Page 3417 – Christianity Today (2024)

“If somebody offered you $2 million, could you give up sports for two years?” This was the question a sports radio station recently asked its listeners. No games on TV, radio, or in person. No sports page. No ESPN highlight films. No Tuesday morning arguing about Monday Night Football.

One fan phoned in and said no, he would definitely not give up sports, not even for $25 million. “It’s where I turn when I pick up the paper in the morning,” he said. “It’s where I go when I’m on the internet. It’s what I watch on television. It’s what I listen to on the radio in the car. Everywhere I go, it surrounds everything I do.”

Omnipresence.

I read about this incident in a recent article in Sports Business Journal that profiled 24/7 fans. The article also notes the time commitment of the sports fan. The average American spends eight and a half hours consuming media, but the average sports fan does so for nine hours and twelve minutes each day. Assuming eight hours of sleep a night, that leaves less than eight hours a day for work, meals, dishes, vacuuming, FreeCell, and sex. No doubt we’re talking about some multitasking here (ESPN and sex?). An advertisem*nt for Sports Illustrated in that section includes this line: “I love that SI fuels my passion for sports every day of the week.”

Devotion.

Another fan who recently moved from his hometown in Kansas said, “I don’t think I could’ve moved around the country like this and kept my sanity if it weren’t for DirecTV. I have to stay in touch with my home teams. Have to.” He records games he “absolutely can’t bear missing,” and “uses his cell phone to check scores when he can’t wait to know the result.”

Fulfillment.

One theme of e-mails I receive is this: “Sports is nothing but idolatry.” Though I disagree with the “nothing but,” it’s not hard to see the point: Professional and college sports have become for many not a celebration of God’s creation, an epiphany of God’s goodness, but the purpose of life and the measure of meaning.

Then again, idolatry cuts two ways. On the one hand, it can be used to knowingly deny the living God. Some, impatient with God’s timetable for their lives, set up a golden calf to worship—like the Israelites in the wilderness. Some find God’s ways unbearable, so they seek out a religion that gives them a little more space (some sex with their ESPN)— like the people of Israel did time and again. One should not mince words when addressing this brand of idolatry: “If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish” (Deut. 8:19).

On the other hand, idolatry can be rooted in ignorance, an ignorance that is best met with understanding. Note how Paul affirmed the pagan Greeks: “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” He goes on to gently explain how God “made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17: 22, 26-27). Though Paul eventually exhorts them in the strongest language, overall it’s a generous speech given the state of their idolatry and cynicism.

Perhaps for some 24/7 fans, sports is the way to avoid God. Lord, have mercy on their souls. Yet others may find in sports things like community or hope or joy, moments that mysteriously suggest a larger Order in life. Maybe this is as close to God as they’ve ever come, and they simply don’t know how to draw closer—maybe they just need someone to introduce them to the reality of which sports is but a shadow.

While we’re thinking about idolaters, though, we are wise to look in the mirror, at the logs in our own eyes. “One can love religion like anything else in life: sports, science, stamp collecting; one can love it for its own sake without relation to God or the world or life,” wrote Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann in his journals. “Religion fascinates; it is entertaining. It has everything that is sought after by a certain type of person: esthetics, mystery, the sacred and a feeling of one’s importance and exclusive depth, etc. That kind of religion is not necessarily faith.”

We believers have a knack for making idols out the most sacred things: the Bible, objective truth, pro-life causes, evangelism, hymns, prayer, good works, worship, missions, justice, to name a few. Anything that replaces a vital and humble relationship with the living God—well, that’s idolatry.

And because we too are tempted, sometimes we unfortunately offer idolatrous sports fans nothing but another form of idolatry when we scold in the name of Christianity. Schmemann adds, “People expect and thirst after faith—and we offer them religion—a contradiction that can be quite deep and awesome.” The 24/7 fan can smell another religion, and he will have nothing to do with that contradiction.

Still, he thirsts. And if he can be shown that it is in Jesus Christ and nothing else that “we live and move and have our being,” he may realize that he’s been chasing a shadow, and will turn around and worship the real thing.

Mark Galli is managing editor of Christianity Today.

Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Galli’s previous Play Ball columns include

March Madnesses | The layers of insanity know no end—thank God.(Mar. 18, 2005)

Spectating as a Spiritual Discipline | For those who have eyes to watch, let them watch something more than highlight films. (Mar. 11, 2005)

The Grace of Sports | If Christ can’t be found in sports, he can’t be found the modern world. (March 4, 2005)

Baseball Isn’t Entertainment | The sooner we stop thinking sports are about the spectators, the more enjoyable the games will be. (Feb. 25, 2005)

Salt and Light in the Arena | It’s going to take more than a few good Christians to clean up sports. (Feb. 18, 2005)

Rooting for T.O. | Why Terrell Owens irritates most of us most of the time. (Feb.. 11, 2005)

Freedom Between the Goal Posts | Sports is much more important than our culture lets on (Feb. 4, 2005)

Fannie Hamilton sat among teenagers during the Sunday service. She used her left hand to hold up her stroke-affected right hand in praise, belting out the words to “My Glorious” by Delirious. A few minutes later, she stood next to a 16-year-old, who joined her in belting out the words to “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” She was a small group leader in our youth ministry—at the age of 82.

She embodied my vision for the church as real and relevant to all ages. I had envisioned a church with young and old and in-between learning from one another, deferring, serving, praying, working, worshiping together—one heart, one mind, one church (Acts 4:32).

I long for a church where teenagers don’t leave as soon as they turn 18. According to George Barna, there are 8 million teens active in student ministries now but who will no longer attend church when they’re 30—a 58 percent drop in church attendance during the 20-something years. That shouldn’t be.

In my 12 years as a youth pastor, we equipped our students for lifestyle evangelism; we created fun, authentic environments of grace; we discipled young people; and we passed the baton of leadership to the next generation. Student ministries were inspiring and captivated young people. I remember making a silent vow, “God, if I ever get to be a senior pastor, I’m going to do youth ministry for big people.”

At Fannie Hamilton’s church, that’s exactly what happened.

How to “keep it real”

My first opportunity to try this YM4BP strategy came when a church of 150 in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, called me to be their pastor. In my first year, we made many changes (“I’m just a youth pastor,” I told them, “I don’t know any better”), the most important of which was to get real.

One of the first lessons of youth ministry is to keep it real. Teenagers have their authenticity meter tuned high. If you’re not the same person on Sunday that you are the rest of the week, if your language is different, or if you act differently, they can smell it. When they turn 18, if they suspect the whole church is that way, they leave it.

