There’s so much happening this week.  I hope you get a chance to get over to www.connexuscommunity.com today to check out the new web site for the church I pastor, Connexus Community Church.  It went live this morning.  It will tell you all about what our whole team (staff and volunteer) have been working on for the last few months…launching Connexus.

It’s been a huge amount of work, and it’s by no means over yet.  Even as we go into three days of lock-down to get all the final preparations done for Sunday morning, we still have weeks more stuff post launch that has to be attended to.

But I’ve been asking myself — are we ready?  In every sense?  Am I ready for the launch?

Sadly, I haven’t been able to shake this bug, and it’s been seven days, so I finally went to the hospital today to get my problem checked out. 

The nurse who was looking after me, a young woman in her 20s, said "have you missed work because of your illness?"

I said, "I kind of don’t have that luxury quite right now." 

She said "What do you do?"

I didn’t want to tell her what I did (I don’t like telling people I’m a pastor — it’s just too weird), but she asked me point blank and I know its a sin to lie.  So I said, "Well, I’m a pastor and we’re actually  launching a church this weekend."

"Oh", she replied, "Are you the guy from that church,  Conn…"

"Connexus?"

"Yeah!  Connexus.  That’s the one in the movie theater, right? That’s so cool. My friend’s been telling me about that.  Yeah…that sounds so great.  What a neat idea…."

She actually sounded like she might attend.

I thought it was amazing that even in an ER ward at 7 a.m., hoping to be anonymous (it’s not nice to have a persistent flu bug that makes mincemeat out of your stomach and digestive tract), God was already at work.

He’s got so many people ready for this…over the next few weeks, and I’m sure months and years.

I’m going to live, by the way (sorry to disappoint you).  They’ve got me on a pill that should make me well by Sunday.   And even so, I’m not that bad. 

So I’m getting my body strong, praying a lot, getting rest (yes, I am getting 8-9 hours of sleep a night!), and working my brains off.  But most of all, under it all, I want to remind myself daily, hourly, minute by minute, that without God, nothing happens.  We need Him.  We love Him.  He’s the whole deal.  Without Him, nobody’s life gets changed.  Doesn’t matter how perfectly everything runs.

But it’s nice to see at 7 a.m. in an emergency ward, God’s already working in hearts and lives of people you and I have never met.  Because He’s got way more invested in the mission of His church than we ever will.  And for that, as we head into launch, I’m so grateful.

Had a call from a friend and colleague last night at home…a church leader who mentored me in my early years as a pastor and who provided all kinds of good counsel. 

He’s probably 10-15 years my senior, and we were chatting about his church (a big building campaign in their future), and he had lots of questions about Connexus.  He happens to be Presbyterian — my former denomination — and we were talking about what the church would be like in the future.

I have a hard time answering that.  I know things are changing even as we speak.  In the comments on my last post, Allen talks about being just on the edge of the Gen X/Buster generation, like I am (I’m 42).  I sense the differences (and the similarities) between me and the next generation.  Hey, I’m old enough to be the father of the youngest staff member of the Connexus staff (yikes), and I don’t think of myself as that old.  But still, I see the generational differences coming.

What will the church of the future look like?  I told him I didn’t want to race into a big building campaign because I don’t want to build some huge cathedral for this generation that will be vacant when the next generation arrives.  I like portable church right now, because it is so flexible.  I imagine a network of many, smaller gathering spaces (maybe under 1000 seats each) closer to where people actually live, then some huge 5000 seat auditorium in some central place we ask everyone and their cousin to drive to on Sunday morning.

Qualitatively, I see the church as being far more

• Relational.  If it really is about loving God and loving others, let’s get on with it.  Community groups are the heart of congregational life.

• Authentic.  Dump the masks and the suits. All of us are screwed up.  Let’s just admit it and make room for lots more broken people.  There’s a word for people who think they have their morality sewn up: Pharisee.

