Learning from the Church-at-large

These sites have video of their services. Good stuff.

Crossroads Church in Denver, CO has a great instrumental variety, solid trinitarian view of worship and (I think) writes a fair amount of in-house songs.

Granger Community Church in Mishawaka, IN is an excellent example of top-notch production quality mixed with simplicity in worship. They do a great job of making their specials shine.

Mars Hill Church in Grandville/Grand Rapids, MI is Rob Bell’s baby and has music that is just as unique (in a good way). “Why not open the worship service with a Marching Band drum cadence?” someone once likely asked at a service planning meeting. It’s cool.

And now a note on looking at other churches. I think it’s important to question what God is doing in your community that is unique and therefore calls for a unique ministry. Continually commit to indigenous ministry. Then (and only then!) look ot other churches for inspiration. That’s just my 2 cents.

Amazon’s Top-Seller List

Do you ever wonder what people are reading (or, at least, buying?)
Amazon updates their top-sellers hourly. It’s interesting to swing by and see what’s “hot”. This, of course, raises the question of whether the top seller list reflects what people buy or if the top seller list makes people buy stuff, thus moving it up the list. Is the list responsive or prophetic? Which raises another question: is Oprah the omnipotent being of print media?

You can check out the Amazon top seller list here

The Servant Leader vs. the Pragmatist Leader

Our internal thesaurus usally equates the title “leader” with “boss”, “numero uno” or “a monkey could do their job”. We’ve all been in scenarios where…

The leader knows how to get things done, yet in the process doesn’t know how to treat their people

The leader doesn’t know how to get things done, yet things come together amidst chaos (we’ll call this the Michael Scott syndrome.

If John Maxwell were to have a Simpson’s-like catch phrase, it would be “Leadership is influence”. Rick Warren is often heard to say (beyond other things) “Leaders are readers”. Both of these statements are true, at least in my experience, and have been a catalyst in equipping church leaders and pastors for the past 15 years. (By the way — I think I’ve heard every one of John Maxwell’s Injoy Life Club tapes — I found a giant batch of them in my home church basement). I know the 21 laws. I’ve seen Purpose Driven in many vehicles. These have made a difference, no doubt.

But now I’m learning about the leader as a servant. The writings of Robert K. Greenleaf are what fill one of my textbooks for my MA program. Let me tell you that this is not just another textbook. Greenleaf is the founder of the Servant Leadership movement. I’m not suggesting that John Maxwell et al don’t write from the perspective of servanthood. But their philosophical perspective on leadrship is that of pragmatism, meaning that success is measured by consequence. While the goal of leadership/management is to bring positive consequences, it can be devistating to focus only on results. Greenleaf focuses on the importance of developing the person, both the leader and the follower, and that positive results will naturally follow.

Greenleaf suggests that a servant leader is a servant first, which means that the desire to lead is secondary to the desire to serve. Go ahead and read that again. It’s important.

Servant leaders…

make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served

knows that the greatest aim is for the served to grow

communication with those you serve is a two-way street; it’s not what the leader says but rather what is heard by the follower that truly matters

This way of thinking about leadreship is less about pragmatism (results-oriented) and more about morality (people-oriented), which assumes that organizations that are being served and strengthened by servant-leaders will naturally bring about positive results. This is the aim of pragmatism. Both may bring the same results but do so by starting from almost opposite perspectives. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.

Application for the local church:

Is the health of a team measured by their end result or their process? Specifically — is a Worship Team better off by producing great music or by being developed as worshippers? Okay, so it’s both/and. But is it equal? What do I find myself focusing on as a leader? Chances are it will be what I’m good at, which raises another question: do I need to develop my servant-leader skills or my pragmatist-ledaer skills?

What are the responsibilites that I have as a pastor/leader to my people? The Apsotle Paul had a sweet balance of pragmatism (be sanctified!) with servanthood (encouraging, comforting) as seen in his letters. Am I spending enough moments in introspection to know where my people are at? Where I’m at?

Where’s the pressure? What are the expectations? Why is it easy to ignore servanthood in lieu of pragmatism?

May the Lord help us to serve our people as we aim together for meaningful results!

Vijay Iyer

Vijay is a jazz-fusion piano rocker who rocks my elementary school socks off. With a PhD in music/physics (his dissertation included the study of effects of music on of culture, since music is pretty much, well, everywhere) and an uncanny skill at marrying seemingly opposite genres, this guy is worth the listen.

This is important for the 21st century church musician because of the evolution of the musical taste of culture. Think about it — the iPod makes it so that I’m not forced to listen to the same slice of musical style “at home, at work, everywhere!”. Our personal mp3 players are an ongoing experiment in fusion. Think about it — when you ask the typical guy on the street “what’s your favorite style of music”, what will their answer be? Probably something along the lines of “I like all kinds of music…except ________”. They sometimes don’t even fill in the blank, though if they do, it’s usually filled in with “country” by those who truly love Jesus.

I believe the hipness of music in future church is its ability to transcend musical flavors while still staying true to its core purpose — not musical expression to a group of people but rather using music to help a group of people make an expression of worship to God. How does a new era of musical tastes in our communities — some of which is more of an awakening on our parts as leaders rather than of the culture — give us insight to what will be an appropriate and powerful use of this language that speaks to every person?

Check out the Detroit Free Press article on Vijay Iyer (VID-jay EYE-ur), our fusion musician of the week, by clicking here.

LibraryThing

Have you heard of Library Thing? It’s an online library database manager that takes the card catalog, digitizes it, and puts it in my own house. Emily and I have been adding my books (and her books to her librarything file) and we love it. Check out my catalog which, at last count is only up to 201 books (with much to go).
This probably isn’t for everyone, I’m sure. But it is the perfect tool for a guy like me who buys too many books, since it’s getting to be pretty tough to keep track mentally of what I already posses.

I’m not sure at what point I got hooked on books. Some of it has to do with the fact that most of the “role models” in my early life had metric tons of books in their homes & offices. I remember my dad reading Mack Bolan books by the grocery-bag full. And the Pastors at my childhood church (not its real name) probably had over 1,000 books each in their offices. So I saw that reading was an important part of ministry and still do. One pastor that I follow on a regular basis claims that he reads a book a day. Rick Warren says that leaders should at least skim a book a day — how purpose driven! The purpose is simple: we must keep learning.

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