Tim Keller: Prayer

Tim Keller - Prayer

Notes & Quotes from Tim Keller’s book on prayer

Part 1: Desiring Prayer

ONE: The Necessity of Prayer

On the significance of prayer from Keller’s marriage.

Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine - a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to is some nights? No- it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget, you would never miss. Well, if we don;t pray together to God, we’re not going to make it because of all we are cain. I’m certainly not. We have to pray, we can’t let it just slip our minds.

12 years later and they’ve never once gone a day without praying together. 

Flannery O’Connor the Southern writer was 21 and studying in Iowa, she sought to deepen her prayer life. Over time O’Connor learned that: 

prayer is not simply the solitary exploration of your own subjectivity. You are with Another, and he is unique. God is the only person from whom you can hide nothing. Before him you will unavoidably come to see yourself in a new unique light. Prayer, therefore, leads to a self-knowledge that is impossible to achieve any other way.

What is prayer?

Prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change - the reordering of our loves.

On the greatest gift of prayer:

It is remarkable that in all of his writings Paul’s prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances. 

Why? Paul recognised that the thing his friends needed most, the best and most important thing God could give them - was to know God better:

To have the ‘eyes of the heart enlightened’ with a particular truth means to have it penetrate and grip us so deeply that it changes the whole person. In other words, we may know that God is holy, but when our hearts’ eyes are enlightened to that truth, then we not only understand it cognitively, but emotionally we find God’s holiness wondrous and beautiful, and volitionally we avoid attitudes and behaviour that would displease or dishonour him.

What we need:

Knowing God better is what we must have above all if we are to face life in any circumstances. 

The integrity of prayer:

If we give priority to the outer life, our inner life will be dark and scary. We will not know what to do with solitude. We will be deeply uncomfortable with self-examination, and we will have an increasingly short attention span for any kind of reflection. Even more seriously, our lives will lack integrity. Outwardly, we will need to project confidence, spiritual and emotional health and wholeness, while inwardly we may be filled with self-doubts, anxieties, self-pity, and old grudges. 

John Owen wrote to popular and successful ministers: 

A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.

Jesus on personal integrity:

The infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life.

The Centrality of prayer

In Exodus, prayer was the way Moses secured the liberation of Israel from Egypt. The gift of prayer makes Israel great: ‘What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near is whenever we pray to him?’ Deut. 4:7

On failing to pray:

To fail to pray, then, is not to merely break some religious rule - it is a failure to treat God as God.

TWO: The Greatness of Prayer

Prayer’s greatness:

Prayer is so great that wherever you look in the Bible, it is there. Why? Everywhere God is, prayer is. Since God is everywhere and infinitely great, prayer must be all-pervasive in our lives. 

Prayer is:

Prayer is awe, intimacy, struggle - yet the way to reality. There is nothing more important, or harder, or richer, or more life-altering. there is absolutely nothing so great as prayer. 

Part 2 : Understanding Prayer

THREE: What is Prayer?

One 2004 study found that nearly 30% of atheists admitted they prayed ‘sometimes’ (bbc, 2004, feb) and another found that 17% of non-believers in God pray regularly (Pew Forum on Religion & Publich Life, Oct, 2012 ‘Nones on the Rise’). The frequency of prayer increases with age, even among those who do not return to church or identify with any institutional faith (pew forum, 2010).

Prayer’s global reach:

Efforts to find cultures, even very remote and isolated ones, without some form of religion and prayer have failed. There has always been some form of attempt to ‘communicate between human and divine realms.’ There seems to be a human instinct for prayer. Swiss theologian Karl Barth calls it our ‘incurable God-sickness.’

but how people pray varies:

Is prayer mystical or prophetic? Mystical prayer (often found in Eastern religions) is the sort of prayer that aims to become part of god, to discover the divine within ourselves.

German scholar Friedrich Heiler talks about the two types of prayer:

Mystical prayer emphasizes God as mor immanent than transcendent. He is within us and within all things. The main way then to connect to God is to go down into yourself and sense your continuity with the Divine.

Prophetic prayer by contrast emphasises that God is outside us, transcendent above us, holy, glorious and ‘other’. 

Mystical prayer climaxes in tranquility without words, while prophetic prayer finds its final expression in words of praise and an outburst of powerful emotions. While mystical prayer tends toward the loss of the boundary between the self and God, prophetic prayer leads to a much greater sense of the difference between the self and the majestic God - an awareness of sinfulness. 

Keller’s analysis:

Prayer is ultimately a verbal response of faith to a transcendent God’s Word and his grace, not an inward descent to discover we are one with all things and God.

