“Unreasonable Church Finds a Balance Between Going Both ‘Deep’ and ‘Wide”’ – Rich Birch
Yesterday I posted The Top 17 Books Christian Leaders Should Be Reading In 2017. One of the books listed was Rich Birch’s incredible look at some of today’s most successful churches – Unreasonable Churches: 10 Churches Who Zagged When Others Zigged And Saw More Impact Because Of It.
If you do not know Rich, he has been involved in church leadership for over 20 years. Early on he had the privilege of leading in one of the very first multisite churches in North America. He led the charge in helping The Meeting House in Toronto to become the leading multi-site church in Canada with over 4,500 people in 6 locations. In addition, he served on the leadership team of Connexus Community Church in Ontario, as well as on the Lead Team at Liquid Church in the Manhattan facing communities of New Jersey. Rich also blogs and podcasts weekly at unSeminary.com.
Because of his kindness, he has provided the readers of this site an excerpt from his new book. Check it out below. You can also purchase copies HERE or on the image above. As an additional bonus, Rich is giving a FREE audiobook and worksheets to anyone who orders two or more copies through November 2016 to discuss with your staff or leadership teams. Now, let’s learn about Unreasonable Churches.
There is so much talk about what a church should be focused on. Should we be focused on evangelism or discipleship? Perhaps churches are too intently focused on one or the other to see the big picture. An unreasonable church does the hard work of both saving the lost and discipling the saved.
Seeking the Lost and the Saved
Christ Community Church was started in 1984 by six couples in St. Charles, Illinois, who wanted a church for their friends and neighbors. They prayed together and hired a young pastor named Jim Nicodem. Jim and his wife have served Christ Community for thirty years and are still going strong.
Christ Community now meets in four locations and has an attendance of 5,000 people each week in the western suburbs of Chicago. The church’s mission is to make “passionate disciples of Jesus Christ, who are belonging, growing, serving and reaching.”
From the beginning, the church sought to be a church that reached “seekers” (whom they now call “explorers”). But this methodology has had many legitimate criticisms. To go “wide” meant that the church could not go “deep,” according to many voices. During the time that Christ Community began, American churches began to be separated by an ideological divide. On one side, the attractional or “seeker sensitive” churches claimed their mission was to reach the unchurched. On the other side, the discipleship-based churches maintained that their primary focus should be toward existing Christians. In other words, the focus became either evangelism or discipleship. This issue has continued to divide American Christianity.
Pastor Jim struggled with these issues. He desperately wanted to reach the lost but also saw the problems of “easy-believism.” As a faithful student of the Bible, the pastor studied the Scriptures’ heartbeat: the gospel promises. He realized that there could be a better way than landing on one side or other of the seeker/Christian divide.
From its earliest days, Pastor Jim and Christ Community saw the deep flaws in this either/or debate. If a church was only focused on evangelism, the trade-off was spiritual growth and maturity. If the church was only focused on discipleship, the trade-off was the unchurched being unreached.
Pastor Jim wanted to balance the division between evangelism churches and discipleship churches. He wanted to go “deep” as well as “wide.”
Going Deep and Wide
Pastor Jim has a passion for going after the lost, and also leading them to be disciples who are taught the deep truths of Scripture. Christ Community Church decided to bring attractional and discipleship-based ministry together on their church campuses, reaching lost people and bringing theologically sound teaching to them.
To bring the two approaches together in a unified focus, the church reaches “wide” with attractional events and outreaches, but also “deep” with an intentional plan to bring new Christians to spiritual maturity.
Going Deep in Evangelism
Pastor Jim and his staff have intentionally reworked their evangelistic materials to build disciples, not just count decisions. The materials emphasize Biblical texts and concepts such as salvation by grace through faith (Eph.2:8–9), but also continues with Ephesians 2:10; that God has created us in Christ Jesus to do good works, which He prepared in advance for us. It’s not just an attempt at casting a wide net to get people saved, but instead a focus on a deep and wide net. Salvation means intentionally living life according to God’s plans and purposes.
Going Deep in Preaching
Pastor Jim recognizes that the seeker-focused or Christian-focused churches usually have different preaching styles. Topically based sermons tend to be more accessible and attractive to those who haven’t grown up in the church, while verse by verse exposition teaches Biblical literacy and understanding. Again, instead of being “either/or,” Pastor Jim takes a “both/and” approach to preaching. His sermons are mostly topical, but he packages the topics within a particular passage of Scripture. With a D. Min with an emphasis on hermeneutics from Trinity Evangelical, Pastor Jim is conscious of working to interpret the topic in light of Scripture rather than the other way around.
Going Deep in Worship
Many attractional churches tend to be very high energy in their worship services, and that was also true of Christ Community Church for many years. However, Pastor Jim found himself drawn to evangelical churches with a more liturgical style when he had Sundays off. He thought carefully about why he was attracted to those churches.
In those liturgical services, there was often the recitation of creeds, times of silence, prayer and confession, and Scripture that was read out loud in responsive, congregational styles.
Grasping the idea that worship was also a time for confession and teaching, the church added a teaching pastor to the worship teams. The teaching pastor began screening out songs with no theological value and added songs that helped move the teaching themes along; other liturgical elements were added, such as silence and confessional prayer.
Going Deep in Community Groups
Bringing together the potentially difficult focus points of “deep” and “wide” meant an understanding of where people were at as they came into the fellowship. The first few steps of connecting people into small groups are intentionally designed. Christ Community has three different “on-ramps,” depending on where the newcomers were starting. For those “explorers” who are just beginning to investigate, the on ramp is a small group class called Alpha.
For the new believers, the on-ramp is a course called Next Steps. For Christians who have transferred from another church, their on-ramp is a seminar entitled Begin to Belong. The on-ramps are designed to move people forward in their journey to an ongoing community group. These small groups are intentionally focused on Bible study, using carefully curated materials. The community groups encourage personal Bible reading and discussion of Biblical passages.
Christ Community is developing both better biblical literacy and discipleship among its members and is continuing to be effective in its evangelistic outreach to the community. By having an intentional way to follow up on and direct new members to the right “on-ramp,” the church takes care to make sure the wide net helps those they catch to go deep. Their plans are working well, as they see 75% to 80% of their weekend attendees involved with the ongoing community groups.
If you are a pastor or in church leadership, get this book. Click HERE and order your copies today!
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