The Milestone 360 Can Transform Your Ministry

In the years leading up to its 50th anniversary milestone, CCCC reflected on its past, assessed its present state, and planned its desired future. Let’s call this analysis a Milestone 360. A comparison of CCCC in 2010 to what it is today reveals an organization reinvigorated with new life and creativity—it is refreshed with new programs, platforms, strategies, and an expanded vision for what it wants to achieve.

Our founder and his ministry friends accomplished their dreams of what they could do with the resources they had. My predecessor did the same. And, after focusing on membership growth and organizational development, in 2011 it was time for the team and me to dream as well. Our founder had told me he was amazed that we had surpassed his vision for CCCC, so it felt like a new beginning for us. A well-timed sabbatical in 2011 led straight into the discovery process that I’m now calling the Milestone 360. We used the process to dream about how CCCC could make a much greater contribution to the success of Christian ministries. Our 50th anniversary was within a reasonable planning horizon and our goal was to set CCCC up for success over the next 50 years. A looming milestone, such as a 50th anniversary or completion of a major project, is a great reason to pause and prepare the ministry for what comes next. However, since this analysis can be done at any time, there’s no reason to not do it now. How might your ministry be transformed by the Milestone 360 analysis?

The first two posts in this Milestone 360 series looked back over a ministry’s history to determine what to preserve, what to revive, and what to leave behind. This post shifts to the present to look around and assess the ministry as it is today, starting with its corporate values.

Corporate Values are Corporate Decisions in Advance

Corporate values are all about the choices that confront ministries every day. Will you go this way or that way, do this or that? When you define your corporate values, you are at the same time deciding in advance the criteria that will be used to assess the many choices the ministry will face in the future. Of the hundreds of values that could be your corporate values, which ones will you feature as the most significant for your ministry for the foreseeable future?

Selecting your ministry’s corporate values is not a forever decision. Over time, you may find that other values should be featured as corporate values. The previous values will still be good and worthy to be held by the organization, but the issues facing you then may benefit from a different set of featured values. Every so often you need to answer the question, Are your corporate values still the ones to feature today? This post will help you answer that question. And, if you have not yet identified your corporate values, this post will help you choose the ones that will best serve your ministry.

Types of Corporate Values

There are several different starting places for finding values that could become your ministry’s corporate values. I’ve found it helpful to label those starting points because the labels provide an organized approach to developing a well-rounded set of corporate values.

You will note that I have not included cultural or team values in the list below. These values are often called corporate values, but they are inward looking rather than outward looking and they deal with individuals rather than the organization and its needs. CCCC has formally documented its cultural aspirations and its team values, but we don’t call them corporate values. Our corporate values are reserved for what the organization as a whole needs to accomplish its mission.

Christian Values

Christian values apply all the time to all Christians and apply to your ministry whether or not they are your corporate values. A particular Christian value becomes a corporate value when it is deemed so vital to mission success for the ministry that it is worthy of receiving special attention.

Because CCCC is an umbrella organization with members from across the Christian spectrum, we feel we have a duty to model Christian unity. So, we have a top-level corporate value of “Evangelical in identity, ecumenical in service.”

And because we are involved in the “business” side of ministry, we believe it is important that we remind everyone, including ourselves, of the spiritual and faith-based aspects of our work with a corporate value to “Present a strong Christian witness at all times.”

Guardrail Values

Guardrail values keep the ministry safe by preventing it from suffering again from past failures or unwanted experiences. Completing the phrase “Never again will we…” will help you discern these values.

For example, for a number of years people perceived CCCC as being a “watchdog” or “police officer” enforcing the rules within the Christian ministry sector. This was neither the reputation nor the role we wanted. (Accredited CCCC members voluntarily make themselves accountable for complying with our standards, which we do “enforce,” but we do so from the perspective of helping them come back into compliance with the standards they’ve chosen to meet.) We have a guardrail value to prevent CCCC being seen as a “watchdog” or “police officer” again: “We aspire to…serve our peers with the integrity and servant’s heart that are expected of a representative of Jesus Christ.” For a season, we had a tagline that positioned us as among our members, not over them: Advancing Ministry Together. Having fulfilled its purpose, we no longer use this tagline, but the value continues as a guardrail for us.

Both CCCC examples of Christian corporate values, “Evangelical in identity” and “A strong Christian witness,” also serve as guardrail values. They protect us from mission drift.

Brand Values

Brand values are those values that tell people “We’re different and here’s how.” They set the expectations of those who engage with your ministry as supporters, staff, or beneficiaries about what they will experience. Review your brand guide to find what is particularly distinctive about your ministry and consider making that a corporate value because it is central to your ministry’s identity and reputation.

For example, a pillar of the CCCC brand is Caring, which we’ve defined as encompassing empathy, compassion, Christian spirituality, listening, encouraging, kindness, and being supportive. This pillar captured what we had been doing for years that built tremendous loyalty from our members. Our related corporate value is that we “serve all Christian ministries in Christian love and harmony.” We believe this is what makes membership in CCCC a relational rather than a transactional experience.

Strategic Values

Strategic values are values that your strategy requires. What values must your ministry hold fast to in order to successfully execute its strategy? Make each of those a corporate value.

For instance, CCCC provides information to its members about how to operate a charity so that it is an exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministry. We need to show our members how to apply our information by using that same information ourselves to be an exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministry. One of our corporate values is to be an “Exemplary model of a Christian ministry” because we aspire to practise what we preach.

Compass Values

Compass values are high-level values that don’t fit under the other value types. Compass values define who or what the ministry is and what it stands for. They keep the ministry on course with its identity and ethos.

CCCC wants to be a good citizen within the community of Christian ministries, so one of our corporate values is to “Demonstrate Christian unity by…always thinking of [other ministries’] welfare, being open to correction, and being ready to find a way forward that honours God.”

We also have a compass value to preserve our Christian identity: “We are Christ-centred and Spirit-led, helping ministries think theologically about all aspects of operating a Christian organization.”

