What do people want from Church?

What do people want from their church? It's evident by the massive spectrum of churches that there is no generalization that can be made about this question. I think popular answers include.

• I want community
• I want family
• I want "something for my kids"
• I want music I enjoy
• I want a great preacher
• I want genuineness

But then there is a list of "don't wants"

• I don't want to feel "judged"
• I don't want people to talk about money
• I don't want to commit more than about 45 minutes a week to this thing
• I don't want to have to "share my feelings"

The lists go on and no-one's list is the same. 

As I'm working at Kinetic I'm seeing an interesting thing. I've worked at 3 churches now. A very old church with a lot of traditional ties that is in a very established community in a simi urban area. A vey new church in the suburbs with some traditional roots that has established themselves as pretty "adult contemporary" and now an "edgy" church that meets in a school with all the trimmings of that style of church. I've loved all three experiences. Each one has presented great spiritual growth for me as well as fair amounts of spiritual challenge. They have all given me opportunities to serve Jesus within the church as well as in the community. So, this post is by no means a commentary on which way is the "right" way to "do church" In fact, the question is quite the opposite. 

As I look across the spectrum, there is a common issue. Churches loose people. They just...go away. Why is that? Some of them turn their back on God. Some of them just hop from church to church looking for...who knows what? And my question is "why"? 

That's all I've got for now. just the question why?

As we look forward to a new church work in the coming years I hope to understand at least a portion of this question. I don't want to pander to whiny Christians who just can't be happy. But I do hope I can better understand better how to teach people to love the church as the bride of Christ and "be" the church to the world while being way less concerned about whether or not they are getting "what they want" out of it.

 

Jesus is God

Ok, here's a 'little' theological mind dump for ya.

How much have you thought about the fact that Jesus is God? I've noticed that the divinity of Jesus is something that is lightly discussed among Christians in the circles that I run in. Not that people deny it or don't teach it. It's just not heavily discussed.

Well, it's true. Jesus claimed to be God (John 10:30). Prophets predicted that he would be God (Is 9:6) . The Angels announced that He shall be called "God with Us".  It's well understood among conservative Christianity (I know not exactly what they phrase means but I do know it to be general enough to make the point) that Jesus is considered one with God. You've probably heard a sweet analogy about the trinity being like a 3 leaf clover or like water in that it can exist in 3 states yet be one. These analogies are helpful but don't fully dive into the power that come from understanding the Jesus IS devine...Jesus is God.

Phil 2 teaches that he was equal with God yet chose to release the privilege of being equal with God so that he could fulfill the needed task of humbly coming to earth to redeem humanity. Yet in this human state he never looses the "God-ness" that makes him capable of being the savior. His miracles were a testimony to his power over nature. He claimed the power of sin and demons in a way that no-one else could. In fact, it was his very name that sent demons running. In his punishment and sacrifice durring the final days of his life he exhibited a singleminded resoluteness that is unparalleled. Even in torment on the cross he is quoted saying something that I would have never considered saying...."Father, forgive them..."  If that's not the love of God I don't know what is. Sure, lots of Good men have remained composed durring torture....but then, by his own power, he rose from the dead.

I love CS Lewis (others have noted too) simplicity here. Jesus was either a Liar, a Lunatic, or Lord. In addition to that I'd say he was either a Liar, a Lunatic, or God.

Titus 3:11-13 acknowledges him as both God and Savior.

11 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,

Knowing more about the 1st century Jewish mind has also helped in understanding this question. The tile for Jesus, "Lord"that is often used to to translate a Jewish title "Adoni" which was the substitute name that Jews used for God (instead of the forbidden name "YHWH") becomes one of the most commonly used titles for Jesus. Our Jehovah's witness friends constantly criticize Christians for removing God's name (Jehovah) from the Bible. It is an interesting fact to note that the word Adoni (now showing up in many of our English translations as a capital LORD) is a more Biblically accurate title that even that of "Jehovah".

Jesus clearly accepted the title of God.

Charles Spurgeon said in a sermon on Isaiah 9, (or listen)

The mistake of those who profess Christ but do not call him Mighty God.
We do continually affirm that an error, with regard to the divinity of Christ, is absolutely fatal, and that a man cannot be right in his judgment upon any part of the gospel unless he think rightly of him who is personally the very center of all the purposes of heaven, and the foundation of all the hopes of earth.

