Singing cheerful songs to a person with a heavy heart
is like taking someone’s coat in cold weather or pouring vinegar in a wound. - Proverbs 25:20

We sing cheerful songs. We celebrate the things that God has done. God is good all the time, and we sing about that. But, what about the guy whose wife just left him? What about the woman who just found out she had a lump. What about the kid who is living with struggles to fit in? What about that person who carries a heart of pain? By how I lead, do I sometimes say “Just sing a happy song and it will all be OK.”

Sunday night a guy I knew from high school showed up at church. His life was crashing. His wife and he were separated and he was incredibly lonely. He was broken. He knew he had made a mess of things. His heart was heavy. Anybody could see that. He had no use for happy-clappy songs. We talked for a bit after the worship gathering. He is not ready to make a commitment to Christ. More than anything I wanted to sweep him into a community that would connect and love him and show him Christ. At a critical life-changing moment, he came to the church. He is looking for connection and answers. Will we be able to offer what he needs? My hope is that we will. My fear is that we will not.

But we do have some great happy songs.

photo by: darren copley

These notes are from Joseph Myers’ seminar “Organic Community” given at Northern Seminary, May 2008.  They are rough.  I’ll post a session each day (6 total).

Power.  Participation. 

Power:

Flowchart model - hierarchy.
They exist in nature, but how? Revolving.  Something else in the room holds the power - the project holds the power.

A specific project gives power to the project leader.  Hierarchy comes under them.  People give up power, knowing that they will get it back.

3 keys to encouraging organic order:
Project holds the power
Focus in the whole
Cross-helping

Participation:

People participate:
as individuals, not as teams and groups
in a decentralized, local way
With whole of lives
Congruent with WAY they are asked

These notes are from Joseph Myers’ seminar “Organic Community” given at Northern Seminary, May 2008.  They are rough.  I’ll post a session each day (6 total).  

Language.  Growth. 

Language has huge power

English is taking a major shift from noun-centric to verb-centric

Greek and Hebrew are verb-centric (most important part of sentence is verb)

    Indication of changes
        Word clustering (more words used to describe words - ex “small group”
        Internet
        Acceptance of quantum theory

Don’t use nouns to describe something that is alive.

Growth

master plan leads to bankruptcy, organic to sustainability

large lump models ——- incremental maintenance patterns ——– bankruptcy

    ex:  big house, can only make payment, no $ for repair, bankrupt

    ex: 100% in small groups - they drop out as youth leaders, etc

piecemeal model ———- quantum leap growth patterns —— sustainability

    Do one semester and see how it goes

Flash growth - ex 40 days of purpose. OK and healthy but don’t expect it to remain

Consider before you launch next initiative:
    Will it deplete resources?  Community life?  Devastate the whole?

Compassion
Community  (good fun)
Hope
This all leads to . . .
Challenge
Reasonability
Commitment

   example - Get married out of compassion, community, hope.  That lead to challenge, reasonability, hope

Raising money - don’t head close to challenge, reasonability, commitment.  Limit scope. 
Studies show that most people who come and claim your church want to give.

Salvation Army raises almost more money than any other org - they use compassion, community, and hope

These notes are from Joseph Myers seminar “Organic Community” given at Northern Seminary, May 2008.  They are rough.  I’ll post a session each day (6 total).  

Measurement.  Partners. 

We measure what we perceive to be important.

What you measure guides your process
What we do not measure becomes less important

“I hired you for your best thoughts, not your every thought.”   
Numbers tell a story.  Don’t take the story out of the numbers.

All stats and research is fuzzy.

How measure significant relationships
3-5 stories -types

Quite fuzzy here.

Pre-measure -  define and measure the future before it happens

If this is your land, where are your stories?
    Indian Chief before Canadian judge over land dispute
    Point:  tell me the stories of your land - not the numbers

TELL STORIES

Partners

We almost always get what we ask for
    Sometimes we ask for the wrong thing or give the wrong idea

I Cor 13:5 - love keeps no record of wrong.  Love is not an accountant.

