3W Seminar: Rome

In a few hours, Pastor George Lutzer of Gracepoint Church in Edmonton, Canada will be arriving in Berlin.  Together we are going to travel to Rome tomorrow for our first 3W Seminar there.  The subject is on "organizing the church."  One of the least talked about, most important subjects a church needs to deal with in-depth. 

I met George last May when I was in Canada and was so impressed with his church and his leadership.  I had previously heard a lot of good things about this young, emerging leader and his fast growing church.  I attended a service and got to meet him personally while presenting a series of papers at Gardner Bible College.  We are thrilled to have him and to learn about what they are doing to create such a fast-growing and healthy church. 

We arrive Tuesday night in Rome and then the next morning, Gary Kendall and his wife Belinda arrive from Kansas City, KS.  Gary will also be co-leading the 3W Seminar and sharing about how his church, Indian Creek has grown from about twenty people to more than a couple thousand with church plants and a satellite campus. 

I will also make sure that they have 2 days of sightseeing in Rome since I don't think any of them have been there before.  I love being the tour guide.  Rome is not my specialty, but it's my 4th visit so I should be able to handle the top 10 places to see.  I'll take lots of photos--although the weather calls for rain. 

You can learn about George's church Gracepoint here.

And you can learn about Indian Creek Community Church in Olathe, KS here.

The very next weekend, we have our first 3W Seminar in Holland.  We'll be updating in other place as well.

We're on Facebook at:  Three Worlds and we are also on

Twitter at:  3WCHOG

NPR on Why Young People Are Leaving the Church

If the media player doesn't come up....don't know what to tell you.  I'm not sure how long my relationship with wordpress will stay in tact.

David Kinnaman is back with a new book called "You Lost Me."  Like "UnChristian", this book explores why young people are abandoning the institutional church.  In this interview he mentions some of his recent finding. He raises a few issues on NPR:

*Church not offering  a deep response to the complexities of today's world.

*Those churches that  deal strongly with complexity, didn't show  a strong committment.  Those that are very committed don't offer complex answers.

*An example of the complex questions:  "A girl in a youth group asking should I sell my eggs to be able to afford college tuition?"

*Youth don't feel the freedom to ask the questions that they really have for fear of condemnation.

*Reverse-mentoring.  Young people can enliven congregations and yet they are very open to mentoring and older people in their lives.

A few comments:

I liked his comment about the churches that can handle complex answers showing less fervor than those that cannot.  This is a real phenomenon.  The churches that take the most clear stand on issues (for instance fundamentalist churches) are often the least likely to dialogue about those issues.

The ones that  are open to dialogue, tend to be more liberal and open---but have lower demands on the people attending.  So the churches and the people tend to be less dynamic and committment among parishoners is lower.  It's a sociological phenomenon.  So how to deal with that trap?

If you just respond to today's youth with inflexible dogma, they tune out.  But if you are excessively open, there is little that demands a committment. It doesn't just water down Christianity, it makes it pointless.

I think the key word for the church to internalize here is dualism.  When churches and Christians are dualistic, it means they divide everything into good and evil--with everything in the world (secular) being totally wrong and awful.  Fundamentalist churches are especially prone toward dualism--as are many Pentecostal churches.  The whole world is evil and everything in it is evil.  Only once you are in the protective bubble of the sect (church) will you find music and art and people that are okay.

This is not what the Bible teaches, but many churches take this posture.  Christianity teaches that what God made was "good," and that as the result of the fall, things are not as they should be.  Because of sin and fallennes, they have been robbed of their full glory.  They are not what they could be (and will be).  So the world is beautiful as are all of God's creation--they are just not in the state they were intended to be in.

It's a bit like an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  There's no doubt that the Gulf of Mexico and all the sea creatures there are beautiful.  But an oil spill taints that.  It doesn't suddenly make the whole ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico ugly or bad or not beautiful.  But it does taint it, and only true purification can ever restore it to its full glory.  But even that oil stained pelican, or fish, or coral reef retains its stamp of beauty.

What the younger generation really rejects is dualism:  "Because there was a gulf spill in the Gulf of Mexico, everything is bad!  All the fish are bad!  All the coral reefs are bad!  It was always bad and it's still bad."  This is how a lot of Christians have defined the world.  As if nothing has any merit whatsoever unless it is found in the church and was produced by the church (like Christian rock music).