This church was filled with good-hearted people, but they were trying to become what they thought church should look like. They tried to be high church instead of being themselves. I challenged the church to change.

Through modeling and from the pulpit I consistently communicated, “Let’s talk about real struggles and real questions. Let’s not be an exclusive club, but instead build a community that currently disconnected people want to be a part of.” I encouraged them to befriend non-Christians and to rub shoulders with the culture, so they could learn to talk normally and engage people outside the church in meaningful conversation.

In preaching, I would crack open the door to my personal life, not to glamorize evil, but to say, “This is my struggle, and this is how God has helped me.” Sometimes I would deliver a string of Christianese jargon to point out how exclusive and silly we sound when we talk like that.

There’s a saying in that area, “The reason central Kentucky has so many rolling hills is because people have been burying their stuff for generations.” We won’t have any impact on 20-somethings if we “hide”our stuff.

Russ didn’t hide anything. I had Russ share his story of gambling addiction before the church. They didn’t normally talk about things like that, but we started inviting people from the congregation to share their stories.

Russ pushed us to become more real when he stood up and said, “I was sitting there with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and the remote in the other, watching the Super Bowl, knowing I had just lost my house because my team had lost. I put down the remote, and I picked up the phone to call rehab.” He opened a door for people to be honest.

If someone said to me, “Our kid has a drinking problem,” I sent them to Russ. Their teenager would sit down with a 50-year-old man and talk for real about drinking. Pain and sin and consequences cross all generations.

Recently I conducted Russ’s funeral. He had a massive heart attack at 53. People from our church and people who never went to church—people of all ages—came. They were there because of Russ’s influence, witnessing how the grace of God can touch anyone’s life. And it all started with one guy standing up and just being real.

God grew the church in Harrodsburg into a real, authentic church. Then he took me to a church plant in Las Vegas, then to Southland Christian in Lexington, Kentucky, and now to Willow Creek. In each place, I have carried the vision of “youth ministry for big people” and of the church unified in heart and mind across the generations. To accomplish that vision, however, we’ve had to do more than just “keep it real.” We’ve also had to engage each other’s lives.

I see young people

The typical church segregates youth ministry from “big people” church. At times, student ministries are created so we don’t have to be challenged by their new ideas. But churches that remain unchanged by new generations grow out of touch, ineffective, and inwardly focused. They also soon discover an absence of 20-somethings.

Rather than separating young people from the mainstream, we need to engage them. This means including teens and 20-somethings in visible ways: worship, drama, greeters, testimonies, and even leadership.

My son and two of his freinds were in the worship band at Southland since ninth grade. Were they killer musicians then? No. But we surrounded them with good musicians who helped them grow. But they’re really good now. I watched as these 22-year-olds led worship for a Willow Creek men’s retreat, and I thought, “These guys are lifers! They will always love the church.”

Engaging means targeting your programming and teaching like you know young people are there. That means including them in preaching illustrations or challenge points (“whether you’re at work or by your locker”). It means learning about their culture and addressing their issues.

In basketball-obsessed Kentucky, I recruited six high school point guards to come on stage. I asked them how they play their position, how they break the press, and so on. Then I said, “You know we didn’t invite you up here because you’re tremendous basketball players—though you are. We invited you because you know how to break the pressure of living for Christ in your high school. Tell us about that.” They did. Then I said, “On behalf of this whole church, I just want to thank you guys for the way you shine for Christ in your local school.” Then the whole church stood and cheered for them—not the usual cheering for basketball success, but cheering for their faithfulness to Christ.

This principle of engaging extends to every generation, and it begins with us church leaders. At Willow Creek, I enjoy hanging out with the Axis group (college and 20-somethings). I spend time worshiping with Promiseland (the children’s ministry). When I was at Southland, our staff played basketball with the Prime Timers (55 and up). They taped sticks to our arms and made us wear trifocals, but we played! At church picnics, I play all-time quarterback with the kids and make sure I throw the ball to every one of them.

I received an e-mail recently from a ninth grader: “I just wanted to tell you I really loved your message last week. I’m the kid you threw a frisbee with in the parking lot last fall.”

Simple things build bridges, and they don’t take much time.

Time for straight talk

While every generation maintains its uniqueness and offers different strengths, the heartbeat of God is for one church. So many forces drive generations apart, but moderns and postmoderns can coexist. It requires humility, mutual submission, and respect for different strengths and passions. Those virtues don’t happen easily. They emerge as we teach them and model them.

Sometimes that means straight talk. Len Sweet asked a seniors group, “How many of you grandparents love your grandkids? How many of you love your grandkids so much you would lay down your life for them?” Many hands were raised. Then he said, “How many of you love your grandkids so much you would lay down your music for them?”

Other times you can just drop in comments, like the one I made following a service that included children and teens: “I am so proud to be part of a church that sees the next generation not as the church of tomorrow, but as the church of today.”

And to the students, I would say, “You need to be grateful to be in a church where older adults love and support you like these do.” The vision must be cast and recast.

In Lexington, we had a reunion service featuring the former senior pastor and the quartet that sang with him every week during his 40-year tenure. These guys we all loved sang old gospel songs, and it was a great night.

The next morning, an older guy in the church grabbed me. “Were you here last night at that reunion?”

“It was great, wasn’t it?” I really thought it was, although our music was now led by a worship band.

He said, “I love that old quartet and that old preacher. Let me tell you something—”

I thought, Oh, man, he wants them back.

He put his hands on my shoulders and said tearfully, “When I look down that hallway and see thousands of teenagers pouring into this church, I thank God that I’m a part of this church. I’m not longing for the past; I believe that these are the good ol’ days. “

One heart, one mind, one church.

Mike Breaux is a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

Fewer than half of senior pastors agreed on a single ministry emphasis as one of their church’s top three priorities for this year, according to recent research. The priorities pastors set often depended on the size and denomination of the church and the race and gender of the pastor.

The Barna Group surveyed 614 senior pastors and found them focusing on 12 different areas of ministry. Most frequently cited were discipleship and spiritual development (47%), evangelism and outreach (46%), and preaching (35%).

Predominantly white churches were more likely to name discipleship (50%), while black churches ranked evangelism as their top objective (67%). Female pastors more than male pastors targeted discipleship (65% to 46%). And larger churches were “far more likely than smaller congregations to prioritize evangelism and outreach,” according to George Barna.

