Six Tough Questions for the Church

      Last week on April 3 we had two books presented to us by students. we spent a good amount of time discussing them and what we could learn from them. In this blog post I want to discuss the book by Dr. Reggie McNeal called "Six Tough Questions for the Church". This book brought forth lots of great information and ways to really take a hard look at your church and see how effective it is being in missional ministry.

      The first question that we discussed had to do with how to change the culture of churchianity to one of Christianity? The thought process behind churchianity is that we are a club and people have to work to feel like they belong to our club. The author of the book says that instead of trying to get people to become church members we need to have Jesus and His mission be our objective. Church culture is not the prevailing culture anymore and people do not just go to church for the most part. When we are going out to reach the lost we really can't assume they have any knowledge of church or what it means to be a Christian. this affects the way we speak and look to relate how a relationship with God is important.

      Another question that we talked about in class that I found interesting was dealing with whether we want to focus on church growth or kingdom growth. There are numerous books out there on different ways to grow a church. The author feels that instead of doing things in our buildings to get people to come we need to go out into the communities and reach people for Jesus. People are just not going out looking for a church to attend like in the past. Now Jesus really needs to be brought out to the people where they are at. This involves equipping people in our churches to bring Christ to all those that they know. Not just equipping them to get their friends to church and let the pastor do the rest from the pulpit.

      The last question I want to discuss in this blog has to do with how we can turn church members into missionaries? I found this to be an interesting concept because at times it seems like churches are trying to do everything they can to keep members in the building. Instead of releasing them and trusting that God will keep the church thriving and growing. So many programs are made to bring people to the church building but not enough of an emphasis is done to send people out into the communities where they can reach people who would never step foot in a church building. This means that people will be encouraged not to spend so much time in the church. This is not a radical idea but is one that many pastors at times fail in doing. Christian culture, in America at least, likes to create programs that get people to the building and keeps those who are there coming back. At times this could be 3-4 times a week. It seems that maybe spending this time with non-beleivers for a couple fo those days would benefit everyone involved.