'Come to us' or 'Go to them'?

Over the last couple of weeks we've organised our local newspaper advertisements, postcards in homes & businesses in the street where we are, information in motels & hotels - all this to "advertise" our Holy Week & Easter services.

People have asked, re a very moving Good Friday service last year, "Are we going to do what we did last year ...?".

I find myself under considerable pressure to ensure that our Easter services "attract". And I feel, rightly or wrongly seeing I'm having to do most of the thinking, planning, etc. by myself, that the judgment on the "success" of Easter at our church will fall upon me.

So I and find myself with a great amount of tension in my current situation. I'm beginning to become stressed by the kinds of questions & demands falling upon me. What can I do to get the crowds back like we had last year? If there are less at our Easter services than last year - does that mean I've failed as the minister? There's a BIG conversation here!

It sort of links in with some current conversations I've come across re the church as "attractional" or as a "people sent". An attractional church is one whose primary stance towards those it seeks to reach is couched in the expectation of a come-to-us mentality. And this expectation as it plays out in Australia, and other western countries, was basically formed in a time in history where the church had a central position in the culture and people naturally came to church to be cared for, to hear the gospel, and to participate in the community life. The problem is that adopting such a mode is at the cost of fundamentally altering our understanding of ourselves as a ‘sent’ people. And this is further exacerbated by the fact that we live in what many call a post-Christendom era. In other words, an attractional church can work in a Christendom context, but in a missionary context it actually undermines our efforts to reach people meaningfully with the Gospel of Jesus. Hence my thinking re an 'attractional Easter' at our church.Two different conceptions of church vying for our loyalty.

Living with a "come to us" mentality or a "go to them" mentality?

jesus of the electric

jesus of the electric
Originally uploaded by striatic.

Palm Sunday - a call to subversion

On Palm Sunday Jesus invites us to join a counter-procession into all the world.

But he calls us not to just any subversion, subversion for its own sake sake, or to some new and improved political agenda.

Rather, Christian subversion takes as its model Jesus himself, "who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross." Dying to self and the many demons of egoism, and living to serve others, will prove itself as sufficiently and radically subversive.
What were Jesus and his first followers subverting? According to the likes of Myers(Binding the Strong Man) Jesus' alternate reign and rule subverted major aspects of the way most societies in history have been organized. Whether ancient or modern, most societies have normalized a status quo of political oppression that marginalizes ordinary people, economic exploitation whereby the rich take advantage of the poor, and religious legitimation that insists that "God wants things this way." It's easy to think of other components of the cultural status quo that Jesus might also subvert, like ethnic stereotypes, media propaganda, gender roles, consumerism, and our degradation of planet earth.

Re story of Prodigal Son

Found this on Jonny Baker's blog who found it on Cheryl Lawrie's (?) blog

You’d never end the story by turning us away
so why do we live as if we could do something that will stop you loving us?

You’d never end the story giving up waiting for us
so why do we live in fear of wearing out your patience?

You’d never end the story with a litany of our sins
so why do we live as though you see us only with eyes of judgement?

You’d never end the story giving us one last warning
so why do we live in fear that your goodwill will run out?

You’d never end the story not recognising us
so why do we live thinking you don’t know the shape of our souls?

You’d never end the story with outpourings of anger
so why do we live in fear of incurring your wrath?

You’d never end the story by taking us back as servants
so why do we live as though there are limits on your grace?

You’d never end the story slamming a door in our face
so why do we live in fear of your rejection?

You’d never end the story with anything but love
so why do we live as though our story might end with anything but love?

slavery 200 years on...

Have had a "heavy" time in the congregation recently. The issue is all about how we comply/don't comply with regulations re our governing board. O that we might devote as much time and effort to evangelism, mission outreach and all the rest of it. We exhaust ourselves in "stuff" that in the end does not advance our "core business"! I just don't get it, over and over again!

This coming Sunday (25 March) I'm also focussing on the anniversary celebrations of 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade bill was passed in UK law through the House of Lords. The irony is that there are more slaves today than 200 years ago with child soldiers, sex trafficking, and forced labour. I confess my knowledge of the history is very small. Anyhow I'm using material from the "Amazing Grace" site in that the song will be featured strongly in the worship. I'm preaching on God's 'amazing grace' and for the first time I'm going to make an "altar call" of sorts. I know some of this is a response to the goings on re our governing board issue & I hope and pray that I do not misuse the opportunity for personal "anger" but only for the love of the Gospel and a true call to repentance.

Bits from Bill Bolton - Entrepreneur Imperative

The Gospel Imperative is a ‘content’ imperative — it is about the Good News of Jesus.

For the Christian, the Entrepreneur Imperative has the same mission content but is a ‘person’ imperative. It calls us all to action — to release the entrepreneurial talent in our midst and put it to work.

