John Meunier

Adam Hamilton’s book Selling Swimsuits in the Artic includes the assertion by him that everything we do in church is sales. He is passionate about that and – obviously – has figured out how to translate that vision into a large and influential church.

But – and maybe I just don’t have the gifts for that kind of ministry – I keep finding the comparison between sales and spiritual work ill fitting – like a borrowed suit.

Are we in sales? Is preaching just another kind of selling?

Mark Covington has taken my thoughts about super-circuits and added some of his own. If we are serious about thinking in new ways, ideas such as the ones he suggests deserve some serious discussion.

One notion he has is essentially farming out smaller churches to the staff of bigger churches. That is what we have happening in effect these days with some big churches creating new campuses and alternative worship sites. Rather than pioneering whole new sites, perhaps existing churches could partner to create the same kind of synergy that must be happening to make this a good idea elsewhere.

Neither his thoughts nor mine may hold up to serious consideration, but the conversation alone would be a significant advance.

A number of years ago my wife and I took our son to children’s concert on Mother’s Day. The performer was a fellow named Tom Chapin. He was at an auditorium in the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. Chapin’s music is folksy and fun with funny lyrics he writes himself. A typical song goes like this:

Before the days of Jello
Lived a prehistoric fellow
Who met a maid and courted her
Beneath the banyan tree

And they had lots of children
And their children all had children
They kept on having children
Until one of them had me

So, that day Tom Chapin was playing his guitar and singing his songs. And he gets to into an instrumental riff. While he’s strumming away at the strings, he steps a bit closer to the microphone and says, “I see we have some really cool people here. Some really cool people who like to sing. Some really cool people who like to clap. Some really cool people who sway with beat. And some really, really cool people who are so cool that they don’t move at all. We call them “dads.”

Read the rest of this entry »

God is good.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

The Spirit is with us.

Grace UMC in Dallas picked a theological fight with a giant Baptist congregation over the issue of homosexuality. The Baptist preacher had preached “Gay is not OK” and little Grace came back with the retort “Why gay is OK.”

Now the North Texas UMC bishop has been drawn into the issue. As the newspaper blog put it, he writes “Gay is not exactly OK.”

The Associated Press’ story about our new $20 million marketing campaign is pretty skeptical about the chances of the campaign doing any good.

Charles Mathewes, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia and editor for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, said that instead of new marketing campaigns, mainline denominations could become more popular among young people by making worship more accessible and offering youth-centered programs.

Mathewes said the ads “might draw in some people, but at the same time it’s unlikely to accomplish what they want.”

My parents are high church and moderately conservative Episcopalians. This means they have to grimace and fret frequently when their church is in the news.

I have a feeling the latest high profile convert to their denomination will not make them all smiles.

Dan Dick has some excellent thoughts and guidance about trust and truthfulness in churches and our connection.

My first repeated text after a bit more than a year of preaching. Dare I go read last year’s sermon?

There is so much here, I find myself struggling to narrow it down. I spent some time tonight praying for guidance and calling to mind each member of my church as I tried to discern what message – what focus – to bring to my sermon this week.

(Having a small church has its advantages. I can pray over every member in this fashion. I’d like to see Adam Hamilton try that!)

But it is still a swirl.

Our community is griped by the news of two boys were burned horribly in a gasoline fire. Does the image of the fire that does not burn need to be dwelt upon? My mind is drawn to that again and again, but it seems such a small part of the text – like missing the central thrust to spend time over these thoughts.

And are these my thoughts alone or the thoughts of those who will hear it as well?

Should my time be spent more with voice and equipping? The power of the Holy Spirit. The tongues. The mocking crowd and Peter.

What word does the Lord have for my people this week? I am still waiting for it to come to me like a rushing wind or a tongue of fire.

Some folks look at a county full of small, country churches and see wasted resources and inefficiency. Letting such congregations perish or languish on their own seems like the wisest approach as denominational energy and resources are redeployed to more fruitful areas. There is not much bang for the buck to be had out there among the cow pastures, people say.

The one idea I hear – and the folks in the pews fear – is consolidation. Collapse all these small churches into one of reasonable size so you can have the critical mass to do effective minstry and support high-quality worship.

But that kind of idea runs counter to the cultural setting. Or it seems to. A big, suburban mega-church may not ever make sense or be possible in places without much population density. You just can’t force the demographics or the psychographics to work.

What if instead of consolidating buildings, you consolidated staff? We do this with 3- and 4-point charges in way, but I’m wondering about staffing in rural settings as if you had a 10- or 12-point charge. If you could create super-circuits rather than single super-churches, you would have a staff – probably still have to be very lean – running a dozen or so worship experiences at a dozen different sites.

This is in a way what we do now with our district superintendents assigning various local pastors to small congregations, but there is – in many places – almost a complete lack of support and oversight. Pastors are on their own out in the field, which can be both good and bad.

A super-circuit like this would perhaps allow a critical mass of resources and the creation of an actual staff of pastors who can bring together the benefits of good team work. But it would remain committed passionately to local worship. It would be like a multi-campus church with very small campuses spread over a county.

Would it be a mess? Perhaps. It surely would be complicated and likely infringe on the independence that many local pastors enjoy. And some bigger small churches that now support elders might refuse to go along with becoming part of such a circuit.

The primary benefit I see is development of a ministry team with enough resources for mutual support and growth and the ability to create real linkages among congregations. To make it work, the local congregations would have to experience the ministry team as a source of better pastoral care and more engaging worship than they can get in the current model.

The dollars and cents may be impossible. I do not have enough experience or knowledge to know. But, I’m tyring to think through the way to get some of the benefits of size in a rural setting without trying to create a church structure that violates the culture. If we are going to be missional, after all, we should be missional even where we’ve been for a long, long time.