The Church in an Age of Scarcity

A couple of weeks ago Jason Evans started to post about the recession and the church which started me thinking as I was reading Howard Kunstler's excellent book, The Long Emergency (Wikipedia summary - Full text available on at Google Books) for about the third time.  If you haven't read it, you need to.

I don't know if I totally accept all of Kunstler's findings.  While I accept that technology today does not allow us to deal with the problems of living in age of scarcity, technology in a capitalistic society does tend to bridge a lot of gaps when the capital is there for innovation as it will be in the future.  At the same time I accept his statement that the western world as we know it is not based on democracy, Christianity, or the pursuit of liberty, it is based on cheap oil and natural gas.  Of course we are running out of those two commodities...

The upshot of all this is that we are entering a historical period of potentially great instability, turbulence and hardship. Obviously, geopolitical maneuvering around the world's richest energy regions has already led to war and promises more international military conflict. Since the Middle East contains two-thirds of the world's remaining oil supplies, the U.S. has attempted desperately to stabilize the region by, in effect, opening a big police station in Iraq. The intent was not just to secure Iraq's oil but to modify and influence the behavior of neighboring states around the Persian Gulf, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia. The results have been far from entirely positive, and our future prospects in that part of the world are not something we can feel altogether confident about.

And then there is the issue of China, which, in 2004, became the world's second-greatest consumer of oil, surpassing Japan. China's surging industrial growth has made it increasingly dependent on the imports we are counting on. If China wanted to, it could easily walk into some of these places -- the Middle East, former Soviet republics in central Asia -- and extend its hegemony by force. Is America prepared to contest for this oil in an Asian land war with the Chinese army? I doubt it. Nor can the U.S. military occupy regions of the Eastern Hemisphere indefinitely, or hope to secure either the terrain or the oil infrastructure of one distant, unfriendly country after another. A likely scenario is that the U.S. could exhaust and bankrupt itself trying to do this, and be forced to withdraw back into our own hemisphere, having lost access to most of the world's remaining oil in the process.

We know that our national leaders are hardly uninformed about this predicament. President George W. Bush has been briefed on the dangers of the oil-peak situation as long ago as before the 2000 election and repeatedly since then. In March, the Department of Energy released a report that officially acknowledges for the first time that peak oil is for real and states plainly that "the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary."

Which will mean that we need to make some changes

The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work. Our lives will become profoundly and intensely local. Daily life will be far less about mobility and much more about staying where you are. Anything organized on the large scale, whether it is government or a corporate business enterprise such as Wal-Mart, will wither as the cheap energy props that support bigness fall away. The turbulence of the Long Emergency will produce a lot of economic losers, and many of these will be members of an angry and aggrieved former middle class.

Over the years I had a lot of discussions on what this will mean to the church.  Chris Marshall is wondering the same thing

My truck is paid off but the gas prices are killing me. I don't drive that much and its over $300 per month, not including my wife's car. So what does this project to as a national economy? Recession seems inevitable, will it go way beyond that? A nation already ruled by fear and over-spending with no margins by individuals and the government, what will be the consequences?

How will this impact churches and mortgages and credit lines that can't be fed? As builders pass on who are the committed givers what is left? 1/2 of boomers are there to give and the other 1/2 are driven past their financial margins with consumerism and can't help. Gen X and Millenials have very little value in long term commitments, are all about instant gratification and consumerism is their native language. Commonly this group of up and comers are living on 125-140% of their income taking on exponential debt per year. What will be the result of these decisions having no margins when the shoe drops?

Will American churches go the way of their European counterparts? Becoming really funky coffee houses, restaurants, art galleries and dance clubs. Just things I wonder about.

I know a couple of people who are the boards of Bible colleges and seminaries who talk about getting new projects done in the next couple of years before the builders who give most of the money to churches and institutions pass away.  After that they know that the money will be in far less supply.  On top of that, while churches like to talk about sacrificial giving and committed tithers, most studies show that people give when the economy is good and are more casual tithers.  When faced with higher heating costs, much higher fuel prices, and more money to go to food, will the cash go to paying the churches bills or their own bills?

One thing that economists have been saying for a long time is that our lifestyle is being financed by VISA and when a recession hits, it will hurt those that are carrying debt the most.  In 2004, Maclean's ran this story about Canadian's personal debt being at record levels.

And so this summer Russell Kent and his wife, Mary, joined the legions of other young families in opting to ignore the admonitions they'd heard from their parents and taking the plunge into home ownership. They bought a house in the suburbs north of Toronto - and in the process have run up their debts far above anything they'd ever imagined. The house cost more than the top amount they'd intended to spend. They had to drain much of their savings and load up on personal lines of credit to muster a 25 per cent down payment. In total, they now owe roughly $340,000, spread across a mortgage, three lines of credit and two credit cards. Every month, $920 goes to pay interest on the cards and bank lines, and another $1,460 toward the mortgage. Mary also spends $300 a month to lease her car. Debt payments eat up close to a third of their after-tax income. Russell says making ends meet over the next few years will be "like stretching a gnat's ass over a rain barrel."

If the Kents feel intimidated by the debt challenge ahead of them, they're not alone. Collectively, Canadian consumers now owe $752.1 billion, according to Bank of Canada, up 36 per cent in the past 10 years when adjusted for inflation. Over the same period, personal disposable income, or take-home pay, has risen 15 per cent. In other words, Canadians are piling on debt more than twice as fast as their income is growing.

It is conceivable that many churches in a particular region of the country could find themselves in a horrible financial mess when funds drive up and the demand on church and other social services intensifies.  While many recessions are relatively short lives to the last big one in the 1970s, there are many who are forecasting the next economic meltdown to last much longer.  Of course this will hit the church in a couple of ways.

