Escape from Consumer Church by Bob Hyatt

Sunday November 14, 2004

“What’s the best way to attract people to your church and keep them once they come?”

Sometimes the problem isn’t with our answers… it’s with our questions.

There’s much good happening in American churches. No model of doing church is either all good or all bad and God is at work in many ways in His body- He’s alive in mega churches and house churches… but I believe that in this place and in this time in church history, God is doing something in terms of making some corrections.

My Story This Far…

My home was a Christian home, and my churches were always Baptist churches. I attended a small Christian College like many of the other Christian Colleges that dot our landscape and then Western Seminary in Portland. My upbringing and education was thoroughly evangelical.

I always wanted to serve God in the ministry and in life… But as I got older, rather than getting easier and easier, it seemed to get harder. Especially when it came to the church communities I was pastoring in. In many ways, what we were doing began to make less and less sense. I saw it connecting with fewer and fewer people who were raised outside of church, and I noticed a huge group of people who left church after high school and never seemed to come back. Maybe some of you who are reading this are in that boat.

After pastoring in Europe and in North Carolina for awhile, I had reached the end of my rope. I was burned out. I was a youth and worship pastor who was honestly beginning to wonder if what we were doing was even worthwhile, much less working. Week after week, we would run our programs, people would shuffle in, nod to each other and shuffle back out. In the midst of that, there were some good relationships and some who genuinely seemed to grow, but amid all the fights over things that really didn’t matter, that seemed the exception not the rule. We talked a lot about community- but I rarely saw it.

Better Doesn’t Always Mean Bigger

It was working in a mega church that opened my eyes to the fact that in many ways, the church in America had pursued a model that created consumers of church primarily and community only incidentally.

The church was big- there were programs happening around the clock, all day, every day. And do not get me wrong- good things happened there. But one day I had a conversation with one of the pastors that helped me understand the problem…He was asking me what I wanted to do in the future and I told him I wanted to be a teaching pastor who studied and taught but also spent a good amount of time sitting with people, listening, counseling…

I’ll never forget this. He looked at me and said “Wow… I used to do a lot of counseling, but I had to stop. In fact, I tell my staff now, ‘If you sit with someone more than three times, it’s too much. We’re paying you to run a ministry, not be with people.’”

And at that moment, I knew I had to get out; out of that system, out of that mentality.

Did We Park In Dopey or Sneezy?

We had become more a provider of religious goods and services and less, much, much less than a covenant community. We had made pastors into managers and programmers and party planners… and in so doing kept them from being shepherds.

The standard model of doing church in America today is primarily attractional rather than incarnational. It says this: “If we get our media right, our preaching right, our seating and our parking right… if we offer great children’s programs and a rocking worship band people will come. If things are excellent, and we offer something for every member of the family -and churches have made an idol out of the nuclear family, but that’s another story… If we do all this, and we market it right also, people will come and we will be successful.“ So what’s the problem with that?

The instant you step on that hamster wheel, you are in trouble. Because your band may rock, but what happens when the church down the street develops one that is better? You’ve got good musicians, but they hire (and churches do this)- they hire studio musicians to come play every week.

I know one church in southern California that hired a Disney engineer to come in and build their children’s ministry space to look like a giant mountain- kind of a cross between space mountain and Bear Country Jamboree- but for toddlers. And that’s great- until the church down the way develops a roller coaster ministry complete with laser show and cotton candy machines.

I know one church that “resigned” a great youth pastor because they wanted him to “take it to the next level” whatever that means. And he said, “No- not the way you want me to. I spend time with kids. I sit and listen to their problems. I read the Bible with them and pray with them. I love them and they are growing. I don’t want to spend my time as a glorified activities director.”

And those of you who are doing youth ministry know instinctively what I am talking about- some of you are serving in small churches, loving the kids God is bringing you… but you are discouraged because your vision is to love kids and teach kids and disciple kids, but the church down the road is doing the X-Boxes on big screens thing and the huge games with the fully outfitted youth band… and you just can’t compete.

What Have You Done For Me Lately?