Accountability - means no love.  Turns into keeping record.

Need an editor - their job is to make you sound better.

These notes are from Joseph Myers seminar “Organic Community” given at Northern Seminary, May 2008.  They are rough.  I’ll post a session each day (6 total).

Spaces

Larry Crab quote on community

People communicate thru 4 spaces:
(from Edward Hall, 1960’s)

Public          12′+
Social        4′-12′
Personal    18″-4′
Intimate    0-18″

It’s more in our head than in reality

To help people with belonging:

The four spaces:
We connect
We are committed and participate

Spaces:

Public
Connect thru outside influence.  Can people be committed and participate only thru public worship gatherings?              Yes.

Social Space
Connect through share snapshots about who we are (pictures of their life).
        Facebook.  Blogs
        It is important for people to build snapshots.
        Aside:  when people divorce they need to rebuild    snapshots.  Lost “we . . .”  need to make new “I . . ”

Personal Space
Share private (not “naked”) experiences, feelings, and thoughts

Intimate
Share naked experiences, feelings, and thoughts
Naked and unashamed. In garden - naked and unashamed.  Sin. Naked and ashamed.

Persons who described themselves as having healthy relationships had . . .
8 public
4 social
2 personal
1 intimate
    Note:  numbers not important.  Half as many from top

Many congregations want high public and high intimate.  This is not healthy.

A person is only built to handle 1-3 intimate relationships in their lifetime.

yes-voting.com/org - google this.  Healthy way to make decisions.

These notes are from Joseph Myers seminar “Organic Community” given at Northern Seminary, May 2008.  They are rough.  I’ll post a session each day (6 total).  

Organic.  Patterns. 

You don’t get to choose who belongs to you.  They choose.
Give up patterns of who you choose.

You don’t get to choose how they give, when they attend, how they serve.

If God is omnipresent, isn’t everything sacred?
Treat everyone like they are family - regardless if they are sheep or goats, weeds or wheat

How do we do church in a way that allows people to choose?

Moving from Master Plan (programmer) to Organic Order (environmentalist) - handout

Talking about an organic order.  Organic has a pattern, an order (ex Sun always rise in same place)
Still need vision, goals, etc - but still being organically ordered

Be as intentional about connecting people as you are about going to sleep.
    Can’t make yourself go to sleep.  I can intend (make it cold, dark, etc).  Can create an environment that raises the likelihood that I would go to sleep.

CREATE ENVIRONMENTS INSTEAD OF FORCING PEOPLE

Master plans are great for building airplanes, but maybe not for human life

Patterns.
Everything in nature has a pattern.  Nothing is random.  Even waves of ocean have a pattern (even with weather, ships, moon, etc)

Drawing a face on paper with grid (divided on 4ths and 5th).  It has a pattern.  None look the same.

There are patterns that people use to connect, but hardly any of them will connect the same.  My kids don’t connect the same way, neither will our congregation.
    We imply that if people don’t connect to Church in the same way, they will not experience the fullness of     community or God.

All of us collect small groups of people around us.
35% of people need help with a connection at some season in their life

Common myths of belonging:
    More time = more belonging
    More commitment = more belonging
    More purpose = more belonging
    More personality = more belonging

My ?:  what, if we took it away from you, would cripple your sense of belonging?

These notes are from Joseph Myers seminar “Organic Community” given at Northern Seminary, May 2008.  They are rough.  I’ll post a session each day (6 total)  

Jesus Redefines Community

Disagree with me if you want.  Just hang with me for a few moments before you write it off.

Picture of sardines - what do you see?
Fishes swimming in ocean - what do you see?

Community and belonging is more natural than unnatural.
Shouldn’t it be easier to get people in community?
Maybe we are going about it an unnatural way.

Paint by numbers or on an empty canvas

Teach them to become artists toward community rather than paint by number

Most people who don’t attend church are afraid the will end up with less of a soul than they have now (will kill them somehow).

