April 24, 2006
It Looks Like a Duck
There’s a saying, ‘If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck’. While experiencing church growth, our congregation has been told we’re not trying to become a mega church, but I’ve got to tell you I feel like a duck in progress. The staff position titles resemble that of a mega church. Our leaders attend conferences and seminars at mega church facilities. We implement methods and programs developed for mega churches and read their books and training manuals. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against mega churches, but I wonder why we, as a midsize church, are conforming to the likeness of a mega church if we aren’t trying to become one.
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2 comments:
Gail,
Maybe the answer to why the leaders tell us they are not trying to create a mega-church in the face of doing most everything according to the mega-church paradigm is that the definintion of mega-church is somewhat relative. Coral Ridge Chapel certainly does not fit the mega-church image, but it is quite sizable. Here at home, we have most of the programs and methods of the mega-church model except for the numbers. Which one more closely resembles the duck?
More importantly, should the church leaders be shaping the church to any model? Is that within their Biblically given function? Pual deals with matters of preference and opinion in Romans 14. He tells us that there is to be lattitude in matters that are not clearly defined in the Word. How the church worships, how it teaches, when it worships and teaches, how it helps to match the supplies of those who have generosity and abundance to those who have need (gee, that concept of church function has certainly faded) are all matters that are not defined by the Word. The Bible simply tells us that we are to worship, teach, meet each others needs, etc. Pual tells us clearly, after setting forth free lattitude for various opinion, that the faith we have we are to keep between ourselves and God. In such an atmosphere, the church being a collection of people - and people having a variety of ways of doing things - one would expect a larger church to have a variety of ways of doing things also.
But certainly not the duck of this topic! This duck is pressed into one mold. And that is the real problem. The mold is not near as wrong as the pressing. God did not give it to the church leaders to press people into their own opinions. Church leaders are not alone exempt from Romans 14:22. Jesus taught His disciples that to be a leader you become a servant, and the greater the leading the more the self disappears. As a servant it becomes tempting to think that you hold the resolving technique in your own expertise, and that serving the people is assuring that your technique becomes fully operational. Unfortunately, if all of the people are not servicable by that technique, then it becomes the technique that is actually being served, and not the people. The line is only one duck toe wide.
As much discomfort as the mega-church feel gives me, what bothers me more is that our leaders must go to some other Joe's church (and that not even in our own time zone) to bring back an idea about how to serve our brothers and sisters here at home. Worse yet, they have to read Joe's books, which generally are not as much Joe's regurgitation of the Word as they are Joe's regurgitation of Jack's regurgitation of the Word. Concepts distort very easily, and the concept that it is our brothers' and sisters' needs that are the object of our gathering together has been distorted almost out of sight by passed on and on Bible interpretation. The intent of gathering together is not to become a church type, it is to become a type of love, a godly type of love. And that can only happen by giving your attention to the ones beside you with the personally met Word in your heart.
Steve,
Well stated! Thanks for the additional insight.
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