Church Growth: An Informational or Discipleship Problem?

Most churches desire to impact people with the Gospel. For many churches, there is a recognition that people in their community do not know about their church and the great experience they can have at their church. Questions arise, how do we let them know about us? How do we best move our congregation to action to address this question?

This perspective assumes that people have an informational problem about their church. They don’t have the information. The assumption is that if the information was provided in a warm and welcoming format people would show up.

Thomas Rainer, in his book The Unchurched Next Door, states that many unchurched people who come to church will come if brought by a current attendee of the church. “As I have also indicated, inviting them and taking them into the church building is very important.” (Rainer, 246) Even the most resistant groups toward churches that Rainer studied would be open to a personal invitation to church (Rainer, 240). But current attendees are not inviting and the answer many churches arrive at is a professional presentation (advertising blitz) of our church will help them to get over the fear of inviting.

I wonder if in God’s great wisdom the best thing for churches is that the advertising campaigns are not successful. Why would I say such a thing? First if the tools worked, as we dream and pray they would, the churches would be unprepared for the influx of needs, questions, and growth opportunities that this mass of people would bring. They would simply overwhelm the systems of many churches.

Second, they would enjoy a great service but would they be able to engage in a helpful and meaningful way through the rest of the churches’ growth processes? The discipleship systems many churches have in place are not exceptional at producing disciples who actively engage others.

This goes back to the initial problem. People are not active and engaged enough in the community to provide the large scale introduction to their church. Again the problem is that churches’ internal systems are not actively producing, on a large scale, disciples who are impacting their world in a way that causes others to come and see why they are the way they are. It is not an informational problem, it is a discipleship problem.

Why Words Fail Us

The complaint was the answer. To have heard myself make it was to be answered. Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, "Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or nothing less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole are and joy of words." A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods to not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis

The reworking of the classical myth of Cupid and Pshche

Attractional Ministry

I would argue that this ‘attractional mission’, while effective for a few, is actually a case of putting the cart before the horse. Deciding on a form of church and then trying to make it so that people want to come is mission in reverse.

From Backyardmissionary.com's article on "incarnational" and "attractional" models of ministry.

Worship Matters

A people's lives are only as good as their worship. The temple in Jerusalem was the architectural evidence of the importance of God in the life of the people. All the lines of life crisscrossed in the temple. Meaning was established there. Values were created there. Worship defines life. If worship is corrupt, life will be corrupt. For fifty-five years lust and violence in the temple had percolated into the streets and homes and villages of the nation. Josiah began by cleaning up the temple.

Run with the Horses by Eugene H. Peterson

The Unknown Parts of God

Yesterday as I was driving around town I was pondering the statement, “God wants to be known.” I deeply believe that God does not hide. While He is mysterious, He desires us to know and experience Him through relationship. Jesus’ prayer with the disciples before His crucifixion recorded in John 17 talks about the knowledge of God that comes through relationship.

While I believe in God’s desire to be known, I have an issue with the unknown parts of God’s character. There are things that He has not answered about the way He works and about His character. My assumption that He wants to be known creates a tension with what He has not revealed through His word, His creation, and His community.

I have a couple of options on how to handle this situation. The first is to state that what He has not revealed to us is not important to knowing Him. The questions we have about Him in these areas are not important to understanding Him. The second option is to state that what He has not revealed is not comprehensible to us now either because of sinfulness or how we are created. This means that the boundaries of our humanness will always limit our knowledge of Him.

This forced me back to an assumption in my understanding of God’s desire to be known, does relationship mean a journey to complete knowledge?

The Power of the Blog

Great comments from Seth Godin on the power of blogging.

We Want a Happy Ending

Jeremiah ends inconclusively. We want to know the end, but there is no end. The last scene of Jeremiah's life shows him, as he had spent so much of his life, preaching God's word to a contemptuous people (Jer 44). We want to know that he was finally successful so that, if we live well and courageously, we also will be successful. Or we want to know that he was finally unsuccessful so that , since a life of faith and integrity doesn't pay off, we can get on with finding another means by which to live. We get neither in Jeremiah...In Egypt, he continues determinedly faithful, magnificently courageous, heartlessly rejected-a towering life terrifically lived.

