Aaron Loy's Ragamuffin Blog

Mosaic Thoughts on Communication

One of the things we do pretty regularly as part of the protege program is prepare and deliver 5 minute talks. (These are uniquely challenging because of how focused having just five minutes forces you to be!) The talks also give us a chance to put into practice some of the things we've been learning and give each other feedback on what we're doing well and where we need to grow in our communication (a big part of the program). This morning Hank Fortener, Mosaic campus pastor of the Mayan downtown joined us. His input and feedback is always so good and this morning was no exception. He are some of the things he shared that really stood out to me. I hope they prove as helpful to you as they were for me: 

Never share a story for the first time from the stage. Tell it to friends, family, and whomever else first. Find out when and if people laugh or cry, or if they don’t connect with it at all.

Constantly refine your ideas for your message with friends. Have people in your life that you can continually go to and ask, “Does this make sense?” “Does this resonate?” “Can people relate with this or is it just me?”

Anything more than 10 days is too long to be preparing for a message. You need to be speaking from a place of authenticity and personal journeying with whatever you are speaking about.

Never assume that people want to hear what you have to say. Every time I stand up at the Mayan I assume that everyone there is busy, skeptical and that they have somewhere else to be.” When I am starting my message, I want everyone to lean in and think, “I’ve been there. I know what he is talking about. I can relate with that.” Then I can begin to take them on a journey.

Don’t be predictable or presumptuous. The last thing you want is to try to create an “aha” moment or represent yourself as an expert and be so predictable that everyone knows where you are going and gets there before you do. It’s like watching a movie and quoting the main character’s line before he says it, and you think, “This is cheesy.” You do that and every skeptic in the room is going to think, “What a dork. I am smarter than this guy.”

Ask yourself, “Why does this matter?” For example, I recently had to speak on the topic of going to church and so asked myself “Why go to church?” Well the often pat Christian answers don’t work for someone like the gal I went to lunch with yesterday, who is an activist and has more friends and meaningful relationships than she knows what to do with. She has community, she has a purpose, she is serving humanity…Why should she go to church? I approach my subject from the eyes of the most skeptical persons I can imagine. I tear apart my belief piece by piece, strip myself of easy answers and really wrestle with it. And if at the end I no longer have an answer, then either I don’t have a message or I need to be honest about it at the beginning of my message.    

Gauging Spiritual Maturity

Perhaps no other factor plays a more central role in shaping a church’s ethos than how it measures spiritual maturity.

As an inherently spiritual community, the church’s gauge for spiritual maturity essentially defines success for its congregation. In other words, the church’s measuring stick identifies the goal that everyone ought to be shooting for. Is the ultimate aim to accumulate a wealth of theological knowledge? To be passionate about humanitarian issues? To be an outspoken republican? To become a central leader in the church? To live a life of simplicity? To not do anything "bad"? 

The easiest way to get a feel for how a church gauges spiritual maturity is by looking at its leadership. These men and women represent the kind of lifestyle, discipline and/or giftedness that is deemed worthy to lead (and thus most valuable) in that community. In a way, they represent the quintessential believer because they set the bar for what it means to be spiritually mature, or at least spiritually mature enough to lead everyone else.

If a church says that true spiritual growth is revealed by acts of compassion, but the majority of its staff has theology degrees and spends most of its week in the church office, then it is the latter that comes to be understood by the community as the standard for spiritual maturity. Although that church might really believe that spiritual maturity ought to be fleshed out through acts of love in theory, it is communicating through its own action that in actuality theological education is the ultimate gauge for maturity.

This is extremely important for leaders to understand because whenever certain qualities are considered more valuable than others by a community, that community will find itself attracting, developing and retaining people with those qualities. Over time, the community inevitably becomes a reflection of its leadership.

Don’t believe me? Take a moment to think of an established church near you that places a very high value on biblical knowledge. They probably teach through the scriptures verse by verse, use lots of big words with extensive theological meaning, regularly examine the original Greek and Hebrew texts, argue that one biblical translation is superior to all others, generally assume that people will bring a bible to church, encourages extensive note taking on Sunday morning and most of their staff have a seminary degree or its equivalent. Okay, are you picturing it? Now survey the general characteristics of that congregation. I’d venture to guess that the church you are picturing has a very high theological IQ compared to most churches. Chances are that its members (like its leaders) would blast most of yours in bible jeopardy. These are the sort of people they attract, retain and develop because that is how they have come to define spiritual maturity.

Although the details change, the story is always the same. Churches that use the Knowledge Gauge are really good at bible trivia and enjoy lengthy theological debates. Churches that use the Financial Generosity Gauge have white teeth, pleated pants and large budgets. Churches that use the Tolerance Gauge have a smorgasbord of sin issues and very few hard conversations. Churches that use the Faithful-To-Show-Up-Each-Week Gauge have apathetic congregations and less and less young people. Churches that use the Involvement-In-Church-Functions Gauge have very full calendars and lots of single women. Churches that use the Frugality Gauge have small budgets, organic produce and no parking issues. It all comes down to how you measure spiritual maturity and how that value is reflected in your leadership.     

