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Church Futurist Challenges Ways of 'Traditional Ministry'
By Craig Pinley
IRVINE, CA (July 21, 2002) - According to noted church futurist Leonard Sweet,
churches are becoming less relevant to the general populace. In support of
that assessment, Sweet notes that only one percent of church growth
actually comes from non-Christians who begin attending a church.
The church can thrive, Sweet suggests, if people remember that Jesus made
the effort to "come down" so that we can "come out" of death into life and
"come up" to be with Him when we leave this life on earth. His hope is that
Christians also will make an effort to "come out" from the traditional ways
in which ministry has been done in the past.
Sweet shared his thoughts during the recent annual meeting of the Pacific
Southwest Conference (PSWC).
Sweet's assessment that the Christian church is becoming less relevant is
based on recent research data, as reflected in one Washington Post
news feature by Julia Duin. The article cites research by George Barna
stating that "although 59 percent of all Americans say religion is 'very
important' in their lives (down from 75 percent in 1952), 42 percent say
they are in church on Sundays. During the September 11 crisis, attendance
went up five percentage points and then dropped back."
The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey released in January
states that more than 29.4 million Americans (seven percent of the
country's population) indicate no religion, double the number 11 years ago.
Ray Johnston, senior pastor at Bayside Covenant Church in Granite Bay,
California, spoke earlier at the PSWC annual meeting. "A total of 87
percent of Protestant churches are stagnant or declining," Johnston said.
"Even the fastest evangelical church group is not growing as rapidly as the
population growth."
Sweet, who addressed last year's Midwinter Pastors Conference of the
Evangelical Covenant Church, echoed Johnston's sentiments during his
sermon. He challenged the Christian church to emphasize relationships and
unwrap itself of the status quo as it ministers to the next generation.
To illustrate the "come down" principle, Sweet used the Luke 19 story of
Zaccheus, the little tax collector who climbed a large sycamore tree
because he so wanted to see Jesus. Sweet told his audience that more
crucial than Zaccheus' interest to meet Jesus was the willingness of Jesus
to enter into relationship with a sinner like Zaccheus.
"The whole axis of Christianity was because of a God who was willing and
eager to come down (to us)," said Sweet. "God was willing to 'dumb down' in
order to smarten up me. And if it's good enough for God, it's good enough
for me."
To illustrate the "come out" portion, he used the John 11 story about
Lazarus, a friend who was raised from the dead by Jesus. "This 'come out'
process is a two-stepper," Sweet said. "The biblical scholars are only
worried about how Lazarus got out of the tomb with strips wrapped around
his body. But there is a second step, there is a division of labor. They
had to unwrap Lazarus (after he left the cave). God frees us from the sin,
but we have to unwrap ourselves . . . we have failed to unwrap each other
for ministry in this new world."
Of what does the church need to unwrap itself? Sweet suggests that
learnedness keeps us from others. "We need to learn more from others," he
said. "I was a learned professor until 1987. I am now a learner."
Sweet also believes that churches are so focused on modern ways to
communicate the gospel that they may have forgotten the core concepts that
seemed to work for the early Christian church. One of the modern stumbling
blocks is the use of committees to run the church. "Every committee meeting
should begin with this question," said Sweet: "Did
Jesus die on the cross so that we can spend the next hour talking about
this?"
Another roadblock in our quest to 'unwrap' the church is what Sweet calls
categorical imperialism - the idea that Christians are supposed to act and
believe a certain way. He brought PSWC Director of Church Planting and
Holistic Ministry Adam Edgerly to the stage and compared shoes to
illustrate the point.
"I can either insist that Adam have a quality shoe like mine," he said, "or
insist that their sole (of their feet) has protection and is covered, and I
let them choose the kind of shoe that will protect and cover them. We are
so wrapped up in categorical imperialism that we don't know there's a whole
world out there in need of the Gospel."
Finally, Sweet said the church needs to unwrap each other from what he
calls 'beliefism,' the idea that faith is about what we believe. He
discussed the unique phenomenon of the alligator as he explained. "If you
keep an alligator in a box, it will never grow any bigger than the box," he
said in a comparison with the church. "It's only when you take it outside
the box that it grows until the day it dies."
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