Posts tagged with "post-modern"
Monday, 11. May 2009, 08:05:26
post-modern, church, ministry, mission
The SMH reports today that Brian Houston will be expanding the Hillsong empire into Brisbane, and thence to other cities. Apparently an existing Australian Christian Churches (AOG) church will be rebranded as "Hillsong Brisbane" and Brian and wife Bobbie will be installed as Senior Pastors. A previous pastor was thrown out because the church wanted a CEO style of pastor rather than a pastoral pastor, and more to the point the church was not growing and the previous pastor had had a nervous breakdown.
There is so much that is wrong with this story, if the facts even vaguely line up with the reality.
Let me say that I have a great regard for Brian Houston and what he has achieved with Hillsong. The Hillsong church has done a lot to inspire churches and pastors to get out of the old paradigms and comfort zones- establishing new ones which need to be challenged again.
So there's a large church in Brisbane which is struggling because it's failing to grow numerically. In fine Pentecostal tradition they blame the pastor- as John Maxwell says "everything rises and falls with the leader." They chuck him out with little regard for their responsibility to him- not as an employer but as a christian body.
They lust for the "success" that the Houston name seems to bring so they install Brian and Bobbie as Senior Pastor.
Here are my issues:
1. Brisbane is not Sydney- so why do they think that the Hillsong model should be right for Brisbane?
2. What is meant by a CEO pastor? This is an oxymoron, a contradiction. The roles of CEO and pastor are very different. The imagining of the Body of Christ as a corporate business operation is a total distortion of everything that Jesus died for.
3. Is growth an end in itself? The mega-church phenomenon has always been about attracting a crowd through great entertainment and spectacular "inspiring" preaching. There is far less concern about disciple making and no concern about whether the growth is from genuine conversion or from merely sucking in christians from other churches.
4. It is simply not possible for someone in Sydney to pastor a church in Brisbane. You cannot pastor a community that you are not a part of.
5. The worship of the man, the cult of the leader, has been the biggest weakness in pentecostal churches. The strength has been the freedom of pastors to lead and preach with the authority of their gifting. But this has been twisted over the last couple of decades to become a cult of personality around the charismatic leaders. This is not unique to pentecostal churches- I read a report a few years ago about declining Uniting Church congregations in one region of Sydney where there was a common hope that if they could get the "right minister" everything would be O.K.
We need to understand that the ministry of the church is the responsibility of the whole body, and not just the Senior Pastor or other "staff" members. Getting The Man is not what we should be about.
Pastors are not super-stars- except in their own fantasies. Ephesians 5 clearly paints the 5-fold ministry gifts as being about encouraging the whole body to grow to maturity. If we see the ministry as about one man brining salvation and significance to the congregation (I'm not talking about Jesus!) then we are worshipping the wrong Messiah.
6. Preaching and teaching come from the shared life of a community of faith. Preaching, even in a large crowd, is an interaction, a shared event. What will happen in this arrangement is that eventually (if not immediately) when Brian is in Sydney, the message will be beamed in by internet or satellite so that the satellite congregation can get the best teaching/ performance every week. This already happens in the U.S. as the mega-churches franchise out their operations to other cities or other campuses in the same city.
Think about this: would you rather get a relevant word shaped by our context together or a well presented but generic message from somewhere else? An extreme example of this is that while much of Australia is undergoing an economic recession, Narrabri is undergoing good economic times because we had quite good rural production last year. Does Brian preach a word for the good times or a word for the tough times when we get his message beamed in?
7. This is the last extension of modernity in the church. Modernity, in the cultural use of the term, relates to the way our technological culture with its emphasis on efficiency, achievement and "success" has changed the way that we think of ourselves. Post-modernism is a reaction to that with an emphasis on relationship and expression rather than production. The baby boomers were the ultimate products of modernism where even the church became just another corporation selling a branded product. The post-baby boom generations are seeking authentic relationships and community (not corporate) values. The growth of cell church and house church movements, the resurgence of incarnational and missional movements (the church has to take Jesus to the heart of our cities and towns and not just expect people to turn up at an event), the growth of christian arts communities- all of these things are pointing to a new way of doing things.
The Willow Creek movement has discovered huge failings in the way they did church. Their problem was that church services were focussed on "seekers" (i.e. people) and not on the transcendent God. Hillsong and many pentecostal churches do something similar in that everything focusses on a sharp, efficient presentation with no room in the programme for the Holy Spirit.
8. I really believe that Brian Houston's ministry gift is apostle not pastor. He has tremendous influence way past the local congregation. But he is straying from the New Testament model by installing himself as a pastor in these various offshoot churches. He should abandon the title of pastor altogether and take on board his real calling. This would require him to cut his formal ties with the various Hillsong churches. They could still pay him a salary or a tithe or whatever, but not as a pastor. He could travel from church to church and speak to them as a visiting apostle and with greater authority. I believe that the local church must be led by a local pastor who is in a father-son relationship with an apostle. But the apostle must allow the pastor to lead his own flock and not seek to control the pastor or the congregation.
