Tag: Pastoring

Posted in Different Scriptures, Different Thoughts

effective (mens/womens) ministry

Posted on by Wick

“Revival will not come through your children’s ministry….Revival will not come through your women’s ministry….Revival will come when we turn the hearts of men back to God.” (source purposefully not mentioned)

These were from the final moments of a recent message I listened to. Maybe you agree and are passionate about these words. Maybe you hear the imbalance in them, as I did. I was given this message by a dear friend, who was excited to share. I listened because I trust his heart. In the first few moments of the message, and several points throughout, I wanted to turn it off. Complaints about the “feminization of the church”. Complaints about poetic songs about “Drowning in an ocean of His Love”. Complaints about flowers and fonts/colors that are too soft and effeminate, accusing these things as the reason men are no longer drawn to local churches. My Bible sure seems to have some beautiful poetic images (the speaker himself even talks about us being the “poiema” of God), words about noticing the flowers, and descriptions of colors.

He then went on to make a list of 3 “Voids” that exist in men today, declaring as if prophetically that if churches addressed these specific needs for men we would see a new revival of God’s Spirit in our churches. I’m glad I kept listening to the message, because I believe he’s right. Although not in the way he might think. I hear his accusations of the ineffectiveness of silos in ministry like “Children’s” or “Women’s” (or “Youth Group” or “Young Adult” or “Singles”, et al). But I don’t believe addressing the silo of “Men’s” ministry will do anything beyond manufacturing the same sort of “boost” (even with amazing limited impacts) any of these ministries offer.

Yet there is still a powerful truth in the 3 “Void’s” he identifies. I believe these voids exist not just for men, however. I believe these are 3 powerful avenues of healing needed for all men, women, and children in our world today. The speaker was spot on when he focused on different generations connecting in deep, Jesus-honoring relationships. I believe if a church can connect younger men with older men, and younger women with older women, and nurture confessional communities where “Truth-telling”, forgiveness, and prayer are part of our DNA, the Holy work of the Spirit of God will breathe a revival deeply needed for the healing of the nations.

