Wondering About the Church

I've been following the discussion at the Jesus Creed about people checking out Catholicism here and am still fascinated. I’m still working through all this in the context of where the church is actually going in the grand scheme of things. I often have a callous and cavalier attitude toward all church structures and traditions and am convinced that we don’t really have a detailed biblically mandated structure to follow. I've also been doing my share of deconstruction - wondering exactly what should be part of church and what shouldn't - both biblically and historically and sociologically and Holy Spirit guided -ly. So I’m doing some wondering aloud here …

There are a couple of wonderings here – mostly out of ignorance. I wonder if the RCC and EO hierarchies are sufficiently staffed to sustain a huge influx? One hears about the paucity of “vocations” and the scarcity of new young priests. Is there sufficient interest in this generation to staff the potential growth indicated by this interest we’re talking about? Are those expressing interest actually pursuing ordination? Or as I mentioned above is it more about a spiritual search that is consumer oriented.

My second wondering: Is this combination of factors (interest in RCC/EO, lowering of denominational walls, deconstructionism, consumerism, general interest in spirituality, lack of trust and commitment to organizations and institutions, the Emerging church, etc) leading us to a spiritual landscape where there are a few stable towers of hierarchical ecclesiology (the Catholic traditions on one hand and the mega church phenomenon on the other - plus a few reformed holdouts) and then the teeming masses of small groups, house churches, new monastic orders, aging and fading mainline congregations, each consuming religion where they want. Maybe the parallel is the emergence of the super store and the disappearance of the mom and pop shops. Some people will still be fiercely loyal to their neighbourhood stores but most will shop where they get the best selection and the lowest price.

Or maybe a better explanation is that we are going back to the pre Reformation days (sociologically not theologically) whereby there are the cathedrals, where major religious events happen and also the many small folk religions and superstitious practices and beliefs (remember I am speaking metaphorically here).

Any body done some reading or writing on this?

Millennials and Church

My niece wrote a little piece on Millennials in the church. I really liked it so I thought I would post her introduction. I think it really captures the flavour of this next generation of Christians: passionate about God but disappointed with the institutional church.

I called my brother this week.

A freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, he’s the epitome of this generation’s busy youth. Besides his studies at this Ivy League school, he’s involved in the gospel choir, the running club, the science department’s research lab, and a local church. When I called, it was one in the morning (Eastern time,) but he laughed when I scolded him for being awake: “Alison, this is early!”

Despite his age, my brother is one of the wisest persons I know. I often call him to get advice, to complain about my boy problems, to discuss politics, or to debate theology. This time, though, he was more reserved. And, after our unimportant small talk, he spoke with an exasperated sigh.

“I don’t know if I can do this much longer,” he said.

"Do what?” I asked.

“This, this - church thing,” he replied. “It’s so boring – the same thing every week! Will it be like this for the rest of my life? Can I put up with it for that long?”

At that moment, I didn’t know what to say. I knew I should encourage him, tell him it would get better, push him to “stay strong”… but I couldn’t. Frankly, it’s because I feel exactly the same way. And, I’ve felt this way for a while.

If the truth were told, I’m tired of going to church. In fact, I dread Sundays. To me, they represent three hours of boredom. I’m tired of listening to a pastor speak at me for 45 minutes (from my 20+ years of attendance, I can usually predict the outcome of his message.) I’m tired of “dressing up” to worship. I’m tired of wearing a plastic smile. I’m tired of seeing our corrupt leaders on the nightly news. I’m just tired.

And, I’m not alone. Besides my brother and I, there are millions of people in the United States today who are fed up with the state of the American church. Statistics show that people aren’t interested in traditional Christianity – both inside and outside of the church. Most importantly, there’s a generational gap that’s growing increasingly larger as time goes on. 

The millennials (the generation just hitting adulthood) are the least churched generation in this nation’s history. And for some reason, institutionalized churches have been unable to successfully attract or retain most of them. Current church programs aimed at the millennials are not working. If the American church wants to survive into the future, they must be flexible enough to re-shape their current structure to be more relevant and applicable to this generation’s youth and the next generation’s leaders.

Thus, young people are leaving the church and turning to other sources for spiritual satisfaction. Within Christianity, three new trends have evolved: Churchless Christians, the Emerging Church Movement, and House Churches. By engaging in these options, some people have found the satisfaction lacking from their typical church attendance. The American church must learn to be open to such new ideas if it wants to survive in the future.

The Attractional Versus. Missional Debate

I was looking through my notes tonight and found this discussion about the nature of many of our traditional or institutional churches. They function in a "come to us" mindset whereas a missional mindset is about going into all the world and making disciples. Alan Hirsch blogged about it on The Forgotten Ways site.

Some comments by Alan Hirsch.
I think the use of the term attractional is a tad ambiguous, but because I am partly responsible for introducing it into the broader conversation I have to stick with it. What I am trying to get at in using the term attractional is what I call the missionary mode or primary posture of the church in relation to its context. An attractional church is one whose primary stance towards those it seeks to reach is couched in the expectation of a come-to-us mentality. And this expectation as it plays out in the US, Europe, Australia, etc. was basically formed in a time in history where the church had a central position in the culture and people naturally came to church to be cared for, to hear the gospel, and to participate in the community life.

The problem is that adopting such a mode is at the cost of fundamentally altering our understanding of ourselves as a ‘sent’ people. (Incidentally, the word missio, from which we get our word mission, comes from the Latin word meaning sent.) And this is further exacerbated by the fact that we live in what historians and theologians rightly call a post-Christendom era. In other words, an attractional church can work in a Christendom context, but in a missionary context it actually undermines our efforts to reach people meaningfully with the Gospel of Jesus. It is literally out-moded! A ‘sent people’ no matter how you configure it implies a going of sorts. And when combined with the other primary theological metaphor in the bible of how god reaches the nations, namely the Incarnation, it clashes head-on with the primary expectation built into attractional forms of church. Hence the conflict–they are basically two different conceptions of church vying for our loyalty in our day.

But another ambiguity can be explained by saying that while a more missionally defined church moves from a come-to-us mentality to a go-to-them mentality, nonetheless all expressions of church should be attractive. That is, we should always be culturally compelling. Don’t mistake not being attractional for not being attractive.

Comment from Alan’s readers:

Comment # 1
This has become a hot button for me - and all because I read The shaping of Things to Come. I believe that churches need to avoid the danger of “Attractionalism” - the belief that creating an appealing church service and programs will attract unbelievers to come to church. The majority of members in attractional churches have abandoned personal responsibility for showing and sharing the truth of the gospel. Instead, they expect the church services and the paid professionals to accomplish the evangelistic ministry of the church. This abdication of personal responsibility to join Jesus in His mission, coupled with churches that design church services to attract unbelievers to church, are significant obstacles to missional activity.

Comment # 2
As Ed Stetzer states, “attraction is not enough.”
In American Christianity there is a growing tendency among churches to believe that if they change the worship service to be more appealing or attractive to the unchurched, then unbelievers will start coming to church. Making changes because you believe it will get unbelievers to go to church is at the core of attractionalism. To truly be missionaries in their neighborhoods, Christians must not focus on attracting people to church. Instead, efforts must focus on incarnationally displaying the gospel to everyone everywhere.

Comment # 3
I agree in principal with the argument against attractional etc. However, I don’t think the case has been made convincingly enough with regards to deconstructing how post-modern culture operates. The culture I live in Australia still revolves around attractionality in all forms of life.
Our kids go to schools in the local community, along with hundreds of others. People belong to a raft of different interest groups in our community and congregate together in order to pursue these interests. People join sports clubs, pay huge fees, conform to uniform and behaviour standards.
We congregate in stadiums in our masses to watch sports or entertainment.
The case against attractional fails to overcome the reality of how people [in the West]live their lives. We happily GO to things, we happily BELONG and CONFORM to codes.
Or work habits mean that we have to go and conform. This is an everyday experience for most of us. Attractional does not run against the grain of modern culture. We are surrounded by advertising, pummelled by marketing, and harrassed by telesales people. We are surrounded by an attractional world vying for our attention and our dollars.
Whilst I don’t necessarily agree with it all, it does show that the notion of what the post-modern world is for emerging ecclesiologists, is purely romantic.

