02 11 13 A Second Gold Nugget

A second golden nugget in this series on transformational churches is the realization that churches are not in the business of attracting church members.  Churches are tasked with creating a community of spiritual leaders.  Elaine Heath has given a wonderful list of touch points to use in disciple formation, and I will list it, below.  But first I want to write a bit about the difference between trying to attract church members as opposed to raising up a community of spiritual leaders.

This difference is significant, because if churches and their ministry strategies simply assume that people generally want to be church members and are waiting for a really attractive church to show up, then they are not truly observing what is going on in the world.  Although their was a brief period after World War II when people believed that flocking to institutions was the way to be responsible, good human beings, those days are long gone.  Since the 1960s Western society has been increasingly distrustful of static worldviews.  People are increasingly interested in ways of living that incorporate new learning and experimentation into their worldviews.  Old institutions are in drastic decline, and the new ones that are emerging are not based on attraction so much as a common mission.  People get involved in order to be a part of the mission, not the institution. With this in mind, the whole concept of membership changes. 

In the long run, I believe this is good news for churches.  God’s mission in the world has never been a static thing.  Christians used to be known as “people of the way, meaning path or road (see John 14: 6),” which means we know our lives to be a journey, and we know ourselves to be the companions in this journey, following the lead of the Messiah.  Journeys are inherently about not being static.  Journeys are about going somewhere, discovering new people and experiencing new things.  Journeys are about personal growth, and journeys with the Messiah are about growing while we accomplish something together. 

Churches, then, are not tasked to train institutional members, but to form a community of spiritual companions, who are journeying out into the world to do something as a part of God’s mission in the world.  These spiritual companions have to be spiritual leaders, because they are leading the way into new places to participate in the new things God is doing (remember all those Psalms about “singing a new song?” Or how about Isaiah 42:9, “See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.”)?  They are leaders, because they are not “doing church” the old way, nor are they ever done learning or trying out new endeavors.  They are always on the journey with the Lord, always participating in something new.

However, the journey with God generally doesn’t go well unless the journeyers learn to build and care for a balanced spiritual life.  With this in mind, Elaine Heath (see The Mystic Way of Evangelism, Baker Academic, 2008) offers the following list of personal disciplines for Christian life:

Prayer                        (I’m currently using The Daily Prayer app on my iPhone);

Presence            (the practice of becoming aware of Christ’s presence in the here-and-

now, and holding onto that awareness throughout the day);

Gifts                        Becoming aware of one’s giftedness and being a steward of them;

Service                        We are sent out into the world for service, if we follow Christ;

Witness            We bear witness to the Christ we follow, and what he is doing.

Practicing this balance of spiritual disciplines, both as an individual and as a member of a missional faith community, is essential for building people up as spiritual leaders, and for building an empowered missional faith community.  It is this kind of balance that gives us vision and empowerment for the journey along the Way.

02 08 13 A Gold Nugget to Share

 

Given Alaska’s gold-rush history, I hope you can forgive me for using gold nuggets as a metaphor.  The presbytery’s participation in the Acts 16:5 Initiative has surfaced several “gold nuggets” that are worth sharing across the presbytery. Today I want to tell you about one of them: The Three Dimensional Ministry Perspective.

The three dimensional ministry perspective observes that effective and enduring ministries require that churches balance their ministry efforts by caring equally for three specific dimensions of relationship.   Much could be said about each one, and it essential for each congregation’s leadership to give serious consideration on how to care for all three.  For this blog, though, I will just list them briefly as follows:

1. Our relationship with God  (worship, prayer, the practicing the presence of God, etc)
2. Our relationship with fellow believers (fellowship, Christian education, equipping the members for service in the community), and
3. Our relationship with the rest of the world (an intentional witness in our communities and, perhaps, beyond).

As I have followed this outward from the Acts 16:5 program, I have discovered that there is a lot of research behind this three dimensional ministry approach.  One of the most helpful descriptions comes from The Faith of Leap (by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch; Baker Books, 2011).  They point out that churches have traditionally started with worship and prayer as the beginning point of ministry, but this has not worked well for the church, especially in the past century.  It is this very approach that has led us to the current era where churches across the west are in decline and where, only this year, people who claim no religion at all emerged as the fastest growing segment of American society.  We have to do better.

Frost and Hirsch began to ask which of the three dimensions best serves as a catalyst for ministry.  If beginning with our relationship with God is not the best starting point, what is?

Starting with our relationship with God tends toward an divisive arguments on which point of view has the most pure doctrine, and leads to the kind of Christianity that is interested in empire and power.  Starting with our relationship with fellow believers can often degenerate into an in-grow “club”-type church that is not much motivated to service in the world.  But beginning with the world—that is, beginning by listening and observing where God is most active in healing the hurts and raising the hopes of the world—engages Christians in service, inspires a burning desire to build the kind of faith community that is being equipped to do the service to which they are called (indeed, the rigors of serving together in the world builds a special espris de corps that the Bible calls koinonia, and that Christians these days have begun to call communitas (spirit-empowered community), and turns people strongly to God for guidance, strength, and joy. 

Some people have suggested that too many of our churches were founded on the “worship first” principle, and that new churches need to be developed.  Acts 16:5 reminds us that the work of God is about transformation, and it begins by transforming our tired churches into vital ministries.  And a good place to start is by paying attention (listening and observing) to what God is doing in the world, and joining in.