Has Twitter Killed Blogging?

This morning Gary Lamb posted to his Twitter page a comment that I have been thinking about for a few weeks now…his comment was “Pretty sure Twitter has killed blogging.  Blogs seems dead lately.”

I gotta admit…other than a few blogs…most of the ones I usually read are getting stale.  Many are simply becoming announcement sites for their churches…others are doing more preaching…and still a few of the “behind-the-scenes” church blogs have trickled down to a just a post or two each month because their staff members are now Twittering.

I have to admit that during my hiatus from blogging I came close to not coming back.  Twitter…even with it’s occasional technical difficulties…is easier, less time consuming and more immediate than blogging.  There are days when it seems like drudgery to type a complete blog post when I can just Twitter something in 140 words or less.  Maybe I am just getting lazy…or maybe I’m coming to realize that blogging has become a thing to really zap my time and productivity.  I don’t know, but I’m wondering if Gary is not correct…has Twitter spelled the end to blogging as we know it?

Perception Is NOT Reality

This week I heard another “expert” in church growth using the asinine phrase “perception is realty”. Perception is not reality…it is only perception. Einstein’s “Law Of Relativity” (not to mention God’s Word) pretty much squashes the whole “perception is reality” myth. Perception is strictly your take on something from the point from which you view it. The reality of what you view remains unchanged…as it is reality unobstructed (duh)….you only see it differently because of your point of view. That does not mean that your view is correct…it just means it’s your point of view (much like this blog post). To get a true sense of reality you must be close to what you are viewing…or your perception will be flawed.

If someone is far away from God…and His Word…then their view is going to be vastly changed from that of someone that is close to God. The view doesn’t change the reality…of Truth…the perception is not the Reality. To suggest that we allow the perception of those far from God dictate the direction of the Church…instead of following the reality and Truth of God’s Word…is a dangerous and flawed concept!!!

Emergent Take 2: Naming Names

Since November I have repeatedly been asked about the response I have been getting to this post about Compass Point’s stance on Emergent. Quite honestly I have been surprised by the response. The folks that align with Emergent have been pretty positive in their responses. They…of course…disagree with Compass Point’s take on Emergent’s main spokespeople leaning more and more toward Universialism…but were thrilled that I did not name names or take shots at specific people. As a result I have remained friends with many inside the Emergent movement…and continue to have a healthy, private conversation with them.

On the other hand, those that share the same stance as Compass Point concerning Emergent have been pretty upset that I didn’t name names or take shots at specific people. They have commended me for taking a bold stand against heresy…but have also been extremely critical that I didn’t go more in depth and detailed with my blog post.

I would like to clear up a few things about me…the Lead Pastor of Compass Point…and this blog.

1. It is important to disagree in a disagreeable manner. This may not be the case for everybody with a blog or in church leadership…but it is for me. When I first started blogging I was pretty immature…and ego driven (I still fall into this trap on occasion). I would name names and take shots just for the sheer desire to get more readership of this blog. It was cheap…it was hateful…it was destructive. My grandmother used to say, “Any idiot can destroy a bridge…it takes a genius to build one”. The purpose of my post was to make a public declaration about a doctrinal stand that Compass Point was taking…not to cut off ties or start a war with the Friends of Emergent. As a result…the bridge is still there…and the friendships continue.

2. I stay in my own yard. I pastor Compass Point…I don’t pastor any other church and am therefore not responsible for any other flock. I don’t want Emergent pastors (or any other pastor for that matter) talking directly to the sheep of Compass Point…therefore I will not speak directly to the sheep of their flock. In essence, I deal with the weeds in my own yard…it is not my responsibility to weed someone else’s yard. I will not comment on what others do that I disagree with…unless those things find their way into Compass Point. The Emergent and Universalism weed had begun to grow in my yard…so I plucked it. That was only reason for the post…not take to shots at those that planted the initial seed.

3. I am not a watchman on the wall. There are many ministries out there that are called to police doctrine, church practices or a pastor’s actions and make the world aware of discrepancies with the teachings of God’s Word…I am not one of them. Other than the pastoral staff, Elders, members and attenders of Compass Point…no one else falls under my accountability. I may not agree with something a church or pastor does…but it’s not my calling to correct him…privately or through my blog.

4. If I’m not on the inside…I’m on the outside. I have no clue what the bylaws of another church say. I am not privy to the inner turmoil that caused a staff member to be fired somewhere else. I was not in on any of the meetings when another group of church leaders determined the doctrinal foundation for their church. Basically, the only thing I know for sure…is what happens at Compass Point. I have felt the sting and pain of accusations from others…when they don’t have a freakin’ clue about what went on within the inner workings of Compass Point. I’m certainly not going to subject others to it just because I’ve formed a feeble opinion based on an outside view.

