One Prayer

Starting next week, our church is going to be joining thousands of other churches around the world to participate in One Prayer 2009. Last year, the inaugural year of One Prayer, over 1800 churches worked together to plant over 660 churches in four countries. As a result of those efforts, over 7000 people have been baptized, and over 44,000 are enrolled in Bible studies.

This year, in addition to continuing and expanding those efforts, One Prayer churches will help transform communities through humanitarian projects such as providing clean drinking water, literacy instruction, safe housing, and micro-finance training.

Here's the plan:

• Plant another 500 churches in each of the currently engaged target areas through current partnership networks. Working in Southern India, Sudan, Cambodia, and Northern China, we'll be supporting indigenous church planting in the most densely populated, difficult, strategic areas remaining on the planet.
• Start pilot programs with holistic community transformation initiatives in at least two (and up to four) of these geographical target areas. We'll be equipping the best and brightest of church planters in the existing One Prayer network to begin community transformation initiatives geared towards improving the living standards in their communities. These initiatives will be easy to deploy, grass roots, micro-interventions that make sense in their communities.
• Add one additional target area in Northern India and plant an additional 100 churches. Northern India is densely populated with unreached populations that are predominately Hindu, Muslim and tribal/animistic, and this new church planting movement will allow One Prayer to make inroads into those communities. With the outbreak of terrorist attacks in Northern India, the One Prayer movement will be strategically positioned with a relevant and powerful response to the violence.

The One Prayer network tears down all sorts of barriers--big church/small church, evangelical/mainline, high church/low church, traditional/contemporary, Reformed theology/Wesleyan-Arminian theology. In so many ways it is the answer to the prayer of Jesus in John 17: "I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

Imagine what could happen if the churches of the world that claim the name of Jesus Christ were all united in the same effort--to bring massive change to the areas of our globe that most desperately need it! Planting churches, training pastors, and starting Bible studies in regions where very few, if any, people follow Jesus. Think of the difference that we can make!

One Prayer's vision is not just global, however. We'll also have the chance to impact our local community through serving them with tangible expressions of God's love. You'll be hearing more about these opportunities throughout the campaign. But make sure you're here next week as we kick it off and join in this exciting movement to literally change our world for Christ and his kingdom!

This June, let's take part in an extraordinary worldwide experience: One Prayer 2009. Unite with churches around the globe to share, serve, and give: http://www.oneprayer.com/

A Crash

My heart aches this morning. On my way in to the office, I passed an accident that occurred on our road about 1500 feet before I turned into our church driveway. I could only see one car that had run off the road and up into somebody's front yard. The car didn't look like it was in too bad of shape--a little banged up, but it didn't hit a tree or anything. I said a prayer for the driver and prayed that anyone else who might have been involved was ok. The police were working the scene and directing traffic, so I didn't think too much about it.

But about a half hour ago, I learned that the driver of the car was a teacher at Flora List Elementary School, Mrs. Page; the accident happened as she was on her way to school this morning. She was ejected from the car and pronounced dead at the scene. There's a brief article here.

As we are located less than a mile from the school, I immediately called to see if there was anything we could do, but they informed us that they had all the help there that they could use.

I'd ask that you remember the Page family in your prayers, as they deal with this sudden and tragic loss. Pray also for the kids in Mrs. Page's classroom, and the other children in the school. Flora List is only for children in Kindergarten and First Grade, so these are very young kids who are experiencing this tragedy. Pray that each child (and adult) will receive the counseling they need.

Flora List is the school in which Kids Hope mentors from our church meet with the child that each of them has been assigned to. I don't yet know if any of our mentors have a child from Mrs. Page's classroom, but I'd also ask that you pray for any that might. They will have an especially important responsibility as they help their child process through this loss.

