Lots of churches died 30 years ago...but no one turned out the lights....

Image used by permission jugglerpm
(the guy takes some amazing pics)

Ok, so first things first. The title of this post was taken directly from a post from Ed Stetzer's blog. He's  LifeWay's lead researcher and missiologist.  You can and should read the post here.

Stetzer's blog post is an adaptation of his book (Co-written by Warren Bird) Viral churches. The book "outlines the best practices in church multiplication movements and reveals the common threads among them." The book is on my reading list but in reading his post and the full article mentioned at the end of the post, it has stirred some thoughts and questions at the same time.

So here goes...has being missional truly become part of the DNA of your Christian experience/journey and along those lines has it become part of the church you attend? (that is assuming you gather with other believers to worship and praise God regularly)

Why does it seem at times that so many churches prefer to remain in the status quo, not reaching their community/sphere of influence, not winning souls but insist that nothing has to change? If we are truly to be missional, empowered by God's Spirit than the status quo could never be acceptable.

Lastly Stetzer on his blog post states under #3 "More Roots in Historic Biblical Discipleship"

"Too often a church can't multiply its leaders because it has too few robust disciples. Instead it has lots of dependent believers who take a consumeristic approach to their faith and ultimately are shallow in character development..."

I would venture to say that the above comment applies to any kind of church be it traditional, contemporary, it's a disease (the consumeristic approach is to some degree simply coming to church to see what I can get from it, instead of an approach to come together to give worship to our Lord and Savior) that seems to have affected all. When it comes to being missional, disciple making is key, I wrote a post about this last month you can view and comment on it here.

So what do you think, is the church (in general, the one you attend or have attended) being missional or is there still a lot of work to be done? Should churches that are not truly being missional and producing fruit for the glory of God...well turn off its lights and start over?

Once again I continue (and will do so in every post until the campaign is over:-) to ask that you prayerfully consider giving (if you haven't already) to my Charity:Water campaign to raise funds to build a water well for those who are in need of clean water. Click HERE for all the info.

Javi