What is our Main Business?

I got home from Tennessee late Sunday night and was groggy all yesterday. Today I'm beginning to get my wits about me. I will comment about our thanksgiving in the next post (when i have a few pictures to add). Today I would like to comment on a presentation I had yesterday from george hunter.

George Hunter is one of the top Church Growth Guys in the country and teaches here at ATS. His speciality is church growth and evangelism. He got his start in 1962 when he ministered to the crowd at Muscle Beach. He lifted weights and built relationships to share the gospel.

During his presentation he shared a few insights which I want to share with you. He said in America there are 180 Million people who are not Christian. This makes America the third or fourth most populous mission field in the world. Over a third of those folks (180 Milliion) have no Christian memory to speak of. Another third attend church once in a while. The other third consider themselves a particular denomination of preference but attend no church.

Peter Drucker, management guru of the 20th century, said there are two questions every organization must ask itself. 1) What is our main business? 2) How’s business? Some possible answers for the church are below:
1) Provide worship and pastoral care - Many churches view their main job to pastor the people they have and provide worhsip services. They answer their business question by how well they are doing that.

2) Perpetuate our Tradition - Some churches are concerned that they keep their denominational heritage going. This includes music, worship style, theology and the like.

3) Support the Institution - Some churches believe their job is to support the mother chruch, the denomination fulfill its goals. They give their time and money to make sure the institution lives on.

4) Work for the kind of world God wants - Churches do this in many ways. SOme see their church as a social service agency. Others try to gain political influence and legislate morality.

5) Reach and Disciple pre-christian peoples - This is the biblical view of the local church. They don't depend on their denomination to do the work. They see their local church as the center of disciplemaking. They try to reach out to folks, win them to faith, disciple them and grow in Christ and cause them to reach out in love to their neighbors. These also tend to be the growing churches.

We also talked about what is the gospel. Perhaps the reason many churches are plateaued or declining is because we are preaching the wrong gospel. He made the following comment (as best as I can remember it), "What we expect is for people to attend church, attend Sunday School, go to programs the church offers, and serve on committees. That kind of Christianity won’t change the world." Wow.

The kind of Christianity that changes the world is a community made up of individuals who are pursuing Christ, who see themselves as the people of God, who pray for God's kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven, who see their lives as ministry to a lost and hurting world. It is the kind of Christianity that is more concerned about what happens during the week than what happens between 11am - 12pm on Sunday morning. May we become that type of community! May God make me into that kind of pastoral leader with a vision to impact a community rather than the community impacting the church.