Of course, the oil spill taints everything--including the churches.  So it wouldn't take long being in a church or hanging out in the Christian music industry and finding out that---lo and behold--things are not so pure there either!  It doesn't seem honest to young people to say "there's all good and all bad, and we're the all good."

A non-dualistic view does appeal to young people.  It's not that there is no "right and wrong", but it is that your view of right and wrong comes from a point of:

1) Deep humility: We are aware that at any given moment, we too could (and are) tainted by the oil spill of fallenness and imprefection.

2) Love for Creation: An acknowledgement that the world God created is beautiful--even the parts that are not in the church or necessarily Christian.  Instead of always talking from the point of judgment and condemnation, one is engaging the world trying to find that hidden value in things that might not apparently be from God.

I think a non-Dualistic Christianity mourns the fall, but continually seeks after beauty.

A Dualistic Christianity forgets we are all tainted by the fall, and is obsessed with deciphering right from wrong.

So why are young people not asking their real questions?

Why are the churches not able to handle the complex questions?

Because many of them are locked into that dualistic paradigm, and the kids know it--even if they can't name it as such.  They sense it.  There's no process and no humility.  "It's my way or the highway."

Confident Christianity is unabashedly Christian---tied to a historic person, processed through 2 thousand years of deep Christian thought, and represented by a book like no other.  But Confident Christianity should not need to constantly be in a posture of defensiveness and hyper-panic.

Today's kids are plugged into the whole world via internet and exposed to multiple cultures and worldviews constantly.  Overall, I think this is a very good thing, not just for them--but for Christianity as a whole.  But it is amidst the bombardment of the senses that there is something within them that longs for the quiet transcendent.  The church can be that place, if it doesn't completely devalue the world they live in.

Special thanks to Jen in Indy and her 1 1/2 year old husband Randolph for forwarding this NPR story.

Venice, Italy

On my trip to Italy last weekend, I stayed in a cheap little inn half way between Venice and Treviso.  It was only $3 dollars for a round-trip bus ticket to Venice:  one of the most famous cities in the world.  The bus trip took about 18 minutes going, and only 15 coming back. I've never been to Venice, and it's always been pretty low on my list.  Tuscany, Rome, the Italian Rivera, the Italian Alps and the Lake District always interested me more.  A lot of people have negative things to say about Venice.  In fact, all my life, I've always heard people say bad things about Venice.  "It's smelly," "It's crowded," "It's sinking into the ocean."  So I've never been that interested in it like I have been other places.  But with a trip to Venice only costing $3, I had to check it out.

Venice is a series of 117 islands immediately off the coast of Northeastern Italy.  It is a flat, marshy area (much of Italy is mountainous or hilly), with canals.  The Venice that people think of, are actually two or three islands where about 60,000 people live in these crowded homes separated by the famous canals.  This "old town" Venice is what you see in photos and postcards.

The bus took me across the causeway (a flat bridge that takes about 2 minutes to cross) and then dropped me off at the bus station.  It is here that all cars and trains arrive and stop.  There are no streets for cars in Venice.  You walk by foot or take a gondola or water taxi.

So how was it?  FABULOUS!  I loved it.  It's an absolute must-see if you are in that part of Italy.  For starters, it was winter time.  When I set off at 10AM, it was about 38 degrees.  Unlike July or August, Venice was not crowded with tons of people.  Neither was it hot or muggy.  Neither did anything smell bad.

As you leave the bus area, you quickly enter into the maze of old streets.  It is an absolute maze and it's easy to get lost.  I walked across the two main islands back and forth over the course of 4 hours.  About 3 1/2 hours into it, I finally did get lost.  Just as with a maze, you go down one path and find it's a dead end.  Go down another way, and end up where you started.  It was fun.

The canal water looked clean.  The buildings were absolutely gorgeous--pictures don't do them justice.  Throughout the city are lots of  Catholic churches--all of them very ornate and beautiful.  The main Piazza of San Marco was just like it is in the movies.  Since it was winter, often I was walking through these maze-like streets alone.  Then every once in a while, there would be a crowd of fellow tourists.  This is probably the perfect time of year to visit the city.  My guess is that most of the people I know that have gone went in the middle of peak season.