Every day matters. Every moment is important. This is why the Bible reminds us, "As for mortals, their days are like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more" (Psalm 103:15-16 TNIV). And that is why the Bible instructs us to root our lives in God, who "has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all" (Psalm 103:19 TNIV). We just never know what's around the next corner; the only thing we know is that life can't make any sense if there's not a God who is bigger and greater than we are.

Road Trip

Over the course of my 34 years, I've had the privilege of joining in on eight major road trips, which have largely accounted for my having visited 46 states and eight countries:

1. With my family in a motorhome to Idaho;
2. With my dad and brother around the country on a three-week whirlwind tour of "guy-stuff" (MLB Hall of Fame, NFL Hall of Fame, Little League World Series, Mammoth Cave & more);
3. With my dad to visit potential colleges;
4. With a traveling music team on a three-month missions trip that went all over the countries of the United States and Venezuela;
5. With three college friends on a spring break adventure, covering 6400 miles in eight days;
6. With five college friends on a January-term adventure, as four of them sang in a gospel quartet in various stops along the way;
7. With my grandmother and 20-some other people on a tour bus around Italy (a college graduation present);
8. With Tanya on our "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" vacation, where we rented a convertible and drove with the top down along the Pacific Coast Highway.

In my mind, at least, there are several factors that distinguish a road trip from a simple vacation:

• First of all, there must be more involved than simply going to a destination and back. In addition to these road trips, I've visited Disney World, New York City, and Hawaii. But the main focus of those trips was going somewhere and returning--not a road trip.
• Second, if you're moving (no matter how far), it doesn't count. I've moved cross-country several times, but I'm not counting any of those. Road trips are supposed to be fun; moving is never fun--not a road trip.
• Third, you have to be on the road for at least a week. Going to a friend's house for a weekend, being in a wedding, going to Grandma's for the holidays--not a road trip.

As a road-tripping veteran (maybe even expert??), I can identify several factors that make a road trip worthwhile and noteworthy:

• Every day, different places. One of the great things about a road trip is that you keep on seeing new sites. The journey's the thing. There may be other things going on that you have to do along the way, but the trip itself is what you remember.
• Every day, the same faces. It's the same people with you, day-in and day-out, in your car, van, bus, motorhome or vehicle of choice. So the memories you have, while they include places, they really center around people. It's the relationships that are central on a road trip.
• Every day, new graces. Whenever you confine people to a limited space, it will always breed some form of conflict. But being committed to the trip, committed to the relationships, and committed to good memories forces the parties involved to work it out--to compromise, to extend grace, to communicate through misunderstandings. And that in itself is a wonderful thing.

In a lot of ways, a road trip is a good metaphor for the church. We're all joined together on a spiritual journey, where there is a destination in mind, but it's the roads we take along the way, the sights we see, and the people we share it with that make all the great memories. And as we're committed to the trip, committed to the relationships, and committed to good memories, we work together to resolve conflict and maintain unity, encouraging and supporting one another along the way.

In this particular road trip, we seek to pick up all the hitchhikers and strays along the way that we possibly can, always scooting over to make room for one more. After all, the more the merrier, the greater the variety, the richer the experience, the deeper the satisfaction, the fonder the memories.

Next week, we're kicking off our series, "Road Trip," an exploration of faith and community, an affirmation of relationships and the value of each person, and an inspiration for all of us to recommit to the journey and life together.

I'd encourage you to consider who you can invite to this series. The longing for connection and true relationships is deep in the human soul--it speaks to the very depths of what God made us for (Gen. 2:18). I'm sure you know someone who is longing to be loved, longing for acceptance, longing for belonging. And we can all find it at the foot of the cross. This series is good news of healing to a hurting world. Be sure to bring a hurting friend.

