Missional Canadian

Eighteen years ago it was my privilege to take up the role of what we’re now calling the “Lead Pastor” of the Redwood Park Church. I entered into Redwood at a time of seismic paradigm shift that was a source of great tumult not just for Redwood but also for evangelical churches all across Canada. Some, particularly some over 50 who had invested their lives into building the church, struggled with the new and sometimes unfamiliar paradigms that were emerging. Others clearly understood that for the church to remain effective in its mission to reach those apart from Christ as well as the next generation, they would have to sacrifice their own comforts for the sake of prioritizing the needs of those we are called to love and impact with the message and life of Jesus.

The late 80’s into the early 90’s for many Canadian churches with an evangelical heritage were a time of what’s been called “the worship wars.” Some churches moved through them well, others have still held onto old paradigms, creating greater distance between the local church and the average Canadian. Redwood did not move through this period unscathed but eventually moved through to the other side and was sometimes viewed as a positive example within the evangelical community of a church that was effective at prioritizing the needs of those apart from faith in Christ.*

Twenty years later those who study culture and the church like George Barna in the United States, Alan Hirsch formerly from Australia and Alan Roxburgh here in Canada are all telling us that we are the midst of a much larger shift than any of us have experienced in our lifetimes. Roxburgh calls these “rancorous times!” Here we are for the first time in Canadian history, watching churches with an evangelical heritage not just in decline, which has never happened before, but in many cases move into steep decline, while the more progressive churches over the last 20 years think they are still relevant because of the changes that have been made.

Roxburgh led me to look at a book by Joshua Cooper Ramo called “The Age of the Unthinkable.” Roxburgh wants us to understand that title is a great description of our time. He passionately says to the Canadian church that we live in the age of the unthinkable, a time of massive cultural change where the real driver of change is the unexpected, where “focusing on well established categories and measurables is worse than useless.” He goes on, “The standard answers operating in our churches and among our leaders today can only misdirect us … focusing on improving worship, developing better evangelism, getting more imaginative discipleship programs or creating a passionate spirituality will no longer get at the levels of change we face … living in an age of the unthinkable.”

“Unthinkable Times” … Roxburgh just might be onto something. As we move into the 2010’s, there’s a complexity to doing kingdom work here in Canada that is deeper than most of us have ever experienced. The transitions that led to the worship wars of 20 years ago, pale in comparison to what we fact in the next few years. My fear is that we will move into this future with grasping the enormity of what’s before us and in the end become increasingly irrelevant to and out of touch with the average Canadian.

My prayer is that the passion that has clearly marked Redwood for at least the past 20 years, that we would be like the Old Testament, “men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do,” (1 Chronicles 12:32, NIV), would remain core to who we are. And what that means is that I like many others need to be careful that in our deep and irrevocable passion to hold on to the truth of God’s Word, that we don’t hold onto other “stuff” that gets in the way of mission in an age of the unthinkable.

* (Side note: Both Faith Today published by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada as well as the denominational magazine Alliance.ca have published articles about Redwood’s missional focus. You can download a pdf of the Alliance .ca article here.)

Creative Redwood Pumpkin Carving!!

From time to time myself, Henry our children’s pastor and Jarret our student ministries pastor get emails or notes of concern about how we at Redwood appear to really enjoy Halloween!! Pumpkin carving parties, costumes, decorations, lots of candy all turn up every year. Don’t we know some ask, “that this is the devils holiday?,” inferring that somehow we might be doing something spiritually dangerous.

The good news is there have been no complaints this year, perhaps the start of a new trend of understanding. In the past I’ve spoken on the issue, written on the issue … and so with the desire to help anyone else understand why we do what we do, here are a few thoughts that I or our staff usually share ever year at this time.

• The word “Halloween” itself is not an evil or bad word. It simply comes out the old Christian church calendar used by mainline churches including the Anglican church that comes from All Hallows Eve, or the Night Before All Saints Day, with the word “hallows” meaning Christian “saints”. It was a time when we celebrated great Christian leaders who God used to change history. Over the years the concept of “venerating” or honouring saints, like we honour great heroes of the faith today, took on some unbiblical baggage that contributed to the Protestant Reformation.

• Martin Luther chose Halloween in the year 1517 as the symbolic day that he would nail 95 Theses to the Door of the Church at Wittenberg that started the Protestant Reformation. In essence the Protestant Church was born on Halloween. Luther was not opposed to the celebration of the heroes of the faith, but he was opposed to how that celebration had developed into something like “praying to the saints”, that they might intercede to God on our behalf, when we have direct access to Christ in prayer.

• The pagan practices of the Druids that some connect with Halloween were not initially associated with Halloween. They happened around the same time of year (late October/ early November) and over time the “days” did end up both being October 31st. But the Druid Samhain festival eventually came to compete with Halloween and in many places overtake it. But Halloween, from All Hallows Eve, is still a Christian not a pagan word, even if Samhain practices now take place on Halloween.

• The fact that some folk do bad stuff on Halloween, mimicking the Druid Samhain festival, is no reason for Christians to withdraw and not have a great party full of fun, costumes and the like. When we withdraw and condemn the Devil wins. Far better for Christians to take the day back and turn it into a great God honouring party. And as we know from Scripture, Jesus was not party adverse!! In fact he would turn up at parties that the religious’ folk thought were too pagan for good believers to be at.

• You may remember the old Larry Norman phrase, “Why should the Devil have all the good music?” He pioneered the use of rock music in the church at a time when you could statistically show that there was a connection between rock music and drug use. In some ways you still can. God used him to redeem something that devil was using. Just because the devil uses it, does not make it wrong. So too we can participate in Halloween in God honouring ways and again take it back from the Evil One.

