therevheadsjourney

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Late last year, I was visiting a friend near the edge of town in a new suburb that had recently been developed onto what had been rolling farmlands. Somehow I took the wrong turn and found myself driving along streets that were currently being built. It was a surreal experience! Fully paved roads with sidewalk, nature strips, streetlights, signage and drive-way entrances – but with no houses, just wooden pegs and in some cases fences marking out street after street of empty green land. It just went on and on for block after block with no shops or churches or old cottages or workplaces to indicate any pre-existing history or narrative. As I got closer to the edge of the estate it changed to row after row of half- completed dwellings. All designed on the same pattern, all pristine and all unoccupied. I felt as if I’d driven onto the set of the Truman Show by accident!

It was Winston Churchill in 1943 who said: “First we shape our buildings, then they shape us” and Stewart Brand who then in 1994 said: “First we shape our buildings, then they shape us, then we shape them again-ad infinitum”.

There is a fine balance between architecture and community. The buildings we design directly influence the way in which we live our lives, they direct and manipulate the way in which we engage with our social values and spiritual needs, even our appreciation of the arts.

This means the balance between society and architecture is in a constant state of flux, buildings and people evolve repeatedly, new buildings are built to facilitate our social development but more often than not, it is the existing buildings which are re-shaped, as Stewart Brand’s quote in 1994 is a reinterpretation of Winston Churchill’s quote in 1943 “First we shape our buildings, then they shape us” whilst addressing the nation with regard to the re-building of the ‘Houses of Parliament’ after its destruction during the Second World War.

There were 51 years between each quote and in that period of time, society was changing rapidly, freedom from world war, politics, technology and science had accelerated development in travel, communication and finance. These changes had altered the way in which society viewed itself. Cultural phrases such as, “the global village” appeared and architecture has changed too.

As our cities have suburbanised, the idea of the close-knit ‘village’, with the home; the village green; the community marketplace; the commons; and the church as the shared permanent spaces, which support neighbourhood community, has disappeared. The home has become a thoroughly private retreat, fenced of from those next-door (who may not even be known). It gets a makeover regularly to reflect the changing status of the residents. The workplace may be many kilometres away and the marketplace is a private space designed lure consumers. In shopping centre design, the Gruen transfer is the moment when a consumer enters a shopping mall and, surrounded by an intentionally confusing layout, loses track of their original intentions in response to "scripted disorientation" cues in the environment.

Not only that, but the modern suburb is often a product more than a public village with a back-story – a private developer creates an ‘instant’ estate, often complete with faux lake or faux farm-fencing. There are often fewer public spaces and amenities. The new residents are strangers who share no common mythology or history. There are no traditions and memories to long past heroes. The relational and spiritual identity of these faux villages is disembodied and distant, as is the workplace and the place of leisure. The plasma screen, rather than the window screen provides the interface with the world! With the pressures of debt high and the social support low – within a generation, these new and attractive estates can become places of social dysfunction and juvenile discontent - Where do we belong, and why does it even matter?

American sociologist, Richard Sennett (The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life. New York: W.W. Norton and Company: 1990) argues that western culture suffers from a division between the private and public realms. ‘It is a divide between subjective experience and worldly experience, between self and city.’ This separation, according to Sennett, is based on our unacknowledged fear of self-exposure – interpreted as a threat rather than life-enhancing. Sennett suggests that city design has increasingly concentrated on creating safe divisions between different groups of people. (Consider the gated-communities that physically exclude strangers). Apart from consumer spaces, public space becomes sterile, as the main purpose is to facilitate movement across it rather than encounters within it. According to Sennett, for the city to recover, we need to reaffirm the inherent value of the outer social life.

In his influential book “The Great Good Place”, Ray Oldenburg (1989, 1991) argues that “third places” are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing feelings of a sense of place. Oldenburg calls one's "first place" the home and those that one lives with. The "second place" is the workplace — where people may actually spend most of their time. Third places, then, are "anchors" of community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction.

