Does the Church add up?

The fol­low­ing email was sent to Tim Steven’s Exec­u­tive Pas­tor at Granger Church and posted on his blog                           ( http://​www​.lead​ings​mart​.com/​2​0​1​0​/​0​5​/​s​o​m​e​t​h​i​n​g​-​j​u​s​t​-​d​o​e​s​n​t​-​a​d​d​-​u​p​.​h​tml ).  Jack’s thoughts really res­onate with me because I agree, and I am a Pas­tor… The one poten­tially prop­a­gat­ing the prob­lem.  The ques­tion is do the meth­ods of the Church work today.  This res­onated to me so I want to throw it out there for you all with some thoughts.

“I left a com­ment but also wanted to email you. My name is (Jack) and my wife and I are cur­rently attend­ing a mega church in Phoenix. Hav­ing said all that I just wanted to say that I have been bur­dened by the thought of some­thing just not adding up with the “come to us” strat­egy in today’s church cul­ture. I haven’t been able to get it off my mind lately. I feel like some­thing is wrong. Not that the Church isn’t doing good in the world, but that we aren’t liv­ing up to the capa­bil­i­ties God has equipped us with. I feel like my heart is to reach a crowd of peo­ple that the church has seem­ingly avoided due to it’s “come to me” atti­tude. I am really look­ing for­ward to see­ing what you post in the days to come about this sit­u­a­tion. It has been on the fore­front of my mind and heart non-​​stop lately. Do you think that we have totally strayed from what the Church’s strat­egy was intended to be? Do you feel like my gen­er­a­tion (I’m 20) will be the one to fix these issues?  I know my heart is to be a part of a local church but to do min­istry in what seems to be an uncon­ven­tional, mis­sional AND attrac­tional way.  Maybe in the near future what is on my heart won’t be too uncon­ven­tional after all.”

Now that you have read Jack’s elo­quent thoughts and spir­i­tual dis­con­tent with the com­mon solu­tion I want to add my own sense of uneasi­ness with where the Church is at today.  Tim to his credit despite defend­ing, and rightly so, his Church’s, and mine for that mat­ter, cur­rent method­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy; notes that we maybe are only effec­tive at reach­ing 40% of our com­mu­nity and shrink­ing.  I would argue our effec­tive­ness is less, as in like 20%.

One thing that Tim states that I find inter­est­ing is that we go to the mall, to a con­cert, to a sports venue ergo we go to Church to be spir­i­tual or to get our Church expe­ri­ence.  I would argue that even though we go to places to get things the Church is dif­fer­ent because it is who we are as fol­low­ers of Christ.  We have done our­selves a dis­ser­vice over hun­dreds if not the bet­ter part of a thou­sand years by mak­ing the Church a des­ti­na­tion and not a real­ity.  And now our cul­ture is look­ing for the real­ity of Jesus not the destination.

The chal­lenge for the Church mov­ing into the future is how do we live this out, speak this lan­guage in an authen­tic and rel­e­vant way.  I believe it will mean we rede­fine what we call suc­cess, we rede­fine what we con­sider works which is hard because it feels like it flies in the face of every­thing we know and has yet to be cre­ated.  But this is the place where the next inno­va­tion and cre­ation of God’s work in a new mil­le­nium will happen.

I can­not claim to have an answer but read­ily feel the heart of Jack…  A heart that cries out there must be more than this… Some­thing more mean­ing­ful… Some­thing where the true capac­ity of the gospel is unleashed and we can claim and praise God that Jesus’ words were true in that we have seen even greater things than those that fol­lowed Him on earth.  That we with all hon­esty can say to a man, woman, and child we have seen the move­ment of the Holy Spirit in a pow­er­ful and pro­found way that only God could have initiated.

Our world, our cul­ture.  Is look­ing for real, look­ing for tran­scen­dent, look­ing for mean­ing­ful, life chang­ing, and pur­pose­ful.  We are search­ing every­where for it… But will only ever find it in God.  I want to know that, I want my Church to know that, I want Cen­tral Chester County to know that.  I pray for that day, and pray that God would lead us toward our ver­sion of the answer which I believe won’t be so much of an answer but more of a jour­ney that molds and shapes itself over time as we exegete our cul­ture and God’s word firmly plant­ing our­selves in the gospel.