Thoughts on Shared Leadership #1

One of the unique things about The Next Level Church in Denver, Colorado is that it does not have a Senior or Lead Pastor. The responsibility to lead, guide and shepherd the church is equally shared by four people.

Jared Mackey: Ministry Core Pastor

John Miller: Worship Core Pastor

Brian Gray: Community Core Pastor

Me: Teaching Core Pastor

We lead by consensus, which has its ups and downs.

Here is one of those "ups": Collective praise and blame.

A shared leadership model makes it hard to be egotistical about your contribution to the whole. Since the work, vision and health of the community does not rest on the shoulders of one person or department it is difficult to think your involvement in the public gathering, an event or the church in general is the to key to its success. Any praise a person gets is joint recognition of the work of the whole.

Any appreciation I personally may get for a well given sermon or talk cannot be absorbed by me alone. Portions of that acknowledgment have to go to the other three guysI work with, those who participate in our Teaching Roundtable and everyone else who has an impact in my life because they all have had a voice into any talk I happen to give. Any recognition of one person’s contribution is really recognition of the community’s contribution.

All of this helps to keep my ego in check. Just because I happen to be the upfront guy most of the time does not mean I do my job alone.

The opposite is also true. When things go upside down, backwards or sideways, there is a collective of people, voices and options who contributed to this as well. If one part of the body is sick, the whole body is unhealthy. If I fail, we have all failed (in some way).

Share leadership can be a microcosm of the church in general.

How to estimate church attendence

From Andrew Jones' blog.

It's a complex thing to measure church attendance but here are a few pointers on arriving at an accurate number based on the attendance figures they give you.

- 50% if its a Pentecostal worship service because they count the legs and forget to divide by two.

- 30% if its a Baptist church because they count members on the roll and not all of them are still living.

+ 10 if its a Vineyard service because those rugs on the floor were actually people!

+ 20% if it's a fundamentalist church because they don't count the people they didn't want there.

- 30% if it's an Anglican/Presbyterian/Methodist church because the number they gave you is from their huge Easter service.

+ 15% if it's an ethnic/non-western service because all those people coming late missed the counting.

- 10% if its a megachurch because the worship team and welcome team got counted during all 5 services.

- 520% if its a Catholic church because they count the parish, not the church attendance.

+ 20% if it's an emergent service because those having a smoke outside were not counted.

- 25 % if its a Reformed church service because they count the people who SHOULD have been there.

- 15% if it's a house church because the neighborhood kids playing video games in the back room somehow managed to get counted with everyone else. So did the guy delivering pizza.

Quote of the week...

'The term 'burnout' was a convenient psychological translation for a spiritual death.'

Henry Nouwen from In the Name of Jesus

The Imago Dei and Homosexuality

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them- Genesis 1:27

Here is a thought about the Imago Dei and Homosexuality:

Premise #1
God is not male or female. God’s character is reflected in men and women. When we speak of God being male or even "Father" it is because our language limits our ability to adequately express the nature of God. The communication of humanity (this is not just limited to English) can’t capture or express the infinite, triune nature and personality of the Godhead.


Premise #2
Men and women are different. They are different because God created them uniquely to reflect distinctive parts of his nature, character and qualities. Some parts of God’s singular image were split between men and women in order to more fully reveal the Creator of both. Since both come from and proceed from God they are different reflections of God.


Premise #3
A married couple provides a fuller reflection of God. This is not to say a single person doesn’t reflect the image of God, because they most certainly do, as Adam did. However, they embody only a portion of God’s character, qualities and traits because the other gender reveals something about God that their gender does not. Marriage is the union of the split image of God. The joining together of a man and a woman to become one is the reuniting of the singular character of God.


Conclusion
In the plan of God, the relational option of homosexuality would then be invalid. Two people of the same gender cannot reconstruct the split image of God because they bring duplicate reflections of God together. Only two different genders can bring the two different reflections of God’s character traits and qualities embedded in humanity together to recreate God’s single nature that was divided between the two of them.

Church Closures

In The American Church in Crisis (Zondervan, 2008), David Olson notes that some 3700 churches will be closing their doors annually for years to come. Taking into account both closures and projected new church starts, an additional 2,900 new churches need to be planted each year in the U.S. just to keep pace with population growth!"

Andy Stanley Rap

This just murdered at Catalyst!

Teaching Round Table

Recently, I created a Teaching Round Table as part of my teaching responsibilities at church. It is a handpicked group of people who have their fingers of influence in parts of The Next Level Church I may not. They are a cross section of the TNL community who are capable of speaking for their representative groups. These people are single, married, divorced, young, old(er), new and old in the faith. Some have kids and some don’t. Some are career professionals, some are not, some have a formal education and some don’t.

I invited 6-8 people to be a part of this weekly discussion, knowing at any one time there may only be 3-4 people who can actually make the meeting any particular week. This group help me by:

• giving insight into future TNL teaching series.
• being a sounding board for my talk (sermon) ideas (examples, polls, big ideas, etc)?
• giving constructive feedback on talks from the previous week.

I first came across an idea similar while researching my dissertation a few years ago. I found the idea in a book called “The Round Table Pulpit” by John S. McClure. Also, in an article called “Sermons Most Likely to Succeed,” Lori Carrell points out that "successful" sermons integrate listener's perspectives. She says these perspectives:

• generate fresh talk ideas.
• increase teaching relevancy.
• increase specificity and depth of informal feedback .

In the few short weeks this discussing group has been meeting I have found it to be helpful in expanding my perspective revealing points of view I don’t naturally recognize and it has improved my application of Scriptural texts.