Tuesday Re-mix – This is a popular post from last year, updated and resubmitted for your consideration and comments.

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17b-19

The love of Christ may be the most awesome, profound, world-altering source of power ever known or experienced by creation.  And it is available to any of us as a free gift.  Paul taught about it, wrote about it, and prayed for it.  The church has been teaching about it and, in some very limited sense, demonstrating it for centuries.  The stories about it abound by the millions over the last two thousand years.  Creation itself speaks of it.

The Bible says it over and over and over again in no uncertain terms.  There is no substitute for it, no limit to it, and nothing else that even resembles it.  It is easy to spot, easy to desire, and relatively easy to access.  It gives meaning to everything.

It is the only “pearl of great price”, worth pursuing at any cost.  Millions have died for it, either for the right to proclaim it or trying to defend it.  Entire empires have stood because of it and have fallen because of it.  Its power is indescribable and immeasurable.  It is the source of life itself.

It is stronger than any government, deeper than any ocean, more expansive than the ever-increasing universe, and more valuable than knowledge itself.  It is why the church exists, why Christianity exists, and why I (as a Christ-follower) am still on this earth.

Why, then, are there ever days in our lives when it is clearly not our first and best pursuit?

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

This is the third in a series of posts about Cultivate ‘09, a one-day conversation held at Park Community Church in Chicago about church communication.  Born out of conversations among some  respected consultants in this field (Dawn Nicole Baldwin, Tim Schraeder, Kem Meyer, among others), Cultivate was the first of what I hope will be many similar gatherings.

In my mind, there is an obvious connection between church unity (my calling) and church communication. Church unity is all about relationships.  Relationships, in turn, are all about communication.  You can do the logic from here.

There is an element to church communications which is not so much about PR or marketing or branding or logos.  A critical part of the ministry of church communications is how a church communicates within the body of believers. The ministry of church communications necessarily must include some strategies about how to facilitate conversation among the church itself.  Sitting and talking with Cultivate participants, it was clear to me that many of these communications professionals at least have a glimpse of what this means (actually, some have much more than just a glimpse).  There is power in formatting how a story is told.  More importantly, there is responsibility in using that power to bring about God-honoring results.

In a session with Kent Shaffer (of Bombay Creative and churchrelevance.com), he said it this way: “Communication [in churches] is more than just sending the right message…it is evoking the right response.” When we begin to take seriously our objective of “evoking the right response”, we begin to see that we can actually empower how people see each other.  We can facilitate conversation among them, strengthening relationships.  We can help bridge communication gaps within a church body, and thereby “preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”  Pretty amazing, wouldn’t you agree?  Here is an example…

In more than one of the sessions I attended, there were people struggling with the communications challenge of being in a church who feels called to reach every generation.  From a secular communications standpoint, that is not just a challenge, it is planning to fail.  But in the kingdom of God, it is not only possible, it is actually pretty common among churches.  So how can the power of communications be put to use in that setting?  People gifted with communications skills can actually help create environments where stories can be effectively told across generational lines.  Teenagers can be taught how to stand in front of a group of adults and share what God is doing in their lives.  We can put a senior adult’s amazing story about God’s direction in her life on video in a format which engages the attention of students.  Again, I am not talking here about messages going out from the church leadership…I am talking about people sharing their stories with one another.  We can help our people succeed in giving testimony of what God is doing among them, and by doing so, we can strengthen the body.

That is a ministry worth fighting for.  That is why this church whisperer is so passionate about church communications.  We can be part of the answer to Jesus’ prayer in John 17: “Father, make them one, so that the world might know that you sent me.” Count me in.  How about you?

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

Tuesday Re-mix – This is a popular post from last year, updated and resubmitted for your consideration and comments.

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-13

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. I Corinthians 12:7

When I was in elementary school it was kind of a big deal how big your box of crayons was.  They had little boxes of 8, bigger boxes of 24, large boxes of 48 and then they had the super duper extra large box of 64.  That last one was the one you wanted.  It was important.  You just never knew when you might need those odd colors like goldenrod or periwinkle.  You wanted options.  You didn’t want to find yourself limited to just a few simple colors, especially if you had a project that demanded a broader spectrum.  You didn’t just want “red”.  You wanted every imaginable shade and phase of red.  It was frustrating trying to color pictures with a few colors when an entire palette of colors was required in order to get it right.

