The Church Rummage Sale

I am going to try to summarize the main points and highlight some practical ideas for church revitalization in the next few blogs.  After attending NCLI (National Church Leadership Institute) this summer I thought it would be helpful to list the seven secrets of church re-vitalization.

 

The NCLI Seven Secrets

1. Understand the current situation and start where you are.

2. Be Positive and map your assets.

3. We must reclaim evangelism.

4. Reclaim our compelling Mission; "Why are we the church?"

5. Create small groups for spiritual formation.

6. Administration is Ministry: empower creative people and programs.

7. Transformational Worship.

 

1 Understand the current situation and start where you are

Phyllis Tickle, in her recent book, The Great Emergence uses a friends image of church history being like a giant rummage sale. Every 500 years the church holds a giant rummage sale and decides what it needs to keep and what it needs to get rid of. The 500 year intervals fall roughly around the Fall of the Roman empire, the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Christians, the Reformation and our time during the dawning of the third millennium.

At the center of these changes is the question of where we look to for Authority in spiritual matters. The Reformation was a time when people began to question the authority of Church hierarchy and focused on Scripture and the current movement is engaged in questioning strict biblical authority and a concern for the Spirit.

 The Emergent church is hard to identify. No one can determine what the church will look like when we emerge from this time of transition and rapid change, however, some key elements that we are seeing is that the new movement is; Jesus oriented, communal, and post-denominational.

Our generation has the task of transitioning the church that exists to the church that is being born. As Church leaders we have the responsibility to lead two churches.

Everyone is confused about what this means. The church is like other institutions and people are becoming less trustful of Government, corporations, economic policies and military solutions.

The Post-World War II era when everyone was civic minded is over. We live in an age of individualism. A generation has grown up with peer learning rather than institutional reliance.

We live in a time of Revivals, awakenings and reforms. What remains important in these churches is the collective impact of mission and networks of collaboration. We need to foster creativity and allow for hands on ministry on the part of creative and gifted church leaders and support them in efforts to create something new. Dramatic changes in our culture are happening at an increasing speed.

 

This spring I attended a workshop led by Paul Nixon whose book "I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church!" attempts to put a frame on the new way of looking at Church life. Paul Nixon is an ordained United Methodist minister who, until 2007, was director of congregational development in the Alabama—West Florida Conference. He is the founding pastor of Epicenter Church in Greater Washington, DC. Every church in the 21st Century needs to think of itself as a new church start. God invites every congregation to thrive. The future of mainline Protestantism is in the hands of pastors and lay leaders who must immediately make some critical choices, radically reframing the way they approach their ministry tasks: Choosing Life over Death, Community over Isolation, Fun over Drudgery, Bold over Mild, Frontier over Fortress, and Now rather than Later.

 

There is no going back to 1950. We are in the midst of dramatic changes like the world has never seen and the church must have courage and wisdom to face the challenges of our new age.