The Present Future

New Reality Number Three

A New Reformation: Releasing God’s People
The first reformation was about freeing the church the new reformation is about freeing God’s people from the church (the institution). The church or congregation that helps followers of Jesus live abundant and missional lives are the ones that understand the new reformation. This is not modeled by gaining new people into the church and then assimilating them into ministry and eventually making them ministry leaders and Sunday school teachers. Currently we get new people, throw them a spiritual gifts inventory and mine them for their gifts to be given to the community…NO WAY to be used in the church for already believers. This method is missionally counterproductive.

Becoming a missionary movement is not easy. It requires admitting that as much as we want to be one body each generation has their own needs, speaks their own language, and cares about different things. It requires us to go into our community and find out what they need, what is important to them and investing in those things.

The truth is that member values in a church are not missionary values. Church under this new reformation is no longer about “me” it is about “them”. These two mindsets cannot coexist. One will prevail over the others and there will be a battle.

Every year churches in my district of my denomination are required to report several statistics to our District Office who then report to our National Office. I believe the report asks for financial giving, weekly worship attendance, salvations and baptisms. The higher each of these numbers the better you are doing. Get these numbers high enough you get a pay raise, get them even higher and you move on to higher level jobs.

The fact is that if your church is a missional movement like the book is suggesting these numbers may actually decline. At first glance of your reports it will appear as if your ministry effectiveness has actually done down. The key to this is changing the scorecard.
How many volunteers do we have in the local schools?
How many conversations are we having with pre-Christians?
How many congregations are using our facilities?
How many languages (ethnic and generational) do we worship in?
How many community groups do we have?
How many hours per week are our people spending in ministry outside the church?

All in all the missional movement should ask this question before any and every ministry endeavor is begun. “Who is this for?” We know what the answer should be!

posted by Nick @ 9:07 AM