Christianity in North America

21 Steps to a 21st Century Church – Part 1

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Shining the light on darknessToday I begin a new series called “21 Steps to a 21st Century Church.” During this five-part series we’ll be examining the ways that today’s Church in the West can rise above mediocrity and get back to being all it can be. We’ll count down to what I feel are the most important issues we need to address by order of importance.

I want to thank all those who contributed ideas. Many of those are included in this countdown, so you have been heard. I pray that the results are satisfying and that all who read this are not only blessed, but begin thinking about how they can implement these ideas in their own churches.

And now on to the first five:

21. Two-way sermons can increase biblical understanding
Given the appalling level of scholarship and biblical knowledge in the Western Church today, few people have enough grounding in the Scriptures and Church history to teach anyone anything. Churches that jettisoned their primary teachings on Sunday in order to present watered-down seeker-sensitive messages that bored the faithful to tears usually have an adult teaching model that pushes all the real meaty Scripture study down to small group leaders, many of them barely biblically literate. With adult Sunday School programs vanishing faster than you can say “ignorance,” fewer and fewer people are equipped to teach, more of that role falling on the pastoral staff.The problem then becomes one of understanding. What good is a sermon or teaching that people can’t grasp? I’ve been around enough churches to know that plenty of people leave on a Sunday scratching their heads, even if we can’t see it. Worse yet, most can’t remember the message a week later; often this retention issue revolves around failing to draw the necessary connections to put the teaching/preaching into practical focus.

Opening up the message to questions is one way that folks can grapple with meaning in the environment primed for delivering meaning. A two-way sermon allows the pulpit to connect with the pew and vice versa. I know that if I were a pastor, I’d like to know when my people were comprehending or not. Too often I think that pastors assume the message got through and take it at that. I would offer that the intractability of discipleship failures in our churches only points out the fallacy of that belief.

Preachers/teachers/pastors—take questions! Open the message up so that folks can truly understand. Don’t make assumptions about comprehension. Welcome the opportunity to let the Spirit guide your responses. You may find your people ask smart questions when prompted!

How can this be facilitated? Have an elder gather written questions that can be answered by the message-giver at the end of the message. If the congregation is small, consider fielding questions as they come to people. If the church is huge, give the message-giver a room in the church to field questions immediately after the service.

Some Emerging churches are doing this very thing and I believe it’s a great idea. Rarely do we give people the freedom to ask questions, so most don’t. But if we create an atmosphere of learning and expectation on Sunday, I suspect everyone in the church will benefit.

20. Leaders should seek out the gifted
We might think we know ourselves, but time and again parents and spouses have keener insights into how we operate than we do. Despite the fact that we live in a self-help culture, most of us are blind to at least a few of our own traits.The same is true of spiritual gifts. Few things are more useless than a self-administered gifts inventory that reaffirms what we already know about ourselves, yet this is how countless people judge their own gifts. It’s amazing how many times our results look exactly how we desire ourselves to be, though.

I personally believe that one of the great failures of the Western Church is that church leaders are not looking for gifted people within their ranks. They’re waiting for those people to self-identify. This is one reason why we have vast swarms of people in leadership roles in churches who are ill-equipped to do the very thing they believe they are qualified to do. How many of us have encountered teachers in our churches who shouldn’t be allowed to teach a preschool class much less adults? I’ve personally lost track.

If we truly believed the Holy Spirit guides into all truth, then we should be able to trust Him to point out gifted people. A pastoral staff that is not going before the Lord daily asking Him to give them eyes to see the truly gifted in their congregations is wasting God’s resources. The tendency is to respond to the boldest extroverts who say they have this gift or that and miss the quieter folks who may truly be the needle in the church haystack.

Not to give pastors one more task, but picking out the folks upon whom the Holy Spirit is resting in power is a critical responsibility. Start taking it seriously!

19. Leaders should primarily come from within a congregation, not from the outside
Want to know if a church’s discipleship and education programs are effective?The surest way to take the pulse of a church’s effectiveness is how many of the pastoral staff came from within the congregation from one generation to the next. Hiring all your pastors and leaders from outside? Then the answer is clear: your programs stink.

The chilling truth is that too many churches have to hire from the outside. Any church that does so is a failure from a discipleship standpoint. If Church A has to go to Church B to get staff, then maybe everyone in Church A should be at Church B.

The surest mark of a church’s health is an unbroken generation-to-generation line of leadership succession. Not nepotism, but genuinely earned positions based on maturity developed within that same congregation. That so many of our churches today can’t do this is appalling. Time to get tougher on how we educate people.

