Why That “Different Kind of Church” Looks Like All The Rest

David Murrow has been blogging up a storm lately. We just used one of his pieces here last week, and I can’t reblog everything he writes; but on the other hand, I cant ignore his more recent post, Why I Am Not Too Excited About Church Planting.  His basic thesis:

Everyone’s planting the same church. I’ve visited half a dozen young church plants over the past two years. And they are virtually indistinguishable from one another. See if this lineup sounds familiar:

• Approximately 15 minutes of praise music, played by a rock band.
• A projector, sound system and stage lighting
• A separate nursery and children’s program concurrent with “big church”
• A 25 to 40 minute sermon delivered by a young, informally dressed man
• An offering, plus maybe a sacrament (communion, etc.)
• A closing song or two, also led by the rock band.
• Service length: between 70 and 90 minutes.

Well, he’s got that right. And don’t forget the 60-second video ‘title package’ which precedes the sermon…

So annually we have thousands of churches re-inventing the wheel. But years ago, the phrase “a different kind of church” was all the rage. How did all these different churches end up so much the same? 

He concludes this section by noting, “We haven’t had this much conformity in worship since the days of medieval Catholicism.”

It’s the new, high-tech liturgy. But all that tech for both the primary service and the alternative service for children involves gear and set-up. It is both capital intensive and labor intensive.  And it rises or falls on the ability of the pastor to resonate with everybody.  No pressure.  Murrow concludes:

If we’re planting 4,000 churches a year at $125,000 per congregation, that’s half a billion dollars per year going into church planting in America alone. Seventy percent of that money is going into churches that won’t exist in 24 months. Church plants will consume 40 million volunteer hours this year. Couldn’t these vast resources be more profitably employed for the Kingdom?

Yes, David, they could, and they should.

One thing that he notes here that I feel very strongly about is the existence of mortgage free church buildings that are hosting dwindling congregations. Michael Frost has been instrumental in spreading awareness of this situation, and his own church in Manly, Australia — a congregation known as Small Boat Big Sea — successfully integrated into a building that was underutilized.   Murrow writes:

Most church buildings are owned debt-free. Many of these churches sit empty 160 hours a week. And they’re half-empty on Sunday. Why don’t existing congregations allow new churches to meet in their paid-off buildings at alternate times? (We’re already seeing this as ethnic congregations are using existing churches for Sunday afternoon services.)

I encourage you to (a) take 3-4 minutes to re-read all this at David’s blog; (b) share this article with senior leadership at your church who don’t object to doing some critical thinking.  Here’s the link.

Image: Church Stage Design Ideas

Wednesday Link List

Regular readers will know this already, but I’ve never quite come out and said it: I find it somewhat snobbish when bloggers publish link lists where anything older than 2-3 days is considered obsolete. A true link sleuth will unearth some great material and won’t be concerned if the post is dated 30 days ago. If it was true then…

• Essay of the week: Church Planting in Montreal. A somewhat typical couple has been living together for ten years but has never gotten close to having any kind of spiritual discussion. And that’s just one challenge. The Quebecois version of Hybels’ “unchurched Harry” is quite different from “Harry” in the rest of North America. 
• Runner up: Remember that feeling when you were young and you came home from school only to find nobody home and you immediately thought everybody had been raptured?  Well, it happens to not-so-young college students, too.
  
• Okay, so that video about how to write a worship song wasn’t the first time Jordan at BlimeyCow waded into Christian music criticism. Or church camp. And different types of churches. 
• While everyone else on Sunday night was watching The Bible miniseries on History, one blogger was putting the final period on his review even as the credits rolled. I guess that way you get to say, “First!”  (The cable channel show beat all the big networks in the ratings.)
  
• If you know people whose Christian faith is characterized by what they are against, may I suggest you copy and paste this article and email it to them.
  