The colors of the houses were so vibrant.  I'll bet the city was refurbished at some point in the past 20 years, because like so much in Italy--it all looked very good and well kept up.  No trash anywhere.  All that Euro money does wonders for the infrastructure.  Although overall, the Italian government (especially under Berlosconi) has been terrible about taking care of their many beautiful places.

Some say that Venice is really just a day trip.  Yes, that's probably right.  Although there are lots of cute little hotels and inns scattered throughout which would probably be fun to stay at if you wanted to take your time and look very closely at the architecture and the churches.  If you need to get from one side of the maze (city) to the other, water taxis are the way to go.  I didn't use one, but it was fascinating to see how it really is the only way to get from point A to point B in a hurry.

Anyway, I didn't realize I'd get to see Venice this year--at least not this month.  But I had a whole 6 hours to kill before meeting up with the gang in Treviso and spending it Venice was absolutely wonderful.  Here are so me of my famous, lousy pictures for you to lament.  Is it possible that this place can still look beautiful despite my bad photography?

Check it out!

Cute little bridges and Gondolas

Lots of little alleys

Brand New 2nd Church Launched in Italy!

This weekend, I flew to Venice, Italy for the dedication service of our newest church in Europe:  the Treviso Church of God.  Treviso is a small city just outside of Venice.  Venice, of course, is a series of islands with canals that is world famous.  Treviso is on the mainland of Italy. The Treviso Church of God, now joins the Arco Church of God (Italian Alps), and the Chelyabinsk-Lenin District Church as our newest congregations.

A group of about 7 people from the Rome Church of God (our only Church of God in Italy until 2010) drove up to visit the Arco church and attend the Treviso dedication.  We were also joined by Sue Haberly of Cottage Grove, Oregon Church of God and three other West Coast ladies.  Some members of other local churches attended, and all in all, there were 50 of us at this celebration.  Many of the people attending come from Latin America as well as Italy.

Pastor Daniele Santonocito of the Rome Church of God gave the dedication message and did a wonderful job.

We are very excited about this new church and are thankful for all the hard work Pastor Niccola Lovaglio is doing in Northern Italy.

Our churches in Italy need support.  These first months and years of this new congregation will be key.  Please contact us if you would like to hear more about how you can help the Italian Church of God as it expands.

I will post some photos of Venice coming soon.


The "Well-Discovered Life"

A good quote: "Not only do you not know what will happen, you don't even know what can happen ... Radical emergence occurs all the time, Turing machine to the Web to Google, Facebook and the Arab Spring. Taken together this suggests something I'm falling in love with: Live the well discovered life. Here you do not know, as you live your life forward, as Kierkegard said, even what new opportunities will open before you affording unexpected virtues you can perfect."

-Stuart Kauffman

The Tree: A Personal Story About Marco

This is a personal story that I shared with my Dad in an email today. This past July, we had a 2 day hiatus in San Francisco before we headed to the Northern California Family Camp and to visit our supporting church in San Francisco.

I spent some of my childhood in San Francisco and was anxious to show them the places where I grew up, learned how to play American sports, and learned some life lessons as well.

Aside from the usual tourist stops, I took Marco to Neil Cummings Elementary School where I attended-- as well as to the homes we used to live in.  He found my elementary school very interesting because I took him to see the playground where I was bullied. I had told him that story earlier in the year.

There was a tough boy named Greg who I tripped by accident on the playground.  It was an accident, but Greg responded by pushing me, starting a fight, and pushing me down off the playground as a large crowd gathered to watch.  I was humiliated.

I got my revenge a couple of years later when Greg and I were put into the same class.  There was a tree on the playground where I started the "I Hate Greg Club."  The IHGC met during recess in the tree and we were all assigned titles like "President," "Secretary," and "Vice President."  I was the "Senator" (even though I was the founder, I preferred the title Senator).  When our teacher found out about the IHGC, she was furious at all of us and yelled at me.  The IHGC was immediately disbanded.

In the end, Greg and I ended up becoming friends.  It turned out he was just a hurting boy who was lonely.  Even as kids we could tell his mother was a mess.  His parents were divorced and his father grew marijuana in the backyard (Hey, who doesn't in San Francisco?  You think the gardens are for flowers?). I shared this story with Marco earlier in the year because last year he had a bully problem all year.  I told Marco the story of IHGC to demonstrate how out of my pain and frustration I became a bully too.  The point I was making is that sometimes when we are in pain, we find painful ways of acting out.  That's what bullies do and that's what we can do as well; even as grown ups. As always, Marco really internalized that story.

