Think about this quote

“The point is.. all the effort to fix the church misses the point. You can build the perfect church–and they still won’t come. People are not looking for a great church… The age in which institutional religion holds appeal is passing away.

“Church leaders seem unable to grasp this simple implication of the new world–people outside the church think church is for church people, not for them.” Reggie McNeal

He goes on:

“The church was created to be the people of God to join him in his redemptive mission in the world. The church was never intended to exist for itself. It was and is the chosen instrument of God to expand his kingdom. The church is the bride of Christ. Its union with him is designed for reproduction, the growth of the kingdom. Jesus did not teach his disciples to pray, “Thy church come.” The kingdom is the destination. In its institutional existence the church abandoned its real identity and reason for existence.

“God did not give up on his mission in the Old Testament when Israel refused to partner with him. God is a reckless lover. He decided to go on with the mission himself. We do not need to be mistaken about this: if the church refuses its missional assignment, God will do it another way. The church has [refused], and he is [moving on]. God is pulling end runs around the institutional North American church to get to people in the streets. God is still inviting us to join him on mission, but it is the invitation to be part of a movement, not a religious club.”

Sometimes I wonder about why I see the church's future to be not in bigger buildings but in bigger people - people who see success as followers of Jesus not in the "position" they hold in the organization, but in the influence their life has on their family, their workplace, their neighborhood.

Why can't I be satisfied with where I am? With where we are?

Because I know in my gut that time is running out - not just for the organizations we call our churches, but for the opportunity to redeem the time we've been given in this life for the advancement of the Kingdom of God.

Because lost people matter to God.

It's AD 30 All Over Again

Reggie McNeal is one of those rare folks who came from the typical SBC background and is able to step out and look around and see where God is working. His book "The Present Future" is a required read. This talk should be.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus

My brother Reggie McNeal's incendiary book "Present Future" is on its fourth reading here this week. The copy I have here at home is dog-eared and full of notes and tabs I put there to be able to find certain quotes. It looks a little weird, frankly. Fits its owner I guess.

In our men's group last Sunday, we were going through the week's readings in My Utmost For His Highest and somehow got into a short discussion of the book of Acts and specifically the early church's growth. One of the men, John Anderson was making the point that the early church had nothing we have today - no buildings, no programs, not even a Bible to tote around.

What they had, was Jesus. And that's what they shared.

Reggie writes (pg 82) "Evangelism that will introduce Jesus to this culture will flow from people who are deeply in love with Jesus."

We've tried to sell everything we could think of to get people to come to church - great music, great children's and youth programs, excellent Biblical teaching, even relaxed styles of dress and coffee and donuts.

When the only thing that will satisfy man's deepest need isn't church at all.

It is Jesus.

What if...

It's Monday - All Day

I wanted to make the disclaimer right up front, since I'm here on my day off with a Rockbridge assignment due, a sinus infection picking up steam, having slept way too late and finding myself in a just plain cranky mood. I did think that our assignment was worth posting in hopes that it might spur discussion and someone out there to go deeper.

We were asked in the assignment to:

Write a critique of Part 1 in They Like Jesus But Not the Church matching your personal and church experience to what is presented by Dan Kimball in 2-3 paragraphs.

“They Like Jesus But Not the Church” Critique
Dan Kimball was perhaps the first to achieve broad distribution beyond the blogs and narrowly focused magazines of the idea that something was amiss with the way that emerging generations perceived the church as it exists today. The work of Tony Jones, Brian McClaren and others had been out before Kimball’s book, but their observations could be dismissed easier because of their fringe liberal status. Kimball writes in a way that helps people coming in from a traditional heritage or present position SEE.

Kimball’s book is like a mirror held up in front of the church today, and instead of the church making comments like “yeah, we are looking pretty good”, Kimball has people from the emerging generations come up and explain what we really look like. We’ve lost the path, and what’s worse, instead of going back and regaining our way, we’re pressing forward and yelling back at those who aren’t coming with us. A must read for anyone serious about reaching those outside.

Then there's Reggie McNeal's work.

Reggie McNeal wrote, “Church activity is a poor substitute for genuine spirituality.” (p. 7, The Present Future). Interact with McNeal’s assertion based on your personal and church experience in 2-3 paragraphs.

Reggie McNeal Interaction: Part One
When I first read the book, coming from a Southern redneck background though tempered with years of both formal education and personal growth, I wanted to run out and shout “heck yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.” The niggling little feelings about what we were doing at church I had possessed since before I was called as a pastor had, 7 years later into my first full-time ministry, begun shouting at me “IT”S NOT WORKING!!! THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT BEING TRANSFORMED!!”

We were doing everything we knew to do as church leadership, and kept adding things thinking that if we just provided one more inlet for people to learn, everything would change. I’ll confess that when 40 Days of Purpose came along, I really say that as a hopeful beginning to the sea change I desperately wanted to have occur. But it didn’t. We are doing too much at church. We are doing too much as staff for people. We are not expecting people to progress and start making disciples of their own. We need to teach people to live a cross-centered life and set them free to do it, not yoke them to another program. So yeah, Reggie spoke to me.

In “New Reality Number Two,” McNeal says the wrong question is “How do we get them to come to us?” and the right question is “How do we hit the streets with the gospel?” What question is your church trying to answer if measured by the programming promoted today? Explain in 2-3 paragraphs.

Reggie McNeal Interaction: Part Two
When McNeal asks questions, look out. You will not like the answer. Most of the time because the one you come up with is so completely wrong you feel foolish. When I read it, I bought copies for all the leadership. We have worked to find additional ways to bring the gospel to where people are, instead of always trying to attract them to where we are. (That was our only strategy at that point in time.)

So we have a sno-cone team that goes down to the local park and gives away sno-cones once a month. They also are in demand at other local events such as the Relay for Life that the American Cancer Society holds. We’re taking worship down to the park this summer with a bluegrass band and our praise band. We created off-site affinity groups (they were doing great, but they are proving very difficult to sustain). We have a group of people volunteering at the local elementary school, and that opened the door to our participating with them in the upcoming Relay For Life in Niceville. We’re not there yet, but we’re working on it.

I've had some people ask me why I'm still so hard after learning more - even after years in the ministry. It's because I still need to learn. We have to get better at living out our faith and sharing it with people who do not know Jesus. Sure, I'd love to write for a living, would love to teach other seminarians someday online. But I'll never stop wanting to be involved in the greatest work anyone can ever do.

Churchless Christians

In The Present Future, Reggie McNeal writes this about churchless Christians:

“A growing number of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost their faith. They are leaving the church to preserve their faith. They contend that the church no longer contributes to their spiritual development. In fact, they say, quite the opposite is true.”

Based on experience, I have no doubt that there are people who once were in church who are not now. And I suppose in some cases, they could be Christians seeking to leave toxic situations that could damage their faith.

But what I have seen more often than not hasn't been that at all.

They left to preserve their preferences, to protest the direction the church was going (or any changes that might be made), and rather than immediately find a place of service and worship, decide to sit on the sidelines and sour.

A friend told me he heard Ed Stetzer say recently that "each church must make a decision - either for their traditions or for the children." He added that Stetzer said most would chose tradition.

As the number of churches, even First Baptist churches - change, those places where tradition is as Faulkner famously remarked "the past isn't dead, it isn't even past" holds true dwindles, where will these people go? They won't. They'll stay home, watch Joel Osteen and enjoy their best life now. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)

Didn't Jesus say something about being connected to the vine?