Beware of Dog, seen in Uptown New Orleans (left)
Preaching Francis Xavier Seelos at the Seelos Center in Uptown New Orleans (right)
Both taken in September 2007

I’ve known Jason Sampler since 2004 when I first moved to New Orleans for seminary. We were both a part of Edgewater Baptist Church in Gentilly (and students at NOBTS). It took the exile after Hurricane Katrina for us to connect, but since then I’ve considered him a great friend. After we moved back to New Orleans in 2006, he started dating Terah Jolene Fox. One cold and windy February morning he called me up and announced his intention to ask Terah to marry him.

So I found the flowers he’d dropped off at the church, hid them, and then positioned myself behind a box to play paparazzi for the afternoon. Twenty minutes later Jason and Terah arrived at Edgewater. The way Terah tells the story, she had a headache and was not particularly thrilled to be standing there under the tent in the bitter cold New Orleans wind, but she was a trooper. Good thing, too. Because Jason is easily the most long-winded brother I’ve ever known, and even though I’m sure it was only ten minutes, it seemed like he might take an hour to tell her how much he loved her.

She said yes, and they were married the following August. The tenth, actually. Of 2007. They live in Kansas now, and were kind enough to put me up for a night my way back to Fort Worth from Indiana over Christmas this past year. And a few months ago they announced that Peanut Sampler is on his way- coming in October. So here’s to you, Jason and Terah. Congratulations on two years of marriage. Congratulations on the forthcoming Peanut. Thanks for being my friends. See you soon.

A while back I wrote a post about my former New Orleans Seminary roommate Britt and his wife Michaela. I took them on a photoshoot in Dublin, Texas back in September 2008. Britt’s sister Janna is getting married to Dan in October, and last weekend I drove over to the Big Easy to shoot their engagement photos. We started on campus at NOBTS, where they first met (didn’t we all?), before heading down to the French Quarter. Eventually Dan took us over to Lafreniere Park in Metairie, and we finished up with a few back on campus in Gentilly. Click more to see the rest of the shoot.

Dan and Janna in New Orleans, Louisiana | July 11, 2009

And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there, and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.  [Matthew 13:53-58, ESV]

One might say that Jesus is speaking of only of prophets.  This would exclude pastors, elders, or bishops if one defines prophet at a “foreteller.”  However, my Old Testament professor taught us that a prophet was simply an individual who acted as a “mouthpiece of God.”  Paul, in his letters to the early churches, spoke of the gift of prophecy as something separate from the gift of teaching (while not excluding the possibility that someone could have both gifts).

So I have some questions:

• Can a pastor plant a church in his own hometown?
• Should someone plant a church in his hometown?
• How far from “home” is far enough?
• What are the obstacles not obvious from the passage quoted above?
• What are the benefits of planting in your hometown?
• What do you think Jesus meant by his statement in Matthew 13:57?
• How broad is the meaning of “prophet” in this context?

Assume for the sake of argument that the call from God is to plant a church, not a call to a particular location.

The second point iMonk made was especially outstanding:

Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people the evangelical Christian faith in an orthodox form that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. In what must be the most ironic of all possible factors, an evangelical culture that has spent billions of youth ministers, Christian music, Christian publishing and Christian media has produced an entire burgeoning culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures that they will endure.

Reality shows this to be true. I’ve watched as countless youth have fallen away from their faith (if it was ever faith in Christ to begin with) when given the simple freedom of college… or any alternative. When they finally gained the choice to attend church, more often they chose against it. Perhaps the problem is that they view it as attending, rather than being, living, and serving the church. I have no doubt that’s part of the issue. iMonk is completely right- these kids don’t have the foundation in Christ. Some youth ministers are more stuck on finding the new gimmick to bring youth into the group than actually solidifying the faith of those who are already there. They’re so busy trying to be cute that they forget the reason they were hired. (Or maybe that’s why the youth ministers were hired: to babysit and entertain rather than lay the foundation of the Gospel that might endure and spread throughout the lives of the youth.)

