Since we're talking about various models of "doing church" on this blog in recent weeks, I thought I'd lay out some of the strengths and weaknesses of varying models. In my view, there are three primary ways of "doing church" that I consider viable and common today. For sake of simplicity, I'll call them Traditional, Attractional, and Incarnational...
By Traditional, I mean (most likely) the church you grew up with. Steeple in the front, organ and piano on the platform, hymns, 30 minute sermon/lecture, etc... Most small town churches and plenty of others are Traditional. Doctrinally they can be and are all over the map, but in terms of form they're Traditional.
By Attractional, I mean churches like Willow Creek or Saddleback (or NorthRidge). The premise is to consciously try to attract the "seekers" by holding services that are non-threatening, comfortable and composed in a cultural language easily understood. This usually means using very contemporary music (often "secular") and doing everything with high production value. Virtually every Attractional church I know of has adopted the "Excellence honours God and inspires people" mantra I mentioned in this post.
By Incarnational, I mean churches that attempt to be Christ's body everywhere. Their worship services are designed to be authentic expressions of praise from the lips of the local body. They believe that "seekers" might well be attracted to that level of authenticity, but that's not why they do it. They are more interested in community than rigid doctrinal conformity. Many are very small, meeting in homes or wherever they can. Some, like Westwinds, are much larger.
So what are the ups and downs of these models? Here's my take - my personal opinion that I invite you to interact with:
Traditional:
Strengths - good sense of community (often rooted in the local rural community and carried into the life of the church), strong sense of doctrinal agreement (they usually tightly define their doctrinal positions within the context of membership), longevity and rootedness (many of them have been around for generations).
Weaknesses - sense of community identity often not drawn from church but town, inability to "agree to disagree" on many doctrines and beliefs, outdated cultural language (who really listens to organs outside of a church context?), usually weak at evangelism, unwillingness to accept change (even when absolutely required for survival), typically missing an entire generation of people (primarily 18-30 yr old adults).
Attractional:
Strengths - strong emphasis on evangelism (often with astounding numbers of people coming to Christ), often many more material resources than other churches, willingness to change as needed, fairly able to maintain doctrinal standards.
Weaknesses - little sense of authentic community, lack of depth of Biblical studies, difficulty leading people into discipleship, typically missing postmodern adults, foster a "watch the show" mentality.
Incarnational:
Strengths - strong emphasis on discipleship, strong sense of Biblical community, strong emphasis on spreading mercy and grace.
Weaknesses - very (often too) broad doctrinal positions within the local assembly (frankly, some are involved in heresy), often de-emphasis on "evangelism" (sometimes taking "friendship evangelism" too far), tendency to deconstruct virtually all of Christianity without an equal vigor to reconstruct anything of value, often missing an entire group of people (moderns in general, older people in particular).
These are broad brushes - I recognize that. I'm not intending to say or imply that all churches of a given philosophy of ministry adhere to the generalizations I've laid out. They are general observations. In particular, they are my observations.
Which leaves me with two questions:
1. What have you observed (where do you agree or disagree with me)?
2. So what? What do we do with this collected information?
Hatushili
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Philosophy of Ministry 101
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8 comments:
That's what I wanted to know. What do WE do? How can we become change agents in our current context? How much should we try to change things? What should we leave be?
By learning our own strengths and weaknesses I would assume we should try to overcome our weaknesses such as being "stuck in a rut" while holding more securly to our strengths. I think where we are, we have a lot to work with a solid doctrine, willing hands, a great community, etc. But, how does this work, how do we improve, when so many people in one building have so many ideals and philosohies of ministries? (by philosophies of ministry I also mean glory of God vs. primacy of preaching) I guess one thing that might help would be having unified goals that the congregation knows and works together to reach with permission from the leadership.
Here is what I think,you can take it as good,or bad,or not at all.
We all have a responsability to take God's Word out to our community,whether it is done by many or just a few.Our church has a responsibility to teach us God's Word,which it does very well,in most cases and then to go home and continue to study it.We are a modern church with a few missional type christians in it who have a desire to get God's Gospel out to the community.Yes,we as a church are somewhat new to this thing of community outreach,but that doesn't stop our responsability as individual believers to reach out to our community.
We are not a post-modern church and doubt that we ever will be,mainly because of the weakness's listed for both in "Attractional and Incarnational".How deep is their commitment to God's Word? People are allowed to bring to much of self into these churches,My bible says we are to be like Christ,denying our self!!If these churches don't fit for the modern group of senior age,what do we do,throw them out to be devoured? I believe also that we have a good variety of age groups across the board here at GNBC.
