Thought some of you might find this interesting!
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Postmodern Opportunities by Neil Cole
Postmodernism is like a bar of soap in dirty bath water, as soon as you think you have a good grasp it slips out of your hand and is lost in the murky water leaving you groping again blindly. continue reading » »
Hey everybody! This week is the beginning of school for Shelby County and Kingwood. When does everyone else start and how can we pray for your family? I think this is one of the most important times of the year because there are great opportunities for us to impact those around us! It’s also a new beginning in the middle of the year and that’s always a great time to “start over” on some things.
It’s also important because the busy-ness get ramped up a great deal–that means increased temptation and spiritual warfare. So, let’s be on the watch and make the most of every opportunity!
Let us know how we can pray for your family!
That is probably one of the most asked questions or most shock-induced comments I get from people who hear about organic or house church. It’s almost as if it doesn’t process right away! So I thought I’d write a little bit of my thoughts on the subject!
Obviously, for 500 years the sermon has been the central point of the protestant church. Every Sunday morning at the appointed time the pastor steps up to his pulpit and delivers an inspirational or informational speech. However, I agree with Frank Viola in Pagan Christianity when he writes, “The sermon actually detracts from the very purpose for which God designed the church gathering. And it has very little to do with genuine spiritual growth.”
At this point you would say “But preaching is in the Bible!” True, it is. However there is a world of difference between what you see in the pages of the New Testament and what happens every week in most churches in America. Today, it’s a regular occurrence, usually delivered by the same person each time to a passive audience and it is a cultivated form of a speech. Contrast that to the kind of preaching of the Bible–In the Old & New Testament we find preaching that includes active participation where the audience often interjected and interrupted! The pattern was sporadic and spontaneous–meaning it was usually delivered on special occasions in order to deal with specific issues. There was no structure and it followed no pattern.
So, where did the modern-day sermon come from? The earliest recorded Christian source for a regular sermon is found during the late second century when Celement of Alexandria complained that sermons did so little to change Christians! A little further study shows that Christians began borrowing from pagan Greek culture in the 2nd century the idea of a sermon! It evolved from the sophists, who were expert debaters. They would go from town to town and give the same or similar speech to wow the crowd with their intellect and smarts. They even wore special clothing to identify themselves! They were the most distinguished men of their time. Around the 3rd century, the last of the traveling Christian workers who spoke out of a prophetic burden began to die off. Barna and Viola write “To fill their absence, the clergy began to emerge. Open meeting began to die out, and church gatherings became more and more liturgical. The church meeting was developing into a service.”
As this was happening, pagan philosophers and followers were becoming Christians and instead of the pagan practice of the rhetorical debate dying out, the church adopted it!
So, why does it matter? Who cares where the idea came from if it works, right? Well, does it work? I would argue a BIG NO! Why? First, the sermon makes the preacher a professional performer of a gathering. This means that the congregation becomes passive spectators who are watching the performance. Pagan Christianity says “The sermon freezes and imprisons the functioning of the body of Christ.”
This leads to what I believe is slowed or retarded spiritual growth. Ever wonder why we have so many churches full of spiritually immature folks? As Christians we have to be active to mature. If we get used to sitting and listening week after week, it fosters a “do-nothing” mentality. We can’t grow that way!
Another issue is the equipping of the saints that Paul speaks of. Rather than equipping believers the sermon has little power to do anything else but inform and inspire. However, many believers have become addicted to the sermons they hear each week.
I believe pastors have great intentions and continue to do what they do because “it’s always been done that way.” I mean, who is going to teach them differently? It’s what we always have known, right? Still, I pray that God would begin to move churches and wake them up to this issue!
Thought you might like to read a brief article by Neil Cole.
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I was recently asked by a Christian Magazine why Organic Church has an advantage to more conventional church expressions in reaching lost people. Here is my answer.
When we teach about organic church (OC), it is not the kind of church (organic, seeker sensitive, purpose-driven…whatever) that is attractive to lost people, it is Christ, and Christ alone. When we make it about church–what kind of church, what is done at church, how is it done, who is the preacher/singer–we miss the point. Unless we realize that it is Christ in us that makes church anything better than the Kiwanis club we miss the plot. Lost people are not spending their hours trying to figure out how to get to church, or what kind of church they would like. The typical lost person sees only two things that church is good for: marrying and burying, and most are trying to avoid both.
But lost people are curious about Christ (As the Passion of the Christ demonstrated). It is not accidental that the two books that have sold the most recently are both about Jesus Christ–The Purpose-Driven Life and The DaVinci Code. Jesus is on people’s minds and in their curiosity. They want to be a part of something that is significant. And, they want to be a part of a close knit family that cares for one another. I believe that our expression of church provides a better opportunity for people to experience those things. Being another spectator on Sunday morning is not enough for most people who have not yet found Christ.
Coming into a living room with a close knit spiritual family where everyone is involved, each praying and singing and sharing their inner lives, is quite amazing for someone who has not learned to trust yet. Then sensing the power of Christ working in and through those people can break any heart. The love we have one for another is a powerful ingredient in evangelism, but sitting in an auditorium listening to a preacher talk about it is not as powerful as being able to actually witness it and experience it first hand. A neighbor nudge for two minutes on Sunday morning is not enough to display God’s power in us.
I have seen toughened street gangsters, weep in the presence of Christ among His people and just pour out confession because of the conviction of Christ. I have seen Palestinian Muslims surrender everything to Christ in the midst of a spiritual family. I have witnessed tough gang assassins surrender to Christ in prayer. Just last week, four fraternity students gave their life to Christ in a meeting at the frat house in front of their peers. Christ in us is powerful, it is the hope of glory. Simply being another anonymous person in a pew is not so powerful, no matter how expressive the music or moving the sermon is.