• For people who don’t know how to use a “table of contents” in a book, The Alpha Bible presents the Bible books in… well you know.
• Given the success of The Book of Mormon, a Broadway production by The Foursquare Church denomination on the life of Aimee Semple McPherson probably seemed like a good idea at the time. 
• The idea of gospel tracts probably seems somewhat archaic to most readers here, but the concision of these short presentations actual suits present attention spans. Now 31 Good News tracts are available on audio.  
• Matt Hafer comes out of church leadership hibernation with five ways for pastors to tell if people are truly on board.
• I know I often link you over to Christianity 201, but I really want you all, if nothing else, to catch this video.
  
• In some ways connected to a link we had here last week, a Christianity Today women’s blog suggests a little bit of Christianese is OK.
  
• As someone whose entire wardrobe was purchased at Goodwill and Salvation Army stores, this is scary: Pat Robertson allows the possibility that those shirts and sweaters could have demonic spirits attached. (That’s why Pat buys professionally tailored suits, I guess.)
• Once we know the name of the new Pope, the new Pope has to choose a name. Past Pope picks included these. (You remember Pope Urban, right?) 
• How is it possible that this great song by the Wheaton College Gospel Choir has had less than 2,500 views in two years?  If this don’t bring a smile to your face, your mouth is broken. Watch, copy the link and share.
• Jon Acuff finds himself in a prayer meeting with someone who gives a whole new meaning to the phrase too much information. 
• If you missed it January, Shaun Groves shares songwriting secrets for worship composers. But ultimately, “I think worship writers have parted with standard songwriting practices because they’re creating with the live experience in mind. So their priorities are much different from those of a traditional songwriter.”
  
• The people at Thomas Nelson flatly refused us a review copy of this, but I’ll be nice and tell you about it anyway. Jesus: A Theography is a new book by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola combining theology and biography with –[free review time expired]
• …Mind you, that was already better than this guy’s review. “After a while, I finally put the book down and said enough.” (When you accept a free book you do agree to finish reading it.)
  
• Remember Anne Jackson? Well she’s still kicking around, still writing, and apparently this Friday is a special day. 
• Nadia Bolz-Weber, the Lutheran with attitude, shares her struggle preparing to preach on The Parable of the Vineyard. (Open the audio link in a new tab, then click back to follow the text; the whole sermon is about ten minutes.) Actual quote: “…you’d think that I’d totally remember a parable where poop is mentioned.”
• Meanwhile Steve McCoy’s kids, age 12 and 14, are taking sermon notes while he preaches.
  
• On our fifth birthday, we introduced you to Derek the Cleric. We had a tough time that day choosing between two cartoons and thought we’d stretch the written permission we received to do just one more.
  

Where Have All The Church Planters Gone?

Recently C. Michael Patton at the blog Parchment and Pen wrote about the decline of the Emerging church.

…[T]oday things have changed. No one blogs about it. No one claims the name anymore. No publisher would dare accept a book about the emerging “thing” that happened in the forgotten past. Why? because around the year 2009, the identity of the emerging church went silent and many (some, enthusiastically) put up gravestone over its assigned plot. In fact, I even paid my respects.

I want to look at something else that I believe is running parallel to the decline of the Emergents or Emergings: The decline of the church planters.

Church Plant

If Patton’s analysis is right, visibility of all things Emerging ran from 1994 to 2009.  That’s 15 years. One thing I really liked about this was the number of people who suddenly took an interest in ecclesiology. The number of lay people who were willing to step out and plant. The number of young(er) clergy who were willing to resign from secure positions and take church to the inner city or to new suburban housing tracts.

Patton is right to mention publishing. An explosion of new books issued forth from major evangelical publishing houses which were studied by people who had heretofore never taken an interest in how the local church functions, with the result that both clergy and laity created a host of new models many of which were customized for unique local needs and situations.

And at the same time as new churches were popping up in gymnasiums, restaurant meeting rooms and private houses, a movement for greater awareness of social justice issues was impacting the Evangelical community at large, with many of the new upstart churches leading the charge.

