Is community more broken than we think?

Eastern Orthodoxy sees the church as “truly the Ark in which mankind may be saved from the flood of corruption and sin.”

It’s more than just a family. It’s literally the “mothership.” It’s actually part of the design and construction of Eastern Orthodox churches to have the long, tall building resemble a ship, “journeying towards the kingdom with Christ at the helm.”

As the “always reforming” New Calvinists like Matt Chandler and Mark Driscoll make bold moves in redefining how we view belonging to a church and being the church, I think even Protestants are moving to a higher view of Christian community.

But it strikes me that the “weak link” is how difficult deep fellowship appears to be, the kind of abounding “love for each other and for all” that Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians as pre-requisite for being “blameless in holiness.”

How do we get along with, live alongside and love our brothers and sisters in Christ? Not very well, if you consider the common complaints in every church.

The response to Perry Noble’s preaching this Sunday on “judging others” touched a lot of raw nerves, for sure. And Ed Stetzer’s Lifeway research found that “not feeling connected to the people in my church,” ranks as one of the Top 10 reasons that 18-22 year olds leave the church.

I’ve spent a lot of time defending the potential for online “community.” But it seems to me that those critiquing the shallowness of the fellowship shouldn’t be throwing stones.

I think a Jewish teacher put it well in drawing analogy about seeing the speck of sawdust in another’s eye and missing the plank in one’s own eye.

The question is not: which methods do we use to fellowship?

The question is: how does the church lead its people in fellowship? The kind of fellowship that is apparently not only a great witness but also fundamental to keeping Christians afloat in the Christian life?

Isn’t it time we moved beyond concerns or fears about holy huddles and koombayas?

What say you?

Filed under: evangelism, ruminations

Everybody wants to change the world … so why can’t we?

Unless you’re a really hardened cynic, I think it’s fair to say that most everyone wants to do good, even if don’t always act on it or even if we don’t really know what that is

It’s obvious that social good is hot right now. Google’s All for Good, Twitter’s Twestival and all sorts of micro-sites are tapping to that desire for people to “contribute.” The web’s core values of collaboration and creativity; its smart, curious, and socially savvy users; and its astounding network effects have created fertile soil for social activism that dares to change the world.

So why don’t we do more as the church to embrace Jesus command to do good to others as an evangelism opportunity?

I’m convinced that when people stand shoulder to shoulder with sold-out believers “working out” their salvation, that the gospel will get preached in dramatic ways. In fact, I think the church should choose personal missions above financial mission work wherever possible for this very reason.

One of the most joyful moments of my life as a newspaper editor was my decision in 2005, under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, to send a curious, spiritually seeking reporter to Hurricane-Katrina ravaged Mississippi with two Christian congregations who were ministering there.

She returned with a deep, profound, life-transforming understanding of Christ that led her to become a member of her church, be baptized in Christ and eventually become a part-time children’s ministry worker.

I think there’s plenty of opportunities for us to engage with people who want to do good locally, since who knows local communities and there needs better than local churches? Why are we leaving this to the United Ways and the Rotary Clubs of the world?

Mission activity energizes local congregations, gets them focused on the point of living for Jesus and gives us an opportunity to talk about Jesus — and build the relationships with non-believers who may later be interested in finding out a little more about why we choose to live such other-focused and sacrificial lives.

We can start by registering what missions opportunities we do have on search engines like All For Good. And then we can start designing and executing high-contact, flexible and inspiring missions opportunities in our local communities.

What’s stopping us?

Filed under: community, evangelism, volunteers , community, evangelism, social action

Can churches deny human choice?

A lot of the critical and necessary debate on this blog comes around one way or the other to: How does the church handle the rising tide of consumerism in its expression?

It’s not an accident: The web has empowered the individual like no other time in history, and the act of accomplishing ministry in this context is bound to flirt, sometimes dangerously, with abetting the self-seeking, vain, prideful human heart without God, rather than calling it to repentence in light of the manifest glories of God.

It seems to me that man has always seen himself at the center of all things. This is not new. What is new is the extent to which man can now do it in almost all phases of life. And the remedy for this heart sickness is and always will be the cross of Jesus.

So here’s my question: When God calls you to salvation, do you really have a choice to “opt out” of the body of Christ? Is it not one of the most magnificent promises of scripture that it’s not possible?

Only “Christians” with unregenerate hearts go shopping for God “experiences,” rather than surrender to him.

Only “Christians” with no understanding of Lordship believe that God is a vending machine of blessings.

Only “Christians” who have never heard the truth will allow themselves to be swayed by every wind of doctrine.

Is it not the gospel, the good news, the freedom from captivity, that human agency, human choice, for the regenerated heart, is always for good?

