Hugh Halter

Hi Friends, got a great message from a well respected friend, Pastor Brandon Hatmaker down in Austin. He pastors Austin New Church, which is truly a fresh new church steeped in missionl work.  I deeply appreciate his take on the tk primer. Hope it helps those of you who have been asking about this new resource.

“I had the opportunity this Spring to sit in a living room condo with Alan Hirsch (The Forgotten Ways), Neil Cole (Organic Church), and Matt Smay & Hugh Halter (The Tangible Kingdom). Many consider these guys to be at the top of the list of the missional conversation, so I was wondering how I made it into the room. I’ve enjoyed my time observing from the outside what’s going on at Matt and Hugh’s church (Adullam) and getting to know them a little more on a personal level. In the same way, it’s been good to hang with Alan at a handful of meetings where the topic of the day was typically “where do we go from here”. It was the first time I met Neil, and as expected, he did not disappoint.

They were discussing the same realization that Ed Stetzer (Breaking the Missional Code) and Alan both acknowledged at a dinner gathering the following night. The claim that missional is not just another passing fad that will be here today and gone tomorrow. They all affirmed that although it’s quickly become a junk drawer word for many, it’s not just a trendy word to describe what’s going on in the church today. Instead, it’s a Biblical idea communicating well the sentness of the church, a label that’s worth hanging on to, and a concept worth pursuing.

I agree and am relieved to hear how convinced they were.

A key element in sustaining the sentness of a church is not only to establish a missional DNA, but to ensure its ideals are manifest in its formation of structure.  The key element is to form, organize, and seek new ways to discover incarnational community… and somehow keep it as organic as possible. The problem for most of us is that while there is a growing desire for this type of community, most of us don’t know where to start in creating it.

I think Hugh put it best on the Tangible Kingdom website, “Everyone’s talking about community. Everyone seems to want it, most complain if they don’t find it, but it’s harder to pull off than you’d think.”

So we’ve engaged culture and begun to form community. We may even gather for worship on the weekends (maybe you’ve done that for years). But how do we equip an entire church to strip away their preconceived ideas of what community looks like and replace it with gospel-centered relationships that emerge out of an intuitive lifestyle? How do we point our people outwards?

Enter the Tangible Kingdom Primer. I think Hugh and Matt describe it best:

“The Primer is about building life-long habits, with two primary purposes: first as a formation tool to prepare your heart for mission, and second as a field guide for starting mission together. So whether you’re a pastor hoping to reinvigorate your church, a planter needing to get your people on the same page, a small group leader wanting to push your friends into mission, or a regular guy (or gal) looking to start something new… get started with this eight-week guide to incarnational community.”

And it’s good. In fact, it’s the best I’ve seen.

Over the past 8 weeks at Austin New Church, we’ve sent each of our Restore Communities (Villages/Community Groups) through the TK Primer. I have several friends both at large churches as well as small churches doing the same. While at first it was a tough sell to get everyone excited about an 8 week study that required daily reading and action steps each week… there was quick buy-in once they realized how practical it was, that it spoke directly to some of their greatest sources of tension, and gave them a realistic plan for intuitively living out their faith.

It’s practical. It’s simple. It hits (and even creates) some tension head on. And it takes even the leader through a calculated and experienced journey. Yet still manages to leave enough unanswered questions to force each community to dig in and blaze their own trail.

Bottom line, we will be using the TK Primer as a critical step in our spiritual formation process and will continue to work through the study as a key part of our partnership (membership) requirements.

Whether you’re building a core team from scratch and wanting to insure a missional DNA, find yourself needing some help communicating missional theology, looking for a way to equip and lead others towards incarnational community, or even find yourself leading a church of thousands searching for a resource to help your people engage community, you should give the TK Primer a hard look.”

(To track ANC’s journey through the TK Primer, see posts from other pastors and churches doing the same, and to contribute to the conversation go to www.tkprimerblog.wordpress.com.)

