Foolishness Gets People Killed in Benghazi

Let me see if I understand this...

According to internal State Department emails obtained by the LA Times on April 6, 2012 Libyan security guards assigned to protect the US compound in Benghazi attempted to detonate a bomb in said compound.

The ambassador requested US security forces and was denied by Washington who said that they were to rely on Libyan security forces for protection...the same type that attempted to blow up the compound? Those who attempted the bombing were released within a week by law "enforcement" officials, but the security guard that fired a warning round in the air to stop them was prosecuted. All this happened before the September 11 attack that killed 4 Americans.

My question: What on earth would lead the administration to believe that we could trust Libyan security forces to protect our people over there after all this information?

On September 11th a military strike by Libyans was launched against our compound there killing four Americans including our ambassador J Christopher Stevens.

We have photographic evidence of who led the attack against the US Benghazi compound but we are prevented from doing anything about it and the Libyan officials have not issued any sort of arrest warrant or anything close. Our own investigators were not allowed to enter the compound until three weeks after the attack well after all evidence has gone cold.

I repeat: what on earth would lead the administration to believe that we could trust Libyan security forces to protect our people? This is foolishness and in this case it got people killed.

Source: "Libya IDs leader of attack" LA Times Thur October 18, 2012 p. A9

A New Name & Logo Isn't Enough, The Church Needs a Transfusion

Five men sat around a table talking late into the night about the name of our church. Would we remain Grace Brethren Church or become Grace Fellowship? It isn’t that big of a difference now as I look back, but in the moment it seemed so important. 

This was in the mid-1990s in a suburb outside the Los Angeles area. The five consisted of three young men in their early thirties, including myself, and two middle-aged men that were actually fathers of the other two younger guys. I remember we had heated discussions on our elder board. I was the pastor of this more established congregational church, and I wanted to bring change. We were thinking that if we changed our name, got a fresh logo, and cast a bigger vision, the church would become healthier and more attractive and would grow. We wanted a new identity in the community. One elder opposed this thought, but we wouldn’t let him stop us. We pushed this new vision through, and the elder later excused himself from our leadership team and the church, but we got what we wanted. We changed the name, the logo, the vision—but not the church.

Years later, I have a different view of what brings change to a church. My new view is born from much more experience and admittedly many mistakes. I don’t think an established church needs a transition to be healthy and vital. What is truly needed is more than a transition; it needs a transfusion of healthy DNA found in the blood of Jesus and nothing less. 

Someone once described changing a church’s name, structure, or programs to fix the problems it faces as much like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic—futile and meaning- less in altering the outcome. 

Church is not an organization or an institution but an organism, a living body. An organization can transition. An organism grows, matures, reproduces, and dies. The thought that we can fix a church by hiring a new staff member or plugging in a new program is ridiculous. Simply changing direction with clever goals and a capital giving campaign is not going to transform a congregation but merely send the same ailing church down a new path. 

To learn how an established church can receive a transfuion of organic life check out our latest book Church Transfusion. 

Old vs New Leadership: A Study in Contrast

Someone wisely pointed out that our organizations are perfectly designed for the results that we are currently seeing. More of the same will only produce more of the same.

Today there is something new happening. With the advance of technology making the world flatter and mass communication easier we are rediscovering movements. Bestselling authors are pointing us to a more movemental paradigm of how to lead. The Tipping Point (Gladwell), The Starfish and the Spider (Brafman/Beckstrom) and Tribes (Godin) point us toward a new way of leading as well as organizational principles that defy the status quo and break open new ways that are actually quite ancient. Jesus and Paul both catalyzed this sort of movemental influence in the first century. My own books Organic Church (Jesus) and Journeys (Paul) describe how these masterful leaders ignited movements. I address many the specifics of movements by answering the most common questions I get asked in my book Church 3.0

In our new book Church Transfusion, Phil Helfer and I go to great lengths to adjust the leadership paradigm in order to release healthy movemental influence within an established church context. 

A few things are obvious. You cannot lead the way you have always done so in the past and expect different results. What brought success in the old form of influence will actually bring failure in the new. Drawing a crowd and dispersing a people movement are exactly the opposite sort of task. You can suck water in a straw or you can blow air out, but you can't do both at the same time. You cannot continue pursuing what once made you a success in the old way of influence and expect to be successful in the new.

The way you attract people, train them and organize them all must change. The old standard of what is success must be replaced.

In this spirit I have compiled a chart contrasting the old and the new ways of influence:

The Church Transfusion Process: An Overview

Throughout the second part of our new book, Church Transfusion, Phil Helfer and I elaborate on the things we find necessary to bring organic transfusion to a church. Below is simply a general overall process for you to think through. This is not a formal five-step plan. It is simply a bird’s-eye view of the process of transfusion. To bring transfusion to a church body, we suggest that you follow this simple progressive pattern.