“The magnitude of differences between black and white congregations is very significant,” Barna said. “Compared to white pastors, few black pastors identified worship and preaching as top priorities. …This may reflect the fact that black pastors are attempting to broaden the faith experience and depth of their people by shifting their focus to other dimensions of spiritual growth.”

Lesser priorities: A second tier addressed congregational care: visitation and counseling (24%), worship (19%), ministry to teens and young adults (17%), missions (15%), community service (15%), children’s ministry (13%), and congregational fellowship (11%).

At the bottom of the list were family ministry (4%) and prayer (3%).

Faves: Worship was named by more mainliners (37%) than Baptists (12%). Teen ministry was favored by Pentecostals (25%) and Southerners (21%). Younger pastors, under 40, were twice as likely to focus on children’s ministry than older pastors (22% to 11%).

—with info from Barna.org

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

It was rumored that the cornerstone of our church's first building was dedicated by the Ku Klux Klan. In 1923 that wasn't a problem. In 1996 it became a problem. A big problem. One that might shut down effective ministry in our urban neighborhood. The Sunday morning that should have been our celebration of racial reconciliation became the showdown on the playground.

Big rock, steep hill

It would have been easier if we had ignored the rumors about our church's early Klan connections, but not a lot had been easy in my first pastorate. Gentilly Baptist Church's heyday was forty years earlier, when the post-war boom had sent young families out to New Orleans's new neighborhoods. At the last stop on the Franklin Avenue streetcar line, our tiny wooden chapel was home to a congregation that grew into a bustling church with a Gothic revival sanctuary that seated 600.

Flight to even newer suburbs resumed in the 1960s, this time motivated by racial conflict, when New Orleans, like most large cities, was rocked by marches, boycotts, and the continual threat of violence after court-ordered school desegregation. Within a decade, once posh Gentilly Terrace more resembled the inner city, tagged by gangs and pocked by drug-fueled crime. The lovely wrought iron bars on doors and windows weren't for decoration.

The pastor who preceded me had recognized the demographic tidal wave. "I'm probably the last white pastor of this church," he said, though, as it turned out, he wasn't.

The surrounding community, once mostly white, became 55 percent African American on his watch and about 80 percent on mine. My predecessor spearheaded the development of a half-dozen mission congregations—Spanish-language, Japanese, and several led by black pastors—but ultimately only one survived. And the Gentilly congregation, with its white, Baptist style, grew older and smaller.

"It was commonplace in the '20s," she said. "The Klan showed up in a lot of parades."

The sanctuary was peopled by ghosts, and we knew the names of those who left better than those who stayed. Attendance was silently measured against the vacation Bible school group photo—with every pew and even the balcony filled—snapped in 1956.

Forty years is a long time to ride downhill.

The 88 people who greeted me on my first Sunday as pastor agreed that we needed a sharp turnaround. We had the same challenges as most old churches—decaying facilities, little money, an aged workforce, and storied tradition. Compounding that was the disconnect we sensed with our community. Younger black people—couples and single mothers—were moving in. In a two-year period, all the houses on the block behind the church, except mine, changed ownership as the elderly residents died or moved to assisted living facilities.

How could we connect with these new families? Would the congregation support it?

Turning up the flame

They did—mostly—but after three years, the atmosphere in the Big Easy changed and revealed how far we had to go. The night a jury in Los Angeles returned a verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial, New Orleans police were out in force. They feared riots like those in Los Angeles after the Rodney King beating trial. That didn't materialize, but the fear factor in the city rose. Race was an issue again.

As we struggled to understand this cultural shift, several things became clear. We had done some things right thus far. Our people seemed in agreement that we needed change. They rallied to visit homes in the area, distribute flyers, hold block parties, prayer walk every street, expand the children's ministry. We started a counseling center and a food bank. We made some headway in reconnecting our commuter congregation to the immediate community. Even so, we took it slowly.

As pastor, I became "keeper of the flame." The role of church historian is usually held by a few senior members of the congregation, but our matriarch, at 102, was not expected on the job much longer, so I began collecting the stories. And telling them.

At every opportunity, we invoked our history to show how previous generations wanted to reach this neighborhood. In 1922, in very Catholic New Orleans, there were only a handful of Baptist churches and none in then-remote Gentilly Terrace. When the fledgling Baptist Bible Institute offered to send out a student preacher, the Johnson family agreed to hold meetings in their living room. Some of the Johnsons were still on our rolls, but only one, who had married into the clan in the 1930s, was still active in our congregation.

At our 70th anniversary, we recounted how the church was begun in the Johnson home one block away. If I had known the whole story, we might not have presented the plaque that beloved Mrs. Johnson hung so proudly in her fabled living room.

Over a couple of years, we began laying a foundation for a multi-ethnic, multicultural congregation. In New Orleans, the 1960s are remembered for two things: Hurricane Betsy and desegregation. And both were recalled by my congregation as devastating. My first few sermons making a biblical case for ethnic diversity were greeted coolly.

"Integration. Do you really want to stir that up?" one of our faithful givers asked me out on the front steps.

Scripture and census data changed a few minds. More were convinced when we read aloud the list of local churches that had shuttered their doors rather than adapt to changing demographics.

When we began talking in terms of missions to our own community, the director of the missionary society found her connection point and brought many in the women's group on board. I learned to let her share our leadership team's decisions with her group prior to their public announcement.

Some members, it was evident, did not welcome the message. The matriarch's 70-year-old daughter dropped her head and shook it back and forth every time I raised the subject in a sermon, but only once did she address it directly with me. Usually, after such a sermon, she would call mid-week to complain about the temperature or the volume of the organ, but when our youth minister and a couple of deacons reopened the gym for teens and young men on the block to play basketball two nights a week, she met me on the steps.

"You're giving away my church," she said, softly enough that I had to lean down to hear her. "My Momma and Daddy built this church. My brother and sister and I were baptized here. My children were baptized here. And now you're giving it all away."

The opposition was from a few, and though it was mostly soft spoken, it rang loudly in my ears: Do you really want to stir that up?

I invited others to make the case. A colleague of mine had attended Gentilly when he first came to seminary. On a return visit to our pulpit, he reported that recently he had been dismissed from the church he had served, because his 14-year-old daughter brought a friend to church. The friend was black. This drum we did not bang every week, but often enough. As our congregation saw the biases of others, our own became more evident.

In this period, a few new families joined the church, enough to offset our continuing losses to heaven and the suburbs. Attendance grew a bit, but we noticed that though a number of African Americans visited the church, some for months at a time, few stayed, and fewer joined. We still weren't bridging the gap.