All healthy societies already have informal meeting places; what is new in modern times is the intentionality of seeking out distinct places to the home or the market place as vital to current societal needs. Oldenburg suggests the hallmarks of a true "third place" include free or inexpensive; food and drink, highly accessibility, proximate for many (walking distance); involves regulars – those who habitually congregate there; welcoming and comfortable; both new friends and old should be found there.

“Associational groupings” rather than “geographic proximity” also defines an individual’s ‘tribe’ or neighbourhood. The sporting team; the mates who hang at the pub; the motorcycle club; the Kinder; the craft-group; the surfing group; the golf group; book-club; ethnic club; street gang; music band; work-buddies or even adult education class are the new tribes. An estate of 400 homes and 1600 residents may in fact be a criss-cross of 30-40 associations – none of who’s members know each other, though they live next door!

The spaces they choose to inhabit will be important in defining them (and vice-versa). Territory is important! Why do they meet in that Pub? How come those kids loiter at that mall?

As we take seriously our place as ‘Salt in the City,’ so we will need to consider how our public space brings peace to the city we find ourselves in. “... And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7 NLT). What does it mean to understand our many ‘tribes’ and their needs? How will we partner with our government instrumentalities and other civic agencies in recovering some of that sense of belonging that gets lost in the sterility of the suburbs?

There is a lot more to understand than this very brief snapshot – but as we as missionaries connect with our ‘tribes’ and understand them, so our buildings will reflect the message of hope we seek to bring. Our spaces and ourselves are gifts to them.

Some questions:

· I wonder what thought we give to the buildings and spaces we inhabit as congregations and as members of churches? Our theology and our vision should literally shape the bricks and mortar we construct. What does our theology say about buildings and social space?

· Think about our personal attitude to property: How are we prepared to ‘give’ our homes to God, as spaces of blessing to our vicinity? It takes one family home with an open table and front yard to welcome kids – to kindle a sense of belonging. This practise confronts the assumptions behind our modern world that ‘privatizes’ the home and our belongings. For example, an informal, unofficial playgroup in a home for the parents in neighbourhood has the potential to build bridges in a way that a formal playgroup in a custom built church building may never do – it will also transform the lives of the family who are stewards that home! The street becomes the ‘parish.’ Book-clubs, shared gardening; neighbourhood watch; care of those in difficult times; even an instant youth group can emerge. Imagine the fusion of community development and outreach!

· It can be good to ask ourselves what we need space for and for how long? Is retaining our own property the best way? Could we inhabit civic space instead, alongside other groups?

· What would it look like to build relationships and alliances with key individuals at the City Council and other community organization such as the local school, the kinder, the footy ground, the youth centre, the new settlers’ club - what are their needs? Is there a point of synergy or overlap?

· What does it mean to create a sense of shared story and identity in spaces where there is no history or where the story has dis-integrated or is life destroying rather than life giving? How do we bring ‘shalom’ to the city rather than becoming yet another private social silo?

· What would a community planner (as well as an architect) say about our own space? How can we ensure that our space does not over time exert gravitational pull on our people drawing them back to an older ‘temple’ mindset? To what extent are we devotees attending our sanctuary or fortress rather than missionaries serving from their own homes and from third places – with the church centre as a civic hub, to support rather than replace them?

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Missionaries without the Pith Helmets!

A number of years ago some good friends of ours sensed a call to go overseas as missionaries serving in Africa. As they prepared and then said their tearful farewells at the airport, I sort of imagined that they would be on some sort of permanent high intensity Billy Graham Crusade. Rallies in large halls, lights and powerful sound systems, dapper suits and ties, choirs and bands, powerful appeals, tearful responses followed by mass conversions followed in quick succession by a virtual army of builders constructing steepled chapels with rows of fixed pews, pulpits and carpeted stages across the land!

I was quite startled when I realized that much of their next five years would be spent living in an adobe hut in a far dry desert, learning a difficult dialect and making friends with and caring for a people who would never find their way into my imagined Crusade!

The Message paraphrase describes the coming of Jesus into the world like this: “... The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” (John 1:14).

We Western Christians are now missionaries in a world every bit as foreign to the vanished era of Christendom. We are no longer running churches amongst people who ‘sort of’ get it but have strayed a little and need to be cajoled back to the faith of their parents.

