothing more than a self-propagating, self-exalting, pseudo-commercial organization. Was that too subtle?  I can’t say enough about this. If the executive pastor is not primarily about God’s mission, the church won’t be either.

XPs for missional churches must be good theologians. If this is not the case, the church will be driven by
pragmatism rather than the Word of God.

XPs for missional churches must be missiologists. The work of the team leader is to find effecitive ways
to intersect the gospel with culture.

Steve: He needs to fulfill the character qualities found in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, displaying he loves Jesus and is a biblically qualified elder. Who we are in Christ comes before what we do for Christ. I think exec pastors can get caught up in doing the business of church and forget that its about being a godly pastor who loves Jesus and loves people. That said, he should also be a strategic thinker who can anticipate challenges, a team builder who seeks to raise up and empower other men and women to lead, and lastly I would say he needs to be flexible. If a church is a missional church, it will constantly be seeking new ways to engage the culture and serve its city. That means a lot of trial and error. That means a lot of venturing into the unknown. That means thinking outside the box… or the org chart. If the lead pastor is willing to do that, but the exec pastor or other pastoral staff members aren’t, then conflict and dissension will ensue. If you’re gonna be missional, you gotta be flexible, you gotta be willing to get a little messy.

“…he should also be a strategic thinker who can anticipate challenges, a team builder who seeks to raise up and empower other men and women to lead, and… he needs to be flexible.” -Steve Miller

Josh: I would start with 1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9 and 1 Peter 5:1-5.  These would be primary for a church considering someone for the role of executive pastor.  Secondarily, every church has a slightly different set of responsibilities and expectations for this position, so these need to be defined as well.  I know the other guys you are interviewing for this blog (Kevin Peck at The Austin Stone and Steve Miller at The Journey) and our roles are similar in many areas and different in others.  You want a guy who is growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18), who lives a reconciled life through the power of the gospel (2 Corinthians 5:14-21), and can lead leaders and build teams with the strength found in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
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Part 1 of the interview is here.
Part 2 on leading from the 2nd chair.

You can follow each of these guys on Twitter: Kevin Peck Steve Miller Josh Patterson

The heart of this website are the Missional Q&A Interviews, updated weekly, where church leaders like you talk about the issues they face on a daily basis.

Executive Pastor Roundtable Part 2

Last week we started a discussion with the Executive Pastors of  three very different but fast growing churches: Kevin Peck of The Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, Steve Miller of The Journey in St. Louis, and
Josh Patterson at The Village Church in Dallas. This week we talk about the challenge of leading from the second chair.

Rethink Mission: As an executive pastor, you probably have the least sexy job in the entire church. Everyone wants to be, hear from, or talk to Darrin, Matt, or Chandler. What have you discovered about leading from the second chair and exerting influence without having the benefit of a large platform?

Kevin: To qualify the question, many executive pastors have considerable public platform as their gifts align to the task of preaching and teaching. However, the heart of this question is really applicable for second chair leaders who will need to deal with the fact that the lead pastor, the primary public communicator, will always have a broader scope of influence. So, no matter the giftedness of the second chair leader, this question drives at a perspective that will be absolutely critical to the long-term effectiveness and joy of the second chair leader and his family.

The first lesson might be the most important to gaining joy in Jesus from second chair leadership. In leadership, there are often as many detriments to having a large, public, crowd-facing platform as there are benefits.  For one, the Scripture, from cover to cover, warns us to guard our hearts from seeking our own glory. This is just down-right hard when the multitudes applaud you. The amount of attention and energy that is required by all three of these godly men to guard their hearts is trying, to say the least.

God gives men in the second chair a great gift to love Jesus and His people with a considerably muffled roar of ministry fans when compared to our lead pastors. This motivates me to take advantage of the constant reminder that I do what I do for the glory of God, and to protect, love and respect my brother Matt who takes many fiery missiles so that his brothers can serve in purity.

Secondly, although a large platform is no doubt a useful tool for influencing, the leader is deceived if he thinks it is required for large-scale influence.  Over the last 5 years, I have seen the effectiveness of leadership that uses large platforms, but does not depend on them.  Scripture and history show us that effective leaders can lead with or without public platforms. Leading leaders is truly the essential competency of influential second chair leaders.