Going hand-in-hand with #20 above, we should be recognizing which young people coming up are gifted for church leadership and we should be encouraging them in that regard. Even more, a church should ensure that the next generation of gifted young people gets the additional training they need to make best use of their gifts, even if that means that the congregation pays for that training! How’s that for a radical idea? If we value leadership and gifting as much as the lips service we give to it, then we should be willing to open up our wallets and put our money where our lip service is.

18. Christian intellectuals must be honored
One of the most insidious trends within Evangelical and charismatic circles in the last thirty years is the absolute scorn with which most Christian intellectuals are held. The wholesale mental slaughter inflicted on thinkers in your average megachurch is contemptible.Everyone loves the people who will let you cry on their shoulder, crying along with you. But how much value do we place on Christian thinkers? My own experience is that they’re treated as carnival sideshows in a lot of churches. Folks who think deep thoughts are somehow inferior to the weeping Wendys and empathic Eddies who get all the attention.

Who can blame intellectually-deep Christians for fleeing the average church? What happened to the Francis Schaeffers and J. Gresham Machens of this world? I’m not really sure where they go, but whenever there’s a “spokesperson for Christianity” quoted in the newspaper or featured on a TV roundtable discussion one truth can be counted on: you’ll never see the theological equivalent of William F. Buckley.

Why so many Christians despise the intellectuals within their midst is beyond me. That so many church leaders allow this confuses me to no end. Perhaps we should not be surprised that the best we can do is Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson whenever the news media wants a Christian perspective.

We need to change this attitude NOW. Instead of poking fun of the theology whiz-kid, we should be holding him up as the standard for the rest of us—unless we’re satisfied with the stupidity we see paraded in public whenever a Christian is asked for his opinion on an important issue.

17. A church’s core values should be obvious
No one should walk into a church and have to ask what people at that church believe. If folks have to go on an extended hunt to get a statement of faith and the general vision of a church, that church has failed to communicate. The first thing folks see when they walk into a church’s lobby should be a big plaque on the wall that lists core values. Also, newcomers should have no problem recognizing the core values because they are proclaimed from the pulpit and lived by the people in the church.In addition, there’s no reason to have people hanging on at a church when they don’t assent to those core values. Nothing drags down a church faster than being loaded with people who don’t want to follow the core values. I think that church leaders should reiterate those values and let people know that if they don’t like them, there’s always some other place down the street that malcontents can attend.

If that sounds harsh, well…it is. But it should only be harsh if the core values of the church don’t align with the core values of the Gospel. If that’s the case, then we should only be happy to leave such a counter-productive church. Otherwise, we should let the dross know just where they stand.
The Church Growth Movement has made us too mamby-pamby about losing people. The honest truth is this: a church of 50 who are all on-board with the church’s core values will grow and make a difference for Christ. On the other hand, a church filled with 5,000 who continually question the core values—or who never live them out—will get nowhere and fight perpetually losing battles until they become worthless for the Kingdom.

I hope you’ve gotten something from the start of this series. Stay tuned for the next four entries coming tomorrow!

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Fire in China, Ashes in America

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God's torch is passing to Asia, and he is performing many miracles in China.
—American missionary David Lin

Diane over a Crossroads is starting a series looking at the underground Chinese Church. I'll be quoting liberally from her blog, Chinese Girl with Her Biblebut as always, it pays great dividends to read her post.

Every Godblogger I know tries to tell it like it is, but inevitably the vast majority of us are English-speakers of American and British extraction. No matter what we might think of ourselves, most of us are not that much different in how we reflect a Western Church philosophy with roots in Reformation Europe. Acculturated as we are within Evangelicalism (mostly), we also take on the sheen of our wealthy American and U.K. culture. Especially for those of us in the United States, our models for how to live out the Christian walk are inextricably linked to American Manifest Destiny, the American Dream, Rugged Individualism, and a "What's in it for me?" attitude.

Yet not every Christian in the world thinks or acts like we do. I know it's hard to believe, but we are not the measure of all things Christian.

Yesterday, I posted that our Western roots and over-reliance on Greek thought have led us into a pit of division, where sides must be chosen, for some have even wondered which hemisphere of our brains is more godly. While we seem to be obsessed with drawing dividing lines wherever we can stick our straight-edge, the non-Western world shows us a Christianity far less at odds with itself—or with the Gospel.

Take the simple act of prayer. Ask most Americans about prayer and they'll say they wholeheartedly believe in it, even if they don't do all that much of it daily. The Chinese underground Church takes a different stance. Not only are the leaders of those churches praying several hours each day, but they have older saints who are devoting themselves to prayer all day and most of the night.

