September 22, 1999

Researcher finds five common
themes in transformed cities
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___HOUSTON--The problem with the evangelical Christian church in America is that it expects too little of God, George Otis told participants in a Houston conference on community transformation this month.
___To illustrate, he told a story about someone going to a restaurant, being handed an extensive menu, and then failing to look at the menu because of being distracted by conversation with everyone else at the table. When the server arrived to take the diner's order, he didn't know what to choose, so in frustration blurted out, "Just bring me a cup of coffee."
___"This is how the church of Jesus Christ is responding to the Holy Spirit when he comes to us," Otis said. Although God is ready and willing to do many great things, American Christians are content with "just a cup of coffee."
___Otis, founder and president of the Sentinel Group in Seattle, works on the front lines of an emerging Christian movement focused on community transformation. His primary thesis is that God not only can transform individual lives and individual churches but entire communities and regions.
___He has researched several dozen communities across the world where he believes community transformation has occurred.
___Otis identifies five organizing principles common to all these "transformed" communities. During the Houston conference, these ideas were explained by Otis and Jim Herrington, director of Mission Houston.
___ Persevering leaders. "Communities are going to be transformed when a growing number of leaders have a vision from God ... and are willing to serve that vision," Herrington said.
___But this vision may not be the same thing pastors and church leaders currently think of their vision, warned Herrington and Bob Beckett, pastor of the Dwelling Place Church in Hemet, Calif.
___The best definition of insanity is "doing the same thing you've always done but expecting different results," said Beckett, an adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.
___When churches and communities are not experiencing the full measure of what they could be with God's help, there is room for a new vision that comes only from selling out to God, Beckett said.
___The problem with many pastors is "we're building churches in communities we haven't spiritually bought into," he warned.
___Pastors and lay leaders alike should ask themselves why they live where they do and who put them there, he suggested.
___Anyone who determines God didn't place them where they are should find out where God wants them and go there immediately, Beckett advised. And anyone who believes they are living where God has placed them should be willing to accept God's vision for transforming that community.
___ Fervent, united prayer. "I'm convinced there is a relation between transforming the city and the drawing together of pastors into relationships of personal prayer and accountability," Herrington asserted.
___The spiritual truth behind this principle is that "God never pours all he has into one vessel," Otis added, explaining that even pastors must be willing to learn from each other and share burdens with each other.
___"United prayer is a declaration to the heavenlies that a community of believers is prepared for divine partnership," he said.
___ Social reconciliation. When pastors and lay leaders begin praying together across denominational, racial and social lines, reconciliation will begin, said Otis and Herrington.
___Persevering leaders must be "ruthlessly relational," Herrington said.
___ Public power encounters. When God begins moving in a community, pastors and lay leaders may be called on to do things that don't make sense immediately and that lead to confrontation, Otis said.
___Throughout the conference, he and others detailed peculiar activities spiritual leaders in transformed communities had felt led of God to do at certain times. In some cases, the quest for community transformation has placed Christians in direct confrontation with occult and spiritist leaders.
___ Diagnostic research. The primary diagnostic tool advocated by Otis is spiritual mapping, a means of determining what past or present spiritual influences may be influencing a community.
___Armed with this information, intercessors can pray more fervently and specifically for God to change the root problems in a community, Otis said.
___"I'm not saying this is going to be a pleasant thing," he added. "It's going to be painful. ... You're going to have to weep over your Jerusalem.
___"God is calling us today to identify and pull up offending spiritual roots."

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