Sacred Roads Winner!

AND...we have a winner for the free leader kit of Sacred Roads: Exploring the Historic Paths of Discipleship. Theresa Haskins-- small group leader at Northside Christian Church in Virginia. (Winner chosen by random.org)

Congratulations, Theresa!

Stay tuned for more Sacred Roads updates and free stuff in the future.

If you just can't wait and want to order a copy for yourself, go to the Threads store.

Inspectors vs. Engineers

When mess happens in groups, it's messy. That's the profound kind of statement that I get paid the big bucks for at National Community Church. And my follow up comment isn't much better. There is no formula I can give you for dealing with the mess. Every mess is different. Every leader is different. And the variables at play in any given situation are endless.

Instead of recommending a formula, let me suggest a posture: be an environmental engineer instead of a compliance inspector.

Compliance inspectors conduct audits and tell you what’s wrong. It’s easy to point out messes and deliver opinions; it’s much harder to be an engineer that creates environments where the mess can be transformed into something good.

Compliance inspectors focus on the problem; engineers focus on the solution.

Compliance inspectors care most about outputs; engineers care most about inputs.

Compliance inspectors write up reports on how well you are following the rules; engineers draw up plans for making environments better.

Engineers look for solutions, and as a small group leader, you are an environmental engineer—you are creating environments that foster spiritual growth. And that sometimes means cleaning up the messes. Sin messes might need to be cleaned—like a hazardous waste spill. Relational messes need to be navigated. Life messes need to be tended—to be cared for.

It’s not the job of the leader to eliminate and eradicate mess from the small group; that’s the job of the Holy Spirit. The job of the leader is to create an environment in which people can best see, engage, and respond to the work of the Holy Spirit. Your job as a leader is to engineer an environment where transformation can happen.

Wesley's Discipleship

John Wesley had a pretty hard-hitting approach to discipleship. In many small groups today, structuring the meeting time around the following questions would be frightening to many members. But if you want to challenge your people to deeper community and more focused discipleship, try these questions:

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am a better person than I really am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?
3. Do I confidentially pass on what was told to me in confidence?
4. Can I be trusted?
5. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work or habit?
6. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?
7. Did the Bible live in me today?
8. Do I give God time to speak to me everyday?
9. Am I enjoying prayer?
10. When did I last speak to someone else of my faith?
11. Do I pray about the money I spend?
12. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
13. Do I disobey God in anything?
14. Do I insist on doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?
15. Am I defeated in any part of my life?
16. Am I jealous, impure, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?
17. How do I spend my spare time?
18. Am I proud?
19. Do I thank God I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the publican?
20. Is there anyone I fear, or dislike, or criticize, or resent? If so, what am I doing about it?
21. Do I grumble and complain constantly?
22. Is Christ real to me?

Types of Messes

Small Groups are messy. It seems to me there are three major types of messes that we face when leading people. Categories can be a bit limiting because they always break down, but I think they can also provide some helpful language and distinctions for thinking intentionally and strategically about appropriate ways to respond to the specific mess we are facing.

Sin Messes
Sin messes happen between an individual and God, but they enter into your group experience because people are sinful. You discover someone in your group is having an affair. Or engaged in unethical business practices. Your small group becomes a safe place for people to confess addictions or habits that are destructive.

Several years ago I led a small group that I was convinced was the most perfect group God ever put together. I couldn’t believe it—it was full of young, smart, likable, energetic, and attractive twenty-somethings who seemed eager and hungry to grow in their relationship with God. We had great discussions about the Bible and great community life throughout the week. I was convinced that God could change the world through us. Until I got a phone call from my co-leader. He prefaced the conversation with this: “Are you sitting down?” He proceeded to tell me that two single individuals in the group—one of whom we were raising up as a potential leader—were sleeping together. In fact, they had been living together without our knowing. That was just the beginning. We discovered other mess in the lives of our group members and a lot of it was this very type— sin mess.

Relational Messes
The second type of mess is the kind we encounter most often in group life. It’s relational mess. The kind that happens in the group between two individuals. Or three. Or four. Or between your whole group. It includes the talking messes—you know, like the long talkers, no talkers, off-topic talkers, narcissistic talkers, extra grace required talkers, theologically divisive talkers, weird talkers, trash talkers. It’s the mess of conflict or disagreement or personality clashes. It’s the mess of agreeing to agree on doctrine and agree to disagree over opinion only to learn that you disagree over what’s doctrine and what’s opinion. It’s the mess that predictably and inevitably happens whenever you put more than one person in a room together.

It's the kind of mess that happened to me not too long ago when some individuals in my group really began to open up and share hurts, fears, and disappointments. One individual confessed to the group that they only prayer she had been able to muster recently was, "God, what the hell are you doing?" I was proud to lead a group that created such a safe place for someone to be that vulnerable. Until another person in the group spoke up to condemn the language that had just been used. Relational messes-- the friction that occurs between people-- is the one we face most often in groups.

