New Approach to Evangelism

Based on extensive polling of our target audience (I asked my daughter) and market research (I googled it), we are adopting a new evangelistic strategy. Effectively immediately, everyone should sell their practical vehicles and replace them with custom conversion vans - modeled below.

This should really help us reach out.

The Regionalization of the Local Church

Down the street from my house, they are building a Lowe’s. This would not be a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that we already have a Loew’s. We also have two Home Depots, three Wal-marts, two Targets, three Hannaford’s supermarkets and at least fifty Dunkin’ Donuts. (I’m not kidding either).

Why do I care about another Lowe’s? Because we already have one. Why, I asked myself, do we need yet another home goods store? Don’t we have enough? Won’t people just drive to the other one? That got me thinking about churches, and that (as they say) is a dangerous thing.

We live in the middle of a triangle that contains most of the people in New Hampshire. If you look at a map of New Hampshire and find the towns of Nashua and Salem (both are on the Massachusetts border) and then locate Concord north of both, you can draw the triangle I am speaking of. That tiny bit of the state is where almost all the population can be found. The population of the entire state is only 1.3 million, and 515,988 of them live inside that triangle. (That’s 40% for your math geniuses.)

The Megachurch Phenomenon

An interesting phenomenon has occurred in the last thirty years or so which has facilitated the growth of the megachurches that now dot the North American landscape. The suburbanization of the large cities in the nation and the development of a commuter mentality have been part of the development of the megachurch but not the only contributors. The Hartford Institute for Religious Research has compiled a list of over 1,300 Protestant churches with an average weekly attendance around or greater than 2,000 people. By size, the top ten are:

1. Lakewood Church, Houston, Texas: 47,000
2. Willow Creek Community Church, S. Barrington, Illinois: 23,500
3. Second Baptist Church, Houston, Texas: 23,200
4. Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, California: 22,000
5. LifeChurch, Edmond, Oklahoma: 19,900
6. Southeast Christian Church, Louisville, Kentucky: 18,000
7. Northpoint Community Church, Alpharetta, Georgia: 17,700
8. Thomas Road Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Virginia: 17,500
9. Calvary Chapel, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida: 17,000
10. The Potter’s House, Dallas, Texas: 17,000

Included in the list are Grace Community Church (John Macarthur, 7,500) and the Campus Church of Pensacola Christian College (5,500) as well as Mars Hill Church in Seattle Washington (now about 7,500).

If you take the time to peruse the websites of these churches, you discover that they are mostly located in the suburbs of these large cities like Houston and Chicago. Some are between two larger metropolitan areas (like Saddleback Church), but few are inside cities.

Beyond that, most have a membership that is spread out over a large geographic area. People generally live within a circumference of twenty to forty miles. Since megachurch buildings are generally located within easy highway access and with adequate parking, people are willing to travel – even those who might be attending for the first time.

And what about the Small Church?

When you look at smaller local churches, you would assume that the geographic dispersal would be much smaller, but such is not the case.

Our church, composed of approximately 50 people, is spread out over a seemingly enormous space.

• The Greater Manchester region is composed of the city and nine outlying towns: Auburn, Bedford, Candia, Derry, Goffstown, Hooksett, Litchfield, Londonderry, and Merrimack. Our church is scattered over all these towns.
• Manchester alone is 33 square miles; the region comprises almost 320 square miles. There are over 265,000 people in the nine towns.

What does this mean? It means that the average family in our church will drive 12.73 miles one way to our worship gatherings on Sundays. The reality is that when I checked the traveling times using Google Earth, I found that only four families lived within a reasonable walking distance (less than 3 miles).

Now, this is all fine and good for people who are already Christians and are interested in church. They come to our church because of doctrine or music or preaching or even programs, but they have a bias toward this. They will travel a greater distance than an unchurched person would ever think of traveling.

In fact, established Christians will tolerate a great deal when it comes to a church. They don’t mind poor parking conditions or an uncleaned auditorium. They don’t care what color walls are (unless the color is being debated in a business meeting). But what would people who do not know Jesus think? They might travel twenty miles to visit a megachurch worship service (to the right), but what would motivate them to join a group of 50 who meet twenty miles away?

Whether we have good doctrine or not matters, but if our church is not accessible to people who need to hear the message of Jesus, then it is useless.

So the challenge before us is simple. How does the local church think regionally? How should we adapt to this phenomenon to continue to make an impact for the kingdom?

 

Ed Stetzer on Preachiargism

The article is Ed’s, but the new word is mine.

PREACH + PLAGIARISM = PREACHIARGISM

It is an epidemic in my opinion. There are a lot of pastors who are so busy doing everything except studying God’s Word that they rely on others’ messages.

