Bill Easums Observations

More and more churches are reporting to me they are having conflicts over the sports schedule and the churches schedule. This has been a growing problem since the 80s.

Just recently I received an email from a client I’m coaching asking my advice on what to do with just such a problem.  In this case it was with the youth ministry- secular sports were taking kids away from the churches scheduled meetings. Here is what I told him.

 Why not see this as a missional opportunity and train your youth to be ambassadors for Christ and participate in the sport rather than being at the youth group. Instead of fighting it, or bad mouthing the sport for conflicting with church, equip the youth to participate in the sports as an ambassador for Christ.  Let them know their church is behind them if they will practice their Christianity in a way that it brings people to Christ and the church.

I think we place too high a premium on church attendance.   Most of our people spend too much time a church and not enough time sharing their faith with their neighbor. We have led our people to believe that attending church is the mark of a Christian. But it’s not. The mark of a Christian is what we do in our everyday lives.  So help your youth minister see that their participation in the sport is more important than being at church. If he has too, let him count them in attendance when they are gone for sports or for practice. But also encourage him to equip them to represent the church while they are there and to know that you, the youth minister, and the church support them being missionaries to sports.

That’s the way I would handle it.

by Bill Easum ©2010

I’ve lived through a number of seismic shifts the last twenty years.  These shifts have changed the way I think and consult and I’m watching how they have affected effective pastors. Those who haven’t assimilated these shifts lead declining churches and those who have assimilated them are leading growing churches. So I want to share them with you if the hope that you will incorporate them into your ministry. I’m only going to list them here.  If you want the full story, check out our website www.churchsoncultations.com and register to get our newsletter – On Track.

I’ve noted the shift from-

• more to less ministry
• the church being the hub of the community to being an outcast from the community
• congregational form of governance to apostolic leadership
• growing the church to growing the Kingdom
• place determining the scope of ministry to God determining the scope of ministry
• homogenous congregations to multi ethnic congregations
• churches that plant a church to churches that have church planting as their DNA
• seeing more churches close every year than are being opened to more churches being planted each year than being closed
• mainline dominance to the rise of the non-denominational church

The interesting about these shifts is that they are just the tip of the iceberg when you think about the next couple of decades. Who knows what these shifts will cause to happen in the future? Stay tuned for what will be a wild ride.

Want to know the whole story? Go to www.churchconsultations.com

A friend of mine, Rick Melheim, sent me the following and suggested I put it on my blog. It’s worth the time to read.

“I watched six hours of the “LOST” preshow, the final episode, and Jimmie Kimmel’s post-show interviews last night and woke to write a piece called “Lost… Without Jesus” at www.richmelheim.com just now. It starts with:

It was brilliant.

It was intricate.

It was clear.

It was confusing.

It always kept you guessing.

It usually kept you coming back.

It was the longest-running sermon in television history.

It was all about redemption.

It was all about choices and consequences.

It was all about chance and second chances, and the myriad of alternate possibilities based on those chances.

It was, in the end, all about laying down one’s life for one’s friends.

It was Lost.

And also in the end, all of the Lost who laid down their lives for their friends were found.

Without Jesus.”

I was just getting ready to do a blog on the comparison of heresy in the first few centuries to that of today since today is so much like the 1st century, when I received a post from one of the members (Anne) of our Advanced Leadership Forum asking if our group had seen the recent The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life Entitled “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths,” the report points out that many Americans are now choosing to “blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs. USA Today had the same info on the front page last Friday.

Anne asked the question: do we need to relax the faith in order to reach these people? Here is my response.

The key to what I’m about to say lies in my belief that the 21st century is more like the 1st century than the 20th century.  And the key to this likeness is the existence of rampant blended forms of polytheism. Both centuries can be defined as the age of polytheism. When Paul spoke at Mars Hill he had to pass through literally dozens of altars to various gods of the time. He even found one dedicated to the unknown god which became his jumping off point for his message that day.

But if you’ve been watching Ophra you saw all of this coming.  Ophra is one of the biggest promoters of blended polytheism on the planet today.  She mixes and matches all forms of religion and faiths.  And she thinks she is doing good for people- helping them find a faith that works for them by taking a little here and a little there and mixing it all together.

Oh, I know. She has done lots of good.  But so did the witches in the medieval times. But they were heretics. Anyone who believes in any form of the occult is a heretic according to the Scriptures.  And that leads us to the heart of this post- Mashed up polytheism always leads to heresy.

