Thus says the Lord: "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
But they said, 'We will not walk in it.'" --Jeremiah 6:16

 

17 July, 2007   comments: (0) Today's Pragmatism   Leader Assimilation: The Building of a Clone Army They're everywhere - you can't escape this army, they've become the status quo. Perhaps they've already invaded your camp and have cast you atop the scrap pile of trouble makers. Maybe they've just set up a base in your sector, and are trying to lure you in with a never ending stream of postcards offering you coffee, entertainment, and marriage help. Resistance is futile, your former leaders have either been assimilated or forced-out by this new army, but WHO ARE THESE CLONES? They're the new breed of church leaders, and they are exactly alike . . . they're clones! They look the same, talk the same, have the same personal interests, and they share the same obsession with numbers. No, they're not accountants, they're pastors, and they desperately want to count you on their ledger of 'decisions', baptisms, and attendance numbers. But what's most amazing is that they're actually willing to become a personality clone of somebody else to make it happen. What's been engineered-out of their trendy "gene pool" today, is the old pastor image, along with his interest in knowing and teaching the bible in great detail. What the DNA of these new clones is comprised of instead, is the focus of an imaginary book that I debuted a year ago on how to make a "Relevant Pastor Blog". At the time I wrote that satire, I had no one individual in mind, and it was really just a summary of all of these pastors combined, as they are so much alike and most of them have very little original thought of their own. Being a year later now, I thought it would be interesting to go back and plug-in a real live pastor into my formula, and see how close he matches. Nobody will be an exact match of course, but one particular church leader whose blog I've been reading lately has many interesting similarities; his name is Michael Lukaszewski and he is the lead pastor of a Georgia start-up church called Oak Leaf (or, if you are cool, you can call it "The Leaf"). Michael is one of those church leaders who believes that 'success' is attained by closely following the Seeker Sensitive church growth movement script. Although I'm sure he would not admit it (perhaps he doesn't even realize it), he has adapted large portions of his personality around these modern success strategies. Yes, he has allowed himself to become a clone, and he has ceased to be a unique individual. He is no longer self-aware, and has been assimilated into the Borg! Ok ok, maybe that's going a little too far, but you get the idea :-) So let's see if my assessment is within the ballpark of being correct. We'll do this by comparing the things that Michael Lukaszewski has been writing on his blog to my "how to make a Relevant Pastor Blog" checklist. Keep in mind that when I wrote this checklist a year ago, I didn't write it around Michael at all. Now I've pasted the checklist below, and have not changed any of the wording. The only thing I've done is placed these (smiley's with cool sun glasses) in spots where I've found a blog post of Michael's that is reminiscent of the point being made in that spot (though not all are exact matches). You can click on these smiley's to read what Michael wrote that's similar to that specific point. Afterwards, we'll do our own number counting, and add-up the number of smiley's to assign a "clone-score". Warning: Some of Michael's links are not suitable for children to read. 1) Show others that you are not afraid to be open and transparent with your love life. That makes you seem "real". Talk about your wife in gushy glowing terms, like you can't wait to get home to see her every single day. Blog about how you always call her at lunch just to blow kisses in her general direction. Blog about every last thing that you do for her that's nice (ie: how you buy her flowers every Friday, etc.). Seekers will really look up to this and will want to convert to Christianity in order to get a better love life like yours. 2) Share with your readers what Rock concerts you've been to recently. When seekers find out that they don't have to give up their U2, Bon Jovi , and INXS - they will realize that Christianity is not such a big step after all. In fact, maybe they'll feel like they can even invite you (their pastor) to some cool (wild) parties. 3) Refer to everybody in your church as a "dude". And for all 37 pastors that work for you, on your hand-picked staff, refer to them in your blog posts as "my boy". So a proper sentence on your blog might be constructed like this: "My boy Justin and I are taking a few dudes to the U2 concert next week". If you have no fear of God whatsoever, you can do what I've seen in the seeker blogs, and also refer to the Lord Jesus Christ as "a dude" as well. 4) Whenever you go to a Rock concert, tell your blog audience how much better your church's Rock worship band is than the Rock band that you just paid to see. Say things like this: "Bon Jovi was cool, but my boys in our worship team Rock!". Also, don't be afraid to talk about how your church's half-million dollar sound system "rocks" ($?). 5) Put lots of pictures of yourself on your blog, especially ones of you "relating" with seekers, but make sure you are wearing jeans and a long untucked shirt. That's what everybody wears, so even if you happen to be 60 years old, show them that you can dress just like them, like a teenager. Then they'll be less afraid to come to church. 