If we really knew the God of Jesus, we would stop trying to control and manipulate others “for their own good” knowing full well that is not how God works among his people - Brennan Manning

Get in trouble when you use your strength to excess.

The condition of unconditional love: not to love to excess
To excessively love someone is actually to not love

Give almost enough help to be helpful.

Matthew very interested in who belongs to God and who does not

Mt 1:1-17
    4 women in genealogy (Rahab, Ruth - note, they were not Jewish)
    Introduces non-male bloodlines and non Jews.  OT was clear - Jew = people of God

    Weeds and wheat were growing together in genealogy.

Mt 13:24-30;36-43
Some who were not believers, but they lived together.
If the weeds were not growing together with the wheat, something would be missing.  The wheat may be             better with the weeds growing with it.  God sends his angels to pull - we are not the reapers, it is not time

Aside:  Everyone in life is here to help us see God better.

Lk 10:25-37 -
Jesus specifically asked - who is in (who is my neighbor)
    Genealogy of grace with Good Samaritan
    2 men pass by because the would be unholy
        Compassion trumps holiness every time
          God would rather you be compassionate than holy
              

Mt 25:31-46
Sheep and goats.  Continuation of weed and wheat, here the reapers have come.
    People surprised.  You may not know if you are sheep or goats

Mt 15:22-28
    Canaanite woman - there were no Canaanite’s during this time  ????
    Son of David - genealogy.  Pits 2 sides against each other
    In essence calls her a goat, weed
    Dog- not pets.  Not part of family.  Calling her a female dog.    really????

    Meanest Jesus has been - why? Tongue in cheek, to show disciples what it is like to speak bad from the     heart (in reference to context of Mt 15:18-19 - from mouth comes what is in heart)

    Redefines lost sheep of Israel to include this woman

Jesus redefines community.

Ken Davis is a brilliant communicator.  One hilarious guy and as solid as they come.  I attended (and graduated) from Ken’s Dynamic Communicator’s Workshop, where I personally met Ken and his wife.  Note: if you are a communicator, this workshop is a must.

The quote below is from Ken’s blog.  I thought I would try to summarize it, but the guy says it so well. 

When an artist performs and lives with genuine integrity and heart it shows.  The power of his or her music is intensified exponentially.  When the origin of the music and lyrics comes from the same genuine heartfelt kind of source, the power is multiplied again.   I can sing one note.  That’s the extent of my range.  I encourage my musically talented artist friends to write and sing from the heart.   Everything else is just business.

“Everything else is just business.”  Amen.

Carlos at Ragamuffin Soul (one of the best blogs on the dub-ya), has a great post here, where he summarizes a recent talk by Jon Tyson.  Given the current happenings at Willow, it leaves many of us scratching our heads (again).  An excerpt:

The church with an Alpha male leading it is setting itself up for failure because the only person that can replace that leader when it is time is someone with equal qualities. A 10 replacing a 10. Therefore we need not build churches around great communicators but around 5 different pastoral leaders with different gifting. He named them.
Willow Creek is a prime example.
Bill Hybels steps down as Alpha male leader.
Hires 3 AMAZING communicators.
All resign after a while because they are only great. Not Hybels.
Bill Hybels now resumes Alpha male role.
So the main point is that there MUST be a rethinking of the current church model that is sweeping evangelical America.

Much to chew on.

Photo by Ruxor

I had a flashback last week.  We are going paperless and are converting all our songs to Planning Center Online.  In an effort to do so, I was going through several years of songs in my files to import them into PCO.  On several occasions, I would pull chord charts from my hard file and say "We seriously sang this?"  I’m not even going to mention some of the songs we used to do.  The memories are just too brutal.   I even found a song that I wrote and had forgotten about.  Judging from the lyrics, it was just as well :>

Even worse, I have to wonder if I will be going through my files in 10 years and thinking he same thing of the songs today.

Shawn has been working like a dog to get everything converted to Planning Center Online.  Once we are up and running (soon), I will post a review here.

Photo by spierzchala