Mike McLoughlin's Blog

Come on New Life! It is time to HOPE again!

Mike McLoughlin — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:46:29 -0800

This Sunday morning Rebekah Croker (New Life Children’s Leader) preached on the subject of HOPE. The message was entitled Hope, A Living Conversation. The passage referenced was from Hebrews 6:19-20. “We have this HOPE as an anchor for our soul…”

Rebekah challenged New Life Church to HOPE. She lined up children, youth & adults with balloons that spelled out the verse: Hope deferred makes the heart sick… (Proverbs 13:12a). The whole morning was devoted to stirring our hearts to hope again.

New Life church has been through a season of much disappointment. Disappointment in finances. Disappointment in relationships. Disappointment in leadership. Our hopes as a church for the glorious promises that God has bestowed upon us have remained unrealized. Our hearts have grown sick with disappointment because our hopes have been deferred.

Yet Christian faith is all about HOPE! The world lacks HOPE! We have what the world lacks! Is your heart feeling sick? Do feel your HOPE has been deferred? Then you need more HOPE!

Rebekah exhorted us to HOPE again!

This happened not just with words. There was a HOPE WALL where people wrote their hopes and dreams. Sara Gagnon painted colorful expressions of HOPE on a canvass on the stage. The youth worship team led us in a reprise of Isaiah 61 – a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair… Church youth acted out various stories of HOPE from the Bible including the story of Abraham and God’s promise of Isaac. They built a bridge of HOPE with chairs. The Master’s Commission Young Adults group from the USA did a sketch on the Christian HOPE!

Nadira Deschner joined Rebekah to tag team the preach reading Biblical passages concerning HOPE! Romans 4:18;Romans 5:1-5; and Romans 8:24-25. (For more reading see: Romans 15:4; Colossians 1:5; and 1 Peter 3:15). (Roll over the texts with your mouse to see the verses). Nadira showed us painting of a morning sunrise she had done. On it were written the words of Jeremiah from Lamentations 3:21-23 - Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Rebekah challenged us to HOPE in God and not in HORSES! Horses are a VAIN HOPE! Proverbs 33:17. Horses are all those things we tend to hope in such as technology, money, real estate, friends, family, etc.. These are vain hopes, since it is only God who can truly save. He did that by sending Jesus and through his death he has made a way for us to enter his presence.

So in Jesus we have a new and living hope! Even if there is no reason to HOPE we can HOPE against hope because Jesus has opened up the way to GOD!

In conclusion, the whole morning was a kaleidoscope of intergenerational expressions of HOPE. It was full of colour, sound, and imagination from all of the generations. It was not simply a conversation on HOPE. It was HOPE embodied in music, art, drama and visual demonstration.

Thank you Rebekah for calling us back to HOPE! As Rebekeh exhorted us: New Life church, IT IS TIME TO HOPE AGAIN!

This message stirred much passion in me concerning HOPE! Thus it is fitting that I relaunch this Blog.

One drawback, though, was the absence of the HOPE OF RESURRECTION. I may have missed it but I did not hear it mentioned. I think this is a common problem with us Charismatics. We get the part in the gospel about Jesus, signs, wonders, the cross and heaven, but we don’t seem to get the resurrection.

It is often tagged on as a post script to the story we tell. I see this often in YWAM. Whenever the good news is shared with groups, the truncated version of the gospel often leaves the resurrection out.

That is too bad, because when you really boil it all down, the exciting about Christianity, even more than forgiveness of sin, even more than access to God’s presence, even more than heaven, is the HOPE of a RESURRECTION to life eternal in a new creation.

Contrary to popular opinion we do not spend eternity in disembodied heaven but in a new material reality with new physical bodies that will enjoy new heavens and a new earth. (Revelation 21). That is why Jesus taught us to pray, your kingdom come and your will be done ON EARTH as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:9-10;)

I have written about that already in this article When Heaven Invades Earth Twenty Four Seven! Grounding the Charismatic Hope in the Resurrection.

Now let the conversation on HOPE at New Life begin.