6) Use the following words as much as possible, because they really have an enticing effect on other seeker pastors. Then they will read your blog a lot, and perhaps one day they'll ask you to have your own conference to teach them about "your vision". The words are: Leadership, Connecting, Unchurched, Goals, Relevance, Buzz, and Vision. 7) Whatever you do, don't kill your blog by saying words like the following. Not only will you turn-off the seekers, but other relevant-pastors will see that you are not cutting edge and will stop reading your blog. Those words are: Doctrine, Theology, Elders and Deacons, Bible Commentaries (oops some of these are two words), Hermeneutics, or any of those kinds of things that pastors have cared about for centuries. 8) Talk a lot about the TV shows that you watch. Tell your readers how disappointed you were when certain shows ended differently than you expected. Mention how you watch TV with your wife. 9) If you bring up scripture on your blog, keep it short and sweet, perhaps give your "life verse" or maybe mention a verse that talks about "vision", but be sure to quote from The Message. It will often give a completely different meaning than any of the other bible translations, but the important thing is that people will be able to understand what it's saying. 10) Stay upbeat! I can't stress this enough. Christians are always supposed to be happy, and seekers will fuel off of your enthusiasm. It's contagious you know. Even if your dog dies, stay upbeat about it. Remember, even if you are not a very inspirational person, people will think you are, just because you are so enthusiastic. 11) Link to the right people. If you have all of the "cool pastors" in your blog roll, people will think that you too are cool. So be sure your blog has links to Perry, Gary, Tony, Andy, Mark, Ed , and Todd. Talk about those guys a lot in your blog posts, and make it sound like you are best buddies with them by using that familiar "my man" prefix when you refer to them by name. 12) You need to be prepared for anyone who might leave a negative comment on your blog that would seem to question "your vision". Those ruin the whole upbeat enthusiasm thing. The way to handle these is to cover-up any biblical points that they made, by citing the number of baptisms you had last month. Ask them how many baptisms their church had. Show them that "numbers" are the end-all indicator of ministry success, and try to make them feel less successful if they don't produce as many numbers as you do. That might discourage them from arguing with you. If they persist by questioning your obsession with numbers, remind them that "numbers are people" and "we count because we care" etc. 13) Your blog posts should be evenly distributed in this manner: 50% of them should talk about the EXCITING things your church is doing and how unique and innovative your approach to ministry is, 40% of them should be humor, and 10% should talk about your personal life (upcoming vacations, your entertainment preferences , the cold you just got over, your kids birthdays, etc.). Don't get too 'heavy' by talking a lot about things you gleaned out of the bible study time that you were able to squeeze in this week. Well there you have it. Keep in mind that not all of those things are 'bad' of course. The point I'm trying to make with this is that, when combined, they are part of a man-made 'success' pattern of what to think, do, and speak. For example, you can search the internet over and will never find a Lutheran or Presbyterian pastor (any non Seeker Sensitive pastor) who talks like that. If you've found any other posts on Michael Lukaszewski's blog that you think deserve a "cool smiley", share the post in the comments below. Michael's "clone score" is 53, and perhaps in the future we'll score some other pastors who are obviously following the same script. If you know of any who are active bloggers, give us their blog address in the comments below. In the meantime, let's pray for a day when pastors will no longer clone each other's personalities and growth gimmicks, and will be too preoccupied with striving after Christ-likeness to be concerned with such things. In order to do that however, they'll need to return to the Word of God and value their bibles the way pastors used to. If they will do so, I'm convinced that they will eventually come to the conclusion that church growth is from the Lord, and that their job is to follow biblically derived checklists like this one instead. Update 7/20/07: I've noticed a few predictable blogs applying their own spin to what's been said here, in an apparent effort to distract from the actual point. One such misrepresentation claims that this post is merely focusing on legalistic "appearance things". But this misses the point entirely. While it's true that there isn't necessarily anything sinful about a pastor having a certain modern aesthetic appearance, there may in fact be something wrong with it if the reason for doing so is sinful (see my comment below citing 1 Corinthians 2). Similarly, it's not legalistic for me to point out that striking rocks with a stick is wrong, if for example I'm talking about Moses, and his reason for striking one (Numbers 20). Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.732   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  RSS Feed  |  Contact