I find myself very disturbed, though strangely unsurprised by this development. I think that there will be severe problems in the long term, and it may sound the death knell of the Australian Christian Churches as a denomination- in the same way that ordaining homosexual ministers was the death knell of the Uniting Church.
In the place of these institutional juggernauts we will see, over the next 50 years or so the rise of genuine relational apostolic networks and the complete reformation of the church.
Sunday, 8. March 2009, 22:26:16
post-modern, church, evangelism, mission
Next Reformation offers the following tips for changing the mind-set of churches about being christian in a post-Christendom world.
Instilling missional habits..
David Fitch asks how we lead a church community to engage mission as a way of life? How do we train a congregation out of Christendom habits and instil post Christendom virtues? Curiously, I had a conversation a few mornings ago and was reminded of a comment Todd Hunter made some years ago. “Nurture the kind of life and practices you want; starve those you don't want.” Dave advocates the gentle rejection of certain assumptions and practices in favour of a missional imagination and missional practices. He lists nine items, and this is the shorthand..
1.) Kindly Reject doing Outreach Events. Instead direct imagination towards ways of connecting with people where they are.
2.) Kindly Reject evangelism as a one time hit on a target with a preconceived outcome. Kindle imagination toward seeing mission as part of regular daily, weekly and monthly life rhythms.
3.) Kindly reject building multiple use buildings as if by building a gymnasium on the church campus we can bring people into the orbit of the church. We should build less third spaces, and inhabit more the ones already there.
4.) Kindly reject one-on-one evangelism and the techniques associated with such apologetic persuasion. Instead direct imagination for inhabiting places in two’s or three’s or more. Hospitals, the school systems, the park districts … two or three Christians together become an undeniable force for the kingdom under the Lordship of Christ.
5.) Kindly reject the Sunday morning gathering as an evangelistic event for it cannot be that in the new post Christendom cultures. Instead fire up imagination for the formation that comes from a communal encounter with the living God in Jesus Christ.
6.) Kindly reject coercive persuasion and argument in our witness. Instead stoke the imagination of your people for seeking “one person of peace” (Luke 10) among the lost of their neighbourhoods.
7.) Kindly reject presumptuous postures of power as we live our lives among those who do not know Christ yet. Instead direct the imagination towards the way Christ always enters the human situation in humility. Come to your neighbours humbly and in need. Instead of offering them a meal, find ways to participate in a meal with them. If you’re in the suburbs ask them if you can borrow their lawnmower.
8.) Kindly Reject Surveying the neighbourhood - Direct the imagination toward exegeting the neighbourhood. Surveying looks at the neighbourhood as a place to market our church,- Exegeting a neighbourhood requires inhabiting the neighbourhood, discovering where the hurting are and the unjust structures are.
9.) Kindly Reject problem solving - instead direct the imagination towards “appreciative inquiry.” We often approach church through problem solving. What is wrong with our programs? What needs are we not meeting? What needs to be tweaked? What are we not doing right? This is negative, mechanical and lifeless.
I suggest # 10 ..
10. Kindly reject strategic planning in favour of thoughtful preparation. We really don’t know the future… but we know that the Spirit is birthing his kingdom among us as we respond faithfully day by day. We keep our eyes on Jesus. Newbigin warned us that, “the significant advances of the church have not been the result of our own decision about the mobilizing and allocating of “resources” [rather] the significant advances have come through happenings of which the story of Peter and Cornelius is a paradigm, in ways of which we have no advance knowledge.” (The Open Secret)
Wednesday, 3. September 2008, 01:44:56
post-modern, church, mission
Jared Wilson has been writing some great stuff on the difference between missional and attractional churches. His latest, on the reasons for worship is excellent.
Missional and Attractional, Part 7
Any consideration of the so-called "attractional church" must consider the recipient of nearly all its energy and resources -- the weekend worship service.
In this series I have been highlighting contrasts proposed between the attractional church and the missional church by the following chart:
In this installment, I am briefly exploring the 14th, 15th, and 16th contrasts as a way of demonstrating the (practically) diametrically opposed paradigms of each model for their worship service vision.
Worship as Attraction vs. Worship as Reflection
I have previously suggested that the raison d'etre of the attractional church is to get as many people as possible through the doors and into a worship service so that they may (ostensibly) receive information on how to a) have a relationship with God or b) live a Christian life. This is a good and sincere motive, and plenty of seeker churches and their attractional worship services have planted seeds for the salvation of sinners.
