Hugh Halter

This last week I was in Beirut training group of pastors around Tangible Kingdom concepts. The only thing I knew about Beirut prior to this trip was that they’ve been sandwiched in between two pretty mean big brothers on each side of the country and as the middle child has had to take licks from both sides. The people of Lebanon are a beautiful people and there are many vibrant believers, but they’re often overshadowed by the Islamic infighting between Muslim factions, Israel, and Islamic fundamentalists. Hezbollah is a sleeping giant that can mobilize terror and destruction at a moments notice.
While there I learned that thousands of Christian Lebanese have exited the country recently. Add the to that the fact that most Christian families have 1-2 children and most Muslim families have 6-8 children, the future looks bleak for the church in this critical part of our world.
This reality of a declining church is not just 4000 miles away. While in London the week prior, I learned that there are more Muslims in mosques every week than those in the Church of England! In England. The Anglican Church that held massive national and global presence now is folding up like a broken lawn chair. They even have an office called, “The office of redundant churches” that is solely focused on selling their churches to keep their denomination funded as long as they can. Many churches are now pubs (which isn’t a bad thing to a guy like me), restaurants, health clubs or community centers.
Now back to the Beirut pastors. Imagine if you expected that your Christian movement could actually be merely a remnant in a few short years. How would you respond? Would you fight? Would you get radical and do all you could to extend the mission forward? OR would you veer toward fear, control and maintenance? My guess is that you may vacillate between the two. They have. There are those who are working tirelessly to extend the vibrant mission of God and there are those who have taken a more skeptical stance and are just trying to stay out of harms way.
Normally I would judge anyone not willing to do anything to extend the way of the kingdom, but after seeing what the church in Lebanon is up against, I am humbled at anyone’s willingness to pastor at any level there. It is tough! Tougher than almost anyplace I’ve been to to date. In addition to simply being massively outnumbered, the state requires that everyone hold a card that indicates whether they’re Muslim, Catholic or Christians, and specifically who they are affiliated with. To be married, divorced or get functional civil representation, you have to choose a side and there must be a sanctioned church or religious heritage over everyone or you won’t have anyone to bury you when you die, or marry your children.
Now imagine that a guy like me just came in and suggested they send out a decentralized movement of incarnational communities to engage the world. Nice idea, but you may be able to see that it’s not that simple. Unless the existing church figures out a way to sanction, support and affiliate decentralized mission from a centralized structure, the church may not survive. Yet, they are going to try and we’re going to do what we can to help.

I bring this up more as motivation for us in the states. Nothing holds us back. No one is threatening our existence. If the evangelical movement dies out in the next 25 years, which it is on pace to do, it’s going to be no one’s fault but our own.

We must stretch beyond our present ways of church. We must stop belly-aching about the cost of new exploits or the potential for failure. “Oh, we might not get paid…Oh, we might not get the respect of our peers…Oh we may have to work a normal job…Oh our denominational leaders may belittle us”…YOU’VE GOT TO BE FREAKING KIDDING ME!!! We still get to make a good living, our children live in peace, we can find plenty of friends who are living the same tension, and we don’t have to worry about exiling our country or leaving everything we know. The worst thing that will happen if we leave the institutional church to engage the world is that we may not reach anyone. That’s it, and that’s not even that bad. It’s just a blow to our pride.
Church planters, it’s time to stop trying to plant churches that give us personal credibility and simply be faithful to love the lost regardless if a church is established. It’s time to stop pandering to consumer Christians who want a cool church service to attend. Denominational leaders, it’s time to stop protecting your job at the expense of standing up for and advocating for the courageous young leaders God is giving you. Time to take the heat for them, and if possible to serve with them in the culture. You may even find ways to give back your denominationally funded salary and get a bi-vocational job with them. Oh..and to “normal Christians”…stop being normal. Instead be “Christ-followers.” The world isn’t inspired by our limp-wristed ways and you don’t even enjoy living that way. Time to step into the waters of financial faith, personal sacrifice, and time with people.
It’s time for everyone to dig in our heels, grab the rope and start pulling. Don’t worry, the rope is anchored to the Spirit of God and is tethered in heaven. It was lowered to the earth through Christ, and now is handed to us by Him. “As the Father has sent me, I now send you.”
If we fail in a land of comfort with all the resources at our fingertips, I believe it will be very hard to look Jesus in the eyes someday.
Hugh

On last weeks trip to London, Amsterdam, and Beirut, I took a lot of personal time to re-evaluate my life, calling, failures and hopes for this next phase of life. Here’s a few of the things I believe God helped me see. Four or Five of these came to me after I fell asleep on a park bench in Amsterdam. I woke up and my camera had been taken, but it at least I got a few nuggets from God.

