<Theofragen>

I just got back from Kairos, a gathering of more-or-less emergently minded pastors and church planters in the hills of Western Maryland. I had a great time getting to know others who are trying to create, sustain and empower missional communities in different parts of the world. Brian McLaren led a discussion on the challenges of church programing in relation to the people who are in the church. Here are some thoughts that emerged:

Problems:
• money
• people fall so in love with the program they lose sight of Jesus
• making the funders happy vs. reaching out to others
• country club (compartmentalized) vs. Anabaptist (missional)
• acting your age—new churches can’t do what larger churches do
• worry about heresy, neoprotestantism and Catholicism
--we need to educate the people about where older, latent traditions come from so that they are not scared of them
--we need to learn more about church history so that we can bring some traditions back to life
• dualities tend to label people as liberal or conservative/ protestant or catholic
• challenge of church growth with small missional communities

A constant struggle for ministers is in balancing the needs of the individual with the needs of the many. Many churches employ programs to enable the church to minister to a number of individuals at the same time. However, when we do this we realize that we don't meet everybody's needs. The group began to think through what would happen if pastors stepped back from the programs and engaged in one-on-one discipleship.

A church culture that is people-focused ought to precede a structure that is people-focused. If we create an environment where people are free to love each other, to serve each other, to pray with each other, etc. we can put more emphasis on people rather than into programs.

These are my more-or-less coherent thoughts and notes. I'm wondering what ya'll think about program driven vs. people driven models of church? Peace.

Blogging Hiatus

People vs. Programs