Sheep Stealing

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how different church would look if we really thought we were working for the Kingdom of God, rather than the Small Principality of __________ (insert the name of your church here). What if we gave to missionaries that weren't just our denomination if they were undertaking strategic work that we felt called to be a part of? What if we supported other Bible-believing/Bible-preaching/Bible-living churches in our area as brothers and sisters?

This came up in a church meeting a few weeks ago when we were talking about stewardship and the radical idea came up to send a chunk of our young families to the church up the road that is doing great things with college students, but is struggling because it doesn't have families as a foundation for the church. What if we did that? What if we blessed people that left our churches because they were called to other ministries (instead of cursing them)? What if we were committed to church planting, rather than growing mega churches?

Last night I was reading Dave Sliker's blog and was surprised to hear him hitting on a lot of these topics. I was especially struck by the following paragraph:

If seeker-sensitive churches are content to play their role on the “team” rather than build the biggest, most successful ode to their giftedness on the block, then everyone wins in the end. If other pastors can come to terms with the fact that “sheep stealing” is a farcical notion birthed from insecurity and sinful ambition rather than the word of God, they would then be fine with people shifting to different expressions of the the body reflected in the different corporate gatherings throughout their cities. Different seasons of growth, maturity, and development demand that believers run with different groups that best fit those seasons. Pastors that are willing to serve, launch, and recognize their limitations can be free of heart and pleased to have played a role in loving a member of the broader body of Christ that is valuable to Jesus. Pastors that seek to be “all things to all men” in a vain effort to gather all peoples to themselves will be sorely disillusioned and frustrated with the passage of time.

If we saw different churches having different roles in the community, things would look quite different. If we stopped trying to create the perfect mega-church on every corner and learned how to be a really good hand or a really good foot (in the body of Christ), how awesome would that be.

Anyhow, I was very excited to hear someone from IHOP saying this as it directly addresses some of my recent concerns about them vacuuming up all the "serious" Christians and holding them in the only "true" church. Kudos Dave. Good points and a good message. I think IHOP has a really important role to play in the North American church. I'm looking forward to seeing them engage more with other churches in the "team ministry" that Dave talks about.

New Life

One of the great thing about this justice project has been the new authors I've been reading and seeing the questions they are asking.

One of these new authors is Timothy Keller. His Ministries of Mercy has this great quote that is perfect for Easter:

"The kingdom of God is the means for the renewal of the entire world and all the dimensions of life. From the throne of Jesus Christ flows new life and power such that no disease, decay, poverty, blemish, or pain can stand before it."