  1. First he mentioned an “Affirmation Void”. Specifically he talked about young men whose fathers never communicated their love for them. I don’t need to prove to you, this is not a male-centered experience of life. Plenty of young women would have loved to hear “I know and love you. I’m proud of you. I enjoy time with you.” Each generation of parenting has focused on different things. As parents, we feel the pressures of the world around us and we want to prepare our children for success. When we move away from a trusting relationship with God and our own Belovedness, our children become “products” we help create, or “proof” of why we should be valued/affirmed in a world we seek the approval of. Whether we’re strict and value their success, or we’re relaxed and value their freedoms to experiment, we can focus so intently on resourcing what they’re becoming that we forget to focus on loving who they’re becoming.
    • So how do we respond? We purposefully become and nurture spaces/times where affirmation is practiced, strengthened, and experienced (Ephesians 4:29), especially across generations. We help all our generations become aware of their feelings, in order to examine our emotional responses. As I become more “attached” to the Love of God both directly, and indirectly through others, I have more freedom to love my children for who they are – separate from any of my identity coming from theirs. We foster moments where connections are happening between generations – inspiring older generations to continue dreaming and younger generations to have visions for who they can become. (Acts 2:17)
  2. Second he mentioned a “Community Void”. He talked about men feeling alone, like no one else knows them, or know one else experiences life like they do. It probably isn’t surprising to anyone to hear, with so much being said about our current “lonliness epidemic”, that there’s only a 1% difference between the experienced lonliness of men and women (Even with women being perceived as having the ability to share more deeply about their emotions.). Our world is just not conducive to building and sustaining intimate committed friendships across time. My wife is ridiculously gifted at this, and I’m so thankful for the ways she has set an example for me, and continues to invite me to consider my own friendships. Our world offers unlimited shallow connectivity with just enough dopamine and cycles of activity to make us feel like we’re generating authentic community. One of the lies of our world is that intimacy can only come through sexual relationships, which has become the source of so much disintegration in those seeking intimacy. But connection, even sexual, is not relationship – we know this by now, when we’re willing to be a Truth-telling community. We have huge amounts of activities (even as churches) that do not deepen our experiences of knowing, being known, loving and being loved. The speaker pointed at all the young men addicted to pornography and video games as proof. I believe him, but I don’t believe young women are doing any better just because they turn to different false sources of connection.
    • So how do we respond? We purposefully become and nurture places where authentic intimate relationships can happen. We talk about, and give a shared vocabulary to our need for the healing intimacy that can only be found as we’re reconciled to God in Jesus by His Holy Spirit. We offer and encourage things like “Discipleship Bands” (John Wesley called these “Band Meetings” for banded discipleship) where Truth-telling, forgiveness, and prayer together help make our Beloved-ness something tangibly experienced. We offer co-ed “Small Groups” (John Wesley called them “Class Meetings“, you might call them “Transformation Groups”.) As this kind of relational intimacy becomes part of our DNA, we will not only experience healing for ourselves, but we become a source of healing for our communities. This is a shared biological need, the need for felt connection. So we can trust that a Jesus who desires healing (the root meaning of the word “salvation”) will always join us by His Spirit when we as the Church seek to invite others to this.
  3. The Third and final “Void” he mentions (though I’m sure there could be more) is what he called the “Agency/Authority Void”. By this he means, we have so many young men who feel stuck in cycles of sin, powerless to advance in their spiritual life. I write this as a man, but I’m pretty confident the modern approaches many of us grew up with, left many of us of both genders feeling this way. Many of us were told what sin was, and to avoid it. We were given unlimited content, apologetics, and even today have access to the most inspirational presenters from across the world. The assumption was, the more correct and encouraging information we can put in our brains, the more transformation will occur. Unfortunately we can end up drowning in content, feeling no more deeply attached to the Love of God in our soul’s deepest sense of self. Both current neurological research and ancient spiritual practices proclaim we are less influenced by what we think than what/who we love.
    • So how do we respond? I believe the ways we addressed the first two “Voids” above will automatically contribute greatly to this third area. I also believe we must become places and nurture experiences of God’s perfecting Love alongside the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our world often believes the loving approach to any particular is to reduce the expectations, boundaries, or limits. But with less integrity in our boundaries, it makes sense we would see increased dis-integration in our world. The good news of Jesus Christ is that we have received a Lord who became like us, served us to the point of it killing Him, and conquered even death itself in order to join and empower us. By His Holy Spirit, He shares that victory with us, reconciling us to relationship with God. We can deepen not just our knowledge, but our experience of that relationship in Spiritual Disciplines. From within that relationship in Jesus’ name, we share His authority over all the forces of darkness we do not understand. We are set free not only from impact of others’ sin, or the guilt of our own sin, but also freed from the power of continued cycles of sin. John Wesley called this “Entire Sanctification”, which the speaker also alluded to in his message. I believe if our local churches become communities who preach/live this message not as a judgmental indictment, but as a loving confession and invitation toward healing – we will humbly invite a revival the Holy Spirit has already begun and desires to accomplish in our midst.

May it continue to happen in my heart. May it happen through our Churches, and for the sake of our neighbors. May His Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Posted in Different Thoughts, Uncategorized

Responsive Reading for a Church Board

Posted on by Wick

(For use in opening a church board meeting. I recommend asking different members of the board to serve as each “Leader”.)

Leader: Lord, we come together today as a group of your children.  We come from days that have been busy and full of people.  We come from days that have been quiet and lonely.  We come tired and ready to be finished.  We come energized and excited to contribute.  We pause, here at the beginning of our time together, to center ourselves on You.  

We are an organization, but we are first and foremost a community of lives and homes being transformed and renewed in Your Love – for Your purposes in our neighborhoods and world.  We pause to be thankful – for it is a holy gift of Your grace that we are invited to serve with You in these Loving ways.

ALL: Lord, come unite and minister to our hearts in Your presence.

Leader: We are gathered here, representing different parts of this local body of Christ.  We confess that we know our own parts intimately, but must humbly depend on one another to come to full knowledge of the body as a whole.  

ALL: Father, help us to listen to all areas of the body. Even those not represented here.

Leader: Even more than we listen to the parts of the body, Holy Spirit we want to listen to your voice.  Sometimes you will speak through one of us. Other times you will speak in the silence, or in the discomfort.  Help us to hear you, and to respond.

ALL: Holy Spirit, guide us by Your presence and in Your Loving Wisdom.

Leader: We come to approve reports and budgets that represent ministry that can never be fully measured, and yet we have been entrusted with this holy task of being faithful with all we’ve been given.  We also recognize that “being faithful” is measured differently in Your Kingdom, than by our worldly measurements.

ALL: Jesus, we offer all these things to you.  We confess that our own abilities, perceptions and measurements fall short of Your wisdom and power.

Leader: We have visions, and dreams, and other things we imagine for the sake of this local church and our impact out in the community and world.  Yet even the best of these things are not seen with Your Vision, nor are they of any value without Your Loving presence.  We come together excited with our ideas, but holding all things loosely for the sake of following Your heart, Lord.

