RETHINK - MAKING A CULTURE SHIFT

 BY STEVE DUNN

The move from being a traditional and inward-focused church to an outward focused one requires a culture shift. As this is played out in the first decades of the 21st century it is done so against the backdrop of the shift in our nation from a churched culture to what some have called a post-Christian one. In particular, within the church you find yourself moving from a membership culture to a discipleship one. In a recent church council training session, I spoke of it in this way:

Rethink

Rethink who you are as a Christ-follower and as a leader

Don’t go to church - BE the Church

DISCIPLES not members

EXPECT something from God

REINVEST in ministry

ACT intergenerationally

ADVOCATE the Vision

GIVE to God first and give more

STOP pleasing people and please God

EMBRACE excellence and reject perfectionism

STOP saying me and proclaim we

(c) 2013 by Stephen L Dunn

A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY FOR THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION FOR CHURCH PLANTERS

The planting conversation today is generally one-sided. We read books and the author speaks to us, we watch webinars and see them teach, we go to conferences and hear them share, but what about our questions? How does what they say work in our context?

LAUNCH'’s goal is to break down those walls that cause the discussion to be one-sided. LAUNCH and the speakers are committed to providing you with time for questions in a smaller context. We want to offer opportunities to continue the dialogue outside the conference sessions and even past the conference itself, so that planters and pastors are strengthened in the mission that God has called them to.

What if you had the opportunity to spend 3 to 5 days with the conference speakers you thought could help you the most? We want to provide those opportunities for you. Our goal is to not be just a conference, but an environment of mentoring, teaching, conversation, push back, and growing from some of the greatest minds in the planting world.

LAUNCH is also partnering with Winebrenner Seminary to launch a new Seminary program that will partner with many of our speakers to provide, what we believe, will be the best church planting program in the U.S. Programs offered will be: Church Planting Diploma Graduate Certificate in Church Planting Master of Arts in Church Development M.Div with a planting emphasis Our Faculty includes: Dr. Reggie McNeal Dr. Linda Bergquist  Dr. Phillip Nation Neil Cole Vince Antinoucci Lizzette Beard Glenn Smith Justin Meier

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT LAUNCH GO TO THE LINK

From the archives of Chris Hunter  EvangelismCoach.Org

Moving from Attractional to Missional

September 27, 2008

I’ve spent the last month talking with pastors around the US about church transformation.  A few pastors are in really difficult situations (read more at: Leaving Egypt and Not Liking it).
From those discussions, it seems that a common meaning of church transformation is

Church transformation is to move a church that is stuck or in serious decline,
and lead them into a new vision of what God has for them.

Thus launching a new life cycle of growth.
Ed Stetzer calls them Comeback Churches.  Ron Crandall calls them TurnAround Churches.
I’ve seen other various titles, like Boomerang church, Redevelopment, Revitalization.  Seems the common word now is Transformational.

Moving from Attractional to Missional

(See Comparing Missional vs. Attractional at Blind Beggar)

A common thread share by these pastors is their labor at moving congregations to shift

• from an exclusive focus on attractional methodology tweaks
• to becoming more missional and engaging their community.

They still seek to improve their attractional ministries (like hospitality and personal invitations to church) but now realize that churches have to be connected to the neighborhood.
It’s a journey in process, and some have moved further along than others.

What is attracional?

Attractional ministry focused on quality programs, excellent hospitality, and marketing to get people in the door.
This was sometimes called a “magnetic” church.  It still is very valuable as a model that supports the work of evangelism of the local church.
Attractional ministry is based on the idea that if you do enough marketing, you can get more foot traffic in your door.  Your hospitality will help the newcomers “stick” and your church will grow.
It’s a variant of “if you build it they will come.”
As I’ve looked at

• Evangelism Committee reports (What is the purpose of an Evangelism Cmmittee?),
• church information forms,
• and mission studies,

a lot of churches still think that making small process adjustments to their parking lot, greeting process, or welcoming will help them reach out to the neighborhood.