Taking Our Church To The Moon

During the offering today, we played a short, parodic song by Sara Groves called "To The Moon":

It was there in the bulletin
We're leaving soon
After the bake sale to raise funds for fuel
The rocket is ready and we're going to
Take our church to the moon

There'll be no one there to tell us we're odd
No one to change our opinions of God
Just lots of rocks and this dusty sod
Here in our church on the moon

We know our liberties, we know our rights
We know how to fight a very good fight
Just grab that last bag there and turn out the light
We're taking our church to the moon
We're taking our church to the moon
We'll be leaving soon

I think this is such brilliant satire about the way we as Christians have sought to use the church as a vehicle to insulate ourselves from the world around us. That impulse, while perhaps understandable, is always wrong.

• Christ calls his followers to be agents of his kingdom in this world, actively bringing salt to the decaying and light to the darkness. The church is an outpost for his kingdom, not a retreat center for us.
• Christ himself, as our model and example, gave primacy to the needs and nurture of the people he encountered each day--from his disciples to his benefactors to the crowds of people to the random person he might come across. He never struck a posture of retreating from the world and its needs, but rather charging headlong into them. In fact, if his object had been shelter from the world, he need not have come here at all, but simply stayed in heaven.
• To the degree that one views the church this way, it mitigates even the possibility of mission. The more removed the church is from the world, the more impossible it is to call anyone out of the world into the love of God found in Jesus Christ.

We would never be so ridiculous as to take our church "to the moon." Instead, we just take it to the suburbs, where we don't have to deal with homeless people, racial tensions, or poverty. Or we might not physically relocate, but we could take our church out of the life of the community that God has called us to reach--present in architecture, absent in impact, absorbed in our own internal machinery. It might as well be the moon, which I believe is the point of Sara's song.

Our church... our opinions... our liberties... our rights...

Our language is revealing. Where is God in this song? Is he leading, directing, moving, working? Is his power evident? Hardly. This is a song about a group of people who have come to see their church as their own private possession--an asset to be handled and manipulated by mutual consent for each one's own personal benefit. And now, these ingenious innovators have discovered the most effective way possible to achieve their aims of isolation and irrelevance... simply ditch the planet!

This is all (ostensibly) part of fighting the good fight--quite a twist on Paul's original idea in 2 Tim. 4:7. Whereas he had lived his entire Christian life for the purpose of bringing as many as possible to a saving knowledge of the Son of God, these "Christians" of the Church On The Moon have lived their entire lives for the purpose of avoiding anyone who might challenge them, change them, or bring any kind of discomfort to them.

It's easy to laugh at these simpletons in Sara's song, but are we really laughing at ourselves? Why do we call our meeting room a "sanctuary"? What does it provide sanctuary from? What do we mean when we say "our church" or "my church"? How often do we moan about the perceived loss of our rights? Why are there 193 million hits on Yahoo! for the phrase "church politics"?

The Immediate Vision of Pathway Community Church is to trigger a dramatic reaction between our neighbors and Christ in a fusion of real needs and real love. It is a vision designed to shield us from many of the errors that are commonplace in Christ's church in America these days--isolation, alienation, introspection, apathy, selfishness, arrogance, irrelevance, and more.

It's an antidote to The Church On The Moon.

My only hope is that it sinks down deep into the fiber of who we are so that we truly are immune against the sicknesses that have infected Christ's church, so that we can become the church he is calling us to be.


There will be no blog posting next week. Tanya and I will be headed to a pastors' retreat center in Wisconsin for a much-anticipated week of just-us-time.

Town Hall For Hope

This Thursday, along with over 6,000 other venues nationwide, we'll be hosting a live feed of financial advisor and media personality Dave Ramsey's Town Hall For Hope. This event is entirely free! And it is sure to be one of the most inspiring experiences of your life related to money.

If you're not familiar with Dave Ramsey, you're simply missing out. He is doing the kind of work that I wish more Christians were--occupying "secular" space in the public square and bringing to it an informed, competent, practical, uncompromising, compelling Christian voice. Both his radio program (6:00pm, 970 WKHM) and his TV show (8:00pm & midnight, Fox Business Network) focus on the financial questions, problems, and needs of all kinds of people. Dave listens to the questions with patience and compassion and answers them with a clear, no-nonsense message that is rooted in biblical principles.