And there’s the problem. When we allowed American Church to become primarily attractional in nature, it also became competitive in nature. We send out mailers: “Come to our church! We have ‘great worship!’” “Come to our church! We have Starbucks Coffee™ and Krispy Kreme™ Donuts!” And big churches get bigger as small ones die because the big ones “offer” more and people flock there until the church down the road offers them something even better. It’s Wal-Mart versus smaller stores but with special music and kids programs instead of bigger selections and low, low prices. And the lessons that leaders learn from this process is only slightly worse than what the people in the pews learn.

We have a phrase to describe the result. “Church shoppers.”

Come on Down The Aisle for A Great Deal!

There’s a story in the Gospels that has some bearing on all this. In Mark 10 a young man comes to Christ with a simple question. “As he was starting out on a trip, a man came running up to Jesus, knelt down, and asked, ‘Good Teacher, what should I do to get eternal life?’" Notice who his focus is on…Jesus gives him the standard rabbinical answer pointing him back to Moses’ law, and the young man lies and says he’s kept all those commandments… so Jesus says one more thing to him.

"You lack only one thing," he told him. "Go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

Jesus said to him- do you really want to know what salvation is all about? Do you want to experience it? Then open your eyes to someone besides yourself. And then follow Me.

Then he makes this jaw dropping statement:

“It is hard for people with money to get into God’s Kingdom.” Now Jesus said this, I didn’t… but I want you to think about this verse the next time you drive into your church parking lot, especially if you go to a big church in the suburbs.

The disciples are upset. They have given up everything to follow Him, they say…
And Jesus responds, "I assure you that everyone who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or property, for my sake and for the Good News, will receive now in return, a hundred times over, houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and property--with persecutions. And in the world to come they will have eternal life.”

Now if you watch any religious TV at all you know that Jesus is making a promise here. If you put a dollar in the plate (or better yet, send it to a TV preacher’s ministry) God will miraculously give you a hundred dollars back… right? Wrong. No matter how much you try that, it doesn’t really work. So either the TV preachers are wrong or Jesus is wrong. Let’s go ahead and assume that Jesus is right, but the prosperity preachers just have no clue as to what Jesus is talking about. So what does this mean?

Jesus is talking about community here… for our purposes, He’s giving us a beautiful picture of church. He says if you lose your family because you are following me… if you lose your father or your mother or your brother or sister… here’s a whole group of people who will be family for you. Here’s a hundred brothers, a hundred sisters. Lose your house? Here are people who will take you in. Lose your livelihood? Here are people who will sell what they don’t need to provide what you don’t have. This is the genesis of the church we see in the book of Acts. Do you see how He’s saying COMMUNITY is the context in which we find and follow Jesus and in which our needs are met?

We’ve always thought the problem with the young man was that he couldn’t handle Jesus’ answer. Maybe the problem really started with his question.

I, ME, MINE

Somewhere along the way we started thinking this whole thing- Jesus, the Gospel and especially Church was all about ME.

If the Gospel is primarily about getting my rear end into heaven, then Christianity is a religion for death, not for life. But if it’s more… if Christianity is meant to be the in-breaking of God’s rule and reign into this world and into our lives, that changes everything, not only about how we think of Church and it’s primary purpose, but how we conceive of our lives and our time here.

The problem with church today is that we rarely do what Jesus did- ask people to look beyond themselves and their “felt needs” to others and their real needs. If your Christianity calls you out of your individualism and orients you towards others, then it is doing what Jesus seems to have intended it to do…
But if by it’s methodology it actually confirms you in your individualism? Then my suspicion and my fear is that it is less than fully Christian.

US, WE, OURS

So how are we trying to address all this at Evergreen, the church community I lead?

There’s a lot, but let me just mention a couple of things…the first being that we conceive of ourselves not as a provider of religious goods and services, but as a missional, covenant community.

By missional we mean that we are trying to foster an orientation within our community not inward, but outward. Not to ourselves, but to others. We are attempting to be not attractional, but incarnational.

What did Jesus do? He preached good news to the poor. For too long I spiritualized that… now I realize that with over 2000 verses in scripture dealing with the poor,, maybe God wants us to pay attention to them. So we try to be concerned about the poor and oppressed in our society.

