The Dwindling Power of the Sermon

The more sermons I hear, the less impact each new one has on my life.

Consider going to a motivational seminar and hearing a compelling keynote address. Now consider if you heard a keynote once a week for the rest of your life. They’d have less and less impact the more you heard.

The Body of Christ is meant to be built up through ‘one-anothering’ with spiritual gifts. There’s a wide variety of gifts, and the church is intended to worship through all of them regularly. Sermons are at best two gifts (teaching and prophecy), and at worst a mere human-crafted speech.

Most institutional churches revolve around Sunday morning worship, which in turn revolves around the sermon. It’s okay to keep it, so as not to alienate existing members. Change your focus to intimate small group experiences. Train small group leaders in worship, encouragement, and especially using and discerning spiritual gifts. Each group should feel like a New Testament church, with members ‘one-anothering’ each other weekly in the group, and also regularly throughout life.

With most of your congregation living into their spiritual gifts and experiencing the depths of Christ among each other, leadership will be freed from management to discern Christ’s mission and movement, and truly lead their flocks to God’s kingdom on earth.

It’s Okay for a Church to Die

Hello, counter-intuitive!

What I mean is, it’s okay for individual congregations, or even denominations, to die (disaffiliate, dissolve… whatever).  It’s okay, so long as the Church doesn’t die.

And guess what?  It won’t.  God’s vision, his plan for humanity, is his church (what I often call the ekklesia, so it’s not confused with how we often misuse the word “church”).  He wants believers to band together in the unbreakable fellowship of faith in Christ.

Evangelicals get this wrong because their attitude is God’s plan is salvation.  That’s part of it, but only step one.  The common intent is the “personal decision” for Christ.  Faith in Jesus isn’t a personal matter, it’s communal.

Mainliners get this wrong because their attitude is God’s plan is worship.  That’s step two.  The common intent is the fellowship of God’s people.  Faith isn’t a matter of consent to doctrine though.  The word faith implies action, that your hope of success for your actions rests solely on God.

At any rate, the point is living a Christ-like life in community with other Christians.  (Incidentally, the word “Christian” means “little Christ.”)  There should be as many cells of ekklesia as there are children of Abraham, and just like cells of a body these should be born anew, grow, and eventually die to be replaced by new ones.

Unfortunately our churches – evangelical and mainline alike – have lost the skill of dying gracefully.  It’s good for churches to grow, and sometimes God resurrects congregations for new life.  Sometimes though, it’s time to make room for new things.

What’s It All About Again?

Someone once pointed out to me the most crucial element of visioning – the Nehemiah Principle.  Nehemiah brought Jews out of Babylon with permission of the Babylonian king to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem.  About halfway through, the Jews got distracted by their homes and other concerns and quit working.  Nehemiah had to recast the vision halfway through.  It took 52 days, so the people forgot in 26 days – a little under a month.

It’s easy to get caught up in tactics, frustrations, ideas and distractions.  I lose focus on the crucial, foundational reason for doing whatever I’m doing.  Besides this, visions are usually full of emotion and metaphor.  They don’t always make sense immediately, so they need to be said in a hundred different ways, at different times, in different places.

For me, the vision is the apostolic church looking forward to the kingdom of God.  It’s the church we read about in Acts, the Epistles, and even the gospels in Christ’s early disciples.  It’s the ekklesia, rather than the institutions.  It’s a fellowship of subversive missionaries changing people’s lives.  It’s a vast network of cell groups huddling around the light of Christ to hedge out the darkness of sin, built up by each other so they can build up the kingdom.

What vision motivates you in your faith?

Who Is Your Church?

• How can you expect members to behave and treat each other, both intentionally and spontaneously?
• What beliefs does your church take strength in during times of stress?
• What is the metaphor, “song in the heart” or vision that excites and inspires your church and the local publics?
• What is the strategic mission you hope to accomplish in 3-5 years, which you align all activities of the church along?

Answering these will spare your congregation from redundant committee management and oversight, trust issues, directionlessness and dithering, conflicted leadership, lack of volunteer interest, budget crises, and a host of other problems.

Be clear about your identity and align it around your purpose.  Drill it into every volunteer and staff leader (from the board to the secretary to the greeters to the custodian). If you can’t articulate your church’s identity, how are the spiritually hungry publics going to find you in the sea of other faceless churches?

Traditions and Monkeys

The Christian Century has an article tying traditional church thinking to an experiment involving monkeys, bananas, a pole and a bucket of water.  I know that’s not much to go on, but trust me: it’s downright spooky.  Here’s a snippet.

We preach and teach about bananas. We cast a vision for eating bananas. We develop pole-climbing training programs. . . . We read lots of books about bananas. We conduct 12-step support groups for people who are starving for bananas. We argue over which side of the pole the bananas should be on. We elect people who represent our side of the pole. But no matter what we do, nobody ever seems to get around to eating the bananas.

A Wandering Church for a Wandering People

I saw an article on Christianity Today a while back describing two kinds of ages in the Bible, temple ages and wandering ages. Throughout the Bible, God’s people either have a kingdom and go to a temple to worship, or they are in exile wandering in the wilderness seeking God.  Abraham’s family, the Egyptian slavery and exodus, and the Babylonian exile are all wandering ages.  David’s kingdom, the post-Babylon rebuilt temple – these are temple ages.

Christianity does this, too.  Christ’s resurrection heralded a new wandering age as Christians were persecuted and scattered.  Constantine established imperial Christendom for a new temple age.  In the 20th century, Christendom fell apart somewhere in the 60s and gave way to a new wandering age.  Trouble is, the church is still in temple mode in most of America, including newer churches.

My favorite worship experiences lately are those in rented spaces – bars, theaters, schools.  Property ownership seems anachronistic to the wanderer.  Why not a new church?

• Gatherings are held either in public places like parks or in rented spaces.  You can’t become entrenched and insular if you have no permanent home.
• Church membership doesn’t exist, instead replaced by accountability groups who walk the same road together.  No affiliation demands emphasis on lifestyle.
• The larger church is better described as a network of smaller churches straddling the line between new church plants and house churches.  Rather than a unified congregation you have a training, support and accountability network for leaders to focus vision and discipleship, as well as promote shared experience.

This church in urban and suburban cities becomes like water, filling available space and time unhindered.  Find your “low points” in the area that need this kind of pilgrim church, keep them filled, and spread from there.  Maintain strong leadership connections, and have the core team do only three things: seek God’s vision, share the vision with leaders and train others to do the same.