Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek (megachurch) recently presented his vision for his church. Here it is:
"The destiny God has in store is far beyond what even your faith can imagine.”
Here are his 3 elements of his new vision:
1. Raise your level of risk to reach people far from God
2. Recoach people on how they grow — so they become “self-feeders” as they mature
3. Unleash unprecedented amounts of compassion and justice for our neighborhood and world
# 2 relates to what we have been talking about - spiritual transformation
I really, really like the wording of #3. I think that would take care of #1.
What a vision and visionary.
8 comments:
Just off the top of my head, here would be my revision of his elements:
1) Aggressively simplify
2) Singlemindely and audaciously reorient to and direct people in the process of spiritual formation
3) Unleash unprecedented amounts of compassion and justice for our neighborhood and world
Seems you have to move in this order.
How would this look?
#1: Move away from chronic overcommittment and busyness; eliminate the children's ministry and hire childcare; pay people to do the administration and maintenance of the institutional church.
#2: Instead of cute sayings on church signs, you would see things like this: Sign up now. 12 week course on how to love your enemies; 8 week course on how to not be angry; 10 week class on how to not be anxious (bring a pillow to sit on); Class for preparation for your metaphorical 3 year trip to the desert to be taught by God.
#3 Man, what would this look like???
(bring a pillow to sit on) = BRILLIANT!
why eliminate the childrens ministry?
and as far as number three...i would start off by building bunk beds...i know its helped me to at least learn a little bit about compassion and justice...then after that...move on to something new and bigger!....
Why eliminate the children's ministry?
It would free up about 20 people to engage in #2 & 3, as well as lots of money for #3.
Plus is saves you lots of time in #2 because then you do not have to spend all the time and effort trying to undo all the Sunday School misconceptions when they get to youth.
Perhaps even canning the youth program may be needed also. With the money you save, you could provide vouchers to a social club for most of the teens. The others that are interested in discipleship could be mentored by people advanced in #2.
Although, if you adopted this model, you would have to be prepared (at least initially) to lose the mortgage on the church building because most of the members would leave for a church with a state of the art children's ministry, youth program, music ministry....
Growth would occur enventually. There are those that could not resist joining a movement like this (is this the braveheart thing you were referring to Tommy?). Children and teens would get to see the kingdom being lived out around them.
Right on, Aaron! Great place to start. Imagine what could happen next!
but...once those young children and teens grow up...they will be considerablly underfed in their own spiritual relm...lets face it...kids cant listen to big church and get anything out of it...hence why we have the childrens ministry...sure there may be some misconseptions...but better to have a foundation of the most basic things then have nothing at all...and i think "canning" the youth program would be a little bit of a bad idea too becuase teens can be hard to reach through big church to...they have to have something exciting to do rather than just sit around for an hour and a half and listen to a guy talk...and besides isnt the Kingdom of God for all ages? or is it strictly for those in big church?
not trying to clash with your opinion or anything...just asking a few questions is all...
Trust me, there would be no shortage of training.
Some would grow up watching the Christian life lived out in their parents (who now have time to do something besides service the institution), because the parents would be being discipled and would be changing in front of their eyes. They would go with their parents as they unleashed their compassion and justice in their neighborhood and world. They would have interested discussions around the dinner table.
The current model is broke. In a blog, you can dream a little.
well...if you believe that so much...maybe you should stop dreaming and do something about it!...i find that that is often the cuase for me not doing things i wish i could have done...
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