Leave Your Baggage Behind
“IT’S a LIE. The sign in front of our new church building is a lie,” the pastor declared to his congregation. “It reads First Baptist Church. It should say, The Place Where the First Baptist Church Meets.” He had a good point. Ones understanding of what the church is influences how he participates in his church and community.
When working in another culture it is even more important to understand the difference between the essence of the church and cultural expressions of the church. We may not recognize how God is moving because we are looking for something familiar and comfortable. Worse, we may be tempted to make the church in another culture conform to our liking. In the process we make it alien to the people of that culture.
Keep It Simple
Brian Hogan, an unreached peoples church planter, identifies two major obstacles to successful church planting. COMPLEXITY – what we are doing is too complex. Church planters need to strip away the cultural elements to the bare New Testament essentials. HOLY SPIRIT – because of a deep distrust of the Holy Spirit to do his work in the life of believers, foreigner churchmen set up barriers blocking new believers from leadership. When complexity is removed, and we trust the Holy Spirit, God will shape the church to best serve in that culture.
In the Global Opportunities GO Equipped Tentmaking course we dedicate several sessions to the essence of the church. For instance, George Patterson identifies seven key elements that define every church. Other elements may be good, but they are not required. Even the essentials may be expressed differently from culture to culture.
If you had to identify the essence of the church, what practices would be on your list?
In Conclusion
While pondering this subject I recalled two teachings from my childhood. I guess I had the answer all along.
What I Learned in Sunday School
“Here’s the church, here’s the steeple;
Open the door and see all the people;
You can have a church without a steeple,
But you can’t have a church without the people.”
Jesus said, “For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”
Phill Sandahl
