Epiphany is a strong word for something so obvious
19 June 2008 Jeff Gill
After two years of helping to run a church my brain has finally started working. I just remembered what I’m good at:
- Connecting with and being liked and trusted by the people who run things
- The hustle – talking to people, selling ideas, making things happen
- Design thinking – coming up with the right idea to meet the need
- Presentation, especially on stage in front of an audience
I used these four abilities to build a design studio from nothing to way-way-way-too-busy in four years. Then I joined the i61 church plant and forgot. For two years, I have been making a lot of pretty things, physically and spiritually, for i61. I have been using those four skills to some degree in the church, but hardly at all to connect the church with the community.
When I went to work full time for i61 18 months ago, I had the idea of approaching ministry as a design job. I wanted to bring the thinking and creative skills that I had developed in five years as a designer to a new arena. But my ideas about how to do it were not well formed. It was all too nebulous, and it didn’t work. I soon slipped back into the place that was the norm for me during Ministry Career 1 in America: in front of the computer, comfortably afraid of doing the Things That A Person In Ministry Should Be Doing. I knew that i61 couldn’t operate very well without me, but What Was I There For, Really?
Was I actually contributing to the advancement of the kingdom of God? I’ve had very real doubts about that. It wasn’t a lack of ideas – I always have a million of those. It was a lack of connection. I wasn’t connecting what I am good at with the work of building God’s kingdom. I was trying to fit myself into my idea of what A Person In Ministry ought to be doing without even being fully aware that I had such an idea.
When I started my design studio. I had the advantage of not knowing how to be a graphic designer or how to run a business. I needed to feed my family and pay bills, so I just got on with it. When I went to work for i61 I had a decade of ministry experience and a lot of new ideas telling me what I should do. Somehow those things didn’t connect with what I can do best, what makes me thrive.
Last night in the bath, the place where most good thoughts are thought, I remembered the things that make me thrive. And for the first time I connected them with the works of God. Bam. I felt like I retrieved piece of myself from the shelf, the feisty bit that likes people and makes things happen.
The catalyst for this connection was a meeting with a high school assistant head teacher. I was talking to her about an event we do called Hi, School! Just having a meeting with someone outside of the church world was a buzz. During the meeting she invited me to do some school assemblies. I came alive inside. Here was a chance to start something. Starting things makes me happy.
Then I felt guilty. Shouldn’t I be focussing on what I’m already doing? This doesn’t fit perfectly with some of my New Ideas Of How To Do Ministry. If I like it, it is probably because it is an old, and therefore ineffective, way of doing things.
Fortunately, I came to my senses and realised that I get thrilled standing up in front of a crowd of teenagers and talking about the kingdom of God because Jesus in me gets thrilled to talk to a crowd of teenagers about the kingdom of God. It is one of the things I’m built to do.
That excitement has been bouncing around in me for a week, and last night it bounced off all the right things at once and gave me this really obvious realisation: The things that I love to do and do well are the things that will make me most effective in getting the good news of the kingdom of God to my community.
Damn the theories. I’m finally ready for action.
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tags: church,
design,
failure,
kingdom of god,
leadership
Grids
13 February 2008 Jeff Gill
In which I neatly jump from graphic designers’ grid systems to the internet’s most famous archdruid to the historian Arnold Toynbee to a church in North Carolina to the bible to you.
Image borrowed from Mark Boulton’s grid systems design tutorial
Graphic designers use grids…
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tags: church,
design,
john michael greer,
leadership
Even more shame on you
10 February 2008 Jeff Gill
There are many, many churches and Christians in the world who have no interest in piling shame on anyone. But we still don’t see the masses rushing to talk to them about their lust and their gluttony and their failures and their griefs. Our minds tell us that those are secret and private. Our culture is in agreement: Hide it away! And we get no arguments from our own pride and shame.
The kingdom of God – and all the healing and life that come with it – doesn’t work well with a lot of secrets. 1 John has a lot to say about living in the light and bringing things into the open – stuff that goes against natural human inclination.
So when we are trying to move people away from shame and ‘into the light’, we need to be aware that we are not just overcoming church culture, but also the broader culture and human tendencies. And that leads us back to thinking about the questions I asked in part one of this little series.
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tags: church,
failure,
grief,
leadership,
shame
More shame on you
10 February 2008 Jeff Gill
The thing about shame is that it is easy to apply and often gives good immediate results. But it has no power to effect long-term change, and it stands completely in opposition to the ways of God.
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tags: church,
leadership,
shame
Shame on you! And while I'm at it, let me give you some condemnation and rejection as well
10 February 2008 Jeff Gill
In my experience, there are a number of life issues and sins-that-so-easily-beset-us that the evangelical church really stinks at addressing. We’re good at inspirational messages about How To Succeed and How To Get Over It (and those are often useful and necessary). We are very good at shock and shame and savagery when people Don’t Succeed and Don’t Get Over It. But we are not so good at teaching people How To Fail, nor are we very good at coming alongside the failures among us and walking with them into success. We are really bad at understanding Getting Over It and what an ordeal that actually is.
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tags: church,
failure,
grief,
humans,
leadership,
shame
Her humps
28 January 2008 Jeff Gill
While we are all waiting around for me to have time to write the next installment in our money story, let’s watch Alanis Morrisette’s rather brilliant satirical cover of the Black Eyed Peas song My Humps.
In that same vein, have a read of Tia Lynn’s article on the book Ten Lies the Church Tells Women and my Seven Cheers for St Paul.
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tags: blogging,
leadership,
music,
silly,
video,
women
Everyone is stupid and wrong
8 January 2008 Jeff Gill
Anyone who gets any position of leadership soon learns that people are stupid and wrong and stubborn.
Anyone who keeps any position of leadership…
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tags: humans,
leadership
Seven Cheers for St Paul!
1 August 2007 Jeff Gill
At the moment Western church culture features a strong emphasis on Jesus the man and on being one of his followers. That’s great, but somehow in some quarters the Apostle Paul seems to have been forgotten in a dusty corner. (In some quarters it seems that the whole bible has been forgotten in a dusty corner, but that’s a different post.)
I don’t think Paul should be forgotten anywhere, so here are my seven reasons for saying, Hurrah for Saint Paul:
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tags: leadership,
paul,
women