Leading In to the Walls

You cannot lead anyone further than you’ve already been. And if you want to lead someone well, you need to travel that road a while. Travel that road often.

My Bachelor’s Degree is in Math Education. With that degree, I was able to teach all levels of high school math in an era before calculus was standard fare. I taught Algebra, Geometry, and Computer Science (this, before the first PC was sold in the US.)

To get that degree, I had to take Number Theory (where we spent time in base 2 and base 7 instead of base 10). I had to take four semesters of calculus. The only reason I didn’t fail that last semester is the prof chose to not fail me. There were two take home exams that semester. We were given a week to accomplish each. I attempted to answer all 7 of the questions on the mid-term and passed that one. I don’t remember the specific details of the final, but it was only 2 questions. The first question left me staring into space, wondering what in the world I was supposed to have studied for the 4 prior months. I never got to the second question. The first question went something like this:

In a cage you have a male and female bunny. Under normal conditions, bunnies reproduce 5 time per year with 4 kits per litter. In the water supply for the rabbits, you introduce a small ratio of alcohol, that ratio increasing by a certain amount over time. Alcohol serves to impede the reproductive rate of bunnies at a certain rate by volume over time. Assume that the litters, over time, average out to have the same number of males and females. Bunnies are able to reproduce beginning at 8 months old. Based on these conditions…

How many bunnies would you have after 24 months?

Not only did I have no words, I had no math. Not for bunnies anyway.

But what the number theory and calculus courses did do for me was take me a long way down that math road. Past potholes, pitfalls, and precipice. I could teach Geometry and Algebra in my sleep because of the depth of training I received.

You certainly can choose to journey together down a new road, but you can’t lead anyone. You’ve not yet seen the potholes or precipice. You’ve not experienced the detours and difficulties. And you’ve never found the amazingly powerful truths the exist beyond the pitfalls that cause most to turn back. Leading someone requires experience. Often, enough experience to fail and succeed.

If you agree with this, then let’s consider one implication.

Evangelism is Dead
I grow weary of hearing the erroneous conclusion of oft-cited “survey” that tells us the difficulty in reaching people for Christ. “If we don’t reach them by a certain age”, the report goes, “then the chances of reaching them grow dim.”

The tipping point age used to be 18, then 16. Now, according to some, it is 12. If we don’t reach them by the age of 12, then our chances of reaching them diminished significantly.

And in every church that I’ve heard this quoted, it is used to promote the idea that we need to invest more in our children’s ministry and preteen ministry. After all if we don’t reach them in those ministries, they won’t be reached. And in many churches, this translates to reaching them before the age of accaountability. Reaching them before they comprehend their need. Reaching them before they can possibly understand the verses we’ve had them memorize or the prayer we led them to pray.

So you don’t miss a serious implication, let’s agree that “reached” does not mean attendance or presence or participation. “Reached” in this context refers to one giving their life Christ. So then, the serious implication is that in so many cases, the children may have gone through the motions, but they are not “reached”. We have effectively applied spiritual millstones around their necks.

The warning raised by the stat caused us to Lead In to the Walls – to turn inward to those who were already among us or will find us under their own steam – inside our walls. The real solution would be to Lead Out in to the Wild – creating effective ministries that turn outward – where the real need is.

How did we get here?
We got here because you can’t take anyone further than we’ve already gone. Our churches are filled today with people that made their salvation decision for Christ inside the walls of the church. The number of believers that are passionate about evangelism that actually practice evangelism in the wild seems to have diminished faster than the reachable age.

So, to paraphrase how this oft-cited quote is misunderstood, “If we don’t reach the children for Christ that are already in our walls or will come inside our walls by their own effort before they turn 12, we may not ever reach them”.

A corollary to this is something like:

“What we’re doing doesn’t work for those in the wild, even though it is supposed to. We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing and just blame the difficulty on the lost people – they’re just harder to reach.”

That oft-cited quote should have raised alarm bells to develop evangelism efforts in the wild. We should have created opportunities that took advantage of the system that would have us removed from schools and the public square. We didn’t do that because you can’t take anyone further than you’ve been. And our churches are lacking critical mass in people who met Christ in the wild, to help move the church out to the wild.

I don’t have any stats, but in the last six churches that I’ve been a member of, only two of the pastors practiced and talked about experiential evangelism in the wild – reaching the lost where they live, work and play.

Unfortunately, neither of those two ever trained anyone while we were there – they never took anyone with them to learn this increasingly rare behavior. In both cases, the church members were always glad and excited that people got saved. Just never glad and excited enough to demand that their pastor train them in a hands on, experiential way. But to be clear, I know for a fact that these pastors were challenged to take members out and train them. They just didn’t.

Of greater misfortune, three of the remaining pastors did not practice evangelism in the wild. They were glad when people got saved in their church, but they had no stories to tell, no effort to share of them reaching people where they live, work, and play.

