we ... have become convinced that the primary meeting place with our unchurched friends is now outside the church building. Worship must finally become, as Paul reminds us, more life than event (Romans 12:1-2). To this end, we will be focusing on the radically different kind of leadership practices necessary to transform our congregations from destinations to conversations, from services to service, and from organizations to organisms. Sally Morgenthaler
Sally Morgenthaler author of Worship Evangelism has pulled her site off the internet. Instead she has written:-
"I don't have to tell you this. The 100-year-old congregation that's down to 43 members and having a hard time paying the light bill doesn't want to be told that the "answer" is living life with the people in their neighborhoods. Relationships take time, and they need an attendance infusion now. I understood their dilemma, and secretly, I wished I had a magic bullet. But I didn't. And I wasn't going to give them false hope. Some newfangled worship service wasn't going to save their church, and it wasn't going to build God's kingdom. It wasn't going to attract the strange neighbors who had moved into their communities or the generations they had managed\ to ignore for the last 39 years." (Click here for her article)The Christian world is changing before my eyes, though of course for leaders to give up their trust in their old methods is radical. I remember reading years ago John Piper asserting the mission of the church flows from the worship of its people but after Morgenthaler's change of heart I realize even more we need to change our focus. Not to stay safe inside. No longer to ignore those just outside our door.
For a few years now Rick Warren, leader of the Saddleback megachurch, has been saying "I have been so busy building my church that I have not cared about the poor. I have sinned, and I am sorry." (Click here for information)
How long will these changes take to filter down to local churches thinking? Quite a long time if my reckoning is right, as leaderships have to be willing to change their thinking to move out of their comfort zones. But there is hope and an undertow! I was blog hopping today through young friends' links and I came across an old blog entry from 2004 about a visit to homeless shelter. My heart was touched because of his experience and I want to quote him perhaps you know him?
... after we finished our coffees, i told X i had to leave. he really appreciated me and said that i should go to the shelter everyday. i told him i had a job. then i walked home. ... humbled. sobered.Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And ... Love your neighbor as yourself.' Matt 22:37-38
