Grace Church exists to glorify our Heavenly Father by
 continually making more disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

PASTOR'S PENS 2007

Grace Church of Burlington September 16, 2007 “The great weakness of North American spirituality is that it is all about us. And the more there is of us, the less there is of God.” Eugene Peterson               One of the constant conversations among pastors and church leaders is how to make a church attractive. It’s almost shocking the lengths that churches will go to make their church attractive, to make it stand out from “the herd.”   Recently, I read of a church in South Florida, where according to their website, the pastor, Troy Gramling of the Flamingo Road Church is getting “naked.” The web site says, “No...not that kind of naked, a new kind of naked.” So starting on September 9th Troy will be on a 24-hour webcam for five weeks in four locations: house, car, hotel, and office. Every day, all day, viewers can see his life in a fishbowl - the good, the bad, the great, the ugly...             When Jesus said, “I will build my church,” I just don’t think that He was thinking of the Truman Show/Real World genre to accomplish that. And while I can relate to this church’s desire to make their church attractive, I believe that we need to be careful that we don’t cheapen the Gospel. Every pastor and church faces the pressure to meet people’s needs and keep them coming back. After three decades of the church growth movement, churches are more contemporary and relevant than before.             Yet, despite being more relevant and contemporary than ever before, overall church attendance across the country is still dropping. Basically, we are reaching the same ones that we have always reached. If churches grow, it is primarily transfer growth from other evangelical churches. Less Americans attend church today than ten years ago. And we need to ask the tough question: Why are we losing people just as we’re making Church more attractive to them?             Personally, I believe that while Christians are attracted to “church lite,” churches that water down the message and lower the bar of commitment, lost people are looking for something that is real and has significance. They are weary of anything similar to the froth that they encounter in contemporary culture. The Church, for them, needs to be different.             Biblical Christianity is first and foremost about commitment. A constant theme in the New Testament is that we as Christians individually and the Church corporately – must die! “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.  For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:24). While we often apply this passage to individuals, we don’t always apply it to churches. The focus of church ministry is often growth and health, not death. But if we apply it to churches, new questions emerge. What does it mean for a church to die to itself? How can churches deny themselves, abandoning self-interest and self-preservation? Can church ministry become congruent with the call to sacrifice and even die? Do we believe if churches do this, they will really begin to live?             It’s not easy to ask these questions. One cartoon shows a long line of antelope, with the pair at the front about to step  over the edge of a cliff.   “I don’t want to be the leader anymore,” one says to the other. Nobody likes leading others to die to themselves. For one thing, we have to go first. Yet the call to die to ourselves, both as individuals and churches, is not optional. It is central to what it means to follow Jesus.             So how do we die? This call to die reshapes how we live as churches. It’s not about me or you then, it’s not even about my family. It’s tempting to come to church as a consumer hoping that my needs and desires will get met. We face the challenging task of orienting ourselves around God and His mission instead of us and our needs. It’s also not about the institution, it’s about Jesus Christ. We don’t want folk to be loyal to our church, we want them to be loyal and committed to Jesus Christ. That’s why our vision needs to be more about His Kingdom than our individual church. And following Jesus may involve actions that cost or threaten individual ministries.             It’s also not about methods or ministry/worship style. While those are important, they are not the primary issue. We are facing a challenge that cannot be answered by methodological or stylistic changes, but in a fundamental reorientation of our ministries away from ourselves.  It’s not even about success. North American culture is obsessed with size, glamour and celebrity, and that spills into the Church. Some of the most effective ministries throughout Church history have been led by the most unlikely people in hidden places, although they will never meet our culture’s definition of success.             Dying to ourselves will not solve every problem, but applying this passage to our churches is much better than the alternative. Our greatest challenge is not about making our churches more attractive. It’s about leading our church to die to itself, so that we can really start to live. We must take up our cross, die to self and live in His resurrection power for Him. Can I challenge you, are there parts of your thinking and values that are not on the cross...that are still kicking and screaming with the old flesh? At Grace, let’s make sure that it really is all about Jesus!