Carey Nieuwhof

A Bias Against the Bible?

This post isn't about the media or 'secular' society.  It's about people who say they follow Jesus and our attitude toward the Bible.

The last month has brought me into contact with an attitude I've seen over the years that just doesn't seem to go away.  The attitude?  Nearly everybody wants to hear from God, but a lot of Christ followers really don't like to read their Bible. 

Let me say that again - a lot of people just don't like to read their Bible.  So they don't.  And then they wonder why they don't hear from God.

The issue's been a live one during our Signs from Beyond series - I really believe we mostly hear from God through scripture - not direct revelation. 

But I've heard variations of this over and over again over the years and intensely again in the last month:

Yeah, I just don't really read my bible.
I find the Bible too confusing.  
I don't get anything out of the Bible when I read it.  
I wish God would just speak to me directly.  

Bottom line:  if you don't access God's word, your probably not going to hear from God.  And your faith won't grow.  And you won't develop an intimate relationship with Him.  And you will end up making foolish decisions because you didn't consult God, but then you'll blame him for your misfortune.  And you'll be frustrated because you'll think God bailed on you.  But in reality, you bailed on Him.

As to whether the Bible's too hard to understand, I'm not sure that ultimately holds water. Check this out. 

No, I'm not in a bad mood.  I'm just sayin.... Because I've seen it over and over and over again.

What do you think?  Do people like to read the Bible? Do we read our Bibles? Is it too hard to understand?

On Monday, I'll come back with a plan I'd like to propose to change people's views about the Bible. In the meantime, chime in....

Now You See It - No You Don't

There's a verse in Hebrews that gets me every time.  I know it's two verses after the 'famous' verse, but I like it better than the famous verse. 

Here's what Hebrews 11:3 says:

What we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.

The writer is talking about how God formed the universe.  Imagine being there in the moment before anything we now know was created, and God saying "this is what exists in my minds eye: Solar systems, planets, oceans and forests, people and duck-billed platypii."  

And you and I would have said "Huh?"  We couldn't have seen it.  It hadn't been created yet.  We would have had no category.  What we were about to see wasn't going to come from anything we could currently see.

Which is kind of how God always works.  

Which, if true, leads us to a disturbing question: what God had planned for you might well come from nothing you can currently see.

That's only a problem because people of small faith (me - you?) love to walk by sight.  We operate best in the known.  Tomorrow is a lot safer if it looks like a slightly improved version of today.  It seems controllable.  It seems safe.  It's predictable.

What if your trust and my trust started operating on a level that so implicitly submitted to God that if tomorrow completely dis-resembled today, it would be fine?  What if we were so open to God that tomorrow might look radically different than today?  

Often we're willing to settle for a better version of inadequate because our fear keeps us from trusting God for anything better.

What we can see did not come from anything that can be seen. The best stories of faith operate on that principle.  

______________

Abraham, I'm going to make you into a great nation.   

Yeah, but I'm old and have no kids and my wife is way past the baby years.  Like that's not even possible!

What you will see will not come from anything that can be seen.

_______________

David, you're going to be king.

But there already is a king, and I'm just a boy and I'm the runt of the litter and I'm only a shepherd.

What you will see will not come from anything that can be seen. 

_______________

Peter, come and follow me.

You, rabbi?  But like I fish for a living and I kind of failed out of Hebrew school and if you really are who you say you are I promise you that you've got the wrong guy.

What you will see will not come from anything that can be seen.

_______________

So - what if God is calling you to something that can't be seen right now?  Would you go?  Would you do it?  Would you trust him that much?

What if thousands of people started trusting on that level today?  What would happen to our lives, to the church, to the Kingdom?

Because what we can will see is probably not going to come from anything that can be seen right now. 

An Open Letter

Dear Hip 2B Holy Viewer,

If you happened to have watched Hip 2B Holy on Global, and you're one of the people who hasn't gone to church for a long time or ever, this letter's for you.

First, I just want to say sorry for keeping you away for so long.  The church has not done a particularly good job of being clear or even being open to people who aren't part of our club.  That needs to change and I hope it is changing.