My Blog is on Hold while I sort out some Family, Business & Church stuff

Mike McLoughlin — Sat, 19 May 2007 22:21:39 -0700

I have life matters that occupy my time right now. Please stay tuned. I will be back at writing this blog soon.

Canadian Christianity Consumed by the Holy Spirit?

Mike McLoughlin — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 12:01:11 -0700

Watch for the book mentioned in this article. There is such a thing as a text for Pentecostal Theology after all!

The StarPhoenix
10 Mar 2007

Ecstatic spirit of Pentecostalism gaining strength in Canada
CanWest News Service

OTTAWA — The first time Michael Wilkinson saw Pentecostals at worship, he was a teenager, dragged along by his parents. “These people are all crazy,” he came away thinking. “I’m not ever going back.”

But then the kids in the youth group asked him to some concerts. The music was terrific and the teens were fun, not losers or hopeless squares. “You can be cool and go to church,” he thought.

Now 41, he is both Pentecostal and associate professor of sociology specializing in Pentecostalism at Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C.

He maintains the Canadian Pentecostal Research Network and is compiling a study of Canadian Pentecostals, one of the first books of its kind. His colleagues are pressing him to finish so their graduate students can use it to undertake studies of their own.

Canada has about 4.4 million renewalists — some 500,000 classical Pentecostals, members of churches developed in the early 1900s; 2.5 million charismatics, people who are “spirit filled” but stay within their denomination; and about 1.3 million neocharismatics, or neo-Pentecostals, a movement that began 10 to 20 years ago among people who want to steer clear of some of the strictures of traditional churches.

Renewalists don’t all share the same beliefs or worship practices, but they are united by their experience of God — “an intense, direct and overwhelming spiritual experience centred in the Holy Spirit,” says Wilkinson, quoting from Frank Macchia’s Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology, one of several new books coming out on the subject.

The Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements says Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity is characterized by “exuberant worship; an emphasis on subjective religious experience and spiritual gifts; claims of supernatural miracles, signs and wonders — including a language of spirituality (as it is experienced), rather than a theology; and a mystical ‘life in the Spirit’ by which they daily live out the will of God.”

Psychology might describe it as magical thinking. Political science or sociology might see it as “enchantment,” a worldview that embraces wonder, belittled in western civilization but very much alive in other countries.

Renewal resides at the mystical end of the religious spectrum and much of it is an outright mystery, which is just fine with its adherents. For them, reason has its limits.

As one renewalist minister describes it, “When philosophers and theologians get to do enough thinking or talking, they eventually run themselves in a circle. . . . They’ve bumped their brains on the ceiling of a mystery, but don’t want to admit it, so they keep talking.”

Probably the most mysterious are the “gifts” of speaking in tongues, prophecy, deliverance and healing, and the signs and wonders, or modern-day miracles, “a foretaste of the coming kingdom of God,” according to Wilkinson.

Evangelicals are also turbo-charged in their worship but they believe the miracles in the Bible were intended simply to help the Apostles get the church started. Most don’t believe they are available to believers today. Pentecostals do.

Since Pentecostals take their name from a passage in the Bible in which the Holy Spirit imbues the apostles with special gifts and powers, their outlook is hardly surprising.

Tags: Pentecostalism, worship, Pentecostal, sociology, Canadian, renewal, charismatic, spirit+filled, Holy+Spirit, Christianity, supernatural, miracles, signs, wonders, tongues, healing, kingdom, God, Evangelicals

An Apology for Back Seat Driving

Mike McLoughlin — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:40:30 -0800

No one likes a back seat driver least of all one criticizes your driving style loudly and in public. I confess I am guilty of backseat driving. In my last post (Establishing Trust Through Emotionally Healthy Leadership), I started out by speaking up about being an emotionally healthy church but I ended it with back seat driving comments for church leadership. That was not appropriate. I am grateful to those on the Leadership team who gently pointed it out to me. I apologize and ask for forgiveness.

Leadership has a hard enough job sorting through all the pastoral and governance concerns to worry about me telling them how they ought to run the church. They are the ones with the responsibility not me, so it was fair for a number of them to express their concerns and feelings about my directive comments. I should have addressed these comments directly to them rather than posting them at the end of my blog.

