I’ve known Chad for close to 3-4 years now and have had many extensive discussions. We got to hang out this summer at Big Tent and I can say that I have no question of his desire to follow Jesus or his love for God. It’s what gets me about these conversations.  Chad’s desire is that of a pastor seeking the restoration of people, and to create a restorative understanding of God.  Yet that understanding was against a traditional set of beliefs, and got him fired.  Rachel Held Evans posted an interview with Chad that shares some of the details.

Seems kind of strange when a pastor gets fired for believing in love. What do you think?

(AP Photo/Sara D. Davis)

Lose Your Job. from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

Travis Reed sits down with Sally Morgenthaler and discusses the provocative idea of church leadership. I thinks she asks some pretty interesting questions regarding the space of being a pastor.  What do you think?

I still love Ted Haggard.

Out of Ur recently posted the announcement that Ted Haggard is starting a church.  And some people are not happy about it. It seems we’re still wrestling with the same problem.  We don’t really know how to restore our leaders.  If Haggard has done one thing it has been to expose the fallacy of our “restoration” process for fallen leaders.

It’s interesting to listen to those sit in positions of power and question what Ted is doing, even calling it stupid.  But what if this is really exposing the tension we have with grace.  If the church (and I know I’m generalizing) has done one thing is ignore the reality of grace.  It’s hard.  We don’t like it.  We hold onto the insane notion that pastors are super people.  And it ends up killing them.  When they fall, it requires years to build them back up.  But when if the reality is that what takes years to build back up is not the pastor, but our willingness to trust?

So I love Ted Haggard because he’s forcing us to wrestling with our own sense of grace.

How do you feel?

{AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)

I had a strange thought this morning.  Would the Apostle Peter get hired as a pastor?

I have an RSS feed for Pastor jobs in my Google Reader.  And I consistently see the same job posting for Pastor.  They typically list qualifications for the role which include something like:

• A committed Christian with an exemplary life and sense of calling to worship ministry.
• A sound understanding of the Bible and application of it in corporate worship services and in all areas of life.
• A maturity to work submissively both with the Senior Pastor and the Elder Board.
• A relational ability to work well with musicians, technical crews, artists, youth musicians, and other ministry leaders in a healthy and flexible manner.
• A heart for worship

In fact the previous list is from an actual job listing.  And I get the list.  We want someone that exemplifies the Gospel in their lives.

But then I began to ask if the Apostle Peter would get hired.  He was obstinate, pushy, and even arrogant.  He probably wouldn’t have worked well with the Senior Board.  And oh yes, he had that thing on his resume.  He denied Jesus three times.   Yet Jesus picked this man and said, “I will build my church on this rock.”

Sometimes I wonder if we’re setting ourselves up for a fall by creating such a demanding role for anyone to play.  When the pastor does fall it becomes virtually impossible to get over it.  Rarely (and there are definitely exceptions) does the pastor stay in the role.  Its just easier to find a new one.

A guy I follow offered the following quote from Bill Hybels.  I don’t have the exact source but I have to believe it is true.

“The local church is the hope of the world, and its future rests primarily in the hands of its leaders.” – Bill Hybals

Do you buy that statement?

What if the evidence suggest women are actually better at leading than men?

Many of you know I’m a huge proponent of women’s leadership.  I’ve led the Call To Men to lead the way in lifting up women.  I’ve called out injustice and oppression. My primary reason for lifting up women is based in the idea that humanity can only see the whole image of God in BOTH the man and the woman.  Adam was originally both expressions.  So in order to see the God image in ourselves (I’m speaking from a man’s perspective) we need women fully integrated into the decision making process, leading the way.

But recently I came across an interesting article that kind of caught my attention in a new way.  What if the historical evidence suggests women are just better leaders than men?  The Pew Forum study on religion revealed a startling piece of evidence.  Women just stay with God better and in more numbers than men.  It’s just a fact.  And as the study suggests, women have been doing this for long periods of time.

I have a Masters in Organization Leadership and I can tell you that the evidence of leadership is based in modeling the defined response, not just talking about it.  The capacity to influence is rooted in integrity to an idea, not just the capacity to speak about it.  This idea was deeply explored in Robert Greenleafs Servant Leadership.  A true leader is the servant of all.  Even Jesus suggested this with his own words.