On the global existence of prayer:

From the biblical point of view, the near-universal phenomenon of prayer is not surprising. All human beings are made in the ‘image of God’. Bearing God’s image means that we are designed to reflect and relate to God.

Jonathan Edwards:

God is sometimes pleased to answer the prayers of unbelievers.

Keller explains:

not because of any obligation but strictly out of his ‘pity’ and ‘sovereign mercy’, citing the biblical example of God hearing the cries of the Nineties in Jonah 3 and even of the wicked King Ahab.

A definition of prayer then:

We can define prayer as a personal. communicative response to the knowledge of God.

C.S. Lewis in ‘That Hideous Strength’ describes the change that occurs in one of the characters when they become a Christian and then returning home: The mould under the bushes, the moss on the path, and the little brick border were not visibly changed. But they were changed. A boundary had been crossed.

Listening & Answering:

for all his complaints, Job never walks away from God or denies his existence - he processes all his pain and suffering through prayer.

Job:

The question of the book of Job is posed in its very beginning. Is it possible that a man or woman can come to love God for himself alone so that there is a fundamental contentment in life regardless of circumstances? By the end of the book we see the answer. Yes, this is possible, but only through prayer.

The power of our prayers then, lies not primarily in our effort and striving, or in any technique, but rather in our knowledge of God. 

Prayer is:

John Knox said - an earnest and familiar talking with God

John Calvin - an intimate conversation of believers with God or / a communion of men with God

Meeting a Personal God:

If God were impersonal, as the Eastern religions teach, then love - something that can happen only between two or more persons - would be an illusion. We can go further and say that even if God were only unipersonal then love could not have appeared until after God began to create other beings. That would mean God was more fundamentally power than he was love. Love would not be as important as power.

Meeting God through his Word:

We humans may say, ‘let there be light in this room,’ but then we may have to flick a switch or light a candle. Our words need deeds to back them up and can fail to achieve their purposes. God’s words, however, cannot fail to achieve their purposes because, for God, speaking and acting are the same thing. The God of the Bible is a God who ‘by his very nature, acts through speaking.’

Prayer through immersion in God’s word

Eugene Peterson:

Peterson reminds us that ‘because we learned language so early in our lives we have no memory of the process.’ and would therefor imagine that it was we who took the initiative to learn how to speak. However, that is not the case. ‘Language is spoken into us; we learn language only as we are spoken into us; we learn language only as we are spoken to. We are plunged at birth into a sea of language… Then slowly syllable by syllable we acquire the capacity to answer: mama, papa,bottle, blanket, yes, no. Not one of these words was a first word. … All speech is answering speech. We were all spoken to before we spoke.

On the role of the Bible in prayer:

If the goal of prayer is a real, personal connection with god, then it is only by immersion in the language of the Bible that we will learn to pray, perhaps just as slowly as a child learns to speak. This does not mean, of course, that we must literally read the Bible before each individualised prayer. A sponge needs to be saturated in water only periodically in order to do its work.

On relationship with God:

If you have a personal relationship with any real person, you will regularly be confused and infuriated by him or her. So, too, you will be regularly confounded by the God you meet in the Scriptures - as well as amazed and comforted.

Prayer:

Through the Spirit, prayer is faith become audible.

The Spirit of adoption:

This is no ‘emergency flare’ or desperate anxious gamble. The Spirit gives believers an existential, inward certainty that their relationship with God does not now depend on their performance as it does in the relationship between an employee and a supervisor. It depends on parental love.

Luther told any Christian to begin to pray by saying the following to the Lord:

Although… you could rightly and properly be a severe judge over us sinners… now through your mercy implant in our hearts a comforting trust in your fatherly love, and let us experience the sweet and pleasant savour of a childlike certainty that we may joyfully call you Father, knowing and loving you and calling on you in every trouble.

Prayer:

Prayer is the way to experience a powerful confidence that God is handling our lives well, that our bad things will turn out for good, our good things cannot be taken from us, and the best things are yet to come.

Aristotle said of the gap between man and the gods:

While it might be possible to venerate and appeases the gods, actual intimate friendship with a god was impossible. The philosopher reasoned that friendship requires that both parties share much in common as equals. They must be alike. But since God is infinitely greater than human beings, ‘the possibility of friendship ceases.’

God is ‘not only the God on the other side of the chasm, he is the bridge over the gap.’ 