1. The Church, Powered by VISA.  Several friend who are pastors bring up the point that their churches have some serious debt and if giving goes down then things will be really tough... of course the good news is that banks aren't all that thrilled with foreclosing on banks but have been known to demand spots on church boards as a condition for continued solvency.  For churches who are owing to their denominations, the money that comes from those investments is now tied down which impacts other areas of church life.  Depending on the denomination, it could have a serious impact on church planting/missions or other areas that are dependent on investment income (as if the downtown in the economy won't have a big of enough negative impact).  Even in a church of people committed to tithing (which Barna reminds us is a rarity), 10% of a reduced income is still less.  Add on top of that rising food and fuel costs, we may have a lot less to give above and beyond.
2. Running on Empty| With today's gas price at $1.31, Wendy and I are driving a lot less then we ever have before.  I am walking to work and if Wendy wasn't on medical leave, she recently was transferred down the street to 33rd Street Safeway.  She says that even at -40 degree Celsius she is walking (I'll believe it when I see it) to work.  I was listening to a podcast with Todd Hunter who talked about that at a church he previously pastored, they would track how far people were driving to the church.  At Lakeview, we used to talk about being a city wide church where people used to drive in as far as Borden to attend church there.  Will people drive at $1.50 a litre, $1.75 a litre, $2.00 a litre?  Kunstler talks about a localization of the economy in The Long Emergency and I wonder if that applies to the religion as well.  Will the small Baptist church at the end of the street look more attractive then the regional megachurch on the outskirts of town?  Especially when you can do as Charlie Wear blogs about where he found his sermon to listen to last week on YouTube.  Of course some are going to say, video churches are the answer and they might be if you believe that only dominant alpha males have the right to speak about how to deal with stress in your families for 14 weeks straight.  I personally prefer the idea of local expressions of Christian community throughout the city.
3. Expensive Natural Gas | When natural gas was cheap like borscht (which itself is becoming more expensive) I hated visiting mostly rural churches that lowered their ceilings to save on heating costs.  Now they are looking smarter and I look out of date.  Most churches are really costly to heat and keep functioning for what is still primarily a Sunday event.  Of course you can keep it cold in there during the week and hot during the summer to keep costs down but churches are pretty expensive to run considering many of them aren't used that often compared to other facilities their size.  There are other options that can be used.  Look at how the Freeway uses their space for the community or as I have blogged about forever.  Of course there are a lot of options for making it cheaper to heat but perhaps going the other way and making them useful spaces again is the better option.  I keep thinking to what Steve Collin's did up as his efforts for rebranding the Church of England.  He was re-imagining church interiors as public spaces again in the city, the local church as a third space, a place to work, rest, and pray and being surrounded by spiritual resources as opposed to something that was open from 10:30a to 12:30p on Sunday's.  To answer Chris Marshall's earlier question, maybe the future of the church is to embrace what the Europeans are doing to churches before the churches themselves die off.  Of course the other alternative would be to start weaning ourselves off our addiction to church buildings.  Look at what ReImagine is doing in San Francisco or what the Hawthorn House is doing in San Diego is doing without a traditional church facility. 
4. The one other thing that needs to be addressed is the issue of the Clergy Class.  I don't have a problem with highly educated and well taught clergy but the process to get them to this point is expensive and this is paid for by one of three methods.  1) Rich parents 2) Marry rich (this idea was suggested to me in college) 3) Student loan debt.  All three of these funding options have advantages and drawbacks but the most popular option is often student loans which tends to make hiring clergy expensive.  I am not badmouthing clergy but if we stick with the current method of church leadership, the economics will need to be rethought out and since our current best idea is debt financing, I doubt there is a pile of money out there to fix the issue.  Either we figure out a way to make private education a lot cheaper, we accept the fact that only wealthy churches get qualified church leadership, or we rethink ways to develop leaders.  During the Great Depression, my grandfather's theological education came through correspondence classes.  During the age of YouTube, I am sure we can come up something as least as effective and maybe quite a bit better.

I am a disciple of Thomas Homer-Dixon and I tend to think that there will be an upside of the coming age of scarcity.  I think the church has a tremendous opportunity during this period of change.  Of course a lot of things we think are sacred cows will be turned into black angus burgers but c'mon, it isn't as if we did that well during the age of abundance anyways.  While managing to start a bunch of megachurches, we also managed to usher the church into a very long period of decline and irrelevance and that was after spending billions and billions on church growth.  As we enter into a new age of global warming, scarcity, and perhaps conflict over resources, maybe the church adapt a little better this time.

Also: Alan Creech has posted some more thoughts on his blog

Technorati Tags: The Long Emergency,Thomas Homer-Dixon,Steve Collins

The world's first billion dollar home

It is actually costing $2 billion

Atop six stories of parking lots, Antilla's (photos) living quarters begin at a lobby with nine elevators, as well as several storage rooms and lounges. Down dual stairways with silver-covered railings is a large ballroom with 80% of its ceiling covered in crystal chandeliers. It features a retractable showcase for pieces of art, a mount of LCD monitors and embedded speakers, as well as stages for entertainment. The hall opens to an indoor/outdoor bar, green rooms, powder rooms and allows access to a nearby "entourage room" for security guards and assistants to relax.

Ambani plans to occasionally use the residence for corporate entertainment, and the family wants the look and feel of the home's interior to be distinctly Indian; 85% of the materials and labor will come from outside the U.S., most of it from India.

My army of security guards and assistants have been clamoring for an entourage room for some time now.  I really need to get cracking on that.  Feel free to let me know in the comments what you and your family does with your entourage. 

Technorati Tags: Antilla,Mukesh Ambani

The rustic re-use cabin

I live this a lot and it only cost $15,000.00

You can order your own from Hive Modular

Technorati Tags: shipping containers,cabin

Goodbye Yankee Stadium

One of my regrets in life is that I never got a chance to see a game in Yankee Stadium.  Today the New York Times gives and audio and written tour of the parts of the stadium that aren't normally seen.

Technorati Tags: Yankee Stadium

Saints Peter & Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church

View from the side

View from the front

I have been fascinated with Saints Peter & Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church since I first saw it years ago but I had never taken any photos of it until today.  It is a cross shaped church that is similar on each side and the front.  I went looking for this history of the church and the architect information but I couldn't find it which is kind of too bad as it is one of the more unique buildings in Saskatoon.  Some of the other photos I took today can be found here.

