Megachurch and Monastery

The Church of the Open Door is a megachurch in Minnesota with some 3,000 people attending weekly. In recent years they've discovered that facets of monasticism are making a great difference to the way the church functions, and the way in which members of the congregation view their lives as Christians.

At the end of his article, Keith Meyer details a number of ways in which the core members of the church function together. The first of these is:

Living in Jesus. We will have regular habits of "being with Jesus" for transformation into Trinitarian life.
-Slowing our lives down together to eliminate hurry.
-Paying attention to God together, all of the time.
-Confessing our sins to one another in safe groups.
-Memorizing and meditating together on longer, transformative passages of scripture.
-Interceding for each other, our community, and our world in prayer together.
-Mentoring and being mentored across generational, ethnic, class, and gender lines.

What is also interesting in the article is that the way in which members have acted out some of these spiritual disciplines has caused other members to react against them.

Missional Shift or Drift

Leadership Journal conducted a survey in May 2008 asking nearly 700 evangelical pastors how their perceptions of the gospel and mission currently compare with their understanding a decade ago. The results were illuminating, and have been summarised in a report by Helen Lee. What follows here is a brief look at some of the highlights.

Compared to ten years ago, they found

• Pastors are focusing more on the Gospels than on the Epistles.
• More pastors believe the gospel is advanced by demonstration and not simply proclamation.
• More pastors say the goal of evangelism is to grow "the" church rather than to grow "my" church.
• More pastors believe partnering with other local churches is essential to accomplishing their mission.
  

Scot McKnight says, "The shifts have actually been going on for maybe 25 or 30 years. There has, though, been a surge in the last ten years. Evangelicals rediscovered the Gospels, and began to reframe their understanding of the gospel in terms of the Kingdom and not just justification."

Five changes are gaining momentum in congregations all across the country:

* Affirming the whole gospel
* Not looking to a megachurch model
* Focusing on making disciples
* Encouraging a missional mindset as a means of spiritual formation
* Establishing partnerships to advance the gospel

Smaller more adaptable churches are being seen as more viable than mega-churches. David Platt said, "We've learned that we don't have to bring people into a building to accomplish our mission." And Dave Gibbons says, "The pastor is now a subcategory of the church. I am now thinking about how to gear everything so that the laity is leading. It's all about how to make our congregation feel as though they are the leaders of the church as opposed to the pastoral staff."

Larry Grays, pastor of Midtown Bridge Church in Atlanta, whose congregants are mostly urban professionals between 20 and 40 years old, has learned that his people want more opportunities to serve the community around them. As a result, Sunday mornings have become less important as the emphasis shifts to inculcating a mentality that service should be a seven-days-a-week commitment.

Partnerships between churches are increasing, and a humility regarding non-Western churches in growing. Gibbons again: "We tend to be patronizing, thinking that we know more, but often it's the locals who know more, and we need to partner with the government, with educational institutions, or other organizations instead of going alone."

Some cautions are aired: don't move from one extreme to the other, from the seeming severity of the Epistles to the social action of the Gospels, from proclamation to 'demonstration evangelism', from leading your congregation to suddenly expecting them to take the initiative.

The full report is here.

Tending or Processing?

Jeff Hawkins wonders if Maybe sustainable agriculture is a better model for church life than a feed lot.

In this article based on his experience as an organic farmer, Jefff asks:

Is it a coincidence that Old McDonald farms are being replaced by large Confined Animal Feeding Operations, while family-sized congregations are being replaced by megachurches? Is the modern church favoring behaviors attributable to a preference for production rather than health, a way of life fundamentally inconsistent with the church's organic nature?

I began to wonder: does our church life reflect a gathering of many faces around the table, working toward holy health, or a disciple-producing machine pursuing greater numbers?

As I moved my own congregation toward this model, it has meant not only that we eat well (having the pastor donate his pasture-raised turkey for the November dinner is a unique benefit, of course), but that we describe our work differently. Instead of using mechanical metaphors for a church that "runs smoothly," "programmed" to produce "quantifiable results," we use organic or ecological metaphors.

We "tend." We understand that in Creation nothing is wasted; rather, the "waste" of one member serves as a valuable resource for another. What the world considers waste, we recognize as blessing, including the cross of Christ.

See the full article on Leadership Journal's site