Give Us a Place to Stand and We Will Move the World

When a church sees itself as the vehicle, and sees God’s kingdom as the objective, church leaders are required to think differently than the leaders who are focused on church growth. The “kingdom” leaders will see the church’s objectives as two fold. First, they are committed to their church’s growth. But the motive for growing their church is not to have a bigger church. Rather it is to have a bigger and more powerful “base of operation.” We can’t move the world if we don’t have a place to stand.

To restore passion in the pews a church must be willing to shape its local mission strategy based the ministry callings of its people. Should a church have a ministry in a local jail? The answer is “yes” if there is someone in the church who feels called to that ministry and “no” if there isn’t. That requires a willingness to decentralize its ministry strategy, because you never know where the ministry callings of the people are going to take you.

Primarily it is the lay people who can position the church where the ministry opportunities are; the staff’s primary responsibilities are at the base of operation. To see the church as both a place to stand and a launching pad to move the world will require a serious shift in thinking by those who are teaching in the seminaries, leading the denominations, the non-denominations and those preaching in the churches.

The primary objective of a church’s mission statement is to send a message that this church is calling friendly to everyone.

When the Gospel penetrates a community!

Recently I had one of my friends ask me, “What does the Gospel look like when it penetrates a community?” People Can't Get Away From Us. And it changes their lives for eternity.

In the late seventies I sat on the board that oversaw the Cornerstone house and when I hear stories like the one in the last blog it drives me to want to challenge the church to do more of that. It is a perfect illustration of the Church is the vehicle and the kingdom is the objective. Terry’s first encounter with Christians was at another of our ministries (Under our board called “Bear Valley Ministries” that later became Rocky Mtn. Ministries when other churches in Denver began to catch the vision and join forces to make a difference in our city), a state funded home for girls that Bear Valley Church ran long before the Faith-Based Initiative. She obviously didn’t buy into Christianity while at the Cornerstone; she went back into the streets, got pregnant and was involved in drugs.

Then she became a Christian at a coffee house and found a Christian home for women who have a crisis pregnancy. Later she did an internship at a Christian medical clinic. Bear Valley church ran, just as we ran the Cornerstone, the coffee house and the medical clinic. Plus it also had numerous families that regularly took in unwed mothers. Everywhere Terry went the church was there, waiting for her. The story illustrates the value of being decentralized throughout a city. Decentralization was part of the genius of the early church, and the Wesleyan Movement in the 18th century Britain

There isn’t a single “people group crises” in our country that churches could not respond to with our vast armies of nobodies. We could make a huge difference in medicine, education, addictions; prisons, etc. if our leaders were committed to “church is vehicle, kingdom is objective,” and the rank and file were encouraged to pursue their own call to ministry

One-dimensional Preaching Kills a Church

Nothing influences the environment of a church as much as the preaching. It is through preaching that people understand how their pastor views life and what he or she thinks is important. Over a period of years a church tends to take on the personality of its senior pastor. Today a lot of preaching is about practical Christian Living or so one-dimensional that people learn that the only thing that matters is “you are saved.” Preaching often takes “news you can use” approach. While the news you can use is good, it is usually pretty self-centered, e.g. How to: Handle Anger, Be Happy, Be A Good Parent, etc. As a result congregations can easily become groups of relentless navel-gazers; the only thing in life that is important is themselves.

Preaching for personal Christian living is helpful and necessary. And preaching to lead people into a relationship with Christ is extremely important. But it needs to lead people into the multi-dimensional reality of becoming a mature disciple. That leads people to serve, so sermons on “what scripture has to say about various kingdom ministry opportunities.” That will lead to sermons about the various Need and Affinity Groups. The idea is not to beat people up when pointing out that there are over two million people behind bars in the U.S. Preachers need to make sure that people know about the huge prison population and that God still loves every prisoner. Preaching in kingdom oriented churches directs people’s gaze outward as often as it does inward. There are two key preaching traits that are present when a church’s pulpit is “kingdom oriented.”

1. The preaching will normally be done with the bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other. The bible is there for truth and the newspaper is there for relevance.
2. Sermons will often include ministry stories involving lay people, from all kinds of churches, especially their own church. They may be stories about people who are being faithful working in the nursery, or they may be stories of those doing kingdom ministries beyond the walls of the church. Either way story telling has a vital impact on the overall ministry vision of a church.


How do we illustrate the logical results of a mission strategy that says, the church is vehicle and the kingdom is the objective? Listen to this letter from our Calling book…

“Dear Friend,

Terry was 19 years old when she came to our church; she was pregnant, a drug addict, single, recently released from Job Corp, and parentless. Just a few days before she met the Lord at a street ministry on Colfax. This week Terry completes her studies as a Medical Assistant….