But all too often this mindset leads to a "whatever it takes" blurring of lines between who is being glorified in our worship. A former church of mine played a song by folk-rock artist Ben Harper called "My Own Two Hands." The inclusion of this song is quite in keeping with the approach this church takes to the worship service: it was added because a) it is a mainstream song that can connect with an unchurched audience, and b) it shared some of the themes of that morning's message. But as our congregation watched and listened to our worship musicians singing an ode to the potential of humanity (the lyrics include the line "I can change the world with my own two hands . . .") the question occurred to me (and several others) "Who exactly are we worshiping?"
This has very little to do with style -- I don't happen to believe that style is neutral, but that is a subject for another time -- and everything to do with the intended audience of a worship service. For the attractional paradigm, the audience is the unchurched congregant and the disillusioned Christian congregant, so nearly every aspect is tailored for comfort, enjoyment, accommodation, and -- way too often -- entertainment. One church I read about recently played Australian rock group Jet's paean to one-night stands, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?," for no apparent reason other than that it's a rockin' song they hoped people would enjoy hearing.
More and more attractional churches are banking on video presentations, elaborate stage sets and props, larger and more polished bands, less God-centered songs, programmed lighting effects, lasers, fog, giveaways, gourmet goodies and beverages, and numerous other enticements to make church seem less like the stereotype of church. To be clear, not all of these things are bad. But the indiscriminate and thoughtless incorporation of them is.
In many missional churches, by contrast, the worship in the worship service is clearly and intentionally about and for God himself. The audience is not anyone in the pews, Christian or not. The audience is God. The music is chosen based primarily on what most makes most of God. It is not arranged with a singing congregation out of mind, but it is not arranged for the singing congregation but for the One they will be singing to.
In this mindset, worship is then not a malleable creative element designed to attract a particular churchgoing demographic; it is a reflection of the goodness and glory and grandeur of our sovereign triune God.
These disparate mindsets affect the tone of preaching in worship services, as well.
Preaching as Application vs. Preaching as Proclamation
In the attractional church, the messages are predominantly of the "life application" variety meant to make the Christian walk seem more practical or relatable or appealing. In the missional church, the messages are predominantly explorations of what God has done.
This is not to say that applicational preaching cannot or does not contain any proclamation, or that proclamational preaching cannot or should not contain application. In fact, the best preaching contains both proclamation and application. The difference lay in the amounts of each and, again, the primary intention of the message.
In short, the typical applicational message tends to over-emphasize our good works while a good proclamational message emphasizes God's finished work.
I will explore this discrepancy more fully in the next installment in this series, but the essential difference between applicational preaching and proclamational preaching depends on how much the preacher wishes to make of the gospel. Proclamational preaching makes much of the gospel, believing that proclaiming the finished and sufficient work of Christ for salvation is, as Paul says, "of first importance." The applicational preacher either presupposes the gospel or relegates it to the conclusion of his message, believing that of most importance is exhorting the congregation to live in more Christlike ways.
To be clear (again): We should be exhorting our congregations to live in more Christlike ways. But if the emphasis of our preaching is on being more like Jesus and not on the good news of grace despite our not being able to be like Jesus, we end actually achieving the opposite of our intent. We inadvertently become legalists, actually, because we are more concerned with works and behavior than Christ's work on our hearts. The great irony is that despite hoping to win the unchurched with the message of the good news, we end up enticing them with a Christian form of self-help or behavior modification, neither of which has ever saved anyone.
The proclamational preacher, though, preaches the texts of Scripture with God as the subject and the gospel at the forefront, and he does so without shame, trusting not his words or his demeanor to win souls, but the work of the Holy Spirit.
How a church approaches these two primary elements of a worship gathering (not to mention how they approach the sacraments) stems from and feeds its view of the worship service in general.
Weekend as Event vs. Weekend as Assembly
The attractional church puts huge stock in the weekend service to do lots of work. Many churches direct most of their operating budget towards the weekend service. Most of the staff is on hand to carry out the diverse attractions of the weekend service. Many pastors spend the bulk of their time preparing for the weekend service, leaving the actual pastoring of the church to support staff. In many churches, the weekend is the only official thing they do!
This approach is symptomatic of many of the claims previously made about the attractional church and featured in the above chart. If evangelism for the attractional church happens "inside," then a lot is riding on the weekend service. If the church exists to attract an audience, then a lot is riding on the weekend service. If growth is numbers and cultural relevance is the name of the game, a lot is riding on the weekend service. It is no wonder, then, that the attractional church is ever attempting to outdo itself (or the church next door), to "think outside the box" and take the weekend event "to the next level." Innovation becomes a core value because coming up with the next new thing (or latching on to the culture's next new thing) is paramount to the attraction of the weekend event.
The worship service has become an idol.
