Well, they didn’t say it that way, of course. But they did agree that working more doesn’t actually mean that more work gets done. Regular rest makes for more productive work:
…We have analyzed the working schedules of hundreds of executives and found that working harder and longer does not make them more productive. In fact, once a person passes a certain number of hours worked in a day, he or she actually becomes less productive. The mind dulls. The eyes gloss over. Focus strays.
You can only work so hard and do so much in a day. Everyone needs to rest and recharge. Unfortunately, too many corporate cultures encourage overwork. Managers drill it into their underlings, prodding them with dreams of cash and promotions. Many senior leaders at organizations work amazingly hard, but our research suggests that the most successful ones who last longer at the top also make considerable time to relax.
To get the most out of employees, companies need to let those employees be more efficient. How?
First off, most working days are incredibly inefficient. The 80-20 rule once again prevails: We have found that most executives waste 80% of the day and get most of their work done in the remaining 20%. For someone with an eight-hour workday, most gets done in just 96 minutes.
Companies should strongly recommend times for leaving work, so that executives don’t feel guilty going home even if their bosses are still working. Obviously, executives simply have to work longer hours sometimes. But if there are too many deadlines that keep people working late every night, you probably need to hire more staff.
Companies should also implement the No BlackBerry Rule after certain hours and on weekends. Being continuously connected seems great at first, but even one innocent e-mail on a Sunday morning stops a mind from truly resting.
Many top people do clue into the fact that working too hard just isn’t worth it. They leave businesses so they can be more productive and spend more time with their families–businesses they would have stayed at if they’d had more balanced lives there. One of the top reasons people quit companies is to find better work-life balance. That doesn’t mean such executives are lazy and don’t want to work hard. On the contrary, it means they want to work more productively and efficiently so they can enjoy life. Companies that have more flexible work arrangements that let executives catch their kids’ games or work from home while nursing tend to have the greatest employee loyalty and attract the best talent.
My post last week on why you shouldn’t go to seminary sparked lots of discussion and debate. It was the most highly trafficked post ever on this blog, and as you can see from the comments, elicited thoughtful reactions both for and against.
Upon reading that post, one of my good pastor-theologian friends had his research assistant dig out an obscure essay by John Frame, who was one of my favorite seminary profs precisely because of his deep love for Christ and his zeal to serve the church. In the essay, Frame makes many of the same arguments I did in the post. He also proposes a way forward (or backward?) that, if followed, would change the course of theological education in America for the better. Here are some excerpts, abridged for simplicity:
In the early days of American Protestantism, the training of ministerial candidates was carried on by pastors of churches. [Eventually], for some reason or other, theological training was institutionalized, and at the same time academicized. As a result, young men [now] receive no training at all in many crucial areas. Most do not even become good scholars, for they learn the results of scholarship without learning how to think and do research in a scholarly way. Worst of all, it seems to me that most seminary graduates are not spiritually ready for the challenges of the ministry. Seminaries not only frequently ‘refuse to do the work of the church;’ they also tend to undo it. Students who arrive expecting to find a ‘spiritual hothouse’ often find seminary to be a singular test of faith. The crushing academic workload, the uninspiring and unhelpful courses, the financial agonies, the too-busy professors, the equally hard-pressed fellow students all contribute to the spiritual debilitation.
After this frank assessment of the problem, Frame turns to Scripture to establish three biblical propositions: 1) the qualifications for the ministry are spiritual (character, skills, knowledge – all seen through the lens of discipleship to Jesus, not academic prowess); 2) training for the ministry is itself a ministry of the Word; and 3) training for the ministry is the work of the church. On this last point, Frame observes:
Teachers have official status in the church as elders and are entitled to remuneration by the church (1 Tim 5:17). If, as we have argued, the training of ministers is a form of teaching the Word, then such training ought to be carried on by these church teachers. And such church teaching ought (as in the New Testament) to be recognized and administered by the church. A seminary which does not ‘do the work of the church’ does not ‘train men for the ministry’ either.
But the genius – and the danger – of Frame’s article isn’t in his identification of the problem or in his biblical observations. It’s in his bold proposal for a model of ministerial training that would render the current Christian seminary establishment obsolete. Maybe that’s why this essay is buried out of sight, in the relative obscurity of a distant theological library?
