A Birthday To Remember and To Learn From

Okay. So I thought we were going to have to rally all CCM’s together and start marching around traditional churches seven times in order to start bringing down the walls that make them seem impersonal, but I’m going to have to put my “Jericho” campaign on hold after seeing what one church member did this past Sabbath at my church to make a personal impact in someone’s life.

For the most part a typical service at my church goes like this: praise time, announcements, call to worship and invocation, hymn of praise, offertory, special music, children’s story, morning prayer, sermon, closing song, and closing benediction. If you want to connect with someone on a personal level you’d better do it before or after you get to the main service because once you’re seated in the sanctuary you’re in the doldrums as far as personal human interest goes. I call this “church in a box.”

But this past weekend a fellow church member threw a monkey wrench in the whole routine! Rather than wait before or after the service to bring attention to a personal matter she did it right in the middle of church in front of everybody! Gasp!

Her name is Gayle Daniels. It so happened that her father’s birthday had fallen on that Sabbath day and she wanted to weave two very special days into one memorable day. So she planned a special surprise for him. Before the sermon began she stepped up on the platform and began addressing the congregation. She graciously thanked the pastor for allowing her the time to bring the occasion to the church’s attention and then called her father up to the front.

As her father made his way up to the front she humored everyone with a couple of light hearted comments about her father’s age. She told the congregation that she wanted to make this a special day for her father and began to call up family members by name. But these weren’t family members who attended our local church. They didn’t even live in the area. Several family relatives, including her father’s nephew, grandchildren and a long time family friend, flew down from Maryland, Tennessee, and Washington DC, just to be there for that day!

As the family gathered around, Gayle also invited the rest of the church family up to the front. Just about the whole congregation crammed between the isles to be a part of the special recognition. Then a family friend, also a preacher, held a special prayer to thank the Lord for the years of life He had granted their loved one.

I’m sure what Gayle and her family did that day will stay with her father forever. But I also hope it had an impact on our church. I hope my church understood that these people were living out the love of Christ. I hope they didn’t just see it as another special feature. What they did that day was inspirational, thoughtful, and showed a devoted love for another person. Their act of Christ-like love gave a glimpse of what true Christian culture is really like without the walls of rigid traditions that tend to keep people at bay. I’m glad that Gayle had the awareness and creativity to create a little bit of Christian culture that day in order to give this kind of personal recognition. On top of everything else what an awesome way to celebrate the meaning of Sabbath; the day that God also celebrates and gives special recognition to His relationship with us.

It’s examples like these that will help break down church walls and make the Christian religion a bit more palatable. If others make similar efforts to celebrate human relationships in traditional church settings then perhaps they will give others a reason to give church and Christianity a shot. On the other hand, if churches want to stick with a “church in a box” program, well they could miss out on the opportunity to experience God’s love in real time. Kudo’s to Gayle and her family!

First Official CCM Serves Up Tik-Va

CCM’s are very rare at this point. So you can imagine my excitement when I learned about what one Pastor was doing to create a Christian culture in his community. I just had to visit with him and learn more about his ministry. So here’s the first official real life example of a CCM!

With nothing but a humble paycheck and a steady faith Pastor Mike Cauley and his family moved to the small town of Keller, Texas to start a church in hopes of building relationships and creating a meaningful Christian community.

Cauley is the pastor of a small Seventh - day Adventist church plant in Keller. But this church plant is unlike any church you might imagine. Pastor Mike and his small church family literally purchased a little house in Keller’s cultural district and named the place Tik-Va, the Hebrew word for hope. And in addition to their delicious biscotti snacks and exotic coffee drinks, hope is exactly what they’ve been serving up.

Thanks to Nadene, a volunteer church member and a great hostess (who gave me a refreshing glass of orange juice during my visit!), Tik-Va is open on weekdays and provides a very relaxing atmosphere perfect for anyone who just needs to break away from the toils of life for a while. Weather someone needs a quiet place to gather their thoughts, or needs to express themselves through art or music, or just needs someone to listen, Tik-Va is where they go. As a matter of fact, during my visit a couple of people stopped by just to chat with Pastor Mike and Nadene about how their day was going. That’s when I realized what this place was really about. It was about real people, with real lives, who wanted to know that someone cared. I can only imagine the kind of opportunities there are to share faith and love here!

Although this approach to church and ministry is certainly non-traditional and outside the box of what most people would even consider being “church” (which we like!), while others may call down the hell fire Pastor Mike and his church family firmly believe that they’re simply doing what Christ did, live with everyday people and show them the love of God. Pastor Mike captures the true spirit of the Christian Culture Maker.

Look out for a full-featured podcast interview with Pastor Mike.

CCM Podcast episode 1: 3 Ways to Engage the Post-Modern Culture

Jesse Sias and Pastor Tyler Bower talk about the challenges of engaging the post-modern culture from a traditional church mindset and 3 ways to begin to break down the barriers between traditional church culture and post-modernism.

Click on title to hear podcast.

CCM's: The Flip Side of the Culture Maker

The first time I came across the term “culture maker” was on the cover of the September 2008 issue of Christianity Today. The cover story was titled “The New Culture Makers” followed by this description, “From inner-city little leagues to modern art initiatives, more and more Christians are making something of the world.”

Andy Crouch is a Christian writer and author of the book “Culture Making: Recovering our creative calling.” In his book Crouch encourages Christians to engage their cultural surroundings by creating cultural goods. In other words Christians are called to use their resources and creative abilities to impact our broken culture in a positive way and make a difference in the world.

Crouch’s approach to the non-Christian culture made me think about the flip side of things. What about the Christian culture? Christian culture is just as vulnerable to decay as the world’s culture. Spiritualism, ecumenism, humanism, and other cultural “isms” can do a lot to break up Bible-based Christianity. Unfortunately the decay of Christian culture goes largely undetected. Much of the reason is the readily accepted belief that all Christianity is fundamentally the same and that Biblical differences are really minor and don’t matter.

But what if they do? What if those differences end up contributing to an overall weaker and less effective form of Christianity? I believe this would grieve the very heart of Christ who laid all on the line to give us an unblemished and uncompromised picture of the nature of God and His kingdom.

I love Crouch’s approach to the non-Christian culture because it passionately embraces one of the fundamental principles of Christianity- to reach out and make a difference. Just like a culture maker is someone who makes something of the world, a CCM is someone who looks out for the world around them but most importantly the spiritual kingdom they belong to.