No, we are missionaries with a message no-one remembers anymore, who need to ‘move into the neighbourhood’ just like our cross cultural missionary cousins do all the time. For them, building a ‘church-building’ or starting a public ‘worship-service’ may well be the very last thing they do – not the first! The missionaries in my story spent most of their time sharing hospitality around meals, listening, chatting, and practically helping out at the point of actual need and opportunity. They couldn’t start with their pre-packaged witnessing program – and never did! Literacy, for them became the core activity. Teaching reading and writing – and sharing of their lives and faith in the midst of that!

As a trickle of people became interested in the way of Jesus – they would meet to talk about the stories of Jesus and show these new followers how to pray – and that little community of faith began to form its own practises, songs, spiritual habits – very, very different to how ‘real’ Christians would do it back ‘home’.

What does that mean for us as 21^st Century suburban planters and church-goers?

It means we need to put on a totally different set of glasses as we look at our neighbourhood and plan our church activities!

Recognise that there are many, many people groups around us, not just one type!

A one-size congregation and ministry-approach, will not serve all, we need to diversify.

Our parent churches do not provide helpful templates for many of these social groups.

We need to move into their neighbourhoods and patiently form real friendship and take real interest in their social life. This will not be where our church friends hang out!

We can’t really enter several neighbourhoods all at the same time any more than a cross-cultural missionary can live in 2 or 3 villages at the same time. Choose wisely.

Our ‘neighbourhoods’ are mostly non-geographic. Interest and age groups are more often the neighbourhoods in which people live – each with their own ‘lingo,’ interests, rhythms and stories. Sporting clubs, schools, hobby groups, cultural centres, art groups, retirement villages, shopping strips, music groups, motor vehicle groups and so on are the new neighbourhoods around town. Can you identify those of your ‘tribe’?

These activities are not an end in themselves, but a catalyst around which a wide web of relationships form. For example, in a girls’ Basketball team, the parents, siblings, boyfriends, former players, coaches and interested schoolmates form the web. It’s not just the 9-10 players, but maybe 40-60 people who connect around the activity. They do so, not just at the courts, but at practise, after-game dessert in cafes, BBQs at family homes and so on. Entry to such a neighbourhood is contingent on being in some way a part of the team or having a significant other who is.

Usually we will be called to and need to be released to serve in the group that God has given us an affinity for. It takes real time and may require being released from some other church-based activities to make time. You may need to give up running the church Mens’ Breakfasts to really find the time to engage that Model Aeroplane ‘neighbourhood.’ Not just the formal meetings they run, but the broader, more relaxed and personal times they and their families connect.

Evangelism here is rarely done on a soapbox or pulpit. As mates share about the challenges and joys of life and what’s got them through – they compare notes about what’s important. Not as salespeople, but mildly with a curiosity to learn in turn how the other gets by. These are the conversations that can change both our and others lives!

‘Church’ in these settings may never become a Sunday gathering with pews, pulpits and preaching! A chat around a kitchen table where bread is broken, prayers murmured shyly and the Story is read and talked before the group heads off on their bike ride – this may be the sign of the Kingdom in that neighbourhood.

This is something we can all do! Grab a pith-helmet and a cuppa and sit down with your family and small group and plan out how you will start!

Friday, June 03, 2011

Public Space Faith

There's an interesting BriefCACE article by article by Sam Tuttle, a city planner about public space. (Thanks Al for pointing me to it).

As we think about moving into neighbourhoods as the people of God,we often think deeply about what shape a congregation's personal evangelistic or discipleship processes might look like, but less about redemption of the social spaces we find ourselves in. What does it mean for a church-plant team, or a missionary team to redeem culture? What is our relationship to the 'city' or the 'village' or the 'land'.

Here's a part of Sam's article:

"...Why should a Christian, or anyone, be concerned about where the next neighbourhood, skyscraper or grocery store is built? To understand this, we must first see why cities matter. In their most basic form, cities reflect God’s design for community.

Despite all of its negative connotations, the city is God’s idea. When God called Adam and Eve to ‘be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it’ he is calling them to use all of their resources, including those provided in nature, and those resources given to intelligent, creative and relational people created in God’s image. This is often called the Cultural Mandate. Cities are the culmination of our relational and creative aspirations. They are the gathering together or our collective desire to be fruitful and subdue the earth.

