I don't know the official structure of Reach Australia, but it generally feels like it has been driven out of EV Church, which Andrew Heard pastors. In the few times that I have heard Andrew Heard speak I thought he was provocative, perhaps maybe too much and he could do with some nuance or balance in some of his statements. However, in this book, I thought he came across very well, balanced and nuance in tricky areas.
I don't know much about City to City, but I get the impression that the book Center Church by Tim Keller is sort of like their handbook (I am happy to be wrong). In the same way, this book (in parts) comes across as something like the Reach Australia handbook, as this covers a few things I have already encountered from RA.
There are many lost people in Australia who need to hear about Jesus. Churches on the whole grow and then seem to reach a saturation point where they get comfortable. Once they have grown and become viable mission heat seems to slow down. As a Church goes through the years they create their own culture and can become resistant to change. Andrew notices this after his own church had only been around for 10 years. When things change, people start appealing to what they used to do in the past, even if it was only a few years ago, as something that can't be changed. We need to think through these ruts to see if they are still working and still reaching the lost.
If your church isn't growing, it will need to change. The problem is that all change comes with pain, but unless you don't feel the pain of not reaching the world, then you won't change. Essentially, there is a choice of what pain you want to choose. Andrew takes us through the "five plus one model" that is to help drive our churches to mission and to feel the need to grow and change, to lose this sight may mean we are in the pain of not doing anything extra. In short, they are:
1. God's plan in Christ is to grow the church
2. Heaven and Hell are real
3. Jesus died on the cross to save sinners
4. Life is short
5. Our love for others is meant to reflect God's love for others
The "plus one" ties the above together to show that there is a Biblical imperative for the church to make disciples of all nations.
Pastors need to be outward and outcome-focused. Instead of just doing the same things over and over again, it is worth looking at the results of what you are doing. Even better it is worth articulating what targets your church is aiming for before you do something, so you can work out if something worked or not. If other churches in your area are getting converts and you are not, you can't blame the culture or the soil as being too hard - perhaps it is your methods or priorities in mission.
Even putting it this way could work against some Calvinistic theology in that it is God who is sovereign and is the only one who can change hearts for Himself. However, it is worth noting that when it comes to sermon prep, ministers do put in a lot of work, even with the same theology that it is God who changes hearts. There is still work to do in ministry, and while we can't change hearts, God's ordinary means include using us people for His mission. Andrew was careful to say while we don't control the outcomes of ministry we can still influence them. The way we live in step with the Holy Spirit should produce fruit in our lives, eg how much we pray, and study God's word, and so by extension those and other things we do or not do may have an influence on how our churches function. The patterns and cultures we set up do have a real influence on people around us.
There is a whole section on numbers and the dangers we have about monitoring or not monitoring them. To me, it seems prudent to know what your church budget is and to forecast spending. In the same way, it seems prudent to know who your people are, how many are staying and how many are coming. Numbers don't tell you everything, but they do tell you something. You measure what you love (like when a baby is born, their weight is a key aspect of what we want to know about them). Perhaps we should spend more time measuring the people in our church as they are more important than the budget.
Of course, there are dangers of depersonalising people, but structures and systems can help. Paul tells Timothy to keep a list (an early Excel spreadsheet?) of widows who are and aren't eligible for support (1 Tim 5:9-11). In Acts 6 we see a need for a structure to ensure care gets done among the believers. All this is to say is that organisation and systems are useful as long as we remember their place and purpose in that they are tools, (which could get more complicated as the church grows) to meet the outcome of the church, not the other way round.
Near the end of the book, there was a section for ministers about the balance of work and trusting in God. Andrew did encourage one day a week for rest, and tried to not be so leaglistic about work hours but did offer a rough guide to say somewhere between 50-60 hours is a good amount to start with. (The next book I read suggested 55 hours). He interestingly also had tips like, don't work the night before your day off, don't work more than two nights in a row and things like that, which I liked in how Andrew comes off quite practical, once he has put a few caveats down.
I perhaps had one small disagreement in the book that I haven't fully sorted out myself. Andrew looked at the role of the pastor as a shepherd and tossed around what that might mean. He pushed back a little on Eugene Perterson who gave a warm personal description of a pastor-shepherd, how they should know their people's names and know the scriptures. Andrew looks at the word shepherd throughout the Bible and who that applies to, and points out that Moses and David were given this title, they lead people who they didn't know.
I thought that perhaps while it is true that to shepherd means to lead, it might be a bit of a conflation of other roles Moses and David had which ministers don't, in that they were also part of civil leadership and not church leadership, which may mean they wouldn't know everyone's name they rule over. They were also building a nation and not only a church. Andrew said there is a danger in persuading the "church as family" model (or any other one-sided model). A pastor is to lead people and equip them to do ministry, and in turn, as the church grows it will need to change and get more structured and organised. Even large family gatherings require more systems and structures to organise.
I think I get the point that making rules that may limit growth like that a minister needs to know everyone's name, should be questioned, so more people can worship God. But I do fear that on a long enough timeline a minister could be abstracted too much from the people they oversee, and become simply a talking head and personality who most people might not know. There are dangers all around, and I haven't fully sorted this issue out - it did make me think about the shepherd role and how much that involved ruling and how much it involved knowing the people. Jesus says He is the great shepherd who knows His sheep and they know Him (John 10:14). How much of that model is to be passed down to the undershepherds?
I did appreciate this book more than I thought I would. Andrew wrote well and convincingly on the contentious issues of aiming and going for growth. He dealt well with the idea of measuring growth and dealing with the dangers of your own heart in all of this. Overall, I do think this could be a helpful book for ministers who are willing to change systems and structures to reach the lost in their area.
0 comments:
Post a Comment