A few thoughts from my reading this morning.
Luke 11:39-44
Chapter 14 Left Behind in a Megachurch World by Ruth A. Tucker
187 – “What is the word that sums up this critical element? Conversions. Discipleship was the key. In the situation he told about, someone in the church simply behaved like a Christian ought to behave—by reaching out in love and service to a traumatized and hurting family in a nearby mobile-home subdivision. “
201 – “The Christian church represented by one-of-a-kind congregations around the world can do nothing more simple or profound than to take seriously the words of Jesus, “Follow thou me.” This last chapter offered some keen insights in how to stretch the church into the world without sacrificing its true identity.”
Chapter 13 Left Behind in a Megachurch World by Ruth A. Tucker
180 – “A pastor staged a funeral for his church that drew crowds. He had a coffin, flowers, and wreaths. The pastor offered an eulogy and opened the casket for parishioners to view the “body”. Attached inside the coffin was a mirror. What the people saw was their own reflection…When the body is dead, there is nothing left. A funeral is warranted. But in many instances, the body is tired or just plain lazy…the truth that this little hoax reveals is that the church cannot survive without regular folks. More than warm bodies, a church that is truly alive is identified by disciples of Christ whose commitment is demonstrated by their love for each other and a needy world outside their doors.”
Chapter 11 Left Behind in a Megachurch World by Ruth A. Tucker
165 – “So how do we process the problem of sin, of messiness in the left-behind church, or in any church for that matter? Dutch missiologist Hendrik Kraemer argues that “the Church is always in a state of crisis and its greatest shortcoming is that it is only occasionally aware of it.” This condition he sees as part of the nature of the church, that “according to the testimony of history…[the church] has always needed apparent failure and suffering in order to become fully alive to its nature and mission.”
Chapter 10 Left Behind in a Megachurch World by Ruth A. Tucker
144,145 – “But a church is first and foremost a story. Far more than it is a set of rules and regulations or even size or social standing, story is the essence of a church. The rules, to be sure, are necessary, as are the doctrinal and biblical foundations that give grounds for the church’s very existence. But they form the skeleton. The body is an ongoing narrative and life of people—flesh and blood and warts and all —and the people, for better or for worse, are what others see. Churches are bodies with personalities that are far more obvious to outsiders than the skeletal framework. In assessing the personality, perspective, and appearance of a church, it is sometimes tempting to concentrate on superficial qualities. Church growth literature emphasizes friendliness, and along with friendliness comes a smiling, happy demeanor. Radiating a sense of excitement and enthusiasm is also high on the list, as is cultural sensitivity, particularly in worship style. If hymns are “outdated” it is a sure sign of being left behind.”
145 – “Sometimes the suggestions for improving appearance are as “design-oriented” as those of the realtor who is listing my house. For a house to sell quickly, he insists, bathrooms and kitchens make or break the deal. For the church the requisites are similar. Indeed, churches are taking cues from upscale homes and fine restaurants and are turning toilets into ladies’ powder rooms with exquisite décor. The appearance of the nursery and the children’s worship space is also high on the list, at least for young families. This formula is substantiated by statistics. An increase in attendance is the proof of success.”
145 – “Should the left-behind church be focused on superficial cosmetic changes? If not, what kind of personality and appearance should distinguish the church? What about authenticity?”
145 – “Phony happiness is easily detected and quickly rejected. Humor is not happiness. Indeed, it is often a means of coping with the troubles and sorrows of this world.”
147 – Very funny story on “Shingles for the Lord”—a must read
Chapter 9 Left Behind in a Megachurch World by Ruth A. Tucker
128 – In the megachurch, separate youth worship is often taken for granted. But there are some who would strongly question the long-term spiritual benefits. “It is a sad fact of life that often the stronger the youth program in the church, and the more deeply the young people of the church identify with it,”writes Ben Patterson, “the weaker the chances are that those same young people will remain in the church when they grow too old for the youth program. Why? Because the youth program has become a substitute for participation in the church…When the kids outgrow the youth program, they also outgrow what they have known of the church.”
130 – Kovacs says, “A great church is not characterized by the numbers on its membership rolls, the size of its budget, the beauty of its sanctuary, or even the effectiveness of its preaching. A small, struggling, country church might be greater than the rich, megachurch in the suburbs.”
131 – Tucker discusses how Eugene Patterson, retired, attends a small close knit church. He says after using a tremendous example, “I think there’s a lot more going on in churches like this; they’re just totally anti-cultural. They’re full of joy and faithfulness and obedience and care. But you sure wouldn’t know it by reading the literature of church growth, would you?”
