The Gospel?

As a Southerner, and a proud one at that, I have often noted a habit among my brethren that is a bit disheartening. What I am referring to is "the gospel of nice." You know what I mean, "Oh, they are such NICE people," or "That church has such a NICE pastor." It goes further as in "Well, I know they don't attend any church, but they are such NICE people." I have even heard, "I know they do not believe in Christ, but would God condemn such NICE people?"

I need not say more. I will say this, as you go to worship the sovereign God of the universe tomorrow, remember that you are worshiping the God who sent His Son to die a bloody and violent death, a death that paid the price for all those whose names were written in the Lamb's Book of Life, and were written there before the foundations of the earth. The Gospel, the REAL Gospel, is not about NICE, it is about redemption accomplished and applied to undeserving sinners. The Gospel is not about what we DO, or even how NICE we are, it is about what has been DONE for us at great price.

Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!

Quotes to Provoke

Some things I heard today...

"In God's eyes, the church is Plan A, and there is no Plan B."

Addressing church growth methodologies, James Montgomery Boice said, "Whatever you win people BY, you win them TO."

Further addressing faulty church growth methodologiesLigon Duncan says, "In the name of reaching the unchurched, radical contextualization has succeeded in unchurching the churched."

"The key to ministry 'success' is FAITHFULNESS, not contextualization. We must not baptize cultural norms to the detriment of the Gospel message."

Finally, "Anyone who says 'Preach the Gospel always and sometimes use words' probably does not understand the Gospel. The Gospel is not something we 'do,' it is something done FOR us."

To quote an old friend, "You think about that."

The Grandest Thing

Let me ask you, is there anything as grand as God's people gathering for worship on the Sabbath? For the last several months I have been reintegrating myself as a congregation member rather than lead pastor, and my life has been immeasurably blessed by being one of God's saints gathered for worship on the Sabbath. To sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, to engage in responsive readings and creeds, to hear sermons from God's Word have brought my heart to many a moment of bliss in the worship of our Sovereign God.

This morning I heard what may be the most incisive, clear, biblical, historical sermon I have ever heard. The combination of history, language, exegesis, interpretation and application was breathtaking. The subject matter is essential hearing for the church today. I will not say more because that would only spoil the sheer enjoyment of God's Word being presented in glorious fashion. At last check, this sermon has not been posted yet, but it will be at this location. Please, PLEASE do not miss this sermon and refer it to your friends, pastors, and anyone else with whom you come into contact. One line that sticks with me is this, "God glories in seeing His creations creating things that glorify Him." Listen and enjoy. It will be time well spent.

Why? What do we do now?

So why are some believers abandoning megachurches? Why are younger generations, generally 40 and under, not attracted to megachurches?

Here is my theory, and as I have mentioned, it is probably WAY oversimplified, but then again, so am I, soooo...here goes. As our information transfer technology has gotten better, and as transportation has gotten more uncomfortable and expensive (thank you OPEC!), workers and businesses have once again embraced a "work where you are" ethic. Millions of people "commute" digitally these days, and they are thus able to once again live in AND GET TO KNOW the community in which they live. No more leaving at "Oh dark thirty" and hoping to get home before the kids fall asleep so they remember their good night kiss.

Once again people are choosing where they live and, more importantly WHO they live with in community, based on values and not distance to work. This is creating more community in general, and more importantly, a greater desire for community, period. This is a death knell for most megachurches, because the one thing that is sadly missing at many of those churches is authentic community. Indeed, as a former church planter, I have had people leave our smaller community specifically because they wanted to "sit on the back row and not have anyone know when they didn't come to church." Another elderly saint said to me one time, "I just don't think I could go to a small church of 200 people. Everyone has to WORK at it all the time just to have church." To which my response was, silently (yes, I completely chickened out!), RIGHT!

And that is what more people are looking for, a contributing, cooperative, collegial community! Something in which they have ownership, a say in what happens, and a place to share life with like-minded, and maybe completely different, people. People genuinely Gospel driven, saints called by God and filled by the Holy Spirit, realize that receiving propositional truth in sermons and classes is, at best, only half of the equation. Incarnational truth, that truth learned and shared in the give and take of biblical community, is as important in living the Christian life. And it is the VERY special megachurch that has structured itself so that its people learn and live in close knit community.

Younger generations want to invest in relationships based in Christ's love, not in bricks and mortar that will fall down some day. Many of them drive by a large church and not even think about stopping, because they instinctively know that they will get lost there. This is a shame because many large churches offer wonderful teaching and community, but their efforts are obscured by the bias against large buildings. Many megachurches, however, richly deserve the bad name they have. I am familiar with one megachurch in which the pastor has no officers supporting him and ministering to the church. Everything the church does is staff-directed or run by ad hoc committees. The people are asked to simply sit and give. Is this a biblical picture of the church? I think not. And many people are finally waking up to that realization.

Next...the importance of covenant community and the "way back" for the church.

What do you think?

How did we get here?