Platitude Values

Platitude values are those that few, if any, people would disagree with. It’s what we mean when we say something is like “motherhood and apple pie.” Who can argue against it? Platitude values are worthy but uncontroversial values that your ministry has no trouble adhering to.

If your ministry has never had to struggle with honesty or integrity, don’t make them corporate values. Most people will assume honesty and integrity are a given, so stating them will make some wonder why you felt it necessary to highlight them. If, however, your ministry has had an experience with dishonesty or lack of integrity, then these are not platitude values for you; they are meaningful corporate values, at least for a time.

Platitudes often become corporate values when people don’t use the starting points listed above to discern a ministry’s corporate values. Instead, they consider in a general way what the corporate values should be rather than analysing what they need to be. One way to tell that you have a platitude for a corporate value is if you never refer to the value when making a decision.

Personal Values

Individuals associated with your ministry may personally hold strongly to some values they want to see adopted as corporate values. This is most likely to happen at the founding of the ministry, but personal preferences for particular values could be suggested at any time. There’s no reason to reject them out-of-hand as they no doubt are good values, but they should not become corporate values if they would be platitudes. Make sure suggested personal values fit one of the other types of values: Christian, Guardrail, Brand, Strategic, or Compass.

Updating Corporate Values

If your ministry already has corporate values, reflect on whether they are still the right values for today. Before you change them, though, consider this: previous leaders set them as corporate values for a reason. You need to understand why. Did they document how the values were chosen? What did your research about the ministry’s history reveal was going on when the values were adopted?

Current leadership can always change decisions made by previous leaders based on current circumstances, but since values are enduring, give serious consideration about what you are losing by deemphasizing the values you want to remove. To be clear, you are not disavowing the values your remove from your corporate values; you are just removing the emphasis on them. In doing so, what would you be walking away from that previous leaders thought was important? Why was it important? Why did they choose to feature that value and not another? Make sure you understand the history before you change a corporate value.

Though we don’t know when CCCC adopted its first corporate values, the 2002 strategic plan listed eight corporate values that had been in place for some years. In 2012, we updated the language for five of the values, and those values are still with us today because they are still relevant. The three values we dropped had all become platitudes since they are part of the very essence of CCCC today, in our strategy, programs, or way of life.

At the same time, we added two new values. One is about the place of the local church in the life of a believer. This was important as it is a key recommendation in my book, The Church at Work, and it was important that CCCC model it. The other new value was about continuous improvement. This was important at the time because we hadn’t kept up with changes in technology and how people use it. We also had a lot of infrastructure that needed updating. We’re doing much better now, but the value is still useful.

If you create or update corporate values, do a favour for future leadership by documenting why you chose to feature each value. This will help future leadership appreciate the reasons for the value and know if it is time to drop the value and replace it with another.

CCCC’s Corporate Values

1. Evangelical in identity, ecumenical in service

• We demonstrate Christian unity by serving all Christian ministries in Christian love and harmony, always
  • thinking of their welfare.
  • being open to correction.
  • being ready to find a way forward that honours God in keeping with the direction of the Holy Spirit as discerned by all parties involved.
• We are Christ-centred and Spirit-led, helping ministries think theologically about all aspects of operating a Christian organization.
• We recognize the biblically mandated special place of the local church in the life of the believer. We respect it as the primary gathering place of Christ’s followers, and we respect its denomination’s oversight.
• We present a strong Christian witness at all times.

2. Excellence in our work

• We aspire to excellence in all that we do, serving our peers with the integrity and servant’s heart that are expected of a representative of Jesus Christ.
• We commit to continuous improvement by
  • building our knowledge and expertise.
  • being an innovative provider of leading-edge services.
  • helping our staff become thought-leaders in their respective fields.

3. Exemplary model for Christian ministries

• The board and staff aspire to model faithfulness and excellence as a witness and an encouragement to other ministries.

You can read about the historical review we did and the consultation process we used to develop these corporate values here.

The post Looking Around: Corporate Values appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Here’s my testimony about the linked post. I wrote it based on my own experience of digging deep into the CCCC mission statement. I find it very exciting to think about our statement: CCCC members will be exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministries. Just the idea of thousands of churches and agencies further living up to that description excites me because of the greater effect they will have on Canadians and our society.

But there’s much more to get excited about!

When I think about what we have to do to fulfill our mission statement, all I can say is I get so excited I can barely contain myself! Plumbing the depths of a mission statement makes it very clear what must be done to achieve it and I look forward to developing or tweaking the programs that will do the job.

This post from April 12, 2021 walks you through a process to discover how your mission statement can transform your church’s priorities and programs. You will be thrilled with the result. And best of all, as a pastor you get the fun of implementing the ideas.

I can’t overstate the impact your mission statement can have. It resulted in CCCC changing its name and its branding, while leading to new programs and a new corporate ethos. Check this post out and discover its power for yourself!

The post Explore Your Mission Afresh appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Let me draw your attention to Isaiah’s prophecy: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel (Isa 7:14).

We know Immanuel means “God with us.” How can we embrace that prophetic comfort in this current time? So many Christians serving in ministry are tired from the pressures and distractions swirling around, some even to the point of wondering whether continuing in ministry is still their call. If that’s you, please hear the Christmas message that God loves you and is with you. And not only is God with you, but he wants very much for you to come to him. His arms are open wide to embrace you—always.

When Jesus was born, the Son of God became flesh and fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy. God was now with us. Later, Jesus himself made his presence with us permanent by saying, “I’m with you always, to the end of the age.” Take comfort that Jesus will stay with you as you serve in your call from beginning to end. From Jesus’ perspective, the prophecy “God with us” has become the promise “I’m with you”. His presence with us today is truly a gift of Christmas.

How can we experience Jesus’ gift of Emmanuel, God-with-us? Well, Jesus gave us the perfect model in his retreats to the wilderness to be with his Father. In prayer and solitude he found guidance, support, and a Father’s loving embrace that told him everything is okay. That time with his Father gave Jesus the strength he needed to persevere in his mission. And Elijah is an example of experiencing God’s embrace even when we are too depleted to seek it. When Elijah fled his ministry and wanted to die, God instead fed him, encouraged him, and launched him back into his call. And that guidance, support, and loving embrace is what Jesus wants to give you, right now!