Last year, his bully would not let up from September to June.  He seemed to be very jealous of Marco.  But Marco never hit back and he never lashed out.  Instead, when he would get the opportunity to select a reading buddy and he would choose the bully.  In many ways, he tried to befriend the bully.

Eventually Marco's friends finally got tired of the bully and by Spring, they started their own little gang against the bully.  But Marco wouldn't join.  He risked his friendship with his friends to keep reaching out to the bully.

"To be a Christian is to take chances," he said to me as we drove home from school one day.

By the end of the year, he had made friends with the bully.  He had won the bully over with kindness.  When summer vacation came around, Marco read a note that the bully had written to him.

It said:  "To Marco.  You are the best friend I've ever had."

Marco's self-restraint paid off.  That's character.  The hardest thing to come by in life.

The Jesuits have a saying:  "Show me the boy at 7 and I'll show you the man."

So that is why I took him to see the tree at Neil Cummings Elementary School in Marin County, California on his summer vacation.

Sometimes the sins of the father are not passed on to the son, and I'm grateful for that.

Mt. Athos Greece: Eastern Orthodoxy

This video is worth watching.  It's a recent 60 minute piece on Mt. Athos--the holiest site in Eastern Orthodoxy.  Eastern Orthodoxy is a huge part of the European religious conscious.  For those of us living over here and working in Eastern Europe and Greece, it's a very important worldview to understand.  And it is so fundamentally different from Evangelical Christianity that it makes for quite the culture clash.  There is a brief commercial before the segment begins.

If you want to see Part II--it is here.

4th Annual Book of the Year Awards-2011

It's that time of the year again folks!  The 4th (or is it 5th?..I really can't remember, but I've been doing this for a while m-kay?) Annual Book of the Year Awards. Already, the celebrities are lining up on the red carpet as the limousines keep pulling up.  Look over there!  It's Joyce DeWitt of "Three's Company" Fame?  I believe I see "Linda Lavin!"  There, behind the E reporter, look it's Rex Reed.  My goodness, all the big names are here.  What is this? The premier of Joanni Loves Chachi?

Alright, it was easily my worst reading year in 20 years, surpassing last year which was my previous worst.  The purchase of an i-phone was a huge distraction to my reading this year.  I listened to Doves and Terence Trent D'Arby way more than I read this year.  On the positive side, I discovered apps with sermons which kept me busy on trains, planes and automobiles.  But 2012 has got to be better than this.  I have a list of books to for this next year and quite a few novels that are classics, so it has got to be better than this year.

Despite the bad year, the Top 10 books this year are not so bad.  In fact, some of them are marvelous.  So let's begin the countdown as soon as Fred Grandy of "Love Boat" fame takes his seat.

10. The Shining by Stephen King (416 pages).  This was my first Stephen King novel ever.  It was actually my first horror novel ever and I was expecting to be very scared.  I wasn't, which was disappointing.  By the end of it I was ready to lock myself up in a mountain resort and kill someone.

9. The Tenth Parallel by Eliza Griswold (336 pages).  A woman takes a multi-country journey to countries where there are fault lines between Christians and Muslims.  Her travels take her to Sudan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other locations.  It should have been called:  "Passport to Muslims and Christians Killing Each Other."

8. The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston (368 pages).  In the late 1970's and early 1980's, a creepy serial killer murdered young couples in the hills of Florence.  These brutal slayings inspired the creation of the fictional cannibal, Hannibal Lector most famously found in "The Silence of the Lambs."    The book is not just about an unsolved case, but about Tuscan culture and the ridiculousness of the Italian judicial system.

7. The Primal Wound:  Understanding the Adopted Child by Nancy Verrier(231 pages).  Fascinating but painful look at the effects of infant abandonment and adoption.  It takes a look at what happens before and after the adoption.  Be careful with this one.

6. Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa (288 pages):  Another novel.  People are disappearing near a mine in the Peruvian Andes and a couple of civil police from Lima are sent to investigate.  Leaving their modern society behind, they enter into the (non-Western) world of the Quechua Indigenous people of the Andes with their mysticism, ritualistic, and spiritual world.  It's a clash of cultures between the Westernized city detectives and the world of the mountain people.