In many missional churches, the weekend service can be an idol too. But the temptation is less common, because the service is not seen as an attractional event meant to pack 'em in, but an assembling of the community to worship corporately and receive teaching from Scripture. Evangelism for the missional church mostly occurs "outside," so while the missional worship service can and often does contain some attractional elements, it is not designed to attract people outside the community to the church but to direct people inside the community to God and to their neighbors.
To put it another way, it is not an advertisement for the church but an adoration of God.
I will once again cop to broadbrushing. There are plenty of self-proclaimed missional churches whose worship services are designed to be quite "attractional," and there are plenty of unapologetic attractional churches who feature God-centered worship music and more proclamational preaching. Certainly there is overlap. False dichotomies must be avoided, and my aim here is not simply to suggest an absolute either/or but to bring to the fore opposing mindsets and to propose that the difference in these mindsets matters. It matters greatly.
Article
Sunday, 23. December 2007, 05:08:41
post-modern, church, bible
This looks like one interesting book, and it should get everyone in ministry really thinking aobut what is important.
From "Letters From Kamp Krusty"
This is going to be interesting.
It's Frank Viola's new and improved Pagan Christianity. And Tyndale is printing it, thanks to heavy-hitter and pollster-guy George Barna, who gets co-author credit.
This book is going to honk people off. Already is, even though it's not due out until February 28th. They sent me an advance copy to review here, because of the enormous influence I exert in the lives of both of my readers.
Here's what's a-ranklin' church folk: They authors are basically saying -- get this, from a major Christian publisher --that the church, in its contemporary, institutional form, has neither a biblical nor a historical right to exist.
I'm pretty sure I'm aptly summarizing, because it says -- quote -- "the church, in its contemporary, institutional form, has neither a biblical nor a historical right to exist" in the preface.
And then things start getting controversial:
-- The "church building" concept is foreign to Jesus's idea of what the church is for. It has "stalemated the functioning of God's people since the 4th century," and "There does not exist a shred of biblical support for the church building." And -- oh yeah -- buildings cost American churches $50-60 billion annually. There's that.
-- Pulpits, altars, clergy vestments (shoot: clergy, for that matter), nuns, stages, sermons, performance-oriented worship, "sacred relics", buildings named after saints, and such are borrowed from pagan traditions, not from the church of the New Testament.
-- Making preaching the center of church gatherings has no biblical precedent. Christianity "still has not recovered" from John Calvin's insistence on leading worship services, himself, from a stage. Luther and Calvin believed each believer had access to God, not through the Eucharist, but through "the preached Word" -- something the writers say is not a biblical idea.
-- The order of worship now defeats involvement of all the believers, and instead focuses on a few talented people, in the face of the practices of the New Testament church.
-- Protestant churches get the ol' familiar "order of worship" from the Catholic Mass. And here they approvingly quote Will Durant, who says the mass was "based partly on the Judaic Temple service, partly on Greek mystery rituals of purification, vicarious sacrifice, and participation."
-- Then there's the chapter on sermons: "The Sermon: Protestantism's Most Sacred Cow"
-- And the one on the "office" of Pastor, which the authors say doesn't actually exist in scripture: "The Pastor: Obstacle to Every Member Functioning"
-- "Tithing and Clergy: Sore Spots on the Wallet" is a fun follow-up chapter. They don't see a biblical basis for tithing to an instutional church, or "tithing" at all, for the Christian.
-- We don't need Bible colleges. Never did. We've inhaled far too much of Athens' approach to knowledge, and the point of knowledge, and misapplied logical tools to the Christian life.
-- And don't get them started on the biblical basis of youth ministers. Actually: DO get them started on the biblical basis of youth ministers. It won't take long: There isn't any.
-- Also, feel free to get them started on "Sunday School", dressing up for church, worship "pastors", pews, the idea of "sacred spaces", and -- get this -- the "church fathers", who they treat less as all-knowing guides, and more as believers who imported their paganism to re-interpret the meaning of the church. (This will cost the authors hip points.)
-- Most modern church-people misunderstand how to read the Bible. They impart qualities to it that aren't biblical. They don't pay attention to context, and miss the point, and widely apply particular verses that were written for specific situations in a specific context.
Like I say, I'm amazed Tyndale is publishing this.
It's footnoted out the wazoo, but it's readable for high-schoolers. It's not written to be accessible, which means, instead of saying it's "painstakingly documented", I can say it's "footnoted out the wazoo." Of course, this doesn't make it true, but some people care about quoting other people.
They're going to make a lot of people think. (What I've seen so far is a reaction against such a "negative" book, but not much refutation on the things that matter.) The authors' point is not -- insofar as I gather -- that a practice is evil to the extent that its roots are pagan. That's not it. The point is that what we consider proper "church" has more to do with surrounding cultures than what Jesus had in mind.