And there’s more that Jesus wants to give you. He gave us other ways to experience Emmanuel, God-with-us. Christians can be “little Christs” to each other and provide an ear to listen, a heart to pray, and a partner to help process the challenges of ministry. In being both supportive and vulnerable, we can be there for each other as we press on. Other ways to be replenished for frontline ministry might include a stay at a pastors’ retreat centre, professional counselling, or a reprioritization of self-care.

Emmanuel, God-with-us, Jesus, is with you right now, ready to listen to whatever is on your heart. Be encouraged by these Scriptures:

·   “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

·   Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7

·   Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4:16

Christmas is the perfect time to remember that you are not alone. All the love, all the care, all the healing power of Emmanuel, God-With-Us, is now yours to receive as God’s gift to you.

Emmanuel! God with you! Hallelujah! Merry Christmas! From myself and the CCCC board and staff. 

The post God’s Loving Embrace: Christmas and God with Us appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Though not typically engaged in advocacy, a church recently wrote an open letter to the BC Minister of Health and Chief Medical Officer about church gathering restrictions, and I was inspired by how well it was crafted. This letter is interesting to study because a) we all can identify with the issue it addresses, and b) there isn’t the wealth of research and background support material to draw upon as there is for the traditional advocacy causes. That means the authors had to put a lot of thought into constructing an argument based upon reason. Given that, the open letter did a great job of laying out a challenge to the governing authorities and supporting it with reason. We can learn from the letter about how to address other issues we may face.

In my post Advocating for Legal/Public Policy Changes, I outlined four possible responses to actions taken by those in authority:

1. Comply with the law either because you agree with it or want to show goodwill if you don’t.
2. Consult with the appropriate authorities when they are agreeable to discussion.
3. Challenge the authorities when they are not agreeable to discussion with either a protest or a legal challenge.
4. Disobey the authorities when circumstances are so egregious and the authorities are so resistant that this is the only option. 

This post is about making an initial challenge—one that is the least confrontational in that it is based on reason rather than pressure. If it is not successful, the challenge can be escalated by adding pressure through public protest (ranging from petitions to demonstrations) and legal challenges.

Scripture gives a great example of advocacy that is respectful and based on reason, yet makes a forceful case. Paul, spoke up for a runaway slave and challenged his owner to receive him back as a brother. In making his appeal, Paul walked a fine line in which he mostly asked for what he wanted, but there is a hint of “you owe it to me to give me what I ask” in his request that comes from the added pressure of his intention to visit the slave owner and see firsthand how he responded to Paul’s request.

The Example

Westlynn Baptist Church in North Vancouver, BC challenged the provincial restrictions on church gatherings.

• If you prefer to read, here is their six-page open letter.
• If you prefer to watch, here is a video of Pastor Sam Chua reading the letter. The video is 17 minutes long, but it is worth watching to catch the spirit in which the challenge is made.

Why This Letter Is a Great Example

Here’s a list of what makes this appeal by Westlynn Baptist Church such a good example:

• To minimize the confrontation, thus improving the likelihood that those in authority will be more open to their message, the church:
  • Respected those in authority
  • Demonstrated goodwill by caring for those in authority with regular prayer and even shared what they were praying for
  • Agreed with what they could: the policy goals
  • Gratefully acknowledged what the government has done well and that government policy has benefited the province
  • Assumed the best intentions of those in authority
  • Followed the very rules they want to change and did even more than is required in order to show goodwill and support the government’s goals
  • Refrained from using inflammatory language
  • Remained factual
  • Asked questions rather than making strident demands
• The appeal should help the government understand the church’s case because it provided new information that highlighted the unintended consequences of the province’s rules. Specific examples of glaring unequal treatment of religion based on truly comparable scenarios made a compelling case for the desired change in policy.
• The church displayed a strong moral conviction about a public good that the government was overlooking. Their argument wasn’t centred on themselves and their rights but on the good being withheld from others who need their help.
• The entire presentation was very well researched and backed up by proper citations.
• The “ask” acknowledges there still needs to be suitable COVID-19 safety protocols, which they committed themselves to observe. The church is making a reasonable request giving due care to the broader community.
• The challenge does reference Charter rights as a gentle reminder that there is the possibility of a legal challenge, but it is very much a secondary argument given minimal attention at this time.
• The church has framed the argument in a way that will do minimal damage to the reputations of the church and Christianity because it is focused on the welfare of the community, not of the church. The church needs to do everything it can to ensure the community hears this other-centred message.

Whether Westlynn Baptist Church will be successful in getting the government to change its policy is not yet known, but they have done an excellent job in challenging the government in a well-reasoned way that is the most promising approach for achieving the desired outcome.

Discussion

CCCC members can discuss their ideas for effectively challenging governing authorities in The Green. Let’s study and learn from each other’s advocacy work.

Key Idea: Using reason to persuade when challenging governing authorities is an initial challenge with a good likelihood of success.

The post Challenging Authorities: Using Reason to Persuade appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

In our world today there are so many ways to lose hope because so many things are wrong—to name a few, there’s the pandemic, political polarization, racism, injustice, terrorism, and declining interest in Christian faith. But this hasn’t taken God by surprise. We are not in a new scenario—we’re in a “once again” scenario.

You see, this current climate reminds me of the time I travelled along with the Jews through their history by reading a chronological Bible. As I began to read the New Testament in early December that year, I experienced Christmas in a whole new way as I saw clearly how wrong everything was going for the Jews at the time of Jesus’ birth:

• The Jews were back in the Promised Land, but they were a conquered people.

• They had a Temple, but it was only a pale imitation of Solomon’s Temple.

• They had lots of new religious writings, but they hadn’t had a prophet from God in 400 years.

• They had a king, but he was not a Davidic king.

• They had no sign of a promised Messiah.

In short, it seemed that God had not kept His Covenant promises to them. It was as though they were once again in the same situation as their oppressed ancestors in Egypt, who groaned in slavery.