Beautiful hymn containing some great gospel truth:

To see the law by Christ fulfilled,

And hear his pardoning voice

Transforms a slave into a child

and duty into choice

— William Cowper, Olney Hymns

The Cost of Prayer

Prayer turns theology into experience. Through it we sense his presence and receive his joy, his love, his peace and confidence, and thereby we are changed in attitude, behaviour and character. 

PART 3: Learning Prayer

SIX: Letters on Prayer

Augustine on prayer - 

Augustine however argues not only that we can grow in prayer inspire of these difficulties but because of them. He concludes the letter by asking his friend, ‘Now what makes this work [of prayer] specially suitable to widows but their bereaved and desolate condition?’ Should a widow not, he asked, ‘commit her widowhood, so to speak, to her God as her shield in continual and most fervent prayer?’ What a remarkable statement. Her sufferings were her ‘shield’ they defended her from the illusions of self-sufficiency and blindness that harden the heart, and they opened the way for the rich, passionate prayer life that could bring peace in any circumstance. He calls her to embrace her situation and learn to pray.

Luther on prayer - 

Peter Beskendorf was the barber who shaved Luther and cut his hair. One day Peter asked Luther to give him a simple way to pray. Peter was a devout though flawed man. While intoxicated at a family mean, he stabbed his own son-in-law to death. Partly through Luther’s intervention Peter was exiled rather than executed, but he endured difficult final years. However, he took with him one of the great texts on the subject of prayer in all of Christian history. Luther gave Peter a rich but practical set of guidelines for prayer. 

Luther to Peter: 

Cultivate prayer as a habit through regular discipline. Luther proposes we do it twice daily.

Focus your thoughts to warm and engage our affections in prayer. This balances the practice of prayer as duty. He advises ‘recitation to yourself’ of scripture as a way of focusing the mind. 

He then describes how to do Bible meditation. 

He uses metaphor of a garland. ‘I divide each biblical command into four parts, thereby fashioning a garland of four strands. That is I think of each commandment as first, instruction, which is really what it is intended to be, and consider what the Lord God demands of me so earnestly. Second, I turn it into thanksgiving; third, a confession; and fourth a prayer.’ 

After meditation are we ready to pray? 

We could do yes but Luther shares one more exercise… Spiritual ‘riffing’ on the Lord’s Prayer. 

‘Praying the Lord’s prayer focuses us to look for things to thank and praise God for in our dark times, and it presses us to repent and seek forgiveness during times of prosperity and success. It disciplines us to bring every part of our lives to God.’

Luther’s final piece of advice:

He calls believers to essentially keep a lookout for the Holy Spirit. If, as we are meditating on praying, ‘an abundance of good thoughts comes to us, we ought to disregard the other petitions, make room for such thoughts, listen in silence, and under no circumstances obstruct them. The Holy Spirit himself preaches here, and one word of his sermon is better than a thousand of our prayers. Many times I have learned more from one prayer than I might have learned from much reading and speculation. 

7: Rules for Prayer

John Calvin

Spiritual Insufficiency 

We need to be aware of our flaws and weaknesses. 

Counsellors will tell you that the only character flaws that can really destroy you are the ones you won’t admit. 

What if we ask for the wrong thing?

Ask with confidence and hope. Don’t be afraid that you will ask for the wrong thing. Of course you will! God ‘tempers the outcome’ with his incomprehensible wisdom. Cry, ask, and appeal - you will get many answers.

The Danger of Familiarity 

Imagine you are, for the first time, visiting someone who has a home or an apartment near train tracks. You are sitting there in conversation, when suddenly the train comes roaring by, just a few feet from where you are sitting, and you jump to your feet in alarm. ‘What’s that?’ you cry, Your friend, the resident of the house, responds, ‘What was what?’ you answer, ‘That sound! I thought something was coming through the wall.’ ‘Oh that,’ she says. ‘That’s just the train. You know, I guess I’ve gotten so used to it that I don’t even notice it anymore.’ With wide eyes you say, ‘I don’t see how that is possible.’ But it is.

It is the same with the Lord’s Prayer. The whole world is starving for spiritual experience, and Jesus gives us the means to it in a few word. Jesus is saying as it were ‘wouldn’t you like to be able to come face-to-face with the Father and king of the universe ever day, to pour out your heart to him, and to sense him listening to and loving you?’ We say, of course, yes. 

Jesus responds, ‘It’s all in the Lord’s Prayer,’ and we say, ‘In the what?’ It’s so familiar we can no longer hear it. Yet everything we need is within it. 

Simple Church: Thom Rainer

Chapter one: The Simple Revolution Has Begun
Out of complexity, find simplicity. Einstein

Because of the complexity of modern life people are wanting simplicity. See Apple, google, graphic designers, successful airliners and interior designers for proof of this.

