passion or details

I just tracked down Bruce Cole. That name won't mean anything to most of you. Some of you have heard me talk about Bruce over the years.

Anyway, he is one of about 5 church leader types I have learned a great deal from over the past 7 years. My peer group spent a week with Bruce two years ago in Chicago.

Well, Bruce has started a new church in the northern suburbs of Chicago called "Elevation Church."
to learn more visit their web site
to learn about their core values and vision visit here
And I would encourage you to read Bruce's personal blog

Now this leads me to some quick reflections:

I think we have become more bogged down again in the details of running a church than the mission of being a church! What I get from reading Bruce and Elevation Church is a clear sense of their mission and who Jesus Christ is...which is their mission to share. I also got that sense from HeartSong Church in Memphis where Duane and Beth Ewing (former members of Fairlawn-West) go now. The worship style wasn't my cup of tea, but their sense of church and mission hit me right in the heart! Mission won out over even worship style!

I have fallen into a maintenance style. Maintaing Fairlawn-West until I can retire. Yep, that's it plain and simple! That came throught to me clearly as I read Bruce's blog.

I need to get the new Cabinet together as soon as possible and we need to start talking and leading about what is the mission of this church...as Tom Bandy puts it, "Its all about the Gospel. Everything else is tactics!" My feel is that we are becoming a "club" again and making it more about us than reaching out to others. Our small groups or discpling groups are as slow as molasses in reaching out and multipling. To reach out to others does not mean abandoning the Gospel or chintzing on who is Jesus. That's core. Central. And that means we don't get hung up about what we want personally. We live more in a culture that is Jesus fed than is personally needy and wanting. That leads to a strength and confidence not in ourselves but in the story of Jesus we find ourselves in (to paraphrase Brian McLaren...see his blog, it is wonderful). I have found myself falling back into trying to convince people at Fairlawn-West to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. I can't convince any of you. That reality simply is. I can live in its shadow of reality and confidence though instead of not trusting its reality and power. I have fallen into the trap of arguing over whether the Bible is central to our experience as a means of telling the story we find ourselves in. That is a false trap and a dead end road. God is the great convincer not me!

Here is an excerpt from Bruce's blog that summarizes it all for me:

The best T-shirt I've ever seen says, "Jesus, save me from some of your followers." There are lots of different kinds of churches out there and lots of different messages about who God is, who Jesus is, and what it means to believe in God and in Jesus.

A lot of churches are just plain boring and irrelevant and turned inward. No one goes except for a handful of people who go because they always have and don't know any different.

A lot of messages about God and Jesus are destructive. I'll just say it - even if it seems edgy: The message I hear a lot is, "If you died tonight and met Jesus, what have you done that will convince Jesus to let you into heaven." Straight up - that's the message of a lot of churches, even some very large churches. That message may help get people to behave better sometimes (emphasis on sometimes), but I don't think it's a message that ultimately gives life to people.

Here are some messages that I think give life:

• What landed Jesus on the cross was the preposterous idea that common, ordinary, broken, screwed-up people could live lives of joy and meaning and hope. The main messages of love and forgiveness really are the main messages.
• All of us - every single last one of us - is in some state of brokenness and untogetherness. Everyone.
• Spirituality is not a formula or a test. It's a relationship in which we let go of seeking perfection and instead we seek God, the one who loves us already, right now, unconditionally, guaranteed, no strings attached. That's grace, by the way. It's not about being "fixed." It's about God being with us when we're broken. In fact, the messes we find ourselves in are the workshops of authentic spirituality.
• Jesus is not repelled by us, no matter how messy we are. Therefore, we should not be repelled by each other (if we really want to do what Jesus would do).

I'm flat-out convinced that Lake County needs a compelling, relevant, vibrant, wide-open, church, that stakes itself on those commitments - on the commitments that:

• All people matter to God.
• God couldn't love you any more, and God couldn't love you any less. God's love is infinite.
• It really comes down to this: Love God. Love People. The rest is details.

There are lot of churches that believe all of that. But somehow, they get inbred, idiosyncratic, stuck in traditions and practices and ways of structuring that have nothing to do with authentic faith and spirituality. It's just that they've always done it that way. The problem is they're dying on the vine and if anyone actually took the risk of walking through the door, they would soon turn around and walk out, and not come back.

The message of God?s grace - God's unconditional, guaranteed, no-strings attached love - dramatically changes lives when that message is shared in creative, attention-capturing, authentic, relevant and passionate ways. How do I know? Because I've seen it happen and I get e-mails about it. You all know that I resigned as the lead pastor of Joy! in Gurnee on January 26 of this year. After I resigned, I received hundreds of e-mails. I saved them in a folder on my computer labeled "Grace."