A Young Pastor's Reflections on the Mars Hill Era

The recent resignation of Mark Driscoll from leadership at Mars Hill and the subsequent decision by the elders to disband the campuses and dissolve Mars Hill as an organization has launched a tidal wave of questions and critiques. I've been helped tremendously by Mark Driscoll's preaching and ministry. I'd even go so far as to say my passion for people meeting Jesus has only been enriched by Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll. The aftermath of the fallout has provided fertile ground for reflection and reminders of what's important in ministry. What follows is just a few current thoughts on ministry and leadership as I continue to think through my own ecclesiology.

Preaching boldly, living boldly and leading boldly must flow from loving boldly.

Most men in Seattle love Mark Driscoll for what he represents... rough edges, real talk, manliness and strength. We admire Mark for his boldness. However, ministry is not a calling of brutality and strength, it's a calling to meekness and shrewdness. Jesus' demonstration of this in his life and death is our example. Leading a church, staff, and elders must stem from a love for leading people and not just a drive for organizing people. Apparently, the church, staff, and elders at Mars Hill often felt manipulated, lied to, and pressured.

In my few years I've had the privilege of sitting down with some incredibly well-loved leaders and pastors. One constant lament I've heard from the  previous generation sounds like this:

Why is it that our largest churches today are led by the most brash and egotistical men?"

I'm inspired by the voices of the past generation who encourage us to lead differently. And I'm optimistic as I look around at the thousands of next generation leaders who are resolving to lead differently. There is a true resurgence in leadership driven by love, character and relationship... not by knowledge, results and employment.

If it falls apart without you, it was built around you. And you failed.

The question that most churches don't ever want to talk about is, "what happens if this guy fails, falls, resigns, or dies?" I imagine this question haunts elders and executive leaders every time a new campus is launched, new schools are started, and more books are published based upon one guy's leadership philosophy. It's as if we operate out of a disillusionment, as if "our situation is unique," "our guy has good fences," or "God will raise someone up," "we're too big to fail."

This is an area of church leadership around the country that stems from insecurity. One way you know you've discipled someone well is if they begin to do what you're doing, and do it even better than you. Insecure leaders don't disciple other men to lead beyond themselves. Insecure leaders are self-limiting forces in their organization, because they put a limit on the success of the people in the church. Working for an insecure leader is exhausting. Ministry under the direction of an insecure leader will always revolve around that leader looking good, having a wider audience, and watching attendance always go up.

I could be wrong, but it seems the true test of leadership isn't what you accomplish in your time in office, but what lives on after you and moves forward to change a community, nation, and world. I think of the local community pastors who serve in their church faithfully and never write a book, yet train up men every year and send them out to plant healthy and secure churches. By the end of their ministry, dozens of other faithful pastors have been trained, and have trained up even more pastors. A whole army of ministers is an incredible legacy I pray I might have one day.

Can we all agree that results in ministry usually come slowly? A secure leader builds the organization around a strong plurality of elders, equips and mentors the next generation of leadership, and seizes every opportunity to make sure Christ is the hero, not themselves. In that regard, their work will live long after they step out of leadership.

Multi-site is a short-sighted strategy if it doesn't anticipate eventual transition.

The seduction of a "wider audience" and having the resources to quickly, easily, and efficiently reach people has caused almost 5% of our churches in America to adopt this model, with almost 10% of church participants attending a multisite church. There are arguments on both sides. If Paul could livestream in the early church, would he do it? Probably. But I bet he would equip and train up young men to continue the work and transition sites to local, autonomous, independent churches.

Many have had their eye on The Village Church and the Denton transition. The strategy employed by The Village Church to leverage muli-site as a means to plant autonomous churches seems to have struck an sweet spot between being biblical and practical. Too many multi-site churches are multi-site because of the gifts of one particular man. Without enabling others to grow in leadership, preaching, and pastoring, every multi-site church without a transition strategy will face the same fate as Mars Hill. I pray every church considering adopting such a model would consider how long a campus will be dependent upon the central church, who will be placed in a position of leadership and authority, and how will the campus be led locally? Without these questions being answered and defended biblically, planting campuses will always be empire building.

So where does this bring me as a next generation leader?

I suppose a summary conviction cementing in my soul is this: The gospel is urgent, but the gospel is spread relationally. Leading without love will cause you to lose everything. Building legacy without the next generation of leadership will cause you to lose everything. Empires rise, and empires fall. Multi-site is a newer, sleeker way to build an empire rather than building a multi-acre fortress.

