Missional, Athiests, Maintenance

Two blogs in two days created a link in my brainpan. First, GuyMuse posted this list that he saw here. After the list, read the money quote from the athiest who sold his soul on ebay. Make the connection.

The List

Maintenance or Missional

1. In measuring its effectiveness, the maintenance congregation asks, “How many visitors have we attracted?” The missional congregation asks, “How many members have we sent?”

2. When contemplating some form of change, the maintenance congregation says, “If this proves upsetting to any of our members, we won’t do it.” The missional congregation says, “If this will help us bless and touch someone outside of our faith community, we will take the risk and do it.”

3. When thinking about change, the majority of members in a maintenance congregation ask, “How will this affect me?” The majority of members in the missional congregation ask, “Will this help align our activities around the missio dei — the mission of God?”

4. When thinking of its vision for ministry, the maintenance congregation says, “We have to be faithful to our past.” The missional congregation says, “We have to be faithful to our future.”

5. The leadership style in the maintenance congregation is primarily managerial, where leaders try to keep everything in order and running smoothly. The leadership style in a missional congregation is primarily transformational, casting a vision of what can be, and marching off the map in order to bring the vision into reality.

6. The maintenance congregation is concerned with their congregation, its organizations and structure, its constitutions and committees. The missional congregation is concerned with the culture, with understanding how secular people think and what makes them tick. It tries to determine their needs and their points of accessibility to the Gospel.

7. When thinking about growth, the maintenance congregations asks, “How many Christians, who aren’t currently members, live within a twenty-minute drive of this church?” The missional congregation asks, “How many unreached people groups live within a twenty-minute drive of this church?”

8. The maintenance congregation looks at the community and asks, “How can we get these people to come to our church?” The missional congregation asks, “How can we go and be engaged with these people?”

9. The maintenance congregation thinks about how to save their congregation. The missional congregation thinks about how to plant new missional communities to extend the Kingdom of God.

Now the Athiest's money quote

Clearly, most churches have aligned themselves against non-religious people. By adopting this stance, Christians have turned off the people I would think they want to connect with. The combative stance I've observed is an approach that causes people to become apathetic—and even antagonistic—toward religion as a whole. Many evangelical pastors seem to perceive just about everything to be a threat against Christianity. Evolution is a threat. Gay marriage is a threat. A swear word uttered accidentally on television is a threat. Democrats are a threat. I don't see how any of these things pose a threat against Christianity. If someone disagrees with you about politics or social issues or the matter of origins, isn't that just democracy and free speech in action? Why do Christians feel so threatened?

You need to spread the message of Christianity—the message being what Christianity stands for—loving each other, helping the people around you. Those are things everyone can get on board with.

Also, atheists … we're not non-believers. We do believe in a lot of things, but they come from other experiences and other encounters, not necessarily a book.

Here's the whole interview with Hemant Mehta.

Fun with Videos

A few videos I shot in Sudan.

.50 Cal Game: A game children play with .50 caliber shells (26 seconds)


Kids Singing (5 seconds)


The main Pastor we worked with using the EvangeCube and communicating with a deaf child. (20 seconds)


Welcome Song from a group at a church plant (26 seconds)


Playing Traditional Music Instruments (26 seconds)

Church Plant

Speaks volumes, huh?
Shot in Kajo Keji by Radler.

Another Lesson from Veggie Tales

From the Out of Ur blog, a few money quotes:

In 2000, Phil Vischer was running the largest animation studio between the coasts, had revolutionized Christian family entertainment by selling thirty million Veggie Tales videos, and was named one of the top ten people to watch in worldwide religion. Vischer’s vegetable empire, better known as Big Idea Productions, seemed poised to become a Christian Disney.

But by 2003 the dream was over. After a heartbreaking court decision, later overturned on appeal, Big Idea declared bankruptcy and Vischer had to sell the company’s assets, including his computer animated characters Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber.

My evangelical upbringing said more impact is better. It’s better to be Bill Bright than Mother Teresa. Better to impact millions at once than one at a time. God has given us limited time and resources and we have to help as many people as possible—not just two or three. Mother Teresa should have franchised a system for feeding the poor on a massive scale. She needed an MBA.

What is your understanding of success now?
Now I understand God has a unique journey for each of us with unique measures of success. Now I ask myself, have I done what God has asked me to do? Am I walking with him daily? Success has very little to do with where I end up. I don’t know exactly why, but we seem wired to look for numerical results for affirmation. But success in ministry cannot be about measurable impact.

emphasis, mine)

Read the whole thing.