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]
Jay,
I was having this same discussion with an elder friend of mine. He and his elders announced two weeks ago that evangelism would be priority number one. While this is a big step forward since they really were not doing anything related to this, I reminded him that evangelism was a part of the mission and not the mission itself.
I encourage people to ask the questions when we think about ministry, programs etcetera to use this lens: "How does this help us make disciples of all people? Because there is missional way to do everything and there is a maintenance way to everything.
2 Samuel 24 comes to mind…
It just seems to me that the things that really matter cannot be objectively measured. Maybe that's not by accident. If we could bottle the perfect forumula for growing churches, and reproduce it, we'd use that ability to build a tower of Babel. It takes faith out of the process. (ie, the faith that if we do the things God says, we will produce the results God wants).
I don't think either of those is the "right question." I just don't see Paul using evangelistic effectiveness as the litmus test for every work of the church. It seems to me that Paul's teaching focused on building up the church in faith, hope and love; preparing the people for works of service; and bringing glory to God. And by the way, those churches grew dramatically.
Oh and related to the parable of the sower and the Fig tree we are called on to plant water and cultivate. When it comes to the kingdom of God sometimes we plant but rarely do we water or cultivate.
Let me try to illustrate.
How much of our activity related to ministry, programs etcetera can really be tied back to a deep spiritual significance or mission? Remember that evangelism is part of the mission not the mission itself. How much of it is really just a result of our cultural way of doing to church? Involvement and even what some may perceive to be “Christian Service” is not the equivalent of spiritual growth.
Some examples activity that is required by our cultural way of doing church but is really about being busy not spiritual growth or mission:
Washing the baptismal garments – (Irrelevant in the 1st century
Preparing communion – (Met in houses the host only prepared enough communion for the few meeting in the house
Cleaning and maintaining the church building and grounds (Irrelevant met in homes in 1srt century
Recording attendance (Irrelevant in 1st century
Bible classes and preaching that do not result in spiritual growth but just more knowledge or memorization. (In the 1st century the word of God was written on people’s heart and shaped their behavior, living and character.
The list can go on and on. These activities are what some may refer to as “necessary evils” because of our white middle class way of doing church in America. It is very hard to draw the connective tissue back to the mission from these activities.
Regarding the "right question." It depends on what you're trying to do. We do different ministries for different reasons.
Some are purely maintenance — preparing communion, visiting the sick, mowing the grass. These are very important and they aren't to be tested based on baptisms.
Just so, when we care for the poor or give money to a foster care agency, the test isn't baptisms. It is, however, effectiveness at caring for the poor. If we aren't really helping in a way that glorifies God, we need to fix it or do something else.
When we host an Easter egg hunt and ask our families to invite friends, this is neither maintenance nor benevolence. It's either catering to our own children or else it's evangelism. And we justify investing huge amounts of time and money arguing it's for evangelism.
In that case, we should sensibly ask whether it's accomplishing the goal that sold the program to the elders or budget committee — does it do effective outreach?
If the answer is: look at all the couples who transferred membership here from another church, then it's not evangelism at all.
Now, I'm an advocate for the Simple Church theory (in general, not detail). We shouldn't ask our members to do things that aren't effective at whatever the goal is. Nor should we replace secular events where our members could make friends with the unchurched.
Hence, I find myself opposed to church league sports. Far better to fellowship with the unchurched! (But a church league that draws from the unchurched would be excellent, and we have members doing just that.) I mean, I just think we need to be honest with ourselves and ask: does this event serve it's intended purpose? And even better: does this event make the best possible use of the talents and energies of our people to serve its intended purpose?
We have only so much time and money. We want our members to befriend the unchurched. Therefore, we need to do less so we can do more.
Alan has a good point that has been stuck in my craw for a long time.
Acts 8:4 is pretty much the only New Testament passage on personal evangelism that I can find.
The work of the community of Christ is disciple-making, not pure evangelism.
This is not to suggest that the "church plant" focus is wrong — just that the "church" has to be "planted" with the right Commission. Dallas Willard's writings, especially The Great Omission, point this out brilliantly.
Nick and Alan,
I wish you'd explain what you're saying. I mean, I'm not arguing that evangelism is the sole focus of the church or that every ministry must be focused evangelistically. I've argued against that viewpoint a number of times.
The Great Omission argues for "discipleship" but what does that mean? What's the right "commission"? I find this all very puzzling.
A disciple is a person who learns from another by imitation – an apprentice.
In the Great Commission, Jesus commands his disciples to do what He did: make disciples.
Much of our effort is dedicated to making attendees, not apprentices.
I'm saying that the goal is not attendance (I know, you're not saying that, either). The goal is not even evangelism per se (if it were, there'd be more passages about it in Acts and the Epistles). but well-shaped apprentices of Jesus Christ. The mission is New Creation.
I believe Scripture teaches that the disciple-making process is inherently, naturally attractive. When people see a life that works, they will want to know where and how we got that way.
alan says, It just seems to me that the things that really matter cannot be objectively measured.
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Jon,
I have no personal experience with church plants, but feel strongly about the movement and the importance of doing more of it. Please add your thoughts to the mix. I'd love to learn more from the front lines.
Wow- what great thoughts! Coming from a church planters perspective, I really enjoyed this- looking forward to more! -Jon