Good stuff from my friend Pastor Mike Anderson in Irving, CA.
Have you read Randy Frazee's "The Connecting Church" if not
you should. He describes a new model for the church to truly "make disciples
and teach people to obey all that Jesus commanded". It breaks the church into 3
groups. the worship service where the whole community gathers for
"inspiration", the mid size community 50 - for instruction in christian basics
and theology, and finally home groups of 10 where people get involved as
families and people are held accountable for the becoming like Christ.
In all of this Frazee says in our busy world the church has
become one more spoke on the wheel rather than the hub which is the Acts/NT
model of authentic community. Finally rather than fragmenting people in
multiple relational groupings with committees for different ministries, the
community group which is neighborhood centered is the place where people learn
to serve, pray, invite etc.. Ie. no MORE COMMITTEES! So this decentralizes
professional ministers and gets the church out into the community being the
Light of Christ where people live.
In terms of youth Frazee turns the model upside down and
has kids, youth, and adults having separate worship experiences (we may not
agree with him on that), then at the community level the kids have a Sunday
morning experience (2nd hour) while the adult are meeting in their community
group for instruction (usually on Sunday morning) and the youth have community
groups on Wednesday nights. At the small group level the families come back
together in the home group.
Of course that aspect could be tweaked, but the main thing
is that this model changes the measure of success from the ABC's of (Attendance,
Buildings and Cash) to is one becoming a disciple of Christ which they measure
through a Christian LIfe Profile that has 30 different areas of measurement (10
for core beliefs, 10 core practices, and 10 core virtues).
I know we Lutherans are shy of measuring things but if
don't have a way to evaluate our success other than "butts in the pew", we will
never be able to see if we are truly "teaching them to obey all they have
commanded". Ironically, Willow Creek is coming out with a new process called
REVEAL, which measures the true spiritual growth in the church. They found that
25% of their members were either stalled or dissatisfied and asking "Where's the
Beef". They are doing a new survey of 500 churhces (they have done 6 and 25
where they got their initial findings), which i signed up our church to be part
of. Since Willow was so seeker oriented they forgot to measure their member's
true spiritual growth and they found that these long time members were the best
source of evangelism, serving, tithing etc.. (this was contrary to the commonly
held belief that new christians are the best in all these
areas).
Okay i"ll stop blathering but this has become my holy
discontent..and now I'll just have to do something about it!
Mike
