So how do you build formational practices into the lives of smart, hip, urban people?
Well, we’re learning a lot. The main takeaway is that information alone does not produce transformation. It is so embarrassing to admit, but it was total news to me.
One of the disheartening things for me (and exciting at the same time) is realizing that most pastors have not spent any time learning spiritual formation—myself included. Two years ago, if you’d asked me basic spiritual formation questions—“John Mark, tell me how somebody actually changes to become more like Jesus,”—I honestly would not have known. If I would have had any kind of answer, odds are it would have been wrong. Like a lot of people, I was focused on informational preaching as how we form people. That’s not truer here in Portland, but it is painfully obvious. People in general don’t feel the need to appear religious, and you see what you’re doing not working in their lives.
Here’s the issue we’re working to overcome: The vast majority of churches in America are built around a 40-minute, information-based monologue from the pastor. I don’t think we realize the extent to which this impacts us. We live after the Enlightenment, when Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am,” and comments about humans as brains on legs shaped our modern concept of self. The assumption? If we get the right information into people’s heads, they will change.
The problem is that basic logic tells us that’s false. I know, for example, that coffee is bad for me. It keeps me from sleeping well at night, that it makes me more anxious, that it’s bad for my nervous system. But I wake up every single morning and I have a cup. Not because I’ve evaluated the pros and cons, but because I love it. I don’t stop, no matter how right my thinking about it is. Same is true with sugar, or whatever. There are so many aspects of our lives where we have all the right information, but it’s not enough to actually change our habits or loves.
But most churches are almost entirely intellectual in their discipleship. Not cerebral, but information based—predicated upon the sermon, upon learning. Bible studies, book studies, small group curriculums, discussions, sermon series, and so on. Our working assumption for years has been that if people listen to our finely polished series on Sundays, and a midweek lecture, and a Bible study, then they will grow and change. We want good parents? We do a Bible study on parenting. We want strong leaders? We do a sermon series on leadership. The problem? It just doesn’t work. At least not well.
Now, I teach the Bible. I write books. There’s a huge place for information in formation. But it’s only the beginning. The problem is, it’s where we stop. Do we want to reach a post-Christian culture? That has to change. We need to form hearts, not only fill minds.
So, we’re rebuilding Bridgetown. We’re shifting away from information as the central facet of church life—though we’ll continue to teach the Bible and write books and all that—and putting formation first. Practice will play a huge part of it—teaching apprenticeship to Jesus as the Christian way. A lot of the spiritual disciplines will be part of that, but also a lot of missional and formational elements. Eating and drinking with people who are far from God, healing the sick, praying and working for God’s deliverance, all the beautiful and miraculous stuff that characterized the ministry of Christ.
Our communities will have a practice-based curriculum instead of discussion-based. So instead of just teaching about, say, Sabbath, and moving on, we’ll teach, discuss, then have six weeks of practicing Sabbath, each week building on the last. We’re excited about it. It’s just getting back to the basics of Christianity—what we need to live here. Stuff that if Peter, James and John walked into our church, they’d say “Wait. You don’t pray? You don’t fast?” None of this is new, but to us today it feels foreign. It’s just so incredibly rare in the American church. At least here in the Northwest.
I love the emphasis on formation. How will you gauge success in this?
Everybody says you can’t measure maturity, so that must be right. [Laughs] But I don’t like that answer. Mark Sayers talks about this book called French Women Don’t Get Fat which says how American women look at a number on a scale every day to tell them their weight, but French women feel their bodies. I think that’s a difference between the metrics we’re used to using related to American churches, and what I’m personally beginning to feel are “healthy” church metrics. Good measurement isn’t always just about bare numbers—it can be more intuitive. You feel it. You just know if something is healthy or not—it’s intimate and connected. You sense the Spirit over cups of coffee and conversation and in prayer with people—is this person growing? Are they stagnant?
We’re having to move past the megametrics of the past here in Portlandia. They don’t reflect what “healthy” means here. In our church, we used to measure the Four B’s: Butts—how many people came on a Sunday; Buzz—momentum and vision; Budget—money; and Buildings—real estate. At least three of those four are literally measurable in hard numbers.
So if those are the megametrics that we used to use to define our success, what are the new metrics for a healthy church built around apprenticeship to Jesus and life in community? It will have some of the same things, sure—like counting baptisms perhaps, or whether or not people are giving sacrificially of their finances—but we need to try for more. This fall, we’re going to try an annual survey of our church, asking the best spiritual formation questions that we can come up with. With great questions, we hope to begin to track growth as a body. But of course, it’s harder than gauging concrete numbers. You’re asking the people to self-report. It’s the body feeling itself, instead of stepping on a scale.
If intentional formation is what a Portland pastorate demands, how does that change your own ideas of success as a leader? Do you view your calling differently?
Yes, but that’s been a gradual change for me. When I was leading a traditional megachurch, by all of the megametrics I was successful. But the last two years or so of my time there, I had a growing sense that I was actually failing at what was truly important. It got to a point where it was so big and Sunday-centric that I started to feel like I was a commodity, not a pastor. I started to question—perhaps I was doing more harm than good in creating a church where people could just come and be a face in a crowd. I felt like I was just some spiritual life-enhancement.
Of course, I eventually decided to leave and start a different kind of church. Bridgetown is not small, but much smaller. The challenge for me personally in the past two years has been leading that totally different kind of church aimed at a totally different set of goals—but emotionally still judging my own success by the megametrics. My mentor recently said that the megametrics make for poor traveling companions. I’ll leave it to each leader to decide that for themselves, but that was so profound for me. I had left the megachurch culture, but not the megachurch metrics of success.
So, the last few months in particular, I’ve been dialoguing with friends about this. We’re asking what the new metrics are. What’s my new definition of success as a pastor? It’s still an emotional journey for me. It’s not just a habit I can flip off like a light switch. Everything in my American psyche says, “Bigger is better and more famous is more influence,” but that doesn’t work here in Portland, and it doesn’t work for me, and I’m called to consider what replaces that in my life and congregation. What’s replacing those are indicators of formation, spiritual life and maturity, ranging from new baptisms to works of the Holy Spirit, to emotional health.
***
We wrap up. The tea is gone, a sweet stain of honey on the bottom of the mug. I click off my tape recorder, say my farewell, and step out of his office into the humming city.
Pastoring Portlandia: The Interview With Rick McKinley of Imago Dei Community »
Paul J. Pastor is an Outreach contributing writer and author of The Face of the Deep: Exploring the Mysterious Person of the Holy Spirit.