When people are more enthralled by Joel Osteen’s “Jesus wants you to be rich” philosophy than they are the words of the Jesus himself, we are surely doomed. When we’re spending more time trying to rig ropes in a gym so we can preach while hanging from the ceiling in an effort to make a five second illustration, rather than focusing wholly on the message of Christ, we are doing the church and God a disservice. What it comes down to is this: the Gospel we preach produces the churches we get. And that statement works from the individual family unit to the youth group to the senior adult Sunday School class to the entire church. It’s reflected in the local associations. It’s obvious in the state and national conventions. It’s clear in the whole of evangelicalism.

This isn’t a condemnation of pastors, churches, or evangelicalism. It’s a condemnation of our nature. It’s a condemnation of our lack of focus on Christ. It’s a condemnation of our silliness and our cuteness. OURS. Mine. Yours. Ours. I’m not sure if I care whether evangelicalism lasts ten or twenty more years. God worked pretty well in the world before they existed, and will do just fine without us. There’s plenty of evidence that shows the church becomes much more unified and stronger when it’s persecuted. There’s evidence that smaller churches are more prone to plant churches than megachurches are. There’s a growing voice that says the days of Sunday-go-to-meeting church are soon coming to an end, and that the organic homegrown church is the future. Could be. But the only way any of it lasts is if the Gospel becomes the foundation of our lives and is at the forefront of our tongues. At least, that’s what I think.

*I wanted to find a source for this statistic, and couldn’t find it. Thus it’s simply something I heard once, and likewise not particularly famous at that. Still, I’m not sure it’s that far off.

I took a few photos inside San Miguel Mission, then grabbed lunch at Upper Crust Pizza next door. There I spent a little while listening to New Mexico politicians talk shop (and trash) with (and about) their colleagues at the state capitol a block away. After lunch I walked over to the Palace of the Governors (above right) and the central marketplace for downtown Santa Fe. Unfortunately, the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi was undergoing plastic surgery (literally covered in plastic), so I didn’t get a good photo of the building- click the link, it’ll show you what it was supposed to look like. I grabbed a few Christmas ornaments from The Shop: A Christmas Store, then headed back to Glorieta to chill for the rest of the day. The next day I drove back to Fort Worth.

I responded with two related thoughts:

1. The gospel we preach produces the churches we get. (Scot McKnight)
2. The system in place produces the results we get. (someone else, but I got it from Jack Allen)

If the gospel we preach produces the churches we get, and the churches we get produce the burnout our pastors and staff experience, then something is broken.  My experience is that church “staff” are guilty of either doing too much or doing too little, with little accountability in either circumstance.  In both cases the system is still the same- a church “staff” with church “members.”  There is a power structure in place that seems to create an us/them mentality.

Biblically, we do see an authority structure in the church.  Here’s a diagram from one of my church planting classes (click for a larger image).  The structure exists to help the leadership focus.  Christ set before us a vision and direction (“Love God, love others, and go make disciples.”)  Leadership exists to guide the church to fulfill that vision.  As the diagram shows, the direction and ministry filter through different levels of church participation to the community.

The values in place help us keep focus on fulfilling the vision.  Often we don’t have a good set of measurable values in place to keep all levels inside those pyramids accountable.  Without values the levels of leadership can become unbalanced- the overseer can overstep his responsibilities, whether on purpose or not, and become burned out.  The church members can choose not to participate in ministry, causing imbalance.  It’s of the utmost importance to have a solid measureable set of values to keep everyone focused on fulfilling the vision set before them by Christ.

So what are some values?  It’s been beat into me over the last four years- the core values that led me to Hope Church in Fort Worth.  The core values taught to me by the aforementioned Jack Allen.  The Heart Attitudes. I encourage you to explore those values and see if they’ll help you.

One thing I know for sure is that the system in place often causes the results we get.  The system and structure of a church probably impacts its leadership burnout.  Whether anything else I’ve written in this post helps stop church burnout, I can’t say.  That’s for you to figure out.  But it can’t hurt to examine your system and consider implementing some changes- for your sake and for the sake of the Church.

I barely remember my first day of classes back in August 2004.  I know I had a roommate who flew in from Korea just days before, speaking virtually no English.  I went to chapel for the first time that day, and it would be one of less then five times I’d go throughout my seminary career.  I mentioned the now cliche’ statistic that 89% (it’s up to 91%) of Southern Baptist Churches are plateaued or declining.  Four years later and I’ll miss hearing Dr. Kelley make use of his ancient Hebrew word: “Wow!”