My Comments
In responding to the assertion that “attractional” is part of our culture and that non-Christians willingly allow themselves to be attracted to events, we need to ask the question: “What are they being attracted to?” Concerts and sports events are entertainment. That is what is fundamentally wrong with the attractional model. It seeks to attract people so that they are entertained. It is a consumerist model. “Come and see the great church we have so that you can be entertained by it for one hour a week!” I’m not sure that this is what Jesus had in mind.

I’m not sure He ever tried to attract a crowd. He at times tried to send people away. They came because He had something they desired. But when the cost of discipleship was emphasized and when it came time for the cross, the crowds dispersed. I think the main danger of the attractional church is that it is almost by definition linked with marketing the Gospel (doing whatever it takes to get people to come and try out your services) instead of preaching the Gospel which is always linked to the cross and the call to die to self.

A Role for the PAOC

My denomination is the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada – a denomination coming out of the Azusa Street Revival and is now almost a hundred years old. We have a fairly strong presence in Canada with over 1000 churches. Over the past few years we have been discussing our future. This is an open letter to the PAOC putting forward some of my ideas and expressing some of my frustrations.

I went to a denominational think tank meeting a couple of years ago. I was disappointed on a number of levels but the most disturbing sense was that I felt like I really didn't belong - an outsider in my own denomination. Maybe it's because I haven't really been part of “normal” church for the past 17 years and I don't feel like I'm on the same page as everyone else. In my ministry in Thornhill I really feel like I'm having church 10 or 15 times a week. I meet in groups of two or three or ten. Sometimes with pastors and sometimes with men I mentor and sometimes with non-Christian neighbours. We talk about our failures and confess sin to one another. We discuss and sometimes study Scripture together. We sing and pray and listen for the voice of God. We pray for one another and the lives of those who need to know Jesus and we pray for our city. We reach out to include our neighbours in this process. We recognize that our whole lives are lived out in worship to God. It's ministry by hanging out and walking around. I guess I hadn’t really seen that I'm doing stuff differently or looking at the world differently until I actually got together with “normal” pastors to do something like this.

In the last Canadian census the numbers for participation in PAOC churches plateaued. (For some of the reasons for that result you might want to check out an article by Rick Hiemstra called Evangelicals and the Canadian Census) Those results caused quite a stir when the numbers first came out. In spite of our passionate commitment to church planting, we've increased the total number of churches nation-wide by a total of ONE in the past 4 years. The total number of people served has increased by only 10000 in four years - that's 2 or 3 more people per church per year. Let's say we were wildly successful as missional churches and every PAOC church in our nation doubled its Sunday morning attendance with new Christians over the next 12 months. We'd then have reached exactly 0,5% of the population of Canada. We need to be looking at radically different models and paradigms of church not just tweaking what we already have. We are still talking about the church as a place or a time or an event instead of a people gathered to do mission. We are still talking about "our" churches or PAOC churches or Pentecostal churches instead of the one church in the city. We are still talking like the great commission is all up to us instead of a work of Jesus incorporating the whole church. We are still talking about single churches planting other churches instead of the united body of Christ expanding into uncharted, unevangelized areas.

Sometimes our focus as a denomination is how to keep growing and maintain our denominational distinctives. However, I think we need to be shifting our focus away from survival to finding new purpose. The PAOC has fulfilled its original mandate – bring the reality of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual gifts back into the life of the broader church. We no longer have a monopoly on the gifts of the Spirit or on speaking in tongues. We no longer have an edge on great worship. We don’t plant the most churches and are not the fastest growing denomination. We have a bit of an identity crisis. This is a crucial time. What is God calling us to be? Who is doing that thinking and that praying? The other positive impact of the North American Pentecostal movement has been to spread that vitality around the world. The fastest growing segments of the church in the global south (the third world) are those that embrace Pentecostal belief and practice. This reality of the dynamic operation of the Spirit of God in daily life deeply connects to a culture used to dealing with evil spirits.

In terms of our identity, I think we need to be discipling people as Pentecostals and not as Baptists. We have abandoned anything that smacks of the wilder charismatic and instead adopted safe teaching materials from those who marginalize the work of the Spirit. For example we adopt the Modified Wagner-Houts Spiritual Gift Inventory (a decidedly non Pentecostal resource) to help teach people about the spiritual gifts. We also use things like the Navigators 2:7 course for discipleship. Both of these are excellent tools but don’t really do anything to promote a Pentecostal ethos or theology – even with supplemental materials and explanations.

We should be teaching classes on “how to listen to the voice of God,” and “how to pray for healing” and “prophetic intercessory prayer” and “prophetic evangelism” and “effectively prayer walking your neighbourhood” and even practical teaching on deliverance ministry. Instead we’ve left these to the fringe groups either because we are afraid to touch these topics or we don’t know how to teach them. The result of this “safe” approach to the supernatural and to the gifts has marginalized us to only emphasizing (and often apologizing for) the infilling of the Spirit with initial evidence of speaking in tongues. A spiritually alive church operating in the gifts of the Spirit can be messy and even sometimes unbalanced because we want to be open to the move of the Spirit. We also need to shift the focus from the infilling of the Spirit to the purpose of the infilling – it empowers us to attempt the impossible, to reach our neighbours, communities and cities for Christ. Our churches need to be outward focused and training centred, built to make disciples. We need to reject and confront the “church as shopping mall” tendency – congregants as consumers. We need to be focused on reproducing disciples.

So what is our next mandate as Canadian Pentecostals? We need to discover why we exist as a denomination. What does a PAOC church offer in the Canadian evangelical church milieu and in the broader context of world Christianity? I think it must be post-denominational in that our purpose needs to be much more about the church as a whole as opposed to a particular denomination. I think some of the elements of our new mandate need to incorporate an understanding of the unity of the church, of the city church paradigm (ie there is one church in a city – church in a locality as opposed to a local church), ministry to the poor (i.e. faith based social ministry), and developing radical new models for church in inaccessible locations. For example the city of Toronto is building 30,000 housing units (population 100,000 plus?) south of Queen Street in the east end. There is no land for traditional church buildings. How do we make church happen in that area? We need to be pioneering that kind of thinking – thinking that moves beyond church buildings and traditional models of church.

In terms of world Christianity, we need to be mentoring new Pentecostal denominations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, providing low cost biblical training schools for indigenous pastors. We need to be raising up African and Asian Bible college and seminary professors who are able to teach contextually and incorporate more local theologies. That takes courage and vision. We also need to be a home (or a “covering”) for those who will be immigrating to Canada. We may very soon see third world Pentecostals sending missionaries to North America. We may also see new Pentecostal denominations springing up in Canada that have their headquarters not in Mississauga or Springfield but in Jakarta or Dar es Salaam. We need to welcome and embrace them because they have much to teach us about passion and faith.

We also need to think about how we structure our denomination. We have too many levels of bureaucracy. We have a national leadership and eight district (more or less provincial) offices as well as a number of ethnic branches. I want to propose a more practical structural suggestion or two (just some wide open thinking here). First design districts around mission targets as opposed to arbitrary geographical or provincial lines. One that focuses on cities, and another for specifically rural areas,. We certainly should factor in the significant East-West-Quebec-Maritime differences unique to Canada. For example, we should probably have one district specifically dedicated to the city of Toronto and the GTA – one for English speaking congregations and perhaps another for ethnic mission in the GTA. Vancouver should also have its own district. Make the districts much smaller (20-50 churches) and have a district for rural churches and one for city churches. Then farm most of the district administration stuff to the national office.

Doesn’t it make more sense to have a national health care benefits provider? The higher the numbers the better the rate. Most district events and ministries could be nationally coordinated: youth, Christian Education, men’s and women’s ministries, conventions, training, etc. You could even have the same people speaking at events and just do a national tour. The economies of scale would be great. Then the districts could focus on local targeted mission – seeing our cities reached for Christ. Right now city pastors hardly talk to each other let alone plan how to plant new congregations or meet to pray for the mayor or local situations. My suggestion would be to have a district pastor/superintendent and some admin support all of whom should be able to have offices in one of the churches in their district. Their function would be more pastoral and (dare I say it?) apostolic. District staff costs would be greatly reduced and all district buildings and properties could be sold. National office would then be very administrative in its functions and responsible for world missions. They should also oversee training institutions and Bible colleges - which may be the topic of another post.

