Jesus focus is new?
I find it hard to think that starting a church that is solely focused on Jesus and connected people to him is a new concept. And yet, every time I tell someone our mission (connecting the disconnected to Jesus - nothing new), their eyes light up. Could it be possible that a lot of churches have lost sight of our original mission as a church? Could it be that a lot of churches have got a little bit too comfortable and started to that the church exists for them?
I know that I've been challenged with this. Around 2 years ago I started to feel really uneasy with my concept of what the church existed for. It had become a weekly tradition that was solely for those who were Christians. We then invited people who didn't know Jesus into our ghetto to become one of us. The concept of integrating into their world first was completely foreign to me.
And then came the realization that the church doesn't exist for itself. That was huge because it completely revolutionized my perception of what happens on Sunday. My interpretation was that it was a time to make Christians understand how much Jesus loved them and it stopped there. But as time went on I began to realize that it just can't end there. If it does, we are hopeless.
Sunday is just a small function of what the church is and yet it gets blown into being the sum of everything the church is. In the eyes of the world, this is a hard perception to change. And yet it has to happen. One of the ways I see this happening is changing the focus of Sundays in a few different ways.
The first is that we have to begin to view everything we do through the eyes of a missionary. Missionaries have to sacrifice their preferences in order to reach the people they are trying to connect to Jesus. This is hard to do but it is a must. We need to start leveraging the things that people in the culture understand so that we can communicate in a way they understand. I know I'm infuriating some of you right now...I'm okay with that.
The second is that we have to change the focus of Sunday mornings so that it leads to the rest of the week. My experience has been that Sunday was the end of the week for a Christian. The world is a tough place to live in and by the end of the week, all you want to do is be back in church. This is fine to a certain extent. If it means that all you do is live for Sunday, it's wrong. If it means that you can't wait to get to church to tell everyone what God did this last week and collectively dream about what the next one could look like, I'm in. My interpretation was that Sunday was a pep rally for Christians to make them feel better. But the way I see it now is that Sunday functions as a catalyst to be resent. And the resending part needs to be intentional. As soon as we start assuming people know they are being resent, they stop going.
Bottom line: Everything we do needs to be about connecting the disconnected to Jesus...even Sunday.
I know that I've been challenged with this. Around 2 years ago I started to feel really uneasy with my concept of what the church existed for. It had become a weekly tradition that was solely for those who were Christians. We then invited people who didn't know Jesus into our ghetto to become one of us. The concept of integrating into their world first was completely foreign to me.
And then came the realization that the church doesn't exist for itself. That was huge because it completely revolutionized my perception of what happens on Sunday. My interpretation was that it was a time to make Christians understand how much Jesus loved them and it stopped there. But as time went on I began to realize that it just can't end there. If it does, we are hopeless.
Sunday is just a small function of what the church is and yet it gets blown into being the sum of everything the church is. In the eyes of the world, this is a hard perception to change. And yet it has to happen. One of the ways I see this happening is changing the focus of Sundays in a few different ways.
The first is that we have to begin to view everything we do through the eyes of a missionary. Missionaries have to sacrifice their preferences in order to reach the people they are trying to connect to Jesus. This is hard to do but it is a must. We need to start leveraging the things that people in the culture understand so that we can communicate in a way they understand. I know I'm infuriating some of you right now...I'm okay with that.
The second is that we have to change the focus of Sunday mornings so that it leads to the rest of the week. My experience has been that Sunday was the end of the week for a Christian. The world is a tough place to live in and by the end of the week, all you want to do is be back in church. This is fine to a certain extent. If it means that all you do is live for Sunday, it's wrong. If it means that you can't wait to get to church to tell everyone what God did this last week and collectively dream about what the next one could look like, I'm in. My interpretation was that Sunday was a pep rally for Christians to make them feel better. But the way I see it now is that Sunday functions as a catalyst to be resent. And the resending part needs to be intentional. As soon as we start assuming people know they are being resent, they stop going.
Bottom line: Everything we do needs to be about connecting the disconnected to Jesus...even Sunday.
hey Dan, i appreciate that you guys are approaching this church plant with a missionary spirit, but do you think we can have a total missionary heart if we come at with Sunday morning being the centre of attention, no matter what it looks like?
i mean doesn't medium in which you "do" church encompass the message in itself?
just curious
Posted by
Anonymous |
6:08 PM
Sunday won't be the center of attention. At this point though, you are right to some extent, it is.
I look at it this way, no matter what way anyone chooses to "do" church, when that gathering becomes the center of everything we do, we've lost the whole point. Whether it's house church or traditional church.
At this point we are just starting and this is our starting point. I think that Christians gathering together is still super important and when you take that away you take the community/accountability away and after that, I'm not sure if survival will be in the forcast as the church.
Sunday is merely a sending point for us. It's not the end of the week, it's the beginning. We gather to be resent. I see it as a gathering of celebration of what God has done in the last week and an anticipation for what God is going to do in the coming weeks. I think real church actually happens monday to saturday.
I just feel like I'm at a place where I realize that how we "do" church isn't the issue. The issue is how we are being the church during the week and if how we do things on Sunday (which will accompany the primary focus of our community which are Undercurrents - our version of small groups) helps people to be better missionaries in their community and culture during the week, I'm game.
Posted by
Dan Richardson |
5:10 PM