He fed people. We need to do the same thing. He healed people. We want to be a community of healing for people- where they can come with their doubts and questions and find not condemnation but space- space to ask, space to find answers and space to heal. Many of the people at evergreen are people who quit going to church because the reaction they experienced when they had doubts and questions was not a positive one.

That’s incarnational- doing the things that Jesus did. We are not about the show. We don’t have a light show or a rocking band. We don’t do big dramas or musical spectaculars. There’s nothing wrong with those things- but we don’t want people to be at Evergreen because of what happens on the stage on Sunday morning. We want them there because they sense that our community is a place where they can find God and walk along side others who are also searching.

We are doing our best to be a church community where people can belong before they believe- a church for the unchurched and the formerly churched. But that’s hard on the lifelong Christians among us- because we don’t get to have things done exactly the way we would like them. We are trying to think more about the people we are reaching than our own wants and needs.

I tell our people: “We are not going to meet your needs. Your needs will get met, but by the people sitting beside you, not standing in front of you. Because we’d like to think that when we say “community” we mean it. I have told our people over and over again- you are the ones who will drive ministry here. We meet in a pub. There’s very little space for “kids ministry.” I keep telling them- I am not going to solve this problem for you. This is your community. If you love these kids, you’ll come up with something for them. I’m your pastor, not your cruise director. My job is to open God’s Word, and tell you what I think God seems to be saying through this book to our community. Your job is to figure out what that looks like and works out like. I tell you God’s Word says we should be concerned about the poor and oppressed. You decide whether that means homeless teens, the mentally ill, AIDS Hospice, etc. We’re trying to develop an organic model of community that develops people, not programs that create dependency on a paid, professional clergy.”

Here’s what I want you to hear in this article. If you consider yourself a follower of Christ- you need to know this. The church is not here for you. You are here for the church - your community; and your community -the church- is here for the world. Jesus did not die to make you into a sanctified consumer. He died to bring you alive to God and to a desperately needy world.

And if you really believe that, it’s going to change everything- both the way that you do church and the way that you live every moment of your life from here on out.



Bob Hyatt is the husband of Amy and the father of Jack. He spends his remaining time as a pastor of the Evergreen Community in Portland, OR.

CIRCLES

"Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve—designating them apostles—that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons." Mark 3:13-15

When Jesus chose the men whom he would designate as apostles, he was starting the first circle of the movement that would be known as Christianity. As a Jewish Rabbi in the first century, Jesus was doing what any rabbi worth his prayer shawl would do...choose his disciples. The passage above descirbes the 3 key goals that Jesus had for the members of his first circle:

1. That they might be with him.
2. That he might send them out to preach.
3. To have authority to drive out demons.

As I think about the different small groups that have been made available to the church over the years, there seems to be quite a gap between what Jesus' first circle was meant to do and the goals of these different small groups. For the sake of simplicity and expediency, let me identify the different goals of the groups that I have encountered and even promoted in the churches that I have been a part of. The purposes of these groups have been:

◆ Bible study
◆ Fellowship
◆ Healing
◆ Leadership Training (a la Maxwell et al.)

It seems to me that most, if not all, of the groups that I have been a part of or helped start have been groups whose focus have been the benefit of the group's members. As I reflect on those experiences, I notice that knowing Jesus and doing what he wanted seemed to be secondary to benefitting the members somehow. Bible Study groups focused on learning the Bible. Fellowship groups focused on knowing and supporting each other. Healing groups focused on experiencing emotional or physical healing. Leadership Training groups focused on developing leadership skills based on some leadership guru's books or gearted towards making the trainee another cog in the church machinery.

Jesus' first circle had a significantly different focus. Specically, members of his first circle focused on Jesus himself. In Jesus' day, a rabbi's disciples were known as his talmidim. Their main job was to "shadow" the rabbi 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They were to live with him; travel with him; eat with him; sleep in the same places; listen intently to him; and mirror his way of life.