After the tensions surrounding the Simpson trial, Promise Keepers' heightened their emphasis on reconciliation. And in 1995, our own denomination passed its Racial Reconciliation Resolution. Southern Baptists apologized to African Americans for the denomination's role in slavery and sought forgiveness from them and from God. Suddenly, everybody was talking about reconciliation.

Our church council discussed drafting our own resolution, but at the time, we were developing a long-range plan for Gentilly's redevelopment as a multi-ethnic church with African American leadership. Did we need to confuse that issue with talk about slavery?

We had pushed our congregation as far as we could toward New Orleans-style blended worship. "I'm not ready to give up," our music director said. "If I give up on my church, I'll have given up on the city, and I might as well move across the lake with everybody else." She was trying, but we couldn't expect our neighbors to embrace a church that sounded white much of the time, and had no black leaders on the platform.

We mapped several steps to move us forward. But just as we prepared to implement significant shifts in leadership and worship style, we hit a wall. Our history came out.

A slow burning cross

How it happened, I don't know—whether it was gossip ripening or a divine revelation. But given the reconciliation talk, it was clear why we were stuck. If the Klan rumors were true, there was a strain of racial prejudice in this church from its beginning, and it continued to manifest itself today. "Is it time for our own resolution?" we asked in a council meeting. They all agreed we should look into it.

We went to Miss Ida, who, after our late matriarch, had the longest tenure. "I came to the church as a teenager. I remember a couple of times they had cross burnings," she said.

"In the baptistery?" (That was the rumor.)

"No, on top of the piano. Small crosses—burned 'em in a plate—but it made the point. You knew what this church stood for."

"What about the cornerstone? Is it true the Klan laid the cornerstone?" I asked.

"I wasn't there—I didn't come until a year after the old building was built—but that's what I heard. It was commonplace in the 20s—the Klan showed up in a lot of parades and public ceremonies. "

She had confirmed some of the rumors, but what about the cornerstone? We needed proof. Then, cleaning out the old garage, we found stored there the old marble stone, saved after the demolition of the original wooden sanctuary. It was clearly marked "KKK"; and in some historical files, we found a copy of the dedication service. The Baptist Bible Institute sent a men's chorus, according to the bulletin, and representatives from the local order of the Ku Klux Klan presided over the laying of the stone. It was true.

Watch the quiet ones

"We should smash it and grind the pieces to dust," our administrator said when the deacons met. He felt so strongly, he confessed, because he had wrestled with racist attitudes as a young man. He wanted no part of the old cornerstone. "We should dump it in Lake Pontchartrain," he said.

"I don't know about going that far," a deacon objected. "Black people are welcome here. We have black members."

True, but when the possibility arose in the 1960s that blacks might try to join, the church had instituted new membership policies that required an interview and a few other steps prior to a congregational vote. No blacks presented themselves for membership for many years. The first black member was an older woman named Azalea. The preventive measures had been forgotten by then, and Azalea hardly seemed a threat. In fact, she was widely appreciated, and many people shared warm memories of her. And the deacon was right, in part; a dozen African Americans called Gentilly Baptist home by this time.

"But we know about the cornerstone," the administrator countered, "and we should make the record clear. We should have made a statement at the time the Racial Reconciliation Resolution was passed by the Convention."

"You're gonna make some people mad if you bring that up now," another deacon, often our voice of reason, warned.

We should pray about it, we concluded, and see if we really must take a public stand repudiating the past actions of our congregation. The deacons called on the church council to join in prayer and fasting. At the end of the fast, we came together in the sanctuary.

"I really feel the Lord has spoken to me this week," one woman said. "I've examined how I feel about a lot of things—and people."

One at a time, we voiced our support, except one man. "I don't like it, not one bit," he said. Always quiet and always friendly, he surprised us. "I have to give over to black people every day at work. I'm sick of Affirmative Action at work, and I won't be part of it at church."

"That's not what this is about—" I said.

"But have you really prayed about it?" the woman interjected.

He was quiet for a moment. "I'm against it, and if you do it, my wife and I will leave. And others, too." He left the room. The heavy front door clicked shut.

I asked, "Are we going to do this?"

"Yes," they said, resolute.

The next Sunday we made the announcement: "The cornerstone of our original building was laid by the Ku Klux Klan. What the founders' intent in that was, we can't say for sure; but we know that the racial prejudice associated with the Klan must be repudiated. This is not what our church is about today. We will have a service seeking forgiveness and reconciliation, and we will break the stone."

In her seat near the front, the head-shaking woman stared at the floor. I soon heard from her brother. "I'd rather see this church shut down and a For Sale sign on the front door than to hand it to the blacks," the son of our late matriarch stormed. "We used to have good preachers."

Muttered threats, real protests

"Diane Johnson called, and she wants the cornerstone," my secretary said just before service the next weekend. "She's coming over."

Diane lived in the fabled house where the first church meetings were held. She was the granddaughter of the founders. Thankfully, Diane's mother, recipient of the plaque, had moved to the suburbs by this time.

"And she's bringing her boyfriend."

That could mean trouble. I had met him once when visiting with Diane in that living room. We had talked about her chemo treatments, her children, both grown, and her boyfriend. What I knew about the situation told me this could be serious.

Diane showed up alone. She was thin and drawn. "How could you do this? To my mother? And my grandparents? This is our church," she said, pained. I explained the situation, the resolution, and the need for church members to personally embrace our neighbors. "This isn't intended to offend you or your family. But for the people who know the story, it's important that we ask forgiveness and demonstrate our sincerity. We're going to break the stone."

"Could I see it before—" she choked up.

"Sure," I said. We walked over to the stone. She brushed it lightly with her fingers, the way you'd trace a name on a grave marker.

She left, weeping, but in a few minutes, just as the service began, she returned with her grown children and her boyfriend. Through the open windows, I could see them pacing the sidewalk between the sanctuary and the playground where the original building had stood. Two deacons guarded the stone.

I preached, but frankly, I don't remember what I said. The sermon was first in the service. At the mid-point, we planned to go outside to the playground, pray over the stone, and smash it with a sledgehammer. I could hear voices outside the window, but I only got the gist of it. A couple of phone calls, and they'd have back-up. The threats were clear, and I began to fear for our safety.

After reading Psalm 51 and several verses on reconciliation, we read aloud a prayer of confession. As we sang the opening lines of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," the deacon chairman joined me on the platform. "She wants the cornerstone," he said in my ear. "She wants to take it home."

I looked at the pianist. Keep playing, I mouthed, loud. I took the deacon with me and returned to the playground. I'm certain everyone inside could hear our conversation.