Any quick reading of the New Testament or study of early Christian history shows that one of the main issues they dealt with was heresy.  For instance: many of Paul’s writings were denouncing heretical acts or philosophies; many of the early writings outside the Bible were attempts to refute growing heresies such as the Gnosticism, Marcionism, Montaism , and the list goes on: and all of the historic four councils prior to the fifth century were about the heresies growing up around who was Jesus and what did he actually do and what is his relationship to God and us.

So back to Anne’s question about how to deal with all of this. It’s a good question and one that should be front and center in today’s jungle (and you are correct Anne, it is a jungle- see our new book Doing Ministry in Hard Times). If the 21^st century is more like the 1^st century than the 20^th century, and if heresy abounds today as it did then, we have just one recourse- to fight it with everything we have. We must not capitulate by watering down the Gospel or holding back on what we believe because we are afraid to hurt someone’s feelings. To water down the faith in the hope of reaching someone for Christ only results in a weak faith and a weak convert. Instead we should become more firm in what we believe. We shouldn’t be swayed by the argument that culture has more to do with how you interpret the Gospel than the Gospel itself.  Timeless truth never changes.

We should also quit falling victim to the propaganda today that because of the many centuries that have gone by we should reinterpret the Scriptures to fit our times- another form of heresy. The Scriptures don’t need defending or reinterpreting. That’s one of the reasons I have been in so much dialogue with the Emergents.

Folks, we are entering a time when, like the first century, it will call for everything Christians have to withstand the onslaught that is about to come our way. Every day we lose a little more of our right to exist. It’s slow, like the frog in the kettle; we lose it little more of our right to exist in the eyes of the Western world. If we believe the 21^st century is more like the 1^st century than the 20^th century, then we also believe that persecution of Christianity will be on the rise the farther we go into the 21^st century.

If you need help processing what I just wrote, remember 9/ll.  And if that doesn’t do it read an article on Huffinton Post by Frank Schaeffer, a New York Times best-selling author, posted an article on Huffington Post on June 10th entitled: “Understanding Domestic Terror USA — It’s About the Twisted Theology Stupid!” This article literally names evangelical Christianity as the primary source of domestic terrorism in the United States and that calls on the Secret Service and the FBI to investigate and “infiltrate” pro-life and evangelical Christian groups. The statements that Schaeffer makes about evangelical Christians in that article are absolutely chilling.  In fact, there are reminiscent of the types of statement the Nazis would make about groups they sought to demonize in the 1930s.

When you start seeing a respected, New York Times best-selling author make statements like these on one of the largest political websites on the Internet, then you know the rampant persecution of Christians is just around the corner. Basically Schaeffer stopped just short of advocating rounding up all evangelical Christians and shipping them off to concentration camps.

No folks. Now is the time to be more firm than ever in what we believe. This means we should have little to no tolerance to heresy in our congregations (Now that should hit a nerve). It means that some people need to find Jesus or quit playing church. They are doing more harm to Christianity than the nut balls who call Christians terrorists. In the first century they kicked these folks out of the church. Should we do less?

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com
easum@aol.com

There seems to be a movement under foot to discourage people from wishing one another a Merry Christmas. “We don’t want to offend anyone so let’s water it down and just say ‘Happy Holidays’.”  Hmmmmm.  Something’s wrong with this picture.

To wish someone a Merry Christmas is the same as  proclaiming the “good news of great joy that will be for all people.” Christmas is Good News! It is a reminder of the birth of Jesus. It’s the prelude story to our salvation. Why should we water down such good news?

In stead of watering down our holiday greetings to include everyone, I think we should be more aggressive in saying “have a Merry Christ-mas.” Let’s put the accent where it belongs.

Now if you’ve read any of my stuff you know I’m not advocating arrogance. One of my favorite questions to ask is “How is one a rabid Christian without coming off looking like a bigot?” I’m simply saying Christians should be a witness to their faith.  And we should be allowed to have a special holiday to celebrate our faith. Everyone else does and they don’t water it down with “Happy Holidays.”

So go on – wish me a Merry Christ-mas- I dare you.

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com

I sat watching my recorded session of Meet The Press. I had a tear in my eye. 20 years ago the Berlin Wall came down and freedom was returned to East Germany.  It was a great site to watch again how the people from both sides of the Wall celebrated its destruction. Hammers, picks, screwdrivers, you name it, were used to do away with one of the most brutal symbols of evil in our lifetime.

Then a horrible feeling crept into my heart- the more freedom people have the more complacent they become.  Nowhere is this truth more pronounced than in our faith. It seems the more freedom people have the less they understand the importance of their faith and begin to take it forgranted. But bring in persecution, as we have seen around the world (take the Mao regime for example), and the more faith people begin to exhibit.