God has a plan for each one of us,and the Holy Spirit leads us to that plan or purpose. In a past article,I said if you would hold a gun to my head I would probably go post-modern,I retract that statement,and no longer believe that to be true.The Holy Spirit is not leading me, to be a post-modernist or a seeker type christian,but a Bible believing and Bible teaching and Bible learning and Bible speaking type christian.The Holy Spirit can work in and thru me,if I am willing to submit to Him.
All types of people can and have been reached with the Gospel of Christ thru individuals willing to go out and build relationships and seek opportunities in their community to share Jesus Christ,where does that come from,knowing God's Word.
I love you guys to death,but as for me ,I need God's Word taught to me in Church and in Sunday School,not the subjects we have been talking about for a while now.They have expanded my brain yes,but have not furthered me in the kwowledge and wisdom of God's Wonderful and Holy Word.
I know this all seems harsh. I have been giving it much thought,and struggled with what to do,and I don't think God is overly pleased with all this talk about other types of churches,if they are not doctrinally grounded in God's Word,they will not last.
Again,I love you guys and enjoy your friendship and fellowship,but I think I need to seek another Sunday School Class,where I can be fed on God's Word.And I pray that God's Word will soon be a part of our conversations,and class rooms,and outreach.
O.K. your turn to release the dogs on me.jk .Put I do feel passionate about what I said.Prayerfully our friendship will stay in tacked.
[Note: in case you're confused by Don's post, Don is in my Sunday School class and has been spear-heading our local church's outreach efforts of late.]
Wow, Don! That's a lot for me to digest. Let me just start here: I'm not posting my thoughts primarily within the context of GNBC. As you know, I'll not be at GNBC too terribly much longer. The whole purpose of my blog is for me to think out loud, and for any one that wants to dialogue with me to do so. Keep in mind that I've got people reading this blog from at least four different states and five or six different churches. And then there's always the "drive by" readers... So I'm not posting my thoughts on, say, postmodernity or incarnational philosophy so as to imply that I think GNBC should change to this or that model. To be brutally honest, I'm mostly using this blog to try to figure out exactly what sort of ministry I feel the LORD calling me to. Hopefully that doesn't sound too selfish.
So with that as a caveat, let me address some of what you've said.
Don said: People are allowed to bring to much of self into these churches,My bible says we are to be like Christ,denying our self! I've got to be honest with you, Don. All churches allow too much of self in - whether Traditional or otherwise. That would include GNBC. What does it mean to "deny ourselves" and "be like Christ"? Does it mean that we continue using outdated language and cultural norms that so isolate us from the very community that we're to be reaching as to render us impotent? That's what Traditional churches usually do. And it's almost entirely because we're comfortable with it. Comfortable with our outdated language. Comfortable with our outdated cultural norms. Completely disengaged from the context around us. Toxically, lethally comfortable - because we've not truly denied ourselves.
Don said: The Holy Spirit is not leading me, to be a post-modernist or a seeker type christian,but a Bible believing and Bible teaching and Bible learning and Bible speaking type christian. To be honest, that's exactly what people in the Attractional or Incarnational model churches would say about themselves, too - that He's led them to be a Bible believing, Bible teaching, Bible learning, Bible speaking type of Christian. They're just doing it in a different context and in a different way.
Incidentally, I'm not saying that any of these three models of church is the right one. Nor am I saying that any of them is inherently wrong. In the near future I intend to post on some theories of how we (meaning Christians in general) might utilize the relative strengths of each model. I'm just laying the groudwork for that discussion right now.
One more thing...
Don said: I need God's Word taught to me in ... Sunday School,not the subjects we have been talking about for a while now. I have no problem with that, Don. But I feel compelled to point out that 1) we've been talking about the Minor Prophets for the vast majority of the last few months in SS, and 2) as I've always maintained, my belief is that Sunday School is Christian education. If that Christian education centers on God's Word for a while, that's good. If it centers on God's churches for a while, that's good too. If it centers on anything that a Christian needs to live as Christ would, that's my goal.
As a pastor, I'm called to know God's Word. But I'm also called to know people, and to know culture. Missionaries have known this for years. I can know the Bible like the greatest scholar but if I don't know how the people in my local context think and live and breathe, I'll find it difficult at best to get God's Word into them. That's what this blog has focused on for a while now - the "how people think and live and breathe" part.
So don't in any way think that our friendship is contingent upon your participation in these discussions. I've got plenty of friends (you know who you are!) that read this blog daily and yet have yet to post a single comment. I love you, whether you're modern or postmodern, Traditional or Incarnational - makes no difference to me.
