March 31, 1999

Collapse of 'church culture'
shaping 21st century thinking
___By Marv Knox
___Editor
___COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.--The future of the church already has arrived, and it's turning things upside-down, church strategist Reggie McNeal told Baptist state convention executives and editors.
___"We have a window of opportunity, and what we do in the 21st century is being charted right now," claimed McNeal, director of the leadership development team for the South Carolina Baptist Convention and a former Texas pastor.
___He described six "present futures"--trends

REGGIE MCNEAL

that already have developed--which are shaping the church:
___ The collapse of the church culture. Church no longer is the dominant institution shaping culture in America, he explained.
___"We're still suffering from the delusion that we're in charge, but we are in the backwaters of the Christian movement."
___For example, 170,000 people accept Jesus as their Savior every day, more than 1 million people become Christians each week--in China, India, Africa and South America. Meanwhile, 12,000 North Americans drop out of church each week, he said.
___The church in America must ask, "How do we rethink the expression of Christianity apart from 'churchianity'?" McNeal insisted. "Much of what passes for Christianity in North America is a reflection of church culture. ... We're going to have to get younger and more diverse and redefine what Christianity is all about."
___Christian churches must set priorities and allocate resources to the "green places"--the fertile areas where new believers will come to faith in Christ, he said.
___"For over 40 years, we've not gained 1 percent of market share" among North American residents, he added. "We're in the God business. None of us would believe Christ died for diminishing returns."
___ The shift from church growth to kingdom growth.
___Christians shouldn't be asking, "How do we grow this church?" with a focus solely on numbers of members and attendance, McNeal said.
___"Church growth can be idolatrous," he cautioned. "Getting 350 more people is only one measure of growth. Kingdom growth is more than measuring by numbers, by the bottom line."
___Church growth vs. kingdom growth can be compared to the difference between taking a cruise or going on a mission trip, he observed. Church growth can seek only to strengthen the institution, and members are tempted to think, "We bought our ticket; we exist just for ourselves," he explained. But kingdom growth thinks about the mission or the movement, and members believe, "We're called into God's kingdom for this."
___Christians must realize much of what God is doing in North America is happening outside the church, he said. "People are looking for God, and they're disappointed if they don't meet him" in church, he added, citing a recent poll that found 61 percent of church members said they rarely or never encounter God at church.
___ The second Reformation.
___The Protestant Reformation returned the word of God, the Bible, into the hands of the people, he reported. "The second Reformation is returning the work of God to his people," he stressed.
___The church should not be asking, "How do we employ more church workers?" but rather, "How do we deploy more of God's priests?"-- equipped and empowered laypeople, he said.
___"In many churches, the pastor's vision is lagging behind the people's vision. No one gives them significant tasks to do," McNeal lamented.
___Effective churches are utilizing more and more laypeople in ministry and affirming their efforts, he added. He cited an example of a layman who led a friend to faith in Christ and then had the privilege of baptizing him, noting, "What gets rewarded gets done."
___ The development of missional partnerships and alliances. Congregations should not be concerned with "beating every other church game in town," he advised. Instead, churches should be asking, "How do we strategize and work with other believers to establish the body of Christ in our community?"
___He advocated teamwork-- "learning clusters" of cooperative ministers, joint worship services, marriage enrichment and lay leadership training retreats sponsored together by several churches, and smaller churches pooling together to support a youth minister in their community.
___"The challenge is how to 'bless' or encourage this," he said. "But the spiritual principle is, 'We really will have to lose our lives to save others.' The more we try to hang on to the old ways, the more we'll lose."
___ The emergence of apostolic leadership. Apostolic leadership--modeled after Jesus' apostles--has several characteristics, he said. They include vision, kingdom consciousness, a sense of mission, a focus on empowering others and an entrepreneurial spirit, McNeal said.
___The church shouldn't waste its time trying to "tweak our current leadership-training methods so we can help people do better what doesn't work," he declared. Rather, the church should focus on recapturing the leadership-development methods of the early church.
___These include mentoring, calling out leaders who have exhibited special gifts and providing field-driven, on-the-job training, he said.
___ The return of focus to spiritual formation. "There is no necessary correlation between Christian maturity and the rear-end time members put in pews and Sunday school classes," he reported. "On the contrary, there is a negative correlation between the length of time a person has been a Christian and evangelistic fervor."
___"How do we develop kingdom people, world-class Christians?" he asked. "We've got to look at how we can get beyond these (church) walls and out into the world. We've got to feed this desperate hunger for God to show up in our churches.
___"And what creates disciples? Other disciples. You've got to get heart-on-heart, life-on-life. ... Most of our churches have too much going on to become spiritual hotbeds, because that takes time."

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