“Leading leaders is truly the essential competency of influential second chair leaders.” -Kevin Peck, The Austin Stone Community Church

Steve: I’ve worked with Darrin over 6 years now and have tremendous respect for him as a leader, a pastor, and friend. His leadership has made room for many others to be able to lead as well. And I know he agrees with something we heard said at an Acts29 Quarterly recently, that gospel-centered preaching is essential to your church but it isn’t sufficient. That means that we must preach well, but we must also do more than preach well. That “more” is often the day in and day out leadership in the church. The work of priests to care for people and the work of kings to direct and empower people is just as important to the furtherance of the gospel as the work of prophets to preach and envision.

If we believe that God desires to see the work of prophets, priests and kings all leading his church, then what can happen is the ones who are sitting in those chairs can work together in a mighty way. Together we can move people towards maturity in Christ. Because I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter what chair you are in, all those chairs need to work as a team. The lead pastor, the exec pastor, the groups pastor, the campus pastor, they all need to work as a team and lead people in the same direction. If the exec pastor is trying to move them one way, and another pastor is going another way, well, that’s no fun.

Josh: Thankfully “sexiness” is not what God has called me to model.  One thing that has become clearer to me is that “leaders lead”.  God has called me to lead the staff and provide leadership to our executive staff, elders and to The Village Church.  This does not mean that I am necessarily the primary leader in all of these areas, but I do lead at some capacity in each.  Nobody at The Village leads alone.  Leadership thrives when humility is the expectation and leaders can lead.

Matt has desired a plurality of leaders from the beginning and has modeled humility in leadership.  When we delegate responsibility and not the authority to act we only hamstring and stifle leadership.  It takes both (responsibility and authority).  A lot of lead pastors delegate responsibility and don’t empower with true authority.  So, I personally have all of the influence and platform I need to successfully fulfill my role at the church.
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Part 1 of the interview is here.
Part 3 on the qualities needed of an executive pastor of a missional church.

You can follow each of these guys on Twitter: Kevin Peck Steve Miller Josh Patterson

The heart of this website are the Missional Q&A Interviews, updated weekly, where church leaders like you talk about the issues they face on a daily basis.

Rethink Mission: A lot of executive pastors work for a chaos-maker or work in a fast-growing church, which of course equals lots of chaos. How do you lead in such a way that brings order to & makes sense of the craziness?

Kevin: Leadership in a fast-growing church is a practice in change-management. One of the first learning lessons at The Austin Stone was learning the difference between chaos and innovation. Chaos is indeterminate change, leading to confusion, inefficiency, and ineffectiveness. Innovation is incremental improvements in paradigms and practices that are essential to creating a culture committed to the contextualization of the gospel.

I have found that my role is to be a passionate advocate for innovation, a deterrent for chaos, and a source of wisdom between the two. This is done through honest and clear evaluation of suggested change with respect to organizational vision, values, priorities, goals, etc.

However, this kind of leadership must be in balance with a consistent catalytic pressure to think past the paradigms and practices currently in place. In short, chaos is bad, but stagnation is no better. I think it is important to say that leadership through chaos is also largely a team effort. I really can’t overstate how critical it has been to The Austin Stone to have a number of leaders who share the responsibility of creating a culture of innovation without chaos. No person, or even pair of leaders, can sustain this culture.

Steve: I think it’s important to first evaluate how you view the craziness or chaos that’s happening. When God grows a church at a rapid pace, young leaders will feel the chaos. But growth is a gift from God that should lead us to thankfulness and also to humility as we are forced to look to Him for direction. Just like in the book of Acts, the Spirit moved and the church then built systems to support what the Spirit was doing. We get in trouble if we try and stuff the Spirit into our systems.

What I have tried to do is help our leaders be encouraged that God is at work (that’s why we have this chaos), and to continually focus them on who God called us to be, our mission and values. It’s easy to let your values become mere words on letterhead when growth overwhelms you. But what will help people is when you can take your God-given values and make them tangible for people, and keep them continually before them. Growth scares many people because they fear change. They want growth but they don’t want what comes with it. Helping them see the core of who we are hasn’t changed amidst the growth will keep them envisioned and on board.