A few days ago I was trudging up the mountain on my road bike. I had my head down, sweat was in my eyes, I was out of water and was fighting the urge to turn around and coast home, but this song from the great theologian Johnny Cash came on my ipod and it fired me up and got me to the top.  It’s a great ballad of how leaders should wear the color of their people and lead through identification.  Not quite as scary as “Ring of Fire” but still inspiring. Enjoy!

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there’s a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he’s a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you’d think He’s talking straight to you and me.

Well, we’re doin’ mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin’ cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought ‘a be a Man In Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mournin’ for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
Believen’ that the Lord was on their side,
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believen’ that we all were on their side.

Well, there’s things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin’ everywhere you go,
But ’til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You’ll never see me wear a suit of white.

Ah, I’d love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything’s OK,
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
‘Till things are brighter, I’m the Man In Black.

Over the last few months, I’ve been feeling the draw toward some larger vision aspects of what God may be wanting to do in Denver.  I suppose it’s natural for any pastor to keep our heads down and serve our own churches.  Yet, at times, you get the impression that God has His fingers under your chin, and is trying to get us to lift our heads and see something larger…something more “KINGDOM.”  When we hear the words, “kingdom,” any pastor knows what is being said.  We’re saying, “look, we need to get past our individual visions, our personal pressures, our denominational ties and do something that represents the real church.”  What strikes me in a sad way is that the only times I’ve used the word kingdom, is when I’m trying to get other pastors to join in something beyond their own…well…kingdoms.   Think about the profound challenge this is.  A “kingdom venture,” is usually blocked by “church” ventures.   Obviously our church ventures are a part of God’s kingdom plan, but strangly our own churches often represent the biggest fight against the larger kingdom works that we know need to be done.  The scripture that comes to mind is where God says, “If my people, who are called by my name will humble themselves and prayer, and turn from their ways….I will heal their land.”  Healing the land is what I would call a “Kingdom work.”  It’s BIG! It’s what the world really wants to see happen, and it deep down, is what we’d love to see happen.  The big IF, is about us, God’s people.  If we will make our kingdoms subservant to God’s kingdom; if we will be as concerned about our peer’s churches as much as we may be about our own; if we will make investments into things that don’t directly benefit us; if we will develop young leaders and get out of their way as soon as they can do our jobs; if we begin to prioritize the mission of the church over maintaining our churches; if we bless and care for people that may never enter our churches, build, or tithe to our churches; then we will see some cool stuff happen.  I look forward to a day when we don’t have to drag, coerse, or prod the church to be kingdom.

Hi Friends, since I can’t figure out how to flicker or twitter or whatever that is, I thought I’d throw out a quick vibe to let you know that I’ll be in Toronto this Thursday for a full day training sponsored by Forge Canada. If you have any friends that want to process incarnational church themes, pass the word along. Google Forge Canada for info.  Hope to see some of you or your friends.

Hugh

Hi friends, sorry for the gap in coverage lately. Matt and I had a good stint in Scotland and Ireland the last few weeks.  We enjoyed a great time with church leaders and even a little golf at St. Andrews.  It’s still quite amazing to be in contexts where less than 1% of the population is in church.  We had better take our call to incarnational life and leadership much more serious if we are going to avoid going where they’ve gone.  Arrogance and or blindness should be the only reason to shirk off the call for change in the church.

On a positive note, everywhere we went, we talked about the need to create resources for those in the existing church to reorient people back to the missional way of God.  The problem in the past has been that we have separated the idea of spiritual formation from missional practices.  It’s time to redefine discipleship as “becoming like Jesus” and call people deep spiritual formation on the streets.

Matt and I have been working to create such a resource.  I’m happy to announce that The TK Primer is now available. We’re more excited about this tool than we were about the release of the book.  Quite simply because we want every Christian to understand their way in God’s missional call.