And honestly, now: "Too negative", as a central criticism, means, "I prefer the status quo, and...that's about all I got." As the authors point out, Jesus was a revolutionary, and a "negative" one at that, to those who's first interest was enforcing their version of religion. They got pretty mad at him.
The authors warn people up-front: If you think all the trappings of "church" are Holy Writ, the book may be too much for you. And they're right.
Did I mention I'm surprised Tyndale is publishing this? I'm glad they are.
(By the way: Before reacting to my bullet-point summaries, read the book. They make arguments I don't have space to repeat here.)
------------------------
MY OFFICIAL REVIEW: Well, I liked it, doggone it. A lot. I like it because people need to think about this stuff. And this book will bug a lot of the right people. In love.
Mostly, I like it because I think they're right about pretty much everything -- that matters, anyway. I'm an honest reviewer, no?
The church Jesus envisioned was never about sacred buildings, sacred relics, sacred preaching, special clergy, spectator events, great orations, musical stars, non-stop knowledge accrual, and theological sophistication. The church is a people, called out for God's purposes, mystically bound together by Christ, and led by Christ.
In other words, they agree with me. So, obviously, I highly recommend.
Five stars.
Article:
http://branthansen.typepad.com/letters_from_kamp_krusty/2007/12/i-cant-believe.html
Sunday, 18. November 2007, 04:44:30
faith, post-modern, society, mission
Alan Hirsch has produced an excellent summary of Alister McGrath's new book "The Twilight of Atheism". Here's a brief taste:
For most of its existence, atheism had to seek out an enemy to oppose. But it had an unwitting ally in the intellectual leadership of the mainline denominations and revisionist theologians. Its high point was the removing of Bible reading and prayer from public schools in 1963. (162-63)The mainline denominations have suffered massive declines while churches that adapt to their populations and communicate in ways that connect with needs have grown. Many mainline ideas were so adapted to the ideas of modernity that they were fatally compromised by the death of modernity and the rise of postmodernity, which reacted against almost every aspect of modernity. (164)
Read more here: The Forgotten Ways » Blog Archive » the twilight of atheism Alister McGrath is quite a perceptive commentator of church issues. What he is saying is that with the rise of post-modern culture, atheism which is very much a product of modernity, is also on the way out. What we are seeing with the raves of Dawkins and his ilk is the death throes of a non-belief system which was never logical and never had anything to offer the human spirit.
Tuesday, 10. July 2007, 23:59:10
post-modern, church, mission
From Alan Hirsch:
The phrase ‘missional’ and ‘missional church’ originated in the work of a group of North America practitioners, missiologists and theorists, called the Gospel and Our Culture Network (GOCN) who came together to try and work out some of the implications of the work of that remarkable missionary thinker Lesslie Newbigin.
It was Newbigin who, after returning from a lifetime of work in India as a missionary, saw how pagan Western civilization really was. He began to articulate the view that we need to see the Western world as a mission field, and that we as God’s people in this context, needed to adopt a missionary stance in relation to or culture. Just as we would in India for instance. His work captured the imagination of a church in crisis and decline and shaped the thinking of generations.
However, the word ‘missional’ has over the years has tended to become very fluid and as it was quickly co-opted by those wishing to find new and trendy tags for what they themselves were doing, be they missional or not.
It is often used as a substitute it for seeker-sensitive, cell-group church, or other church growth concepts, thus obscuring its original meaning.
So, do we dispose of it and come up with another term? I think we need to keep it, but reinvest it with deeper meaning. The word sums up precisely the emphasis of the radical Jesus-movements that we need to rediscover today.
But more than that, in my opinion it goes to the heart of the very nature and purpose of the Church itself.So a working definition of missional church is that it a community of God’s people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world. In other words, the Church’s true and authentic organizing principle is mission. When the church is in mission, it is the true Church. The Church itself is not only a product of that mission, but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God’s purposes in and through his people.
If we can embed this inner meaning into our essential identity as God’s people, we will be well on our way to becoming an adaptive organization. This mission can express itself in the myriad ways in which the Kingdom of God expresses itself—highly varied and always redemptive.
The Forgotten Ways » Blog Archive » a working definition of missional church
What do you tihnk about this definition of missional church?
How do we structure all of our acitvities around the mission of Christ?
Blessings
Keith
Saturday, 30. June 2007, 20:54:14
post-modern, church, society, mission
A United Methodist leader refuses to lead a dying church. But the current reality, he indicated, is a denomination in crisis.
U.S. membership in the United Methodist Church is at its lowest level since 1930 with just over 8 million. Moreover, 41 percent of United Methodist churches across the nation did not receive a member by profession of faith in 2005.
Although the Rev. Paul Nixon, author of recently released I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church, sees much hope in the United Methodist community, at the same time, he recognizes that the denomination is in "the midst of a cultural avalanche."