Technorati tags: Saint Peter & Paul Church

The Re-emergence of the High Line

I have never been to New York but one of the things I want to see when I go there is the High Line when it is done.  The New York Times has a nice article on how it is coming along.  It's enough to make me want to move to New York.  Oh right, I have always wanted to live in New York but it's another reason why I want to live in New York. 

Speaking of New York, at coffee yesterday I was listening to some co-workers mention that they would want to live in a small town.  I thought they were crazy and when I mentioned New York, Boston, San Francisco, London, and L.A. as cities I want to live in, they thought I was certifiably crazy.  Each carries risks.  In several of those places, the chances of being run over by a run away swather is a lot less then the others.  Nothing is worse than "death by swather".

Technorati tags: High Line, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, swather

The Dusty Cover Used Bookstore

Jamie Arpin-Ricci and YWAM Winnipeg are launching The Dusty Cover Used Bookstore.

The Dusty Cover is a non-profit used bookstore started in October 2007 in Winnipeg's historic West End neighbourhood and is dedicated to serving and investing into our community. In addition to being a good source of used books at great prices, our comfortable lounge is an excellent place to enjoy a hot cup of coffee, tea or hot chocolate, all fair trade products.

I can't wait to check it out.

Where Writers Write

There is a great special report in the Guardian about where writers do their writing (with some fun photos). So where do you do most of your writing? Post some photos on your blog or on Flickr and post the links in the comments.

Alternatives

to living in the McMansion. The micro-compact home or the Tiny Tumbleweed Housing Company which are not much smaller than my house :-) Of course another option to sprawling burbs is living in a shipping container. I link to these because a couple of years ago Wendy brought home a magazine and it hard a feature on a family of four who decided to purchase and live on a house boat all year long in Toronto. Two teen boy and two parents and not a lot of space. The mother talked about the discipline it brought to them in regards to materialism because for everything that made it's way on board, something had to be tossed. Everything they bought cost them twice. First for the purchase and then the loss of something else. Wendy and I are working on that right now and I think it is a good idea.

Living in an over inflated housing market like Saskatoon does change the way we live. If we were to sell, we would get between twice and three times what we paid for our home but to purchase again, we would have to leave the city for a rural outlying area and commute in (thanks but no thanks). The alternative is to change the way we live being changed as opposed to the container we live in.

Simplicty

Eugene Peterson has asked the question, "If we know so much, why do we live so poorly" and he isn't thinking financially. It's a question I have been thinking a lot about lately with the kind of dualism that life has working in a homeless shelter and the community here and with many of our friends being more affluent.

The other day I was over at a friends place for coffee and he had all of the toys. A great smart phone, large flat screen television, new thin notebook computer, and two nice cars. My notebook (which is a 650 mhz Pentium III with a dead battery) was booted up and he was using mine to take a look at something online. The discussion started that my $100 notebook does everything his new $2500.00 Vista powered notebook does at about the same speed (I am running Windows 2000) which turned into a discussion about how despite all of the toys that he had, is life really any better with them. Now sports is a wonderful thing in HD but baseball is amazing on AM radio as well and Arrested Development is funny on a $150 20" television as it is on the flat screen.

McWorld tells me something different. It tells me my television stinks, my cell phone is a fashion accesory and needs to be updated, 5 megapixels will never be enough, nor will a small house. I need more stuff and I need to make more money to get that stuff. I had a long chat with a drug dealer the other night (it's part of the job) and he was justifying why he needed to deal drugs. iPods for kids, flat screen televisions for their rooms and so on and we all know that isn't possible on most wages.

At coffee today, Darren told me of a nine year old getting a iBook for her birthday. I asked him if at nine, he could be trusted with an iBook and not breaking it (I couldn't have been) and he replied, "I wasn't even allowed to use real glass at that age!" Of course when does it stop. A former family members I know was nice sports car as a gift one year, the next year it was to ride in a pace car at an IndyCar event and later it was an exotic six figure sports car. So what comes after that? The Bugatti Veyron? A Mig 21? I know those are weird examples but just because we can do something, do we need to do it?

The other question that I have is this a good use of the income that I have coming in? I have noticed lately that many people I know have expanding lifestyles. At one time the small house that Wendy, Mark and I live in, would have been quite spacious for a family our size. Now we lament the lack of closet and storage space to keep our assorted possessions. This summer we have literally been going through room after room and getting rid of things that we have accumulated over the years as purchases or gifts (anyone want a cappuchinno maker that has been used once?). The funny thing is that we aren't making any sacrifices. We have a coffee and a tea maker and a coffee/tea press but all take up space in our kitchen (in addition to the cappuchinno maker). I keep looking at my options. There is a great 8x12 shed at Costco that I can store things in and we could also build a small garage to park the car in and store all of things that we never use. Someone I know has a mansion. Not a McMansion but an actual mansion. What do they complain about, not enough stuff to store their stuff so I know more storage space isn't the solution. Affluenza tells a story of a guy with a four car garage, not to store his cars but to store all of the stuff that accumulates over time.

The problem isn't 1930s architecture. It is us and how we our lives are defined by McWorld. The church can't speak against it because in many ways our organizations are just as materialistic (when was the last time you heard the church call for sacrificial giving for something outside of its walls... it may happen but it doesn't happen very often). The other day I was looking at the Palm Foleo. A notebook computer except it isn't a notebook computer. It is a notebook computer for when you can't bring along your notebook computer. Got that? Good, there will be a test at the end of this. I started to think how cool that was and how that would work for me when it hit me how insane this all starts to get after a while. Why would I need a notebook to carry when I can't carry a notebook around with me and when would those situations arise?

The other night at work I was chatting with a former (I hope) drug dealer who use justifying selling drugs, partly to take care of his families needs. He talked about how expensive kids are with them needing television sets, iPods, and computers in their rooms and yet I grew up with none of that stuff. I had a $20 Walkman that did a good job, I had a ghetto blaster but no television and I had a paper route to buy the other things I needed in life and I don't remember being particularly unhappy in life which gives me the overwhelming reason to believe that I don't need stuff stuff to be that happy and not only that but with less stuff I would actually be happier.