The Primer is not a workbook.  We’ve realized that you can’t train, program, or preach people into incarnational life and community. The only way people will live like Jesus lived is if they have a heart change born of time with God and people on the streets.  In book lingo, unless people find their own Fiona’s that grab their hearts, they’ll probably settle for church attendance and personal devotional times. Prideful, fearful pastors will call this discipleship but any leader who takes Christ’s call to make disciples seriously, will never settle for this!
The Primer is a spiritual formation journal that walks someone through an 8 week process to deal with the barriers to real apprenticeship. That is Individualism, Consumerism, and Materialism.  This is an individual process, but one must do it with friends. Each week has 7 days of content and follows this format.

Day one: Exploration of the concept

Day two: Meditation of scripture on the concept

Day three: Change element: what will life have to be like to change around the concept

Day Four: Action day: baby steps into new life

Day Five: Community Day: where they process their personal journey together

Day Six: Calibration Day: Serious reorientation to the new habit

Day Seven: Sabbath Communion

The primer can be used with existing small groups to move them beyond “just a bible study” and more into incarnational commmunty or it can be used as a preparation for mission.  In adullam, we use this 8 weeks to prepare people to live the Adullam way and so it serves as a great assimilation process, re-decipleship process, membership curriculum, or small group training.

You can only find it on our Tangible Kingdom website. There, you’ll also find a basic video from yours truly to help you use the primer well.

If you’re an existing pastor and desire to use this tool to reorient your church, we’d recommend you check out the MCAP training program. The Morph Class is specifically design to give you an effective grid to work from using the Primer. You can find out about the MCAP at the Missio web site.

Take care,

hugh

A few months ago, I made a mistake and blogged about Adullam’s intentional fight against consumerism.  I let the cat out the bag that we were going to take a season (about 4-6 months) and meet only twice a month for our normal all church worship gathering. We did this for two primary reasons.  First, we looked back and realized that most of our conversion or transformation stories happened during spontaneous community time on the weekends.  As people bounced off each other, ate together, played together, helped each other, and shared conversation about God, really cool stuff happened.  Weekends in Denver are really the best time for this so we thought it would be missiologically appropriate to give God back the best time of the week.  The second reason was to help filter through Christians that had “transferred” to us.  We noticed that they were inspired by the Adullam story and Adullam way, but just came to church every week.  Consumerism was a deep concern for us and we wanted more for them.
So we made the shift about four months ago.  So what happened?  Not sure yet. I’ve heard many of our people love it, some struggle but feel the tension is good for them, and others have been honest to express that maybe Adullam isn’t for them.
Here’s an email to that affect. “Hey Hugh, to get right down to it Village stuff just doesn’t work for us.  Any sort of home group – regardless of the name – is just us being at home with kids running around, like any time at home.  For us, we need a place to go where we can participate and the kids can be taught and everyone gets a break. We are pretty worn out by the time Sunday rolls around and we enjoy a break from the rest of the week.   When Adullam stopped meeting weekly a few of us families tried to cram into our apartment a few times and it sort of fizzled after that.
Regarding the church Gathering, if we didn’t have kids I think it would be perfect for us.  It’s a spontaneous, visceral, and ‘bare-knuckle’ kind of church.  I was excited in the beginning about it, and it’s still a great group of people.  But for our kids we want something more – something long term. The way it works now, I’m not sure Adullam is sustainable for families.  I guess for us with three little kids, we need a church where there is weekly consistency and resources for kids. This is good for them and it’s good for us.    Take care.”
Because of my overdeveloped pecs, sawed-off military haircut, and some candidly tough blogs and writings about church folk, people assume I’m a heartless drill sergeant who gets his kicks off of watching soft evangelicals whimper through the pain of mission.  Actually, when I got this email, the Winter-warlock melted. I felt his pain, I admitted to him that I don’t like small groups, nor did I enjoy twelve kids running through my house, pooping on my carpet, or screaming while I tried to diatribe through Romans.  I didn’t blame him at all, and I sincerely wanted to give him a man-hug, and start doing church services for him again.
The reality of life does leave people working their backsides off during the week, struggling to find good family time, recover from all the stress, etc.  Therefore on one side of the dilemma, I believe it’s a great ministry that each church has to provide a place of spiritual solace for folks.  I really mean that.
On the other side of the argument is what happened with two of our villages that same week.  In a few hours I’m about to drive across town to help one of our communities, perform a dedication for one of their children.  We do quite a few baby dedications in our normal church services, but this village wanted to do it in their home with friends from the neighborhood, family, and some of their Adullam friends.  This village last night took all their adults out for a date together while another village watched all their kids.  Apparently, they trade off so that the adults can take a break together.  Then last night in our village, a bunch of the ladies got together to do a book club gathering at a home in our neighborhood where the homeowners have never been to church.  Apparently, the husband eventually came downstairs and they got talking about life and before they knew it, the couple was asking about Adullam and shared how ever since their wedding, thought they should try a church.  Sounds like they’ll be joining us for Easter next week.
As you can see, just this week in Adullam reflects the tension of consumerism, a churches role in trying to create pathways for people to move from fans to followers to fellow kingdom partners.  I share this story not to suggest that we’ve made the right choice to make it this hard.  Maybe we need to adjust.  I suppose if Adullam had the resources we would gladly provide a weekly service, maybe multiple times so anyone struggling to keep their heads above water could at least have a community to worship with.  But Adullam still has no full-time staff or building of our own.  Thus, our pathway of discipleship may not be able to accommodate what a larger, more resourced church may be able to do.  On the other side, maybe we’ll have a higher percentage of our people move deeper into mission because of our narrow way, and I suppose many larger churches would love the nimbility we have.  Sometimes I think it’s just a matter of helping people think outside the box.
The first emailer, may never have thought that they could actually get more solace by trading babysitting with kids, and over time, he may find that integrating kids into mission might be more fun and spiritually formative than just dropping the kids off every Sunday for the next ten years.
And this is the point of this chapter.  Every church has the same call. The main thing of making apprentices of Jesus is a non-negotiable. But each church has its own context, resources, and processes they must navigate in order to win the day over consumerism. Sometimes all it takes is helping people think outside the box. Although there’s always pain in not being able to meet everyone’s desired wants or felt needs, I think long term, we’re better to push than to pander or perform.