"Avalanches can roll on for a while and wipe out whole villages in their path. But if we are quick, nimble, and attentive in our skiing, we may escape burial in snow," wrote Nixon in the May/June issue of New World Outlook, a mission magazine of the United Methodist Church."And when the "slide of snow ceases, we may view a panorama never before seen by human eyes, a place of fresh start," says Nixon, also director of Congregational Development in the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church.But in that new terrain, doing church business as usual would be "insane," as Nixon stated.
Scholars and church observers have continually stressed the need for churches, particularly in the mainline denominations, to implement changes and to do so continuously.
"Churches that choose to live in yesteryear will be marginalized from further significant engagement with society, continuing simply as handfuls of old-fashioned and cultural-fringe folks marking time until the doors close," says Nixon.
CHRISTIAN POST
If you look at history Methodism started off as a movement that we would call today a cell church movement, heavily into evangelism and good works of service, all mediated through small groups. Somehwere along the way, it lost its path and became a "comfortable" church. Then decline set in, almost terminally.
Australian readers would see the same story in the Uniting Church here.
God can renew any church, just as he can save the worst of sinners.
The question is, though, will Methodism in the U.S. allow itself to be renewed?
Monday, 25. June 2007, 07:17:17
post-modern, church, mission
From David Fitch
I was up late last night and my mind started racing. I was thinking about how all assumptions about church planting changes once you no longer can assume the culture is Christian. It is actually quite humorous to think of some of the old assumptions about church planting that some of us grew up with. Boy have the times changed. Since not all of us are necessarily living in places where Christendom has died, I thought I'd offer my thoughts in terms of the following 10 signs that may indicate Christendom in over in your neck of the woods too.
10 Signs That Christendom May Be Over
1. You do a survey in the neighborhood asking people what they're looking for in a church on Sunday morning and they respond by saying "they never heard of such a thing."
2. You fill in that yearly report card for church plants from the denomination- and when you get to the question about how many converts made decisions for Christ this year, no one asks if they can count Catholics in the church as "converts" anymore.
3. The local District says all ministries must be self-supporting in 3 years- and you ask what does "self supporting" mean? Because we already have jobs.
4. You invite your neighbors to the new video simulcast church plant down the street .. and they ask you why they just can't stay at home and watch it on cable.
5. You send out 10,000 postcards inviting people to come to a more relevant church … and 10 people show up asking for tickets to the Oprah show.
6. Your grandmother tries to explain why her church used to have a Sun. morning, Sun. evening and midweek service every week- and every body thinks she's crazy.
7. People mistake your Jesus tattoo for Che Guevara and ask why you prefer Marxism to postmodernity. You end up inviting people over for a coffee and talking about Jesus as an alternative politics.
8. A denominational official visits your church and asks about your foreign missions program. Someone in your congregation mistakenly responds by sending him to the local department office of immigration
9. No one says any more before the offering: "if you're visiting please do not feel obligated to contribute." Now it's "if you're visiting, this is what it means to be a Christian: we're in this together and your money is not your own."
10. When the pastor was announcing a new church "building project" he was not referring to a new church building, he was talking about the community's Habitat for Humanity venture in the neighborhood.
http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/2007/06/10-signs-that-christendom-may-be-over.html
Thursday, 3. May 2007, 05:54:41
post-modern, church, evangelism, mission
For over ten years I have felt a sense of frustration, a little like trying to remember a dream that had been so vivid in the night but when you wake up you can't recall it.
Read more...
Monday, 30. April 2007, 01:12:06
post-modern, church, evangelism, society
Ross Gittins is one of Australia's more astute business, economics and society commentators. In this article:
Rudd rides high but you wouldn't want to be a union boss
I had a revelation about something that has puzzled me for a long time.
The issue is this. Many people have noted that people in our community are open to Jesus but they don't like the church. I haven't been able to work that out really, and nobody else has either. Yes I know you get all those reports about pedohile priests and greedy pastors and other forms of abuse, but that doesn't really explain it either.
But Gittins makes an essential point in this article. He says this:
It's clear a lot of working people are anxious about the threat to their jobs, pay or working conditions - if not for themselves then for their kids - and this is by no means due solely to the effectiveness of the unions' advertising campaign.
But that assessment sits most oddly with the latest statistics showing that, over the year to August 2006, union membership fell by 126,000, down 6.6 per cent. This caused the proportion of employees who were union members to fall from 22 to 20 per cent (in the private sector, just 15 per cent).
How could this possibly be? At a time when workers with little personal bargaining power have every reason to feel exposed - and we know many are feeling anxious - union membership is falling rather than rising.
That's how deep the unions' difficulties run. The workers know they've got a problem but it just doesn't occur to many that the union might be the answer.
