I’m a NASCAR fan, and on Sunday’s in the religion of left
turns and second place is just the first loser, commentator Darrel Waltrip is
fond of preaching two counter-intuitive formulas for success. #1—“Loose is fast.” It’s his way of telling that if you want the
fastest car, you have to have a set-up that keeps you uncomfortable. “You’re driving it,” he says, “but it feels
like your wrecking it on every lap.” #2—“You
have to slow down in order to go fast.”
Last Sunday I preached the divergence of two scripture stories
describing the disciples after Jesus’ resurrection. One story from Acts 5 (a story that you may
have attended Church all your life but never heard of), describes disciples breaking
the rules, being chased by police, enduring jail time, sprung in a jail-break
orchestrated by an angel and re-sent to defiantly preach Jesus crucified and
risen. Another story from John 20 (that
we tell in Church almost every year), in its most-popular form describes fearful
and doubting disciples hiding behind closed, locked doors.
I think in spite or because of our best efforts, too many
churches have ministry and mission models that mimic “hiding out.” We’ve developed building-centered identities
where our “witness” is safely showing the world our faithfulness in gathering for
weekly, hour-long meetings; and, it “appears” the rest of our lives can be
disconnected (like Church and State) from our church attendance and religious
beliefs.
It’s no wonder we choose John’s story, though. If we followed the example from Acts 5, we’d
surely feel the uncomfortableness of feeling like we were wrecking on every
lap! So to ensure crash avoidance, we
over-adjust our car’s set-up so it always feels like we aren’t wrecking. Yet we end up being so safe we can’t keep up
in the race! While we’re dramatically
under-performing, “inside our buildings and practices” where we breathe the air
of deeply held beliefs and tried and true practices, we errantly insist that “not
crashing” IS winning.
But most people know better.
So, with disappointing results—too many empty pews, unfunded
budget line items, and dreams of former glory—we ask ourselves questions
like: What can help people come to
Church— or (at least) come to worship? How
can we go from under-performing to over-performing? But often, these questions give rise to MUCH
speculation from INSIDE—where we breathe the air of tradition and
success-that-once-was-ours. In response,
mostly internal speculation that scrambles for what appears to be working in
other churches gives way to “quick-fix” or populist ministry based on
attraction. In order to try and
replicate the programmatic successes we covet, we narrow our first move down to
picking tried and true programs to duplicate.
Sometimes, you just have to slow down in order to go
fast.
Waltrip, as strange as it sounds, preaches a NASCAR wisdom
of carefully “backing off”—slowly rolling out of the gas and not working the
brake so hard—to let the car negotiate a turn without the driver aggressively
over-driving the corner. The result
generally is that you go faster, except that it feels like you’re slowing
down.
As congregations consider how to create new ministries,
conventional wisdom is to avoid “re-inventing the wheel” by choosing something
that’s been tried and tested. But a few
months ago, I was impressed with a presentation at a NEXT Church event by a couple of pastors
from Baltimore. They described work that
“looked a lot like” those disciples in Acts 5.
But they labeled the start of this Acts-mimicking-ministry with a process
where LISTENING was the first step. It
sounded easy. You just ask people what
they wanted or needed, and then built a program around that need. Piece of cake, right?
Not so fast. Literally!
The kind of LISTENING they advocated wasn’t the simple
survey kind—“here, fill out this form, we’ll collate the data and get back to
you when we have a solution you might like.”
Rather, it was a form of deep listening that required a kind of
incarnational community involvement that necessarily reverses some of our
evangelistic thinking. We have to stop
looking into the community and asking, “How can the Church get some more
members out of here?”; and instead, recognize the essential nature of the
Church supporting, enhancing, and growing the community as a whole. We have to begin to see and understand that, “The
community doesn’t exist for the Church; rather, the Church exists for Jesus
Christ AND for the sake of the community on Christ’s behalf.” Can we discern what the community needs that
the Church can participate in fashioning?
It might even require that a church have partners in the community!
In Baltimore, the experience of listening paid off only when
the listening was followed by a season of wrestling and discernment within the
Church. Leaders described a circular
pattern where listening was followed by discerning or wrestling, followed by
choosing an action, followed by evaluating the outcome. “Wins” didn’t just describe successes, but
were the natural result of carefully studied failures and learnings. In fact, failures (opportunities to learn and
grow from actions that underperformed expectations) were required before almost
every “successful outcome.”
The journey starts not with a conversation around, “What can
we do?” or by borrowing someone else’s set-up.
Rather, we must start with a conversation about “How can we listen—to those
around us?” Followed by a conversation
about “How can we serve—those around us?”
Followed by a conversation about “How can we act—in response to those
around us?”
I’m convinced this is model that will ramp up our ministry
and really make it hum along.
The problem? It feels
like we’re slowing down. Avoiding self-interest
and especially self-promotion goes against every conventional wisdom of
increasing BIPs (butts in pews). And it
feels like we’re going to crash long before we get someplace meaningful.
©
Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of
Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania
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