Second, sorry for any and all anger directed at you by Christians.  I'm always amazed that Jesus rarely had a harsh word for religious "outisders".  Instead, he kept his harsh words for insiders who didn't reflect God's heart (usually religious leaders).  How we got it backwards, I'll never know. So for the times we've held placards denouncing you and whatever your group stands for - sorry.  It's not like Christ to attack the people He died for.

Third, sorry for behaving like Jesus died for the church.  His compassion and affection were actually sent for the world, not just for a small minority of people or peoples.  When Jesus died and rose again, we were all covered by that.  Sometimes we in the church behave like it was for us only.  That's wrong.

Fourth, sorry for making it so hard to understand what God is saying.  If you've tried church, you realize that often we just get "weird" about how we do church and we make it hard for someone with no background to understand what's happening or going on.  That needs to stop.

Finally, while the documentary did a great job in many respects, I felt a bit bad about its portrayal of mainline Christianity.  Yes, it's in decline.  Yes, I was in mainline circles for a decade and left, but there's no bitterness.  There are pockets of life and some fantastic Christ-followers in mainline churches.  Wish that had come out.  

There is a lot more to be said.  But the bottom line is this: Jesus loved this world passionately enough to die for it and offer us new life.  

I hope you can be part of a new dialogue - a new beginning.  Many of us are still getting our heads around what it means to be loved by God.  I don't fully understand it. 

When we gather, we want to create an open, accessible, even irresistible environment in which people of all backgrounds and life-stories can come together to discover grace, forgiveness, transformation and hope.  

We need you.  We need skeptics, doubters, people who think they are beyond the reach of love, people who feel the whole Christianity thing is garbage.  We need you in community - in our community, to be part of the community and part of the dialogue.

Thanks for watching...If we can help in any way, we're in.  Post a comment.  Drop by our website. Send me an email.  Come to one of our services or drop by a church in your neighbourhood.  

There's a powerful message and relationship with God that's really worth exploring.  I hope we can do that together. 

Carey

The Orange Families Podcast

I'm already getting  questions from people about how they can get their hands on the messages for the Orange Families series that started last Sunday at Connexus.

This is a huge series for us, because we built our church around a family ministry strategy.  In Orange Families, we're covering for the first time the parenting strategy that Reggie Joiner and I have been developing over the last year.  I'm so excited to share it with our families and the wider church community (some of you have heard snippets of this on the Orange Tour and at last year's Orange Conference, but this is the first full run at it).

The easiest way to get the messages is via the Connexus Podcast. Just go to iTunes and search "Connexus Community Church" and our audio and video casts will pop up (don't have iTunes? click here.)  Subscribe away.  It's free.

You can also go to our website where we stream the messages.  You can also burn a DVD for yourself off our site.  Click here.

If you are a church leader or volunteer who wants to know more, I'm teaching a breakout at the Orange Conference on how to position your church to maximize a parenting series.  Orange is an awesome conference (you have to get to it) and, if you're interested, the breakout covering this is called "Communicating the Family Ministry Strategy to Your Church". 

Really looking forward to the next five weeks of Orange Families.  Excited by how God might change families because of it!  Looking forward to hearing your feedback and comments!

Shift - Clarity

Been doing way more twittering than blogging lately (y'all on twitter yet)?  But I do have a few thoughts that take more than 140 characters to express...so I'm resurfacing....

I've been thinking about shifts that we'll see (or that we'll need to see) in the church in the next five years, and I want to outline a few that I'm wrestling with.  Some of these shifts are already underway - some might yet need to happen. Would love to hear what you are wrestling with too.  Some of these are really thinking in pencil.   But the church and culture are always moving and changing.  Sometimes it's hard to spot the trends ahead.  So hereogoes.

Shift One - Clarity
We're exposed to a wider variety of choices every year, but is more always better? There's a growing opinion that excess choice leads to paralysis.  Faced with ten options, people start to feel overwhelmed and end up either doing nothing or making an ill-informed choice.

