In an effort to extend church planting discussion beyond model-based debate, I wrote this Wrong Debate: Attractional vs. Missional. Neil Cole has weighed in consistently, offering some insight on Organic Church and hopes to post on the Gospel soon. At his blog, he is running an Organic series. Check out the discussions in the comments here for some insights.
Tag: neil cole
Wrong Debate: Missional vs. Attractional
Neil Cole has a three part response to Dan Kimball’s Missional Misgivings. There is some lengthy exchange that covers very little distance in their multi-comment conversation; however, this gem emerged from Cole’s final post:
A global survey conducted by Christian Schwartz found that smaller churches consistently scored higher than large churches in seven out of eight qualitative characteristics of a healthy church. A more recent study of churches in America, conducted by Ed Stetzer and Life Way Ministries, revealed that churches of two hundred or less are four times more likely to plant a daughter church than churches of one thousand or more.
So churches of 200 plant more often than churches of a 1000, but they will have to plant 5xs as many churches to reach the one thousand of the megachurch. Methods, methods, methods. We are in the wrong debate. We don’t need to be debating mega vs. micro, attractional vs. organic/incarnational. This is a methods driven conversation, and if we have learned anything from the history of missions it is that God uses a variety of church models to bring in the lost sheep of his kingdom. For a moment, just stretch the conversation beyond America. House churches are immensely effective in China and mega churches incredibly effective in Korea. When it comes to methods, context is king, unless your contextualization of the gospel compromises the its theological integrity, in which case it is no longer contextualization but syncretism.
What we need to be debating is the strength of the gospel that is being preached, taught, shared, and shown in our churches. Are we incarnating and attracting people to a diluted gospel or a strong gospel? Are we incarnating kitsch gospel or kerygmatic gospel? In the end, what are we calling people to? Is our gospel both missional and communal or inward and individualistic? If the latter, then something is wrong with our gospel. Let’s stop debating methods and start debating gospel. Let’s refine the gospel seed we are sowing in America for the sake of our country, our future, and our Lord.
A Critique of Organic Church
Here.
Service in the Local Doesn't Have to Kill Her
On Sunday at our Deacon Training we discussed how be a deacon that doesn’t just do ministry. We don’t want to have deacons (or volunteers) that serve out of sheer duty. Rather, we want to cultivate disciples and deacons that serve from the strength that God provides in the gospel, thru the Spirit. Joyful deacons, not jaded deacons.
As Neil Cole points out, mundane service such as setting up or tearing down, can be disconnected from both the gospel and the mission of the church. It is unfortunate that mundane tasks are viewed as lesser, when in fact, they are frequently the greater task, requiring greater servants.
Service in the local church doesn’t have to kill her. In order to promote a gospel-centered approach to service in the church, we discussed what it looks like to connect the gospel to web design, media work, and traffic direction (and these are just Sunday examples; the church is much, much more). To cut to the chase, we concluded that publishing the gospel on the web has a remarkable impact on people who read manuscripts and listen to podcasts. For those that direct traffic, they are actually pointing people to Jesus, and some of these people have never really understood who Jesus is. Both traffic direction and media work contribute significant to the gospel-centered mission of the church, so deacons take heart.
But what keeps us from duty-driven service that leads to weariness and bitterness? The gospel. We discussed the idea of leaning away from the gospel into people pleasing (not Christ pleasing) service or leaning into “screw the responsibility,” self-pleasing service. We were reminded that serving in the strength that God provides is essential to church-edifying, Christ-honoring work. Instead of working to please pastors, we work because God is already pleased with us in Jesus. We don’t need the approval of pastors (though encouragement is important). The path of irresponsibility is also deceptively dangerous. Abandoning service to the people of God is an abandoning of the gospel, a gospel that has remade us to serve, that has wonderfully enslaved us in love to one another. Of course, seasons of rest are important, and one of our deacon candidates is in that season. In the end, we serve not to be spiritual but becase we are spiritual; we are new creatures who live out the new life we have received from the Spirit.
For some interesting discussion on a related topic, see the comments on this blog post.