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Frankly Continued by Michael Bishop (@ Next Wave)
Posted by Ed and Lois
Hello?
If you are reading this and have some vested interest in a community of faith - whatever your flavor, old-school or new-school, emerging or submerging - do yourself a favor and stop caring about the following things:
1. The number of people in your church. Really, it doesn’t matter.
2. The “relevancy” of your common worship.
3. How often or if ever a new person shows up at one of your common worship times.
4. The size of your church budget, building, or paid staff.
5. What any other church in the world is doing - good or bad or otherwise.
And please start caring about the following things:
1. Actively looking for the evidence of God’s kingdom - where what he wants done is done - at work, at home, at Starbucks (heaven forbid), at the beach, and anywhere else you might find yourself in the course of living your normal life.
2. Simple, honest worship.
3. Having friends that don’t give a rip about your church. Maybe you might just rub off on them.
4. Giving away money to people who need it; using existing, familiar (and free) spaces for common worship such as homes, restaurants, parks, or community centers; flattening the organization’s need for paid leadership and support roles.
5. Go on a unique, unreproducible journey with a group of people and rejoice with other groups of people who do the same.
I’m not making any promises here. If you do these things it won’t make the perfect church, but you most likely won’t be mired in burnout or depression either. Maybe the best I can offer is my own personal experience. Three years after I [mostly] stopped caring about those five things and started caring about those other five…well…I still suck as a Christian, but I don’t suck as bad! Hurrah!
I really, really, really, really, really, really love being a part of the Church Jesus is building.
Full Post:http://www.the-next-wave.org/stories/storyReader$447