The Office Curmudgeon

This past week in our bi-annual all staff meeting Adam, our senior pastor, said something that coalesced a reoccurring thought I’d had for a while. He mentioned a list of large projects our church had either completed, or moved from the idea stage to a living process. Then he suggested that to do this repeatedly, and continually succeed, you have to go through a strategic planning stage. That’s a simple statement right? So now – everybody go do that and succeed much more often …. If only it were that easy.

I’m sure that statement is in a thousand books and repeated by even more people, but the reason I’m blogging about it today is that it seems to be one of those statements where the absorption and understanding of it are worlds apart from the action and ability to perform it. Why is that? Is it simply a factor of the human condition, or is a skill that can be learned and honed? I would lean toward the latter.

Pastor Andrzej from
Katowice, Poland

The idea that strategic planning is a critical ingredient of any vision to reality project is at first too simple to be so profound. One of the questions I have been asked on multiple occasions, after people learn I work at Church of the Resurrection, is “Why do you think Resurrection has been so successful?” The last time I was asked this it was from pastor Andrzej while I was visiting him in Katowice, Poland. Pastor Andrzej has been a United Methodist pastor for more than 25 years and is currently positioned in a thriving church with a congregation more than 100 strong. To put this in perspective, the United Methodist presence in all of Poland is less than 4,500 people.
Pastor Andrzej, spoken in my poor English as “ahhn-jay,” is a person who comes off calm and composed, but with waters just underneath the surface that are roaring to bring God’s Word to the non religious.

Up until now, my answer to the above question has been these things, in short: One is leading with prayer. Another is effective leadership, and the last is an uncommon hive of people who possess a drive to do everything with excellence. These are still accurate, but what I may now add to those is effective strategic planning.

I think if there were a great suggestion for pastors striving for success in ministry, it would be to educate yourself in strategic planning. When Adam spoke about this at our all staff meeting, Andrzej came back to my memory. He and I had discussed the importance of prayer, and asking for God’s guidance. No one should underestimate this, but God rarely lifts those of us up who are sitting back waiting for Him to take the wheel and drive.

It made me wonder what programs or resources we have set up for our local pastors, as well as our International pastors. I couldn’t find much searching through Google, though it may have been the keywords I was using. My co-worker, Chuck, recommended Effective Church Leadership by Kennon L. Callahan.

Would anyone else who has read this recommend it? Does anyone know of other resources out there that focus on strategic planning in the church?

I previously posted about the TYPO3 Conference, but wanted to expand on it a bit. Thinking back on the event re-affirms my excitement to be a part of the Web Empowered Church ministry. This was the second conference, and the second opportunity I had to meet Kasper Skårhøj, the creator of the TYPO3 CMF. Kasper is a character, and a great individual with a strong passion for quality and perfection.

This year, Kasper was in good spirit from becoming a new dad just a few months earlier, but was also excited to renew his connection with WEC. In the past, Kasper expressed how he struggled with the motivation to continue maintaining TYPO3, as it was not a perfect fit for his desires as it was earlier in time. At this years conference, he expressed how deeply connected he now felt to the WEC ministry, and how he wished to contribute more than was able. When he released TYPO3 in the open source world his vision was brining it to the church world, enabling them to perform ministry on the web with ease and ability. It seems WEC has been formed to help push the ball over that goal line. His motivation was renewed with TYPO3 being brought to the church like he initially envisioned.

At the same time, those of us performing WEC tasks have become much more knowledgeable in TYPO3, not leaning so heavily on the TYPO3 community to make progress, and we are giving back to the community more. The WEC ministry is now in full swing, more capable than ever, and more supported than I ever imagined by Kaspers personal commitment who believes it a God match.

So coming back to my reflections, I am excited to be a part of WEC for all of these reasons. God brought me to Church of the Resurrection five years ago for some purpose, and although I don’t feel worthy, I believe it was to do my part to bring WEC & TYPO3 to churches. It is exciting to be a team mate with these individuals, and partner with those supporting WEC. I’m looking forward to what the future will bring and where God will lead us.

This past Sunday morning the Web Empowered Church team attended two churches to give our guest, Kasper, a taste of different worship services here in North Carolina, US. First we attended the Long’s Chapel UMC worship service. This was a modern church building which extended off an original stone building. The sanctuary felt new, with pews on an angled floor, and a beautiful wooden roof having a look of yellow pine. The roof was flat, and angled upward from the corners of the room up to a square center, which raised up to let light in through small windows at the top. It reminded my wife and I of a Catholic sanctuary we visited last year while we were in Wisconsin. Both created a beautiful vertical space that gave a very personal feel to the room, and left you with a sense of awe.

The service was contemporary, with songs that were thoroughly approved by my wife, and we had the pleasure of witnessing a baptism. Everything had a touch of Southern style to it, which is hard to describe here in words other than “a comfort of home.” This was the weekend before Independence Day, so the theme was patriotic, along with the sermon. The pastor spoke about church and politics, Chucks favorite topics I might add, and mentioned Jesus’ response to paying taxes, “Give to Caesar what is Caesars, and give to God what is Gods.” The message, as it should be – simple, hold God above all things in your heart.