ALL: God, come and have Your way.  We invite You to have these moments, and have this community for Your purposes now, and for tomorrow.  Amen.

Posted in Different Books, Different Scriptures

Promoting Relationship…

Posted on by Wick

As a pastor, I am always wanting to grow in my understanding of relationships. The psychology, sociology, and neurology that go into the ways we relate to one another, ourselves, and even the ways we pursue a relationship with God are of significant value.

Presently, that means I’m reading a book called “Missing Each Other: How to Cultivate Meaningful Connections”. One of the technology books I read with our older daughters this past year talked about the importance of face to face interactions in terms of building healthy relationships. It ranked the strength of communication styles for building a deepened connection, and texting (a primary form of communication for most of us) was toward the bottom, under phone calls, video chats (another primary form under COVID), and of course the number one – face to face, in person, conversation.

With such a low amount of connecting in person during the past couple of years, it’s no wonder that the worlds of psychology, sociology, and neurology are paying attention also, and figuring out how to help people understand (and of course, I realize, capitalize on this moment for profit-making also). Whether you’re an extrovert or an introvert, you’ve experienced loneliness during the past couple of years, and if their research for human relationships holds similar for our relationship with God (my guess is, there are definitely connections), you might be feeling a bit disconnected from the presence of God as well.

One of the basic premises of the book, is that their research shows a fundamental part of building more meaningful connections is this element called “Attunement”. They break it down into four components: “relaxed awareness, listening, understanding, and mutual responsiveness.” The book goes into exploring these components, offering ways to become more aware, research to understand & improve each area, and exercises they have found to be helpful. Of course, it’s written for all people, and not a “religious” book. You won’t find them suggesting meditation on scripture, quiet breath-prayer/prayer walks, cultivating an awareness of God’s presence, etc. But they still offer some helpful insight, which can be adapted as needed.

Of particular note neurologically, is the research on how the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system responds to stress by releasing hormones, “including cortisol (often considered the body’s main stress hormone)”. The authors note that “experiments conducted at McGill University have shown that a stress response involving cortisol release can block a person’s emotional empathy for another person.” As we look at our culture today, especially the promotion of anxiety and stress by those who profit from our attention, we can easily see one of their conclusions then: “modern human culture has brought us a variety of long-term worries and stresses, and chronic activation of our bodies’ stress systems can have negative effects on our physical health, as Sapolsky points out, and can also have negative effects on our ability to tune in and connect to each other. This continual activation of the stress systems can promote a vicious cycle as stress increases a sense of disconnection; and being isolated and disconnected, in turn, increases stress.”

As a pastor, it helps to be aware that people are coming to church, and to life in general, with a decreased ability to form or participate in relationships with empathy. It also helps me to understand that simply praying “Lord, help us all have decreased levels of cortisol.” is not a faithful response to the understanding God has given us about how we’ve been created. As the authors write, “the activity of the PNS (parasympathetic nervous system) can reduce the activity of the HPA system.”

So what can I do to help activate and strengthen the activity of the PNS?  Dr. Stephen W. Porges stresses the importance of the “polyvagal theory”, as his research has found that the vagus nerve (which runs from our brain stem down into the abdomen, and is a major nerve of the PNS) can be calmed purposefully in several ways (here are some examples). One of the easiest ways, as we stand in the front of our churches in a moment of prayer or worship, aware of such things – is to slow our speech, model deep breaths, and even invite our people to pay attention to their own breathing. To pause and take a deep breath not only allows us to prayerfully consider what words to say next, it is also allowing a holy pause which can allow our PNS to wash our minds with responses that reduce cortisol and raise levels of oxytocin (a “neuropeptide involved in social bonding…including feelings of trust, generosity, empathy, and understanding.”)

It also means, as I encourage people young and old to spend personal time with God – I should emphasize that such time with God will be deepened by awareness of our breathing and body. It’s not as helpful to “dip in and out” of a 5 minute devotional, forcing God to connect in the time we give Him. We will improve and deepen our moments with God by finding ways to relax, de-stress, and become more physically attuned to our own emotional state as we move into His presence.

May you take a moment to breathe slow today, finding ways to turn away from the anxieties and stresses (even legitimate ones), knowing that purposefully embracing patterns of Sabbath and physical peace allow our relationships with others, with ourselves, and even with God to flourish in new and deeper ways…

 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.’ – Jesus (Matthew 11:28)