In that same vein, I’ve always been troubled by interpretations of “Spiritual gifts” which purport to limit the “gifts” to a list of 5 or 9 or 14 gifts.  I know there are several New Testament passages which discuss spiritual gifts and which do list specific examples of them, but I see those lists as just that: examples or illustrations of the larger concept.  After all, Spiritual gifts are a “manifestation of the Spirit”.  So, how many ways is the Spirit capable of manifesting Himself through a believer?  Does anybody really want to limit God to a number?  It is  like someone handing you a box of 8 crayons and saying, “Now, go and color a picture of God.”  If ever there were a time when you would want the absolute largest box of crayons imaginable, this would be it.

I have also always been a little troubled (not a lot, just a little) by those “Spiritual gift inventories” which try to pigeon-hole my gift, slap a label on it, and send me on my way.  I tend to think about spiritual gifts more in terms of a “package” of ways in which God manifests Himself through a believer.  It is a blend of gifts, maybe a little bit teacher and a little bit encourager in one person but a whole bunch of evangelist with just a touch of teacher in another person.  It’s more like a combination of ingredients in different proportions than any one ingredient.  I just don’t think trying to describe how the Spirit of God manifests Himself through a believer with a single label or descriptor is a concept big enough to encompass our God.  It seems terribly limiting and I do not believe it captures the essence of the scriptures’ teaching on the subject.

The concept of Spiritual gifts is not complicated.  A Spiritual gift is simply how the Spirit of God shows Himself through a believer.  The gift is not just an ability or a talent; the gift is the Spirit of God Himself.  Moreover, your “gift” (i.e., how God shows Himself through you) is not for your benefit at all…it is for the benefit of the body of Christ.  Specifically, the purpose of your Spiritual gift is “to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Ephesians 4:12-13. So, if you ask me how many different ways God is capable of doing that, I am more than a little uncomfortable trying to put a number or labels on it.

When it comes to trying to describe God as He is manifested through a brother or sister in Christ, I’m going to need a bigger box of crayons…

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

This is the second in a series of posts on my impressions from Cultivate ‘09, a church communications conference at Chicago’s Park Community Church.

The gathering place for registrants of Cultivate ‘09 was the coffee bar in Park Community Church.  It was where we all relaxed while we waited for the doors to the auditorium to open.  It was a spacious room with several couches and tables and nice chairs, and a full service coffee bar.  It was a fitting room for this crowd of communications professionals, most of whom were of the gen-x variety (when I walked into the room, the median age went up a good 10 years).  I felt like one of the few who was not carrying a Macbook in a shoulder bag or backpack and wearing thick-rimmed narrow glasses and shirt-tail out over jeans…all marks of a generation younger than I.

This type of atmosphere is where an entire generation of Christians gather to tell their stories.  And they do tell their stories differently than my generation does.  I suppose my generation (and the one before mine) enjoy telling their stories by standing and talking, such as in a pulpit or on a platform.  Andy Stanley, John Ortberg, Rick Warren, Erwin McManus, etc. are all masters of telling stories in this way.  I suppose when my generation gets really creative, it tells a great story through a feature-length movie (insert the name of your favorite movie producer here–chances are he/she is a Boomer or older).

But as you transition from Boomers into Gen-x’ers (now in their 30’s) and then into the millennials (now in their 20’s), the story-telling changes dramatically.  Their are now two young adult generations who present and receive “story” completely differently from the rest of us and even from one another. Their stories are image-rich, video-packed, fast-paced…and short.  Their stories are tailor-made for a lifestyle that is crammed full of audible and visual stimuli.  Their stories are no less significant than those which precede them, and God’s story doesn’t change one bit from one generation to the next, but how God’s story is told and how it is received change dramatically.

Walking into the gathering room at Cultivate ‘09 provided a stark reminder that it is NOT my generation who has blazed the trails in this ministry of church communications.  If previous generations blazed trails in how to communicate God’s story from the pulpit (platform), this generation is blazing trails in how to communicate God’s story as told in the lives of His people.  And that is what has me so excited about the direction we are headed.

The ministry of church communications is not a trend.  It is not something that will go away with time.  It is an honest reflection of some large shifts in our society.  If your church wants to spread the gospel to multiple generations, it must get intentional about telling God’s story in ways each of those generations is communicating.  Let’s face it…it has been several decades since story-telling was a “one-size-fits-all” phenomena.  Understand your calling as a church, then understand the story-telling format of the culture you are trying to reach.  Then tell God’s story (and each others’ stories) in a way they can be engaged.  That is the communications challenge before all of us.