The unions have exactly the same problem as churches.
So the problem is not the church. The problem is that the church has to restructure itself to become smaller, more engaged with its community.
Commentators speak of the "tribalisation" of society. In other words we are tending to identify more closely with sub-cultures within the community.
The challenge for the church is how to idnetify the "tribes" and to target the Good News to the thousands of tribal groups "out there" in our towns and cities.
Quite a challenge!
Saturday, 21. April 2007, 21:08:16
post-modern, mission
From Alan Hirsch
Bill Kinnon did a marvelous rant about a month ago. Our conversation together last month over the big church superstar mentality (when I was up in Toronto area for the Evolving Church Conference) spurred me on to think of my own experience of church planting. I have often pondered the church planter's tasks versus the mega church pastor's. To me, what the smaller more organic missional community leaders do is much more difficult. Here's why.
It is more difficult to take 10 people and grow a living organic body of Christ to 150 than it is to transplant 200 or 300 people (or I have heard even 600-800) and then grow that congregation to 5,000. Because a crowd draws a crowd. And if you have all the bells and whistles, 5 full time pastors and a youth program, all from day one, and a charismatic speaker with spiked hair (no shot intended at anyone in particular) and you don't mind putting the smaller less flashy community churches out of business, it will be harder to stop attracting a big crowd from all the people who want Christianity to be more fun and mesmerizing. BTW did you know that the statistics say that small church growth (from 10-150) is where the true conversions (as opposed to transfer growth) come from? Why then do evangelicals exalt the mega congregations as the answer to reaching those outside of Christ?
It is more difficult to build a community of people who know and care for one another, who when they speak, they are heard, who when there is conflicts, all participate in reconciliation and growth, than it is to put on a production and provide religious goods and services where if some people don't like it they can just go shopping elsewhere.
It is more difficult to preach a sermon to 100 people than it is to 8,000 people. Of course, there are some of my emerging co-laborers who don't believe in preaching per se. I believe in proclamation of the new reality, the calling of truth into being, and my thoughts on expository preaching are already out there. My point here is that to preach for 100 people you know and live with is a lot harder than to preach to 8000 people, 99% of whom you don't know. It is not that it is harder be vulnerable in a larger crowd. It is that in a space of 100 people you are more vulnerable when so many know you. In many ways you are naked. And I might add, I've preached for our own congregation of 100+ and I've preached for 1000+, and my experience is that a joke is 10 times easier to pull off in a large audience than in a small congregation (not that I should be trying to tell jokes in my sermon but you all know what I'm talking about).
It is more difficult to deal with conflict and leadership in a small organic church where our conflicts, our vision, our weaknesses must all be talked about, worked through. In small church organic leadership we must do the hard work of owning our weaknesses and speaking truth in love to other leaders. It's hard but we grow. In mega-sized corporate churches leadership and organization is much easier. BECAUSE YOU CAN JUST FIRE PEOPLE.
It is more difficult to build a live body of Christ, the social space of His Lordship, where his powers are made manifest and his mission is sent forth, and poor people are actually recognized and loved, and where a politic takes shape which subverts the consumerist depersonalizing forces of our day than it is to build large mega churches that play on the consumerists forces that rule our culture and play right into church marketing programs.
It is more difficult to organically engage people's lives where they are at than it is to become a media figure over night through some large publishing house by which those Christians looking for the next hip thing buy your book and drive to your church. Then you do not have to deal with everyday details of people's lives. You take the show on the road to promote the illusion that you started this church from 8 people and overnight it turned into 4,000 people and you couldn't stop it. But nobody asks the question how did this ACTUALLY START, so the mythology grows and all the young church planters with visions dancing in their heads become depressed and defeated when the same things do not happen to them.
It is more difficult to build a gathering that is a mission in the world, than it is to build a gathering that comes to see the show. It is more difficult to build a gathering into being the Body of Christ in the world than it is to build a crowd into a bigger crowd around a personality. Yes it is more difficult, but in the end so much more satisfying. And when you're gone this community will keep reproducing the love of Christ, the fruits of the Spirit and the leader(s) to carry on the transformation of the world until Christ returns.
FOR THESE REASONS, TO ME THE REAL HEROES ARE THE MISSIONAL PASTORS WHO RAISE UP THE ORGANIC COMMUNITIES THAT TAKE DIFFERENT SHAPES AND MANIFEST THEIR ACTUAL PRESENSE IN NEIGBOURHOODS. Yet status quo evangelicalism knows no other way but to extol the virtues of the mega-sized personalities at mega-sized conferences. In the process those who would be missional church pastors are demoralized, leave the pastorate or just give up.
