Will Mancini

 Jane McGonigal has spent the last 10 years designing games. Now she wants to use games to change the world. This fascinating TED talk struck me because her audacious vision inspired by the world of online gaming contains interesting parallels with the vision of the Gospel. 

According to McGonigal:

• People spend 3 billion hours a week playing online games
• 500 million people, spend 1 hour a day gaming online 
• In the next decade, the number will increase to 1 billion 
• The average kid will spend 10,000 hours gaming by age 21
• 10,000 hours is equivalent to an education between 5th – 12th grade

The question is “why?” Why do people invest massive chunks of their lives into online gaming? What is the “good news” of gaming for the human heart?

McGonigal cites four super-empowering realities of gaming that enable people to experience a better version of themselves. 

1. Urgent Optimism: She calls it extreme self motivation. Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that there is a reasonable hope of success. 
2. Tight Social Fabric: Games foster trust and cooperation based on an unbelievably clear, common mission.
3. Blissful Productivity: Games take a lot of work, but people eagerly engage it. We are happier working hard in the right work, than just lying around.
4. Epic Meaning:  Games are always cast in a larger story line; a greater backdrop of good and evil. Every aspect of the game is tied into the greater story. 

Can these insights from world of  gaming help you design ministry in your church? Here is a challenge: In your next staff meeting place these four attributes of the gaming experience on the whiteboard and ask the following questions:

• Would we want our people to experience these realities more in our church than an online game? 
• How do we currently help people experience these realities in our church?
• Which ministry exhibits them the best?
• What are we doing that prevents these realties in our different ministries?
• Would we be willing to listen to a focus group of gamers to help us rethink some of our ministries?
• How did the disciples experience these realities with Jesus?

This line is from the stellar strategist, Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church. When my friend Caz McCaslin (founder of Upward sports ministry) first heard the “systems talk” at the Catalyst Reverb conference ( I think it was 2007), he called me and we discussed it for what seemed to be hours. As a piece worth pursuing, here is Andy Stanley’s flow of thought:

• God created systems
• Systems create behavior
• Our leaders and volunteers action are guided by the systems we inherit, adopt or create
• We overestimate our ability to guide change, when we are not thinking on the systems level
• Systems have embedded expectations, rewards (lack of), consequences (lack of), communication styles, and behavioral patterns of the people in charge

The idea of integrating the mission and vision into the systems of the church is a massive gap in our best training environments today. (In response, the Auxano team has spent years developing a tool to address this need- we call the Vision Integration Model, which debuted in Church Unique.) So how do teams apply what Andy addresses and does so well intuitively? How does a staff have continual conversations so that alignment, attunement and integration can really happen? One phrase from Andy holds the key to getting started. He comments almost under his breath that leaders need to have “big, bold, multi-day discussions” together. A great take-away exercise is three questions for having your first big, bold conversation:

#1 What are three bahaviors that you wished your group exhibited? (The group may be your entire church, the volunteers in your ministry area or the leadership team itself.)

#2 List at least one thing you can do systematically to encourage and motivate each behavior. (process-driven not event-driven).

#3 What are we doing that accidentally works against this kind of behavior?

Neue is a new quarterly journal by Relevant Media that just rereleased with a more readable magazine format and leadership savvy content. The tagline is “Ideas Shaping the Future of the Church.”  A very short article by Scot McKnight (his blog) was a particular jewel in this new issue. It doesn’t look like the content will be online anytime soon. Here are my highlights for the article Copycat Church:

In summary, Scot concisely and articulately connects the problem of copying methods and programs from other churches to a defining observation he has made in his career as a theologian and biblical scholar. He calls it his most important discovery of the last decade. In his own words:

For me the most important discovery in the last decade, of biblical and theological studies was two-fold: First, I realized that Jesus’s language was not sacrosanct for Paul and Peter and others.

 Second, I realized they were doing exactly what Jesus was doing. That is, Jesus wasn’t “imitating” anyone when he articulated the movement of God in terms of “Kingdom of God.”  He didn’t find this in Moses, or David, or Isaiah and restore it to its proper place, and the early Christian apostles didn’t “imitate” Jesus by expressing the Gospel with “Kingdom of God.”

The thrust of this article, carries the heartbeat of the ministry of Auxano and the book Church Unique: Every local congregation should think through their local context and their particular calling from God. And when they do, the articulation of their identity and direction will be stunningly  unique!  Scot’s emphasis is that even the inspired biblical authors didn’t copy each others words. Therefore, and even though we have the foundational revelation of Scripture, the Holy Spirit still creates new articulation of the Gospel through his people for different places and times. Here are some quotes from the article. 

• Imitation has its place, but one thing imitation doesn’t promise is results. Unfortunately a lot of church leaders don’t get that fact.
  
•  You can’t imitate Spirit-empowerment. You either have it or you don’t.
  
•  There is one thing that’s clear: There is no movement of God apart from God’s empowering Spirit.
  
•  The New Testament suggests that Spirit-empowered movements articulate the Gospel for a particular context for that day.
  
•  Spirit, context, Gospel, word. Those are the elements of a genuine movement of God.
  
•  The apostolic witness is the foundation of the Spirit-shaped truth of the Gospel. However, this does not mean that we simply puppet, or imitate the words of Jesus or Paul- for the New Testament does not do that itself.
  
•  What we need is less imitation and more discernment through God’s Spirit.

Thanks to all the folks at the C3 Conference (Creative Church Culture) who quickly sent this video as it brought to mind Church Unique.  Ed Young Jr’s creativity is off the charts as usual, and this time he brings a video with a message close to my heart. Enjoy! He is the pastor of FellowshipChurch.com

Vision Sunday 2010 from Hillsong Church on Vimeo.

If communicating vision is important to you, then consider listening to this 25-minute vision casting experience with the attached evaluative tool.  What makes this Hillsong vision casting piece uniquely effective?

• The visual medium is fantastic
• It’s invitational tone is incredibly engaging
• The substance of life-change is palpable
• It’s kingdom driven rather than church driven
• But, the kingdom values don’t dilute the church’s  identity
• The testimonial “weaves” don’t  fragment the power of one visionary voice
  
• It forges bold newness and continuity with the past

 Before hitting play, here are two recommendations;

 #1 Listen to the entire 25 minutes in one sitting. I was moved the most at 22 minutes.

#2 Listen with the Vision Casting Spider Diagram from Church Unique. You may want to do this as a team exercise.

Team Exercise:

 Listen to the video as a team.  Write down the most powerful phrases, metaphors, and stories to you as they corresponds with the six elements of vision on the spider diagram. Discuss them as a team, and how your team can improve their vision casting skills this week.

More free resources from Church Unique