“The celebrity church must die. And doing anything—like video venues—that prolongs its life, even in the name of the lost, runs counter to the best interests of the Church in all its expressions, big and small, and its mandate to see more people not only reached, but gifted, trained, and sent.”
Have a read of the whole post - it’s a great explanation of why it’s not such a great thing to have churches going the “multi-site, teaching via satellite link” type of direction. But I especially love the start of this quote: “The celebrity church must die”. Because I think that the “celebrity church” is such a dangerous mindset - this concept that the work of the kingdom gets performed by paid staff that we support financially.
And at the moment, that’s the challenge (it seems to me) for YVV. My church has grown to the point where we can’t all fit into one service, and while that’s fundamentally a practical issue, the move to two (theoretically identical) services has the potential to change how the church community sees itself, as well as how the church sees it’s leadership. The size of the church necessitates that the leadership doesn’t know everyone in the church. So how we deal with that necessary aloofness without having that communcate value and status, is a very difficult thing.
Of course, we might just plant a bunch of churches, give away all our best people and the problem goes away
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Agree….
My thoughts are I am also with the article and the traditional church planting.
I have visited mega churches were the only interaction you get is via a screen and its cold, dead cold, no impact, no touch, no personal conversations, no interaction with the leaders etc.
Thing with church planting is that God will ALWAYS rise someone up if a need is needed. One reason why no one rises up is because there is no opportunity (been in a church like that). Give opportunity and God will rise people up.
mmmmm….we can debate all we like what is right…what is the best way. For me…the proof is in the pudding…what is working?
But what does it mean to be “working”? Are you measuring the quality of discipleship, the level of community transformation? Or is it about measuring how many people show up on a Sunday morning for two hours? We can’t just turn the model of our churches into a numbers game
Define leadership. Is leadership the person on the platform? Is that just one role of leadership? Even in a small church you don’t always have a relationship with the “leader” even though he may know your name. Is it possible that in church the definition of “leadership” and “pastors” needs to change? It’s interesting to think on one hand that in a smaller church the “leadership’ knows everyone and is known by everyone, but doesn’t that make it Leader/staff/celebrity oriented in a smaller way. The fact is is that often smaller churches are more staff dependent than bigger ones because they need fewer people to pastor fewer people and that usually gets dumped on the staff. (At least that is often the expectation of small churches. “I want to be Pastored by the Pastor and I expect him to be friends with me.” Is this starting with the assumption that everyone needs to be “pastored” by the paid Pastors. That isn’t a new testament model anymore than the “mega-Church’ This is a dangerous assumption because that is saying that home-groups aren’t an expression of church, discipleship, pastoring. I agree that video-multi-site can be “virtual” church However I have seen it “work” not in shear numbers, but actualy developing a community pressence in a way that a smaller church plant would struggle with, but it’s still not my cup of tea. However I actually contend that even the small churches I have been a part of (100 or so) most of my life transformation, discipleship and pastoring came from relationships like in home groups not with the staff.
My life, in general, has been most impacted by people I have known in day-to-day life. I think Paul(as a person not an apostle) personaly impacted a small group of leaders (Timothy, Titus, Silas, etc) and lead a larger groups of people. Most of us want to be personaly impacted by our “leaders” and let the leading be done by ourselves (I want to know you, but don’t try to lead me). One could also make an argument that multi-site is the closest thing to the New Testament model. When Paul was writing to the Church at Ephesus, Corinth, Philipii etc. He was writing to The Church with different locations. In Revelations the Spirit (First few Chapters) addresses the City Church (big) with local gatherings (small). I’m not defending multi-site just a thought before we let our personal preferences guide our theology of Church.
