“…The racial problem has been the unresolved dilemma in America. It has gone on since its inception because its roots have not been addressed by the people who are most qualified to address it: The Church!” (Dr. Tony Evans)

When I saw this video I knew I had to share it with the Dream Of Destiny community.  Many of you know who Dr. Tony Evans is.  Several of you may have even seen this video before. It was produced by a very cool para-church ministry called “I Am Second.”

What I found powerful about this short video was Dr. Evans’ first story of being raised in Baltimore during a time of racial strife and tension.  What resonated with me was how “common” his story is among our African American pastors and leaders in our brotherhood.  Many, if not the majority of them over 50 years of age, still love God, but have lost hope in ever seeing change in the association of Independent churches, and Churches of Christ movement.

Many of them carry, not only the everyday burdens and challenges associated with leading small local churches that fight to keep their doors opens from year to year, but also the hollowing effect of their voices not being heard by fellow brothers that make up the NACC. To compound matters even more, if the truth be told, many of them wrestle with the feelings of inadequacy and insecurities that linger like battle scars from past fights and struggles that have never had the chance to properly heal.

In the spirit of illumination, I share this with you not to foster guilt or feelings of remorse by the wrongs of ancestors.  In like kind, I do not bring this to light for others to use as justification for abdicating any responsibility to continue to push forward. I shed light on this issue to provoke and encourage two regular calls to action:

1. To our Caucasian sisters and brothers in leadership; it is critical that you be intentional and proactive in reaching OUT (NOT back and down) to your fellow “minority” sisters and brothers in leadership at the local level. Even if you’ve tried in the past and found little reciprocated response, Do Not Stop!  Do not be tired in doing [this] good, because in due season your efforts will reap good fruit in time.
2. To our sisters and brothers who make up ethnic minorities in our association; it’s critical that you continue to be intentional about getting and staying involved with the convention (even though you feel that your voice has not been heard -remember, the more voices, the louder the message).  At the local level, continue to do what you can, with what you have, right where you are to connect with other pastors of independent Christian churches.  Again I encourage you, Do Not Stop!  Do not be tired in doing [this] good, because in due season your efforts will reap good fruit in time.

Why are these calls to action important for us to ALWAYS be intentional about?  Because they reflect, in how we engage one another, the very message,  we are all called to share with the rest of the world.  It is a message of new beginnings. It is a message of new identities.  It is a message of renewed hope, and freedom that is found in our new identity in Christ.   In the video above (at the 1:23 minute mark) , Dr. Evans talks about a “repositioning” that occurs when Jesus becomes first in our life.  Please go back to it now and listen, again, to what he says.

Going forward, what would our efforts truly look like if each of us truly embraced this idea that “I Am Second?”

Dream of Destiny 5 Star Initiative from Shepherd Youth on Vimeo.

I have been reading a book called Bus Ride to Justice by Fred Gray, a lawyer for Rosa Parks who was arrested on December 1st, 1955 for sitting where she was NOT supposed to sit. As you know, African Americans were supposed to sit in the back of the bus and save the seats in the front for the “white” people. When the courts finally ruled that segregation on city buses was unconstitutional, it was the one case that truly began the civil rights movement in America.

On page 97 of his book, Fred Gray writes, “A pebble cast in the segregated waters of Montgomery, Alabama, created a human rights tidal wave that changed America and eventually washed up on the shores of such far away places as the Bahamas, China, South Africa, and the Soviet Union. And it all started on a bus.”

But there is ONE GLARING problem. That tidal wave never hit the CHURCH in AMERICA.

It was in 1963, which was almost 50 years ago, that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said 11:00 a.m. is still the most segregated hour in America.  Here we are some 47 years later and that statement, even is Los Angeles, is still true. An article in the Jan. 11, 2010 issue of Time Magazine states that 93 percent of the churches in America are still primarily segregated. Less that 8 % of churches are diverse. How is this possible?

The 5 Star Initiative is simply to get churches to be more intentional about diversity…getting our churches to ACCEPT the great commission to reach “all nations.” And I know is sounds simplistic, and I am sorry if you do not agree, but if we could just start by diversifying our platform and our stages, we could see immediate change within our churches today. Finding ways to include people of color in our worship teams, in our praise teams and in our choirs—and even in those who make announcements, conduct the baptisms, and lead the congregation in prayer—it would have a HUGE ripple effect on those who are first-time visitors, those who will look to the stage and see that this is a church that accepts people from all walks of life.

