What if older, struggling churches making little impact on their neighborhood handed their church buildings over to church plants and church planters to start fresh works?I know that some will not like my assertion that struggling churches are dead churches. But, I am sorry..."being a tight knit family of the same people for 20-30-40 years" is NOT CHURCH!! The church has a mission and that is to spread the gospel and make disciples. If that mission is not happening, than it is not the church Jesus commissioned. Very clear to me.
(I am also aware that some church planters do not have "owning a building" in their plan. That's cool too.)
So...
What if churches that have passed their fruitful season, handed the keys over to a work that is entering their fruitful season? What would that do for total kingdom harvest?
What do the people in the releasing church do?
- If they are mature enough to release and realize that it is not "theirs" anymore....never was....then, they could stay and give their whole hearts to the vision of the new ministry.
- If there is too much emotional baggage and territorialism, they they'd be best suited to find another ministry that they could pour themselves into.
What if? You have any thoughts? Maybe you agree? Maybe you disagree? Push this out with me.
I have had this thought in my mind for some time now, I was just never bold enough to really talk about it! We are actually ministering in an area that unforturnately has lots of territorialism going on. We are about 1 1/2 years into the church and things are going well, the dynamics are unlike any other, as most church plants are. There are some where around 150 to 200 churches in a population of about 9,000 people, NO kidding, most are those churches that you just described. Check us out at Overflowchurch.org, look at the blog off the home page as well. Would love to hear your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteSojourner, thanks for your comment. I looked at your site. Great stuff! I would love to connect further if you would like. Email me someday off the CCF website at www.capitalchristian.org
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