Churches who "get it"
These are observations from someone who visited several churches. The churches that 'get it' had similarities. I will only list the ten points to grab your attention. Read the entire article here.
1. Each church has a pastor with a vision.
2. Each church hires almost exclusively from within.
3. Speaking of staff, the staff of these churches ‘get it’ too.
4. A larger percentage of their staff (or staff wives) are pregnant.
5. These churches and pastors don’t have a clue what they’re doing.
6. Since they don’t have it all figured out, these pastors all shared with me their desire to connect with other leaders who can help mentor them.
7. These churches are not shy about sharing resources.
8. Most all of these pastors are bloggers.
9. These churches are not afraid to make tough calls.
10. Numbers are important to them.
5 comments:
Boy, was that a frustrating article to read. Not a word about biblical fidelity, prayer, the centrality of the preached word, service... Whatever these churches "get," it all could apply to a new age church, a cult, or a Mormon congregation just as easily.
This is exactly why I'll never read a book on church growth unless the title is "Grow Your Church By Preaching Biblical Truth" or something along those lines.
bryan why do you have to bring the bible into the discussion. we are talking about church - NOT the bible. the sucess of a church has nothing to do with the bible does it?
i'm curious to know what you'd think if the article did add a section about biblical fidelity and historical orthodoxy.
let me clear up a few things. i did not post this piece because i thought it was a good mission statement of a church - it is not. i posted it because the writer made some interesting OBSERVATIONS of churches he visited. i believe the assumption is that they are teaching the bible. should that have been explicit in the article? maybe. but that wasn't the point of the article.
please understand that i posted these as interesting observations.
bryan you have to agree that a good church growth concept is to keep the pastors wife pregnant, eh?
Yeah, I'm all for keeping the wives pregnant. Mainly because that means that lots of sex is being had.
I went back and read the article again and I still think that while they are interesting observations, it makes me incredibly uncomfortable to think that lots of pastors are reading this article and thinking, "Hm. I guess these are some things we should focus on." But "the Bible" and all of the things that go along with biblical corporate worship and ministry should never be "assumed." That's all I'm saying. That seems to me to be a slippery slope.
It just bothers me that there is not one single thing about this article that is distinctively Christian (unless you include, for example, Mormons, JW, Seventh-Day, and various other abberant cults under the umbrella of "Christian").
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