Our hyper-consumerist society is still relatively young, probably 100 years old at best. And for the church, for thousands of years a local phenomenon, our history with it is even shorter. Perhaps 50, if that. And i think that, if anything, there is a reckoning coming for the church as it wrestles with this, which probably explains some of my passion for the Web Church: It accelerates the urgency of figuring this out.

I submit that the battle is not between consumerism and whatever some Christians think can control it — authority structures, whatever. The battle is to get anointed, gospel-saturated teaching that places the supremacy of Christ above all things into earshot of as many dead hearts as possible so they can be convicted and awakened to life in Christ.

We need to make sure that people choose the church rather than Oprah, Dr. Phil, Tom Cruise and every other self-help guru who is leading people dancing and singing straight to the gates of hell.

Only then will they know difference between a true and false gospel.

Only then will they know the difference between a life that glorifies self and a life that serves God

Only then will they know that Jesus’ call to total surrender can not be resisted except with tears.

And only then will the Holy Spirit magnificently insist that the appetite for seeing, savoring and treasuring the joy of Christ be fed insatiably.

I ask again: Where does the path lead for Christ-centered churches who work in this “crooked and twisted generation” without an understanding of choice?

Filed under: discipleship, evangelism, ruminations, web campus , culture, discipleship, evangelism, theology, web campus

Web church success may be tied to customization

I’ve been looking at the Hartford Seminaryanalysis of megachurch attenders because I think it could be useful in understanding the Web Church’s potential mission field and how it can extend what we’ve learned from modern church methods. You can read past posts in this series here, here and here.

One of the study’s most dramatic conclusions was that:

involvement at these (and perhaps all) churches may be less about creating an idealized plan to move someone toward commitment and more about providing many ways by which people could craft their unique, customized spiritual experience to meet their needs.

It’s logical that the Web Church respond to this apparent desire for customizing church experience. Web culture, after all, is about empowering individual choice, and letting you set the terms of your engagement with content and people.

Many NewSpring Web Campus attenders are already actively engaged in designing their own path to spiritual growth and assembling the building blocks of an online church life, spurred on by the breathtaking amount and quality of podcasts, books, and blogs that fan the flames of someone’s spiritual fires on demand.

There’s no reason to think that wouldn’t extend to all aspects of church life as they migrate online. Someone could choose one church’s online worship experiences, another’s online small groups, yet another’s online discipleship program etc. and another’s online outreach and missions program.

I think the megachurch lesson here is that offering many paths for spiritual exploration and engagement and involvement could be the Web Church’s supreme value proposition.

That could include providing social guides or personal recommendations toward other trusted, high-quality content. Or it could be offering opportunities for spiritual growth in partnership with regional, national and international ministries. It could even be providing the support systems, resources and “open access” to the Web church’s people to build new ministries and recruit for them across the web.

A believer’s attachment, then, to a Web church might not be traditional “membership,” but in the personal relationships with individual believers as they come across them in different ministry area.

What do you think?

Filed under: community, discipleship, evangelism, web campus , community, discipleship, evangelism, icampus, web campus

The Web church could lower barriers of entry to Christian faith

The megachurch study by the folks over at Hartford Seminary has grabbed my attention, largely because I think it proves that “church different” has created a new “market” of believers.

The study’s authors marvel at the megachurch’s role as an “assimilation engine,” taking people from every demographic, religious and cultural background and helping them connect and integrate within the Christian faith.

They found that 25 percent of attenders were new to church. And 28 percent of all attenders had recently relocated — representing 40 percent of all those who had church background.

The lesson here is that traditional churches apparently carried a lot of cultural and even “theological” baggage that turned people off and created barriers to entry.

I think the web church, as the megachurch has done, can remove artificial, and largely cultural barriers to Christianity and allow for sampling of the experience on an attender’s own terms.

There are many hundreds of millions of people worldwide, but especially in the post-Christian west, who don’t have any real understanding whatsoever of the basics of Christianity and would simply not see the point of going to church at all.

The Web church could be ideally positioned to create a new type of experience that intentionally refuses to trade on old and outdated assumptions about faith and its centrality to one’s life, and instead chooses to address spiritual seekers and immature believers head-on. (The megacurch study found that only 6 percent of attenders were new converts, so there’s lots of progress to be made in that area.)

Web church worship environments tap into the spirit of our technological, experiential, explorational age. And the web church can dovetail nicely with personal and relational evangelism that can overcome hostility to institutional church and “organized religion.”

Given that personal invites were, by an overwhelming margin, the No. 1 method that megachurches attracted attenders, I think there’s reason to be optimistic that Web churches, properly positioned, can truly take advantage of the Web’s network effects.

Filed under: evangelism, web campus , evangelism, web campus

Megachurch study filled with positives

Mention the word “megachurch” and the chances are the response won’t be positive.