In the end, I'm interested in building God's Kingdom, not my brand's empire. May I be secure in the reality that the one King is on the one throne, and my reputation, accolades, and successes ought not detract me from worshipping Him and serving Him with a heart that makes Him famous. How amazing is it that through this collapse, God is picking up the pieces and starting new churches? He's a sovereign leader. He's our Sovereign Lord.

Activating Leaders

This past weekend, a crazy generous family in our church and youth ministries opened their lake house for us to use as a retreat center. We had the idea to do a leader retreat months ago, but couldn't figure out how to get it in the budget, so we actually gave up on the idea. Two days later, this couple came forward and asked if we'd be able to use their new place. #TheLordProvides.

We brought up as many as could make it for a day and a half of team-building and training as we prep for the fall. It was an awesome time of getting to know each other's personalities, stories, and what makes them tick. The weekend looked something like this:

Friday Night, carpool up to the lake house in as few cars as possible. Get to the lake, head to the beach, build a fire and make s'mores, worship, pray, share, encourage. This is the Facebook post from 1:10am...

Saturday morning, we had a time of solitude and reading. Leaders spread all over the house, woods, and beach to spend time alone with God. This was probably the best part of the morning for most people... sitting on the shore, taking in the beauty of Lake Michigan, and being refreshed. The Summer has really been a roller coaster of wins and losses, and taking time like this recalibrates my heart.

Mid-morning consisted of vision, training, and program specifics. I'll be posting more on that in the next few days. But the biggest win for me was having my friend Jason Robinson up with us to talk about his life's work of mentoring. It was a super clear picture of the way God gives people gifts to be used in the church, and he gives those men as gifts to the church so it can be built up. All of our leaders are gifts to us, and Jason helped highlight that clearly.

Saturday Afternoon we hit the beach, rented some wave runners, and just played. It was an excellent opportunity to relax, play, and laugh.

And then we headed home, really ready to take on the fall together and help student meet Jesus.

This was the first time I'd really taken time and invested the effort into a leader retreat, and I'm confident this will be a consistent part of our ministry planning over the next years. The only word I can use to describe what happened is ACTIVATE. Our leaders have been on our team for a few years, and I get this feeling after the training we did and the time we spent that they feel activated to do ministry. They've come forward and asked if they can be used, but we've gone beyond "using" people for ministry, and this weekend we saw God activate people for ministry.

What do you do to get your leaders activated in your group?

DJ

5 Ways to Preach Using Your Imagination

My grandfather wrote the book. It's called Preaching and Teaching with Imagination. While you may not have had a chance to read it, the title helps you know what it says already... "Stop boring people with the Bible!" Homiletics courses all over the country and for decades now have used this mantra for helping engage people with God's Word. But here's 5 ways I try to preach and teach with imagination...

1. Manage the tension, reveal the problem, or don't even bother telling the story. All good stories have tension or dilemmas the character balances or solves. The biggest way to kill narrative preaching and kill your imagination is to refuse to build the crisis point.
2. Read Between the Lines. The Bible is drama. It's often heart-breaking, hilarious, tense, and a matter of life-or-death. Just because the language is neat doesn't mean the drama isn't thick. Read between the lines by pulling out what's hinted at in the text.
3. Imagine Modern Day Characters in the Story. I'm a big fan of watching a lot of Netflix. So are millions of people who you preach to. Tap into the common language of today by inserting a favorite character. For a few weeks there, characters from Frozen couldn't go wrong.
4. Create Triggers for all 5 senses. In Narrative especially, there's huge opportunity for using language to move the listener's mind into the story, and sensory details make it happen.
5. Use Your Life as the Starting Point. I doubt this is a good hermeneutic, but it makes for a great homiletic. Often I find myself transposing real life situations that I experience into the original situation. Often it helps "humanize" the Bible and shows that we all have experienced something similar to the narrative at hand.

Take a look at how I do these five things in this short clip from a recent message out of Luke 10:38-42.

Taking time to Celebrate

For the past five years we've run a summer internship program at Harvest Naperville. We've been so blessed to find a handful of the brightest and most quality college students looking to explore church ministry. The really cool thing is, almost all of our interns have gone on from their summer with us to serve Jesus in the local church, some even our church.

So this year, to cap off a summer of sweat, tedious labor, early mornings and late nights, we took a little bit of time as a team celebrating these interns by a day of wake boarding at West Rock Wake Park. It was a ton of fun as we just kicked back today, but was a great time to hear what impacted them the most this summer. We'll miss these guys when the fall hits!