So how does your church measure spiritual maturity? What is your gauge? What cherished "spiritual" characteristic is most clearly modeled by your leaders as the most important? Is there consistency between this and what your church says it values most? Or how about between this and what you are asking of your people? If not, what needs to change? And most importantly, what does your gauge say about what you believe as a church? Is it biblically sound? Or did it generate from somewhere else?

(In part 2, I'll be looking at the way Mosaic gauges spiritual maturity and how that fleshes itself out in the church. It's probably not what you think...)

Epic Mistakes in Ministry

You ever think back to something you did and wonder to yourself, What was I thinking?! Perhaps it was your first ministry gig or one of the first times you were trusted with significant responsibility and you did something of such epic stupidity that it still makes your face hot to think about it?

When I was in my early twenties, I was hired as the part time worship pastor for a church plant in Lincoln, NE. I had previously sworn to never work for a church. As a wounded pastor's kid, I had spent most of my young adult life avoiding church people. So when I took the job, I did so with more than a little hesitation and with a big church-person-sized chip on my shoulder.

So you can about imagine how well I handled it when anonymous comment cards started coming in attacking myself and the worship team for (of all things) wearing hats on stage. All of the bad pk memories came flooding back as I remembered the people who had caused me to tuck tale and run from religion so many years ago. Adding to the fire was the fact that these comment cards represented a direct contradiction to the vision of our church (the reason I was there in the first place). I was primed and ready to flip.

Then one week I received a particularly scathing comment card. Its author took cheap shots at various members of the worship team for their unacceptable attire on Sunday mornings - particularly their wearing of hats - and what they believed that reflected about their character. And in true coward form, it was once again anonymous. I was livid. But ya know, it probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal if I hadn't been on deck to preach one of my first sermons that coming Sunday.

Church Planting w/ Erwin McManus & Co. (pt 3)

This is the 3rd and final installment of my notes from last week's church planting class at Fuller Seminary with various leaders from Mosaic.

Octavio Martinez:

I am at a place where I just don’t care what people think of me unless they’re a non-believer.

I love my Christian brothers and sisters. But I just don’t care if they are worried that I am slipping from the faith, not focused enough on soul formation, or praying for me (or my demise) because I am meeting with a non-believer at a local bar in Whittier.

The church will actually become a reflection of you – your DNA, your virus, etc. You cannot ask people to do something you’re not doing. They are going to watch how you live. That is their only frame of reference. So you may be able to talk a great game about being missional, but if you’re not living it, it doesn’t matter.

Church Planting w/ Erwin McManus & Co. (pt 2)

This is 'part 2' of my notes from last week's church planting class at Fuller Seminary with various leaders from Mosaic.

Erwin McManus:

You cannot inspire passion when you start from a narcissistic core. It can’t be about your need to feel important, your need to be valued, your need to lead, etc. It has to be about what this tribe needs.

Passion and excitement are different. Lots of communicators can generate excitement. It is all about the moment, like fireworks. Passion is generated by sustained risk. Passion is generated by people watching how you live, what you are willing to risk.

When people sense that you are risking greatly for your own good, they might be willing to risk for their own good. But when you risk for the good of others, they will begin to risk for the good of others.

We need to stop asking what kind of church we want to plant, and start asking about the kind of world we want to create.

Church Planting w/ Erwin McManus & Co. (pt 1)

This last week I had the chance to be a part of a church planting class at Fuller Sem with various leaders from Mosaic. It was beautiful in that the spirit of the conversation all week was, "This is what we've done, doing and trying to do and what we have learned along the way. It isn't necessarily right, this is just us." There was really a spirit of humility and it was very conversational all week. It made me proud to be a part of Mosaic.

Interestingly, however, there was some real hostility towards Erwin when he taught on Day 2 - had a couple walkouts, some angry questions and probably lost 1/3 of the class by the end of Day 3. This was especially interesting given both the spirit of humility and the fact that Erwin was far more gentle and accommodating than normal. Seeing such a lack of teachability and such a resistance to creativity and innovation in the church only served to reinforce my lack of faith in institutionalized Christianity and its ability to change. The class itself was a great illustration of precisely why we need new faith communities (and why having a seminary education in no way qualifies one for ministry).

I have had a few people ask for my notes from class, so I thought I'd share some of those here. Unfortunately, there is some great material that I didn't take notes on because I've heard it so many times in the last year. So what you are getting is bite size nuggets that stood out to me personally. I'll be rolling out my notes in 3 parts by presenter - Chad Becker, Erwin McManus and Octavio Martinez. Hope that they prove as helpful for you as they have for me.

7 Keys to Starting a Movement

Some things are so good that you just need to hit "copy and paste" and share it with the world. This is one of those things.

Rt:

A few things I think we can learn from this video.
1. One man can start a movement.
2. A movement need not be started by the most skilled member of the movement.
3. When beginning your movement and you look around and no one else is joining the dance, just keep dancing.
4. When the one guy who joins your movement slowly fades away, keep going.
5. Before you know it, the people joining your movement won’t even know you started it.
6. When your movement takes a life of it’s own, just let go. There will be no stopping it.
7. The very people who are staring at you like your nuts as you movement alone, will be the very same people dancing the hardest in the end.