But a close reading of Hartford Seminary’s analysis of megachurch attenders — the most comprehensive to date — offers plenty of reasons to think that these large, Christ-centered, culturally-relevant congregations might have proved critics wrong.

The study found:

Megachurches widen the funnel for people to come into the Christian fold. More than a third of the congregation was young and/or single — a demographic that is more or less absent from traditional churches — and 25 percent were new to “church” as a whole. So much for megachurches just stealing attenders from other churches!

Megachurch attenders are active and engaged. More than 70 percent of attenders described themselves as “active participants,” and nearly half of attenders who have been at their church longer than 2 years report that their involvement increased.

About 20 percent of surveyed attenders said they weren’t active participants in church life outside services, and yet they exhibited strong signs of personal, spiritual development, with a fourth of this group praying and reading the Bible daily, 40 percent worshiping weekly, and three fourths having invited people to services. So much for unengaged, passive consumers!

Megachurch attenders are growing spiritually. Three-fourths of all attenders say they read the Bible and pray daily or often during the week. After 10 years, half or more of megachurch attenders are tithers, compared to only 34 percent at traditional churches. So much for megachurches being breeding grounds for a weaker, watered down Christian practice.

There’s other great stuff in there, too. You should read the whole thing.

I’m guessing that the same dynamics that led to criticism of the megachurch will be leveled at the web church once it, too, is firmly established as a new expression of church.

And the study might offer hope to the Web church that it is adding to the fullness of Christ’s kingdom positioned as a complement to other church expressions for those who Bobby Gruenewald <a href=”http://swerve.lifechurch.tv/2009/06/11/who-are-you-reaching/”>defined recently</a> as “distant, mobile, curious and digital.”

Thoughts?

Filed under: evangelism, web campus , evangelism, web campus

Is your web campus embracing your physical church attenders?

A church would be foolish not to see a Web Campus as a key to its growth at physical locations.

And a Web Campus would be foolish to ignore its church’s physical worshipers as a way to be successful.

One of the most biggest realizations we’ve made through the first few months of the Web Campus ministry is that our campus serves many different audiences.

Our Web Campus primarily targets the unchurched and the dechurched. People who have been relocated from your church who can’t find a good, Bible-believing church near them. Maybe people who are searching for God or for a church and seem to “connect” to NewSpring’s vision and theology.

Then there’s the sizable number of our attenders who are connected to our Anderson, Greenville and Florence campuses and are sick or out of town or just aren’t able to make it to church that week. It’s wise not to overlook the power of that second constituency to the Web Campus ministry.

No. 1In the mobile society that we all now live, physical attenders are bound to have many family and friends spread across the nation without access to a church like NewSpring, and who have been impressed by the ministry during visits or through casual conversations.

As we know, the power of personal ministry is greatest in relationships of deep love and intimate connection, and it’s in these family connections that a web campus or web ministry can best flourish.

Each family member or friend can have a shared experience — whether during the service in the chatroom or private IM or in conversations after the service. And the friend or family member can provide the instant and extended support and ministry needed by every believer to flourish in the Lord.

No. 2. Those physical attenders exposed to the Web Campus, have a natural opportunity to share a “preview” of the NewSpring experience with those that might be skeptical, reluctant or intimidated so that they can then be invited to a physical church location.

And to prove this isn’t just theory, here’s a story that providentially dropped into my email box Sunday:

I normally attend the Greenville Campus and serve on the care team. I was really bummed this morning because I had a terrible migraine and would not make it ! Thankfully I was able to attend today’s 11:15 service on the web. What an amazing experience! It was awesome to have a chance to interact with everyone in a chat room environment during Perry’s message.

After the service I came into contact with two people who have been wanting to attend the Greenville campus but didn’t want to go alone. I look forward to meeting both of them there this Sunday!

I also posted a link on my Face book profile at the start of the service . I received a reply from one of my contacts thanking me for the posting. She and her husband attended the Anderson campus last week and were looking forward to this Sundays service. She had fallen ill and couldn’t attend. Thanks to the web campus they were able to hear Perry’s powerful message today! I never ceases to amaze me to see how God move’s in our church. I can’t wait to see what’s next !

Got a take on this? Got a story or several of your own?

Filed under: community, discipleship, evangelism, social media, web campus , community, discipleship, evangelism, social media, web campus

Is this the front door to the church in the 21st century?

I read this interesting post from social media/PR guru Brian Solis about the future of the news industry, and I couldn’t help thinking that he may also be describing the 21st century “front door” to our churches.

Solis’ imagines the new news industry as personality-focused, community-based, and distributed through the network.

An information producer, passionate about his “subject,” will cultivate a network of people who will help him create content and ultimately publish it through his network’s statusphere and its viral effects. Content serves as the supply of “social objects” around which conversations occur and networks build.