Another feature of Jesus' first circle was that they had a bias for action. They went where Jesus went. They did what Jesus asked them to do. They helped with the distribution of bread and fish when Jesus fed the multitude. Jesus' disciples DID things with him.

And last but not least, Jesus' first circle was tied into Jesus' mission. Everything they did supported and advanced Jesus' cause; his proclamation and demonstration of the Kingdom of God. The first circle was sent out to heal, deliver and preach. In fact, that first circle expanded from 12 to 72 (Luke 10) to do exactly what they had already been doing with Jesus.

The importance of the first circle in any movement cannot be stressed enough. The first circle sets the tone for what follows. It contains the DNA of the rest of the movement. What is true in the first circle will be true in the rest of the movement.

How does this work for SOULNET?

It's drawing near the time to start our first circle. I want to prayerfully select the people who will be the members of the first circle of SOULNET. The more I meditate on the first disciples, I notice that there is really only one key functional requirement...to be teachable enough to be shaped by Jesus. This means a willingness to submit their lives to follow the Rabbi. I am growing more and more convinced that the key requirement for the first circle members of our movement is a willingness to be shaped shaped by the Master and his mission: To live under the Lordship of Jesus in the power of the Spirit.

I envision spending a significant amount of time in worship, prayer, and listening to the Spirit of Jesus with the first circle. But I also see the need to be essentially biased towards action. Our time with Jesus must lead us to action...to doing...to following where Jesus would go and what Jesus would do in our city.

I see the first circle working together to proclaim and demonstrate the Kingdom of God to the marginalized in our city; the homeless, the desperate, the fatherless etc.

Fluid but Concrete

A thread at the seedstories site (www.seedstories.com) and a recent conversation with a dear couple who are serious followers of Christ but unconnected to any one local congregation, has me grappling with the operationalization of a fluid network movement. There are several challenges that we face in being the church as a fluid movement:

1. Detoxing from the default mode of institutionalism that most people in the movement have come from. Most of us have grown up in the church and still see the church as an organization that offers the world a variety of religious programs and experiences.

2. Grasping the concept of the kingdom of God and how it enters into every sphere of life rather than being relegated to the compartment of "my spiritual life."

3. Providing enough concrete structure so people can grasp what it means to be an organic and missional church and yet avoid the pitfalls of institutionalism and attractional ministry.

4. Engaging people who view life from a consumeristic point of view.

5. Equipping, empowering, and deploying a growing number of disciiples into every sphere of society: family, church, education, business, government, media, and arts.

Deep, concrete thinking on these matters is absolutely necessary so we can move out of the theoretical mode to the operational mode of thie church plant.

The Starfish and The Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

Starfish organizations have the ability to replicate themselves at every level of organization. If you were to cut off one of the five legs of a starfish, it would simply grow a new one or, in some cases, a whole new starfish would develop from the severed arm. This forms the basic paradigm of leaderless organizations.

I believe the church was meant to be like this. With Christ as the Head and orgnaizing principle, the church was meant to be a growing movement seeping into society and affecting positive change within the culture it finds itself.

Brafman and Beckstrom have a chapter in their book called The Five Legs. This really inspired me to realize how we need to build the new SOULNET. In this chapter, they describe the 5 "leg" upon which a decentralized organization stands. You can take away a couple of the legs and the organization can still function. But when all 5 are on, the leaderless network becomes unstoppable. These kinds of organization have the following:

1. CIRCLES - All decentralized organizations have circles to which people belong. Circles are powerful because they provide the sense of identity and the experience of participation. Unlike leader led group, there are no rules for a circle but there are "norms." These are key behaviors that the group has agreed upon as normative for the circle. As it implies, circles are not led by any one person. Rather, circles are "led" by the protocols embedded in the movement's ideology. The churches in the Primal Church worked in this way.

2. A CATALYST - These people get things started. But they quickly back off so that the group can lead itself. The catalyst is key at the very beginning because he/she sets the norms of the orginal circle. Apostle functioned in this way.

3. IDEOLOGY - This is the "why" that drives the group. This "why" drives the "what" and the "how" of the entire movement. When this is crystal clear, there will be no need for leaders. Interestingly, this is the hardest part of what we're doing at this time.