There’s nothing wrong with vision casting or leadership or management or going to conferences, but the Apostle Paul said:

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, [Ephesians 4:11-13, ESV]

And when confronted with all the other things they could have been doing, the apostles told the church:

And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” [Acts 6:2-4, ESV]

This tells me that there is something wrong if a pastor/teacher/minister is more focused on any other aspect of “church” that he has to short change preaching. We all rely on each other as resources, and certainly we can borrow from one another from time to time, but I think we do a great injustice when we borrow wholesale from others because we don’t “have the time” to do the necessary preparation to preach.

How?

134,000 dead in Myanmar because of a cyclone.
Up to a million more will die from disease.

34,000 dead in China because of an earthquake.
Who knows how many bodies are still buried in the rubble?

And that has just been this month.

How many of us have even made any more than a passing thought about these people dying on the far side of the world?

How many of us will do anything other than shake our heads?

Portable Atari 2600

I was doing some research to get ready for our upcoming “Man Day” and I happened upon this guy who builds portable Atari 2600 systems.  This is pure genius.

Two Unrelated Thoughts

First, I am almost done with The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I watched the movie a couple of weeks ago, and I was so astounded by the inaccuracy of the film that I was certain the book could not be as bad. It is.

There are so many historical inaccuracies and myths in the book that it would take weeks to catalog them. But here is the best – the Merovingian kings of early France were descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. It would be laughable if so many people hadn’t bought this book.

Fact: The Merovingians did rule post-Roman Empire Gaul/France. They were named for a semi-mythical founding father named Merovech.

Fact: The Merovingians did not accept the Nicaean Creed as properly detailing Jesus’ divinity. They were followers of Arius, who taught something similar to modern Jehovah Witnesses.

The problem with any theories involving the Merovingians is that we know next to nothing about them. There are only three sources – Decem Libri Historiarum by Gregory of Tours; Chronicle of Fredegar by Fredegar and others; and Liber Historiae Francorum by an unknown editorial team. All are relatively close to the period, and yet they say next to nothing.

The book was terrible. It is so inaccurate as to be absurd.

The other thought was the film Stranger than Fiction. I wasn’t sure what to think about Will Ferrell in a serious role. The film was surprisingly well done. The acting was passable, but the premise was great. We often cause havoc and pain in others lives without being aware of what we do. When confronted with the pain, any thinking person would change their actions.

Will Ferrell’s character, Harold Crick, resolves himself to his fate, and showing himself willing to put his own life at the hands of the writer controlling his life. When he submits, it alters everyone’s paths and brings about non-linear results.

I found the work thoroughly post-modern; the art of writing driving real life but then real life altering art. It was intriguing. I wouldn’t class it as a phenomenal masterpiece or anything, but it was much more intelligent than anything else I’d ever seen Ferrell in.

So, a book I find absolutely inaccurate and repugnant; and a film that was surprisingly intelligent. It was a decent week.

What I’ve Been Up To

Hey readers:

Just wanted to let you know. I haven’t forgotten about my blog. We’ve been setting up our temporary church website on wordpress, and it has consumed most of my computer time.

So, head on over and check it out.

www.heritagemanchester.org

What the heck is DISCIPLESHIP?

This may be a pet-peeve of mine, but I find myself endlessly frustrated by the words that Christians have invented – this little private language we have. Sometimes these words convey huge ideas (like the word Trinity which has been a part of our faith since the 4^th century although it does not appear anywhere in Scripture), but often they are simply substitute words for things that we already have perfectly good words for.

The current word that is annoying me is discipleship. Beside the fact that this is a very awkward compound which literally means “the shape of a learner”, this word just does not feel right. To me, it gives the impression that people must be pounded into the form of a disciple. It is probably my own experiences with “discipleship programs” but it is not about exploration but rather information. Discipleship often means “indoctrination” rather than “conversation.”

I think the reason it gets under my skin is that we have taken a perfectly good noun - disciple – and turned it into a verb – discipling – and then into a process – discipleship. These are essentially Protestant, English words for catechumen and catechism.

Disciple comes to us from the Latin – through French – word discere meaning “to learn.” This word entered English vocabulary from the Latin Vulgate when William Tyndale translated the New Testament into English.

When he sawe the people he went vp into a mountayne and when he was set his disciples came to hym [Matthew 5:1]

There’s nothing wrong with the word disciple and I want to be very clear about that. We are disciples. It is our recent permutations of the word that bother me.

• The verb form of disciple is discipline, not disciple. You cannot disciple someone because a disciple is a person who is being taught. You can discipline them, but not disciple them.
• Likewise, the process of becoming a disciple is not discipleship or discipling. If anything, it is development or training. There is no reason for inventing a word just to be different.

