Are we missing the boat?

For just over a year now, I’ve been chewing on the thought that the North American church has missed the boat. Now, before you misread me, understand that I absolutely love the local church. I’ve been raised in it and I’m currently serving in it. In fact, I have a great heart for it. I think this is why I’m so concerned about it.

It all began last February when I was attending the Southeast Conclave Student Ministry Conference in Atlanta. During the weekend, I had the opportunity to hear from Francis Chan who has quickly become one of my favorite speakers/authors/Christian leaders. During his session, he asked this question:

If you were stranded on an island and the only influence you had for what a New Testament church should look like was the Bible, would you walk into your church and say, “yeah, this is it! This is what the bible says church should be!”?

His answer regarding his own church – at the time – (Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, CA), and what the majority of us in the room would say was “No!”  Now this isn’t a bashing of the local church in general or my own church specifically, but it is a reality that we must consider.  Although God is moving and there are tons of great things happening in our church, the question that has been weighing on me is are we missing out on the totality of what God wants our churches to be?  Because of how we’re structured, how we operate and how we program, are we limiting the movement on God’s Holy Spirit in the local church?

By the way, I don’t have an answer to this, so if you’re reading looking for some great nugget of wisdom on how to build or return a church to what it should be biblically, I don’t have it.  I do believe I know where we need to begin, though.

A few weekends ago I attended another conference, YouthLab, at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary with Jeff Tilden.  During this conference we heard speakers like Wes Hamilton, JR Vassar and Ergun Caner – all of whom brought great wisdom from their own experiences as church leaders.  Although I could blog at length about what any one of them said, it was Vassar’s message that has really stuck in my heart and mind.  Not only that, but I believe it’s where our journey to the return of a God-honoring, biblical church begins.

Vassar mentioned to us that as church leaders we must be much more concerned with inspiration than we are with imitation.  What he meant was that so often our desire is to imitate what other people and other churches are doing in ministry instead of just following the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  I believe that much of the Church’s ineffectiveness in today’s society is because we love imitation but neglect inspiration.  It’s so easy to just copy what someone else is doing instead of abandoning ourself to the nudging of the Holy Spirit.

I fully believe that God understands how to reach our communities and the various subcultures around us.  I believe that he understands the thought patterns of the Baby Boomers, Gen X’ers and Millennials.  I have complete confidence that when God planted my church where he did 175 years ago that he knew the people who would live in our community in 2010 as well as those who will live here in 2050.  This isn’t true just for where I serve, but for every evangelical church out there.  Why then would we as church leaders go anywhere else but the Holy Spirit to find direction and wisdom in how to reach those around us?

Again, I don’t have any great nuggets of wisdom to share.  In fact, what I do share I stole from Vassar: If we desire for our churches to be biblical, to return to their original intent and to effectively engage our culture with the message of Jesus Christ, we must first return to a complete dependence on the Holy Spirit.  Sure, we can glean insight from conferences, associational entities and other churches about what might work and about what might not but, ultimately, we must turn to the One who has all authority and who loves the church more than you and I ever will.

~ by joshephillips on April 26, 2010.