• December 25th, the day we celebrate Christmas on, was originally a pagan festival to the Sun god, that Christians decided would be great day to celebrate the birth of the Son of God. But the day was originally very pagan. And it still is in some parts. Would we withdraw from celebrating Christmas if Satanists decided to revive old pagan Sun god practices on Christmas day, and police stats went up on that day??

The bottom line is we simply will not allow the Devil to win by taking what is good and positive and fun about Halloween. The colour, the candy, the costumes, the games … Jesus loves them all. And I’m convinced He’s right there in the middle of the party with us. I’m looking forward to All Hallows Eve – both enjoying the colourful party and remembering the birth of the Protestant tradition.

For those of you waiting for another post about Catalyst West, it’s coming, but last week I had a phenomenal experience that that blew away Catalyst West, as great as Catalyst west was! I had the opportunity to spend a full day in a Q&A setting with one the great influencers in my life, Bill Hybels. Two hours, where a small group of us connected with him around a board table and then another 3 hours in a larger classroom setting. I’ve had a couple of previous opportunities to connect with him in small group settings, but for the most part he’s been more of a mentor at a distance. So this board table meeting in particular was way cool. I did discover that Redwood Park Church is the very first Canadian church to become a part of the Willow Creek Association. Scott Cochrane the new executive director of Willow Creek Canada made a bit of a deal of that!

What impressed me most was how Hybels continues to lead Willow in a way that keeps the ministry fresh and in-tune with the waves of culture, while keeping the church very much centred on it’s original vision to reach folk apart from a life-giving relationship with Christ . Willow is not stuck in how they’ve done things in the past, while being very aware that they are working with a huge ship that doesn’t change direction on a dime. Hybels is a leader who navigates change with great wisdom and discernment, who is not afraid to do what’s needed to keep the ship pointed in the direction of missional effectiveness, while instilling confidence among the fearful that change is good and necessary.

So let me list a few changes happening at Willow that perhaps we could all learn from:

• Midweek classes work. Willow has had a huge win in transforming it’s midweek believer service into a series of classes and courses that work with those exploring faith right through to those looking for deeper seminary style classes. The sense that some folk had they were not getting enough “deeper teaching” has dramatically decreased because of this change. Folk at Willow have really bought into attending classes geared to meet a diversity of needs, passions and levels of academic depth.

• Worship led by the younger generation crosses generational lines. Willow has opted to allow it’s younger generation to take the lead in creating and leading a weekend worship experience that is more passionate, intimate and interactive. Worship geared more towards 20-somethings appears to have the greatest reach across all generational lines. However what Hybels does to keep youthful worship from crashing with the older generations is he spends 2 hours a week working with the worship planners on the service, and he personally signs off on every song and every announcement and every moment on the order of service. It sounds controlling, but I realize it’s the key to allowing 20 to young 30-somethings lead while insuring that the older generations remain positively impacted. What Willow appears to have learned is that certain values that frame more youthful postmodern worship have broad appeal, within perhaps a few boundaries.

• The worship order is no longer tightly tied to the message. Willow is no longer interested in how closely everything fits the theme of the service. More important is that a worship environment is created that allows for a profound encounter with God Himself. Willow has moved from creating a well packaged presentation of biblical truth, to creating an experience where Truth is encountered. This is a huge shift in Willow’s thinking.

• Flexibility around worship is the new value.  There is now room in Willow to change a song, somewhat re-order the flow of worship in the midst of worship, if the leader feels so prompted. Yes they still plan carefully, but they are no longer as tightly bound to the plan. They are no longer planning the worship year out a year in advance, but maybe just 4 or 5 weeks in advance. Hybels himself now has the freedom the change the message midweek before weekend worship,  if he feels so prompted.

• The end of a worship service is now blurred. There is a 10 to 15 minute period of time after the message where the worship team remains on the platform and sings, while some folk sit and pray in their seats, and other folk get up and go for prayer or to other stations to work through what they sense God is saying to them. They want to leave time for folk to work through their encounter with God. (Think of the implications here for Children’s ministry!)

• Those on the platform must be able to “move the room,” though authentic expression of devotion and passion.  This is particularly true of vocalists and worship leaders. Those giving announcements, leading in prayer and not just the speaker need to be able to move a room. The way Bill put it, “no dead eyes allowed.” Willow will put someone on the vocal team with less skill than someone else musically, if they have the ability to authentically communicate through their facial and body expressions. Racial diversity on the platform also remains a must.

• There needs to be more consistency among those who are on the platform. The extent of team teaching at Willow created a significant sense of inconsistency and lack of focus for the congregation, so Hybels is again the main speaker supplemented by a smaller team. The same is true of those who lead worship and play other roles on the platform. Folk in the seats highly value the relationship they develop with a handful of key platform leaders.

• Being “Jesus” to the community is a big deal. Social justice and ministry to the poor and marginalized in their city and around the world have become front burner issues at Willow.  Faith has become very much what you do and not just who you are. The whole Willow family feels a part of something much bigger than just themselves and folk like themselves.

Shortly after Willow got into its new facility it began to stagnate and perhaps even decline numerically. But as it has made significant adjustments to it’s mid-week approach to teaching and it’s weekend worship, that has turned all around. A church that had peaked and begun to decline at the 20,000 mark has turned that around in the last couple of years and is now over 25,000. Even in the midst of a difficult economy where Willow has laid off 27 staff, growth has continued.

So much more was packed into those 5 hours! Suffice it to say that Willow and Hybles continue to have much to teach us.