Practically, a company will request that you fill out a survey, usually online. The survey consists of a series of questions that ask you to rate your experience with the retailer on a scale of 0-10 (with 10 being “excellent” or “most likely to recommend”). A company’s NPS can be as low as -100 (everyone is a detractor) or as high as +100 (everyone is a promoter), with +50 being a desirable score.

The NPS is used by retailers like Apple and GameStop.

Now that you’re all caught up on what NPS is, let’s talk about the idea of using an NPS at a church. If there’s something that plagues the Church in America it’s consumerism. The consumer ideology runs so deep in our blood that it’s almost impossible to do anything without having some kind of consumeristic leaning. Even in our churches, western consumerism runs rampant in varying degrees. From the more vivid examples like Lakewood Church to the slightly less consumer-driven like North Point Community Church and even to the traditional groups.

The question I see rising up here is this: should churches allow for some consumerism? While some may differ with me on this topic, I would argue that we should do all we can to remove consumerism from the Church.

Consumerism leads people to church-shopping. They “go to” church because of what they can get from it or how they feel about it. One church has cooler music while another church has a better teacher. One church has better children’s programming while another has a better students’ ministry. They weigh their options and choose a church that best suits their needs and desires.

And the Church in the West is okay with this. In fact, across the board, churches are using our consumerism to their advantage. If they know they have a really great band, they’ll mention to you just how “rockin’” their music is. If they have a great media production, they’ll talk about how classy their media are.

To date, I haven’t heard of any church using satisfaction surveys and promoter scoring, but from what I know of the American church world, I wouldn’t put it past several of them.

Here’s why I’m uncomfortable with the idea of a church using net promoter methodology. The idea of seeing “How likely are you to recommend our church to your friends?” in my email bothers me.

Ultimately the purpose of the Net Promoter Score is to encourage an organization to improve the overall customer experience. To what end? So that the current customer will continue to patronize their company and so that they can obtain a wider customer base. Without the customers, the company will decline and eventually cease to exist. The final authority is the customer base.

Using net promoter methodology in a church is saying essentially the same thing. Why take these metrics unless you planned to do something to improve the overall parishioner experience? You want your parishioners to continue to attend and contribute to your church, and you want to increase the size of your congregation. You’re actually saying that the final authority in your church are the congregants.

But in reality you’re accountable to God for how you’ve led the church. Net promoter methodology seeks the approval of your church’s attendees. But what about submitting to the reign of Jesus? What about seeking his approval? Shouldn’t the Word of God be the final authority in your church? At the end of the day, no one else’s opinion holds any weight.

God’s purpose for the Church is to glorify himself by his Church restoring the earth and taking part in Christ’s ministry of reconciliation through making disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey his commands. Do you really need to take a poll to do this?

Whose approval are you seeking?

“Every Christian is either a missionary or an impostor.”
~ Charles Spurgeon

In my previous post I mentioned every Christian’s responsibility to follow the mission of Jesus. Sadly, we’ve shifted our focus to the wrong things. We’ve lost the urgency of our calling quite a bit since the Edict of Milan passed in AD 313.

Since people had to be in church, Christians no longer felt the necessity to go out into the world and make disciples because, well, everyone’s here already. When this happened, the Christian life was no longer about restoring the world and reconciling it back to God (2 Corinthians 5.18-21); rather, it became about sin management and individual spiritual fulfillment. Discipleship was no longer about training to attack the “gates of hell”, but about becoming a person of high moral standards.

But if you look around, you’ll see that we no longer live in Christendom. Christianity is quickly becoming a fringe practice. I realize that to many, this comes as sad news. But I’m actually very optimistic about this. Why? Because it means that the Church is again given the opportunity to follow Jesus’ mission. We are reentering the pluralistic world with which Paul was so familiar. And in this world, our traditional methodology for leading people into the kingdom of God will rarely, if ever, produce any real fruit. Instead we’ve assimilated people into a church subculture, rather than unleashing them into the world’s culture with the mission of plowing a counterculture.

These are some examples of the practices of the Christian faith. Internally we devote ourselves to the teaching and study of the Bible. We gather in community to lift each other up, sharpen each other, and keep each other accountable before God. We also share meals together, comfort one another, share communion together, and practice hospitality. Externally we’re supposed to engage in the community, become a blessing to our cities (Jeremiah 29.4-7), and serve those in need (Matthew 25.31-40; Matthew 10.40-42; James 2.14-17).