We had some friends over on the weekend. Remember, even though I live in the shadow of Toronto, Canada; our hometown’s population is only about 17,000. And yet, as we caught our friends up on the recent issue of alternative church movements in our location, we counted about nine different bodies which sprang up between 2000 and 2010 — including one each for both my wife and I — some of which are still going.

But lately not so much planting has been taking place.

Right now, the dominant model is to simply become a satellite campus for a much larger church. Rent a theater with a 10-foot (3 meter) dish for down-linking live sports and entertainment events. Or pop in the DVD or flash drive with the recording of last week’s sermon at the mother church.  No wonder some people — slightly tongue in cheek I suspect — suggest that in 20 years there will only be a hundred pastors in the U.S. with everyone else picking up a live or recorded feed from the host churches. (And by host church, that doesn’t mean megachurch, since technically, the messages could be recorded in a studio with no live audience.)

I miss the days of rogue church planting. Part one of the gospel is “taste and see.” Part two is “go and tell.” I miss the wild stories Michael Frost told of churches planted in west-coast shoe stores, among water-skiers on the Pine River, and over red-wine-and-pizza discussion groups hashing out religion, philosophy, politics and the latest books; groups which possessed more solid orthodoxy than you might suspect. I miss the emphasis on candle-lighting versus darkness-cursing. I miss the whole, “Hey, let’s start a church” mentality.

Patton might argue the many of the plants never fully ‘took.’

There was no runway on which to land and the emerging plane did not even have landing gear. The deconstruction happened with no plans of reconstructing. The emerging journey became an endless flight that did not have any intention on setting down anywhere. Many people jumped out, skydiving back home. The rest, I suppose, remained on the plane until it ran out of gas.

But then he concedes — and I’ll give him the last word on this — that the movement is forgotten but not gone:

But certain aspects of the ethos of the emerging church should be within all of us. We should never be satisfied with the status quo. We should always be asking questions and bringing into account our most fundamental beliefs. We need to identify with the culture at the same time as holding on to the past. I believe that Robert Webber, though never really called an emerger, was a great example of our continued need to reform. His Ancient-Future Faith was a great example of how we can hold on to, respect, learn from, and identify with our past, yet push forward into an exciting future.

Wednesday Link List

Try to have your link suggestions in by 8:00 PM EST Monday.

• What happens when Anabaptist convictions and Catholic worlds collide? An interview with Jesus For President co-author (with Shane Claiborne) Chris Haw on his latest, From Willow Creek to Sacred Heart.
  
• CNN did an exhaustive profile on the father/son relationship between Charles Stanley and Andy Stanley. (Skip the comments, though; no wonder media outlets are shutting down their religion blogs.)
• For those of you with high speed internet, Duke Taber has a collection of ten contemporary Christian Christmas songs — never thought I’d have to construct a phrase that way — to put you in the mood for 12/25.
• For pastors, worship leaders, and church leaders in general: A contrast between success and fruitfulness in ministry.
• Some Arminians don’t want to include open theists in their group because it gives credence to a Calvinist belief that Arminianism is part of a slippery slope toward… open theism. Roger Olson explains.
• At Daily Encouragement, we were recently informed that in some parts of Asia, the equivalent to “How Are You?” is “Did You Eat?” We have much to be thankful for.
• Carolyn Arends and her 14-year old son are on opposite sides of the table when it comes to creation theory, as are many Evangelicals.
• Now, see, if we were into sensationalism, we’d include a link to the one about the 80 year old priest who bit the ear off another clergyman.
• Or the one where Pat Robertson dismisses the whole David Petreaus scandal as something to be expected. (And here’s the word he used.)
• A church an hour east of Toronto, Canada is using a mobile app as a major part of its church growth strategy.
• Albert Mohler thought the election results were an “Evangelical Disaster,” but one author thinks maybe it was a good thing.
• Inside Perspective: What does it look like when the funeral protestors show up in your own home town? 
• When she’s not biographing Justin Beiber, Cathleen Falsani is following U2′s Bono to Georgetown University, where she summarizes the evening and includes a video of his full address.
  
