Responses to “New Kind of Christian”
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You are always baiting people. This
time I hope some of the younger people take the bait. The best way to reach more people is to plant more churches.
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Boomer churches are at their zenith and about to go into a long period of
decline. They are like the downtown
churches of the 1950’s—they appear to control the entire market share of
Christians. But the truth is they are like the church growth movement was in
the 1980’s—in command but about to disintegrate. I have little hope that boomers will be able to adapt to the next
generation. We are too self-absorbed and happy with the innovations we
introduced. The only hope for
tomorrow’s church is if some of your discontented students go out actually
start new churches. I say go for
it. Our church will even support them—for a while.
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I don’t have time to reply to your article
because I took your advice before you gave it—I am planting a Christian community
now and I am loving it! My father thinks
we aren’t; even a “real church” but that’s exactly how I feel about his church
too. ;-)
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Great article! My hope is of course that people will lay
down their cards and play.
But, let me ask: Why don't we want to lay down our cards?
(1) The stakes are too
high. We have put too much money in the pot so far that we are aggravated
when someone calls us. We want to "buy the pot" with our complaints,
so that everyone else folds and our ideas win. It’s of course hopeless,
because the boomers have too good a hand to fold at the moment. "Call"
means the game is over and we have to really show our cards -- and we know we
only have a low two pair!
(2) Which comes to the further
point. We are bluffing. And you have called our bluff.
We really want church to meet our needs in a particular way. We don't
want to actually make the church this way for others .
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I just "planted" last Saturday. (In the subject line with no
message added)
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You should be ashamed of yourself for using parts of poker to make your point. We do not need any more encouragement of our
youth toward the evils of card-playing and gambling
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I want to do what you say but I just can’t
take the first step. Perhaps I am
afraid of failure or risk or something like that but I’ve thought a lot about
it and just can’t jump overboard yet.
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I've found your past two writings interesting
and your response to the issues of discontent in the church a tad bit immature (no disrespect intended). I've experienced the rude, and often evil, reality of
the church as well as a strong discontent.
I believe that the reason we have a younger generation is so discontent
is because they are starving spiritually. Forgive the honesty, but the church spends a lot of time on
programs, writing its own literature, teaching its doctrine and starving its
charges. I sat for several years in a church I would never have chosen, with
people I did not like, at a time when I was extremely discontent with the church as a whole,
and with a pastor who seemed to be in far
left field most of the time. But I
learned and grew more spiritually from that experience for several reasons.
First, I watched a Godly man under tremendous stress and pressure, in the worst
of situations, come in and love a very unlovely people and to do it with such grace and kindness… Second,
not once did we use preprogrammed literature.
Scripture was the only text. If
you couldn't talk the text then you didn't have much to say… Third, my
appetite for God and the text could not be quenched. I could just not get enough!
Fourth, I learned to respect others and their differing thoughts
and opinions. Fifth, it taught me to respect my elders in a different
way. I watched a very gracious man sit
under a group of arrogant, worldly and downright disrespectful elders and
graciously serve! That was definitely
no my personality or mentality. That
changed me deeply. Sixth, I learned what love really is. When you see a man tenderly love a group of
people like this man did, you have to believe in the grace of God. Seventh,
I learned what it was like to live on another level spiritually. Believe me
this pastor was not "perfect".
In fact, I bet I could have made him much better if I offered my
critique like the others--you know, preach shorter, make me feel good sermons,
fix all the parishioners and make them what I think they should be, give me the
programs I want, organize the church according the to the business structures
of the world, be my coach and make me all I can be. You know! Even so, I must
say, he was the closest to perfection I've ever met in a pastor--not the
greatest of preachers but when God moved that man wailled! Why, because of how he lived, loved, dealt
with folks and because of his quiet dependence on God. He was not a man that inspired many in that
church but then again if you wanted church, he would not have. He made you stretch your understanding of
the text and spoke of things that you never understood but made you
hungry. He could be above you, with
you, and below you and it never fazed him one bit.
So, when I read your advice to younger folks
when they are discontent with the church to move on a build your own, it makes
me ill. That is why we are in the
situation we are in with the church now.
