Riley's World

I wish and pray that God would raise up a few who seem to have a really keen pulse on the culture and could help provide the leadership with clear measuring posts by which to conclude that what we are doing is in fact meeting our objective. And that these people would meet on very regular basis taking the personal initiative outside of the specified meeting to be pondering and praying over this matter.

I have to be personally careful here and not want the miracle pill. Having been involved with the Rock for six years now, and involved with the FNR since it's conception during summer of 2000 I have noticed that we as a people group like to set things one way. However, our culture is very malleable right now and as such, will require at least bi-annual tweaking of implementation. (And it's way to easy as humans to let our preference override what is best for the whole or to keep it toned down to submit to the objective.)

Thinking about this topic as I am writing, I think we made a good attempt a year ago to specifically hallmark our relationship skill (Paul called it Fellowship) and our music. I still feel that we were not quite sure how to effectively go about that. The changes came on the heels of sending off the IC church plant so it was a strange time of transition. Perhaps the change in leadership coupled with the format change, unsettled us in some fashion and so we were not quite sure what to make of it all.

At that time though, I felt we lost some of the depth of public message from the stage and de-emphasized it. This isn't a bad thing but for me points out a very important principle:

Our format must be clearly able to meet our mission objective while at the same time actually be able for us to achieve it.

For example, we cannot pick a format that would require too much out of our people to the point that they were failing at achieving what it suppose to achieve the mission objective. Let's say we just de-structured the FNR and had it be one big hang out time. It's not a bad format but would the gospel go out? Would conversations that naturally occurred at the time be spiritually salted? If not, why? Are the leaders too timid, not sure how to bring up spiritual conversation? Then why not pick a format where the spiritual nature of the meeting was presented or forced in such away to cause one at least the potential to think/talk about such things?

Culture of Apathy...

I sometimes wonder if part of our struggle for genuine growth (either in depth of character or numerically) is part of the prevalent attitude of apathy in the culture. Things like this must drive the format as well. How could we jar that attitude at the FNR?

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Well I have probably left you with more questions than answers, but hopefully it got you thinking. As more thoughts bubble to the surface, I'll share them with you.