And yet companies like Apple, Toyota and Honda, who offer surprisingly little choice when compared to their competition, are gaining market share, not losing it.  Increasingly it seems like people would like fewer choices among quality products rather than a sea of mediocre options.

How does this translate into church leadership?

 People can't follow a fuzzy calling, random messages or muddy strategy.  Here are three shifts I think need to happen in churches:

• Our call needs clarity.  There can be a temptation to play to bigger and better.  But you can get there by shuffling Christians out of a church that is slightly less hip or relevant than yours.  Bad move.  Ultimately, if I am not over the top crazy in love with Jesus and the people Jesus died for (read 'the general population), I probably ought to quit.  I am struggling more with this call now than I have in a while, and I think that's a good struggle.  You can play to an audience in the church or give your life to loving and serving the world for which Jesus died.  He usually doesn't call people into ministry to impress the already-redeemed. 

• Our message needs clarity.  Too many of us have walked out of a 40 minute message and asked what on earth it was about.  The application isn''t clear or (often) is non-existent.  In the guise of being "deep", the content is over people's heads or obscure.  Maturity is sometimes defined as being able to sit through long sessions of these.  I know as a preacher I am constantly being challenged to be clearer, simpler and more direct in the messages I give.  It's much harder to be clear than to be fuzzy, but I think people would be so much better served if we shifted to clear, applicable and easier-to-follow messages.

• Our strategy needs clarity. As ministry leaders, we often let random things happen in our ministry because we have no clear plan or path in mind and don't like saying no.  If you pick up a church program or browse a web site and no clear path is in place, how do we expect people to make progress?  If you're not sure where you're going, any path will take you there.

What's your take on the need for clarity?  Do you agree?  Where else might we need to become clear?

Great Ideas

I love getting around leaders who make me think.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to be at the North Point staff meeting where Reggie Joiner spoke. 

After serving at North Point for over 10 years, Reggie left the staff there to devote all of his time to ReThink.  As part of that move, he's traveled the country meeting church leaders.  Yesterday, he shared some of his learnings.  Here are a few highlights that got me thinking:

• People who are anti-mega church tend to be the people who already go to church.  That hit me pretty hard.  Obviously, large churches do a pretty good job of attracting unchurched people.  Church people find large churches too big.  I'll chew on that one awhile.

• Maybe the job of the communicator is not to resolve tension, but to create it so that people leave having to wrestle with what was said.  I love that!  I think that happens a bit already in good preaching, but what would happen if we made that a goal?  In family ministry, we say that what happens at home is as or more important than what happens at church.  Maybe that's true of big church (when adults gather) too.  

• You can tell people they are significant, but until you give them something significant to do, they won't feel significant. Okay, that's just way too true. It made me think - maybe the problem of burnout in churches is not that we have given people too much to do, maybe it's that we've given people too many insignificant things to do. 

What do you think?  Do we need to create more tension - more wrestling, in preaching?  Do we ask people to do things that are not really significant?  Is there anything wrong with a large church?

PS. If you want more stuff like this, you might want to get down to this conference where this kind of sharp thinking will be all over the place.

Dangerous Questions (4)

When we started this little series a week or so ago, a friend emailed this question in:

How would fully realizing that I am 100% fully, completely forgiven affect how I react to people who have hurt me?

To me, that's a bombshell (good bombshell) question. 

What would be different?  What grudge would you have left to hold?  What relational funk would there be left in any relationships?  Is that actually what heaven will be like?  If Jesus died for our sins, doesn't that mean we can experience that now?

I have had moments - just moments - in my life where I think I saw the power of that thought.  A glimpse.  My heart melts.  Then the moment is gone.

What if that was true in our lives today?

What do you think?

P.S.  Tomorrow, we turn it over to you to ask your dangerous questions.  Can't wait to see what you're asking.

We Interrupt This Series to Simplify Things

Okay church leaders, we're not done the Dangerous Questions series (a landmine question coming next), but here comes a quick break to share this.

