My Own Take on Ethos

I was inspired by my buddy Mike’s posts on Ethos at Bish Blog. Mike and I are a part of the same faith community. But when you read my take on Ethos then read Mike’s, you’ll see we are looking at the same coin. He sees heads and I see tails.

In my mind Ethos is to be cultivated as well as experienced. Case in point: When immigrants of my grandparent’s generation came to this country they came to become Americans. They believed in the American dream that if you work hard and smart, are honest, and a little bit lucky, one can provide a nice life for yourself and your family. They came, they learned the language, and they adopted large parts of the culture. At the same time they didn’t completely abandon their own culture. Thank God too. Where would we be without Italian restaurants and Chinese food? What they didn’t do is come here to impose their culture on the rest of America.

Ethos is a funny thing. It is literally the sum of the cultural parts as expressed in a particular community. As different people come and go the Ethos literally changes with each addition and each subtraction. But is there a part of the Ethos that is not negotiable? Another way to look at it is what makes this faith community (or church family) different form every other one. Is there something here in the culture of this faith community that makes some people want to stay and adopt it while others don’t want to adopt it and leave?

I submit to you that there are parts of the culture that if removed simply wouldn’t be the same culture. It’s those parts that we agree on that are the glue. I think they need to be explored, discussed, presented to people investigating us and taught to each other and our children.

So what's the glue?

First I would say we are all Christians in the traditional sense of the word. There are many different denominational backgrounds and beliefs represented. But we would all agree on the basic tenants of the faith like Jesus’ divinity, sacrifice on the cross to pay for the sins of us all etcetera.

This could be said about many churches and faith communities. But when Tara and I walk into a new home church we can usually tell within five minutes if they are kindred spirits or if they are just traditional church that hasn’t grown enough to meet in a building so they use a home instead. We like to visit other home churches to encourage them since when we started out 8 years ago we felt so alone. Similarly when someone visits our faith community they should be able to tell within a few minutes that something’s different here. It’s those differences that I think set us apart and join us together.

Answers to “Who’s your pastor?” and “How do you handle money?” tell Tara and I nearly everything we need to know to understand if they share the core components of our ethos or not.

If you were to ask ten different people in our church family who is the pastor you would get ten different answers. And none of them would be easy. No one would say seriously that it was pastor so and so. You might get answers like we all pastor each other. Or there is no specific person that is the pastor. Or different people have the gift of pasturing.

The next question is about money. To be frank, to prove tithing is legitimate from the new testament you have to do some serious biblical acrobatics. There’s more flips and twists in that argument than on an Olympic gym floor. So if we get an answer like “We teach that one should not rob God of his tithe which is 10% of gross income.” I know I’m just not in the right place. In our community we don’t teach or practice tithing to the community. Some in the group may tithe to other nonprofit organizations like Compassion international. But that is up to the individual family. I personally believe God wants 100% not a measly 10. But that’s another blog.

I should say something about transition here. Often times we hear an answer we like to one question but not both. Or we’ve seen where the answers they give show we are on the same page but their actions tell a different story. In those cases we say they are in transition. Most of us came out of a traditional 501c3 church where there is a board of directors, and executive director (the pastor) perhaps a staff (the clergy) and everyone else (laity.) When someone feels that there is something wrong with this sometimes they leave and do something new. Sometimes they work their way towards what many people know as a home church. During the time when they are unlearning everything they were taught and relearning what is true according to the Bible, we call this time transition. This process takes time, often several years. During which what people believe and how they practice that belief goes through many changes. But that’s another blog.

A related element of our Ethos is the willingness to unlearn, relearn and challenge long held beliefs. When Tara and I first left our AG church we spent the next 6 years just trying to figure out what the Bible actually said instead of what people told us it said. Believe it or not it doesn’t take a degree in theology to understand its core messages and meanings. Yes there is value to an education. Don’t get me wrong. But in an effort to differentiate themselves and justify their occupations too many theologians have complicated the good news beyond repair. Some over complicate the simple. There are lots of reasons this is the natural tendency but that’s another blog.

Finally the priest hood of the believer is held to be true and practiced. Most churches will say they believe in the priesthood of the believer but when it comes to praying for people, teaching, preaching, etc. it’s usually up to paid clergy to do that work. Everyone else is relegated to child care and parking ministry. In my own experience I made it all the way up to head usher. I was shooting for senior head usher but didn’t make it before I left. In the group I worship with now, everyone is encouraged to use their gifts no matter who they are or what their education. All that is needed is maturity, gifting, opportunity, and God’s timing all within the context of respect for the boundaries of the nuclear family. Maturity is the state of knowing what to do or say, gifting is the God given power to do or say it, opportunity is having the chance to do it, and finally God’s timing is that internal sense that God wants it done or said now or later. The context of nuclear family means if a man is going to room to privately pray for another man’s wife, he had better ask the man’s permission first and all the other situations like that where God has put man to protect his wife and parents to protect their children.

Peace,
-John

Who’s in Charge of this Church Anyway?

