Mark's Blog

This choice on your part has taken me completely by surprise!  Another surprise is that it is perhaps the most continually read post I’ve written.  I suspect it is because it is often forwarded to church leaders from members or ministers . . . . Let’s pray that this New Year brings a more positive message about Christ’s churches!

!Years ago, I was a church leader in an ill church, and I really didn’t even know it! Certainly I had my concerns about different issues and challenges that we were facing, and I threw my influence as far as it would go to help enliven the church, but never did I think that the church might be in a death spiral!

Now, many years later, I ask myself why I did not recognize the very obvious signs of terminal decline. As I have searched my own soul, the following seem to me to be some of the reasons why church leaders do not even sniff the rottenness that is corrupting the Body!

1.     Too inexperienced. Few of our church leaders are trained church leaders. They are usually excellent volunteers, but how many would let an excellent hospital volunteer examine and diagnose you?  What if they couldn’t tell a mole from melanoma?

2. Too busy leading the church! The more rapid the decline, the more work there is for those trying to keep it alive! Hard to see imminent danger because of all the people needing your immediate attention.

3.     Too optimistic! Optimism–trust in God’s victory—is a highly desirable quality, but look at how difficult it was for Jesus to convince His closest disciples that He was going to die! Facing reality is also highly desirable.

4.     Too invested! Your family is in this church; your life-long friends are in this church; you grew up in this church! Unfortunately, none of these investments will save a declining church!

5.     Too satisfied. You have a great group! The building is paid for. Sure, you are a little smaller, but it is still alive for you!

6.     Too comfortable. It takes a lot of time and energy to change things. It is MUCH easier to just keep on doing what we have always done—and maybe it will work out!

7.     Too fearful. You can’t even go to the idea that this church might go away—too much pain involved!  Too many unanswerable questions about the unknown future.

8.     Too proud. After all, you are one of the leaders and things don’t fail that you are a part of! Not on your watch!

9.     Too tradition-bound. We’ve always done things this way and we’ve had rough days in the past, so if we just keep on course and not mess with the formula, we’ll be OK!

10.   Too much ownership! Granddaddy was an elder, Dad was an elder, and now I’m an elder. This is my church and my family’s church, and we will never let it fail!

11.    Too influenced by others. We’ve talked it over at the elders’ meeting, and the consensus is that  we are OK.  The members aren’t complaining.

12.    Too short-sighted. Even if it were true, what can anyone do about it. Might as well just ride to the end of the road.

13.    Too power-oriented. I’m one of the leaders. I can’t imagine not being a leader, so I think I’ll just keep on being a leader!

Rarely is leadership blindness the result of just one of the above Such lists are always an oversimplification of complex bundles of ideas and emotions, but no item on the list above allows church leaders to see clearly the plan of God for the people entrusted into their care.

I’ll end by just challenging church leaders to search their hearts and look for symptoms of reality blindness.  It’s not a fatal disease. Leaders can discover their vision and wisdom in time to take responsible action.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt.”   James 1:5-6

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In January 2011, an amazing transaction took place between these two churches.  This post and the follow-up to it were widely read, probably by both supporters and antagonists. 

Church leaders seem to be the center of lots of controversy and criticism—and not without cause! Today though, I can’t wait to tell you about two groups of leaders who have done things extraordinarily well in a very difficult situation.

Let me just say to start that I am not in either of these groups, nor do I have unusual access to the inner workings of these groups, so I don’t know anything but the public version of the story. I also do not intend to tell the whole story because it is not mine to tell. What I want to do is share with you two instances of great church leadership!

The Southlake church has had a pretty tumultuous history during the last decade or so. We were told that in 1998/99, this church had over 1000 attending services each week.  Then came a series of splits, some involving doctrine, some involving styles, some involving leaders, and all involving personalities.