Principles to reaffirm:
• First things first: Whenever family wants to do something, make it a priority. Schedule ministry after I schedule family.
• I can’t out-give God
• I’m not in God’s will if I’m stressed. Prayer under pressure proves that I trust God.
• Everything cool I have has been given to me by God so stay on His good side.
• Ryan is God’s gift to me to make me more like Him. Pay attention to how I process his struggles. Patience with Him will be the most significant way I change at the heart level.
• Stay in shape, it’s not an option. It’s part of my job and calling.

• Walk outside with God every day. He doesn’t ever meet me in my office.

• Alli loves Harley rides and doing projects with me. Get’er done!
• McKenna loves shopping and talking with me. Get’er done!
• Start treating both like young women instead of girls. Teach them how to handle money this year. Give/Save/Risk formula.

• Cheryl loves to walk, dinners out with fun people, and longer coffee times. Get’er done!

• Don’t get frustrated with people’s lack of commitment or ignorance at any level. See it as an opportunity to be more creative in how I lead.
• In ministry, prioritize leaders and sojourners. Let other churches deal with the rest.

What I want these next five years:

1) Cheryl, Alli, & McKenna to love being around me

2) Ryan health to improve and for him to find friends

3) Shoot at least one Bull elk

4) God’s winsome blessing over Adullam

5) For Satan to leave me alone and go pester someone else.

Hey, I had a chance to hang out with some buds, Phil Graf (left) and Carle Raschke (camo) in Amsterdam and spend some time with Andrew Jones. You can read his blog on the whole thing at the Tall Skinny Kiwi blog.

I normally don’t do this, especially on a blog, but I’ve come to feel that this leg of the journey is shaping up to be a poignant God set up.  What I thought was an informal meeting with some pastors in Beirut seems to be moving into a two day intensive training with some dear leaders that have struggled to find a handle on which to hang their mission.  This war torn country is not only dealing with deep ethnic and religious fighting, but the church seems to be paralyzed in the midst of the chaos.  I sheepishly accepted this invite by our CRM president, mostly to be a fly on the wall, but with there response to the book, I need to see this as much more.  I’d ask for your prayers as you read Sam’s email to me tonight.

“Hugh:
Just talked to the coordinating leader, and he wants any and all extra books he can get his hands on.
The thing has mushroomed on us in Beirut …25-30 people.  Heads of several denominations, leading pastors, etc …  it is a rather remarkable crowd for this country.   He is ecstatic about the response he has been getting to the book.  One pastor just called him …had read the book twice and is requiring all his staff to attend.  Another one called and said “This is exactly what we need.  My church is rusting.”

To prime the pump, he also met with each of these people individually and hand delivered the book, asking them to read it and explaining why they were invited.  I think we’ll find pretty much everyone will have done it.  The major question he is getting is, “OK, how do we do this?”

Hope it’s going well in Amsterdam.  Looking forward to hearing how things went on Monday after I left.