"No *@!$#@! way you're gonna break this stone," Diane's boyfriend called out as we approached from the side door.

"This don't belong to you," her daughter joined in. "It's ours, and we're going to take it home." She wielded a refrigerator dolly.

We talked for a couple of minutes, then I stepped back inside and motioned for the leaders to gather in the back hallway. "We should break it like we planned," one insisted.

The head of our women's group said, "We prayed about it and we agreed on it. If we're sincere about reconciliation, we must demonstrate it."

"No," a younger man countered, "If they want it on their heads, let 'em have it."

"Yeah, so long as they get it off our property."

We prayed, and an answer came quickly: Give each person in the congregation a whack at it, but not hard. We'd only tap it, at least once for each year since it was laid. "That will make our point," the young man said, "and everybody gets to take part."

We were unanimous.

As the congregation filed out onto the playground, the protesting foursome grew quiet and retreated. We explained the plan and Diane's desire to have the stone.

"We won't intentionally break it, but everyone who wants to may strike it with the hammer," I said. "Our neighbors should know that the racism we believe is represented by this cornerstone is not at all a part of this church today. It's vital that we ourselves understand that, and state it publicly. This church is for everyone in our community."

They lined up, young and old, white and black, life-time member and newcomer. And one by one they lifted the heavy hammer and dropped it on the cornerstone. We counted aloud as the blows echoed off the brick walls. Secretly, I hoped it would break, perhaps at the hand of an elderly lady or small child, as a judgment from God. More surprising though, Diane stepped forward, took the hammer, and just before the final blow, gave the stone her own solid strike.

The atmosphere seemed lighter as we joined hands and formed a large circle around the perimeter of the playground. Diane and her daughter joined the circle, and we prayed one more time for forgiveness, a clean slate, and a new day. The amen was punctuated by hugs and tears and cheers.

Then the boyfriend slipped the dolly under the marble square, hoisted it, and rolled it down the street.

A new South rises

I won't say all was forgiven after that. The deacon and his wife who opposed the resolution left the church, as did a senior lady, and our relationship with the descendants of the founders was strained. The significant strides of the next few years, however, were worth it.

That fall we elected our first black deacon. His wife became a leader in our women's ministry. The next year, we called an African American as our youth minister. And we named as our associate pastor an African American man with the intention that he would start a second worship service and eventually helm the church. He did.

Today he is the pastor of Gentilly Baptist Church. Attendance has more than doubled, and the church is demographically representative of the neighborhood. Several families from the old body are still there, active in leadership with the current pastor. And the son of our late matriarch attends on occasion, I'm told. To his credit, he's even said this man is a good preacher.

Eric Reed is the editor of the Illinois Baptist newspaper and media, and Associate Executive Director of the IBSA Church Communications Team. He is former managing editor of Leadership Journal.

Of the 13 books professor and church growth expert Thom Rainer has written, Breakout Churches excites him most, he says. He’s found a handful of churches that have been able to stem a decline without changing pastoral leadership. In business terms, they’re “good to great” churches. In fact, Rainer based his research methodology on the study of dramatic business turnarounds reported in Jim Collins’s popular book, Good to Great (Harper, 2001). Familiarity with that book isn’t required to appreciate Breakout Churches, but it helps. Rainer refers frequently to Collins’s research and strives to translate it for the church.

The book is not a study of great churches in general, but those rare congregations that had stagnated or declined for years, then turned around to experience evangelistic growth. Specifically, Rainer sought churches that broke out without changing leaders. He wanted to dismiss the idea that a church had to call a new pastor in order to ignite significant growth.

Of an estimated 400,000 congregations in the U.S., Rainer’s research team found data for about 50,000. Of those, Rainer located 13 churches that matched their breakout criteria. The team studied the churches’ growth patterns, histories, and leaders to determine what preceded and resulted from the time of the breakout. The 13 churches reflect a variety of denominations, ethnicities, and community demographics. By looking at the commonalities of these congregations, Rainier discovered a pattern:

Acts 6/7 Leadership: Leaders “seek to equip others for the work of ministry while deflecting recognition for themselves.” They build the ministry to outlive themselves.

ABC Moment: Awareness develops that something is not right in the church. Belief results that these inadequacies must be confronted. Finally, a crisis is “created in the leader’s heart because of this gap.”

Who/What Simultrack: Leaders determine what the purpose of the church is, and who it will take to accomplish that purpose.

Breakout Churchesby Thom S. RainerZondervan,272 pp.; $22.99

VIP Factor: Vision is discovered at the intersection of three factors: leader passion, community needs, and congregational gifts.

Culture of Excellence: “Everything the church does gets measured against a barometer of excellence.”

Innovation Acceleration: “Innovations were accelerators but not solutions of all of the church’s needs.” Change occurred but fads weren’t chased.

Three concerns emerged from my reading of Breakout Churches. First, how reliable are conclusions distilled from only 13 out of 50,000 congregations? Even if there are more than one hundred possible breakout churches in America, as Rainer suggests, the percentage is still quite low.

The optimist in me sees this as reason for hope. Perhaps we don’t have to change pastorates to experience growth. The pessimist in me, however, fears it’s unrealistic to believe my church would be one of these rarities.

Second, the book is intended to be a presentation of research results, meaning it is far more descriptive than prescriptive. Chapter 10 is titled “To Become a Breakout Church,” but few practical answers emerge on how to apply what these leaders did in order to experience similar results.

Finally, the results of Rainer’s research seem suspiciously similar to those of Collins. He appeared eager to integrate Collins’s findings from Good to Great with what he discovered in the 13 churches. It’s one thing to replicate a research methodology, but another to get the same results. I have to wonder if Rainer’s favorable bias toward Good to Great influenced his own conclusions too highly.

Despite these reservations, Breakout Churches is a recommended read for pastors and lay leaders in congregations that have seen little growth and desire to change direction without changing leaders. Denominational staff and church consultants will appreciate Rainer’s determination to share research results and not just opinions. While the sampling of breakout churches is small, their stories and values are a helpful guide.

Alan Nelson, Scottsdale, Arizona

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

The saddest thing about a certain high-poverty community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is that everyone wants to leave. Anyone with an economic upturn quickly moves away to a better place. As a result, the neighborhood, especially the Eugene Field Elementary School in the heart of it, is caught in a perpetual cycle of need.

Enter Don and Emily Renberg from First United Methodist Church in Tulsa. They’re well-known in the neighborhood because they go to the school so often, sometimes for the entire day. They coordinate an extensive mentoring program for students.

