CREATING A CHURCH THAT UNCHURCHED PEOPLE LOVE TO ATEND

From Andy Stanley comes some solid counsel for outward focused churches.

WHY AN OUTWARD FOCUS FOR THE CHURCH?

 BY STEVE DUNN

"The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." - Jesus

 
"The experience that a transformation of all human life is given in the fact that "Jesus is there only for others." His "being there for others" is the experience of transcendence. It is only this "being there for others," maintained till death, that is the ground of his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Faith is participation in this being of Jesus (incarnation, cross, resurrection)." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Go into all the world and preach the Gospel ..." Jesus
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"The church is the church only when it exists for others...The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling, what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

One of the tragedies of the Church in our present age goes directly to its faithfulness and fruitfulness.  That is the tragedy of the Church's inward-focus.  Too many churches organize their life around taking care of one another--but the result is that they give only lip service to the needs of "others."

Too many churches possess a fortress mentality, intentionally creating barriers that keep the world from getting to close for their comfort.  That desire for comfort blunts the call to sacrificial servanthood that is at the heart of Christ's Great Commission.

As a result these churches lose their transcendence as there is no attempt to embody the love of Christ in the midst of a world where God is too often out of sight an out of mind.  There is no costly discipleship by which the church matures and validates the supernatural power of God.  There is no resurrection life because there has never been a death to the old "religious" ways that made them feel like good people, instead of being God's people.

The Church's true impact, authentic identity, and God-honoring purpose can only be found when it becomes a "church for others.":

(C) 2013 by Stephen L Dunn

WHAT IS YOUR RESPONSIBITY TO THE GREATER COMMUNITY?

Posted on High Calling> featuring attorney Dwaine Massey on what he feels he should give back to the community in which he lives and which provides him a place to carry out his calling.

PARTNERING WITH THE SCHOOLS

There was a time when the churches were the center of the community. Except for the rarest of situations, the school has supplanted the church as that center.  The school, between families with kids in school and those who pay taxes to support it to people who follow their sports teams, has a profound shaping effect upon the community.  Recognizing this reality, my congregation has been prompted by the Holy Spirit to include this statement in our vision as a church in mission.

"We believe God wants us to partner with our schools in every way to influence children and youth for Jesus Christ."

To fullfill this our church has created a youth center with two days drop-in center programs for Middle Schools and High School.  We have made our church available as the practice site for the Junior Cheerleaders. Persons from our church volunteer in the schools building relationships and providing needed services to help the school.  We now provide leadership for an on campus student Bible study.  We sponsor two Good News Clubs at the nearest elementary schools. We are careful to be respectful to the boundaries necessary in schools to avoid church and state conflicts, the we make no secret that we do what we do because God wants us to be the best church for our community. We hope people will be open to our help spiritually as they recognize the need.

Recently I attended a meeting of our local ministerium and the Vice President for Student Services of our local school, the Hempfield School District.The schools need tutoring volunteers, parent advocacy and education programs, clearing houses for needy families physical concerns.  We are actively engaged in helping netwrok to meet those needs.  We are now helping sponsor a dialogue between the schools' leadership and the religious leadership of the community of how the churches can assist with basic human services that would normally cost schools budget monies in these fiscally stressed times.  Our Christmas offering was for the school's Good Neighbor Fund, which the Office of Student Services used to help families who financial emergencies cannot be met in other ways.

One of the thoughts that came to my mind is that our church could help the school disseminate important information to the community and to help us do our planning in a way that we could make good use of the resource that is the school. Also to avoid unnecessary conflicts when our parents are pulled one way and the church wants to pull them our way.  We have now added the website for the school district to the links section of our church web site and to our church blog. You can see these by going to our web site CHURCH OF GOD OF LANDISVILLE or to our blog BEING THE BEST CHURCH FOR THE COMMUNITY.
Trust me, the school officials were delighted at our offer.