Yesterday I mentioned "megachurches" and how they are failing in whatever it was they set out to do. This is most tellingly exposed in a statement by Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, in the Fall of 2007, "If you simply want a crowd, the seeker-sensitive model produces results. If you want solid, sincere, mature followers of Christ, it's a bust." Let me say that I do not question the motives of most megachurch pastors, I just think they went the wrong way and have inadvertently hurt the church in the process. Let me make one clarifying statement here...not every large church should be categorized as a megachurch and thereby cast aside as "not working." I am familiar with some large churches that do not function as a megachurch does, and do not have the attitudes that megachurches do. These churches function well and biblically, and they should be commended for their ministries.

How did megachurches become "the next big thing?" My simple, probably overly simple, analysis, is that the megachurch sprang from the same place as mega-corporations and mega-corporate headquarters. In the 40s, 50s and 60s, as a nation, our transportation abilities increased faster than our information transfer technologies did. This called for gathering people into large spaces (corporate headquarters) to facilitate information transfer, thus making business run more efficiently. The idea was that it was easier to move the people than the info, so let's do that!

The churches decided that they needed to understand and borrow this idea in order to make church more "efficient," whatever that might mean. They, too, began to gather people into large spaces, and the people, having been inured to traveling some distance and gathering with large groups to receive vital information, went along with the churches. This, of course, ignores the fact that the Christian life is about far more than "information," but hey, it was working, at least in the view of some churches.

Famous unbiblical doctrines arose to spur this growth in large, centrally located churches, doctrines like the famous "Three to Thrive." The idea here was that if churches could get people to come to a central location three times per week, Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening, they will be tied to a local church and the local church will "thrive" along with its people. Not to sound too Clintonesque, but the truth of that doctrine really does ride on the definition of "thrive," doesn't it? Who is the "thriving" supposed to benefit, the local church entity and its budget and ability to build edifices and programs, or the people in their relationship to God and one another?

So throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and into the 90s, megachurches seemed to thrive (there's that word again!) What has happened to change the minds of people in those churches? Why are some megachurches finding it harder and harder to attract younger generations? Why are many megachurches becoming cultural non-entities, unable or unwilling to penetrate the culture surrounding them with the Gospel? What are the attitudes that make even some smaller churches function like that grand oxymoron, "mini-megachurches?"

Stay tuned. More tomorrow. What do you think?

I'm baaaaack

Well, after going skiing (no injuries!) and getting a good case of the flu, I am still trying to figure out this whole blogging thing. The news remains the news on a daily basis, and with our 24 hour news cycle, which I think is deteriorating into a 1 hour cycle, I increasingly believe that my 13 year-old daughter is right when she says, "Dad, it's just the SAME THING over and over again."

I recently read a book which helped me thoroughly escape our post-post-modern culture, and made me wonder/realize what we are missing as Christians. The book was by George MacDonald and is entitled "Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood." MacDonald was a 19th century pastor and author, mostly author, with incredible insight into the human condition. The "quiet neighborhood" of which he wrote was a small, out of the way, English parish where the lead character was the vicar. The insights shown in loving and pastoring sometimes difficult people were amazing to me, particularly when one considers that MacDonald was still a young man when he wrote the book. The book was written when "parish" was the way in which Christians instinctively understood daily living. That presupposition alone was enough to set this book apart as a treasure when read by someone in today's church.

What happened to parishes? What happened to the idea that people don't just "go to church" together, but they live life together? "Going to church" is just a phrase that shows the deep misunderstanding that most people have about what the church is, in any case.

What has happened to the church? Why did megachurches come into existence and why are they no longer effective, if they ever were, at doing what they set out to do?

Now that I am asking questions, what makes a church a "megachurch?" Is it size alone, or is it a set of attitudes? I think it is the latter, meaning that we could have a series of very small "megachurches" out there, leaving us with an oxymoron much like "jumbo shrimp," only in reverse. What do you think?

Finally, back to parishes...don't we need them back, or at least the attitudes and understandings they were/are based upon? Don't we need to get back to living our lives in covenantal community, and not just "going to church" (ugh!) together? And what does it mean to live in "covenantal community?"

More tomorrow on how this happened and what to do about it.

"our descendants after us for the generations to come"

I don't want to always be too serious here, but I have a question rattling around in my head that I would love to hear from some folks on. For those of you who know me, you know two things...first, I don't like to be serious too much of the time, and second, when a question gets in my head it doesn't take long to get it out in the open.

So here's the question...How much time do we as pastors, or Christians in general, spend in building the church for the next generation? How many of us have a vision of the church for our grandchildren and the grandchildren of our friends and fellow parishioners and work steadily toward that vision?

Several years ago I pastored a church that had a large segment of senior citizens. They were a great group, but some of them really wanted to hang on to "their" church rather than "give in" to this generation. Looking back on it, I worked hard to build the church for THIS generation with little or no consideration for the next couple of generations. No setting up standards for making certain that the ministry of the Gospel continued to penetrate the culture whatever might come. No willingness to embrace new paradigms to prepare for the future. No asking of the simple question, "Will our children even want to go to church here?" I know that we educate our children and teach them Scripture, etc. But do we build the church for them and their descendants by any means other than giving them the chance to build a church for their generation when they get to our place?

Am I the only guy out there thinking about this? I doubt it, because I just am not that smart. Let me know what you think or what experiences you have had with churches who have set this task before themselves in commendable ways.