Well, I have some more free time tonight, so I’ll try to pick up where I left off.

With regard to our place in this world being seen as an ecosystem: The church, “is both influenced by the world around her and called to influence the world in which she exists.” (p 15) It seems that we have been so concerned about the church being influenced by the world that we have retreated and no longer are able to influence the world in which we exist. This is related to the first issue of A Balanced Ecosystem.

The second is Environmental Adaptation, or change. He is careful to point out he is talking microevolution and not macroevolution. His example is excellent: “We don’t have to go any further than human beings to see the unique capacity for adaptation and change. Imagine the Olympians of the 1890’s attempting to compete with gold medalists of the 1990’s. In the one area that we would seem to have the least control – our physical development – we’ve watched extraordinary advances take place.” “A part of the design of the church is to be able to make positive change while keeping her essence at the core.” (p 16) As the years have gone by, the communities around our churches have changed, but our churches have not > it’s as if we have disconnected from the world around us! One dramatic change McManus recommends is from words to images. “People simply do not read; they observe.” “We … need to move from static to dynamic” “Our culture is not only multi-sensory, but multilayered. We receive information not only through all of our sense, but also through multiple senses at one time.” (p 17) He goes on to recommend the use of sculpture, painting, dance, aromas, film, etc.

The Third is Spontaneous reproduction. The church should naturally reproduce. McManus differentiates between a horse and a mule > mules being strong and good for work, but stubborn and unable to reproduce.

The Fourth is Nurturing Instinct. “Insufficient nurture can bee seen when new converts too easily and too often fall away, and excessive nurture can be seen when those that we consider mature Christians have yet to embrace the mission is a personal way. The first one creates too big of a back door and the second one creates a log-jam at the front door.” (p 18)

The Fifth one is HUGE. It is Life-Cycle Harmony. “It can be sobering to realize that a major portion of our lives is given to preparing the next generation for life … In the prime of our lives we begin the process of replacing ourselves. When a healthy relationship exists within the life cycle, a selflessness of giving oneself away is created. The more one focuses on one’s own living, the less one is concerned about giving life to others. The only way church buildings stay filled through generations is if the church lives and dies and is born again over and over. Soon we realize that the church is not the same church it was twenty years ago or even four years ago … In the end, it is not so much about prolonging or perpetuating our own life as about giving new life to others.” (p 18-19) WoW! This really impacted me in a big way. I haven’t been living like I should > selflessly… This next quote is quite sobering > “If churches wait too long to die to themselves, then they ensure that they will die by themselves.” (p 19) “Our future is not to be found in our preservation, but in our investment.” (p 19) I realize that I need to get serious about building into the lives of others!

Chapter None: Atrophy
As a new pastor, McManus found there was a load of cash just sitting there & he wanted to use it to reach the city, but others insisted they keep it to help them survive. McManus was determined to impact the city or in the effort – close the doors. “there was no promise in the Bible that insured survival. Once survival has become our supreme goal, we have lost our way. The New Testament word for ‘witness’ is the same for ‘martyr’. They didn’t survive, but they died facing the right direction … It is not difficult to understand why a church would want to disconnect from the world around it. Just watching the five o’clock news can make a person want to give up. If our perception is that people don’t care anyway, if our conclusion is that no one is really open to the truth, and since there’s overwhelming evidence that the hearts of individuals and the heart of society seems to have hardened beyond repair, it is no wonder that churches have become spiritual bomb shelters. Yet the church is not called to survive history, but to serve humanity … The life of the church is the heart of God. The heart of God is to serve a broken world. ” (p 23) McManus goes on to say that when the church ceases to use it’s muscles in serving, it begins to atrophy. Even worse, “the real tragedy is not that churches are dying but that churches have lost their reason to live! Dying is a natural and noble part of life. All too often we take the promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church as a guarantee that no local church will ever close it’s doors. How could we ever gather this from the one who told us that, unless a seed dies first, it cannot bear fruit? Before we can even begin to explore how the church can really live, we must first be willing to die. We must be willing to die to our conveniences, our traditions, and our preferences – everything that places us above others.” (p 24) He goes on to say that just like a bell curve, the church begins to decline right after the highest point when it has the most people & the most money because Success blinds us to the force of atrophy…

McManus contends that in seminaries, pastors were being equipped to preserve the past rather than create the future. “We became known for being traditional rather than transformational. The ritual replaced the radical. The pastor/teacher replaced the apostle/evangelist … Pastors found themselves experts in Biblical exegesis, but novices in cultural exegesis. The rapid shifts in society only added to their dilemma … We’ve spent millions of dollars preserving our music and hymnals rather than creating worship that expresses the culture in which we live. And while we find it difficult enough to change in areas related to style, sound, and structure, in more substantive areas of change we lack even the wisdom to change.” (p 25) OUCH!