Sam”
_______________
Dr. Sam Metcalf
President, CRM-US

Thanks

I’m writing today from London/Heath-row airport. I just spent three days on the front-end of tangible kingdom journey that will move to Amsterdam today and then Beirut toward the weekend.  Each stop includes some time alone to seek God on issues related to life, Adullam, and our calling to influence leaders of today’s church.  And each stop includes some time with locals who are processing missional concepts in the book.  Last night, I met with 12 men in a central London Pub, who described by the informal ring-leader, were “a simple band of drunks and womanizers who were trying to follow Jesus.”
These guys were the real deal. They meet every Tuesday night from 6:30 to 10:30 pm.  They talk, they drink warm beer, a lot of it, and then they pray for each other.  The prayer is the most important thing they do and even though the “famous author” came across the seas to spend some time with them, they wouldn’t let that supersede time supporting each other with intimate manly intercession.
As we talk about the book, I realized that the issues of missional life are similar wherever you go in the west. I expect it to be no different in Amsterdam.  The problem lies with three primary issues.
One is time:  These guys are as busy as anyone in the states.  One guy was a contractor and has to schlep his tools around a city that is jammed with cars, trains, pedalers, and motorbikes.  He comes home exhausted, gives his Sunday mornings to his church, small group time on another weeknight and then gives his buddies Tuesday night. The other nights are spent with his girlfriend.  He seemed motivated by my story, but asked as most do, “how do you have time?”  As the other guys prayed, we just talked about doing less church related stuff and also intentionalizing time with sojourners in the other natural times.  He loved to golf and just suggesting he always include sojourners in the time, seemed to jog some creativity in his mind.
The second issue that some in the group brought up were the issues of having time “just” with Christians verses time with sojourners.  They seemed to think as we do in the states, that these are separate groupings of people and thus, you have separate interaction.  As we talked it through, I mentioned that if they avoid calling themselves Christians and instead refer to themselves as “guys that are trying to follow Christ,” then it makes it a lot easier for anyone to be with them.  “They,” speaking of sojourners “struggle with pornography, so do you; they struggle with dating and sexuality, so do you; they struggle with marriage and parenting, so do you,” I reminded them.  “The call is not to make yourself to be so different than them, your call is to invite them to be with you as you struggle through issues of faith and life.”  They seemed to easily see that their bible and prayer time could be more open to the men in their lives who didn’t know Christ.
The third issue was that of “church.”  Although we may already be fighting the lousy assumptions people have about our Christian sub-culture in America after 300 years, imagine fighting 2000 years of church history and trying to set your faith apart.  These guys are jacked! They have Anglican churches on every corner and in the words of another man last night, “people really don’t know what Christianity is anymore.”  Some still had some fond experiences in their churches, but half of these guys didn’t go to church and wondered what they would do if they actually saw a handful of friends come to faith. For them, it was an inevitable dead-end.
As I left, I felt that the world is very small and that the issues of incarnational life are really no different. There are some theological beliefs that seem to give us permission avoid the world, and the pace of life makes it hard, and our greatest hindrance to witnesses of the gospel is against the public perception of the organized church.    “Bugga” isn’t it!???
The Tangible Kingdom rolls on to Amsterdam.

Hi friends, I’ve had a lot of emails lately by people who have read The Tangible Kingdom, asking about the MCAP.  Strangely, I feel bad I haven’t taken a blog or two to give more detail about how we train leaders.   So, if you’re interested, here’s the scoop.

Just to give you some background, well before The Tangible Kingdom book came out, we were flying around the globe offering a four day alternative church plant training called Zer0.  Essentially, we wanted to help church planters consider how a missionary would start a church through incarnational means instead of throwing up a church service and hoping people would show up.  The training went well, but we felt that frontloading the training wasn’t helping leaders process the tough transitions and unique opportunities and pitfalls associated with incarnational new works.  We got flooded with emails weekly by folks, saying, “ok, what do I do now?”

At the same time, Adullam was growing like a weed here in Denver and we felt a ton of pressure to stay home instead of doing all the training.  While sharing our dilemma with Alan Hirsch, he suggested we consider turning the four day training into a 7 month weekly apprenticeship so that we could stay home and help guys as they need it.

Thus, the MCAP (missional church apprenticeship practicum) was born.

What it is: Essentially, the MCAP is an online, collaborative learning environment around incarnational community and church planting.  Online in that, you don’t have to get on a plane and leave your context. You just have to wake up in the morning, grab a cup of coffee an log on! We upload a 20 minute video each Wednesday that has some focus on the three main stages of missionary life and church formation.  The three phases are:

1) Cultural engagement, 2) Community Formation, & 3) Structuring congregational forms that stay missional.

After the video is watched, we give you questions to relate to or practical homework to do with your community.  You then post your responses and start to learn “collaboratively” from other practitioners.  We do share our Adullam story and our concepts, but the MCAP is not “form-specific,” which means, we won’t tell you how to do church.  You get to architect your own environment while at the same time learning, gleaning, and processing what you see others doing from around the US, Canada and other western contexts.

We’ve found that most participants really appreciate the creativity they are forced toward through watching so many other contexts.

In addition to the weekly training, we provide unlimited, real-time coaching and video conferencing so that you can get what you need when you need it.

The benefits have been huge. For the planter or existing pastor who want to move toward incarnational church, it gives you a safe fraternity of friends who understand the tensions associated with non-attractional ministry.  For the denomination, it saves millions of dollars!!

