Catalyst: The Church Experiment

Rick McKinley and Chris Shey presented the evening session on The Church Experiment.  Together they opened with some great humor and kept the entire group lively, not a small feat for a session that begins at 7:30pm.  The key points I grabbed from them was:

What does it look like for the church to move from a place that tries to be relevant to culture to being and institution/organization that is influencing, creating and changing culture?

Rather than looking at culture and trying to be relevant, what does it take to redeem and shape culture?

If you take the incarnation out of Christianity, it's just a set of religious dogma.

As a pastor you want to be liked.  We want to be thought well of and want to have said that he has a nice church.  That doesn't change culture...  It's like being the most popular kid in the chess club.

In order to be incarnational, need to ask how I can lead a change in our culture.

Restoring Eden - Group that travels to Christian colleges and tries to talk about using our natural resources as part of our covenant with Noah and part of the beauty of creation.

How do we commute to church, how do we do coffee, how do we recognize the cosmos? 

The hope for the church in the West is in the East, it's when we humble ourselves and listen to the people of the East.

How do we deal with tribalism as a church and how do we make disciples in Rwanda after the genocide?  Do I act as a tribesman or a Christian?  You can't talk about repentance or forgiveness to your own tribes, because then you become a traitor, need to talk about revenge and get justice.  You can't talk about justice without forgiveness.

This isn't church, it's the doorway.  If you're not here to begin serving then you don't understand what it means to be a part of the church.

How do you move from a ministry mindset and culture that's attractional and begin to see an incarnational way of ministry?

Chris: It's really hard.  Many churches were started by asking "what do people want?" but the primary threat to Christianity is consumerism, and people are attracted to the church but not the gospel.  People got what they wanted but now they want something else.  We end up killing ourselves but not getting people to this place.

I say simply that "I do not give a damn about your felt needs."  I do care about your real needs.  Your real needs are to love your god and to love your neighbor.

Need to say, what if we forego spending $150, 000 on a youth blowout and instead divert our resources to Rwanda.  People intuitively say yes, that's right, but then struggle when they don't have the event.

Rick: The question supposes something that we don't really want, which is the unattractive church.  The answer isn't to go "Let's make this a really lame service and see if anybody comes" instead what do you do when people show up?  Do you spend your resources meeting felt needs, or do you get people to begin leading a missional life or asking them to leave.

It's to move people and make them disciples.

What are the most vital aspects about starting a church in today's culture?  Starting with incarnation churches, how do you do that effectively?

Chris: When you get people there it's what you do with the people.  Just having my family in the living room with another family, there needs to be a sense of us coming together.  But what are we coming together for?

Do we believe the Gospel says things about celestine planning?  If so we need to live that.

Rick: you want to go through gifts assessments.  There's a 60% - 80% failure rate for church plants.  You need to be assessed and committed to that sort of thing.  Then ask "do I live this way, do the people around me live this way"?  It's a value shift, it's not about a mission statement on paper, it's about a person going around saying I know the mission and vision of the church because I've felt it.

I've realized that I can't change the heart of the people in the church and I can't change my own heart.  It becomes a season of repentance asking God to change our own hearts.

What's the biggest thin you guys want to say to the evangelical church?

Chris: The reason Christianity is broken is that we're working on the facts of Christianity, instead of what it means to be Christian. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts book by Sam Weinberg.  Talks about the uselessness of learning the facts. Our minds are made for narrative, and without narrative there's nothing to make them stick.

We should tell the biblical narrative and our narrative.  Find our voice in that way.

Rick: Why are we so arrogant to the world and our culture?  Why don't we hold our orthodoxy saying we don't have it all figured out?

What are some practical things that the church can do to be sensitive to the world and our environment while we have a dependency to fossil fuels.

Peter: This begins by recognizing that we have an addiction and a problem.  It's not going to be solved by drilling in every place that's sacred.  We're willing to trade the sacred for the propane.

I was just in Pikesvile, MN and the ton was dead but the hotel was filled because a windmill company was hiring people.

People are beginning to get it.  WalMart, Exxon, BP are looking at ways to find energy independence.  Set aside for god instead.

Ty Robinson book - Saving God's Green Earth.

How does Sunday morning come into being missional?  What's the most important part of Sunday morning.

Chris: I don't think its Sunday morning.  It's about gathering together.  There's a kind of worship, beauty and majesty gathering together. 

