What would happen if local church institutions were willing to add dying and multiplying to their mission?
I stumbled on this article today. It details some of the recent events in China between large unregistered churches and the government.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091210/ap_on_re_as/as_china_mega_church
Here is the crazy thing. Although it sounds like this is bad for the church, I believe that government actions like this are precisely the reason the church is thriving in China.
Think about it. The government just broke up a 50,000 person church. So what will be the likely result? It will result in an energized and supremely dedicated group of tens of thousands that will now likely form hundreds or thousands of new individual churches.
In 5 years, many of these new churches if not most will likely have doubled or tripled in size. If the large church were left alone, it is highly doubtful that it would experience this type of growth.
Jesus knew this and explained over and over again that the kingdom would grow through multiplication. We in the church tend to forget this when left to our own decisions.
I have often heard it said that a church is 'organic' and that organic things grow so a church should be focused on growth. However, this is a very incomplete and somewhat dangerous thought, particularly when applied to a single local church institution. In addition to growing, organic things also multiply and on an individual level, they die. While everything in our world is busy living, dying, and multiplying, the local church is busy trying to exist and grow - and losing ground in the process.
So think about it ... What would happen if local church institutions were willing to add dying and multiplying to their mission?
Thursday, December 10, 2009
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3 comments:
Good perspective.
It seems that the overwhelming emphasis on church today is the church gathered. What happened to the Biblical definition of church as a community of Christians which fuctions in the "one another's" all week long while making friends with those that don't yet know Christ? With so much emphasis, energy and money given toward the gathering, the building and the programs the more fundamental essentials of church life seem to take a back seat to event oriented Christianity.
THis is only somewhat related, but you know, we are sometimes disappointed in our church here in HK, that it doesn't have as much "stuff"--activities, programs, etc., as we're used to. But the truth is that we not only have more nonChristian friends here than we've ever had in our lives, but we also have time to spend with them. In the past we have often complained that we had no time to develop relationships with non-believers since we were so busy being on committees! I'm starting to think that as long as you have some group of people to meet with and pray with, the less programming, the better.
Monte - we started to realize the same thing while living overseas. We definitely experienced more spiritual growth in a time with very little church structure. We are finding it rather challenging bringing that attitude to life in the States. We're apparently not very good at it. :) All of the programs are so much fun - it is hard to say no.
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