Most denominations have put on average $50,000 to $250,000 into church plants after they’ve signed off on a leader after a week long assessment.  The results have been devastating and have caused denominations to fear the next plant.  The MCAP is our way to help you and your denomination “assess” your abilities and aptitudes toward church planting and it only costs $2500 for the year.  One denominational leader started to cry when I told him that they could outsource their front end missional church plant training and that we would work with them to provide a real assessment.  He realized all the money he could save and also how this process could help redirect leaders who were more gifted inside the church, back into the church.  He said, “it’s a win/win. At the very least, we’ve helped all our leaders, both planters and existing pastors know who they are and where they can play best on the field.  They’ll all be better missionaries regardless!”

We piloted the MCAP quietly for the first two years.  We’ve seen about 100 leaders now benefit and speak highly of this unique environment and with the book being out, we now want to let people know that there is an alternative to attractional church and attractional church plant training.

If you’re interested, email me at hughhalter@gmail.com.  I’ll quickly forward you on to Matt Smay who runs the MCAP and we’ll process your application.  You can get more detailed info at www.missio.us.  Click on MCAP.

Take care!

hugh

Imagine, you’re walking down the beach with a buddy “Sam, your spiritually disoriented God seeking friend.” You’ve been gently and sensitively loving on him and his wife for two years. You’ve blessed them, cared for them, prayed for them, and in the last two weeks Sam has been finally asking you about what Christianity is all about. Your heart starts to race, you begin to beg your God for the right words, but also for wisdom not to freak Sam out. Yesss! The right sentence comes to mind that will ease you into the next 30 minutes as you sashay your way down to the pier. The moment is right, the groundwork has been laid, it’s time for your friend to hear the beautiful story of your faith in Christ……when all of a sudden you run into this guy!!!

His hairy chest makes you gasp, his European-cut speedo elicits an immediate gag reflex. But nothing is more overtly misplaced than the megalith cross he’s sporting around his neck. Yep, he’s there to witness about Jesus!! Your friend, who was all ears 30 seconds ago, trades in his curiosity for laughter.

Yes, the message of the cross is clearly displayed, but once again poor posture ruins the message. This story is an embellishment but this guy is for real, and so is poor posture. Last week in LA, I spoke to a college group at a mega-church. They were there to learn about missions in the suburbs. As I talked about our posture being just as important as our message, one young man raised his hand and asked, “But if we worry about our posture, isn’t that like pandering for them to like us?” I asked, “Do you think it’s bad that people like us?” “Well, it seems like trying to be liked shouldn’t take precedent over telling people the truth.”

At that point, I flipped him off. Seriously I did. Not, however out of anger, but as a point of learning. I had just been leading the entire room through a mock story. We were all a missionary team sent to Europe to be good missionaries, you know, to show people the Gospel. We had just discussed how long good missionaries would take to win the hearts of the culture they were sent to, especially if the culture was recovering from 1800 years of oppressive religion. Most agreed, a minimum two years would be required just to gain a little street cred.

I thought we were getting somewhere, until this young man took us all the way back to the middle ages and thought the job of a Christian is to spout off truth without concern for how truth comes across. My middle finger was simply part of the story. I said, “buddy, if you show up in almost any western culture like Europe or Australia and prioritize proclamation over posture, this is the response you’ll get almost every time.”

Yes, my visual metaphor was crude, and I don’t plan on doing it again, but I think it’s time for us to take this issue much more seriously than we have. The collective evangelical church looks like this guy to most of the God seekers out there. It’s that bad and we better take our missionary call to win the hearts of our culture as the prevailing call of the church. It’s not about getting people to like us. Its about helping people see that its not about what they think its about.

Evangelism used to be “just telling them.” Now, evangelism is changing their assumptions. Just telling is easy. Changing their assumptions will require patience, prayer, and a creative community of people that all reflect an entirely different story.

This week I spoke to a denominational leadership team for the largest denomination in the country.  Historically, this group has been pretty slow to listen to strange guys like me, especially when they know I tend to challenge the way they view and do church. However, over the last five years, I’ve seen a marked openness and humility that gives me much hope.  At the end of a three hour presentation, an older lady came up to me and gave me a very tearful and honest hug. She didn’t say anything. Just a hug and then out the door.  I knew it meant something deeper.

The next day, I spoke to their collegiate ministry team a few hours away and one of their denominational heads, said, “you know that hug you got…well, it was a big deal.”  Apparently this dear lady has been fairly skeptical of new church ideas.  She like most, fear change although they know things can’t stay the same.

