The Power of Sarcasm: What to do while you wait for God to build movements

I’ve adapted Steve Addison’s list of suggestions (plus some of the comments) for what we can do while nothing is happening in our efforts to build movements everywhere.

While we’re waiting, we can:

1. Call ourselves apostles or some other lofty title. Have some business cards printed. Hand them around.
2. Throw lots of money at subsidizing unhealthy, declining efforts.
3. Throw money at experimental missional initiatives and never evaluate their effectiveness.
4. Set goals for multiplying new movements but don’t make it clear who is responsible.
5. Make someone responsible but don’t give them any real authority, discretionary time or sufficient funding. Change the appointment every two years. After ten years, save money by retiring the position and making everyone responsible.
6. Appoint a committee to undertake a study and write a report for the leadership group. Wait three years, then do it again.
7. Hire a consultant to undertake a study and write a report. Wait three years then do it again.
8. Appoint the wrong people to plant movements. When they fall over say, Building movements doesn’t work.
9. When we see a healthy movement say, Yes it’s growing but it’s not really a Reformed/Baptist/Assemblies of God/Presbyterian/Methodist/New Vine/Navigator/OCF/InterVarsity/Campus Crusade etc (choose one) movement.
10. Require pioneering leaders and volunteers to go thru formal training before they can plant a movement.
11. Reverse Corollary: Never require pioneering leaders and volunteers to continually learn and grow and develop.
12. Throw our best leaders at our biggest problems, not at our greatest opportunities.
13. Watch pioneering leaders exit our movement and comment on their lack of commitment to CCC (or your organization) and God.
14. Reward pioneering leaders with promotion. Get them away from the front line. Harness their drive to keep the institutional and headquarters’ wheels turning.
15. In the 1960s change the word missions to mission. To usher in the new millennium change mission to missional . Around 2010 plan to change missional to postmissional.
16. Agree to plant new movements when: (a) We’re large enough (b) We’re healthy enough (c) We have the leaders to give away (d) We have the money to spare (e) God has clearly shown us it’s time (f) When the cow jumps over the moon (g) Any or all of the above.
17. Run workshops on building movements. Hold conferences on movements. Offer a course at your annual training or at your theological college on movement building. Do nothing to follow up the people who show an interest. Make sure only experts like me get to teach. Keep the practitioners away from the volunteers. Keep the volunteers in the classroom.
18. Grow your movement’s facilities, staff and budget as BIG as you can. Let our vision stop once we hang our shingle at the front door. Let church history end with us. Let the Kingdom dream die.
19. Set ridiculous but catchy sounding goals like 500 in 5 years, or 2,000 by 2,000. Three years after the target date expires set new goals. Don’t forget to change the dates!
20. Modernize our theology then PostModernize our theology. Remove evangelism and discipleship and church planting from the centre of God’s mission in the world. When decline hits make sure the paid professionals like us are the last to feel the pinch.
21. Adopt a Calvinistic theology of double-predestination, fake a humble posture, and suggest it would be utterly arrogant to mess with God’s sovereign election by trying to build a movement, coz it would smell too much like evangelism. Move somewhere out the mountains of Colorado and take up fly-fishing for a living.
22. Lastly, set up a blog like this on movement building. Link to other bloggers on movements. They link to you. Add smoke and mirrors.