• Missional.  Gone are the days when the church is about satisfying the needs of its members.  We just grow fat and inactive when that happens. Most Christians are 2000 bible verses overweight, and most of what those who are "learning" need to learn can be gleaned through beginning personal study, community groups and weekend services.  It’s not hard to find the basics of Christianity.  The challenge is to live them out.  The church, as an outward focused organization, finds its life when we focus not on ourselves, but on others.  And in that is the mystery of life — that when we lose our lives, we find them — when we give our lives away, we gain them.

Thanks to my friend and colleague Terry, for some great conversation. 

What do you think?

I’ve been in a conversation with a tv producer over the last few weeks (watch for an announcement on the Connexus blog tomorrow).  One of the questions that has come up is why some churches are growing when so many churches are not growing.

I’ve thought about this question a lot over the years.  I remember a long drive to Chicago two years ago with an emerging church leader.  During the trip, he asked me point blank why some churches grow and others don’t.  It really made me think.  Within two months, I’d boiled the answer down to three factors — three factors that still make sense to me over two years later.

You might be disappointed, because few of the factors are shrouded in the mystery of church "language" or hyper-spiritual talk.  It might be more tempting to say "because God blesses growing churches"…but doesn’t that imply that God curses dying churches?  Or we might say "because the Holy Spirit is with growing churches…".  But again, is He then not with stagnant or declining churches?  And isn’t it possible to grow a church (at least on the short term) through human effort?  Is God actually behind every growing church, or sometimes can talented people grow a church while God has nothing to do with it?  I doubt the growth would last for years or decades, but I bet you can get solar-flare growth for a little while on human effort alone.

So, here’s my short list of three factors that I think lead to long term, sustainable, God-honuring, authentic growth in a church.  In my opinion, all three are necessary.  You can’t have two out of three and grow long term.  You need all three:

i. Biblical Integrity.  If you base your ministry on anything other than the word of God, long term it will fizzle.  If people aren’t being led into a growing relationship with Jesus based on scripture, then they won’t stick around for long.  Scripture is the guide for life, for churches and for people.

ii.  Cultural Relevance.  You may believe the Bible, but if you speak Greek to a culture that speaks English…good luck.  Too many Christians love stuffy, antiquated church culture as much as they love Jesus.  That’s going to be an issue if you are trying to reach people who live firmly in 2007.  Musically, language wise and otherwise, churches need to move into a culturally relevant model of ministry that speaks to people where they are at.  Jesus did.

iii. Structural Agility.  This is the unlikely inclusion in the list.  I added it because I have met way too many church leaders who base their ministry on scripture, do culturally relevant ministry, and don’t grow.  By structural agility, what I mean is that church leadership has to be sensitive to the constantly changing dynamics of size and scope of ministry at every size of growth and be willing to change how they function structurally as a result.

The structural changes are myriad.  A church of 300 must be organizationally different than a church of 100.  A church of 900 is going to be very different organizationally than a church of 400.  Many leaders get hung up because they try to pastor a church so that they "know everybody" when they can’t know everybody. Personal pastoral care by a pastor has to disappear in every church over 200 — it is organizationally impossible for one person to care for more than 200 people (see Exodus 18). Biblically,it should have been care by-the-people for-the-people-anyway, but that’s another discussion  (see Ephesians 4.11-16)

Decision making also needs to change in a growing organization. It needs to move from consensus based decision making to leader-led decision making, and from congregational decision making to leadership team-based decision making.  As a church approaches 500-1000, the staff must take over effective day to day decision making even from the elders, who will function more as the spiritual ‘guardrails’ of decision making. 

By the same token, the role of staff needs to become more and more equipping-based, where instead of doing the work we enable the work to be done by people.  Congregations become empowered when staff release them to do the work of ministry.

Many people chafe at these changes (in large measure because they’ve never been part of a large church or never seen another model), but that explains why 99% of churches in Canada are under 750 worshipers (that’s an actual statistic).  We condemn ourselves, and God, to limited influence because we won’t make the structural and leadership decisions we need to make to grow the Kingdom. To ignore structural agility is to condemn your church to always being smaller than your vision (or even God Himself) wants your to be.