Papa John's pizza company:

at Papa John's we have a simple formula for success: Focus on one thing and try to do it better than anyone else. By keeping the Papa John's menu simple, we are able to focus on the quality of our product by using only superior-quality ingredients.

 In research surveys conducted across 400 churches of various sizes they found evidence that the vibrant churches were much more simple than the comparison churches. The difference was so big that the probability of the results occurring with one church by chance is less than one in a thousand. 

In general simple churches are growing and vibrant. Churches with a simple process for reaching and maturing people are expanding the kingdom.

The converse is true as well. Complex churches are struggling. Sadly the busy complex church is the norm. 

What the book isn't saying:

1) Simple is not a change in doctrine or conviction
2) Simple shouldn't be done because it's hip or on trend (actually the world is busy busy complex)
3) Churches shouldn't become simple just because it works
4) Simple is easy. Ministry will always be messy and difficult because people are messy and difficult.

Jesus, the revolutionary knew the importance of simple.

He wasn't pulled around by the complex religious factions. He settled on the simple and 'straightforward' 'love sinners and love God' idea.

In stark contrast to the heavy yoke of the religious leaders Jesus offered an easy yoke and a light burden.

Jesus and Clutter:

As a simple revolutionary, Jesus was bothered by meaningless and distracting clutter. 

Jesus' behaviour in the temple gives us amazing insight into the heart of God. Jesus is adamantly opposed to anything that gets in the way of people encountering him. 

Ministry schizophrenia. This is not a clinical disease. You will not find it in a psychology book, but it is present in many churches. You have noticed it before, but maybe you did not diagnose it as ministry schizophrenia. It is plaguing local churches.

When ministry philosophies collide, schizophrenia happens.

Like many churches, success at pastor Rush's church is measured by how well a particular program goes. Parts are evaluated but not the whole.

Story of the Bird Road rapist. Jose Diaz worked to set his father freed from prison. He did so by making them test the DNA of victims and the DNA of his wrongly imprisoned father. For 26 years the man was locked up until they did these DNA tests. Jose Diaz saw the whole picture. He saw the forest and not just the trees in the case of his father. Like Jose Diaz church leaders are called to free prisoners. Not from physical jail cells but from spiritual ones. 

Leaders of simple churches are designers. They design opportunities for spiritual growth. Complex church leaders are programmers. They run ministry programs.

To have a simple church you must have a simple discipleship process. This process must be:

Clear.

It must move people toward:

Maturity.

It must be integrated into church life and we must get rid of clutter.

Chapter 2: The Simple (and not so simple) Church in Action

A very helpful church that contrasts two real life churches of similar sizes, one that is streamlined around a clear vision and strategy and another that is more of a 'whoever shouts the loudest', over complicated programming type church.

Helpful for seeing the need for us/the church to get 'simple' and clear about what we're aiming at and how we're going to do it.

Chapter 3: Simple Church and extreme makeover

Clarity, movement, alignment, focus

Church leaders are builders and architects of a community. In 1 Cor. 3 believers are called God's children, God's field and God's building:

Children, fields and buildings grow in process. They do not mature overnight. They are not built in a day. They are constantly redecorated. 

Children, fields and buildings need the right environments to facilitate the process of growth. Children need nurturing, touch, food, and love. Fields need water, care and farming. Buildings need workers, materials, and someone like Ty (home makeovers, US style)

 Defining a simple church:

A simple church is a congregation designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth.

It's 'designed' - the ministry doesn't just happen.

'around' - it centres on something.

That something is a 'straightforward' - it is not confusing. The leaders know it and the people understand it.

It 'moves' people - programs are used as tools to promote this movement.

The authors conducted a survey (the Process Design Survey) in which they asked hundreds of churches questions relating to their church process strategies.

They assessed how well each church did on the four key elements of: clarity, movement, alignment and focus.

The results showed statistically that if churches wanted to grow/be vibrant then they needed to be simple. On average the growing churches scored 85 out of 100 whilst the 'comparison' churches scored an average of 69 points. The statiticians said: there is a highly significant relationship between a simple church design and the growth and vitality of a local church.

In short: a simple church strategy is effective.

The survey showed that simple and growing churches were also quite strategically focused around the four elements: clarity, movement, alignment and focus.

The above four elements ought to be at the forefront of ones mind as they seek to build a Simple system.