Have I overstated my rant? If so I apologize ahead of time. May the Holy Spirit burn away any chaff that I have written and use the rest to encourage any discouraged missional community leaders for the glory of His Kingdom. Amen
Friday, 6. April 2007, 23:40:21
post-modern, church, mission
From the Sydney Morning Herald, an article on the Emerging Church:
More younger people are delving into Christianity. But they are unlikely to worship at the altar, writes Barney Zwartz.
'JESUS asked his mates to stay with him, but they got pissed and fell asleep, the bloody bastards." As an account of the disciples' failure in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before Jesus was cruci fied, it may lack the poetry and majesty of the King James Bible. But the 22 street people in a dingy city basement get the point powerfully.
This rather loose Bible reading from Matthew 26 by a young church worker, Virginia Moebus, is part of a weekly gathering in Credo Cafe, run by Urban Seed in Melbourne, a Baptist Church outreach to homeless and drug-addicted city dwellers.
Most of these people would never set foot in church, but they come faithfully to the gathering, followed by the free lunch served every day. "People see it like their living room, especially if they are on the street. It's somewhere they can come and sit down and be warm and safe," Moebus says.
But it's more than that.
Read more here...
Monday, 19. March 2007, 22:33:47
post-modern, church, society
This thoughtful (and short) analysis of the church appeared in Leadership: Out of Ur recently and I think it's worth a read-- especially her comment that Western society goes through 500 year cycles-- very interesting!
The Future of the Emerging ChurchAre we experiencing the next Reformation of Christianity?Conversations about the future of the emerging church can be overheard at conferences, seminaries, chat rooms, or anywhere church leaders congregate. Does the movement have legs? Does it represent a passing trend or a new Reformation? Not long ago we sat down with author/scholar/editor Phyllis Tickle to discuss the subject. Tickle, a feisty Episcopalian from Tennessee with an intellect matched only by her sense of humor, has served as a religion editor for Publishers Weekly and has written over two dozen books. Her three-volume prayer manual, The Divine Hours, has renewed the discipline of fixed-hour prayer for Christians in many traditions.
The Future of the Emerging Church | Out of Ur | Following God's Call in a New World | Conversations hosted by the editors of Leadership journal
Friday, 2. March 2007, 06:52:29
post-modern, church, evangelism, mission
Read this in the context of the last post about the fun-fair.
Alan Hirsch writes this in the context of discussing Alpha and mission.
"How can this be? A major part of the problem is that although largely dechurched people do come to faith in Jesus through Alpha, it seems that they still don’t want to ‘go to church.’ It’s that darn ‘Jesus, yes, Church no” phenomenon again! People will come to faith in small intimate communities of friends but generally don’t want the organised religion part of the deal. This swapping of agendas has sometimes been perceived as a ‘bait and switch’ strategy is generally considered unethical in the commercial world. So we have now reached the vexing situation that the prevailing expression of church (Christendom) has become a major stumbling block to the spread of Christianity in the West."
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/2007/03/02/the-new-tribalism-part-ii/
I guess the challenge is to continue meeting with people, sharing the gospel and developing relational networks and small groups to infiltrate our community.
Thursday, 11. January 2007, 02:40:47
post-modern, church, mission
Alan Hirsch writes an excellent analysis on changes that the Church needs to make
The Forgotten Ways » Blog Archive » going to the roots of the matter
Thursday, 4. January 2007, 01:30:43
post-modern, mission
In this chapter, Michael Frost loks at how working righteously changes the world.
Read more...
Thursday, 28. December 2006, 00:20:15
post-modern, church, mission
An interesting night last night at New Life.
Daniel from Rockhampton came through and stayed overnight on his way to Adelaide. He arrived about 7 pm and we fed him and chatted to after 1 am. He's got a long drive today- must be close on 1000 km to Tooleybuc, his next overnight stop.
Simultaneously with all of that, Lisa who is here on holidays from Scotland had organised a board game night in the church with our offspring plus others. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely.
I just think it's great when a church building (even a pink shed like ours) becomes a centre for community.
At the heart of all this is giving of ourselves and our possessions for each other. The church building is not "sacred" in the sense that nobody can ever use it. It is actually a place for the community of faith to call "home" and to use for fun, fellowship and sharing with the lost sheep.
I love it!
To make it work, we all need to develop the gift of hospitality. Invite the neighbours around for lunch, your co-workers for a barbecue... and see how friendships develop.
Wednesday, 27. December 2006, 03:06:24
post-modern, mission
In this chapter, entitled "Exiles At The Table", Michael Frost talks about hospitality in the community of exiles.
Read more...
Friday, 22. December 2006, 10:34:32
post-modern, mission, church
Alan Hirch has posted a very compelling article on church growth and the modern (as in not post-modern) church
Read more...
Wednesday, 20. December 2006, 03:58:01
church, post-modern, mission
In this chapter, Michael Frost looks at how we develop a missional community
Read more...
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