Those are my three. I realize when I say these things that they are counter-intuitive and often make other church leaders or church people angry, but I think they are just true.

What would you add?  What resonates?  How would you think differently about those factors?

So as we get ready to become two campuses, the reality of "not seeing" the Orillia people is starting to hit me emotionally. While I’ve got piles of friends at the Barrie campus, I live much closer to Orillia than to Barrie, so that means many of my personal network of friends will be at the Orillia campus. Which means, I won’t see them much anymore on Sundays.

For years, I’ve struggled with knowing "everyone" at our former ministry.  Naturally, I didn’t know and couldn’t know well over a thousand people.  And that’s why we have community groups — so everyone at Connexus can be connected with a leader and others who love them and know them and care about them. And when we announced that Connexus would be at two locations, many of you came up and said "but we’ won’t see you anymore, and we’ll miss you".  And I explained why I’d be in Barrie and that it was no big deal that we wouldn’t see each other because the church does not depend on one pastor knowing everybody, because then all churches couldn’t grow to more than 200 people and that we would always know each other anyway and blah blah blah.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been struggling with this week.  I miss the Orillia people already.  And I know I’ll miss the Muskoka people twelve months from now.  And then I’ll miss the Barrie people who will go to Barrie for a year or two until we can do something in the GTA and our southern ring from the Barrie campus will disappear.  I miss you guys already too. 

This is just turning into a sap-fest, isn’t it?

I’ve been praying about it though.  And here’s what I believe God is saying to me (please realize that the older I get, the less I like to say "this is what God said to me", because I want to speak for God less and less and let Him speak for Himself more and more…). Nevertheless, here’s what I believe God is saying to me as I pray about it:  "If you want to build a church on your relationships and your influence, go ahead.  But if you want to build a church on my strength, on my power, on my influence, then let go.  Let me care for the Orillia people and the Muskoka people and the Barrie people and eventually the GTA people  and you do your little thing in your little world and I’ll use it any way I want."

What do you say to that?  Basically, I clear my throat and change the subject.

I really kind of feel like I want to be in two places at once on Sunday.  I do.  But I can’t be.  (We have to set up one site with full equipment for filming and we picked Barrie…and no, I can’t float between sites, and yes I’d like to change that but we can’t and blah blah blah). 

So, I think as we practice being Connexus for one more weekend, God is about to do something bigger than any one of us and probably bigger than all of us.  He’s going to do something based on His influence.  Based on His dreams.  His scope.  His size.  His power.  Not mine, not yours, not ours.

So I’m getting ready for that.  I need to you to know I miss you already…but I’m just not sure God cares about how I feel nearly as much as he cares about the people He wants to influence through all of us through all our communities.    And I think somehow that’s far more important than how I or any one of us feels.

I sit here Monday afternoon still kind of in awe of everything that’s happening.   We just came out of the first soft-launch weekend for Connexus Barrie, and it was so great. You kind of plan for months and dream for years and work hard at things…but to see it all transpire is a bit surreal. 

Some Monday morning quarterback reflections:

• I guess we really are trying launch relevant environments in two cities at the same time.  Every day, I hear from people who offer encouragement but then ask the question…so you guys are trying to do what in how much time?  I guess it is a little crazy to try to launch two campuses within a week of each other…but it actually appears to be working.

• Without trying to be insincere or sound like some marketing campaign that no one believes, I can honestly say I have never ever worked with a crew of people who have been so singularly encouraging and positive as this Connexus crew.  It’s like we all just moved to a new level. The faith and sacrifice of this group is unbelievable…I guess when we really did make the leap together last month we stepped into something that was much bigger than we are.  Your energy, prayer, devotion and encouragement and sheer enthusiasm humble and inspire me.

• The band was so great.  I so totally missed our Sunday gatherings, and can’t wait till they’re wide open on Sundays for everyone in December.

• I’ve never believed in the vision as much as I do now.  I care far less about size and growth and far more about seeing people changed.  And if we get to do that a thousand times over, that’s great.  What fuels me is that we get to do this.

