How to Exegete Your Community (Part 1)

I’ve been thinking about this one a lot lately as I’ve had interactions with church planters from various places who’re seeking to understand their immediate community that they’re planting in.  I believe we all know it is important to exegete your communities and that we need to do it but the “how” is the more difficult part.  Are you ready?

First of all, I’m not a stat geek and so my process is going to be more intuitive than pouring over 76 page demographic reports.  Listen, I know to marketers that things like the flow of traffic and generic preferences of the people are good but it is easy for planters to get bogged down in the minutia of it. When it comes to demographic profiles sometimes they can be like horoscopes in that they’re so broad and general that they apply to everyone and yet no one at the same time.  Obviously, when you’re finding out about ethnicities, language groups, and such it is helpful.  Look at these reports simply like your car’s dashboard where all you really need to know is your speed, RPM’s (debatable), and how much gas you have left.

WALK THE STREETS

The best way to collect the info you need is to simply immerse and invest yourself in the community.  Walk the neighborhoods and get to know as many people as you can … baristas, neighbors, community leaders, city leaders, realtors (GREAT resources!), developers (residential and commercial), educators, restaurant and business owners, and so on.  It is amazing that when you connect with a wide group of people like that how much networking takes place and the relationships are priceless!  We get into the funk of thinking that all we need to do is have a trendy worship gathering and a little marketing and poof!  Insta-church!  We’re missing out on soooo much!

Several examples: When I was in Tucson I really wanted to know what was going on in city’s downtown core.  I spent day after day there.  I’d hang out in coffee shops from the really nice ones to the scary ones, I’d eat in restaurants, go into shops, and walk the streets.  They had a self-guided 2+ mile walking tour of the downtown where you learned all of the downtown’s and city’s past as well as what’s going on today.  I became well-versed in Tucson’s history and could walk you through most of everything that took place in the last 2,000 years there (no joke) in the downtown area. So I walked … I learned and I began to sense and feel the struggles of what was taking place downtown. I became passionate about the city core, I poured over the downtown newspaper, I connected with urban planners, commercial developers, and housing leaders because the city had a dream, a compelling dream to reinvent the downtown core and I believed that new churches could be part of that fabric. I spent hours and hours researching new housing developments, new transit systems that were being built, what new restaurant was coming in, what churches were in the area and what they were doing, what the educational system was like there and so much more.  The more I learned the more I fell in love with the city core, the built environment, and more importantly the struggles and dreams of those who lived there.

Next example: Not too far from my house a new coffee shop opened up and of course that became a new base of operations for me.  After getting to know the whole AM barista crew they finally asked me what I did. Because I had that relational investment I was able to share open and freely about my desire to plant churches in the area that sought to invest in and make the city a better place.  They were actually excited! We tend to think to start new churches, especially in heavily under-churched cities, that people will be antagonistic and anti-church but if you have a great relationship and you share your heart for the community (because you’re part of it and you know it) then you’ll be surprised how many non-Christians want to be involved with you. I understood the area, the needs, and when I shared with these baristas how the church can serve the city they were enthused.

As you’re connecting with people in your community begin internally finding out the answers to these questions:

1. Who lives there? (are people moving in or moving out of the area?)
2. Why do they live there? (are they stuck?  Is this a destination kind of place?)
3. What’s going on?  What’s the history? (Is there a lot of construction … both housing and commercial? What has happened in the past the shapes and influences the community and decisions today?)
4. What are the dreams and aspirations of those who live there? (where are people here going?  Is there a collective over-arching vision/dream of this community?)
5. Where is this community going? (Is the area in decline?  Is it it be gentrified? Is it all brand new?)
6. What are the biggest needs here? (Every place has needs)

These are simply a FEW questions to get the ball rolling.  This is by no means comprehensive.  I believe that this is a more intuitive than scientific process and approach. I know we’re all wired differently so if you need all of the papers, pdfs, and reports then go for it. But what I’d like to do over the next several blog posts is to flesh out some different ways you can understand your community from all different angles and source.

