New Statistics from Gary McIntosh

Did the name of your church influence your decision to attend
No 84% Yes 12% Uncertain 3%

Did the pastor’s preaching influence you decision to attend
Yes 90%, 6% no, 3% uncertain

George Hunter notes

Here are some interesting notes from George Hunter's lecture at the American Society for Church Growth.  The topic was evangelizing Pre-Christians.

George Hunter

 

Belonging comes before believing

 

Themes: Community, compassion,

 

If you don’t learn to communicate redemptively inside the body you won’t be effective in communicating effectively outside the body.

 

If you are orthodox

 

Lack of Communication

 

Conversations—Declining market for one way communication.

 

Feature the theme apostolic

 

It is one of the earliest and most perennial terms referring to the church.

 

The church is apostolic –sent out to pre-Christian people whom the Lord loves.

 

This is the main business of the church.

 

Proliferation of congregations within local churches.  Groups with similar homogenaeity within a body.  Who care for each other

 

The church features a strategic perspective of evangelization.

 

Strategy is the

 

Most churches are driven by the demands of the calendar rather than by a strategic vision of an overriding purpose.

 

The gospel is the only thing we have that the world doesn’t already have.

 

Cultural, emotional relevance in presenting the gospel.  Christianity is a religion of the heart .  To become a Christian is to be set free from an emotional world that was destroying you.  Guilt, doubt.

 

The secular world has an ecstasy deficit.  We need to help people discover grace through sublime worship experiences.

 

One of the supreme unspoken issues is “What is normal church like?”

 

Church should welcome people as though they have come into their true home for the first time in their life.

 

The domesticated relatively trivial church is not what Jesus or the apostles had in mind.

 

Another myth—The great commission is our purpose, but to fulfill it, all you need is correct theology.

Counter analogy—NPR interviewed a botanist. Phd in Botany and taught for 30 years.—He decided to take early retirement and build a great Victorian garden.  Five years later, his intended Victorian garden, was not a Victorian garden, but no one would have perceived it as a Victorian garden.  Why?  Birds, insects, droughts, pests sabotaged his dream.  After 5 years he went back to GB to visit the gardens, this time, he made a revolutionary discover, every great Victorian garden has a great Victorian gardener.   They knew more than enough botany, but they also knew soil science, meteorology, ornithology.  In our complex world, you can’t even build a Victorian garden without an interdisciplinary approach.

 

You must have an inter disciplinary approach to church.  Behavioral Sciences, anthropology, must be part of our understanding of our world.

 

Evangelism is not merely the enrolling of people into eternity, it is also the ministry of enlisting of people into working in the mission of Jesus in mission, justice and the other callings of Christ.

 

You can’t fulfill the mission of Jesus without building a critical mass.  The building of that critical mass is called evangelism.

 

Two Scientists

 

Arthur Edington—Cambridge—Astro physics—1930 “Why I believe in God”—“Relativity explained”

 

“The entire universe is more strange and complex than we imagine, indeed it is more strange and complex than we can imagine.”

 

Paul—No one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit

 

Albert Einstein—“We must make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

 

In the academy we don’t make it simple enough--  The majority of academic people are virtually unintelligible.

 

In mission we often succumb to the temptation to make it simpler than it can be.

 

The biggest hurdle is the folk wisdom that assumes because we have slogans we can interpret reality.

 

 

One reason to use the apostolic is that every other term has a shelf life of less than half a generation.

 

Don’t enter your horse in non-main business races.

 

George Hunter reads Mere Christianity almost every year.

 

P 199—God became man in Christ that we might become little Christs.—CS Lewis.  If the church is not doing that, then everything we are doing is a waste of time.  God became man for no other purpose.  It is possible that the entire universe was created for this purpose.