Run with the Horses by Eugene Peterson

His Model Death

His kingdom society will be shaped not by power-mongering but by self-sacrificing service for one another. In fact, he reveals, his own life will be an absolutely perfect sacrifice and memorable example: He will give his own life as a ransom and as a martyr for them. He will die in order to take their death upon himself, and he will, at the same time, provide a model of how to live - by giving your life for others.

One.Life by Scot McKnight

Can a country holding individualism to be its strongest value survive?

It ultimately relates to the fundamental unit in human society, which is the family. Individualism is an expression of the selfish ego, a reflection of the radically autonomous person that leaves no room for the family and the corresponding virtues of society. My coauthor and I disagree with the conclusion that self-interest has been the deciding force in human affairs. Rather, we believe that altruism and the willingness to create a family have been the deciding force. The family provides citizens with a commitment to the future. The society that celebrates the individual over the family is a society in decay; it is overwhelmed by aggressive selfishness.

Quote found in Family Matters: An Interview with Allan Carlson, President of the Howard Center by Bernard Chapin from Salvo On-Line.

 

Can a country country holding individualism to be its strongest value survive?

It ultimately relates to the fundamental unit in human society, which is the family. Individualism is an expression of the selfish ego, a reflection of the radically autonomous person that leaves no room for the family and the corresponding virtues of society. My coauthor and I disagree with the conclusion that self-interest has been the deciding force in human affairs. Rather, we believe that altruism and the willingness to create a family have been the deciding force. The family provides citizens with a commitment to the future. The society that celebrates the individual over the family is a society in decay; it is overwhelmed by aggressive selfishness.

Quote found in Family Matters: An Interview with Allan Carlson, President of the Howard Center by Bernard Chapin from Salvo On-Line.

High School and Beyond

I get to lead the graduating seniors during their Bible Fellowship Group time this Sunday. We are going to look at the topic of Discovering God's Will. I think I may use this quote:

Also imagine a world, Jesus tells us, where there are ultimate consequences for what we do. Imagine a world where the reality hits home that some folks ruin their potential by ignoring the kingdom vision of Jesus. They get all exited about the dream vision of Jesus when they are in high school but fail to do anything about it in college and beyond, because they think it is too demanding. Or maybe they fool themselves in to chasing sex and drugs and drunkenness and money and fame and possessions and power, but fail to see that the Desire Dream and Dollars Dream fade fast. And they don't even care.

Jesus wants his listeners to imagine a world where the one who wins at the end is the one who lets the kingdom seed take deep root and lets the Kingdom.Life shape all of life.

One.Life by Scot McKnight

Why the End Matters

Christian theological claims about providence and anthropology are devoid of any meaningful content in the absence of eschatology. If there is no given telos, as opposed to a projected goal or objective, then the temporal acts of ordering creation are literally pointless meanderings, because they lack any point of reference for determining a direction over time.There is no eventual destination beyond the horizon only infinitely more horizons. If there is no given end, then providence is a vacuous doctrine, for there is no created order that can be said to unfold over time, and human acts are reduced to creative self-assertions, because there are no temporal trajectories with which humans may align their desires and will. Without an operative destiny, we remain enslaved to an infinite regress of historical cultural construction and posthuman self-creation.

From Human to Posthuman by Brent Waters

The Perfect Family

The perfect family, if there is such a thing, is not an idealized nuclear unit of consumption, but an inclusive, warm, inviting environment where people can get a glimpse of true community, and therefore of heaven ...This is no family-first approach as we now conceive it. Rather, for disciples, it must be Jesus first and all things in relation to Him.

"Refocusing on the Family" by Alan and Debra Hirsch from neue magazine.