Welcome to the journey …

Planting Churches Among the Creative Class

The past few days I’ve found myself in various coffee shops in gentrified neighborhoods in and around St. Louis.   These are all uber trendy and swank places to live and there’s definitely a draw for church planting. Frankly, the city needs new churches in these neighborhoods. Again, in some of my preliminary research showed roughly 7 out of 10 new churches are planted in the suburbs and while we need more there and not less there’s also a HUGE need in the city.  However, cities are tough and there’s no way of getting around it.  For example, there’s a reason why the city of St. Louis (city proper) has gone from over 800,000 people in the 1950’s to just over 300,000 today.  When you think about it … that’s a big loss.  Why did so many leave and flee to the burbs?  The city is a tough place.

Now when I say tough I’m not necessarily speaking of the “hood” but the reality of planting and even raising a family in the city is challenging.  For example, some of the swank areas I was in today … Soulard and Lafayette Park are great places but what I immediately noticed is that they’re full of young singles or young couples.  I didn’t even see one kid in any of those places today.  Now I’m not saying they aren’t there but that stands in stark contrast of hitting a Starbucks in the burbs full of soccer moms and kids in tow.  If you live even in those gentrified neighborhoods whether you work in the area or going to plant a church you have to deal with the schooling issue.  Yes, it’s easy to plant when your munchkins are young but then when they hit school age all of the sudden you have to make some tough choices …

What are you going to do about schooling your kids? How committed are you to the community and the city?  Enough to put them in inner city public schools?  Private school?  Home school?  Or is the temptation going to be to hit the burbs once your kiddos are entering school especially if you don’t have the cabbage to afford private schooling?  I’m not going to make judgment calls on whether you have your children go to public vs private vs home school, but recognize that you will have to deal with that decision.

But, the good FAR outweighs the bad. Having your children in schools with kids of all different ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds is awesome. To have your kindergartner sitting in a class with students from Iraq, Bosnia, Thailand, Mexico, and who’re black, white, and brown is going to have a lasting affect that will literally shape their lives.  They’ll grow up globally minded and conscious as well as having a heart for the whole world.  They’ll be color blind, tolerant, and accepting of the various cultures around them.

To plant in the city is an investment indeed.  In some ways it is a sacrifice and in others ways I believe it is the key to an amazing life.

Deconstructing While Planting

We could all agree that many Christians are in the midst of deconstructing their faith as we’re immersed in a rapidly-changing worldview shift into postmodernism, the ending of Christendom in the West, and the acceleration of the ubiquitous nature of technology that has permeated all of life. I believe going through this is healthy and painful at the same.  It is scary to begin pulling apart and sifting through not only what you believe but how you believe, why, and how you arrived at those conclusions.  If we were to survey Christians we could make the case that everyone is somewhere on the spectrum where on one end you have those who’re embracing this change and tension while at the other end are those who staunchly resist and deny there’s any reason to change in the first place.

While it is good and healthy one of the difficulties is when this takes place during the church planting process, or more particularly in the early stages. This is where it can become a bit messy as the planter is wrestling through so many deep theological as well as etymological issues which can and does affect how they lead their church plant.  How do I know?  That’s what happened to me when I helped plant my first church.

After a number of years  in youth ministry I wasn’t prepared for the wholesale shift in a lot of the ways I looked at things, in particular God, the Bible, the church, and so on.  While I still remained a committed evangelical and for the most part arrived at the same conclusions (i.e. God is God, Jesus is God, etc.) I went about it in a completely different manner.  Even now I fumble with words right now to explain.  Maybe you’ve been there and you know or maybe you’re in process now and you’re catching on.  It was and is a good struggle, healthy tension, and it completely reoriented the way I view / do / be church. Many of the old ecclesiological shackles were removed as well as I felt like I had a renewed wide open and free faith and relationship with God like never before.

Going through this while planting a church was hard because for me so many things were simply up in the air as I wrestled through numerous issues.  Again, its not that I became a pluralist or anything like that but the way I like to describe it is like I switched from being a PC to a Mac kind of a Christian (and that was before the rip-off commercials).  It wasn’t like switching from Windows XP to Vista but a whole new OS altogether. During this time I “rebooted” my faith and when my internal computer was loaded back up it wasn’t Windows anymore. PC’s and Macs are still computers and so for me I still loved and followed God, believed that Jesus died for me, and other core tenants of the faith, but like a new operating system, I went about things different.  You could also call it rebooting my faith with a more Postmodern worldview as opposed to the Modern one I humbly inherited.  It’s not that the former was bad, it’s just that times have changed just like they did change when we entered the Modern era hundreds of years ago.

