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"…if you say you are called to be where you are, a few questions need to be answered. For example, how would you be missed if you left this place? What would change? …what would your church (and the worldwide church) look like if everyone was as committed as you are? If everyone gave and served and prayed exactly like you, would the church be healthy and empowered? Or would it be weak and listless?"

— Francis Chan, Forgotten God

John Piper on the “prosperity gospel”.

How to Leave Well.

I hate goodbyes.

I heard Tony Morgan say during a podcast a while back that “…leaving a church is like breaking up with a girlfriend.” Except that since you’re dealing with several relationships in the church, you have to break up a dozen or more times instead of just once.

After last week, I couldn’t agree more.

When we first announced that we were changing churches, it was incredibly difficult. Now that the buzz of leaving has moved throughout most of our social circles, it’s getting easier. It’s less of “…we’re leaving,” and more of “…these are the reasons behind it.”

Here are five things I’ve learned from this process…

1. PRAY.

This is the first step for a reason. Honestly, if you haven’t prayed through your decision and you haven’t gained a spiritual perspective with some direction from the Lord… stay where you are.

2. Dig the well before you need the water.

PREPARE. Unless you plan to leave in the middle of the night, if you’re thinking of changing churches people are going to ask you why. Again and again and again! And I haven’t had anyone settle for the “…well, it’s just the Lord’s will,” kind of answer. Think it through THOROUGHLY. Once you understand your position and why you feel that way, you need to:

3. Be open and up-front with your leadership.

To be honest, I could have done this one better – it’s always clearer in hindsight. But being honest with your leaders is vital to maintaining unity in the body. Let them know your reasons for leaving (or considering leaving) and give them a chance to respond. The leaders at Twelve Oaks gave me some valuable wisdom and pointed out some areas that I need to watch. I deeply value their guidance. And don’t be afraid to be honest about your reasons for joining the new church.

4. Be open with the members of the church.

You don’t need to get into personal gripes or disagreements that you may have with the leadership or the church’s direction to do this. You don’t want to cause disunity. But you dowant to avoid the possibility of rumors starting. Take the opportunity to maintain relationships and to build trust through the process of changing churches. And finally [drumroll]:

5. Don’t badmouth your old church.

Rachel and I have really been intentional about speaking well of Twelve Oaks. We love the people and the church and it’s done a lot of good – for us and the community. You can leave in a storm of controversy, or you can leave well. Are people going to wave at you when they see you at the grocery store, or will they hide behind the produce aisle and thank the Lord you aren’t going to be there on Sunday?

Here’s to leaving with grace and dignity.

Good… in context.

From RagamuffinSoul.com…

Ideas come from other ideas… The blogging world has given us a great opportunity for this. When I started the Worship Confessional idea it was with this in mind. People sharing their sets, videos, ideas, and hiccups together. Blogging is just one step in this viral communication world we are living in. Find patters and ideas that are working and rip them off. It’s ok.

It’s okay to talk about what went well in the worship setlist.

I thought I’d clarify this after venting last week about all the ‘worship confessionals’ floating around online.

I think the main thing that’s overlooked is the context of the local church.

On the worship team at my church (which typically uses acoustic guitars, keyboards, a bass and a djembe) I tried to get the music to sound like United. I saw this great sound, and fascinating lights and fog machines… and I lost my direction as a worship leader.

If we’re not careful we start judging our worship services by how closely it resembles the original recordings… most of the time without considering the context of our music and the makeup of our congregation.

To put it simply: we’re just at a different place than [X] church or [Y] church.

And that’s okay.

So, the question “How was your Sunday?” is incomplete. We also need to consider how effective we were at meeting the congregation where they are with the songs and styles we used.

"Charles Spurgeon warned his students over 140 years ago, “There are more secret snares than these, from which we can less easily escape; and of these the worst is the temptation of ministerialism–the tendency to read our Bibles as ministers, to pray as ministers, to get into the whole of our religion as not ourselves personally, but only relatively, concerned in it.” (Lectures to My Students, p. 15) In other words, there are times I am not really a minister, I only play one in church."

— Dave Bruskas, via the Bryant Blog