Simplistic Church?

Simple, but not simplistic!

When you dumb things down, the result is dumb! The future of the church is not a simplistic path to make it easy and essentially impotent. There is power in keeping things simple, but not at the cost of becoming simplistic and watered down.

I once served at a church that was growing so fast that the church had more people coming than they knew what to do with. They needed more leaders to take care of these people, so they lowered the requirements for leadership. A person was qualified to lead a group if they could push play on the DVD player and fog a mirror.

Needless to say, these leaders washed out and quit at the first sign of difficulty. 70 groups were launched and six months later 70 groups had crashed.

Hundreds of people signed up for these groups and wash out because the leader and the group was not equipped to do the job and not led well by a coach/pastor and inevitably washed out.

Moving people from the church building, providing a warm body to host the group in a living room is not a sustainable plan.The goal must be to produce spiritually mature believers and nothing less.

Colossians 1:28–29 (ESV) "Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me."

Small groups provide the wineskins of structure that makes spiritual maturity possible. The goal is to lead people into an ever growing relationship with Jesus, who is the "wine" that the wineskins contain.

Unfortunately that church I'm referring to is still going through a couple of thousand people each year who come and don't stick, because they are not being led by properly prepared leaders, resulting in a lack of personal love and care. The system is created to move people to acts of service for the benefit of the institution, parking cars, shaking hands, taking the offering, watching children. The process is set up to keep the program running each week, not to help people grow to maturing in Christ.

They can't find anyone who is qualified to serve on the Board because the system is not producing spiritually mature believers.

The focus is on making converts instead of making mature disciples of Christ. Yet Jesus didn't command us to make converts only. It is like a dead beat parent who loves making babies but doesn't want to parent. Making disciples is messy and complicated and expensive and it takes time to see lives transformed. Jesus spent three and a half years pouring into the Twelve and still they were arguing over who was the greatest right up to Jesus' crucifixion. Yet it was this investment in leaders who would shepherd the church after Jesus was gone, that created a church that has survived over time and reached us today in our generation.

Most people aren't looking for a complex system to help them connect to a church, they just need someone who cares, they need a friend who can challenge them to grow in the faith. This is the kind of ministry that can reach any generation because it is based on an ever expanding love for God and love for people, beginning with those who lead.

Rick Warren has stated, "if you are leading people and not loving them, you aren't really leading, you are only manipulating."

Oh Lord, how we need more churches who are focused on growing mature followers of Christ who genuinely love the next generation to within an inch of their lives.

Research tells us that only 15 percent of Millennials and 4 percent of GenZ are Christians. The church has a big job to do, and it will not happen by dumbing down the Gospel and what is required of disciples of Christ.

This is the heart of Christ and what it means to live out a cross cultural experience within our own culture, in our day.