To help finance her schooling and her stay here, Terry has an early morning paper route. It is not always easy for her to rise at 3:30 a.m. and deliver those papers. She also is the one who is always looking for ways to make my work easier. She learned to drive through our training and so is the usual errand runner. Terry has also worked in the Sunday School…

Terry’s next step is a month of internship where she works in a doctor’s office and receives “on the job” training. Then it will be on to the work force where she’ll support herself and her son. In the future, Terry hopes to get more training and specialize in some medical field….

This person P.S. followed:

Dear pastor,

I especially wanted you to hear about Terry. Her first encounter with Christians was when she lived at a group home called the Cornerstone (This was a house for street people I sat on the board for). She claims the people who operated the home were members of your Church…. Terry is the second gal I worked with from the Cornerstone. The other is also a growing young Christian.

Terry also has worked at the inner-city clinic that your people have started. It has been a good part of her growing experience both spiritually and as a medical assistant. She and our gal, Linda, help take blood pressure tests near the clinic once a month. Through this, they have both met a few more of your wonderful people…” (Calling pgs 123-25)

Go Around The Church

Yesterday, I went to an inner-city Christmas giving program. It was fun to see several churches involved, but often these kinds of ministry have no local church connection. We will know that a church is the vehicle and the kingdom is the objective when its people start going through the church to pursue their call to ministry.

Twenty First century America has an enormous number of people who are part of legitimate ministry target-groups. For example:

Teen Mothers (Numbers are going down, but there are still thousands every year)
Children Living in Poverty (The numbers rose significantly during the 1990s).
School Drop Out (Each one will cost taxpayers $536,000 during their life)
Physically Disabled (Over 90% have no connection to a church)
Health Care (Over 42,000,000 are without health insurance)
Isolated Seniors, (Longevity often means more years alone)
Homeless, (Includes huge numbers of women and children)
Addictions (The varieties are staggering)
Prisons (Over 2,000,000 are behind bars)
Literacy (One in five adults is illiterate)
Refugees (Arriving by the thousands)
Hospice (Thousands die alone)

These groups represent kingdom opportunities that are seldom on the radar screens of the power brokers in seminaries, denominations or churches. There are certainly more than a hundred such groups.

Since the Great Commission is still the GREAT Commission our Target Group strategies can’t end with the NEED groups. From a Christian perspective the “up and outers” are also a mission field if they don’t have a relationship with God. That means there are also a variety of AFFINITY groups that need to be reached:

International Students (750,000)
High School Students
College Students
Ethnic Groups
Motorcyclists
Fishermen
Campers
Golfers
Hikers
Teens
Moms
Dads
Etc.

We Can Only Visit the Kingdom

The kingdom is experiential; we enter it when we are in harmony with God’s will. We exit the kingdom when we are not in harmony with God’s will. The Church is both organizational and experiential, we remain part of the church even when are not in harmony with God’s will. Paul blasts the Corinthians who were getting drunk and being rude gluttons at the Lord’s Table. Their sinful activities were church activities, but they were not activities that God recognized in his kingdom. The only way we can remain in the kingdom is to remain totally in God’s will.

The objective of the church is not primarily to grow itself. Churches, at any juncture of history, are too full of sinful people to make themselves their own objective. The corrupt Roman Catholic Church of Luther’s day were Church Growth enthusiasts.

Women and the Holy Spirit

If we ask, “what would Jesus do in His new body, i.e. the church; that would be a continuation of what he did in his original body?” The answer is obvious; he would continue to make growing the kingdom his top priority. When Jesus ministered on earth he spoke often about the priority of the kingdom, but He mentioned the church only twice. He did say, “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18). But it is obvious that the reason he would build his church is to continue the work he began. And that work was the building of his Father’s Kingdom.

What do you think Jesus would do with the physically disabled?
90% of the physically disabled in America have no relationship with a church!
80% of American families with a disabled member experience a divorce.

When we consider the ministry of Jesus in his original body, it is inconceivable that his New Testament body, the church, is so disengaged from the physically disabled who were so important to him while he was physically on earth. For all the good things about the Church Growth Movement, its label communicates the wrong objective. If it had been called “Growing God’s Kingdom Through Churches” it would have had a clumsy name, but it also would have been right on target.

Some of us grew up reciting the Lord’s Prayer from Luke eleven in church every Sunday. We are familiar with the part that says, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Those fourteen words may be so familiar that they no longer have an impact on us. But take a second look. It tells us “wherever God’s will breaks into human experience the kingdom is operative!” Wow, that is pretty powerful!

And it also raises some serious questions. Is God’s will always being done in every church? Of course the answer is no. All of us have been involved in church efforts that in retrospect we know could not have been God’s will. Remember the people who didn’t appreciate the first MOPS group or the ones who almost killed the Calvary Chapel Movement.