• Mark D. Roberts referred to an author I remember reading, Ben Patterson who taught him to remember that our words should please God.
  
• Renown atheist Penn Jillette of magic team Penn and Teller has included the Bible in his list of six favorite books.  Of course he’s being cynical.
• This links takes you to the channel for articles by Anna Heydenrych, an author women will resonate with, whose column Coffee Break originates with Gateway, a South African Christian news portal.

Church Shopping in Canada’s Largest City

Units in industrial malls like this one (or trade parks, as they call them in England) could be used for warehousing or light manufacturing; or equally they could house places of worship. Bylaw changes in Toronto would eliminate the latter possibility.

As we toured Michigan and New York this summer we were ever mindful that in the U.S., there is literally a church on every corner.

In Canada, much more religiously diverse, there is a house of worship on every corner, but it won’t necessarily be a church, and you might need to redefine the word ‘corner.’

From a Toronto Star story (10/22) we learn:

• There are 1,260 churches in the city of Toronto; this does not represent the Greater Toronto Area, or GTA, sometimes called “The 905;” this is just in the metropolitan city limits.
• Church planting — or its equivalent in other faith circles — is alive and well with a third of all those 1,260 opening since 1995.  This is especially significant when you consider the historical churches in Toronto’s core.
• As of 2008, a whopping 22% of the churches/worship-spaces are located in industrial areas. I’m sure that’s gone higher in the last few years.
• The city, originally made up of six boroughs until 1998, is continually re-drafting consolidated zoning legislation, and the current proposal would put an end to faith groups operating in industrial areas.

Do you see the trend? Schools are increasingly cost-prohibitive, not available on long weekends, or just not leasing to churches at all. And now industrial/commercial complexes are under threat. What exactly does that leave?

Churches in Toronto See 800% Increase in School Rentals

Have you ever had guests from out of town who knew more about your hometown than you did?  That’s how I felt learning about this Toronto story — a city about an hour away — from the Christianity Today Live Blog.

Canadian churches in Toronto may face eviction if they fail to pay increased rent to the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) — even as those payments increase up to 800 percent.

The TDSB announced on August 29 that churches renting space in public schools would no longer qualify for reduced rental rates. Other nonprofits still qualify for subsidized rent, but churches have been removed as the school district seeks to close a sizable budget gap.

Churches have scrambled to determine their options. In some cases, the recent change will result in rent increases of up to 800 percent.

Some pastors gathered to protest the rental fee hikes, claiming the increase to be an attack on churches, but other pastors prayed over the school board for divine intervention.

The move is part of a 2012-2013 district budget, approved in June, that will attempt to close a $110 million budget gap.

CT previously covered the similar situation of churches in New York City, a long-running case that questioned whether or not schools could evict churches and went before the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2011. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so in June a New York district court judge issued a permanent injunction, allowing churches to continue meeting in schools. 

Certainly there are other types of spaces available, and churches, be they in New York or Toronto or Dallas or elsewhere need to be more creative in uncovering new places to meet.

Wednesday Link List

From the Sojourners Magazine slide show and report on the Wild Goose Festival

With an over 70% U.S. readership, I don’t have a lot of high hopes for record high stats on the 4th of July, but here goes anyway.  Lots of Wild Goose Festival coverage here, too.  If you’d like more links, there was a Weekend Link List here on Saturday.

• So why does Mark’s gospel begin with a quote attributed to Isaiah when it’s actually taken from the book of Malachi?
• Small-town pastor Chuck Warnock did a graduation address to a Christian high school that’s worth reading in full, but if you can’t take the time, at least check out The Monkey Experiment illustration.
  
• Author Cathleen Falsani (Belieber) goes off the grid (not by choice) at the Wild Goose Festival and then comes back on the grid (via Sojourners) to share her experiences.  “The revolution is not dead.”
  
• Speaker Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove reflects on the festival, an event he sees in a long line of camp meeting culture.
  
