Greetings in Jesus' name, and welcome to this new blog space. This is the place where I will be sharing some ideas from my reading, my prayers, my experience, and vision - all with the goal of provoking conversation on how we can best achieve the mission of Community UMC. That mission is to make new disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world!
In January of 2013, I took a three and half week sabbatical to reflect on our church, its ministries and the effectiveness of those ministries, and on our mission. I came back from that sabbatical with the conviction that we need to pay more than lip service to our mission by "doing church" the way that we've always done church... we need to truly figure out and act on ways to reach out to our community in service and love and in sharing Jesus Christ so that each life the church touches will be transformed in God's grace.
We've had conversations in staff meetings, Ministry Leadership Team meetings, Church Council, Lay Leadership, and in many other areas on various ways that we can become the church that reaches out to those who need to know Christ's love, and those conversations have been fascinating and fruitful. In September 2013, we changed our worship services, offering a Traditions service at 8:30 am, and a Catalyst service at 11 am. The dream for the Catalyst service is that, as it grows and evolves, this service will be the primary service where those new to Jesus Christ can worship and grow in a life-transforming, saving faith.
However, all the changes to our worship services and all of the conversations won't accomplish anything unless we find new ways and use old ways to connect with people outside of our four walls.
I'm going to begin by sharing some ideas from the book Get Their Name: Grow Your Church By Building New Relationships by Bob Farr, Doug Anderson, and Kay Kotan. This book was written in order to challenge and inspire churches and their leaders to engage in active, relational evangelism - relational being the key word here. The ideas expressed should help us in visioning ways that we can connect with our neighbors in order for our mission to happen.
This will take several blog entries for conversation on this book. If you would like to purchase a copy, here is a link from Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Get-Their-Name-Building-Relationships/dp/1426759312/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382636585&sr=1-1&keywords=get+their+name.
For this post, I want to share four observations and a consequence to get your brains a thinkin'...
Observation One - "Inwardly focused churches tend to define and practice evangelism as "reconnecting disconnected church folks."
Observation Two - "Outwardly focused churches define and practice evangelism as connecting the unconnected folks to Jesus and then to the church.
Observation Three - "The pool of churched people to connect with is dramatically shrinking, while the pool of the unchurched, never-connected population is growing exponentially. This is especially true among the millennial generation."
Observation Four - "Early denominational movements focused on unconnected folks, while the established churches of the day focused on and supported the folks who were already churched when they arrived in America. These movements became institutionalized over time, and they focused on membership rather than discipleship. The mainline churches were dislodged from the center of American culture by the upheaval of the 1960s. The situation became further confused by the resulting rise of religious conservatism in the 1970s and 1980s. This led to the American polarization of religious liberals and religious conservatives, which in turn led to the disaffection of youth from religion in the 1990s and 2000s. The mainline churches as a result are bewildered and unsure how to proceed through an accelerated state of decline."
Consequence - "If any denomination is to have a future, it must reconnect to the biblical purpose and mission of making new disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. To accomplish this mission, it requires us to be once again people who widely, continually, and fervently share their faith in Jesus Christ with those who do not yet have such a faith."
So, are Bob, Doug, and Kay correct in their observations? Why or why not? The mission of our church matches the mission for all churches that the authors believe is necessary in order for ou churches to have a future - what do you believe it will take for us to become a people who widely, continually, and fervently share our faith in Jesus Christ?
*All quotes come from pages X and XI of Get Their Name: Grow Your Church By Building New Relationships. Abingdon Press. Nashville. 2013.
