Had a chance over the weekend to preview How Can I Know: Answers to Life’s 7 Most Important Questions. a new DVD-driven study from LifeWay by Robert Jeffress.  Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas is the author of multiple books and the host of the radio and television program “Pathway to Victory.”

Filmed live on location in the worship center at First Baptist, Dallas, each session is 40 to 45 minutes in length.  Packed with very good content, the teaching style will be very familiar for some group members and will take a little getting used to for others.  Need a sample?  You can hear the first message right here on iTunes.

The 7 questions answered in the series are:

• How Can I Know There Is a God?
• How Can I Know the Bible Is True?
• How Can I Know Christianity Is the Right Religion?
• How Can I Know God Is Good with All the Suffering in the World?
• How Can I Know How to Forgive Someone Who Has Hurt Me?
• How Can I Know God’s Forgiveness When I’ve Failed?
• How Can I Know I’m Going to Heaven When I Die?

The member book provides a viewer guide that will help members take notes on important principles for later discussion as well as a simple set of group discussion questions to help begin to apply the teaching.  The member book also includes a fairly robust set of daily lessons designed to help members really dig in to the big idea for the week.  Averaging 5 to 6 pages in length daily, this will take some commitment to complete along with the payoff of in-depth exploration.

Have members that would benefit from additional content?  A companion paperback edition of Jeffress’s book by the same title is available and included in the leader kit.

How Can I Know is not without its challenges.  For many groups the DVD segments are just too long at 40+ minutes.  For others the more formal teaching style will be difficult to embrace.  Still, the content is very good and will be quite helpful to many.  If you’re looking for a study that answers these questions, you’ll want to take a look at How Can I Know.

Ever had the values conversation?  I bet you don’t have this one on your list:

It’s been a long time since I actually worked an algebraic equation.  I’m guessing it’s the same for you.  Still, I’m working on an insight that is helping me form theory and practice for an essential question in grouplife…and a kind of equation is proving helpful for me.

Here’s the equation: Raw Material + Process = End Product.

Here’s a little definition:

• Raw Material: the people who are part of your congregation and crowd.
• Process: The strategies you are using to develop the people.
• End Product: What you are producing in the lives of the people.

With me so far?  Let me tease out the concept just a little with an example:

Church A has a working attractional concept that attracts a mix of non-users (unchurched unbelievers) and transfer growth.  That’s their raw material.

Their process includes an engaging weekend service with topical series (based largely on felt needs) and contemporary music designed to attract and bring back the mix they’ve targeted (non-users and transfer growth).  While there are exceptions, the mix they’re attracting regularly invite their family, friends, neighbors and co-workers to a service that seems to be designed for them.   In addition, they talk about the importance of groups all the time and make it easy to join or host a group.  Groups are designed to generate relationships and conversations that help spiritual next steps happen.  There are also on-campus events designed to make it easy to get connected, but every on-campus event (or class) is designed to lead to grouplife.

The end product they’re designed to produce is a fully devoted follower of Christ (you might have another term but you get the idea).

Initial Takeaways:

• The effectiveness of the process must be evaluated in light of the end product being produced, both quality and quantity.
• Keep in mind that “your ministry is perfectly designed to produce the results you’re currently experiencing.” Andy Stanley
• The end product you are producing is not a coincidence.  It is the result of the effects of the process on the raw materials you have.
• If you’re not happy with the end product (results), you need to address the design (process).

Full disclosure: my equation and thinking is a work in progress.  What I know for sure is that you can tinker with the raw product you have to work with by adjusting some major elements.  You can also make changes to the process that will affect the end product.  What you can’t do is dismiss the impact of your process on the end product you are currently producing.

What do you think?  Have a question?  Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

I hear this (or something like it) a lot.

“We don’t want to just connect people.  We want to help more of our adults become disciples who make disciples.  We know what we want to end up with.  We’re just finding it hard to get the majority of our adults to answer the call and make the commitments they need to make.”

Ever heard that?  Ever said that?

Listen.  I want that too!  But, when I hear that line, I’m reminded again how important it is that we never forget that most of the adults in our sheepfolds aren’t looking for the thrill that comes in being a disciple.  They’re not.

What most of the unconnected adults in our sheepfolds are looking for is the sense that they matter, the sense that they’re known, the sense that they belong.

If we want to help more of the adults in our sheepfolds become disciples who make disciples, we’ve got to design first steps that are easy, obvious and strategic.  They need to be doable.  They need to be blatant.  And they need to lead in the right direction.

The first order of business?  Design first steps that are easy.  The most important thing that for us to remember is that if we want people to arrive at the destination of a disciple who makes disciples…they’ve got to move from where they are.

Legendary Sunday school teacher Henrietta Mears said, ”It is difficult to steer a parked car, so get moving.”

Don’t forget this.  Ever.

What do you think?  Have a question?  Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

This might seem like a stretch today, but I really want you to come along with me for just a few minutes.  I want to talk with you about grouplife agnostics and the adjacent possible.