Looking back, I am thankful for all the time I had with college students and their leaders, but I did fly home feeling like my connection with this woman may have signaled a more profound influence.  Giving the old guard hope instead of poking a finger of blame, sharing stories instead of challenging through philosophy, and being honest instead of belittling seems to be the key in holding both the latent church and the emerging expressions of church together.

I think we all want the same thing!   God’s Kingdom… may it come.

hugh

I just got email from a normal unpaid peasant.  He said, “Hugh, I probably wasn’t supposed to get a copy of your book since I’m just a normal Christian.  My pastor gave it to me.  Anyway, I just want you to know that you’ve made something very simple, even more simple and I plan on living this stuff out with some friends. Thanks. Jim”

My reply, “Jim, thanks for the kind note.  Although the book was put out through Leadership Network, and tends to get marketed to the top level pastoral leaders, we actually intended it all along to make it down to the grass-roots level of you “sub-par humans.  Just kidding, although we really did write it for the average Joe.  Hope your pathway is fruitful and do share it with other hobbits!”

When Matt and I considered the content of the book, we envisioned the ways of the kingdom being accessible and desired by all Christians… at least the ones that care about God’s ways in the world.  Much of our training was with normal Christians and our passion was simply to move the people we were leading to live this stuff out.  As we saw the manuscript unfold, we also started to see how the book could influence the way church leaders think about leading.  When it came down to picking a publisher, we were most impressed by Leadership Network and Jossey-Bass’s commitment to our content and to their ability to market the work we did.  There was one rub, however.  LN’s wanted to market only to the top 40,000 church and denominational leaders.

Problem?  Sort of.  Although we wanted to affect these leaders, we also didn’t want to lose our voice with the peasants primarily because we think the peasants are really the ones who make change happen.  Yes, I work for a missions agency that focuses strategically on leaders with the belief that leaders affect change, and although I do feel strongly toward this end, I have come to learn that a good ol’ plumber with a heart and a few spare hours of time can get more kingdom stuff done than an overburdened pastor who’s time is filled with Christendom minutia.

So, we did change a few sentences and make the book look more palatable for leaders, but our prayer was that we would get a few hundred thousand emails like Jim’s.  Leaders are also giving us great reviews, but their emails always come with a deep sense of tension.  “I love it..But” followed by a list of why it’s so hard for them to unshackle and move forward.  Non-leaders can just get there faster and thus will become the silent leaders of a new revolution.

I was joking a bit about faking LN out. They actually knew what we were up to and have been great comrades in our fight to change the establishment while also fanning a grassroots movement of incarnational life and communities around the globe.

If you want to know the best way to jump in, buy the book for 6-8 friends (peasants) and then start reading together.  In a few months our Tangible Kingdom website will give you the opportunity to register your community thus giving us a way to resource your efforts.

Blessings

hugh

Good Morning, it’s Sunday morning about 5:30 am here in Denver.  I woke up in peace and I thought it was so noteworthy, I’d tell you about it.  You see, back in the day, with our first church plant we started in Portland, waking up on Sunday morning was like getting up to fight the French Foreign Legion.  I had such a fear of speaking, preaching, leading, and holding our community together, that I would get nauseous as soon as I’d realized it was Sunday morning.  I’d usually have stayed up till 1:ooam plowing over and over on my sermon, and then back up at 4:00am out of nerves to go back over my words. I’d drive to church depressed and often it would take me 60 minutes of prayer just to fight back the fear of approaching the community.

Today, I got up and was excited.  The fact that I was even able to take my mind off today’s events shows that God is re-orienting me towards a better way.  Adullam has taught me that people don’t come to a church gathering for a sermon.  Or if they do, they’re coming for the wrong reason.  Adullamites come to connect with God and see friends.  That changes everything.  I’m not really preaching today. I’m just going to walk the community through the sermon on the mount and see how people are feeling.  I’ve been meditating on it all week and do have a few thoughts to share, but I don’t feel any need to button it together into a monologue.  Jesus just seems to be in the room and I’m learning to trust his spontaneous voice to myself and the community.   I wonder what would happen if every pastor felt like they could just read scripture and facilitate a more simple and relational approach to spiritual learning.  I’m not suggesting at all that a well thought out sermon isn’t helpful, but quite possibly adults may learn better from an approach that requires them to participate.  It may also release many leaders from the performance miseries every week.

This morning, I’ll take my daughter Alli with me.  She loves to go early and hang out with me.  I wouldn’t have had the peace of heart to do this ten years ago, but this morning I’m looking forward to donuts and Alli, and friends.