September 12, 2006 Featured Article
A Modern Church by Ken Johnson |
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August 25, 2006 Hi Ken, My reply: August 25, 2006 Hello Ingrid: Thanks for your recent email concerning the circus church. I have visited your Blog and am pleased to be included with the people that you don’t agree with. I will take this any day if I am paving the way to bringing new people to Christ. First, I would say that I never said that there isn’t room for a church like you have described. The problem is that their attendance and membership numbers are quite small which there is nothing wrong with that, but with such small numbers they are not able to carry out the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Jesus said:
Then they have to carry out the Great Commission:
In all honesty, I see very little if any, of this type of ministry happening in the churches that you are describing, and I see it everyday in the churches that you disagree with. The church as you describe it is not presently doing much to further this commandment because they don’t have enough people to carry out the commandment. Their major problem is their worship, which should be the main focus of any church, doesn’t attract many people and if they do come they won’t come back a second time. Further, I have learned in my church visits there isn’t much teaching and learning about the Christian Faith going on in those churches they just carry on the old traditions. Sad but true. In those churches there are many pew sitters who are there because that is what they have done forever that is what they will do until they die. They are not performing the Great Commission. Second, I have searched the scriptures, New and Old Testaments and have found nothing to indicate that Jesus wore flowing white, black or whatever color the season dictates, robes. I have also found nothing to indicate that He preached from behind a pulpit, nor did He sing, or lead as the case might be, “the liturgy as the church has for millennia,” the Lamb of God, the Kyrie, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Nicene Creed that you speak of and probably also the Doxolgy and the Apostles Creed. These are all good things from history but are all man made many years after the death and resurrection of Jesus and mean nothing to the 21st century Christian. As you can see over the 2000 years of Christian history many things have changed in the Christian faith, many for the good and many for the bad, and I don’t ascribe to all of them. I do ascribe to the Great Commission which says that we have to go into all the world and preach His gospel and bring people into the Christian faith and He doesn’t say—here are the restrictions. He says that whatever we need to do within the culture that we live in we need to do. That means whatever it takes to get the peoples attention so you can minister to them. As I read the scriptures I see Jesus did exactly what the growing body of the church is doing today and that was going into the community and doing whatever it took to teach about this new Christianity. He didn’t hide under a bushel, he turned water into wine; healed people; talked to the woman at the well; had Zacchaeus—a tax collector—come down from the tree and went to his house to eat; and I could go on and on, but these were things that created a circus atmosphere where He was and allowed him to bring people to Himself. I honor you for doing what you think is right for your family, but it is vitally important that you not criticize the ways that other churches bring people to Christ. I can tell you from my visits to 100 different churches that those churches that are continuing to do worship the same as it has always been done are quickly dying, and if they don’t change soon they will be extinct within a few years. Is that what you want to happen to the church? We need a 21st century church with a 1st century power. We need to pray that we, the church, have more dreams than memories. We need to find ways to attract the 21st century person not expect them to “do it our way.” I will pray that you and your children will continue to be ministered to in your church and I will also pray the people who are looking for something different will find what they need. I do need to talk for a moment about church consulting and its value. Regretfully or thankfully our culture has changed over the years and the current pastor isn’t able to keep up with all of the changes so they sometimes need the help of an outside person to evaluate where they have been, where they are right now and where they need to be going. Regretfully, the churches who need consulting the most are the churches that are dying and they have pastors who think that since they received a call from God that God will take care of their needs and it doesn’t happen, so they just fade away and die. Recently a pastor of one of those churches said to his staff that: “This is the last trick in my bag of tricks. If this one doesn’t work, I’m out of here.” And sure enough, thankfully he is gone. I’m not sure if the church will survive but at least now they have an opportunity and they are trying. The Phantom Pew Sitter #1 and The Phantom Pew Sitter #2 include my visits to the 100 different churches. There are actually more than 100 visits because visited some of those churches two or three times hoping that they might have begun to make the needed changes—regretfully most of them hadn’t and they continue to languish and prepare for death. How sad. I pray the Lord’s blessing on you and your ministry and look forward to hearing from you in the near future. In His Steps Ken Johnson
© 2006, Ken Johnson, President and CEO of The Ken Johnson Group, LLC. To contact Ken, or for permission to reprint this article, send an e-mail to: ken@thekenjohnsongroup.com |