Because of this tremendous potential, there is tremendous power to do evil. Like all of creation, our cities are corrupted and groan to be redeemed. But the city has a place in God’s redemptive plan. The picture of the fulfilment of God’s Kingdom on earth is not of a return to the Garden of Eden, but of the New Jerusalem. God’s final design for his people is as citizens in the City of God...."

Here's the WHOLE ARTICLE for you to read.

What do you think?

Sunday, May 08, 2011

Florida Fun

The last three days in Orlando were spent hanging out with Caity, who's spending the year in the States.

We did the toursity / theme-parky thing:

NASA, Cape Kennedy was cool and informative. Absolutely amazing to think of the ingenuity of that team which landed Apollo 11 on the moon with computers using the crunching power of a modern calculator ... Assuming of course, that they DID land on the moon!

We ALMOST saw the very last shuttle launch. Even the Prez was heading down, but they postponed it at the last moment.

No, these are not alien glasses - but 3D glassses for the excellent iMax docos about space.

Universal Studios world - Here's Caity shamefully pagan in her excitement about Harry Potter world.

One of these is my daughter:

Gee she's got a young looking dad!

We spent some time at Disney World's - EPCOT park, which is sort of a round-the-world theme park, (different to the fantasy park), it's an interesting and pleasant day's meandering. You walk around a mini version of Germany, Japan, Norway and so on. It's fun, but it's a very happy sweet world where national cliches rule supreme - and you are encouraged to buy mementos at each stage!

It's amusing that there's a Morocco-world even though the middle eastern Disney stories like Aladdin are set in Iraq and similarly less idyllic places - Morocco though is safe and sanitised!

Yummy tir-fry for tea at China world:

Yes, but can you name all the Disney princesses?

Nothing like a Lego dragon to wrap up a good time!

Friday, May 06, 2011

REFLECTIONS ON EXPONENTIAL 2011

I’ve just got back from Orlando in Florida where I attended the Exponential Conference – On the Verge. This was a huge Church Planting conference with four thousand people attending from around the (mostly) Western world.

In the next few weeks I’ll add further reflections to my blog as well as the Mission and Ministry website.

The Conference started with a member of the Exponential Band setting the stage with a stirring version of Bob Dylan’s anthem, The Times They Are A-changing. Verses two and three are particularly prophetic for our times:

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come preachers and pastors [sic]
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

In truth the Western Church finds itself on ‘the Verge’. Either we are on the verge of complete extinction – or we are on the verge of a new movement of God. Taken as whole, the decline of Christianity and the church in western contexts continues a-pace. More of the same is not likely to achieve significantly different Kingdom results; so something different is needed.

My first reflections of the Conference:

1. I believe that we are beginning to get it! For the first time at a large gathering, including senior ministers from U.S. large churches – the call I hear is that it’s no longer about building bigger, centralised, gatherings-focussed churches, but sending our people out as ‘missionaries’ into neighbourhoods that will never come to us. I recall Francis Chan the Senior Pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church telling about visiting poor and persecuted Christians in India and describing to them about how we do church in the middle-class West, and hearing them laugh-out loud in disbelieve at how ludicrous it sounds! Says Chan: "You go to a building, someone gives you a bulletin, you sit in a chair, you sing a few songs, a guy delivers maybe a polished message, maybe not, someone sings a solo, you go home ... When you read the New Testament, you see the Holy Spirit was supposed to change everything so that this gathering of people who call themselves Christians had this supernatural element about them..." Francis has moved on from pastoring this very large church to focus on building and releasing sacrificial followers of Jesus to live amongst their unchurched neighbours.