[And now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging.]
Hatushili
Well, Nathan asked that I stop lurking about and actually contribute to the discussion, so here I go…
My church is primarily of the traditional persuasion. (It’s Lutheran, and I hear that about 100 years ago there were protests when we wanted to stop preaching in German and start preaching in English….)
We do have an informal service, with drums and guitars, and even a cello once or twice (please, come back, cello player). It started at least 15 years ago. We also have a traditional service in the sanctuary, with organs and red-robed choir singers, liturgy and all that. We’re big enough that we can run both services simultaneously, with one of our pastors in each service. I think this is helpful because our older members prefer the traditional service, but the younger families prefer the informal.
Our church’s primary ministry is wrapped up in the school (preschool – 8th grade), but we have a relatively strong ministry for the elderly. We’re weakest with people between college age and 30, which Nathan stated was one of the weaknesses with traditional style ministry. There have been a few attempts at starting Gen X-type ministries, but they never seem to get off the ground.
I spend three hours a week teaching the eighth graders at the school writing. After talking with Nathan, I had a discussion with them. I asked them what they would do if they were in charge of church. They wanted more drama, more discussion, more interaction—things that this blog has stated postmoderns want.
I think the tricky thing with reaching postmoderns is that many people see that drama, discussion, and interaction tend to play toward the weaknesses of postmoderns: short attention spans, lack of deep thinking, general disinterest with authority. (I read somewhere that it’s not so much they rebel against authority as they don’t recognize it in the same way previous generations have.) Personally, I think to demand that postmoderns “just get down to it and read the Bible” fails in one way, just as churches who don’t push their members into a deeper understanding of God and his Word fail in another.
(Addendum: It’s interesting to me that Christians used to be at the forefront of art (and science), but nowadays we have so little art in churches. Creativity is one of the primary aspects of being made in God’s image. Where are the songwriters, the painters, the poets in our congregations? I truly believe everyone has a song or a story.)
One gets the idea when Jesus feeds the five thousand and heals the sick that he is not only proclaiming his person, but he is also meeting the people where they are—attracting them and showing them the love of God simultaneously. But after feeding the 5000, Jesus leaves and the people follow. John tells us Jesus basically calls the people out. Paraphrase—“You didn’t follow me because of what I said, but because I gave you food.” (From this, Dosteyesky(sp?) based an idea in “The Grand Inquisitor” that all people on earth would follow Jesus if he would only have fed them real bread, and not gone on to promise spiritual bread.) But Jesus does then tell the people they must eat his body and drink is blood, and many turned away from him.
All this is to say that attracting people to the church is a good “intro” ministry, but you have to bring them deeper—and if Jesus can’t keep them, we shouldn’t much expect to either—though we need to find ways to bring them to the threshold. God can bring them over the threshold.
The trick with trying to make a comprehensive plan of ministry (and the trick with making this post coherent) is that we’re breaking into division what should be a unified whole. But the culture is no longer unified. American culture is a splintered mess. How do you be all things to all people when you have the Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, immigrants, and who knows what else? There’s a niche for everything—but we are all called to “mere” Chrsitianity, to borrow a phrase from Lewis. How do we play to differences without making difference our banner?
Missionaries go to convert one people group at a time. I’m not saying Gen Xers are a completely different group from Baby Boomers, but the distinction is larger than “my old man” and “that young whippersnapper.” I think sometimes that we wonder what our church should do instead of what the Church is doing. There’s a reason God called Paul as one abnormally born to be an apostle. He didn’t fail with the twelve, but they weren’t equipped to reach the Gentiles in the same Paul was.
I’m not sure what that means to a pastor. Maybe it’s what my pastor did when my brother and I approached him with this video youth group idea—we take the youth every Sunday not for Bible Study, but to produce skits and short films. The kids love it; the films aren’t works of art, but the kids come back every week; they feel a part of something; they put principles of Bible stories into action; and they even learn! And the congregation seemed to enjoy our retelling of the Christmas story. My pastor would never have been able to suggest such a project (very few at my church are really handy with technology), but he recognized that it was another way to reach people. He’s always looking for new ways to reach people, but sometimes he waits for the people to freely volunteer the idea themselves.
I’m not sure this answered your question Nathan. I’m not even sure it makes sense. But there it is.