132 – Left behind does not mean hopelessly mired in the past. It does not mean a no-growth graph. It does not mean stiff formality or fundamentalist separation. But it does mean holding on to traditions, hymns, liturgy, and intergenerational togetherness.
133 – Tim Stafford in speaking of “seeker sensitive” churches, “I admire the evangelistic spirit behind this. It has attracted many people into a church building who would probably not otherwise attend. But I think it has exaggerated a sense that the church must adapt to the general public, not the other way around.”
134 – An important issue for any church to wrestle with as a community is whether the church is one that emphasizes contextualization with the culture around it or whether it sees itself as being countercultural. Contextualization is reaching out to the postmodern generation(s) in culturally relevant ways. One of the hallmarks of church growth is the church’s ability to make someone on the outside feel comfortable on the inside. And that is surely not bad. In fact, contextualization has been the buzzword for cross-cultural missions for decades…but at the same time the early church was very countercultural in standing apart from the worldliness around it. And it is on this side of the equation that the left-behind church is often better equipped to radiate the good news that stands in stark contrast with the bad news of the world around it. But the good news should not be misconstrued with the good feelings that are easily manufactured in a North American contextualization church. Our culture is one characterized by materialism and the cult of therapy, self-absorption, and political correctness. This was not the way of Jesus. Jesus was countercultural even as he so seamlessly contextualized the gospel. His listeners understood…, to follow Jesus was to step out of the crowd and be different. Jesus continually spoke of the uniqueness of the kingdom of God as opposed to the world at large. But on the surface at least, it was not the good life. Yes, there was life more abundant and for the weary there was rest, but there was also the cross to bear, one the world knows nothing of.
136 – Church growth requires a spirit of optimism and elation—certainly not one of sadness. “At Saddleback, we believe worship is to be a celebration,” writes Rick Warren, “so we use a style that is upbeat, bright, and joyful. We rarely sing a song in a minor key.”
Chapter 8 Left Behind in a Megachurch World by Ruth A. Tucker
113 – “I once attended a church service in a small Midwestern town,” writes Anne Wilson Schaef. “Afterward, I told the minister how pleased I had been with the prayer and sermon meditation. He nodded and immediately launched into a discussion of church attendance and how few people were there on communion Sundays during summer. I had commented on the quality and content of the service—and he had responded with numbers.”
Chapter 7 Left Behind in a Megachurch World by Ruth A. Tucker
100 – “The Father of Church Growth—the ideas and tactics behind the movement churned in the head of a missionary and theoretician, not a church pastor. Donald A. McGavran is the uncontested father of Church Growth, but the movement quickly attracted followers-and self-described leaders. The movement displayed a strong current of pragmatism founded in the discipline of sociology—concepts that ‘sound as if they were invented by a frustrated sociologist whose idea of a wild and crazy Saturday night is rearranging his sock drawer,’ writes Tom Raabe. Their books, he continues, flaunt ‘mundane titles like Understanding Church Growth, How to Grow a Church, I Believe in Church Growth, and Strategies for Church Growth.’ And their doctrines? Even the specialist is easily confused; ‘The homogeneous unit principle; the Resistance-Receptivity Axis, composite church membership; multi-individual, inter-dependent decision; E-2, 3-P evangelism; etc.’ …According to Raabe, from his mission post in India McGavran ‘sent forth a phalanx of researchers marching behind the banner of the Great (Growth) Commission: ‘Go ye therefore and study growing churches and find out what works.’ If there is one common element of church growth in all its varieties, it is pragmatism. The underlying rationale is that it is our responsibility to bring as many people to Christ as possible. A world is dying without the gospel, and if we don’t reach them who will?…Pragmatism rules the day…The end-times justifies the means….”
101 – “What McGavran did as a theoretician in the foundational stages of the movement, George Barna did as a statistician as the movement developed.”
101,102 – Barna concludes: “Without being unreasonably optimistic about the chances of a once-healthy church being turned around after a severe decline, our research demonstrates that there is relatively little reason for such optimism…In many cases, trying to revitalize a declining church is probably a wasted effort.”
102 – “It would be unfair to argue that the church growth industry and its subsidiaries have nothing to offer those who are concerned about the condition of contemporary Christianity. But it is irresponsible for a pastor or a congregation to simply accept the basic premises without challenge. Much of the church growth industry has followed cultural patterns—those related to consumerism and marketing on the one hand and to self-help and therapy on the other. “The produce/consumer market model turns possible vice into virtue.” Writes David Kelsey, “by generating its own growing and lucrative market for experts and consultants who analyze religious customers’ felt needs and help churches package their products in effective ways.” He names George Barna as the leader of these marketers, citing his book Marketing the Church, where Barna argues that “the major problem plaguing the church is its failure to embrace a marketing orientation in what has become a market-driven envionrment.”