I spoke about leaving NOBTS after just one semester, but by October I knew I was where I needed to be.  The Spring semester was better, and I had the opportunity to hear NT Wright and John Dominic Crosson speak about the resurrection of Jesus.  It was probably one of the greatest lectures I’ve ever heard.  I’ve had a good seminary experience, despite a lot of the complaints I’ve made about how much better things could have been.  There’s always room for improvement, but I can walk away from here satisfied that even if I didn’t learn everything I thought I would in class, the last four years’ experience taught me more than I ever imagined.

I lived in New Orleans when the worst natural disaster in United States history occurred.  The events of that period still feel like they were yesterday.  My mentor and his wife were in the hospital downtown watching their first son being born just two days prior to the landfall of Hurricane Katrina.  The fear and confusion of that period is something I can’t forget.  I think we all learned so much during that time.  For all the talk of being “the church scattered,” I truly began to grasp the gravity of what that means.  The last line of my scattered post was, “Pray for the city. It’s grown on me, I’d like it to still be there when I go back.”

It wasn’t, and sometimes I can’t help but feel like the last couple years have shaved off a few from the end of my life.  They say seminary is one of the dryest times in your spiritual life.  I agree.  Coming back after Katrina was just that much harder.  I have so many friends who had such more complicated situations moving back, but they did.  Nothing I experienced was as difficult as those who struggled to bring their families back into a post-Katrina New Orleans, search for a suitable home, and pursue God’s mission here.  I’ve got a lot of heroes among those I’ve known here.  You can read the post I wrote on the second anniversary of Katrina, and what I had to say last June, having been back in New Orleans for a year after Katrina.

But there’s more to my New Orleans experience than seminary and the flood.  One of the most significant aspects to my time here has been as a member of Edgewater Baptist Church.  It’s not a perfect church, but it’s the best church family I’ve ever been a part of.  My first semester here I became a member, leaving behind what was a difficult and frustrating time in Mobile.  Through Edgewater I joined a small group that became the support I needed to make it through the first year in New Orleans and in seminary.  Those brothers (and sisters) of mine were such a huge reason I came back after Katrina, and I owe them such a huge debt of gratitude.  After four years, there’s no question that the New Orleans I’ll miss most has Edgewater at its center.

Edgewater has always had a large group of seminary students, which makes its membership pretty transient.  One of the traditions at Edgewater that impressed me was that when a member left, the church body gathered around that person, laid hands upon that person, and prayed as a church body for the person and ministry.  I don’t know if a lot of other churches do that (my past experiences say they don’t), but I know it made an impact on me then, and still does today.  This past Wednesday night was my night.  It was just as humbling and just as much an honor as I thought it would be.  I’m going to miss them greatly.

It seems easy to experience something new every day in New Orleans.  Friday night I drove through City Park on my last errand before the move.  Just south of City Park in the Esplanade area of Mid-City, as the legend goes, someone let out their parrots, which took up residence in the trees along the avenue.  My last new thing as a resident of New Orleans was seeing a flock of parrots on the side of the road in the middle of City Park.

So long, New Orleans.  Thanks for that last new experience.  The next chapter begins.  Fort Worth, here I come.

So here’s what I’m thinking.  Did we experience the seminary of the future?  What if classes were held differently?  Online, maybe.  I don’t know- I like having a professor available in person, and I like seeing my other classmates.  But what I hate is when professors just babble on and on all semester long following their PowerPoint presentations without elaborating or offering anything else.  I can read, and I’ve already got the PowerPoint printed out or open on my laptop.  What can we do about that?

And the other issue is mentorship within the seminary.  There are too many students and too few professors here, part of which is due to the Great Flood.  But even before that, some of us sat in our dorms and discussed the role of professors in the lives of the students beyond academia.  What we know is that some professors don’t care about us that much.  But we also know plenty do.   I guess what it comes down to is that a lot of us would like some kind of community with our professors.  It’s not hard among students- we live together.  And the school tries with Spiritual Formation groups (I hit the jackpot with mine this last year, but others don’t have as interesting or dynamic professors.  Plus I knew going in that I held things in common with this prof).  I guess now I’m just rambling thoughts… so I’ll leave the rest to you.

What do you think about seminary?  What can you suggest toward our dilemmas and desires?  Any thoughts?