A couple years ago I posted a comment to TheOoze Web site stating that I did not believe that the Church in America would ever see any kind of revival unless people started praying a minimum of two hours a day. The response was that two hours of daily time dedicated to nothing but prayer was too much to ask. TheOoze is an Emerging Church site, so I was not surprised by that reaction from the mostly sub-35 crowd there. But what has been eye-opening to me is that Emerging Church foes in the Traditional Church largely have the same response: two hours solely devoted to prayer is unreasonable given most people's circumstances.

If one assumes that we continue to follow the societal structures we've created in our "every man for himself" society hellbent on fifty hour work weeks, two hour commutes, and family quality time, then maybe two hours is too much to ask. But persecuted Chinese Christians are pulling it off. They seem to be loaded with praying people, but where are our Western prayer warriors? If we wonder why Christianity in the U.S. is in the doldrums, I think we should look no further than the woeful prayer lives that most of us have, from the newest believer up to the most senior pastor. What kind of vital faith do we expect to see when we try to squeeze by on a handful of minutes tossed heaven's way while we rush around like headless chickens?

I don't hear American Christians talk about breakthroughs in the Spirit the way the Chinese do, either. We tend to timidly toss in the towel when confronted with a mountain-sized challenge—or else we resort to the following:

  • Traditional Church – Form a committee to examine the challenge. Form another one when the original disbands because of in-fighting.
  • Emerging Church – Walk a labyrinth to clear our heads so we can think deep, spiritual thoughts about the challenge while asking, "What would Thomas Merton do?"
  • Seeker-Sensitive Church – Commission a demographic study to examine what most people think of the challenge, then design new programming that makes talking about the challenge culturally relevant.
  • Charismatic Church – Bring in a band of traveling prophets to have them scry the meaning of the challenge in terms of battle plans for Joel's Last Days Army.

What do Chinese house churches do? They fast and pray for as long as it takes for God to resolve the challenge. As one Chinese Church leader says it:

When there is a real resistance, the teams do not try to push the Gospel. They just go on their knees and wait on the Lord to hear His voice for direction on what to do. They just keep silent and continue to fast and pray. This is a very practical part of their lives.

Is that how our churches today—no matter what kind they might be—do anything?

Our Western tendency to compartmentalize the Faith is strange to Asian believers. They have a far more holistic view of the Gospel and how it plays out in everyday life. From Diane's post:

Brother Denny (an American missionary interviewer): How do the Acts of the Apostles compare to the Chinese church? What does the Chinese church believe about the Book of Acts?

Brother Paul (Chinese): They would say, "We are there. It is our normal Christian life." They believe that Acts is a demonstration of the normal Christian life. It is a testimony of the resurrected Christ, and He is still the same today. They do not believe that miracles have passed away.

Brother Ren (Chinese): We have to understand that the Gospel that is preached in China, is a little bit different. The emphasis is not only intellectual and mental messages. It is fifty percent preaching, fifty percent showing the power of the Gospel. There is always an expectation and readiness for miracles. It is normal that anytime when the message of the Gospel is pronounced, there is going to be a demonstration of the power of God in that situation. People can see clearly that Jesus is the Son of God, and that He is the Savior of the world. The church of China is not praying for miracles, but they are living in miracles. It is like [Brother] Paul said: it is the normal Christian life.

While we continually argue the theological points of our own little factions, the Chinese Church is living the whole Gospel, not just the parts they like. The result is that God is growing the Chinese Church exponentially, while we American Christians bicker about one topic or another as fewer people care to listen to what we have to say.

Here is a Church that has none of the material available to them that we have. They have no money, no political standing, no cleverly-devised programs, no conventions, and nowhere near the dogmatic factionalism that we have. But what they do have is a faith that moves mountains and may very well topple the atheistic Communist regime in their country of 1.3 billion souls.

And what of the persecuted Chinese Church's view of evangelism? Well, they believe that the Great Commission comes first. What is unusual to Westerners is how they go about it.

In many cases, Christians are sent out to towns that have no Christian witness and the first thing they ask is, "What is the greatest problem in this village?" When they hear what it is, they immediately begin fasting and praying that Jesus Christ would prove Himself greater than the problem. Diane quotes the Chinese Christians (from the quote above) saying that two young women went into a town and were told that a demon-possessed man had the townspeople under his thumb. They confronted the man in the name of Jesus, cast out his demons, and led him to Christ. Then that same man joined the two women as they spoke to the entire village about Jesus. All three hundred in that village repented and gave their lives to the Lord.

Does that model seem familiar? We saw it in Jesus' ministry and the ministry of the apostles in Acts. In fact, the Lord Himself advocated this type of ministry when He said:

And proclaim as you go, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay. Acquire no gold nor silver nor copper for your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics nor sandals nor a staff, for the laborer deserves his food. And whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it and stay there until you depart. As you enter the house, greet it. And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town. "Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
—Matthew 10:7-22 ESV

Should we be surprised at the quote that opened this post? We out-thought the Lord here in America. We told His Spirit that we can do it all in our own cleverness or we told Him that He could not work that way anymore. Either way, we seem to have lost Him here in America. He took His fire to China.