Whatever the metronome is set at, slow it down a few notches.  Give people more time for silence and prayer.

Rick: We try to make our identity about focusing on the world and not ourselves.  We expose people to ministry and tell the stories, but we gather to worship to meet with god and gather together and do the sacraments.

Chris: I don't know how you don't do the sacraments every week.  As often as we can we invite people to the table.

How can the church shape culture when we're in the minority status?

Rick: Why are we the minority status?  When we become part of the culture then our status doesn't matter.

Chris: We're only the minority in the West.

Rick: I think we want to be Jesus.  We want to pay attention to him.  I wouldn't call Jesus to save Western civilization.  If America goes away then I've still got some culture to go to.  I'm trying to redeem culture.

Erick Celeste article - Save the Ten, Lost the Eleven.  He's saying Christianity is a bunch of bonk, but really he doesn't get Christianity.

A lost of people we believe to be Christian and part of the Christian culture really don't get Christianity.

What's the difference between shepherding a flock and CEO of a company?

Chris: I don't want to do this necessarily.  Gods puts you in a place and says love these people.  God has put these people under your care, so you herd with them, suffer with them when they suffer and celebrate with them when they celebrate.  A system or organization of Christianity doesn't seem to work.  But a family seems to work intuitively.

Rick: I would love to be a CEO of a company if I hadn't gotten saved.  I've got the old man who wants to run the church.  But I have God's voice that makes me recognize that the crazy lady in the church matters.

Brokenness.  You have to know pain, because everyone else's life is going not hell and is hurt and broken.  When we pretend that's not true we create a false gospel and they'll wake up and walk away.  We need to let them know that we understand life sucks sometimes.

After tragedy couples come to our church.  Which is odd because why would you not stay at your old church?  People don't want to hear that God knows and has a plan, the want people why just says "that sucks"

What is your approach to the apologetics?

Chris: The kind of apologetics I'd like to do on a campus is to bring mangos on the campus and have them taste mango.  Then ask them how they can't believe in Jesus.  The logos is the core of Christian religion.  Chase after wisdom and others will chase after you.  The beauty of that wisdom is the logos.

Rick: It's a continued posture.  The question about the gospel is "does life work", "can life work".  You're always talking through an apologetic lens, but you're not fighting the value about evolution or whether it was six days.  People have no trouble holding opposing propositions in place, but at the end of the day it's about what works.

???

Rick: culture is the air your breathe, you don't get to get out of culture.

Does scripture tell me to steward the earth?  Yeah.

Does it tell me to worship the earth? No

Does it tell me the tree has the same value as me as a human?  No

There's God, the others then the earth.  But to advocate them we stand side by side with environmentalists for different reasons.

Peter: Also a disconnect that nature is something outside of humanity?  We're a part of nature, we're mammals.

Let's assume I'm a youth pastor of a traditional church and I love these new ideas.  What the hell do I do now?

Chris: We need to come to a point where we stop preaching Andy Stanley's sermons and talk about the real you.  Find your voice and begin articulating your story.

We need pastors and youth ministers to find their voice and tell the truth with their own stories.  Get around people who will tell you "I don't believe you" and learn from that feedback.  We'll become a country of stories

Rick: Don't do it because you're angry.  Do it because you're living it, and take kids along with you to go live it.

There may come a time that you realize going down this road will harm the church, but then it's probably time to leave.

At what point do you go from welcoming new people to asking them to make the next step?

Rick: We hold the truth side really strongly.  We have homosexuals at our church that know we don't believe it's ok, but while they know that truth side they also know the compassion side that walks with them.

This all happens in a culture that says "let's see how this looks like to walk it out".  I don't know your problems or you life, but let's see what the scripture says and try to grow out of that broken place.

We're creating a context where true transformation can take place.  Where's it safe to be honest.  People can come in and if they're looking from the outside they think we're whacked out for hanging all these messed up types of people.

Chris: In journeying into community we've found that when we start a small group every person in the group gets to share their life story.  They share a meal and everyone shares their story.  Without exception, people get to a part of their story that is really hard, ad when they get to that part of the story the people in that room gets closer.  Says they are there for the person, but also thanks them because they are broken the same way that I'm broken.  I hope our churches can catch that.

Rick: We have this premarital class and people shares their stories.  One couple said they met over drug deals and they had to get married so see each other once one went to jail.  We're not Christians but we need to be married to see each-other.  So what do you say if you're sitting at that table?

posted by Tom at 10:37 PM