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It's always amazing how God operates through people, isn't it? My last few blogs, I have been writing about the idea of applying the principles of Jesus' earthly incarnation to the realm of mission, but at the weekend, I felt some of this was confirmed at a conference I attended in Bristol, England.
The speaker was a Baptist Pastor from California, who looked at business models and comparisons between three strands of church, including the Church Growth Movement of the 1980s (focused on numbers), the Emerging Church model (focused on experience and style), and the Incarnational Church (focussed on discipleship and relationship). The hosts were a Church of England ministry that had been joined together with the Baptist Church in the area.
Chatting to him over dinner, he obviously explained that neither movement was exclusively correct, and that elements of those movements could be mixed and matched. For example, although Jesus calls us to love, pastor and nurture people, he also calls us to advance with gospel, and even to speak relevantly into peoples lives. I believe where the church has gone wrong, is to focus heavily on pastoring and teaching, whilst neglecting or even rejecting the apostolic, prophetic and evangelistic offices in Ephesians 4. The church needs these offices working in harmony for the health and life of the body. To be apostolic means to lay foundations and to start fresh, new ministries and congregations, and to appoint and recognise leaders. The prophetic enables us to stay relevant, or even ahead of the game; to be practical as well as spiritual. And of course, the evangelist trains us to keep reaching, and believeing for growth; helping us to reject comfort and press on into the future.
I came to the conclusion by the end of the day that to be truly 'incarnational', we have to 1) identify with the needs of the people we are trying to reach by coming alongside them, but also 2) to learn to be multi-lingual in our church life. By this, I mean to work with, and to try and understand, different traditions of church, and how they operate. I do not have all the answers. As someone who came from 12 years in a modern, pentecostal church, and is now called to a reasonably High Anglican Church, I need to learn to respect and to work with those of other backgrounds.
Let us continue to build healthy churches, that engage members, but also speak the language of the people we are trying to reach.
The speaker was a Baptist Pastor from California, who looked at business models and comparisons between three strands of church, including the Church Growth Movement of the 1980s (focused on numbers), the Emerging Church model (focused on experience and style), and the Incarnational Church (focussed on discipleship and relationship). The hosts were a Church of England ministry that had been joined together with the Baptist Church in the area.
Chatting to him over dinner, he obviously explained that neither movement was exclusively correct, and that elements of those movements could be mixed and matched. For example, although Jesus calls us to love, pastor and nurture people, he also calls us to advance with gospel, and even to speak relevantly into peoples lives. I believe where the church has gone wrong, is to focus heavily on pastoring and teaching, whilst neglecting or even rejecting the apostolic, prophetic and evangelistic offices in Ephesians 4. The church needs these offices working in harmony for the health and life of the body. To be apostolic means to lay foundations and to start fresh, new ministries and congregations, and to appoint and recognise leaders. The prophetic enables us to stay relevant, or even ahead of the game; to be practical as well as spiritual. And of course, the evangelist trains us to keep reaching, and believeing for growth; helping us to reject comfort and press on into the future.
I came to the conclusion by the end of the day that to be truly 'incarnational', we have to 1) identify with the needs of the people we are trying to reach by coming alongside them, but also 2) to learn to be multi-lingual in our church life. By this, I mean to work with, and to try and understand, different traditions of church, and how they operate. I do not have all the answers. As someone who came from 12 years in a modern, pentecostal church, and is now called to a reasonably High Anglican Church, I need to learn to respect and to work with those of other backgrounds.
Let us continue to build healthy churches, that engage members, but also speak the language of the people we are trying to reach.
THE PROBLEM COULD BE MANY ARE MARRIED SPIRITUALLY TO THE TITLE'S OF THE CHURCHES, AND DOCTRINES INSTEAD OF BEING UNITED WITH JESUS AS THE BRIDE GROOM. A TITLE MEANS NOTHING. A PERSON'S HEART MEANT EVERYTHING, WHEN HE WAS CRUCIFIED WITH US ON HIS MIND. ISAIAH, SAYS, YOUR NAME IS WRITTEN ON THE PALMS OF MY HANDS'. BLESSINGS WITH YOUR CALLING.