Simple Deliberately

When Steve Mason became the pastor of Christ the King Church he had a stipulation.  He made the group of 50 adults commit that the church would focus its energies on three things, and three things only.  He asked them to agree that the church would be 1) a worshipping church, 2) a church centered on small group ministry, and 3) a church that was committed to outreach.  The people agreed, and Steve made them sign a piece of paper to that effect.

Early on those priorities were tested.  Various people approached him to ask if the church could have other points of emphasis, or initiate other programs.  But for the first year Steve actually carried in his pocket the church’s written agreement.  When discussion would come up about other programs or ministries, Steve would pull the paper out of his pocket and say, “No, these are the things that we agreed upon: worship, small groups and outreach.”  The “paper in the pocket” was an early expression of “deliberate simplicity” and set a course for what CTK would later become.

Many “how to” books for church leaders suggest things to do (in addition to what they’re already doing) to improve the effectiveness of their church.  Unfortunately, many pastors are already experiencing diminishing returns (or burn out) from attempting too much.  They are trapped in an old paradigm that says, “The only way to increase your productivity is to work harder or longer.”  But pastors know intuitively that adding more to the list only accelerates their fatigue and demise.  Only “Super Pastors” with extraordinary capacity for administration flourish in such a system.  The “Clark Kent” pastors are burdened, if not overwhelmed, by the complexity.  Many are working to the point of exhaustion in an attempt to keep up.

Church participants are also longing for simplicity.  As Pastor Wade Hodges opines, “If becoming a part of a church places people in an environment that encourages them to live more frenetic lives than they were living before, then we are going about doing church the wrong way.” 

Church researcher Kennon Callahan reports that “People in our time…are already busy and bustling enough in their everyday, ordinary lives.  They neither need nor want the mixed blessing of a church that now invites them to be even more busy and bustling than they already are.” 

Deliberate Simplicity advocates restricting the activities of the church, instead of expanding them. Deliberate Simplicity says, “It’s not about the hours you put in, it’s about what you put into those hours.”  It calls for less programming instead of more….working smarter instead of harder.  Minimality is how less turns out to be more.

A friend of mine owns a steel fabrication company with his father.  The shop next door to theirs has a machine that cuts steel with a jet of water!  Powerfully pressurized.  Intensely focused.  But still, just plain, ol’ H2O.  It is amazing what common elements can do when they are focused well.  In a Deliberately Simple church, “deliberate” is the pressure in the hose and “simple” is what brings powerful definition to the flow. 

At Christ the King we have an emphasis on small groups.  This is not new with us.  Christians have met in small groups since the first century.  We did not invent the small group concept.  We just decided that “this is how we’re going to do it.” We’ve made small groups a point of emphasis and accountability.  It’s the focus of Deliberate Simplicity that gives it its power. 

Focusing is about making choices, and that means removing the unnecessary.  As Howard Hendricks says, “The secret of concentration is elimination.”  The development of the immensely popular BlackBerry wireless device is a case in point.  Company CEO Michael Lazardis says, “In the PC world, you have less engineering discipline on the application end, because you know that next year you’ll have more memory, a faster processor, and an infinite power supply.  In wireless, you can’t get away with that.  Wireless is inherently constrained in terms of memory, power and bandwidth.  We develop from scarcity, so we have to be disciplined.”

Right from the start, Lazardis believed that what would matter most to the BlackBerry’s long-term success was not what RIM put into the device but what it left out.  Only by eliminating certain features could engineers extend the life of its power source – a single AAA battery – to three weeks.  Only by leaving stuff out could they successfully launch an email message from a two-watt transmitter. 

We are finite.  We have a limited amount of time and energy.  In a sense, we are trying to achieve a high calling on a “AAA battery.”  We need the discipline of “intelligent loss” to achieve our purpose.  In order to be effective and create a sustainable yet exponentially growing movement, we need to keep asking, “What is the simplest thing that could possibly work?”

4 Comments »

1. Dave Browning is one the best-kept secrets in the Kingdom today - thanks for publishing this. 

   Oh, and he’s right on this, too.

   Comment by Sam Middlebrook - May 12, 2009 @ 11:07 AM

2. I think that is right.  The more you do the less, you have time to do the other things you are doing. (With the given caveat that we should always and only be doing what God calls us to be doing). 

   I think that many churches fail to think about the fact that resources are limited.  So to do something else means to not do another thing, or at least to do another thing less. 

   I was apart of a small church and we always had issues with child care.  We had money to hire someone to watch the young kids, but we had people that thought we should be doing a full grade level Sunday school with only 50 attenders (including children).  They didn’t want to help, they just thought it should be done.  (They would always point to all the kids that didn’t know Jesus that were out on the streets.  To which I always agreed and asked if they felt they were called to reach those children.  When they said no, then I would suggest that if they really felt we should be doing something, then they should be looking for and praying about a person to lead that.  (That would put it to bed for a couple months anyway.)

   Comment by Adam S - May 12, 2009 @ 11:18 AM

3. Awesome thoughts.

   Deliberate Simplicity is definitely something the Church & her leaders must “focus” on in order to reach people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ effectively.

   Comment by Mark Myles - May 12, 2009 @ 01:18 PM

4. Wow! Powerful stuff.  I really resonate with Mr. Browning here, and as a pastor/minister in a (roughly) 1100 active member church and with many friends currently serving churches across the southeast I have seen up close and even feel personally at times the weight of “the load” and the pull from many directions.

   On the one hand, there is hope in Mr. Browning’s words, commitment, and philosophy.  Like I said, he gives voice to that unnamed source of anxiety and expression and clarity to thoughts and questions bubbling just beneath the surface.  It is certainly something to strive for in future, if not current, expressions of Christ’s church.  On the other hand, I notice that Mr. Browning began with a group of 50 adults.  I don’t doubt there is more to the story between the introduction of Deliberate Simplicity and its embrace by the community there; but as I look at the calendar (and values) of our 1100 member church, I wonder if the path to Deliberate Simplicity is even possible.

   Perhaps, that expectation in and of itself is unreasonable and unrealistic, that an 1100 member congregation, after 60years headed in one direction, might make a wholesale turn in the other.  Perhaps it begins in my own corner or sphere of influence as part of the worship ministry here.  Perhaps it begins in me.

   Thanks for publishing.

   Comment by giles blankenship - May 12, 2009 @ 03:34 PM

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