Jun

17

The Present Future-Part 4

June 17, 2007 |

The Present Future
For an introduction to this series, go to here

New Reality Number Three: A New Reformation: Releasing God’s People

“The first Reformation was about freeing the church. The new Reformation is about freeing God’s people from the church (the institution). Both Reformations have been fueled by an information revolution.”

“… church members no longer have to rely on clergy for information about theology or Christian activity in the world. Nor do they have to rely on denominations to structure their giving or ministry focus. Increasingly these are individual choices, driven by a sense of personal mission, not mere underwriting of the church or denominational program by faithful loyalists.”

Wrong Question: How Do We Turn Members into Ministers?

“Every time I see the slogan ‘every member a minister’ I cringe. It usually means that there has been a lot of effort put into getting church members to get church work done…. This myopic vision has resulted in ministry being defined largely in church terms and lay people often being viewed as functionary resources to get church work done.”

“Laypeople see the disconnect in the ‘every member a minister’ strategy. They are voting by not lending their time, energy, and money to ministry ‘vision’ that has the church as a primary beneficiary or recipient. Church has become increasingly irrelevant to their workaday and home lives. Church ministry to them is an add-on activity to an already crowded life. They wonder why God can’t use them where he has already embedded them—in their homes, workplaces, schools, and communities.”

Tough Questions: How Do We Turn Members into Missionaries?

“North America is the largest English-speaking mission field in the world. It is the fifth or sixth largest mission field of any stripe.”

“Missiologists do cultural exegesis. Missionaries understand that being culturally relevant is critical to an evangelism strategy. Only people without a missiology disdain attempts at being culturally relevant. The point is not to adopt the culture and lose the message; the point is to understand the culture so w can build bridges to it for the sake of gaining a hearing for the gospel of Jesus.”

“The approach to spirituality in the modern church has been to adopt the world’s educational model. Sunday ‘School’ reflects the basic assumption that the past to Christian maturity involves the acquisition of biblical information.”

“We focus on the Bible because the thing-in-itself (God) is really beyond us.”

“The result of the modern church’s form of spirituality is a North American church that is largely on a head trip. This is at the heart of why the lifestyles and values of people in the church mirror so closely the lifestyles and values of people in the larger culture. We have a rational faith. The test for orthodoxy typically focuses on doctrinal stances, not character and spiritual connectedness to God and others. Faith, in the modern world, is about intellectual assent, not belief in the biblical sense.”

“Because the church clings to the modern world, we now have a church in North America that is more secular than the culture.”

“…postmodernism is at heart a spiritual movement (don’t hear ‘Christian’ movement). It is a search for meaning. It is the alternative to the nihilism that so many people predicted to be the next phase of Western thought. Postmodernism refuses to be forced into the synthesis of the Hegelian dialectic. It allow for ambiguity; it countenances opposing notions at the same time.”

“Postmoderns are wildly spiritual. It is a spiritualism that reflects a hunger for meaning and connectedness. It is a spiritualism that starts with an affirmation of the basic goodness of humanity (in contract to the ‘depravity of man.’)”

“We have a church in North America that is more secular than the culture. Just when the church adopted a business model, the culture went looking for God. Just when the church embraced strategic planning (linear and Newtonian), the universe shifted to preparedness (loopy and quantum). Just when the church began building recreation centers, the culture began to search for sacred space.”

When people come to church expecting to find god, they often encounter a religious club holding a meeting where God is conspicuously absent…. In fact, many people outside of the church are more spiritually passionate and enthusiastic about god than many church members.”


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