Hugh Halter

Tonight, I joined about 12 young guys in our intern community house for a beer brewing evening. This has been a consistent activity our guys have enjoyed together and I always go away thankful for the freedom to be with brothers and their non-believing buddies in this great monastic tradition.

Over the three hour time, I was able to meet two guys who are not Christ-followers. I learned of their story, their jobs, the things they enjoy doing, and I was able to tell them a little of what I do. I was able to work with two guys who are working on an important video that will accompany the The Tangible Kingdom book we’re releasing in a few months: I got to share a good solid 5 minutes getting to know a great young man that has been coming to Adullam for about a year, but who I’ve not had much private time with: I got to hang out with two guys that are in our MCAP leadership training, watch a little tennis match online with another young man that came to Christ in our community last year: I was able to help plan a city wide “beer and theology tour” we’ll be kicking off around Denver this year and give leadership to my brewing understudy who has become a beer master: I also got to love on a young couple that has become dear to our people through their struggle with alcoholism and domestic abuse: I was able to help coach and listen to a great young guy about his dating relationship and job woes. And Ye, I also got to enjoy some great homebrew.

I share all this, simply because I’ve enjoyed a lot of evenings like this. Quite a few people over the years, especially church planters have asked how we were able to gain so much momentum so quickly. Well, here’s the reason. We make time to participate in 3-4 hour evenings together over an activity that will bring both saint and sojourner together. In doing so, I am able to multi-task evangelism, leadership development, incarnational modeling, pastoring, strategic planning and I have fun. Yes, I used to have to initiate these evenings before, but now they invite me and I look for ways to maximize my time with people I love. This night I wasn’t planning on doing any of these things. It just happened. The key is that I showed up!!

The key to incarnational life and ministry is nothing more than being in the room, at the bar, in the club, on the path, at the school, in the restaurant…as much as you can.

hughdogout

Tonight I took my 21-year-old son Ryan to a basketball game. To be honest, I wasn’t excited to go. I was pooped and wasn’t in the mood for a loud gymnasium.
Ryan has severe epilepsy, and has since birth. His team is cornucopia of developmentally disabled people from 14-20 years of age. Most have Down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, or retardation. Some of them are cute, but most are severally unattractive to look at and watching them struggle to talk and walk, let alone play a functional game of basketball is pretty tough.

Imagine the scene I am watching right now: Ryan is double dribbling the ball with both hands all the way down the court and no one is calling a violation. After he airballs from 12 feet, someone from the other team throws the ball back so he can try again. Another airball. So this time, another kid takes the ball to Ryan and invites him to step a little closer while the other kids clear the lane so he can have a clear shot. He shoots, and the ball bounces around the rim, but falls to the side. All the kids pat him on the back and congratulate him for getting close.

As the other team now comes back down the other way, a girl in a wheel chair is being pushed by anther team member. She has the ball in her lap. She’s gripping it tightly but needs another persons help hold her head up. She is drooling uncontrollably from the excitement of getting to play. They wheel her right under the basket and another team member asks her permission to shoot for her. He makes the shot and they all give her a hug, as the shooter unassumingly runs back down to get ready for the next play.

This goes on and on until every person gets some meaningful experience in the game. All the parents root for everyone and no one looks at the scoreboard because no matter what the real score, the scorekeeper keeps the game even.

No one loses, no one is a loser, everyone counts, appearance or capacity mean nothing, everyone is dependent upon each other, no one is ashamed of failure, thankfulness for life is the one constant, and everyone can’t wait to see each other next week because of the experience they just shared.

What if church was like that?

Breaking through the perfection of this picture of church, however, are two people I’m looking at right now. One is a father who is sternly talking to his son who just came off the court. He seems to be intensely pushing his son to try harder. If I wasn’t writing this blog, I’d like to go over there and throw him off the bleachers! His son has Down syndrome and constantly smiles, except in this moment where he’s getting asked to do something beyond his abilities. The game was a blast until expectations of others shriveled his heart.

The second individual is the oldest player on the court. While the beautiful picture of the perfect church happens before my eyes, this disabled kid is about 6’ 4” and actually is quite athletic, probably good enough to play on a normal high school team. He has apparently watched too much pro basketball, because every time he gets the ball, he does some creative head-fakes, hits a 25 foot jumper over the wheel-chair girl and after the swish, yells “That’s right…who’s your daddy?!” as he holds the arrogant pose.
The first guys reminds me of so many lay members who’s expectations of performance suck the heart out of a church. The second guy reminds me of some pastors I’ve seen who call people to play at their level without realizing the normal constraints of life for the average Joe.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

I help facilitate an online collaborative learning environment for incarnational leaders, pastors and church planters called the MCAP.  Each week we coach leaders who are trying to influence people without the programs often associated with attractional church.  We find that even the most entrenched denominational leaders know we’re on to something and want their best and brightest to get our training, but eventually we get asked if we measure success…and if so, by what?

In the past, the Christendom report cards measured numbers in attendance, number of salvations, number of small groups, number of new churches, or budget numbers.  Essentially “numbers.”  Even though we all felt as though this can’t be God’s measurements, we found it hard to break free and find other thing to look at to see if we were being good leaders for God.

Without getting into too much detail, let me throw out a few ways we evaluate our faithfulness to God’s call.  Because most of us are dysfunctional westerns who can’t count movement, I’ll  guise it in the idea of numbers.  These will be in no particular order of importance.

