The "Simple Church" book seems to settle on a disciple-forming process with three basic elements: Love God, Love Others, Serve the World. Does that work for us?
I wondered about this because education is so much a part of what we do at Saint Nicholas, yet it isn't explicitly mentioned in these three steps. What about, "Love God, Love Others, Teach the People, Serve the World"?
PG
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I have not finished the book yet (caveat), but I find the content intruiging. Admittedly, I find myself overwhelmed at times with the amount of stuff we have going on around our Church family. I thought it was just me, but maybe not. It seems to echo some of my sentiments. I've been thinking about the mission too. I was thinking, "Love God. Love others. Serve others." Difference from the book being that serving in the local community should certainly be included. I see the education we do as part of "Love God." By learning about Him, you are learning why He should be loved.
BTW, Stang66Ccode is Dave Hickin. :)
Eureka!! I'm a blogger now.
Here's what I like about the book so far:
LOVE the simple idea! We all need to unclutter and see the big picture, especially in church.
LOVE the idea of a Christian growing over time.
LOVE the stats that back up the research.
Here is what I wonder about.
What exactly are these churches doing in their third stage? I'd like to know more about that. Maybe I'll get to it when I finish the book.(Caveat) :)
I think our Sunday School classes may be the small groups for thier age groups (Second Stage), but if attendance is sporadic, is it meeting the goal of the second stage.
I wonder where we stand compared to these simple churches. I've only belonged to two churches in my lifetime, both of similar size. I have no experience with mega churches. I can imagine they become very busy. With more people, there are bound to be more directions people would like to see their church go.
I wonder about what the overarching goal of the Church should be and what it is to these simple churches:
Is it to grow in size?
Is it to serve the needy?
Is it to learn how God wants us to live?
Is it to honor and praise God for all his blessings?
Or is it a combination of all of these things?
I'm torn between loving the idea of the Simple Church and fearing it. I am looking forward to more discussion.
What I think the book might say is that the purpose of the Simple Church is to raise up disciples.
One of the things that I think we're going to do on our leadership retreat (and maybe again in our Lenten Soup and Study) is to do the exercise in Chapter 9.
Try it: First write down, "Mature disciples of Christ at SNLC are ________________, _____________, ________________, _____________" and fill in the blanks as descriptively as you can. For example, one might be "attend worship regularly," and another might be "commune regularly." What might others be?
Step 2 is to turn that into a process by writing, "At SNLC, people become disciples by _________________,_____________" and fill in the blanks again, this time in terms of process steps. So, it might be "coming to worship," "participating in Sunday School," and so on.
I'd be interested to see how you all fill in those blanks, separately and then together.
Oh, I didn't finish the thought. Kathy, I think what the book would say is that the Simple Church, by raising up disciples will do other things. It will grow in size, it will serve the needy, it will teach us how God wants us to live, it will honor and praise God, because raising up disciples is attractive and because these are things that disciples will do.
I like the book, but am always nervous when authors tell us to follow a model (in this case "simple") that sounds like a something from a business seminar. After all, if we are truly the Body of Christ, we all need to be different, right? (1Corinthians 12) Yet, each of the successful models used in the book all had a similar approach. Though I like it, we need to ensure we don't try to become a square peg that should fit into a round hole. A couple of other notes:
- I do think we do so many good things for our community, but also believe we are a mile wide and an inch deep. I am guilty of protecting my own pet project (Operation Christmas Child), but will offer it up if we decide it no longer fits.
- If we want to be simple, then we should first look at our worship services (the Traditional service if very complicated). I worry we may lose several visitors because of its complexity.
- Emmanual Baptist is using this same model and they have grown by leaps and bounds. I think they are using a formula that is very popular in the U.S. right now, (i.e., the three step process described in the book), but can we, should we adopt this as a member of the ELCA? What restrictions would we have to overcome?
More later...
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