The congregation found itself in 2010 very diminished—200-250 in attendance—and with no readily apparent means of reversing the decline.  Elders in this kind of situation usually have very limited options.  Southlake leaders certainly considered some, if not all of the following:

• Continue to function as a large church and continue to overwork and underserve their members.   Prognosis: Rapid decline!
• Restructure to be a small church: reduce staff, reduce programs,  and be content.  Prognosis: Slower, but continued decline!
• Disband and sell the property.  Assimilate into other churches. Prognosis: Members and leaders alike see their work for God and His kingdom as failed. The community understands closed doors as failure as well.
• ?????   Something else!

Praise God – these spiritual leaders at Southlake chose to explore something bold, perhaps controversial, but something that would seem to hold promise for expanding the Kingdom.  They chose to approach The Hills Church of Christ, a large, thriving congregation in the same city about a merger that would be a blessing to both groups.

Here is where I simply want to stop and praise the leadership at Southlake for the following reasons:

• They put the Kingdom first and their own identity as a congregation second!
• They put the Kingdom first and did not claim ownership of the church.They did not make the high value of their property either an issue or the center of conversation!
• They put the Kingdom first and emptied themselves: all of the elders offered to resign—and did.  The senior minister took a different position in the church.  Other ministry leaders let go of their territory—gave up their keys!
• They put the Kingdom first and did not let the minority of naysayers either lead or derail the leadership. There were those who were fearful of losing their identity. Others were fearful of losing control over their own destiny. Others were—just fearful!

These faithful Southlake leaders are setting an example for all leaders in declining churches.  Many of our churches are beginning to reach a critical point in their decline, where just keeping the doors open is a matter of concern.  The Southlake solution is not the only solution—but putting the Kingdom first and emptying yourself should be part of every solution that every leader considers!

The leadership of The Hills Church of Christ also showed boldness and great vision. Again, I am not in the inner circle at The Hills, but here is what I know from the outside:

• At the time they were approached by Southlake, The Hills was in the middle of a 10 million dollar campaign (Greater Things) that was demanding a great deal from the entire staff and eldership! They could have easily been too busy to even look at the Southlake dilemma.
• Part of the 2020 Vision of The Hills as well as part of the Greater Things campaign that had already been announced was the establishment of a satellite campus on the west side of Ft. Worth that was going to require staffing and over a million dollars of investment to launch in 2011.  They could have easily said that starting one new campus was enough for this year!
• With all of the above, The Hills could have easily offered only a half-way solution or a temporary arrangement—but they didn’t! They went all the way. Even this week, less than a month after the official merge, the Hills is spending a large amount of money on renovations at the Southlake building so that it will be the same quality as the North Richland Hills campus—if not better!  Key staff members as well as selected elders have already shifted locations. Not all the foundation is in place, but it will be soon!

The result of the prayerful work of these two groups of church leaders is that two congregations are now one. Both are stronger, both are excited about the new beginnings, and rather than a funeral, the community of Southlake is going to see fireworks!

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This post was the third installment of a series on Rethinking Mission Work in Churches of Christ.  I plan to publish that series as a small book this spring.  

Although both of the first two posts in this series contain serious areas of concern with respect to the way Churches of Christ do mission work, today’s post is where we really want to get to the most critical issues of all!

In the first post of this series, I talked about the process in which those who want to become missionaries must prevail. In the second post, we reviewed the limited number of support/oversight opportunities available to the potential missionary in Churches of Christ.

Local churches Are ill-equipped to truly oversee foreign mission work.

Typically, churches who agree to provide oversight of a foreign mission effort have very little idea of what they are really agreeing to. For most congregations, total oversight means they have hired another employee (the missionary) and that they have ultimate responsibility for the missionary’s

• complete job performance,
• all monies given by them, both personal and work-related funds,
• all work-related decisions, including those made by the mission congregation.
• all doctrinal issues and/or congregational practices
• growth strategies, including types of facilities

Any serious differences in opinion in any area or dissatisfaction within the overseeing church results in loss of financial support, the premature return of the missionary family, and often the complete termination of the missionary efforts at that site.

