pastor – Jeff Gissing

June 19, 2014June 18, 2014

Five leadership books every pastor should read

Pastoral/ministry leadership is one of the most complex types of leadership there is. It combines personal holiness (hopefully), with theological wisdom, and the ability to guide a team toward defined goals. During my time in leadership with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA and now as a senior leader at First Presbyterian Church, I have repeatedly come back to these books to help me to develop as a leader:

Leading Change – If change isn’t happening then you’re not leading; you’re managing. John Kotter’s book provides an excellent overview of the change process and how to move through it. [buy here]
The Advantage – I’ve read this book twice as well as outlined it in the front leaf. Patrick Lencioni shows how organizational (congregational) health trumps everything else. He also provides a road map toward better health. [buy here]
Good to Great – Jim Collins shows why some companies are able to make while others continually struggle and eventully fail. This is helpful in terms of identifying limiting patterns in the life of a congregation and/or its leadership. [buy here]
The Power of Full Engagement – As a leader as much can be gained by managing your energy as by managing your time. Tony Schwartz provides helpful strategies for managing your energy level so that you always have sufficient focus to deal with the strategic decisions and projects that are central to your work. [buy here]
The Generals – This masterpiece traces American military leadership from World War II to the present. By profiling key military leaders Thomas Ricks teaches timeless lessons about what good leadership looks like. [buy here]

Resource: If you prefer to read these titles electronically and don’t have a Kindle, make sure you download the Kindle App for your iPhone, iPad, or Android devices for free. You can download it here.

June 10, 2014June 5, 2014

Five ways ministry leaders squander their day

I’ve been in ministry for more than ten years. Nine of those were in parachurch ministry–some as a campus minister, and some as an area director. Since April I’ve worked on the senior staff of a large presbyterian church. Each of these calls has its own challenges. The ones that are freshest to me are those that are new. As a result these observations are based on two months of working at a large, multi-staff church.

One of the biggest differences between church and parachurch ministry is the fact that every day I get to go to work in a church building alongside fifty other people. We can run into each other in the halls, drop by offices, have meetings in conferences rooms, you name it. Most of my time working for InterVarsity, communication with colleagues in ministry involved getting on the phone. The physical proximity of colleagues makes for efficient communication, which I love.

The downside is that in a large church there is always something either going on or about to go on. As a result every day there are lots of conversations to be had about church-related stuff. Add to this the challenge of making sure that all of the events, initiatives, and meetings on the church calendar are effectively communicated across the congregation and you understand why each day can be sort of hectic.

As my workload has increased, I’ve found myself reminded of fundamental errors that often derail a ministry leaders’ day.

Start the day without a plan. If you show up at work without at least a list of three “must do” tasks as well as a list of your time commitments for the day, you may as well go home.
Ignore or obsess over email. With people communicating to one another internally and congregation members and leaders communicating by email, it’s entirely possible to spend the whole day doing nothing other than reacting. Don’t do this.
Leave the door open all day. Pick a part of the day for open door visits and for walking around checking in on people and how their days are going. It’s best to leave the first 90 minutes of the day for door-closed focused work.
Let themselves get in a bad mood. Productivity and focus is closely linked to mood. If you feel angry, bored, or frustrated it’s incredibly difficult to get things done. It’s tough to remember, but each of us has responsibility for our own mood-managing it so that we can work effectively. When you feel the sting of failure, the frustration of criticism, or the lethargy that often accompanies detail work do yourself a favor and go for a walk or get a cup of tea. It’ll help you regain perspective and return with a better focus.
Never look at the clock. Obviously we all look at the clock so that we can know when an appointment starts, when we can go to lunch, or leave for the day. I’m talking about a more intentional clock-watching. We work best when we have an external accountability system and when completing our work gives us some sort of tangible reward. Use a stopwatch (you can check out an app like Vitamin-R) to time yourself so that a task or project is given a limited block of time in which to be completed. You’ll be surprised how highly focused you can be when working against the clock.

I look at productivity as a stewardship issue. It’s not necessary to wring productivity from every second of the day–in fact, that’s counter-productive. However, floating through the day can be a form of sloth. It’s also important to be fully-engaged with those interruptions that happen during the day–they’re often gifts from God and opportunities for ministry.

So, how do you stay focused in the church office?

February 3, 2014January 31, 2014

What is the optimal length of a sermon?

