Then, basketball was taken by storm with the Jeremy Lin story. Lin, another notable Christian athlete became the first NBA player to score at least 20 points and have seven assists in each of his first five starts. After leading the Knicks to 6 straight wins, the Associated Press called Lin “the most surprising story in the NBA.” Time.com ran an article titled, “It’s Official: Linsanity Is for Real,” and he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated in back-to-back issues.

Fast-forward to this weekend in golf at the Masters, and another unlikely Christian athlete rose to center stage. Bubba Watson made an incredible late-day comeback, including an amazing shot in the 2nd playoff hole to earn his first Green Jacket (Commonly viewed as the most prized accomplishment in the sport).  Not only is Bubba a widely entertaining golfer to watch, he leads a Wednesday Bible study with fellow golfers before each tournament.  If you have any doubts about the authenticity of Bubba’s faith, take a look at his Twitter profile. @bubbawatson: Christian. Husband. Daddy. Pro Golfer. Owner of General Lee 1.

While these stories could normally be chalked up to typical, secular Christian rhetoric in the moment of success…There’s something deeper at work in the lives of these athletes, and their outspoken credit to Jesus is more than a finger point to heaven. Or, was that the – I’m number one sign?

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

There is certainly is an uptick in the social activity of the church today. This is a good thing. But when serving remains simply an event that we do once a quarter or year, it often falls short of having gospel implications. So how do we move beyond serving as just an event? How do we create structures to ensure that we engage need on a personal level and as a part of missional community?

Before I offer some thoughts on those questions, here are two things I want to clarify about serving the least:

1. Serving the Least does not make you Missional: Missional recognizes that you are, where you have been sent.  Serving the least is a critical part of a missional posture, but serving alone for the sake of serving is not enough. You can go serve the least and still be a jerk to your neighbor. Not very missional.
2. Serving the Least is critical for the church to regain her voice: Serving the poor transcends culture and context because being good news always transcend culture and context. In a post-modern and post-Christian world, it’s both biblical and contextual. Our skeptics demand that our deed match our creed.

Okay… now that I got that off my chest… here’s a few thoughts I shared at today’s Verge Conference on the topic.

Serving Through Missional Community: 7 steps to moving beyond the event.

1. Teach Serving as a part of gospel-centered discipleship effort: Too often we fail to connect the dots between serving, becoming good news, and the Gospel.
2. Plan Events & Projects that serve a redemptive purpose and present opportunities to do more: When we do so, the “Event” can serve as a spring board or “gateway” to more engagement and relationships.
3. Create structures that clearly communicate  a plan for next steps to engaging need: Serving cannot be just an “add on” event. It must be a clear part of the discipleship process. Communicating this reality is a critical step of the equipping process.
4. Create a Place to Engage Culture:  Missional Communities must be postured to engage real needs. We cannot engage culture without engaging the needs of culture. We can often utilize existing structures for this function (Re-purposed small groups, etc…). Often these must be decentralized in order to be both contextual as well as reproducible.
5. Create the Space for Mission: Service will be the first thing that goes when people get busy. Most of our churches are already incredibly busy even without serving outside the church. So we must “add by subtraction” to create space to add service as a priority without simply adding another thing to do.
6. Staff the Legwork of Serving: Instead of planning the entire event, recruiting leaders, and begging people to come… if our efforts are truly decentralized… we can do the front end legwork of working with non-profits, building the relationships, and providing a handful of service options (often the hard part), taking a “help me help you” posture with your group leaders. This helps enable and empower leaders to own a project without being bogged down with the red tape of initiation.
7. Change the Way you Measure Success: This is the hardest thing to do but the most necessary. Serving the least is often messy, slow, seemingly ineffective, costly, and doesn’t necessarily result in church growth. We must begin to measure success in different ways:

• Kingdom impact over attendance impact.
• Percent of people from your church serving outside of your church.
• Number of non-Christians, seekers, & de-churched joining you to serve.
• Personal Transformation in your people.
• Number of those going on to the “next level” of engaging need as an intuitive part of life.

For more information on Brandon – checkout his site at www.brandonhatmaker.com

I plan to post more stories this year of life that bridges the hobbies I love with natural ministry environments.. For example, it was a real treat to fish on Saturday with Jerry, a friend from Adullam. I didn’t realize when we planned the trip that Jerry’s dad was a surveyor during the construction of Navajo Dam from 1958 to 1962 (picture is taken from the dam). He knew all the history of the quality water section and had plenty of stories of big fish and favorite holes. More importantly, I’m learning that Jerry is one of those rare deep souls that cares more about how life is done, than what is conquered through it. While the fishing was great, the stream-side conversations with a genuine man of wisdom made the trip a true success for me.

The San Juan River NM

Hi Friends,

Hugh and I would like to share some critical adjustments we’ve made that might encourage and inspire you in your ministry contexts. Like many of you that wrestle to discover the right ministry context and role, we’ve also been struggling through most of 2011 to find the right approach to the ever-growing pastoral challenges of leading a local church – Adullam. Making matters more complicated, was the increasing ministry expansion and influence of Missio and Missio Publishing.

We continue to learn that ministries rarely remain on the same trajectory for long, and what worked two years ago, can become a hindrance to further expansion and growth. So, with a great deal of prayer, processing, and input from leaders around the country, we concluded that we needed to make some significant changes in order to focus more intently on both Missio and Adullam, while expanding the teams associated with each.

In order to steward each ministry appropriately, we recognized that in this season Hugh’s shepherding capacity and vision is needed more specifically at Adullam, while Matt’s strategic insight is crucial to the expansion and further development of Missio. So, in an unprecedented move, Matt was sent with the blessing of Adullam from his staff role (while maintaining his volunteer elder role), to focus on the expansion of Missio. Hugh simultaneously made a significant shift by doubling down his focus and energy towards Adullam.

As we look beyond this year of transition, we’re excited by the opportunities in front of us – including the expansion of our team, the development of additional resources, and the collaboration with other networks.

The official change took affect a little over a month ago, which has shifted my focus towards Missio and Missio Publishing for the foreseeable future. What I’m realizing more each day is how true it is that, ‘It’s impossible to do three things well.’ Between the three organizations, work for me was becoming a cluttered haze, shaped more by the tyranny of the urgent than strategic planning and solid goals.

Yesterday, at the gym someone asked, “What do you do for work?” I paused a second and let it sink in…While I would rarely answer someone with, “Pastor” – it’s still been a significant focus for nearly 16 years. I’ll share with you more of my thoughts and experiences soon. I’m learning a lot in the volunteer Adullam Elder role, there are great opportunities ahead for Missio, and the publishing focus is expanding quickly (we have a few more Primers and other Missional Resources lined up for 2012). Keep me in your prayers as I enter 2012 with some new perspective and clear focus.