• I’ve really got to get used to video preaching.  The cameras were not the issue…but the lights were literally blinding.  It was like staring into the high beams of a lexus.  What I missed eye contact with people (the lights literally blind you). For me, preaching really is a dialogue, and I am constantly watching and reading people while I preach to evaluate how the conversation is "going" and what needs to be said.  We’ll play with the lights again this weekend so I can see more people…or else I’ll have to learn how to imagine the weekly dialogue in my head.

• I miss my family.  This week is a week of catching up at home on evenings (no meetings in the evening for a couple weeks…). As much as the wider ministry is great, not being on the road again for two months is great right now.

• I’m so praying for who everyone is inviting, and can’t wait to have a wide open foyer December 2nd and 9th.  I can only imagine how God is going to move in the lives of your friends, family and in these communities.

Thanks for a great weekend everyone. 

What was memorable/significant for you?

It’s been a great week, and so much to look forward to this weekend.  Some quick reflections as we head into an exciting weekend and week:

• It was awesome to be at the North Point lead pastors retreat again this year. I felt guilty on the one hand because our team at home was working SO hard on the launch this weekend.  But had us totally unplug for the better part of two days…it was good for the soul.  No blogging, no email, just connecting.  Had some good down time and actually slept nine hours one night….yikes..that felt too good.  I feel like I’m heading into weekend one of Connexus completely refreshed and restored, physically and spiritually. Rich time with God this week. Thanks God.

• I am SO excited about the soft launch of the Connexus Barrie campus on Sunday.  This is week one of dress rehearsal (soft launch).  We’re running two services (8:30 and 10) and I’m excited and nervous and calm all at once.  Hard to explain.  Very excited about the message and the whole experience of making our environments more relevant than ever.

• I am SO proud of the staff and volunteer team.  Our team is simply tops.  I felt like I was on the French Rivera all week on retreat while they were in the trenches.  Between late Wednesday and late Thursday, it looked like our $600,000 equipment order wasn’t going to make it across the border in time for tomorrow morning, delaying the soft launch and the public launch by a week….but our team worked non-stop and made all the arrangements and the gear is set to roll in on Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m. as scheduled.  Special thanks to Rich, Nadine, Marja and Cindy who just didn’t stop till this got solved!!!!

• On the plane home yesterday I was writing small group questions for our six week series that kicks off the new year.  I have never ever had the privilege of putting together a series that comes close to the power of the stuff from God’s Word in that one.  Christmas is the perfect lead in to something incredible I think God wants to do in each of us….in all people.  These first two months promise something powerful, at least for me.

• The North Point community continues to amaze me with fresh insights and
  great encouragement, love and support.  North Point — you folks are one of a kind.  I’ll
  share some of those insights next week on the blog.  I think you will not want to go back to other ways of thinking and being…. I don’t.

• I just feel grateful to actually be able to be a part of all this.  God does more than we can ask or imagine.  And for a thoroughly depraved, forgiven guy to get a chance to be part of a work of God is amazing to me.  I’m so thankful for the whole emerging Connexus community.  We’re going to see so many lived transformed…including our own.  Can’t wait.

Talk to you on line over the weekend, but even better….see you in person Sunday. 

Love the comments on the blog…I totally agree that the 20 something gap is huge. It’s the product of the failure of our approach to children’s and family ministry in the last decade or more. 

I think there are three factors in the Orange approach that we’re integrating at Connexus that can change the reality in many families and in many young adult lives with the next generation.  The first, is getting teens engaged in mission…in serving others.

There comes a point where each of us needs to stop being a consumer and start being a contributor.  Life just works better that way…in marriage, at work, in parenting, in friendships.  If all we do is take, and never give, then somehow we end up feeling empty…deeply unsatisfied.  Ironically, the very thing we are afraid of losing if we give to others (our fulfilment) is the very thing we gain when we give back. But then Jesus taught on that, didn’t he?

