Gerard Kelly from Bless on Vimeo.

I first met Gerard Kelly about ten years ago when he spoke at my church and we went out for beers and cigars afterwards.  While hipster city pastors who like to show off their expertise on single malts are now a cliche of the clergy, Kelly is no poser.  He’s too old for that, I think he just likes a smoke!   I remember thinking at the time that he was fascinating thinker about urban mission.  Also, my friends, Dave and Blythe Toll, went and worked with Gerard and Bless in Europe for eighteen months, so I feel like I am only two degrees of separation from him.

This video was recently forwarded to me, and I liked it so much I thought I’d comment on the six words.

Six words that Gerard Kelly believes describe the kind of churches people want to belong to:

Sustainable

Kelly rightly identifies the shift of meaning in this word from ‘what we do for the environment’  to ‘having a sustainable lifestyle,’  So it is natural that churches should think about sustainable models of church, community and mission in a sustainable way.  He is right when he suggests that what many churches are doing is unsustainable.  I love his hook here that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate renewable energy source.  The guys at St Thomas’ Sheffield and 3DM ministries make a big point about this and so work hard at balancing their community calendar.

I often speak  with people who are not living sustainable lifestyles: they might be married with young kids, both parents are working, and maybe even studying.  Even the kids in my church are over worked – trying to fit all the school activities in as well as studying so hard to get into the top University courses.  To the overworked Christian, church activities can feel stressful and a burden.  Sunday worship is attended out of loyalty rather than joy.  Often there is guilt around a lack of a personal devotional life, and the only formal ministries they can sign up to is to do the Bible reading once every few months.  In addition, many adult Christians finances are overstretched and unsustainable.  They have committed to a mammoth mortgage without first prioritising their budget ‘christianly.’

We’ve never been good at identifying our idols.

All of this points to the great opportunity we have as the Church to discover Christlike sustainability and then to share that with the world.  People want to be part of churches that help them to live sustainable lives.  A good question every pastor should ask is what programs can we slash and still have good community?  And what might happen if we all had a Sunday off from attending our church service?

Social

This is not about social networking but about human commonality.  Kelly urges us to adopt the logic, “you’re not my friend because we vote the same or believe the same but because we are both human.”  We should learn to mix with people who don’t agree with us.  Often the community that the church offers is one dimensional and boring but it should be vibrant and countercultural. Christlike friendship is more important than faction:  “you are my friend even if you choose a different life to me.”  Christ-centred society is supposed to have friendship with meaning.  What does it mean to create churches that have relationships and friendships and mission like this?

One of the best things a church can do to be attractive is to be Christlike in its relationships.  Unfortunately this often isn’t the case.  Congregations often trash the pastor and vice versa.  [See Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together.”]  One of  the best things you can do as a pastor is (1) repent of all the times you’ve whinged about your congregation (2) forgive your congregation for when the whinged about you and ask them for forgiveness (3) preach against whinging and promote a culture of generosity (4) promote lay people to positions of leadership who are generous.  If your church can turn around and be generous and positive, you will be modelling one key aspect of Christ-cenetred community that will cause you to become very attractive.  If you can also promote love for the marginalised, and a culture of listening before speaking, then you’ll be one step closer to heaven!

With regards to the idea of learning to develop friendships with people who disagree with you, a great book that I’ve been reading lately that goes into some detail about how you pursue the tension between your submission to Jesus as Lord and your engagement with the world is Graham Cray’s book “Disciples and Citizens.”

Choral

Following on from the idea of “Social” is the idea of “Choral”.  Kelly is playing with the idea of difference and harmony.  When people sing different parts in harmony the effect is beautiful.  What we are called to in the church is sing our song in a million different voices – and enjoy the fact that when we do this something amazing happens.  We should not seek to become homogenous but be and celebrate difference.  Mix people together who don’t normally hang together – slaves and masters, jews and greeks, young adult hipsters and noisy toddlers.  This raises an interesting question about the validity of aged focused churches and congregations.  Kelly is suggesting  the best way forward is to offer diversity of culture rather than sameness.  Perhaps, now that we have learned that we need to engage with people cross culturally in church and not assume that everyone understands the medieval aesthetic that we have enjoyed for a 1000 years of European church, that now we can go back to having congregations with people from all ages and stages?  Christians should get over the idea that we need to find the perfect church which is one that is filled with lots of people just like them.  If our churches do reflect the diversity of the neighbourhood, then we will be one of the only contexts where those subcultures will meet together.  “Choral” is a glimpse of heaven.

Conversation

Kelly believes that churches of the future need to become “conversational” as a way of seeking truth.  We are discovering that truth is about conversation – we should promote conversation.  Truth, Kelly argues, “is woven from a thread of a thousand stories.”  Don’t tell but dialogue and listen.  This is going to become especially important as thorny divisive issues such as sexuality continue to become more thorny and divisive.  Preaching in the 21st century church needs to become conversational and move away from simply being declaratory (not easy to get this right).  You can have a conversational culture and still believe in the truth of scripture.  But you have to remind yourself that while the Bible is inerrant, you’re capacity to interpret the Bible is not.  (Which is why we should read the Bible in community and not just solo.)

Aesthetic

Kelly makes a zinger of a point about prioritising aesthetics in the 21st century church.  He reminds us that the younger generations are an aesthetically informed people.  And yet despite this, the evangelical and pentecostal movements are so aesthetically starved!  For the past 20 years or more we’ve produced churches that seek to meet in starchy warehouses and sing cheesy sentimental juvenile worship songs.  God is beautiful – God is not just true.  What’s the point of the gospel being true if it’s ugly?  Beauty always points towards God, says Kelly.  Therefore, believe in design and beauty.  Making, painting, and designing should be part of the church.  [Note to megachurch pastors: just because you have sexy marketing and lavish HD digital projections in worship does not mean that you do this well].

Pastors of the future should seek to be aesthetically intelligent people.  If they are not, they should find people to work with who are.

Entrepreneurial

Like Al Hirsch, Kelly says the church of the future needs to promote its entrepreneurs.  The Church needs heroes who start things.  The church needs to do something, make something, be something new, and have an entrepreneurial spirit.  This is especially challenging for the denominational churches who are chained to the concept of propping up their heritage.  Anglicans and Baptists promote Pastors and Teachers to leadership but where are the Apostles? Answer: for the past few decades the Pentecostals have stollen them.  But that is beginning to change as Pentecostalism starts to join its Anglican and Baptist brethren into being a ‘denomination’ with a heritage to uphold.  Now the entrepreneurs are starting to rise up in their respective denominations.  In my Anglican tribe in Melbourne we have about six or seven church plants in development at the moment, whereas five years ago you were lucky to have one.  Exciting times.  Promote a culture of entrepreneurialism.  Promote the entrepreneurs!