Perhaps these thoughts are only pipe dreams. Some of the suggestions may prove to be unworkable. Some things are already being done. My prayer is that we could actually anticipate the coming national and global shifts in Christianity and adapt our structures to fit the reality around us instead of redefining reality to fit our pre-existing, out-dated structures and philosophies.

Church Going Behaviour - Canada Style

In following up the previous post on the Barna research I found some research by Reginald Bibby that relates specifically to Canada. His findings line up with those of Barna but are close to my estimates. He wrote a great paper covering this information and in it he questions why there is this perception that religion and church attendance is in freefall when it is actually increasing. The specifics? Four out of five Canadians (78%) identify themselves as Christian and thirty four percent of Canadians attend church at least once a month (25% at least once a week!) But what does the press say? He gives these recent examples from Canadian media outlets.

During the period spanning the Thursday before Easter in 2007 through the Monday after, the country’s number one national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, ran 44 items that included the word “Easter.” During the five-day period, only seven had a religious theme with only one what could be described as a positive and current portrayal of faith – the Pope’s Easter mass in Rome. The dearth of religious material in the paper was all the more puzzling in light of the results of its own on-line poll conducted over Easter. The paper asked the question, “Does the Easter holiday hold religious meaning for you or is it just another day off?” Some 4,000 of the paper’s readers responded – and no less than 80% said it holds religious meaning.

On Easter Sunday, 2007, the most-watched evening news program on national television featured only one religious item – the Pope’s mass in Rome. No Canadian angle or Canadian content was included.

Over the Christmas season in 2006, one of Canada’s two national newspapers, The National Post, ran a weeklong series of articles on the state of Christianity in the country. The lead-in to each of the articles started with the line, “With interest in spirituality on the rise and church attendance in freefall…” (Brean 2006). No data were provided to document the alleged “freefall.” Actually, the paper used Bibby's most recent findings on beliefs and spirituality – but took a pass on his findings showing a post-90s increase in attendance.

A year earlier at the same time of the year, a widely used article produced by the national news service, Canadian Press, announced that, in 2006, “Pastors and priests face ever more empty pews” (Shackleton 2005). The documentation consisted of observations from select opinion leaders, including best-selling critic of Christian churches, theology, and scriptural interpretation, Tom Harpur. In a column of his own, Harpur (2003) has written, “The current decline [in church attendance] is a drop in the bucket compared with what’s coming. …all is far from well in Canada’s churches. It’s the role of false prophecy to cry otherwise.”

Together, these findings on religion in Canada can be summed up as follows.
• There are some 30,000 religious organizations in place – second by a small margin only to the number found in the sports and recreation sector.
• They have more participants than any other kind of organization – even pushing sports and recreation into second place.
• They have a core of 25% of the national population who attend their services every week, 35% every month, and about 45% in a six-month period.
• A total of 84% of the population continues to identify with the traditions they represent.
• Two in three people who are not highly involved are open to greater involvement if they can find that religious groups touch their lives in significant ways. If that adds up to a bleak situation, one has to wonder what the Golden Age of religion in Canada must have looked like (Bibby 2006:194).

On of the reasons there is perception of secularism in Canada is because there "is a subculture of people, especially individuals in the humanities and social sciences. “While its members are relatively thin on the ground,” he says of the subculture, “they are very influential, as they control the institutions that provide the ‘official’ definitions of reality" notably, education, the media, and the legal system. “What we have here is a globalized elite culture,” writes Berger, who can easily fall into the misconception that their views about religion reflect those of their respective populaces. This, he says, is “of course… a big mistake.”

A couple of charts help visualize this data. The first is a graph of monthly plus attenders (those who attend once a month or more) and weekly plus attenders (who attend weekly or more). This graph shows that attendance has been increasing over the past five years.

The second chart shows the percentage of those that identify themselves as belonging to various religious groups and denominations. Here again we see that 78% of Canadians identify themselves as Christian.

Church-going Behaviour

George Barna has tried to formulate a new way of counting and categorizing Christians and churched people. In a new study he has come up with five categories of church attenders and they reflect some very interesting characteristics - especially those he categoizes as "unattached" or those who had not attended either a conventional church or an organic faith community in the past year. They comprise 23% of the USAmerican population.

The other four categories are:
Intermittents (15%) - people who have participated in either a conventional church or an organic faith community within the past year, but not during the past month.
Homebodies (3%) - people who had not attended a conventional church during the past month, but had attended a meeting of a house church.
Blenders (3%) - adults who had attended both a conventional church and a house church during the past month.
Conventionals (56%) - adults who had attended a conventional church (i.e., a congregational-style, local church) during the past month but had not attended a house church.

The real interesting findings are whne regular churchgoers, are compared to the Unattached. Some of their (the unattached) characteristics are:

- more likely to feel stressed out
- less likely to be concerned about the moral condition of the nation
- much less likely to believe that they are making a positive difference in the world
- less optimistic about the future
- far less likely to believe that the Bible is totally accurate in its principles
- substantially more likely to believe that Satan and the Holy Spirit are symbolic figures, but are not real
- more likely to believe that Jesus Christ sinned while He was on earth
- much more likely to believe that the holy literature of the major faiths all teach the same principles even though they use different stories
- less likely to believe that a person can be under demonic influence
- more likely to describe their sociopolitical views as "mostly liberal" than "mostly conservative"

Six out of ten adults in the Unattached category (59%) consider themselves to be Christian. Even more surprising was the revelation that 17% of the Unattached are born again Christians - defined as people who have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that they consider to be very important in their life, and who believe that they will experience Heaven after they die because they have confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior.

A significant proportion of the Unattached engages in traditional faith activities during a typical week. For instance, one-fifth (19%) read the Bible and three out of every five (62%) pray to God during a typical week.

The Unattached distinguished themselves from the churched population demographically, too. They are more likely to be single, male, and to have been divorced at some point. They are also less likely to be registered to vote, which is often a sign of people who feel less connected to or influential in society.

What does this say to me? It says that USAmerica is a very very Christian country (at least outwardly) - in spite of what is seen and heard on the media and in spite of the negative decisions being made in the courts. 62% attend at least once a month and 77% go at least once a year! And even those who don't attend church, 60% of them also consider themselves Christians! That means that 91% of the nation considers itself Christian! That is stunning at a number of levels. It means that most people who support abortion and gay marriage etc. consider themselves Christian. It also means that being Christian is much more about being American than being someone who is passionately obedient to Jesus. It may also mean that faith is much more about a personal sense of encouragement or comfort than about discipleship.

But then I'm probably not saying anything new or fresh.

I wonder what the statistics are in Canada if we used the same categories. My sense is that most people would self-identify as Christians (maybe as high as 80%0 but church attendance would be much lower (less than 40%). I'll have to look up some of Reginald Bibby's studies. Anyone have a link for me?

Answers to Loneliness

A rather interesting post at A Place for the God-Hungry.. Interesting because I have been continuing to wonder how to express the significance and importance of community and hospitality as I've been continuing my thoughts about my DMin thesis. First the post ...

Many, many people feel isolated and alone.

- Many men in their more honest moments will speak of feeling alone or friendless.
- Many ministers speak of feeling very alone in their ministries. One often hears the phrase "isolated and alone" when ministers are being very honest.
- Many people speak of how hard it is to make friends in their church. Some will point to a time, place, or church when they had close friends. However, they have never been able to have those same kinds of experiences again.

Some people admit they have few if any friends but will then say that they really have no time to invest in new friendships.
Why is the sense of being alone or friendless so common? What are some of the contributing factors? What can be done (either by individuals or by a church) to help remedy this?

A blog reader posted a comment ...

We can't help [but] acknowledge that many of our lives are so frenetic that we do not have room or time for relationship. You can almost see eyes roll when you begin speaking about real community and what it takes. People are thinking how idealistic that is and they question how they can possibly fit it into their lives between work, kids activities, chores etc. This same overly extended generation of people can hardly fathom the spiritual practice of hospitality in order to cultivate relationships.