In a modern church-centered life, the primary focus of the believer is on his internal life, resulting in questions such as, “How is your personal walk with God?” or, “How’s your church life?” Like I’d mentioned in my previous post, without a mission, the life of a Christian becomes about sin management and the self-actualization of one’s spiritual potential.

Here’s what happens in our traditional church discipleship model. When the believer follows this course, his effectiveness in the culture is diminished greatly. Why? Because he’s no longer a friend to the people he once associated with. He was pulled from the community and brought into the church culture, where he was nurtured and cared for and raised to look like the people who are inside this Christian bubble.

This model, when put into practice looks something like this: Bob has been in church for many years. He decides one day, after hearing a sermon on sharing the Gospel, to invite one of his coworkers to a Bible study at his house. After some time, Joe (Bob’s coworker) gives up his Wednesday night poker game and decides to attend the Bible study. Joe eventually gets saved and becomes heavily involved in the church life. He’s at every Bible study class, he hands out bulletins during Sunday services, and he even serves on the outreach committee that’s working on a big free carwash event that will be used to invite people in the community to start attending their church services.

A year later, the pastor preaches another sermon on sharing the Gospel, and Joe recalls his poker buddies. He hasn’t seen them in almost a year, but he decides to call one of them to invite him to church.

Basically, what has happened here is this: Bob has extracted Joe from his context by finding something attractive inside his church world and highlighting it for Joe (green arrow underneath the diagram). There’s been an attempt at pushing Joe into the culture, but because Joe hasn’t been properly discipled, it becomes extremely difficult to reenter his previous context. He soon finds that all his friends are Christians, and outside of family responsibilities, work, and church-related activities, he has almost nothing else to do.

Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad methodology, but is it really that effective? Is it the best method we can come up with?

What if we were to reverse the model?What if instead we were to move from “external” to “internal”? Here’s what I mean.

Matt and Steve are believers. On Mondays they hang out at a little pub a few blocks from their neighborhood. They meet there every Monday after work, hanging out with the regulars at the bar, being an encouragement to the men who are trying to numb whatever pain they’re experiencing. They’re comforters and companions to the patrons of the place.

On Thursdays both of their families have dinner at Steve’s house. After dinner, Matt leads the little group in taking communion.

On Fridays they go on a group date with their wives and one or two other couples. And on Sundays after the church service Matt, Steve, and their friend Todd get together to pray with each other, talk about what God is teaching each of them, and hold each other accountable to the mission of Jesus.

Now, at any point in their schedule, Matt and Steve could engage in mission. As they develop friendships at the pub, opportunities to talk about their faith with someone become more readily available. They could invite someone from that area of their life into their Thursday evenings. Or they could invite someone from their church to join them on Monday afternoons and teach him how to build friendships with people outside of church. But no matter where you look in their lives, you can draw a sense of restoration from their rhythms.

You see, the Christian life is about so much more than just staying morally pure or sitting still in a church pew or serving on a church committee. It’s about restoring and reconciling to God every aspect of life.

My girlfriend often talks about a holistic, restorative approach to interacting with creation. Discipleship should be no different. Life shouldn’t be dichotomous for a Christian—church life and “regular” life, or even spiritual life and physical life. No, everything is connected, and wherever you go, you’re a missionary.

Again, I’d like to know what you think. Am I completely off base? Do we really need to rework our thoughts about church/discipleship (as I’ve posited), or can our current/traditional methodology be tweaked slightly and updated?

Any global missionary will tell you that in order to effectively reach a new culture, you have to immerse yourself in that culture. You have to become friends with the people you encounter. You have to learn their language. You have to eat their food, wear their fashion, and adopt their pace of life. If you don’t do this, you won’t be an effective missionary.

The same applies to us here in America. Unfortunately, we live in the aftermath of Christendom, and there are still a great number of Christians who fail to recognize their responsibility to follow Jesus in his mission of restoration and reconciliation in the world.

Here’s a little history for you. In AD 306, Constantine I became the Emperor of Rome. He’s noted for being the first Roman emperor to have converted to Christianity. Until this point, there was widespread intolerance of Christianity throughout the empire (most notably under the reign of Nero, who earned the title “First Persecutor of the Christians” by the writers Tertullian, Lactantius, and Sulpicius Severus). Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, offering tolerance to Christians and religious freedom to all Roman citizens.