Nick the Bookie
O.K. first I want to apologize to all the readers outside our little group from church,I had no idea others were involved because I never see any other comments from outside our church. Second,I want all of you to know I value and appreciate Nathan's friendship and teaching, but as of late I found myself thinking to much of these blog subjects and not enough on God's Word,that is what caused me to write what I did,I am the type of person who needs a steady flow of God's Word to keep me heading down the right path.Third,I believe we all have the same goal for our communities,to see people come to Christ to the Glory of God.A friend wrote me that we need to see all sides. May we be able to put it all together to reach that goal and serve Christ and our community effectively.Some see that as a whole church approach,some see it as an individual approach.May the end result be to unit in Christ,to reach our community.
re: Nick - Thanks for coming out of the shadows! I appreciate your input. A few questions/thoughts for you:
1.) How does having two different styles of services work for you guys? Do you still feel connected to the people that attend the more traditional service? Do you feel like two congregations or one?
2.) It sounds like your teenage/postmodern ministry may be laying some real seeds for change! If you can keep this kind of thing rolling past the teenage years, maybe you'll find more and more of that "missing generation" coming back. How has the congregation received these skits/flicks?
3.) I agree with you completely re:the arts. That's one of the things I love about the emerging movement - they're reclaiming the belief that each of us has a creative offering to the LORD.
4.) You're notion of "attractional" being a first step toward "deeper" faith is interesting, but how do we go from the philosophical to the practical?
Good to finally see your thoughts on this blog. Please don't let this be the only time. You've made a good contribution to the discussion!
re: Don - I appreciate where you're coming from, Don. It's easy to get so caught up in the lastest concepts about ministering the Word of God that we lose sight of the Word itself.
In light of that truth, I'm posting a discussion of a Bible issue that drives me crazy. Look for it very soon.
Hatushili
1.) I think the two services feel separate, at least for me, though there are attempts to break down the barriers. Probably the most effective are the Sunday schools--and while the number of people attending Sunday school classes is increasing, the pastors keep pushing for more congregation-wide involvement. Since both services run at 8 and 10:30, the Sunday School/Fellowship hour is at 9:20, mostly in the gym between the two services. This way, people from he early service, the late service, the informal and the formal can all mingle before and after Sunday School. So the opportunity is there, at least.
2.) As far as the flicks go, we got a lot of good feedback for our Christmas films. The trick for us, really, is delivery--when to play them. Since video takes a good deal of effort (scripts, acting, editing) we can't often make videoes for certain sermons without a good deal of prior notice. In some ways, we're still building our credentials. We did have a film festival at the church last Saturday, and that went off well.
3.) A random thought concerning the arts. I've considered putting together a devotional book written by the members of the congregation. It would take some effort, but if you can get everyone on the same page for formatting, self-printing a book is ridiculously easy and even relatively cheap nowadays. The benefit would be two-fold. One: when you write a devtional, it tend to convict you more than simply reading one. Two: The illustrations would all be by people you know--it would build community.
4.) Off the top of my head, perhaps the best way to run the attractional side of ministry is outside the church. I've heard of churches going around and asking the neighbors what the neighborhood needed most. It ended up, they just wanted clean streets, so the church went around and picked up trash--and a number of people became interested. Other community type projects might work. Since I'm more art-oriented, I could see some sort of community theater (or community film festival), also. I think whatever you do would work best outside the building. That way, you meet people where they are, but "church" is still about growth. You get people in the door, and hopefully truth will keep them there.
Nick
4.) You're notion of "attractional" being a first step toward "deeper" faith is interesting, but how do we go from the philosophical to the practical?
re: Jered - In the first comment on this post, Jered made a good observation that I meant to comment on. He said, I guess one thing that might help would be having unified goals that the congregation knows and works together to reach with permission from the leadership. This is one of the fundamental points of the book Simple Church, as I posted about here.
Having a simple process of effective discipleship that everyone knows forward and backward can go a long way toward instilling a sense of community that is so often absent from our churches...
re: Nick - thanks for answering my questions. I'm glad to hear that your church offers SS between the two services. That seems like a good way to help build community.
As for your flicks, do you think it would be feasible (once you gain more cred) to work more closely with the pastor ahead of time to arrange some sort of artistic expression on a regular basis - say every other week, or maybe once a month? Would that require a part-time paid staffer? Could it be done strictly volunteer? Would the pastor and congregation be open to it?
I love your thoughts on a devotional written by the local congregation! Run with it, dude.
On your take about attractional - what you've described it really Incarnational. The local assembly "being the church" within the context of the community. The only difference, I suppose, is that most Incarnational advocates would say they're really not cleaning streets (for example) in hopes of getting people to come to their church gatherings. They're simply spreading the grace of God for His glory. If people come as a result, that's great. But it's not the point.
So... it sounds like your just as pro-Incarnational as me! : )
Hatushili
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