There was a time when I looked forward to listening to Mark Driscoll on a regular basis. That was before I lost my stomach for the whole thing.
Driscoll was a new and exciting voice, championing the need for new, missionally minded churches to be planted. He was embedded in a city known for being both unchurched and superhip. He was dynamic and inspiring.
Over at the Reclaiming the Mission blog, I’ve thrown in my two cents in an debate between David Fitch & Ed Stetzer. This disagreement is over Ed’s data about megachurches and sheep stealing. Stetzer claimed that
about 44% of new members at megachurches are from other local churches– not 60%, not 70%, and definitely not 95%. I hear people saying 90% and I agree that’s a myth. (But it is still way too high… just like so many other churches.)
I wish it were 0%, and every person that joined a megachurch was formerly without Christ, but the fact is that people do transfer between churches. Yet, I don’t know of any research or real evidence (beyond “but I KNOW it is true, Ed”) that megachurches transfer more out of local churches, destroying them while benefiting their own growth.
Fitch argued that the data was suspect, but ceded the point that small churches are just as guilty. His larger point was that
The real proof that mega churches are merely playing in a game of Christian musical chairs is the fact that on a macro basis, the percentage of Christians attending a church over the whole country is still on a slow decline.
So in their friendly debate, they could agree that there were too many church transfers. The immediate question I asked is why is it people don’t want to stay? Why are they not so passionate about their community and their role within it that they can’t imagine being anywhere else?
Fitch and his team over at the Reclaiming the Mission blog have been kind enough to post my thoughts on “Three Ways to Keep Your Sheep From Getting Stolen.” Here’s a slice:
It would be easy to write off church hopping as a cultural phenomenon. You could even cite the individual for a lack of spiritual maturity. But churches have a responsibility as well.
Imagine if your sheep were so deeply committed to your church that it would be hard to accept a job offer in a new city.
Imagine if there was such a level of commitment that they would be willing to put up with poor preaching and bad music.Church hopping and sheep stealing doesn’t have to be inevitable. But it will require doing at least three things differently.
(Read the rest here.)
What about you have you ever left a church? Why did you leave? What would make a church worth staying at?
Updated: The article was reposted here by churchleaders.com, which inspired a great discussion.
Phyllis Tickle’s The Great Emergence is a deceptively short and easy-to-read breakdown of the current state of North American Christianity. Tickle’s senior citizenship and long time experience as religion editor for Publisher’s Weekly, allows her to levitate above the fray of the modern-hyper-calvinists vs. the pomo-emergents. Her thesis is that every 500 years, Christianity has a garage sale, and we’re in the middle of one right now.
The bulk of the book shows how the basis of American Protestantism, primarily concepts like sola scriptura and the nuclear family, have been broken down a “century of emergence.”
The most valuable material comes at the end, where she creates a visual respresentation of American Christianity, divided into four quadrants: Liturgicals, Social Justice Christians, Conservatives and Renewalists. “The Great Emergence” is what’s happening in the center, where divisions are breaking down. She includes the explosion of charismatic movements and the vanilla-evangelical megachurches as the forerunners of a newly emerging Christianity. Now Pentecostals are using liturgy, Social Justice people are rediscovering personal morality, evangelicals are passionate about clean water in Africa, etc.
Emergence left me with the following question: If post-modernism, globalism and technology have redefined what it means to be human how must we redefine what it means to be the church?
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