And then, amid the sorrows of life under Roman rule, Jesus was born. Surely His birth would change everything and give hope to the Jews that their salvation was at hand! But that wasn’t the case. Jesus’ birth and its circumstances remained hidden. 

Yes, the Magi came…but they protected Jesus by saying nothing. Mary and Joseph wisely kept Jesus’ identity to themselves too. And who would listen to Anna and Simeon who’d spent years waiting for the Messiah? Only the shepherds proclaimed the news widely, but how many believed their unlikely tale?

All this stifled communication led to the fact that Jesus’ birth meant absolutely nothing to society at the time because they didn’t even know about it.

And yet, God had already acted decisively to set in motion a plan that would change everything. 

Just because the masses didn’t know the Messiah had been born didn’t change the fact that He had been. It didn’t change the fact that God was at work behind the scenes building up to the most significant intervention in human history. By the time people started noticing, thirty years had passed!

All through those years when Israel felt abandoned by God, they were unaware that He knew about their sorrow and suffering, just as He had known about the plight of their ancestors in Egypt. 

And He once again kept His Covenant promises and was already at work on a plan. What peace they would have had if only they had known that the plan was unfolding and they simply had to wait thirty more years, such a brief moment of time in human history.

In our current world filled with so much wrong, we are once again in that type of situation. Maybe God is once again doing something new behind the scenes and we will see its effect in thirty years. Or maybe God already did something thirty years ago and its effect will be revealed soon, maybe even later today! There are so many possibilities! And, while God has not communicated His specific plans to us, we can be sure that our Father is never remote from us and He is not idle.

Christmas is a beautiful reminder that God remembers us. Just like at the time of Jesus’ birth, He knows our circumstances, feels what we are feeling, and cares for us more than we could ever imagine. We can be confident that He does have a plan in motion, whether we see evidence of it or not. 

Friends, this Christmas, let’s embrace the reassurance that our Father is in control and actively at work in our world, giving us hope, once again.

Merry Christmas to you from myself, the board, and the staff at CCCC!

A number of churches have asked permission to share this post with their congregations. The answer is “Yes.” Please do two things:

1. Attribute it to: Rev. John Pellowe, CEO, Canadian Centre for Christian Charities
2. Use the email icon on this page just to let me know that you are using it.

The post Hope for the Church: Christmas & God the Father appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

CCCC members who would like to discuss this post can do so in The Green.

God has an exciting trajectory for humanity that leads from a world populated by two people with nothing of human design in it to a highly populated society designed and built by humans. Jews and Christians know this trajectory as the Creation Mandate, which was given to all humanity in Genesis 1:26-28. Everyone else is on the same trajectory but thinks of it as simply human progress. Either way, all well-intentioned people have the same objective: to build a good world that will sustain and support a thriving humanity. This shared goal gives Christians a great way to build bridges into all other communities.

However, it may be that some Christians are not making the most of this opportunity to reach out to our neighbours because the Creation Mandate is often sidelined in favour of the Great Commission. We could all benefit from a fresh review of the Creation Mandate and our response to it because the mandate is vitally important to God and his plan for both creation and humanity.

The Creation Mandate

I find it remarkable, but in line with God’s generous character, that he gave humanity the responsibility of co-creating the world that will support our growing population. In giving the Creation Mandate, God charged Adam and Eve (and through them, all humanity) to subdue the earth and to rule over all living creatures.

Subdue

Since Genesis 1 is all about how God created order out of chaos, the best of the different meanings of subdue in this context is “to control for the purpose of establishing order.” Today, we call this creation care.

Genesis 2:15 helps us understand how to care for creation as God’s stewards in a way that pleases him: “Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.” The crucial words are cultivate and keep. Here’s a good explanation of what God wanted Adam to do:

[Cultivate] can be translated as work, nurture, sustain, and husband; [keep] means to safeguard, preserve, care for, and protect. These are active verbs that convey God’s intention that human beings both develop and cherish the world in ways that meet human needs and bring glory and honor to him. . . . Human beings are, by divine intent and their very nature, world-makers.

James Davison Hunter. To Change the World, p 3.

God expects us to bring order to the natural world and then cultivate and care for it so that it continues to provide sustenance and enjoyment to humanity. Without idolizing creation, we are to cherish it as the treasure it is.

Rule

The best of the available meanings of rule in the context of Genesis 1 is “to have charge of.”  We have charge over all living things, and the way we rule must align with the way God rules. That means we must rule with the goal of ‘justice‘ because God created humanity in a condition of justice (shalom), where each person had his or her due share of God’s creation. And it means our rule must be characterized the same way as Psalm 145 characterizes God’s rule. He rules by wisdom, power, goodness, grace, compassion, faithfulness, generosity, provision, protection, justice, and love.

Our Responsibility

Since the Creation Mandate was given before the fall and has never been rescinded, it continues to apply to everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike. Theologian N. T. Wright is careful to distinguish between the Creation Mandate to build our world and God’s work of building his kingdom, and he makes it clear that fulfilling the Creation Mandate is not optional:  

God builds God’s kingdom. But God ordered his world in such a way that his own work within that world takes place not least through the human beings who reflect his image. . . . He has enlisted us to act as his stewards in the project of creation. . . . Through the work of Jesus and the power of the Spirit, he equips humans to help. . . . The objection about us trying to build God’s kingdom by our own efforts, though it seems humble and pious, can actually be a way of hiding from responsibility, of keeping one’s head well down when the boss is looking for volunteers.

N. T. Wright. Surprised By Hope. P 207.

Another theologian makes the same point about the obligation of fulfilling the Creation Mandate. Doing so as God’s representative “is the basic purpose for which God created humanity. We are responsible to God to manage and develop and care for creation.”¹

The Necessity of the Creation Mandate

Continuing to build our world helps it provide for our growing needs. As the population increased beyond Adam and Eve, there was a need to construct social institutions to help us relate to one another and coordinate our activities. We needed economic systems for trade and investment so we could diversify and specialize our work so some people produce what we need for survival and others work in science, medicine, or the arts. We could also pool resources to do projects that no single individual could do. As populations became denser, we developed technology to provide more bountiful food supplies and to distribute food and goods across longer distances. We built an educational system to support discovery of new knowledge and to pass it on to others. Today we still need to learn how to use the world’s resources wisely, particularly for energy, and create ways to sustain life on an increasingly densely populated planet.

