If It Could Happen Here: Turning the Small-Membership Church Around - Softcover

Patton, Jeff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0687030331 ISBN 13: 9780687030330

Verlag: Abingdon Press, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Are small membership churches--as the conventional wisdom says--simply places where pastors bide their time while they wait for something better to come along? Are they places where long-standing family relationships are maintained, but little else? Are they places where attendance is dropping, the building is out of date, the programs are boring, and people don't want to change? If you believe this conventional wisdom, then this book is not for you. But if you see small-membership churches, especially those in rural areas, as opportunities for the radical message of Jesus to transform lives and communities, then this is a book you want to read.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jeff Patton is director of Christian Counseling Clinic, Inc. in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

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If It Could Happen Here ...

Turning the Small-Membership Church Around

By Jeff Patton

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2002 Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-687-03033-0

Contents

Foreword by Bill Easum, 
Introduction, 
1. Then and Now, 
2. "Light for Those in Darkness, Safety for Those in Storms", 
3. The End of "Pastor Fetch" and the Beginning of "People Go", 
4. Lever 1: Prayer, 
5. Lever 2: Discerning a Clear Mission, 
6. Lever 3: Indigenous Worship, 
7. Lever 4: Growth Groups, 
8. Lever 5: Membership That Means Something, 
9. Lever 6: Lay Pastoring, 
10. The Drive for Quality and the Difference Excellence Can Make, 
11. If It Could Happen Here, It Could Happen Where You Are!, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

Then and Now

I hope that what you are about to read will change you and how you view Christian congregations. This book is about the process of turnaround and how a congregation can overcome many handicaps as it grows into an effective mission-driven, vision-oriented, faith-based, permission giving community that knows there is more to church life than taking up room in a pew. This can happen where you are!

East Canton was able to overcome many handicaps because of the imbedded heart-driven desire "that all might know Jesus." In addition, this community gradually believed that God really was "able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine" (Eph. 3:20 NIV). We overcame many obstacles because we were willing to care about those who were lost, hurting, and alone. We were able to overcome the handicaps because we understood that new times require new approaches if we are to be effective in reaching people with the good news of Jesus Christ.

Understanding our situation—the times, events, cultural climate, and demographics—was crucial in our success. Until we saw the situation accurately, we continued to operate on faulty assumptions. For example, when we realized how spiritually hungry people were, we addressed their core hungers. Previously we had thought that people simply were not interested in worship. Now we understand that they were interested, but we did not speak their language.

To assist you and your congregation, I will provide an overview of the historical situation of Christian congregations at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy looks around the new world where she has landed and makes the discovery that she's "not in Kansas anymore." When we look at the world around us, we make a similar observation: The world is different, strange, hard to understand, and more complex than ever. Like Dorothy, we can say this is not what we are familiar with. The landscape has changed. Words have new meanings. Humankind is different, more diverse, more intellectually aware, more spiritually open, more resistant to organized religion, and more morally confused.

Our culture, in general, is moving forward technologically, but morally it looks like that of the first-century Roman world. Sure, we have laptops and cell phones in our cars, but ethically, we are in radical decline, declining to the days of Plato when the most clever argument would carry the opinions of the populace. When any action is "okay, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone," it becomes politically incorrect to suggest that there is a God or that our actions have consequences. The philosopher may delight in this condition, the sociologist may have much to research and to detail, the moralist much to bemoan; but like it or not, we are not in Dorothy's Kansas, nor are we in 1959. We are not even in 1999.

Turnaround congregations understand this dramatic shift and changes in culture. Furthermore, they view these changes as opportunities for an invasion of the world with the life-changing message of God's love in Jesus Christ. This is an opportune time for Christian believers, for we face a world that is in moral decline but also wide open to the new life Jesus Christ has to offer. People are more open to spiritual thoughts and ideas now than in the last forty years. Old and new forms of religious expression (both Christian and not) are growing all around us. The search for meaning, in a holistic sense, now captures the attention of many people who appear to have it all but still have no meaning. The opportunity is in front of us. What we do with this opportunity will decide the fate and future of many mainline congregations.

Loren B. Mead details these changes in his work The Once and Future Church. According to Mead, the environment the church finds itself in has come full circle from the first century. In the first century, the church was attacked by society. Mission was local, right next door. There was little separation between leaders and followers of the Way. Everyone was in mission and ministry as each person used his or her God-given gifts in service to the cause of Jesus Christ. Then the church entered a period in which it dominated the culture (at least in the West), and in that period, clergy dominated the church. Mission was pushed to the edge of the known world, out of the empire, on to the vast "mission fields" of the unconverted. This Christian era was marked by widespread evangelistic efforts, both pre- and post-Reformation.

LEADERSHIP TIP

Can you see the opportunities in front of you? What are they?

Mead and others know that this era is over. We have entered what Mead calls the post-Christian period. Bill Easum calls this new era "pre-Christian." In this era, the society is once again hostile to the Christian church. The mission is local once again with only 43 percent of Americans active in a worshiping congregation.

In thriving congregations, clergy no longer dominate. Instead, empowered lay leaders are called to do the lion's share of the ministry. Until recently, the Christian church in America was a major player in the sociopolitical field. Now the church is a noisy minority cast on the sidelines, used and manipulated by the media as extremist or by politicians to get votes. What churches say is no longer trusted. Clergy are not automatically respected. Congregations are viewed with suspicion.

Some churched people wish we could return to the nottoo-distant past. Many church leaders, particularly those in the mainline churches of America, built agencies and denominational structures for the sole purpose of keeping the church from changing. Some believe they can hold back the flood of change from the culture and the church by vote and committee. If we just vote against change long enough, perhaps we will return to a time like 1959 when church life was peaceful and people flocked to worship.

What a grand year—1959! A three-story, frame house with garage and large yard and that was close to school cost my parents $8,700. Ike was in, and Kennedy was coming. Change was knocking on the door. A new wind was blowing, and singers were singing against war and telling us "we'd better get out of the way for the times they are achangin'."

LEADERSHIP TIP

Change happens. You do not get a vote.

—Merv Thompson

Well, it is not Dorothy's Kansas, and it is not 1959 anymore. The changes have come and are coming, and you and I did not and will not get to vote on them. New times are here, and the post-Christian, postmodern, pre-Christian generations find worship services boring, irrelevant, useless, emotionally flat, or in a word, deadly. These people are moving on. These...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Abingdon Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0687030331
• ISBN 13: 9780687030330
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 136
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland