What If…?

What if our church looked like this?

What if…

[HT: Vitamin Z]

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Clever.

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Few More Resources for Growth

This post will include two resources hat I pray will be beneficial to anybody who comes across it.

(1) Blog: What’s Best Next (http://www.whatsbestnext.com/)

One of the ways that I continue to feed myself and grow in areas in which I recognize I need growth is by visiting a few, important blogs everyday (e.g. theResurgence, Between Two Worlds, and DG, to name a few).

Well, I’ve found one more.  It’s a blog by Matt Perman, who is the Director of Strategy at Desiring God Ministries.  In his blog, he frequently posts amazing insights on management and organization.  And as someone who is organization and management illiterate, this website has proven invaluable for me.  The following are just a few samples of the insight he offers:

• Setting S.M.A.R.T. Goals
• What’s the Best Method to Achieve Productivity
• 3 Obstacles to Productivity and Management
• Understanding the Fundamentals
• Building an Organization’s Vision
• The Chief Responsibility of a Great Manager
• The Importance of Being Constructive
• The Importance of Setting Days to Do Things You Don’t Like

(2)  Video: How Sound Affects Us

In this video (also discovered at What’s Best Next), Julian Treasure, explains how sound affects us in four ways: (1) physiologically, (2) psychologically, (3) cognitively, and (4) behaviorally.

One interesting factoid he offers is that if you work in open plan offices, your productivity decreases by 66%!  I’m going to guess that this would extend past offices and include any area that is full of chatter and background noises. Perhaps this will shed some light into why some of us students are so incredibly unproductive when we try to study at Starbucks. (However, he does provide a solution – watch the video to find out).

Hope this helps us.

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Ideas Running Around In My Head Currently

Recently, I read an article by Ed Stetzer on his blog titled, The Biggest Sin In Your Church.  Naturally, being the type who’s easily enticed by interesting titles like that, I read the article in its entirety.  This article has shaken me, to say the least.  For example, here are some excerpts from the article:

If I preach about gay marriage, everybody cheers. If I preach about sin you can hear the amens ring. But those aren’t the real problems. I tell people that the biggest sin in our church is you sitting there doing nothing and still calling yourself a follower of Jesus.

…

The elephant in the evangelical room is that we’re not making disciples. People are still struggling through how to do that. We studied 2,500 Protestant church attendees and did so again a year later and the spiritual development was shocking and frustrating.

And so, what I have resolved to do this year (much akin to what Steve McCoy did in 2008), is I wanted to make this year about not only studying, but also learning how to make evangelism and telling people about the Gospel a regular, normal part of my life.

At the end of the day, like what Ed Stetzer wrote above, what it must boil down to for us is this – how can we call ourselves disciples of Christ when we are afraid/ashamed of doing what he has called us to do, namely to “go… and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that [Christ has] commanded…” (Matthew 28:19-20)?

And so for all those interested in joining me on this journey, I have compiled a quick reader of blog articles that will hopefully get us more acquainted on the subject.  If you have any other good books or articles that you would like to suggest, please pass them along.  Thanks.

• Ed Stetzer – The Biggest Sin In Your Church (http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2009/02/the-biggest-sin-in-your-church.html)

• Ed Stetzer – Rethinking Discipleship (http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2009/02/rethinking-discipleshipship.html)

• Ed Stetzer – The Meanings of Missional (http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/the-meanings-of-missional.html)

• Steve McCoy – Evangelism 2008 (http://www.stevekmccoy.com/reformissionary/2008/01/evangelism-2008.html)

• Steve McCoy – Evangelism Category (http://www.stevekmccoy.com/reformissionary/evangelism_2008/index.html)

• Steve McCoy – Books on Evangelism (a library) (http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?tag=evangelism&view=SteveMcCoy&shelf=list)

• Jonathan Dodson – Simplified Missional Living (http://www.newcitydowntown.org/node/92)

• Tim Chester – Evangelism in a Total Church (http://timchester.wordpress.com/2006/11/14/evangelism-in-a-total-church-model/)

• Jim Elliff – The Value of Hanging Out (http://www.ccwonline.org/hang.html)

• Gary Rohr Mayer – Ideas for Practicing the 3×5 Rule (http://garyrohrmayer.typepad.com/yourjourneyblog/2007/08/the-3-by-5-rule.html)

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Stop Going to Church by Jonathan Dodson

Recently, I came across an article on theResurgence that Jonathan Dodson, the pastor of Austin City Life wrote for Boundless webzine.  In it, he writes about how the current condition of the Church today in America falls ever so short of what God had originally intended the Church to be.  Here’s a quick excerpt from it:

Church is not an event, a place or a plant. It is a family of brothers and sisters united in the Spirit and the Son. The church is a community, people in relationships under grace. So the church is supposed to be a family, but we act more like acquaintances.

Instead of sharing life and truth, joy and pain, meals and mission, we share one, maybe two events a week. Church has been reduced to a spiritual event that happens for an hour or two on weekends, and if you are spiritual, occurs another couple hours during the week in a small group meeting. We spend just enough time “at church” to be religious, but nowhere near enough time to be family.

The dominant metaphor of the church in the New Testament is the metaphor of family. Every one of Paul’s letters opens by addressing the church in familial terms — sisters, brothers, son, and our Father. The use of “brother” is, by far, the most frequent. This sibling emphasis reflects the familial nature of the church. What would happen if we started acting like family?

Here’s the direct link to the entire article.  Again, what would happen if we started acting more like family?  God, help us.

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