The Renbergs aren’t paid to do this. They’re volunteers. But with their business savvy and entrepreneurial smarts, they’ve figured out both how to genuinely help the Eugene Field community and how to recruit peers at church to lend hand and heart at the school. They chose to move “from success to significance” by serving this community in partnership with their church. First Methodist embraced the idea of discovering and deploying high-capacity leaders who, in too many churches, sit untapped in the pews.

“Our pastors see the benefit in freeing volunteer leaders to do what God is calling them to do, and then they empower us to do it,” says Clark Millspaugh, another volunteer at Eugene Field. Clark’s day job involves running an oil and gas exploration company, but his passion is running men’s ministry at the church, and involving others like himself. “A few years ago I read Bob Buford’s book Halftime, and its theme of moving from ‘success to significance’ hit a responsive chord with me,” he explains. “I love to find people going through some kind of transition, to pray with them, and to help them make a difference in our community.”

Indeed, the church’s leadership has become more intentional about discovering seasoned marketplace leaders and letting them lead. Dr. Wade Paschal, senior pastor, said, “We have a history of saying to people, ‘Where do you think God wants this church to be in ministry?’ and then giving them a real opportunity to do something about it.”

A mechanism that works

People like Clark Millspaugh and the Renbergs are exactly those First Methodist wants to find. The church created a simple way to discover and match Halftimers, who often fly below the radar screen of the church leadership, with big-challenge serving opportunities. Key to the process is Collaborative Day (described at www.halftime.org/howtomanual), which brings Halftimers together with the senior leadership of the church to dig deeply into some of the greatest opportunities the church faces.

“Part of the day is spent discussing the church’s biggest opportunities—an efficient way for church leadership to get to know these people and see them use their marketplace skills on ministry ideas,” says Lloyd Reeb, director of The Halftime Group, and author of From Success to Significance (Zondervan, 2004). “The second part of the day enables Halftimers to explore their own second-half calling, gain peer input, and begin to match with the serving opportunity they are most passionate about.”

The results of Collaborative Day take different directions. “As follow up, my wife and I read From Success to Significance and did its practical exercises on how to find more margin in our lives,” says Clark Millspaugh. “I’m using it with a men’s group I lead to help them create margin in order to do those things of greater significance.” Others, such as Dan and Terry Young, hit the streets after Collaborative Day, starting a Eugene Field Community Night.

A Collaborative Day approach may be new turf for many churches, but it offers solid, long-term payoffs according to Pastor Paschal. “We have to remind ourselves that there is risk in controlling people just as there is risk in letting people loose. I firmly believe the risk of not doing is greater than the risk of doing.”

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

Pastors named Billy Graham as the most influential Christian leader in the U.S. according to a new survey, and they say Graham is still the most trusted spokesman for the Christian faith. Pastors were each asked to identify three leaders; 300 total were named.

Graham was chosen by pastors of all denominations, with Purpose-Driven author and pastor Rick Warren second, but there was great disparity in their remaining selections, with each group more likely to nominate its own. Mainliners commended Martin Marty and Will Willimon; Baptists cited Jerry Falwell, John MacArthur, and Adrian Rogers; and Pentecostals tapped Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, and Paul Crouch.

Here are the top ten influencers, averaged from all pastors’ nominations:

1. Billy Graham
2. Rick Warren
3. George W. Bush
4. James Dobson
5. Bill Hybels
6. T.D. Jakes
7. John Maxwell
8. George Barna
9. Pope John Paul II
10. Max Lucado

—from Barna.org

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

Fresh EncountersExperiencing transformation through united worship-based prayerby Daniel Henderson (Navpress, 2004)

I am often disappointed by books on prayer. Despite their helpful information, they rarely fire me up to pray more. Henderson’s book, Fresh Encounters, is not a disappointment. The book motivates with stories of life change that resulted from prayer.

One significant emphasis is corporate prayer, and Henderson does an excellent job of biblically defending it. He suggests that our private prayer life will rise and fall on our corporate prayer experience, and he fills the book with many creative ideas for corporate prayer meetings. The appendices include schedules, songs, and Scripture for worship-based meetings that will inspire a congregation to pray.

Dee Duke, Jefferson, Oregon

Invading Secular SpaceStrategies for tomorrow’s churchMartin Robinson & Dwight Smith (Kregel, 2004)

Fresh Encountersby Daniel HendersonNavpress, 2004184 pages; $12

Conversations about the future of the modern American church often neglect two facts: the church is neither American nor modern. Robinson and Smith avoid this oversight in their book, Invading Secular Space: Strategies for Tomorrow’s Church. The book successfully combines history, sociology, theology, and practical strategy. And the authors’ European point of view gives a refreshing outsider’s perspective of the church in America. They examine the incredible growth of the church throughout the world, and then ask why the Western church currently is failing to experience the same vigor.

They reexamine our assumptions about the church’s mission, structure, history, and place in the culture. By looking at the rapid advancement of the gospel in emerging countries and in earlier ages, Robinson and Smith lay out a new strategy for the church in the West. Rather than creating large “vertical” church organizations led by a dominant pastor, they argue for recapturing a “horizontal” church with decentralized structures and multiple leaders.

Invading SecularSpaceby Martin Robinson& Dwight SmithKregel, 2004224 pages, $13.99

Invading Secular Space may prove helpful for ministries wrestling with the pragmatism of the modern church and the values of the emerging church movement. Robinson and Smith tip their hat to both sides by acknowledging the monumental shift occurring in Western culture and the need for structural changes in the church, while offering ideas that resonate with leaders seeking practical suggestions.

Skye Jethani, Wheaton, Illinois

A Resilient Lifeby Gordon MacDonaldNelson, 2004224 pages; $19.99

A Resilient LifeYou can move ahead no matter whatGordon MacDonald (Nelson, 2004)

How do we structure our lives so that the first half empowers and enriches the last half? MacDonald gives us a way of thinking about our future so we may condition ourselves for an endurance run. Resilient people, MacDonald says, know the importance of cultivating Christian character.

He embraces the concept of becoming a Christian rather than being a Christian. This requires ongoing study, meditation, and other disciplines that form our character. MacDonald wonderfully reveals the character of resilient people to include generosity, encouragement, purpose, and gratitude.

He extols the necessity of having a circle of close friends who can provide a sense of well being, but who are also able to challenge, encourage, rebuke and stretch us. “A careful study of the Bible will lead one to realize something many of us were not adequately taught when we were young: that the Bible is about relationships and that no one is a complete human being apart from the context of those relationships. It is truly the Christian perspective.”