As a church I don't think there is a cure all for this. Certainly we can position ourselves and our entry points to facilitate people getting into smaller groups of one kind or another in order to make connections with others. I think the greater challenge is trying to form a culture that prioritizes hospitality, service, confession, sharing and mentoring. Perhaps when Christians are being honest about their lives, testifying and praying over each other in public ways, the temptation to remain in a lonely place of guilt or shame will be less likely.
Sorry this comment is so long. You really have me thinking.

My comments ...

It is sad to think that this obviously intelligent person who makes the comment thinks the church has no cure. The church fundamentally is the cure - but not the church we see around us. Isn't Christian loneliness a symptom of the failure of "typical" church? I continue to wonder what the God answer is. How do we create faith communities that actually do alleviate loneliness and enhance community? I think we may each need to personally think back to times when we were experiencing what we felt was meaningful community and list some of the elements that made it so. Then each one of us must take responsibility for ensuring that our current communities reflect those characteristics. It will no longer be done for us - except by accident.

I'm really only thinking out loud here. I continue to speak to people about what this looked like for them and so far I have no consistent answers - just some clues that keep leading me deeper. I will stay in touch.

The Only Real Hope

A friend of mine has just discovered that his headaches have been the result of a tumor growing in his brain. He has been diagnosed with a glioblastoma (grade 4, most aggressive type) tumor with oligo features. The surgeon says he can expect 12-18 months with radiation (6-9 without), and possibly a further extension with chemo, but both treatments can only delay the inevitable.

Wikipedia gives the following description/definition: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common and aggressive type of primary brain tumor, accounting for 52% of all primary brain tumor cases and 20% of all intracranial tumors. Despite being the most prevalent form of primary brain tumor, GBMs occur in only 2-3 cases per 100,000 people in Europe and North America. Treatment can involve chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery, all of which are acknowledged as palliative measures, meaning that they do not provide a cure. Even with complete surgical resection of the tumor, combined with the best available treatment, the survival rate for GBM remains very low.

This friend is about my age (around 50) and he has two teenaged children - one in university and one in highschool (just like my kids). I've known him for almost 25 years and have worked fairly closely with him for the past 4 or 5. I have a hard time imagining how he's feeling. The email that I got informing me of the diagnosis finished with the statement: "The only real hope now is for a miraculous healing."

Isn't that always our only real hope? In our church service on Sunday morning one of the girls from the Philippines told the story of her friend experiencing a resurrection from the dead just this past week. I'm not sure of all the details but I believe it happened in Hong Kong as a group of Philippino domestic care givers were in a refugee area waiting for visas and transport out of the country. A woman died from heat exhaustion and heart failure (I think that was the reason). After the initial shock the rest of the group started praying for her. After not breathing for a long time (an hour?) she suddenly stirred and started breathing again.

That story stimulated a long discussion about why we hear of more miraculous healings in the "global south" (what we have traditionally called the third world) than we do in the Western nations. It comes back to that statement "The only real hope now is for a miraculous healing." Miraculous healing is often the only hope for many in the global south. Sickness is not always accurately diagnosed. Medical care is spotty. Living conditions are detrimental to good health. Nutrition is often poor. But faith is high and miraculous healings are more common.

Needless to say our prayers for my friend that morning were more passionate than normal and our faith was stirred.

The Culture of Death

A couple of weeks ago I attended a breakfast hosted by the Canadian Urban Institute - a group that hosts regular forums on issues that affect urban life. The one I attended was geared towards how to make faith more a part of the urban landscape and they talked about ways to value, support and include the "social capital" provided by churches.

In the USA the conversation is about funding and valuing "faith based initiatives." Canada has marginalized faith based organizations to a much greater degree even though we have a strong history of co-operation between church and state. For example the church has run native schools, the provinces have funded Catholic schools (in Ontario) and Pentecostal and Salvation Army schools (in Newfoundland). Much of the work with the poor is done by faith based organizations like the Salvation Army (homeless shelters, rehab centres, etc.)

One of the presenters was Rob Joustra from the The Work Research Foundation whose mission is to influence people to a Christian view of work and public life. They seek to explore and unfold the dignity of work, the meaning of economics, and the structures of civil society, in the context of underlying patterns created by God. They have a great website with lots of resources and a very interesting report that should be out in a month called Stained Glass Urbanism.

One of their resources is called "Think." Here they have a number of podcasts about urban, work and cultural issues. I listened to one of them last week (by a guy named John Seel) and I have been thinking about it ever since. Fred Petross at Abductive Columns posted about it and gave me a link to a hard copy. That is great because I was ready to actually transcribe it word for word from the podcast because I feel it is such a significant resource in understanding our current culture.

I've quoted a few sections of below. The links to look at all of it are in the previous paragraph.

On Postmodernism

Identity, morality, and society itself are impossible to maintain unless they are premised on an existing sacred order.

Philip Rieff. (Sacred Order/Social Order: My Life Among the Deathworks), a non-practicing Jew, argues that identity, morality, and society itself are impossible to maintain unless they are premised on an existing sacred order. Cultural formation is a process of translating the sacred order into the social order. Until recently, all societies depended on a vertical relationship with the sacred. All social and individual life made this assumption. This is not true today.

Rieff identifies three historical epochs or worlds, captured in words: fate, faith, and fictions. The first world is the classically pagan, based on fate; the second world is theistic, based on faith; and the third world is postmodern, based on fictions. The third world differs radically from the former two. For the participants in this third world, which represents our culture, “transliterate no sacred order into social order but instead propose a world in which there is no truth and no sacred order, only fictions and various rhetorics of power and self-interest.” This is unprecedented. “Every world, until our third, has been a form of address to some ultimate authority,” Rieff warns.

Consequently, the culture war we face today is not like that of the past. Past conflicts were between competing sacred symbolic systems. They were in effect family feuds. Not so today. Sociologist James Davison Hunter, in his introduction to Rieff’s book, writes, “What makes the contemporary culture war distinctive is that it is a movement of negation against all sacred orders and directed, in its particulars, against the verticals in authority that mediate sacred order to social order.” The third world cultural elites are insistent on instructing society in this “higher illiteracy.” This world, anticipated by Nietzsche, Rieff calls a “deathwork.” “Deathworks are battles in the war against second culture and are themselves tests of highest authority.”

Abandoning the wrong approach

Our past efforts at cultural renewal have not been effective in part because the faith perspective is underrepresented in many of the institutions of cultural leadership. Consider geography. There are four main centers of national cultural influence: Boston, New York, San Jose—representing the Silicon Valley—and Los Angeles. Evangelicals are concentrated instead in places like Wheaton, Colorado Springs, and Orlando. Institutional evangelicalism serves institutional evangelicalism, but rarely the wider culture.

Politics reflects culture; it doesn’t direct it.

Culture is shaped by a small number of gatekeepers. Majority perspectives have little bearing on culture formation. Instead, elites dominate. Neuhaus notes: “Even though [these elites] may be a minority of the population, they succeed in presenting themselves as ‘mainstream’ through their control of powerful institutions in the media, in entertainment, in the arbitrations of literary taste, in the great research universities and professional associations, and in the worlds of business and advertisement that seek the approval of those who control the commanding heights of culture.” Increasingly, grassroots political efforts to reverse the current cultural direction are proving futile. Politics reflects culture; it doesn’t direct it.

Moreover, by focusing on mobilizing majorities and legislative coercion, these faith communities have alienated their opponents while squandering their cultural and biblical capital. They have failed because the convictions that underlie culture cannot be coerced. They can be proposed, never imposed. Culture changes when a society’s assumptions and aspirations are captured by new ideas and images that are developed by thinkers and artists, expounded in both scholarly and popular forms, depicted in innumerable works of art, literature and entertainment, and then lived out attractively by communities of people who are committed to them. By narrowly focusing on Washington and state legislatures, faith communities have forgotten how to assert cultural influence. Today, most Christians in America are known for self-serving power politics rather than humble service for the good of others.

That many faith leaders are now viewing “the culture” as a new strategic goal is laudable, but such recognition also needs a deep theological perspective and appropriate cultural discernment to have any renewing effect.

Ya Might be a Redneck if ...

The Jeff Foxworthy schtick is probably getting pretty old for most of us already. You know ... "Ya might be a redneck if the grass growing in your front yard is so out of control that it hides the fact that you have two abandoned cars parked there."