I’ve seen the difference in the church I serve, and I think you’d see the difference in your church as well. It is time that the Church of 2k10 reflects the church of Revelation 7:9-10.

Watch the above video. Go to http://www.dreamofdestiny.com/ and sign up to be a part of the 5 star Initiative.

This post is a re-post from John Saddington, over at ChurchChurch. This blog post launched a myriad of ideas and questions in my mind, when it comes to reaching the “unchurched”  and the diverse landscape of our changing America.  A lot of good and healthy questions!  I decided to share this blog post with you. Enjoy!

“MySpace is nothing like it used to be.

It’s a nuclear disaster. It’s a stain in Silicon Valley of a hopeful-gone-terribly-wrong and it’s loss of online equity, prominence, and fame is legendary. It’s the butt of too many jokes to count and the platform technology is becoming even more laughable as time marches on.

It’s old, outdated, all but abandoned, neglected, forgotten, and definitely passed over. I haven’t signed in to the service in over a year; in fact, it’ll be 2 years this coming January, and I plan on staying out indefinitely. Their product is stagnant, senior management is bailing, and the future looks desperately dark.

But want to know something scary? The above doesn’t sound too far from the Church and some local congregations may find themselves in the same metaphorical boat: Loss of attendance, neglected, forgotten, with very few new visitors. Sounds like the death knell to me!

So what can the Church learn from MySpace? Here’s my technological perspective on five things that the Church could take notice of and learn from one of the biggest falls in high tech history:
1. Pride Comes Before the Fall

In 2008 Murdoch told the world that MySpace would easily break 1 Billion in target revenue. This not only stunned the world but also the executive team. It was outrageous, a boast that represented a blind attitude that this was the future of social networking. Too much was banked on an industry that was un-bankable.

They missed that target. Big time.

Regardless of what was done and predicted and what wasn’t done (or should have been done) the fact is that no one can really adequately predict the success of web technology and products in the high tech space. No one.

And the Church should take note. Remember that your strategy, especially your web strategy, is not a tool nor a piece of technology. Don’t force your leadership or ministries to put all their eggs in one basket and promise the world significant change and improvement through a tool.
2. You Must Stay Nimble, Flexible

It has been documented in more areas that News Corp would like that MySpace was the best darn thing that the internet has ever created (not in those exact words, but essentially) and how competition to the likes of Facebook, etc. was nothing.

They were wrong. MySpace has since, of course, given up the race with Facebook and has accepted it’s decreasing valuation and traffic as truth.

Users have abandoned the site not because it wasn’t a neat place to hang out but because the technology wasn’t able to keep the pace of the changes within the space. What was once a nimble and non-bureaucratic system became bloated with leadership, ego, and communication-guile.

The Church needs to make sure that they can stay nimble and limit the amount of red tape that may exist from a technological perspective. This is absolutely necessary to be, and stay, effective in this new online landscape and culture.

This, of course, does not mean that the Church must be bleeding edge, but that leadership and ego doesn’t get in the way of continuing to advance forward. Stay nimble, stay humble, and don’t for a minute believe that you’re in any competition with other ministries.
3. It Takes the Right Mix of Leadership

When the purchase was finalized of Intermix (the parent company of MySpace) and the acquisition done Murdoch put one of his most trusted lieutenants in charge: Ross Levinsohn. Ross had a great background with the likes of Alta-Vista, and knew the space well (or at least Murdoch thought so).

The problem was that before the ink was dry Levinsohn having “issues” with DeWolfe and Anderson, the two co-founders of MySpace. They were world’s apart in terms of vision for the site and has been oft-said that DeWolfe and Anderson never really liked being told what to do.

Leading well in the technology space requires the right people first, talent second. You see, you can always hire the latter, and fill in the gaps necessary, but the right type of leadership is required to be successful.

The Church needs to be aware that it’s quite possible that the current leadership isn’t the right leadership to lead that ministry into the tech space. This could mean some significant changes and challenge the way in which we lead in those areas.

Levinsohn made a calculated error on the way in which he lead MySpace and the cost was great. In fact, for a large part, it was simply based on a difference of focus. He eventually had to leave.
4. Shared Vision and Focus

Levinsohn, to his credit, was a phenomenal businessman. He made Fox Interactive Media money. He did it well and he pleased his boss.

The problem was that money was the chief end of what MySpace became: a channel of dollars for partner businesses, Google, and other advertisers. What their focus should have been user experience.

It didn’t require a degree in rocket science to begin to see the rapid decline of the user experience as more advertising space was created, and filled, in every single page on MySpace. In fact, the user experience had now become subordinate to ad slots with weight-loss products rather than anything else.

