31 December 2007
An Exercise in Futility — Part One
Today I was once again reminded of why we are structured the way we are at Southbrook Church. Sure, there are plenty of good reasons we’ve chosen the structure we have—great churches I respect tremendously function similarly—places like Saddleback Church (with Rick Warren), Fellowship Church (Pastor Ed Young jr.), Northpoint (Andy Stanley), New Hope (Wayne Cordeillo)…Honestly, it’s no coincidence that the best, most effective, kingdom minded churches eventually come to the same conclusion regarding structure.
Moving from a medium sized church to a large or mega church and doing so quickly all but mandates the change.
We hit the wall and made the shift over three years ago.
Is it perfect?
Tell me what is and we’ll move to that in a heartbeat. No, it isn’t perfect, but it’s the closest thing to it that we’ve found and we’ve been fortunate enough to be guided in the process by churches and leaders we all greatly admire.
Whenever I grow frustrated or nay sayers come along (and they always ‘come along’) God will somehow remind me that this is where we need to be to accomplish the vision He’s called us to as a church.
Today he used this, Us Senate playing games to stop progress Check it out. Talk about an exercise in futility! It’s amazing we get anything accomplished EVER as a nation with this kind of silliness going on! This article is worth reading if you need a good laugh, but the long and short of it is that the Senate majority leader, Jim Webb arrived in the huge chambers where the Senate usually meets to debate and vote and with the bang of a gavel, declared the first session open on Sunday morning before closing it seconds later, without any of his colleagues present in the hall. <— Read that again.
The brief ceremony will be repeated every two to three days until January 18, when lawmakers resume their work after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
Why?
to prevent President George W. Bush from making appointments on recess.
This is worse than an eight year old who sits on the playground clutching his football and refusing to let anyone play (at recess) unless they play be his own nutty little rules.
Who loses?
Everyone.
The entire nation, because, in this case there were conservative judges waiting to be appointed who line up nicely in their positions with 80% of American’s. With nonsense like this going on the chances of them ever being seated is about zero, however, because special interest folks want to control their power positions rather than do what they were elected to do, getting nothing done remains the order of the day—every day.
Almost sounds like church.
4 Comments currently posted.
David Edge says:
JT says:
I am waiting to see where part two takes us on this journey. I’m not quite sure what to comment on other then I would expect nothing less from a government that has put all of its focus on itself and not on God.
I was expecting more about why Southbrook is structured the way that it is, but am guessing that is coming in part two.
Have a safe and happy New Year!!
Rob says:
Dave,
Good question. Sure there is room…a lot of room for discussion–without it you would have a dictatorship. I will be addressing this as well as many other things in this series (which will probably end up being the longest one I’ve ever done 
). But, here’s a hint of “what’s to Come.” (JT, this will answer your question as well)…
There seem to be 2 main ways churches get mired in quicksand and rendered ineffective. There are a plethora of “symptoms or results” of each of these, but basically only 2 diseases as far as I can tell..
Each of them have to do with the swing of the pendulum…
Too far one way and you have a pastor run church with absolutely no accountability and. tragically, that can end in a Jimmy Swaggart or a Jim Baker scenario, however, the other side isn’t any better.
The other side is a completely lay led church and this usually shows itself in churches that seem to go through a pastor every 2 years or so. The committee “calls” a new pastor to the church and paints a rosy picture only to completely hamstrung him to the point where he can’t cast vision or lead the church without his every move being scrutinized. Right here in our own city we’ve witnessed these “preacher eater” committees completely disunify their churches and the result is a loss of testimony, a frozen vision, and ungodly behavior.
I’ll be talking about all of this and more in this series…
Stay tuned!
Robsingleton.net » An Exersize in Futility! — Part 2 says:
[...] some readers for this series (the lethargic ones) I refer you to the previous post in the series here. Read that and then return to this post and continue. As always, I’ll wait for ya. [...]
I agree that we can’t run a church by committee, but at the same time I think we need to be careful to listen to the members. It seems like if someone does not agree with something then they are labeled a whiner or nay-sayer. Is there room for discussion on issues?