Blogging and Social Media

I've written a short piece for The Institute of Evangelism in Toronto on how and why you should consider starting a blog. Here's an excerpt:

One of the best ways to maintain an online presence is through a blog. Mohler says that we used to think that bloggers were all “twentysomethings in their pyjamas writing online rants.” But blogs are now “one of the most significant platforms for our cultural conversation.” It’s one of history’s “most cost-efficient way of communicating big ideas and solid content. If you are not writing a blog, you should be.”

I agree. Here are four reasons why you should blog...

Read the rest here.

Speaking of web stuff, I was interested to read about how astronaut Chris Hadfield made it onto Twitter:

He initially balked when his sons began preaching the merits of Twitter and Facebook more than three years ago...

During a family Christmas get-together in 2009 his son Evan, who now lives in Germany, and Kyle, who's in China, pointed out that they relied on the Internet to find out what's going on.

They got on his case again when his five-month mission was announced in early September 2010. It was then that they decided to set up his two social-media sites...

Upon his return to Earth this week, Hadfield was hovering around one million Twitter followers and more than 325,000 "Likes" on Facebook.

I'm sure glad his sons got on his case. I'm glad the same thing happened to Tim Keller (except, of course, the part about going into space or singing a David Bowie song). What I should say is that I'm glad his son pushed him onto Twitter.

I agree with Al Mohler.  If you’re not active online, you’re limited in your ministry to those who aren’t online. “That population is shrinking every moment. The clock is ticking.”

Setting Gospel Grassfires

My latest column at ChristianWeek:

There’s no question that ministry in Canada is a challenge. According to Bill Hogg, National Missiologist with C2C Network, that’s not a surprise. “Canada is further down the track in terms of liminality, the marginalization of religious ideas and religious institutions,” he says. “Canada prizes social pluralism and religious pluralism, which is obviously a challenge as you seek to proclaim Jesus.”

Not only is Canada pluralistic, but many churches are stuck. “The reality is that 85% of North American churches have plateaued or declined.” Hogg believes that churches often follow a life cycle that resembles a sigmoid curve. “Something that started, where lives are being transformed, can eventually decline, and needs to experience renewal, refocus, restructuring, or replanting.”

Despite the external and internal challenges, Hogg is encouraged. “There are pockets of hope across Canada. There are little gospel grassfires.” The C2C Network exists as a nationwide, indigenous Canadian church planting and renewal network. “If we want to reach Canada for Christ, it’s going to require fresh, vibrant, innovative, gospel-centred, Spirit-led, mission-focused new churches,” Hogg believes. “But it’s also going to require the established church to get on mission, steward the gospel well, and embrace the mission fields where God has placed them.”

According to Hogg, the Canadian church faces three challenges. The first danger is gospel drift. “A lot of evangelical and charismatic churches are not centred around the gospel,” he says. “There’s a danger that evangelicals are no longer evangel people.” Hogg identifies the danger of preaching the prosperity gospel, or its “kissing cousin success,” moralism, or just old-fashioned legalism instead of the gospel. Churches must continually recalibrate around the gospel.

The second danger is missional retreat. According to one author, the dominant North American ecclesial motif is church as private club. Our challenge, Hogg says, is to first look to Jesus, and then to look outward to the town, village, city, and community in which God has placed each faith community.

The third danger is seeing the church as human enterprise. This means that we often look for technicians, not ministers, and for techniques and programs that promise success. “We have to be Spirit-empowered, Spirit-dependent, and Spirit-led. This is messy and defies the cookie cutter approach.” Our starting posture is important: “It’s not about coming up with a plan. The first order of business is to surrender to Jesus. The idea is not to work a plan but to hear from the Lord, and then from dependance upon Him walk in obedience to what he speaks into the life of the church.”

This underlines the importance of prayer. “Jesus, who commissioned the 72, said that he’s sending them out as lambs among wolves. There is peril and danger. We’re in a spiritual combat zone, and we need the wisdom and power of the Lord.”

Hogg believes that we have every reason to hope. “The gospel hasn’t lost its power. God is still on the throne, and Jesus has not rescinded the Great Commission even for such a time as this.”

Making Sense of Weakness

My latest column at ChristianWeek:

I spend so much time trying to be strong that I have a hard time making sense of what the Bible says about weakness.

"I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling," the apostle Paul writes. Later he says, "For when I am weak, then I am strong." What kind of Kingdom math is this? And if it's true, why do we try so hard to be strong?

Rose Marie Miller, in her book Nothing Is Impossible with God, helps me make sense of this. There are three kinds of weakness, she writes.

The first kind of weakness is presumptive weakness. It's what we usually think of as strength. "Presumptive weakness is when I am strong in myself. I think, 'I have the ability, the gifts, the understanding, the wisdom to get the job done or get on with life.'" It turns out that our strengths, until surrendered, are liabilities, because "it is impossible to fully trust in God while you still cling to something in yourself."

The second type of weakness is despairing weakness. This is usually what we think of as weakness, but it's not what we should aim for. When we despair, we look at our own resources and discover they're not enough, and we begin to lose hope.

I find that I tend to alternate between these first two types of weakness. I try to make it on my own strength, or give up. There's a third way, though.