I can't read Diane's post and not get excited. Unfortunately, I'm excited for China and not for America. We can't seem to see what we've done to ourselves because of our overt anti-supernaturalism and our reliance on our own human reasoning. Meanwhile, the Chinese Church is receiving the blessing of God while they live out the whole Gospel, or as they say, "The normal Christian life."

I don't know about you, but I want that same kind of "normal Christian life" here in America. What has happened to the Church here is criminal, but we brought it on ourselves. It will take the Holy Spirit of God to bring His torch back our way, but He'll only do that if we are ready.

Lord Jesus, make us all ready.

Tags: China, America, Revival, Holy Spirit, Evangelism, Church, Faith, Christianity, Jesus, God

The Lord of Apologists and Servants

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Fallout from "The Godblogosphere's Black Hole" and "More Thoughts on 'The Godblogosphere's Black Hole'" continues to rain down. Pyromaniac's Phil Johnson waded into the fray on Tuesday. The comments for his response to me are intriguing. A few have reiterated in comments here the gist of the comments in Phil's blog. And the wheel goes 'round and 'round.

A few days ago, I wrote a mini-series called "The Church's Brave New Brain" that viewed the Church in terms of those within it favoring one side of their brains over the other. The left-hemisphere thinkers like the logical approach and bring that to the Church, while the right-hemisphere thinkers bring the relational.

In the past, I've written elsewhere on the idea of Apologists versus Servants. I believe in many ways this aligns with the left/right hemisphere issues I discussed in the aforementioned series. Now that the issue of apologetics is showing up in comments here, I thought I'd address it even if it borders on the very theological "battle" I swore I wasn't going to let myself get dragged into. For that reason, I will be brief.

Jesus Christ came to attest to the Father through His own life. He is the Revealer of Truth and the Truth Himself. He is the Lord of Apologists.

Jesus Christ came to serve, to be the Suffering Servant. He is our perfect model for service. He is the Lord of Servants.

Without apologetics, we serve in vain.

Without service, we contend for truth in vain.

In short, the two cannot be divorced.

(Since mostly Apologists are reading this, I won't even bother to pull out my ESV and quote all the verses to support this. Most of us can do it from memory.)

The folly of the Church in the West (a folly that does not seem to affect non-Western Christians, interestingly enough) is our penchant to always want to divide and conquer. We latch on to either apologetics or service and we bring that laser-like Western focus on the discipline that most ignites our hearts. We concentrate on it until we burn the rods and cones out of our eyes that correspond with that OTHER side. In effect, we can no longer see the whole picture.

I wrote what I did in those two "Black Hole" posts because in 2005 the Godblogosphere increasingly looked like an Apologists' convention. It's understandable if for no other reason than Internet-savvy folks are largely left-brained Apologists. It's also true that blogs lend themselves to information over relationship. Sure it's nice to make friends through blogging, but it's even nicer to shake that person's physical hand and down a beverage of choice with him. Nothing replaces that.

The Godblogosphere has become the haunt of Apologists. There is nothing wrong with Apologists! It's the disproportion that bothers me. But what bothers me even more is that so few are trying to find a way to use blogs as a means to service that can restore balance to the Godblogosphere.

If I can help bring the Servants out in force, I think that's my goal for 2006 in my little neck of the blogosphere. I believe that blogging can evolve to better implement physical service to others. No one said it would be easy, but I think we have to try for that ideal.

Before I end here, I have a couple more thoughts.

Right now, people are coming to Jesus Christ. Today, those people begin a walk of sanctification that they'll continue until the day they see Him face-to-face. Those new Christians are Christ's beloved. And you know what? They're going to fall on their faces when pressed hard for some piece of biblical knowledge they're not going to know. They're also going to take their newfound love for the Lord and serve themselves right into a hole because they don't know how to serve yet.

No matter whether we fancy ourselves an Apologist or a Servant, we've tanked in both those areas at some time or other. Depending on how badly we failed, we might very well have started drifting away from the apologetics or the service depending on which didn't work perfectly at that point that we most wanted it to.

And that's a shame because the Man of God is made to be both an Apologist and a Servant, not one predominantly over the other.

That's what I'm shooting for in 2006. I pray that at least part of the Godblogosphere walks alongside me.

May Christ richly bless you Apologists and you Servants as you grow more profoundly in love with Him on your way to becoming true Servant Apologists.

Tags: Servants, Apologists, Service, Apologetics, Balance, Church, Faith, Christianity, Jesus, God