These are all issues that Christians ought to care about and be involved in, so we should not withdraw from politics, banking, the arts, or any of the other things that evangelicals have tended to shy away from. Christians need to be active in all aspects of world-making to fight against the effects of sin (including our own) and keep all human-designed systems working for the good of all humanity.

What Creation Care Looks Like

Not properly stewarding God’s physical creation has dire consequences, according to the authors of Caring for Creation (Mitch Hescox and Paul Douglas). They say that disregarding God’s instructions to tend and care for the earth results in the earth’s failure to provide the necessities for sustaining life. While I haven’t done my own research, they cite research showing, for example, that there is a strong link between petrochemicals and fossil fuel energy and conditions such as asthma, autism, ADHD, and allergies. Breast cancer has risen from a lifetime risk of 5% to 12.5% since the 1960s, and research is increasingly showing that plastics and chemicals that act like hormones in our bodies are the likely culprits.² Environmental stewardship is crucial to our future! As Christians, we should be at the forefront of environmental activism.

Caring for Creation is an excellent book for anyone wondering about how real the environmental issues are or anyone wanting to start caring more for God’s creation. The authors provide plenty of research, some theological reflection, and ideas for what individuals and churches can do.

N. T. Wright describes a different aspect of creation care: adding beauty to our world:

Part of the role of the church in the past was – and could and should be again – to foster and sustain lives of beauty and aesthetic meaning at every level, from music making in the village pub to drama in the local primary school, from artists’ and photographers’ workshops to still-life painting classes, from symphony concerts . . . to driftwood sculptures. The church, because it is the family that believes in hope for new creation, should be the place in every town and village where new creativity bursts forth for the whole community, pointing to the hope that, like all beauty, always comes as a surprise.

N. T. Wright. Surprised By Hope. P 231-32.

Beauty is not superfluous. It was important enough to God that he did not make a utilitarian world. He wasn’t concerned only with functionality. Because beauty is important to him, he demonstrated great creativity and artistry in creating a world that delights, amazes, and stimulates wonder. He gave us our senses to enjoy beauty. He gave us minds that can appreciate beauty. If beauty is important to God, it should be important to us too.

Creation care is about much more than environmental stewardship; it is about caring for the complete environment in which humans exist — social, intellectual, emotional, and so on.

What Justice Looks Like

Here’s one vision for what ruling with justice looks like:

Part of the task of the church must be to take up that sense of injustice, to bring it to speech, to help people articulate it and, when they are ready to do so, to turn it into prayer. And the task then continues with the church’s work with the whole local community, to foster programs for better housing, schools, and community facilities, to encourage new job opportunities, to campaign and cajole and work with local government and councils, and, in short, to foster hope at any and every level.

N. T. Wright. Surprised by Hope. P 231.

Greg Paul’s book Resurrecting Religion: Finding Our Way Back to the Good News puts a human face to the suffering caused by injustices right here in Canada. The book is challenging because readers will come to realize that we can’t ignore our role, whether active or passive, in sustaining these injustices that are part of our own society. Paul writes:

Imagine if the church in this world, and the individuals who make it up, actually looked and acted like Jesus. Instead of spending most of our time and resources on a razzle-dazzle Sunday morning service, together we’d heal the sick, feed the hungry, embrace the unwelcome, set prisoners free, restore the dignity of people who have been humiliated, flip the tables of oppressive economics, offer forgiveness instead of seeking vengeance, sacrifice rather than protect ourselves, and much, much more. We’d vote for governments that promised to do those things . . . we’d be content with having enough, we’d share our excess with those who don’t have enough. We’d do all this as well as announcing the Good News of salvation for the individual soul — in fact, we’d do all this as a means of announcing it. Because that is what Jesus did.

Greg Paul. Resurrecting Religion. P 76-77.

Ensuring all humanity experiences God’s justice (shalom) is the basic rationale for all compassion ministry.

We Can’t Go Back

Because some people have romantic ideas about returning the world to what they consider is some earlier idyllic time when everything seemed to be just right, it must be noted that God’s trajectory does not include a return to the past. The trajectory is not a circle, but a line that takes human history in only one direction: from God’s creative work in the past to God’s ideal future for humanity.

And we should also watch out for another error: dualism. That happens when we think that a pure, pristine, 100% natural world is the goal. In that thinking, nature is good and human development (such as cities) is bad. But God’s ideal future for us includes nation states, economies, and political governance (see Revelation 21:24), and those structures will be the continuation of what we have built by fulfilling our responsibilities under the Creation Mandate.

This last point needs to be emphasized. The work we do today to create a better world has eternal consequences. Our work isn’t going to be undone by God at the end of time. Instead, God will perfect it! N. T. Wright has a great explanation of how what we do today will carry over into God’s ideal future:

The final coming together of heaven and earth is, of course, God’s supreme act of new creation. . . . He alone will make the “new heavens and new earth.”. . . But what we can and must do in the present, if we are obedient to the gospel, if we are following Jesus, and if we are indwelt, energized, and directed by the Spirit, is to build for the kingdom. . . . You are accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world – all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. That is the logic of the mission of God.

N. T. Wright. Surprised By Hope. P 208.

Our goal is not to stay put at some comfortable place we find along the way, or to return to an earlier point, but to keep pressing on toward God’s ideal future.

Engaging with the Creation Mandate

As Christians, our knowledge of God and his ways will help us decide at each step along the trajectory what is good and what is not. These are matters that the church can and should address. Christians should be at the forefront of caring for and ruling over creation. While we certainly shouldn’t browbeat people with biblical verses to support this or that Christian view, we can use Scripture and theology to form a godly position and then because creation follows natural laws laid down by God, find good research to support our position and convince non-Christians of the goodness of it.

