The findings come from a recent survey conducted by LifeWay Research for the Cornerstone Knowledge Network (CKN), a group of church-focused facilities development firms. The online survey included 1,684 unchurched adults – defined as those who had not attended a church, mosque or synagogue in the past six months except for religious holidays or special events."

Could it be, that once again, the church is trying to reach the reached rather than the unreached in our communities? If you'd like to read the rest of this insightful article check it out here.

1. If you are a Sr. Pastor or Lead Pastor of a church, do you genuinely rejoice when another church in your local or community grows and has a greater impact in your community or do you find yourself pre-occupied with the need to point out what they could be doing better?
2. How long has it been since you felt convicted by the Holy Spirit of an attitude in the heart (like jealousy) that no one else knew was in you?
3. How well do you do in following the warning of Proverbs 4:23 when things are not going well in the church you lead while other churches seem to be doing well?

1. What unique and specific calling has God given to your congregation?
2. Are you as a leader, modeling and inspiring those around you to live up to what God has called them to be as a congregation?
3. How can you express these distinctives in your; architecture, design, décor, website, name and even church gatherings?

Yet with all of the excitement, I must be careful that my feelings do not make me think that what works for another ministry will automatically work for my ministry.

Just because someone else’s calling is exciting, does not mean that I should make their calling my calling.

I think we all can agree with that statement.

But unfortunately, this copying mindset often plagues ministries. I see too many churches and too many ministries pursuing the exciting, the successful, the cool, the hyped, the trendy, and any other shiny thing that catches their eye rather than pursuing something that is more aligned with their calling.

Copying is not a cure-all solution. Copying makes people say,

If we could just be like…

If our website was just like…

If our marketing was just like…

UNIQUE CALLINGS

Although there may be ministries similar to yours, keep in mind that there is no ministry that is an exact copy of your ministry. No other ministry has the same calling as your ministry. Your calling is a unique formula of your passions, gifts, values, abilities, timing, place, and people you will reach.

As 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 explains, we each have our own unique mission, our own unique role to play in the Body of Christ.

Imagine if your foot started doing the hand’s job. In the big picture, the master plan would fail because each part of the body has a specific function.

God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another.
1 Peter 4:10

It does not say use someone else’s gift. It says use your gift.

3 REASONS NOT TO COPY

1. Copying limits you from reaching your full potential.
   If you are copying, your methods are not customized to your ministry’s unique context, and consequently, you will fall short of your full potential.
2. Copying can misguide you to someone else’s mission.
   Whether copying a church or a corporation, copying will likely give you the results for their mission. Copying something that you do not understand the reasoning behind is dangerous because you make be achieving the opposite of what you hope to achieve.
3. It may no longer work.
   (1) It may be oversaturated. If everybody is doing it, people have probably become desensitized to it. Oversaturated methods are just clutter and noise.
   (2) It may be obsolete. Because intersecting cultures create innovation which creates communication breakthroughs which creates more cultures and speeds up the evolution of cultures, what used to work may no longer work because it could be obsolete.

COPYING VS. TAILORING

Inspiration is good. But it is what you do with inspiration that matters.

You can copy what inspires you.
You can tailor what inspires you.

Some things can not be tailored. You need to understand the science behind things in order to know if it can be tailored to your ministry.

8 STEPS FOR TAILORING YOUR MINISTRY

1. Write your mission down.
2. Review your mission.
3. Study who God has called you to reach. (science of culture)
4. Determine the best ways to reach them. (science of methods)
5. Do it.
6. Reevaluate.
7. Tweak.
8. Repeat.

1. The word, “nations” means we must get the gospel into each ethnic group of people so that these people can become followers of Jesus Christ.

2. Since discipling is an ongoing challenge, we must get the message of Jesus Christ into the thinking, values and life of each different ethnic group of people throughout the globe and throughout the ages.

3. Effective evangelism implies evangelizing people as a community and baptizing them into a community, not just winning them as isolated individuals.

4. This challenge certainly includes evangelizing the postmoderns cross-culturally, for they represent a different ‘nation’ from previous generations. Once they are won to Christ, they are baptized according to a Trinitarian formula and then taught everything that Jesus passed on to his disciples.

