“Our system is perfectly designed for the results we are receiving.”

This was the repeated phrase at a lunch I recently attended where author Alan Hirsch was presenting.  The room was full of Chicago-area church leaders, and the room quickly fell silent as Hirsch began critiquing the current state of affairs in the Western Church.  While he had some apt critique, he wasn’t all sour – he was just as ready to point to fresh perspectives and examples of the church engaging and subverting the culture in America.

He made it clear that only the American Church, unlike the church in Europe or Australia, stood a real chance at re-interpreting the Gospel for the West in a way that could thrive in the post-Christendom era in which we now live.

But his strongest words were the line  he dropped half a dozen times throughout his talk: “Our system is perfectly designed for the results we are receiving.”

Think on that for a moment – how much weight can you bench press?  Only as much as your body’s system allows - and the way things are in your body are perfectly arranged for you to lift exactly what you’re capable of lifting.  Want to up your max weight?  Change your system! Try adding more protein to your diet, and less sugar.  Head to the gym 2 extra times a week.  Read about lifting techniques.  If you want to change the results, change the system.  Its amazing how we constrain our imaginations when it comes to the systems in our lives.

“Oh, that’s the way things have always been, and always will be…”  Give me a break.  You’re talking “equilibrium,” and to biologists, equilibrium is another way of saying, “you’re stone dead.”  Change = life!

The Church in the West today is spending 3 times as much on facilities as it was 10 years ago. 3 TIMES AS MUCH AS A DECADE AGO!  And numbers are in decline.  Leaders are getting harder to come by, as congregations are expecting more and more from their church leaders.  Sure, there are more and more mega-churches dotting the American landscape, but for every mega-church that breaks 1000 attendees, how many congregations had to shut their doors?

It has been said of the American Church, “The front of the parade is becoming more and more impressive, and no one is noticing that the line is getting shorter and shorter.”

The question is – can the church…your church…change its system? It is interesting how quickly we have come to expect the inevitability of the mega-church as the ONLY form of ecclesiological success.  Like the industrialized food system in America, the mega-church has only emerged in the last generation or so; and yet we see it as the only box God can work in.  I for one simply refuse to go along with that.  What ways can we keep the Gospel close to our chest, and yet experiment wildly with the form?  Let’s change the system – let’s take ourselves a little less seriously, and let imagination become our modus operandi!

Don’t do it out of fear that “God’s Church is depending on you,”  Do it because prophetic imagination is central to the story of God.  Do it because the Gospel is ALWAYS changing its clothes – the “word” is always “becoming flesh” and “moving into the neighborhood.” (John 1:14)

We’re perfectly designed to get the results we’re seeing across America today.  If we want more of the same – keep doing the same thing you’ve always done.  Otherwise, get out there and break the mold!

I’m peering out a window as plows push away a pile of snow only to let the sky create a new problem right behind them.  People are catching cabs – leaving their cars in the middle of the streets.  I think I saw a bus go by with chains wrapped around its tires.  Chicagoans become both paralyzed by the might of the weather, and strangely adventurous in its wake!  People out with snow shoes, ski goggles, I think I even saw a pack of huskies pulling a CTA train…

It is powerful watching the wind blow in the middle of a blizzard.  Its almost unbelievable watching lightning clap across the sky illuminating the millions of snowflakes in view.  ”Thundersnow…” who’dda thought…

All this brings to mind just how fragile this whole project is.  I mean – this isn’t exactly the full extent of the universe’s power – a simple solar flare at the wrong angle or a slight chink in our earth’s electro-magnetic armor and this snow would melt in a millisecond and so would we.  There truly is no limit to the power God has in his hands – this is just a kind reminder of what’s possible.  It’s also a reminder of the continued grace of our existence!  Sitting in this warm space with decent coffee and a funny folk music playing in the background is all a grace.

Ancient cultures believed that this weather madness was proof of a two gods fighting it out in heaven leaving us with the collateral damage.  Worrisome.

Keep the fragility of your life always before you, but don’t live it out in fear.  Let it be a moment of living in the dependence of the very Power who controls this “snowpacalyse” – who puts a limit to the force of the winds and the feet of snow that fall.  God didn’t destroy chaos when he created this world of order; he put it in it’s place:

Job 38:8 “Who kept the sea inside its boundaries

as it burst from the womb,

9 and as I clothed it with clouds

and wrapped it in thick darkness?

10 For I locked it behind barred gates,

limiting its shores.

11 I said, ‘This far and no farther will you come.

Here your proud waves must stop!’

If you’re experiencing the power of God’s chaos today – enjoy the grace of existence in the midst of it all.  He’s got chaos on a leash, but today he’s letting it loose for a little while.

Today Katrina and I met up with leaders from others from house church networks all over the region.  We met very close to O’Hare and chatted about the upcoming Greenhouse Conference with Neil Cole and others.  This is a weekend intensive conference that brings in some great speakers from around the country to share some of their insights into the wild, emerging conversation of viral discipleship and organic church planting.  Its the perfect conference whether you just want to learn about it all from a 30,000ft perspective or you’re ready to dive in head first, OR you’ve been at it for years and need help with the complex issues of leadership and networking.

Wanna learn more about the event?  Check out our new starter website for all organic networks in Chicago.  If you are in a network or know of another one, please contact me and we’ll get ya added!  Want to attend the Greenhouse Conference?  Soon we’ll have a Registration site – but for now you can check all the details for it here. If ya just can’t wait – click “contact us” on my blog’s side bar.

My hope is to get a few more posts up this week – I’ve been missing you blog!