Now, all of this may seem like an etymological rabbit trail, but it does have a rhyme and reason. Somewhere along the line, we separated the idea of a disciple from the concept of a Christian. We turned the maturing process inherent to every believer’s journey into a process to be completed with curricula and catechism. The division was necessary because in recent years, we have had such an emphasis on moments of conversion that we do not allow for the development of one’s faith. Since a person “gets saved”, they have to turn into something, right? So, we have separated “becoming a Christian” from “becoming a disciple.” I think Jesus would have a problem with that – since it is clear his disciples were not yet Christians, and certainly had some real development issues even after they were called into ministry.

What we should call it is “growing” and “maturing” – which are two Biblical words. We do not become Christians. We become disciples. We develop in our faith over our entire lives. Our entire existence is growth in faith.

For my two cents, I believe that blurring the lines between “salvation” and “discipleship” as well as “evangelism” brings us much more in line with what happened with Jesus’ disciples during his ministry.

Clergification

A great article from Ed Stetzer - a guy who spends a lot of time asking the question “why?” when it comes to the way church is done. It includes some stuff from Neil Cole, author of Organic Church which is a necessary read for those looking to get into “professional” ministry.

It is a definite read, especially for those who think church is done by the “paid staff” rather than something we do together.

Click here to read it.

Hey is the Church Where They Have Keg Parties?

It happens all too often. Someone visits our church, and some Christian they know feels it necessary to inform them of our church’s “liberalism.” Then we get to have these discussions about what Heritage’s position is on a list of secondary issues:

• Drinking - “I heard that church lets people drink. They even joke around about it.”
• Dress - “That church has no standards. People show up looking like slobs.”
• Theological Liberalism - “They believe in __________; can you believe it?”
• Versions of the Bible - “You don’t want to there; they don’t use the Bible.”
• Salvation - “They don’t give altar calls and they believe salvation is a PROCESS!”
• Language - “They approve of swearing and profanity.”
• Politics - “The pastor over there is not even a Republican.”
• Separation - “There’s no difference between them and the world.”
• Gender Roles - “They let women do just about anything” and “The pastor there hates women.” [I love how we get picked on for both extremes on this particular issue.]

The list goes on and on, and I am sure there are some that I missed because there are always new ones coming up. It is fascinating how inter-connected the Christian community is in our region and how quickly rumors and accusations fly. As Douglas Adams once quibbed:

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.

These criticisms are generally followed by out-of-context quotes of the same old tired Scriptures used to justify positions. [By the way, this post is not related to any recent criticisms. It is just for general information.]

One of the most amazing rumors was that we are universalists. This rumor was started when a pastor in our region went on our website and read our Articles of Faith (which, by the way, are under revision because they were just boiler-plated when the church was incorporated). In our Articles is the affirmation that we “We believe in the universal church, the body of Christ, which is composed of all born-again believers of this age and that Christ is the only head of that church.”

Just for the record, universalism means that you believe everyone of every religion is going to heaven.  Believing in the universal church however means that you believe all who are saved are part of the Body of Christ, what we have recently begun to term “the assembly of the firstborn” which is the Biblical terminology (Hebrews 12:22-23)

Answering Critics
So, here are the official answers to these questions - from the pastor’s desk.

• First of all, rumor-bearing and gossip about the body of Christ is ungodly.  When people try to “set you straight” with unsubstantiated accusations about individual believers or churches, take them to the Scripture.
• Second, our church is focused on reading the Scriptures literally and contextually.  This requires that we set aside our cultural expectations, learn about the world in which the Scriptures were written and then attempt (to the best of our ability) not to go beyond the original, intended meaning of the Word of God.
• We then apply this original, intended meaning to our current context.  We attempt, to the best of our ability, not to read our cultural expectations into the Scriptures.

Let me use the issue of language as an example.

The Scripture most often quoted on the issue of language is Ephesians 4:29: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” [Ephesians 4:29, KJV]  People take this verse and say, “See?  Swearing is corrupt communication, hence you should never use inappropriate language.”  The result is people labeling this word or that word as “corrupt communication.”

Most of our leadership came from churches were cussing and swearing were frowned upon intensely.  We would certainly agree that corrupting communication should not come from our lips.  But, in studying the Scriptures, we have had to ask the question of what is corrupting communication?  We have had to consider the question from the point of view of the original audience and then with consideration of our current culture.  I have included two examples: one dealing with sexual language and the other dealing with vulgarity.

