Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Kent Carlson
if we have gathered people into congregations by appeasing their appetites and desires, how can we help them deal with the fact that their problems in life and character-even in church"-are primarily caused by living to get what they want?
"we [in the dominant form of church life today] have trained Christians to be demanding consumers, not disciples." "It was this issue of consumerism that brought the conflicting values of external success and authentic spiritual formation into such sharp contrast."
We Christian leaders have created the current religious system, or at least have been complicit in its flourishing, and we ought to feel a responsibility for the rather meager and impotent product that has resulted.
A pervasive focus in the religious culture throughout North America is that success lies in attracting people, churched and nonchurched, to their particular church organization. This attractional model, we believe, is fundamentally flawed and will not be able to produce in any significant way the kind of Christ followers church leaders want to produce.
One of the undeniable truths of the culture of the large entrepreneurial, attractional-model church is that it requires constant feeding. When we structure a church around attracting people to cutting-edge, entertaining, interesting, inspirational and always-growing services and ministries, there is simply no room for letting up.
spiritual growth into the image of Christ is to be the normal experience of the follower of Christ. To follow Christ in any meaningful sense requires that we must be profoundly transformed.
attracting people to church based on their consumer demands is in direct and irredeemable conflict with inviting people, in Jesus' words, to lose their lives in order to find them. It slowly began to dawn on us that our method of attracting people was forming them in ways contrary to the way of Christ.
It
our current church structure was actually working against the invitation of Christ to experience his authentic transformation. In order to help people follow Christ more fully, we would have to work against the very methods we were using to attract people to our church.
to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus, consumerism was not a force to be harnessed but rather an antibiblical value system that ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
If Christ is King, everything, quite literally, every thing and every one, has to be re-imagined, re-configured, re-oriented to a way of life that consists in an obedient following of Jesus. This is not easy. It is not accomplished by participating in a prayer
meeting or two, or signing up for a seven-step course in discipleship at school or church, or attending an annual prayer breakfast. A total renovation of our imagination, our way of looking at things-what Jesus commanded in his no-nonsense imperative, "Repent!"-is required.
The outward success of our church came with a steep price tag. We had grown the church, but we were not more like Jesus. Growing the church did not require that we be like Jesus.
the leadership energy required in a larger church and the adrenaline rush of outward success gradually substituted for authentic experiences with God.
If a churchgoing Christ follower asked for guidance on how to move toward maturity, we would probably not suggest they attend another worship service. We would encourage them to spend time in silence and solitude, memorize Scripture or walk into the scars from their past. We would invite them to become part of a small group where Christ centered community happens. We might suggest they find a place to serve other people.
It seems there are two routes a church can take in attempting to orient more fully around the gospel of the kingdom and spiritual formation. First, hungry individuals and small groups scattered throughout a congregation can pursue this new way of living on their own. As they do this in the shadows, the leadership waits for it to slowly and subversively infiltrate the culture of the church. Over time, hopefully, the infection spreads and the DNA of the church gradually changes.
The second route is a more centralized pursuit of the kingdom life with a corresponding overhaul of the church's
...more
We were enthralled with the idea of the gospel as an invitation to be an apprentice of Jesus. "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:29-30). Apprentices are learning from Jesus how to live in the kingdom of God, and to trust him with everything, not just their sin problem. They are learning how to experience the life they long for and are made for, under God's gracious, loving and good reign and rule.
The way we did church, the style of our services, the underlying values behind our ministry-these communicated a "gospel" in which accepting Jesus was required but apprenticeship to him was optional.
while we had ministries geared toward
discipleship, the heart of the church was to attract more people and help them make decisions for Christ. Once they did, we hoped they would assimilate into the life of our church. Our time and energy was spent dealing with the ongoing maintenance of a growing church machine. On our way to becoming a successful suburban church, we had abridged the gospel.
There is a symbiotic relationship between the message and the methods we use to preach it-the methods we use are part of the message. The style and strategy of the church shapes the message that people hear.
Does the way we do church reinforce a theology of death to self? To what extent have we oriented our church around the needs of people who have minimal interest in actually living as disciples of Jesus? Is our ministry structured in a
way that supports our conviction that church is more than Sunday services? Does the way we do church proclaim the gospel of life in God's kingdom? If someone attended our church for three months would he or she say discipleship is one of our central concerns?
Nondiscipleship Christianity remains normative. People acceptJesus, but they don't trust him for much beyond the forgiveness of their sins. Their character, values, relationships and daily life remain unaltered by their devotion to Jesus. Christianity without apprenticeship is the predictable result of a truncated gospel that separates discipleship and salvation.
The gospel solves the problem of our sin and its collateral consequences. But the gospel is not only about sin and eternity. It has much to say about who we can become and how we can live right now. It has much to say about our lives today. The gospel invites us to a way of living that trains us for eternity.
