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In Defense of Physical Community – Part Two

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

By Jake Johnson

Cultural Implications – White-Hot Consumerism

In the last post I discussed the unknown effects of the Internet on our mental and communal health and why I thought proceeding with caution was a wise choice when it came to wholesale embracing virtual church. You can read that here.

Here I want to briefly explore some of the cultural implications of the online medium.

The Internet Mapping ProjectLet us not forget that there are many vested interests in the propagation of the Internet as a normative part of our lives – many of which I’m sure are not concerned with our mental or communal health.

For all his railing against Western cultural influences, I find it interesting that Doug Estes somehow neglects to acknowledge that the Internet is quite possibly the ultimate Colonial tool, spreading the Western materialistic and consumerist mentality to the masses of the world in the name of democratization of information (which I actually consider the anarchy of information – but that’s for another day), and that online church is primarily a Western phenomenon.

Consider for a moment the implications of the Internet. Much of our ministry training has been centered on fighting post-modernism. I’ve argued that post-modernism, if it isn’t already dead, is on its last legs. Replacing it is what I’ve proposed as Digitalism. Whereas post-modernism was the subjection of truth to culture, Digitalism is the subjection of truth to the individual.

In a post-modern world, there was still some semblance of universal truth, granted it was solely within the realm of culture. But the reality was that you were still held accountable to the truth by those whom you interacted with within your culture. The reality of day-to-day interactions necessitated that people would call you on your crap and bring you in line with cultural truth. Why? Because whether you liked it or not, you were forced to be exposed to people of varying opinions, and more often than not, the majority opinion – public truth – was still upheld, and you were expected to adhere to it.

In the world of Digitalism, we are increasingly no longer forced to interact with those who disagree with us. Through our various Internet interactions, especially our social media platforms, we can easily delete (or ignore) friends from our lives who would dare to question our version of reality – our personal truth. For the Digitalists, the ego is supreme. Truth is derived completely from within, all reality is subjected to personal taste, preference, and experience – and most importantly, only those who carry the same truth, or who are willing to not question that truth, are sought out to become part of community. Digitalists are creating worlds within worlds. Worlds that are not bounded geographically, but instead ideologically.

Practically, this is an escalation of our already Western predisposition to consumerism and individualism. I’ve labeled it white-hot consumerism.

In a church context this means someone may choose to be part of an online church rather than a local church because they like the preaching, it feeds them spiritually, or some other personal reason. Of course, this is not a new problem, and, as Doug points out, mega-churches often result in the anonymity that allows for the same behavior. But that is not a valid argument for online church; it’s an argument for reforming the way we approach mega-church ecclesiology.

In the end, the problem is an individualistic pursuit to consume church rather than enter in to community in the local church.

Online church simply accelerates this problem. At least when people used to church hop, they had to do so within their communities. Eventually, if they church hopped enough, they’d start running into people they knew – and who, more importantly, knew them (and their church hopping ways).

Now people can attend a church thousands of miles away without ever being involved in a localized community that has the concerns and ministry needs of that person’s local community at the forefront of its mind.

What is more, we can now begin to colonize the world through our Western online churches, supplanting local congregations in foreign locales or foregoing the hard work of planting local congregations that can more effectively meet the needs of the local community and contextualize the gospel to the local culture.

We are on the way to creating a worldwide phenomenon of Christian consumerism through a medium that is one of the most individualistic and consumerist communications environments ever created.
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See: In Defense of Physical Community – Part 1
Parts 3 & 4.

Jake is the Communications Director at Praxis Church in Tempe, Arizona, and a freelance writer and editor. He enjoys long walks in the park, glorious sunsets, romantic poetry, and snarky bios that make people wonder if he’s serious. He’s also trying by God’s grace to be a good dad and great husband. He blogs at www.thejakers.com.

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In Defense of Physical Community – Part One

Monday, October 26th, 2009

SimChurch Doug Estes

By Jake Johnson

“The brave new world of cyber-glop will be an increasingly lonely, isolated and dehumanized word. It will be a place where you can order anything you want online, but you don’t know your neighbors, where your children and your parents will spend evening hours logged into the Net, talking to distant strangers rather than each other.”

