Saturday, June 16, 2007

THE STARTING PLACE [Organic CP #4]

How can we build disciple-making churches that rapidly and naturally reproduce themselves?

The Starting Place
In the New Testament we are not commanded to “go and plant churches.” The great commission is that we go and proclaim the good news (Mark 16:15), make disciples and to teach them the commands of Christ (Matthew 28:18) and be a Spirit-filled witness to the resurrection of Christ (Acts 1:8). Jesus did not have much to say about the church in the gospels. He did say “I will build my church…” (Matthew 16:18). We are clearly commissioned to announce and demonstrate his kingdom, and to go and make disciples of Jesus. Meanwhile, he will build HIS church.

Euripides said “A bad beginning makes a bad ending.” Whatever the DNA of a seed is will be revealed by the fruit. An apple seed will produce an apple tree, an orange seed will produce an orange seed. How we start a work or a church is the most powerful determinant of what the end result will be. If we make planting churches our starting point, we will end up with the wrong result. The starting point must be “preaching the gospel of the kingdom,” and “making disciples.” If we effectively proclaim the gospel of the kingdom to social networks and disciple them to Jesus, churches can naturally be formed.

If our starting point is planting a church, rather than kingdom proclamation and discipling, our focus will be on getting people to a meeting. Our priorities may become developing a good worship band, organizing a Sunday School program or effective advertising. However, if we focus on preaching the kingdom and making disciples, our first focus will be on getting people to follow Jesus and apply His principles in their lives and we leave Jesus free to build his church however he chooses.

Jesus never tried to plant a church. Instead he focused following the father’s initiative (John 5:30; 8:28), announcing and demonstrating the arrival of the kingdom by doing good, healing the sick and setting free the oppressed (Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38) and perhaps most importantly, on training a group of between twelve and seventy followers; teaching them to love and serve one another and sending them two by two to share the good news of the kingdom and heal the sick.

Church planting strategy must be built around the great commission; "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:19-20).

Likewise, St. Paul never went into a city just to plant a new church and get people going to a meeting. He preached the kingdom and discipled the new believers. He then either baptized them, or had some of the new leaders baptize them and taught them to begin gathering together to love and encourage one another as they shared the kingdom and discipled others. The primary focus was not on the meeting, but on sharing the news of Jesus’ kingdom and making disciples. As the number of disciples grew in a city, they met from house to house for fellowship, prayer, teaching and mutual encouragement. The primary spiritual energy of the Pauline churches continued, however, to move through their social networks in the marketplace, in the streets, in the schools and in their homes as they shared the news of Jesus’ kingdom and called people to become followers of Jesus.

The result was the advancement of the reign of God in the city and the gathering of committed disciples around Christ. Jesus built his church! The primary focus was never only on attending a weekly meeting but a daily lifestyle of love and obedience to Jesus!

Thursday, June 7, 2007

THE NEED FOR A NEW KIND OF CHURCH [Organic CP #3}

It is not my desire to discourage faithful pastors in effective church communities who are heroically sharing God’s word and making disciples within their congregations. Nevertheless, the overpowering evidence indicates that a large number of struggling pastors are laboring in ineffective churches who are failing to reproduce disciples, often even among their own children.

Not only do we need new churches in the U.S., we also need a new kind of church. Just planting more of the same kind of churches is not the answer. Despite the faithful presence of many good churches, the “American church model”[1] has in many ways failed to be effective salt and light in our generation. Barna’s research has shown that there is statistically little difference between those who call themselves “Christians” and those who do not claim faith, in virtually every area of moral behavior that can be measured.[2] George Gallup concludes in his study on spirituality that, “faith in America is broad but not deep,” [3] and that “born again citizens are as likely as their counterparts to believe in astrology, consult astrology charts and to have consulted a fortune-teller.”[4]

The last two decades of the twentieth century saw a variety of innovative approaches to church life such as seeker churches, cell churches, purpose-driven churches, prophetic churches, G12 churches and mega churches. Despite this growing diversity of forms and styles of worship, church goers are voting with their feet in massive numbers and opting out of participation in organized church life as we know it. At the same time, those who continue to attend Christian services show little or no difference in their lifestyle from those who avoid affiliation with formally structured Christian churches. Not only are new churches needed, but a new kind of church is desperately needed [note: I wrote this before I was aware of the emerging church movement: I do not necessarily endorse the ECM as the answer to the problem I am presenting here, although I welcome any and all attempts to become more effective in mission and disciple-making to a new generation]

There is a need for churches that are centered on relationships rather than meetings. We need churches that are life-oriented rather than program-oriented; organic rather than organizational, spontaneous rather than highly structured. We need churches that produce committed disciples rather than meeting facilities and institutional programs; churches that focus more on sending than gathering; incarnation rather than attraction.