Well I was reading a portion of a book by Paul Vieira (a Canadian author) called "Jesus Has Left the Building." In it he talks about his call to move outside the walls of the church to interact with the community and be the Church where two or three are gathered. In the book introduction he spells out some of the characteristics of the "institutional church."

So, how would I define “the building”? What is it exactly that Jesus is supposedly walking away from? Well, you might be dealing with an institutional understanding if you maintain or accept the following ideas about “church:”

So (in my words): "Ya might be part of an institutional church if ..."

• it’s somewhere you go
• it happens on a special day of the week
• you have a professional to tell you what to do
• all it requires of you is attendance and fees paid
• there exists a hierarchical command structure
• meetings come before people
• it has committees
• it has programs
• it has a corporate vision
• it has a corporate name
• it segregates itself from other believers
• it is more concerned with structure than content
• quality is sacrificed for quantity

He continues some of his ideas with these comments ...

In my experience, I loved being with God’s people. But there was something else interfering with our relationships and life together. This subtle, but very powerful system of values and practices does not seem to have its root in Jesus. I often use the following words synonymously (sometimes humorously), to describe this hindrance: institutional church, organized church, the religious system, the system, the corporate machine, the monster, the building, the matrix. Periodically, I will make statements that question the legitimacy of “church.” When this happens, please know that I am not referring to the true church, made up of all believers in Christ, but to the organization typically called “church.”

So How Many People Do You Have? 5

This is the conclusion to David Fitch's posts on how church planting is changing in Canada. It has been an enlightening read for me and it is something I plan to study in greater detail. It reveals that what I have been doing almost instinctively in trying to respond to my community and the changing Canadian cultural scene, others have been doing as well. Maybe God is up to something.


THE PROMISE OF CANADA'S NEW MISSIONAL LEADERS

All of the above paints a picture of a leader mentality drastically different from the church planter of the past. Yet most (not all) of the missional leaders I have met possess strains of this new mentality. I believe this bodes well for the future. For I believe this next generation of pastors (in my experience coming mostly out of evangelicalism) provides hope for a renewal of Christianity in Canada.

Like a fermenting revolution evolving out of a tired and reified ancien regime, these tiny bands of Christians have come on the scene committed to live a life together of worship, spiritual formation, community, hospitality and service to the poor (of all kinds). In ways never imagined by the machinations of the mega church, many of these bands are already infecting their neighborhoods with an embodied gospel that cannot be denied, only responded to. Knowing Christendom is gone, they carry no pretension. Instead they embody the gospel in its most compelling, authentic, non-coercive form.

This new wave of Christians is small in number and possesses little to no resources financially. Most do not impress with their grandiose visions. They do not hang in the halls of power. They do not make a show of their successes. Yet their vision of a simple Christian habitat as witness in the world reminds me of the Irish missional orders God used to effect a profound conversion of European society in the 4th century. We have seen the world changed like this once before (read How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill). Could we be in the early stages of seeing God move in a similar fashion once again? Let us pray it be so.

So How Many People Do You Have? 4

This continues the (copying of a) series of posts by David Fitch. In the last post he described how Canadian missional church planting is changing. Here he describes how leadership is changing.


SOME OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING MISSIONAL LEADERS

THEY WILL BE SURVIVORS

Enduring missional leaders learn how to survive financially and spiritually for the long term. They must be able to hold down a job that does not consume him/her, merely enable them to live simply for the long term. In Christendom, the denominations used to pay someone to get a self-sufficient church going in three years. This person was in essence paid to extend an organization, open up a franchise, and set up a version of church with the distinctives of the denomination.

In the new post-Christendom, this doesn't make sense. In my opinion it takes at least 5 years of "seeding a community" before one even begins to see an ethos of community and new life develop that can be a cultural carrier-transmitter of the gospel. As a result, the new missional community leaders must have patience, steady faithfulness and the ability to live simply. They must have a mental image of how they are going to sustain their lives financially, relationally, spiritually and personally. It all must take the shape of a sustainable rhythm.

THEY WILL BE COMMUNAL SHEPHERDS

I have found that missional leaders are most often shepherds of an overall ethos of a community. They are not starting and managing an organization. They may not even be good at organization. Instead they are cultivating a communal sense of mission identity among a gathering people "for this time and place".

It used to be every church planter had to be an extravert entrepreneur, someone who looked good and had the perfect family. This person had to be a good salesman (woman) and had to have endless energy. He or she had to set a vision, direct a course, motivate and sell. Yet I have seen, in this new era, that the missional leader is most often someone who can take time and be with people. He or she will listen to people, discern the needs, articulate where we are going, knit the community together in a common struggle with gentleness, encouragement, listening.

For we do not gather as we once did to hear a charismatic leader preach an entertaining piece of inspiration. We do not gather for a professional piece of programmed worship experience. In the new post-Christendom we are coming together to be formed and shaped, supported and edified for the Mission as a band of brothers and sisters. Yes we do gather on Sundays to hear the Word, to be nourished at the Table, and respond to what God is calling us to, but we do all this not as individual but as a community, a community "sent out" into mission.

Missional communities will not grow unless there is a nurturing sustaining presence prodding for the long term. Leaders that can adapt, roll with the punches, and shepherd communally are more valuable than the high-powered "strong starters" who wish to be gone in two years. These leaders are mentored not through leadership conferences and books. Instead, we must have regular times together to practice together listening, mutual submission, responding with love and guiding instead of dictating. We look together for what God is doing in our lives and in and around our community.

THEY WILL BE INTERPRETIVE LEADERS

Rarely do missional leaders lead their communities as a feature Bible teacher who dictates the a.'s and b's of Biblical doctrine. Rather they are interpreters of what God is doing communally through the teaching and preaching of Scripture. They read Scripture in community and preach looking for what God is calling us to in the neighborhoods. It used to be that every church planter would be this high-towered charismatic gifted preacher. He (normally a man) would draw the crowds. Soon a crowd would be gathered to hear "the show."

These days are past, not because you cannot attract dissatisfied or thrill seeking Christians from other churches with a great preacher, but because we have seen that true spiritual growth occurs communally only when the whole congregation is involved in times of praying, hearing, submitting and responding to the Word. Interpretive leaders do not dictate from the pulpit a list of do's and don'ts and solutions from God for every problem. They interpret the Scriptures to open our eyes to what God is doing and where He is taking us.

In a different way then, we must mentor leaders who are more than great preachers. They must lead their communities in interpreting what God is doing via the eyeglass of Scripture. Where is God taking us, where is he calling us? His/her sermons therefore fund the corporate imagination of God's Kingdom in our midst and where He is at work in our everyday lives. And when conflicts arise, we sit and pray, submit, pray for courage and humility and discern the Scriptures for the journey we are in called God's mission. This kind of leader often does not come from our (all too often) modernist seminaries. They are grown in a community who gathers to worship the Triune God so as to discern Him at work in our midst.

THEY WILL BE DIRECTORS OF SPIRITUAL FORMATION

I believe that missional leaders must know how to guide the community in a spiritual formation. Admittedly, this kind of leadership is not common among younger evangelicals at least. Yet I still believe that the development of communal worship liturgies that are historically thick yet still local and organic, is crucial for these times. For we now recognize that the consumerist forces of our post Christendom Canada (and even worse United States) cannot be resisted as an isolated individual. An individual alone cannot resist the forces of desire that tell us things are more important than Mission, the life itself we share with the Triune God. Our communities therefore must be places of spiritual formation, of resistance to the forces of distraction, unsatiated desire and exploitation of those we choose not to know.

This means that our Sunday/Saturday? gatherings must be places of spiritual formation, encouragement and sending out for Mission. We must ever navigate against putting on a show that will attract, yet develop a liturgy that is simple, accessible and Scriptural that thereby guides our lives into Christ and keeps us from the distractions that would take us from Mission. But there will be no missional community of people formed and shaped for mission if we just preach Mission as a legalistic requirement. Mission requires patience, a sense of vision and a self-denial that can only be trained in the simple organic disciplines/liturgies of the historic church.

THEY WILL BE LEADERS WHO GIVE AWAY POWER

Missional leaders that have served for any length of time have learned how die to their ego's and allow God to use every man and woman's gifts in the community for the furtherance of His Kingdom.