The most common variation on the total oversight model above is financial oversight, which usually means the overseeing church simply provides regular financial support to the missionary and as long as no criminal or moral irregularities occur, they are satisfied and continue this relationship of benevolent neglect until one of the following occurs

• the missionary chooses to return to the States,
• the overseeing church loses interest in the missionary—often because of excitement about a new missionary, or
• the mission site is not seen as one that excites the overseeing congregation any longer, often because a new site seems more appealing now.

Attempting to Educate Local Churches

Mission professors at our Christian colleges as well as several groups like Mission Resource Network (MRN) and Sunset (SIBI) have tried for years to educate churches of Christ about missions. In spite of valiant efforts, the truth is that most congregations are woefully ill-prepared to provide oversight of a foreign mission work—much less several works at multiple sites.

We need to seriously consider whether it is realistic to expect every congregation to develop mission expertise—and then not only to continually renew this expertise, but also to educate succeeding generations.

Here are the difficulties that battle against education as the solution to the serious flaws in our missions paradigm:

• Very few congregations have members who have any personal experience in mission work. The most experienced have often only visited a foreign site for a few days.
• Knowledge gained through expert instruction is secondhand information that too often becomes a mission template that may or may not be appropriate for a specific mission work or site.
• Turnover in mission committees or elderships who oversee missions is enough that even if some members are satisfactorily educated, what about the new ones who replace them?
• The education that our institutions offer must by design be general, that is, mostly general policy oriented. In the application of these general policies to a specific site, whose judgment prevails—the missionary on site or the overseeing church who now has been through the mission policy course?

In my opinion, Alexander Pope was right when he said, “A little learning is a dangerous thing!”

Responses

Recognizing the weakness of the church education model, many larger churches have responded by limiting their mission focus to only a few workers that they fully support in one or few sites for long periods of time. By limiting the number of workers and the number of sites, they are able to gain a degree of expertise and feel more competent about their oversight.  With longer missionary tenures, overseeing churches are able to pass down this expertise more easily.

The challenge of this corrective measure, however, is that it puts a virtual cap on the number of workers on the field, limiting the number to what a relative handful of people in a few large churches feel comfortable managing.

Other churches deal with the oversight dilemma by limiting their active responsibility to financial oversight only—although they are often reluctant to admit this. As long as the missionary reports regularly and accounts properly for the funds, these churches are happy. They may or may not have any emotional relationship to the established church or mission site. They do not wish any further commitment as long as they can report to their congregation that they are doing mission work.

Smaller churches (under 500 members), since they do not feel capable of major financial commitments, are rarely willing to accept oversight responsibilities. They limit their involvement to sending checks to the larger churches and enjoying the visits of “their” missionaries, when the larger churches bring the missionaries home on furlough.

Conclusions:

Exceptions exist to every statement I have made, but Sherrylee and I have been involved intimately in missions in Churches of Christ for over forty years. If you will accept the general truth of what I have stated, then these are the necessary conclusions!

1. Most missionaries self-select and quality of preparation/training varies widely!
2. The number of missionaries that Churches of Christ can send to the field is limited to those that large churches can and will both oversee and financially support.
3. The number of Christians directly involved in sending missionaries is virtually limited to the number on mission committees in large churches.
4. The oversight of missionaries is done primarily through financial control, usually by people with even less training or experience than the missionaries themselves.
5. Spiritual oversight is grossly neglected.
6. The number of missionaries in Churches of Christ is limited to those who either have good large church connections, and/or good fund raising personalities—neither of which are essential qualities for doing good mission work.

In the next posts, we’ll talk about alternatives to the current paradigm, but my suggestions are out of the box—just warning you!

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The dramatic changes brought about by the “Arab Spring, ” even the end of the Iraq War, nothing was celebrated in the U.S. like the killing of Osama bin Laden.  Some Christians were shocked by the celebration. This post addressed this moral dilemma.