With me?  Here goes.

First a couple definitions:

GroupLife Agnostics: I use this term to describe small group ministry practitioners whose worldview keeps them from seeing anything other than the way they’ve seen grouplife work or the reality they are comfortable with.  For example, they’ve only seen an apprentice leader become a leader and because they’ve never seen it any other way, they can’t even imagine another scenario.

Adjacent Possible: A theory developed by scientist Stuart Kauffman, “The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways the present can reinvent itself (p. 31, Where Good Ideas Come From).”  See Where Do You Want to Go with Your Small Group Ministry.

Second, a little meat to chew on:

One of my favorite Frederick Buechner quotes is from Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC.  Describing an agnostic, Buechner writes:

An agnostic is somebody who doesn’t know for sure whether there really is a God.  That is some  people all of the time and all people some of the time.

There are some agnostics who don’t know simply because they’ve never taken pains to try to find out–like the bear who didn’t know what was on the other side of the mountain.

There are other agnostics who have taken many pains.  They have climbed over the mountain, and what do you think they saw?  Only the other side of the mountain.  At least that was all they could be sure of.  That faint glimmer on the far horizon could have been just Disneyland.

So…it follows that a grouplife agnostic might have just never taken pains to find out if there’s another way.  Or, they might have taken great pains and just can’t see it.  Instead…they wonder if that faint glimmer might just be Disneyland.

An application.

Somewhere, just on the edges of the present state of your small group ministry, there is an idea that might open the door to an entirely different outcome.  It is the adjacent possible.  It is where grouplink and the small group connection were found.  It is where video driven curriculum was found (by the way, it is also where easy-t0-use curriculum was found by Lyman Coleman).  It is where the church-wide campaign and the HOST strategy were discovered.

The adjacent possible.  You can ignore it.  You can overlook it.  You can even call it a pipe dream.  But if you want in on all that’s possible, you’ve got to be willing to work close the edges.

What do you think?  Have a question?  Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

Tripped across an interesting new book by Daniel Montgomery and Mike Cosper that I think you’re going to want to know about.  Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey takes the fragments of Christian life that most of see in isolation (missions, discipleship, worship, the cross, or the kingdom) and assembles them into “a beautiful, coherent picture.”

Not strangers to the missional movement, Montgomery and Cosper bring an experienced eye to the issues that confront all of us who want to help our own congregations navigate the ancient paths “that saints have followed for a long, long time.”  Two of the founding pastors of Sojourn Community Church, a fast-growing multi-site church in Louisville, Kentucky, Faithmapping is their “attempt to lay out the lessons [they've] learned as [they've] tried, failed and fallen in love with the gospel (p. 20).”

Faithmapping is organized by the framework of whole gospel, whole church and whole world.

Beginning with a look at the whole gospel, I think one of the many helpful concepts in Faithmapping is the integration of three central aspects of the gospel.  The gospel of the kingdom argues that the gospel is a kingdom announcement; the authors explore what the kingdom of God is and what the other competing kingdoms are.  The gospel of the cross makes the case that the gospel is “the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection–all that He did to pay the penalty for our sins.”  And the gospel of grace explains that the gospel is a gift of grace, “something that God accomplishes for us, entirely of His own strength and power, not because we earned or deserved anything.”

Continuing with the whole church, Faithmapping “unpacks the movements of transformation: how the gospel changes us from inside out and how that is different from the way the world understands religion and change.”  Explaining out our identities as worshipers, family, servants, disciples, and witnesses, this section illustrates how each is a road through the landscape of the gospel.

Concluding with the whole world, Faithmapping points us to a new dynamic.  ”The gospel is an announcement that forms a people–the church–and those people live out their new identities in the world around them, pointing people back to the gospel message that changed and saved them (p. 196).”

Practical application: I think my favorite aspect of Faithmapping is the way every chapter ends with a short look at application.  Asking three questions, Map It provides a way of integrating what I’m learning in the book to the rest of my life.  Here are the questions:

• Who am I?
• Where am I?
• What am I to do?

Faithmapping is both readable and important.  Likening it to the way John Ortberg referred to his The Life You’ve Always Wanted as Dallas (Willard) for Dummies, the authors refer to Faithmapping as Keller for Dummies.   I’d say they’re on the right track.  I found myself again and again marking a paragraph and noting that I need to come back to that.  There’s a ton of very good stuff in Faithmapping.

Ever wonder what’s at the heart of true innovation?  When you trip across something that’s really good, do you ever wonder how they came up with that?  What processes are they using to think up such an elegant solution?  Ever think those thoughts and just find yourself stumped when it comes to your own situation?  

I wonder if our inability to see the innovative path has to do with our inability to successfully abandon things that worked in the past?  In Managing for Results Peter Drucker wrote that “planned, purposeful abandonment of the old and of the unrewarding is a prerequisite to successful pursuit of the new and highly promising.  Above all, abandonment is the key to innovation—both because it frees the necessary resources and because it stimulates the search for the new that will replace the old (p. 143).”