The problem with doing that in a blog on the Internet is that once you say something it immediately becomes public property and you can't really undo what you did.

So I need to make it a part of the public record that I was wrong to be critical or directive in my writing about transitions at our church. I stand behind and pray for the leadership and I wish them well as they navigate through some difficult waters.

Apologizing publicly when you have screwed up is actually one of the things recommended by Peter Scazzero in his book The Emotionally Healthy Church. It is a part of his chapter on Living in Brokenness and Vulnerability.

However, I don't recommend screwing up just so you can learn to be broken about it. Better to avoid the screw up! So one of my new year's resolution for 2007 is no more back seat driving! Feel free to point it out when you think I am doing it!

Establishing Trust Through Emotionally Healthy Leadership

Mike McLoughlin — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 21:03:38 -0800

This article continues my series on the book The Emotionally Healthy Church as it relates to my church experience at New Life Church Kelowna. (For previous articles see I, II). In Chapter Two Peter Scazzero discovers something desperately wrong in the way churches conduct themselves emotionally.

It has to do with consistency. Specifically, consistency between espoused values and values in practice. He begins his chapter retelling the plot of the movie The Apostle, It was written and directed by Robert Duvall who also plays the main character, Sonny.

"Sonny, like most of us, is a complex individual. He is zealous, committed Christian whom we admire, and yet he is also terribly inconsistent. Most painful, perhaps, is his lack of awareness of the harm that will come from appearing to be more than he really is. In some ways he is an imposter. He easily compartmentalizes his faith and spirituality from the totality of his humanity. Most of us in Christian leadership and in the church can relate to more about him than we like to admit." (p. 39)

Scazzero then recounts story after story of real life Christian leaders who have lived inconsistent Christian lives, beginning with Bob Pierce (see CT article here), the founder of World Vision, who saw great things in his ministry overseas but ended up alienated from his family.

The number one issue that erodes trust in leadership is inconsistency. Scazzero believes that this inconsistency results from a faulty model of Christian discipleship that neglects to form the emotional aspect of spiritual maturity for church leaders. That is, leaders are unable to connect with their emotional side and be transparent about those emotions in a healthy manner.

After writing the recent articles I received an e mail from a person who has been attending New Life and is stuck in the emotional pain surrounding the things we have been going through as a church. The person asks "How can I trust when their (leaders) words and actions are so different?"

This is the central question of Peter Scazzero's book. It is about establishing trust in relationships. Whether or not it is true that leaders actions and words are different, there is often a perception in those who follow leaders that there is an inconsistency between espoused values and values in practice. Bringing actions and words into alignment both in reality and in the perception of church members is a very important responsibility of leadership. It is a responsibility that requires an emotionally healthy response because it may require leaders to admit that some actions were not in line with the core values of the church and it is through admitting those errors and being humble about them that trust can be re-established and strengthened.

In another email that I received from one of the leaders at New Life I was asked, "Mike, don't you trust leadership?" My answer is that I trust the heart of my leaders that they sincerely desire to do what is right. That is part of the covenantal care I have committed to at New Life. However, no leaders are perfect, even those who guide New Life! So while I trust the heart of leadership, I do not trust that they are infallible.

For trust to grow in me and in those who were wounded by leaderships actions, there needs to be an emotionally healthy response by leadership to the concerns and questions that have been raised and that remain outstanding, otherwise trust in leadership will erode.

(UPDATED, Friday, January 5th, 2007.

I deleted four paragraphs of "backseat driving" comments. See my apology here.).

By the way Scazzero has a website for resources on being an Emotionally Healthy Church. You can read chapter one of his book here. You can take a measure of your emotional health by answering these questions here.

As Go The Leaders, So Goes the Church - Leading New Life Through The Pain and Out The Other Side.

Mike McLoughlin — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 20:08:22 -0800

I have been blogging on a leadership transition occurring at my local church. (See my previous post here). I have suggested that the way forward for us is to go through the pain generated from recent personnel changes, specifically the end of the working relationship with the founders of the church, so as to come out the other side of the experience empowered to love one another more deeply.