One leadership evolutionary path of the home church

Home churches are a different kind of animal in the way they make decisions. From the outside they often appear to look like chickens with their heads cut off. We appear to run around with no direction sometimes. From the inside something very different is at work.

Christ is the head of the church.

The Bible is clear about leadership in the Church. Children are subject to their parents. Wives are subject to their husbands in partnership. And CHRIST is the head of the Church. This we understand intellectually but in practice it is a journey toward realization.

Most of us have grown up in a traditional top down leadership structure in our churches. In addition almost every leadership structure we have ever encountered has been the same. There has always been a boss or a pastor or coach or parent that has told us what to do. Even if we were the boss or pastor we still participated in this leadership structure as the person in charge.

Believe it or not Church and God are no different. There is still someone “in charge.” It just not who we think it is. Jesus is in charge by way of the Holy Spirit. Christ is the head of the church. So where does that leave the rest of us?

Recently we have made a practice of calling our “church” our “church family.” “Home church” is simply a misnomer that is useful for explaining what we do, to our institutionalized brothers and sisters. Church family is a more accurate way of describing who we are and how we behave. In this family, there is a father figure, God and a mother figure, the Holy Spirit. Jesus is whom they have left in charge. I know doctrinally God is one. But you recognize that our one God chooses to interact with us in different ways. I am trying to capture the flavor of that here. In any case the point is we are all brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Is one brother the lord over another? Can I command my younger siblings to obey me just because I am older? I cannot do that in the World how much less should I do that in Church? Does the hand tell the leg what to do? The head, Jesus Christ, tells the rest of the body what to do by way of the nervous system, the Holy Spirit.

Even all this we know in our heads. But it has not always reached our heart. And beyond that putting these ideas into action is against everything we have ever been taught or experienced.

What I’ve seen in the past is we go through a transition period. Usually a home Church is started by a charismatic person with some training in the church. They may feel something is wrong in the current situation or perhaps they just feel God’s calling to do something different. That person is usually “in charge.” He makes most of the decisions and feels personally responsible for the success or failure of every meeting.

As trust grows, some of the decisions are allowed to be made by some of the other members of the group. The person in charge delegates that authority to a few of the people he or she trusts for whatever reason. This is still a top down authority structure that begins to look like brothers and sisters acting as peers if you are in the “in” crowd.

Later on when the initial leadership team begins to become more comfortable with themselves and God’s leading, at least intellectually everyone is brought into that group of leadership. At first is looks like the leaders are weighing the input of the other people in the group. But after awhile the “leaders” begin to simply allow others to make decisions about various aspects of what’s going on.

This is when a significant change in group dynamics can occur. Prior to the leaders giving away control the group belonged to the leader or leaders. They owned it, will it, had the right and power to kill it. I remember in one church plant Tara and I were involved in, the couple who were the charismatic couple that got things started, decided to leave. We had already been working through the leadership issues for quit a while. But they still thought when they left the group would just shut down. They brought a scrap book for everyone to sign and it was very emotional for them. They were very surprised to learn that we kept on going after they left. That group didn’t last forever. But it closed for different reasons then someone in leadership leaving.

When the leaders give up ownership of the group, the followers can take up ownership. Two things I have observed during this paradigm shift of behavior and thinking. First followers begin to be self directed (or perhaps Christ directed.) And the group takes on a significantly new flavor. Individual creativity is allowed to flourish. The other thing is the leader types take a break. A needed and well deserved break I might add. Since the groups survival no longer depends on them to make things happen and they are not in charge for the most part, they tend to relax. This a wonderful benefit by the way for the would be pastor and his family. They are now allowed to be human, to have faults and to receive care from the other members without shattering their superhero image.

At this point some people may begin to exert their new found freedom in exercising their faith in the group. But both the leaders and the followers will naturally fall into old patterns of command and control and being commanded and controlled. Perhaps command and control is a bit to strong but we have all seen situations where those words fit the bill.

The last phase I’ve seen is where the leaders systematically remove themselves from leadership. At the same time the encourage others to step up to the plate. I remember a conversation I had with my wife where she was “unhappy” with the way things were going in our home church years ago. We spoke about it and I encouraged her to be responsible for making the change that she wanted. Another time a woman in the church was unhappy with our lack of worship. There were no guitar players in our group of musically challenged. If she wanted something different it was up to her to make it happen. Not that she can’t ask for help or bring it before the group. Only that it was her responsibility to be in charge with whatever God was leading her in.

The last phase I’ve seen is when the leadership deliberately remove themselves from the lime light. They ask question like “what do you think?” or “what does the Bible say about that?” It becomes a situation where not only control is given up but the torch is actively passed to everyone else. Actively being the operative word. They repeat over and over again that it’s up to everyone to make the group work. And they mean it.

Anyway that’s what I’ve seen. But who knows maybe the pendulum will swing the other way in a few years and I’ll be a senior head pastor of some religious country club that charges an extraordinary but sliding scale of dues. Probably not.

Peace,

-JH