The second service we attended was at the Stuart Auditorium at Lake Junaluska, through the South Eastern Jurisdiction. The auditorium was an open gathering hall, originally constructed with a tin roof and sawdust floor. The building we were in now was more modern than that, but still considered strange, with a very high wood roof and this large white structure coming out of the middle, descending down into the center from the ceiling. The only way to describe this thing was it looked it like it could sprout legs and walk off like a some version of the mechanical beast from the movie, Wild, Wild West. The sides of the building were very open, with fans hanging down to cool the inside temperature.

Other than the distraction of analysing the strange structure, I thought the service had a well seasoned choir, and the speaker of the week was William Willimon. He did use some “churchy” words in the sermon, and lightly dusted the sermon with dry humor about the disagreements between liberal and conservative churches regarding whether the Christian church needed a full body resurrection to believe in Christ. It was delivered in good taste, with no names mentioned.

It was wonderful to be able to experience not one but two Sunday services, both of which my wife attended and survived to my surprise, and something I’ll be able to remember quite a while.

I’ve been here in North Carolina at The Foundation for Evangelism at Lake Junaluska over this week, learning more of the TYPO3 CMF. This in relation to the Web Empowered Church ministry. It has been the second opportunity I’ve had to meet and be inspired by Kasper Skårhøj, the creator of TYPO3, and although we drove quite deep into the technical, what stood out the most was Kasper’s expression of his original mission with TYPO3. He always saw TYPO3 as a tool for ministry, which is now being realized with Web Empowered Church.

I try to step outside of myself and realize how truly unique it is for Christianity and technology to come together in such a way. The room is filled with twenty people who have come to have Kasper impart knowledge about TYPO3, but all have come to imagine new ways that expand the Lord’s Kingdom through Internet Ministry utilizing TYPO3. We have people representing Web Empowered Church, freelance consultants, church staff, and ISPs. In short, Christian technology geeks, a categorization I happily place myself in. :p

I began as a WEC developer in January 2006, coming on board for multiple reasons. The short list being empowering the local church with tools for ministry, the fact that WEC is a global ministry with the ability to affect people on that scale, and most importantly because I felt God calling me to do this, which tells me all I need to know about WEC. Also, as Kasper expresses in his corner of the web, what better way to honor God than using the ability he gave me?

I rather enjoyed visiting The Foundation For Evangelism and experiencing their culture here at Lake Junaluska. It is the first time I’ve visited this part of the South, and I have to say you can hear all you can of southern hospitality, but until you experience it – you won’t get it, trust me. The Foundation staff were extraordinary.

Although I came away with a deeper technical knowledge that will empower my ability in this ministry, I also came away with an experience being another notch on the pole of my spiritual growth. As some in the community would say, +1.

I was inspired to post by Jeff’s post on racial profiling at God Don’t Make Junk, that I picked up through the Wesley Daily.

Without a doubt, some places still need a lot of growing up to do. I’ve experienced enough racial profiling second hand, myself being a very white Caucasian, bordering on translucent with red hair. One experience was very similar to what Jeff wrote about, except it was with a Caucasian-Mexican friend of mine who looks quite Mexican. That was the only time I’ve felt threatened being pulled over by the police – hands on gun holsters, looking nervously at my friend in the back seat. (I-44 highway in Missouri.) I have a game I play here in Kansas City KS/MO, and I-70 into Saint Louis, it’s guessing the race of the person who’s been pulled over by not one, but two police cars. I’m rarely wrong, because it’s always an African-American or Latino who’s been pulled over.

Much less threatening, yet still annoying is my Indonesian wife who gets carded for using her credit card 95% of the time she uses it. And when I say carded, I mean carefully studying the card, looking at her face, then looking over the card again carefully. Caucasians, how often do you get carded for using a credit/debit card? It only happens to me once or twice a year.

It’s very sad. Equality is not a balance of power segregated by race lines, but all of God’s children seeing each other as such without color and race. The biggest beef I have with racial anything is that no one seems to focus on this, rather they are focus on segregated balance. I don’t feel that helps stop or slow racisim, and feel it’s a reason we’ve only made it this far yet. Individuals seem to want recognition as upstanding citizens of their race, rather than human beings or children of one Father. I think this is due to a couple prominent factors.

People confuse culture with race.
Race is genetic, culture is experiential. I am an Austrian-Hungarian, Croatian-Bohemian, German-French-Irish individual … and I think I missed one or two in all seriousness. The fact I’m Caucasian with hazel eyes and red hair in no way binds me to the culture I’ve experienced – period. Hold onto your culture, lose the racism.

People are naturally more comfortable with those whom they have more in common with, whether by race or culture.
Pull up some multi-racial situations in your mind. How often do you see all races equally dispersed, sitting amongst each other? More likely than not, you’ll see groups segregated by race or culture. Why, because they’re all racist? No, because people drift toward others whom they have more in common with, more likely by culture. I think this bends us naturally toward segregation.

You know what we all have in common though? Humanity. Can we focus on this instead?