I am using Scazzero's book The Emotionally Healthy Church as my template for the way through the current situation. Scazzero planted a church in the Queens area of New York City. Ironically, the name of the church was New Life Fellowship. That's the original name of our church after we dropped the word 'Baptist' and before we added the word 'Vineyard'. Now we are simply New Life Church.

In chapter one, Scazzero links the emotional health of leaders with that of their congregations. Leaders who have the capacity to publicly admit pain, disappointment and failure are better able to model appropriate and mature emotional behaviors for their congregation. Leaders that deny there is pain, pretend it is of little consequence or are not willing to publicly admit their emotional weaknesses model the opposite.

People trust leaders who are sincere, authentic and transparent with their emotions. Being transparent about the pain gives followers a sense that their leaders understand human frailty. People feel safe with those who understand and identify with that frailty. Trust develops under these conditions.

Those who cannot admit their pain publicly, will find their exhortations falling on deaf ears. People are not stupid. They can see when leadership is struggling with issues. Why not admit it? Those who have admitted it and are transparent with it gain favor in people's hearts.

This is what Scazzero does in recounting his story of emotional challenge and transitions at his church. It was when he connected with his emotions on a personal level and found appropriate expression for them in his church context that he was able to model for others how to respond appropriately to pain and disappointment.

"What God did in our lives spilled out into the church immediately, beginning with our staff team, then our elder board, and eventually the rest of our leadership. For the first time, I understood what it meant to minister out of who you are, not what you do. My discovery was contagious. We went from being "human doings" to "human beings " The result has been a rippling effect, very slowly, through the entire church. Beginning with the staff and elders, interns, ministry and small-group leaders, the congregation at large—directly and indirectly—we have intentionally integrated the principles outlined in this book throughout the church." (p. 34)

For us at New Life we need leaders who own emotions by "ministering out of who they are" in a way that allows the people they lead to follow suit.

For example, people can invest the present circumstances with emotional pain from previous events in their personal lives. Some have described the surprise announcement of the loss of the founders of our church as a divorce. The congregation are like the children who are the last ones to find out that there is trouble in the marriage. Some people who have really experienced divorce may invest in the present circumstances the feelings of hurt and abandonment they felt with their parents surprise divorce even though the two situations are very different.

Emotionally mature church leaders will see the potential for this to happen in their congregation. So they identify the pain people are feeling -- the pain at being surprised with difficult news. Then they own that pain publicly as their own pain and empathize with those who are feeling that pain, but distinguishing it from the pain that people may have personally experienced in other situations in their lives.

Then they model how they, as leaders, are dealing with the pain by seeking or offering forgiveness. They show their people a way out of the pain, a way that takes the pain "out of circulation" by grounding the 'electrical current' of the pain in forgiveness so that it is dissipated in a healthy manner, thus allowing healing to happen.

In doing so they diffuse the emotions generated by that pain that are often made worse by previous painful experiences. This allows people a measure of closure on the pain, giving them release to renew relationships and start the process of rebuilding trust.

So the way through pain for our church is not to skirt the issue or to pretend it will go away. Growing emotionally means that we own the pain and talk about it with an effort to bring healing by reconciling with one another in love. Love does not mean there will be no more pain, it simply means that when pain does come, as it inevitably will come, we are not overwhelmed by it. Instead we embrace it as a necessary part of our emotions and we let it shape us so that we can care for one another more deeply.

Thus church leadership needs to model the way through the pain. As Scazzero succinctly states, "As go the leaders, so goes the church." Our leadership has an amazing opportunity right now that does not come around often. It is an opportunity born from adversity. We have reaped the consequences of emotional immaturity too much in our past, now is our opportunity to step into the pain and through the pain and out the other side. This is what I mean by the pain shaping us as a congregation and maturing us in our spirituality as well our emotions.

The Kelowna city motto is "fruitful in unity." It is a motto we as a church have previously endorsed. God wants for us to be an emotionally healthy and a spiritually fruitful church. For us to be fruitful as God desires we need some pruning. Pruning is painful ...