5. My time is limited. I really don’t have the time, resources or help to research every church movement, pastor, book or strategy out there that I may have a problem with. The “No Friend Of Emergent” post took several weeks to write…mainly because I didn’t have a lot of time to concentrate on it or complete it all in one sitting. I am called to be a Godly husband to my wife and a shepherd to the flock of Compass Point. If I’m spending time cyber-arguing on blogs, commenting about everything that gets my dander up and writing lengthy posts about everything I have a doctrinal beef with…then I am disobeying God’s calling on my life…and wasting His time.

In conclusion…I didn’t name names when I initially wrote the post…and I won’t be naming them today…or in the future. Compass Point’s leadership took the stand we thought was best for our sheep after much prayer and outside counsel.  We Biblically removed the wolves…took steps to make sure that the same problems don’t arise again…and have moved on. I doubt I’ll ever be addressing it again through this blog.

How Much More Do We Take?

How is it that when you name a teddy bear Mohammed you get thrown in jail, expelled from the country and have an angry mob calling for your execution - yet when you say something offensive about Jesus you get a slap on the wrist?

How is it that when you call a girl’s basketball team “nappy headed hoes” you lose your job - yet when you say “F*** Jesus” you get a week off?

It seems to me that Christians are looked at as wimps and non-entities these days.  We allow offensive things to be said about our Lord and Savior all in the name of unity, harmony and love.  What a crock of crap!!!

How much more do we take before we stop rolling over playing dead?  Comments are open on this one!!!

Part IV: The Conclusions

Now that the story has been told…it’s time to add a few final observations, comments and conclusions. I came close to not posting any of it for fear of offending friends, being too open, being seen as a negative person, people getting the wrong idea…and of other pastors trying copy what we are doing…thus perpetuating the clone cycle.

I want to make a few things perfectly clear…

1. Compass Point is not a huge church. Most other pastors that blog are reaching thousands. Compass Point is reaching dozens and sometimes hundreds during any given week. We are not a success compared to what is seen as successful churches these days. That is fine with us…but might not be fine with you. We are reaching people that no other church in Lakeland is reaching…thus it means slow growth…but no overnight success. So I wanted to give full disclosure…nothing I wrote about will make you a megachurch in 30 days or less. I think it will eventually…but who knows?
2. The things we are seeing in Lakeland…most other communities in America are not seeing (maybe they are and I just don’t know it). We are growing into a very large town…a bedroom community for Orlando and Tampa. Most of the folks here are blue collar workers, lower income white collar and artsy college students. What works for us will probably not work for you.
3. The folks that we are reaching…and the numbers we are seeing…doesn’t look too good on paper or in denominational reports. But it sure is rewarding…and humbling.
4. I have nothing against megachurches, modern worship technology or stool-sitting communicators. Those things are fine and work in many situations around the country. They didn’t work for us or our people…so we ditched them.
5. While the leadership of Compass Point and I have limited the amount of input from other resources…it doesn’t mean we have completely cut them out of our lives. We still read books, check out blogs, hang out with other pastors, listen to podcasts and go to conferences. However, we make sure the resources more closely match the direction that Compass Point is moving and are affecting the kind of folks that Compass Point is reaching (more on that in a later post). God uses others to speak to pastors…it would be pretty dumb to ignore what other churches and pastors are doing.
6. This is all still just an experiment. In the end we could be really wrong…and wouldn’t you look like the fool for following what God called us to do.
7. There are a bunch of people going to Hell everyday. There are way better things to do than argue over what may or may not be the best church planting or outreach strategies out there. The purpose of the posts were to help others avoid the mistakes we made…convey what was working for us…but not to start some asinine online argument.
8. So far the negative emails about the series have been criticizing my honesty. Look guys…church planting isn’t easy…and some days just stink!!! If you want cute, happy stories there are plenty of blogs out there that will pump sunshine up your skirt. This isn’t one of them. I love church planting…I love being a shepherd…I love being used by God…I’m having the time of my life right now….but I refuse to pretend that there aren’t difficult days…or that I know what I’m doing. If I knew what I was doing I wouldn’t have to worry about seeking God’s guidance everyday…and someone would ask me to speak at a pastor’s conference.

Now it’s time to move on…

The “Secret” To Church Growth

I have alluded to the fact that the third year of Compass Point’s existience was the most difficult and rewarding in our history.  I’ll share about that in more detail sometime this week or next.  However, I think one of the benefits from this year has been that I’ve discovered the “secret”…or rather “secrets” to church growth.  They are…

1. Follow others.
2. Follow God.

Both will acheieve growth in attendance.  However, only one will acheive growth in baptisms, discipleship, leadership development and truly carrying out the “Great Commission”.  For the shepherding-disabled…that would be the second one listed above.

