The Easy Way Out?

Face it. We all want the easy way out. Is this a good thing? And are our churches promoting it?

Preface: I want to make a few statements up front before I get into something potentially sticky. 1) I’m exploring truth & better ways of leading truth in the context of Church. I have not been professionally qualified, ordained or otherwise instructed in such a way that ends up in seminary graduation or in some fancy title after my name. 2) I have a very high respect for Andy Stanley (pastor of North Point in ATL) and have been deeply influenced by his leadership principles & teachings; his is one of only five podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis. I heart Andy Stanley! 3) There’s a lot of opinions floating around out there, and I don’t believe there’s one absolute way that every single church should operate/teach/worship/etc. As long as you’re rooted and based in the Word of God (the only Absolute), then fair game. 4) this post is uber-long…i know i’m breaking the unwritten rule of “keep it short, simple and catchy”…sorry. you’re gonna have to work for this one, which is what this post is kind-of about. 5) I hate church bashing. This is not it. I love every one i mention in this blog and do not find fault with them.

Lastly, this blog is meant to serve the Church…to build Her up and not tear Her down. But it is still my blog. And I am human and flawed and trying to figure things out. worshipVJ is more than just tech-talk, tools, art, stories and mission trips. It’s a place to connect, communicate, process, wrestle & grow. So, with that said, the following is a glimpse into my journey and some raw/honest thoughts I have. here we go:

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Today at church, my pastor (Jamie George) said something that struck me. (You know when you mentally check-out for a moment to process something the pastor says? yeah, it was one of those moments.) He went on to explain that some pastors promote a new way of teaching that involves boiling the sermon/message down to ONE POINT. Multi-point sermons are something, I’m sure, we are all familiar with. And this new way basically says “Get it down to one point…one phrase. One that’s memorable. And repeat that phrase multiple times throughout the sermon.” I am very familiar with this style. Jamie went on to say that he did not disagree with this nor think it was wrong, but just said that this wasn’t what he felt we needed at Journey.

Jamie described his preaching style as sticking around a common theme (based off a Biblical narrative) and then walking around firing a “shotgun” of statements, stories, ideas, etc surrounding that theme. The whole sermon is a conversation….and he is one of the best storytellers I know. He often encourages us to “check out” when we feel the need: to journal, pray, etc…. His hopes are that something he says will spark a dialogue between us and God. And he often throws things out there without closure. Why? Well, for many good reasons… one is that he wants us to wrestle with stuff and to cause us to dig deeper (aka, dialogue with God). Another reason is that he is still figuring it out himself; he often wrestles with things in his sermons. None of us have it all figured out…and he doesn’t pretend to either. But that doesn’t stop him from talking about it. His preaching is the most authentic I have ever experienced… anywhere. See for yourself.

One-point sermons are a great tool. They are much simpler and more memorable and easy to carry around throughout the week. It’s very easy. And it works for a lot of people. But, like with everything, there is a pitfall. There is a danger of never going deeper. And one can easily slip into a mindset of “give me my one thing to take away.”…week after week after week. There’s the danger of getting spiritually lazy…and not going through any tension or process of discovery on your own. I’m NOT saying this is the result of one-point preaching…i’m just saying it’s a danger for some people. And I’m not suggesting that one-point preaching shouldn’t be used.

Andy Stanley practically invented this model, and Andy blows my mind every time he speaks. He is clear and challenging and engaging. He has been & continues to be one of my heroes. And a lot of pastors want to be him and preach exactly like he does. And they want to do it just like North Point does it. (side-note: Ministry Pornography) Yet in many cases, they are lacking something very important: North Point’s context (aka, their “why”). And the result of THAT makes way for a LOT of pitfalls. One of those pitfalls is, you end up trying to make it (church, life, faith) too easy for people!