When you think about your own organization, can you remember the last time you laid to rest a program that was still working “good enough”?  Maybe an idea that at one time was really a good one but whose day had come and gone?  Think about it.  In fact, this would be worth a full-day off-site.  Take your key people and wrestle through it.  Drucker’s idea is dead-on correct.  Not without pain.  Not without issues.  But it is in the planned, purposeful abandonment of yesterday’s winners that tomorrow’s can emerge.

What do you think?  Have a question?  Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

I had a jaw drop moment while reading an HBR blog post by Bill Taylor, Brand Is Culture, Culture Is Brand.  Although the article is about brands and organizational culture, the story he told about the way USAA employees learn to meet the needs of their customers was very compelling and I realized right away that you’d want to hear about this.

His article highlights USAA (the insurance and financial-services firm that only does business with active or retired members of the U.S. military and their families) and their intense drive to meet the needs of their customer.  They do that by building a culture that seeks to understand the life that our military and their families live.

This is where the article brought me to a jaw-drop moment.  USAA employees are known for their empathy.  They develop that empathy through a series of immersion activities.  For example, when they’re about to start training USAA team members:

• “Get a ‘deployment letter’ like the ones real soldiers get: ‘Report to the personnel processing-facility’ tomorrow, the letter reads, and get your affairs in order beforehand.’”
• “Eat MREs (meals ready to eat) on many occasions during their training, to get a ‘taste’ for the life of a soldier”
• “Walk around in 65-pound backpacks.”
• “Read actual letters from soldiers in the field to their families back home.”

All of this is part of a strategy that “USAA calls it ‘Surround Sound’ — immerse employees in the real life and emotional needs of customers.”  One consultant said, “There is nobody on this earth who understands their customer better than USAA.”

Wow!  Isn’t what we all do worth that kind of immersion?  Wouldn’t we all like to be known as the organization that understands their customers better than anyone else!

What would it have to look like for all of us to really understand our customers in this way?

What do you think?  Have a question?  Have an idea?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

There are signs everywhere…that American culture is becoming less Christian.  When I study the research and read the reports, I’m immediately an analyst myself, speculating how these trends are already impacting what we do.  If you are a ministry practitioner, volunteer or staff, you may already be having the same thoughts.  If you’re not there yet, it’s time to begin paying attention.

This week the Barna organization released findings that while “seven out of 10 adults describe themselves as ‘Christian’ and more than six out of 10 Americans say they are ‘deeply spiritual,’” America is becoming increasingly post-Christian.

Analyzing 42,855 interviews conducted in recent years, the research explores the emerging post-Christian landscape of the nation by examining 15 different measures of non-religiosity.  To qualify as post-Christian, “individuals met nine or more out of 15 criteria. Highly post-Christian individuals met 12 or more of these 15 criteria.”  The measures they selected were:

1. do not believe in God
2. identify as atheist or agnostic
3. disagree that faith is important in their lives
4. have not prayed to God (in the last year)
5. have never made a commitment to Jesus
6. disagree the Bible is accurate
7. have not donated money to a church (in the last year)
8. have not attended a Christian church (in the last year)
9. agree that Jesus committed sins
10. do not feel a responsibility to “share their faith”
11. have not read the Bible (in the last week)
12. have not volunteered at church (in the last week)
13. have not attended Sunday school (in the last week)
14. have not attended religious small group (in the last week)
15. do not participate in a house church (in the last year)

Here are the questions I’m asking when I see the research:

• When we see the list of factors, are we seeing the faces of family, neighbors, friends, and co-workers?
• Does our communication (website, messages, bulletin, sermon notes, etc.) recognize that 40% of our community might be operating from a post-Christian mindset?
• Am we taking their worldview into consideration when we choose or create the small group studies that we’ll use to launch new groups in the community?

By the way, based on the same analysis, Barna identified the “most post-Christian cities in America.”  How did your city do?  Are you on the list?  What are you doing to tailor your ministry to function in a post-Christian culture?

What do you think?  Have a question?  Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

How does your strategy work in an increasingly post-Christian culture?  How much thinking are you doing to truly understand the implications of ministry leadership in the 21st century?  Are you sensing the connection between a rising degree of ministry difficulty and changes in the spiritual barometer itself?

Barna’s most recent report highlights again the shift happening in America as 37% of Americans are highly or moderately post-Christian. Are you having the conversations that lead to strategic shifts in ministry design?  See Gabe Lyon’s The Next Christians for more.

James Emery White’s blog has been helpful in spotlighting a seismic shift in outreach strategy.  Have you begun wrestling with how ministry must adapt and change to be effective in the second decade of the 21st century?  See his book, The Church in an Age of Crisis for more.

I’ve been harping on this for several years.  It’s front of mind every day.  Are you there?  See also, Different, Not Better, Will Connect the Widening 60%.

What do you think?  Have a question?  Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.