I wanted to update you all on a great partnership that is forming between Alan Hirsch and his Australian network called FORGE and Missio.  Over the last two years, we’ve done a lot of synergized events with Alan and he’s been an incredible advocate for Missio and The Tangible Kingdom as we’ve always pointed people towards Alan’s writings and processes.  People often say, “I read Shaping of things to come/Forgotten ways, and it changed the way I think about church, but The TK  helped give a real life picture of how missional/incarnational ways of church can happen.

This constant response has moved us all to realize that the Missional/Incarnational dialogue is now becoming common place. No longer is it a fringe idea. Everyone, including multi-site/mega-church/normal church leaders are all wanting to move forward.  Thus, we’ve sensed a need to have a more unified effort to bring more people into the discussion, providing regional training options and a more comprehensive support structure to help all ends of the church spectrum.  We hope that as we join hands in this effort that many others will look to serve God’s missional movement with us.  We’ll keep you posted. As for now, I leave you with a silly picture of the masterminds (or band of knuckleheads)  of this global takeover (Hugh, Matt, Lance “shapevine” guy, and Alan)  If you look really close to the whiteboard behind us, you’ll see the secret plan to wake up the “underworld”!!!!

Several weeks ago I loaded up a brief list of comments regarding “You know you’re an incarnational community when.”  I had one fella email me and ask me what my list would be for incarnational church.  Great question and it caused me to parouse all the “missional/attractional” charts I’ve compiled over the years.  You’ve probably seen many as well.  As I looked through some of the tags, I noticed that none of them mentioned “Nimbility.”