Josh: I have been a part of The Village Church for 5 ½ years and the pace of ministry is something that  I have grown accustomed to.  The church has experienced a lot of fast growth which produces challenges and complexities for everyone, but I would not describe it as “chaos”.  It is certainly busy and our time is focused and directed.  Matt actually helps lead through the challenges and, thankfully, doesn’t contribute to them.

I am a team-builder and want to empower our team to move ministry and mission forward.  One of my roles is to direct the development of ministry, not micro-manage it.  So, I am not working through the challenges of the church alone.  Instead, there are dozens of gifted, talented and capable people who are working to implement the mission and vision of the church.  God has gifted us and given each of us a measure of faith to walk in these gifts (Romans 12:3-8).  Our staff is at its healthiest when we recognize our gifts and walk in them powerfully by the Spirit.

RM: How has your job changed as your church has grown over the years?

Kevin: To begin with, as I have conversations with my peers at other churches, it is clear that the job of the executive pastor is very different from church to church. Much of this is determined by the gift mix of the lead pastor and the gift mix of the executive pastor (as well as other senior leaders).

Over the last 5 years a lot has changed at The Austin Stone. One notable change has been the balance between working on efficiency and effectiveness. When the church was still a church plant my job was split between making sure we were doing the right things and making sure we were doing things right.

However, as the leadership team has grown in size and skill I spend almost all of my time on ensuring that we are doing the right things. In the beginning, I spent a large portion of my time developing core ministries such as groups, children’s ministry, etc. However, as ministry and leaders developed my time is now largely spent on innovation and new initiatives.

Another key evolution was a movement from ministry development to leader development. In the early years, I spent a considerable amount of time in ministry development as well as leadership development. In the more recent years, I spend the vast majority of my time developing current and future leaders. This also includes devoting a considerable amount of attention to developing and maintaining healthy, biblical team dynamics.

Pastor Steve Miller. Photo courtesy of Brea McAnally.

Steve: Well, the one thing that’s been constant is the change that I’ve experienced in my job over the years. With each new level of growth there arises more needs. Early on I led the small group ministry until we found a leader to do that. I taught and preached more often until we found another teacher to do that (some guy named Jonathan McIntosh). Then I did a lot of financial and business work until we found a leader to do that. The list goes on. The point is that in a young growing church, as an Exec Pastor who is scanning over the entire leadership structure of the church, you are the first one to take on the responsibility for the leadership needs that arise. So the goal is to not get buried in those needs, but to raise up leaders who can take it beyond what you could do. If we fail to raise up leaders, or if we fail to hand things off to emerging leaders, our plate gets too full, we become a bottleneck for the church, and we will ultimately be in danger of burnout.

Josh: The fundamentals of my roles are essentially the same as when I started in this role 5 years ago, but the nature of the job is more complex now.  I became the executive pastor when we had about 12 people on staff and now we are close to 80.  We were a single campus church with just over a 1,000 people, but now we have 3 campuses with over 6,000 people.  So, my job has changed by matter of degree.

We have had to shift and implement new processes and language to adapt to the changing culture of the church.  Multi-site was definitely a challenge that caused us to revisit our ministry philosophy and staffing structure.  Each new campus introduces new challenges and complexities.  All of this has been healthy for us as we continue to press in to the Lord to see what He has for us as a body moving forward.  That said, some of the basic realities of my job have remained: loving our staff, working toward a healthy, cohesive and unified staff culture, ministry development, etc.
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Part 2: Leading from the Second Chair.
Part 3: The Qualities of an Executive Pastor of a Missional Church.

You can follow each of these guys on Twitter: Kevin Peck Steve Miller Josh Patterson

The heart of this website are the Missional Q&A Interviews, updated weekly, where church leaders like you talk about the issues they face on a daily basis.

Rethink Mission is a community project.

The heart of this website are the Missional Q&A Interviews, updated weekly, where church leaders like you talk about the issues they face on a daily basis.

Rethink Mission is first & foremost about church leaders talking to church leaders.

In our short two weeks up, we’ve talked about planting in the ‘burbs, preaching in a way that connects with culture, and next week we start a round-table discussion with executive pastors from three young yet influential churches.

So the question is this: who would you like to see interviewed? What topics would you like to see addressed?

How can we help you do your job and fulfill your calling in a more missional way?

And listen to me. I just got a note from a friend and he said, “But, I’m just an associate pastor.”