But there is at least one further thought…the most important one yet.  What impact might the ministry of church communication have on church unity?  Thoughts on that question coming up Thursday.

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

Cultivate ‘09 was a one-day conversation held at Park Community Church in Chicago among a hundred or so creative minds (some of us were less creative than others) about church communication.  Born out of conversations among some highly respected consultants in this field (Dawn Nicole Baldwin, Tim Schraeder, Kem Meyer, among others), Cultivate was the first of what I hope will be many similar gatherings.  This post is the first in a series on my impressions.

It has been a long time coming, but there is finally a bit of a ground-swell in the American church of a “new” staff position: Director of Communications.  It is not so new in the mega-church world, but more and more smaller churches across the country are beginning to realize the importance of having someone on their staff whose entire job is to coordinate communication efforts both inside and outside the church.  Different churches are coming to this realization in different ways, but they are in fact coming.  Even the mainline denominations, who are often the last to follow church trends, are beginning to make the journey.  They are realizing that telling God’s story effectively, both among church members and to the world outside the church, requires an increasingly wide range of skills and creative abilities, from verbal communication, to the written word, to video production, to web design, all the way to social media and beyond.

At Cultivate ‘09, I was reminded that this community of church communications professionals is growing.  I was encouraged that more and more of the American church is taking seriously its responsibility to tell God’s story in languages and formats in which it can be understood by our culture.  I was seriously impressed that God has called young professionals out of their respective secular media worlds and has asked them to use those very same skills and creative expressions to tell His story.  At Cultivate ‘09, I found unbelievably sharp minds, creative thinkers with a firm grasp of the gospel and a sensitivity to maintaining the integrity of God’s message.  I found professionals with a clear sense of calling and a passion for sharing the gospel AND for telling the story of what God is doing among His people today.

Even in this crowd, however, I was reminded that the concept of church “marketing” still carries huge baggage.  There is still a level  of fear associated with the concept…fear of losing the message in the packaging…fear of getting ahead of God in the delivery…fear of manipulating the hearers in our own power, rather than allowing the Spirit to touch hearts.  In virtually every small group discussion I heard, the conversation eventually devolved into one or more of these fears.  In every instance, I was impressed that even among these (mostly) young communications professionals, there is a sensitivity to preserving the integrity of the Truth which they are communicating.  That pleased me.

So, my first and most prominent impression from Cultivate ‘09 is this: if we as God’s people truly are charged with the responsibility of telling His story (and I believe we are), then we are definitely moving in the right direction, calling upon the expertise of communications professionals to help us understand our own culture as well as the cultures into which we are speaking.  I am excited about where we are headed!

More impressions to follow here shortly.  For example: (1) church communication raises some significant generational issues for us to address and, while we are beginning to ask the right questions in that regard, I believe the answers are still tough to come by…and (2) might God be using these communications professionals to actually help foster church unity?  Stay tuned.

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

Tuesday Re-mix – This is a popular post from last year, updated and resubmitted for your consideration and comments.

I am pretty sure there is nothing at all natural about confession and forgiveness.  I think that, among the Spiritual ramifications of the fall of man, there is this part of the human condition which makes saying “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you” difficult words for us to form.  It feels almost counter intuitive.  It doesn’t come naturally to anyone.

So, I’m reading the story of Joseph and his brothers and how they sold him into slavery and then told his father he had been killed.  He eventually got resold into the house of Pharaoh and later would rise to become second in command for all of Egypt (o.k., I skipped some of the story).  It is now many years later when he sees his brothers for the first time.  An ironic twist in the story is that they do not recognize him.  He sends them back home without disclosing his true identity and keeps one of them in prison while he awaits their return.  We don’t know how long they’re gone, but it is at least “seasons”, all the while he is keeping one of his brothers in prison.  Eventually, after they return to him, he discloses his true identity and he forgives them.  It is an awesome moment in the scriptures, one of my favorite stories.

Joseph is such a lovable and nearly perfect character, one might easily miss the fact that it took him a pretty long time to choose forgiveness.  He kept one poor brother in his prison the entire time he pondered his options.  It was not a choice that came naturally for him.  He had to draw upon something else to come to that conclusion.  What was it?