Mark 9:35 – Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

And to press the evidence, women have been doing this even in the face of injustice and oppression towards women.  Women have remained faithful even in spite of the injustice. The article calls out the injustice.

Not a single major faith is led by members of its female flock, and the more deeply adherent a religious group becomes, the less freedom it offers its women, not to mention power. It’s hard not to compare women sticking with faith to wives confined to bad marriages: They’re so committed to the institution that they’ll willingly shrink under mistreatment just to maintain their own status quo.

In other words, history reveals that women just get it better than men. They reveal stronger faith. And if we’re going to be honest about who we’re really going to follow, wouldn’t it then be more honest to admit that women are better leaders?

What better way to explore the Adventurous Life than to begin being honest with ourselves.  The real winner is all of us.  To begin including women into the idea of leadership means we can begin to see the whole image of God in our midst.  We can begin to see the beautiful voice that has been missing in the conversation for so long.

This is an on-going update on free The Nines conference.  It will be updated as the conference goes.

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Scott Hodge has more energy than the Energizer Bunny and I like it.

Dave Ferguson talked about the five steps in apprenticeship. But he never mentioned what someone does.

In the first 90 minutes not one leader talked about the Great Commission or the practice of love or grace.  I would think this is the basis for leadership…but I could be wrong. ;-P

Give it up for Stacy Stacy Spencer at New Directions Christian for bringing leadership back to restoration. Although, Bill Kinnon and Steve Knight said Skye Jethani was off the charts.

How come it took the woman (Anne Jackson and Nancy Beech) to give us a warning to slow down and find the safe spaces to be real?

Andrew Jones had the best comment in the first couple of hours. He asked, “if legitimacy equals more than largeness, who will speak for the tiny underground movements? maybe alan hirsch and neil cole.”

Scott Wilson pays his people to read leadership books or get out. There’s something to this but it just came off strange. Drew Tatsuko said, “ok. you totally lost me at cash incentives for leadership. puke.”

Steven Furtick completely lost me.  Oh well.  He looks like Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction, which kind of distracted me.

Reggie McNeal makes the assertion that, “we are not the point.”  Yet the entire story of Scripture is God’s working to redeem US.  What say you?

Noel Heikkenin from Riverview Church rocked.  He talked about how we are crippling people from maturity by robbing them of their own struggle. He also spoke of the problem we’ve created with the role of pastors.  It really reminded me of this post.

Len Sweet talked about the Big Head Syndrome, or getting lost in your own success.  But Jan has the best comment to follow.  She said, “Right now, lots of pastors are listening to @LenSweet talk about big heads and thinking of someone else. #thenines”

Teresa from Northstar Community absolutely knocked it out of the park.  Tell yourself the truth.

One of the things that I noticed this morning but didn’t really seemed to bug me during the day was that The Nines said registration was required.  Yet when I went to the site, it was not.  I guess I just don’t know why this was spoken this way.  Seemed strange.

Greg Surratt said, “We are deeply afraid people may find out who we are.” Wow.

Scott Williams from Flat Irons Church says, “You’re not my Holy Spirit.”  That’s good stuff on how we try to play God with each other.

It’s 12:20 for me right now and Neil Cole is on, but I’m flat worn out.  They should have scheduled this over a couple of days.  To much is too much.

Okay someone finally said it, JD is the pastor of Summit Church and he said, Love is the best apologetic for the Gospel.

Ed Stetzer made an interesting comment that sort of dovetails on Reggie McNeal’s above.  He said, “Mission is the opposite of self.”  I would spin it differently: Mission is the natural extension of the restored self.

I have a friend who is a pastor.  And sometimes I think he secretly wishes he could dump the label.

One of the tensions I see in the church is the dichotomy between the pastor and the members of the church.  The system is actually designed to help foster this tension.  There’s a guy up front who does all the thinking, and the people out there who take it all in.  The guy up front is has a higher degree, is likely ordained, and is paid to pour over the Scriptures.  The people out there actually pay to come and listen.  Rarely do the two ever meet. This tension is magnified during failure. When the guy up front fails, the level of anguish is catastrophic.  Entire organizations can be transformed literally over night.  When a person out there fails, it can easily be swept under the carpet or forgotten within days.

