Tuesday, October 28, 2008

an outward focus can be painful

An outward focus can be painful. It is like taking up a cross.

Based on a comment in yesterday's post, someone has asked me to say a bit more. This is their comment:

Because core values are so important would you please expand on your statement "Growing churches let go of traditions that do not work and reach out to the community with things that are relevant to the community, even setting aside their own preferences in order to win new people in the neighborhood."

Let me say a bit more about that statement, and it is not pleasant, but it is real. This is why many churches are growing and many others are not. If the only people that we are trying to win are those like us, eventually we will decline and die, because we are all growing older. By nature we lose touch with younger folks. We wonder why we have no young folks at our churches, but we are often unwilling to change to attract them. It is like we are saying, "come join us, help pay the bills, but you will need to learn to like our music and have church the way we like to have church. After all, it is our church."

If we expect to win young people in the community, we need to create an environment that is welcoming to them. We need to give them more than a seat in a pew. We need to give them authority. We need to help them shape a church that they want to take ownership of. This means that we must be willing to allow a church to be created that is not to our liking. We may prefer traditional choral music or a formal, reverent service, but if we stick with that, we will not win the young folks. We will simply die a slow death, while clinging to the life raft of our traditions. If we don’t change to become a church that they like, they will figure out how to start their own churches…and they are.

To welcome someone is to cook their favorite meal, whether you prefer it or not. It is to find the joy in having a house full of young folks that enjoy a different taste in music. We must learn to grin and bear and enjoy their ways and their music if we want them around. Here is the fun part. In 20 years, it will all have to happen all over again. In 20 years, we can watch them suffer with the ideas and music of future young folks, just as we have had to do for them. We can mentor them in the ways of change and acceptance, all for the mission of Jesus Christ. We must decrease so that he can increase.

The following quotes are painful, but true.

"Those who are not here, matter as much if not more than those who are here."
adopted by the Administrative Council of Woods Chapel Church, August 2000

”The church is only the church when it exists for others”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as quoted in the book, Faithquakes, by Leonard Sweet

The church is the only group on earth that exists for its “non-members.”
as quoted in the book, Radical Outreach, by George Hunter.

"Go and make disciples," "take up your cross and follow me" and "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it."
Jesus

Death awaits those who insist on their personal preferences and comfort. The future of the church is bright and joyful for those congregations who are willing to give themselves away for the sake of the gospel.

To what extent are we willing to reach beyond our comfort zone to welcome the next generation? Answer this question and I will tell you your future.

It's a beautiful day in God's world, be sure to see the good.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

For those who were lucky enough to be in church at 9:05 or 10:10 last Sunday you got to see three young people perform some of the most beautiful praise music I have heard in quite some time. I suspect that young and old alike were moved by the amazing way they were able to lead worship because I heard more people in the congregation singing along than most Sundays (myself included).

In terms of tradition Woods Chapel has some great ones. Ash Wednesday, Walk to the Manger, Jeff's annual apology to the visitors on the Sunday he preaches on giving... :-) We don't have to let those go. And thanks to our youth and their leaders we have new traditions for our young people. Logos, Synago, Mission trips, Sunday night worship, The Breakfast club. These traditions allow our kids to participate and will transform their lives so they will want to lead and participate in the ministries and missions available as those young people grow up.

I agree wholeheartedly with Jeff. We need to let our young people have a voice in the church. - they are our future leaders. I'm an old guy, but I love some of our new ideas. I remember visiting Jeff in the hospital and he mentioned to me how important it was to him that we start doing some "cross-over" music. I heard the 10:10 band rehearsing a U2 song last week. That's awesome.

If someone searching for God walked into Woods Chapel and heard the Carrie Underwood song we did a last month it very well could be that moment where they first feel the connection to Him. "And what you've been out there searching for forever is right there in your hands". That is a powerful statement to someone seeking Him. All that person may have needed was the context of worship to bring that to light.

Traditions are good. If you like traditional services we've got them. If you like contemporary services we've got them. At some point we will want to add another worship style because that's what it's going to take to bring people to church so we can connect them to Jesus Christ. Pyro and lasers anyone?

DT

Anonymous said...

Ditto,
on all acounts.
By the way, I keep hitting the
"anonymous" button becuase I cant seem to remember my user name and password but this is Erik Blaney and I agree with Jeff. I have watched from a distance as my childhood church has slowly died for many reasons. Most of them are outlined by Jeff in the last couple posts. Thanks for your leadership and vision.
Erik Blaney

Anonymous said...

I also agree, but want to add that the young people catagory also includes the 30 something's. I was in a bible study a couple of weeks ago and heard someone say "I don't really have any girlfriends who are also mom's".
What! How can one be a mom without having girlfriends! I told her that because she came to this bible study at WCC she now has a handful of "mommy girlfriends", myself included. I love Woods Chapel as do my Mom,Dad, and Grandma when they visit.

JD

Anonymous said...

I was reading a book the other day that had a passage that stuck with me that I was going to share with Jeff via email but it seems appropriate here: I hope its not too long: "Years later, I was haveing a conversation with a pastor of a far more liturgical church than the one I was raised in. The pastor was telling me about Bill, a man in the church who was ccomplaining about so much liturgy being used in the service on Sunday. It was more formality than he was generally used to. I had been going there for sometime and I wondered about the same things Bill was wondering about too, though I was falling in love wht the liturgy in those days. "I do not like all the rigeamorale, "bill said. " I don't get it, Just sing a couple of the good old songs, and then preach me a good sermon and lets go home." "The liturgy is not for you, Bill," the pastor told him. "it is for God. On sunday , our job is to put on the best possible show for God that we know how to do. We are doing so in the way that God's people have always done it, If you get something out of it, Bill, that's fine. But if you do not, the that is okay too. It isn't even for you. Sometimes now, I will talk to a friend someone who is thinking about changing churches. And sometimes one of them will say that he changed places becasue he was not getting anything out of the sermons anymore. Or the way the serrvices were being conducted "just was'nt doing it for me anymore" Sometimes when I talk to peole about prayer they say the same sorts of things. All these years later, I finally have a good answer for my grandfathers sunday question. "Boy , what did you get out of the service today?" "It was not even for me, " I wish I had known to say.

from : In Constant Prayer by Robert Benson

Just another way of thinking I found of interest...its not about us...its about our Father.