Baby boomers did just that. It
has been the mentality of the baby boomers from their young lives to rebel
against authority, to think they can do everything better than their elders and
to think that they are better educated and prepared to take the bull by the
horns. In many respects they are
right. But in the economy of God, they
are wrong and the church of this generation is impotent because of it! God can't and doesn't move in the churches
led by baby boomers because they don't want God. Look at all the literature being sold...the purpose driven church and the like. I must say the church of the boomers is
easier (less demanding spiritually, but more demanding programmatically) and
more fun than church of old but if I had my choice, I'd take the church of old
where God moves because when He moves it is so much better than anything any
boomer could ever think of! So, when I
read is it time for the old timers to go, my vote is no! A thousand times no! I say it is time for the old timers to do
what they did years ago if there are any left (they may be extinct)! Let God move through them. Let God do the work. And when the younger generation gets it, let
the bulls lose and be amazed, be totally amazed! God bless!
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I just might do it! You are tempting me!
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From what I see this “new kind of church”
is nothing at all like the “Bog box churches” of the Boomers. In fact I’m not even sure we would call it a
“church.” Many of your graduates have
an idea of a dozen or so twenty-something folk just like themselves “doing life
together” while living in some sort of 1960’s hippie commune remake. It is cute but I’ve been there, done that. We pulled on our bellbottoms grabbed our guitars
and did our house church thing back in the early 1970s. “A good time was had by all.” But something happened on the way to the
love-in. We shifted directions and built
mega-churches instead. Now it is their turn to reinvent the church. I hope they reach more people than we did
and produce a better quality Christian than we have. If they do I’ll follow them.
But I’ve not seen any of them yet who wants to lead. They will dream, and talk, and plan…but will
they do it? We’ll see.
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Usually, us Protestants analyze Martin
Luther's contributions to Christian thought two ways: 1) We LOVE his zeal and passion for the Word
of Go. We celebrate his strong defense of Scripture in the face of heresy and
building apostasy in the Catholic church.
2)We HATE the door he opened.
That anyone who can pick up a Bible can decide what it says and go by it. Most
of us despise the Protestant Principle that says we can just split off of the
church the second we don't like it and form our own. (Although we usually realize
that this was not Luther's goal nor what he would like to have happened!) This
post takes the Protestant Principle, amplifies it, runs with it, and takes it
to its logical, horrible conclusion.
Whatever happened to working within the body rather than forming our won
little havens for people who think, act, and worship just like ourselves? Heaven forbid we communicate and dialogue with
other minds to form and change them more to our perspective (if it is even the
more "Christian perspective;" which often times, it turns out to be more
of a fad than anything). If my generation takes your advice we will not be
remember as the generation who changed the face of church history...we will be
known as a gang group of zealots who liked the sound of their own voice.
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Your last two writings came as a slap upside
my head. I needed to hear what you had to say in your
open letter to your former students. At
first I reacted strongly against it, thinking, "What does he know, he's
not in our generation." But I had
to let some of the teachings sink in to realized that you were opening up a
conversation as much as you were giving us a firm talking to. Unfortunately I am an emotional, perceiving
man and that makes me a prime candidate for the Brian McClaren teachings. I think you were right on the mark in many
of your suggestions. I am dealing with youthful
idealism. I often have a skewed
perspective of God. I feel ripped off
because I am not able to use my talents the way I envisioned using them, and I am
discovering that I am not as strong as I thought I was. Also, to make it even more tailored to
myself, I have watched my parents follow God recklessly to the point of
subjecting their children to alienation and manipulation (guilting us into
being a part of their ministry). sob, sob, poor me. Even still I am choosing
to follow God. He presented to me this
wonderful opportunity to come and observe His work overseas, and I have used
music more than I ever thought I would.
Still the sentiments of my post-college ministry peers are ringing in my
ears (I didn't mean for that to rhyme).
Seminary:
Many of us who graduated from IWU and not considering seminary are
thinking:
1. The course list
is almost the same, why would I pay so much money for something I already
studied
2. If I am
struggling with these questions, and have already had opportunities to talk
about them in a group, what guarantee do I have that when I leave seminary I'll
have my ducks in a row?
3. We perceive
most seminaries as old-school and out-of-touch (our misperception)
4. (If you are Wesleyan) the IWU ministry track
is sufficient for ordination...
Church
Planting: To offer church
planting as an option seems Boomerish. Or
maybe Gen Xish. If we desire unity,
then starting a "new church plant offering our reflective post-moderny
services" is quite laughable if not a downright offensive idea. Those of us who are having Post-modern
tendencies often still see the existing church as the organic Body of
Christ. We want to work from the
inside, and we want introduce you to our quircky spiritual needs. The boomers are like our parents, we want to
be accepted by them. I suppose some
younger people equate acceptance with control.
We are trying to be patient. But
first we want to know what you think of us. Are we heretics? Are we
crazy?