There are no just associate pastors here.  Church leaders of every kind – designers, song writers, administrators, counselors, teachers, media personnel – all need to be released and empowered to do ministry in our ever changing culture.

So, from the lone church planter whose church is just a dream in his heart, to the volunteer children’s minister, to the production designer who manages teams of hundreds – who would you love to hear from & what issues need to be addressed from a missional angle?  Hit me back.

Rethink Mission: As you prepare, do you speak with a specific person or group of people in mind?
Darrin Patrick: First, I think about my own objections to what I’m saying. I think about my resistance to the text and how I try to avoid obeying this and my arguments.

I think about men. If you’re able to preach to men in a way that they can hear it, everybody’s going to hear it.

And then, with all the sexual abuse statistics, you have to think about people who are just sexually broken and abused and sinned against. When you look at the stats and you’re looking out there, every service there’s potentially hundreds of people who have been victims of sexual abuse.

And I think about all those people who didn’t experience that but had friends who experienced that. I think about the people who are going to take this message that I’m preaching to their friends. Is what I am saying transferrable? Is it downloadable? Can what I’m saying be passed on to people who are not there so we can make people in our church missionaries in that way.

RM: Talk to me about preaching to men. How do you do it?
DP: I think the direct piece is huge. If you look at what speaks to men, if you look at what guys are in to –  depending on their political persuasion, if they’re politic guys, they’re watching Keith Olbermann on the left, they’re watching Bill O’Reilly on the right, they’re listening to Rush Limbaugh on the right, they’re listening to Bill Maher. On the sports side, they’re watching Jim Rome; the polls show that’s what they like. What is the common thread with all those guys? Direct, kind of sarcastic, not afraid to offend, politically incorrect. I think there has to be an element of that in your preaching. You can say, “You’re just trying to go with the cultural current.” Well, those things are biblical. The prophets are sarcastic, Jesus was sarcastic, Paul was sarcastic; obviously they were all direct. Obviously they were all politically incorrect; they died martyrs’ deaths.

A self-deprecating use of humor is helpful, to get guys not to take themselves so seriously. To counter some of the macho pride issues, self-deprecating humor seems to help that. If they can laugh at me, they can laugh at themselves. If they can see that I’m not taking myself that seriously but I’m God’s word seriously, maybe they’ll do the same.

RM: You mentioned humor. Tell me about your use of humor in sermons.
DP: We’re not stand up comics as preachers. What people are often left with, more than the text, is the punch line. That bothers me. I get that on one level. In one sense, if it helps people connect to the text, I get that. But I hear a lot of sermons that are more like stand-up routines, and that concerns me. But on the other side of it, humor is the universal language. When you see people from other cultures, even other languages – the connection is made when humor is present and people are laughing, you let your guard down.

RM: As pastors are preparing sermons, what other groups of people do they need to be aware of?
DP: It’s no different than Jesus: who did Jesus preach to? He preached to the broken, people who were sexually confused, people who have been abused, people who are just undone one way or another.

But then he also preached to the Pharisees. In every church, you’re going to have people who lean that way, they’re going to try to use rules to reduce God; they’re going to be stricter than God about what he commands and permits. You’ll always have those folks.

You’re always going to have Sadducees who are going to want to blow off the authority of scripture and rewrite that and have their own agenda about trying to religious. So, you’re going to have the right, you’re going to have the left, and you’re going to have the hurting.

And then you’ve got leaders in your church, so you’ve got disciples. They’re in, they’ve bought in, they are for the church, they’re for you, and you’ve got to preach to them as well.

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Read part 1 and part 2 of the interview here.

The heart of this website are the Missional Q&A Interviews, updated weekly, where church leaders like you talk about the issues they face on a daily basis.

Rethink Mission: Lets talk about contextualization. What does it look like for you to preach to your audience: predominantly young St. Louisans?
Darrin Patrick: We have a multi-generational church; more and more I’m not preaching to one generation – I’m preaching to three or four.  At the same time, I don’t care how old you are, you have a basic worldview that I would call American, post-Christian, and relativistic.

American, meaning that people are fiercely individualistic and consumeristic. To try to challenge people to participate in the gospel through the mission of the local church is absolutely radical. Nobody asks anybody to commit to anything anymore. The bar has been lowered. That’s primarily, I think, an American thing; it’s not just American, but everybody’s been marketed to their whole life, told that they can have it their way and every way.  So, when someone comes up and says, “No. There is a cross and you gotta carry it, and here is a city and you gotta love it,” you’re being controversial. I have to address that in preaching.

