Archive for September, 2007

The main thesis of this book is that a local church needs to know what its purpose it, and then ensure that all it does is directed towards accomplishing that purpose. Rick Warren is of course founder and pastor of Saddleback church in America that has grown to over 20,000 attendees. He has a particular passion to reach the “unchurched” with the gospel, and this book details how he goes about this.

He is aware that “mega-churches” come under heavy criticism, which he seeks to refute early on in the book. You can grow without compromise. Indeed, he would say that a church that is not growing is actually dying. He also reports that Saddleback has not grown through “transfer growth” (Christians changing churches). In fact, 80% of their membership were baptised at Saddleback, and they saw 7,000 conversions in their first 15 years. This is certainly impressive, though sadly I imagine that not many mega-churches would be able to offer statistics anywhere close.

Another “myth” he attempts to debunk is that you can’t have quantity and quality. Of course they are not mutually exclusive, but McDonalds teaches us you can have quantity without quality. There is a real danger that the church grows wide and shallow.

One of his key strategies is being “seeker sensitive”. This involves two things. First of all, he simply means that churches should not do things that make visiting unbelievers feel awkward, confused, unwelcome or embarrassed. The language should be understandable, the welcome should be warm, the music should be of a good standard etc. In many ways, he is arguing for things that most evangelical churches have now taken on board (the book was published in 1995).

But there is a second side to being “seeker sensitive”. The Sunday meeting is actually specifically designed with unbelievers in mind. They still have worship and a sermon, but of primary importance is that the visiting “unchurched” will enjoy the worship and find the sermon useful. Saddleback run services directly targeted at believers on a different night.

It is worth considering the unique culture of America here. Rick Warren got over 200 people to attend his first meeting simply by mailing invitations and promising a church that would not be boring and irrelevant. And these were not Christians who came. Such a thing is unheard of here in the UK, and this fact should give pause for thought for anyone who would seek to copy his methods (Warren himself is insistent anyway that it is only the principles that should be copied – the particulars will differ). Evangelism in a “post-Christian” culture will look very different to this.

Warren claims that though the sermons are aimed at people’s “felt needs” this does not mean that the gospel is watered down. He argues that Jesus himself used this method. While I agree that Jesus was a good communicator, I was not entirely convinced that his messages were all as upbeat as Warren makes them out to be. For example he portrays the Sermon on the Mount as starting with “eight secrets of genuine happiness” and ending with a nice story about the importance of putting the teaching into action. It strikes me as a remarkably positive spin on some very challenging teaching!

Saddleback are very intentional about who they are targeting. They even have a name for their ideal customer (yes Warren even calls church attendees customers at times!) – Saddleback Sam is a well-off, middle-class, professional, husband and father. They design their services to be exactly what he wants. If someone objects that this is pandering to his ego-centric consumerism, Warren responds that these attitudes will be challenged after they become a believer. If people came to church with the mindset that it was merely a dispenser of religious goods and services, then we would hope that that idea would be challenged almost immediately as they find the church not to be a mirror of their culture, but a counter-cultural community.

We might also wonder why such a “nice” person was chosen, when the gospel is surely for all races and social classes. Warren seems to think that other churches can target other types of people, but that you can’t simply try to reach everyone, so you should go for the people you “most easily” reach. I found this approach uncomfortable – if every church thinks like this, who will reach the poor, Muslims, alcoholics? The fact is that the Christian population is predominantly white middle class both in the UK and in America. We cannot avoid “cross-cultural” mission even in our own cities. Having said that, it does appear that Saddleback has developed some other ministries to reach different types of people, even if the seeker service is not aimed at them.

Also slightly odd was their discipleship program. This involved people graduating through four stages, each complete with its own covenant (for example the first one is to tithe, have a quiet time, and attend regularly). This sounded a little formulaic and even verging on the legalistic, but it has to be said that it is way beyond what most churches require of new members and does at least demonstrate a genuine commitment to spiritual growth rather than merely an infatuation with “numbers” that many mega-churches are accused of.

In fact the chapters on helping members mature and minister to others are perhaps the strongest in the book. They take seriously the importance of commitment, and one of the things I liked best was his aversion to bureaucracy and committees. He would much rather people spent their time in ministry. He also believes that members should be empowered to initiate new ministries as they have a heart for them, rather than leaders coming up with ideas and looking for staff.

Rick Warren is certainly a pragmatist. This will leave some readers wondering whether he puts results before uncompromising faithfulness to the gospel. This is the first of his books I have read, and to be honest I wish he had taken the time to articulate what he understands the gospel to be. I appreciate his passion to see people saved, and to see them become mature. There is undoubtedly much to be learned from this book. But at the same time there is much that should not be copied, even if it is working at Saddleback.

There seems to be a glut of books on new ways of doing church recently – liquid church, provocative church, deep church, messy church, intelligent church, relevant church, deliberate church, positive church, and here “total church”.

Total Church is co-written by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, who are leaders in the “Crowded House” in Sheffield. The unique thing about them is that while being very conservative doctrinally (I’m pretty sure they are Reformed and cessationist), their approach to church is quite radical.

