toxicity of vision

One of the things which I think sucks the life out of individuals in the church is "Visionary thinking". It rife. It comes from a corporate culture which runs on goals and objectives. It acecpts 'collateral damage' for the sake of the cause. 

Its interesting how when you set yourself aside from this type of church driveness, you begin to see its toxicity. You can see it in yourself. Everything is evaluated by it. Should I have tea with this person. Mmmm Better to have tea with these people they have more of the skill mix the church needs. It starts to rot to the core.

Its interesting for me that when we dropped the 'vision' stuff at Ranges The place took on more of an organic feel and even more interesting people seemed to grow.  Peoples own vision where encouraged and the Churches place was just to blow air, to encourage the flame.

Naked pastor has written 'frustrate visionary thinking' on how to frustrate vision thinking in the church. Here is a snippet::

1.  It is one thing for individuals to have personal visions and dreams. It is the application of these to a community that is dangerous.

2. Don’t see the church group as an entity, but primarily a voluntary gathering of free individuals.

3. Similarly, the church as an entity cannot fix people’s problems or make their lives happy. It is their own responsibility that other individuals can assist in.

4. Embrace diversity of thought and expression. Do not set goals for the church.

5. Do not measure success in terms of numbers, money or reputation.

6. See that mission is expressed individually. Each person is salt and light.

7. Any corporate mission that is genuine will seem spontaneous and have an “of course” feeling to it.

8. Share the oversight of the church. Avoid autocratic rule that provides the richest culture for visionary thinking.

9. Don’t pretend to know the future of the church prophetically, statistically or otherwise. You don’t!

10. Respect the pressure the people are under to want a king, to desire favor, and to think in terms of marketing to promote success. Almost all the literature available is written by successful pastors of successful churches. But don’t bow to this pressure.

The Naked Pastor.

It was with a bit of sadness for me that the "Naked Pastor" David Hayward announced on his blog that he is no longer pastoring a church.

I’ve left the professional ministry. I was ordained 25 years ago. I was a student minister before that. It has been a long hard haul. But I’ve gradually come to the realization that I can no longer work inside of the system. I no longer seem to fit within the institution.

The reasons I'm sad is that David is one of the few really alternate voices within the Vineyard denomination. While I had given up on the denomination, he was a voice which gave me hope. 
Anyway it will be interesting in following him where the next part of his journey leads. It will be rather exciting!

miracles

David Hayward, who used to blog under "The Naked Pastor", has once again put up a thought provoking post. "I've never seen a miracle". The basic premise that there are plenty of miracles around us, a sun rise, reconcilliation forgivness etc. Yet the type we hear in charismatic or penticostal churches are non existent. Its a big statement to make by David, pastoring a Vineyard Church (I think) which was built on "Signs and Wonders"

But I have to come out of the closet and admit that I’ve never seen a “miracle”, like someone’s sight restored, or a limb replaced, or cancer cured, or the lame walk, or someone brought back to life (I’ll have to tell you the story some time of a guy who tried to get me to sneak into the back room of a funeral home just before the funeral was about to begin to pry open the coffin and raise the man from the dead. I weaseled my way out of that one!). Not that I don’t pray for these things to happen. And I will continue to do so. I am human and in times of great love or fear I cry out for any help at all. But I have never seen it happen.

I pretty much agree. I give a sigh of relief. That when people claim them in church settings there is a "mob" mentality to it. Where the group/congregation talks themselves into it.

Yet I don't discount miricles all together. Strangly my experience of miricles have been more dramatic outide of the church than within it. When I did my stint at palliative nursing there where a couple of amazing times of when people would be discharged from our books. Alive, and not Christians. (Oh no not the thought the devil can heal as well).

Codependency

The Naked pastor has come up with one of his lists again that gets me thinking. This time on codependency. He aimed it specifically towards the pastor and his Church; although it could be anything including husband and wife.

1. I believe I can change him.
2. I depend on his money to live.
3. I would rather be loved poorly than to not be loved at all.
4. I believe there is a decent person deep inside of him.
5. I can’t picture life without him.
6. I help him. He needs me.
7. I keep things calm by repressing my true feelings and personality.
8. I accept that I am called to suffer for this, even though I am often sad or even depressed.
9. I feel incredible guilt even when I just think about leaving.
10. I can’t listen to the advice of others to get out. They don’t understand

Its sad but I could see this in a lot of churches. It is in many ways a good judgment of Church health...

The renewal virus

Naked pastor put up and interesting post "Spiritual Infections"

...something I notice in charismatic type churches, or churches who have been connected in any way with the renewal movement: we are more transient. We’re looking for something. And if the church loses it or doesn’t provide it, we’ll be faithful for as long as we can, but eventually we’ll move on. When I was a minister in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, I never saw anything like this. There are many churches in this area that people move around in. Like certain birds, we tend to migrate around to wherever it’s hottest and most agreeable. Renewal and charismata does something to us. And it ain’t all good. It plants a discontent deep within us that can never be satisfied, at least for long. I know what I’m talking about because I fight this restlessness all the time. As messed up as it was, Corinth, the conference capital of the Roman world, would’ve been my drug.

A few relections on his piece::

::I think he is right. This transient nature has left especially in mainstream Melbourne Churches hardly anybody of that type in the buildings!
::Pentecostal Churches seem to be the biggest winners in terms of numbers to the migration.
::I wonder if the new explorations of liturgy has something to do with this renewal infection. Eg Todd Hunter who has gone from renewel to a jumping in with the liturgy of the Anglicans. I must admit I'm attracted to it, but only in terms of breathing new life into my spirit. Not some repetitious mumbling of words of which I grew up with.

Naked Pastor attends the Frank Viola conference

I was interested to read on Naked Pastor's blog, his thoughts on the Frank Viola conference which he attended. I was especially interested in his thoughts regarding the parallels to the Vineyard Movement.

Viola says that he has been outside of the institutional church for over 20 years. But the problems that he admits so beset the house-church movement sound remarkably similar to what, say, my denomination, the Vineyard movement, presently struggles with. The issues of theology, purity, passion, mission, power and authority, money, commitment, isolation versus networking and clustering, are identical. We are all talking about the same old solutions to the same old problems.

Im glad that the Vineyard movement has moved on from this stuff a bit. That for us in the Vineyard Catalyst network there is the ability to do House church stuff, that Frank Viola talks about.

I'll be continuing my look at Frank Viola's book Reimagining Church on this blog and I'll drag some of my previous posts of the ranges blog across as well.