We need to embrace this imperative and be more entrepreneurial in the way we live and tell the Good News, just as the early Church did. Those involved took enormous risks; they challenged the status quo, they thought and lived differently.

Above all, they did what entrepreneurs always do, they ‘built something of recognised value’: the Church...

Since that time, the Entrepreneur Imperative has been lost for long periods both in society and in the Church as authoritarian bureaucracy has taken hold.

However, when conditions were right, it surfaced again, most notably in the Renaissance period and then the Industrial Revolution.

The key condition was an environment of deep and profound intellectual and social change.

Economically, socially and spiritually, we are in a different place. The old certainties have gone and we struggle to understand what is happening.

It is at such a time as this that we must grasp the Entrepreneur Imperative.

Entrepreneurs are motivated to build something of recognised value and, in the process, they create capital....

Social capital is about values shared within a community or group of people that give them common purpose and a sense of unity. Trust is its currency. The more trust within a group, the greater the social capital.

Economic capital is something with which we are all familiar. Its currency is cash.

In the past, some have taken the Gospel to mean only spiritual capital. Others have focused on social capital. Economic capital has also got involved when missions and commercial interests have operated together.

The Entrepreneur Imperative is not about this past but about the future and offers a new and holistic approach to mission which values all three forms of capital.

Henry Venn’s three principles of a self-propagating, a self-governing and a self-financing church say the same thing.

His emphasis on ‘self’ is important and at the centre of the Entrepreneur Imperative. It is something for all of us, whether we are entrepreneurs or not.

It is about creating an environment in which those with entrepreneurial talent can take their rightful place in our society and institutions, including the church.

Popular culture in the West is ready for the entrepreneur. Its uncertainty and rapid change is the entrepreneur’s natural habitat. The greater publicity being given to entrepreneurs shows that society is starting to grasp this new imperative and run with it.

Big business has struggled to cope with change and, after trying to re-organise, re-engineer and even re-invent itself, is finally recognising that it too must grasp the Entrepreneur Imperative.

The Church, with its tradition and hierarchy, is in a difficult position.

The world changes ..

Margaret Wheatley & Deborah Frieze ©2006
Despite current ads and slogans, the world doesn’t change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible. This is good news for those of us intent on changing the world and creating a positive future. Rather than worry about critical mass, our work is to foster critical connections. We don’t need to convince large numbers of people to change; instead, we need to connect with kindred spirits. Through these relationships, we will develop the new knowledge, practices, courage, and commitment that lead to broad-based change.

Pobreza

Pobreza
Originally uploaded by Memo Vasquez.

More on "Global Warming"

Last night (5 March 2007) TV Channel screened a program called "Cool Aid".
Just to note the following comment sent to me.

During last night’s Cool Aid I was amused to see Sandra Sully had flown to Japan to interview Al Gore. Considering the whole point of the program was to demonstrate how to reduce the production of greenhouse gas why didn’t they just set up a satellite link? Or was the point that the important classes can afford to purchase offsets and maintain their lifestyle while the rest of us must reduce our outputs by altering our way of life?

Undies and 'global warming'

Came across the picture. In a fun way it wishes to suggest the effects of global warming and our move to smaller "undies" to help keep our bodies 'cool'.

"What gospel is that?"

"A Church that doesn't provoke any crisis, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of society in which it is being proclaimed, what gospel is that? Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917-1980)

Taking seriously sub-cultural identity

With the breakup of the modern period and the subsequent postmodern period, things have begun to radically change. For one, the power of hegemonic ideologies has come to an end, and with that, the breakdown of the power of the state and other forms of ‘grand stories’ that bind societies or groups together in a grand vision. The net effect of this has been the resultant flourishing of sub-cultures, and what sociologists call, the heteroginization, or simply the tribalization, of western culture. Just as we had intuited from the local level at a new tribalism was born in the postmodern era.

People now identify themselves less by grand ideologies, national identities, or political allegiances, but by much less grander stories: like those of interest groups, new religious movements (the new age), sports activities, competing ideologies (neo-Marxist, neo-fascist,) class, conspicuous consumption (meterosexuals, urban grunge, etc.), work types (computer geeks, hackers, designers, etc.) and so forth. On one occasion some youth ministry specialists I work with identified in an hour fifty easily discernable youth sub-cultures alone. (computer nerds, petrol heads, skaters, homies, surfies, punks, etc.) Each of them takes their sub-cultural identity with utmost seriousness and hence any missional response to them must as well.

The above is from the blog of Alan Hirsch. Whilst there is much to debate in the above, the last sentence resonates especially with me. How to take seriously, so as to respond with the Gospel, such sub-groups in a congregation that wishes, the desire of the 'gate-keepers', to be middle-class senior and only respond to those who fit in. In other words, the sheer difficulty of children's/youth ministry, to say nothing of responding to early 'baby-boomers', etc.