If the data are to be trusted, I have a longer attention span than most. If the subject is interesting to me and well-presented, I can follow a 30-minute presentation fairly easily. However, I’m not most people. Over at Holy Soup, Thom Schultz shares data that suggest the optimal attention span for an aural presentation is–are you ready?–six minutes.

Educators have been studying this phenomenon for some time now. Some of the latest research comes from the University of Rochester. Research scientist Philip Guo recently studied the efficacy of online education, specifically the use of teaching videos. He found that the average engagement time with any teaching video maxes out at 6 minutes, regardless of the video’s total length. And engagement times actually decrease the longer the video. For example, students typically spend only 3 minutes on videos that are 12 minutes or longer.

A decade ago (2004) the attention span of most adults stood at about 12 minutes and since then has been halved. So, the question comes: what impact should this have on preaching?

To some, a six minute sermon communicates a lack of value for the Bible. To others, it seems like an appropriate accommodation to the limits of our post-google brain. Pastors and sessions will need to decide precisely what they make of this data, but it seems wrong-headed to me to suggest that all sermons now ought not to exceed six minutes.

There are other options. Perhaps the sermon could be divided into something like four segments (that build on one another) and dispersed throughout the worship service? Perhaps greater use of video could minimize the sensation of talking heads? I’ve noticed that for many pastors, what is called “the sermon” is really a series of shorter messages bookended by a story–each segment lasting no more than six minutes and reset with a story and change of cadence/pause.

What do you think? How do the realities of our digital age require that we alter the recent tradition of sermon delivery?

September 17, 2013

Watch your life and your doctrine closely…

There are some also who investigate spiritual precepts with cunning care, but what they penetrate with their understanding they trample on in their lives: all at once they teach the things which not by practice but by study they have learnt; and what in words they preach by their manners they impugn.

Whence it comes to pass that when the shepherd walks through steep places, the flock follows to the precipice. Hence it is that the Lord through the prophet complains of the contemptible knowledge of shepherds, saying, When ye yourselves had drunk most pure water, ye fouled the residue with your feet; and My sheep fed on that which had been trodden by your feet, and drank that which your feet had fouled (Ezek. xxxiv. 18, 19).

For indeed the shepherds drink most pure water, when with a right under- standing they imbibe the streams of truth. But to foul the same water with their feet is to corrupt the studies of holy meditation by evil living. And verily the sheep drink the water fouled by their feet, when any of those subject to them follow not the words which they hear, but only imitate the bad examples which they see. Thirsting for the things said, but perverted by the works observed, they take in mud with their draughts, as from polluted fountains.

Hence also it is written through the prophet, A snare for the downfall of my people are evil priests (Hos.v.1;ix.8). Hence again the Lord through the prophet says of the priests, They are made to be for a stumbling-block of iniquity to the house of Israel. For certainly no one does more harm in the Church than one who has the name and rank of sanctity, while he acts perversely.

Gregory, Pastoral Rule, Ch. 2

August 13, 2013

Three lessons from Brené Brown at Leadership Summit

One of the highlights of last week’s Global Leadership Summit was hearing Brené Brown speak. Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work and a TED Talk sensation since her 2010 talk went viral (more than 8 million views). That talk is embedded at the bottom of the page. Her research has focused on the interplay between vulnerability and empathy, encouraging people to experience “whole-hearted” living.

Here are three lessons I learned from Brené Brown:

When you judge yourself for requesting help, you invariably judge others when they ask.How many of you feel shame when you ask for help? Just yesterday I tried to figure out to run a report on a database at work. I had a call scheduled with my boss and part of our agenda was to create and discuss this report. I wanted to know how to do it before I got on the call–to save time. I’ll be honest, I tried for about 15 minutes and never did figure it out.
Once on the phone I admitted that I hadn’t been able to figure out how to run the report. As I did, I noticed within myself a twinge of shame. Not much, just a little shame. After all, I use a computer all day long. I blog, use social media, etc. I should–I reasoned–have been able to figure this out.
We lose people in the gap between profession and practice.Professing love (in all its forms) is fairly easy. What is not easy, not simply, what is incontrovertibly complex is practicing love.
How many of us make vows at our wedding–a profession–only to find it require intention, effort, humility, and sacrifice to remain true to the words that so easily dripped from our lips?

How many of us take vows when we join our church and in fairly short order recoil from a significant decision made and once more experience the difficulty of keeping vows?

