Tuesday, October 14, 2003
What's on my mind?
This is actually an email sent to a good friend.......
Had COC Sunstate convention on Thurs-Sunday.
It was huge - services every night, LADS concert with 700 (?) youth Sat, combined Churches on Sunday morning - springwood closed down for it - good stuff all up
Main sessions were by Bob Logan and the seminar I went to was by Neil Cole
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the content was mind-blowing. Seriously. I am now offiically profoundly disturbed. I am experienceing high levels of cognitive dissonance - an existential crisis perhaps. My brain keeps crying out for me to ignore everything that I heard and go back to my nice pleasant world. As I'm thinking now my heart is heavy and I think sometimes I'm close to crying.
Neil Cole's main analagy is that the Church is meant to be organic, like a crop. He keeps coming back to the Mark 4 parables, of the four soils, of the seed growing by itself and the mustard seed. If those parables are true, God's kingdom (ie the Church) should grow rapidly. Yet it doesn't! there are a few Churches here and there that do great jobs, but the norm seems to be bunches of Christians gathering without real fruit occurring. There are a few people doing the vast majority of the work, and a vast majority along for the ride. As Christians get older, rather than them becoming more like Christ instead we see them becoming more cynical, critical and judgemental. If the Church is a disciple-making factory its quality control processes are pretty dodgy!
Cole would suggest a few things. Raise the bar of what it means to be a disicple of Christ. Lower ther bar of what it means to start a Church. Have Churches that are small and are based on the DNA of Divine Truth, Nurturing Relationships and Apostolic Mission. These Churches will intentionally reach out relationally to the unsaved and continually begin new Churches that themselves will have the same DNA that will reproduce itself. All these Churches would be self-propogating and self-perpetuating.
In practice this has happened, and the Churches have naturally spread all around the world without coordination or planning. The parables paint Church growth as normal and huge, and the stories Neil told show that it can happen!
I keep on trying to turn these ideas and appropriate them into the existing, institutional Church. Yet I wonder if that is a battle worth fighting. A key point Neil made was that there is good soil and bad soil. Good soil is made up of people who are poor (James 2:5), those who are bad (Luke 5:32), and the uneducated nobodies (1 Cor 1:27-29). Bad soil is those who think they are good, well off and intelligent etc. What sort of soil do institutional Churches seem to be?
There are so many other problems with institutional Churches, many of which have floated around my mind previously. They are incredibly dependant on the Senior Pastor. A scandal here, an accident there and you're in big trouble. The cost of buildings also seems such a waste of resources. Do we really need half a million or more to get a building for every new Church? The existence of ministry staff seems to somehow make people think that they are responsible for all teaching, pastoral care, evangelism, discipleship etc. I really wonder whether any Church with paid staff can ever truly realise the priesthood of all believers? Are the standard Church concepts of centralised authority, lecture style sermons, fake community and programmed worship true enough to the Scriptures or even acceptable to today's postmodern minds?
Obviously I've only given you a tiny fraction of what we explored over the seminars - I suspect I've missed key elements that make it - well make sense. I don't think I've said much about Neil's approach to evangelism, leadership, Church, discipleship etc - but I guess all that's detail - and I'll prob talk more about that to you later.
Where I fit into all that - who knows? Where Churches fit into that-wo knows? And that's why I'm unsettled. I guess the next step is prayer and lots of it.
Ok - I think that's the rant over for now.
Talk to you later,
This is actually an email sent to a good friend.......
Had COC Sunstate convention on Thurs-Sunday.
It was huge - services every night, LADS concert with 700 (?) youth Sat, combined Churches on Sunday morning - springwood closed down for it - good stuff all up
Main sessions were by Bob Logan and the seminar I went to was by Neil Cole
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the content was mind-blowing. Seriously. I am now offiically profoundly disturbed. I am experienceing high levels of cognitive dissonance - an existential crisis perhaps. My brain keeps crying out for me to ignore everything that I heard and go back to my nice pleasant world. As I'm thinking now my heart is heavy and I think sometimes I'm close to crying.
Neil Cole's main analagy is that the Church is meant to be organic, like a crop. He keeps coming back to the Mark 4 parables, of the four soils, of the seed growing by itself and the mustard seed. If those parables are true, God's kingdom (ie the Church) should grow rapidly. Yet it doesn't! there are a few Churches here and there that do great jobs, but the norm seems to be bunches of Christians gathering without real fruit occurring. There are a few people doing the vast majority of the work, and a vast majority along for the ride. As Christians get older, rather than them becoming more like Christ instead we see them becoming more cynical, critical and judgemental. If the Church is a disciple-making factory its quality control processes are pretty dodgy!
Cole would suggest a few things. Raise the bar of what it means to be a disicple of Christ. Lower ther bar of what it means to start a Church. Have Churches that are small and are based on the DNA of Divine Truth, Nurturing Relationships and Apostolic Mission. These Churches will intentionally reach out relationally to the unsaved and continually begin new Churches that themselves will have the same DNA that will reproduce itself. All these Churches would be self-propogating and self-perpetuating.
In practice this has happened, and the Churches have naturally spread all around the world without coordination or planning. The parables paint Church growth as normal and huge, and the stories Neil told show that it can happen!
I keep on trying to turn these ideas and appropriate them into the existing, institutional Church. Yet I wonder if that is a battle worth fighting. A key point Neil made was that there is good soil and bad soil. Good soil is made up of people who are poor (James 2:5), those who are bad (Luke 5:32), and the uneducated nobodies (1 Cor 1:27-29). Bad soil is those who think they are good, well off and intelligent etc. What sort of soil do institutional Churches seem to be?
There are so many other problems with institutional Churches, many of which have floated around my mind previously. They are incredibly dependant on the Senior Pastor. A scandal here, an accident there and you're in big trouble. The cost of buildings also seems such a waste of resources. Do we really need half a million or more to get a building for every new Church? The existence of ministry staff seems to somehow make people think that they are responsible for all teaching, pastoral care, evangelism, discipleship etc. I really wonder whether any Church with paid staff can ever truly realise the priesthood of all believers? Are the standard Church concepts of centralised authority, lecture style sermons, fake community and programmed worship true enough to the Scriptures or even acceptable to today's postmodern minds?
Obviously I've only given you a tiny fraction of what we explored over the seminars - I suspect I've missed key elements that make it - well make sense. I don't think I've said much about Neil's approach to evangelism, leadership, Church, discipleship etc - but I guess all that's detail - and I'll prob talk more about that to you later.
Where I fit into all that - who knows? Where Churches fit into that-wo knows? And that's why I'm unsettled. I guess the next step is prayer and lots of it.
Ok - I think that's the rant over for now.
Talk to you later,
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