I have to address this idea that people are post-Christian, meaning that the majority of the people coming into our church are not used to the Christian subculture. A lot of them grew up in church but they’re not familiar with it. You can’t use buzzwords; you can’t use “Christian-ese”. You can’t assume that people know. They are biblically illiterate. Even if they grew up in a church, they don’t know the scripture for the most part, so you can’t really assume anything. They don’t have a good understanding of the narrative arc of the scripture, so they just default to moralism or to whatever.

People are also relativistic, meaning that they don’t really honor any meta-narrative, that there is someone who can tell everyone what to do, that there is truth that is true for all peoples and all times and all places. People don’t believe that. You have to address that. You can’t just assume, “I’ll say, ‘The Bible says,’ and that’s enough.” There is some philosophy that needs to be used, there is some challenging to that mindset if you’re going to get through to people.

RM: Do you specifically attack “defeater beliefs” or questions non-Christians might have about the text?
DP: I try to. Obviously [Tim] Keller has a done a great job of articulating what the main ones are. I think it’s important to take away peoples arguments that are philosophically founded but are not solid. I think it’s good to get people thinking about the fact that what they’re basing their whole life on is a belief as well.  I do think its helpful to do that; you’ve got to do that pretty much in every sermon that your text touches one of those [alternate] beliefs that’s going to keep them from listening, believing and applying what you’re saying.

RM: Obviously, the Spirit’s power rests on you when you preach, but what would you say that people find poignant or attractive about your preaching?
DP: It’s direct. It’s not self-aggrandizing. I hear people say, “It seems like you are a fellow struggler, you’re preaching to yourself as much as you’re preaching to me.”

I’ve been told a lot that I’m a coach, so I think people feel that they’re being coached in a good way.

There are different metaphors. There’s a guide, which is what a lot of guys call themselves, a spiritual guide. They don’t really have a lot of opinions, they are just there to make suggestions and encourage and do the “find your own way,” kind of thing.  And then there’s the commander that’s standing up in front of everybody telling them what do. “You’ve got to do it my way. Follow me.”  On the other hand, the coach has authority, the coach has a game plan, but he’s calling the best out of you. He’s saying, “I’m here to help you do what God’s calling you to do.”  The other one would be the self-help guru. I’m going to throw some principles so you can change your own life with them.

The coach brings you back to the rules of the game with the big picture of what’s going on. “This isn’t just about this game, this is about our season.  This isn’t just about us getting better; when you get better, we all get better.” So it’s a call to be in community, it’s a call to be under authority, and it’s a call to play your role.

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See part 1 and part 3 here.

The heart of this website are the Missional Q&A Interviews, updated weekly, where church leaders like you talk about the issues they face on a daily basis.

Rethink Mission: What makes a sermon or talk “missional?”
Darrin Patrick: I think a missional sermon is comprehendible to the people that the sermon is being preached to. Comprehendible meaning not just clear but that the metaphors used, even if they are Biblical metaphors, are explained in a way that people can understand them. The illustrations evoke memory… it’s stuff that’s in their common thought processes and culture. They get it. It connects them. It elucidates the sermon so that they can get handles to grab onto the text, the concept, or point.

RM: Is it helpful to talk about sermons this way? Why can we not simply be content with a thoroughly “biblical” sermon?
DP: Two reasons: the nature of the Bible and the sermons in the Bible. The Bible itself is quite possibly the greatest work of contextualization, because every book written was written to a specific people at a certain time in a certain place. The bible utilizes cultural raw materials to teach unchanging truth. You get into the New Testament and you see clearly that Matthew was written to Jews so that they could understand the gospel. Mark [was written] to Romans, Luke to Gentiles, John to Greeks. And then you get into the epistles and all of those are written to a specific situation that the church is dealing with. The biblical theology is brought through the specific context. The nature of the Bible itself is missional, it’s contextual.