As a former media exec, turning the focus away from the industrial model of news organizations to individual “information evangelists” was almost exactly the blueprint for the future of news I was trying evangelize myself inside the E.W. Scripps Co. beginning in 2005.

Why wouldn’t the “good news” industry work the same? Isn’t this proved by the rise of the pastor personality who uses online social tools to proclaim the good news and gather and “care” for a flock? (And also the decline of the denomination and the church-as-institution?)

Rarely a day that goes by on the NewSpring Web Campus that someone doesn’t say they first heard about NewSpring through NewSpring Senior Pastor Perry Noble’s phenomenally successful blog or the NewSpring podcast.

I think there are a lot of opportunities for traditional church pastors, online pastors and thoughtful church members to serve as a new breed of online evangelist.

And if that’s true, we need to pay for more attention to and what information people receive, process and pass using social media, as well as why and how.

I fear that most churches’ current emphasis on promoting invites and interest in church in our ambient friendship networks online aren’t really all that effective, and worse, may actually be turning people off.

Maybe the news industry can teach the “good news” industry something. At its most successful (online or offline, professional or amateur), journalism delivers information that’s useful, easy to understand, and easy to apply. Some of it is practical, like how to save money, raise good kids etc. And some is just ambient knowledge, so you can be part of conversations and build friendships around what you know and like.

When it comes to evangelizing Jesus “in the network,” the new front door of the church, we need to start with first principles, not assuming that anyone who reads us knows anything about Christianity.

We need to embrace seeker-sensibility by making our message less about church, or even the Bible. We need filter everything we say so that it’s useful, easy to consume and more relevant to everyday people who don’t care about “religion” and are just trying to live life the best they can.

What if the “new evangelist” did what great teachers and preachers, just like Jesus, have always done: Take the stuff of life, the stories of our culture, the news of our world, and the practical challenges and felt needs we daily face, and offer spiritual insight, practical wisdom and life modeling to help people live better.

Maybe that way they’ll earn the equity to point people to Jesus as the true fulfillment of this crazy, beautiful life, and then be able to invite them to taste and see that the Lord is good.

Thoughts/

Filed under: evangelism , evangelism, social media, social networking

A micro-mission online explosion is good news

I’m really pumped about the recent tide of church efforts to use the web to show the love of God to people who desperately need to know him.

I’ve been blown away by the current Servolution initiative of Healing Place Church, led by its service-driven pastor Dino Rizzo.

The 7-day service blowout has included such things as giving free lunches to business around Healing Place’s Swaziland campus, a trash cleanup near Healing Place’s Baton Rouge hub or the inspiration for a New York church planter to pass out quarters to people in a laundromat.

There’s nothing that cuts as much to the core of who Jesus is and who we are as the church as meeting needs and serving others.

But what makes the recent trend even more encouraging is that storytelling is baked in. Telling our story as a people of faith is a powerful and necessary part of revealing God’s work in the world, proclaiming our unique gospel of grace and shaping a positive identity for ordinary Christians who so often are just the butt of jokes or bear the brunt of the polarizing culture war over abortion and gays.

Servolution’s integration of mapping, media, liveblogging and twitter to involve people in the action as it happens and to share the stories of those who have experienced and seen the impact of this kind of ministry is truly impressive.

Before servolution, of course, we saw a similar mashup for the Christmas-time Gift Revolution from Flamingo Road Church. Other attempts include this February’s RevolutionaryLove two-week event from LifeChurch.tv and the anonymous The Love Revolution.

What we haven’t seen is the attempt to go beyond an event-based way of executing this idea on an ongoing basis. That’s where Simple Love Project comes in. Starting April 13, the web site will challenge believers to follow-through with weekly love missions, read about missions others have accomplished, network and share ideas.

I’ll be watching it closely to see whether devoted followers of Christ find this helpful in focusing their good works, whether their commitment to love others as they love themselves continues long after the novelty, the buzz and the publicity have died down, and, most importantly, whether a durable community of grace does indeed grow up around it.

Churches everywhere might be able to learn something from that, and the web church in particular. Check it out and sign up.

Filed under: evangelism , evangelism, social action

The good news in 140 characters?

It’s amazing what we can pack into 140 characters on Twitter. But is that enough space for the Good News of Jesus?

I thought it might be fun to have some fun on a Tuesday afternoon to see if we could kick off a gospel meme that would fly around the Twitterverse in time for Easter.

Here’s mine:

The world sucks. Pain. Sickness. Death. We know we’re meant for more. Jesus will show you how much. He rescues anyone. Just ask. #goodnews

Be original. Be creative. Use the tag #goodnews. Give it your best.

Imagine the power of folks hearing the truth of Jesus simply by scanning their Twitter or status updates.

Post yours in the comments below.

Filed under: evangelism, social media , evangelism, social media, social networking, Twitter