Re-Thinking Church

Re-Thinking Church Growth Strategies!
The evangelistic arm of the American Church has been cut off by a culture that has been disenfranchised by the very people who represent the Church, Christians. Traditional methods of evangelism like passing out tracks and door to door visiting must be retired and the Church must rethink their external witness. At a Washington D.C. pastor’s conference, Craig Groeschel, the lead pastor of LifeChurch.tv said, “If churches are going to reach the people no one is reaching, then they have to do the things no one is doing.” Jesus said it like this, “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins . . . new wine must be poured into new wineskins” (Luke 5:37, 38). Traditional churches keep pouring new wine into a culture made up of old wine skins. By doing this, the power of the Gospel message has been watered down and the punch line has been played out. A four-part Gospel has been reduced to two. Instead of sharing with the world: (1) Creation (2) Fall (3) Redemption and (4) Restoration. The majority of American churches have defrauded both the people inside and outside the walls of the church by only focusing on the Fall and Redemption. If the goal of following Christ is not restoration, then most Christ followers will not see how they contribute to the restoration of Creation.

Internalize Before Externalization
The kind of changes that will solve the Church’s problems will be of a different order to the kind that created them in the first place. Internal changes must be made for external productivity. Three major paradigm shifts must be internalized by church structures; if the Church is going to reach those people no one is reaching and who have burst from too much wine.

Missional vs. Traditional
Traditional Churches have basically one strategy for evangelism: invite people to the church building. This strategy has institutionalized the salvation experience and de-powered Christ-followers. The responsibility of salvation is not only the mission of the pastoral staff, but each individual Christ-Follower. Missional Churches primary concern is to be committed to God’s missionary calling in the culture it is sent. The new strategy to adopt is to equip and release each Christ-follower to creatively and innovatively use their gifts, talents and abilities to advance the Kingdom of God in their personal sphere of influence, not just in Church services and functions.
Case Study:
Mark Driscoll who pastors, Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington has successfully implemented the Missional-Incarnational strategy. He has taken a hand full of people in the least churched city of America to over 5,000 in attendance by emphasizing a missional approach opposed to the traditional.

Incarnational vs. Attractional
The traditional strategy the Church has duplicated for the last 17 centuries is the Attractional Church. Alan Hirsch describes it by saying, “The church bids people to come and hear the Gospel in the holy confines of the church and community.” Attractional churches operate as if they have a monopoly on God. A core assumption, Alan Hirsch states, is “that the Attractional Church is based upon—the assumption that God cannot really be accessed outside the sanctioned church meetings.” On the other hand, the Incarnational Church adopts a Go-To-Them, rather than a Come-To-Us approach. The Incarnational Church is a sending church. The goal is not only to get people into the church, but to get the people of the church into the world. The Incarnational Church does not focus on church growth as much as personal growth. If Christ-followers grow personally, then the not-yet-Christians at their work places, in the grocery stores and cafes will encounter a real life embodiment of the person of Jesus. Just as God infiltrated the world in the form of a human, so should Christ-followers infiltrate the part of the world God has designed and called them to be incarnational.

Case Study:
The mission of the Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon is “to take the Whole Gospel to the Whole Person to the Whole World, equipping people to become mature in Christ.” This church has adopted the incarnational approach to ministry by equipping “followers of Christ to operate as his hands in the world by virtue of bringing the healing touch of Christ in the name of Christ.”

Culturally Relevant vs. Biblically Relevant
Most recently, churches have built a reputation for being seeker-sensitive in their weekend services. Their services have been watered down, the worship is over amplified and as Billy Hybel’s confessed, most attendees are just attendees, not fully devoted followers of Christ. Instead of attracting seekers to Church services with culturally relevant sermon series,’ churches should use their services to equip Christ-followers to be attractive to seekers. The Biblically relevant service trains, equips, and restores Christ-followers to be incarnational in the part of Kingdom, God has called them to. This service welcomes all, but is primarily geared to equip the saints for works of service. The lifestyle of each Christ-follower becomes a living animated church service that incarnates wherever they go.

Case Study:
Dr. Rob Rhoden is the lead pastor of Commonwealth Chapel in Richmond, Virginia. In his venture to revitalize a church, he shifted from a centralized service to a de-centralized. His primary purpose for weekend services is to train and equip his church to be evangelistic and incarnational. Since his church has embraced this approach to ministry, they have become a pillar in their community.

These three shifts will not just revitalize the evangelistic arm of the Church, but will empower Christ-followers to be part of the restoration of Creation. When the missional church partners with God’s mission to restore the whole of Creation, the emphasis on evangelism becomes secondary to the restoration of God’s image in each Christ-follower. The churches that becomes Incarnational, rather than Attractional, empowers Christ-followers to be responsible for the communities they live in, the places they work in and families they raise, not just the churches they attend. The shift from culturally relevant to biblically relevant services will equip Christ-followers with the tools and training to be a fully reflected image of God in the corner of the Kingdom of God, they have been called to. When the ultimate goal of following Christ is not how many times you lead somebody in the salvation prayer, but how close you can look like Jesus, then each Christ-follower will purposefully live out their faith in every arena of life, not just in their churches.