Clarity - Movement - Alignment - Focus

This is also true of projects generally. The chapter illustration is the design team in Extreme Makeover. They start by defining a clear vision, with blurprints to show it. They then get moving and implementing the plans, next they align every part of the job around the clear goal and finally they stay focused and 'on task' throughout the project.

Clarity

The ability of the process to be communicated and understood by the people. For a church to be simple it must have a high degree of clarity. Clarity and simplicity go hand in hand, they are close friends.

Without understanding, commitment wanes

If people are to embrace and participate in the ministry process, they must be able to internalise it. To be able to internalise it they must first grasp it. 

Movement

The sequential steps in the process that cause people to move to greater areas of commitment. This is about flow, assimilation. In a relay race the crucial stage is the handoff from one person to the next. This is what the 'movement' section is all about. It's about the handoffs, the bits in between the programs.

Sadly most churches are like poor relay teams. Instead of caring about the handoffs they care too much about the programs.

Simple churches pay attention to the handoffs. They have grasped the truth that assimilation effectiveness is more important than programmatic effectiveness.

To implement the movement element, church leaders must take a fresh look at the weekly church calendar and the regularly scheduled programs. All programs must be placed in sequential order along the ministry process. 

Alignment

The arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process. Alignment to the process means that all ministry departments submit and attach themselves to the same overarching process.

Alignment ensures the entire church body is moving in the same direction and in the same manner.

When a church is fully aligned all ministries are operating from the same ministry blueprint. The ministries not only embrace the simple process, but they are engaged in it... without alignment the church can be a multitude of subministries.

All churches naturally drift away from alignment.

When misalignment on a car is not address, the results are damaging. Tires can blow out while driving. Damage to the wheels can occur. The same is true for a church. When misalignment is not addressed, there is damage.

Focus

The commitment to abandon everything that falls outside of the simple ministry process.

Focus most often requires saying 'no'. It involves saying yes to the best and no to everything else.

If movement is the most difficult element to understand then focus is the most difficult element to implement.

The church needs more Hezekiahs

Hezekiah called God's people back to worshipping the true God. He was also willing to break the things that had become obstacles to their growth. He broke the golden snake of Moses' day because it had become an idol. He went beyond just destroying the high places, he also removed the things that had had their day and needed to be done away with.

Church leaders need to do the same. We need to stop the things in church life that have had their day and are now a distraction.

Hans Hofmann

Born in Bavaria in the late 1800s. He became an artist and a teacher of other great artists. He once indicated that if you want the necessary to stand out, you have to get rid of the unnecessary.

Churches need to learn to do the same.

Chapter 4: Three simple stories

Three Simple churches.

Story 1 - Immanuel Church, Glasgow, Kentucky

Bible belt territory, small 'city' of 16k residents. Immanuel has grown from 150-300 in just two years.
Tony Cecil is the Senior Pastor. He was 29 when he started (he's now 34). 

Clarity: Connecting, Growing, Serving

Movement: 

Sundays are for connecting believers. The worship service brings people into connection with God and other Christians.

Midweek Bible studies are for growing believers.

After the Bible study group people are encouraged to go to a smaller group which are deisgned ot help people become 'serving' believers.

Alignment: 

Everyone and every age specific group uses the same terminology. Connect. Grow. Serve. Simple. 

Focus: 

They don't do many special events and programs, choosing instead to focus their attention on moving people with various levels of commitment to deeper levels of commitment: 'we havea ctually grown spiritually and numerically by doing this' Tony said.

Tony's perceived benefits for being a simple church:

• Increased Morale. Telling people how they're going to make disciples rather then just urging them to 'do it' has really helped them.
• Urgency. People feel the need to move and grow in their Christian life.
• Spiritual Growth. 
• Conversions. From 2 baptisms in 18months to 40 a year!
• Stewardship. By cutting things that were peripheral, they had more money to spend on what really mattered.
• Unity.

Story 2: Christ Fellowship Church, Miami

Clarity

Like many established long running churches they had vision, purpose, strategy ad mission statements. They stripped back to one statement that would feature their single process. The purpose at the church is also a process: connect to God, connect to others, minister to people, witness to the lost.

Movement

From worship service to small group to ministry area and to witnessing to the lost. Everything serves their clearly defined purpose.

This is good:

Since the lat step in the process is not a program, people are challenged to do three things a week at Christ Fellowship. Come to a worship service, be in a small group, and serve in a ministry. Simple. These expectations are stated clear to people in the church.

Alignment

The vision is the same in every dept. : connect to God, others, ministry and the lost.

Focus

Extra programs are what business consultants refer to as nonvalue-adding work.