Hierarchy is the product of Christendom. It hails to a day when Christianity still held power in society, when, Jesus was still established as a given in Canada. Hierarchy made sense in a day when the preacher in the town was looked up to and held power. This world, when one man could wield influence and get things done in the name of Christ, is waning. As a result, no one man or woman can lead a community from the top down and expect the church to go on as a viable social reality. We cannot be the very Body of Christ if we do not empower the manifold gifts in the community to minister the kingdom as part of everyday life. If we even try to operate out of the old hierarchical ways, missional communities will flounder and their leaders will die from exhaustion. I have seen it happen over and over.

This model subverts the CEO pastorate style we have all become so used to for each pastor gives away power instead of consolidating it. This kind of pastoral leadership models a kind of community for the rest to see instead of dictating the rest of the church to just do it. In this way, all shall own the leadership of this community and the journey we are on in the Mission. This kind of leadership needs to be modeled and practiced and it does not come easy in our day.

So How Many People Do You Have? 3

This next post by David Fitch describes the general movement toward new understandings of planting churches. This was the "aha!" post that suddenly named what I had been doing for the past 8 years. I had been cultivating a garden. There were a couple of comments after the post that I really enjoyed and I've copied them too. My apologies but I often enjoy the comments people make as much as the original post and I wanted to make sure you were able to see them connected to the post.

FROM SETTING UP GROCERY (BIG-BOX) STORES TO CULTIVATING GARDENS

For those of us born before 1970, this change (to post Christendom) is truly stunning. The landscape of post-Christendom demands we think about church planting with a new eye for faithfulness, truth and integrity. Among the new missional leaders, church is the name we give to a way of life, not a set of services. We do not plant an organized set of services; we inhabit a neighborhood as the living embodied presense of Christ. Missional leaders now root themselves in a piece of geography for the long term.

We survey the land for the poor and the desperate, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. We seek to plant seeds of ministry, kernels of forgiveness, new plantings of the gospel among "the poor (of all kinds)" and then by the Spirit water them, nurture them into the life of God in Christ. We gather on Sunday, but not for evangelistic reasons. We gather to be formed into a missonal people sent out into the neighborhood to minister grace, peace, love and the gospel of forgiveness and salvation. The biggest part of church then is what goes on outside gathering. If the old ways of planting a church were like setting up a grocery store, now it is more like seeding a garden, cultivating it, watching God grow it amidst the challenges of the rocks, weeds and thorns (I owe this metaphor to my fellow co-pastors at Life on the Vine). What do these leaders look like? How can we walk alongside them? After hanging with a hundred or so of these leaders over the past few years, I offer the following observations. I'll post on this next.

Comments
len said ...
david, glad this has been an opportunity to put these thoughts on paper. Here are some thoughts from Michael Toy a few years back reflecting on the implications of organic gardening..


• take crap and use it to nourish things 

• it isn't "dirt," it is soil, and the preparation and maintenance of the soil is really important

• things that are garbage are used to grow the garden 

• vigilance is important 

• be willing to take smaller fruit in order for it to be truly healthy 

• gardening requires a systems understanding

• gardens die every winter and require replanting 

• things can only grow in certain climates 

• hybrids don't reproduce 

• if you use miracle grow to start, you have to keep boosting the amount 

• what you plant next to what is important 

• you have very little to do with the success of the gardern, photosynthesis is still a mystery, you can't make it grow, it is a miracle 

• backs and knees are sore because you are down in the dirt, you don't stand above the garden

• we need to protect the garden from bunnies. Worms are good, bunnies are bad. 

• organic fruit doesn't all look like the stuff in the market. Quality is over beauty, and there is no uniformity.. you share from the excess.

bigmikey (not me) said...
Dave,

Great post. Very enjoyable. The more you explain the metaphor of the garden, the more it resonates with me.


Len, great additional comments. If I may be so bold, the "bunnies" in my experience are the disaffected evangelicals who hop from church to church. They come in so gently and softly, saying all the right things etc, but you turn your back for one minute and ... the radishes are GONE. Those evil b*st*rds!

So How Many People Do You Have? 2

David Fitch has created a couple of posts on his blog on how church planting has changed over the years - especially in Canada. Although you can go over there to check it out, I want to post here a lot of what he is saying so to create some continuity with what I am thinking in terms of what church will look like over the next few decades. I will also tie some of this stuff into my DMin work.

50 YEARS OF CHURCH PLANTING: THE STORY AS I SEE IT

Over the last three decades, I have watched church planting change dramatically in Canada and the Northern parts of the United States. Back in the sixties/seventies, we used to send fifteen or twenty people from one local church into another place several towns over that was "under-churched." We would hold worship services, teach Sunday school, have a children's ministry. We would set up shop. We would choose a pastor who had all the tools as "they would say." He (most often a male) would be young, energetic and able to work like crazy. We would send out announcements expecting many who were looking for a church to show up. And if we did the basic services well, then we assumed the little gathering would grow into a self-sustaining church in 3 years. We might call these churches franchises.

Church planting worked like this because there were still large numbers of Christians to draw from for a congregation. We were in the great post-WW2 expansion in North America. New towns and subdivisions were springing up left and right. And just as each town needed a supermarket, a library and public schools, it needed a church. One could assume that out of the many thousands moving here into these new habitats, some would be Christians and need a church. So we planted churches like franchised local grocery stores. This was still an era of Christendom.

In the Eighties, the focus on church planting changed. Post WW2 expansion had slowed. More and more of the suburban boomers had not returned to the churches of their youth. The focus of church planting shifted to recapturing these now unchurched people for Christ. Now when we went to plant a church we needed first to conduct marketing surveys. We asked what we could we do to make church more relevant and user friendly. These surveys focused on finding out what these unchurched people were looking for? What turns them off of church? How can we do church in a way that relates to these people?

How can we make church relevant so that the "unchurched" would want to come to our services. What could make church more attractive? We focused on delivering the services with "excellence" and "efficiency" characteristic of the marketplace. In this way we planted churches like Wal-marts. The seeker service and church growth methods were invented. Hundreds of boomer generation people came who had left the church a decade before. Many hundreds of people in traditional churches left as well for "the new and improved" big box churches. Today, hundreds of mega-churches exist across North America as a testimony to "the success" of this approach to church planting.

Church planting like this worked because there were still huge amounts of unchurched people who had once learned of Christ in the earliest years of their upbringing. These unchurched had some familiarity with "who Jesus was." Deep within their boomer psyches, Jesus still carried credibility, even authority, even if they did consider the church obsolete. We assumed therefore that if we could just make Jesus relevant and attractive (as opposed to their former experiences of church) they would come. If the Bible could be communicated in a way that was meaningful to people's everyday life and needs, these unchurched would surely listen. They did come. People making "decisions for Christ" multiplied.

Church-planting like this however, still depended upon what was left of the vestiges of North American Christendom. A majority of the conversions were former high-church catechumens "coming back to Jesus." They had never made a "personal" decision to follow the Jesus they had earlier been taught about (most often in catechetical rote fashion). In this way, the seeker church movement was built upon Christendom.

To most Christians living in Canada, the days of Christendom are fading fast. There has been a change in mindset of those who would plant churches. As the number of Christians without a church shrinks, as the number of unchurched who once were catechumens of Christianity grows extinct, I have witnessed first hand the new wave of church planters who think of church planting in completely different ways. They are not interested in competing for the leftovers of Christendom. They resist the notion that the church is in need of just one more innovation. They are interested in nothing less than becoming missionaries, to plant churches cross culturally, across the barriers to people who have no knowledge or language about Jesus.

So How Many People Do You Have?

There are times in life when you meet someone or read something or see something that creates an "Aha!" moment. That happened to me this week.

For the past eight years we have been in the process of establishing a faith community, (planting a church, starting a new work, pioneering - whatever term you might like to use) in our community of Thornhill. When I meet people who know I'm doing this one of their first questions is "So how many people do you have now?" When I say "20-25, if everyone comes" they kind of look at me funny. If they are just making conversation, the conversation usually ends there. If they really want to know, I start telling my story.

I approached church planting the way I thought I was supposed to - because I really thought I had heard God calling. So I read all the books on church planting, attended a church planting bootcamp, had a church planter's assessment done, established a prospectus, read books about establishing a mission statement and core values, set up a time line, gathered a core team and started to pray. I did the demographic studies and determined that the least churched place in Ontario was Thornhill, got approval from the district, sent out prayer letters, decided on a name and started planning a kick-off event.

