RABBONI...which is to say, Master

Patrick Meads Blog for the Tuesday is so powerful I just had to share it with you.

Should we plant more churches? Let's dispense with the obvious: Jesus is not optional and we want more people to worship him in spirit and in truth. That said, is church planting the answer? May I be forthright at the risk of being offensive? Perhaps we shouldn't plant churches that are just like the churches we have if those churches are not reaching their communities and the cultures that surround them. Your church may be small and struggling because it is faithful, but more likely it is small and struggling because it is not connecting with the culture that lives outside its building. Putting up another building won't help.

George Hunter III wrote about the difference between Celtic and Roman evangelistic efforts ("The Celtic Way of Evangelism"). The Romans built a building and preached a system. You could belong to that group only if you came to their building and bought into their system. You had, in short, to look like the Romans. The Celts moved into an area and, instead of building a chapel, looked for ways to serve the community. They protected travelers, provided health care, helped mend fences both physical and emotional, and worked their way into the hearts of the people so effectively that the people belonged to the community before they even believed.

Here is a quick question, the answer to which will help you determine whether you are a Celtic or Roman style church. Is your church a redeeming force or a sacred outpost? The Crusaders held territory but didn't change hearts. Is your church a crusading church or does it transform the hearts of the people in their culture? Our churches are called to be pivot points of a movement working to reform the cultures of the present day; to engage the people who ARE around us rather than the people we WISH were around us. We must be like the first century Jews who were admonished by Paul to sit in peace with the Gentiles.

Hold the line? Stay the course? Three thousand churches in the US close their doors each year (source: George Barna). While they wanted things to change, they were not willing to change. they held to their traditions and programs, answering questions the culture was no longer asking. We baptize a lot of people, but none of them are baptized because we won an argument with them about their church, their baptism, or their worship. They are baptized because people of this faith community engaged them, befriended them, served them, loved them, and cared for them until they found themselves part of the community; willing to do anything to belong to the Jesus that had found them. I don't preach against the denominations. I try to out love them, out serve them, out Jesus them so that anyone who watches can see the difference. It works.

Mark Driscoll (read "Reformission" and "Confessions of a Reformission Rev") says that the church is called to love the gospel, the culture, and the church but most churches only love two of the three. If we love the gospel and our culture but not the church, we form a parachurch organization that tries to connect people to Jesus without connecting them to each other. If we love our church and our culture but not the gospel we become a liberal, mainline denomination without power to change the world. If we love the church and the gospel but not the culture, we become isolated and our churches slowly die (it can take a century or two), prone to legalism and irrelevance. We have determined that Rochester will be a church that reaches up, reaches in, and reaches out. We will fulfill all three parts of our calling.

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The vast majority of churches today are ineffective for two major reasons.  They are perceived by the world as irrelevant and lacking in credibility. Until we deal with the root causes of these perceptions of the world that we are trying to reach, we will simply never reach them. So what must we do?

Some things we must avoid. First, we need to be careful how we jump on the culturally relevant bandwagon. You might call this, “becoming all things to all men on steroids”.  Christian should never compromise those things that are to make them distinctively different from the world in which they live. Second, it would be just as ineffective to bury our heads in the sand and doggedly continue to try and do it “the way we have always done it”. The mind set that “if it worked then, it will work again”. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Adapting our approach based on present day culture is just common sense.

Some things we must do. In his book, “The Church of Irresistible Influence”, Robert Lewis speaks of the need for “bridge” building to reach our world for Christ. Bridges that connect are supported by not only the Great Commission, but the Great Commandment. Christians exists to demonstrate the love of God. As the recipients of God’s Love and Grace, we in turn dispense the same to those who don’t have it, and become the reflection of His glory to them. Authentic relevant lives lived in the presence of and for the world we are trying to reach will restore our credibility to a world that does not have a lot of respect for Christians and Christianity today.

Bridges also allow for two way traffic. Many churches today are becoming more and more “attractional” in their approach to outreach. More and more programs, events and happenings design to say come to us. But this is still mostly ineffective because it lacks a “missional” approach to the world we are asking to come to us. Salt and light penetrate! They mingle, influence and bring change to what they touch. So must Christians.  We must develop missional efforts that take us into the world so we can be a salty influence.

One of the biggest changes that must take place is in our definition of success as a church. Success is not brick and mortar structures, and a larger and larger staff and payroll. It is a mobilized membership and outreach that is taking place throughout the community and not just what is happening at the building.  It may take the form of a group of couples banding together to become foster parents, or a Christian Tattoo parlor. It may be a job skills program designed to make people employable in today’s market. The list could and should go on and on. These are the types of things that lead to discussions and then to Christ.