There are two reasons why Christians must engage in the Creation Mandate:

1. It is our responsibility: If we leave the responsibility for God’s creation to only those who do not know God, we would be irresponsible stewards. We have perspectives that might not otherwise be heard. Although non-Christians can manage reasonably well using human wisdom founded on natural revelation and their God-given capacity for reasoning, they won’t have the benefit of the knowledge of God and his ways as Christians do. And we should be working beside them anyway. It would be to our shame if the non-Christian world took better care of God’s world than we did.
2. It builds a bridge: Working on the Creation Mandate builds a bridge from the Christian community to all other communities because we both want the natural world to be in the very best condition for humanity to thrive. Doors may open for the Gospel message to be conveyed and accepted when we work together in common cause.

How Churches Can Fulfill the Creation Mandate

The discussion guide attached to this post will help your church get started on identifying the role it could play in helping Christians fulfill the Creation Mandate. Here are some high-level ideas to prepare for that discussion:

• Deliver a sermon series on the theme of justice throughout the Bible. A great resource for preaching about justice is Let Justice Roll Down by Bruce Birch. Alternatively, find a Bible study or write one for small group or personal study.
• Teach the biblical principles that should guide how Christians should think about any of the issues in our society so they can do their own analysis and develop a position. How does God want us to think? What should our priorities and values be? What are the parameters of a good position?
• Prepare your congregational members to be great stewards of the Creation Mandate by ensuring they have been transformed by Christ to rule with the characteristics of God’s rule as listed above. As N. T. Wright says, “If the gospel isn’t transforming you, how do you know that it will transform anyone else?”³

Key Thought: Christians must engage with the Creation Mandate as part of God’s plan for humanity.

“The books, Caring for Creation: The Evangelical Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment and Resurrecting Religion have been provided courtesy of Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available now at your favourite bookseller.”

The post The Creation Mandate: Our Responsibility and Our Bridge appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Yet once the Spirit-led leader is hired, that person is placed within an organizational structure, otherwise known as an institution, which has policies, procedures, and plans that are supposed to be helpful. In fact, institution means an organization founded to help people do something together (rather than separately) for a religious, educational, professional, or social purpose. All churches and specialized ministries are institutions.

Institutions and Institutionalism

Now, I have to acknowledge that the word institution has a bad rap. As soon as it is said, one thinks of a stodgy old organization that is set in its ways and resistant to change. But that is not the way an institution has to be. Stodginess, being settled in one’s ways, and resistance to change don’t define institutions, but institutionalism.

Institutionalism arises when maintaining the organization itself becomes the primary object for a group within the organization. For them, the idea of what the organization is becomes what the organization was at a moment that is now frozen in time, and then bad things happen:

• Form takes precedence over substance
• The servant becomes the master
• The tail wags the dog
• The organization that once served the mission has displaced that mission

Institutions and organizations are good things. As Carl Dudley wrote, “Organization puts ideas on wheels, translates faith into action, and enables our vision or ministry to become tangible reality.”¹ There is no reason why an institution should necessarily inhibit charismatic ministry. And yet much conflict, particularly in local churches, occurs when Spirit-led ministry runs up against entrenched institutionalism. When the institution takes precedence over its mission, institutionalism has inhibited the charismatic work of the Holy Spirit.

The problem from a leadership perspective is that, once a Spirit-led leader is hired, the stage is set for conflict with the powerful force of institutionalism. The Spirit-led leader could find resistance coming from any or all of the board, the staff, or the donors. Any of these persons could be predisposed to revel in the fresh work of the Spirit today (charismatic ministry), or to trust in the time-tested ways of the ministry’s institutional life (institutionalism).

The Solution

The solution is to recognize that people suffering from institutionalism have lost sight of how God works and what the purpose of the organization truly is. My own observation is that those people have displaced Christ at the centre of the ministry with their own personal preferences for the ministry. In other words, the ministry is now serving them as opposed to the mission. They may still be actively engaged in mission, may be significant donors and volunteers, but only in so far as how the mission is conducted suits their own preferences.

We all need to acknowledge that Christ and his mission for our ministry come first, and our personal preferences come much lower in priority. The welfare of the community within the organization ranks in-between.

The board and leadership need to help people understand this. Discipleship programs should include teaching about the place of individual preferences in the life of the church. When everyone keeps Christ at the centre, we will all get along. We’ll not be self-centred and will be much more charitable towards others. We will be more willing to follow the Holy Spirit wherever he leads us.

The Spirit’s Leadership

The primary correction for institutionalism, a fixation on the past, is to focus on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church today. So here are some thoughts to help you teach your community about the role of the Spirit and, consequently, to be more receptive to Spirit-led leadership.

The Holy Spirit Continues Jesus’ Ministry

Luke says his gospel concerns only what Jesus “began to do and teach,”² and yet his gospel and its sequel, Acts, show that Jesus’ time on earth came to an end shortly after the close of the gospel when he ascended into heaven. So how does Jesus continue to do and teach?  Luke makes it clear that Jesus continues to work through the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit Helps Us Adapt

According to the lexicons, the Hebrew and Greek words for the Holy Spirit mean “invisibility, movement, power, and life” and convey the idea of “God in action.” We live in an ever-changing world, so when we know that the creative and dynamic Spirit of God is actively guiding the church to meet new challenges, we should expect change and development to be the result. While the church’s mission does not change and the gospel of Jesus Christ does not change, how the church conducts its mission certainly can and does change.

The changes brought about by the Holy Spirit help the church address current conditions and are not changes that we humans can control. All we can do is acknowledge that the church and its various ministries belong to God and are his to do with as he pleases. The Holy Spirit therefore has primacy over the church, its methods and its structures, and we must accept his leadership.

The Spirit Prevents Decay

As often happens as organizations age, we get attached to the structure and the methods already in use and then, as it has been so eloquently said, the “encrustations of time . . . come to be valued as the most distinctive feature of the organization.”³ The organization fossilizes and declines.

We must keep our focus on God and remember that the church exists for a reason. It’s been well said that, “There is church because there is mission, not vice versa.”⁴ Mission comes before organization, therefore organizations (institutions) can be adapted to support the mission.