5. Legacy Churches by Stephen Gray and Franklin Dumond (115 pages).  A book about why churches enter into steep decline and what it takes to re-invent themselves.  It's a must read for probably 90% of all pastors out there right now.  A great introduction into the dynamics that lead to churches hitting a plateau and decline and what can be done about it.

4. In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000 Year History of American Indians by Jack Page (480 pages).  A wonderful overview of the history of Native Americans which summarizes a lot of history into a very readable and compact form (obviously, 480 pages for 20,000 years but, hey, he's a good writer).  It breaks down simplistic view of the Native Americans, brings out the fullness of the diversity of the various tribes, and is full of fascinating facts like the fact that many tribes prophesied the arrival of the white man.  Also they were not primarily hunter and gatherers, but agriculturalists and city dwellers.  And the horse riding, Sioux of the plains we all love in "Dances with Wolves" were an aberration---a post white-man reinvention of themselves that moved them West and onto horses.  Really nicely done history.

3. Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden (256 pages).  The story of the hunt for Colombian Narco-traffic kingpin Pablo Escobar.  Don Pablo ushered in the age of the highly globalized, drug cartel that took over Medellin, and then Colombia. Pablo is an evil, but intriguing character and the way the cartel emerged from the slums to become more powerful temporarily than the government is fascinating.

2. A Land So Strange:  The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca by Andres Resendez (314 pages).  In 5th grade, I fell in love with the story of Spanish Conquistadors encountering the Americans in the 1500's.  All the stories are riveting but none more so than the story of Cabeza de Vaca (Head of a Cow).  Hoping to perhaps become the governor of newly discovered Florida, Cabeza de Vaca and 600 Spaniards set off to conquer land and find gold in an area they thought was close to Mexico City.  Instead, they were hit by a hurricane near modern day Tampa Bay, shipwrecked, lost in the swamps, and starving.  This was only the beginning of a journey into hell as they were captured by Indian tribes (some that don't even exist anymore), passed around as slaves, survived another large raft voyage, and trekked from Tampa all the way to Mexico City suffering the entire time.  They saw mystical things and went to places no Westerner had ever seen.  In the end, they ended up having spiritual powers themselves.  I won't ruin the ending but Cabeza de Vaca's journey was simply astonishing.  One day in the life of Cowhead is more dramatic than our entire lives. This guy is my patron saint.  I'd love to visit his tomb in Spain in the coming years.

1. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Surival, Resiliance, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand  (pages 398).  The true story of Luis Zamperini whose quest to become an Olympic champion was interrupted by World War II.  Much like Cabeza de Vaca, Zamperini's journey is simply astounding.  It's hard to decide between the two books, but Laura Hillenbrand's writing has such a remarkably wonderful flow to it that it reads more like a novel than like history.  I read this while on vacation in Costa Rica and just could not put it down.  While Cabeza De Vaca's story doesn't inspire (just astounds), this one adds the redemption piece that makes it a remarkable life lesson.  It was a gift from Rod Stafford of Fairfax Community Church in Washington, DC.  What a great one it was.  The best book I read all year!

Honorable Mentions: It's a doctoral dissertation but it's now published; Rod Stafford's "Free to Lead: The Decision-Making Ethos of Healthy Growing Churches" is a very good read about a completely under-written about subject: the fine line between unhealthy hierarchical leadership and overly de-centralized leadership as it relates to congregational decision-making.  Rod's Collaborative Hierarchy model would get a lot of churches out of the bogged down bureaucratic process that can keep them from healthy change.

Biggest Disappointments: Serpico and King of the Gypsies by Peter Maas.  Well, they were both made into films!  True, one of them starred Eric Roberts and Judd Hirsch, not such a great sign--true 'dat, but still, I thought these books would be a gripping insight into New York police life and American gypsy life.  They were really very underwhelming.  Perhaps at the time (the 1970's) this was a pretty gripping sociological read.  But I just wasn't feeling it.

Well, there you have it.  The show is over and Ricky Gervais did not make one bad joke.  What a memorable night.  Congratulations to Laura Hillenbrand for winning the big award.

Next year, more novels I think.  I could use the escapism, but I always find myself gravitating toward non-fiction.  The world is so interesting and these books made that very clear again this year.  See you next December at the 4th or 5th or 6th annual Book Awards unless the Mayan Apocalypse kills us all in 2012.

Peace out!