What is missional?

I’m not giving a full definition of missional.  In this context, a Missional focus however moves to help the church re-engage its neighborhood.
Some pastors are in island churches, meaning their church is mostly commuters who used to live in that neighborhood.
The culture around the church has changed (demographically, socio-economically), but the church has not adjusted accordingly, thus being a cultural island.
Missional helps the church get out of hoping people will visit them to actively engaging the needs and people of the community, and in the process both demonstrating and sharing the faith in Jesus as Lord.
Many of the pastors I spoke with this past month are trying to move congregations in this direction.

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NEAL COLE ON THE CHURCH AS A LIVING SYSTEM

WHAT'S IN YOUR VISION FRAME?

Brian Mosely of Irving Bible Church and his leadership team have created a "Vision Frame" to guide their church. Will Mancini recently shared this as a part of the Right Now Conference in Dallas.  The values contained within this frame are a helpful reminder to any church doing serious, outward-focused ministry.


Mission: What are we doing?
To help people trade in the pursuit of the American Dream for a world that desperately needs Christ
Values: Why are we doing it?

• We love … THE church. In our neighborhoods, at the office and around the world the mission of the church matters.
 

• We love … authentic stories.
Real-life stories have the power to inspire and validate what God is doing.


• We love … immediate action.
Christianity is a verb.  To wait is a sin.
 

• We love … hard work.
God is glorified when we use our God-given passions and skills with excellence.
 

• We love … our families.
There will always be more work to do, but not at the expense of family and friends. 

Strategy: How are we doing it?

1. Inspiring Leaders
   
2. Transforming Small Groups
   
3. Coaching Individuals

Mission Measure: When are we successful?
The mission is accomplished when a trader is activated. A Trader is a new kind of missionary, not defined by geography but by the resolve to:

• Choose Daily
• Hate Injustice
• Work as Worship
• Act Swiftly

THE CHURCH AS A LIVING SYSTEM

A number of the churches in my denominational family have begun looking at the thoughts of Neil Cole in their journey towards an outward focus for the sake of the Kingdom. Here is an excellent clip from the Verge 2010 Conference.



Neil Cole: Church As A Living System [VERGE 2010 Main Session] from Verge Network on Vimeo.

TWO QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION FOR OUTWARD-FOCUSED CHURCHES

Many of us were blessed last week to a part of Catalyst East and/or Catalyst One-Day in Lynchburg VA.  Andy Stanley shared many thoughts, but here are two that I'd like to reflect upon with you.


 One of the reasons churches see in decline is because they love their model more than the unchurched and unsaved-Andy Stanley 

Outward-focused churches are churches that look outward towards the people who are not yet a part of the church and the Kingdom.  It is not so much a strategy as a calling fueled by a passion.  Lost people matter to God and therefore to them because they are God's people--His instrument for reaching the lost. Andy also said, "Your ministry is perfectly designed to achieve the results you are currently getting."  


Can I get an "Ouch!" here?


Churches develop models to achieve the mission they are given from God.  But too often our models become more important than our mission.  Models make us comfortable, protecting us from the chaos that develops in ministry.  God keeps pushing us out of those comfort zones because He knows that our models can easily stop listening to the needs of the communities we are trying to reach -- and to Him.


If your model has grown predictable, somewhat inflexible ... and you have been using for a long time unchanged except for an occasional tweaking, it may have already taken over.

"Sometimes we cannot give to the people in need just because we spend too much in something we don't need."- Andy Stanley


This can refer to financial resources, people's time and spiritual gifts.  Does our model help us achieve both faithful to and fruitfulness in our mission, or does the model sap off strength from the primary task of reaching our community and reconciling people to God?


The first statement calls us to evaluate our heart. The second to evaluate our effectiveness. Both are well worth the prayerful effort regularly.