I propose that we dump the academic model once and for all – degrees, accreditation, tenure, the works. The academic machinery is simply incapable of measuring the things that really matter – obedience to God’s Word, perseverance in prayer, self-control, the ability to rule without pride, the spiritual power of preaching in the conversion of people and the edification of the church. The actual training, the development of ministerial qualifications, must take place in a non-academy.
But dropping the academic model does not require the dropping of institutional training. Here, then, is my alternative to the academic model. A church establishes a kind of “Christian community” where teachers, ministerial candidates, and their families live together, eat together, work together. It is not a monastic escape from the world; rather, each teacher, student, wife, and child is to be deeply involved in the work of planting and developing churches.
The best candidate for a teaching job at our community is a pastor who has trained elders and congregations so that the work of teaching and evangelism is widely diffused throughout the congregation. Upon first arrival, a student will spend much of the time in menial work around the study center. It will be expected that the student manifest the fruit of the Spirit in the sight of all before being accepted as a full candidate for the ministry. The community will evaluate the quality of the student’s devotional life, contribution to the work of the church, testimony to non-Christians, and particularly the ability to accept correction from elders in the Lord. Intensive counseling sessions will attempt to uncover unconfessed sin and traits of character detrimental to the ministry. The quality of the person’s repentance from these will be observed.
Once the community has verified the likelihood of a man’s call to the ministry, he is enrolled formally in the program. He begins to be trained in evangelism, preaching, and pastoral work. At the same time, the man begins to study the formal theological subjects. Teachers and older students will be constantly involved in the work of supervising the labors of younger men. Wives and children of students will also be subject to training and evaluation. There will not be a set “number of hours” after which a person is entitled to graduation. Teachers and older students will meet from time to time for intensive evaluation of each student’s progress in life, skills, and knowledge. These meetings will determine whether a man will be dropped from the program, promoted to new levels of responsibility, or “graduated” and recommended to the churches for ministry. No person will “graduate” unless the teachers are convinced that he has the character, skills, and knowledge which the Scriptures require of church officers.
But: if we follow this proposal, would this not rob us of the most important centers of Christian scholarship, the academic seminaries? Yes, it would. Such a restructuring of the Christian scholarly establishment would, in my opinion, produce, not a dark age, but a renaissance in Christian thought. Why?
1) Many Christian scholars, under the present system, are tied up doing something they are not really equipped for, namely the training of pastors. It is as if all professors of mathematics were involved full-time in the training of accountants!
2) The integration of theory and practice in Christian scholarship implicit in the above suggestion would help isolate those problems which most need scholarly attention in our day. What a challenge to the aridness of contemporary thought, Christian and non-Christian alike!
3) The current structure is inadequate even to train scholars, for in the academic seminaries the results of scholarship are presented without adequate training in the skills of thought and research, leaving the students easy prey to any fad boasting academic support. How marvelous it would be to have a theological leadership in the church which would not be swept around by every wind of doctrine!
It’s great to realize that in my quest for innovation, I’m simply standing on the shoulders of a giant like John Frame. Apparently his proposal, written in 1984, has gained little traction. Hopefully that is about to change. This is exactly the kind of model we’re shooting for with our Church Planting Residency, and with other Acts 29 initiatives like Re:Train and Soma School.
Any of you thoughtful readers want to chime in?
[Here is the bibliography info - good luck finding an original: John M. Frame, "Proposals for a New North American Model," in Harvie M. Conn and Sam Rowen, eds., Missions and Theological Education in World Perspective (Farmington, MI: Associates of Urbanus), 369-386.]
In November I will have the great privilege of joining fellow Acts 29 pastors Darrin Patrick, Kevin Cawley, Daniel Montgomery, Steve Timmis, and Matt Chandler (along with distinguished guests Dave Harvey and Ed Stetzer) to lead the last Acts 29 bootcamp of this year. We will gather in Louisville, Kentucky, at the very cool digs of Sojourn Church, to preach on the theme of AMBITION and to assess potential church planters.