He goes on to say that if Jesus were not God, he would rather become a Muslim than remain a Christian. Because that would make Jesus a liar and Mohammed a better leader of his disciples. Muslims have no question in their mind over this issue. Jesus would have been wrong to be so unclear if his intentions were not to leave us believing that he is God. 

Ok...This is by no means a scholarly presentation of this thought but I hope it is helpful to you. I've been in a bit of a personal battle lately over this topic.

More Learning (Small Groups, Front Line, Early Plant Thoughts)

So this past weekend was excellent. My mother-in-law came to visit. Always a welcome guest! Unfortunately I didn't get to spend a ton of time with her and the fam. Of course, I'm sure she was much happier to see the younger residents of our house anyway. 

Small Group Vision Meeting

Saturday, while the kids and wife were having "Nanna-Ma" time (great matriarchal name right?) I was with the Kinetic small group leaders. It was the vision/strategy meeting for the year. Before I get to some content let me get stoked about the location for a second. We met in a board room in the clubhouse at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. That place was ballin!

It was a great environment. The director of Small groups is Daniel Perkins. Great guy! You might know his dad (Dr. Clay Perkins of MACU). He and Dave kinda ran the show but it was really a all-hands-on-deck kinda meeting. We identified 4 "wins" for Kinetic small groups (i.e. how do we know when they're working). We identified a plan for growth and retention of small groups. We also did some planning for training up new leaders. The lesson of the day was pretty clear to me. Vision is a team thing. It takes a visionary to plant a good vision but it takes a team to grow one. I saw that first hand on Saturday. 

I'll be leading a small group starting in 2 or 3 weeks.

Sunday: Front line

Kinetic's Welcome ministry is called "Front Line." I'll be working front line for the next several weeks. The current coordinator is Allison Hodges. She's great....spunky, funny, and very honest with people. IT was cool shadowing her and learning her philosophy and thoughts about the importance of Front line. 

Frontline arrives at 830 to set up the foyer. Coffee, snacks, breakfast bars, lemonade, and water. A lot of atmosphere stuff. Music. It's all very deliberate. Then, the teams breaks from the technical side of set up to be reminded of their purpose. 

They have a phrase at Kinetic. "Vision leaks every two weeks." So, Allison takes is seriously. She has a vision meeting every week before they put on their game faces and welcome people as they come through the doors. This team may be the first faces that someone far from God ever associates with God. Impressions are made in something like the first 7 seconds. Front line does a lot to prime the hearts and minds of people as they get ready for worship.

Allison has a baby due in a few weeks. I will be doing some of her work when that time comes.

Monday: 

Monday was a day for setting my eyes back on the path that I'm on. With moving and getting situated it's been hard for me to really focus and remember why exactly I'm here. Monday was a great day to be reminded of that. Dave and I met for a while to talk about some goals and purposes. He's given me a few assignments that I'm really excited about. I'll be working on a few projects and personal growth things that I can see making HUGE impact on who I am and how I think about evangelism and church work. That stuff will come out later as I work through it in the blog. Our goal for this year is to simulate as many of the things that I might experience in the first year or so of church planting so that I can have a little experience under my belt. Other than that, I discovered a really important aspect of the whole residency. I realized that this year is about so much more than ME learning about church planting. It's a chance for my family to get a taste of it too! LIndsey and I talked about this idea a great length over the last few days and it's really revolutionized the way we're both seeing the upcoming year. We see that God is going to allow growth in both of our understandings, attitudes, and philosophies of the church.

Tuesday

One of my first "assignments" was probably the biggest thing I need to work on in my Christian walk...Personal evangelism. The idea of intentionally placing myself in situations or lifestyles that might lead to me meeting and winning someone (that I dont' already know) to Christ. So, I've been tasked with doing that. Meeting people, engaging them in actual relationship and getting involved in discipleship with them. The truth is, this is not a reality show or a "game."  It's real life. So, I'm not going to post a lot of detail about people and their business here. I've had many seasons of practicing personal evangelism and the truth is, it becomes easier once you know someone. So, right now I'm trying to meet someone. I'm getting out into the community some. Camping out at starbucks to see who the regulars are. I plan to hit up some music stores (since that's "my peoples") going to parks with the kids to meet families with kids. The reason this is so real is because It'll be vital for me once I'm in the church planting phase. I'll be living in community with tons of people that I don't know and I'll need to be deliberate and strategic about meeting them. 

