Wednesday, April 25
Always going back to Jesus...
Continuing notes from the National New Church Conference… I just attended a workshop given by Alan Hirsch. It was really good. Really, really good.
Hirsch is the coauthor of the book ‘The Shaping of Things to Come”. He has a new book called “The Forgotten Ways”, www.forgottenways.org
Basically, the thoughts that were the most powerful to me were these… “Christology (the person and the work of Jesus) determines Missiology (our purpose and function in the world) which in turn determines ecclesiology (the nature and shape of a faith community or movement)”.
Hirsch says, “Our problem is, that many times, we reverse it: “Ecclesiology leads to Mission leads to Christology. That’s the problem with church planting, our focus become totally ecclesiology. We have to keep going back to Jesus.”
Mark Nelson at 3:16 PM 1comments
1 Comments
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at 4:07 PM
said... Mark,
I agree completely with your viewpoint here. It's interesting that church's as a whole believe a couple of things:
1. If you build it, the people will come (perhaps for awhile, but will they become committed and stay??). We need not bother going out into the community - let them come to us.
2. Programs driving the people instead of the needs of the people dictating the programs.
It's kind of like we forget what the Great Commission clearly tells us we need to do. Evangelism becomes the idea of inviting people to church, unlocking the doors, having some "cookie cutter" form of programs in place and sitting around wondering why no one shows up.
I recently suggested to a pastor friend of mine that the next time he steps up on Sunday morning and gazes across the congregation, instead of being concerned with the number of people in attendance to ask himself how effective the one's that are there really are.
Are they making a difference for God's kingdom in our community?
Yes Mark, we certainly do need to live, teach and preach Christ first, then go out and spread that message into our communities. Take the church to the people, love them and minister to them. The buildings and programs will naturally follow.
Just some thoughts.
Jeff