• He was the only explicitly non-religious speaker invited to the Wild Goose Festival.  Bryan Parys travels with Chris Stedman.
  
• Ian reflects on the theologically relaxed atmosphere, while a Unitarian Universalist fills us in on the LGBTQ issues that were raised, and more details on the music.  There are many more reports — use Google Blog Search — to help you get the picture…
  
• Have your say: It’s Open Forum Week at Internet Monk.
  • Monday: Open Forum for Pastors
  • Tuesday: Open Forum for Readers around the World
  • Wednesday: Open Forum on America (Independence Day Special)
  • Thursday: Open Forum for Mission Workers
  • Friday: Open Forum for Bloggers and Writers
• Thomas Kinkade’s wife and Thomas Kinkade’s girlfriend are in a battle over the artist’s fortune.  (There’s one of his works in one out of every twenty homes in the U.S.) Sixty-six million is at stake.
  
• Apparently Church Executive magazine — it’s usually racked next to Newsweek — thinks the new generation of pastors isn’t speaking out on national issues. As one of those mentioned, Pete Wilson responds.
• Randy Alcorn has a three-in-one post with an update on Steve Saint, a discussion of the problem of men not being readers, and a related reblog of a Russell Moore piece on men and online addictions.
  
• Author Timothy Paul Jones fills us in a little on some of the books that did not make it into our New Testament.
  
• Brave New World Department: The first genetically modified humans have been born. Yes. Only in America.
  
• A Christian writer gives a thoughtful and thorough review of Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, albeit with a few spoilers.
  
• Okay, we do have a link that’s tied to the 4th of July: Chad Hall looks what happens when patriotism comes to church. “Conservative Christians rightly resist religious syncretism …but we fail to see that equal and greater harm comes from the syncretism of Christianity and nationalism.”
  
• Medical Complications Department: “The medicine he had to take as a child to fight his cancer had eventually caused his heart to wear out… he had to have a heart transplant…[years later]…the medications Chuck had to take to maintain his new heart had given him cancer.” Read J.’s tribute to his friend.
  
• Dan Kimball has a new book and a new website coming. Here’s the 411 on his new project: Adventures in Churchland.
  
• And Mike Breen (Lifeshapes) has a new blog. A good place to learn more about what he and 3DM is doing with church-planters is to start with this 5-minute video.
  
• Website Discovery of the Week: HarvestUSA — Proclaiming Christ as Lord to a Sexually Broken World.
• Mark Sandlin explains why he, a pastor, is taking three months off from attending church.  “I want to understand what it is that the ‘spiritual but not religious’ like about not being in church AND I want to understand what I, a life long churchgoer, miss about not being in church.”
  
• It’s been a year since we introduced you to Aimee Byrd, Housewife Theologian who is still blogging regularly and living proof that not all radical Calvinists are male. (Hence, no specific link here.)
  
• Yes, I know just about everybody else has blogged this by now…but here’s the bacon graphic… Everyday Theology had the best intro: “If you live in 17th century Holland, it’s fine to summarize your theology using flowers. But in 21st century America, we prefer our theology a little meatier, and saltier, and greasier. So forget the five points of TULIP, here is the new creed for the Five Strip Baconist!”

Wednesday Link List

Did you catch the weekend link list? Lots of good stuff there, and here, too.

• First link today is long — I didn’t get through all five pages — but it’s interesting: When we think of unreached people groups, we tend to think of groups that are marginalized, but Eric Metaxas says we should also consider reaching the elites. (Hey, that’s easy for him now that he’s preached the Presidential Prayer Breakfast…)
  
• Brad Lomenick Skypes with worship songwriter Tim Hughes in London. Tim serves on staff at HTB, the birthplace of The Alpha Course.
  
• Really enjoying the Phil Vischer podcast with Skye Jethani.  Episode two is now available to download or stream live.
• Shai Linne is a Christian rap artist who, “eloquently explains the trinitarian nature of salvation with poetic clarity.”  Check out the video for Triune Praise.
  