Bonhoeffer, in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, called it cheap grace- Grace which is presumed upon, taken for granted, and in the worse cases spit upon.

God help us Americans not to take either our freedom or our faith for granted. Both are precious and both should be worth giving our all.

The latest edition of Leadership Network Advance had this headline – Freeze of Hire! The headline followed with examples of how some churches are handling the economic crunch the country is experiencing today.

It wasn’t long ago a survey was done by I forget who, but they were reputable, in which the conclusion was drawn that most churches weren’t being affected by the economic downturn. I think perhaps the survey was taken too early.  Most of the churches I hear from are experience financial declines up to 20% or more. These churches range from very small to mega churches.

Every financial guru I hear from says we are entering a jobless recovery that will take as much as three to five years to rebound enough that some jobs will be added back. And most of them are saying it will be longer than that, if ever, before we return to the levels of jobs and consumption we saw before the bubble burst.

That’s why my partner and I wrote the book, Doing Ministry in Hard Times, and published it online while waiting for my publisher to get it in print. The book is designed to bring churches through the crunch much stronger on the other side by knowing how to strategically dream. Instead of across the board cost-cutting the book shows what to always cut in hard times and what to always add to in hard times.  It seems the book is still needed some 9 months after its release in digital form.  You can find the book at http://21stcenturystrategiesinc.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=11_1&products_id=372 .

It marked the beginning of a profound cultural shift and the gradual end of five hundred years of modern history known as “Modernity.” It caused polite society to blush in anger and teenagers to dance with joy. It went virtually unnoticed by church leaders even  though it was to have a profound effect on Christianity.

May 10, 1954, New York City became the fault line between Modernity and what would later be referred to by many as postmodernism.  That was the year and the place in which Bill Haley and His Comets un-leased upon the world what would in time become the most important song in rock and roll history and the first to reach number one on the charts – Rock Around the Clock. And most of the world was in for the ride of its life! And yet most of mainline protestant leaders either shrugged it off as a non-event or spoke out against it.

That same year, in Benton Arkansas, Modernity was given another fatal blow. Sam Walton began experimenting with ways to outsell his competitors by offering lower prices. Over the next four decades what has become known as Wall Mart replaced the neighborhood grocery store as well as any other store that carried what Wall Mart carries and the landscape of much of the U.S. was changed. Small was no longer so beautiful. Big was becoming better. Surely this had nothing to do with the fact that during the same period of time the rise of the Mega church got underway. Or did it?

That same year mainline denominations were enjoying the zenith of their prime.  The Seven Sisters of American Protestantism, as they were referred to then, were thriving, without a hint of what was to happen to them in less than ten years.   After all, most of them were too big to fail.  Sound familiar?

1954 was also the year I was introduced to Christ for the first time and my life was turned upside down and set on a totally different direction than I had previously chosen.

Fifteen years later, I was introduced to what was about to become The United Methodist Church. At the time the denomination boasted some eleven million members, second in size only to the loosely associated Southern Baptist Church, and not one of the Seven Sisters mentioned earlier. All I knew about Methodists was what I had learned by reading John Wesley. I fell in love with his form ministry. Little did I know at the time Wesley was little more than a vague memory for most Methodists.

Still, this once behemoth of a denomination gave me a place to live out my call and became my spiritual home for some forty years and counting. Many of my life-long friends were found in its midst. It also became the springboard for my consulting ministry which has brought me into contact with more than forty different Christian denominations.

Over these last twenty years of consulting ministry, I’ve come to love and respect a variety of denominational expressions of faith.  So it saddens me to see what is happening to them. Every one of the Seven Sisters, in spite of merger after merger, is only a shadow of what they were when Bill Haley ushered in the rock and roll era. My own denomination has plummeted from eleven million members to slightly under nine million members since 1962. 

Why is it that established Christianity always seems to be the last group to adapt to major change? It’s been over 50 years since Rock Around the Clock and the vast majority of established congregations in the U.S. still cling to a Lawerence Welk type of culture? It reminds me to the difference between the church at Jerusalem and the church at Antioch. One hunkered down in the past and had to be subsidized and the other forged a new path to the future.

Makes one wonder if the two huge movements underway today, church planting churches and multi-site churches, in time will become so established they too will miss the next great cultural revolution, say like the virtual church?

Just some food for thought from one who cares deeply about Christians who languish in the past while missing all God is doing in the present.

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com