I'm a bit of a passionate/crazy Simple Church advocate.  What's the philosophy of simple church?  Rather than offering a hundred programs in ministry, we offer very little in terms of ministry options at Connexus, believing that less is more. That philosophy is even reflected in our slogan... Real Life...Simplified.

So for adults, all we do is Sunday morning and community groups.  That's it.  We believe so strongly that community groups currently offer the best impact for life change that we don't want to muddy the waters.  We just picked our best option and we're running with it.  That's it.

I always challenge church leaders with this: if you can't explain your ministry strategy on a dinner napkin, it's too complicated.  If you can't say it in a sentence, you probably don't understand it. 

A simple ministry model is to church what Apple is to computing, what Toyota and Honda are to the automotive world.  Rather than offer dozens or hundreds of mediocre choices, they offer very few choices but what they do offer is high quality.  And as this article points out, it's working.  At least for Apple.  And one might argue for Honda and Toyota.

I know this is still controversial, but several years into a simple church model, I'm so glad we made the change.  It might not just be a good church model/business model, it might also be a great life model.  Pick a few things, and do them well. 

Just sayin'....

Dangerous Questions (3)

Here's a question that I hope disturbs your day and my day enough to force us to answer it. I think I heard a version of this question a few years ago (can't remember who, just don't want to steal credit...), and I wished the question stuck in my head every day.

Are you doing anything in your life that absolutely requires God's help to accomplish it?  If not, you're probably not doing anything significant.

As much as we say we want to trust God, most of us would rather have our lives unfold so neatly that God isn't required.  We'd rather have reward without risk and success without sacrifice.  We'd rather get a guarantee that it's all going to work out than have to engage in activity so risky that it actually requires trust every day.

So most of us settle. Life with limits.  A little house in the suburbs.  Better furniture.  A church that we could build on our own strength.  Just big enough, but nothing daring.  That's a good life.  Yeah, but it's boring. And it doesn't require God.

But

• if you're hanging onto a marriage you don't know how to fix...that absolutely requires God's help to heal it...you're doing something significant. 
• If you are are leading a mission so different from what others are doing that no one thinks it will work but you're convinced it will lead people to Christ...you might be onto something significant. 
• If you're living at a level of sacrifice that actually forces you to pray to God because you're not sure you've got enough left over for yourself, you're doing something real.
• If your day starts uphill against the wind every day because you're attempting to obey God, then you're doing something significant.

And you might, actually, be trusting God.

You Reading Your Bible?

So it's Sunday, and due to a 5:50 a.m. phone call from a friend whose car broke down and needed a ride to Connexus this morning, I haven't cracked YouVersion yet today.  But I look forward to reading it tonight.

If we've tracked together at all, you know that daily bible reading is a core discipline for me.  The more I am in God's Word, the more alive I become. 

Just have to reiterate how refreshing YouVersion has been for me this year.  I don't get any commissions or kickbacks or even have any interest in YouVersion, but let me try to tell you why I like it:

• As a guy who has read a paper Bible for all my life and surfed online Bibles for research purposes for a few years now, reading my daily passages on the YouVersion iPhone app has been fantastic (it works on iPod touches too).  Somehow seeing the text on a screen makes it jump and pop in fresh ways.  You can read it off a regular browser too - not just off your phone.

• It's classic web 2.0 stuff.  You can keep an on line journal, see what others have to say about a text, add video to help comment on a passage, switch translations and more, plus...

• You can read in community.  I love reading in community.  To do this even more personally, you can "follow" people on YouVersion and they can follow you, and and RSS feed gives you easy access to their comments.  My friend Pat Dryburgh sampled this on his blog recently.  Enjoy.

• If you have trouble sticking to a reading plan, not only does tell you what to read every day, but the people who follow you and encourage you to stick with it.

If you want to join our journey, just follow me (search my username: cnieuwhof) and I'll follow you.  We'll be able to track together.  YouVersion is showing up a lot on Twitter these days...yet another layer to the community (you can follow me and many others who are daily Bible readers on Twitter too).

So...all of this is to encourage you to get into God's earth shaking, mind altering Word in 09 if you're not already into it.

What do you like about your personal bible reading...however you might do it?