While Dave is unabashedly Christian (his signature sign-off for each hour includes the injunction: "And remember, the only way to financial peace is to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus"), he is not a Bible-thumper or a blowhard. He understands that he has an audience with a diverse spectrum of beliefs, and his goal is to help each one of them, but he does so always using sound, biblical financial principles. While his answers and comments are always consistent with scripture, he only occasionally makes the conection explicit for his audience because his show is not intended to be a biblical studies class. And yet his audience knows clearly where Dave is coming from.

One of Dave's great strengths is to bring a calm head to any financial situation--whether a caller is struggling under mountains of credit card debt or simply wanting to know the best way to diversify their portfolio. He has a clear, easy-to-understand, practical way of explaining finances that ordinary people can understand. He's funny and engaging. And, perhaps more importantly, he gives people a roadmap to travel by, empowering them to make good financial decisions and imparting hope that they can actually get to their desired destination.

In Jackson, there is a great deal of economic struggle, and this has been our condition for some time. The recent national/global recession has only intensified our local one. Unemployment in our county is now at 12.7%; statewide unemployment is 10%, highest in the nation. The daily news about the auto industry leaves little optimism that anything is likely to change here for the better soon. And yet each one of us has the power to make our own decisions and chart our own direction. Even in today's economic climate, there are things that each of us can do to take charge of our financial present and future--regardless of what our past experience has been.

All of this is why I'm so glad to be able to bring The Town Hall For Hope to our community. We are an area in need of hope. Each of us are surrounded by neighbors and friends and family in need of hope. All of us need to be reminded of our ultimate hope, which rests in Christ. This is yet another opportunity for us to trigger a dramatic reaction between our neighbors and Christ in a fusion of real needs and real love.

I want to urge each of you to carve out a little bit of time on Thursday evening to attend this nationwide event. I'd encourage you to also bring someone with you that you think may benefit from a message of hope and encouragement. Let's bring hope to Jackson!

Keeping Score (Part 2)

...Continued from last week

4. Conversions & Baptisms vs. Amoeba Movement
We've always kept score of people who make first-time decisions for Christ (as best we can tell) and people who make the decision to be baptized. While these continue to be important decisions that people make, we recognize that there are other important decisions as well. Spiritual growth isn't just about being "in" or "out" of a relationship with Christ. Both those in and out are engaged in a process, a spiritual journey. In our church, we relate that to an amoeba, where Jesus is the nucleus, and we want to encourage people to keep moving in toward the center. Someone who is hostile toward God or Christianity, for instance, may become open to engaging in spiritual dialogue as we demonstrate love toward that person. Someone who has been attending church for a while may decide to join a small group or get involved in serving in a ministry. These kinds of decisions--and others as well--are all important. Anytime anyone takes a step in their spiritual growth, we want to make note of that, and consider that a "score"--not count just certain steps.

5. Under Budget vs. Community Presence
Formerly, we would consider an event a success if it came in under budget. If the money that was spent was less than the money allocated, then it was considered to be used wisely--regardless of the outcome of those expenditures. But what we are realizing is that even if you spend only $400 of $500 that you could have spent, it still may not have been used wisely. In fact, it might be even better to spend the extra $100 if it will increase the credibility of our church in the community. For the extra $100, if we can increase our community impact and community presence, then we should do it. On the other hand, if we can increase our community presence for free, that's even better. There are many things that don't cost any money at all--time, love, service, kindness, humility, relational contact--and those are the things that we need to focus on, not the bottom line (even as important as the bottom line is). Those are the things that will help us win, regardless of the balance in the checking account.

6. Did we have fun? vs. Did we trigger a dramatic reaction?
In the past, we would judge the success of our events largely based on whether we had a good time doing them. If we enjoyed it, we would plan to do it again. While ministry should be fun, I think a much better gauge of success is whether we actually trigger a reaction in the people that we're serving. If nobody is changed or impacted, it really doesn't matter how much fun we have because the mission of the church is not to be an amusement center for the members, it's to bring people into an ever-deepening relationship with Jesus Christ.