If you are 1) a leader or emerging leader within Coram Deo or 2) a church planter or potential church planter thinking of aligning with the Acts 29 Network, you should consider attending this conference to get a feel for the DNA of Acts 29 and to network with other leaders and pastors. I will have a pretty full week with speaking responsibilities, church planter assessments, and some meetings, but at least one other staff member from Coram Deo will travel with me to help network with any Omaha or Midwest folks who attend. We’d love to have you along for the journey. It’s going to be a great conference, and the people at Sojourn are first-class hosts.
For more info, check the conference website. And please be praying for me as I prepare.
The next installment of our monthly Film & Theology sessions is this Sunday starting at 6:30pm. We will once again be hosted by our kind friends at The Foundry, and as always there will be some popcorn, drinks, and comfortable seating. The film we have chosen for this month is Seven Pounds; you can go here to view some details (including rating) about it. See you there!
The title of this post is bound to raise some ire. But it’s time to call a spade a spade. I’m writing this post because of numerous conversations I’ve had in the past 2 years with people who feel a calling from God toward Christian ministry and assume that going to seminary is the natural “next step.”
Here’s one example: a young man in our church is about to graduate from Bible college and wants to serve in pastoral ministry. Last week, he told a friend of mine that he’s planning on going to seminary next year. Wanting to be helpful, my friend asked what his criteria were for choosing a seminary.
He had no idea.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Christians have a nebulous perception that a seminary degree is like a union card for pastoral ministry. News flash: it’s not. In fact, in Acts 29, we find that church planters without a seminary degree are often more successful than those with a degree.
Readers are going to have to forgive me for some over-generalizations in this post. What I am going to say is not true of all seminaries, all seminary graduates, or all potential seminary attendees. I am not anti-seminary. I have a seminary degree myself, and I cherish the education and the spiritual formation that it provided me. But it’s time for someone to challenge the standard assumptions.
First things first: theological training is a must for anyone called to the pastorate. Pastors who don’t have a deep grasp of history, theology, and philosophy are simply unqualified. Titus 1:9 requires that all who serve in the office of elder (pastor) must be able to “give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.” According to Richard Lovelace, Christianity quickly lost influence after the Second Great Awakening because “the leadership of lay evangelists without formal theological training… led to a progressively shallower spirituality among evangelicals and to a loss of intellectual command” (Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p. 50). Pastors work in the world of ideas. They are guardians of a storied theological heritage and teachers of a philosophy of life. Education is a must.
So I’m not denying the importance of sound, rigorous theological training. I’m simply questioning whether seminary is the place to get it. Here are some of my concerns:
Seminary pulls pastors “off the streets” for 3 or 4 years to isolate them in a sterile academic environment. While this might be great for paper-writing, it’s really bad for missional living.
The nature of the business means that seminaries are always juggling the best interests of students, faculty, donors, and accrediting agencies. These players are never in agreement, which means that no one is ever happy.
Seminaries seek to accomplish theological training apart from immersion in a local church. Though most require their students to be active in a church, seminaries tend to be a breeding ground for Monday-morning-theologians who want to critique the church rather than serve it.
Because professors are pressured to publish and gain tenure, the classes they teach are often little more than laboratories for their latest projects. One seminary student in our church told me that every one of his classes this semester uses a book written by the professor.
Seminaries have to pay the bills, which means it’s in their best interests to keep students around as long as possible. Seminaries continue to promote the M.Div. as the “flagship” degree – even though a 2-year M.A. with well-chosen electives is often just as good, and about $15,000 cheaper.
Seminary graduates tend to exit with heads full of theology, but without worshipful hearts or authentic relationships with non-Christians. I am aware this is an over-generalization. But unfortunately it’s an accurate one.
Because of a seminary’s need to cater to a diverse student body, most seminaries can’t offer a truly systematic theological education. Students end up having to piece together the fragmented bits of data they’ve accumulated in so many haphazard, out-of-sequence courses. The idea of a cohesive “body of learning” is all but lost in the modern academy.
