While God’s words are eternal and unchanging the tools we use to access those words do change, and those changes in technology also bring subtle changes to the practice of worship. When we fail to recognize the impact of such technological change, we run the risk of allowing our tools to dictate our methods. Technology should not dictate our values or our methods. Rather, we must use technology out of our convictions and values.
Why I still believe in the sermon
I still believe in the sermon. I know it isn’t necessarily cool or clever these days to think that. In an age when young people and young adults are leaving the church in huge numbers, a lot of people, especially youth workers, have suggested that the old method of preaching is outdated and needs replacing. But I still believe that preaching, when it’s done well, is an art form.
6 Reasons why young people are leaving the church
David Kinnaman (author of unChristian) and the Barna Group have just released their latest research, this time interviewing American young people who left the Church after the age of 15. Here are the six main reasons they found for young people / young adults leaving the church:
- Churches appear to be overprotective
- Their experience of Christianity was shallow
- Churches appear to be against science
- They’ve made mistakes and feel judged in church because of them
- Churches are afraid of the beliefs of other faiths
- Church is unfriendly to those who doubt
Kinnaman unpacks his findings in his new book - You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Church.
How do these findings resonate with your experience as a young adult?
How can we grow church in a way that works for young adults?
The Ten Commandments of Steve
The news of Steve Job’s death was a huge shock - for our generation he had become an icon of creativity, vision and leadership. The Daily Beast has 10 core ideas that sum how Steve Jobs led Apple into a new age of creativity:
- Go for perfect
- Tap the experts
- Be ruthless
- Shun focus groups
- Never stop studying
- Simplify
- Keep your secrets
- Keep teams small
- Use more carrot than stick
- Prototype to the extreme
What can church leaders learn from Steve Job’s leadership style?
It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community. He committed the entire work of salvation to that community. It was not that a community gathered round an idea, so that the idea was primary and the community secondary. It was that a community called together by the deliberate choice of the Lord Himself, and re-created in Him, gradually sought - and is seeking - to make explicit who He is and what He has done. The actual community is primary; the understanding of what it is comes second.
Emerging Leaders #1: The Call to Adventure
Just like good old Luke Skywalker (or the hero of your favourite story), the first step towards growing into leadership is hearing a ‘call’ to move forwards.
For the hero of a story, this is the call to adventure - for those of us thinking about Christian leadership, it’s a call to join God on his Mission.
What does it mean to hear a ‘call’ to leadership?
And how should we respond?
This is the first in a series of posts on emerging leaders - to do with growing and developing as a young leader. I’ll be using story and narrative arcs as a way of think about leadership as a journey and making regular references to the Star Wars saga.
When I first felt God’s call to become a leader with The Lab, I didn’t experience a ‘eureka’ moment to do with leadership - there were no burning bushes and I didn’t audibly hear the voice of God calling me out as a leader. What I felt was a profound sense that God was doing something with The Lab, something was happening, and I couldn’t not be the person to respond and help it to happen.
That was my call to leadership - it was really just a profound sense that there was something that needed to happen, that I needed to do.
Luke experiences the ‘call to adventure’, when R2-D2 plays part of the distress signal from Princess Leia. There’s a sense of urgency, a sense that someone needs to step up and do something, and it needs to be him.
So, what does it mean to experience and respond to the call to adventure?
1. It means pushing aside doubts about your capabilities
The doubt that we are the right person, that we aren’t one of those people who is a ‘born leader’, that we aren’t charismatic enough or don’t have leadership gifts.
‘Leaders are neither born nor made. Leaders are summoned. They are brought into existence by circumstances. Those who rise to the occasion are leaders.’
- Leonard Sweet, Summoned to Lead.
If you see a situation that requires action and step out, then you are a leader - regardless of gifts, training or confidence.
2. It means choosing to commit to moving forwards
Anyone can describe the problem, pick holes in the current situation or deconstruct what went wrong. It takes a leader to begin to formulate solutions and make a commitment to moving forwards.
3. It means taking others with you
It means having the courage to step out and look for a new direction to head in. Instead of just heading there on your own, though, you need to try and draw others with you. This means listening to where they are coming from, and sharing where you are coming from and where you’d like to go.
You don’t need to be trained, qualified or special to hear the call to leadership - you just need to push aside your own doubts, commit to moving forwards and draw others around you to make the journey with you.
- Have you heard the call to step up and be a leader? What was it like for you?
- What challenges have you faced in hearing the ‘call to action’?
Please feel free to agree, disagree or suggest an alternative to what I’ve said.
Next week #2: ‘The Challenge to Stay Put’
The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear Brothers [and Sisters], we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.
Has Facebook Killed the Church?
Interesting article on the effect social networking may have had on church attendance (written from a US perspective).
What do you think? Has Facebook replaced church as a place for social networking?
So why has mobile social computing affected church attendance? Well, if church has always been kind of lame and irritating why did people go in the first place? Easy, social relationships. Church has always been about social affiliation. You met your friends, discussed your week, talked football, shared information about good schools, talked local politics, got the scoop, and made social plans (“Let’s get together for dinner this week!”). Even if you hated church you could feel lonely without it…
But Millennials are in a different social situation. They don’t need physical locations for social affiliation. They can make dinner plans via text, cell phone call or Facebook. In short, the thing that kept young people going to church, despite their irritations, has been effectively replaced. You don’t need to go to church to stay connected or in touch. You have an iPhone.
Theological Reflection on the Eucharist & Fresh Expressions of Church
Interesting article from Nigel Scotland in the Church of England Newspaper, as this is something that has affected The Lab as we’ve grown as a community:
For several years now the term ‘fresh expressions’ has been on the lips of many Anglicans including those in the corridors of power at Westminster and elsewhere. ‘Fresh expressions’ or ‘emerging church’, as some prefer, are clearly needed and are to be commended. However one aspect of this which seems not to have been significantly touched is the way in which we practice Holy Communion. The structure and ethos of our Common Worship is still largely set in a 16th century time-warp which is derived from the medieval mass. For many this appears to have been a sacrosanct given that cannot and should not be changed.
Yet now in this period of exploration may be an appropriate moment for some serious reflection on the matter.
