Please, No More Information!

Recently I read an article that started with the following statement,

Do you know what your problem is? Your problem is not that you are uninformed. That is what you might have thought your problem was. Your problem is also not that you lack information. This is a common misconception. In fact, people nowadays have lots of information… Ezra Klein’s philosophy in running Vox.com has been precisely this: people do not need facts, they need explanations.

I didn’t agree with the article, but the above statement reminded of a church meeting I’d attended a few days earlier.

The meeting was good. After a great time of worship, the pastor introduced the guest speaker who spent 30 minutes or so talking about how every believer was a light and the salt of this world. He talked about the properties of salt and light. He said what it meant for each believer to have those qualities. He gave examples using a flashlight while the lights in the sanctuary were dimmed. He had us tell the person next to us how precious they were for being the light and salt of this earth. By the time he was done, most of us knew more about salt and light than we needed.

While sitting there, I wondered how many believers in that room weren’t already familiar with Christ’s teaching in Matt 5:13-14? How many needed more information about those verses? How many had not, over and over again, heard what salt and light do? I am sure that for most of those present, the problem was not lack of information, but what to do with it. I’m confident that everyone left the meeting feeling great about who they were in Christ, but to what end?

I am a practical follower of Christ. I believe, at this age, after being a believer for over 40 years, I don’t need more information on what it means to be a disciple/servant of Jesus. What I need is how to implement all I’ve learned about what it means to be a Christian.

I wish, unlike most teachers I’ve heard all these years, our teacher that night had sent us home with some practical steps on how to make our lights shine, or how to attract people to our saltiness, so they become thirsty for the things of God. I wish he had said something like:

Now that you know you are the light and the salt of this world. Now that you’ve become aware of who you are in Christ, I want you to implement what you learned tonight. Go from here and be the light and salt to your own neighborhoods. Fulfill God’s greatest commandment—loving your neighbor through God’s love—by, at least, getting to know your next-door neighbor’s name, offer to mow his/her lawn (if they need it), make a casserole dish and take it to them, or something like that.

In order to be the light and salt of this world, the majority of us doesn’t need any more facts and information on the subject. We need to put to work all that we already know. And for that, we need teachers who can give us simple and yet practical ways to achieve that goal. And for the Church to stop being just a hearer/information gatherer and become a doer also.

Is Preaching To The Masses Passé?

My last few blog posts have centered on the need for church to change. But this time I want to offer an idea for a new church structure. It is just an idea and I would value your feedback in the comments section. Now, this is not something I have dreamt on my own, but I have been looking at an industry that is very similar to church, education. Both churches and schools spend a lot of their time educating their constituents. Thus, they are very similar in emphases and structure.

Over the past 100 years, every day in primary and secondary schools, teachers have lectured their students. Some included in-classroom exercises to reinforce what was just taught, and then students have homework to practice further concepts taught in the classroom. Then, as we have all experienced, we are given tests to indicate how well we have learned what we have been taught. I have tremendous respect for teachers because they are constantly juggling 20-30 students keeping the fast learners from getting bored, and trying to give slower learners extra support to keep them moving forward.

If any teachers are reading this, you know first-hand that there is a tremendous shift happening in schools today. Popular terms used to talk about this shift are “personalized learning,” “flipped classroom,” or “individualized instruction.” The main concept of this shift is for teachers to no longer lecture in front of the class and expect all students to progress at the pace the teacher sets. Instead teachers are now guiding the learning of each student individually. So each student is on their own path and can progress at their own pace. Yes, there are still benchmarks of progress each student must reach by the end of the year, but now the teacher can guide this learning and the student becomes much more active in taking responsibility and pursuing their own learning.

In this new model, everyone participates, the teacher and the student. No longer do students sit for hours listening to lecture after lecture, taking notes; neither do teachers give the same lecture two to three times a day. Now, both teachers and students go on the learning journey together, down the path set by the curriculum. No longer are teachers viewed as the sage on the stage, but as a mentor, a facilitator, a guide who can draw deeper learning from their students by offering wisdom, different perspectives, and asking questions that make students reason and think, and not just repeat what they memorized. Perhaps, this is a model churches could adopt.

In my last two blog posts, I have mentioned that one of the main reasons the “dones” are leaving the church is that they want to participate more instead of sit in a pew and listen to another sermon. They want to be involved; they want to be active in using their knowledge, expertise, and gifts to help others. I could easily see teams of leaders guiding, mentoring, and helping believers grow deeper in their faith and knowledge of the Bible and of God. In this structure both congregants and leaders embark upon a journey to learn together. Now, I am not advocating putting unskilled or inexperienced people in positions of leadership, but I am advocating giving those who are mature in their faith opportunities to use their gifts to guide the learning of others.