Parachurch Ministries > “The parachurch created a missiological rather than theological environment … In many ways the emergence of the parachurch reflects the paralysis within the local church. When we stopped calling youth to the mission of Christ, Youth With A Mission emerged. When we ignored the opportunity to reach university students, Campus Crusade emerged. When we settled for church attendance and neglected discipleship, Navigators emerged. When we hesitated to call men to the role of spiritual leadership, Promise Keepers emerged. Yet while the parachurch was rallying and mobilizing men and women whose hearts were longing to serve Christ, it was at the same time accelerating the spiritual anemia and decline of the local church. The church became a fortress from the world rather than the hope of the world.” (p 27)

The removal of prayer from the public schools > “The crisis did not begin when prayer was removed from public schools but when we stopped praying. This event was not the starting point of our cultural decline but the result of years of the church’s diminishing influence on society.” (p 27)

Well, I still haven’t gotten all the way through, but I’ll do more later :)

Well, more than two weeks have gone by and I’m just now getting around to blogging again…

What can I say? I’m still trying to become more disciplined. I have an opportunity to get some weight lifting equipment at a pretty good price, but decided I should at least be doing basic exercises at home for a while before I spend money on equipment. I did ok for about two weeks or so and then slacked off… That was a month ago. I’m taking guitar lessons & have enjoyed practicing & playing (though I’m no good), but still don’t feel like I practice as much as I should. I’ve been sick the past two weeks and I’m taking classes three nights a week, so I can blame some of it on my schedule, but really, I just need to be more disciplined with my spare time…

I had been putting off reading until I was at a computer so I could capture my first thoughts & impressions, but then I really wanted to read this book. So, I snuck ahead & read 30 pages without blogging. I’ll attempt to go back and pull out some stuff before I go ahead.

Erwin compares pastors to Spiritual environmentalists stating that five characteristics must be present. One, a balanced ecosystem; two, environmental adaptation; three, spontaneous reproduction; four, the nurturing instinct; five life-cycle harmony. He explains that everything is connected together > all creation is tainted & condemned because of the sin of one man. The church does not see her role within the greater context of the whole of creation around us. We usually do not realize we are a part of a greater spiritual & societal ecosystem & that our role is to be the very fiber that creates health. “Just as it is critical for all living beings to live within a balanced ecosystem, the church can only thrive in the context of healthy relationships.” (pg 15)

We typically think of the great commission, but it was the commandment that Jesus called great > Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind AND Love your neighbor as yourself… The Great Commission flows out of the Great Commandment.

I’ll post more later. J

“It’s not that the product of technology is unappealing. We work faster and better. Unimaginable conveniences become commonplace expectations. From cell phones to DSL, we have the world at our fingertips. In some ways, technology organizes the mess in our lives, yet it offers us convenience so quickly that sometimes we forget to stop and ask the question, ‘Is organization the best thing for everyone in every situation?’… It’s not that we don’t like diversity, options, and choices because we clearly do. We want our color options, size options, and style options. We just want them in a way that brings us greater convenience and doesn’t complicate our lives. We want everything tailored to our specific tastes, while at the same time, we want it available without any effort on our part… The contemporary church has chosen the same course. We have chosen standardization over uniqueness. We have chosen predictability over surprise. And without realizing it, to our own regret, we have chosen comfort and convenience over servant-hood and sacrifice… ” ~ Erwin McManus (prequel) An Unstoppable Force

I’ve been reading about ‘an unstoppable force’ by Erwin McManus, but hadn’t actually read it yet. It was recommended that I get on with it and read it! In fact, it was because of this book that I finally started up my blog. I started reading it without any structure for capturing ideas and only got about 4 pages before deciding that I HAD to start the blog for this…

Erwin McMannus is the lead pastor of Mosaic in L.A. The book is an unstoppable force – daring to become the church God had in mind.