Sexual Language
Let’s consider the Scriptures for a moment, shall we?  Here are a couple examples of the Scriptures using terminology and words most Christians would consider inappropriate for public discussion:

• In Isaiah 64:6, Isaiah refers to our righteous deeds as “filthy rags.”  This is a pleasantly modernized phrase isn’t it?  Of course when you read the underlying text, you discover that the phrase in Hebrew is beged-’einenu, literally “menstrual rags.”  This was the ancient equivalent of a tampon, strips of cloth that a woman to contain her menstrual flow.
• In Deuteronomy 23:1, we read in the KJV “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.”  The phrase for wounded in the stones is petzu’a-dake’ or literally “crushed testicles.”  The word translated privy member is shafkah or penis.

Many Christians do not even publicly admit the existence of sexual organs, almost as if they are ashamed of them because they are “dirty”, but here is the Scripture - the very Word of God - referring to these things both openly and plainly.  There is no hidden code.  Can you imagine Isaiah or the Deuteronomist blushing when writing these words?

Clearly, God’s Word uses these terms unashamedly.  The sexual being is not dirty or sinful.  It is the twisting and perversion of the sexual that is sin, but sex is of God.  Our bodies are still built the way God intended them, thus men have penises and women have vaginas.  There is no shame in the fact that God created us as male and female.  Thus sex should be discussed properly and completely without embarrassment.

Vulgarity
There is no end to the debate on the issue of what is a vulgarity and what is not.  The word vulgarity itself comes from Latin meaning “common” or “peasant.”  How did this terminology come about?

When the French-speaking Normans invaded England in 1066, they took over a largely Germanic culture.  The Anglo-Saxons who inhabited and ruled the island of Britain used a language similar to Old German.  The French conducted a campaign of cultural eradication, attempting to destroy the Anglo-Saxon languages and replace them with French for common conversation and Latin for scholastic work.  These languages were considered the languages of “civilized” and “cultured” people while Germanic tongues were pagan and unchristian.

As a result, the rough gutteral language of Anglo-Saxon was pushed down and repressed by labeling it vulgar and barbaric. It then became a sign of rebellion against these oppressors to speak in the forbidden tongue.  Hence we have some of our most vulgar profanities:

• Fock was the Germanic word for penis and by extension act of sexual intercourse.  It actually means the same thing in modern Swedish.
• Scheissen was the German word for manure (which ironically was the French word for work that we also get maneuver from)
• Kunte was the common Anglo-Saxon word for a woman’s vulva.

So extensive was the eradication of these terms that even words that came from Latin which sounded like German words were considered vulgarities, like cock (from the Latin coco).

These two examples show how Scripture uses terminology and how culture determines what is acceptable or unacceptable.  They prove little except that the common, modern Christian definition of what is “corrupt communication” and what is not is based on culture often far more than it is on Scripture.

That being said, our church’s position on language is plain - strong language belongs only in strong situations. We do not make common usage of words consider profanity because such terminology has proper usages.  A child born out of wedlock is a bastard.  A female dog is a bitch. A long-eared equine animal is an ass. These are proper words, used properly.

The misuse and misapplication of words is poor communication.  Ephesians 4:29 is not speaking of specific words but of specific actions - specifically bitterness, wrath, anger, excess, clamor, and slander (see verse 31).  These are corrupting communications.  Any words can become profanity when used these ways.  We do not attempt to accumulate a list of words that are sinful but rather attitudes and actions.

Conclusion
I have used a sampling of the issue of language because it is such a flashpoint for so many.  In many areas, our church does differ from the Christian “norm” because we feel the norm is unbiblical and driven by an unbiblical culture.  In many other areas, our church lines up with the norm because in searching the Scriptures, we found it to be the biblical position.

Very briefly, let me provide some summaries about some of the other flashpoint issues from the list at the beginning:

• Drinking - There is a lot of drinking Scripture.  Wine is considered a blessing from God.  Drunkenness, however, is universally condemned.
• Dress - Jesus did not wear a tie.  End of discussion.
• Theological Liberalism - Most of the accusations are false based on parts of things and misunderstanding.
• Versions of the Bible -Jesus did not speak English.  End of discussion.
• Salvation - We do not have altar calls; and we do believe people will journey toward encounters with Christ.  Salvation is not a work of man, but a work of the Spirit.  As we perceive the work of God, salvation is a process.
• Language - Language’s appropriateness is not arbitrarily decided.  Appropriate language is language which suits the situation and issue being described or explained.
• Politics - For the record, I am not a Republican; and I happen to believe America is dangerously close to being imperial in the tradition of the Roman Empire, which our founding fathers revered but the church fought against.
• Separation - We are part of this world.  Jesus said so.  End of discussion.
• Gender Roles - Men should love Jesus and submit to him.  Women should love their husbands and submit to him as he submits to Jesus.

Hope that clears everything up.