Also, I've got a big project I'm working on. I'll talk about it more once I get it fleshed out some but it maybe the definitive learning experience of this residency. 

This post is getting long and I'm trying meet people so....I'm out for now. 

Thanks for the prayers! See ya.  

Welcome to the Residency.

So, as I promised yesterday, I am back into blogging again. My purpose for this season of blogging will be to chronicle my journey over this coming year in my new role. I'm sure I'll have many of the same types of blog features that I've had through the years like movie/book/etc. reviews, rants about whatever, and quirky fun stuff. But I also want to keep a running log of my experience here.

For sake of recap...a little background. Roughly 6 months ago, my wife and I heard the clear call of God that we should work towards planting a church somewhere in a community that was lacking one. After much soul searching and counsel, I decided to first step into a 1 year leadership residency at Kinetic Church in Charlotte NC. Kinetic  is about 6 years old. Their lead pastor, Dave Milam, offered the opportunity for me to come onboard as a full time staff member and work alongside him and the other church leadership. The goal is simply to see the inside of a church plant and learn a little about what's under the hood. So, here we are. Living outside of Charlotte in a town called Kannapolis.

I want to take some time to talk about what I've done so far and what It's taught me. I guess I can boil this first week down into a couple of experiences. First, preaching. I preached on my first Sunday at Kinetic. It went pretty well in terms of delivery, crowd attention, even content. But the goal is to critique and improve.  So, today Dave and I watched the tape of the message. We got about half way through before our time was up but I learned a lot in the time we had. There are mannerism and habits that I  can identify (some that I was aware of and others that Dave helped me see) that I can work to harness. Many of the things we do while doing public speaking are not in themselves evil. Things like pacing, hand gestures, poses, eye contact, etc. Can all be used to great effect OR when misused can prove to be distracting or discrediting. So the lesson is...watch yourself and be deliberate.  Also, there are certain words that we use that are (as I heard on a radio broadcast yesterday) poor economy of word usage. Words like, "thing(s)" or "that" are often used without actually adding meat to a sentence. For example, "there are two things I want to tell you about grace" vs. "there are two principles I want to tell you about grace." Both give the same basic promise but to call the "things" "principles" adds meat to the bones.

Today I was enrolled in a stand up comedy class! Dave enrolled me to give me a chance to take an unconventional look at public speaking. I'm actually really excited about this. I won't lie, it makes me a little nervous to know that a bunch of Kinetic people will probably crash my graduation when I'll have to do a 5 minute routine. Haha..but hey, everyone's funnier in a comedy club.....right?

The second element I worked on some this week was Small groups. Over the course of this year I want to consume as much knowledge and understanding as possible about small groups. It seems that the greatest and most meaningful growth in a church can happen at this type of level. I met with Daniel Perkins today to talk about Small groups. I'll be leading one this fall. There is so much I could say about that right now but I'll save some for later. Daniel really opened my eye to some good ideas for small groups.

I've really enjoyed my first week "kinda" working here. (They've allowed me to kinda ease into the work load. I'll start full-on on Monday.) The other guys on staff (Daniel Hodges is the worship Pastor and Dave) have been great. The elders are young guys with big hearts and wisdom that is clearly seen. The ladies at the church have been all over making my wife comfortable. Lindsey has absolutely loved hanging out with them.

Tomorrow we finish watching my sermon and I'll be getting on my feet a little bit in figuring out what to do with myself every day.

We're in Charlotte

Whew, what a marathon of a month. We're here. All moved in to the Charlotte NC area (Our house is in Kannapolis). I started my new job this week. I'll be more "officially" working next week. Right now they're letting me get settled in and I'm working from Starbucks this week. (Not too shabby)

I plan to get back into the blog swing too. If you look back to old posts you'll probably see that I've made that commitment more than once. Oh well.

You can get a much fuller update on the happs of the Woolard fam in our new news letter.

Silas has started kindergarden this week too! Wow. He's getting so big. We're actually home schooling this year and he's doing great so far. Svannah is just busy being too dang cute. She turned 2 last month and she's full of spunk. Lindsey is wonderful as ever. She loves it here and is really making good friends already with a few people from our new church.

So, that's me easing back into the blog world. More to come later.

Peace.