And of greatest misfortune, one of those pastors admitted to me that they had never led anyone to Christ in a one-on-one conversation. Certainly people had responded to a Gospel presentation before, but no experience with personal evangelism.

Sadly, in all six churches, from the tepid challenge to “tell your story” to a strong admonition to share the gospel, not one of these churches leveraged their God-given resources to build a church-based evangelism effort. They limited there challenge to the individual. “You. You go. You go to your friends and family.” And even one of them actually said, “And we (the staff) will be here if you need anything.” (See “The Problem With My Neighbors” to understand why this has never worked broadly in the US.)

Let that sink in.

The reason that students and young adults are harder to reach has little to do with their social, emotional, or educational development. It has everything to do with these facts:

  1. We think disciple making is the activity of improving the spiritual state of saved people.
  2. We think the process of disciple making is best done by telling believers what to think instead of training them how to think.

If we think disciple making is fundamentally about working with saved people, then we make evangelism optional. The Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20), then, does not include it. Therefore:

  • it is not required by Jesus (not to mention)
  • uncomfortable for us (and finally, after all)
  • it is the pastor’s job

We therefore don’t need to be concerned about it other than to be happy when it accidentally happens.

You can’t lead anyone where you’ve never been. So we have effectively killed evangelism. That is why it is harder to reach people over the age of 12. Not because they are hard to reach, but because we’ve stopped doing the hard work of reaching others in the wild.

If you’ve never been trained, go to your pastor and demand it. Demand that he connect you with an evangelistic mentor for the express purpose of learning how to share the gospel in a hands-on, experiential way.

Now I know for a fact that you’ve been challenged, too.

Hancock, The Train, and Confirmation Bias

There’s this scene in the movie, Hancock. You know the one. It was one of those that just stunned you momentarily when you saw it. It’s still fun to watch today.

But it got me thinking about a declaration I’ve heard in many churches in which I’ve been involved.

Here’s a guy with all of the resources in the world to do whatever needs to be done, and he saves this one guy in less than stellar fashion. The crowd is up in arms. The damage that’s done to automobiles, the crushed train engine, the derailment of dozens of railroad cars, power lines, and what turns out to be the last remnant of Hancock’s reputation are overwhelming and devastating.

The crowd surrounds Hancock and yells that he could have simply picked the car up off of the train tracks and moved it out of the way. Not one of us would disagree with the crowd. He had plenty of time do this another way. Hancock, living with the sort of denial that psychologists refer to as “confirmation bias” argues with the crowd and levels personal, verbal attacks as a way of justifying what he did as acceptable. Though he didn’t say it exactly this way, his attitude is, “What’s your problem?  I saved his life, didn’t I? Wasn’t it worth it?”

I used to be a member of a mid-sized church that every year produced a major Christmas program as an outreach event. Here is the short list of statistics from the event several years ago:

  • $ 16,000 – and this was because they only had to upgrade software and equipment that they had purchased over the years as they built up this event.
  • 200,000 man-hours. Months of choir rehearsals, drama rehearsal, orchestra rehearsal, light and sound technicians, set and stage design and construction, publicity and promotion, break down and clean up. Add in the hours that soloists and actors spent on their own, learning their parts, and 200,000 man hours is a very conservative number.
  • 4 performances, involving approximately 175 participants, with an average attendance somewhere in the 800 range.
  • 5 response cards turned in.
  • 1 person reported accepting Christ (but this person also reported a re-commitment to Christ).

And then someone says it. “If we reach only one, it was worth it.”

Could we not have found some way, with all of those resources, to pick up that one person that needed saving without derailing thousands of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours? Let me be clear: everyone is worth saving. However, I’m fairly confident that if it takes $16,000 and 200,000 man-hours to reach each person, the cause of Jesus Christ is lost.

This was not the first year, nor was it the last, that this church produced such a program. The program was driven by those that love music and drama. Calling it an outreach event gave it the spiritual justification it needed. The reality is that outreach did not happen. But having 3000 people attend the event made it easy to believe that outreach was happening, even though it wasn’t.

Raymond Nickerson, of Tufts University, defines Confirmation Bias:


Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises”, copyright 1998 by the Educational Publishing Foundation

In other words, Confirmation Bias is the intentional or unintentional practice of ignoring or discounting any information that does not agree with what we already believe. This bias includes the desire to seek out and rationalize any information that will support what we do believe. (This is often the cause of proof-texting with scripture: taking passages out of context to “prove” a point or position.) Don’t confuse me with the facts… my mind is made up.

Something that often happens on this journey away from effectiveness is the subtle redefinition of effort. Somewhere along the way, this outreach event became a “gift to the community.” There was no change in effort, no change in expense – only the purpose changed. And it changed to match what was already happening. It changed from being “so that” people would be reached for Christ, into a gift for the community “because” that is what it had become. The encouragement to invite friends and family worked. However, the fact is, the longer one is a Christian, the more “Christian” is their circle of family and friends. We filled the house with believers. But because most of us did not know most of them, it felt like outreach.