Those are some of the ideas that I am going to be exploring over the next couple of months here. I know a lot of people have written on simple living but I think the temptation is to reduce life to a lower common denominator or from an earlier age and say, "That's the ideal!" which ignores our current context and living within that which for many includes too much debt, too little time, and trying to keep up with the Jones with no way out. So I guess I am trying to answer, how do I live well without falling into those traps. I guess we will see how I fare in answering those questions.

Surf's Up at the Roxy Theatre

Tonight Mark and I walked the 15 blocks to the Roxy Theatre on 20th Street in Saskatoon. I am ashamed to admit that despite working a block away and being a big fan of the restoration, I had never been there since it reopened (although I did see Rambo there as a kid). It is really nice inside and it has a lot more atmosphere than the crime against architecture that is the Galaxy Theatres. It took Mark and I about 40 minutes to walk down and we got our tickets (only $4) and assorted junk food for the movie. The reviews for Surf's Up were good and we both enjoyed the movie. There has been several articles about how the Galaxy is killing other theatre business in the city so I am making a concentrated effort to support the Roxy this summer and take in some other movies there with Mark. If you haven't checked it out yet, you will definately want to. Mark has already secured some commitments to see Shrek the Third and Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer over the next couple of weeks.

Sustainability

Jason Evans has an excellent post on sustainable community living and co-housing that you will want to read.

The Present Church

Below is a rather wordy article for my denomination's magazine to help get people thinking outside the box in how we see the local church. Not sure if it worked but people have been saying nice things about it to my face at least :-)



For Lent this year, I decided to give up politics. In the past I had given up caffeine, chocolate, television, and even NHL hockey playoffs but this year I decided to step back from following politics which is something I spend too much time thinking and reading about. Of course this meant trying to ignore the Quebec election of which I had some success in doing. On Monday, March 27th, I was agonizing over the final edits of this article, which was supposed to be about the future of the church. I decided to take a brief television break and was confronted with some really boring choices. While surfing channels, I found myself watching CTV Newsnet and seeing what the talking heads were saying about the Quebec election. Before I caught myself, I heard the panel chortling to themselves over the comment, "Who could have predicted that this result was going to happen to Jean Charest?" I remember the exact same comment being said during former Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow's final election when he was handed a minority. A couple of hours before that I remember a well known political commentator leading off his networks coverage with, “Is there anything that will stand between the NDP and another strong majority? No there isn’t”. Well the prognosticators were wrong that evening as well.

The phrase made me think about a book I had read a couple of years ago by Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon called The Ingenuity Gap. One of the books recurring themes is that we live in a world with a tremendous amount of variables which are overwhelming and make it very difficult to predict the outcome of our decisions. The book goes to show how complex our inter-connected world is and how poorly we understand how it works despite our proclamations to the opposite. From the food chain in the English Channel, to water planning in Las Vegas, to international markets during the Asian currency crisis; time and time again experts missed something that invalidated all of calculations for the future. Not only is it hard to know all of the variables that will influence our future, we are constantly hit by fads that while seem important, really aren't (like election news stories over which tie color resonates best with voters)

As I returned to edit my article for Mosaic, I realized that I was probably making the exact same mistake. There are too many variables, too many things that can change. If the all knowing pollsters and Mike Duffy can't forecast a 40 day election, how do we talk about the future of the church farther than that? All of the variables of culture plus the complexities of denomination and local church dynamics make it hard to predict any future.

So what can we talk about? Instead of talking about the future, it may be helpful to discuss the the factors that are happening now that will impact the future. To often organizations live in the past as it is easier to understand and don't have the needed conversations on what is happening the present that will shape their future.

Post-Christian Canada and the West

In a couple of books I have read in the last year, they have referenced some recent studies that point out by 2040, under 5% of people in England may be Christian (only 9.4% are attending church now) According to church statistics, the four main UK denominations, the Church of England, the Roman Catholic, the Methodist, and United Reformed Churches, are all suffering from a long-term decline in attendance figures. The good thing is that they realize this and are trying new ideas to reverse the decline. The Anglican and Methodist Churches have started their Fresh Expressions initiative which encourages new expressions of church like alternative worship, and even the Archbishop of Canterbury plans to be broadcasting his sermons on YouTube in an acknowledgment that more and more Anglicans just aren't in church on Sundays. While some of the initiatives talked about as other Fresh Initiatives seemed a little off the mark, it is encouraging that the Church of England the Methodist Church in England are acknowledging that something has to change.

In Australia, things aren't that much more encouraging but in a recent book called The Forgotten Ways, missiologist Alan Hirsch sees it this way

A combination of recent research in Australia indicates that about 10-15 percent of that population is attracted to what we call the contemporary church growth model. In other words, this model has significant "market appeal" to about 12 percent of our population. The more successful forms of this model tend to be large, highly professionalized, and overwhelmingly middle class, and express themselves culturally using contemporary, "seeker friendly" language and middle-of-the-road music forms. They structure themselves around "family ministry" and therefore offer multi-generational services. Demographically speaking, they tend to cater largely to what might be called the "family-values-segment"--good, solid, well-educated citizens who don't abuse their kids, who pay their taxes, and who live largely, what can be called a suburban lifestyle.

Not only is this type of church largely made up of Christian people who fit this profile, the research indicates that these churches can also be very effective in reaching non-Christian people fitting the same demographic description--the people within their cultural reach. That is, the church does not have to cross any significant cultural barriers in order to communicate the gospel to that cultural context. (pg 35)

In the United States, the number attracted to the idea of church may be as high as 35%. Canadian polls suggest that about 20 - 30% of Canadians may share values that would be open to going to church (approximately 20% of people say they attending church regularly but that number is often inflated by people exaggerating how often they attend church). That number is a both a blessing and a curse. It shows that at least about six to seven million Canadians are open to the values articulated by the church which do provide a large pool of Canadians for the church to draw from but even that is difficult as pollster George Barna sees the family values segment of the population to fall by half in approximately fifteen years.