Story 3: Northpoint

Andy Stanley: complexity dilutes your potential for impact.

Clarity

From the foyer to the living room, to the kitchen. That's their process. They seek to move people into increasing levels of intimacy and relationship.

Movement

There is constant movement at NP. Even when people reach the kitchen it's not over. Small groups must start new small groups.

Alignment

Every ministry understands their process. It's so simple it can be drawn on a napkin. The process can be drawn with three circles. The first circle is the largest. It is the foyer environment for each ministry. The second circle is smaller it's the living room and the third circle is the smallest, it's the kitchen.

Focus

Everything is executed with excellence. The reason for this is because they have chosen to not do very much but to do what they do really well.

Simple Church: Part II Becoming a Simple Church

Chapter 5:

Why would you try to build spiritual lives/buildings without clear blue prints? We wouldn’t do that with physical buildings…

Define:

Vibrant churches are more than twice as likely than comparison churches to have a clearly defined process.

The starting point then is define your process. Without definition, people are uncertain about how the church is making disciples. 

Where there is ambiguity there is often confusion.

How’s your how?

Church leaders must define more than the purpose (the what); they must also  define the process (the how).

Thom discovered in some research that: evangelistically effective churches have leaders who are clear about the purpose of the church. 

Michael Hammer (business consultant) believes that the process is more important than the purpose of a company. It is the process that makes everything work.

Three concepts to wrestle with as we develop a ministry process:

Determine what kind of disciple you wish to produce in your church. 

Describe your purpose as a process. 

Decide how each weekly program is part of the process.

2. Illustrate:

Illustrating your process is vital. If you want your church members to see your simple process clearly, you must illustrate it.

People are more likely to experience the reality of the process if they can recall it.

3. Measure: 

The cliche is true: What gets evaluated, gets done.

If you do not measure the process people will think it does not matter. It will be just another statement on the wall of in the bulletin.

To learn to measure you must learn to think differently in two critical ways:

Learn to view your numbers horizontally and not vertically.

Most churches measure vertically. They look at any given program to see how many people are in it in order to decide how successful that program is. To look at the numbers horizontally means to look at each program alongside the previous and next set of programs for a persons development. 

Measure attendance at each level/stage in your process.

4. Discuss:

Clarity is not realised without consistency. To be a simple church with a simple process the new idea can’t become just another banner on a wall or vision statement in a drawer. It mustn’t be forgotten or dropped. Everything must be discussed relating to it and around it.

Michael Hammer: The leaders of an organisation must be the pioneers and the overseers of an organisation’s process. Ownership begins with leaders.

Pace yourself. This process takes time. The discussion is ongoing. It takes time for understanding and ownership to develop.

Four ways to surface and resurface the simple process in discussions among the leadership:

View everything through the lens of your simple process.

Surface the process in meetings.

Test the leaders on it.

Brainstorm new ways to communicate it.

5. Increase Understanding: 

Understanding does not come easily. It does not occur with a one-time magical act of communication. 

Three ways to increase the level of process understanding in your church.

Articulate the process corporately. 

‘Leaders you must talke about the process to the church as a whole. When you are tired of talking about it, people will just be in the first stages of understanding… you are just one voice in their lives.’

Max Depree said: Leadership is like third grade: it means repeating the significant things

2. Share the process interpersonally. 

Preachers note: it means more to people and people pay greater attention when they can see your heart off the stage.

3. Live the process personally.

If you are asking people to move from a worship service to a small group, you must be in a small group. If you are asking people to progress to a place of service, you must serve in a tangible way… off the stage.

If you are asking people to connect to people relationally who do not know God, you must meet your neighbours and the person who cuts your hair. 

Don’t be a spiritual travel agent, telling people to go where you’ve never been.

Please, no more travel agents

There is a major difference between a travel agent and a tour guide. 

Think of the difference between someone who sends you brochures for white water rafting and the guide who gets in the most with you and takes you down the river. People need spiritual tour guides. They have had plenty of spiritual travel agents. Take people on a journey with you.

Chapter 6: Movement: Removing congestion

Congestion is very frustrating. No one likes rush-hour traffice. Many churches are congested. 

People are stuck, not changed, unmoved. 

God is transforming us all the time, moving us on, growing us, sanctifying us. 

Our part in the process: Discover the place God wants you to be and place yourself there.

Strategic Programming

You must begin with the process and not the programs. If you begin with the programs you will have a tendency to build a process around the programs.

There should be one program for each phase of your process. The temptation is to attach all of your existing programs to one aspect of your process. 