Schools are understandably concerned when churches simply try to get into the schools to advance the goals of the church, especially when churches seem unconcerned with the perceived needs of the schools.  But we believe that churches who seem themselves as partners with the schools can benefit the entire community and remind the community that the work of Jesus is not a threat, but an enhancement.

SISTER ACT - A MISSIONAL MANIFESTO

Early in my D.Min. studies, this movie inspired many of us to become outward focused.

STEVE SJOGREN ON OUTWARD FOCUS

Many years ago I served churches that began raising their evangelistic temperature by servant evangelism - acts of kindness in Jesus name.  Steve Sjogren with the Vineyard Fellowship in Cincinnati was the pioneer.

ROB BELL - THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH

I know that Rob Bell is a controversial person in some circles, but his description of the Gospel and the Church describes in a powerful, powerful way the motivation that compelled the earliest church to proclaim the Good News.

INTERNAL NEEDS BASED CHURCHES MAY MISS GOD'S UNIQUE MISSIONAL VISION

James Nored recently wrote in the Missional Outreach discussions page of his MISSIONAL OUTREACH WEBSITE:

"Jesus said that his mission was to seek and save the lost, serve people, and share the good news of the kingdom of God. As he went about this mission, he healed people, fed people, and met many needs.

But when you look at how he treated the disciples, other than healing Peter's mother-in-law, it would appear that Jesus focused more on teaching them how to meet other people's needs than their own. In fact, his call was to "lay down their lives, take up their cross, and follow him." This call was to service and self-sacrifice and meeting the needs--of others.

In his book, Church Unique, author Will Mancini talks about the problem of having a church that is focused on meeting internal needs and expectations. Note the following:

"On the needs-based slippery slope, leaders are constantly trying to meet people's needs and expectations within the church. Whether the needs ring of religious consumerism or are legitimate concerns of life and death, the slippery slope works the same. With the leaders' cruise control set to "react," thoughtful leadership becomes unnecessary because there is always a persistent parade of needs to be answered. The vision of the church is reduced to making people happy. The reality is that such a church is probably missing out on fulfilling its unique calling and role in the community by trying to be all things to all members.Sliding down the needs-based slope is perhaps the most 'spiritual' way of avoiding the hard work of self-discovery."

His point is that being an internally focused, needs-based church puts leaders in a reactive mode that does not allow them to effectively discover and implement God's unqiue missional calling for their church in that context. Time and energy alone from dealing with needs and complaints leaves room for little else. I have witnessed this problem many times.

What are your thoughts on Mancini and Nored's observations?

INTERVIEW WITH RICK RUSAW ON EXTERNALLY FOCUSED CHURCHES

Church Executive recently published an interview with Rick Rusaw, Senior Pastor at LifeBridge Christian Church in Longmont CO and co-author with Eric Swanson of The Externally Focused Quest. Here is an excerpt from that interview which you can read in full by clicking the link at the beginning of this post:

What inspired you to encourage churches to be more externally focused?

I think what happened was we had a sense that even though our church was growing and we were doing a lot of good things inside the church, we were not really making much of a difference in the community.

We realized that we weren’t engaged at the root level of a lot of issues. So we got asked to start a school, and I said maybe we shouldn’t start a school, maybe we should just get more involved with public schools. So we started volunteering and helping out. For years we just did service projects, such as raking leaves, and we looked for ways to connect. We raked a lot of leaves first before we got invited to do bigger things.

So you started developing relationships with people in the community.

Yes, with public schools, nonprofits and government agencies, and over the years our involvement grew. Now we are involved in 54 partnerships in town. I think one of the things that happens is that a church feels they want to help the homeless and they start a homeless ministry, but those who are already doing that see the church as a competition. So what we did was find out who were working with the disenfranchised kids or single moms and we came alongside them. We create relationships, and the more relationships we have, the more we can speak into how they do what they do.

Building relationships takes years, definitely not the easiest route to reaching people for Christ.