The seminary model is a tired one that needs to be updated for a post-Christian, technological age. Here’s a possible way forward:
The primary place for pastoral training and development should be within the local church. Good, theologically astute elders can guide aspiring leaders through a year or two of seminary-level reading and study without ever removing them from their church body. Rather than paying thousands of dollars for a packaged seminary education, aspiring leaders can get exactly the same level of reading and study (minus the classroom interaction) for free, with the added bonus of mentorship and community with others in their local church.
Regionally influential churches should band together to host theological training academies, similar to what Mars Hill/Acts 29 has begun to do with Re:Train. Cadres of a couple dozen students can fly top-notch professors in, wine them and dine them, and pay a hefty honorarium for their labor, and still come out way ahead of the $400 or $500 per credit hour that seminaries charge.
Theological students should use technology to access “the best of the best” teachers and theologians. Many seminaries offer lectures for free through iTunes U. Others allow students to audit classes via videoconferencing. If you want to learn systematic theology from Wayne Grudem, church history from John Hannah, and apologetics from John Frame, why not?
Seminaries should continue to hire and equip the best and brightest academic minds in Christianity to do battle on the field of ideas. We need good theologians doing high-level academic work, and seminaries provide an important context for that. But rather than paying the bills by lassoing directionless Bible-college grads for a 3-year M.Div., they should focus their recruiting efforts on doctoral students, pastors who want ongoing training, and “a la carte” students who would pay to access the wisdom and expertise of the most talented professors in a given field. Seminaries could cut all the “adjunct” faculty and retain only the best and brightest thinkers.
How would this change the face of theological education? Right now an aspiring pastor goes into the poorhouse to fund a 3-year M.Div, only to come out less equipped (in many ways) than when he went in. Imagine if that same aspiring pastor spent 2 years studying theology under the direction of his local church elders, then a third year taking electives from “the best of the best” professors at various seminaries, available through distance-ed or through short on-site intensives. He would avoid debt, stay connected to the local church, continue to grow as a missionary and worshipper (not just a theologian), and still come out with a top-notch education – and a much better pedigree for missional leadership.
When I was a sophomore engineering major at the University of Oklahoma, I contacted a family friend about a potential summer internship. He said, “Yeah, I’d love to have you come work for me – because after you get your degree, I’m going to need you to un-learn everything you’ve learned anyway.” That’s exactly how I feel about seminary graduates who are coming into a missional church-planting movement. The model I’ve proposed certainly isn’t flawless – and if you’d like to defend the current model or propose other alternatives, I’d love to hear from you. But the fact is that seminaries simply aren’t producing the kind of leaders that missional church leaders are looking for. It’s time for a change.
Over the weekend I read the best book on prayer I’ve ever read. Yes, over the weekend: that’s how engaging this book is. And yes, I’ve read quite a few books on prayer. Paul Miller’s A Praying Life beats them all.
Four reasons why Miller’s book is that good:
1. It’s not simplistic.Miller engages the difficult questions about prayer without falling into naïve God-speak or smug cynicism. As an example, he starts the book by punching the reader in the mouth with this story:
I was camping for the weekend in the mountains of Pennsylvania with five of our six kids… I was walking down from our campsite to our Dodge Caravan when I noticed our fourteen-year-old daughter, Ashley, standing in front of the van, tense and upset. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “I lost my contact lens. It’s gone.” I looked down with her at the forest floor, covered with leaves and twigs. There were a million little crevices for the lens to fall into and disappear.
I said, “Ashley, don’t move. Let’s pray.” But before I could pray, she burst into tears. “What good does it do? I’ve prayed for Kim to speak, and she isn’t speaking.”
My daughter Kim struggles with autism and developmental delay. Because of her weak fine motor skills and problems with motor planning, she is also mute. One day after five years of speech therapy, Kim crawled out of the speech therapist’s office, crying from frustration. My wife Jill said, “No more,” and we stopped speech therapy.
Prayer was no mere formality for Ashley. She had taken God at his word and asked that he would let Kim speak. But nothing happened. Kim’s muteness was a testimony to a silent God. Prayer, it seemed, doesn’t work.
Can you relate to this feeling? I can.
