Can You Teach an Old Church New Tricks?

Class today was very stimulating. Dr. Trautman got us into a great conversation for the last half hour regarding renewal vs. planting.

His opening was about a church in SoCal that had a review by some church consultants. The consultants noted that the church had a very small evangelism budget relative to their overall budget and little in "missional" programming. His question was how would you go about changing this church.

Since so many of the students are specifically enrolled in the class in order to plant missional churches, the responses were reflective of this viewpoint. Holden said that he thought there was a blessing in sticking with the church and enduring the suffering. Mike said that he was enthused by his church's changes over the last few years in becoming more intentional in their service. Mike also stated that he just wanted the people to get out of the pew and do something. For some reason, it seems that we church folk don't follow our Bibles very well.

Perhaps a core issue in stimulating church renewal is that we are sheep. Sheep aren't very good at change. They don't follow very well and they tend to be resistent. Sheep don't like to work, but they like to eat and sleep. Since we are all sheep (even the pastor/church planter), we can say the same thing about ourselves.

A more depressing thought: we will always be sheep.

Hope: The Holy Spirit lives in these sheep. He can change the heart of an individual and the heart of a church.

I certainly agree with church planting as a strategy for reaching new people by getting more people out in the community to bring the gospel to the people. This isn't a full solution to the "sheep" problem. Certainly a church planter will enjoy the opportunity to shape the look and feel of the church becuase there's no tradition or predecessor to live up to. However, it seems to me that a church plant becomes an established church when: (1) the founding pastor leaves, (2) there are more people attending who weren't around in the "glory days", or (3) the initial surge of mission fades as the church builds programs to care for the new believers/attenders.

In conclusion: All of us like sheep are going astray. We keep turning to our own way. The Lord has taken our sins of worldiness, apathy and hypocrisy and layed it upon Jesus. He has paid the price so that the church -- established and emerging -- can become what the Bible intends. \

Sheep: let's follow the Shepherd!

-Derek