Pastors in record numbers are burning-out, dropping out or falling out. My wife just last month attended a women’s Prayer Summit in Miami. There were 22 pastor’s wives participating. Almost every one of the wives said that their husbands were discouraged and thinking about quitting the ministry. The American church model is no longer workable, and is quickly losing its leadership base.

In my opinion the most pressing need in United States is not bigger churches, more seeker churches or more purpose-driven churches. I say that with the deepest respect for the valuable contribution that spiritual pioneers like Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Ralph Neighbor and Dr. Paul Yunggi Chou have made to church life at the end of the twentieth century. The research both Barna and Gallup show us that we need more “disciple-making” churches that effectively form men and women into highly committed followers of Jesus rather than simple church attendees or even lay workers in church programs.

We need churches that really do change people’s lives. Churches where people actually do encounter God and experience His active, transforming presence. Churches where people are challenged with scripture and held accountable for their moral behavior. Churches where people learn to serve and love one another. It my opinion, the formation of one single highly committed follower of Christ has a far more powerful effect on our society than gathering ten or a hundred “seekers” into a church meeting.

Not only do we need “disciple-making” churches; we need disciple-making churches that effectively reproduce themselves. Often, churches that focus on forming quality discipleship in believers do not seem to grow or reproduce. They turn inward and focus on perfectionism, always raising the standards of excellence but never reaching outward to those outside the circle of grace.

How can we build disciple-making churches that faithfully and naturally reproduce themselves?
[1] Phrase coined by Dr. Dow Robinson in lectures on New Testament church life. 1995
[2] George Barna, The Second Coming Of The Church (Word Publishing, Nashville: 1998) p. 6
[3] George Gallup, Jr. The Next American Spirituality (Cook, Colorado Springs, CO: 2000) p. 128
[4] Ibid, p. 131

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Lewis: A Christian Society

The New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian Society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one’s work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no ‘swank’ or ‘side’, no putting on of airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience—obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly, it is going to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls ‘busybodies’.

If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, ‘advanced’, but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old fashioned—perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing. That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine. We have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan itself. You will find this again and again about anything that is really Christian: every one is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest.

— from Mere Christianity (Klein:156)

Friday, June 1, 2007

THE NEED FOR NEW CHURCHES [Organic CP #2]

Like any living organism, every local church has a natural life cycle. Unless a church is able to reproduce itself in every new generation, it will go through a natural life cycle and die in one generation.

Right now in the U.S., there are approximately 340,000 churches [note: this is undoubtedly outdated. I don’t have the most recent figures, but due to the emphasis by Bill Bright and others such as DAWN, there has been an effort to plant house churches over the last four years. Plus, there is evidence that large numbers of people have stopped going to organized church services and have started meeting at home with the family and a few friends]. Three fourths of these churches are slowing dying and one fourth is growing[2]. Almost all of the increases of the 25% that are growing are transfers from the 75% that are diminishing.

Over the last twenty years, more than 3500 churches have closed their doors annually.[3] That translates to about ten churches shutting down every day. Only half as many are currently being started. Planting new churches in the U.S. is essential. If there is not a major focus on effective church planting, Christian faith in the U.S. may quickly become as culturally marginal as it is in Europe.

C. Peter Wagner has said that church planting is the most effective form of evangelism. Extensive research by Christian Schwarz of over a thousand churches in thirty-two nations shows that smaller and newer congregations are far more effective in evangelism than large churches. According to Schwarz, numerous churches far excel a single mega-church in evangelistic fruitfulness; “If instead of a single church with 2,856 in worship we had 56 churches, each with 51 worshippers, these churches would, statistically, win 1,792 new people within five years—16 times the number the mega church would win. Thus we can conclude that the evangelistic effectiveness of mini-churches is statistically 1,600 percent greater than that of mega churches.”[4]

If our prime directive is to make “disciples of the nations,” by persuading the unbelieving to trust and follow Christ, we must consider church planting as a mandate. If the church in the United States desires once again to be “salt and light” to U.S. culture, a sustained church planting movement must be launched. It must be the kind of church planting movement that easily and rapidly reproduces itself. If such a movement is to have a major impact on our society, it must not be “resource intensive” requiring multiple 10’s or 100’s of thousands of dollars and highly trained specialists to succeed. The term “organic” church planting communicates the image of something that spontaneously multiplies under natural conditions.

If the church in the U.S. is to continue to flourish in the future, we must also place an urgent priority on church planting among young adults. If the statistics are alarming about the pace of new church planting compared to dead and closing churches, the explosion of youth culture and the relative absence of a Christian influence is even more alarming. No where is the need for new churches more acute than among the millennial and Gen-X generations.