CoolChurch News
March 10, 2004
Welcome to the March 2004 edition of CoolChurch News – a resource designed for those who are serious about bridging the gap between Christ and the culture he is redeeming. In this edition, you’ll find …
- Review and Excerpts from The Perfectly Imperfect Church by Steve Sjogren
- A Shameless Plug for the upcoming conference Wired2Grow 2004 with Brian McLaren
- An Invitation to participate a Learning Community for CoolChurch Leaders
- A rundown of Recent Sightings that may help you in your journey
The Perfectly Imperfect Church
If you know Steve Sjogren, it’s probably through his spreading of the servant evangelism gospel. As the founding pastor of Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, Steve has made a name for himself, the church, and Christ through the practice of selfless acts of love designed to get people to ask, “Why are you doing this?”
Now Steve has written a fresh book that takes a look not just at outreach and evangelism, but the whole church system. The Perfectly Imperfect Church is written as an antidote to the myth that all churches are designed and destined to be mega-churches and the related lie that mega-churches are therefore the best sources for learning how to be/do church.
While not dismissing or disparaging the mega-churches (after all, VCC is one), Steve gives hope to the rest of us – reminding us that “even small and imperfect churches with limited funds, not many people, and a “compact” building can be (and are) used by God.”
This handy and easy-to-read book offers basic, simple (sometimes simplistic), and down-to-earth advice on how to be effective no matter your size or circumstances. Here are a few excerpts that caught my eye:
- There are four kinds of churches: the Struggling Church (most churches in America); the Ego-Driven Church (“Have you ever driven into a town and seen a billboard advertising a church – and most of the billboard is a photo of the pastor’s face?”); the Launching Pad Church (a church of over 1,000 in attendance who “sees birthing new congregations as normal and reproduces itself in a variety of ways.”); the Pretty Good Church.
- The Pretty Good Church (aka, the Perfectly Imperfect Church) has an average attendance of 300 to 500. It is competence, not competition, oriented. It is large enough to plant a new church now and then. It is large enough to be able to enjoy the strength of a varied staff.
- “Like it or not, it takes two hundred people to support a church. Because of all it takes to maintain the cultural expectation of what a church should be, two hundred regular attendees, adults and children, is the break-even point in America. A church is not truly viable until it hits the two-hundred mark.”
- “The de-churched are far more difficult to reach and communicate with than the merely ‘unchurched’ of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. They are looking for authenticity, transparency, and reality. They won’t have it any other way. …Many of the de-churched are believers. They love the Lord; they just can’t handle the complexity of the church as it has come to be. …For those who have ears to hear, the message is clear: People are looking for something more simple and straightforward.”
Wired2Grow 2004 featuring Brian McLaren 9.9.04 – Raleigh
If you live in the southeastern US, you don’t want to miss out on spending a day with one of the world’s best thinkers on all things related to the changing face of culture and how it impacts how we do church. Brian is the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church between DC and Baltimore, and he will be spending a Thursday with 200 of his closest friends on September 9th, 2004. You can be one of those friends if you’ll only fork over a $25 registration fee! If you wait until after August 30, the price goes up to $40.
So go ahead and put September 9th on your calendar and make plans to be in the Raleigh area (New Horizons Fellowship in Apex, NC to be exact). The event will start with worship at 9:00, include lunch, feature three sessions with Brian, and we’ll even have a bookstore.
To register, contact Linda Hudson at 919.467.5100 ext. 224 or at lhudson@bscnc.org.
Learning Community Invitation
A great friend of CoolChurch News is Bud Wrenn – the pastor of Integrity Community Church in Burlington, NC. For two years, Bud has hosted a learning community for pastors and other staff leaders of churches that are on the innovative side of things. Many of these churches consider themselves to be “Purpose-Driven” but not all have autographed pictures of Rick Warren on their desk or full-colored renditions of the baseball diamond hanging in the front of their worship area. Anyway, nearly forty churches of differing denominations and traditions participate in the learning community Bud leads, and so CoolChurches is partnering with Bud and Purpose Driven Ministries to expand this ministry to other areas.
What is a learning community? It’s an all-day gathering (usually once a month) for pastors and staff to learn from one another about how to be more effective in leading their respective congregations. There is a time for sharing (not bragging or bemoaning), time for learning (sometimes from an invited guest), time for eating lunch, and time for addressing the challenges that each member is facing so that everyone can move forward in their journey.
If you live in NC or in a bordering area and you’d like to participate in this kind of learning community, then drop an e-mail to Bud at TWRENNJR@triad.rr.com. Right now, we are looking at forming communities in the Raleigh and Charlotte areas.
Recent Sightings
Here are some things I’ve come across lately that might help you on your journey …
- “Hip New Churches Pray to Beat of a Different Drummer” on the 2.18.04 front page of the NY Times.
This was an almost fair rundown of what is becoming widely known as “the emerging church movement.” The article describes some of the usual suspects: Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, Ecclesia in Houston, and makes reference to Brian McLaren (the godfather of the emerging church). The article is a decent read, but the main power of its punch is that the emerging church is now mainstream enough to be given front page coverage on the (still) most respected newspaper on this planet.
- Making Room for Life, by Randy Frazee
Randy described the gist of this book to me over dinner a few months ago and I was greatly intrigued. Now the book is out (Zondervan) and available for anyone who is seeking to use biblical principles to reduce stress and create more time for relationships. Key to the book is what Randy calls the “Hebrew Dayplanner.”
- Humble Apologetics, by John Stackhouse
John is a prof at Regent University in Vancouver. Though most profs write terribly for pastors, this is a book that is readable, engaging, and filled with narratives that bring it to life. The book is a describes how/why today’s faithful must present the truths of Christ in ways that make sense to the post-Christian, post-modern, and post-logical population that surrounds us. Key to this kind of presentation is an apologetics that is truly humble: admitting that we really do not know with 100% certainty that Christianity is true, but confessing why we still believe.
- Transparency Edge, by Barbara Pagano and Elizabeth Pagano
This business book (published by McGraw-Hill) is subtitled “How Credibility Can Make or Break You in Business.” In a world where church leaders are ranked just below car salesmen in surveys of credible professions, this book may just have something to say to us. Here’s an excerpt: “When we discover how others perceive us, we are better able to align our intentions with reality and develop a plan for improvement. In order to learn and grow, we must have self-awareness, which, ironically, requires input from others. The paradox of self-awareness is that one cannot become self-aware through the self alone. …Asking others for their opinions about something conveys respect. When the subject is you, you practice a key aspect of transparency and show others that you value them, increasing your respect and credibility.”
<back to top