People speak of a prolonged adolescence among so many young adults today…I just want to avoid that in the next generation.  If, by the time our kids are 12 years old, they are learning to serve others, they will be able to put into practice all they have learned and will continue to learn.  So while they still play Wii at Xtreme, they may also choose to help with set up and tear down at the theatres, or learn to run a sound board for UpStreet or serve in a homeless shelter. Teens can also get into the thick of serving by serving as small group leaders in Waumba Land or UpStreet, or help in some meaningful way.  By giving back to others what God has given to them, they become whole.

What I love about people like Sarah, Terra, Tim and Laurie who are returning to church after an absence or as young adults, is that they are people who have learned to give back. This may be a key to fulfillment for each of them.  Ironically, while we really want to get, what they have seen is that by giving we get the most.

Parents have a critical role to play in the formation of this next generation.  By partnering with church leaders throughout the different stages in life, parents get equipped by the church to help kids assimilate faith and character into their lives from the youngest age.  But as their son or daughter heads into the pre-teen and especially teen years, by applying what they are learning through serving, and living outside themselves serving other kids, going on mission trips, and helping those on the margins of society, our kids may finally be able to see why we believe what we say we believe, and have what they know deeply integrated into their being by the time they are 18.  I think this might create a "stick" factor for Christianity that is much higher and much truer to Jesus.  After all, if it’s only information we’re teaching our kids without application, there will be no transformation.  And it’s pretty hard to walk away from transformation.

The other key component is moving from class-room based ministry to group-based ministry.  By teaching kids at every age level in a large session, people with teaching gifts are freed up to be engaging and to do what they do best.  In our model (as in all Orange models), kids then switch from a large teach time into small groups, where they have the same small group leader who tracks with them regularly.  The kids in the group are the same week to week too, so every child gets another adult building deeply into their lives and friends who are running the right direction.  This creates a powerful chemistry of relationship that is also very hard to walk away from.  It’s easy to skip out on class…it’s much harder to walk away from real relationship.  But then Jesus modeled that too right…something about 12 close followers…disciples….

Throughout the process, group leaders are interacting with parents to equip parents to bring home what God started on Sundays and to help address what’s happening in the home.  As we all know, sometimes kids stop listening to their parents (really?), and having another adult saying the same things parents say can make all the difference in the world.

I believe that mission for teens, groups for everyone and partnering with parents can really help kids get deeply grounded in their relationship with Christ before they leave home.  It will give them something real to walk away with, not from.

Long post…what are your thoughts?

I must admit.  Three years ago, family ministry didn’t matter to me. We had a "successful" kids ministry.  In my former ministry, a couple hundred kids and students would show up every week.  Hey if you had tons of kids show up, wasn’t that enough?

But my mind is changing on that.  Thanks to my work with a good friend and incredible leader, Reggie Joiner.

I just spent a couple more days with Reggie.  If you don’t know Reggie, you should get to know him.  He’s one of the most creative people and deepest strategic thinkers I’ve ever met.

These days, Reggie leads the Rethink Group (which he also founded).  Rethink not only publishes first rate curriculum for children and student ministry in churches, but is responsible for all things Orange, including the Orange leaders community, the Orange Tour and the Orange Conference next April.  Prior to working full time with Rethink, Reggie co-founded North Point Community Church and developed its innovative and powerfully effective approach to family ministry.

What drives Reggie is a deep and abiding concern for families.  In Canada, only 11% of people attend church on a regular basis, but even among those families who do attend church in Canada and the US, a stunning 80% of kids who grew up in the church leave the church when they go to college, not to return for years…or in some cases, ever.  Reggie has an incredible desire to change that.

The idea behind the Orange movement is that church leaders and parents can partner together around a master plan to cultivate faith and character in our children.  The church can’t do it alone, and parents can’t do it alone.  God designed us to do it together.

I find it incredibly refreshing to know that Reggie and his team work day and night on better ways to equip and help church leaders and parents raise the next generation for God.  I’m so thankful that Connexus will be an orange church from the ground up, even though we are still working on exactly what that means as the orange movements get shaped in these months and years ahead.  All I can say is I want to be counted on to be one of those who helps reverse that walk-away statistic.