1. See it. Change agents and innovators must see the potential of a transfused church. They must understand and envision an organic body functioning in complete connection with the Head. If we cannot re-imagine what can be we will just tolerate what is.

2. Want it. If there is going to be a contagion of health within the body, then those who would spread the healthy DNA must want it badly enough to endure the process necessary to bring complete change to a congregation. It must be birthed first as a passion in the leader’s own heart before it becomes transfusion in the leader’s church.

3. Pray for it. The passion for this change needs to be such that it often becomes the subject of your prayers. “Prayer,” as someone once said, “is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence.” If you want it badly enough, you will pray for it passionately. If you find you haven’t been praying for it, perhaps that means you don’t really want it badly enough yet.

4. Pay for it. There is a cost to change, and not to tell you this up front would be misleading. If a fully functioning body, with each part connected to the Head and reaching out into the world with the transformative gospel, is indeed worthwhile, you will pay the price necessary to see it happen. People who are comfortable with the way things have been will resist the changes. Doing church organically may mean less financial security for leadership. Leaders who have developed a reputation for their expertise may find that the new changes mean that their importance is lessened as they must become equippers of others rather than specialized leaders on which the church depends. These are but a few of the costs that some will have to face. Count the cost up front, which is what Jesus taught; then if it is worth it, pay for it.

5. Do it. Make it happen. It will come about in phases, not all at once. It will start small and slow, but if things are done right, it will increase in speed and breadth of transformation over time. You must first live as a connected member of Christ’s body before you can ask others to do the same. Personal transformation precedes community transformation. Live it out yourself first.

The Way to Live is to Die

In our new book, Church Transfusion, Phil Helfer and I start by claiming that the true expression of Christ's kingdom should stand out as very different from all other religions. To demonstrate the radically different nature of God's kingdom we list 6 ways that the upside-down kingdom stands in contrast from the world's view of what is right. Unfortunately this is often is at odds with the Church as well. In these blog posts I will list those six different paradigms of the upside-down Kingdom. This is the sixth and final one: The way to live is to die.

In God’s kingdom resurrection is meant to be the way to life. In church transfusion we must die to our old ways if we hope to exist in new resurrected ways. This truth is universal and applies to us as individuals and to us as a collective—the church. All change begins with a death. A church that is unwilling to risk death is simply unwilling to live by faith in Christ. Resurrection power is available only to the person or church that is willing to die.

Jesus went on to say, “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39b).

Why is death to self so important? Consider this: without death, you cannot have a resurrection. Without death, there would not be any gospel or salvation or even life itself. Perhaps it is time that we embrace a theology of death.

This is what a theology of death looks like:

Die daily to who we are and what we want.
Empowering others, not self, is our life.
Accept risk as normative.
Theology is not just knowledge but practice.
Hold tight to Christ and loosely to everything else.

Unless we are willing to die, we will not live. It is that simple. Death is the path to life. Conversely, holding on to life appears to be the path to death. We are to die to self because it is the only way we can live for Jesus. We can only have one master. Either we will live for ourselves or we will live for Jesus. This is why we must put ourselves to death every day.

Our cultural mind-set in the West places the individual first and foremost. We read verses that use the second person plural and apply them to ourselves as individuals when in fact they are addressed to a community as a whole rather than to us alone.

There are many cultures, however, that do not see the world that way. They immediately regard life as a community first and an individual second.

The words of Jesus having to do with death are most commonly applied to the individual disciple. And granted, the verse should be applied in this way. We have found, though, that the truth in His words is universal and applies to any organization made up of disciples, such as a church.

Death is no longer our enemy, for there is no sting in death anymore. When we place our faith in our own efforts to maintain the life of the church, we have already passed into a place of dying. We of all people should be ready to embrace death as if our life depended on it—because it does. Jesus said, “Whoever clings to his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake gains it.” We follow Jesus to the cross or we do not follow Him at all.

All church transfusion begins with the concept of death. The churches that are more ready to die are the healthier churches. In most churches and ministries of the West, leadership is focused on self- preservation and keeping things going. Decisions are based on how the outcome will help the church continue. Those who are in self-preservation mode are dead already; they just don’t know it yet. As our friend Lance Ford once said, “You need more than buy-in to change a church; you need die-in.”

The Way to Be First is to Be Last.

In our new book, Church Transfusion, Phil Helfer and I start by claiming that the true expression of Christ's kingdom should stand out as very different from all other religions. To demonstrate the radically different nature of God's kingdom we list 6 ways that the upside-down kingdom stands in contrast from the world's view of what is right. Unfortunately this is often is at odds with the Church as well. In these blog posts I will list those six different paradigms of the upside-down Kingdom. This is the fifth: The way to be first is to be last.

It is the American way to push and pull yourself to the top of the ladder. We have annual articles in our Christian magazines ranking our successes as the fastest growing churches or the largest churches. We even occasionally have lists of the fifty most influential people.