-Clifford Stoll, author of “Silicon Valley Snake Oil”

If you are a blog nerd like me, and you have an unhealthy obsession with the implications of technology on ecclesiology, and you were on the Internet on Thursday, you may have come across Doug Estes post on Out of Ur, “In Defense of Virtual Church.” (In full editorial disclosure, Doug mentioned in the comments of his post that his original title was “The Myth(s) of Virtual Church,” which was changed without his consent by Out of Ur’s editors.)

The post has generated quite a bit of discussion and controversy, being called everything from a great post on an emerging topic to an attack on straw men and a cheap plug for Doug’s new book, SimChurch.

As the Communications Director at Praxis Church here in Tempe, Arizona, I have a vested interest in this topic, as it is highly relevant to our church demographic. We are a young, vibrant, growing, urban church with an average age of 26 and more forearm ink than could fill the pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica. We’re tech savvy hipsters with all the trappings. And we run a fairly active online community.

So I found Doug’s post to be of high interest – and also a bit disturbing, both in it’s seemingly casual dismissal of opposition, and in its cavalier style that was less concerned with dialogue and more concerned with body slamming.

In quick summary, the myth(s) Doug seeks to expel are that online church:

  • Is not good
  • Is not healthy
  • Is not biblical

In doing so, Doug sums up the reasoning of those who hold these viewpoint as being the “very common and tired themes” that “Internet campuses and online churches are not true churches because they don’t look like and feel like churches are expected to look like and feel like (in the West, anyway).”

The vast majority of criticism against virtual church, according to Doug, are, “blogposts…based on cultural factors, pop psychology, materialistic misreadings of a few New Testament verses, or worse, citations of famous pastors who have doubts.”

Now, I’m not a professor, nor am I a Lead Pastor, so I’m already at a bit of a disadvantage from a credentials point of view. I’m just one of those bloggers that Doug eviscerates so succinctly. But I’ll do my best to respectfully articulate some of the thoughts that I’ve been mulling over as a practitioner in terms of technology and ecclesiology – and to not quote famous pastors, except for Doug.

Since Doug seems to think that all arguments against virtual church are rooted in inherent Western preconceptions with materialism (buildings and physical contact), I hope to present some other considerations that are both more pragmatic and also philosophical in nature. Some of this material was originally published on my blog, thejakers.com, in a series I called, “Ministry in a Post-Christian, Digital Society.”

I’ll be doing this over the course of four posts looking at:

The (Unknown) Effects of the Internet

The Internet is relatively new – at least when you think of it in terms of it being an all-consuming, daily part of our lives. The reality is that the rise of social media and near universal access to the Internet for the world’s affluent is only about a decade old – and has just hit its stride over the last five years or so.

Like many of you, I can still remember the day when I didn’t have a cell phone, email account, and thought America Online was the coolest thing ever invented. You mean I chat on a computer with live people!

Today, I have a cell phone linked to four email accounts, a Facebook and Twitter account, a dying MySpace account, four computers, broadband access, and a host of other technological wonders. I’m totally reliant on the digital world. This is worrisome to me because it happened in the space of less than a decade.

What is more, I can feel intuitively that the Internet is changing the way I think, and the way I approach life, my family, and community. I’m not alone.

As Nicholas Carr writes in, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” an article published in The Atlantic:

“The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers have discovered that that’s not the case. James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind ‘is very plastic.’ Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. ‘The brain,’ according to Olds, ‘has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.’

We know that the brain can change dramatically, even in adults; yet, we have no idea how the Internet, a new form of interaction and community, is affecting our minds.

As Nicholas Carr continues: “Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.” (My emphasis).

Yet, we have accepted it as a normative part of our life with little-to-no opposition. Like Isaac, we’ve laid ourselves down on the Internet’s alter with full faith that it will turn out well in the end.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I can think of no other major shift in human interaction and thought that has been so completely, quickly, and docilely embraced than the rise of the Internet and the digital age.

The fact that we have almost no tangible evidence on the Internet’s effects on our minds and development – whether good or bad – should be reason enough for us as the church to be hesitant in embracing it as a ecclesiological norm and a substitute for church as it has historically been practiced (physical community) over the last 2,000 years.

