New Wine or Kool-Aid?

At the risk of sounding like an old fart, I want to post something about Christian Leadership Conferences. I've been attending such for decades now. I am in my 23rd year of ministry and I have attended some stellar conferences through the years. I attended Rick Warren's Church Growth Conference in 1990 before anyone really knew who Rick Warren was and before Saddleback even had a building. The conference was held at a Presbyterian church in El Toro, CA.

I've heard many of the megachurch pastors and their leaders, Bill Hybels, Lee Strobel, Robert Schuller, Andy Stanley and his dad, Charles, Ed Young (Sr. & Jr.), Jim Mellado, Bob Russell, Greg Surratt, Perry Noble, Adrian Rogers, etc. etc. No doubt, I've been enlightened, encouraged, and educated by these men (and some women. And, by the way, did you notice that they taught me to alliterate?)

We moved our church offices recently which meant that I had to move a bunch of my books and stuff to a new location. I decided to go through a collection of conference notebooks and write down quotes and notes that I wanted to keep in my journal. Then I discarded the notebooks for the sake of space. I've enjoyed reviewing those dusty notes and, in fact, have been reinvigorated by some of them.

I say all of this to say that I am not anti-conference. But I don't attend them much any more.

I think we have too many now. There seems to be too many conferences and too many megachurch pastors with too many opinions. Each conference is trying to attract the same church leaders. Let's face it. Most of the church leaders who attend these conferences are white, middle to upper-middle class, suburban church pastors who are trying to reach white, middle to upper-middle class suburban families. And many leaders are saying, maybe even doing, outrageous things to get attention.

A few years ago one megachurch pastor told about how he spontaneously decided to do a staff turnover. He reassigned his middle-aged Administrative Pastor as the Youth pastor, the Graphic Designer became the Worship Leader, and other weird stuff like that. Everyone was reassigned to a position where they had no education, experience, or calling - except the Senior Pastor, of course. It was done permanently, not temporarily, for the sake of change.

In a breakout session later that same day, the newly assigned Youth Pastor confessed in his breakout session on "How to do Youth Ministry" that he had no idea what he was doing.

I wonder how many wanna-be megachurch pastors in the audience that day went back to their churches and did something similar just because the cool pastor from Texas said so?

Idiot.

Last night, I saw a Tweet from a friend who apparently attended a conference at a megachurch in Alabama. According to his Tweet, "Staff at (church name) will be fired if they are caught doing ministry..they are hired to train members to do ministry."

That's ridiculous.

I don't think my friend agreed either. (At least, I hope not!)

Everybody wants to do something different, out-of-the-box, creative, radical, cool, awesome, something nobody has ever done before, etc. etc. Jesus called it new wineskin. But you have to have new wine before you can use the new wineskin. New wineskin without new wine is not the answer.

Copying what another megachurch is doing is not new wine - that's called "drinking the Kool-Aid." Drinking the Kool-Aid is following a charismatic leader and doing whatever he says to do without question. That's foolish. (For details on where "drinking the Kool-Aid" began, see this Wikipedia link.)

Do I sound like an old traditional fart? I hope not. I've been in new, contemporary churches for all but 6 of my 23 years of ministry. I am currently in my 5th church plant. I love reaching people with the gospel of Jesus in a fresh, relevant way. But I don't love how church leaders dress, teach, talk, and lead like other megachurch pastors in an attempt to be like them. And I don't like how some megachurch pastors say or do ridiculous things to draw attention to themselves and their churches.

Just be who God made you to be. Please. If you want to put the gospel in a new wineskin, you've got to spend time with God and get the new wine. Don't just drink someone else's Kool-Aid. A pastor friend of mine told me years ago that we (pastors) need to get alone with God often. In his words, "We need to get a jug of water and a Bible and go out in the woods for a day and be with God."

Probably not bad advice. Don't drink the Kool-Aid. Get a jug of water and see if Jesus will turn it into new wine.