Jesus was never impressed with these things. He clearly says that the way to be first is to become the last. Most of the church growth occurring in America is merely transfer growth at the expense of other churches. The current mood of Christendom is that of competition, where each church is striving to grow with little to no regard for the church that is losing its members to the growing church.

Jesus did not come to gain permission and empowerment but to give it away. He said, “The Son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Those who would follow Christ must follow His example.

Empowerment is not just for leaders; it is also for congregations. Imagine what would happen if the Brethren church in your town were more concerned with the success of the Baptist church. What would happen to the spiritual climate of a city if the local Presbyterian church were praying for the success of the Pentecostal church and vice versa? I cannot help but believe that if the churches that make up the body of Christ, the one body of Christ, were to empower and lift up one another rather than attempt to ride each other’s failure into their own success, a whole town or city would be transformed. The gospel would not just be preached but demonstrated in power. This can happen when a congregation is willing to take up its cross and die. Perhaps your church should lead the way.

In church transfusion, the leadership needs not to pursue being above others but to lift others up. In fact, if a church were more concerned with the success of the church around the corner than its own success, we firmly believe that God would honor such a church with fruitfulness. Test us on this; we dare you.

The Way to Becoming Rich is to Give Everything Away

In our new book, Church Transfusion, Phil Helfer and I start by claiming that the true expression of Christ's kingdom should stand out as very different from all other religions. To demonstrate the radically different nature of God's kingdom we list 6 ways that the upside-down kingdom stands in contrast from the world's view of what is right. Unfortunately this is often is at odds with the Church as well. In these blog posts I will list those six different paradigms of the upside-down Kingdom. This is the fourth: The way to becoming rich is to give everything away.

The more you cling to, the less you will have. Greed is not the way to have plenty in God’s kingdom. The more generous one is, the more true riches one will have. One who has nothing to lose is a dangerous person.

In a world divided only by those who feel entitled to their wealth and those who feel entitled for their fair share of the other person's wealth, the church is meant to stand as a model of love and generosity. Unfortunately, we have not fulfilled that role very often, but instead have become greedy rather than generous. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” When a church starts to accumulate things and hold on to them as prizes worth defending or preserving, they will quickly find that their affection and provision is not found in Christ but in the maintenance and management of possessions and property.

So much greed, selfishness, and stinginess in the kingdom of God is excused under the banner of “good stewardship.” We believe that the tighter you hold on to Christ, the looser your grip on other things will be. There is an absolute and direct corollary between these two opposites. The harder you cling to things, the less you are holding on to Christ. If you find that as a church you have a difficult time giving away the use of facilities or equipment, perhaps that means you are not holding on to Christ with enough faith.

We know of a senior pastor of a church in our area who, after refurbishing the facilities with fresh paint and new carpet, stood before the congregation with a cup of coffee. To the shock and sighs of the congregation, he then intentionally poured its con- tents directly onto the new carpet, creating a dark puddle and a permanent stain. He said to the church that the carpet can go to hell but he didn’t want the kids in the neighborhood to have to. The people outside the walls are far more important than the carpet inside of them. They left the stain as a permanent reminder that the mission is not in the building, but outside in the streets. We must not let our grasp of material things keep us from the mission we are actually called to and then excuse it under the banner of being good stewards.

We believe with all our hearts that a church that is overtly generous with all the resources it has been blessed with will always have enough to do whatever God has called it to. We also believe that greater resources come to the churches that are generous. A generous church is one that Jesus will want to increase and multiply. A greedy church is one that He will not want more of.

We would all agree that Jesus was a faithful steward, right? Well, I think we should take a second look at his financial practices. He had a band of followers who were responsible men for the most part. He even had a professional bookkeeper-accountant who served as a tax collector on His team. When Christ chose someone to be responsible for the purse, He chose the only untrustworthy thief on the team. We do not believe that this was an accident or a blind spot on His part. The way Jesus views money and the way the church views money are two very different things.

Jesus never placed His faith in His financial balance; he placed it in His Father, and we should all do likewise. It is safe to assume that if God has blessed your congregation with some property, it is so that you can bless others, for that is His nature and way (Gen. 12: 1–3). It has been estimated that only 15 cents of every dollar received by a church is actually spent to benefit those outside its own membership.1 Of course, that 15 cents includes money spent on all mission work that is to reach people who will hopefully become members of the church, so the percentage that is intentionally spent on people never expected to darken the door of the church is even less.

We find that churches that allow multiple congregations to use their facilities are not as clean or ordered—but are far more beautiful. Those that do so without charge are the most beautiful, and both of us have aspired to that kind of generosity in ministry.

In church transfusion we have found over and over again that the church that holds loosely to all its assets and gives generously is the church that is healthy and is one that God would prefer to multiply.