Despite the religious freedom that he offered, Constantine saw it as his duty to establish religious orthodoxy. He disliked the disputes that came about, so he gave the Church the authority to dictate proper religious practices.

Gone were the days of Paul, Peter, Timothy, and Apollos. The Gospel of Jesus no longer spread virally underneath a pluralistic society of philosophers and liberal thinkers. Christianity became the religion of the state, a tool in the hands of the government used to maintain religious order throughout the Roman Empire.

This is the model from which we have adopted our American church. The church closely mirrors the governmental system from which it was birthed. In Europe, the government was largely centralized around an emperor. Thus the Church centralized around a bishop or pope. In America, the government was dispersed among voting representatives, and so we have a church tradition that rests in congregationalism.

Now we have a culture that is largely governed by our consumeristic impulses. Do you see what this has done to the Church? We’re now adopting cool names, hip media presentation, convenient service structures, and sleek marketing and advertising.

To the outsider it looks like churches are competing to grab my attention. There’s an underlying assumption that we’re still in Christendom, and since we’re in Christendom, I have to attend a church. Which one will I choose? LifeChurch? They’ve got a great band. Buckhead Church? They’ve got a great band too, but they also have Andy Stanley, and he’s written a lot of books, which means they’re famous. Newspring Church? Their band is great, but they also play songs by Coldplay and Led Zeppelin, so that means they’re really cool. Liquid Church? They’ve also got a great band, and they were just on CNN for giving away $90K, so I guess that means they’re famous and generous.

Or will I just decide the whole church thing is not for me? I wouldn’t be alone. Only 40% of the American population ever sets foot in a church.

Guess what? We’re not in Christendom anymore, and nothing says it better than the 60% of Americans who never have—and probably never will—enter a church in their lifetimes.

And in reality, I myself would rather be in his shoes. Sleeping in and watching football just seems like a much better way to spend my hard-earned weekend.

What’s weird about this is that the whole thing is backwards. My pastor and I were talking about this last week, and he said that the “invite a friend to church” mentality actually forces the role of missionary onto the person you’re inviting.

Think about it, a missionary (which, if you take Christ’s words in John 20.21 seriously, would include every follower of Jesus) is someone who leaves the environment that’s comfortable to him and sets foot into a culture that is not his own. He has to learn how that culture thinks, what they like, what they believe, etc. When we invite our non-believing friends to church, we’ve given them half the tasks of missionaries.

And then we invite them into our small groups, which, contrary to popular belief, aren’t doing any true holistic discipleship. Our small groups are really nothing more than therapy and discussion groups.

And we wonder why our churches look nothing like the explosive movements of the first century.

There’s nothing wrong with having those kinds of groups. Just don’t call it something that it’s not. Small groups are not discipleship groups.

Think about it this way. We invite someone to come to our church’s Sunday service. After she’s been attending for a few weeks, she “gets saved” and joins a small group. In the small group meetings, they sit in a circle, eat some crumb cake, maybe sing a few songs, talk about how a particular passage in the Bible makes them feel (or how they feel about the passage), and then they pray together and ask God for things.

And then what? Does she go back into her former world somehow and try to invite some of her friends to attend her church? She was plucked out of her culture, nurtured in a completely different culture that didn’t really prepare her to return to her former culture, and then expected to reach that culture again?

What we’ve done to her is not discipleship, it’s assimilation.

In my next post, I’m going to talk about what I think could be a much more effective discipleship methodology. But for now, I’m going to ask this question: am I wrong here? If I’ve made a mistake, please let me know. I realize my cynicism is showing a little bit in this post, but I’m making an observation. I could be way off.

Leave a comment if you think I’m mistaken in my observation.

I want to update you on a few things. First off, a lot has changed in me over the last year. Let me take you on a very short version of the journey I’ve been on this past year.

A little over a year ago I started a new job at a church called Emergence. At first glance, I thought it was more of what I was familiar with. Rock music: check. Teaching pastor in jeans and plaid: check. Lots of twenty-something people: check.

But little did I realize that God had brought me to a place that would change me, shape me, and in so many ways mold my vision and understanding of the Church and the mission he has called her to.