In other situations, the word remains the same, but the meaning changes. “Outreach” too often is satisfied by events that draw other Christians to your church. Let me ask you to consider your pantry and your refrigerator. As the master of your home, if you were to take cheese, lettuce, and chicken out of your refrigerator and place them in your pantry, would you then look in your pantry and think (with the appropriate amount of Confirmation Bias), “Wow, I’ve got more food in my house now.”

Do we think that the Master is somehow fooled into thinking that He has more people in His house because someone has moved from The Reformed Refrigerator to Protestant Pantry? It’s not possible to reach out to those that are already reached. Confirmation Bias allows us to believe it is.

Now, here is the solution for Confirmation Bias.  Stop it. Just stop it. Stop deceiving yourself because of your bias for your own preferences, programs, personalities, and polity. If your church has a purpose statement, ask yourself and others:

  • Are we really doing this? No, really, really doing this? (In other words, is this really our purpose, or is it simply a statement in a frame, hung on a wall?)
  • How are we doing at this point in time?
  • What specific plans do we have to accomplish this purpose?
  • Will those plans really get us there?
  • What is my specific role?
  • Am I willing to do what is necessary?
  • What gifts has God placed in our body to help us accomplish His purpose?
  • How will we move our membership into alignment in this purpose?

And, equally important:

  • What are we doing that is working against this purpose? (For example, time, people, and resources are not unlimited.) In other words, what do we need to say “No” to, so that we have the time, people, and resources to say “Yes” to God’s purpose?
  • What barriers do we need to overcome?
  • What processes need to change?
  • What polity needs to change?
  • What programs need to change?

If your church does not have a purpose (statement), set about arriving at what God’s purpose for your church is, and then set a strategic plan in place to accomplish that which God has set for you to do. And please, let the facts confuse you. And let the wisdom of God bring clarity to your mind.

The Well-Trained Stay on Track

ontrack_03482I grew up with railroad tracks running behind my house. I cannot remember a time that I could go to sleep without hearing the clackity-clack of the wheels on the tracks, boxcar after boxcar rumbling by in the dark.

Some years ago, I lived even closer to the tracks in Colorado. They ran about thirty feet away from my home. They didn’t often run at night like they did in my old North Carolina home, but they did have some things in common.

  • No train ever moved without knowing where it was going. Those tracks are there for a reason.  Forward-thinking individuals envisioned destinations, planned the way, built the structure, cleared obstacles, and set in motion journey after journey that impacts the lives of thousands of people every day.
  • Except for the tragic, every train arrives at its destination. Unless a train goes off its tracks, hits an obstacle on the tracks, or runs out of fuel, it will arrive at its destination. It knows where it is going and how it will get there. It knows what potential problems may arise, and often where to expect them (we call them “railroad crossings”). And with apologies to an air conditioner company, “it’s hard to stop a train”.
  • Except for the dying, every train journeys toward a new destination. Sometimes, a train is put out of its misery. It has traveled hard and long, and repairs to make it functional are simply not worth the expense.  Otherwise, every train gets set on a new journey as soon as the present one is completed.

Churches could learn a lot from trains.

  • No church ever moved without knowing where it was going. Oh, there is the illusion of movement, but running in circles is not really going anywhere. It is not only possible, but it is Biblical for the leaders of a church to know where God wants them to go, if only for the current journey. It is possible to envision destinations, plan the way, build the structure, clear obstacles, and set in motion journey after journey that impacts the lives of thousands of people every day. The apostles did it following Jesus’ teaching, and the scripture reports that these unlearned men “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6, ASV). They knew where they were going, the followed a plan, built the church structure, cleared obstacles, and set in motion the journey that has resulted in generations of new disciples for Christ. However, in the United States, thousands of churches each year reach no one for Christ. Thousands each year reach one or two. These thousands and many thousands more reach people accidentally. There is no plan and no structure. But even running in circles tends to stir up the occasional accidental opportunity.
  • Except for tragedy, every church can arrive at its destination.  There really are only a few reasons why churches don’t arrive at God’s plan. And it is a tragedy when they don’t. Churches that are on track are not surprised by the occasional obstacle.  In fact, they have predicted it, planned for it, and deal with it appropriately. They know where they are going, how many resources it will take to arrive, and they have a plan to work these things together for that good journey. A church headed in God’s direction is hard to stop.  Unfortunately, it’s also hard to stop one that is running in circles.
  • Except for the dying, every church journeys toward a new destination. Sometimes, a church does run out of track. But unlike trains, churches don’t have to be “retired”.  Trains only have two choices: continue to new destinations or retire. Nobody wants a train that just sits on the tracks blocking traffic or runs in circles.  These are not the purpose of a train. Sitting and circles are really just the first stages of running out track.

The well-trained stay on track.