David Goetz immediately stirred my interest because he is not just an academic or unseasoned clergy with an opinion. He is He is president of CZ Marketing, a brand and strategy firm serving the nonprofit sector.  AND Goetz lives with his family in the very suburban Wheaton, Illinois. He is positioned within the culture he is writing about, and admittedly knows first-hand the struggles and temptations of suburban temptation.  For me, someone who is speaking out of their own experience and vulnerability has a special place.

To listen to David Goetz talk about Death by Suburb, download the MP3 file by going here Death By Suburb Audio

I am reminded over and over again how deceptive Satan is. This god we call the Suburban Dream seems so right and so heaven-like, and yet its very pursuit usually takes us in the very opposite direction from God. The more we find what we’re looking for in the suburban life, the more it creates an emptiness that demands to be filled.  The hamster wheel is a perfect, in overused, metaphor for the suburban golden calf. It is an idolatry of our own making that seems under our control, but that really puts us on an endless, empty, exhausting pursuit that makes us spin wildly out of control, yet demands that we look calm and happy and put-together on the surface. It’s an amazing device of the Enemy that few see through unless prayer or hardship pull back the corner on the real scene.

Goetz’s talk wasn’t all that profound or novel, but it did pull back the corner a bit and sort of jabbed its finger into a familiar, but undefined sore spot. Now that we know what the pain is caused by, we can work on the tough, thankless job of helping ourselves and others detox. The hardest part of this whole picture is that every addiction denies its own existence and resists its own cure. Addiction can’t exist in the presence of a cure, so it makes the cure look ridiculous and impossible. Many of us have come to the point of knowing our Suburban addiction, and we want to detox, but the question is HOW?

“When Jesus heard this, he said to him (them), ‘You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.‘”

WRONG ANSWER! IS THERE ANOTHER WAY GOD?!  David Goetz humbly says that the other ways will be prayer (which most don’t like) or hardship (which no one likes). Addictions suck!

“When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.”

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So anyways, I mentioned in the last post that one of the tradmarks of the Q Conference is its understated treatment of times of worship. Normally, it consists of an individual playing an instrument (guitar or piano) off to the side of the stage. There are white lyrics on a black screen to help lead the singing, but there is no sermonizing, no cheerleading, no request to stand/sit/kneel just sort of natural invitation to enter into worship with the presence of God and and the simplicity of song doing the “work”. Below is a cell phone shot of David Hodges, former  member of Evanescence, leading worship from the side of the stage, plunking on a keyboard and singing softly.

David’s book fleshes out eight things that bombard the residents of suburbia.  I will not list those things out of fairness to Dave and because it would be much better for you to read and discover those on your own.  At the conference, however, he hit upon three major addictions in the life of the average suburban resident.

1. Suburbanites are obsessed with the success of their children.

2. Suburbanites are consumed with their neighbor’s life.

3. Suburbanites are fixated on the speed of their lives.

The reality of these three forces, if you will, in our lives is that we end up living very bloated lives obsessed with getting ourselves ahead, being successful, appearing like we have it all together.  The bloat is too much of one thing and too little of everything else.

I’m not talking about finding time for church.  Rather, I’m talking about being the church within time.  How has the drive to be as efficient as possible deterred the growth of healthy families?  What if the lack of time for intimacy has left spouses as hollow shells of their once committed selves, hollow shells that soon shatter with the reality of divorce?

The painful truth of this suburban “paradise” of a picket fence, a golden retriever named “Theodore” or “Theo” for short, two kids, nice, big vehicles, plenty of spare cash to spend at the movies.  This style of living appeals to many of us.  Suburbia isn’t popular because it causes people to suffer.  Suburbia is popular because it anesthetizes us.  It lulls us into false senses of security.  Our “gods” are satisfied.  We have a flat-screen television, we have a beautifully cut lawn.

The enemy of suburbia is the “wantingness” of humanity.  If Mr. John Jacobs has a new SUV then my minivan doesn’t look so hip anymore.  If she can afford those kinds of clothes then I need to buy something better to not only match her fashion move in this game of clothing poker but to up the ante a little bit.  If she spends $35 for a shirt I will find one a little more expensive in the hopes of being a little more unique.

The problem: uniqueness in suburbia is only an illusion.  The only thing unique about most teenagers is the inseam of their jeans.  The brand is the same as 50 other students living on the same block.  The only unique thing about that person’s car are the people it’s hauling.  Buy a new car sometime and just see how INSTANTLY you see that same car everywhere.  We’re not unique…there is nothing individual about our individualistic culture.  It’s all vanity and we have bought into the lie and pay homage to the gods of consumerism every day.

So, what’s to be our response?  Goetz uttered three words that have haunted me, my closest friends, and the community of faith I call home for some time, we must “die to self.”  One way to solve a bloating problem is to stop eating or drinking that which is bloating you.

Goetz contends that the Protestant church has been especially great at creating beginners on the Christian journey.  The only problem, you cannot program converts and you cannot program spiritual transitions.  The deeper (thicker as he calls it) life is not a mere three programs away.

Transitions on the spiritual journey involve suffering and prayer.  These things, however have no consumer appeal.  People do not flood churches for a Wii when it involves losing their family members, becoming disowned by a social group, giving up straight A’s to become a beacon of hope to your neighborhood, going to community college instead of an Ivy League school.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”  Jesus had to die, His followers had to die, we must die to experience the fullness of the Kingdom.

Jesus’ death seemed like the end but, in reality, it was the beginning.  Only through His death were we granted true life, abundant life.  But Jesus is not a gateway to inner bliss.  Instead, Jesus is a model of what all of us must do to experience life.  Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body I live by faith in the son of God who loved me gave himself for me” (2:20).

Before we go any further, dying here ultimately means physical death.  But for us now, death implies dying to all those things that we find identity, security, hope and love in other than Christ.  We’re talking about dying to self.  Even though there is something about dying to self that fully brings us alive, it is a difficult journey for it goes against every fiber of our being.  We avoid dying to self because dying to self requires the greatest amount of faith in God, namely, that He is able to bring us back to life AND that the life He offers is really the best offer on the table.  We so desperately want to live because we have not allowed for the evidence of God’s unending love and immense provision to sweep into our lives.

Just read the following scriptures and hear the call to lose control and give it to God:

• “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:39, TNIV)
• “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, NIV)
• “Then Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.  Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.  Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them.  And how much more valuable you are than birds!  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?  Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?’” (Luke 12:22-26, NIV)
• “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never anymore than a grain of wheat.  But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.  In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it  is destroys life.  But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.” (John 12:24, The Message)

The dilemma of Protestant Christianity, Goetz argues, is that believers are living in a perpetual state of Christianity.  The call to transition to the deeper end of the spiritual pool is one that calls us to lose control.  For churches to transition to the deeper side of life they need to begin thinking in terms of spirituality and move away from the thought process of ideas fleshed out in programs.There is no way to get deeper with Christ without suffering and prayer.  There is no consumeristic appeal to come to these.  Ultimately, in light of Bonhoeffer’s quote above, there is really no consumeristic appeal to the Gospel.  Dying is ultimately giving up control.  For the suburbanite (and small town resident I would argue) this is counter-cultural to the well-groomed, carefully maintained, life under control existence to which we’ve become accustomed.

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.