My encouragement to you if you’re in the midst of this process and you’re planting to find someone who’s gone through it and latch on to them.  Ask them to walk by your side.  You’ll need someone in whom you can ask crazy questions and won’t be shamed or looked at funny for doing so.  You need a mentor outside of your church plant who can offer you perspective, comfort, a listening ear, and encouragement.

The Lifestyle of a Church Planter

Church planting can be as nebulous as trying to understand the complexity of the Bowl Championship Series in College football and talking about the lifestyle of a church planter even more so.  If you’re engaged in planting a church then what does that look like?  Is there a template?  Are there things you “must do” that are applicable to all church planters?

If you were to survey 10 church planters I’m sure you’d get 13 different ideas of the way a church planter ought to live, function, and go about planting.  Also, depending on your denominational or theological background those two things end up influencing you more than others.  For example, some would advocate spending 15-20 hours a week working on your message while others would say 2-4 hours would suffice.  Some would advocate spending a good chunk of time planning your worship gathering and others would simply go with the flow.

Another big influencer obviously is how you approach church.  Attractional?  House church? Cell church?

But how is a planter to live? I’d like to make the case that church planting is a missionary endeavor … meaning this, it is a lifestyle more than a job or profession or anything like that.  Based upon my own experiences (which includes more failures than successes) I would like to stick with the point I made a few blog posts ago … church planters should spend 75% of their time with those who don’t know Christ. Yes, 75%. I just read a stat (you know how tricky those can be) that said that only 1% of our churches growth comes from evangelism.  1%?  Wow … that’s not good.  So if a church planter would devote 75% of his week to spending time with and doing life with non-Christians (or as Jim Henderson says, “Those who Jesus loves most”) then I think there’s a remarkably good chance that 1% would be a stat of the past.

Church planters ought to invest their life in their neighborhoods, their communities, and their cities rather than admin, sermon prep, and so on. I’m not saying those things are not important but when was the last time you heard a non-Christian complain that your message wasn’t expository enough or that you used a pre-2004 song or that they wanted more David Crowder songs … um, they’ve never even heard of the dude.

I know there will be some push back … but maybe you could try it this week.  What would happen if you spent 75% of your week with those far from God?  How about even 50%?

The Fabric of the City

For a number of years as a hiking guide one of the greatest thrills was exploring new trails leading to high summits, deep canyons, undiscovered archaeological sites, sweeping vistas, and of course a great workout out in the process. There’s something beyond thrilling about new terrain and new mountains to explore.  But I’ve also found something equally as exciting to explore as well … cities.

Earlier this week we drove around and explored St. Louis (both sides of the river) and there was something magical about it … the architecture, the way the city is laid out, the placement of parks, the universities, the downtown, and so on.  One of the fun parts (and scary) about being a parent is that you accidentally rub off on your kids. Whenever we go into a big city the first place the boys want to go is downtown to check out the scene.  (I love that!)

Recently I spent a lot of time studying the nature of cities and doing research on it for my dissertation. Starting with the earliest cities and following the progression until now is an amazing journey. It has helped me understand the forces which shaped cities, why they’re laid out the way they are, early visions/dreams of the city, the rise and fall of them, and so much more.  When we drove through St. Louis I tried to put those “goggles” on and look at the city from that perspective.  You begin noticing things like nuances in architecture, different historic districts and their modern usage today and such things like population shifts.  For example, the city proper had a population of over 800,000 people in 1950 and yet 50+ years later that has drastically dropped to over 300,000. Why?  What happened?  Why did the White Flight phenom hit here harder than other places?  Is the trend reversing?  How would it?  What needs to take place for that to happen and just as importantly … where is the church?  What role does the church play in shaping the future of cities?

I’m excited to explore this new (to me) great city and to see where God is at work.  I don’t know if I can be a Cards or Rams fan but I’ll at least be tolerant. 

That Which Haunts Me

After praying this morning out of frustration I came across this retweet from Len Sweet on Twitter … “There is no path thru life w/o detours. Truth: Detours, roundabouts & imperfections r paths chosen by the Spirit 2 lead us home.”  I knew God had this for me. After inner turmoil for numerous days this was a jolt, a wake-up call, and a call to embrace change and the new reality we’re walking into … but I’m still squirming.