It’s been an odd period in my life, to be sure. I grew up in a fundamentalist church (yes, the type of church that was the topic of a 20/20 report. I left that church and found myself bouncing from one church to another, finally finding a place to rest at a place called Liquid Church.

If you’ve been reading my entries over the years, you’ve seen me discover this new church culture. You’ve seen me learn to embrace a “progressive” church and find the strengths in its style.

It’s often said that change is the only constant in life. And once again, my life is changing. My thoughts are changing. My beliefs are changing.

I won’t presume to have all the answers, but I will say this much—I’ve learned far more this past year than I could’ve ever thought possible.

I’ll leave you with this today: I love Liquid Church. I’m thankful for the grace that I received there, for the friendships I built there, and for the message of hope that God has proclaimed through the leaders there. Yet I can’t help but ask these questions.

1. Are we actually making disciples? Not converts. Christ’s commission was “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” Discipleship is a lifelong pursuit, not a one-time prayer.

2. What are we empowering people to do? How high is our bar? Handing out bulletins or planting a church? Changing slides in a media presentation or developing intentional, mission-driven relationships with the people they rub shoulders with?

3. Is Sunday our “game day,” or are we engaged in mission all week long, stopping only to rest, refuel, and reflect on Sunday?

These questions make me think. I realize that I’m asking them of you, my readers, but as I read them, I find myself guilty of taking the easy options in regards to my church life. But if I understand the mission of Christ and his kingdom, and if I think about how the church existed in the first century, then there’s no way my “church life” should be truncated to making converts, handing out bulletins, or “going to church.”

“Go into the culture and speak the language of the culture so that you can be a counterculture for the culture.”

I love this word. It speaks volumes of what followers of Jesus are supposed to be in this world. At my church we use this word practically every week. It’s in our DNA. But the word is often left undefined. What is a counterculture? What does it look like to plow one? Why do I have to be one? Am I plowing it already?

We sometimes talk about what that might look like in praxis; in fact, when talking about our lifestyles we often refer to that as counterculture. Sometimes we might say something like, “living out the gospel.”

Before I dive into what that looks like practically, I want to create an image of what that might look like philosophically.

If you’ve ever studied music, you’ve probably heard of counterpoint. Essentially, counterpoint is the relationship between two independent melodies that together create euphonic harmony. In a contrapuntal line, the once independent melodies become interdependent. One melody is completely distinct from the other melody, but when brought together they don’t clash. In fact, they create a beautiful harmonic line.

Counterculture works in a similar way. Culture may be moving in a certain direction, and a counterculture moves in a completely different direction, but this counterculture doesn’t attack the culture. It’s not an anticulture. To pull from my opening quote: we need to be “a counterculture for the culture.” In other words, we work for the good of the culture around us.

For many years modern evangelicals and fundamentalists have been caught up in a “culture war,” firmly believing that the culture was the enemy, and Christianity is responsible for making it right.

But if you look at the world around you, you’ll find endless possibilities for the gospel to infiltrate and come alongside this culture, creating a distinctly beautiful counterculture.

So what does this look like in praxis? Well, it’s different for every church. But look around you. You’ll soon discover the heartbeat of the culture you’ve been placed in.

What about for the individual? Perhaps that’s a little easier to answer. God requires certain things of his followers, but there’s one command he gives that encompasses all other commands.

Love.

“Love me. Love your fellow disciples. Love those around you who aren’t disciples. Love those who hate you for being a disciple.”

And what does that even look like? Perhaps it’s partnering with a local soup kitchen and helping to care for those facing poverty. Perhaps it’s taking that homeless person walking up and down your block everyday out to lunch. Perhaps it’s sitting next to that despondent guy at the bar in your local tavern and listening to his story.

Perhaps it’s choosing to not ogle the women at your office, to care more about your coworker’s wellbeing than your own, to deflect praise for a “knocked-out-of-the-park” project from yourself to your teammates, to value your community above your individuality.

And when someone asks, “Why do you live the way you live?” you can say,

“Because the God I serve stepped out of his comfort zone and said, ‘I love you’.”

Rob Bell’s upcoming book Love Wins is already on trial more than a month before it’s released.

On February 26, Justin Taylor denounced Bell in a post on his blog, and John Piper dismissed Bell in a post on Twitter.