2. I believe that God is raising up leaders for the future: I was struck by how many passionate, articulate and competent leaders there were in their 20s and 30s leading and sharing to their generation from the front. My generation needs to heed the words: “Come preachers and pastors, please heed the call, don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall.” New movements will often find greater resistance amongst the gatekeepers of what was once the movement, than from the world outside. Barton Stone as only 29 as a leader of the Cane Ridge Revival! Thomas Campbell wrote the Declaration and Address when he was in his mid-40s and Alexander was just 21. John Wesley was 32 when he began his work. Martin Luther was 34 when he nailed the Ninety-Five Theses to the Wittenberg Cathedral. Samuel Wilberforce was 21 when elected to parliament; and Mother Teresa was 19 when she arrived in India. Doug Nicholls was 29 when he started at the Gore St. Mission Centre.

3. It’s not about ‘Church’ planting: Our future will not be about duplicating the thing we’ve done for the last few hundred years. Reggie McNeal and many others made the point that he gets very nervous if someone says to him: “I’m called to plant a church.” The reason is that because alongside our other social silos like politics, commerce, sport, home, justice, education and so on, we Christians have added a new silo called ‘church.’ This is where people come to ‘get’ personal religion; ‘do’ worship and ‘find’ religious succour. We need to re-imagine our role as being salt and light across all the other silos rather than being a new and separate silo. Says Reggie: “We have too many ‘church’ planters - we don’t need more church planters, but sowers of Kingdom across our cities. We plant Jesus and His Kingdom (Neil Cole) into the arenas of politics, commerce, sport, home, education, and every other field of human endeavour to be transformed. The people alongside us are not ‘church members’ attending to find fellowship - but a ‘band’ of subversive missionaries changing people and culture – who happen to discover koinonia as they serve. I wonder what would it look like to train and send out Jesus ‘agitators’ from our congregations?

4. Our shape needs consideration: Many speakers, such as Mike Breen from the 3DM network talked about ‘Missional Communities’. Mike was for many years the vicar of St Thomas Sheffield in the UK, where he pioneered what he calls missional communities, that is, mid-sized groups of 20-50 people on mission together. Mike talked about early British church history. In the early 5^th century, Romans returned as missionaries. The first archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine, built the great Canterbury cathedral. Roman philosophy was attractional: “If you build it they will come.” But the Celtic missionaries, who came a little later, took a different view: “If you go you will reach them.” They got into their coracles and sailed out across North Sea, to northern Europe and beyond. Later as Roman and Celtic philosophies collided – they evolved into the ‘Minister’ movement – which transformed Europe. They melded together the ideas of large monastic or support centres for healing and formation, BUT these centres then send out missionary teams. Like strawberry runners they contextually infiltrated the villages and towns for Christ. Attractional and incarnational melded together. Several speakers spoke about the vitality of small-groups, house-churches and intentional missional communities of 30-50. These are mobile, highly relational and highly adaptive teams that can infiltrate the many new neighbourhoods and fluid networks that mark our 21^st century world. My sense is that our larger churches are going to need to learn to become ‘minsters’ that send and sustain a score of smaller and varied ‘parishes’. How will we learn and adapt in our context?

5. Our measurements will need to change: Our language and our measures become a map that sets us in a particular direction. Language like: “Bringing our friends to church,” or “Going to church,” or “Church attendance was down last week,” or “ We go to Pastor so-and-so’s church,” or “We do outreach at our church,” or “Come to our church’s community programmes,” paints a mental image of church as a location and agency in which things happen. Here we measure attendance numbers, baptisms, age-spread, giving, building-capacity, technological excellence, mid-week groups, pastoral care satisfaction and sizes of church services. What if our language and measures changed? Rob Wegner who serves as a teaching pastor at Granger Community Church is working alongside Alan Hirsch in an innovative coaching program called Future Travellers is helping mega-churches become missional movements. “... We are not a church against the community. We are not a church that simply exists within the community. We are a church FOR the community. God told his people while in exile in Babylon to not simply live in the city, but to love it and work for its welfare. The actual word used is shalom. Shalom doesn’t just mean peace or a cease-fire of hostility. Shalom means universal flourishing. God’s people are to work for the economic, social, cultural, and spiritual flourishing of their city ...”. What if we began to measure: (1) the authentic friendships the church members were forming outside church programs, (2) the felt needs of the neighbourhood as expressed by them, (3) the identity of the disempowered and marginalised groups in our town, (4) the local agencies our people network with, (5) the actual issues people tell us they would like solidarity and help with, (6) the number of non-church people who share in forming our responses, (7) the daily prayers for our community, (8) the birth of faith communities indigenous to our neighbourhoods, and so on. You get the idea – our agenda might look quite different – but, it would be exactly the same as any good cross-cultural missionary’s usually is!