Again, we want to know if we are
accepted. We were trained to be leaders
in the church. We don't want to teach
the icing (as Dr. Schenck put
it). We want to teach the cake. Can we be leaders and just teach the
cake? Or must we throw in the icing to
be accepted into (your) leadership positions?
We don't want to leave your denominations, but we've branded ourselves
by our inability to commit to the distinctive doctrines that began the
denominations in the first place. Of
course, I am making the problem out to be much larger than it really it - but
for those emotional people like me if I sit down in a room long enough and use
my imagination I will freak out. Anyway, thanks again for your writings. If you guys have time I would love to read
further discussions about the topics that Dr. Bounds mentioned in his article
"The Christian Essential".
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I truly appreciate your Tuesday column this
week about those who want to be a "new kind of Christian" or have a
"new kind of church." I
believe there are several young persons studying the Ministry, such as myself,
who grew up in the church and, for some reason or another (and believe me, I
have a few of my own) they feel either discontent or disillusioned with
church. They come away with questions
like, "Is this all there is?" or, "I wish church (or the people
in the church) were/weren't so . . ."; the list is endless. In my mind I have several responses to those
who pose such questions that seem to have been gnawing at them for years, and
also to myself.
First of all, if there is something we
dislike, or we see wrong, there must be some amount of truth to it, either universally, culturally, or
personally. Obviously there is more
than one way to skin a church. A church
here will not be the same as a church there.
The church will change, and the church will also stay the same. There will always be conflict and
disagreement on the part of some people, and maybe on the part of many. There are some things that should probably
never change. However, there are some
things which appear to be temporal, although it may take a while for these
things to pass (like the length of the lifetime of a generation).
Second, it is rather audacious to criticize a
ministry or minister without having attempted to fulfill such a position for at
least a time. Many students, as you pointed out in your
article, do not seem to have a particular fondness for the business side of the
church, for its institutionalization.
However, I would be impressed to see such a person try to pastor a
church as an institution before making such a bold statement; then I would be
really impressed to see them run a church without its “institutionality.” What would they say then? People, even I myself have this awful
tendency to think to ourselves, "I could do a better job than him." Do we have the nerve to make that
claim? How will we tell in the future
whether we have actually done better than that person, without having been in
the exact same situation, ministering to the exact same congregation, in the
exact same setting. You cannot make a
contrast without first making a controlled comparison. Also, what is "doing better?" Is it having more people, having less
conflict? Preaching better, praying
better, teaching better, shepherding better?
How can one prove superiority in ministry and the kingdom of God? The one who desires to be the greatest must
become the least. And who is he that
measures spiritual success, or more browny points with God? I think it is the Almighty, and not we
ourselves! To compare ourselves with
other leaders might be a poor place to start.
Third, I somehow doubt we would begin to know
how to start a church without at least first starting with what we have known
all our lives. We like to think of ourselves as "New
kinds of Christians;" we do not truly realize how greatly our faith is
influenced by our parents, our church, our tradition, and not just by "what
we read in the Bible." I used to
think I was going to base my faith, and run a church by what the Bible says,
and not by what my denomination says.
Then I realized that I do not even begin to understand how little my
beliefs are influenced by the Bible and how greatly they are influenced by my
predecessors. Finally, since there is some truth to what we
see wrong, or what we want different, let us not just get discouraged by our
first year in ministry, but let us do something about what we observe. It will not be easy to make changes, but as
you have said yourself, if it is a change blessed by God, it will endure.
The struggle I see in changing the church is
this: the ends does not always justify
the means, especially if
people become our means, and the end turns out to be not much better than what
we had to begin with. Some philosopher
said something very much like the golden rule, "Treat every man as though
he were an end in himself, and not only a means" (my paraphrase, since I
cannot remember it). If we souls are
being lost as a result of our change, I would hesitate to say that our actions
can be justified. I have a strange feeling in my gut that ministry is more than
what it looks like on Sunday morning, and it is more than the programs we run
as a church; I get the feeling that the "success" of our ministry
will largely be determined by the strength of our relationship with God and
with His church, and how closely we follow Him; our ministry will stand or fall
on our discipleship to Christ, and whether or not we fulfill the two greatest
commandments and the great commission. Let us be quick to listen, slow to
speak, and slow to anger. And let us
remember that the kingdom of God is not of eating or drinking, nor is it of
programs, attendance, and church structure; but it is of righteousness, peace,
and joy in the Holy Spirit.
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