The management team (and the developers) didn’t share the same vision (or core values). The product became a mess, and pressures like the 1 Billion sales mark didn’t help either. What was nimble, responsive, and fair to the community became sluggish, biased, and hell-bent on green.

They simply didn’t have a shared vision and focus and the Church knows far too well what happens when differences like this arise. The Church has been about the people, building relationships, and meeting the needs of those in pain; our web products should continue to do just that.
5. Continued Interest by Leadership

Murdoch had made the buy with as much flair and fanfare possible. His research was sound, execution well-played, and his interest was obvious. He and DeWolfe went to trade shows, conferences, and events touting the future of online and how MySpace was going to be the arbiter.

But it didn’t last.

In 2007 Murdoch purchased Dow Jones, and it was obvious the interest, time, and attention by the person who made it all happen was gone. DeWolfe himself had become the internet playboy of the digital age and tensions had already been noted that his ego was getting in the way of the product advancing.

The Church’s future doesn’t sit with web technology alone, but it sure is important, and it’s going to require an increased fascination and dedication to it as a serious communication channel if we’re ever going to fully realize it’s full potential.

Leaders must commit themselves, their ministries, and their congregations to investing in the online space and must engender a sustainable model to become effective long term. Don’t drop interest like Murdoch.
Where Now?

I must admit that, to be fair, this type of flame-on/flame-off story isn’t anything new, and to give credit where credit is due it’s really because MySpace had not only the potential to become a giant but because it was also the first to show that type of potential.

Why else would Uncle Rupert have purchased it?

But they executed poorly and their vision was limited. And the future doesn’t look too bright for MySpace (although anything can happen).

The Church, though, has far longer and deeper history than any web product, and has proven its worth to shine brightly through even the darkest of times. But we can always learn more, and learn we must.”

John is the Senior Editor @ ChurchCrunch and Chief Blog Junkie. He enjoys Triple-Tall Americanos, Twitter, and a few other random things.

Unity Through Diversity!

I came across a website around this time last year. It was called Advent Conspiracy. Have you heard of it? What inspired me was the simple “call to action” it was advocating. It challenged us all to be smart about show we spent our money during the holiday season. It did not advocate that we boycott the shopping malls as a “Christian stand against consumerism.” It’s simple message asked us to remember, in our “buying choices,” what is truly important: Lifting up JESUS! And Jesus tells us to love one another. As followers of Jesus we are called to love our fellow brothers and sisters that make up humanity. Jesus’ life, and ultimately his death, modeled the intentionality we must demonstrate towards one another, locally and around the world.

I am excited about the holiday season because it gives us the perfect excuse to be intentional about “loving people” -reaching out to people we would normally never talk to, all because we just happen to run in different social circles. Not only that, what if we were more thoughtful about how we engaged them? Instead of just giving people gifts, why not invite them to partner with with you to bless someone else? Be as creative as you want! I am using the holiday season as an excuse to get dads in my neighborhood to spend more time with their kids doing stuff outside. In the process, I am getting to know and love my neighbors even better. Isn’t that kind of what Jesus would do? I am also inviting other triathletes, and swimmers to do a swim-a-thon with me to raise money to builds clean water wells in Africa.

The advent season has begun. Let’s use this season to love one another well, instead of making us-vs-them statements. Let’s put Jesus in front of us and let Him lead us into a life of joy and exhilaration to the point where we can barely catch our breath.
That’s what is truly exciting about this season. That’s what it looks like to make Jesus, the real reason for the season.

Who’s with me?

Check out the Advent Conspiracy:
http://www.adventconspiracy.org/

Unity Through Diversity!

This article is a re-blog taken from CatalystSpace.com, writen by Alan Hirsch, the author of The Forgotten Ways.

Having been believers and ministers for over 25 years now has given Debs and I an appreciation for just how hard it is to be an authentic follower of our Lord and Savior. To be an authentically radical disciple requires a relentless evaluation of life’s priorities and concerns—together with an ongoing, rigorous, critique of our culture—to ensure we are not adopting values that subvert the very life and message we are called to live out. For true followers of Jesus, discipleship is not simply the first step toward a promising career of being a Christian, rather it is itself the fulfillment of our destiny. So, Debs and I have decided to write a book on what we call “missional discipleship.” Appropriately called Untamed, it is meant to be a penetrating look into the things that keep us from becoming all we were made to be and has many practical suggestions about how to become wild followers of Jesus again.

