Tuesday Re-mix – This is a popular post from last year, updated and resubmitted for your consideration and comments.
I found these comments at Len Hjalmarson’s blog, nextreformation.com.
The observations are insightful and should probably be required reading for every church leader. They’re short, simple, and easy to understand. But the ramifications of actually implementing them in your church would be enormous.
A couple of years back Mike Bishop asked some great questions:
“If you are reading this and have some vested interest in a community of faith – whatever your flavor, old-school or new-school, emerging or submerging – do yourself a favor and stop caring about the following things:
1. The number of people in your church. Really, it doesn’t matter.
2. The “relevancy” of your common worship.
3. How often or if ever a new person shows up at one of your common worship times.
4. The size of your church budget, building, or paid staff.
5. What any other church in the world is doing – good or bad or otherwise.
“And please start caring about the following things:
1. Actively looking for the evidence of God’s kingdom – where what he wants done is done – at work, at home, at Starbucks (heaven forbid), at the beach, and anywhere else you might find yourself in the course of living your normal life.
2. Simple, honest worship.
3. Having friends that don’t give a rip about your church. Maybe you might just rub off on them.
4. Giving away money to people who need it; using existing, familiar (and free) spaces for common worship such as homes, restaurants, parks, or community centers; flattening the organization’s need for paid leadership and support roles.
5. Go on a unique, unreproducible journey with a group of people and rejoice with other groups of people who do the same.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the kind of stuff you print out and nail to the doors of the church. Maybe that’s why Len named his blog what he did…