I want my kids to be fully alive in God when they head to college.  I want it for more than my kids or your kids…I want it for the community, the region, the continent, the planet.  If life is truly found in God, why would we wish anything but that on the next generation?

Reggie and I spent last night talking about how to raise awareness about the silent crisis happening in churches with the next generation — that so few, even among the churched, are being influenced for God.

The first step to raising awareness is to acknowledge the problem.

Three questions:

    1.  Do you see it?
    2.  Do you care?
    3.  Are you prepared to do anything about it?

It bothers me that again and again, the hardest ministry to staff in churches across North America (including Connexus) is kids’ ministry.  Maybe that’s a factor in the stat.  Maybe we can change that!

more on this soon….

I had to leave our awesome Sunday gathering at Connexus on Sunday early…largely because I had to catch a flight to Atlanta where I’m spending a good chunk of this week working on things Orange and on retreat with the lead pastors from North Point, not to mention getting ready for soft-launch this weekend at Connexus Barrie.

On the way out, I had lots of time to think.  It’s not often a preacher finds himself with time off on Sunday mornings.  So, I looked around at life outside the church on Sundays.

The parking lot was pretty busy at the Galaxy with our people.  But Walmart was filling up too.  Okay…there were more lots more people at Walmart than at Connexus (even though we were close to packed out). And things were getting busy at Starbucks too. I waited in line for five minutes at Starbucks, desperate for a latte (they were closed at 8 a.m. when I went the first time!!!).

It got me thinking about categories.  I have spent so much of my life thinking of people as "churched" or "unchurched" – preaching to the churched, preaching to the unchurched etc.  But I’ve never called anyone "unchurched" to their face.  I mean how would that go over?  "Hey, I’m Carey.  I hear you’re unchurched."

At the end of the day, you know what we all are?  We’re people.  That’s it.  Just people.  More and more, I like that.  People — just plain people.

People Jesus died for.  People who find WalMart more compelling than church.  People who find church more compelling than Walmart.  People who all need Jesus.

I think moving forward, I’m going to spend less time talking about "churched" and "unchurched", and more time talking about people. Better yet…more time talking to people, not just about them.

Because the people shopping at Walmart have the same needs and face the same issues as those of us filling the Galaxy.  Because people in line at Starbucks still have deep questions about God, even though they are at Starbucks instead of at church. They simply don’t believe that the church can help them in their quest for God — at least not yet.

Maybe that’s who we’ll preach to starting next weekend with our soft launch in Barrie: people.  People who want to know God. People who desire relevant environments to lead them into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

Maybe one day, we’ll see Walmart less full on Sunday mornings and some weeknights when community groups are meeting across Central Ontario…because people are meeting Jesus.

Think about the the people in your life this week…and how we can all get them into environments that will lead them into a growing relationship with Jesus.

I’ll spend a good chunk of today (Friday) planning out the message series for Connexus well into 2008.  The one thought I can’t get out of my mind is how powerful love is.

I posted about the song Under Pressure earlier this week. Parts of the song have been echoing through my head for two days since:

"keep coming up with love, but it’s so slashed and torn…|why can’t we give love one more chance? |    Why can’t we give love…give love…give love…| but love’s such an old fashioned word|and love dares    you to care for people on the edge of the knife|and love dares you to change your way of caring about  ourselves…"

Haunting words.  Great questions.

Why did people flock to Jesus?  Many reasons, but I wonder whether one of the most powerful reasons is because in Jesus, people experienced real love.

What do you crave most deeply in life? Love.  Why do many kids go awol on life and into deep rebellion by age 12 or 15?  Lack of love.  What drives marriages apart?  A loss of love.  What causes breakdowns in relationships?  Absence of love.

Love is the glue that holds it all together….love is what’s lacking in our lives (my life too often)….and God, the Bible tells us, is love.

What if at Connexus, we accessed the love of God?  What if we just loved people?  What if somehow we reflected God’s love deeply and profoundly and He moved in us and through us and in spite of us?

That’s what I’m praying about/thinking about this weekend.  How about you?