Why Rock the Boat? -- Guest Post

This is a guest post from an author I really like:  my wife, Kaye Sims,  who asks some of the questions she has been wondering about lately.  This one is addressed to church leaders who encourage cutting edge ministry... and then fail to support their pastors who actually implement innovative methods, some of them ultimately losing their jobs as a result.

...

Why do you encourage missional thinking?  Why do you bring in innovative thinkers with their radical and transformational ideas?  Why do you invest so much time and energy getting pastors fired up to lead their churches into organic, refreshing, authentic ways of doing ministry?  Why do you push these amazing, wonderful, life-changing concepts and encourage pastors to implement them?  Why do you convince people that disciple-making is not a program, but that it is a radical way of thinking and living, a fresh but ancient wave of spiritual reproduction?  Why do you challenge church leaders to dismantle their fortress mentality and to learn instead what it means to unleash the church - to BE the church outside the institutional walls?

But the real question is this:   When pastors follow these principles and find themselves and many of their people invigorated and becoming more effective in reaching their community, and then when the local power brokers get up in arms about the inevitable break from tradition, why, oh why, do you refuse to stand with those pastors?  Why in the world do you stand instead on the side of the status quo as yet another pastor gets kicked to the curb?  Why do you blame him and the people who followed him into the new Spirit-led ministry that you introduced?  Why do you label them rebellious - those who dared to venture out and live out these transformational disciple-making principles?  

Why indeed do you encourage such innovative thinking that violently upsets the apple cart?

Innovative thinkers blow up the status quo.

Wouldn't it be better to promote ways to keep things running smoothly?  Wouldn't it make more sense to invest your leadership resources and energy in training pastors how to avoid making waves?  Why don't you bring in speakers and organize conferences around the principles of compliance to authority?  Forget finding the "man of peace" in a community who might be instrumental in welcoming a move of God that would transform that town.  Instead why not train each pastor how to quickly recognize the "man of power" in the local congregation - the one who pulls the strings or at least holds them?  Wouldn't a pastor benefit from learning the steps of how to keep that person happy?  

Instead of challenging pastors and people to resist the status quo, maybe it would be smarter or safer to train them to submit to it.  Wouldn't that be the way to keep the machinery oiled and running smoothly?  The way to avoid church splits and to keep the statistics steady and the monthly reports rolling in on time.  Isn't that what matters?  

....

Kaye Sims very much enjoyed serving in church ministry for pretty much all her life until suddenly finding herself on the outside.  She has since discovered glorious freedom and loves to  watch for opportunities to be involved in reconciliation, redemption, and restoration.  She still finds herself wondering about lots of things and writes about some of them at her blog,  Wondering Journey.

The Win-Win of Church Splits

  I can't believe I'm writing this.  Probably my mom can't either, as well as my brother who is a pastor in the Missionary Church, and a lot of my friends who are still in the church. The title alone is enough to raise the ire of church folks everywhere.   Oh, well, that hasn't stopped me before, so here I go, publishing my unpopular opinions and then letting people love me anyway.

  This post is actually a challenge of sorts to the previous post, "Thin Walls", in which I condemned the denominational and political walls that have dismembered the Body of Christ over the centuries.  This time I am saying that divisions can be good, that they serve an essential service in the Kingdom.

  Here's the thing: human nature.  Or maybe personality types, or even spiritual gifts.  What I'm talking about is the variety of people that exists in the world and in the church:  People who get bored easily and initiate change for the sake of change, and those who resist change.  People who welcome the presence and work of the Holy Spirit, and those who resist the Spirit.  People who love noisy, animated worship, and those who retreat in quiet meditation.  People who enjoy expose' and exegetic preaching, and those who can't wait for the small group so they can finally ask questions and enter the conversation.  Evangelists, and administrators.  And so on.

  It's a good thing there are different scenarios, different styles, different types of church settings, because there are so many kinds of people.  A virtual smorgasbord of worship settings exists in America, a plethora of flavors and colors.  And that's good.

  Because birds of a feather will just normally flock together.  Naturally.  That is, in harmony with the God-given nature that is within them.  This results in harmony for everybody.  Because if very different species of birds are forced to co-habitate, there can be squabbles and even violence.  That's just the way it is.

  Okay, a personal story here.  I was active in the same church all of my adult life and held various positions of leadership as a volunteer within the church.  But on random occasions during that time, I experienced resistance and even opposition to my efforts from others in the body.  My ideas were shot down, my actions were questioned, and my individuality was challenged.  My friends of the same unconventional feather noticed the same natural phenomenon.

  It happens everywhere.  Most of the time I didn't take it personally - even when it was intended to be personal, in which case I would pretend it wasn't.  It was simply different people operating within their own sets of gifts, personality types and personal preferences.

  But a chasm started to open within the church body, a gap between two large groups who held very different values.  And over twenty-five years the gap widened.

  One group placed a high value on outreach.  They were people-minded.  They stressed missions and community service and love for all.  And they would disregard sacred practices of the church to embrace the needy, whether inside or outside the congregation (i.e: they might spend their tithe money on car repairs for a needy neighbor and then not have it to put in the offering).  They were inspired by movements and champions of movements like Frank Tillapaugh and Kennan Callahan.*  I started calling them the Progressives.

  The other group were Traditionalists.  They placed a high value on structure.  The buildings and property were important to them.  The doctrines of Wesleyan evangelicalism were sacred to them, and familiar programs were set in stone.  "If it worked in the last century it will work today!"  They  didn't just resist change, they stood in the way of progress.