To answer that question (at least in part) we have to go way, way back in the Bible, all the way to the story about his father, Jacob and his uncle, Esau.  These two brothers had also parted ways, and it was a serious parting…one in which Esau promised to kill his brother Jacob if he saw him again.  After a very long time apart–more than 20 years–Jacob goes back to his brother Esau, hoping for reconciliation.  Jacob has his entire (very large) family in tow with him.  At the point of meeting between Jacob and Esau, the scripture goes to some lengths to talk about Jacob’s wives and children who were all present, but it only mentions one of the children by name. Guess which one? Bingo.  It’s Joseph.

So here is the important question this raises for us as leaders in the church (or as parents).  How important is it that our church members (and our children) actually get to witness confession and forgiveness when we mess up?  How might that experience influence them later in their own life when they are called upon to make a choice about forgiveness?  Think about it…they will either do what comes naturally, or they will remember what you taught them and do what they saw you do.

Lead well, my brothers and sisters.  Lead well.

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

]]> http://churchwhisperer.com/2009/10/27/there-is-nothing-natural-about-reconciliation/feed/ 0 blakecoffee building-bridges http://churchwhisperer.com/2009/10/22/the-fabric-of-your-church/ http://churchwhisperer.com/2009/10/22/the-fabric-of-your-church/#comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:00:39 +0000 Blake http://churchwhisperer.com/?p=1526 ]]>

Your church is not just comprised of people.  It is comprised of relationships among those people.  That’s an important distinction.  It is the difference between a pile of bricks and a building made with those bricks.  It is the difference between a jumbled wad of thread and a fabric woven with that thread.  It is not just the people who make up the church…it is the specific ways in which those people relate to one another that either make them a New Testament church or not.  More specifically, it is the Spirit of God living in those people and moving them into relationships with each other which make them a church.

I often describe the church as a fabric.  Each of us is a single thread in that fabric.  Every place my “thread” touches another “thread” is a relationship.  And all of those relationships, together, form my local congregation.

There are always things putting pressure on that fabric…weighty objects (“issues”) which God permits to fall into the fabric of your church.  Some of those issues are heavy and others are pretty light.  But when one of those issues tears the fabric, it is not just a function of the weight of the issue.  It is a function of the strength of the fabric. Churches which teach and practice Biblical interpersonal relationships constitute strong fabrics.  They can handle lots of challenges.  But churches who do not teach good relationships will eventually become littered with broken or damaged relationships, i.e., weak fabric.  And where the fabric is weak enough, it doesn’t take much to tear it wide open.

Another metaphor that works here is thinking of your “fabric” as a latex balloon.  When you inflate it and then hold it up to the light, you can actually see where the latex is thicker in some places and thinner in others.  As you begin to put more and more air into the balloon, you can actually predict where it will most likely burst first, because the latex is thin in those places.  Churches are the same.  Where there are no relationships in place (or where there are damaged relationships), that is where the break will happen first, just as soon as there is an issue to put pressure on those places.

For example, if there are no relationships between generations in your church (i.e., the older generation and the younger generation don’t mix much), then a generation-oriented issue (such as music in worship) could easily divide that church.  On the other hand, where those relationships are in place and are strong, that church will not be bothered much by that kind of issue.

My co-teacher in this ministry, Dr. Ann Farris, has a slightly different take on this “fabric of the church” metaphor.  She thinks of the church as a patchwork quilt, a “mosaic” of sorts, with each of us representing a unique element in that quilt but one which is necessarily connected to all the others.  Again, without the relationships, i.e., the connections between us, we are little more than a pile of cloth squares.  But as the Spirit of God joins us together and we learn our relationships with one another, we become a church.  I like this metaphor, because it reminds us that we each bring something unique to the table in the way of Spiritual gifts and preferences.  We each have a certain beauty which we add to the larger work, but we still must have strong relationships, strong connections to the others for all the reasons I mentioned above.

With either illustration, the point is clear.  The church is much more than just a collection of people.  It is the relationships among those people.  Those relationships will dictate the effectiveness of that church and its mission.  Is it any wonder, then, that Jesus’ prayer for us in John 17 was not just that many people would come to believe, but that those people would have unity with each other?

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  John 13:34-35

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

]]> http://churchwhisperer.com/2009/10/22/the-fabric-of-your-church/feed/ 4 blakecoffee fabric woven quilt