How to Have an Emotionally Healthy Church

Mike McLoughlin — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 11:34:49 -0800

As per my last post I have had some conversations with people about the emotional pain resulting from recent personnel changes at New Life Church Kelowna. The responses ranged from "We have been talking about the pain too long and it is time to move on." to "The pain is very real, any attempt to deny it revictimizes those who have it." to "It really hurts but I am willing to forgive." That last response is the emotionally healthy response.

In his book, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Peter Scazzero makes the case that a spiritually mature church is an emotionally mature church. Emotionally mature churches are able to go through the pain and come out the other side of it, allowing the pain to refine, purify and shape the church community. Immature churches ignore there is pain or they get so fixated on the pain that they cannot move on.

Our challenge at New Life is how do we process our pain and the pain we have caused others in an emotionally mature manner? I think Scazzero's book can help us do that. He is a pastor from New York city who burned out in his ministry and learned some very hard lessons about what it means for a church community to bear with one another in love. He says,

"The sad reality is that too many people in our churches are fixated at a stage of spiritual immaturity that current models of discipleship have not addressed. Many are supposedly "spiritually mature" but remain infants, children, or teenagers emotionally. They demonstrate little ability to process anger, sadness, or hurt. They whine, complain, distance themselves, blame, and use sarcasm—like little children when they don't get their way. Highly defensive to criticism or differences of opinion, they expect to be taken care of and often treat people as objects to meet their needs. Why?

The answer is what this book is about. The roots of the problem lie in a faulty spirituality, stemming from a faulty biblical theology (chs. 3 and 4). Many Christians have received helpful training in certain essential areas of discipleship, such as prayer, Bible study, worship, discovery of their spiritual gifts, or learning how to explain the Gospel to someone else. Yet Jesus' followers also need training and skills in how to look beneath the surface of the iceberg in their lives (ch. 5), to break the power of how their past influences the present (ch. 6), to live in brokenness and vulnerability (ch. 7), to know their limits (ch. 8), to embrace their loss and grief (ch. 9), and to make incarnation their model for loving well (ch. 10). Making incarnation the top priority in order to love others well is both the climax and point of the entire book. The church is to he known, above all else, as a community that radically and powerfully loves others. Sadly, this is not generally our reputation. "(p. 18)

I think the pain we experience both individually and corporately is, as C S Lewis put it in his book, The Problem of Pain, God's megaphone trying to get our attention so we can address some serious personal and community issues. Moving on without addressing these issues, I fear will condemn us to repeat our folly, and re-experience the pain again in our new situation.

So I actually think we need to move toward the pain as a church rather than away from it. I think the pain is where God wants us to go. It is the cross he intends for us to bear as a church right now. Not that we stay at the place of pain, but that we move through the pain and out the other side, allowing the pain to shape us.

I think God wants us to become 'wounded' healers, who are familiar with sorrows so that we are better able to bear the sorrows of others. This is what it means to live incarnationally. (Henri Nouwen has written a classic book on this subject called The Wounded Healer).

If we can own this as our story in which our pain has redemptive value, it can bring lasting healing to that pain and empower us for the way forward as individuals and as a church community.

That is the message of Scazzero's book and it the way we can become an emotionally healthy church. My hope is for us to be a community that does not continue to re-offend and re-experience relational pain but that we learn to love one another deeply, so deeply that no amount of pain or disappointment or anger will ever again come between us. This is my hope for the way forward for New Life Church Kelowna.

Let Us Talk About the Pain at New Life

Mike McLoughlin — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 10:46:49 -0800

A week ago Sunday night this is what happened to my car. It was parked on the street outside the auto repair shop waiting for a new starter. Somebody decided to have a little fun by dropping a rock into the windshield.

The previous Friday, I received an e mail courageously challenging my thinking on Why I stay at New Life Church. She asked, "Are there only two categories of church going people: consumer Christians and covenantal Christians? Are there not more categories? Is it so black and white? What about the group who have been patient long suffering members in which the pain of spiritual and relational disappointment disables their participation?