The Trinity and Institutions

A Trinitarian view of the church helps us see the continuing work of Christ through the Spirit to accomplish the Father’s purposes, giving the church a dynamic quality that prevents fossilization.

Where the Spirit is at work, things happen. The people of God should be solidly grounded in the historical, incarnational ministry of Christ, but also open to the continuing, fresh, dynamic work of the Spirit.

Surprise!

There will always be an element of surprise as we discern where the Spirit is and how he is leading us. We must be careful to not make the Spirit fit our preconceived notions of how things should be!

Spirit-led leaders and the institutions they lead will always be highly compatible when everyone is focused on Christ and his mission and sees the organization simply as a helpful means to fulfill Christ’s mission.

Key Thought: A Spirit-led ministry uses its institutional structure to accomplish its mission.

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Authors as Artists

I was introduced to C.S. Lewis and his wonderfully captivating world of Narnia in third grade, when my teacher brought a radio to class so that we could listen to a reading of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Later, at university, I was introduced to another wonderful world – Middle Earth – first through The Hobbit, and then through the majestic sweeping saga of The Lord of the Rings, both by J.R.R. Tolkien,

People tend to assume that great authors such as Lewis and Tolkien are incredibly gifted individuals who, working all on their own with innate gifts of imagination and composition, single-handedly develop their plots and characters to tell a compelling story.

But that wouldn’t be true.

Both Lewis and Tolkien worked in community to develop their stories.

They were part of a group closely associated with Magdalen College at Oxford University,¹ the Inklings. This group met in Lewis’s rooms at the college from 1933-1949 to read their developing stories to each other for critique and suggestions. The picture below shows where C.S. Lewis lived at the time – on the middle floor just to the right of the centre section, where the two white blinds are seen.

The best known place where the Inklings met weekly for friendship and lunch, as opposed to readings, was at a pub called The Eagle and Child. 

They sat at the table shown on the left in the picture  below.

Leaders as Artists

Leaders, like authors, are often thought to work alone, but instead of crafting stories, they craft strategy and solve organizational issues. This leadership model, developed in the early 1800s, is called the “Great Man Theory,” and it certainly can appeal to a leader’s ego! After all, who doesn’t want to be great? The theory is that an organization’s or a nation’s success can be attributed to a single heroic person, who in olden days was always a man. This theory has since been discredited, but it still lingers on, particularly in the world of organizational leadership where successful leaders are lionized as individual heroes.

Now, there certainly are great leaders, but if they believe that they represent the Great Man Theory in action and that the organization’s success is truly all bound up in them, then they are ripe for a brutal reality check. The truth is, great leaders work with teams. They are not infallible nor are they omniscient. Some leaders are far more creative than others, but they don’t have to be. A leader is simply a person who recognizes opportunity, no matter which person is creative enough to spot it, and knows how to bring a group together to make something of it.

For an example of what could go wrong with leaders who believe otherwise, just read my post on the leadership failure that sent a short-term mission team to jail. In this case, the leaders thought they knew everything they needed to know, but it turned out there were a lot of crucial things they knew nothing about.

Drawing on the Community

Here are some tips to help you discern your plans in community rather than alone on your own:

• Every leader needs to be receptive to influence and critique from outside their sphere of influence. Pick people who you know have alternative perspectives to your own to consult with. This way, you will generate a much more robust and informed understanding of the topic at hand.
• The stronger your personality and sense of inerrant judgment, the stronger and more forthright your outside influence needs to be. You need to have people who will challenge you and push back on your ideas when they can think of something they believe is better.
• Look for confirming and disconfirming feedback. If you have a genuinely good idea, you will find confirmation in consulting with others. If your idea has flaws or isn’t the best, you will get disconfirmation. Be sure to pay attention to disconfirming information. In a country like Canada where we generally try to be so polite to one another, it’s a gift when someone is willing to say anything knowing that it is a challenge to the way you see things.

If you’re not sure who you should consult with, read the section “Ministry Peers” in my post It’s not lonely at the top!.

Key Thought: Communal discernment means better ideas! 

The post The Value of Communal Discernment appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
John 10:1-4 (NASB)

Christ’s Call to Ministry

I love hearing ministry leaders tell their stories about how Christ called them into vocational ministry.

Every story is unique. No two are alike.

Every story is very personal.

And no one ever forgets their call story.

They treasure it!

Christ the Great Shepherd

The Initial Call to Ministry

When Jesus Christ enters the sheep pen, he knows all his sheep individually. He even knows them by name. And they know his voice. You’ve probably had the same experience I’ve had. You hear someone talking but can’t see them, and yet by their voice you know exactly who they are. As I read these verses, I can’t help but imagine that when the shepherd speaks, the sheep’s’ ears perk up, they turn their heads toward the voice, and they listen intently. And when the shepherd calls them out of the pen, they follow.

As Christian ministry leaders, Jesus called each one of us from the pen to go out through the gate and enter into vocational ministry.

Many of us were probably quite attentive to his voice at that time because many transitions come when we are in crisis or upset, and are looking for direction:

• It may be that we are unsettled in what we are currently doing, restless and needing a change.
• Perhaps we’re finishing up a seminary degree and anxious to find a place to serve.
• Maybe our world has turned upside-down and we are in crisis. Everything is changing and we need to find a way forward.
• Or it could just be an opportunity comes your way, and you wonder what to do about it.

In all these scenarios, we end up searching for what God wants of us. And thus we are particularly attentive to his voice at the time when we first come into ministry leadership. And we probably stay attentive for at least a while, earnestly seeking to discern what God wants us to do.

The Continuing Call While in Ministry

But as we mature in our leadership roles, we may find ourselves growing in confidence of our own abilities, and we may lose the sense of dependence on God, and gradually his voice grows dim as we focus on doing our very best for God based on our own self-reliance.

Yet once the sheep have left the pen following behind the shepherd, the shepherd doesn’t stop talking with his sheep. The shepherd walks ahead of them, still talking with them, and they continue to follow wherever the shepherd leads.

