Still a pastor... I guess?

Well, last night, I turned in my resignation as pastor of the Church of the Nazarene, Scottdale, PA. We have known for a little while we would be leaving. The leadership all knew we were leaving. There were some other details that had to be clear before I could "officially" resign.

We will be moving to Jeannette, PA to take on two new positions. The first position will be an associate pastor at Norwin Church of the Nazarene in Irwin, PA. My responsibilities will include the young adults of the church and probably other things that I don't know yet. The other position will be the planting of a church in the greater Greensburg, PA area - of which Jeannette is a part.

So... I'm still a pastor, but I am a pastor to be, a lame duck pastor, and a not yet pastor. Wrap your minds around that...

How to Make Your Ministry More Effective!

Maybe it is just me, but does anyone else get tired of all the media available to be a better pastor or better church? It is bad enough getting several forms of advertisements, but we also get hundreds of pieces of mail from our denomination. Apparently, direct mail is still alive and well, much to the chagrin of the receivers.

I wonder how many of these products that we could buy would actually help us? I know for fact a few of them would, but the majority of them get a quick glance at best and are tossed in the recycling bin. To be fair, though, every time I receive a pen I usually cannot find one at the moment.

It makes me wonder sometimes as I receive pieces of mail from other churches announcing such and such a program how this is helping build the kingdom. I realize churches should work together and that's fine... but how many of these events are meant for church fellowship instead of reaching out?

If I was a non-Christian and I heard that a group from a Christian university or church was coming to perform "X", would it really inspire me to make plans to go? When I lived in OKC and Dallas, I would get anywhere between 5-10 postcards a quarter from all of the big churches telling me what the next sermon series would be. Not to be rude, but as a non-Christian, do I even care?

I had a talk with a man who is the kind of guy you want in your church. He has a heart for the lost and wants to help his church move to reaching out. This year, he is leading a group from his church into doing a new reach out kind of thing by watching the Super Bowl breakfast and inviting people from the community to come. The Super Bowl breakfast takes place the day before the Super Bowl and has various Christians from around the NFL talk about God and football. I believe that Tony Dungy is a stand-by for this breakfast. Anyways, the guy talked about contacting the Christian radio station and some other Christian businesses for support. He asked what I thought?

I had to pause for a moment, because I sometimes get looked at weird when I share my thoughts. Finally, I asked why advertise a reach out event on a Christian station/business? Why not contact a secular station/business? I think he was testing my parameters, and said that he thought about putting some ads up in a bar restroom and I told him that's a great idea. He said I was one of the first people that didn't hesitate when saying it was a good idea. Others balked when he mentioned something like that.

This is exactly what gets me upset. My church does not need stained glass windows, a cd duplicator, new sound system, church database software, t-shirts, calendars, jewelry, or even pens (though they come in handy sometimes) to make ministry more effective. We need living, breathing people to be willing to go to bars and put up ads for a Super Bowl breakfast. We need people to place ads on secular stations letting people know that we want to get involved in their lives. Even better, to make our ministry more effective, let us live like... *gasp* Christians! What does that mean? Well, there's this guy named Jesus... let us live like him.

The WoW game...

As what few of you that read my blogs probably already know, I play a game called World of Warcraft (WoW). Well, I should say, played. As of right now, I canceled my subscription, which I will eventually resubscribe to... most likely, anyways.

But I think what I have learned by playing it is that people are desperate for real relationships. That being said, they will do everything possible to keep from being too vulnerable in said relationships. Most of the playing community is very anti-church, and to a lesser extent, anti-Jesus. Probably in the same way that chat rooms ruled the mid-nineties and instant messaging services followed, there is a freedom to be who you want to in the world of warcraft. With the option of many races, you get a list of classes that are suited to a specific side of warfare. You can be the guts and glory upfront, melee style class, or a caster that shoots spells at the various monsters. You can heal and you can steal. There are various trades that help make money and/or improve your gear for war.

All in all, it is a very complex game in that it takes seriously the economy (a regular NYSE, if you will) while learning to balance ego. It gives you the option to be a team player or a solo specialist. There is more territory travelled and explored in the game than most of us will visit in our lifetime. I personally know of people as young as eight and as old as fifty playing this game and have heard many say there are those up into their eighties.

Yet almost all of the above is an icing to the cake of the game. The game is about relationships, or the choice to not have them. If you find like minded people, you can form a guild (club) and they range from hardcore to semi-casual. Usually, the hardcore guilds require more rules and regulations than signing up for government assistance. Some even require filling out a three page application to be considered. These guilds are about progression - seeing the newest content that the developers haver created while sporting the best gear. Many people commit more hours to this game, even the casuals, then they do at work.

If you make enough people mad, you can get removed from a guild - and those actions may even lead to you getting into a different guild. Some guild hop from guild to guild to try and see how different guilds operate. Some do it to get free gear. There are some guilds that have over 1000 people who play regularly, and some have one person that only plays to give out money and hold supplies. Each guild is as unique as the 10+ million subscribers.

In many ways, I have seen the similarities of this game to the real world in that guilds are not too disimilar from churches. Some guilds split or disband because of some drama kings/queens that cannot see beyond their own goals. Every guild has drama in the same way that every church has politics.

Another similarity is that for many people, this game is as important to them as the old stand-bys at various churches. To remove the game from their life would be the equivalent of all the churches in an area shutting down. Many of these subscribers don't think twice about paying $180 a year to play the game. Some give up food and other resources to have a good game computer. There are thousands of websites to learn various aspects of the game. One of my favorites is how to cook better and faster.

The point of this post is that I learned a completely different culture while participating in this game. There is new vocabulary, rules, and tradition to play the game. I cannot tell you how many hours I have spent reading the back stories for the game. You can play the game and not care about any of the lore or rules or even language, but why? It defeats the purpose of playing the game in many ways.

Why be a Christian without knowing any of the lore or rules or language? You can, but why? If you do not know our story, then it is hard to understand what the gospel is. We learn how to grow in grace, and there is a linguistic difference when we use words like love and God to those who are not part of our cultural linguistic community.

Most of the people that play the game play it because they want something better than what they have experienced in real life. In real life, they might have been made fun of, but in the game they are near unstoppable. Many have experienced hurt from the church or Christians, and see the whole Jesus thing as made up as the game they play. Though I strongly disagree with their thesis, it is not hard to understand why they believe it.

We do not talk about Jesus as if he is real, we talk about him as if he is some figment of our imagination with lots of cool stories... kind of like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. When we tell others about how God has changed our life, our descriptions become trite, stale, and bland. To be honest, WoW has changed my life. I have met many people who I can relate with and have a good time with. I have lost somewhere between 20 and 30 pounds because I do not eat as much junk food. I spend less on entertainment a month, $15, then I did when not playing. This has helped finances. To make a statement that God in Christ has changed our lives, we need to be saying something that actually makes sense to people.

Think about it, Jesus does not ask for $15 a month, he asks for the whole of us - and generally speaking, that's a lot. And when no one sees the real benefit by how we live our lives, why would they want to come and learn a new lore, a new language with new rules?