How to Kill Leaders or Run Them Out

Don’t talk about leadership.

Never trust people with any significant responsibility.

Avoid risk.

Assume you are the expert.

Stay clear of men and women who might challenge your leadership.

Never ask things of people that require any real sacrifice.

Make sure all major decisions have to go through you.

Never expect much of others.

Don’t model personal development.

Invest your time and energy in those who are most needy.

Make sure you remain the most talented person in the room.

Don't talk about leadership.

Homegrown Leadership

This past week I was made aware of a college pastor job that was recently posted by a very well known and influential church that I greatly admire. Apparently this quite large, emerging-type church is looking to hire someone from outside of their community, which quite honestly, surprises me. In fact, I have to admit that I am surprised every time a church of three, four, or even five thousand people still feels the need to look outside of their community to find leadership. A big part of this has to do with my paradigm of leadership promotion -a topic that I think deserves some attention. There are essentially two different paradigms when it comes to finding and promoting leaders. 

The old way: Hiring from the outside.

A lot of churches still operate with this paradigm. The goal is typically to hire a pastor from another church who they feel can take their church or a particular ministry to the next level. In the good scenarios, the pastor sticks around as long as the average pastor sticks around (less than 5 yrs according to most sources), and does his job well until he is “called” to a better opportunity (i.e. bigger church, higher pay). Those are the good scenarios.

In most cases, however, things don’t really work out. This can happen for a number of different reasons: as an outsider coming in, the pastor is never fully embraced by the congregation, early mistakes cause people to question his ability to lead, he just isn’t a good fit for the community and/or the church, or the aforementioned “calling” comes a whole lot sooner than anyone expected.

Sometimes an imported leader and those who hired him or her are faced with the harsh truth that effective leadership is not always transferable. Leaders that are effective in one environment will not necessarily be effective in other environments. This is a basic truth of leadership. A great example of this can be seen in Willow Creek’s hiring of Randy Frazee. Randy was a proven leader that seemed to be a sure bet as he was hired to serve in the same type of capacity he had thrived in elsewhere. But as often happens, what worked elsewhere didn’t work in South Barrington and Randy’s stay was short and his departure (along with Gene Appel’s) painful. Unfortunately, theirs are a common story. Rarely does a leader hired from the outside stick.

The new way: Empowering from the inside.

Many churches are moving away from models that look to hire leadership from the outside and are choosing instead to raise up and promote leaders from within. This is what one might call “home grown leadership.”  

Mosaic is one of many churches that have chosen to adopt this paradigm. Mars Hill (Seattle) has also gone this route. I mention these two churches because they are both highly influential and very different from one another. Both have opted to empower from within and both are reaping the rewards, a few of which include:

• Vision: homegrown leaders are more likely to get it, own it and live it
• Tested: homegrown leaders are known by those they lead and by those they answer to long before they are ever given authority
• Fit: homegrown leaders are already acclimated to and serving in your local context, meaning whether or not they "fit" is never a question
  
• Loyalty: homegrown leaders are more likely to be committed to you and the vision of your church for the long haul

Of course, occasionally situations arise that require looking for leadership outside of an organization. Some churches have simply done such a poor job of developing leaders (or such a good job of running them off) that there are few, if any, leaders ready or willing to take the reins. And as I have mentioned, sometimes promoting leaders from the outside works. But I would recommend this only as a last resort. Leaders grown and empowered from within are simply more committed, more dependable, and more likely to champion and embody the vision. So, the question then is…

Who are your home grown leaders/influencers? These are people that have come to know and follow Christ as a part of your church and/or have been a part of your faith community for some time, where they served faithfully with integrity. Are there any? If not, what does this say about your faith community? What needs to change? How can you begin investing in and raising up leaders in your church?

Secondly, who are your potentials? Who has the potential to be a homegrown leader two years from now? Three years from now? Now, what can you do to help these men and women develop into power players in God’s Kingdom work? What are their strengths, their gifts, their passions, their talents, their dreams? Where do they need encouragement and where do they need some guidance? How can you help them discover and grow into their God-given potential?!

Erwin Quotes

 One of the best things about being a part of Mosaic is having the opportunity to serve under Erwin McManus' leadership and to get to hear him teach on a regular basis. If you've ever had the opportunity to hear him teach other leaders, you know that trying to take it all in is like trying to drink from a fire hose. Here are a few of my favorite Erwin quotes from the past few months:

In speaking to the proteges shortly after we arrived in L.A...

"My goal is not to make you all great leaders, because some of you don't have the character to sustain that kind of influence. Your character would be crushed under that mantle of power."

In speaking about his approach to preaching...

"I don't want to feed people, I want to make them hungry."

Speaking to Mosaic's leaders at Leadership Advance...

"The day you lose your curiosity is the day you stop living. You must find a way to rediscover the curiosity of your youth. The problem is that often times religion is described as static. God is symbolized as a rock, but he is expressed in the wind."

Spoken Sunday night at the Mayan after telling a classic self-deprecating story...

"Don't follow me. Follow Jesus."