CULTURAL ARCHITECT

Wayne Cordeiro and Robert Lewis. along with Warren Bird have written an excellent book called Culture Shift: Transforming Your Church from the Inside Out (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series). In it they speak of the pastor (or lead pastor) as the chief “cultural architect” of a church. The concept reminds me of several deep truths about the church, but particularly the church that seeks to be a “bridge to the Bridge (Jesus Christ).


1.Every church has a culture.

2. Our culture naturally shapes the way we live.

3. If we don’t shape our culture, our culture shapes us.

Most of the churches in existence today were born into a culture where the institutional church had a significant place at the table. There was a certain synchronicity between the values of the general American culture and the values of the church. The church had a fairly simple task to make disciples because the culture provided a certain amount of elemental support to the mission of the church.

Culture has a powerful shaping influence. Despite the presence of the church at the table, our culture has developed a strong consumer mindset rather than a servant one. A consumer mentality seeks first and foremost to meet the felt needs of the consumer.

Religious satisfaction (read, religion that meets my felt needs) was often the first order of business for most churches and most church people. That tended to give churches a strong inward focus, rather than an outward one because the incentive to meet the needs of the already persuaded often used up most of the resources, leaving little for persuading others to become reconciled to God. The prevailing culture (which was less and less influenced by the church) made most Christians at the end of the 20th century more consumers of religious services than servants of the mission of Christ.

Bridgebuilding requires first a culture that values bridgebuilding. That means a church must intentionally be structured around a mission to reach and reconcile lost people to God. It must be a culture that sees itself as missionary in nature and to intentionally imbed the values needed to be on a mission from God.

That begins with the pastor–the person responsible for equipping the saints to do the work of the ministry. That also means that the pastor must be committed to the missionary nature of the church. That, of course, means that the pastor must be intentional about helping shaping the lives under his care with the values of Christ.

Those values come the Word, from scripture. Part of the reason the church has been so often been shaped by the culture is that the values of the church were more religiously cultural than biblical. The cultural architect must first start with the blueprint of his Architect (the real Chief Cultural Architect) lest he try to design the unique expression that is his congregation that is disconnected from the power and blessing of God.

And the cultural arhitect must be sure that he is being shaped by his Arhitect. That means that the cultural architect (pastor) must himself first be led by the Spirit so he can do his part in shaping a culture (a church) that is led by the Spirit.

This article originally appeared on the blogsite BRIDGEBUILDERS

BEING MISSIONAL

Interesting little video from the Missional Outreach Network (the link is in BLOGS WE FOLLOW)

TIM KELLER ON THE MISSIONAL CHURCH

FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD HE DIDN'T SEND A COMMITTEE

This message in embroidered form is framed and hangs on the wall of my father-in-law's den. A veteran of the corporate world, and the the church world; I am sure that he has been a part of many committees.

A whole lot of people would agree with that sentiment, especially those who have been part of traditional churches. As a friend once observed, "Did you ever notice that you sit on a committee?" Committees with their cumbersome procedures, their love of the 67th book of the Bible, and their belief that their chief job is maintaining the status quo, have developed a well earned reputation for slowing any process to a crawl and stopping any momentum from gaining speed. (I know, you're wondering about that 67th Book of the Bible reference. I am referring to Roberts' Rules of Order, everybody who has been to a formal meeting of a church knows that Roberts has the authority of sacred scripture.--I am being facetious, relax.)

Committees have become synonymous with stultifying bureaucracy. I have watched many a committee and many a bureaucracy kill a mission and drain a vision of its power. The reason is that a church, the Body of Christ to be specific, is not an organization. It is an organism. Organizations have committees, but organisms do not. Organisms have structure but the structure is intended to channel the life that is its many cells into productive and reproductive patterns. Organizations "organize"; organisms "live." An organism is never concerned with simply maintaining. It is concerned with living, reproducing, multiplying--becoming something new over and over.

Jesus said, "I making something new. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." Organizations say, "We choose the new only if it does cost the old too much."