My Last Day

Dec 8, 2023 is my last day as an employee of The National Ministry Centre of The Alliance Canada. I have served in numerous roles within this faith community since Sept 1983. 40 years. Most recently as Strategy Director for Marketplace and International Churches. This isn’t a retirement. I intend to keep working. It’s a release due to significant budget constraints the organization faces. The processing of this has taken me through many emotions, all typical of an unanticipated transition. I wish the ending of this part of my career was different, but it is my reality now.

However, a budget cut isn’t going to be my story. While it is the organizations' story, here is mine: 

I have been privileged to have a ministry career where I could develop and then utilize my skills in facilitation,coaching, leadership and program management. It has enabled me to serve on a global stage and according to who I am. What an uncommon joy to be able to leave while living the optimal experience of vocational & personal convergence. I also leave a high functioning, committed and ‘’real’ team that has exemplified true servant leadership. So, if a person must ‘go’, it’s a great way to go. 

There are many ideas to sort through and untangle on the path to creating what’s next for me. However I have no immediate career plans except to finish my basement renovations, enjoy some family time, and take along-delayed anniversary trip with Becky. Together we have travelled the road of transition many times in our lives, and one thing we know – Christ always has a future for us.

A good friend spoke at a retreat I recently attended and addressed the notion of ‘finishing well’. He reminded us that no one knows where the finish line is, or when you will approach it. So then, how do you actually finish well? By finishing today well. If you finish every day well, no matter when the time comes, you have finished well. 

I am content to have finished this part well.

Harv Matchullis

Measuring What Matters

Expansion isn't necessarily a sign of growth.  It could just be swelling.

When a church wants to grow, it's a good thing.  But what kind of growth?

The metaphors of growth Jesus used in His parable-stories are clues to how churches can map their path to true 'expansion'.  The mustard seed, salt, yeast and light metaphors are about growth, but a kind that is organic and permeates its' environment.

The numbers of people in the proverbial pew do not adequately represent Kingdom growth. To design a church's budget, staffing and programs around that growth metric is an exercise in missing the point of the parables of Jesus.

Influence and integration of our surroundings is the point.  

Two questions for you and your church:  

1. Is your church equipping and releasing you for influence in the places and spaces where you spend the bulk of your life: your workplace, community, family and social life?  
2. How can that change?
   

YOU are yeast and seed and salt and light. Your world needs your influence and integration.

Harv

Stop Yelling

There’s a sector of Christianity bent on taking Jesus public, crowning Him king over everyone and forcing their version of Christianity on the world. 

It’s most obvious in Christian nationalist movements, but it also shows up in the rhetoric/posture of Christians who are engaged in culture war, defending their way of life by opposing things they view as inconsistent with Christ.

Let’s talk about being consistent with Christ, with the Jesus Way. The rhetoric of war permeates the Biblical story, and literalist readers carry that forward as applying to the way of Christ.  But it doesn’t. Leaving the literalist reading of Scripture aside for another discussion[1], let’s look at Christ (the true Word of God) and how He comes across to the world.  By implication then, how are we His followers to show up in the world?

For brevity I’ll refer to one story from Isaiah 42:1-4 where God the Father describes the posture His servant (Jesus) will take with the world. And I think that as you read about the life of Jesus, you will see how consistent He was living according to this ‘way’…

“Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I will put my spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.  A bruised reed he will not break and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice.  He will not falter or be discouraged until he establishes justice on earth.”

For some Christians it seems Gods' ‘justice on earth’ is accomplished forcefully and via a culture war.  That’s the opposite of what God the Father lays out here as the ‘way’ of Christ.  Stop yelling.  Stop hurting the broken. Stop blowing out what little flame exists in the hearts of people towards the Divine. Show up quietly, faithfully, consistently, persistently.   That’s the Jesus Way.

 

Perhaps Robert Service, in his poem The Call of the Wild, sums it up best how we change the world:

“…the simple things, the true things, the silent men (sic) who do things…”

Harv

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[1] Suggested reading: A More Christlike Word by Bradley Jersak, Whitaker House, 2021

 

What Are You Looking For?

Jesus often asked people: "What are you looking for'?

Bono hasn't found what he's looking for yet.  Most of us are still seeking...something.

If Jesus asked me this question today, how would I answer?  Here are my responses. 

1. PEACE.  Deep in my soul I want peace with my Creator (which I actually have in my following of Jesus Christ).  However I also want peace within myself and for this fractured, tortured world.
2. PURPOSE: There is a purpose that peace with God brings to me, though admittedly I often wander away from it.  Yet I sense there is more to it, and I am not talking about a some kind of grand, earth-shaking purpose - but the knowledge that my everyday engagements, loves and interests are not meaningless.  I know that all of life is God's and therefore has meaning.  However I want to embrace that truth in my everyday, and be content in it.
3. 
   WONDER:  I live on the 3rd rock from the Sun, in a vast, unfathomable universe, surrounded on this planet - and in my own yard - with amazing life, beauty and mystery.  I want wonder rekindled in me.  
   