Over the next few weeks I will be publishing further articles that talk about different aspects of church planting. The next one will be: Why on earth plant more faith communities in Australia - of all places? The one after that: How to begin! How you too can be a 'missionary' in your own neighborhood.

These can also be found on the Mission and Ministry 'Articles' page.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Roll up! Roll Up!

3000 - 4000 attendees shuttling too and fro from workshop to workshop to plenary system to loo break and then back through the common areas to pick up lunch bags, cans of soda, coffee, water, and a space to sit and chat makes for a permanent peak hour!

Around all the corridors and common areas are sponsors and resource-ministry stalls staffed by friendly and helpful people, often with generous free hand-outs or interesting resources to sell.

To walk around watching the conversations at the stalls tells you a lot about the different dreams and stories the attendees and resource sellers hold. Here's a snapshot:

For these guys, below, marketing media are key. How important is 'hard media' to planting? Interesting how many were using the 'Win a free iPad' worm on their hooks!

For this mob, compliance, legal, fundraising and insurance issues and consultancy were important. There DVD packs looked well produced. Is doing church inevitably about public events conducted by an incorporation of some sort?

On the other hand, Great Commission Ministries (GCM) mobilizes missionaries to work in their local churches for the purpose of evangelism, discipleship and church planting. They train, employ and serve missionaries as they raise a team of supporters for their ministry.

For these guys its the software you'll need for your new church:

This group was cool - a mobile church - all the bits you need, sound systems, seating, lighting and even a portable coffee shop to accommodate the planter who hasn't yet got a fixed base!

This group can assess your planter's potential:

These people help you to build a strong team. Teaming, rather than lone rangering is the key to planting sustainably:

World Vision was there, maybe reminding planters that the church is a means not an end:

And this lot can help us make disciples, mot just attendees:

There were seminaries with ubiquitous seedling images:

And South American focussed mission's trips:

Hugh Halter and Matt Smay run Missio - how to build and release missional communities, bigger than a small group, smaller than a congregation to serve a need or people group or neighourhood. I did find their seminar very helpful indeed, check it out:

This organization can put together a kit of everything that a planter might need, including a guest services counter!

Everything you need to start a "Cinema Church:"

Or to reach the 'unreached':

Or the poor:

Maybe you need data or better demographics?

Or perhaps you're just tired out by it all?

Can't remember what these little carrots were selling, but they drew a crowd!

We know these cool dudes! They are bringing together a whole new crew of missional practitioners, good stuff!

3DM led by Mike Breen is a brilliant resource in birthing mssional communities: '...Long before “missional” became a church buzzword lighting up the blogosphere (and on the lips of such evangelicals as Andy Stanley, Francis Chan, Alan Hirsch, etc), a church in England started doing things differently. They operated in a European culture that wasn’t friendly to Christians and they knew that if they were going to reach new people for Jesus, it wasn’t going to be in a church service. So they reinvented what church looked like. And as it turns out…it looks a lot like what we see in the early church...'

Stadia bring planters, training, networking and sponsorship together into one network:

Church content management systems? Websites?

The Catalyst Conference is the largest gathering of young leaders in the country...

The North east of the USA specifically?

New Thing "...is to be a catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches relentlessly dedicated to helping people find their way back to God..."

Remember Willow Creek?

Maybe ts books you need? There's some good Aussie titles right there!

You need to empower those you serve:

Biblical solutions - studies seminars and other resources for life issues people face:

According to Ed Stetzer and Thom S. Rainer, the authors of Transformational Church, "Too often we've highlighted the negative realities of the declining American church but missed the opportunity to magnify the God of hope and transformation."
Based on the most comprehensive study of its kind, including a survey of more than 7,000 churches and hundreds of on-site interviews with pastors, Transformational Church takes us to the thriving congregations where truly changing lives is the norm.