So it turns out the church in Poland DOES want a team to come to help them out this summer. I spent a while this morning on the phone with Karolina, our translator from the last trip. She ferried some information to me from the non-english speaking pastor and his wife.
So I find myself with the noble and harrowing task of putting a team together and raising a bunch of money for the trip. It’s exciting! I can’t wait to see everyone there again.
If you’re in the habit of praying for me or for people you don’t know, I’d appreciate prayers regarding this trip. The Lord needs a team with the money to go to Poland. He needs it all put together in time to leave in July. So there’s no time to waste.
Its looking like both my parents and my wife will be coming this time too (this is not the first time for me). I’m really happy to be able to share the experience with them this time.
I just spent 3 days in Medicine Hat visiting my parents with my wife. It was good to get a break. My father has pointed me towards the Acts 29 Network which is a great site containing all kinds of information for people wanting to plant churches. I’ve listened to my first Acts 29 teaching and it was very inspiring. So if you want to explore some of the aspects of church leadership and deveopment, go ahead and download some talks. They are first rate. (Dan, you need to check these guys out.)
One thing I will say though is that Act 29 teaches some very unpopular opinions about women in ministry. It’s biblical, but contraversial. I raise this point because I’m not sure what I think about the Acts 29 Network’s stand on Women in the church. By directing you all there, I don’t want you to think that I’m… anything. I haven’t even heard all the teachings yet. Anyhoo, this can be my disclaimer.
This brings me to my next topic of exploration. I have been mulling and preparing some infomration and research on Church leadership. I am specifically looking at what the biblical model of church leadership is. As an Anglican, I am quite disturbed to be finding myself not seeing alot of the biblical model in the Anglican church.
WAIT! Before you freak out, I should rephrase that. I actually see a lot of the model here, I just don’t see it being used to it’s fullest potential. What I see is burnt out leaders who are trying to do it all. This describes me too. I’m not an ordained leader, but I am a leader. I’m not sure if this topic will come out as a series or if I’ll be able to condense it all into one post. We’ll have to see.
Anyhoo. I’m back at work now. I’ll give more info on the whole church leadership thing when I have some idea of what I’m going to do. I’m looking forward to exploring it further.
There is also a chance that I’ll be going on a mission to Poland this summer. That’s pretty exciting. Nothing is for sure yet, but I’m looking at the details to see if this will be happening or not. I’ve been there on a mission before. Last year. It was a great experience and I look forward to maybe going there again. We’ll see what God wants.
So in conclusion to all I’ve had to say on this, I’d like to sum up.
What’s important?
I think much of my own personal frustration with the church is rooted in people (includeing me) using the church as our spiritual crutch most of the time. We don’t take the time to pray enough, so we hire a priest to put on regular prayer times each Sunday. We don’t live lifestyles of worship so we hire a priest to hold weekly worship times for us. We show up and just assume that we’ve done our part. Just showing up DOES count for something, but the Bible simply doesn’t confine our Christianity to the church we go to. The organization of the church should be considered more of a resource for us to further develope our prayer, worship, and outreach, that occurs primarily outside the 4 walls of the church during the rest of the week. This point is a big part of equation I think.
Second I think we have some issues with trying to have Sunday morning be the one-stop-shop of spirituality. We want it to draw in new folks, convert people, grow people, comfort people, challenge people, teach people, and encourage people all at the same time. The end result is that none of these things get done particularly well unless a church focuses on only a few of them. Some would argue that different churches are in place to provide different aspects of this list, but I have to disagree. I think that our goal should be to develop ways to run our churches so that all of these things are represented. That being said, I do not believe this can all be responsibly represented in a single 2 hour gathering of 200+ people once a week. It’s just not reasonable to expect that everyone will be getting the spiritual food they need in that short time.
I believe it is not the job of the church organization and staff to be doing the Kingdom work of the church. I believe that is for us be doing as individuals or perhaps as very small groups. The church should be mandated with equipping it’s membership to be effective in all they do outside the 4 walls of the church itself. The organized church needs to work towards growing people in loving ways. It needs to strive at creating opportunites to learn and to encounter God (for the 1st time AND for the 100th time).
A church of 200+ people needs to have a gathering where the 1 Corinthians 14 model can be put in place. If this isn’t the Sunday service, I think the small group would be best. A secondary service for people who desire to go deeper would be suitable at least until it grew in size beyond where certain kinds of ministries are made easily available to the people who attend. What I’m saying is that a secondary service could take the place of a small group in some circumstances, but not in all.
Small groups that are run according to the 1 Corinthians 14 model are a sure way of ensuring that we are remaining biblical in the way we gather. Consider that back when the church began people woudl not have been meeting weekly at the temple. Those who were far form the temple would have met regularly with those in their are who were believers. I believe that these smaller groups are the original audience of 1 Corinthians 14. These small groups are ideal for prophetic ministry and personal prayer ministry. They are also and ideal way of building one another up. They are also an appropriate sized group to practice other spiritual gifts as released by the Holy Spirit. A group of 60+ can not hope to be nearly as effective with its membership without having extrememly long gathering times in order to ensure that each and every member has the opportunity to respond to what God might be doing.