While nothing is wrong with those within that segment, most of us as Free Methodists would be there and by in large, they are not that offensive of a people group. Six million Canadians is nothing to sneeze at and does provide a significant opportunity for the church but that is only part of the story.

Of course what is to make of the people outside of that family values segment? Depending on how one looks at the numbers, anywhere from 65% to 85% of Canadians are removed by various degrees from that category and from those values. They make up the vast bulk of Canadians that have to overcome some obstacles to come to our churches as the church is not even on their radar. According to what Alan Hirsch writes in The Forgotten Ways, in addition to not being on the radar for most people, a large percentage are at some level alienated by the church. From bad experiences, to strong preconceived ideas about Christianity or from a cultural context that is hostile to Christianity, it would be as hard for them to be a part of a church as it would be many Free Methodists to join a non-Christian religion. Doing “church” better; PowerPoint, better music, wittier or more theologically astute sermons probably won’t make any impact on those that are outside the church because they are unlikely to bother entering the doors in the first place.

The other factor in society is that there has been a breakdown in the mass markets. Where at one point a church used to pick a neighborhood and then put down it's roots and if church was "done right", it had a good chance to reach their area for Christ. Depending on the church, property values actually rose if you were closer to a church. A middle class neighborhood would have middle class people in it with middle class values. Today that is changing where traditional people groups have segmented and segmented again. The mass market is shrinking and those neighborhoods are made up of a variety of sub-groups.

What does that mean for the future of the church?

While it is popular to lament the loss of the Christian fabric in Canadian culture and condemn those that don't share our values, that probably won't do anything to reverse the change. Complaining that people don't go to church anymore won't change anything.

When Anglican Bishop nd missionary, Leslie Newbiggin came back to England at the age of 65 after spending most of his career in India, this is what he found.

Ministry in England, he discovered, "is much harder than anything I met in India. There is a cold contempt for the Gospel which is harder to face than opposition. . . . England is a pagan society and the development of a truly missionary encounter with this very tough form of paganism is the greatest intellectual and practical task facing the Church" (Unfinished Agenda).

It is hard, Newbigin knew, for a Hindu or a Muslim to come to worship Christ. For an Englishman, it would seem, it had become even harder.

Whats life for the church going to be like in a post-Christian Canada. A world in which we are seen more and more irrelevant? There isn't a definite roadmap or program to follow and I think the mass segmentation will force the church for the first time in a long time to chart their own paths as we enter into new territory. That being said, there are some that have been at this for a little longer and have adjusted to their own contexts.

The Freeway in downtown Hamilton is both a church community and coffee shop serving both those looking for coffee and a place to connect online as well as the urban poor.

Three Nails in Pittsburgh is an Episcopal church plant that has embedded itself into the community by meeting a need that I never would have thought of and that is making really good New York City style hot dogs. They helped open a restaurant that used to be called Hot Dogma but was sued over the name so now they are called Franktuary. Their motto in case you are wondering is And the meat shall inherit the earth.

Harambee in Pasadena, California Back in 1982, Navarro Avenue in Pasadena, California had the highest daytime crime rate in Southern California. Believing that the only way they could make a difference was to move into the neighborhood, Dr. John Perkins started a ministry on "blood corner" (named because of the drive by shootings). Twenty five years later it had largely changed the neighborhood and curbed the violence. Not only that but it has prepared two generations of church leaders as well on a campus that is essentially several small houses with a common backyard. It doesn't take much to change the world.

The same can be said about emerging congregations and church plants in the Free Methodist Church. Ecclesiax and ThirdSpace reach artists and creative types in different ways because their local contexts are different.

Some Anglican churches in London, England empowered and nurtured new faith communities who met in their own buildings. Most often with no staff or clergy, these communities formed what is now called alternative worship and is engaging a portion of England's population that would never enter into a traditional worship context. At the same time they give new life to traditional congregations.

Some churches in urban areas saw what a place called Paragraph NY did, which is create a place that is essentially a gym but instead is a place for writers and creative types to work. They looked at a lot of unused space, got a good coffee maker, and wireless Internet and opened up the doors... and people came in.

At the end of the day, the church is going to have to learn to reconnect with their community as opposed to rely on the community to come to them. Whether or not churches can do that will largely determine how long of a future they have.

The Future of Theological Education

I remember being a conference years ago when the comparison was made between the average income of baby boomers measured against things like education, mortgage, and transportation. Then they compared my generation. Everything was more expensive but especially education and at that moment I realized that the Freedom 55 commercials were not targeted at me. The presenter put it into what it meant for the church. To go to seminaries like Wheaton or Fuller, it meant that you either had to be older and saved up some money, come from a wealthy family, or willing to take on a large amount of student loan debt. This has affected even smaller Bible Colleges who are faced with an aging donor base and less contributions which has meant higher tuitions.

The costs associated with education keep many interested learners at arms length. A building costs money; faculty need to be paid and they expect certain privileges associated with their position. Beyond that, the physical space of education limits the number of students who can participate (those who can get to the location, those who can fit into the facilities). After a while the school's priorities shift toward the necessities of taking care of the building and faculty, and these begin to displace the original educational goals.

This starts to impact the wider church in a couple of ways as it also influences students. As I heard one seminary faculty member say it, whether the student or his family is footing the expensive cost of seminary education, it makes students less inclined or less able to enter the mission field or enter into a ministry context that does not pay a certain amount of money or safety.

The long term consequences of that happening to more church leaders is easy to see. Only wealthy churches have access to quality theological thinkers and the church may have to withdraw from areas that can not afford a certain level of compensation.

There has been others who have seen this happening and are working to create an alternative future. City Seminary of New York is a collaborative project of churches across New York City who brings in theologians and speakers to help church leaders in their local contexts. Fees are as low as $10 (to cover meals). The Alternative Seminary in Philadelphia is developing training materials and offering classes for those that can not afford it. Closer to home, in Kingston there is the Invisible College which tackles big issues from a Christian worldview. Topics like globalization and how technology impacts our lives have been past topics. Resonate has hosted several local discussions with theologians and thinkers over the last three years in Toronto and Hamilton all for free.