Even at the beginning I had the real sense that what we were supposed to do would be different in the church planting world. First of all, when I read other people's plans and looked at their organizational structures it just made me tired. I did not want that! I wanted to establish a community that was more organic than organizational. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant but I was sure that I was not going to begin a church plant with a structure that included 17 committees.

So we started. We did what we were good at. We had a great worship team. We had a couple of kick off events (a "shout from the Hills"), met in a church for a while on Sunday evenings and then took the leap to meet on Sunday mornings in rented facilities in a school. The evenings were good worshipping times but meeting in a school was kind of deflating. The school was expensive. We had to set up and tear down every week and transport our stuff to and from the school. It was too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. It was usually not cleaned up from the week's activities (because the janitor used Sunday mornings to clean). It was a long walk from the parking lot (at one end of the school) to the gym (at the other end of the school). When visitors did come we couldn't spend time visiting with them because we needed to clean up and get out by one o'clock. I felt like a failure every week.

I know now that what we were trying to do was establish an attractional model of church in a neighbourhood that was not (and would never be) attracted to church. I had done my demographics - 80% of the community was Jewish! I only realized later that because of the demise of Christendom very few unchurched people are attracted to church (Jesus - yes, authentic Christianity - yes, but not normally a Christendom style church.)

After a year and a half of meeting in the school we decided to meet in our home. It was in the middle of the community. It was large enough to host the 15 to 20 people who came. Surprisingly enough we grew as soon as we moved into our house - 3 or 4 new people. And as soon as we moved into our house this artificial pressure to "be" something disappeared and I started enjoying church again. We started a process of sharing with one another, praying for one another, calling people up if we hadn't seen them for a week or two. We started becoming a community.

We started focussing on our community (or more correctly our communities). People began to realize that they were not there to run a machine called church. There were no ushers. There were no Sunday school teachers. There was no building committee or finance committee or outreach committee. It was just us trying to figure out how to make an impact on our world. So we started praying for one another's work environment and co-workers and neighbours. When someone was sick we laid hands on them - all of us! We went to one another's houses to bless their homes and to prayer walk their neighbourhoods.

Sundays became not the main focus of the week but a time and place to share with others the significant events of our weeks, the answers to prayer, the divine appointments. Ministry wasn't what happened on Sundays but what we were experiencing during the week - not just a place to hear sermons but to tell our stories. It was not about me pastoring a church but all of us pastoring a community (neighbours, family, co-workers and one another). People have come into relationship with Jesus but they don't necessarily connect with us as a worshipping community.

There are times where I wondered if anyone else was doing church like this. Most of my colleagues were talking about their busy counseling schedules, committee meetings, the programs they were involved in or their preaching plans for the year. None of it really related to where I was. I wondered if I was completely missing the whole concept of church. I wondered if anyone else was experiencing what I was.

Then this week I read some stuff that David Fitch had put together about missional churches and the processes they were going through - and it reverberated with me. I will talk about it more in the next post.

Living Well In the Emerging Milieu 2 (DMin)

The question of the previous DMin post was "How Shall We Then Live?" Given the realities of the postmodern world and the demise of Christendom, what must we be doing and how should we be living? The first requirement is to be incarnational people - recognizing the Christ is in us and living as light and salt in the world. The second suggestion is both personal and structural - for each individual and for each local church to simplify. This post addresses more of the organizational simplicity. The challenge also remains to simplify our lifestyles by consuming less and giving more.


2. Simplicity.

Many churches have become complex machines that dehumanize both the visitor and the Christian worker. The burden is felt especially by Christian workers who are becoming burned-out because the lack of sufficient human resources to do the job and lack of appreciation shown to those who volunteer. Some churches can do it (the program church) well and provide some excellent programs and services but most pastors are not gifted as CEO’s or as Broadway producers and have difficulty carrying this major production off week after week. And more importantly, is the big, complex church effective at extending the kingdom of God, nurturing the workers and in discipling people to become more like Jesus?

One way of simplifying is to grow smaller. Neil Cole, in the Organic Church, makes a convincing case that complex organisms do not multiply easily, and certainly not rapidly. He suggests “the term “simple church” began to gain popularity, because we valued a simple life of following our Lord and avoided many of the complexities of the conventional church. Complex things break down and do not get passed on, but simple things are strong and easily reproduced. Ordinary Christians were able to do the extraordinary work of starting and leading churches.”

Neil Cole has established a network of simple churches based on the concept of “where two or three are gathered.” He always meets weekly with at least one “life transformation group” (an LTG). These are gender-specific groups of two or three. The addition of a fourth person is the beginning of a second group. They meet at least once a week for about an hour.

Three tasks are accomplished in an LTG: sin is confessed in mutual accountability (by asking specific questions of one another); large portions of Scripture are read repetitively and in context (both at the meeting and during the week); and, people (primarily non-Christians) are prayed for strategically, specifically and continuously. Three or four LTG’s will sometimes meet together as a home group for sharing and worship. In six years close to 800 of these churches were started in 32 states and 23 countries. This is the essence of simplicity.

MissionGTA

I did my city wide activities today. I participated in a MissionGTA meeting and in our local ministerial in Thornhill. MissionGTA is a region wide (GTA is the Greater Toronto Area) organization that attempts to gather Christian leaders for united prayer geared toward seeing positive transformation of all the spheres of life in our city. I pulled the following off the newly revamped (not fully complete) website to give you a bit more info.

This is our strategy ...

* Connecting various groups who are already causing a transformational impact in the different spheres of society as identified by the key indicators, and where such groups do not exist encourage their formation.
* Providing representative leaders of the different geographical communities of the GTA with opportunities for interaction, prayer and strategy formation.
* Providing representative leaders of the different ethnic communities of the GTA with opportunities for interaction, prayer and strategy formation.
* Mobilizing unified intercession through the efforts of PrayGTA.
* Providing the Body of Christ with opportunities for regional prayer gatherings (including City Hall Prayer, Prayer Summits and Global Day Of Prayer).
* Encouraging the creation of a communication hub for all Christian activity in the GTA.

The Thornhill Ministerial on the other hand is our local gathering. It involves seven churches in my immediate area where the pastoral staff of these congregations meet once a month. It involves Lutheran, Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, United, Roman Catholic and Pentecostal churches. It really is quite collegial and quite enjoyable but not particularly spiritual or prayerful. Our major event is an annual Lenten series of meetings where we swap pulpits for the six Sunday evenings of Lent. It is nice to be able to participate in the various traditions but the concern continues to be that younger families and youth don't attend. (After hearing the particularly somber music at one of these Lenten services my son (12 years old at the time) quipped: "Don't they want people to attend these meetings?" I force my family to come at least once during Lent - the Sunday I'm speaking.

My other "ministerial" involvement is with my area denominational meetings. They happen infrequently - only three or four times a year.

However, if I went to every event, meeting, conference, prayer breakfast, or seminar designed to assist, inform, unify or equip the local clergy, I could be busy 532 days per year. The power to choose must be exercised to be healthy!

The "Event" (Continued)

I enjoy having fun, being inspired, learning new stuff or encountering God when I attend a Sunday Christian gathering. But the part I like best is meeting the other people who are there and learning how they experienced God this week. I love hearing about the answers to prayer and the divinely arranged "God Encounters" that have supernaturally intersected someone's week. I love to see us all praying for someone and then hearing next week how that prayer was answered. I love the challenge of living out the Scripture we read and then having someone hold me accountable for it the following week. That to me is church - the assembled, set apart saints of God who gather to worship God and encourage one another.

The "Event" seems to miss all those things. The Event is geared towards attracting a crowd and its purpose is to passively entertain. I just have a hard time calling that "church." It may attempt to be honouring to God (it is probably more God honouring than a Broadway production). It may provide good Biblical teaching, and it may inspire and create good feelings, and it might bring some people into the kingdom - but is that church? Is that what we're supposed to be doing? I'm going to repeat a quote I made in my paper because it fits here again ...