With more than 40 years of pastoral experience, MacDonald gives us an exciting view of how our Christian lives can continue to develop. If we train well for the race we will still be of service to our God, our churches, our communities, our families, and ourselves all the way to the finish line.

C. Mitchell Carnell Jr., Charleston, South Carolina

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

A 21-year-old pastor of an 18-member inner city congregation stood on the steps of a former Russian Orthodox church on the Hispanic southwest side of Chicago and asked, “How in the world are we going to reach this community?” That was 1986. Today, New Life Community Church has 2,300 attenders, eight locations, services in Spanish and in English, and an unrelenting passion to reach every person in Chicago.

That young pastor was Mark Jobe. “We knew reaching the neighborhood would be difficult, and we weren’t big enough, smart enough, or wealthy enough, but we were willing to change.” Jobe knew the first barrier to overcome was music. The church’s organ and hymnbooks would never fit the neighborhood’s growing Mexican population. “The first month I advertised free guitar lessons,” Jobe said. “That was something I could do. It was an outreach to the community.”

Twenty years later, Mark Jobe is still helping his church connect the gospel with those around them. “We’ve done a lot of bridge building,” he says, “not because we like bridges, but because we are determined to reach our destination.” That destination, Jobe says, is to become a church comprising one percent of the city—approximately 30,000, representing all strata of Chicago—black, white, Hispanic, Asian, CEOs, and street people.

New Life’s efforts have, so far, resulted in eight congregations planted throughout the city; each one seeking to connect the gospel in its own context. New Life’s Little Village campus uses Mariachi music, while the North Side campus has a Starbucks-like café. “The message is the same. It’s the styles that differ,” Jobe says. “It’s beautiful seeing people who are so different from one another all connected by the same church, sharing the same vision.”

You grew up with missionary parents. How’s that influenced you as a pastor?

I was six months old when we left the U.S. and went to Costa Rica. When I was about six years old, we moved to Spain because my parents wanted to reach a more unreached area. So the desire to understand other cultures and reach out to different people is sort of inbred in me. It’s part of my DNA.

So starting a Spanish-speaking church would seem natural for you. Was it?

In the beginning the biggest barrier was myself. Although I spoke Spanish, the European culture I grew up in was very different from the urban Hispanic culture here. Put me in a plaza with a latte speaking to university students in Europe and I was comfortable. Put me on the southwest side of Chicago with Mexican immigrants and gangs, and we’re talking about a totally different culture.

I think it’s a tendency of every person to think their own culture is better than the culture they’re trying to reach. I had to learn that my personal style was secondary to my calling. Missionaries know this, but it’s something I still had to learn.

You’ve described New Life’s calling to be a church of blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, CEOs, and street people. Why is this diversity so important to you?

We’re not after diversity for diversity’s sake. Our calling is to reach all the people in our community, and that’s what has driven our focus on diversity. Any church that takes seriously the Great Commission is going to have to be intentional about diversity. We cannot be serious about reaching the city without asking, “How do we reach the people around us, who are from a lot of different backgrounds?” The answer is “In a lot of different ways.”

Why not focus your church’s ministry on a single category of people, and let other area churches reach the rest?

The church growth movement in the 1980s advocated that churches reach their own sociological groupings, and studies showed that churches grew more rapidly if they targeted a single group. Some of this makes sense. If we’re trying to reach a Hispanic community, obviously we need to speak Spanish. But I also believe Jesus has called us to be ambassadors of reconciliation.

Our main drive should be reconciliation with God. But the Bible says our mission is also about reconciling Jews and Gentiles, reconciling parents to their children, reconciling masters to their slaves.

The Bible is all about reconciliation. First reconciling us with God, and then reconciling us with others across ethnic, generational, and economic barriers.

So if churches aren’t crossing some of these cultural barriers—

I think churches that don’t do this are failing to present a huge component of the gospel.

Some have argued that if a church does not define a specific target audience, it will be ineffective. Do you agree?

I believe in diversity, and I also believe in effectiveness. I think it’s wrong when a community is mixed, but the church targets only one group in that community. In other words, if diverse people live together and work together in this area, then we need to reach them together. The mandate of Christ is very clear—love your neighbors; make disciples of all nations—so we will attempt to reach everybody we can. That doesn’t mean we’ll be equally effective with everyone.

At New Life we’ve been a lot more effective reaching Hispanics than we have been, for instance, reaching the nearby Polish community. But this doesn’t mean we’re going to pursue only Hispanics. We’ve been brainstorming ways to reach our Polish neighbors in Chicago, and if we can’t reach them with what we’re doing, we need to try something else.

Again, what drives us isn’t diversity, but the Great Commission.

What if you were in a setting less diverse than Chicago?

Churches need to ask themselves, how can we reach the whole community that God has called us to? Today, there are very few places where that won’t mean building some bridges to another culture, another social class, or another ethnic group. In fact, statistics show that in the not-so-distant future whites will no longer be a majority in the United States. Sooner or later every church will need to face these challenges if they take the Great Commission seriously.

So in the future, culturally diverse congregations may have an advantage over hom*ogeneous ones?

In some ways it’s happening already. A number of couples are attending New Life because they’re in bi-racial marriages and have felt uncomfortable at other churches. The diversity at our church makes them feel more accepted, more at home.

At our North Side campus, our worship leader is black and his wife is white. Diversity is a huge thing to them, and it’s not just about ethnicity or skin color. For them diversity is about acceptance, about not expecting everyone to look like you. A more diverse church is seen as more welcoming.

Which has been tougher for you—racial and ethnic diversity, or economic diversity?

Definitely the economic differences. In fact, I’ve discovered that people of different ethnicity but the same economic level often have more in common than people of the same ethnicity at different economic levels. The challenge is always the bias and prejudice that exists between the wealthier and the poorer.

On one side, wealthier people can perceive the less wealthy as lazy, uneducated, and unwilling to work. They may not understand all the complicated factors that keep people locked in poverty. Other times the prejudice is among the poorer who see those with more money as snobs, or they resent those they think have had life served on a silver platter.

What kind of leadership is necessary in a diverse community?

We look for leaders who are effective and called and have character. These traits are more important than degrees or resume. A lot of the people we’ve reached are first generation Christians, and many of the leaders at New Life have risen from within the community. If we required leaders to have certain degrees, that would rule out many of our best people. And we’ve seen that the leaders tend to attract people like themselves. If the leaders are too different from the community we’re trying to reach, they may not be effective.

By looking at character, calling, and effectiveness rather than education, we are raising up leaders from within the very communities we want to reach.