But also, the preaching, the sermons in the Bible; the prophets were always appealing to cultural milieu in their sermons. Jesus would appeal to common metaphors: plants and seeds and mountains and rivers. He wouldn’t say mountains and rivers and plants and seeds if there were not mountains, rivers, plants and seeds in the culture. He’s appealing to that which was around him. It wasn’t that he was just using abstract cultural references, he was using specific cultural references from the culture he was trying to preach in.

You get into Paul’s sermons – he does the same thing. He changes his sermon to meet his different hearers. In Acts 13, he uses scripture to preach to the Jews. In Acts 14, he uses agrarian metaphors to preach to the pagans. In Acts 17, he uses philosophy to preach to the intellectuals.

RM: Does missional preaching clash with biblical preaching – meaning are those two things at odds?
DP: I think they can be. The whole issue is: what is the authority base? Is the authority base culture or scripture? When the authority base becomes culture, we simply use the Bible to back up what the culture is saying. That is the slippery slope away from trusting the sufficiency of scripture. But if the scripture is the authority base, then all we’re doing with cultural references and missional preaching and contextualization is simply helping people understand through common experiences, common understanding, common ideas what the scripture is saying. It’s an on-ramp to understand the scripture.

On the other side you can be so “biblical” that you simply say, “We’re going to preach the truth; I’m going to preach the word, and I’m not going to worry about culture. People are going to have to understand it.” And I think that is patently unbiblical. Sounds very pious and very biblical, but I think it’s patently unbiblical. Because that’s not the way the sermons in the Bible are. Period. And in church history, when we look at good preaching, revivalistic preaching, we look at the Great Awakenings, we look at the Puritans, we look at Spurgeon, and church fathers – they all alluded to cultural issues. Whether it was heresy and they were trying to fight that – that’s a cultural issue – whether they appealed to the theater and used that. Down through the ages the church has always done that. To think that we exist in a culture where we can just be amissional because we’re preaching the Bible, betrays the Bible and church history.

RM: How important would you say a knowledge of culture is to your own preaching?
DP: I think there are degrees to it. The line between using culture to inform your preaching and using culture to entertain and distract yourself is thin. A lot of preachers in the name of, “I want to be culturally relevant,” are way more informed by culture than the scripture and they spend a lot more time watching movies and listening to music. You look at their blogs and it’s always about the new band and the new whatever, but you don’t hear a lot of biblical insight. I think it’s very dangerous; to try to be aware of culture is a very dangerous thing.

But, for me, I try to read. I’m interested in sports for instance; I don’t have to work at that one. I don’t really ever have to watch another sporting event to be able to use sports; I’ve got that. But other issues, I don’t know – so I have to read on those things. I think the most important thing is not to watch everything and go to everything but to be well read and know what’s going on. That protects you from getting sucked in to entertainment and escapism and distraction from the gospel.

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Part 2 on contextualization is here.
Part 3 on people is here.

The heart of this website are the Missional Q&A Interviews, updated weekly, where church leaders like you talk about the issues they face on a daily basis.

That’s good.

But what about the ‘burbs? They need gospel-centered churches, too, don’t they?

With that in mind, we’re talking to Trey Herweck, planting pastor of Refuge Church in St. Charles, an outer-ring suburb of St. Louis.

Rethink Mission: Trey, you yourself are a product of the ‘burbs, but I know that God had to break down some of your misconceptions about suburban life before you could move back and plant in St. Charles. What were some of those?
Trey Herweck: Wow, I could go on for a while on this one. I think the “missional code” of the suburbs is easy to stereotype but extremely difficult to reach with the gospel if you are centered in the suburbs. This was hard for me to learn. Everyone is looking for acceptance. In the urban core, you do that by joining a certain group or movement that secures your identity. In the suburbs, you do it by building your own fortress complete with lawn, two car garage and picket fence. It’s not as much about who you spend time with as much as it is about what you spend time with. The ‘burbs seem to be built on outward appearance which makes it extremely difficult to really break inside. I thought it would be easier to throw out the “rebellion” movement and kind of daring people to be a part of something new, not the anti-church, but not the every-church. Here’s the problem in the ‘burbs – when you dare people to come back to your church, they won’t…they’ll go find something else.

RM: You came to expose the idols of suburban culture, but in the process some of your own idols were exposed. Tell me about that.
TH: Yeah, I’ve had to repent to our staff and leadership often of my rebellious nature toward the suburban attractional church plant. In trying to be cool and not be gimmicky, we failed (I failed) to convey to people that they were important and valuable. I had become more concerned about not being consumeristic than about engaging our community. It’s never good to be more about what you’re against than what you’re for…unless maybe you’re a politician.