When the gap between what we say and what we do becomes too immense, we loose people. Marriages collapse. Church fellowships rupture. Friendships end.
Courage and comfort are mutually exclusive.By its very definition courage requires that we confront something that is difficult or that causes us to experience fear. When comfort becomes our objective in life, we cannot be courageous for we will always turn away from anything that causes us to be uncomfortable–it could be making a phone call, following a dream, initiating a difficult conversation, restoring a broken relationship. Interestingly, we may claim that we’re not satisfied with our life, but as long as comfort is our chief value our life will never change and we’ll settle into a begrudging comfort.

I’ll be reflecting on these lessons for a while. What stands out to you from Brené’s talk?

July 25, 2013July 24, 2013

Are there really two marriages? (Part Two)

In his brief anthology of blog posts entitled, There are Two Marriages: A Manifesto on Marriage (2011), Tony Jones argues that the church ought to seek the strict separation of what he calls “legal marriage” and “sacramental marriage.” A result of this change would be the removal of much of the church’s resistance to same sex marriage.

Yesterday I rehearsed Jones’s historical and theological objections to the connivance of state and in marriage. I will argue today that Jones fails to recognize that marriage is, for the Christian, necessarily the union of religious belief with the physical world:

….Marriage matters because we are embodied and what we do with our body matters.

The church has affirmed over the centuries—almost with no exception—that marriage exists not only for the mutual aid and comfort of husband and wife, but also for the procreation of children.

“The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God.”[1]

We’d likely all agree that a marriage may be legitimate without children being born to the couple—having children does not a marriage make. However, it is a relatively recent innovation to believe that childbearing and marriage are totally unrelated.

Jones seeks to trace the changing nature of matrimony as grounds for a continued development of marriage to include same-sex couples. For example, in the ancient world marriage was simply the exchange of property with the consequent production of progeny.

Today marriage has become simply, “formalizing and cementing a romantic attraction.” It is emphatically not about having children. If it were, we would not allow “celibate, infertile, post-menopausal, non-producing” people to be legally married.

The reference is to restrictions on marriage, principally state laws that forbid consanguinity but that fail to forbid marriage between people unable to conceive. To derive a mandate for the church simply by the absence of state law on the matter is not a terribly good way to do affirmative theology.

As a pastor, were a couple to ask me to marry them and state up front that they would not be sexually intimate with one another nor would they even consider attempting to conceive, I would likely not marry them. Marriage is intrinsically linked with both sexual intimacy and with procreation. That some are unable to conceive doesn’t invalidate the rule, rather it’s the exception that proves it.

In all, Jones fails to build a compelling case for changing the nature and definition of marriage either in the state or in the church. He assumes that since people will always be gay—which is true—we should incentivize gay monogamy in the context of marriage. On the surface this may appear sound. However, Jones’s contention fails to consider that in the Christian view it is not simply that homosexual polyamory is wrong, but that all homosexual practice is not only inconsistent with Christian holiness, and is detrimental to human wholeness. To change marriage means more than “live and let live,” it necessarily encourages destructive behavior and, moreover, will inevitably lead to restrictions on religious groups that fail to recognize the appropriateness of same sex marriage.

[1] Book of Common Prayer

April 29, 2013

Who is my neighbor?

‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?’

And then the King will tell them, ‘I assure you, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’

On Saturday I experienced a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. After spending the morning doing various things to serve our downtown community, members of our church went out and invited everyone they met to have lunch with us. Many came.

It was a powerful experience that taught me several lessons about myself, humanity, the gospel, and the church:

Myself: My fear of being patronizing often causes me to hold back. I deeply desire to encounter those with fewer resources, less cultural power, and (perhaps) greater physical need as equals. This can be difficult to do, and so the fear of perceiving myself as a savior often causes me to miss out on deeper relationships with those who are different than myself.
Humanity: All of us are united both in our dignity and our degradation. The photo above is linked to a collection of portraits of homeless people. As I clicked through the gallery, I was struck by the juxtaposition of dignity and degradation. Stare into the piercing gazes of these people and you will see their dignity. Eyeball don’t age, do they? Yet, those same eyes are set in a deteriorating and unwashed body. It’s no different for me. The form may be different, but I too combine dignity and degradation.
The Gospel: The invitation to the banquet only deeply resonates with those who recognize their need. Those who respond to the message of the gospel are those who see their need. Those who joined us for a simply lunch of sloppy joe’s and potato salad where those who recognized and admitted their need for a free meal.
The Church: The church is a parable of Jesus and so together our story has to mirror Jesus’ story in the gospels. It’s quite difficult for anyone to encounter Jesus in abstraction. Most of us will encounter Jesus through a message-bearer. As the church, we are the bearers of the message that there is free grace offered to us by God through Christ.