4. PREEXISTING NETWORK - Movements and leaderless organization don't start from nothing. They mazimize existing networks, building momementum, and grow in numbers and influence. Thisn is akin to what Jesus told his disciiples to look for in Luke 10, the Man of Peace. This person is open to the disciples and to the ideology and mission of Christ and opens up their relational network to the group.

5. CHAMPIONS - These are people who are burning with the message and ideology of the group. They are relentless spokepersons for the orgnaization. They live and breathe the movement.

Leading a Movement

I've been teaching, mentoring, developing, deploying, training, and empowering leaders for 16 years. So it is going to be a little odd for me to say that I am in that stage of my personal leadership development where I am desperately searching for a way to create a leaderless organization; a truly organic movement that impacts the heart of society. I am a pastor but I don't think I am gifted to be a pastor. I am a church planter but i don't want to plant a congregation. Confused? Try being me. Now, before you say, "It sucks to be you," I want to tell you up front that I am pumped. I am excited. I see light at the end of this leadership tunnel.

In their book "The Spider and The Starfish: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations," Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom have given me a clearer framework to work with when it comes to seeing and developing the church less as an institution and more as a movement. They cite leaderless organizations like eBay, al-Qaeda, the internet etc. to show how powerful these networks can be. From it's inception the church has always been a movement not an institution. But very few people have written about the church as such. Most people cannot see the church as anything else but a static and oft-times out of touch monolith whose time has come and gone. It's in my heart to recover and restore the church's organic nature.

There is a huge difference between the leadership style of someone leading an institution (CEO) and leading in a fluid network (CATALYST). Brafman and Beckstrom outline and contrast the difference below:



Much of the literature on leadership comes out of the context of a static, old-school organization. But there is a scarcity of material on leadership from within a movement. Somehow, that's got to change.

The Heart of the Kingdom: Following Jesus

Taken from moral laws given in ancient China, Babylon, Anglo Saxon culture, American Indian culture, Judaism, Christianity, ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Hindu culture, the moral code or core of every religion is:

[1] Don’t do harm to another human by what you do or say.
[2] Honor your father and mother.
[3] Be kind toward brothers and sisters, children and the elderly.
[4] Do not have sex with another’s spouse.
[5] Be honest in all your dealings.
[6] Do not lie.
[7] Care for those weaker or less fortunate.
[8] Dying to self is the path to life.

The core of the movement that Jesus started is found in Mark 1:16-20. Unlike the morality and rules-centered religions of the world, the movement Jesus started revolves totally around a relationship to Jesus himself. Let me state the main idea right at the beginning: The heart of the kingdom is to have a heart for the King. What does it mean to have a heart for Jesus, the king?

1. Having a heart for Jesus means imitating him.

Jesus, the Son of God, became flesh in the form of a Jewish rabbi living in Jewish culture. As a rabbi, his role was to embody the torah or “Book of Instruction” found in the first 5 books of the Scriptures. A rabbi’s role was not only to be an example but to pass on his way of life to disciples. In Hebrew, talmid is the word for disciple. The plural form is talmidim.
The decision to follow a rabbi as a talmid meant total commitment... Since a talmid was totally devoted to becoming like the rabbi he would have spent his entire time listening and observing the rabbi to know how to understand the Scripture and how to put it into practice...Most students sought out the rabbis they wished to follow. This happened to Jesus on occasion. If a student wanted to study with a rabbi he would ask if he might “follow” the rabbi. The rabbi would consider the students potential to become like him and whether he would make the commitment necessary. It is likely most students were turned away. Some of course were invited to “follow me”. This indicated the rabbi believed the potential talmid had the ability and commitment to become like him. It would be a remarkable affirmation of the confidence the teacher had in the student. (FollowtheRabbi.com)

Today, at the very heart of participating in the Kingdom of God is the response to Jesus’ invitation to follow Jesus as a talmid or disciple. This doesn’t mean that we follow Jesus’ teachings only. Rather, discipleship requires that we know Jesus’ mind and will, Jesus’ heart, Jesus’ vision for our society.

