What are we doing? Oh, and why are we doing it? Huge questions. Is our "mission" to get as many people as possible to "pray the prayer," get on the rolls, so they'll go to heaven when they die?

I know forms of that question have been asked lately by the likes of Willard, McLaren, and Hunter. I'm asking it in this context: what is the purpose of the church? Why do we plant them? What are we trying to accomplish? Those questions, I'm sure, have been asked and answered a thousand times. Well, get ready, I already asked them again --- now I'm getting ready to develop some kind of answer. I think there is presently much confusion in our emerging ranks surrounding the area of evangelism.

We are asking questions like, "what does it really mean to do evangelism?" And we're coming up with different answers than we have been familiar withom the past. Part of this comes from our shifting definitions of what is means to be the church and why we are doing it. For so long, many of our evangelical churches have had the primary goal of "reaching people for Jesus" in order to "get them saved." Many of us have been inundated with a certain pressure to perform in the area of what has been called evangelism.

OK, these crazy new church planters plant these "churches" and 6 months later, someone asks them the inevitable question, "how's your church going?" Meaning, most often, "how many people do you have?" We are then faced with a challenge = a challenge to our definition of success. Can we answer, "it's going very well" without having "gained" a person in 6 months? I think we are beginning to be able to honestly do that.

"What do you mean it's going very well with no people increase in 6 months!?" Well, I mean, what is your definition of success and how do you measure 'evangelism'? In our new context, we are doing evangelism in ways that may not even look like evangelism in our former settings. Our goals will change because our definitions have changed. And what we look like we're accomplishing from the outside will most assuredly change. We will even have a hard time dealing with it perhaps.

The word "slow" will become very familiar. I will be considered a failure by many. I came across a very appropriate Thomas Merton quote recently that speaks to some of the underlying attitudes that are connected to this: "Modern man believes he is fruitful and productive when his ego is aggressively affirmed, when he is visibly active, and when his action produces obvious results." By "modern" he means "contemporary" --- could as well be "contemporary church planters believe they are fruitful and productive when..."

It is cripplingly unfortunate that this attitude has invaded us as much as it has. What am I trying to say? Don't evangelize? No. Not saying that. I'm getting around to saying this: that we should develop a more healthy definition of success when it comes to churches and evangelism. We may need to even rethink what it means to evangelize people. And most of all I'm saying we need to seriously rethink, and we are doing this already, why we are planting churches.

What is our primary goal? I believe that is to facilitate the transformation of lives into the image of Christ, fully, holistically. This is WHY we are starting these faith communities - to act as transformation stations. So, we move from our main goal being what people call "mission" to what people call "discipleship." So, mission is what we do out of our transformation. We are, as a local faith community, a Kingdom outpost, a halfway house, a transformation vehicle. We are to be about becoming, as a community, and facilitating the becoming of who we were designed to be by God.

So, our overloaded former focus on going out and bringing people in and getting them to "close the deal" is going away. The short-term is being replaced by the long-haul. The quick doorway with the longer journey down a path. So, where has this shift brought us? I hope, to a healthier place - to a place where we actually get down to the real thick business of being the Body of Christ together. I hope we will shed this false pressure to build some kind of empire or even to feverishly "get people saved."

By God's Grace we will start really living --- living as God's people in the world, building real relationships with people. We will begin to naturally be witnesses to His transformation in our own lives. And maybe, along the way, we will invite some folks to walk with us on this amazing journey.

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Gosh, I felt the energy jumping right off the screen as I read your comments. I am church secretary of a small Presbyterian church and we are just beginning this journey on which you seem to be miles ahead. My question is this. . . .in order to change our thinking and living as God's chosen must we leave the traditions of the past? In other words, must our church change into something intirely "new" in order to be engergized spiritually?
--Sherry ( wesites at earthlink dot net ) on 10/15/2005; 8:08:01 PM