Though I have never really talked about it on my blog for fear of sounding like a name dropper…I have been honored that men like Shawn Lovejoy, Perry Noble and Dr. Ed Stetzer have taken the time to converse with me about church leadership.  All of them at one point or another in our discussions have talked about limiting input from other sources and just getting in tune with what God was revealing…what His vision is.  It took it a while for the message to get through my thick skull…but once it did things began to change for the better around Compass Point.

I am not opposed to learning as much as I can about church processes and structure from other resources.  I am not opposed to learning how to streamline church strategy from blogs, books, magazines, podcasts or other church leaders.  However, I have learned that it is not okay to get vision from any other source but God.  Vision from other resources can grow a church in the short term…but it cannot grow the Kingdom of God in the long term.

Too many times we as church planters and leaders read about…or hear about…great churches doing great things…and we fall in love with their vision and their flock.  We try to reproduce that in our own communities with our own churches…and deep down I feel that is a sin. When I say sin I mean as in the actual disobedience of not following God’s revelation in our lives.  He calls us to be at work in our community in the way in which He guides us…and we ignore that to chase the latest, greatest church strategy concept so we can sit at the cool kid’s table at a pastor’s conferences.  You can’t call it anything else but sin.

True Kingdom growth by the church you lead can only come from true vision provided by God.  It took me three years to learn to put down the latest business leadership book, turn off the church growth podcast on my iPod, switch off the growth strategy DVD on my  television, set aside the church leadership seminar notes, attend a few less pastor’s conferences…and just take a bunch of time to get with God…and listen.

Church growth is easy…Kingdom growth entails following God…and God alone!!!

We Must Be Emerging With The Word

I realize that faith without works is dead.  However, I have also come to realize that works without the Word is also dead.

Having grown up in church throughout the 70’s and the 80’s I saw the foolishness firsthand of how church programming, alternative religious events and multi-purpose family life centers allowed Christians to hide from the world…to become salt that never left the shaker.  The idea of a church “emerging” outside the four walls of the sanctuary…to actually take the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world…revolutionized my Christian walk..and pastoral leadership.  I began to engage in…and lead others in…taking water to the homeless, visiting those in prison, befriending AIDS patients and loving on the unloved.  What I discovered through a very long process it that the people I reached out to…were changed for a moment…but not for a lifetime.

I suppose it goes back to the old saying that “If you give a man a fish…you feed him for day.  But if you teach him to fish…he never goes hungry.”  It began to dawn in me that what the AIDS patient really needed was comfort for an afterlife in Heaven once the disease helped to end their life.  What the prisoner needed to know was that they were living out Galations 6:7…but John 3:16 could set them free forever.  I came to understand no matter how much I loved on the homeless and the unloved…I was going to die…and they were going to die.  Human love can only go so far…what they really needed was to know a Love that transcends time, life and nature.  They needed to know a Love that was comforting but also just…that encouraged but also disciplined.  They needed to know God.  A bottle of water, a free meal or a hug wasn’t going to tell them about that.

I began to realize that Scripturally it is not enough for the Church just to emerge into world and today’s culture.  Churches were not called to be welfare agencies, self-help groups, political protests or social justice activists.  The Church was called to take the uncompromised Word of God into a dying and hopeless world.  You cannot do that without opening up your mouth and proclaiming Christ.  I agree that we must be doers of the Word…but we must also be sayers of the Word as well…or the world will never know why we are doing it.

As I stated before, faith without works is dead.  Works without God’s Word being boldly proclaimed is also dead.  There must be a new way of emerging for the Church.  A way that does not leave the message quietly behind within the fours walls of the sanctuary.  For if we have emerged without the Message…then we really haven’t emerged at all.

Merry Tossmas

To understand what I mean…click here for an explanation video.

Less We Get Too Smug

In the last 24 hours…

• Over 40,000 children worldwide died of hunger
• 845 million people worldwide went to bed hungry
• Over 3 billion people on Earth lived on less than $2
• Almost 6,000 people worldwide died from AIDS
• Over 32,000 children in Africa became orphans
• Almost 1 billion people worldwide couldn’t read a book or write their name

It’s fairly easy to point the finger at Hollywood…it’s a little more difficult to point the finger at us…followers of Christ. Consider the statistics above…now…how many of us Christian leaders, pastors, bloggers and laypeople….

• Spent $5 this week on a cup of coffee?
• Helped our church raise millions to build another “much needed” building?
• Blew over $100 this week on Christmas gifts?
• Filled up the tank of our gas guzzling SUV?
• Spent a butt-load of cash on multi-media products for worship?
• Are taking the youth group skiing?
• Bought a video game console for our children?
• Broke the bank to market our church?
• Left uneaten food on our plate at a buffet?
• Spent hundreds to thousands of dollars on a staff retreat?
• Downloaded a cool ringtone to our cell phone?
• Paid a bunch of money to go to conference?
• Didn’t spend a dime of missions or relief ministry?
• Patted ourselves on the back for being doctrinally sound, while totally ignoring Matthew 25:34-40?

This Is A Riot!!!