My Sense of Urgency

In the CGGC we love fads.

I’m a geezer. I began to serve my first churches on December 1, 1976. And, as far as I can tell, the CGGC has jumped on every band wagon that has rolled down the road from that day on.

Off the top of my head, a few come to mind.

Lifestyle Evangelism. Becky Pippert’s a sweet woman who wrote a nice book. Out of the Saltshaker & into the World. We loved it. We brought her to IMPACT (before it was called IMPACT.) We loved her. We talked about lifestyle evangelism. It was our answer--our hope for a bright tomorrow. Until the next band wagon came along.

Spiritual Gifts. There was a day in which we believed that knowing and using Spiritual Gifts was the answer to all our challenges. We hopped on that wagon. We brought Ken Kinghorn to IMPACT. We bought his books. We did his inventory. We had fun with it--for a while. Then, we began to glance around for the next wagon.

Acts of Kindness. Steve Sjogren wrote an exceptional book. To our credit, we didn’t have him speak at IMPACT, but we did make the concept the theme of IMPACT one year. We sold his book from the General Conference office--and probably still do. But, our zeal for showing God’s love in practical ways has waned.

Postmodernism. Boy, was that the watchword for about a year! We invited Lenny Sweet to Ritz Lectures. We made Reggie McNeal’s book our first ever book of the year. We invited him to IMPACT. We introduced an Emerging Church track to IMPACT. Brian was praised for starting this blog. And, well…now a small handful of us chat and some others lurk. Welcome, Don.

And, I’m afraid that I was just naïve about missionalism.

I guess I didn’t notice the distant clacking of the horses drawing the wagon. We named Externally Focused Church the book of the year and I should have known. We brought Rick Rusaw to General Conference and then IMPACT. By then I definitely should have seen what was going on. We invited Rick to speak at Eastern Regional Conference and, duh of all duhs, I still didn’t see it.

But then…

…and believe me, gang, I really, really hope I’m wrong.

I was reading the eNews about the Exponential Conference and I saw the sentence, “The key now will be to translate the concepts back into our ministry setting in the Churches of God.” And, suddenly I’m remembering Becky Pippert, Ken Kinghorn, Lenny Sweet and Reggie McNeal.

Something clicked. I’ve exchange a few emails with Ed and Brian and chatted on the phone with Brian for about an hour and Ed for a half hour. I’ve been praying about this in every spare moment for the last few days. And, I’m thinking:

No.

NO!

No, no, no, no.

Nutz!

No, Lord, please, no!

Not being missional. Not the next fad! Lord, please don’t let this be just the next bandwagon! Tell me that the theme of IMPACT 2009 will not be: A MISSIONAL CHURCH.

I believe in being missional. I’m not good at it yet, but I aspire to it. I dread the thought of missionalism as a mere bandwagon. And, I’m not sure how long we can survive if we do with missionalism what we did with lifestyle evangelism and spiritual gifts and all those other fine notions.

Many of you know that my academic training is in church history, but I’m in congregational ministry now and don’t get to do a lot with history these days. But, the planning committee for the Eastern Region offered me the opportunity to lead two breakout sessions on Churches of God history at Conference this year. And, I jumped at the opportunity.

Part of one of the sessions led me into some research on church planting and church growth. And, I stumbled on some statistics on us from the U. S. Census Bureau. That data led me to ask some questions and to find the answers.

Get this:

According the stats available to me, we reported the largest number of congregations--511--in 1906. Since then we have experienced a net loss of 190 congregations and now have a total of 321. Obviously, that’s not encouraging.

But, I went back to the census data again and checked out U. S. population statistics and I discovered that the population of the U.S. today is almost exactly four times what it was in 1906.

Now, the first 80 years of CGGC history were challenging but successful and we were growing. We began in the 1820s and grew to over 500 congregations in those first 80 years. Though the word ‘missional’ hadn’t been invented yet, that’s what we were. I couldn’t find worship attendance figures for 1906 but I did find membership and Sunday School attendance figures. The two average out to 27,000. I’ll use that number as a guess of what our attendance probably was.

So, here’s what I realize. If 100 years ago we had only stopped growing and had merely held our own with population growth, in 2008 we would have about 2,000 congregations and total worship over 100,000.

That is, of course, if we had just held our own. If we had remained missional, of course, and had continue to grow, our figures might be twice that--4,000 congregations, worship of over 200,000--probably more.

But we didn’t hold our own. We declined. We don’t have 2,000 congregations. We have 321. We don’t have attendance of more than 100,000. We slipped below our lofty goal of 35,000.

Jim Moss wrote a great little book on church planting in the CGGC called, Returning to our First Love. (You can buy it from the CGGC for 15 bucks.) Jim says that we stopped planting churches in 1917 and didn’t do planting for about sixty years. What he also describes, without using the terms, is a transition from missionalism to attractionalism.

When I think that we’re down to 321 congregations from 511, I’m somewhat discouraged. When I think of what reasonably might have been. What might have been if we had just held our own and when I realize that were down to 321 congregations instead of 2,000, I begin to feel desperate.

Jim Moss tells me (I don’t recall if it’s in the book) that in our history we’ve started about 3,500 churches. Most, of course, failed. That happens when you’re missional. Well over 95% of the churches we started, we started in our first 90 years.

And, so I’m developing a frantic sense of urgency and I mean what I said in my first thread.

+ We need understanding of the importance of missionalism. Jim Moss is correct. We have lost our first love. Read Revelation 2 and look up what Jesus says about losing your first love and not repenting of it.

+ We need to do some serious repenting in the CGGC. This absolutely is a matter of heart. Continuing this mindless culture of jumping on and off every bandwagon that comes down the road is killing us. And, we are dying.

+ We need to be praying for Ed and all of our leadership. This is a big deal. They face a serious challenge.

+ We here on this blog need to be bold and to assert ourselves and to provide leadership out of the energy and vision that we have.

+ And, we need to move ahead of others if others in the CGGC are not going to move fast enough. We need to be steadfast when the day comes that excitement over the missionalism fades and others begin to embrace the next fad. If necessary, we need to be radical and push the envelope and not back away from the challenge of being holy rebels.

Dan Masshardt made this cogent assertion on my other thread:

I truly believe that it is a false dicotomy. I was just listening to an audio interview with Hirch and he said that he had never intended them to be opposites.

And, Dan makes a reasonable point.

However,…

….I’ve done enough counseling to realize that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

And, in the CGGC to say, “We can be both missional and attractional,” just makes me afraid that we’ll do with the missional trend what we did with lifestyle evangelism and spiritual gifts and acts of kindness and postmodernism. We have a ‘bandwagon culture’ in the CGGC.

I love Ed Rosenberry. He’s a big man--spiritually. He knows that I pray for him daily. He didn’t create the bandwagon culture. He inherited it. It’s probably nearly as big as he is. I know many of the guys who attended the conference with him. And, I respect them. And, I’m certain that they are all sincere and that they are doing and will do their best for us.

But, I don’t want to be sitting around in a few years sensing the excitement around me for the next bandwagon and recall the good ol’ days when the flavor of the month was being missional.

I’m not sure we can afford that.

And, so I’m frantic.

I have a sense of urgency.

“John Blutarsky”