1. Innovation is good because the unchanging gospel is reintroduced in a new culture.

    2.   Some innovation causes the gospel to be compromised. 

(The spectrum below cited in chapter 3 helps to illustrate this point) 

1. Self-Supporting
2. Self-Governing
3. Self-Propagating

1. God Looks At Motives

2. God Cares About His Glory

3. Avoiding Risks (That Dangerously Approach Biblical Prohibitions)

1) Emerging Evangelicals

2) Emerging House Churches

3) Emerging Reformers

4) Emergent Liberals

If I had to put Valley Christian Church in one of these lanes it would fit in the 'Emerging Reformers'lane. All of this is quite helpful, as some of the leaders in our church were recently told by a well-intentioned but confused person that Valley could not be considered an 'emerging church' because we emphasize the importance of studying Systematic Theology in our leadership training. What in the world?!?! 

Because I believe it is so important to really understand what's going on in the church today, I've pasted the clip on the homepage of GWM. You can view it here.

Mark Driscoll asked him which doctrines he would encourage young Christian leaders to devote themselves to studying as they prepare for what potentially lies ahead theologically. Below is Wayne Grudem's answers in short:

1. Scripture —He said that every issue ultimately hinges on one’s view of the inerrancy, authority, and truthfulness of Scripture in every way. He encourages all young Christian leaders to make sure that deep within them is a love for and trust in every word of Scripture as God’s perfect revelation to us.

2. Authority — He said that he sees authority as a pervasive problem in our culture. As we talked, it became clear that what he meant is that people profess to be Christians yet refuse to submit to God’s authority, including Scripture, and people God has ordained to be in loving authority, such as godly parents and pastors.

He summarized his points by saying that he aspires for Christians to believe whatever God says and obey whatever God commands.

How awesome is it to hear the wisdom from mature Christian leaders as they pass it on to the next generation (see also GWM post dated August 1). It seems to me that the biggest issue for young Christian leaders today may simply come to down having the humility to listen to those who have gone before us.

1. 90% - Pastor/Preaching
2. 88% - Doctrines
3. 49% - Friendliness of Members
4. 42% - Other Issues
5. 41% - Someone Church Witnessed to Me
6. 38% - Family Member
7. 37% - Sensed God’s Presence/Atmosphere of Church
8. 25% - Relationship Other than Family Member
9. 25% - Sunday School Class
10. 25% - Children’s/Youth Ministry
11. 12% - Other Groups/Ministries
12. 11% - Worship Style/Music
13. 7% - Location
    
    How do these statistics compare to your own personal experience? I'd be curious to hear from you. :)

Why Many Americans Prefer Their Sundays Segregated

1. Regeneration — He said that the doctrine of regeneration has not been fully appreciated by many who do not understand that to be born again with a new heart and new nature means that we have at our deepest level a new identity and new passionate desires for God’s Word and ways. He commended to all young Christian leaders a thorough study on the doctrine of regeneration.

2. God-Centered Theology — He said that theology today is rife with man-centered thinking so that the glory of God in all things is not the essence of what is taught to be faithfully Christian. The result, he explained, is that even Christians often live their lives for the supreme purpose of their perceived happiness, feelings, and satisfaction. Yet, biblical Christianity differs from the other religions of the world in that the desires and purposes of God override ours; we are not the number one priority, but rather God is.

3. Godliness Begins at Home — This point was both surprising and refreshing. I was expecting only weighty and complicated theological admonition from such a theological giant. However, his wise counsel on this point is well needed. Packer said that most Christians do not take seriously the biblical teaching that true Christian living begins first at home with one’s spouse, children, and grandchildren. Therefore, he implored young Christian leaders to begin their quest for maturity and holiness at home in relationship with their family.

4. Trinity — Packer stated that the fullness of the doctrine of the Trinity is not completely appreciated as it should be. The result, he said, is that some Christians have only a deep understanding of Jesus or the Holy Spirit so that they are guilty of what he called “Jesus-olatry” or “Holy Spirit-olatry” rather than a full love and worshipful appreciation of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.

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After reading J I Packer's responses it really makes me feel great about the investment I've been making this summer in the leaders of Valley Christian Church as we have committed ourselves to a summer (and a lifetime) study of Systematic Theology. WHY? We've done this to avoid many of the pitfalls Dr. Packer is speaking of here.

Found this post on one of the blogs I frequent. Alan Hirsch is one of the leading writers on the subject of the missional church and wrote one of my favorite books (The Shaping of Things to Come) that I often quote in the classes I teach. Here, Alan is addressing a concern that I've also held for sometime, the overuse/misuse of terms today in the church by those who really have no idea what they are talking about. It's a long read, but I think it is worthwhile for anyone who has any leadership responsibility in the church today. If you'd like to read more from Alan's blog you can find it here.