• Revell Publishing will issue a biography from Patty Mallette, aka Justin Bieber’s mom. “…a teen mom who had to overcome a drug and alcohol addiction; she now believes God gives second chances. The book is titled Nowhere But Up.
  
• The SCL’s keep on coming: Here’s 12 Signs You Attend a Suburban Church.
  
• When Jared Wilson left Nashville for rural Vermont, he was told the move was a real career killer.  But, reminded by Tim Keller, we need to jettison the mindset that small(er) town ministry is second rate.
  
• InterVarsity Press’ Andy LePeau cites a study that shows enhanced (interactive) ebooks actually yield lower comprehension.
  
• Truthinator posted a “parody of Emergent Church Planting” at Xtra Normal a few years too late, but we through it in here anyway.
  
• Dan Gouge points out that for some people, the final takeaway from the tsunami in Japan is that Maru the cat survived.
  
• Marriage Corner: Some people feel that patriarchy is based on pragmatics: “Somebody has to make the final decision. Somebody has to break the tie.” Richard Beck thinks there are not that many tie votes. (See all submissions — pun accidental — in this synchroblog series here.)
  
• Should you date a non-Christian? I think you know where this is going. “Don’t misunderstand me here. You’re not looking for a saint, but you are looking for someone with a hungry heart for Jesus. If that’s present, Jesus will take care of the rest.”  The reasons are practical.
  
• Looking for a smile today? Here’s a video and some analysis of what could be the worst eschatological song ever.
  
• Gotta go…time for some food:

Wednesday Link List

If you missed the bonus edition of the link list this week, be sure to click over to Monday.

• Quotation of the day, from Arminius, after whom Arminianism is named: ““Next to the study of the Scriptures which I earnestly inculcate, I exhort my pupils to peruse Calvin’s Commentaries…” (appropriately, as quoted on an Arminian blog.)
  
• Canadian author, apologist and television host Grant Jeffrey passed away on the weekend. His independent publishing catalog was purchased years ago by Random House subsidiary Waterbrook Press, with Wikipedia listing 34 titles including one scheduled for next January.
  
• At Age 30, Chris Galanos is the youngest person to pastor a megachurch in the United States. Needless to say, it’s in Texas.
  
• If you have ever struggled to sing the bridge to “Blessed Be The Name” — the “You give and take away” part — you might resonate with this article and many comments.
  
• On the 20th anniversary of New Wineskins magazine, Keith Brenton deals with the emotional issues that arise when one reaches a crossroads in terms of their committment to their church home. To stay or to go, that is the question. 
• Julie Clawson learns the hard way that when you’re in the fitting room trying on swimsuits, you’re a captive audience for the woman who wants to stand outside the door and share her faith. Not sure if this would work at the menswear store.
  
• Lots of Bible-related links today; that’s a good thing, right? Now picture yourself sitting alone in your room reading your Bible. In the grander scheme of things, you’re not really alone.
  
• Francis Chan makes a rather provocative statement about mission and worship, and — just like Andy Stanley’s fifteen minutes of controversy last week — the words get wrenched from the heart of what he’s saying. Gee…that’s never happened before.
  
• How does a Bible translator feel when a new English version is introduced, knowing so many people still don’t have a Bible or even a complete New Testament in their language.
• The Amish weren’t supposed to have cars, but did anybody say they couldn’t fly? In a community where the official ruling was still pending, a young man takes up flying in 1917, and where the Great War is going on, he also is an exception to the practice of exemption from military duty. All this makes The Wings of Morning a rather interesting looking novel.
  
• The Gay issue. It’s the toughest challenge the church has faced in years. And each gay person is going to have contact — good or bad — with professing Christians. And for every 17 interactions, you have to hope one of us gets it right.
  
• Pete Wilson boards a helicopter for a flyover of a piece of property central to a complete relocation of Cross Point in Nashville, and also celebrates a God-blessed history in this 15-minute video.
  
