The Church as the Delivery Mechanism for the Gospel Must Change!

Alan Hirsch has been rocking my boat lately. Here are some quotables from his session today at Velocity.

  • We will win or lose the battle for the Church from here in America. If it doesn't happen from America, it's going to continue to decline in America.
  • We live in a time when our decisions make a difference in the world--and that's a great thing to celebrate!
  • Missional is not just another cute buzz word--it changes everything about how we do church.
  • Many years ago--the church was in the center of society. Translating the language didn't take much.
  • But, the church is becoming increasingly isolated in a quickly changing world.
  • All communication of the gospel in the west is cross-cultural. We have to become cross-cultural missionaries. (I remember someone writing about that in Pop Goes the Church!).
  • Attractional churches work well to reach people who are not too far removed (culturally). When people get further away--it doesn't work as well. Why? Because we are asking the individual to do the cross-cultural translation to come into the church (rather than us going to them).
  • Huge survey in Australia on people's perception of...
    • God = HIGH marks
    • Jesus = HIGH marks
    • Spirituality = HIGH marks
    • Church = VERY LOW marks
  • The good news is that people give VERY high marks on God, Jesus and Spirituality. That is good news for us.
  • What has to change? The CHURCH as the delivery mechanism for the gospel MUST CHANGE.
  • The problem--90%+ of churches are trying to follow the contemporary, church-growth, attractional model that...at best...will only reach 40% of Americans.
  • The problems of the church cannot be solved by doing the same thing that got us into those problems.
  • The church that Jesus designed was meant for advance and attack--not defense!
  • Keep doing attractional. It works for 40%. It's not an either/or. It's a both/and. I'm interested in finding the AND!
  • Mission precedes the church. You do mission. The church is something that happens out of mission.
  • You plant the gospel. You don't plant churches. Church planters should be missionaries first.

If you haven't read The Forgotten Ways yet by Alan Hirsch...get it today. (Hey Granger--there are copies in the bookstore!).

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