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The Qualities of an Executive Pastor

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Executive Pastor Roundtable Part 3

The VillageThe JourneyAustin Stone

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.

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It’s Monday & Your Pastor Wants to Quit

Monday, September 21st, 2009

The Sunbeam Bread TruckMark Driscoll calls them “bread truck Mondays.” A Sunday that was so difficult or draining that the day after makes a pastor wish he was anything but a pastor – even the driver of a bread truck.

Not every pastor wants to quit all the time, but from time to time discouragement sets in and often it’s hard for pastors to find a safe, anonymous place to talk about it.

I took an informal poll of my friends in pastoral ministry. “What recently has made you want to quit?”

These are their top responses:

“To Protect My Family”
Sometimes, the pastor’s family will sacrifice in ways that make the pastor want to give it up for an easier or, frankly, more lucrative job. One pastor, discouraged by his young church’s inability to pay him a decent salary, responded that he feels like he is being a “sucky provider.”

Another friend who has moved into a difficult neighborhood to be an incarnational presence there, cited drug dealers in his neighborhood as a reason that he’s wanted to quit.  Difficult days can make you question your call to take the gospel to the hard places.

“Criticism”
Often pastors feel attacked on all sides. One friend of mine replied to my question with simply the words “sinful criticism,” which he later described as “criticism that is nit-picky and comes from a consumeristic church culture.”

“The Hard Work of Shepherding”
For one church planter, it was the difficult realization that after you “launch” the church, you have to actually pastor people.

His response:

“Coming to the reality that we can’t just make cool websites, network in the community, and launch a church. We actually have to do the hard work of shepherding.”

“Restlessness”
Some of the time, the issue is simply that entrepreneurial church-planting pastors have a hard time staying in one place for very long. “Restlessness and feeling a desire for another city,” was one pastor’s response to my question.

“Coveting Others’ Gifts”
Even though only a small percentage of the churches in the world see rapid numeric growth, it is these stories of fast-growing churches that get promoted the most in the church world. Add to this, because of the connectivity of the internet, that everyone has access to the most gifted preachers & teachers around.

One pastor named his struggle for what it is: “coveting others’ gifts, leadership, fruitfulness.”

If you are “normal” pastor of a “normal” church, this can lead to great discouragement. It can cause you to question if you alone are struggling with difficult people or a difficult context.

One pastor responded (ironically via Twitter) to my question on what’s made him want to quit recently:

“Twitter. Following people who always seem to have the momentum & success & few struggles. Seriously – it has gotten to me.”

“Lack of Change”
“Stagnation in the church that won’t change gets me down a lot,” was one pastor’s response to my question.

The single most discouraging issue for pastors is a sense that things in the church are not changing or progressing.

One pastor cited a “lack of change….doing the same things the same ways without vision for the why behind it all.”

Pastors are pouring out their lives in order to see transformation – change in people, a neighborhood, or an entire city. When things seem stuck, it can feel like it’s time to throw in the towel.

One pastor described it as a “lack of mission: Feeling as if we’re just spinning our wheels. Spiritual apathy among leaders who were ‘with’ us.”

What about you?
Pastors, what things have made you want to quit recently?
If you’re not a pastor, how have you encouraged or protected your pastor from discouragement?

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Leading From the Second Chair

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

The VillageThe JourneyAustin StoneExecutive 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.

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Posted in Missional Q&A, church | 4 Comments »

Executive Pastor Roundtable Part 1

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

The VillageThe JourneyAustin StoneFor the next two weeks, we are talking with the Executive Pastors of three 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.

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.
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.

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Posted in Missional Q&A, church | 7 Comments »

Help Make Rethink Mission More Helpful

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Pastors roundtable

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.

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Posted in Missional Q&A, church | 21 Comments »

What Driving a Big Truck Taught Me About Church Leadership

Monday, August 31st, 2009

100_0287This weekend I drove, from Missouri to Mississippi, the largest truck I was legally licensed to drive (crammed with all my earthly belongings) complete with a car carrier in tow.