  Finally, a progressive and well-loved pastor who was seen as the champion of an organic  movement was forced to leave the church.  For no good reason, except that the traditionalists, who had been outnumbered for twenty years, were momentarily in control of the governing board.  And the result was a church split.  The progressives had finally reached their limit of patience with the road-blocking traditionalists, and 150 of them left all at once.  The church went from 225 to 75 almost overnight.

  It was a dizzying exodus, and my head was spinning for months after as I tried to figure out what had happened.  The perennial peacemaker and an elder at the time, I had worked harder than anyone to keep the place together, sacrificing my reputation in the process.

  But I was obviously a progressive, and I was made aware that, not only were my ideas not welcome there anymore, neither was my presence.  One of the other elders told me to give it up; "You guys lost," he said.  My response was, "We all lost; there was no winner here."  Six months after the mass exodus, my wife and I reluctantly exited too, amid turmoil and pain, much of her family remaining at the church.  

  But we are loving it now, and I've changed my tune; I no longer believe there were any losers in this parting of the ways.  Three years after the split we see what a wonderful place we are in, a place of freedom in a land of opportunity.  We will never go back to working within the walls.  Here's what's good about this church split and why we are thankful that it happened:

  1. The Traditionalists have their church back the way it was 40 years ago, the way they like it.  They have put thousands of dollars into improving the property and buildings and installing air conditioning, they have re-instated old programs and practices, and their familiar doctrines and orthodoxies are unquestioned and unthreatened within the walls.  Remember, structure is their highest value.

  2.  The Progressives, who had talked and dreamed of engaging the culture in more organic, incarnational ways but whose efforts were often blocked, have now moved outside the walls of the church and are pursuing their dreams and visions with excitement and energy. Most of them are meeting in one of several small house groups... or in the park, or at the ice cream shop, or at the ballgame.  There's nobody to tell them not to.  Remember, their highest value is people.

  3. Everybody's happy.  It was a win-win situation for both groups and continues so.

  I have concluded that as long as we are unified by our belief in Jesus, birds of a different feather may be better off not flocking together.  So there will be options for everybody.  If you like tradition you have options, and if you want to try something new, you will find a place to belong as well.  Different strokes for different folks.

  That's the nature of it.  Take a look at any school playground and you'll see that from a very young age, humans will naturally cluster with others who are like themselves.  Birds of a feather.  That's our God-given nature.  That's the way it is.

*Frank Tillapaugh wrote Unleashing the Church, defining and criticizing what he called "the fortress mentality" of exclusiveness in the church culture. (Regal Books, 1982)
 Kennan Callahan wrote Effective Church Leadership, in which he explained that America was a post-churched culture where effective leaders should see their local churches as mission outposts, not fortresses. (Jossey-Bass, 1989)
 Also see The Shaping of Things to Come, by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost, in which they analyze the Life Cycle of a Church, the focus of a church being on people in the growth stage, and on structure in the declining stage. (Hendrickson Publishers, 2003)
  
  

God Isn't There Anymore

   "A godly man suggested we stop going to church," she told me, "He said God isn't there anymore."  This young wife and mother of two young daughters must have seen the surprise on my face and took it as encouragement to tell me the rest of the story.  It was an interesting story.
  Their local church had recently split down the middle, but Rona Lessfoot and her husband, Nate (not their real names) were determined to take the high road and not take sides, even though they had dear friends on both sides of the controversy.  They continued attending with their friends who were still at the church, but they also were meeting every week in a home group with friends from the other side.  Though there was a measure of awkwardness to this, everyone seemed okay with the arrangement for several weeks, until this couple had an arbitrary encounter with a man they hardly knew but who seemed to have an unusual spirit of discernment and wisdom.  Perhaps because he was from the outside, they felt they could share their recent experience with the demise of their home church and the estrangement among some of their friends.
  After listening intently to their story and asking a few questions, this would-be prophet seemed to have a word from the Lord for them.  "I think you should stop attending that church for awhile; God is not there anymore."  He suggested they withdraw for one month and then see how they felt about it.
  Though they were surprised by the idea, after discussing and praying about it, this young couple decided to try it; they quit attending for a month but continued with the small group in their home.
  That was more than two years ago, and they haven't been back to their old church since. Today, the Lessfoots and their daughters are meeting in the home of some friends who also have kids, and there are two other couples who attend-- and that is an interesting sidebar in itself.
  It seems that their friends with kids have recently experienced a similar situation about one year ago, having been expelled from a new church plant that went sour after a three-man pastoral team broke up when one of the men became overbearing and abusive in a grab for power.
  Not only that, but the two other couples in the group consist of a former church elder and leader, and a former pastor who was ousted by his denomination for obeying clear direction from God that ran contrary to directives from district leadership.  Go figure.
  It seems there is no shortage of church refugees in this neighborhood, but they maintain that their relationships with God and fellowman have never been better.  There seems to be a depth to their discussions and Bible studies that was seldom achieved when they were in the institutional church, and having been through similar tribulations, there is a deep bond that glues them together.  It's really more like family than ever before.
  Nate and Rona and their family are part of a growing movement in the western church world, a widening exodus that is moving from organized church to organic church.  And they say it's a good thing.  In fact, none of the good folks in this house church ever mention anything that they miss about their former life in the institutional church.
  How about that?
  Do you know anyone else who left the church because they felt God told them to?