2. The author writes as both a fellow journeyer and a spiritual leader. To make me listen to what you have to say about prayer, you need to be skilled enough in prayer to know what you’re talking about, but real enough to relate to the rest of us. Miller walks this line perfectly. He isn’t afraid to claim that he knows something about prayer: “I never started out to write a book on prayer. I simply discovered that I’d learned how to pray. Life’s unexpected turns had created a path in my heart to God; God taught me to pray through suffering.” Okay, I’m listening. This guy has the smell of wisdom. But at the same time, he doesn’t over-promise: “What does it feel like to grow up? It is a thousand feelings on a thousand different days. That is what learning to pray feels like… a praying life isn’t something you accomplish in a year. It is the journey of a lifetime… There is not one magic bullet but a thousand pinpricks that draw us into [a praying life].” And that’s Miller’s stated goal: not for you to make impressive resolutions or pray for only a season, but to help you develop a praying life.
3. The book acknowledges both the poetry and the precision of effective prayer. To those who trust in formulas and structures, Miller has this rebuke: “Many attempts to teach people to pray encourage the creation of a split personality. You’re taught to ‘do it right.’ Instead of the real, messy you meeting God, you try to re-create yourself by becoming spiritual… So instead, begin with who you are. That’s how the gospel works. God begins with you. It’s a little scary because you’re messed up.” On the other hand, just when you start to make “praying like a child” an excuse for laziness, he retorts: “Many people… are suspicious of all systems. They feel it kills the Spirit. Systems seem to fly in the face of what we learned about childlike praying. But all of us create systems with things that are important to us. Remember, life is both holding hands and scrubbing floors. It is both being and doing. Prayer journals or prayer cards are on the ‘scrubbing floors’ side of life. Praying like a child is on the ‘holding hands’ side of life. We need both.”
4. The book is full of powerful sentences. If an author, time and again, grabs me by the throat with a single sentence, I know I’m reading a book that has punch. Hence the reason I enjoy Lewis, Tozer, and Chesterton. Miller is not in the same category as those great writers, but his book does have its share of thought-provoking turns of phrase. Among them:
Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart.
If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life.
Less mature Christians have little need to pray… there is no complexity to their worlds because the answers are simple.
Cynicism is the air we breathe, and it is suffocating our hearts. Our only hope is to follow Jesus as he leads us out of cynicism.
The persistent widow and the friend at midnight get access, not because they are strong but because they are desperate. Learned desperation is at the heart of a praying life.
I do not understand prayer. Prayer is deeply personal and deeply mysterious. Adults try to figure out causation. Little children don’t. They just ask.
Everything you do is connected to who you are as a person and, in turn, creates the person you are becoming. Everything you do affects those you love. All of life is covenant.
We think spiritual things – if done right – should just ‘flow.’ But if you have a disability, nothing flows, especially in the beginning.
There is a tendency among Christians to get excited about ‘listening to God’ as if they are discovering a hidden way of communicating with God that will revolutionize their prayer lives… This subtly elevates an experience with God instead of God himself. Without realizing it, we can look at the windshield instead of through it.
How would you love someone without prayer? People are far too complicated; the world is far too evil; and my own heart is too off center to be able to love adequately without praying.
Whether you’re just learning to pray or seeking to deepen your practice of prayer, do yourself a favor and read A Praying Life. It will feed your soul. We’ll have a few copies available at the Coram Deo book table next week.
Last Sunday I asserted that our church, like the church in Colossae, has a mission problem. We are not living out the mission of God as he intends us to. To substantiate this point, I observed that while our Sunday attendance this fall is near 400, only about a fourth of that number are giving anything financially or pursuing church membership, and only about half are connected to a missional community.
Every time I make observations about giving or membership (which isn’t really very often), I can sense that I’m touching the third rail. People start getting defensive. Lots of people seem to feel like they should be able to hang out at a church as long as they want without being challenged to join the mission by becoming members, giving, and serving.
For non-Christians, skeptics, de-churched people, and those still detoxing from bad experiences in American evangelicalism: you bet. Hang out as long as you need. That’s part of gospel hospitality, and that’s what it means for us to be a missional church. (And after all, our whole paradigm for discipleship is relational, so you have to hang around for awhile to get involved.) But for those who don’t fall into those categories, here’s my plea: Don’t spiritualize your lethargy. It gets tiring as a leader to consistently hear things like “I just don’t feel the Spirit leading me that way” or “I’m still praying about it.” Christians are skilled at making excuses that would sound ridiculous in any other context.