If you notice in the New Testament, God doesn’t let us have one model to say “this is it” (Although lot’s of books and conferences will tell you they have found the Model) Their is large, medium, small, home Church,City-Church rich, poor, Jewish, Gentile, etc. models in the New Testament. Why do we need to de-construct other expressions of Church? That doesn’t mean we don’t examine and observe and adapt and change. Let’s just try to be open to expressions that aren’t our style. I think that is the beauty of the emerging church is that there isn’t one model. The problem is that when I get passionate about “my” model I tend to defend it by challenging the other ones in all their faults. My expieriences, preferences, personality, theology, gender, wounds and culture lends me to filtering out everything that doesn’t fit nicely into all of my ideas of what church should be. For me, I have found that when I expose myself to other cultures (African, European, South American etc.) My view of church in my culture gets some perspective. ( side note have you ever noticed that it’s mostly white, middle class westerners that are even fussing about church models, while the rest of the world is getting on with doing church stuff and seeing revival happen. I have talked to other Christians around the globe about these debates and they think we are crazy) I recently talked to a friend who planted the ultimate expression of a small post-modern emerging church. It was church he all ways wanted to go to. This guy is also very gifted in many ways. He found that he couldn’t get any non-Christians to come to church or to even fully trust him, because his church was too “different”. He found that most non-Christians didn’t want a “different ” church, however they did want different Christians. a He has concluded, that you can change or keep the model and it didn’t make much difference if the people in the church weren’t changed at all. (maybe the real debate is over how do we see people changed and become like Christ.)I think some of this discussion needs to be seen like a family metaphor. Which is better a big family or a small one? two kids or 10 kids? Big house or small one. Large extended family parties or small intimate gatherings? Is one better than the other? Do they both have opportunities and challenges? A small family can be easier to know Dad and Mom, but a big family gives you more brothers and sisters to hang out with, diversity, but you don’t get your own room and not as much say either. You see what I mean? We don’t argue about that stuff because it’s just different expressions each with inherant pro’s and con’s. I could build a case for either one, but why do I need to. My friends are having lot’s of kids. God bless them, keep it up. I have a small one that is right for me. I see the dangers of a small family (sometimes kids get more spoiled in small families) I see the dangers of a big family (sometimes kids get lost in the grand shuffle) However, I’m so glad that we can have diversity. Geoff, the hard part comes when you think you are part of a small family and then some more kids get adopted and you become a medium size family and Mom and Dad say more kids may be on the way. That can be very difficult. For some part of the strategy is to build more rooms, Build bigger rooms, build extensions, buy more houses and start more families in the long run, but what do you do with the kids on your doorstep? Things change, and for some, change means loss. Can we ever change and have all gain and no loss? Sorry for the long reply. Great thoughts, let’s graciously keep it up the disscusion
Thanks for jumping in there Kevin, and I hope you haven’t heard criticism about what’s going on at YVV in what I’m saying above. I just trying to recognise that the challenges for YVV as we grow, will look different to the challenges we’ve had in the past - and discussing what those might be. I do think that once of the challenges for YVV in the short to middle term is building a church culture that is led by paid staff, without expecting that those staff are taking on my responsibility to engage in the kingdom work. That’s not a criticism of where we are at: I think there are a bunch of things that we’re doing as a church to address that, but it is recognizing that the challenge is there.
The last sentence (”plant churches and all our problems go away”) was very tongue in cheek - sorry if that wasn’t clear. I’m not nearly naive enough to think that planting churches would ever be “the easy/quick option”.
I also really like what you’re saying about the definition of “leader” needing to change. I certainly think that’s a part of the challenge. Please don’t hear criticism of YVV or yourself in my thought’s here: that is absolutely not my intention, nor my feelings.
Thanks again for commenting: I sometimes forget that other people might actually read my dribbles!
Interesting post Geoff and responses. I do think there are a variety of expressions of what Church looks like. I think in Melbourne there are some really health churches which have multi-site congregations. City life, and New pensinsula for example. They have videos but not the ‘video linkup stuff’. The thing that I really like about them is that they are very culturally sensitive to the demographics, and different cultures.
) Leadership should be a dynamic when faced with different scenarios.
Regarding church leadership. When your environment is dynamic you need to change. When a Church grows you need to adapt how you have been doing things. How you did things for a small congregation will be different when there are 50 more people than year before. The same is true when your church hasn’t grown over a number of years . You probably need to change. (Or if you can’t get out.
Continuing the Discussion