2. Sequential Programming

In the rafting illustration used the experience gradually builds toward the level 4 rapids, you don’t start at level 4. 

Designate a clear entry point to your process. 

Commitment should increase with each level of programming. Therefore attendance at the subsequent levels of programming will decrease as commitment increases. 

3. Intentional Movement

Simple church leaders are designers. They design opportunities for people to be transformed. Complex church leaders are programmers. Programmers focus on one program at a time. Designers focus on the movement between the programs. 

‘Without movement programs are an end in themselves. Without movement you are just running ministry programs.’

Create short-term steps. Saddleback’s 40-day focus at various points in the year is a helpful way of encouraging people to buy in because the commitment and expectation is low and for a set period of time.

Short-term challenges engage people.

Capitalise on relationships

‘People to not progress through the simple process because they hear it from the pulpit. People do not move through the process because they see a purpose statement on the wall. As helpful as these things can be, people move because someone else brings them through the process.’

Consider the ‘now what?’

As people move through the process always co sider what the ‘now what?’ questions might be that a person asks. 

Connect people to groups

4. Clear Next Step

According to the research, offering a clear next step for new believers is essential. New believers are the greatest resource your church has to influence the community. 

Next steps for new believers:

some use groups for new believers: either a new believers group or an existing group they fit into.

some use mentors. Two people meet for several weeks in an informal setting to go through some type of curriculum. 

‘discipleship of new believers doesn’t just happen it must be intentional. 

5. New members class

New members classes are extremely important: ‘The relationship between assimilation effectiveness and a new members class is amazing. Churches that require potential members to attend a new members class have a much higher retention rate than those who do not.’

At membership classes: 

teach the simple process

ask for commitment to the process

Back to Jesus

Jesus approach to discipleship:

• the calling (Luke 5-6) 
• the building (Luke 7-8) 
• the sending (Luke 9)

Chapter 7: Alignment

U.S. gold medal winning hockey team. All of the players had to disregard the team’s they’d previously played for and instead recognise that they played for the United States. they had to all be aligned in their commitment that team and that time.

People are attracted to unity. Jesus wants unity, Paul encouraged the same. Unity is powerful. It is magnetic and its impact is great.

Alignment is the arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process.

We need to be united around the same what (purpose) but also around the same how (process).

Herb Brooks’ hockey team: I’m not looking for the best hockey players, I’m looking for the right ones.

Recruit to the process 

Key leaders must be aligned to the same philosophy of ministry. If not the church will move in a multiplicity of directions.

Offer Accountability 

Without accountability people naturally drift away from the declared ministry process.

Avoid the two extremes of micro-management and neglect.

‘Micromanagement stifles creativity and hampers shared leadership. Neglect fosters complacency and leads to a fragmented team.’

The balance needed is good leadership. Leaders should outline the simple process but then allow ministry leaders to implement with freedom and creativity. 

A tool for accountability:

Ministry Action Plans (MAPs) are based on Peter Drucker’s concept of Management by Objectives in the 1950s. Leaders and those they lead agree on measurable goals up front and their agreement becomes the basis for evaluation. Each person sets his or her own goals based on the direction of the organisation. 

At the beginning of each year the senior leader sits down with his staff members individually to discuss their MAP. The MAP includes how that specific ministry reflects the vision and process of the church, how the programs are designed to move people through the process, the organisational structure of the ministry and a present evaluation of the ministry.  

Then from these considerations each staff member sets five to seven measurable goals for the new ministry year. They also outline how these goals will be achieved. 

Throughout the year the status and progress of the goals is evaluated. 

Each staff member then presents his goals to the entire staff. They also pray for the individual for his or her goals for the year. 

On unity: In reality it isn’t normally differences in theology or the Bible that splits churches, it is in the realm of ministry approach and philosophy. 

Remind people of the process:

People need to be reminded more than instructed

Connect every decision in your church to the direction of your church.

‘At your church, all of the important details such as hiring, budgeting, facility changes, and building projects must be connected to the process God has given your church.

Management expert Edward Deming coined the term: MBWA ‘Management By Walking Around’

On new ministries: It is vital you make sure new ministries fit into the simple process before they begin, Afterwards it is too late.

Chapter 8: Saying Not to Almost Everything

Like McDonalds and other fast food chains churches keep expanding their menus to keep up with the expanding spiritual appetites of the people in them.

Focus and being single-minded is advocated in the Bible by the references to pursue God and God alone…

To get focused…

eliminate

‘Going Google’ however is hard .Other search engines can’t do it, they can’t get simpler. Too many companies/people are share holders and personally invested in being on their home page that Yahoo or MSN or… simply can’t get simpler on their homepage. That is, according to Marissa Mayer, the person in charge of Google’s homepage.

