November 10, 2005

How do we "do church"? How do we lead people to love Jesus?

I recently moved to a new city (I sort of retired, or something like that), and hence needed to find a new church. I am somewhat impatient with the "traditional" evangelical American way of doing church, and so I want an alternative. My wife, having suffered through life with me for, lo, these many years, has also become somewhat jaded toward business as usual.

Without my knowledge, she looked on the website of the Willow Creek Association, and selected a church with an unusual name that seemed within a reasonable distance. Then she called them and left a message, saying, "We're new here and tomorrow we are unloading a large rental truck at this address, and if you are interested, we could use some help." She didn't tell me anything about this until the next day. I thought, right, fat chance anyone will show up to unload a truck for strangers. How naive is that?

The next day, as I was slaving away, and thinking I was far too old for this, a guy I had never seen -- with a ponytail, yet -- showed up at our new house and said he was there to help us. He was the associate pastor at the church.

Needless to say, we went to that church the next Sunday, and after looking at them closer, we have remained. I am sort of the elder statesman there, as the average age of these folks is perhaps 30ish. The oldest "elder" or pastor is probably 31.

As we have gotten to know them, we see in the leadership a passion to be something more than a typical -- though younger -- church. They want to be a "thriving" church, with real community, "exciting" worship and more than just an intellectual belief system.

But they seem to be at a loss for what to do next. Someone has said it is insanity to do more of the same and expect a different result. They don't want to appear crazy.

I am interested in responses from readers, ideas of what a leader does to move from just doing church as routine to seeing the presence of God in their midst and being a powerful spiritual force in the lives of the community.

Thoughts?

Posted by Larry Baden at 10:30 AM | Comments (15)