RM: What is good about suburban life? What are the positive values you see?
TH: There is a lot that is great about suburban life. It does tend to be very family friendly. You get more bang for your buck space wise in a home. We have everything we could want close to us – a good school, office, nightlife, parks, etc… If you put effort into it, you can get to know your neighbors deeply. We’ve lived in our house for 2 years and now all of our neighbors who were previously unchurched have started attending, even joining Refuge. There are roughly 313,000 kids of similar age to our own just on our block (slight exaggeration). One family has an in-ground pool (jackpot!). When it comes to the church, you have a ton of kids, you have stability, you have givers, you have volunteers (to a degree), and you have a ton of kids. When you walk down the street, people will make eye contact with you, say hi in the grocery store, wave or nod when you drive past each other. When your family is in need, suburban people will flock to help out with meals, transportation, babysitting, finances, even space in their fridge (had to use that one earlier this year).

RM: What about the idols of suburban life that need to be confronted?
TH: Well, in all of that above that is great there also lays the deep idolatry that is hard to really confront with the gospel. I think the mindset of the suburbs with all of the stuff that surrounds you is “herein lies my heaven, herein lies my security, herein lies my salvation.” It’s hard because I have a tendency to err toward the cynical and I don’t want to do that. However, in the suburbs I see a lot of churches doing good things, I see help for the poor, I see passionate music and preaching, I see cool programs and state of the art technology and buildings, there is church growth, there is effective community assistance, there are good people, there are people overcoming addictions, becoming better fathers or businessmen…but if you’re asking me do I see a lot of people falling in love with Jesus? I don’t necessarily see that.

I think Tim Keller (ever heard of him?) talks about this as “outside in” Christianity. There seems to be some outside changes that takes place, but the hard problem in the ‘burbs with this is that the chief idol is the external because it’s easy to change and put on the show. We joke about how our first mission in St. Charles is to get people lost…because then we can introduce them to Jesus.

Our vision for ministry is Rethink, Renew, Respond. The gospel forces you to think differently, from worshiper of self to worshiper of God. This transforms your basic assumptions about the world around you. The gospel renews your primary identity being in Christ, which allows you not to be so dependent on the externals to tell you you’re ok, but is dependent on Christ. And finally, the gospel, having renewed your mind and identity, compels you to respond to the world around you in want for restoration and renewal of all things. It seems to me that most churches in suburbia focus mostly on what God says that shapes what you do, as opposed to who God is that changes who you are that then shapes what you do.

In confronting the suburban idols I’m realizing that you can’t just shame people in to dealing with internals. They will run away and there are way too many alternatives. So our hope is to provide a safe place where people don’t have to be perfect and can let out some of their crap. We want to make it easy for people to come and feel loved and feel apart, but we want to constantly challenge people to let down the show, ask the hard questions, be vulnerable. That’s difficult when image is everything.

RM: You planted Refuge over 2 years ago – what would you do differently now?
TH: This is such a difficult question because I would not have learned what I know now if I had not made a lot of the mistakes that I made (and continue to make) so I’m thankful for the time we’ve had and somehow, God still has surrounded us with amazing people. Probably, I would have loved my wife better and repented to her more often and taken the time to set up a better schedule with her in mind because I’m not married to any of the freaks that have come along the way and sucked the time and life out of me. And yet, some of them took my best which is absolutely shameful.

I also would celebrate more. It is so easy to see all that is not happening, especially in church planting. Too many times I failed to celebrate what God was doing and I am learning to celebrate better.

RM: What last words would you say to someone who feels called to move from a city to plant in the suburbs? What advice can you give?
TH: The suburbs are a worthy mission field and probably the toughest to penetrate with the gospel. Please don’t feel second rate, like somehow your calling is not as grand. People, money, kids, influence, they all dwell in the suburbs and they are in desperate need of the authentic gospel and not just a neat experience to go out and be nice people.

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For more on the gospel in the suburban context, visit: http://thesubtext.org

The heart of this website are the Missional Q&A Interviews, updated weekly, where church leaders like you talk about the issues they face on a daily basis.