Let’s be clear, I’m no Mother Theresa. I am, at best, an apprentice at loving my neighbor. However, God met even me in the simple act of sharing a meal with those in our downtown neighborhood.

April 16, 2013

Your guide to pastoral facial hair…

Facebook is a treasure trove of graphics, many of them pretty crappy. However, this little gem stands out! It’s masterful–I can think of at least one person I currently know who approximates each of these, except perhaps the angry whiskers.

Which one’s your favorite?

March 27, 2013March 27, 2013

Four ways churches manage the tension of gospel and culture

Evangelicals are learning to face some new realities about the gospel’s encounter with contemporary culture. The church exists for the purpose of proclaiming the truth of the Christian gospel–that reconciliation with God is possible through Christ. As God’s missional community, we are to embody that truth we pursue the various callings God has given to us (father, mother, husband, wife, etc). We are also to verbally communicate that message as God gives us opportunity to do so through organic, authentic, respectful conversation. As a result we live with a tension in deciding which parts of our message and faith are culturally-conditioned.

This tension between message (gospel) and means (practice) has been addressed in at least four ways by the contemporary church.

Change neither the means of communication nor the message itself. This is the traditional church that continues to speak and act as if it was still 1950. A traditional gospel is preached using traditional religious language, and in the context of a program driven church with a very traditional worship service.
Change the means of communication, but not the message itself. This group includes many new reformed churches associated with the Acts29 network, a fewer number of emergent/ing communities, and generally those who are associated in some way, shape, or form with the center-right constituency of the missional movement. I’d even include a church like Redeemer New York (and its daughter churches) that assume a non- or post-Christian audience. The essential meaning of the gospel message remains consistent with the church’s traditional formulations. The language is updated and much insider language is jettisoned in favor of verbal symbols that connect with contemporary hearers. Context is king and so some of these churches embrace older, more liturgical forms of worship and some embrace what could be called “contemporary” Christian music (contemporary having a range of meanings each specific to the decade in which the preponderance of the congregation became believers).
Change both the means of communication, and also the message itself. I’d include in this grouping the majority of the emergent/emerging conversation. It’s clear to me now that classical theism doesn’t describe the views of many of the proponents of emergent/ing. Many would object to (or at least downplay) doctrines like: God’s impassibility, the penal-substitutionary theory of the atonement, and God’s foreknowledge and/or foreordination of that which is to come. Since these concepts (often thought to be cultural accretions owing the Greco-Roman origin of the early Christian church) seem to many emergent/ing folk to be insufficient to addressing our contemporary world they are essentially jettisoned. As with group number two, these folk work hard to create worship experiences that are participatory, aesthetically rich, and transformative.
Change the message, but not the means of communication. At first glance, you might be tempted to think that this should be an empty category. It’s not. Most of the mainline churches have essentially revised the gospel message to be accessible to their conception of what (post)modern people want. However, few have changed the form of their worship beyond including ethnically diverse hymns in their hymnbooks and editing out masculine language.

These are the four options most Christian churches pursue. It is my belief that the path of Christian faithfulness requires innovation in almost every area of the church’s life. My preferred means of innovation is breathing new life and forms into classical Christian worship as it existed prior to the Great Schism of AD 1054. Any innovation must be severely restrained (even chastened) in terms of the way in which the church talks about God and the gospel. Our talk about God does not exist in a cultural vacuum–it is anchored to and flows from God’s revelation of Himself in the person of Jesus, in the Word of God written, and in the church’s theological reflection on these over time. This is a limiting factor on the extent to which we can speculatively formulate notions of God and gospel that are “acceptable” or “palatable” to our present cultural moment.

Those are my thoughts–what are yours?

February 28, 2013February 28, 2013

What is the church?

The gospel teaches us that the Church is the one and only foretaste of heaven now because she alone has a real participation in the life of God on earth…. This divine reality of foretaste and first fruits is the key to understanding the Church’s power and relevance.

Scot Sherman, “Why the Church?” in Looking Forward: Voices from Church Leaders on Our Global Mission. (MTW, 2003).