This professional class of Christians troubles me because it fosters the idea that to participate in missions means doing what the guy up front does.  It means going back to school, selling it all and becoming an itinerant preacher.  I’ve actually had someone say that to me. Yet if this were true, the church would be made up of people who were simply talking instead of listening.

But as I look as the Jesus model, he began with the un-professional.  He assumed the people could become like him.  He worked with a small group of people culturally unqualified for the role and stayed with them continually over three years.  He modeled the Way of grace and love and trust, and invited them to follow it too.  And then he released them as elders, as someone who could then teach others in the Way.  There were no degrees, no guy up front, no dichotomy.  The assumption was that anyone could participate in the Kingdom.

Which brings me back to my friend.  What is funny is that when we’re really honest with each other, he sometimes wonder if he’s even cut out for the label. Most of his friends from seminary have quit or moved on to “other” professions.  He periodically ruminates on the idea that he’s slowly killing himself in the process of holding on.  Being up front has created an expectation that is virtually impossible to fulfill.  And the harder he tries the heavier the expectation becomes.

What if the problem is not the Gospel, or the message, or the Kingdom of God, but the structures we have created to communicate them? Truth is, we like to insert stuff into what God is doing.  We like to take God’s image and fashion it after ourselves.  And what we end up with is a structure that cripples us in the process. And all the while God stands back and just laughs, thinking, “You don’t have to live like this.”

What if we found the courage to simply follow Jesus and do it His way?  What if we took the risk to return to an elder led, discipleship oriented structure that fostered community, spiritual formation in a tight knit group, and focused on living out the Way.  What a concept right?  Yet when the ecclesia engaged this process, it flourished.

I would suggest that one of the real significant changes over the next fifty years we will see is a move away from the professional Christian and to an elder led ecclesia. The professional will likely exist, but not as the dominant form of spiritual formation or even community.  And when we do, it will release people to participate in the Kingdom.

I have a friend who is a pastor.  And sometimes I think he secretly wishes he could dump the label.

One of the tensions I see in the church is the dichotomy between the pastor and the members of the church.  The system is actually designed to help foster this tension.  There’s a guy up front who does all the thinking, and the people out there who take it all in.  The guy up front is has a higher degree, is likely ordained, and is paid to pour over the Scriptures.  The people out there actually pay to come and listen.  Rarely do the two ever meet. This tension is magnified during failure. When the guy up front fails, the level of anguish is catastrophic.  Entire organizations can be transformed literally over night.  When a person out there fails, it can easily be swept under the carpet or forgotten within days.

This professional class of Christians troubles me because it fosters the idea that to participate in missions means doing what the guy up front does.  It means going back to school, selling it all and becoming an itinerant preacher.  I’ve actually had someone say that to me. Yet if this were true, the church would be made up of people who were simply talking instead of listening.

But as I look as the Jesus model, he began with the un-professional.  He assumed the people could become like him.  He worked with a small group of people culturally unqualified for the role and stayed with them continually over three years.  He modeled the Way of grace and love and trust, and invited them to follow it too.  And then he released them as elders, as someone who could then teach others in the Way.  There were no degrees, no guy up front, no dichotomy.  The assumption was that anyone could participate in the Kingdom.

Which brings me back to my friend.  What is funny is that when we’re really honest with each other, he sometimes wonder if he’s even cut out for the label. Most of his friends from seminary have quit or moved on to “other” professions.  He periodically ruminates on the idea that he’s slowly killing himself in the process of holding on.  Being up front has created an expectation that is virtually impossible to fulfill.  And the harder he tries the heavier the expectation becomes.

What if the problem is not the Gospel, or the message, or the Kingdom of God, but the structures we have created to communicate them? Truth is, we like to insert stuff into what God is doing.  We like to take God’s image and fashion it after ourselves.  And what we end up with is a structure that cripples us in the process. And all the while God stands back and just laughs, thinking, “You don’t have to live like this.”

What if we found the courage to simply follow Jesus and do it His way?  What if we took the risk to return to an elder led, discipleship oriented structure that fostered community, spiritual formation in a tight knit group, and focused on living out the Way.  What a concept right?  Yet when the ecclesia engaged this process, it flourished.