Their contention is this – churches should be built around gospel and community. The “gospel” part of this breaks down into two aspects – they are word-based, and they are mission-focused. Both of these must be done in the context of community, so the word is taught and applied in community and mission is done in community. They note that many churches are trying to be both faithful and contemporary with their presentation of the gospel, but ultimately find that there are very few opportunities for unbelievers to actually hear that message.

They argue that churches have got so much going on that they transition from “mission” mode, to “maintenance” mode. We need to run fewer evangelistic events, youth clubs and social projects to allow more sharing of our lives with unbelievers. This means starting new congregations rather than growing existing ones.

The type of “sharing of lives” they seek to cultivate in their house churches is one in which the church itself adapts to changes in peoples lives. So when a family have a baby, for example, it is the whole churches responsibility to help them and support them in practical ways, not just that family who have to adapt themselves so they can remain part of church life. And while avoiding “heavy shepherding”, they stress the importance of people making decisions (such as moving house, changing job) with regard to the community and in discussion with them, because they are family, just as a husband would discuss with his wife and family.

By becoming a Christian, I belong to God and I belong to my brothers and sisters.

Having laid a theological foundation for word and mission centred community, the second part of the book moves on to look at some practical topics. The authors do not insist that you give up your existing church models and do things their way, but lay down a challenge to “make community infectious”.

Become a blessing by offering hospitality, showing practical care, dropping in on people. Create around you a group of Christians who will share their lives and encourage one another in the faith. You might start with your home group. Often home groups are little more than a meeting. Make yours a community by acting like a community.

Having laid down the principles of “gospel” and “community”, the book shows how these two strands should run through everything we do. So evangelism must be done in community, sharing our lives rather than seeking out “evangelistic opportunities” to hit people with the gospel message. The conviction is that “our love for one another, to the extent that it imitates and conforms to the cross-love of Jesus for us, is evangelistic”. Evangelism involves sharing our lives and sharing the word, and so we need to introduce people to loving a community, not just to church meetings.

There is a challenging chapter on social involvement, which warns that we tend to build churches aimed at professionals. We may not be racist, but are we truly open to those of a different social class to ourselves? The authors encourage us to move beyond “hit and run” social action, to a model where we offer the poor and needy a genuine place of welcome and community.

Church planting is strongly encouraged as the mode of church growth. “The household model is in some way defining of church. The church is the household of God. … For New Testament Christians the idea of ‘church’ was synonymous with household and home.” The authors do not however give any indication of what they consider an ideal size for such a congregation before a new one is to be started. They try not to be too dogmatic, especially concerning the relation of these households to one another. “It matters little whether these small groups are called churches, home groups or cells, as long as they are the focus for the life and mission of the church.”

Discipleship and training is also worked out in the context of community. New leaders are trained by a leader sharing their life and ministry with others. The conviction is that “truth cannot be taught effectively outside of close relationships.” Pastoral care, too, is to be handled in the context of community, not by simply passing people on to “professionals”, nor by becoming amateur “counsellors”, but by the conviction that as we live in community, applying the word in ordinary situations we will see lives transformed.

A chapter on spirituality takes a bold swipe at ideas of “solitude, contemplation and silence”, arguing that these are the luxury of the spiritual elite. Actually we are called to community, meditation on the word and prayer. The authors encourage that Bible study and prayer (and even sermon preparation) should be done in community, not in isolation. Theology too, “is also the task of the church, because the only theology that matters, and is worthy of the name, is practical theology.”

A fascinating chapter on apologetics asks whether we have mistaken the symptoms for the cause. We have assumed that people reject Christianity because of an intellectual problem, rather than because they don’t want God. Thus our attempts to prove Christianity to be rational, while helpful, may miss the mark. A relational apologetic is required. “Christian community is the ultimate apologetic.”

Equally controversial is their chapter on youth work. They argue that much effort is spent with little fruit in running large scale youth events. Rather, it would be better for Christians to invest their time in community with a smaller number of young people, effectively discipling them. Also, the youth are to be included in the church community, rather than being filtered off into “youth church”. It is certainly an idea worth some reflection, but not without some serious practicalities to be worked through.

Finally, the criteria for success is of course faithfulness rather than numbers. Success is being a gospel-centred community. “It is judged in terms of growing Christians and gospel opportunities.” Ultimately, the authors close with a reminder that “Christianity is not a strategy or a set of principles. It is a relationship of love with the triune God.”

I can wholeheartedly commend this book to anyone wanting to shake up their thinking about church. I didn’t agree with all of it, and was left in some cases wanting to know more (for example eldership was not discussed). But this book stands as a fine example of how we can have a radical ecclesiology without losing our biblical moorings.

The church, … is not something additional or optional. It is at the very heart of God’s purposes. Jesus came to create a people who would model what it means to live under his rule. It would be a glorious outpost of the kingdom of God: an embassy of heaven. This is where the world can see what it means to be truly human.

Read more quotes from this book on underlined bits