The megachurch and me
I would feel very inappropriate calling myself a "casualty" of the institutional church. There are many issues that cause some bitterness toward the Ic for me. At the same time, I'm not sure that I would be aware of the needs of the church had I not been exposed to them for so long. I was also challenged recently by a professor after voicing my opinion. I had expressed a great deal of frustration with the fact that the church seems primarily concerned with evangelism and numerical growth, subsequently leaving believers to fend for themselves with little or no equipping for the extreme challenges of the Christian life. My professor tended to agree with my observations, but asked me what I would do to change it.
That's certainly a wake-up call for a whining dissenter like myself. Well, it's very easy to sit back and criticize institutions. It is a whole other matter to actually suggest and try to implement change. Like it or not, revolutions need to be started from inside the "machine."
So what is my primary selling point here? If I want to act as if I have something profound to say, what is it? Like our proverbial dad says, don't criticize unless you have a way to do it better. And just to make the game a bit more challenging, let's suppose that you wanted to create a true spiritual awakening...at a megachurch. Gasp. It's theoretically pretty simple to get together a house church and raise them up to be New Testament believers. You can observe and walk alongside a small group of people with ease. You can personally mentor them and craft a program of spiritual formation, in accordance with the leading of the Spirit, that fits the individuals perfectly. But how can the pastor of a megachurch accomplish such a task?
One answer, from the extreme anarchists, would be to abolish the megachurch altogether. In their opinions, the megachurch is an amalgamation of Western consumerism and Christianity taken to its absurd conclusion. It is the mutant bastard child of a desire for material gain coupled with outmoded modernist epistemology, creating a beast that manipulates the unsuspecting masses in a quest for the bottom line. I suggest that this picture is a bit paranoid and extreme. Does it contain warnings that the prudent should heed? Certainly.
Let me step into utilitarian/pragmatic shoes for just a moment and suggest that the megachurch, good or bad as it is, is here to stay, at least for the time being. Since the day of salvation is today, I would be a fool to just wait until the megachurch dissolves and crumbles upon its sand-sculpted foundations. Emergent church activist types have no right to act like self-righteous uber-liberals and sit on their laurels laughing while the world crumbles around them. The megachurch evangelical is my brother, my cousin, my father in a very real since (not a literal sense).
My bottom line, my foundational statement, my creed is spiritual formation. I am going to be thinking in great detail, with the megachurch in mind, of ways to bring about a paradigm shift that can and will work in the megachurch. Is it wishful thinking? Perhaps it is, but I don't think God wants his children falling by the wayside. This area is going to be a big area of focus in my doctoral research, and hopefully I will be able to flesh it out and narrow it down in the next year and a half. If you are reading this, please feel free to contact me and offer suggestions, or better yet offer dialog via any number of sites that I post on. I am no prophet or wise man, I just have gotten a taste of God that is so much more than I have ever been offered in the IC...and my heart burns to share that with those both inside and outside of the church.
That's certainly a wake-up call for a whining dissenter like myself. Well, it's very easy to sit back and criticize institutions. It is a whole other matter to actually suggest and try to implement change. Like it or not, revolutions need to be started from inside the "machine."
So what is my primary selling point here? If I want to act as if I have something profound to say, what is it? Like our proverbial dad says, don't criticize unless you have a way to do it better. And just to make the game a bit more challenging, let's suppose that you wanted to create a true spiritual awakening...at a megachurch. Gasp. It's theoretically pretty simple to get together a house church and raise them up to be New Testament believers. You can observe and walk alongside a small group of people with ease. You can personally mentor them and craft a program of spiritual formation, in accordance with the leading of the Spirit, that fits the individuals perfectly. But how can the pastor of a megachurch accomplish such a task?
One answer, from the extreme anarchists, would be to abolish the megachurch altogether. In their opinions, the megachurch is an amalgamation of Western consumerism and Christianity taken to its absurd conclusion. It is the mutant bastard child of a desire for material gain coupled with outmoded modernist epistemology, creating a beast that manipulates the unsuspecting masses in a quest for the bottom line. I suggest that this picture is a bit paranoid and extreme. Does it contain warnings that the prudent should heed? Certainly.
Let me step into utilitarian/pragmatic shoes for just a moment and suggest that the megachurch, good or bad as it is, is here to stay, at least for the time being. Since the day of salvation is today, I would be a fool to just wait until the megachurch dissolves and crumbles upon its sand-sculpted foundations. Emergent church activist types have no right to act like self-righteous uber-liberals and sit on their laurels laughing while the world crumbles around them. The megachurch evangelical is my brother, my cousin, my father in a very real since (not a literal sense).
My bottom line, my foundational statement, my creed is spiritual formation. I am going to be thinking in great detail, with the megachurch in mind, of ways to bring about a paradigm shift that can and will work in the megachurch. Is it wishful thinking? Perhaps it is, but I don't think God wants his children falling by the wayside. This area is going to be a big area of focus in my doctoral research, and hopefully I will be able to flesh it out and narrow it down in the next year and a half. If you are reading this, please feel free to contact me and offer suggestions, or better yet offer dialog via any number of sites that I post on. I am no prophet or wise man, I just have gotten a taste of God that is so much more than I have ever been offered in the IC...and my heart burns to share that with those both inside and outside of the church.