• Sports Department: Victor Goetz is a championship golfer, however he’s also quite blind. He typically finishes with a score of 105. He also earned a Paralympic gold medal in lawn bowling.
  
• Pop goes the music department: A new Owl City EP released yesterday with help from Matt Thiessen of Relient K.
  
• A Lutheran (LCC) pastor thinks you can preach a perfect sermon but still get a failing grade if you’ve answered all the wrong questions or left people with the wrong mandate.
  
• Michael Hyatt sits down with the originators of a rather unique new English Bible translation, The Voice. This edition uses a dramatic script format where applicable, and I’m hoping at some point to get a copy so we can delve into it here in much more detail. (There’s a page sample from one month ago at this blog when the usual suspects got upset about a particular phrase translation choice.)
  
• For those who follow the Fundy Follies, Right Wing Watch blog is doing a series based on the student handbook at Liberty University; this link deals with the policy of random drug testing. Too bad thought-monitoring hasn’t been invented yet.
• Which is a great lead-in to twelve easy steps the rest of us can follow that provide an absolute guarantee that we’ll never be mistaken for a Fundy.
  
• ‘You and I in a little toy shop, buy a bag of balloons for the Bibles we bought…’ — They weren’t red balloons, but they carried Bibles into North Korea, and GPS tracking devices verified that they reached the target.
  
• You’ve seen the line, “If you love Jesus click ‘like.’” Does that mean that if I don’t click, I don’t love Jesus? Is Facebook theology becoming shallow, or were the FB-ers who post this drivel spiritually shallow to begin with?
  
• Now then, as to that Archie comic above. If you’re old enough to remember the “even then it was awkward evangelism” Spire Christian Comics and want to relive those memories, Carp’s Place has them waiting for you on .pdf files…
  
• …And since one Archie deserves another, I thought we’d end with TV favorite 1970′s bigot, Archie Bunker; and if you dare, a link to Archie reading the creation story from Genesis, which isn’t quite the same as Linus reading the Christmas story.

Brandon Cox: Five Cautions

Brandon Cox is a Pastor, planting Grace Hills Church in northwest Arkansas. He also manages Pastors.com and Rick Warren’s Pastor’s Toolbox newsletter. Grace Hills Church is only eleven weeks old but Brandon has some cautions he wants to share.

If you read what follows, you’re joining the article in the middle, so I suggest you read this at Brandon’s blog, where it appeared under the title, Why Grace Hills Church is in Jeopardy.

If we fail to intentionally be the church, we will unintentionally just do church. And that’s true, no matter how much we say we’re going to “be the church.” Doing the Sunday gathering thing is what we’re good at, and even though we spend a lot of time and money on it, it’s still easier than scattering to be the church in our community.

If we fail to intentionally make disciples, we will unintentionally just make fans. I believe in making Jesus famous and bringing people into the enjoyment of His glory, but our mission is more than increasing the popularity of the church. The mission is to help people become reproducing, sold out Jesus-followers.

If we fail to intentionally be authentic, we will unintentionally just perform. I’ve performed before. In fact, I’m a recovering performer and have struggled with an addiction to the approval of others, so admitting my weaknesses is tough, but essential. I no longer trust my autopilot to lead me into genuine authenticity. Being real takes effort, and if we aren’t real, nobody heals.

If we fail to intentionally embrace all people, we will unintentionally play favorites. And the apostle James warned us about the danger of insulting the cross by picking and choosing those with whom we want to do ministry. Rather than hanging out with only the “churchy” people, of our color, of our political persuasion, of our cultural background etc., the gospel itself demands that we purposely break free and seek out new friendships for the gospel’s sake.

If we fail to intentionally be generous, we will unintentionally consume everything. By default, we spend it all, and we tend to spend pretty much all of our resources on ourselves. Churches tend to fall into the trap of sustaining their institutional machinery, maintaining their buildings and budgets, and begging for more volunteers and bigger offerings to keep the snowball rolling. Generosity requires purposeful sacrifice (if we can even use that word in light of the cross).

~Brandon Cox