Transformational Church

Is it any wonder then that people live in a state of confusion over the identity and calling of the church? Loren Mead says that the church today exists within a context of ambiguity. The culture is a mixture of openness, indifference, confusion, and hostility toward the church. It is my experience that most people enter the church not knowing just what the church is and its purpose—its identity and calling—or the notion they have is misinformed. That we live in an age of ambiguous cultural perceptions toward the church within a reality of religious pluralism means that the church has to work very hard at being clear about its own witness to the world.

The task of a transformational church in a consumer culture is to assist people to discover their gifts, assume greater ownership of the congregation’s life and mission, and do what works for them. Discipleship is not to exhaust people or fragment families because they spend too much time doing “church work.” Discipleship is putting one’s passions to work in ways that promote wellness and wholeness in the whole of life and in all arenas, in the church and the world, for the sake of Jesus. From the days of the infant church until now, the baptized live in the world among all walks of life.
--Rick Barger, A New and Right Spirit

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Flush from a mighty victory over Baal’s prophets at the contest on Mount Carmel, Elijah frantically flees Jezebel’s wrath, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (1 Kings 19).

So, the only person surprised when self-pity seizes Elijah’s soul and takes him down into the pit is Elijah. In this sad state of the soul, all his marvelous intuitive, spiritual strengths are turned against him, and he actually begins to believe the devil’s lie that God has abandoned him. Self-pity opens us to enormous self-deception, doesn’t it?

But the moment of our importunity is often God’s opportunity. The still, small voice ministers mercy even while posing the question: “What are you doing here?” What is he doing indeed! What Elijah desperately needs and longs for but cannot name in his muted and defeated condition is the healing of the purpose of his life. This healing of purpose happens only when we are pushed up against the reason for our existence. Only when God begins to ask the core questions of our lives can we hope to recover any sense of the Divine calling upon our lives.
--Gary Straub & Judy Turner, Your Calling as a Leader