The truth is that discipleship, at least the way the Bible understands it, cannot be limited to a personal exercise in personal spirituality. There are much greater, perhaps even global, consequences at stake in our becoming more like Jesus. So much so that we have actually come to believe that discipleship is a frontier issue for the people of God at this time in history. Why? Because most commentators would now agree that the Western Church, because of its deep embedding into the prevailing consumerist culture, has all but lost the art of discipleship. Reggie McNeal has concluded that “church culture in North America is now a vestige of the original [Christian] movement, an institutional expression of religion that is in part a civil religion and in part a club where religious people can hang out with other people whose politics, worldview, and lifestyle match theirs.”

If this is indeed the case, we should be clear that this is not what the church is called to be, and is, in fact, directly caused by a failure in discipleship and disciple-making. And it will have to be addressed if we are to give faithful witness to our century. Therefore, rediscovering what it means to radically follow Jesus is now an area of strategic—and definitely missional—concern. To recover mission we are going to have to take discipleship seriously again, but the reverse is also true; to rediscover discipleship we are also going to have to take mission seriously. We cannot be true disciples without also being missionaries (sent ones) to our worlds.

The gospel is the power of God for the salvation of the world (Rom. 1:16), and God wants to redeem the broken and lost world around us and through us. Our lives, individual and corporate, play a vital role in the unfolding of the grand purposes of God. The gospel cannot be limited to being about my personal healing and wholeness, but rather extends in and through my salvation to the salvation of the world. To fail in discipleship and disciple-making is therefore to fail in the primary mission (or “sentness”) of the church. And it does not take a genius to realize that we have all but lost the art of disciple-making in the contemporary Western church. No wonder Dallas Willard calls the systematic non-discipleship of the Western Church “the great omission” in his book by that name.

There is much talk about missional church in our time—and we completely agree. The church must become missional or fade into increasing irrelevance in the 21st Century. But we simply cannot get there from here without factoring discipleship into the equation. We can’t have one without the other: if there be no mission there can be no discipleship, and if there is no discipleship there will be no mission. And there can be no missional church if there is no disciple-making church—it’s as simple as that. If ever there was a time to recover the true meaning of the Great Commission to make disciples of the nations it is now. The future health and viability of Western Christianity is at stake. We must not waste time.

This article excerpted from Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship, by Alan Hirsch, Feb 2010. Published by Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Used by permission

Alan Hirsch is widely regarded as a seminal thinker and writer on areas of missional church. He has written The Forgotten Ways, The Shaping of Things to Come, and ReJesus. Debra is a gifted speaker and teacher on issue of mission to the marginalized and on sexuality. Alan and Debra Hirsch’s new book Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship will be released by Baker in Jan 2010.

While authentic diversity can not be manufactured, there are common practices among organizations that experience a significant amount of diversity on their staff, and within their student body or congregation.  Listed below are 15 “common practices” that you can implement to organically foster more diversity within you organization.   Just like growing an organic garden of different vegetables in your back yard, there is a level of intentionality and commitment that must go into making it happen.  Likewise, diversity happens most naturally in intentional environments that are committed to fostering it.

Here are 15 things you can do, as a leader, to foster more diversity within your organization:

• 1. Hiring people of different ethnic and cultural heritage on Pastoral team
• 2. Hiring staff of different ethnic and cultural heritage
• 3. Presenting diversity on Worship Team from the platform (i.e. music leader)
• 4. Having people of diverse heritage and background on the Board of Elders
• 5. Hiring interns of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds
• 6. Encouraging a multi-racial church congregation
• 7. Developing cross cultural relationships within the community
• 8. Partnering with a sister church in the urban areas of the city
• 9. Staging a city-wide church swap where 3 or 4 participating churches of different races agree to go through the same series (pastors would collaborate) and each weekend the congregations are encouraged to visit a different church during the series. Promote a spirit of inclusion by integrating diverse cultural forms and expressions of worship into weekend schedule.
• 10. Hosting multi-cultural events
• 11. Creating small groups where the DVD series and teaching included different people of different churches. Participating churches would encourage their small groups to join together with small groups of other churches for the series.
• 12. Inviting other Pastors of different races to speak from your pulpit
• 13. Providing monies and assistance to the ministries that focus in this particular arena of diversity. (Example: Dream of Destiny)
• 14. Providing scholarship monies for Bible Colleges that are recruiting students of differing ethnic backgrounds.
• 15. Providing financial assistance to students that desire to go in to ministry, but attend a church other than your own. Reach out to neighboring churches to locate these young people that need sponsoring.