103 – “That a minister would couch motives in will-of-God terminology should not automatically sanctify the circumstances.“
104 – “Loving a congregation is not necessarily as easy as it sounds. Many pastors simply do not love their people, particularly when they are out with the boys –their fellow ministers—and each one is telling war stories to top the other.”
108 – Mark 10:42,43
Chapter 6 Left Behind In A Megachurch World by Ruth A. Tucker
88 – “Like any large corporation, a megachurch is involved in marketing. Marketing involves selling a product to more and more people so that the company can grow larger. Whatever a large company does to grow and bring in more revenue, so does the megachurch. There is advertising, trend analysis, product assessment, and headhunters in charge of securing top-notch managers—all in effort to sell products or services. Ministers who once lamented the difficulties of managing an all-volunteer organization no longer face that situation in a megachurch. Here there is a large, paid staff that more closely resembles a large, nonprofit organization than a church. Elder and deacons no longer serve in volunteer capacities to conduct church business and minister to the disadvantaged. Instead, a board of directors oversees the paid professionals who work as employees.”
89 –” ‘Church marketers assume that marketing is a neutral process or technique that leaves the substance of the faith untouched.’ These are the words of Philip Kenneson and James Street in their book, Selling Out The Church: The Dangers of Church Marketing…We are always looking for the latest church growth methods, concepts, or fads—very often without any thought of how the very methods affect the gospel. ‘Said another way,’ the authors continue, ‘church marketers believe that marketing affects only the form in which the faith is presented, not the content of the faith itself. This assumption about the neutrality of marketing takes the church marketers off the theological hook.”
89 – Tucker sold encyclopedias one summer and was the top salesman. When she returned home her pastor asked her to teach the other members selling techniques. “I taught the group all the little techniques of how to get a foot in the door, how to get someone to say yes when they really wanted to say no, and how to push a decision before someone was ready. The gospel was not really the gospel as we went door-to-door selling it. Form has a strange ability to change content more than we could ever imagine. So it is with church growth techniques.“
90 – “‘Marketing is a value-laden enterprise rooted in specific sets of convictions,’ writes Kenneson and Street. ‘Having management techniques at one’s disposal encourages one to see all people as objects to be managed and controlled, just as having marketing techniques at the center of the picture encourages one to view the entire world as a series of manageable exchanges.”
90 – “Yet the concept of marketing the church is widely touted by George Barna and other church growth experts. Indeed, Barna laments that the vast majority of churches in America do ‘not have a marketing perspective.’”
93 – “Although megachurches appear too easily buy into all that is cutting edge in contemporary culture, their theological tastes are decidedly conservative—evangelical and fundamentalist. According to Rob Marus, Southern Baptists are particularly tuned into the megachurch mentality because they, perhaps more than any other denomination, measure success in terms of numbers of baptisms or converts. ‘The more conservative and evangelical the church, the more important growth is,’ he urges. ‘It becomes almost a jockeying contest to see how many you can attract, how many you can convert, and how many you can baptize.’ It is no accident that every one of the presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention in the past two decades has been a senior pastor of a megachurch.”
95 – “‘Not…every church is called to be a large congregation.’ Those are the shocking words of Gene Appel and Alan Nelson, in their book, How to Change Your Church without Killing It. ‘Through history,’ they write, ‘people have taken a new thing God was doing and elevated it to an unhealthy level, so much so that their affections became attached to the method instead of to God.’“
97 – “Form does matter. The competitive corporation core structure of the church affects the content. Marketing is not a neutral formula that leaves substance untouched. Perhaps some would argue that substance, for whatever reason, needs to be changed. And surely the case for the megachurch has been ably made by its many defenders. But that these defenders would claim that form does not affect substance amounts to a superficial analysis at best. And that the megachurch form would find its rationale largely based on the failure of the typical left-behind church is an argument that does not fly. All Christians are admonished by the words of Jesus that the last shall be first and by the words of Paul that by weakness we are made strong. Form that flies in the face of bedrock Christian principles must be challenged.”
Chapter 5 Left Behind In A Megachurch World by Ruth A. Tucker
83 – Look for Vincent van Gogh’s painting Still Life with Open Bible, Candlestick, and Novel, which he did to move beyond his failure in ministry. The symbolism was striking. The Bible lay open, but the flame on the candle alongside had gone out. Vincent van Gogh killed himself at age 37 in a small village outside of Paris.
84 – Pastoral failure in Safenwil – This young pastor who failed in this small town was none other than Karl Barth who later succeeded.
TRAILS From The HEART 