However far you have come in ministry since your initial call, Jesus is still going ahead of you and keeps calling you to follow him. We must continue to listen to his voice just as intently, just as closely, as we did when he first called us to ministry, because he knows the good works that he has in store for us to do, and he doesn’t leave us to guess what they are. If you continue to listen to our Great Shepherd’s voice just as earnestly as you did at the beginning of your ministry, you will be led to all that he has in store for you. And having heard Christ’s continuing call, respond to it just as eagerly as you did his initial call.

Blessing

Now [may] the God of peace,… the great Shepherd of the sheep … Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Hebrews 13:20

Key Thought: The Good Shepherd’s call to ministry becomes his guidance in ministry.

The post The Shepherd’s Voice appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Everyone was amazed by the many miracles and wonders that the apostles worked. All the Lord’s followers often met together, and they shared everything they had. They would sell their property and possessions and give the money to whoever needed it. Day after day they met together in the temple. They broke bread together in different homes and shared their food happily and freely, while praising God. Everyone liked them, and each day the Lord added to their group others who were being saved.
Acts 2:46-47 (CEV)

“Everyone liked them!” Or, as other translations put it, “They enjoyed the favour of all the people.” Considering that only a short while before this time, the crowds were calling for Jesus’ crucifixion and the apostles were in hiding for their lives, the turnaround in public opinion is amazing. While not everyone accepted their beliefs about Jesus Christ, they did respect his followers, the first Christians.

What strikes me as a message for the church today is that the ancient church was able to preach the truth without compromise and yet win the favour of the people by how they lived. If we could but do the same today!

The Obstacle: They Made No Compromise

You would think that the key to popularity would be to preach a nice, agreeable, non-offensive message supported by good deeds that people would appreciate. But this is not what the ancient Christians did. They performed good deeds, but their message was anything but nice, agreeable, and non-offensive! It seems very strange that the public held Christ’s followers in high esteem in spite of some pretty blunt preaching. Peter certainly didn’t pull any punches in his sermons, saying,

Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know….And you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross….Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.¹

The ancient church did not compromise or sugarcoat its message to win people to Christ. In those days, death on a cross was clear evidence that Jesus was not the Messiah, because everyone in that society knew that the Messiah would not die but would be victorious over Israel’s enemies. And no true Messiah would surrender to an execution so horrible that it was reserved only for slaves and outcasts. There couldn’t have been a bigger obstacle to public acceptance than the cross!

But the ancient Christians didn’t avoid talking about the cross, the very thing that the public believed most powerfully argued against the Christian faith. The church countered that argument against Jesus’ messiahship with their own much more powerful argument based on his physical resurrection and the hundreds of people who had seen the risen Christ. Their preaching didn’t cater to the audience but seriously disturbed them to the point that “they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

We need to speak to our audience in a way they can understand, but we shouldn’t downplay aspects of our faith which we think they might find troublesome.

For example, in today’s culture:

• The idea that there is only one way to God and it runs exclusively through Jesus Christ is offensive to most. They want to find their own way to God.
• The idea that there is a personal god is rejected by many, because that brings accountability into the picture. They’d rather have an impersonal force or principle that they can manipulate to their liking.
• The idea that there are moral absolutes offends many people today who believe there are no absolutes, everything is relative. Moral relativism allows them to justify their own morality. We need to remember that we don’t have a better way to offer, we have the only way to offer.

A fellow elder at my church heard a pastor leading people in a sinner’s prayer at a seeker-sensitive evangelical church. The prayer completely avoided mention of sin and the cross and effectively made Jesus not much more than an inspirational person we aspire to be like. If people make a decision for Christ under those pretenses, they may later feel they were the victims of a bait and switch when they find out the whole truth of Christian faith.

Like the ancient church, the church today needs to speak truth, not avoid it. There are wise and unwise ways to preach the Gospel today, but the whole truth needs to be preached.

So, be unabashedly evangelical in proclaiming the Gospel!

A Powerful Attraction: They Practised What They Preached

As a community, they lived such attractive lives that they enjoyed the people’s favour. They preached love for one another and they demonstrated it. They preached a new way of living with justice for all, and they lived it.

At that time, they expected Christ’s return in the very near future, so they weren’t thinking long term. This led at least some of them to liquidate assets to care for each other, something that is not sustainable over the long term. (Or maybe that’s a sign of our lack of faith that our Father will provide us ‘our daily bread’ as we need it.) Nevertheless, Christians as a group are still the most generous people, who are ready to share their resources to help others, often non-Christians, who are in need.

As part of their spiritual growth as a disciple of Christ, Christians today should ask themselves how they could demonstrate more of their faith in their lives. What have we received from God that we haven’t personally given as fully as we could to others?

• His unconditional love?
• His provision?
• His integrity?
• His willingness to sacrifice for others?
• His constancy?
• His kindness?

What could you do to demonstrate God’s traits in your life so that others could see them at work in and through you? What could your ministry do? If we believe something about God, then we should find a way to act on that belief and pass the fruit of the belief on to others.

So, let’s make our church congregations a true community seven days a week through individual acts of love both within and without the community.

An Impressive Result: They Walked in God’s Power

Miracles and wonders accompanied the apostles as they did their work because God’s power flowed through them. The results were impressive, as the book of Acts records. Their secret was that they believed Christ would be active in their world through the Holy Spirit, and they expected to see things happen. So they did! They were bold and confident as they went about their daily business, sharing the Gospel and doing good to others.

Are we as bold and confident today? We will develop boldness and confidence when we have our own personal, life-transforming, meetings with Christ. When we know what God has done in our own lives, we will have faith and boldness to tell people what he can do in theirs. This is why we should be doing everything we can so that every Christ-follower is alive to the spiritual, theological, and missional components of Christian life. When they are plugged in to God spiritually and understand who he is and what he is about in this world, they can then express their faith in word and deed to the world around them.

So, be open to and expect the power of the Holy Spirit to be at work in and through you each and every day.

Conclusion

Let’s take our faith to heart and make it real in every aspect of our life and being, so that others will be drawn to the beautiful difference that Christ makes in each person.

Key Thought: The church needs to fully live up to Christ’s intent for it and walk as his disciples walked – in love and in power and in community.

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