The kingdom is not the result of human organization, or fallible belief systems. That is why there are no Liberal/ Fundamentalist Controversies in the kingdom. Many church leaders have longed to equate their church ministry with God’s kingdom. But the minute they take a stand on issues such as the role of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life or the role of women in church, they risk being wrong and you can’t be wrong in the kingdom.

The Wesleyans Get It!

So I left off a few days ago with The Wesleyans of 18th century Britain are one of Church History’s best examples of how Christians can make a difference without an “edifice complex.” I promise I will circle back to the Kingdom soon, but first…

The horrific conditions that existed prior to the brutal revolution in France at the end of the 18th century also existed in Great Britain. Great Britain however did not sink into a revolution similar to the one in France. It is worth noting that Great Britain had a significant number of Wesleyans, France, on other hand, had no comparable group. The French had already expelled their largest group of Protestants, the Huguenots. While the Wesleyans did not, by themselves, keep Britain from a revolution similar to the one France experienced; they were a significant mitigating force that championed the poor.

Conditions in 18th Century Britain

Housing: Ten people living in one room was common
Streets: Horse manure piled as much as 14 feet high along side the roads was common.
Diseases: Typhoid, small pox, dysentery, and cholera spread unchecked.
Starvation: Daily wagons picked up the bodies of those who had starved to death the night before on the streets of British towns.
Grave Yards: Poor Holes were large common graves, left open until they were filled with the bodies of the unknown.
Schools: one in twenty five children attended any type of school.
Children: By the age of six children worked 12 to 14 hours a day, many were sold to Chimney Sweeps by the age of two or three.
The Law: Five men were hanged in London for stealing a total of $1.50

The Wesleyan Response

1.Started schools for the poor, the first Sunday School was started by a lay man, Robert Raikes, who was influenced by Wesley. Its purpose was to teach kids, who worked in the factories six days week, the three Rs.
2.Started food and clothing distributions.
3.Opened homes for widows.
4.Launched the Sick Visitors Corporation to visit the sick in hospitals.
5.Championed prison reform and started prison ministries.
6.Began an unemployment program.
7.Started the Strangers Friend Society to befriend immigrants.
8.Started orphanages, in fact when Wesley traveled to America to preach during the Great Awakening, his primary motivation was to start orphanages.
9.Did ministry in London’s workhouses through something called the Christian Community.
10.Did pre and post natal care and religious instruction to unwed mothers
11.Offered loans to poor people to start businesses, the slogan was “join hands with God to help a poor man live.”

There was a deep conviction among 18th century Wesleyans that God was on the side of the poor. Therefore, to be on God’s side meant joining Him on the side of the poor. Unfortunately that mentality has largely disappeared in affluent middle class American churches.

We Did Better Without An Address

I had a great conversation on The Kingdom of God with three friends this week and in the next few blogs will unpack what I mean by Kingdom, let begin by explaining why it is so important to understand the Kingdom. One of the worst things to come out of the Church Growth Movement is its emphasis on facilities. Church Growth tends to emphasize being in the right location and running the right kind of programs. If you do that the people will come, and they are right!

But a great location, great preaching and great programming can be a curse to the growth of the Kingdom. To illustrate what I mean let me tell you about a ministry I use to work with several years ago, it was called Cornerstone, a group home for delinquent female teens.

The drug craze of the 1970’s created a host of new social problems. One of the new problems was the need for hundreds of new state run juvenile delinquent homes for females. The federal government made money available to the states to open a large number of homes all across the country. To my knowledge the only church in Colorado that applied for a license to run a home was my church Bear Valley Baptist and the church that my friend Frank pastored. I doubt that the leadership in any other church in the state was even aware that the money was available. If church leadership is primarily focused on Church Growth rather Kingdom Growth this kind of “social action” information is not very useful.

Bear Valley Church ran a very successful home, called Cornerstone, for five years until all the funding for the federally funded homes was cut. A successful home meant that the girls emancipated, i.e. they finished high school and moved into adulthood and out of the system. Dozens of girls not only got their lives back on track; many became a part of the Bear Valley family.

So how does running a home like the Cornerstone relate to the right location with great programming? With a great location and great programming churches can easily be convinced that they are getting the job of the Great Commission done by keeping the consumers happy. After all they usually grow like crazy and that makes them successful churches.

During the three hundred years, when the church had its biggest influence on its culture, it didn’t have an address. And until church leaders learn to disconnect their mission potential from their church’s address; they will make very little difference in this Post-Christian culture.

The Wesleyans of 18th century Britain are one of Church History’s best examples of how Christians can make a difference without an “edifice complex.”