I stand corrected on my two category approach. Participation in church community can range along a continuum from covenantal commitment where members stick by their church no matter what to 'church hopping' where participation is conditional on church products offered.

I stick by my assertion, though, that Christian life is about bearing with one another in love because I believe God's unconditional commitment to us means we must follow suit. This is what Matthew 18:21-22 teaches. Forgiveness is not optional, however much commitment to one particular church community may be!

However, to forgive and to bear with one another does not deny the REAL pain of relational and spiritual disappointment. This is the lesson from the rock in my car windshield. The pain sits like a big rock crushing the spirit and life out of those who are wounded. If we are going to have a REAL conversation for the sake of REAL community at New Life, we need to talk about the pain. To ignore it is to deny it.

Exactly one year prior to the morning of August 13th, the day New Life announced the departure of Wesley and Stacey Campbell, I had a very vivid dream in which I needed to see a doctor at the local hospital. As I approached the front door, I noticed the receptionist sitting on the steps taking a lunch break. I asked her about an appointment. She said, "I don’t know, why don’t you go up to the office, get the appointment book and bring it down to me. I will see if there is a space this afternoon for you." I said, "Sure!" So I took the elevator up to the office. I went in, reached over the front counter and got her appointment book. I went out to catch the elevator, but it had already started down. Rather than wait for it to return, I decided to take the stairs, because I wanted to get the appointment sorted out quickly.

I went through a doorway I thought led to the stairwell, but it wasn't the stairwell. It was another section of the hospital that is reserved for maintenance of the hospital systems. I could see all this big equipment parked in empty hospital rooms. I tried finding the stairs but I got lost. I could not find my way out and there was no one around to show me the way out. I checked my watch and I realized that the secretary's lunch break was over and that she was probably back at the front desk looking for her appointment book. I was lost. I felt ashamed at my mistake. I did not know how to get out. There was no one to help me. I felt an overwhelming sense of panic. I was trapped in the place of pain.

As I reflected upon this dream, I realized the hospital represented both a place of pain and a place for healing. Jesus is the doctor. I am on my way to be healed by Jesus. However, I have to get by the gatekeeper who is the secretary. The secretary represents all those people in my life who I feel I need to please. I took what I thought was a shortcut so I could please them but it ended up getting me lost in the place of pain.

After sharing this dream with my wife and some friends, I realized that I needed some help. So I started a counseling program. However, as the past year progressed, things went from bad to worse and I ended up in full blown depression. Depression is what happens when one internalizes one’s anger. When my counselor asked me if I was angry, I told her I did not think so. But the problem was that I did not know how to get in touch with my feelings. In fact, I was operating in denial that I had any feelings, that I was feeling any pain at all.

Just before the big announcement at New Life last August, I enrolled in a eight day course in Biblical Counseling at the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Okanagan base entitled "Pain of the Heart". It was taught by a Mennonite couple from Ontario, Clair & Clara Schnupp. They minister among first nations people in Northern Canada and Greenland. (Read more about their ministry here.)

As the Schnupp’s shared their stories of pain of the heart, I realized that I had been living in denial of my pain. Depression resulted from me denying an outlet for the anger at the pain I was feeling but could not find expression for. As the course progressed, I realized I could connect with my pain by attaching feeling words to it such as disappointment, sadness, abandonment, etc. As I attached these feeling words to my pain I had an outlet to express it. I could talk about it with those at the course in a safe loving environment. As I talked about my pain, I felt God's healing penetrate my being and I was released from the weight of my pain. the rock was being removed from the windshield of my car.

In God's mercy, I think it was no coincidence that I had a dream exactly one year prior to the happenings ...

Making a Real Commitment to a Real Conversation For The Sake of Real Community

Mike McLoughlin — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:10:55 -0700

Last week, I posted an article on Making the Hard Decision to Care Covenantally for My Church Family. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Being mindful of the need to prove what I say by acting upon it, I ask: how am I embodying the change I wish to affect at New Life church?

