Tuesday, October 02, 2012
Returning To Being The Church
Researcher Ed Stetzer writes of the church for the next decade:
A shark is an eating machine - it eats to find more to eat.
But people are more than animal - we develop art, engineering - culture. To simply build a church to continually feed itself denies our higher nature, it in fact denies the image of God in which we were created.
Sharks grow physically - like seeker-sensitive churches often do. But people and Christians grow in more ways than just size. When we grow just in size we become obese.
The first is the navigation of a post-seeker context. When I use this term, I do not mean that "seekers" no longer exist. (The Spirit is still at work to enliven the hearts of people and draw them to their need for Christ.) Rather, churches that once targeted seekers are finding that portions of subsequent generations do not have any religious memory at all--and it is harder to appeal to their seeking. They are the "Nones" - those who, when asked about religious affiliation, check "none." In a post-seeker context, churches will have to create new models to lead their people to engage their neighbors who might not find appealing an invitation to church.I had an entirely different thought about the phrase "post-seeker context" when I read it. My thought was the church needs to figure out what to do with seekers, once they are no longer seekers. It is not enough merely to turn them into "finders" - out searching for new seekers to bring to church. That strikes me as shark-like.
A shark is an eating machine - it eats to find more to eat.
But people are more than animal - we develop art, engineering - culture. To simply build a church to continually feed itself denies our higher nature, it in fact denies the image of God in which we were created.
Sharks grow physically - like seeker-sensitive churches often do. But people and Christians grow in more ways than just size. When we grow just in size we become obese.
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