So these are the ways that we're trying to change how we keep score. Only if we have a proper scoreboard can we know if we are actually winning (i.e., advancing the mission of our church). Each year, we want to do better than we did the previous year. And while there's nothing bad or wrong about things running smoothly, being under budget, having fun, and so forth, we've decided those aren't the right criteria for evaluation. They're not bad... they're just off-target. If we really want to win, we have to have the right tools for judging ourselves.

This week, we have the free movie for the community at the Michigan Theatre on Friday at 7:00pm. (Check out our website for more information on that!) Then we have the Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday (registration at 10:30am, hunt at 11:00am). Then we have the Easter services on Sunday at 9:30 & 11:00 with breakfast available before each service. We're keeping score! Let's see how well we do in engaging in relational contact, helping people move through the amoeba, bringing unchurched people, increasing our community presence and reputation, triggering a dramatic reaction, and claiming ownership of the various activities of our church.

Keeping Score

In January, I announced that we would be waging an all-out assault on losing in our church. For more on that, you can read this post. But part of being a winning church is making sure that we are keeping proper score. What constitutes a "win"? How do we know when we've hit the target (or missed the target)? What is it that counts?

This is a conversation the elders and I have been having for the last several weeks, and here are some of the things we've come up with. We recognize that there's been a faulty scoreboard that we've been using, and we're trying to replace it with a more accurate one. Here are some of the changes that we're working on. I'll be covering three of the paradigm shifts this week, and three next week.

1. Number of People vs. Number of Unchurched People
In the past, if it was Soccer Camp or a worship service or a Primetimers picnic, we gauged the success of an event by the overall number of people. We still want to keep track of everybody, but now we're most interested in the number of unchurched people that we can get involved and connected to our church. The reason is that we will never bring unchurched people to a growing and deepening relationship with Christ if we can't get them established in a community that will support and encourage them on their spiritual journeys. The number of unchurched people is an indicator of how well we are accomplishing our mission.

2. Percentage of PCC People Involved vs. Percentage of PCC People Who "Own" It
In the past, we would consider something successful if we could get a large percentage of our church actively involved. Soccer Camp, Dinner Theatre, Trunk Or Treat, 40 Days of Community, and small groups are all examples of things that we have encouraged "everybody" to be a part of. But not everybody needs to be involved in everything that comes around. We are realizing that we need to allow people to decide for themselves what is going to be the best use of their time, talents, and resources for God's kingdom, rather than trying to give them the "hard sell" to get involved. Rather than grumpy, reluctant participation, what I'd much prefer is for someone to not be involved but nevertheless excited about what their church is doing. I'd rather have someone brag to their friend about something they're not personally involved in than to have their arm twisted so that they're burdened down by yet another church activity. And I want everyone who does choose to participate to do so because they're genuinely excited about this opportunity they have to serve and give of themselves.

3. Everything Runs Smoothly vs. Relational Contact
In the past, we placed a heavy emphasis on a smooth-running operation. We wanted ministries and events that were well-organized and well-executed. And while there's nothing wrong with that, it has led us often to fuss over minor details and neglect the opportunity to engage with people standing right in front of us. If someone comes to a well-oiled event, they may have a good time, but if they are personally engaged and someone takes an interest in their real life and their real needs, they're much more likely to be impressed with PCC as a place that oozes love (which is what Jesus said would be the hallmark of his church in Jn. 13:35). Now, rather than observing the administrative details, we'd rather hear stories about new relationships that were established and existing relationships that were strengthened. We are additionally trying to think of ways that we can make our ministries and our events more intentionally relationship-intensive.

Tune in next week for three more shifts that we're making in evaluating the effectiveness of our ministries and events.