My advice to churches is if you’re going to be externally focused only for a day, maybe you shouldn’t do anything. Don’t just show up for one day and say you want to be helpful, but then you’re not there the rest of the time. At our church we look for ongoing ways with which we could serve. We have teams of people who help the facility staff at various schools, and what we find is they open the doors for more opportunities. They say, “We have this problem, will you help us?” But it takes some time for people to trust that you’re really going to be there and keep doing what you’re doing. So again back to that line, you rake a lot of leaves and eventually you get more opportunities.

Were people in the public schools and community agencies suspicious or resistant at first?

Yes, very much so. We went to the school district and asked if there was anything we could do to help, and they said they couldn’t really see what that would be — the whole church thing — they were not sure. But now they meet with us and give us a list of things to help them, and not just to fix broken things or paint walls, but they give us opportunities to help them with programming, resourcing, tutoring and after-school programs. I think if we do service for the sake of growing our church, we’ll miss out on its real value and power. What we create are relationships. Eventually, we get asked why we do what we do, then we get to talk about God’s grace and why we care.

Sometimes people in the church are not encouraged to do things for the community unless what they want to do aligns with the “vision” of the church.

One of the things we do is encourage all of our ministry areas to do something that’s externally focused. We don’t want to have a Department of Externally Focused. We want community service to be a part of who we are and what we value. We encourage people to find a place where God can use them to make a difference. Of course we can’t do everything, and in those cases we redirect them to similar kinds of things. And a lot of times people come with great ideas about what we ought to do, but they don’t really want to get involved. I’ve actually gotten better at saying “why don’t you make that happen and let us know how we can help you.” Whatever vision gets set for a local church, unless the leaders care about becoming connected to their community and becoming a part of the solution, the church is not going to have an impact.

QUOTABLES

"80-20 is not a principle, it's a sin." - Ed Stetzer, addressing the Churches of God General Conference, June 26, 2010

"The opposite of hate is not love, it's indifference." - CSLewis

"We talk about the Second Coming: Half of the world has never heard of the first." - Oswald Smith

ARTICULATING A MISSIONAL IDENTITY

1) Great models all have great clarity. The Soma model has a uniquely formed language that drives it’s culture. Two of the most common missing elements of vision (five questions of the Vision Frame) are modeled really well at Soma. The first is “when are we successful.” Soma articulates a four-fold missional life-mark as “Identity: Who we are.” The church is not successful based on attendance, buildings and cash, but on the development of identity. These are the kind of people, the kind of disciples, that the community produces.

• Family
• Missionaries
• Servants
• Learners

The other missing piece in many churches is strategy or “missional map.” How do we actually accomplish the mission on the broadest level? Soma has articulated a beautiful 6 component strategy that they call “Rhythms: How we live”

• Story-formed
• Listen
• Celebrate
• Bless
• Eat
• ReCreate

2) It is rare to see vision, thoughtfully integrated into communication.

Excerpts from Will Mancini's latest post which you find by clicking on the blogroll.

WHAT THE CHURCH CAN LEARN FROM LOST

Jared Wilson on his blog The Gospel Driven Church makes these observations about what the church can learn from the television show Lost:

1) LOST was robust. It did not partition off "spiritual matters" and "scientific matters" and "romantic matters," etc. It wasn't a romance show. Or an adventure show. It wasn't just science fiction. It wasn't fantasy. It was -- I think -- more along the lines of "myth," but what it managed to do was weave a "philosophy of everything" into its storyline. I think Christians can learn from this that "Christianity," as David Powlison says, "is higher than anything is high, yet walks on the ground." The Incarnation of our Lord itself reminds us that Christian faith and practice has ramifications for and application to everything in the world, including the things it opposes. This helps us steer clear of easy and brittle "faith vs. art" or "faith vs. science" sorts of gnosticism. Christianity is a sturdy, earthy, robust way of life.