If you always make things easy for people….and hold their hand and make it feel all better…you are doing them a disservice! People need tension. They need to wrestle with things (after the sermon). They need to go through a process of discovery for themselves and with others in the Church community. It doesn’t always have to be spelled out word-for-word with the mystery stripped completely out of the equation. Leaders, don’t kid yourselves in thinking that you have life or God figured out more than your people. I don’t…and you don’t. Lead us…but don’t think you can fix us. Don’t underestimate your people…and don’t underestimate that new-comer that you always use as your excuse for not doing more challenging & different things! Quit making church safe and allow tension to enter the equation! In doing so, we will be stretched and fine-tuned (refined by fire, as the bible puts it). Hard to be refined by fire if you spend all your time putting out fires. just sayin’.

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Later in the day, I was reading Twitter updates. John Saddington (aka @human3error) was apparently watching/listening to Andy Stanley preach, as I so often do. He was tweeting a few quotes, and one of them was…

“It is always a mistake to decide what you want to do before you have decided on who you want to be.” – Andy Stanley

My immediate reaction was disagreement. I processed it for a bit, then decided it was worthy of a RT (”re-tweet”, for you non-conformists) along with my statement of disagreement. Hey, I love throwing gasoline on a lit match. As you know, I’m a bit of a pyro. ;-)

Let me unpack this quote a bit. I would agree with the statement “It is better to decide who you want to be before you decide what you want to do.” But I don’t like the way it was worded…mainly the “always a mistake” part.

“who you want to be” could be taken so many ways. Who you are in Christ. Who you are as a person (or who you want people to know you as). What you want to be (occupation)…like “I want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a VJ.” (wink) … I think the principle behind Andy’s statement works in all cases. If you know where you want to go, it will help you better decide what to do and how to do it. It’s the most efficient, sure-fire way of living life (or making decisions or whatever). “Who you want to be” is our story…our narrative context … and the “what we dos” is the content. But content without context doesn’t make a good story. However, do we really know our full story? How do we discover what our story is and who we want to be?

“always a mistake”. That’s where I draw the line. It’s too absolute. It implies that it won’t work the other way around and you’re in the wrong for ever doing it that way. I think in many cases, doing something you want leads you to discover who you want to be. Maybe God gives you a desire to do something so that He can show you who He wants you to be. And even though cliche, I do believe that the journey is more important than the destination.

Like it or not, there is a discovery process involved…a journey…that leads us to knowing who we are. It’s full of mistakes, sin, desires, beliefs, values, injustices, doing things, meeting people, going places, some in obedience & some not, and moments of stepping out in faith when we have no clue what the context/story is. God is directing our path…He is making it straight, NOT US. He ordains, redeems & uses every step we make. But He calls us to the road less traveled. It is very inefficient, inconvenient, slow, and frustratingly mysterious. It is NOT the easy way!

In college, I tried to follow Jesus…I loved to worship….but I did not know who God wanted me to be or do. I did not fathom of VJ-ing or visual worship leading or producing films and events. And I definitely did NOT want to be a missionary! But I wanted to attend concerts and play a part in them. I wanted to see pretty pictures & cool videos during worship and I knew I wanted to pick them out. I wanted to move to Nashville. I did NOT want to go to China! But I did want to travel to another country and “get something cool out of it” at some point. And I did all of those things at 110%. I wasted a lot of time in the process, and wish I could go back and do some things differently…but God is bigger. And because of those experiences, God started altering the way I thought and He led me to a realization of what I wanted to do…but I still didn’t fully know who I wanted to be (beyond who I was in Him.)

My “what I want to dos” led me to the “who I want to be.” And now that i know who I want to be, that has a profound influence on what I want to do. It’s much better this way! And had I known 10 years ago what I know today…. oh man, life would be so different and probably a lot more awesome. But that wasn’t the point of the last 10 years!!

But even now, I don’t pretend to know who i want to be in the years to come. I know who I want to be TODAY (and in the near future), and I make decisions on what I should do & how I should do it accordingly. But I am NOT at my destination and have a lot more journeying and discovering to do. And my decisions of what I do will play a profound impact on who I end up being in the years to come.

We don’t wake up one day and fully know who we are in Christ. That is a process…a lifetime of discovery. Yes, I know who I am in Christ today, but I will know way more about myself & Him in 20 years (hopefully)…I may not even know the majority of who I am or who I want to be at this stage in my life. And I want to live my life open-handed and willing to walk away from it all at any point. (and I WILL…if He calls me, I will shut it all down and move to another country…it crosses my mind daily.)