Words carry meanings and the blurring of words leads to a blurring in clarity and understanding. Biblical truth in particular is inextricably bound to the right use of words as images are often suspect conveyors of truth in Hebraic worldview (see Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word) . Part of the role of theology is to guard the meaning of words–to maintain truthful speech in the community of faith. In light of this, the word ‘missional’ carries a very distinct, and I would argue irreplaceable, meaning/s. Why I am so fussy about this word is because I believe it carries the full weight of the hope for the church in the West. I wholeheartedly believe that the recovery of the missional idea of God and Church is critical to the survival, let alone the growth, of Christianity in the West. Much is at stake here! The reason for this is that ‘missional‘ is a word that gives us a perspective on the very nature of God. It has direct links to the doctrine of the Missio Dei…the understanding that God is a ’sent one’, a missionary–a redeemer by his very nature). This has profound implications for the Church’s fundamental stance in relation to the world in which we are called to live. Missional church requires that we, following the Missio Dei, are in turn a missionary, a ’sent’, people. The church emerges out of the mission of God in the world, not the other way around. The way I phrased this in The Forgotten Ways was to say that “…it was not so much that the church has a mission but that the mission has a church.” Another paragraph from The Forgotten Ways…

Missional church is a community of God’s people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world. In other words, the church’s true and authentic organizing principle is mission. When the church is in mission, it is the true church. The church itself is not only a product of that mission but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God’s purposes in and through his people. [82]

This is clearly notthe same as the core ideas that inform the terms ‘emerging church’ or ‘Emergent’ (the organization that largely represents it in the US at least). Whilst some people in the emerging church are deeply concerned about organizing around missional ideas, And while there are certainly aspects of missional approaches throughout the movement, the same can be said for all churches, including the church growth movement which is is opposed to. in my opinion what is expressed through Emergent, the Alt-Worship movement, and what has been called Post-Evangelicalism, is not by-and-large a missionary movement, but is rather what I would call a renewalmovement. That is, as far as I can discern, its primary concerns lie largely in interpreting theology and worship for the post-modern situation. Therefore, for many who can no longer hold to modernist understandings of the faith, it is a deadly serious search for a ‘place to stand and believe’ or else abandon the faith altogether. But at bestthe emerging church movement is about contextualizing theology and spirituality for a particular cultural context at the dawn of the 21st Century. At worst, it is simply a reaction against both Evangelicalism and a Western church captive to a distinctly modernist cultural understanding of itself. And let it be said that I believe that many of its concerns ought to be heeded, although I do believe it sometimes overreaches itself and discards many hard-won, and profoundly significant, theological insights passed on to us in the historical, orthodox, understanding of faith. As for me, I am happy to call the so-called ‘emergents’ friends and fellow travelers, I personally do not feel the need to question the inherited theological tradition as many of its adherents do.

All this to say that I do not believe for a moment that “missional is the new emergent”! Emerging forms of the church must always be subservient to the missional purposes of the church. We can use the term, as I do in my writings, the “Emerging Missional Church”, but the emphasis should always fall on the term ‘missional’. Actual mission must precede any new cultural understandings that the church might develop of itself. The Emerging Church has a certain validity as a renewal movement, but renewal movements come and go, the Missio Dei however, is something that must have abiding implications for the Church’s theology, lest we lose the irreplaceable redemptive core inherent in the Christian view of the world. My advice to ‘emergents’ is therefore, don’t emerge before you have a mission.

And my advice to all you folks on both sides of the debate that mix up the term, be warned! What you are doing is only making it harder for the Church to come to grips with its deepest sense of call and purpose in this time and place–no less! You are therefore mucking around with what could be one of the most significant ideas that the Church has to grapple with if we are going to survive, let alone thrive, in the 21st Century. For God’s sake, be clear in your use of the term or can I suggest that you stop using it.

To guard against a further degrading of the word, I want to suggest (as I did in The Forgotten Ways) that we combine the term ‘missional’ with the associated term ‘incarnational’ to come up with the term missional-incarnational. Its clunky I know, but the combination of these two words I believe captures far more completely a sense of the Church’s deepest theology and missionary calling in the world. It is laden with profound theological, and therefore missiological, meanings. If ‘missional’ carries the sense of being ’sent’, then ‘incarnational’ gives definition to the nature of that ’sentness.’ If ‘missional’ means being thrust into the world as witnesses to the redemption that is in Jesus, then ‘incarnational’ shows us that we ought to engage the world in the same way that God did in and through the Incarnation of the Word in Jesus the Messiah. We must go into the world to reach people, but we ought to stay and abide in order to communicate the Gospel relationally and meaningfully in any given context. Mission always sets our Agenda and Incarnation must always describe our Way.