We have spent a great week with family at the cottage on Georgian Bay, and I have almost finished Leadership Next, by Eddie Gibbs. I have completely enjoyed this book filled with new ideas about what the church and leadership within the church will look like in the years to come. Professor Gibbs has devoted much of his academic work at Fuller Seminary to these ideas, and so, I am learning from an expert.
Bottom line of what I have been reading: this is not your father’s church. Its not even my church. A church oriented to the missional call of Christ in the coming years is not going to necessarily look like what I expect, what I think it should, or what I feel comfortable with. It is going to be highly relational, not authoritative, not focused around a single personality. The future church is going to be, if anything, a team. A team focused on a common call and purpose, a vision to reach out, not to insulate within.
Can we pull this off at our church? Can we change traditions that have been many years in the making? Can we find a new direction and work together as a team? Can we?
Although the challenges are great, and the traditions of our old church are quite staid and ingrained, I have never felt more hopeful. The events of the past year have quite literally, broken us. We have few pretenses anymore. We are no longer the “big church on the corner” with the years of tradition, and the shiny images to protect.
We can start over. We can clear the decks and ask God to begin in us something new. Something new, and fresh, inviting, embracing, and empowering to those who visit. And for us older folk, who have been around a while, and think we know it all, it might well be something scary.
To that I say, please Lord, scare me.
File under: Church Thoughts
3 comments:
It is so difficult to make new roads and new pathways through an existing culture that has never truly viewed church as anything other than what they have experienced for the past umpteen years... Even when a church is losing members, money and momentum, there are those who dig their feet into the ground, cross their arms and say, "I DARE you to move ahead with your 'little' plan..." In fact, some might even withhold giving altogether - or make sure they carfully ear-mark their offerings to ensure that their hard earned money doesn't go anywhere other than THEY have smugly and selfishly decided for it to go.
This is called idolotry. And God does not look fondly upon it.
My prayer is NOT for "your big church on the corner" to move out boldy - but, rather - to move out boldly and then radically transform the world around you in ways you never thought possible... I pray that one year from now - the very culture and make-up of your church is so radically different that the only memory of the past is the sign on the exterior of the buildnig - which may ALSO need to be changed in time...
And, finally, I pray that the Lord brings so many people that you are forced to find ways to minister to all of them that will completely stretch the edges of your collective envelopes!
Thanks Dan, and bring it on!
Steve:
Hadn't heard from you in quite some time and just got onto your blog. It's off-topic for this post but I am so sorry to hear about your mother. Please call me when you get back into town -- I'm buying the margaritas.
Steve Kamm
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