While seminaries and many local churches have been slower to adopt this model in favor of selling content, more and more universities are giving away their lectures, course work, and even tests for free over the Internet. M.I.T.'s OpenCourseWare allows you to tap into M.I.T.'s vast teaching resources as a teacher or self-learner for free. It doesn't grant you a degree or credits but it does share the wisdom. TED, a world leading conference of big thinkers has recently used Google Video to make their entire conference available for free online. While I questioned the Archbishop of Canterbury's use of YouTube when the idea was floated, almost 8000 people have watched his latest video in three weeks, far more than what would have heard him speaking in a church and that number will keep climbing.

While the Free Methodist Church in Canada's Foundational Courses and the Archbishop of Canterbury's efforts come from a denomination, many of the other alternative forms of theological education are coming from the grassroots of the church. Motivated local church leaders striving to make a difference in their communities. Whether that will be online or offline in churches and third spaces, in partnership with existing educational institutions or creating new ones, how it shapes up and we decide to view new forms of education will go a long way in shaping how we see church.

Discipleship

This is related to the discussion on theological education but we can't ignore the issue of discipleship or lack of it in local churches.

In his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, Ron Sider points out that evangelicals do a rather poor job of living out what we preach. In fact in some areas that evangelicals profess to care about, we tend to live worse then those we profess to want to "save". Robert Webber writes on this topic in his book, Ancient Future Evangelism where he suggests that discipleship is a forgotten practice in many churches, a theme which is echoed in Dallas Willard's book which is aptly named, The Great Omission. Duke University's, Stanley Hauerwas suggests that we have confused North American values with Christianity and reduced being a Christian to being a good neighbor and good American [or Canadian]. Eugene Peterson simply asks that how can we know so much and live so badly. Both Eugene Peterson and Dallas Willard talk about the church services.

Eugene Peterson says this,

The operating biblical metaphor regarding worship is sacrifice. We bring ourselves to the altar and let God do to us what God will. We bring ourselves to the eucharistic table, entering into that grand fourfold shape of the liturgy that shapes us: taking, blessing, breaking, giving—the life of Jesus taken and blessed, broken and distributed; and that eucharistic life now shapes our lives as we give ourselves, Christ in us, to be taken, blessed, broken and distributed in lives of witness and service, justice and healing.

But this is not the American way. The major American innovation in the congregation is to turn it into a consumer enterprise. Americans have developed a culture of acquisition, an economy that is dependent on wanting and requiring more. We have a huge advertising industry designed to stir up appetites we didn't even know we had. We are insatiable. It didn't take long for some of our colleagues to develop consumer congregations. If we have a nation of consumers, obviously the quickest and most effective way to get them into our churches is to identify what they want and offer it to them. Satisfy their fantasies, promise them the moon, recast the gospel into consumer terms—entertainment, satisfaction, excitement and adventure, problem-solving, whatever. We are the world's champion consumers, so why shouldn't we have state-of-the-art consumer churches?

Dallas Willard says something similar but in just three sentences,

We must flatly say that one of the greatest contemporary barriers to meaningful spiritual formation in Christlikeness is overconfidence in the spiritual efficacy of 'regular church services,' of whatever kind they may be. Though they are vital, they are not enough. It is that simple.

Even if we get every other aspect of church right and people do engage with us again. What do they get when they get here. An entire "discipleship industry" has formed within the church trying to sell me an answer to that question and there are a lot of different opinions.

As technology and culture change, it changes the world in which we learn in. What would have been considered deviant behaviour a generation ago isn't questioned today as being abnormal. I remember reading a book on how young Christians needed to act and it concentrated on issues like how long should your hair be and if sideburns are okay. It was as funny to read then as it is today but it does go a long ways in determining what we saw were important things back then. Today, things have changed. A friend showed me his high school son's instant messenger buddy list. Every single one of them was a sexual reference. While we were talking about that, a song came over by an underage artist talking about sex acts with her boyfriend. What does the church look like in a culture that is changing, materialistic, confused, and intolerant of how it sees the church being intolerant? While the much of the discussion centers on the forms we use for discipling, statements from many theologians suggest that we may have to rethink what a Christian is in today's world.

If there is good news in all of this, it is that many Free Methodists are having these kinds of discussions all over the place, both formally (like at last years Ecclesiology Study Commission) and informally. Many of those voices will go into papers and ideas to presented at the next General Conference and of course are being discussed in local churches. As I told a colleague not that long ago, some of us are too young to have experienced the "good old days" of the church but this is the time that God wanted us to be here for and there is something exciting about that.

Ecclessial Mercenaries

Soon after the Church of the Exiles website went live, I started to get some e-mails in asking me who was funding our little church plant.  I think everyone assumed that either Resonate or the Free Methodist Church in Canada (through the Life Cycle Project) was funding it.  They were shocked to find out that Resonate doesn't fund church plants (neither does Emergent Village as far as I know) and we never applied for funding from the Life Cycle Project (although that is an option).

 

Why no money?  I am not opposed to the idea of outside funding and we do have some needs (a small soundboard would be great) but we don't have that much financial needs right now.  We don't have permanent office space or salaries and our technical needs can be met by modest (cheap) means rather than expensive ones.  While some of us in leadership have had staff positions at churches, we are all working outside the plant.  People call us bi-vocational but that seems to suggest two paychecks.  We are doing it out of passion and fueled by coffee.  I could say that we were lucky in finding affordable space but it also came through Wendy probably making 100 phone calls to pubs, schools, businesses, churches, and other third spaces trying to find a space that would work.  It wasn't so much luck as perseverance and desperation :-). In some ways we have taken on the business philosophy of bootstrapping.