Firstly, I need to make a tangible commitment. I met with my pastor and his wife and offered to volunteer where they needed help. They suggested perhaps I could help in evangelism. YIKES! I thought that is the last thing I want to do! Honestly, I am not an evangelist. I don’t have a passion for evangelism. I can’t remember when the last time was that I lead somebody to the Lord. If there is one opportunity at church that I would avoid like the plague it would be evangelism. Whenever our pastor preached on evangelism my wife and I would feel like crawling under our respective chairs to hide ourselves! In fact, after more than 18 years at the church, evangelism, is the only ministry (other than dance J) that I have not been involved in at New Life.

So I am wondering what's my problem with evangelism? I am not alone. Most local churches need help with evangelism. Why is that and what does one do about it?

Perhaps the reason I get squirmy about evangelism is that I just can't see myself recruiting people to the church as it is now. Nor can I see myself trying to convince people of a message I am not sure really does justice to who Jesus is and was, especially 'The Four Spiritual Laws' version. Finally, the traditional Evangelical and Pentecostal approaches for evangelism, I think, are a set up for failure in today's culture. Hurling truth propositions at people from a great distance; confronting them with their mortality and the possibility of eternal damnation; and then promising them power in Jesus name for healing the sick, but when the crunch comes being unable to deliver on that power because nothing changes when we pray. These approaches are all 'non starters' for your post modern pagan.

Is this really what Jesus had in mind when he said to his disciples "As the Father sent me, even so I send you."? I don't think so. (For more on that check out Rob Bell's NOOMA DVD series especially the one entitled The Bull Horn Guy.) In fact, perhaps a better evangelism strategy would be for the church to confess its sins to the world and seek forgiveness for not being more Christ-like in its approach to communicating the gospel. (See Donald Miller's book Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality for more on that idea.)

So secondly, I need to talk about doing local church differently. What is wrong with the local church? What is right? Why this crisis of confidence in church? What's up?

Let this conversation go beyond the order of service, the orientation of chairs or the worship style. Let's go deeper: What is the purpose of local church? What is the local church THERE for? Is it primarily for the benefit of members? Is it for spiritual feeding once a week? A worship extravaganza? Prayer for emotional or physician healing? Who does the church exist FOR anyway?

Archbishop William Temple once said, "the church is the only voluntary society that exists for the benefit of its NON members." (emphasis mine) Is that statement true? How does that play out for a local church? What does that look like at New Life? What are we doing for our NON members? How are members oriented towards non members? Does the word 'evangelism' describe that orientation or are there better words? How about words like 'friendship', 'generosity', 'service', or 'hospitality'.

So many questions, not many answers. Let's be careful not to presume we can figure it all out, that we can solve all the problems of the local church with one bright idea. Let's start with questions that encourage a deep dialogue with one another. Let's talk about the things that give us hope and the things that disappoint us. Let's be open, honest and frank about our expectations and what is realistic. Let's talk about the things that are really important to us, that really matter, our friendships, our families, our love for God, our heart for the poor, our concern for justice, our longing for God's presence. Let us cry out with the psalmist, "Oh send out thy light and thy truth; let them lead me, let them bring me to thy holy hill and to thy dwelling!" (Psalms 43:3)

Talking assumes a third thing that needs to be done: community. This is not the kind of community that occurs at the church potluck. This is cathartic community: community where we are deeply honest with one another, where we face our short comings together, where we bring it all up onto the table, where we take off the masks and we get REALLY real: vulnerable and transparent. It is community where we see people's hearts, their pain, their tears, and their joy. We groan with each other, we weep with each other, and we so value each other that we forgive each other.

This is the kind of community that is a love shaped community. Love is the 'heart shaped' keyhole that God wants to pull us all through as a church at New Life. It is a time in which we are all pressed together so that we come out on the other side, one with another.

It is the kind of authentic community we all long for but are too afraid to risk our reputations to bring about. Well, I for one am ready to jettison my reputation so that I can get real with my church family. How about you?

Perhaps then we will win the lost because ...

Why do I stay at New Life Church? Making the Hard Decision to Care Covenantally for My Church Family.

