For me, Alan Hirsch remains credible because he presents good data and because what he says makes sense. He’s not just a bunch of bluster and unsubstatiated opinion. He also has been an observer of trends in England and Down Under that seem to be pre-cursors to what is happening in America. He can predict what will happen in America by explaining what happened in those parts of the world.

So, here’s the the tough part of putting Hirsh’s wisdom to work in the Church. We like to contain things and then measure them. As long as we are using an attractional or extractional model of church, we can put our arms around those who respond and we can count them, survey them, monitor them, etc.  Since we measure success in the church by numbers and dollars (c’mon, you know I’m right) we replicate those things that look like successful outcomes.  Bringing people into the church environment, and assimilating them into our culture, look like success as we do it on greater scales, so we keep doing it.  What we can measure we can manage, and the conventional attractional/extractional church environment allows us to measure and manage people and behaviors. And so we keep doing it. If Hirsh’s ideas of missionality are correct, which I believe they are, then we are going to HAVE to divorce ourselves from the old measurements of success. Not mask them. Not rename them. Not rewarm them. We need to detox from them and send them as far as East is from West.

How in the heck do we do that?  Some people say they have made the switch from measuring numbers of people in their programs to measuring stories. Huh? What? I don’t know what that means really.  I think it sounds really good, but we’re still qualifying and quantifying to measure success. I’ve heard others say that they measure inputs instead of outputs. Like, Statistical Process Control, if  the theology, training, message, experience, commitment of the Christian community is strong, then the outcomes will be strong. What outcomes? How do you measure how well a mom loves her kids or how effectively a boss relates to his employees or how purely a missionary serves his field? My instinct says that a true missional model has to be a total clean break from dependence on metrics as measures of success. We’ll always have metrics but our confidence in their integrity is indirectly proportional to our freedom to be missional. There will be much argument on this point, but no one can ever win, because we have no way to prove the answer metrically. Some things “work” in some places. The same things “fail” other places. There’s something really important about the Fall of Man and that has to do with categorizing everything as good or bad, but that is another conversation for another time.

So…if we are to be missional, the Church has to cease conforming to the patterns of this world.  The clergy system that depends on butts and bucks is in jeopardy. The facilities system that we’ve adopted to contain the Christian community is on the chopping block. The programs that we use to direct people in tracks of proper behavior might have to go. The worship-centered experience of the faith may have to fall into equal proportion with other less pleasant components. AND…when we become missional, the very metrics that Hirsh uses to show that we’re currently failing as a church will say that we have failed miserably, because to measure how non-missional we are, we are using non-missional metrics!!!

So, on to more important things… The first night there, we ate at a place called the Hickory Street Bar & Grill. It was good in spite of all the buckets scattered around to catch water leaking through the ceiling from the recent rains. It has sort of an indoor outdoor format and a hippish, grungish vibe.

Here is what I ate… Grilled Portobello with corn-salsa, rice and black beans. It was really tasty with its zingy seasoning and freshness. Pretty guilt-free too!

Jason Barnhart, my friend and partner-in-ministry is blogging about the different presentations we experienced at the Q Conference in Austin in late April. I am jumping in the conversation by adding a second generation of thoughts and responses as he goes through the different topics. Think of this as the missing scenes or producer’s commentary on a DVD. Consider these the liner notes to Jason’s “music” about Q.

This first post is a bit more about Q and its context…

The Q Conference is organized by Fermi Project. Fermi is “a broad collective of innovators, artists, social entrepreneurs, church and societal leaders experimenting with ways to advance the common good in culture. The focus of this project is strategically placed on Christians and leaders throughout the Church. Multiple mediums are leveraged to push forward the essence of this project, including events, research, essays, films, books and culture shaping projects.” By clicking here, and coughing up your email address, you can download an essay, Influencing Culture: An Opportunity for the Church, developed by Gabe Lyons, Founder of Fermi Project.

The annual Q conference is a convergence of these innovators, artists, social entrepreneurs, church and societal leaders, who share a large scale brain-dump of ideas, dreams and methods for influencing culture.  The trademark of Q Conferences is their 18 minute time limit on almost all presentations.  This makes each session concise and limits the distracting sermonizing and self-aggrandizing that often accompanies conferences.  Other unique characteristics of Q are the relatively small group of attenders (350 -400?), the absolute resistance to Christian celebrity status for presenters, and the very low key, minimalist attention to worship (this year, David Crowder spoke, but didn’t sing. David Hodges, former  member of Evanescence, led worship from the side of the stage, plunking on a keyboard and singing softly. No one was asked to stand or sing louder…).

The Q Conference has convened for three years. Q organizers try to select venues that represent cultural significance in the cities that are culturally significant.  The first was in Atlanta, last year we attended the conference in New York City, this year we descended on Austin.

Q organizer, Gabe Lyons, explains why they chose Austin this year:

“There are just so many reasons. For starters, how about the music scene? Over 200 live music venues that bustle every night with jazz, folk, country, or rock make Austin the Live Music Capital of the World. And the food? It’s hard to top the mouth-watering beef brisket or authentic Tex-Mex you can find on almost any corner. The reasons for choosing Austin could go on: the largest university in the U.S. (go Longhorns!), flourishing arts and film industry, significant high-tech culture, influential political arena, and world-class environmental awareness. All in all, Austin is the perfect city for Q.

It’s also a city that hasn’t gotten too big. In fact, Austin is probably more like the place you live than L.A., Chicago, or New York City ever will be. It boasts no professional sports team and lives in the shadow of the much bigger Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio areas. Moreover, Austinites are trying to figure out how to grow a city well, how to maintain creative culture, and how to make suburban life feel, well, not so suburban. Perhaps the slogan of the city says it all: “Keep Austin Weird.” It’s against that backdrop – a city seeking to maintain and re-express the heart of its identity – that Q 2009 comes to Austin. It’s our prayer that as we gather there, new ideas and fresh expressions of the gospel will be born and cultivated among us.”

So, we arrived in Austin, and as we pulled up to the Paramount Theater, Q’s meeting place in Austin, I was smacked by maybe the most profound moment of the conference.  In front of the theater was a bench. On one end of the bench were two Q participants, drinking Starbucks and going through their participant’s gift bags which were stuffed with books, coffee, a water bottle and other hip booty.  Sitting on the other end of the bench was a lonesome looking homeless man half-shielded from the morning chill by a blue sleeping bag and hoodie.  Seperating Homeless Man from Q Men on the bench was a plastic bag with all of Homeless Man’s possessions in it, along with a gulf of difference and indifference that prevented even a shred of interaction to occur. The ends of the bench could have been ends of the world.  It was a sight symbolic of the church’s struggle to be influential in a world that has drastically lowered its expectations for us to be of any good. It was an irony that seemed lost on too many people at the conference.

This is the context that we gathered in and in which we live in this place and time. Hopefully these scattered points of interest will help bring the test-tube world of Q to the streets where you live.