Entries Tagged 'appropriate church' ↓

9 signs that you’re congregation may be pedestaling

1. The lack of an opening prayer (opening prayer orients the entire worship experience toward the divine)
2. Hyper-scheduled worship format (no room for spontaneity)
3. Avoidance of silence (a constant stream of music and speaking)
4. Little opportunity for the assembly to interact outside of singing
5. Sermons and lessons to the elimination of stories of God and God’s people
6. Emphasis on godly principles versus God’s person
7. No confession
8. Band, worship leaders, pastors, and preachers always placed front and center (How about placing a cross, candles, or art in the center? We tend to elevate whatever is in front of us)
9. Little or no Christian art or symbols (remember bare walls and a corporate/lecture type assembly are symbols in and of themselves. They tend to represent Western corporate culture and a human-centered worldview)
   

Global Church Advancement recently held a five-day conference in Orlando Florida. You can browse the conference information or visit the Global Church Advancement Blog and read the notes from the Missional Conference. I particularly liked Randy Pope’s distinction of people-based churches and programmed based churches.

A church is program-based when its primary method of making mature and equipped followers of Christ centers around the delivery of truth through the vehicles of church programs (i.e., seminars, preaching and classes, etc.). ~Randy Pope; Life on Life Missional Discipleship

A friend at Starbucks on Saturday. Four or five couples at Bob Evans on Sunday. This is as close as it gets to “church.” The idea is most representative of what the early Christians did two millennium ago. They spent time together, ate together and shared together, Hence they knew each other well.

This is what our little group of Jesus followers prefers; meaningful relationships outside the rigid structures of America’s skewed understanding of church. Before I go on, I need to tell you that we all still attend the Sunday assemble. We just no longer do “church work” as defined by the institution. We’re not willing to fall into the trappings of traditional church. And how do we keep from being sucked back in? As Gordon MacKenzie, says, “You go into orbit.”

Have you got a minute? Good. Because I want introduce you to the concept of orbiting. Orbiting is responsible creativity that energetically explores and operates beyond the gravity of church models, patterns, accepted norms, and contemporary standards while remaining connected to the spirit of what western culture has come to define as church.

To enter orbit around the “contemporary-traditional-church” is to find a place of balance where you benefit from the resources of the organization without becoming entombed in the institution. How do you enter orbit? By seizing the best course of action for turning one’s vision into a reality while avoiding the pallid path of “church appropriateness.” You’re ready for all this, right? Good. I’ll go then.

To be of optimum value to the “appropriate church” endeavor, you have to invest enough individuality to counteract the drag of the “appropriate church,” but not so much that you escape the pull altogether. I want to hover just beyond the gravitational pull of the “appropriate church’s” programs, ministries and premeditated Sunday morning worship. Through the measured assertion of my own uniqueness I’m reestablishing a dynamic relationship with the appropriate church. I find its gravitational drag an asset that keeps me from floating out into the overwhelming nothingness of what is embryonic, emerging and still evolving. Yet I must be carefully not to allow that same gravity to suck me into the church trichobezoar, or I’ll find myself in a different kind of nothingness. The nothingness of normalcy made stagnant by the contemporary consumer’s “appropriate church.” Orbiting the appropriate and normal is the only place where you can tap your one-of-a-kind magic, your limitless creativity.