Mike McLoughlin — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 16:45:05 -0700

A friend who used to attend my church recently asked me "Why do you stay there? There’s a lot of sizzle at that church, but where is the beef?" Then he gave me a teaching CD from his new church as if to say -- here is some substance.

The decision to stay or to go is deeper than indulging one's preference for more beef and less sizzle. Sure, my church has weaknesses. Yes, the teaching could be better, but then so could every other church's teaching be better. Certainly, there is a need for change. Improvement opportunities abound at New Life Church Kelowna.

From the perspective of consumer Christianity, church is a dispenser of religious goods and services. Some churches provide better value for your tithing dollars. Others find it difficult to compete. Consumer Christians make church membership conditional on the product offered.

Covenantal Christianity sees the church as a community more than a spiritual consumers club. This is because in the gospel, God cares for us covenantally not conditionally, therefore, we must care for one another covenantally, not conditionally. (Matthew 18:21-22)

Once we have made the commitment to be a member of a church family, we are not at liberty to keep the door ajar or to take a wait and see attitude with respect to our church family. As long as New Life Church Kelowna subscribes to the basic creeds of the Christian faith, I am called as a member to care for them covenantally.

This is the hard made decision: to let go of the pain of disappointed expectations, to be patient with the failings of leadership, to endure the differences in ministry style, to put up with the irritating idiosyncrasies, to bear with one another in love, to forgive the offense that has upset me, and to move from a position of conditionality to a place of trust. Trust in God who will provide the grace to cover me when I risk loving othersunconditionally.

Besides this basic reason, here are more reasons why I stay:

Ø Staying Because of Perspective. The problems at my local church are reflective of wider problems that are occurring throughout the North American church. A huge cultural shift is occurring in our society that affects the local church. Reggie McNeal, author of The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church, states "current church culture in North America is on life support." George Barna in his book Revolution calls for a complete transformation in where church happens. (See my reviews here) Brian McLaren, author of Church on the Other Side, states it is time to migrate to a new way to do Christianity. All these authors have one thing in common. They see that the local church in North America is in serious trouble. Unless it transitions, it will die. I stay because I believe New Life can make that transition and I want to help them do that.

Ø Staying Because There is Substance. At New Life, there is substance beneath the sizzle. Our church has a rich history with God. We have made a difference in our community, in the nation and around the world. There is a present vitality in our worship and community. I stay because I know God has used New Life to make a difference in the lives of many people both in Kelowna and abroad. He will do it again.

Ø Staying Because New Life is My Tribe. In 1988 I wrote these words in my journal concerning my arrival at New Life. "I had found my tribe!" Although one may reject one's family, one cannot lose the family resemblance. New Life Church has shaped who I am and I believe will continue to do so. I embrace that no matter how difficult it is to live in a dysfunctional family, Jesus said, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." New Lifer's are my friends. Friendship demands I stay.

Ø Staying Because I have Hope the Church can be Different. In 2000, our church launched a revolution in the way we minister. We went from a governance structure that concentrated knowledge and power in a small clique at the top of the church hierarchy, to a governance structure that distributed knowledge and power more evenly among ministry leaders. In the New Beginnings approach, everyone could hear from God, not just the 'anointed few'. Everyone had an apostolic role to play since to be a Christian is to be a "sent one". Everyone's contribution was valued as we moved forward together. Part of the reason why we are experiencing turbulence is that we are following the path we set out in 2000. I stay because I believe this is the right path and I have hope that we will reap a good harvest if we stick to it.

Ø Staying Says We Are Saved Together. Despite what our consumer culture tells us, Christians do not exist as autonomous decision-making individuals. We are who we are because of the relationships within which we exist. No person is an island unto themselves. If God is the one who "sets us in families" then who am I to decide that since my present church family may be somewhat dysfunctional then I should go and find a new family? I stay because I am called to be pulled through God's keyhole together with the rest of my New Life family. I am saved together with them not apart from them. This is how God forms us for his purposes. Consider this thought on salvation from Leslie Newbigin,

The Bible does not speak about "humanity" but about "all families of the earth" or "all the nations." It follows that this mutual relatedness, this dependence of one on another, is not merely part of the journey toward the goal of ...