That’s when you launched what you now call Verges—mid-sized groups.
Verges are not as fragile as very small groups, but not as difficult to steer and maintain as large groups. You have the accountability and ministry opportunities of small groups, and you eliminate the logistical issues and prohibitive overhead of large groups. You can meet in restaurants, in people’s homes, in other churches. I started rethinking phrases I had come to accept and buy into—things like, “It’s all about the weekend.” This was different; this approach placed much more emphasis on relationships and leadership development than on doing a big weekend program.
Bob Buford has written about the 60/40 principle, the idea that you can only do one thing excellently and it will require 60 percent of your effort and resources. Everything else will tend to be mediocre. I knew where my effort had been going up to that point: Sunday morning. What if I turned things around and invested first in leaderships development?
Which is why you started rethinking the leader’s role not just as pastor/teacher, but as pastor/social entrepreneur.
Well, social entrepreneur is not meant to be an elitist title. It’s meant to be seen as one who is a support to community transformation. We undergird the community, that’s our role. So I see the pastor not just focused on preaching and the programs of the church, but also supporting transformation as it extends through all the different domains of society, which includes education, housing, health. The pastor needs to be aware of these things—and involved—because the truth is, that’s life. An hour on Sunday morning is a program, sometimes a show, sometimes worship, but it doesn’t engage all of reality; it doesn’t encompass the whole of the community’s life. I realized that as the church in Irvine had grown I had become more and more isolated from the life of its community.
So these ideas were forged during what became for you a one-year stay in Thailand, establishing NewSong Bangkok. But these guiding ministry concepts were not something you could leave behind in Southeast Asia once you returned to Irvine—you took them with you. That must have made for an interesting re-entry.
You hear about reverse culture shock—it’s very real. I thought I was proficient at adapting to culture, but I had a very difficult time when I returned.
I started sharing what had happened to me in Thailand, and how we were going to change up the church, following a more decentralized model. I was so enthusiastic. And that’s when people started leaving. We lost about 30 percent of our people—we lost people and we lost finances.
But my wife gave me some great advice. She said, “When you were in Thailand, you listened to people. You need to do the same thing now at NewSong.” I had been gone a year and people were wondering what had happened. They were hurting. The church has since grown again, but that was a tough, tough adjustment!
You talk a lot about a theology of discomfort. But for the past few decades we’ve put a lot of effort into making the church comfortable—an environment that’s attractive and welcoming. Is that in conflict with your vision of the church?
I think we have to be about hospitality and making people feel at home. But I want to pose a question to the American church—and to the church at large: What should our people feel uncomfortable about? What should we challenge them about?
Yes, we’re focused on comfort in the American church and it’s led to a consumer church. In the process, we’ve missed the full expression of the gospel. We’ve missed out on the second most important commandment, which is to love your neighbor. And who is your neighbor? As defined in the scriptures—the story of the Good Samaritan—it’s not someone like you, it’s actually someone not like you, someone you are not naturally drawn to, someone of a different culture, someone you may even hate. Jesus said, Love God and love your neighbor. If you can love someone who is unlike you, that’s when the world will take notice.
You’ve taken this idea beyond spiritual aspiration—you’ve turned it into part of your strategic plan.
When we go into a new city to initiate ministry, what do we generally do? We think demographically: Who is like me? Shouldn’t we instead ask, Who are the most marginalized people in this community, and then go love on them? Love on them with no strings attached!
I really believe that as we reach the marginalized we will reach the masses. Isn’t this what God demonstrated? People saw who Jesus chose as his disciples. They saw who he hung out with—the fringe—and they said, “Jesus is for us.” That was the story that became viral.