I would suggest that one of the real significant changes over the next fifty years we will see is a move away from the professional Christian and to an elder led ecclesia. The professional will likely exist, but not as the dominant form of spiritual formation or even community.  And when we do, it will release people to participate in the Kingdom.

I have a friend who is a disgraced pastor.

He’s still trying to recover from the experience. He’s lost most of his friends and is struggling to understand how to put his life back together. There’s nothing simple to his story. It wasn’t a simple fall that is so easy to categorize. There were many parties involved over long periods of time. The fall even surprised him. He understands the weight of it and is living the cost in a very real way. Everything in his life has changed in a dramatic way because of it.

And what doesn’t surprise me is the response from the church.

His fall was well documented and very public because he was a pastor at a mega church. Everyone heard about it. I even heard about it before I knew my friend. News like this travels very fast. Unfortunately the church has done little to restore him in any way. He was removed from his role and essentially ignored by the pastors, who told him they would help him when they saw “true repentance.” Senior staff made very little effort to bring him to some form of restoration. I’m not privy to the inner workings of this church so I can not say what they said. I’m sure it was painful and hard for everyone.

But it made me ask a very serious question. Are we really about restoration? Sometimes I’m not so sure.

There seem to be two major examples in Scripture of dealing with a fallen leader. There’s the model Jesus provided and the model Paul provided. Paul has many exhortations for the various churches.

2 Corinthians 2:5-8 – 5If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you, to some extent—not to put it too severely. 6The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him. 7Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. 8I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.

He also has an exhortation in Galatians 6:1

“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.”

Paul also talks about being disqualified in Corinthians, which has been used extensively about fallen leaders.

1 Corinthians 9:27 – No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”

But actions sometimes take precedent over words. In Acts 15:36-41, Paul doesn’t want to take John Mark on his next journey because he had previously abandoned them. The dispute actually separates Paul and Barnabas. And I can’t help but wish Paul had followed his own advice on this one. But I also get his response to John Mark to a great extent. When someone we consider an example falls, it hurts. What my friend did has extensive consequences and affected a lot of people. Trust was broken. But isn’t one of the central message of the gospel that we are fallen? And when we do, why are we surprised?

But Jesus’ response is quite different and one I think the church has ignored. Peter, who was part of the inner circle, denies Jesus three times. His denial could be considered one of the most grievous acts of broken trust in Scripture. He turned his back on God. He denies knowing Jesus when it really mattered. But Jesus’ response is profound. He doesn’t shame him or berate him, which is what we typically think is needed to “teach someone a lesson.” We assume that shame will be enough of a motivator to change their actions. Instead, Jesus avoids the use of shame and actively restores him to ministry.

John 21:15-17 – When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.

This is the man Jesus had told would be central to growing the church.

“Matthew 16:18 – And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

And I can’t help but believe that Jesus is giving us a deeper message that restoration is much more powerful than shame? And could Jesus be saying that he will be building His church on stories like Peter’s, ones of restoration? Jesus understands that it’s better to restore than tear down and leave behind. In restoration we find the essence of love. Jesus is telling Peter he’s worth it. He’s validating his dignity at that moment.

But the reality is that restoration requires great sacrifice on our part. It’s not the easier path. In fact forgiving someone is much harder. It means letting go of justice for the broken trust. It means actually living out the Gospel when we don’t feel like it. It means dealing with our own injustices that we want to sweep under the rug because they remind us of the lesser half.

I think Jesus understands that restoration is central to the mission and he provides us with a clear example of how to do it. And I love that it’s Peter, who is always the one out front. Peter is the guy who takes Jesus at his word and goes for it. He’s the guy who we would see as the natural leader. He’s the closest thing we have to the rock star fallen from grace. And Jesus restores him.

My hope is that as we begin to build new models of church that we begin to find ways to actively restore leaders the way Jesus did. Because when we do, when we choose to restore a fallen leader we send a message that restoration is meant for everyone. We send a message that grace extends deeper than our sin. We send a message that we really do believe in forgiveness. We send a message that love is more powerful than our brokenness. And people like my friend can begin to walk with community towards restoration, rather than in isolation.

That’s the kind of church I want to be involved with.