Just finished this little book which you could probably look at in two very different ways. On the one hand, it's another "hey, look at me and my church and the way we did it" text to toss on the pile of successful church strategies.
On the other hand (which I'm claiming), it's a pretty good collection of ideas which could help a church and it's leaders really focus on what's important. One of the best things he says is in the introduction about how anemic and useless the label of "Christian" is in our culture today (the United States specifically). According to Barna, 85% claim to be Christian...but there's little to no difference in the way decisions are made or life is lived. The way I see it, the church should own up to that disparity. Because our religious institutions have done much more to prop themselves up and preserve traditions than they've done to facilitate the kind of Kingdom life transformation and discipleship which would result in a tremendous movement of Christ-followers who wouldn't tolerate the luke-warm expression of Christianity which consumes culture without discernment or condemns culture without compassion or love.
Their 'bigidea' network of churches push for developing "3 C" Christ-followers who celebrate, connect, and contribute. I like that idea because the Sunday morning event of celebration and worship should not comprise any more than 1/3 of our spiritual experience and relationship with God. It's an important component, but it's on 33% (at the most!) of the deal. Connecting is about living our the resurrected life in genuine community with a few others. Contributing is about leveraging all your resources for the Kingdom (time, energy, etc).
2 comments:
Yeah I will need to check that out. I just began reading a book called Simple Church by Thom Rainer. There is a need to simplfy this complex mess of what we call church and get back to some basics like the 3 C's. I would be nterested to know more about what it says about connecting and contributing. I think we have too much focus on the celebrating part of it as well.
Tom Fox
Funny how those three C's coincide with the Bible's three main definitions of worship....sounds pretty balanced to me.
The simplest form I know of for running a church is to focus on who its all about and for. If it's all about Jesus then all the "programs" and ministries will line up.
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