So who a church reaches is determined by who is leading?

Here’s what I know—it starts with leaders. If we’re going to reach the African American community, we need some key leaders in the church who are African American. If you look at our leadership team, one of the obvious things is that there are no African Americans. We have been effective at bridging some cultures, especially white and Hispanic. But we have not been as effective with African Americans partly because the neighborhoods we started in were a mix of whites and Hispanics. But if we’re going to be effective at reaching Chicago, we need to reach more African Americans. So we have been praying intentionally about some African American leaders for our church.

Is it possible for leaders from one culture to reach people in another? Can they pick up what they need to know?

Maybe. But this is a big mistake people make when trying to reach a new community. I run into older guys who say they’re going to reach young people, so they start trying to be hip, trying to talk differently, and trying to dress differently. I know a 45-year-old guy who says he’s going to learn Spanish because a lot of Hispanics are entering his community.

I say to these people, “Don’t try to be something you’re not. You’ll never learn Spanish, especially at 45, to a degree that will really allow you to minister well.”

It’s better to get someone Hispanic on your team, or find a young person with a passion to reach other young people. Get someone who is already part of the culture, and they will be able to say the right things in the right way and you will automatically start connecting with the community you want to reach. That’s been our philosophy when we assign leaders. I don’t find a leader and then try to change their personality. I try to connect the right leaders with the right people.

For example, we had the opportunity to launch one of our locations in Melrose Park, a heavily Italian community that in recent years has become more Hispanic. As I was thinking about that location, I wondered, Who would do well in this half-Italian, half-Hispanic area? The leader I thought of, John Palmieri, had been at our church for a while. His father was Italian, but he had a lot of ministry experience in Hispanic neighborhoods. He has done a terrific job in Melrose bridging the older Italian people with the younger Hispanic families. They’re holding three services now.

Half the challenge in leadership is placing the right people in the right context.

How do you maintain unity among your leaders despite your diversity?

It’s driven by two things: we all share a common vision, and we are really intentional about relationships. We do a lot together. We have fun together. We laugh together. We play together. The pastors’ wives get together twice a month for their own gathering. The younger pastors are mentored by the more experienced ones. We do a pastoral family retreat every year where a lot of our goal is just to laugh together and have fun. We play a mean volleyball game. I think a lot of our unity flows from our work at building relationships.

Has this dynamic among leaders influenced the rest of the church culture?

At New Life, we talk about “flowing with the river.” We believe God’s calling for the church is like a river, and those who jump into the middle will flow better than those that stay at the edge. Every New Life location may do things a little differently as they minister in different cultures, but we’ve discovered the people who jump into the middle of the river, by sharing our vision and building relationships, are more effective and more fruitful.

Do you ever look at your diverse congregations—the unity they share—and wonder, How is this possible?

We bring our congregation together a couple times a year for a big worship service. We have shared youth ministry and special events—men’s and women’s retreats and such. At the last women’s retreat, when they broke out into small groups, I cringed when I saw one group where everyone was different. The women were all different ages, from different backgrounds, different educational levels, and I thought, That’s going to be a terrible group because they’re just not going to relate to each other.

I was wrong.

Talking to the women later, they shared how they felt like God had divinely put them in the same group and how well they connected. These were people who would not naturally gravitate toward each other in another setting, but because the small groups are all about brokenness and prayer and worship, there is a melting together that occurs.

That doesn’t make sense to me, but that is the work of God.

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

I spent ten years in Waco, Texas, which should be more than enough for anyone. My memory of those days is a bit spotty. It goes something like this: I moved into my dorm at Baylor, made friends, enjoyed classes, joined a fraternity, pastored a rural church, started a new church funded by American Express, blah blah blah. Let me expand on that last part.

I met a friend named David Crowder, and in January 1995, we started University Baptist Church. Within six weeks, the church exploded from 0 to 600. We were telling the story of God in a way that connected with college students and with people other churches weren’t reaching. One month later a local pastor wrote a scathing article in his church newsletter defaming the church and me. I had never met the man, and assuming there must be a misunderstanding, I gave him a call.

The same man who stood behind a pulpit to preach God’s Word the day before now uttered vile and arrogant words through the phone line, “Son, we are in a different class. You don’t amount to s!*t and you never will. Maybe you will make me eat my words. But I doubt it.”

The words are forever imprinted on my brain.

What do you say to that? “Good to visit with you, Pastor. Thanks for your time.” Even now, I sometimes dream about calling him and rattling off my accomplishments, like the fact that Philip Yancey or Calvin Miller read one of my books and liked it. But then I decide I’ll just send him a copy of the book with a clever comment inscribed.

Never mind, I won’t do that either.

As this supercilious, middle-aged minister berated me on the phone, I was simultaneously humiliated and angry. I look back now and realize I adopted a new posture after that day, my wit sharper, my attitude more jaded, and my mind more skeptical about boomer pastors. My opinions and preferences were cementing into dogma, and without knowing it I was becoming the very thing I hated in others.

I spent a number of years guarding myself from experiencing that kind of pain and humiliation again, and, I am sad to say, I went on the offense. My targets varied, but the most common were the church-growth practitioners who had perfected the art of slick. In my view they had managed to condense centuries of Christian worship experiences into a 60-minute glitch-free presentation.

In the late 1990s, I did my best to convince them of their foolishness. I insulted their mullet hairstyles, mocked their booty-shaking pianist, and snubbed their band-in-a-box called the MIDI.

Despite my assaults they stood their ground undeterred. The wings of their hair grew fluffier, the pastels grew brighter, and soon the entire throng of miked vocalists began to shake their booties. This was a war I couldn’t win. People—large crowds of people—actually enjoyed this contemporary worship that I considered a shenanigan. Who was I to rob them of such joy? So I gave up the culture wars. If they didn’t mind our worship sounding a bit like Wilco or Coldplay, then theirs could relive the glory days of Neil Diamond.

Looking back, I realize I failed at being a peacemaker. I failed to build bridges. I failed to make friends. And I failed to be a blessing to others. I deeply regret that. In spirit, I was closer to my Waco antagonist than I cared to admit. I thought he and his types didn’t amount to much, and never would.

But my anger was misplaced and sinful.

The transition I’m walking through now is much more about substance than style. I pray that, with additional years, I will have more patience and grace. The gospel is always about uniting us amid our diversity. I knew that in my head, but it is an easy thing to forget when we feel under attack.

Chris Seay is pastor of Ecclesia, a congregation in Houston, Texas.

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.