John & I replied each other some. He said, “It suggests a priority, not an exclusion. Also, it sat well within the context of the entire message.” Great response! Context, like we all know, is everything. In design, in worship, twitter conversations, etc…content without proper context has a low survival rate. And I agree with the “priority” thing…I think I just fleshed that out here. the only thing I disagree with in Andy’s statement is the absoluteness of it (and the fact that it was taken out of context doesn’t help either…i should probably go listen to that message). But it did lead me to process all of this, and it stirred up some thoughts & feelings. So this has been a very positive experience for me today.

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Is it just me, or do you get the feeling that our churches give us the easy way out? They want to take all the hard work out, create a risk-free environment, never confront or piss off the big-tithers, never scare off the strangers, and give you resolution to everything so that you feel satisfied in the end and want to come back next week. They want to grow in big numbers, sell their message/product to as many people as possible, have the latest and greatest around, be the best marketing/PR tool around, etc etc et-freaking-cetera! Churches are functioning and leading more like a business than a family! And the world sees this… and they are NOT impressed. They aren’t impressed with our cool strategies, our new logos, a multi-million dollar facility, those new HD screens or our ripped-off rock and roll music. If they are, it is extremely temporary and they will be bored in a few weeks. (causing us to rethink things and outdo ourselves again… #RatRace) What they want…what they NEED…is authentic relationship….to be loved….served…accepted….to experience what family was designed & meant to truly be….to know God and know what it’s like to be loved by Him.

So many churches & worshipers (myself included) do a lot of things in the name of Jesus…for Jesus…for His Kingdom…and for His people. But we don’t really know Jesus. And one day, He is going to deny some of us to the Father. Our big productions won’t mean crap on that day.

I fear this whole “visual media/VJ-ing” thing is just adding to the noise and helping us all put make-up on our worship. The thought disgusts me and I have many moments of wanting to give up and permanently turn it all off. I see the need of those around the world and wonder why the freaking heck i spend so much time on my Mac or talking about motion backgrounds, fonts & software. Somedays I care more about my iPhone than I do the orphans in Uganda that I met in October. And I hear of missionaries having to leave the tribe they’ve invested years in because their main sending-church pulled back their giving amount, only later to find out they installed a new sound system & new projectors. We have wandered into the field of dreams…I call it a field of lies. “Build it and they will come”?! what kind of theology is that?! Jesus said “GO AND TELL” not “COME AND SEE”. Then some of us finally “get it”…but next thing you know we make rock stars of ourselves and of others. We create (or let be created) an “us” vs “them” mentality and we shut out those who aren’t “important” enough. We thrive on telling stories but we are the last to live a good story by investing in someone else’s who has nothing to give back. And this happens to the best of us.

Shame on us. Damn us all. Big fat epic FAIL.

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Then Jesus steps on the scene.

And He picks up the broken pieces.

He takes on the damnation that we deserve.

And He loves us even more.

For me, He lets me throw my “righteous tantrum” and then reminds me how much He loves me despite my sin. His strength is made perfect in my weakness. He starts whispering of His love for His broken Church, and how He wants His people to experience a taste of His glory, splendor, creativity, majesty & mystery….even through the luxury of visual media. And He reminds me that today, I have a laptop in my hands, a few projectors, and sometimes a nice canvas to project on. And He nudges me to tell His story…of Who He is, what He is doing, and how beautiful the broken Church is. He tells me who I am and He gives me the desire to be just that. Then I look back at all the things I wanted to do and did…and bad or good…He shows me how He used it to get me to today. And more pieces of the story-puzzle start fitting together and things become more clear. And I look ahead into the unknown….nervous, excited, confident, hopeful, and expectant.

He did not take the easy way out. At any point, He could have called down the angels to rescue Him. And He calls us to join Him in His sufferings. But it’s not about us…our successes or failures as the Church. None of that really matters. Because really, we are one big failure. And that’s why He didn’t take the easy way out. In the end, He is all that matters.