Friday, January 30, 2009

Rocking the boat ever so gently

I often try to view things from an outside perspective when it comes to how people may see the church, but I wonder if that is the case with most of the leadership in the church today. I was reading Tony Morgan's blog this morning (tonymorganlive.com) and he presented an interesting list of things to consider in his blog titled "Are we married to the mission of the methods?" Here are a couple that stood out to me and made me wonder if we need to rethink a few of the methods we use:

We need the church to connect us in groups, while the rest of the world finds their own friends.

We share our message at specified times on Sunday morning, while the rest of the world uses video on demand.

We use bulletins, while the rest of the world is on Facebook.

We are concerned about the structure and the rules, while the rest of the world is focused on the content.

Not saying what we do is right or wrong, just curious if we could throw out the way it is currently delivered (the method) and be okay with that if there is a different way to connect the mission better? If we are married to the method, then I think we are looking to make ourselves comfortable more than caring about those outside the walls currently. Harsh? Maybe, but I think it is good to check our motives in why we do things and to be willing to change if necessary.

One of the comments asked the following similar question - Does our philosophy drive our actions (ministries), or do we manufacture a philosophy to justify our actions (ministries) after the fact? I think this is an excellent question to consider, but then again I like to rock the boat. I want to challenge leadership to evaluate and reconsider at all times. The moment we think we have it all figured out is the exact moment that we start to die as a congregation in my opinion. If we aren't constantly growing, then according to science (I believe this is true, but I could have just made it up) we are dying. Any thoughts? (Of course if you are reading a blog, you might not be the person who most needs to hear this challenge right now, but then again ask a high school student if what you think about certain methods may be outdated and you may get a different answer.)

1 comment:

brianj33 said...

Really good stuff. I'm gonna chew on that.