1)    Number of new relationships formed where I know their names and they know mine.
2)    Number of people who have been uniquely blessed by me and my community.
3)    Number of people who invite me to be with their friends who don’t follow Christ.
4)    Number of ways, my street, neighborhood, or community are more livable because of my influence.
5)    Number of Christians that are actively confronting their consumerism and making adjustments at the life level.
6)    Number of Christians that I ask or persuade NOT to go on mission with us.
7)    Number of incarnational communities that commit to form around benevolent action instead of just a bible study.
8)    How long people remain at our weekly gathering after the formalities are over.
9)    Number of community-based initiatives our people are supporting with their time or money.
10)  Number of young leaders we’re intentionally developing.
11)   Number of people baptized: Still is a great guide to judge a persons commitment to follow Christ with the    community.
12)    Number of Bibles purchased because someone asked for one.

There are twelve quickies that work well for us.  You’ll notice we don’t count “professions of faith,” church attendance, church budget, or number of churches started.  We don’t think they historically measure anything real or transformative.

Jesus taught us to look for the real, when he said, “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.”  The context of this scripture is to warn against false prophets and false teachers.  A bit harsh as an illustration, but I think the times require that we forcefully challenge the emptiness of our judgement upon what is successful and what is a waste of time.

To denominational leaders, this new report card will be tough to swallow initially.  However, I often encourage this new direction by reminding leaders that people are leaving everything related to our past success indicators.  The questions of irrelevance should propel us to look for new signs of life instead of clutching to what is dying and eroding away.

Long term, we do expect that churches will be born and that financial statements will increase and that conversions will be easy to find.  But we don’t start there or expect it prematurely. If you begin with the old goals in mind, you won’t live out the incarnational presence of Christ one person at a time. If you start with the latter, you’ll eventually find that people are following you and that they stay together in a missional form called….a church.

We’ve all read accounts of times in Christian history when people were judged on face value of some comment or affiliation, and later deemed to be a heretic. Just pondering quickly, I think of Martin Luther hiding out as his present day church leadership tried to kill him for his strangely literal interpretation of Romans; the Salem witch hunts just several hundred years ago where many innocent, God fearing women were burned at the stake for having the wrong color hair or tone of voice, which certainly indicated they were of the devil. In my lifetime, I remember the outcry over Bill Hybels in his early days for his “seeker-sensitive” programs, or in the last few years, Alan Hirsch, Mike Frost, Mark Driscoll, Spencer Burke, Brian Mclaren, Rob Bell, (not sure if I spelled their names correct) etc….Just to name a few who seem to get trashed online because of something they’ve wrote, spoken, or sponsored.

Why am I bringing this up? Why am I concerned? Only because Matt Smay and myself are about to enter the fray of public opinion. Our book (which will be out in April,) is sure to keep us riding around on our broomsticks fighting off mis-informed, witch-hunters that feel it’s their calling to spend five hours a day reading everyone’s blogs and blogging their opinions.

A week ago, someone sent me a blog from a young lady who had called out Matt and I, as well as our CRM missions agency because we hosted Alan Hirsch at Denver Seminary. Apparently someone had read Alan’s book, The Shaping of Things to Come, and got offended at one of his comments, took it out of context, pulled his financial support from CRM, and then sent a note to this woman, who felt it her obligation as a Christ follower, to start stoking the fires of web-based heresy hunting.

Just for fun, I sent her a note suggesting that if she is to call someone out, she might at least buy the cd’s and listen to the content of what was said, before she defame a host of good people. She emailed back a reply, “You’re logic is amiss, I don’t have to smoke cocaine, in order to tell everyone that cocaine smoking is bad.” I replied, “Smoking is illegal and crack has never been construed in a positive way by anyone, in any situation, so it’s a pretty easy and safe call. To metaphorically deem a theological conversation at a seminary as “crack cocaine” while never hearing one word of the conference is a tad bit of a stretch….don’t you think? Quite possibly, your blog post defaming 300 people connected with CRM, without a word of evidence of heresy, might qualify as gossip??” Somehow in her biblical fervency, she missed some clear warnings about gossip and declined to agree with me.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do think there is going to be a lot of heresy in the coming convergence of new church forms with old church forms. And yes, when clear orthodoxy is challenged, then I think we must call it out. I fear however, that the global power and speed in which we can state our opinions about Christian brothers and sisters travels so fast, we should be much more careful in gathering and interpreting facts before we spout off in judgement.

Interestingly, gossip is mentioned along with witchcraft as “non-kingdom” ventures.

Again, this morning, I got a call from a pastor who found out that we’re loosely associated with a reformed network. As they followed their weblinks, they read about the reformed networks, “male-dominated” theological stance. One of his female leaders immediately found question with us. Add to that the hundred or so times, Matt and I have had to navigate this question, “are you emerging church?” and you may see why this is starting to feel like cactus in our underwear.

Just to save you all some time, don’t ask us if we’re emerging church until you can define it. If your a gal and want to know our stance on female leadership, don’t ask me about my stance until you go lead something or serve someone since that is Christ’s bedrock for leadership. If you need me to agree with you about all your theological points before you’ll follow me, listen to me, or like me, then it means you have everything figured out and therefore you should probably lead your own cult.

I’ve heard that a good sermon is simply telling people what they already believe or want to hear. Strangely, Jesus said taught that if you want to find, enter, and benefit from kingdom life, one must be reborn as an infant and come to him as a clueless child.

There will be thousands of points to which we can argue and get offended over. Orthodoxy, however, is quite simple. Human depravity through sin, the need for an atoning savior in Jesus, and a call to live as he lived. Not that hard!! If someone goes for that but has some funky view on a fringe issue, cut them some slack and open your eyes to your own cosmic blindness. And by God’s good grace, get your butt off the chair, stop reading blogs, and go do something helpful in the world.

I feel better now. I’ll be nicer on the next blog a few months from now.