In a conversation between services, a thoughtful friend of mine was asking some good questions, and I used a common-sense example that seemed to help. She works at a coffeehouse. I asked, “Suppose someone comes into your coffee shop, camps out at a table, logs onto the wi-fi, and uses the restroom – but never buys anything. That’s not cool, right? I mean, technically, someone can do that – it’s not illegal or unethical. But you would still consider that person a freeloader.”
“Yes,” she replied. Same deal at church. More people showing up means more resources being expended: more volunteers, more materials, more time, and eventually more staff and more space needed to facilitate the work of mission and discipleship. If many of those people are professing Christians who are not practicing biblical rhythms of giving and serving, there’s no difference between them and a coffeehouse freeloader.
So hey, professing Christians: if you are benefiting from the ministry of a church without supporting it, at least have the integrity to say so – and to amend your ways. Don’t spiritualize your objections. If the coffeehouse barista challenged you for taking up space without buying a drink, you’d think that was fair. Give your pastors the same latitude. The work of the gospel may not be as tangible as a cappuccino… but the same rules apply.
This is an update from Brett Moser, lead pastor of River City Church in Fargo, ND. River City is planting this month and is one of the churches we are currently helping to equip in the work of church planting.
Coram Deo has been blessed since the day it planted with very talented musicians. Over the past 4 years, our music team has continued to grow and develop under the faithful leadership and service of Jared Strock. We have grown from the early days of just Jared and his guitar -to- adding a female vocalist -to- adding a djembe -to- eventually our current reality → The CD music team is composed of 5 female vocalists, 2 backup guitarists, 4 violin players, 2 bass players, 3 percussion players (both djembe and drum kit), a piano player, and we have even seen a few odds and ends instruments in the mix from time to time. While we still have room to grow both musically and theologically, we are humbled and thankful for the great fruit that God has produced amongst us in this area.
With this growth, we have developed our own sound, which one astute listener has described as “tight, layered harmonies over unadorned, straightforward instrumentals, proclaiming the rich theology of old hymns in an earnest and uncompromisingly beautiful voice.” You can go here to get more of a feel for what I mean. Along with this sound, God has given us the vision, the resources, and the right people to be able to say this: “Coram Deo is going into the studio!” What started as a text message from myself to Bob while I was boarding a plane over Christmas break last year has turned into an actual project that is off and running. Preparations have been made, musicians selected and prepped, songs chosen and worked over, nights of practice and rehearsal ongoing, and much more work to come. We are set to go into the studio to start recording the last two weekends of October and are working toward a mid-December release.
The album will consist of 10 historical hymns that will be tastefully infused with our own Coram Deo style, arrangements, and energy. Luke Pettipoole, who has been a part of the Coram Deo community for the past 2 years, is a uniquely gifted musician and producer and is well connected in the recording world. Luke will be helping to shape the creative direction of the album. He describes it this way: “We wanted to preserve the beauty of the lyrics and melody of these sacred songs, but subtly modernize them. We felt the perfect musical backdrop would be a mix of early Americana, 60’s folk and recent alt. country. The songs are often re-energized and at times even explosive, but the original essence of these powerful hymns is never compromised.” To give you a taste, without giving away the whole track list, the first hymn will be CD favorite Praise to the Lord, the Almighty and the last will be How Great Thou Art.
We intend this album to be a blessing to people (and churches) both inside and outside of Coram Deo, and we are humbly asking God to help us bring that intention into reality. Our hope is to provide an album that is artistically skillful, theologically deep, and profoundly worshipful. We trust that it will spur gospel meditation as well as great creative momentum and energy within Coram Deo.
I want to thank a few special donors who have helped to get this project up and running. Their generosity has given it some much needed momentum that it would not have had otherwise. There is still some room for help in this area, if you are so inclined.
Enjoy these pictures from one of our recent practice sessions…
This is an update from Todd Bumgarner who will be planting 2 Pillars Church in Lincoln later this year. Please let us know if you or someone you know might be interested in jumping on board with Todd in the work of church planting in Lincoln.