 

During that time as I have shared that with other prospective planters, the response has been disbelief but I am not that sure why.  My grandfather pastored a small Free Methodist church in Davis, Saskatchewan (Rural Municipality Number 461, just outside of Prince Albert, neither the church or the town exist today) during the Great Depression.  There was literally no funding as Saskatchewan was bankrupt and he was paid in potatoes, turnips, and wild game meat which was all that many in the congregation had to give.  From his records, the only money seemed to come from his atheist father who would send up money for train tickets home at Christmas.  Now that was a different time and context and seems like worlds away from today but a quick read of most of the churches in Saskatoon show very modest and humble beginnings and a character that was created out of the shared struggles as a faith community.

 

For some of the people I have talked to there seems to be a desire of instant success.  I am not sure where it comes from, whether it be from the instant churches of 200 that get planted out of larger churches who hit the ground running with a building, staff, and mature congregation and leadership or if it is just part of the church culture that worships size and success (whatever that is) and 10 people getting together and praying and worshipping in a rented room isn't success.

 

A while ago I asked someone why they needed so much funding.  Earlier in the conversation that couple had described themselves as "ecclessial mercenaries" - people who would church plant for whoever would pay the bills.

 

Of course they had their list of needs.

• A Macbook so they could run both Windows and Mac software
• Essential software, MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, and After Affects, Dreamweaver.
• Projector, Sound system
• Web host that can handle streaming audio and video.
• Comfortable office space with a street front access
• Rental space for worship in a historical location.
• Salaries for him to be high enough so his wife would not have to work.
• Operational funding for two years at least.

The one thing that work has taught me to do is question statements by people.

• What do they need a Macbook to do that my Compaq Armada m700 won't?  Not picking on Mac users here.  The same question could be asked about what does he need a Macbook for that a G3 won't do either.  Yes the Macbook is a far superior notebook and OSX is a better OS than Windows 2000 but for the money (1/10 of the price) that you don't have, something cheaper may work pretty well.
• What are they using Premiere, Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator  for that Premiere Elements, Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro , Ulead Video Studio, or even Microsoft Movie Maker (shudder) software won't do.  Again, I worked with an excellent and talented digital media creator for years that can do things that would make some movie makers blush.  He also does great stuff with crappy tools as well.  My point is that there is cheaper alternatives to professional grade software that creative people can still make things look very good with. It may be a pain in the neck (and other places at times) but if the money is tight, you have to make do. If you have someone with professional talent, it is a great investment, if not, it is a waste of money.  One church I know of bought the same animation software that they used to create Jurassic Park with.  Even if someone was capable of mastering the interface, they would have needed a server farm to render their creations.  In the end it was a massive waste of money.  I have loved Microsoft Office since 4.x under Windows 3.x  but again, it comes down to is there anything I really need that Open Office and NeoOffice can't do? 
• Had they not heard of Google Video or ODEO?
• They had talked of their respect for Wendy and I so I asked, if it is okay for Wendy to work and for us to raise a child (however poorly we are doing with it), why can't other church planter spouses work?  Don't get me wrong, I have nothing wrong with stay at home parents and Wendy and mine schedule stinks right now where we go weeks without a full day off with each other but if the money isn't there.

I was being a pain and it was a good conversation but I think one of the things that church plants need to figure out is cash and how to do things without it. 

I am not that sure if it is any different than it has always been.  You need to start something before it you know if it going to turn out.  I can't think of too many startups that were guaranteed instant success but they just kept working towards what they knew they had to do.  Kind of like the graphic from Andrew Jones old post on How Do You Build a Cathedral.

Another way of looking at it is from this interview with a designer turned wine maker, Courtney Kingston (of Kingston Family Vineyards)

One of the biggest challenges for me was going from a job that was reactive (e.g. a highly scheduled day managing other people) to starting a business with a blank slate every morning. Every day, there were a thousand things that seemed urgent that I needed to do to get things going. It was a little paralyzing and I didn’t know where to start. My friend Rob gave me a great piece of advice: decide what *one thing* is critical to your concept’s success. Write “ONE” on a little yellow stickie, and stick it on your computer monitor as a daily reminder to accomplish one thing–no matter how small—that will get you one step closer to that goal each and every day.

The person who helped clarify this for me was Guy Kawasaki in his book, Rules for Revolutionaries and his idea of starting out with what you have and going from there making it better and working towards your final vision.  The vision and ideas for Exiles are a lot more than what we have no but slowly we are making out way there as a community and no it doesn't take a lot of money to start.

Technorati Tags : church+planting, money, emerging+church, Church+of+the+Exiles

Off the Grid

A little ironic but George W. Bush's Crawford ranch is totally off the grid and extremely environmentally friendly.  Maybe he knows the same thing about his energy policy that the rest of us know... Interesting article on the eco-design of the ranch.  I enjoy his reference to the "whining pool". via

Technorati Tags : environment, George+W+Bush, architecture, Crawford+Texas, energy

A Low Impact Woodland House

This is kind of cool.  via.  Everytime I think of a Thomas Merton type hermitage to get away to, Wendy reminds me that a brisk 15 minute walk takes me into the "country".

Technorati tags: architecture, environment, hermitage

Church as a Third Space

This is a concept that I have been talking about since I first posted about Paragraph NY.  While the post wasn't about the church, a bunch of pastors talked about how they all wanted something like that to go to.  My response was that you already had a place like that and all you needed was to add some wifi, a couple of comfortable chairs near plugins, and open the doors.  Of course there was a lot of reason by the same people on why it could never be done.

Steve Collins is asking people to reimagine church as a public space again.  A space with free wifi, good coffee, personal and spiritual resources being available, as well as a space for work, rest, and prayer.  Pernell has some good thoughts on what a third space is here .

Seriously, this would work, all it needs is someone for a vision for it happening and the willingness to rethink what the church is for during the week.

Technorati Tags : third+space, church

The Winterbeard

Dave Blondel, pastor of the Third Space is now blogging at the Winter Beard.  Of course he has one post on it so this is more hype then anything.  Think of Dave as the Snakes on a Plane of blogging.

Technorati Tags : Dave+Blondel

New website for Third Space in Peterborough

You may want to check out Third Space's new website, just in time for their big move.