2) LOST was multiethnic. Has there ever been a show that was not only this diverse but diverse without relegating minority characters to background, "token" positions? I think part of LOST's appeal was its racial diversity and the strength of characterization within the diversity. This is compelling to lookers-on. So the church can learn from this not just the inclusion of multiple tongues, tribes, and races, but the integral inclusion of them.

3) LOST got narrative. What do people in most modern contexts need from the Church's communication? A story that is comprehensive and compelling. And of course there is no more comprehensive and compelling story than the Christian one, which has the added benefit of being a true one. We can learn from LOST to tell the biblical stories well, to tell them in compelling ways, to show how our stories are part of God's story, to show how Jesus is the hero in every story and the gospel the theme, and to help people see what God is doing in the world over and throughout history. History is going somewhere. (Of course that somewhere is not a purgatorial "now" where sincere believers in x, y, and z all connect. But we are headed for a finale.)

The Church doesn't need LOST. Like all TV shows, this one will drop off our radar in a few years, fondly remembered when retrospectives and nostalgia trips arise. But the creators of the show did some stuff tremendously right; as far as TV goes, they made some stinkin' good art here. I think we can learn something from it, if we care to.

THE CHURCH IS A "SCRATCH AND SNIFF" EXPERIENCE

Will Mancini describes himself as a "clarity evangelist." He writes a blog/website by the same name. Glenn Smith, a superb church planting coach used by my denomination pointed me towards this blog. One thing led to another and I found myself reading Will's summary of a teaching time from Alan Hirsch. Here are some powerful thoughts from Alan:

• How can you improve on Jesus’ plan of discipleship? He said, “Die.”
• If we don’t get Jesus right, we create a toxic system, that produces toxic people.
• If you want to reproduce, you have got to be “reproduce-able.”
• With disciples you can go places, with consumers you can’t.
• We must act our way into a new way of thinking not vice versa.
• We engaging a people group, we can’t preempt the gospel with our version of church (structure).
• The church is a “scratch and sniff” experience of the Kingdom.
• Incarnation is how the God engaged the world. He doesn’t overwhelm us, he invites us.

You can read more of this post. Click
We have also added Will's blog to our blogroll.

DO YOU WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD?

This post appeared on the EXTERNALLY FOCUSED CHURCH NETWORK. It is written by Eric Swanson. You can follow this blog by clicking it in RESOURCE LINKS section of our home page or by going to: http://externallyfocusednetwork.com/blog

Recently, as I’ve been speaking at externally focused events, I have asked those in attendance, “How many of you want to change the world?” Invariably, every hand goes up. And here’s where the nickle drops; everyone wants to change the world but very few people are giving the opportunity to do so. The job of leaders…spiritual, visionary leaders, is to give everyone in their Bailiwick the opportunity to regularly engage in changing the world.

Liz and I have a son who lives in another country. When he shares his faith he tells college students, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life and part of that plan is to help change the world.” Then he tells them about the compassionate good news of Jesus and his kingdom. “What do you suppose our campus would be like if every student was a follower of Jesus?

“Our campus would be an awesome place.”
“And what if everyone in our city was a follower of Jesus?”
“Well, there would be no street children…no hungry people, no homelessness…there would be jobs and people would love each other, even those who are hard to love…and our city would be awesome…and everyone in our country would want to move to our city”

What if…
…we gave people the regular opportunity to do nothing less than change the world?

BAPTISMS AT A BEACH PARTY

The student ministry at our church (Church of God of Landisville) is called BURN. The name comes from the mission to help kids burn with passion to serve Jesus Christ and the impact their generation to follow Him. The front door of BURN is not a typical youth group on Sunday night. It is a midweek worship gathering that includes music (our own student band) and insightful teaching, testimonies from the kids, and fellowship. Generally the kids start gathering around 6:00 with things kicking off around 6:30. Worship begins and the rest follows. Generally they wrap up around 7:45-8:00 (it is a school night) but many times kids stay afterward for prayer and some godly counsel. Seven months ago our youth group had 12 kids on its best night (usually a party). Now more than 100 kids are part of BURN, not just from the church, but from the community youth center we operate (the Agape Center) and their friends from the local high school across the street.