Of course, another edge that OC has in reaching out is that it is able to go where lost people live life. Rather than being merely another attractional church waiting for lost people to come to it, OC brings Christ to where people are. Church should happen wherever life happens, you shouldn’t have to leave life to go to church. That means His church is truly “holy and apostolic” in the fullest meaning of the word…sent by God to the world on a mission.
For me, however, the greatest advantage of OC is that regular Christians are empowered to do the work of the kingdom and are not waiting for the professionals to do it for them. To unleash an army of ordinary Christians empowered with Christ on a sleeping world is my hope and dream. OC can do that. Now, all of us are priests and everything is sacred. To the pure all things are pure. A job at Hewlett-Packard is a holy calling into ministry. All of us are called to ministry. All are ordained. The workplace becomes a sacred calling for the ordinary believer to bring the kingdom of God into a dark place.
Christian leaders are no longer to do the work of the ministry, but to equip the Christians to do the work. Evangelists are not called merely to evangelize, but to equip the saints to do evangelism. Teachers are not only called to teach, but to equip ordinary Christians to learn how to fulfill the great commission and “teach them to observe all that (Christ has) commanded (us).” This is a revolution that will turn church as we know it upside down, and in the process all the passive Christians will be poured out into the world like salt out of a salt shaker. Wow, now that will change the world!
–Neil Cole
Hey everyone! I wanted to post a blog from a guy named Traver Dougherty, who is part of Church Multiplication Associates. CMA is a big influence on the organic church movement and things like Life Transformation Groups that we do. Very interesting! Please feel free to comment.
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Recently I attended the Sunday service of a church looking to be “missional.” Knowing my research interests, a key staff person spoke with me about a whip-bang event they’re planning, complete with free food and bounce houses for the kids. “We’re trying to reach out to the neighborhood,” she told me.
Although I didn’t mean to, I think my heart went numb. My simple question is this one: When will we come to understand that “missional” isn’t the next event, but the next breath, all that we are, used of God, led by the Spirit to usher in the Kingdom to any and all “dark” places? “You [not free food or bounce houses] are the light of the world” [Mt 5:14]. I tell you the truth, as long as we think in terms of events we’re sunk in the water.Does this mean bounce houses and hot dogs are off limits? Absolutely not. For example, my friend Scott Wilson makes use of his Big Red Bus appropriately; that is, he doesn’t see “Big Red” as a tool, but as a blessing. There’s a difference. Scott puts it this way, “We want to love people whether they ever love our God or not.” When we use tools, we manipulate. When we bless, we’re a blessing.In the end, motives will always find us out. And too often, when we “do” events, we’re looking for a “return,” thereby “objectifying” people. Instead, let’s be faithful to embody the gospel, sow the Word (often by sharing verbally), let God bring a harvest, and reap when the time is right.When it comes to missional, think nets, not hooks. Jesus said, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of people” (Mt 4:19). Notice the imagery. Hooks are baited, attractional. Nets of relationships, however, are all-encompassing and those in the process of being “caught” are swept away in a torrent of love.
Now, with Jesus at the helm, let’s go throw our nets on the other side of the boat.
Blessings,
Traver Dougherty
Church Multiplication Associates
(Traver wrote this in his regular “Helpful Tid Bits for Organic Church Life” on June 23, 2008. You can sign up for the e-newsletter here)
Ok..so I just got back from vacation and I was doing some deep thinking. Just how wasteful is the American church? Well, it’s impossible to tell, but I did a little figuring. Now my figures are very conservative and I’m sure I could have come up with much bigger numbers…but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t over stating my case.
It is estimated that there are well over 335,000 protestant churches in America. Those are bricks and mortar churches. Not counting the house churches and organic church like ours. So, let’s say there are 300,000 total Christian churches. If the annual cost of construction, maintenance, and general repairs on the building were $100,000 per church, that would mean we are spending $30 billion dollars on buildings. Now, it won’t be that much at some churches, and it will be much more at others. But then, let’s add the average salary of a pastor. Rather than take into consideration the really big churches, I just took the average salary of a small-church pastor, which Gallup says is around $35,000. With 300,000 churches that comes to $10.5 billion per year! Combining both the building costs and the salaries, the American church as a whole spends $40.5 billion per year. Now, let’s say that I really did overstate these figures. Let’s cut that number in half. Let’s say it’s only $20 billion per year. Remember, that’s just building and one pastor’s salary! What would that kind of money do?
It would pay for:
60,000 wells built in central
130,000 water tanks constructed in middle east
48 million children fed for 1 day or 133,000 children fed for an entire year in many third-world countries
164,000 sheep in a third-world country
80 million malaria treatment plants in
OR
go a LONG way to help alleviate poverty for 36 million Americans living below the poverty line!
Not to rant, but that’s a lot of good we could be doing! I know I’m preaching to the choir, but sometimes it’s good to see in black and white a confirmation of what we are doing! I’m so glad that we are committed to using our resources for REAL ministry at Perimeter Pointe!
The next scheduled corporate worship gathering will be Sunday night, June 29th at 6 PM. We’re going outside for this one!! We’ll gather under a pavilion at Veteran’s Park in Alabaster! This should be a fun and unique worship experience!
We are rescheduling our corporate worship gathering. Stay tuned for more details!
We enjoyed a wonderful corporate worship celebration including our home churches this past Sunday night! It was great to hear testimonies from several people about how God is using home church, community groups, and life transformation groups to change lives! We also enjoyed a great worship time with Brad leading us once again! We’re looking forward to next month’s gathering as well!
Join us tonight, April 27th a 6PM for our first corporate worship celebration! Our house churches will gather together to celebrate what God is doing in our families and in our community! We’ll meet at Safe Harbor Church in Pelham! For directions, click here.