Technorati Tags : Third+Space, website

Entertainment for the retarded saints

From A.W. Tozer.

Without Biblical authority, or any other right under the sun, carnal religiousleaders have introduced a host of attractions that serve no purpose except toprovide entertainment for the retarded saints.It is now common practice in most evangelical shurches to offer the people, especially the young people, a maximum of entertainment and a minimum of serious instruction. It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God. One can only conclude that God's professed children are bored with Him, for they must be wooed to meeting with a stick of striped candy in the form of religious movies, games and refreshments.This has influenced the whole pattern of church life, and even brought into being a new type of church architecture, designed to house the golden calf.So we have the strange anomaly of orthodoxy in creed and heterodoxy in practice. The striped candy technique has been so fully integrated into our present religious thinking that it is simply taken for granted. Its victims never dream that it is not a part of the teachings of Christ and His apostles.

(Man: The Dwelling Place of God, 135, 136.)Not sure if I totally agree with him but he sure knows how to get worked up. He does hit a point where God's people do seem bored with him and need a variety of programming and religious services to keep their interest. via

24.7

There is a rumor out there that I am involved in a new church plant, regardless of whether that is true or not, we are meeting tomorrow morning to talk about some things.  Earlier in the week I may have tried to schedule a gathering and it was really hard.  All of our work schedules are all over the place.  I work nights.  Wendy's work schedule may run her from starting at 8:00 a.m. some days to other days her getting home at 11:15 p.m.  I want to say that others have crazy schedules as well but crazy seems to be the new normal for work.  It isn't that we are workaholics, we all work from 37.5 to 40 hours a week and get a couple of days off.  It is just that those hours are often not 9-5 anymore.

Safeway, Superstore and other grocery stores are all open until 10:00 p.m. but all have staff working 24 hours a day.  Most other big box stores are open until at least 9 p.m. and Wal-Mart in Saskatoon has experimented with 24 hours a day store hours which it does in many other cities.  Even smaller retailers are now open on Sunday and open at noon.  Banks which used to set the standard for never being open when you need them are even staying open later.  As I was running some errands today, I heard a radio ad saying that the casino in Prince Albert is now opening early on Sunday mornings.  Those restaurants that everyone goes to for Sunday lunch have to be staffed by someone and I bet their shift doesn't start at 12:10 p.m. on Sundays so they can go to church.

It used to be that you could schedule a gathering or a meeting at 7:00 p.m. in the weekday and people would be there.  No it isn't quite that easy.  One of the frustrations that I had while at Lakeview was that Wendy worked every weekday evening except for Monday and we had to choose between giving up our one evening alone or going to a small group.  For us it was easy because there wasn't any couple small groups that met at Monday while I was there but you get the point.  I don't blame Lakeview for it as we were in a very small minority where small groups didn't work for us.

I think it was Leith Anderson who first talked about the 24/7 church and I admit, it sounds cool and is something that all mighty morphin' mega churches should aspire to but it is something that I don't see us making a lot of progress on.  It is the chicken and egg dillema.  Most churches don't see the need to diversify their offerings because for the most part, the people that need that kind of community, aren't coming to their services and small groups because they are working already.  The people who are coming have the work schedules that work within a traditional work week.

The sad/funny/ironic thing is that I know a bunch of people who work shifts that don't fit into the church week and they talk about wanting to come to church!  There is actually a group of people out there that want to be a part of a church community and can't find one, even in the Canadian Bible belt that is Saskatoon.

For all of our talking about North America being a mission field, a good place to start may be thinking about those that are working while the church is worshipping.  This sounds stupid but what about looking at life with a missional eye and asking the question when you are out late or grabbing a coffee before church, "If they wanted to attend my church and work, could they?"  There are so many ideas that one could work with.

• Podcasts.  Like I said before, the Mosaic, Allelon, Cedar Ridge and other podcasts get listened to and influence my thinking because they are automatically added to my iPod.  I may not be there physically but I am under their sphere of influence and teaching.  Most churches record their sermons anyways, how hard can it be to upload them to their website and provide a RSS feed.  There are numerous tutorials available online.
• Paragraph NY :: Everyone loves the idea of a third space like Paragraph NY.  A space where people could read, find some silence, and even be creative during the day and be around other people but not too many churches want to do it.  Here are some actual objections that I have heard.  "We would have to add a couple of locks" and "People would get upset if there was spilled coffee".  Very few church buildings don't have an empty room or twelve and I just saw an ad faxed to work for a 1.5 ghz computer with a 40 meg hard drive with a CD/RW for $150.  You can get 19 inch monitors for under $100 and a mouse for $10.  Why not?
• Instead of offering everything in the evening, how about something in the mid-afternoon or morning?  If you are going to do that, why not offer something else than just for mothers as well.  Yes parents and kids need their play time but what about those that aren't parents but are home during the mornings but can't make the evening stuff?

I am not a big fan of Wal-Mart but Sam Walton was brilliant in his ability to try something and if it doesn't work, try something else.  Anyone else have any ideas?

Technorati Tags : emerging+church, church+growth, Saskatoon

Resonate Greenhouse :: Peterborough

A Resonate Greenhouse has been started in Peterborough as well.  If you are a church planter or thinking about planting in the wonderful city of Peterborough (home of the Peterborough Petes, Third Space, probably the most effective YFC chapter in the world and one impressive used book district), check out the weblog, and subscribe to the RSS feed

Technorati Tags : Peterborough, Resonate, Resonate+Greenhouse, emerging+church, church+planting

Information Architecture

I am in the process of redesigning parts of Resonate's website and I must admit that of all of the sites that I looked for inspiration on how to handle a fair amount of information, Apple does it the best. The thing I love about Apple's website is that no matter what I am looking for, I know where to find it. Looking for a iPod, head to www.apple.ca/ipod. Looking for a Mac Book, head to www.apple.ca/macbook. It's that easy. At work, when we are talking about Mac products, everyone just knows where it can be found. All websites need to be thinking like that.