Here’s the trailer for the book in question:

So where do I fall on this?

It’s no big secret to my friends and co-workers that I’m fascinated by Bell’s teaching techniques, his writing style, and his ability to captivate an audience through an artistically smart medium. He’s culturally savvy, yet not flashy or in-your-face like so many pastors and churches are becoming these days (arguing ad nauseam that in order to be hip and cool you’ve got to be loud and obnoxious. . . I love you, Perry Noble, but please, relax a little).

But now accusations are being thrown in light of the possibility that Bell might be a universalist.

This battle is nothing new. Bell has often fallen under fire from Neo-Calvinists like Mark Driscoll and Joshua Harris who follow in Piper’s footsteps and view Bell as a liberal compromiser (though perhaps not in the same way that a Fundy might call someone a “liberal compromiser”). Ever since Velvet Elvis was released, the Reformed camp has been searching for one opportunity after another to roast Bell.

And in response, Bell’s supporters and the hipster evangelicals hurl accusations at the side where Driscoll, Harris, Piper, and Taylor rest, calling them “smug, legalistic jerks who care nothing for loving people.”

Lines are drawn in the sand. The Neo-Calvinists attract intellectuals because of their systematic approach to studying scripture. They work hard to affirm the orthodox tenets of historic (whether traditional or non) evangelical theology. The hipster evangelicals attract artists and their ilk because of their narrative approach to theology.

The sides are angry with each other because one side appears to be spurning the Apostles’ Creed while the other side appears to be punching people in the face with it.

“Even worse, both sides often make the assertion they stand in for God, even as they both deny they do so. When statements like, ‘Either believe this or you aren’t an orthodox Christian’ or, ‘I think God is tired of iron clad,’ get thrown around, you know that both sides believe they are speaking for God.”

~Rev. Jonathan Weyer

I’m reminded of Christ’s parable “The Lost Son” from Luke 15.11-32. We often think of this as the story of a prodigal son, but in reality, it’s a story about two sons and their father’s transcendent love.

The younger son, like Bell and his hipster evangelical followers, dismissed his father’s love by spurning the home he’s built for his children (the “home” of theological orthodoxy). The older son (Piper and the Neo-Calvinists), while staying close to home, dismissed his father’s love by rejecting his embrace of the younger son.

I want to approach this debate in a different way. If you pinned me down and asked me what my beliefs are, I would affirm the truths set forth by Driscoll, Piper, and Taylor. But I can’t line up with them on this debate.

I think there’s more at play here than orthodoxy vs. liberalism. If it were simply about that, I’d fall on the side of orthodoxy in nearly every argument. But it’s not anymore.

It’s quickly becoming about how one side of evangelicalism treats the other side of evangelicalism with disdain. “You don’t love people like we do! You’re a bunch of jerks!”

Or “You don’t affirm the tenets set forth in the Nicene Creed. You’re preaching a false gospel!”

I’ll wait to talk about Bell until after Love Wins comes out. And afterwards I will continue to read his writings, listen to his sermons, and watch his Nooma videos regardless of whether he skews orthodox or universalist.

But I will do so as I always should have—with one or two grains of salt.

Why continue gleaning from his teachings? First, because he teaches from a fresh perspective on Jesus. He still preaches Christ, the Son of God. He still preaches Christ, crucified and resurrected, however off his interpretation of heaven and hell may (or may not, we’ll have to wait till the 29th to find out for sure) be. And second, because he remembers something that many Neo-Calvinists sometimes forget: part of being missional is being approachable.

I’m not sure why this particular sermon came to mind recently, but I know that something about it really bothered me especially given what I’ve been learning about God as I try to draw closer to him.

It’s not because this preacher likened us to ants (because we pretty much are), but because he likened God’s relationship with us to our relationship with ants.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t really have much of a relationship with ants. I don’t necessarily hate them, but I find them to be pesky, invasive, and an overall nuisance. I wouldn’t really want a relationship with ants. The idea of becoming one of them is repulsive to me. Given the option, I wouldn’t even bother.

Yet God, in his incomprehensible love, has relentlessly sought after a relationship with us. He longed for us to be with him that he actually became one of us, died at our hands so that we wouldn’t have to, and came back to life so that we could be with him.

That kind of relationship just doesn’t exist between a human and an ant.