About six years ago, I returned from Orlando in Florida where I attended the Exponential Conference, the largest church planting conference in the world, with four thousand people attending from around the (mostly) Western world.
The Conference started with a member of the Exponential Band setting the stage with a powerful amended version of Bob Dylan’s anthem, ‘The Times They Are A-changing.’ …
Come preachers and pastors
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
In truth, the western church finds itself at the crossroads. Either we are on the road to extinction – or we are on the verge of a new movement of God. Taken as whole, the decline of Christianity in western culture continues a-pace, and yet there is a new wind beginning to blow! More of the same is not likely to achieve significantly different Kingdom results; so something fresh is emerging.
I love that! “These men have turned the world upside down!” The Greek word anastatoō means to unsettle, to stir up or cause an uproar — literally, to turn on its head! What a fantastic indictment of those early missionaries! They turned their world upside down! When the whole world saw allegiance to the way of Caesar as the ‘right-way-up’, these bold believers proclaimed the ‘upside-down’ reign of Jesus!
The times they are a-changing. Being salt and light in a post-Christian world will mean ‘upside-down’ thinking and courage about how we do things. If we were starting all over again — with no expectations or history — what would we dare to do? What would we stop doing? As we gaze over the vast new estates to our north — what would turn everything upside down for the way of Jesus?
The era of doing ‘church’ in a Christian culture is ending. If we want to meaningfully proclaim the reign of God, we will need to be as flexible and nimble as our cross-cultural missionaries have learnt to be.
Cross-cultural missionaries go out They do what Jesus did, as John 1:14 puts it: “... The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood.”
We Western Christians are now missionaries in a world every bit as foreign to the vanished era of Christendom. We are no longer running churches amongst people who ‘sort of’ get it but have strayed a little and need to be cajoled back to their faith.
We will need to ‘move into the neighbourhood’ just like our cross cultural missionary cousins do all the time. For them, building a ‘church-building’ or starting a public ‘worship-service’ may well be the very last thing they do – not the first! Sharing hospitality around meals, listening, chatting, and helping out at the point of actual need and opportunity will need to become more important than the programs we run in the building. And as a trickle of people become interested in the way of Jesus – we will share the story of Jesus with them – and little households of faith will begin to form, maybe with their own practises, songs, and traditions – very different to how we’ve done it.
What does that mean for us as 21st century Christians?
The next article will suggest 10 points to consider.
To be continued.
