Learning to ask the right questions
A few days ago, I started reading this book, THE PRESENT FUTURE, by Reggie McNeal, and I couldn’t put it down. With every turn of a page, I found myself thinking, “That’s what we keep saying here! That’s what we keep talking about when we are sitting around my kitchen table!” Reggie McNeal challenges Christians to stop answering the wrong questions with the way we promote “churchianity” and to start asking the tough questions that will hopefully further the kingdom of God, and I find this a very compelling topic!
Recent events here in Slovakia have led to many discussions about “church”. How do we define church? How should we structure church? How do we BECOME the church rather than DO church?? We are in a unique place here in Zilina, with the opportunity to start a new church community. The whole country is waiting and watching to see what happens now that a group of influential Christian leaders in this country have stepped away from the traditions of the known, traditional denominations and have declared that our new church will be non-denominational. This is extremely risky in this country because at this point in time, non-denominational churches are not allowed to officially register and are therefore controversial. It is a situation that is causing us all to be face down before the Lord, utterly dependant on Him for every move and every decision. We are praying for direction and words for conversations like never before.
In the midst of all of this, I have found myself constantly trying to figure out where I stand on issues surrounding the structure of church leadership, programming, outreach, service, etc. I’ve been studying church history from the days of the apostles until the present time (Thanks for lending me that book, Priscilla!); I’ve been listening to church leaders share their visions; I’ve been studying the book of Acts; I’ve been listening to non-church people share their views of the church; I’ve been studying what it means to be living in a post-modern culture and asking questions about how this impacts the function of the church in our societies; I’ve been learning about some of my cultural blind-spots and how they may possibly be impacting my ministry here in Slovakia; I’ve been asking myself how I can be a part of what God is doing right now, right here. I’ve been asking God to not let me miss something new He is doing because I’m so comfortable living in the things I have already learned. I want to be walking in His spirit more than I am relying on the methodology and theology and missiology that I’ve learned so far. I want to live a life that points people to God (not myself), and I want to be a part of a church community that draws people into His kingdom (not just the church).
I am compelled by Reggie McNeal’s challenge to deconvert from churchianity and rediscover the church’s original mission: to join God in His redemptive mission to the world. In his book, McNeal proposes that we (the church) have been preoccupied with answering the wrong questions (the questions of the modern world), and this has severely handicapped our ability to offer true meaning and hope in this post-modern world in which we live.
The six wrong questions and his suggested tough (better) counterpart questions are: 1) Instead of asking “How do we do church better?”, we should be asking “How do we deconvert from churchianity to Christianity?” 2) Instead of asking “How do we grow this church (how do we get people to come to us)?”, we should be asking “How do we transform our community (how do we hit the streets with the gospel)?” 3) Instead of asking “How do we turn members into ministers?”, we should be asking “How do we turn members into missionaries (how do we deploy more missionaries into community transformation)?” 4) Instead of asking “How do we develop church members?”, we should be asking “How do we develop followers of Jesus?” 5) Instead of asking “How do we plan for the future?”, we should be asking “How do we prepare for the future?” 6) Instead of asking “How do we develop leaders for church work?”, we should be asking “How do we develop leaders for the Christian movement?”
Great food for thought! If any of you have read this book (or other books on this topic) and would like to share, I’d love to read your comments!
I know this is a bit long and maybe not all that interesting for the average blog-reader…but this is what I’m thinking about today, so I thought I’d write it down!