Be a wise steward of people’s time

Be a wise steward of people’s money

2. Limit Adding

Travis Bradshaw at the University of Florida thought that the more services a church offered the more the church would grow. After he tested his hypothesis he realised he was wrong. His research proved the opposite. Less, is more.

Less programs means you can make more impact.

Add more options, not more programs.

3. Reduce Special Events

Michael Jordan’s focus! He once asked to borrow a jacket from a friend (Fred Whitfield) who had in his wardrobe a mixture of Nike & Puma clothes. Jordan took all of the Puma clothes out of the wardrobe, laid them on the floor, grabbed a knife from the kitchen and then proceeded to cut up all of the Puma clothes, literally butcher them to shreds. He then said to his friend ‘don’t ever let me see you in anything other than Nike. You can’t ride the fence.’

4. Easily Communicated

Communication is key. If key leaders do not grasp the process in the midst of change, division is certain. As programs are eliminated and special events reduced, you must point people to the simple process. You must communicate.

5. Simple to Understand

Choose simple language. Any word that has to be parsed or explained should not be used to describe your process. 

Be Brief. 

‘The amount of information people are confronted with today is overwhelming. And it is increasing. It has been estimated that the world produced five exabytes of information in 2002. That is the same amount of information produced from the beginning of time through the year 2000.’ — Linda Tischler ‘Google’s Secret Weapon.’

Focus & Greatness

Proctor & Gamble. From 1996-98 they reduced their products by 20% by selling or ‘burying’ them. Yet doing so didn’t just reduce costs it also bolstered sales. Market share increased by five points. Reducing clutter produced big results.

Chapter 9: Becoming Simple

On impacting generations:

‘In Super-Size Me Morgan Spurlock is seeking to prove how effectively McDonalds impacts upcoming generations. So, he meets with schoolchildren and shows them pictures of famous people. Most of the children recognise a depiction of George Washington. All recognise a depiction of Ronald McDonald. None of them recognise a common depiction of Jesus Christ.’

Change is hard

90% of heart transplant patients do not change their lifestyle. People find change hard even in a ‘change or die’ situation like that one.

Leadership expert Tom Peters once commented: It is easier to kill an organisation than it is to change it.

Experts disagree on how to implement change: all at once, or bit by bit? 

Complexity is often synonymous with mediocrity. 

Steps to change:

Design a  simple process (clarity)

Place your key programs along the process (movement)

Unite all ministries around the process (alignment)

Begin to eliminate things outside the process (focus)

Post-Script

Five years on from the book’s first print 6 things they’ve observed.

Churches drift. Inevitably vision drifts and churches drift toward complexity. Churches drift off mission.

Stat: multi-tasking means your focus on any given task drops by an average of 10 IQ points. Compare this to smoking weed. Smoking weed lowers your IQ by 4 points. Smoking weed is better for your attention span than multi-tasking. 

Process is a big mind-shift

There is a good section where the authors explain that they are not trying to create another model for churches. The first chapter begins with the words ‘this is not a church model’. They intentionally don’t address issues that a book presenting a church model would do. 

‘The proclivity of leaders to look for another church model is a sign of the church’s shallowness and not its maturity.’

The original title of the book was going to be: Process-Centered Ministry since the key idea of the book is about the importance of process.

They also make the point that out of Wesley & Whitfield, it was Wesley who left the bigger legacy because he was more concerned with process than Whitfield. He administrated the move of God.

Big idea of the book: 

View discipleship as the whole process

Be careful not to over-program early in your discipleship process

Mission must be deeply embedded in your process:

We are concerned that some church processes end with the church. In other words, the end result of some discipleship processes in the church is the church itself. We believe that mission must be deeply embedded in a discipleship process that is truly reflective of the type of disciple Jesus makes. If your church discipleship process sounds like, ‘Come to our church, get connected and help us do church better.’ you need to repent of too shallow a vision for discipleship. 

Live the Vision: Personally as leaders.

John Kotter of Harvard Business School wrote: Behaviour from important people in the organisation that is contrary to the vision overwhelms all other forms of communication.

Quote: In other words if the leaders do not live what they are asking people to live, time was wasted on the new logo, money was squandered on the new banner, and the statement in the bulletin is worthless. 

On Multi-site:

When a pastor asks if his church should consider launching another campus, there are two essential questions that must be answered. 1) is your church healthy? 2) Is your church reproducible?