The killing of Osama bin Laden immediately reassembled moral questions that followers in the Judeo-Christian tradition—have struggled with for centuries, if not millennia.  As I read the comments and tweets, it seems to me that most of the questions gather themselves into two main dilemmas:

1.            Can a God-fearer purposefully take the life of an evil person?

2.            Should God-fearing people celebrate the death of an evil person?

As with many moral dilemmas, I think I was first confronted with the question of pacifism through reading war novels as a teenager. I remember reading Mila 18 by Leon Uris and the struggle the Jewish citizens of Warsaw had as the Nazis first captured the city, then literally walled them off into a ghetto, followed by aggressively eliminating them.  I still remember vividly the tense debates between the rabbis who argued for patience and trust in God to deliver them and the Jews that wanted to take up arms and resist the evil perpetrated upon them.

The same dilemma occupied faithful Christians in National Socialist Germany. I just finished reading Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas. In some ways, the whole Confessing Church struggled with resistance to the evil Hitler began introducing long before he was powerful enough to begin killing Jews.  One of the first things he did was to corrupt the church, installing leaders more faithful to him than to Christ, re-writing creed and doctrine to fit new moral standards, and imprisoning those Christians who refused to adopt the new church order!   What would you have done as a Christian when the God-ordained government (Romans 13) corrupted the church?  Would you have disobeyed the government or sought ways to “live at peace with all men?” Would you compromise by keeping silent and not resisting your church leaders  because you were to submit to those who rule over you?

Then, of course, Hitler and his government changed the social rules of morality: no commerce with Jews, report any bloodline discrepancies, have babies for Hitler, ad nauseum! What would you have done when ordered to act like a bigot or to betray your neighbor?

A German friend of ours told us that one day her best friend—a little Jewish girl—didn’t  show up at school—anymore. No one dared to ask—she didn’t ask—because if you asked, you would be the next one who disappeared in the middle of the night! What would you have done?

Would you have hidden Jews in your home as the ten Booms did? Would you have lied to protect them when the Gestapo knocked on the door?

Six million Jews died in concentration camps, four million German civilians died in WWII, seven million Russian civilians, six million Polish civilians—none of these numbers include the soldiers who died.

“Shall I shoot? I can get inside the Fuhrer’s headquarters with my revolver. I know where and when the conferences take place. I can get access!”  In November 1942, Werner von Haeften, a staff lieutenant of Hitler’s High Command, could no longer hold his burning question in check. The man confronted Bonhoeffer with this question because they both were Christians with deeply held convictions.

The two men reportedly talked for hours. Bonhoeffer offered him no easy answers, but one part of their conversation I’d like to share with you to think about. Bonhoeffer told von Haeften that he should not make his decision based on guilt because guilt was going to be the result of either decision. If he did nothing in the face of evil, he would be guilty; if he killed in the name of Good, he will be guilty. He could not emerge without guilt, “but then that guilt was always a guilt borne in suffering.” (quoted in Bonhoeffer, 425-6, Kindle Edition)

Von Haeften was part of the July 20, 1944 failed assassination attempt on Hitler and was executed the next day. Bonhoeffer too decided that he could actively participate in attempts to kill Hitler.Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s best friend and confidante, explained

We now realized that mere confession, no matter how courageous, inescapably meant complicity with the murderers, even though there would always be new acts of refusing to be co-opted and even though we would preach “Christ alone” Sunday after Sunday.

Thus we were approaching the borderline between confession and resistance; and if we did not cross this border, our confession was going to be no better than cooperation with the criminals. And so it became clear where the problem lay for the Confessing Church: we were resisting by way of confession, but we were not confessing by way of resistance.” (Essays on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995. P. 24).

As I sort through this difficult question myself, I come to what I believe to be true from my own understanding of God. God never asked his people to do anything that was intrinsically evil. He repeatedly told the Jews to purge themselves of those who did evil and to put them to death (Deut. 13:5; 17:5, 7, 12; 21:21 and more.)  He did not order them to do evil.

