Some questions for us to think about…
1. What are your initial thoughts?
2. Is Mark on to something, or just on something?
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Response to Being Church vs. Doing Church
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Some questions for us to think about…
1. What are your initial thoughts?
2. Is Mark on to something, or just on something?
7 comments:
1. My initial thoughts are that this could be a transcript of the conversation we had last week and "Good luck, Dave Covell, trying to get Council to understand this"
2. I like what Mark proposes. It's interesting to me that the way to reach "post moderns" is actually the most "ancient of methods"...i.e the relational, incarnational example of Christ that He taught to His disciples. How did we lose this for all of these centuries?
3. After our group discussion, and reading this article I have had two almost diametrically opposed "Ah ha" thoughts. First, it strikes me that being an incarnational, relational minister in Christ't church is the easiest thing in the world to do...it just means being yourself in all situations...no deception, no inflation...no hard sell...easy. Oooh, but then I am overwhelmed to realize that IN ALL THINGS...IN EVERY MOMENT...EVERY INTERACTION...I am a minister of Christ's church...it is the most awesome and difficult role I could imagine for myself.
4. I am both excited and terrified. It's very easy for me to talk about my faith to others, but I've never been one to try to convert or bring someone to the church building I worshipped in. It's a bit of a relief to me to read in Practice #4 that we are not called to bring people in, but to send people out.(yes, and there's a few people I would like to send out right now...sorry)
5. Attractional is the mega-church movement now, the TV evangelists of yesterday, and the tent-revival snake-charmers of the turn of the century. Incarnational means Christ became flesh and lives in our neighborhood. It's what an inner city Lutheran Church is attempting to do by going into the neighborhood and serving, rather than hiding behind closed doors and praying. It's what we want to be.
I'm not sure they are totally exclusive. Jesus was incarnational, but His message and impact are incredibly attractive.
6. In practice #2 Mark mentions that "third places" don't work as well in the suburbs. Do you agree? If so, how does this change things?
Have you heard the CD "The Gospel Truth" by Susan Werner? She epitomizes the searching, post-modern ideology.
Cindy
I don't know about the third places yet. I do know that we probably know enough people in our own circles already to get us started. That's where we start.
Also, I think incarnational becomes attractional, not because we have a great service to bring people to(which we will), but because they will want what we are living out before them.
test
Sorry, this is my third attempt to post a comment. I really like this blogging idea if I could only get it to work.
I like the article. Mark's approach seems to be natural, easy-going, and non-threatening (both to us and to those we are trying to reach). If there is a downside, it is that the process is slower and one person at a time, but in the end, I think the relationships built have the potential to be stronger and longer lasting. Overall, it pouts me at ease, because this sound like something anyone can do, not like the kind of evangelism that we all think of (carrying signs, knocking on doors, cold calling people). For me it is much easier to talk about to someone about Christ, faith and worship when they are ready.
Mark does not address the role of worship, corporate worship, or larger gatherings of believers. Does he envision a lot of small cells gathering in homes, and/or one-on-one relationships only? Certainly a lot of churches are "attractional", but can a church have quality worship without having some "attractional" attributes? I do not believe that incarnational and attractional are mutually exclusive, there is a role for both. I suppose one has to ask the question, "Who is corporate worship for? Can this be another way for postmoderns to connect with God and believers in Christ? Or is this just for believers?" I have a song also, "Tears of the Saints" by Leeland, which captures the missional thinking of postmoderns and why they don't seek out established churches.
Finally, I think the burbs have "third" places, they are just different and tend to be organized (eg soccer). I do think suburbanites protect their privacy more, and Mark's ideas are particulary suited for the burbs.
Grant
You made a great point about the worship thing. We will be discussing this more down the road, but isn't it interesting that Mark never even brings up the worship service in his article? Why not? What does that mean for us?
Cindy asked how we lost the most ancient of methods, the relational, incarnational example of Christ. We lost it when the church became institutionalized.
Grant
Sorry it took me so long to get involved in the discussion.
I think this article exposes our inability to be really effective in outreach. As Grant said at our meeting, we know this in our heads.
Unfortunately, the reality is we at POP don't practice it. I truly believe we would like to we are just so used to "church" being a gathering on Sunday morning that it's hard for us to break out.
It was truley scary to listen to the folks at St. Andrew discuss their efforts at evangelism. "They passed out invitations to the whole neighborhood to come to the movie 'Luther' " At the moment they mentioned it I thought to myself "Do we sound that pathetic?"
I'm looking forward to changing my way of thinking and watching POP change.
To get back to the blog discussion:
I truly believe every neighborhood has third places. I'm willing to go explore some when the time comes.
Dave
P.S. this blog need spell check becuase i'm a horrible speller.
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