Now I know that a Penske truck with trailer is no 18-wheeler, but 10 wheels on the road all told is a big deal for me. Driving something that high off the ground and that long and cumbersome was a new experience for me. In fact, it caused me to look at road trips differently. My perspective on driving was altered.

What changed?

Well for starters, I could not easily accelerate; it takes a while to get something that large up to speed.

I found myself for the first time aware of how high bridges, signs and telephone wires were only because I didn’t want to hit anything.

I realized I needed some extra help from someone I just passed (in the form of a courtesy flash of the headlights) when I changed lanes just to know that I wasn’t about to hit anything.

The biggest deal was that when I got hungry or wanted to pee, I couldn’t just pull over any old place I wanted.  There was no way I was plowing that monstrosity through the drive-thru at Chick-fil-A (but oh, believe me, I wanted to) because frankly, I didn’t want to hit anything.

I needed a truck stop that sold diesel and that had a parking lot with plenty of room (so when I had to turn around, I wouldn’t hit anything) and if it had a good restaurant connected so that I didn’t have to eat day-old-fried-sausage-cheese-mystery-whatever-on-a-stick, all the better.

I know that I wasn’t a real trucker and that Penske is a far cry from a big rig, but that day I experienced the road for the first time through the eyes of someone who drives a truck.  And here’s the deal, it gave me some compassion & appreciation for them.

To be honest, I have never appreciated truck drivers, or the extra difficulties that they have to go through simply to get from point A to point B.  In the past, if I thought about them at all, it was only as a nuisance.

As church leaders, we can sadly get to the point where we look at people, especially people that need or want something from us, in exactly the same way: a nuisance.

When the people in our churches only become a nuisance to us, we’ve lost touch and lost compassion for those that we are called to love and shepherd.

We forget easily how daunting it can be for people to try and join a new group.

If you are new to church, frankly it can be scary:
- to take the time and effort to attend a worship service with hundreds (or even thousands) of people you don’t know.
-to email the leader of a church.
-to try to join a small group.
-to reach out for help.
-to try to belong to something.

What can you do as a church leader who is naturally an insider, to regain the perspective of what it’s like to be an outsider?

IMG_0578Attend an event by yourself.
There are plenty of churches that have services on off-times (like Saturday and Sunday night) so that you could easily attend another church one weekend. If you simply can’t get away to another church, attend a mayor’s breakfast event or large civic function in your city. Go by yourself.  Don’t tell people who you are. If you’re an extrovert, don’t talk to people – try to imagine the experience from an introvert’s perspective. What does it feel like to go somewhere new and not know the protocol, not know where to park, where to sit or even where the bathrooms are? How does it feel to be ignored while large groups of people talk amongst themselves? Try showing up late – how does it feel to walk in with all eyes on you?

Try to join a group.
I know, you’ve got so much free time on your hands. But trying to join a local group like the Rotary Club or the Chamber of Commerce will do more than put you in contact with other key leaders in your area – it will remind you just how daunting it is to try to join a group as an outsider. As pastors or ministry leaders, we are at the very center of our church social circles. When was the last time that you were actually an outsider, and felt the insecurity that comes with that? You’ll get better at crafting pathways for new people to connect when you know again what it’s like to try to belong somewhere as an outsider.

Email someone you admire.
This sounds weird, but pick someone you respect who is not likely to respond to you personally. Take some time and actually craft an email introducing yourself and thanking this person for their work or impact. If they reply to you, great. But if they don’t, it’s good for you to feel what it’s like not to get a response, or worse yet, to get a canned response to something you took time to write. Every time someone new to your church or organization takes time to write, call or email – it’s a big deal to them. Is it a big deal to you?

With everything on our plates, it is so easy for us to forget the big steps we often ask & expect people to take in attending church for maybe the first time in a long time, signing up for a new group, and trying to get answers to key questions from us or our staff. It is easy to forget that the Ultimate Insider became the Ultimate Outsider – for us.

Moving from irritation to appreciation takes more than mere observation. It takes actually sitting in the seat of another. And for me, that meant driving a big honkin’ truck… while trying not to hit anything.

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Posted in church | 2 Comments »

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