It might be hard to break away from the mindset of groups of people being taught by one person. Heck, most of us have experienced this for most of our lives. But at the time when we have so many mature, experienced, educated and godly “dones” why not engage them and create opportunities for them to participate.

 

By embarking upon journeys together, conversations will happen, people will share what they are thinking, will read something that gave them insight, taught them something new, or even answered prayer. People will read together, people will read on their own, people will wrestle with problems in the company of others who support them. Since we are all in this journey together, I think participation by more people would be a good thing. Now, I will repeat, I am not saying I have all of the answers. I am not saying this is the way things have to be. This is one perspective that I wanted to share.

So, your turn, what do you think?

By Guest Blogger, CK Miller

This Is How WE Do Church!

Tonight I received the following email from one of my old college students from 10-12 years ago:

Hi Shah and Karen! 🙂

I just wanted to stop and say thank you.

Thank you for teaching me through opening your home to me, and thank you for living what you have been speaking about for years! Luke and I were just talking about the power of prayer and I was recalling that my eyes were opened regarding prayer when I came into your home on Thursday nights.

I have learned so much from the seeds that you both planted in my life and in my heart. When you showed me how to know, and experience the Living God, my life was forever changed; and now my children are learning about listening and obeying God’s voice in their early years. So, THANK YOU for choosing to follow Jesus and teaching me to do the same!

I always smile when I think about you guys 🙂

With love,

Karia

Karia was referring to something Karen and I have been doing at our home since 1998, a gathering of a handful of believers seeking to be Christ-like. Some are quick to say, “You mean a house-church?” No, I don’t like to call it a house-church because most house churches consist of regular church services with the hope of one day having their own buildings. I call these, “buildings wanna be house churches.” We don’t want a building.

• It’s not an open meeting. You can only participate if you’re invited.

A while back I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen for several years. After the regular pleasantries, our conversation went something like this:

“So, where are you going to church these days?” To which I replied,

“I don’t. We have our own house meetings.” Without losing a breath he said,

“I’m gonna check it out one of these days!” To which I said,

“You’re not invited…”

You see, one of the main reasons for our gatherings is to establish a community where the believers can build relationships based on honesty, trust, and transparency, which will eventually lead to accountability. There’s no way one can build such a community with people who just want to, “check you out”. We have no desire to increase our numbers at the cost of shallow relationships. We have mega churches for that.

When I invite someone, I make sure that there are three expectations of him or her.

• They have to attend every meeting regularly.

One can’t build a sustainable, trustworthy relationship with those whom he/she sees occasionally. Being in the business of community building, I want our meetings to consist of people who, short of an emergency, see each other every week. If this makes any invitee uncomfortable, they don’t have to accept my invitation. On the other hand, if one agrees to the terms, but doesn’t follow them, he’s asked to stop coming. I invite and un-invite people to my house.

• They’re expected to come prepared.

The first hour of our meetings is filled with lively discussions about the chapter of a book we all are supposed to have read the week before. This is a book that the participants had all agreed upon. With new groups, I choose the book, but eventually it’s up to the group. It has never ceased to amaze me how differently each individual looks at the same paragraph of a book, and because of that, how much we can learn from each other. Finally,

• Once they move on, they’re expected to strive to start a meeting based on the same principles.

This is a house gathering and not a cult. We have no desire to, by hooks and crooks, keep members from moving away. I know that eventually some people need to move on with their lives. Therefore, when that time comes, my hope is that they will start another meeting wherever they go built on the above principles. Again, the goal is not to have a network of small groups all over town with Shah overseeing them, but to see the same blessings people have received at our meetings being propagated everywhere.

Our meetings are built around the discipline of Lectio Divina. In Latin, it’s pronounced, lec-t-o divina, which means divine reading. It’s one of those Christian disciplines that has been with us since the Early Church. My purpose in this post is not to explain the practice of Lectio, but to show the focus of our meetings,

• To enter into a deeper bond with God through silence and meditation on his word
• To build godly relationships
• To learn from one another—There’s no one-man-band show

To allow each individual to practice his/her spiritual gifts —This is the time when we recognize/discover and respect each other’s gifting.

• To allow the Holy Spirit to guide and lead us into praying for one another

I challenge any Sunday service to offer any of the above with some measure of consistency.

Is it possible that today God-fearing, Christ-loving believers are walking away from the church because they want deeper relationships with their Creator and his created ones? They want a gathering where they’re allowed to use the gifts God has given them? That they long for a place where they aren’t afraid to be honest and transparent revealing their sins and weaknesses to those around them?