“my failures are my gift to others. My successes are the gift of others to me.” ~ acknowledgements

“To get the most out of this book, pay close attention to the metaphors and stories. If you want to lead people, regardless of whether they are modern or post-modern, boomers, gen-Xers, or millennials, you must learn their metaphors,, use the right metaphors, and change the metaphors when necessary. If you can change the metaphors, you can change the world! …Every church is called to fulfill five eternal purposes that Jesus gave in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. These purposes never change. But the styles and methods we use to fulfill these purposes MUST change with every generation and target. And how you say it makes a difference. Mosaic uses five elemental metaphors to represent the five New Testament purposes: Evangelism as “Wind,” Fellowship as “Water,” Service as “Wood,” Worship as “Fire,” and Discipleship as “Earth.” These images are poetic, deeply profound, and perfectly match the church’s target of reaching artists, cultural creatives, and those attracted by aesthetics and images in the Los Angeles basin. … For twenty-five years I’ve taught pastors that “the church is a Body, not a business. It is an organism, not an organization! It is a family to be loved, not a machine to be engineered, and not a company to be managed.” Pastoring is an art. It has nothing to do with being a CEO. It’s all about servant-hood and authenticity and taking risks in faith.” ~ Rick Warren in the forward

“An Unstoppable Force is an abrupt opening of the window shade, revealing that we’ve all been hitting the snooze button for decades. On the other side of this book is different faith, a new awareness, a new excitement, and a new burden that the need is even greater than we realized before. … We’ve worked so hard to get people inside the church and on a path to maturity; how do we now move them back outside of the church to serve in the marketplace, the community, and the world? Church growth and church health really don’t make sense without church dispersion; yet that may prove to be the most difficult task yet. We like comfort. We like safety. It is a daunting task to change church from a place that serves consumers to a place that creates servants. … In the last two decades, pastors have been told that they must be good preachers.. er, actually, we mean teachers, er, uh, more accurately, leaders.. what we really mean is a visionary CEO type.. wait that’s not it.. we really mean system builders and equippers. Now we see that church leaders must be spiritual directors: builders of the culture and creators of the soul of the church… This book is probably best read with a leadership team. It fosters challenging dialogue. It does not attempt to mechanize something that can only be achieved organically and spiritually.” ~ Brad Smith > Leadership Network - forward

Well, that’s all I can do for now > just barely got through the forwards and haven’t even gotten into the book, but it’s time for breakfast! I’m kind of getting a late start to the day & don’t usually eat breakfast, but we’re out of town, visiting family, and the whole routine gets changed. It’s refreshing. Maybe I’ll dig into the book again later this weekend…

Well, here goes. This is my first real attempt at any sort of journaling or blogging... I read a lot of books & find that as time goes on I remember less & less about specific books and end up with a general impression {that one made my head hurt, this one really motivated me, this one convicted me, etc}. I decided that from then on I will give myself a detailed blow by blow book report as I read a book. I even had a notebook especially for that purpose.

That was three books ago & I still haven't written anything. I have atrocious handwriting and sometimes even I can’t discern what I had written – also I just don’t enjoy writing. Typing, on the other hand, isn’t so bad. I can usually type faster than I can write, it allows me to organize my thoughts better {cut & paste}, AND I can read it later on.

SO > I was thinking that if I just kept a text document at home or work, I would have to email it back & forth or disk-shuttle it. No thanks. By blogging, I can access this from any computer. Now all I have to do is read by the computer for those sudden ideas, or perhaps keep a document open while I’m reading then post it all at once at the end of the day.

I’ll try to stay on topic and not ramble too much, but I’m afraid of several things: That those who read this will see how sporadic my reading habits are {starts & spurts}, will see how sloppy my first drafts are, will wonder about why that passage impacted me, and that my quoting of copyrighted text might get me in trouble. Up front, let me say that I will be quoting some passages, please don’t prosecute. So far this blog is deemed ‘private’ – we’ll see if it goes public.