Occupy Fort Worth (Dish Out)
You may already be registered for the upcoming Fort Worth Dish Out, and if so great! And if not, then what is the hold up!
In case you are not aware of what Fort Worth Dish Out is a meal based micro-granting event for local non-profits.
Everyone in attendance buys a ticket ($20 each) and shares in meal, shares in fellowship with the Fort Worth community, hears 3 non-profits in the area, and votes on the non-profit they would like to support. The winner of the vote gets 60% of the funds collected that night while the other two non-profits each get 20% of the funds.
Based upon the number of people who attend, these non-profits get more funds and exposure!
So this means that if you are looking for a great night of fun as well as making a social impact on Sunday October 23, @ 5:30pm - you ought to be at Fort Worth Dish Out.
You can register here.
Confusing Rushing and Urgency
With the world changing so quickly there is a pressure in the Church to try to keep up with the times. Local churches are expected to have the same personal services and amenities of any other place which has 'membership dues'.
When viewed in this light, the church becomes a place where we are primarily "fed" and "where everybody knows your name". And when the church does not accomplish these things, then one takes "membership dues" and goes elsewhere. This creates a unhealthy co-dependency which I have recently addressed here and here.
The point of this post however, is that when the local church is asked and expected to keep up with the Joneses of the for-profit world then we are always running behind. This pressure to keep up married with the fact that churches are usually lagging behind, creates a sense of urgency in the church for some people.
What I have noticed is that in the church urgency is often confused with rushing.
In our efforts to keep up with the Joneses and keep pace with the expectations of being a "membership based" culture, we are often reacting to things and rushing to create something that it ends up not being our best.
There is a difference in a sense of urgency and being rushed.
There is a difference in responding to issues and reacting to a concern.
Our churches are notorious for rushing to get something out by Sunday and in doing so we fall even more behind and look even worse.
- Child care at all times
- Personalization of services
- Different "take aways" or SWAG
- Free perks for members
- Premium content for those who pay more
- Access to communal resources
When viewed in this light, the church becomes a place where we are primarily "fed" and "where everybody knows your name". And when the church does not accomplish these things, then one takes "membership dues" and goes elsewhere. This creates a unhealthy co-dependency which I have recently addressed here and here. The point of this post however, is that when the local church is asked and expected to keep up with the Joneses of the for-profit world then we are always running behind. This pressure to keep up married with the fact that churches are usually lagging behind, creates a sense of urgency in the church for some people.
What I have noticed is that in the church urgency is often confused with rushing.
In our efforts to keep up with the Joneses and keep pace with the expectations of being a "membership based" culture, we are often reacting to things and rushing to create something that it ends up not being our best.
There is a difference in a sense of urgency and being rushed. There is a difference in responding to issues and reacting to a concern.
Our churches are notorious for rushing to get something out by Sunday and in doing so we fall even more behind and look even worse.
Not the 50's nor the 90's but the Emergents!
There are a couple of ways of thinking about "church" that seem to be in tension with each other.
There is the more popular and more recent 1990's idea that believes that if you get a band that play contemporary music while having a dynamic speaker then people will come. This more difficult to argue as no longer valid as we sit in the shadow of mega churches/teachers such as this guy or this guy or this woman. However, you may recall that back in 2007 Willow Creek (a church that pioneered the 1990's model of church) reported that that model was a mistake and does not lead to discipleship.
There is the 1950's idea that believes if you build it, people will come. Put a cross on the building and people will come to the church. Another way of this model is expressed this way, "yes people leave the church in their 20's but they always come back when they have kids." There are several books on the shelves that argue that this way of thinking is all sorts of wrong. I differ to these books.
There is the more popular and more recent 1990's idea that believes that if you get a band that play contemporary music while having a dynamic speaker then people will come. This more difficult to argue as no longer valid as we sit in the shadow of mega churches/teachers such as this guy or this guy or this woman. However, you may recall that back in 2007 Willow Creek (a church that pioneered the 1990's model of church) reported that that model was a mistake and does not lead to discipleship.
It is not that these above models are totally wrong 100% of the time. Rather it is that we have put all our eggs in a particular basket as a way to "save the church" from extinction.
We are in the middle of the Emergent Church/Incarnational Christian gaining traction as the new model that will "save the church". And while I am an advocate of this way of being the Church, I have to admit that this model too will suffer the same fate as other models if it is unwilling or unable to adapt.
The 1950's model, the 1990's model the Emergent model are all wonderful models - they are not, regardless of the rhetoric, silver bullets.
Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.