This post was inspired by the recent news that a pastor I’ve known for many, many years is leaving the (very) large church he is currently a part of to plant a church in a nearby city. Also, I’ve been an attender and participator in church plants over the years myself. If you’ve never been a part of, or attended a newly formed church or church plant, I think you’re missing out. The early weeks, months and years are challenging, but there’s something almost magical about it. People volunteer, they help each other out, people pull their weight, and there’s a sort of (dare I use the jargon?) authentic community experience about it all.
Sadly, what I’ve observed over time is this. It almost seems that the goal of a church plant is to graduate from a church plant to a bureaucracy. The sooner that attendance can increase, program after program can start running so we can attempt to fabricate belonging and involvement, trying to measure and count everything and base improvement on near meaningless statistics. The volunteer-base decreases. Those who have been volunteering for years become exhausted and burn out. I have yet to see a large church that doesn’t run this way (and by large I mean anything more than 100 people, which I realize in todays day and age is quite small, given the trend toward mega-churches).
Do I know how to fix it? Nope. It’s just my observation. That being said, if someone asked me what I would do about it, I’d try the following:
- Do some reading on Dunbar’s Number and think about applying it to the way we do church.
- Stop trying to measure success based on numbers and statistics and survey results, and instead base it on relationships.
- Once your church reaches 150 people, split. It should become two churches.
Photo is Creative Common’s Licensed (Author’s Page on Flickr)
The sacred body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist
When we gather together on a Sunday (or whatever day you have a church gathering) do you ever ask yourself, “What is it that makes this event sacred?”
Whatever your feelings are towards the Catholic Church, it has to be understood that the central focus of meeting is the Mass, which is Christ. They meet to experience Christ through the Sacrament of the Eucharist where Christ joins with his people in a sacred union.
The focus point of many Protestant churches is the sermon. The “talk,” discussion time, teaching session, whatever you want to call it. It’s basically a lecture for 30 to 40 (to longer) minutes where we the people try and take something away with us that we have learned. We’re looking for a life lesson or some kind of biblical interpretation that fits with what we believe. The problem is, how many sermons can you recall impacted your life the same as a meeting with Christ would?
So what is sacred? Is it the gathering of people? If so, why do we often feel disconnected from each other on a Sunday morning? Is it programs?
Not even close. We’ve often programmed the Holy Spirit right out of churches and kept on going ourselves.
So what is sacred? Where is there room for Christ to meet with his Church?
Here begins a dialogue about church and community. These writings are intended to act as a dialogue that provide actionable, thought-provoking and at times controversial thoughts and opinions on what church is, what it’s supposed to be, and how we can take steps in our individual lives to improve it.
This is also a discussion about community, which for the most part seems sadly absent from modern day life.