Quite possibly, it’s due to the fact that it’s not a word, but since other authors get to make up their own words, I thought it’s okay to give it a shot.

“Nimbility” according to Hugh, is a churches ability to hear from God and make quick adjustments or even change course without going through the normal 6-12 months rigamaroll.   Now there’s a great word “rigamaroll.”

Nimbility was a key characteristic of the non-institutional church that seemed able to hear God’s voice and simply go where God wanted them to go and do what they thought the winds of the Holy Spirit directed. Now, I’m not one of those hyppie-type Christians that believe that we just sit indian-style in the middle of a flowery field and move like a band of Grateful dead followers in a caravan of VW buses.   I’m actually quite suburban in my ways.  I like some structure; I value organization and planned forethought; I value the biblical precedent of eldership and congregational accountability, but there must be a way to avoid the drawn out process of ecclesial red tape that quite often limits a church’s ability to dance with God when he speeds up the music.

A few months ago, we were sensing that Adullam may be slipping into “churchdom.”  Our original story as chronicled in The Tangible Kingdom was full of conversion stories, spontaneously meaningful dialogue with the unchurched culture, hours spent on the weekends in transformational relationship, and all-around focus on a Monday through Monday missional Christianity.

Although our rhetoric stayed the same, the gravity of growth was pushing us into a corporate slumber.  Many of us sensed it, but we simply didn’t have the time or the energy to address it as we wanted to.  Maybe you’ve been there.

Maybe that’s a side lesson in Nimbility. Just like you lose your co0rdination after a long run or a two hour hard mountain bike ride, fatigue, both corporate and personal may be why we settle into the rut of “just doing church.”

When the voice of God was clear, I sent out an email to our entire congregation and told them that I needed them all to be at the next gathering. I referenced that we had to make some hard decisions together.  In fine form, almost everyone showed up.  I think some thought I was either shutting the church down or someone had made a massive moral blunder.

I began by calming their fears of impending doom, but told them that we had lost our story.  I reminded them of our original story together and simply asked them to consider giving God the best part of our week again.  I shared how almost all the great stories of Adullam happened on the weekends and how our Denver culture requires that God’s missional church be most active with people on Saturday and Sunday.  We needed our spontaneously intentionally time together again.

I then suggested that we hold a much more balanced rhythm of Gathering weekends and Village weekends without a corporate gathering.  After our time, we handed out response cards to get their opinions. We gave them a week to respond and then we made our decision.  Out of several hundred adult responses, we had only two people that said they preferred to have weekly gatherings.  Everyone else confirmed, God was asking us to get back up on our toes and start dancing again.

In the next four weeks, we prepared not only to change our Gathering structure but also a new location move and we actually moved our Gathering time as well.  In short, we did what you’re never supposed to do in a church. CHANGE EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE!

So what happened? Not sure yet, but so far, everyone is smiling, we almost doubled the number of villages, I was able to have a truck load of conversation with people who felt the change was pushing them back toward God.  As well, many of our villages that had become midweek bible study groups had intentional conversations about how they were going to use their free weekends to serve in their city and neighborhoods.  In short, we recalibrated back to God’s original thumbprint for our corporate community and in six week time, it feels like the old story.

I hesitated to share this with you via blog because I didn’t want any tired pastor to throw in the towel and push their congregation like we did ours. For sure, most congregations can’t do what we did, nor would it be wise for others to try.  Adullam had as one of it’s core elements, a history of change and flux so “Nimbility” came easier for us.

I’m simply sharing this because I’m proud of us. Like a Dad who sees his family do something remarkable together, I’m glowing with admiration for a band of friends and fellow sojourners who want to hear from God together and who make His missional call the priority over personal preferences, fear of change, or calcifide organizational structures.

If I was to make my new “what does a missional church have to have” list, at the top would be NIMBILITY.

I’ll keep you posted

Hugh

Hi Friends, quite a few folks ask us about our definition of “an incarnational community.”  In Adullam, we make sure people know that our goal is not to pump out IC’s or to get people to do IC’s.  The goal is that every person starts to grow toward being a more holistic IC, learning to integrate Inclusive Community, Meaningful Communion with God, and Pure mission to others.  Some start off as bible studies, some start off from a point of mission, and other groups start as simply a group of friends.  No matter where they begin, we coach them to become a fully functioning IC.   Here’s just an off the top of my head list of ways you can know you’re group is maturing.  Hope it helps. Feel free to add your own to my list and maybe we’ll come up with a good grid to help others with.

You know when you’re an incarnational community when:

* You have a group of friends who know they can come over, or call your cell phone without feeling like they’re bugging you.
* You look at your weekly calendar and can find at least one or two times that you’ll be seeing several of them.
* The question, “How’s it going?” is quickly followed by, “how can I help?”
* The same people you call for a movie night are the same ones you call for prayer, and the same ones that you find yourself helping others with.
* You can’t wait for your non-Christian friends to meet “your people.”
* You are as excited to throw a party together as you are about studying through the book of Romans…but you still like studying Romans.
* You watch each other’s kids and are on call for emergencies.
* You can think of a few people you’ve had to suggest they go “play church” somewhere else.
* You can’t find all your tools cuz they’ve been loaned out to people in your community.
* You find yourself taking a hike together on Sunday morning instead of just going to church.
* You meet together as a community to help serve the larger church gathering or network you’re a part of.   (If by chance you don’t think you should be a part of a larger congregational structure, you’ll probably heading for myopic land and you’ll be out of community all-together in a few months.)
* Everyone’s sniffed each others stinky socks (metaphor for knowing each others hidden secrets) and there’s now a freedom to just be yourself.
*Extroverts get to be extroverts and introverts can remain introverts.

*Your children feel like they are a part of the community instead of getting thrown into the basement to watch veggie tales until the big people are done talking.

*When needs come up within the sphere of your friends, your people quickly pool resources or commit time to help.

*When your house or the house of your community runs the social calendar for the neighborhood.

*When you can take a month off from meeting and pick up right where you left off.

As I keep adding or updating I’ll let you know.

I just read a good friends blog about my blog.  A great leader here in Boulder, Kevin Colon wrote this:

“Hugh moved to Denver to do a training deal for an organization and he ended up starting a church. His blogging is not incredibly frequent but when he does blog….it’s good!”

Now, while I’m humbled that a man like Kevin would even want to read my blog, I figured it was a good time to state once and for all why I only post once or twice a month.  Simply this……..”I prefer to spend my time with people.”  I’ve always wondered how people have time to read blogs, let alone write the darn things.  I only write when I’m jammed between two people on a plane, or stuck in layover at a bad airport. Other than that, I haven’t got time to be a good husband and dad let alone a good writer.  The Tangible Kingdom only got written because I committed 3 nights a week between 11:00pm and 2:00am, for five months, to do it.

So let me throw my bias out to the world, (which is only about 50 people per day).  If you have time to read more than two blogs a day, or if you’re writing and posting your own blog every day….you’re not spending enough time with people!!!!  I know some of you monastics may get a little frisky over this, but it’s just simply true, at least if you’re married and carry some burden for a local church community.  You just can’t spend your time listening to everyone else’s story if you want your own story to emerge.   People in need, empowering mentor relationships, time in the pubs with spiritually disoriented folks, great bonding with your spouse and kids, essential leadership over your own church or in your churches, etc, is where the time must be spent.

Listening to Mark Driscoll’s sermons, watching YouTube videos for hours on end, posting strange thoughts to other strange blogs, going to conferences, or pastor prayer breakfasts have to get the big chill!

If you’re in agreement, but you recognize you’ve developed an unhealthy addiction to web-based information, I suggest you give as much time to people as you give to your computer.  If you pull that off, you’re on your way to recovery!

You know some of this is tongue and cheek so don’t get too cranky with me.

Take care,

Hugh