We came back to the Midwest on a whim to be close to family particularly after my Dad had died. I took a job/ministry role working with campus ministries and young adult church planting.  It ended up being a role that was like fitting a tutu on an elephant.  It fit about as good trying to wear Michael Jackson’s glove and moon-walking.  I was a fish out of water. This drove me harder into deeper prayer, deeper soul-searching as well as soul-cleansing as I pleaded daily with God looking for answers as well as direction.  I picked up Experiencing God which I hadn’t read since college and honestly didn’t even remember what it even was about.

But God has used this time … this detour, this roundabout, and my imperfections to speak to me and into my life. It has been my own “dark night of the soul” where I spent many late nights wandering through Washington Park crying out to God. It was during this time time where Vancouver BC kept coming back up to the surface as a place I had dreamed about for quite some time. It was and is a dream to move there and somehow and someway to be involved in church planting.  And so we began to walk in that direction …

But now in the interim we find ourselves in transition again knowing that Vancouver is a little ways off as we begin the process of raising funds.  Honestly, we have no idea how long it will take. So we’re moving AGAIN but this time to the St. Louis metro area.  Even though I’m still working for the same org/denom (IBSA of the SBC) they’ve switched my roles so I’m no longer doing campus ministry based out of Springfield but am strictly involved in church planting with the focus on the metro east area of St. Louis. I keep fervently praying that somehow something like $500,000 would magically appear in our fund-raising account in Vancouver and we could pack up tomorrow.  The reality is I have no idea how long this may take. The thought of having our boys in another new school makes me sick to my stomach sometimes because I don’t want to jerk them around because I know we’ll all leave again and start over once we embark for Vancouver.

Amidst a lot of dealing with inner frustration that retweet from Len Sweet spoke to me this morning and deflated me like a popped balloon. Now, I’m beginning to pray, “Lord what I am to learn or experience before we go to Vancouver?”  I pray that this detour would indeed change my life and that somehow God could use a leaky vessel like me to further church planting in the St. Louis area.

What’s the Quickest Way to Plant a Church?

I admit, patience is not a strong suit for me. If it’s playing a game on the Wii with the boys I want a fast-moving game rather than a planning/thinking one.  I’d rather roll with the punches and react.  In the cycling world that’s probably why I’m not a road cycling fan.  The Tour de France does nothing for me … just grinding away for hours on the open road sounds about as fun as reruns of Leave it to Beaver.  Now mountain biking on the other hand … acting, reacting, twists, turns, jumps, obstacles and you really don’t have much time to think.  You just GO!

Last night I sat in a college worship service and it was a great experience.  I love that age group and see so much potential. I couldn’t help  but think through of ways to plant churches among college students using college students. We’re moving to the St. Louis east metro area until we’ve raised our funds to head to Vancouver so my time here is limited.  My task is to be a sort of a catalyst to plant churches so my initial thought is … what’s the quickest way to plant churches?  Like my last two blog posts have alluded to, I don’t believe we always have to over-think or even-plan things.  Just GO!  I know there are probably just as many pitfalls under-planning as there it over-planning so it’s a wash, right? 

I have several ideas whirling through my head, but like mountain biking, I want to attempt to do this with a go-with-the-flow reactionary kind of stance.  See a tree … DUCK!  See a log … GO OVER!  See a drop off … JUMP!  See a sharp switchback … BRAKE AND TURN!  Why can’t we plant churches like that.  Just like on the trail you’re going hard and fast reacting to what’s in front of you (which is a total blast by the way). Whatever I do here I want to purposely take this fast-moving reactionary approach to church planting.  Well, here we go!

Over-Thinking Church Planting

I’d like to pick up where I left off on my last blog entry and that is on the topic of over-thinking church planting.  With the plethora of books, conferences, websites, organizations, degrees, and specialists in church planting it makes one think that church planting MUST be some highly specialized technical kind of endeavor.  I mean … you “need” highly trained people with the right “stuff” to plant a church because you can’t just let anyone plant because they might screw it up … right?  We may not say that out loud but it’s the way we communicate in our non-verbals.

We’ve over-thought church planting … period.  Yes, I’m a “specialist” (whatever that means) and my Master’s degree is in church planting and I’m writing my doctoral dissertation on church planting … BUT, it really isn’t nor should be that complicated.  I remember in my first church plant I had drafted something like a 25 page strategy for it.  It was quite a bit overkill and I ended up scrapping it.  I sometimes wonder if we perpetuate the notion of the complexity of church planting because it is job security for people like me and the conferences and books associated with it would suffer.