Matt Casper, an atheist commissioned by Pastor Jim Henderson to visit churches to provide an outsider’s view of what we do in church, said this about the machine that church has become. If someone who had never attended church went to visit a number of churches … “if that’s where they started, they would have to conclude that Jesus’ number one priority was that Christians invest the very best of their energy and their money into putting on a huge church service – a killer show as it were … is this what Jesus told you guys to do?” Casper simply could not imagine Jesus telling his followers that the most important thing they should be doing is holding church services. And yet this was the only logical conclusion he was able to come to based upon what he observed.

Perry Noble at NewSpring church in South Carolina supports the Event mentality but he calls it "Creating An Experience" at his blog. Bill Hinon has a great response that I thought I would post a large chunk of it here.


One of the things that Perry explains to those of us with smaller churches (or no church at all) is that Jesus was in the experience creating business:

One of the things I have realized in reading Scripture though is that Jesus was far from boring–He created experiences for His followers–experiences that they NEVER forgot…do you remember…

And just like Jesus, Perry gathers his team together to creatively plan their spectacles services.

Today I sat in a room for two hours as our creative team talked about the next several Sunday’s. We spent around 10-15 minutes on how to conclude the sermon for the 17th of this month…we are serious about Sunday’s and the experience that is created for people coming in these doors.

I can just see Jesus gathering his team around him.

Jesus: OK guys. Any suggestions for what we do next. I've done the water into wine thing, helped you guys catch a boat-load of fish and calmed a storm that was freaking you all out. What are we going to do to wow the crowd next.
Simon Peter: I'da know. What about maybe walking on the water. That would be totally amazing.
Various disciples: That would rock...Totally cool...how could we capture it?
James: Or what if you spoke to a big crowd, say 4 or 5,000 people. The only food was a loaf of bread and a few fish. But everybody left filled to the brim...with food left over.
Various disciples: We could call your sermon "Feed Your Need"...yah, or "Five Ways to Come Empty but Leave Filled."
John: You know what would completely blow people's minds...what if you raised someone from the dead. And I don't mean just recently dead...but somebody who'd been in the grave for three days...somebody already stinking.
Various disciples: You're creepin' me out, John...My stomach kinda reacts to bad smells...Couldn't you be a little less earthy, John?
Judas: whatever we do, we can't forget the offering. We need money to keep this thing going, people.

Hang on. I'm sorry. This is really bad exegesis on my part. There is absolutely no scriptural indication that Jesus ever had this kind of discussion with his disciples. Not an iota. I'm really sorry. (Other than Judas talking about money, perhaps.)

What we do know is that Jesus went off to spend a lot of time talking to his Father. And to attempt to write that conversation would probably be blasphemous, eh! But since he only did what his Dad showed him to do, do you ever think he asked "What next?"

Perry further helps us understand his methods by playing the Hollywood card:

Seriously–I believe people should look more forward to church that they do 24, Lost, or American Idol. WOW…there’s something…those shows actually put hard work and effort into their programming…and it shows! Hmmm, maybe if the church was as serious as Hollywood in reaching people…we would be reaching people.

That's right, Perry. Whenever I want to look at people who build depth and substance into relationships, I look to Hollywood. People who experience what Hollywood produces have more joy in their lives, their marriages last longer and they even have fresher breath. Who could want anything more?

Going Forward by Going Back - DMin

The last post was going to contain another section of the DMin paper but I got a bit carried away and it got too long. So in response to the previous stuff posted in my paper, we respond to the current church and culture situation by looking back to the first century and other periods of time when the church responded effectively to the culture around it.

Going Forward by Going Back

What is needed is not a recalibration or retooling of the existing model but an entirely new structure and certainly a change in thinking. There is a consistent message being communicated in much of the literature examining our necessary response to the passing of Christendom. If the problem is Constantinianism, then the solution is to be found as we examine the church before Constantine and of course the biblical record. Many of the authors suggest recapturing the spirit, if not the specifics of first century Christianity.

The characteristics of the first century church and that of the necessary emerging model of church can be contrasted with the Christendom model:
1. Locus of gathering: didn’t have dedicated sacral buildings but met in homes and was often persecuted – emerging models also reject need for “church” buildings,
2. Leadership: apostolic, non-institutional, 5-fold ministry gifts (Eph 4), pioneering-initiative, usually bivocational,
3. Organization: grassroots, decentralized,
4. Grace: communion celebrated as a community meal – the new models redeem, resacralize and renew symbols and events alongside Lord’s Supper,
5. Position in society: on the margins and fringes,
6. Missional mode: incarnational/sending and missional.

Given the demise of Christendom and the bleak outlook facing the church in the West, are there any models, past or present, that can help us formulate a way forward? Fortunately, yes. The clearest model is the exceptional growth of the Church in the second and third centuries. Rodney Stark, a church historian, (using conservative estimates) calculates that the Church grew from 25 thousand in CE 100 to anywhere between 10 and 20 million in CE 310 and up to 33 million by CE 350.

Although exceptional, this growth is not unique. More recently, when Mao Tse-tung seized control of China, there were about 2 million Christians. He nationalized the church buildings, killed most of the leaders, banned all public Christian meetings and tried to eradicate all traces of religion. When the so-called Bamboo Curtain was lifted a few decades later, estimates were that there were 60 million Christians; and that there are about 80 million today. How did that happen?

Hirsch summarizes the common characteristics between the early church and the Chinese church:
1. They were an illegal religion.

2. They didn’t have church buildings.

3. They didn’t have easy access to Scripture (the Chinese had illegal, partial copies passed on from house to house).

4. They didn’t have any central institutions or professional forms of leadership.

5. They didn’t have seeker-sensitive services, youth groups, worship bands, seminaries, or commentaries.

6. They made it hard to join the church.
How did they do it? Hirsch’s concept is the mDNA of Apostolic Genius – that is, the “missional” DNA of how the apostles were led by God’s Spirit to unleash the gospel. That will be for the next post.

The "Event"

In the previous posts of the ongoing excerpts of my DMin paper, I outlined some of the problems experienced by the church today and of the changing of our culture that makes the Christendom attractional and extractional model of church increasingly irrelevant to the people of this culture. Good programs and targeted marketing is not sufficient to make church interesting to a culture that is now at least a generation away from Christian teaching and typical church practices (like Sunday school, Bible studies or prayer meetings). Again this is not to say that Christianity has become irrelevant! That is my whole point! We have adopted a form of godliness that in many ways has lost its power - because it once did have power. The question really is where do we go from here? That's the point of the next section of the paper - we go forward into the future by learning from the past and listening to the Spirit. (Actually the next post will contain the next section of the paper - this post is getting quite long already).

Interestingly enough there are many who continue to strongly advocate for the attractional marketing model of church. In the previous post I mentioned Bill Hinon's series on Marketing the Church. In the comments section of one of those posts a guy named Nathan argues (at length) the benefits of attractional ministry.

Just a sample.

"Church marketing, that is nothing more than telling people (in whatever manner) about your church, what your church is about, and what your church can offer (salvation, fellowship, children's ministry, etc.) can result in new members, and not just new members by way of another church (shuffle). I'm talking about growing the church via baptistm, not theft. You seem to believe that the church cannot do so without resulting in lazy consumer christians. I'm here to say that the only way you get lazy Christians is through lazy service preparation and preaching."

My response to that is there are many people who will not come into church in the first place - no matter how good the marketing or how many personal invitations there are. Secondly, the product we are offering is not usually something people think they need - especially in the form we present it. This is not because everyone presents it poorly (some do but many present this "exciting church" product well). It is because the megachurch model is basically an entertainment model. A large group of people gathered to see and hear professionals perform. It's like a play, a concert or a movie. People will come to see it when they sense a need (like at Easter or Christmas) but won't make it a regular habit because they think it's the same thing over and over again. Only weirdo's go to the same movie over and over again.

The other thing is that the real event is not just the movie - it is the series of events connected with it. Meeting friends, going out for dinner, seeing the movie, having drinks afterward or going to someone's house to continue the connecting. The megachurch model tries to make church the complete experience instead of only part of the experience. We need to see that the real connecting happens before and after the event. The event is only an excuse to get together and no matter how good it is, the event itself is rarely the best part of an evening together with friends or a loved one.

Church was never intended to be about the event. Church was never about coming to a place where you could learn things or see things. Church is about where two or three are gathered Christ is in the midst of them. Church is about the connecting and learning and journeying together.