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

Vision and Passion

Vision is derived from the passion of a leader who has a prophetic fire burning within the soul to accomplish something significant for God. Groups may take this vision, help produce congregational ownership, and delineate its implementation, but, without prophetic fire to begin with, there are no images of preferred futures that produce systemic change. If pastors are not clear about either their role or that of the Church, most congregations will remain dormant, irrelevant to life change, and in decline.
--Paul D. Borden, Direct Hit

Fear cripples people & congregations

My experience is that fear cripples both people and congregations.

Leonard Sweet wrote in The Gospel According to Starbucks (not the best book he has written, but there were a few quotable lines)
“The greatest gift my mentor gave me was helping me learn to move through my fear and to embrace creativity and spontaneity. When I learned to trust God and act on the ideas, dreams, and passions he placed in my heart, that’s when my life and ministry took a new energizing and fruit-bearing direction. What would your life look like if you were no longer controlled by your fears of what others might think?”

2 Timothy 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

If only we would claim the power that is from God.