The third type of weakness is what Paul talks about, and it's what we should aim for: true weakness, "born out of a deep sense of inadequacy and need, which drives us to Christ and unleashes all the redeeming energy of God's grace in our lives."

Charles Spurgeon put it this way in his sermon "Paradox": "We are strong when, under a sense of absolute inability, we depend wholly upon God...When we are weak we are strong, again, because then we are driven away from self to God."

What about our abilities and talents? Oswald Chambers writes, "God can achieve his purpose either through absence of human power and resources, or abandonment of reliance on them...He chose and used nobodies only when they renounced dependence on their natural abilities and resources."

The exciting part about true weakness is that it's freeing. We don't have to pretend to be more than we are, or that we have it all together. I spoke to a man last week who with genuine joy said to me, "There's nothing you could tell me about yourself that would surprise me, because there's no way that you're a worse sinner than me." He had encountered God's grace and strength in his weakness, and it set him free.

I'm a weak pastor in a land of weak churches. That may just be my greatest strength. I'm slowly learning to turn away from my own resources and despair, to find that God's strength really is enough and more.

Planting is for Every Church

My latest column at ChristianWeek:

I used to think that church planters are deviants—nice people with a rebel streak. I liked them, and I admired them, but I couldn't relate to them, and I certainly didn't want to join their number.

Tim Keller, a pastor and church planter in New York City, changed all that. I read an article of his called "Why Plant Churches?" (PDF) and I still haven't recovered. Church planting, he argues, is the biblical strategy for reaching people with the gospel. Church plants reach people that established churches won't.

Church plants are also the best way to renew established churches. Keller answered every objection I had to church planting, and he convinced me to see church planting as essential. It's not for deviants; it's essential for every church.

I remember sitting in my office a decade ago while pastoring an established church. A friend of mine had just planted a new church. We had a huge building, money in the bank, and a couple hundred people. They had a dozen people meeting in a basement.

A decade later, that church plant has outgrown the established church I pastored, and they have also planted a number of new churches that are also growing. While I'm still convinced that we still need to work on renewing existing churches, I began to appreciate church plants like never before.

I also remember sitting in a meeting with two pastors of established churches and three church planters. As we talked about our churches, the two of us from established churches struggled to articulate our vision. We lacked clarity. The three church planters spoke with great clarity about the vision of their churches. I walked away from the meeting wondering how their vision and clarity could rub off on us.

I've come to believe that every church needs to be involved in church planting. It's not just because I'm now a church planter—it's because I've spent 20 years pastoring established churches, and I now realize what I was missing.

First, church planting is strategic. In every city and town, we need new churches to reach the people that existing churches can't. According to Keller, the average new church brings in six to eight times more new people than an older congregation of the same size. I agree with Peter Wagner: "Planting new churches is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven."

Secondly—and this is new to me—church planting benefits established churches. My mother is often asked why she seems young for her age. She has a one-word answer: "Grandchildren." Because she's investing in the lives of those who are young, she's stayed young. Every church was once a church plant; the way to maintain some of that energy is to continue to live close to the youth of other church plants.

Church planting isn't for deviants. It's the way to reach new people, and it's the way for the established Church to maintain its vibrancy. Church planting is for every church.

Disrupt Yourself

My latest column at ChristianWeek:

If you asked me if I struggled with fear just three years ago, I would have told you no. But then I began to notice traces of fear in my life: fear of confronting people, fear of taking a bold stand, fear of putting everything on the line when needed. One day a colleague who's not noted for his tact asked me, "When did you become such a chicken?" I was stunned by his question, but I realized he was right.

So when we sensed it was time to make a ministry transition last year, I had to confront my fears. I had two relatively safe options. One in particular could have become very comfortable. I also had the option of church planting. The upside of church planting is huge. The downside is that the pay is uncertain, and the risk of failure is real. I came to realize that if we didn't plant, it would be because of fear. I knew I could fail, unless I redefined failure as not trying. I took a deep breath and chose church planting.

One of the most helpful things I read while confronting my fears is an article in the Harvard Business Review, of all places, by Whitney Johnson called "Disrupt Yourself." Johnson walked away from a seven-figure income to an uncertain future. "If it feels scary and lonely, you're probably on the right track," she writes. "Be assured you have no idea what will come next." On the upside, "Your odds of success will improve when you pursue a disruptive course." Fear is a good indicator that we may be on the right track.

When we're young, we risk a lot because we have to, and because we often have little to lose. The same goes for churches. As we age, we have more to protect, and we start taking less risk. This makes sense to my financial advisor, but it also explains why a lot of people and a lot of churches stop growing.

Fear is ultimately an issue of idolatry. Tim Keller, a pastor in New York, defines an idol as anything more important to you than God. An idol is "anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living." In other words, our fears point to our idols. This means a lot of us miss out on living the risk-filled adventure of serving God because we're too busy servicing our idols, and we don't even know it.

This helped me. As I prayed and read through Scriptures like Psalm 27, I began to realize that God's invitation isn't really about giving up good things, as much as it is to give up the idols that hold us back from cherishing Him above all things.

"Fear is a daily battle that everyone in ministry is called to fight," says Paul Tripp. The way to avoid stagnation, individually and as churches, is to confront our fears and idols. Disrupt yourself.