Life Messes
Then there is life mess. This is the kind of mess that happens to individuals in your group that is totally unrelated to their group experienced but completely affects your group experience. Think of sudden deaths, divorce, cancer, a job loss. It’s the kind of mess that happens because we live in a broken world, and, in healthy groups, when one member suffers, the whole group suffers.

It's the kind of mess that happens in our groups here on Capitol Hill every two or four years. Lost elections-- which result in lost jobs. Sometimes, a group contains those on the left side of the political aisle and those on the right side of the political aisle, and the election cycle can mean significant change for those people. Some lose jobs while others get promoted. It's a challenge for a leader to rejoice with those whose lives are changing for the good and to simultaneously mourn with those who face loss.

Often, these messes are interrelated. Relational messes lead to sin messes. And life messes lead to relational messes. We'll talk next about some ways to address mess when it happens in group.

Mess and Transformation

Where people exist, mess abounds. Which means that small groups are messy. I live in a world where mess abounds. My church is about 60% single and under the age of 35, and many of them work jobs that have political overtones or undertones. The three issues I find myself addressing over and over again: 1) appropriate relational and sexual boundaries, 2) how to approach alcohol Biblically and responsibly, and3) how to navigate tricky political issues with people whose passions and jobs are fueled by them.

I’ve discovered the hard way, and I’m beginning to discover in a hopeful way, that mess and transformation are directly proportional. There is always a link.

Sometimes mess is the byproduct of growth. When systems are working properly, there will be a messy byproduct. For example, if a car is running, there will be exhaust. It’s the natural and expected byproduct of a working system. Several years ago, a young man attended a small group training class that focused on the need for transparency among leaders. He decided to put that into practice. Which meant he had to confess to a pastor that he struggled with same-sex attraction. The growth in his life—a desire to be more transparent—resulted in some messy byproduct—a confession that had to be engaged. Because he learned and grew, mess came out. The good news? The mess led to transformation. That young man grew through the mess and today serves as a sought-after leaders in the group ministry at his church. Mess is the byproduct of growth.

Sometimes it works the other way around and mess can be the catalyst for change. Mess happens and it causes people to grow as a result. Think about compost piles. They don’t do their job unless trash is heaped on them regularly. Several years ago, a leader met with me to let me know he was stepping down from leadership and submitting to spiritual authority for accountability and growth. He confessed that he had been hanging out with his small group one night and had a bit too much to drink. The result was behavior inappropriate for a Christ-follower, much less for a leader. He submitted to a process of accountability and growth which catalyzed spiritual growth in his life, and his transparency and response actually caused those around him to respect him more. Mess happened, which catalyzed a growth moment, and transformation happened. Today, he's back in leadership with more maturity and more respect from those he leads.

Mess is the byproduct, the catalyst, and the environment of transformation. Mess means that change is happening, is right around the corner, or will happen if we engage it correctly.

Lessons From the Pig Farm

I learned an important lesson about dealing with messy community and messy discipleship at a pig farm in southern Louisiana. When I was a graduate student in the biological engineering department at Louisiana State University, I took a class called bioreactor design. Bioreactors are used to grow cells and tissues and are systems that transform raw materials into useful products. The class focused on understanding the variables and catalysts of the reactions that transformed inputs into productive outputs—like turning chemicals into medicines and wastewater into wetlands. It was about designing a system in which transformation was catalyzed.

Toward the end of the semester, each of us was required to participate in a project that brought together all the principles we had learned. While the majority of my classmates were designing systems that working with snazzy equipment and studying reaction kinetics for cranking out important products like pharmaceuticals, I was sloshing through the mud and poop of Ben Hur Research Farm every day to take samples from the treatment lagoon at the swine animal feeding operation. In other words, I was drawing samples of pig crap out of a pit.

Here’s the deal. Pig farms stink. I mean, they stink really badly. And most of the farmers treat the waste in treatment lagoons. My goal was to reduce the stink. My project was to determine the variables and kinetic parameters (width, length, depth, retention time, flow, volume, etc) for the reactions in the lagoon that broke down the waste and converted it into useful product—fertilizer—and to come up with new lagoon designs that maximized those reactions. Does that make sense? All this pig poop was being flushed into a alagoon…and I had to make it less stinky.

But here’s the deal—I quickly learned I couldn't do anything to directly address the stink. Instead, I have to focus on creating an environment in which the stink was most effectively and efficiently converted into a useful and beneficial product. The point was not to focus on the stink but to focus on the environment. To design an environment that fostered change and maximized transformation.

In the church, we tend to want to focus on the stink. The sin, the mess, the conflict, the “whatever” that we perceive to be inhibiting growth and community. And we think if we point at it and say firmly enough “stop” that it will go away. Or we try to ignore it away. In reality, we need to approach things like that bioreactor design class. Acknowledge that mess (poo, crap, bad stuff) is a natural by-product of life and work to create environments that catalyze change.

FREE TICKETS! to Lead Now

There are lots of free giveaways here on Wineskins for Discipleship this week. In addition to the free leaders kit of Sacred Roads, we are giving away tickets to the Lead Now event (in Dallas and over 40 satellite locations) next week!