This means that we need to learn to hear his voice for today. We need to see what he is doing in our world. We need to feel his heart for the people around us. We need to grasp his vision for our society. And we need to do the things he did. This includes following him in his death and resurrection. When Ariel was 2 years old, she had a saying which she repeated often. She would imitate something I did and proclaim, “Like you, Daddy! Like you!”

I am not trying to convince you to become a Christian. I am not trying to get you to join the Christian religion. In fact, I hope that you never call yourself a Christian. The label “Christian” conjures up images that are so UN-Christlike that I don’t ever want to be called a Christian. Rather, I am trying to convince you to follow Jesus Christ. I am trying to convince you to join Jesus’ cause and movement. I am hoping that you will identify yourself as a disciple of Jesus Christ. I am trying to get you to live your life in such a way so as to say to Christ, “Like you, Jesus! Like you!”

This kind of thing isn’t something we will quickly embrace because imitating Jesus means that our lives cease to be our own. It means that we have to change. It means that we have to adjust. The problem is that it’s in our nature to be in control of our own lives. We would rather make God in our image than be shaped into his. This is the essence of religion. Religion puts us in control of God.

Following Jesus also liberates us from consumerism. We’ve been taught all of our lives that everything comes secondary to our needs and wants. We’re told by our market-driven society that we are the center of the Universe. But follwing Jesus requires that we repent; that we change our minds about ourselves. Imitating Jesus means that we relinqusih our needs and wants to submit to his will. Imitating Jesus means that we’ve changed our minds. We’re no longer the center of the Universe. Becoming like Jesus is everything to us.

2. Having a heart for Jesus means your life gets re-interpreted through his mission.

Jesus said to these fishermen whom he calls to be his first disciples, “I will make you fishers of men.” He is re-interpreting their life experiences through his Kingdom mission. They were to give up living for fish so that they could be begin living for God. While most of the people Jesus called did not have to abandon their jobs to follow him, I believe that Jesus calls all of us to reinterpret our vocations in light of his Kingdom mission. Being a part of the movement Jesus started 2000 years ago means that we stop living for our paycheck or our passion and start living for his purpose. We begin to see our workplaces through the eyes of Jesus. We begin to see our workplaces and schools as mission fields. This means that while we’re at work we seek Jesus’ purpose and will. Following Jesus means that we play an active role in bringing a taste of heaven to our classrooms; a taste of heaven on earth.

Every thing becomes secondary to following Jesus.

This also doesn’t come easy. We would rather follow the religious route. In North America this normally means that we compartmentalize our lives. We have our personal lives here. We have our family life here. We have our professional life here. We have our hobbies here. We have our spiritual life here.

This also flies in the face of consumerism because rather than encouraging us to be consumers, following Jesus calls us to be contributors. This is a major concern for me because there are those who have allowed consumerism to be the driving force of the church. You see these churches whose programs and ministries exist to fulfill the consumeristic needs of its members.
There are actually advocates of contemporary church growth principles who say that the church should be more like a shopping mall that provides all sorts of choices for its members. Their message is no longer a kingdom message where people are called to change their minds and embrace Jesus’ mission; to live for Jesus. Instead, the message is that God lives for us; that Jesus’ mission is to meet our needs and wants. And when this happens, the church ceases to be the church and becomes instead a cheap imitation of the world.

No, what we’re really trying to do here is not be a mall but be a movement.

3. Having a heart for Jesus means embracing uncertainty.
When you decide to follow Jesus, there is a level of uncertainty that comes with it. You never know what he will do. You never know what he will say. There is an element of risk in a relationship with Jesus. And that’s where trusting him comes in.
This is why religion is so appealing. Religion gives us a way of controlling uncertainties. Religion makes God predictable. Religion puts us in control and makes God our servant. But in reality, those of us who lead the church are really more like Morpheus in the movie The Matrix where he says to Neo, “I can only show you the door. But you have to be the one to open it.”

Conclusion
The heart of the kingdom is to have a heart for the King. It means imitating him. It means being on mission all the time everywhere. It means trusting him to lead you. And today he is inviting you to come and follow him.