But seriously, is it really that complicated? I am reading over a book on church planting right now (go ahead, throw stones) and what I love is that the author said that church planters should spend 75% of their time with non-Christians. Great thought!  If all of our church planters would do that we wouldn’t have to worry about so many planters sitting in offices dropping 15 hours a week on sermons, another 10-15 hours in “leadership” development (i.e. hanging at Starbucks with buddies), and another 10-15 working on their website and how to make their worship gatherings trendy.  30 hours a week with non-Christians?  Imagine what would happen …

I think as long as we keep the process of church planting murky with complexity, organizational charts and drafting position papers all of the time the less we’ll engage in evangelism which is what church planting is really all about.  It’s not about starting a new church so you can pick your favorite music nor a way to experiment with candles or such things … it is simply about investing your life in those far from Christ and leading them to the Savior and then helping them grow.  It’s really not that complicated.

Are Worship “Services” A Thing of the Past?

I admit that I lean heavily towards more of an organic/house/simple church kind of way of doing and being church.  I’m not one to throw sticks and stones at those who do otherwise because the reality is that God does indeed work through all forms of ecclesiological expression.  Obviously we could spend a lot of time going over issues of contextualization because that should drive the discussion more than mere preferences, but for the sake of time let’s not.

Like you, I’ve read countless books and blogs and been part of numerous conversations where the whole idea of a “church service” (or more trendily named “gathering”) has been downplayed or tossed out altogether.  I always say that as Protestants we’ve been protesting since 1517 so what’s new?  We don’t like something and we run the other way only to revisit it years or decades later but with a new twist to it.  I get it, it’s part of who we are and what we do.  I think some out of fear being labeled “traditionalist” or “mainstream” have jettisoned any gathering that involves music/singing and if they do break out in song they make sure and downplay it saying things like, “Well, you know, this doesn’t define us” and they do it irregular enough not to fit into any stereotype or box at all.

Aren’t we over-thinking things?  Are we trying to be too smart for our own good?  Why is Manny Ramirez of the LA Dodgers such a great hitter?  He doesn’t over-think things … he just walks up to the plate and “WHACK!”  Hits the ball …  Are we spending too much time and energy talking about what we DON’T want to do when we gather?  Can’t we just get together and “WHACK!”  Hit the ball …?  If we sing so what?  If we teach expositionally or topically so what?  If we meet in a house vs. a cafe vs. a park vs. a school so what? If we have one talking head vs. more of a group discussion so what?  Aren’t we so overly obsessed with techniques that we leave the Holy Spirit out of our gatherings?

Technology and Church Planting

I constantly go round and round on this topic of the use of technology in church planting.  One side of me thinks it’s a must … Twitter and Facebook for communication and when it comes to any sort of gathering whether in a home, cafe, or larger building then you have computers, online live streaming, sound equipment, and so on.  The other side of me?  It says, “Forget it!” and don’t even worry about it.  If you’re honest then you’d probably admit that some of the most intense spiritual experiences with a group of fellow Christians you’ve had were with minimal “stuff.”

Think about it … you’re sitting in a room in a house or lodge or outside around a campfire with 23 people you knew well (or semi-well) and you’re worshipping together, sharing stories as well as your lives, and there’s something amazing about the simplicity of it all.  Remember?  Sure you do …

So where does technology come in on church planting?  I think a good rule of thumb is to take a minimalist approach to it.  Use only what is absolutely necessary and that’s it.  You don’t have to go overboard because you’re certainly not going to impress people.  With everyone now having the capability to producing their own music, websites, blogs, and even books the less they’re impressed with the latest gadgets the church tries to use. Also realize that this is all from the perspective of a guy who rides a singlespeed mountain bike because of the simplicity.  I’m not one for complexity.  If you’re planting a church that’s seeking to plant others then the more simple you keep it the better your chances for multiplication.  If you have a “big show” for your gatherings then the chance of replicating that stacks highly not in your favor.

Even in a simple gathering in a house there’s a place for technology indeed … but again the underlying question is, “Are you out to birth a single sterile child or a movement?”  The answer to that question determines you’re usage of technology.