Q Ideas

Reflecting on Mark Batterson’s 5 Points on Church & Place at Q #qdc

Been looking at my notes and thinking about Mark Batterson’s Q Talk on Church & Place.
Here were his five main points:

1 – We need to find ways of doing church that no one is doing yet
2 – We need lots of different churches bc there are lots of different people.
3 – Church ought to be most creative place on planet
4 – Be known for what we are for, not what we are against
“Criticize by creating” – Michelangelo
5 – Church belongs in middle of market place.
“Coffee houses are postmodern drinking wells, screens are postmodern stained glass.”

Mark is the pastor at National Community Church, has authored a number of books and is a regular speaker at national events. From the few times I’ve heard/read him, I appreciate his balance of ideas and numbers. Here’s an example from a Q piece he wrote a while back “Postmodern Wells: Creating a Third Place.” Though I’m not really following his work but what he’s saying is what I’ve been thinking about and trying to apply to my ministry. Hmmm, maybe I should start following his work.

Anyway, in general I agree and respect Mark’s points. He said quite a lot in the nine minutes he was given. Certainly resonate with the first one. In some sense, it’s a bit over-stated but I think it’s a great question to begin asking in any ministry context. It’s this mindset that had my friends and I are wondering about concerning alternative worship services, pub church gatherings, small group dynamics, etc.

Completely agree with the second point and I find myself saying something like this all the time. We need churches like Solmon’s Porch and McLean Bible churches. We need churches that meet in pubs and coffee house, I believe there is still a place for the traditional church and I of course believe in the large church structure as well. We need different churches that are always reforming and seeking the Spirit for the sake of the Kingdom.

Point three sounds nice. If by that, we mean the Christian community (as opposed to only the institution) needs to be the most creative place, yeah, I guess so. But I’m not sure I would say it like that. I certainly think we need to aspire to be creative and pioneering. We honor the great Creator when we create. When I think of creativity today, I of course, think of Apple, the Arcade Fire and The Tree of Life (are you reading Bo?). In any case, Mark is right to encourage us here.

I would outright disagree with point four if so many people I respected didn’t keep saying it. I understand that for too many people outside the Church, we are only known for what we are against (gay marriage, abortion, Democrats). Of course these generalizations are not helpful. I do want the Church to be known as a community of love, compassion, open-mindedness. However, I think we should be known also as a people that are against unfair discrimination, injustice and closed-mindedness. When there’s a hate crime, society should say, “People in the Church are going to be angered, there is no room for racism here. We need grace and love.” People are not saying that and I know that sounds idealistic but it’s certainly consistent with the teachings of Jesus.

And regarding point five, I wish he could have had more time to unpack this. I need to take a closer look at what they are doing with the Ebeenzers Coffee House. I have visited, it is cool, great space, and they serve One Village! It felt that very few communities could use this as a model but again, I would need to learn the story.

As a staff, we’ve talked about things like this a couple of times and I think this is a needed conversation in our churches. Not only because of the economical climate, not only because American culture is steeped in the marketplace, but I see it as stewardship. Even further, should local churches enter the market place, I hope we can do so with a countercultural attitude that confronts the negative aspects of consumerism and celebrates the better things like fair-trade, fair-wage, ethical marketing and a Kingdom-minded mentality.

For more check out:
www.markbatterson.com
the church he serves at, National Community
His new book The Circe Maker

and you can follow him on Twitter.

For related posts on my time at Q, you can read:

Reflecting on Andy Crouch’s Discussion on Power (And How it Relates In the Church Sector) at Q
Reflecting on the Q Conference, Washington DC Post 1 – Back Home & Grateful

Reviewing Our Experience With the Q Society Room’s “The Whole Gospel”

If you have been reading my twitter and this blog, you probably know my now that I have a strong appreciation for Gabe Lyons and the work of Q. I have attended the last three conferences and they have been pretty solid. To those that don’t know much about it – it’s similar to TED‘s where about 40 speakers give 18 minute presentations (yep there’s a countdown clock to their right). The idea behind Q is to ask and engage in the difficult questions that the Church is facing. You can check out more here on their site but if you don’t click, know that you are missing something excellent.

Among the important conversations the Church is having is the topic of the Gospel of Jesus. Our church is having this conversation in a number of ways and I could think of no better study than using Q’s “The Whole Gospel” from their Society Room series (there are 5 of them).

Here’s my review which includes some of the group feedback
Week 1 – Tim Keel’s which I would be happy to watch with you. I have nothing but love for Keel and thought he absolutely nailed his presentation. (His was a “featured presentation” and was given 36 minutes – probably my favorite. He argues that we have domesticated Jesus, we have taken something wild and tamed it to be polite indoors. Later he mentions that we need to rethink our ideas on heaven. To paraphrase he says, It’s the result, not the goal, the outcome, not the objective. Excellent.

Discussion was vey easy and free-flowing after that. We shared about how understanding of the Gospel growing up in our respective churches. If there was one glitch was that we all agreed too much with each other. It was our first meeting together – maybe everyone was just being polite ;-)

Week 2 was supposed to be our reading of an excellent essay by Ron Martoia. We put it off until our last week so as to not intimidate newcomers and being a new group it was easier too so we watched Tim Keller’s …. instead. We did like the idea of reading together and at week 5, we’ve decided to read The Hole In Our Gospel by Richard Stearns.

If you know Tim Keller, he’s the reformed evangelical pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. In this presentation he says if you understand justification then you will understand the need for social justice. I found it to be extremely helpful for my conservative evangelical climate that does not want to risk compromising the salvation that Jesus brings. If you are one who is skeptical about the efforts of social justice, you would love this. Unfortunately, it is not available for watching online but if you live locally, I would be happy to watch this with you (and yes, it’s legal).

Week 3 was with evangelical hero Chuck Colson. I was in attendance at Q New York and remember this presentation extremely well because just before it, my wife, Susan sent me the most exciting text of our lives, “We’re adopting! The birth mother wants us!” it was pretty surreal and I have a pretty hyper-recollection of the presentation and who was around me. Anyway, I digress.

Just like what I just mentioned a few lines ago, if you are a conservative evangelical and find yourself reluctant to compromising the gospel to social justice – his presentation entitled “Cultural Commission” is for you. You can watch it here. Though as a group we felt that the questions were getting a bit repetitive, it was still an solid presentation and we had a worthwhile discussion. This was the week that we also ended up discussing the Islamic Center near Ground Zero. It was a pretty interesting night to say the least.

Week 4 was awesome watching Jaime Tworkowski – founder of To Write Love On Her Arms. This led to perhaps our most personal conversations as the topics of cutting, depression and the Church’s response to it became the centerpieces of our discussion. From a small group perspective, this presentation was excellent timed as by now, we had felt some trust and comfortability sharing such personal aspects of ourselves and our families and friends.

Week 5 – We moved the .pdf (included in the dvd) to week 5 for our final time. By then, we were ready to talk as soon as we sat down and even better – we loved Martoia’s essay “Spiritual Conversations: Understanding the Cultural Language. In it he reminded readers of Scripture the salvation narrative begins in Genesis 1 not Genesis 3 and that changes everything. He made other worthy points points including calling attention to how we talk about the Gospel. It was very appropriate and I’d be happy to share my extra copies with my local friends. I’d offer to email it to anyone interested but that would break the licensing agreement with the dvd’s intent. Again, if you are reading this and considering this study, I really recommend you purchasing it and checking it their other studies here.

I happily recommend this study and pretty much anything Q is involved in.
Anyone want to go to next year’s conference in Portland? It’s going to be good …

Filed Under: The Church Tagged With: Q Ideas