Relevant teaching should be being made available to all members of a church. This may require more than one teaching time per week, especially if the Sunday service is geared mainly towards seekers. It is critically important that the regulars have regular and relevant teachings. These people need to be challenged and pastored on a regular basis. Elementary teaching will not sustain the growth of these individuals.
Church leadership should take part in and encourage continual fellowship and relationship building within its membership. Fellowship is what brings a community together and helps it to function as Jesus intede for it to function - as a loving and caring group of individuals.
So what is Sunday for then? It’s about the corporate repsonse of the people to God. Where it should not be a substitute for our daily worship and prayer, in can be the place we go to participate in these things corporately. It is a place where worship, prayer, and loving and caring relationships come together. When we meet together we truly become the bride of Jesus. We go to church to corporately respond to God in worship, prayer, and to meet with God through Holy Communion. We also meet as a church to be taught. Though to maintain a complete and healthy learning diet, we very likely need more than just Sunday morning teachings, especially if Sundays are seeker oriented or conversely if they don’t provide anyhting elementary enough for seekers. Church leadership should strive to meet these needs. Sundays are alos about fellowship and growing together as a community. Sundays should be a time of sharing what else is going on in the other aspects of church life. What are the other small groups experiencing? What is the spiritual direction of the church?
Once our congregations grow over 60 people or so, we can not hope for Sunday to be all things to all people. It’s true that there are some things we just won’t ever do particularly well, and in the case where a person really needs that thing, perhaps it is appropriate for that person to seek a new church group to gather with. I don’t believe it is appropriate for a church to just choose that “the spiritual gift are not for us”. They are for everyone and it is a shame that there has been so much misunderstanding a fear surrounding these gifts. It grieves me that so many people have said to me that they consider the spiritual gift to be unecessary. Perhaps they are unecessary when considering basic salvation, but I refuse to believe that something so positive and encouraging would have been created to be swept under the rug. It might sound harsh, but I believe the incorrect opinion that seems to be preceed the spiritual gifts is merely an effective effort by the evil one at ensuring that we go through our lives feeling unedified, unencouraged, and down right foolish. It also serves as yet another issue that the church as a whole can fight about so as to become even more splitered that ever before. This can only be seen as the result of a successful compaign of the evil one. The bible is clear that these gifts are for all of us. We need to learn to embrace this by teaching/learning more about them and exploring them at appropriate times in appropriate ways.
What shoudl we be expecting?
- Sundays are about what we as a corporate body can offer God. If we get blessed in the process, then that’s a bonus. This is also a good opportunity to receive teaching as an entire group.
- Small Groups is about what we can learn from one another as well as what God can do for us. This is the time where we seek encouragemnt and edification from God. This is where we take seriously one another’s personal journey and help one another on the way. This is where the 1 Corinthians 14 model really shines.
- Secondary services are great of specialized teaching and can run on 1 Corinthians 14 models until they grow beyond an effective size. At that point they need to become primarily a venue for specialized teaching and fellowship. This is where things get taught that are important, but that for whatever reason don’t fit on Sunday mornings (often due to the need/desire to not preach of the heads of less mature Christians).
So what now? This is what I’m going to do - or at least what I plan on doing. I’m going to begin working within my church to see the following things happen.
- That small groups be run according to 1 Corinthians 14 with a social aspect mixed in for the sake of relationship building. I plan on finding one such group and joining it.
- That attending small groups is stressed so that one day, Sunday is not considered the most important meeting but rather just a time to meet as a corporate body to worship, pray, fellowship, and learn together. We need to get to a point where “church” is done in small groups, so Sunday can be focussed on our corporate response primarily and not be about what we can get from God, but what we can offer Him.
- That our church’s teaching method be examined to ensure that there is regular teaching for all members no matter what stage in their faith journey they are on.
- That we start gathering in a secondary meeting (perhaps twice a month at first) that is not designed to be seeker sensitive. This meeting would likely be a solution to any discoveries in #3 as well as be a good place for more mature Christians to seek to go a little deeper with God.
So this is pretty well what I’ve come to in all my thinking about what we’re supposed to be doing in our church. I may from time to time go back and tweak things as this whole thing is very much a part of my own personal process of figuring out what is truly important. What I will do is read through it all again and add a last revised date on each section so that if you happen to re-read them (you’d have to be pretty gung-ho with the length of these), you’d know there was something different about it.
People have been going to Church on Sunday morning for many, many years. The practice has become a tradition and in some cases has lost it’s meaning. We need to pray that God renew a vision of the true purpose of the church in the leadership and the laity. We need to get things back on track so that we are being effective and useful. I for one am very interested in seeing people come alive with renewed purpose and vision. I also imagine that people will be more committed to what they are doing when they are filled with a sense of purpose and vision.
The bottom line is that if we believe God is real - truly real - then the work and the sacrifice involved in getting all this right would be well worth the effort. So I hope this series has been inspiring in some small way and that you’ll go with whatever bit of info that has hit home for you and run with it.
Thanks for reading. Blessings.