Moses ordered the killing of Israelites who chose the golden calf. God’s judges killed those who did evil. David, the man after God’s own heart, killed Goliath.  What do you do with these executions of evil people, apparently approved by God?  God does use servants to punish those who do evil!

“But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”    (Romans 13:4)

God hates evil. Yes, he is longsuffering so that all can come to repentance—and we must be also. He is rich in mercy–and we must be also, but His wrath is frightening and the wages of sin is death.

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I’m thrilled that this post about Oklahoma Christian was so widely read. It’s a pleasure to re-p0st it again with the hope that many more will learn about this best-kept secret!

Oklahoma Christian University has been a best-kept secret for too many years!

Last night Sherrylee and I were on their campus again for the 35^th Annual Cocoa and Carols, a wonderful program that our dear friend Dr. Ken Adams has produced and directed from its inception. He is retiring at the end of this year after forty-one years at OC, so we especially wanted be there to share it with him and his wife Lindy.

One of the reasons I enjoyed teaching at Oklahoma Christian for so long was that OC has always been committed to excellence, and excellence is difficult to pull off when you are small and in the middle of Oklahoma! Cocoa and Carols is a great example of this kind of excellence, however.

For thirty-five years, Oklahoma Christian has offered its community a classical Christmas program, almost always using a full professional orchestra to accompany its own student choir. Each year they offer their audience a master work by not only the likes of Bach or Mozart, but also modern composers like the Gloria by John Rutter this year! (You can find excerpts of this modern classic on Youtube, if you are unfamiliar with the work like I was.) And this Christmas gift has always been given free to the public! I love it!

I’ve always believed OC has had an excellent academic program, if anyone cares about that anymore! OC has strong majors in sciences, with an excellent record in students going into medical school and other health-related fields. The school of business is highly recognized and the MBA program is one of the best in the State of Oklahoma.  OC has an outstanding engineering program, with a very hands on approach because many of the engineering professors have come directly from their industry to join OC’s faculty.

Of course, I’m a big fan of the liberal arts, so I can say that OC’s English department, history and political science departments, music department, art and graphic design areas all have outstanding professors and, though small, give their students just as much with more personal interaction than is really possible at larger schools.

No, you won’t find a big football program at Oklahoma Christian, but you can find championship golf, tennis, and  track and field, as well as baseball, basketball, women’s softball, and soccer! Social clubs and intramural sports offer plenty of time for play

And I do believe that Oklahoma Christian is still committed to delivering a Christian education, something that not even all colleges with Christian in their name are doing any more.  You can go to church with your professors, or work in inner city missions with them—not just your Bible professors, but your accounting or your biology professor as well.  They may invite you to join them on an overseas mission project during summer break, or they may just sit down with you in the coffee shop to check on your life!

I was trying to decide what keeps Oklahoma Christian hidden from the mainstream of Christian education. Part of the answer is its location—Oklahoma. I have a friend here in Fort Worth, who although living only about 100 miles away from the Sooner state for decades, had never been to Oklahoma.  It’s not Malibu!

Sherrylee would admit to thinking that God had made a big mistake when He sent us to Oklahoma Christian in 1979.  We thought He had taken us way off the map, but I can truly say now, that our years in Oklahoma were just wonderful!  And, although Oklahoma Christian likes to identify itself with the Oklahoma City community, the town of Edmond, to which it truly belongs,  was selected in 2011 #1 on CNBC’s “10 Perfect Suburbs” list!

Let’s don’t keep Oklahoma Christian a secret! It’s not perfect! It’s not the right university for every student! But don’t skip over it just because . . . . You and/or your student might find a wonderful oasis of people who love God and who are committed to offering excellence.

Thank you, thank you to people like Ken and Lindy, to Stafford and Bailey, to Ron and James and Lynn and Bill and John and Joe and Elmo and Kim and so many others who have committed the major years of their lives to teaching young people to be excellent Christians!

Well done, Oklahoma Christian!

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