I can't believe I get to be a part of such a stellar lineup of speakers! This conference is unique in that it focuses almost exclusively on missional living in our world today. Even the small group track focuses on being the light of Christ in our communities rather than hiding that light in the homes where our small groups meet!

I’m going to give away two Conference tickets to the 10th person who emails me. Be sure to put “LeadNow’09 Tickets” in the subject line. So what are you waiting for? Send your email now!! I’ll announce the winner as soon as they winl.

If you don’t win, don’t worry you can Register Here.

Main Conference Site is at Irving Bible Church :: 2435 Kinwest Pkwy :: Irving, TX 75063

See The List of 40+ Remote Host Sites Here

Messes of Biblical Proportions

Community is messy, and it's been that way since the beginning. Let's just think about some messes of Biblical proportions.

God created. Everything was good. Butthree chapters in, mess happened. Eve disobeyed God, encouraged Adam to join in the mess, and sin mess happened. Fingers got pointed and relational mess happened. The inevitable results of sin are proclaimed and life mess began.

Then we move to Cain and Abel. I would say jealousy and murder amount to mess.

Noah—built a huge boat to house the few remaining fragments of creation mess that God wanted to maintain. Later, he got himself drunk and his sons discovered him naked. Which resulted in some family breakdownMess.

Then there was Abraham claiming that his wife was not his wife and navigating water resources rights with his nephew, Lot. There’s Isaac and Rebekah playing favorites with their sons Jacob and Esau, thereby producing life-long (and history-altering) sibling rivalry. Then Jacob favoritism to his own son Joseph, which resulted in another family meltdown.

Let’s fast forward a few hundred years to Moses. I like to think of Moses as the first small group leader in the Bible—but look at these people he was charged with leading. They don’t follow instructions. They complain. And they forget the miracles they see in a matter of hours- they are completely ADD. It’s a mess.

Fast forward a bit more to David. I think of David as the second small group leader in the Bible. In 1 Samuel 22 we read about David running for his life and then hiding in the cave of Adullam. Then Scripture tells us that he was first joined by his family. And then he was joined by men who were in trouble, in debt, or just discontented. Great. Talk about a dysfunctional group. First of all- family. Then add on the Extra Grace Required people in the form of those who were in trouble or in debt or just plain discontented. Mess. How many of us feel like that’s our small group? Right? And think about David's other messy relationships. David and Saul. David and Uriah. David and Bathsheba. David and the prophet Nathan. David and his son Absalom. Okay, pretty much David and everyone.

Skip over to the New Testament. Jesus was born in the mess of a stable—a cave where animals were kept and fed. Placed in a stone feeding tough. Jesus called 12 men to follow him- fisherman, tax collectors, political revolutionaries—who bickered over who was going to be greatest in the Kingdom.

In Acts 15, the apostles had to meet in Jerusalem to sort out theological mess. Paul and Peter had issues. Paul and John Mark had issues.

The majority of writings in the New Testament are there because the early church was messy. Look at the church in Corinth—all the stuff that was happening there. Incestuous affairs, lawsuits, divorce and separation, idol worship, big egos, doctrinal fighting, sexual promiscuity, people getting drunk while celebrating communion. And you thought your small group was messed up.

And yet...in the midst of the mess...

As we read these stories, we see the hand of God writing his own story in them and through them. Emerging from the mess is the fingerprint of God writing the hope of the Gospel and the story of redemption in history.

Proverbs 14:4 has become one of my organizing metaphors in regards to group life:

Where no oxen are, the manger is clean, but much increase comes by the strength of the ox.

You can have a clean barn with no animals in there. But you aren’t going to get much done without animals.

You can have a tidy group as long as no one is in it. But community requires that we show up. And showing up means bringing our mess.

Small Groups are Great...?

Small groups are great...and then the people show up.

Once upon a time we heard a pastor give a stirring message on the theological, ecclesiological, and practical importance of life in community and we left with a newfound conviction that small groups are great. An announcement was made from the pulpit about the need for new small group leaders, and we decided to put our convictions into practice because we were convinced both spiritually and experientially that small groups are great. We courageously attended leadership training classes and left with a passion to change the world through the greatness of groups. We saw our group promoted in print, in word, in pictures and we approached the night of our first meeting with a holy anticipation. Small groups are great!

And then people walked through the door.

It might not happen on the first night. It might not happen in the first month or even in the first year, but at some point, our well-tended "great" group experience begin to fall apart. The chairs are set, the snacks are ready, the lesson is prepared, the service project is planned... we are doing everything we need to do as a leader. And all of a sudden, we realize that there are some things no one ever told us about leading small groups. The nice thoughts about growth and friends and transparency and community fade into the newfound realization that groups are messy.

What do you do at that moment? The moment you realize that groups are messy will become the defining moment of your leadership.

Here's the scary news: small groups are messy because groups are made up of people and people are messy. Community is messy because it’s about broken people hauling their brokenness and stink and baggage and moving in with you.

Here's the good news: mess might be exactly where God wants you to be to become the person and the community that he created you to be.