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November 05, 2004
How to do Church
In praying over a future in Church planting and studying through Acts I have been thinking about the method of family interaction within the body of Christ that has come to be known as the church.
Ochuk recently wrote an interesting post on the subject following Rock Minneapolis’ retreat simply titled “Church”. I also solicited the famous Pat Sokoll on the subject seeing how he has co-led a recent church plant with a “non-traditional” organizational structure. His response was wise, mysterious, and as always “Pat-ly challenging”:
“Our method to develop our philosophy was to determine what outcome we wanted to produce and to only create structures that directly lead to those outcomes. We arrived at our philosophy of ministry that way. 1 Corinthians 14 was pretty key to us. I also noticed as I snooped around a little that there was a trend among alternative style churches to be pretty strong in their thoughts about the program based church. So be careful and guard your heart as you do your research.”
In a break from Erickson’s “Christian Theology” I picked up Cymbala’s “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” and was impressed by the same ideals as Pat expressed. (I think that Cymbala got it from Pat.) Those ideas of playing to your gifts and strengths as a leader(s) and congregation are something that I did not glean from the text on previous readings.
So this leads me back around to self evaluation which for me is always dangerous because of what has been previously noted several times: I pridefully think that I can do everything and anything. Wow, that's dumb.
Till later...
Posted by paul at November 5, 2004 09:20 PM
Comments
“Pat-ly challenging”
Nice.
Posted by: leah at November 5, 2004 11:23 AM
At the risk of stepping into waters too deep for me, my experience with church planting and church in general is that there is too much emphasis on programs and too little on relationship building.
God is relational, not programmatic. We should be too. Our first responsibility is to our relationship with God. Our job as ambassadors is to introuduce people to a relationship with God and to help them develop that relationship.
In the process we build relationships with others, which in effect further introduces them to God. After all, where two or more are gathered, "there I AM."
The idea of gift development feeds this because if we pursue our relationship with God we also experience the fulfillment of our gifts, which are given for the building up of others, thus deepening relationship.
Bottom line, love God, love others and the rest takes care of itself. The church's job is to facilitate those relationships, to help create a web of relationships. You can see this at work throughout the Gospels and Acts. The church grew less out of programs than through relationships. Read Romans 16 and search the names in Scripture and in the histories and you'll see this clearly.
I haven't read many books on the subject, but this is what my experience and my reading of Scripture tells me.
P.S. -- Paul check back on my blog. I replied to your comment.
Posted by: Dan Benson at November 6, 2004 12:04 PM
I think I want to be Pat when I grow up. Then Paul will quote me on his blog. Sigh... back to prayer.
Posted by: Tim at November 6, 2004 05:41 PM
Yes. Sigh.
Back to watching "We Were Soldiers Once..."
Posted by: Dan Benson at November 6, 2004 07:53 PM
I like this idea of only including structures that achieve our goals. I wonder how many times we just go with the structures we are familiar with or comfortable with and hope for the best with the results. I would love to hear more of your thoughts about church planting, Paul.
Posted by: Autumn at November 7, 2004 03:19 PM
Church Programs and Relationships. They are not in conflict. Programs should enhance community within the body of believers.
Posted by: kjohnson at November 15, 2004 05:33 PM
Programs and relationship-building shouldn't be in conflict but they often are. Evangelistic blitzes and 40-Days of Purposes, rock-out worship services and blow-my-mind conferences and other stuff that could be used as stepping stones toward deepening relationships within the church are instead too often thought of as, or hoped to be, some kind of magic bullet towad church growth or some other artificial goal.
Millions of dollars are spent and billions of words are written to give church's sure-fire methods to help them grow.
Posted by: Different Dan at November 16, 2004 12:39 PM