Amazing Grace/Churches of Christ in Decline?: Transitional Issues, Part 2

5. Generation gap.

I change my mind on this one about every half hour. There are basically two philosophies that make sense to me. And they contradict each other.

We presently have a “blended worship.” We sing traditional hymns blended with contemporary music. This is justified on the “love one another” principle. Those who love hymns sing contemporary songs out of love for those who love contemporary songs — and vice versa.

We’ve been doing this for over 10 years, and now many of our older members prefer the contemporary tunes, and many of our younger members find themselves falling in love with the old hymns. (NOT Stamps-Baxter, of course. That requires not only love but a miracle!)

But a church plant will not think in these terms at all. They may sing old hymns or contemporary songs, but whatever they pick will be in sensitivity to the musical taste of those they are bringing to church.

Hence, the question is — pick music that suits the congregation? or that suits seekers?

If I were a church planter (and I’m not), I’d be picking music based on what’s excellent and suitable to the talents in the group (“Oh, Lord, Our Lord” won’t be possible until you convert an operatic soprano). You see, I think that once you get past the selfishness and tradition and all, it’s really about good music, whether new or old.

And some new music is pretty sorry. Some new music is great but is suitable only for a soloist (“I Can Only Imagine” doesn’t really work as 4-part harmony). And some old music is lousy. And some is excellent.

My own thinking is to forget the worship wars, old versus new, and just pick great music. But I think I’m in the minority on this one. Or maybe I just have eccentric taste.

The same holds true for what to wear for church. I think the preacher should never, ever wear a suit or tie. The elders should be business casual. If someone comes to church in a suit, it’s no problem, so long as the leaders aren’t demanding suits by their example. Give clear, unambiguous permission to dress casually by dressing casually, but don’t criticize anyone else who does.

And don’t be too formal in how you do worship. Don’t line up men to pass out communion. One of the happiest days of my life was when we finally stopped that! I mean, we made men sit on the front row away from their wives and children just so they could pass food. They hated it. They looked uncomfortable. And their misery was contagious.

We now have the communion servers leave their seats one song before communion and head to the back. They pass the trays and then go back to their seats. They don’t dress up. They don’t line up. They just pass the trays. And they largely enjoy it. Service is fun if you avoid making into a theatrical performance. It’s not a show. It’s just passing food and drink. The analogy isn’t a wedding. It’s Thanksgiving dinner.

6. Low expectations.

Ahh, this is where the rubber hits the road. And I’ve not got this one quite figured out either.

In the Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren suggests requiring all members to sign a covenant to attend, give, support the leadership, etc. Many congregations have moved in a similar direction. And some of the fastest growing churches are those that insist on such a commitment from their members.

As a practical matter, you can’t run a church without volunteers. And if you can’t even get enough people to staff the nursery, how on earth will you get involved in community service?

I was once a Rotarian (it’s a good story, for another day). They had a saying, something like “The answer is always ‘yes.'” They actually taught their members that if they were asked to volunteer, they had to say “yes”! Well, the Rotary Club is, after all, a service club.

Meanwhile, the church is really a social club, right? I mean, we give salvation away for the price of dunk in the baptistry and then only ask for regular attendance and contribution. That really is hard to defend, isn’t it?

Now, it just happens that attendance and contribution are the easiest things to measure, and so we insist on them. We really need to learn how to measure something else, like volunteer hours or friends brought to church or something. (I’m open to suggestions here.)

We’ve often talked about requiring new members to commit to class, small groups, and ministry, but we keep chickening out. I’m not sure why. We teach classes on the importance of service, but nearly half our members aren’t there to hear it! And so we preach on it, but 1/3 of our members are missing for most services.

The solution isn’t to tell our members to stop visiting family or taking vacations. It very likely is that we need to ask for a commitment. Jesus did.

7. Ministries that aren’t part of the vision.

Oh, wow. This is a tough one. Every ministry has a constituency. And a history. Some have a LOT of history. But not all serve God’s mission.

To give an example (which will get me in ALL sorts of trouble), consider Vacation Bible School. Traditionally, we go to all sorts of trouble to give our children an incredible educational experience, we spend unbelievable sums of money and volunteer hours, and we tell the kids to invite their friends. And they do.

The problem is, their friends are all Baptists or Church of Christ or whatever. And then our kids go with their friends to their VBS at their church the next week. The evangelistic results are, well, nil.

Now, the temptation is to think: how can we make VBS evangelistic? Wrong question. The right question is: how can our church help us be evangelistic? And if VBS is the answer, we do VBS. But we don’t start with the answer.

You see, ANYTHING can be rationalized as an “outreach” ministry. And I suppose nearly anything can be an outreach ministry. But not everything is.

For another example, church league softball is by nature not an outreach ministry. We’re playing ball with Christians! Far better to play ball with those outside the church, isn’t it? Unless, of course, the team includes several nonbelievers. Then it’s an outreach — if the team members are intentionally working to introduce their teammates to Jesus.

I think the correct approach, if we’re to be church planters, is to return to the Parable of the Fig Tree. Try to dig around the ball team and fertilize them, see if we can turn the team into genuine outreach, and if they succeed, keep the team as a church ministry. If not, encourage the ball players to do something else to reach out.

Now, it’s easy to rationalize a team that doesn’t reach out as great fellowship and all that, and it is, but church planters don’t do that. They moved to town to grow a church and they don’t invest that kind of time and energy in an effort that won’t help.

Now, the same is true of Christian private schools. Are they evangelistic? Not very. Do they serve the poor and needy? Well, if they play basketball, right? But such schools are hardly targeted at our mission to the lost and hurting of this world.

Now, Christian colleges are different, to the extent they train people for ministry and leadership in the church. If all they do is hide our lights under a bushel basket, separating us from the lost, they are anti-missional.

You see, God didn’t call us to be separated from the sinners in the world.

(1 Cor 5:9-10) I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people– 10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.

Paul actually tells us to associate with the immoral, greedy, swindlers, and idolaters among the lost! We are not called to isolate ourselves from the world, and yet we sometimes spend vast fortunes to do exactly that.

(This is not as nutty as it may seem. Sunday School was originally invented as a way to provide a rudimentary education for working children who couldn’t go to school Monday through Saturday. It was only after the child labor laws were passed that Sunday School became Bible classes for members. It’s a fascinating, largely forgotten story. Remind me to write something on it one of these days.)

[to be continued]