Several weeks ago after an extended period of teaching called "Real Vs Fake" when the kids were confronted with the call to be serious committed disciples, 16 students gave their hearts to Christ at a worship gathering. Soon after several more were added. Jeremy Moyer, our Youth Director, asked about baptizing these new believers, with which I enthusiastically agreed.

But here's the twist. We have 12 kids desiring baptism, but at that baptism they were going to share testimonies about their journey to faith. Many of their friends would not come to the church for a regular service in our sanctuary with its magnificent marble baptistery. Many of them had not even made it to the gym where our student worship is held.

So we opted instead for Baptism at a Beach Party. On a Saturday night before Easter, BURN through an outreach event - a Beach Party at the pool at Hempfield Recreation Center. There, as the party wrapped up, we held a baptismal service. 75 teens (and some parents and adults) heard these 12 kids share their stories and then witness the powerful experience of the Spirit's presence as we baptized them in the pool (sometimes with other kids in the water a few feet away).

Changed lives are a powerful force for the church. Baptisms in neutral territory multiply the impact.

BEING A "GOD" INFLUENCE - 2

To engage people in culture we must remember that holiness is separation from sin, not separation from sinners. - Ed Stetzer

In 2002 my congregation at Landisville began a series of "Thinking Forward Meetings." The Elders had invited the entire congregation to seek the mind of Christ for the future direction of the church. 71 persons attended 13 of these small group gatherings to share how they had seen God at work leading the church and what they believed we needed to deal with in order to be faithful to God.

In one meeting, 82 year old Bernie McFarland (a life long member of the church) announced, "If this church died tomorrow, no one would really notice. They think of us as the rich church on the hill (a reference to our magnificent stained glass windows), but we have no real impact on this community."

From that statement and similar confirming statements, my congregation set out on a journey to be a church that impacted its community for Christ in life-changing ways. Borrowing a model from Robert Lewis in The Church of Irresistible Influence we set out to build bridges to the community in prayerful hope that our interaction and relationships as the church with the community out in the community would draw people into the Body of Christ.

We also worked on understanding and embodying our core values so that when people connected with the Church they'd meet the real Jesus living in and through us. That meant we had to mature and grow as disciples who each day reflected the character of Christ--trusting the Spirit of God to make us influencers for God in the world without fear that the world would influence us.

BEING A "GOD" INFLUENCE - 1

The Outward Focused Church understands that it is called influence its world. We tend to think of influence as a political act. Influence that is a result of living with Jesus' DNA is an act of love for our neighbor and faithfulness to God. The description of Christian influence is found in Jesus' declaration in Matthew 5:18ff. "You are the salt of the earth ... you are the light of the world."

Intentional ministry is intended to be an influential ministry. A missional church in focusing on living according to its mission asks the question, "How will our actions lift up Christ before this community?" Such churches know that to misrepresent Christ is an act of disobedience to God with perhaps tragic consequences because it might influence people to embrace a false understanding of Jesus. Or if the non-Christian has a sense of what Jesus truly is like, our behavior in Jesus' name may influence them to reject Christ, or at the very least cause them to want to have no part with His Bride, the Church.

An inward-focused church often has little influence because its has little contact with or relevance for the community that surrounds it. That is more a tragedy than anything. And if the people surrounding that church see that the church is basically occupying space in the neighborhood and little else, they can easily (and perhaps appropriately) say that the church does not care. And that influences them to seek love from some other source than Christ.

Influence, therefore,requires involvement--on a daily and basic level. The church, to truly be influential intentionally builds (what Bill Hybels calls) redemptive relationships--relationships intended to assist God in His work of salvation and life transformation.

Influence is not throwing your weight around in the public square, it representing the name and the aim of Jesus to a world that has grown skeptical and suspicious about the value of God in their community.

(c) 2010 by Stephen L Dunn