How would you answer Jesus Christ's question:  "What are you looking for"?

The Church and CSR

I am involved in many ongoing conversations around gospel, marketplace and the all-encompassing way of life that Jesus guides us to live.  To live into His truth - that as you are going about your everyday life in whatever you do and with whatever knowledge you have - you are a disciple-maker, is tremendously freeing.

Yet many churches are still not freeing people into this way of life.  Ironic.  Even tragic.

In their own expression of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), many churches have contained and restrained the gospel by programming the Way of Jesus into group activities and forays into ‘the world’, rather than equipping and releasing people to live their life in Christ in the 98% of life they spend while NOT in church.

How would our neighbourhoods change if the organized church re-organized itself in this direction?

Less will actually mean more.

Is the Christian Gospel Any Good For the World?

Christians talk a lot about this thing called the Gospel, and that it is ‘good news’.  However, just how good is it when it is often encountered as a demoralizing message of shame and guilt over things people have done wrong, and that behind all this is a God who will punish you if you don’t conform (but hey – accept Jesus and you’ll be saved).  The church as the corporate purveyor of this so-called good news hasn’t had a good run of it lately either.  Public perception of the church (warranted or not) is coloured by many things that detract from the ‘good news’ such as the impact of colonialism, residential schools, anti LGBTQ stances, and in some contexts, Christian nationalism and its related issue-politics. 

This is not His ‘good news’. It makes me sad and frustrated at how far the expression of this Gospel has strayed from its original story. 

It’s only in the last decade I have come to extricate myself from a narrow and truncated version of God’s Grand Story for the world that was so often put forward by some within evangelicalism. Yes, I am deconstructing – and in reality we all should be.  Not to destroy and abandon, but to renew, rebuild and restore.  Our faith is not static.  How can it be if it is focused on the Creator of the Universe????  Can you remain in your knowing, thinking you’ve ‘got it’?

What happened to love?  What happened to inclusion?  What happened to embracing the outcast?  What happened to radical hospitality? What happened to resisting and even challenging the straitjacket that is religion?  What happened to living as a representative of Jesus Christ, who displayed all these things I just mentioned? 

What happened is that instead of living out His ways in the workplace, the neighbourhood, and wherever we go in our lives - and thereby attracting people to that way and truth about real, abundant life -  contemporary Christianity chose to slice and dice the Bible as though it was merely a divine last word theology-text, draw the lines of who can qualify as a Christian, develop the words and the rules of entry into God’s Kingdom and in effect, take on the role of humanity’s judge.

A tragic case of missing the point.

The Gospel is indeed Good News for the world in that ALL THINGS will be restored to God’s original intentions though Christ.  As we live according to His ways, that process of restoration is being enacted in real-time. God’s good news is that in Christ there is a path to abundant living with nature, with each other and with our Creator.

The earth desperately needs good news.  My personal sense is that everyone in this world has a primal sense that things could and should be better.  Don’t we all long for more peace, more love, more abundance and joy?  The Good News is that Christ is the Way to that kind of life.

Let’s show up and show that Way.

Change: Rhetoric vs. Reality

We are in an era of organizational re-design and rebirth.  Whether it’s new working arrangements or new ways of doing business/ministry, things are not what they used to be.  Thank (or blame) the pandemic.  Here we are.

However, the dynamics of how change works has not changed.  Change impacts structures and processes but it’s humans that carry out the change. To declare change without paying attention to the human element of how people process and experience change, is to ultimately struggle through a failed change management process.

Here’s a classic downward spiral that I have seen take place in many organizational change processes.  If you see your organizational experience reflected here, know that it’s quite common.   My question for you is: What have you seen or experienced that has helped to get you out of this downward spiral?  Let’s help each other, and our organizations, move forward.

The Spiral: 

DISCUSSION about a sticky area; a place where everyone senses a need for change.

DECLARATION of the intent to do something about it.  Sometimes there’s even a ‘plan’. 

DELAY in taking action.  This often happens because there wasn’t an actual plan in the first place. Delays usually mean people…

DEFER to the old ways/patterns of acting.  When people realize promised change isn’t happening, the result is often a…

DECLINE of confidence that the system, or leadership’s commitment to change is real. 

DISCOURAGEMENT sets in and sometimes people begin to depart - not necessarily via actual resignation from the job, but a resignation to a status quo environment.  Leave a person in that state too long and it results in a…

DROP in both productivity and engagement[1].  After all, why take the initiative to change and improve if the system you are in, won’t?

 

Please share your thoughts & ideas in the comments.  Help us all move forward toward positive change.

Harv

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[1] 85% of employees are not engaged at work. According to Gallup's recent State of the Workplace report, a significant proportion of employees are not fully engaged in their work. Specifically, 85% of employees are either unengaged or actively disengaged. Dec 22, 2022