wrestling:with:truth

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Matthew 28:19-20

This post is my attempt offer some of my ideas on where I think Church can go. These are just my ideas. This is what I call a Hybrid Church. This is the short and quick version, the longer version I'm sure some of you would find boring, so this is the condensed version. The Hybrid Church takes a lot of good things from different generations of church and combines them with the Great Commission to hopefully offer a haven where people can be encouraged, grow, and Go (Great Commission.)

The Hybrid Church takes on the form of the missional church and the emerging church to form a church with strengths comparable to our ever-flowing and changing culture. The church needs to have the mindset of caring about and reaching out to the lost, broken, and oppressed. This is the Missional Church. According to Dr. Eddie Gibbs, "there are many churches describing themselves as "evangelical" that are not evangelistic. They display little concern for and make little effort to reach out to, those who are not yet Christians, as well as evangelism only in terms of inviting nonattenders to swell their ranks." If the Church does not handle what Jesus commanded in the Great Commission then all is lost. People are wired and designed to experience something greater than themselves and if the church cannot connect those dots for people who will?

The other half of this hybrid is the "emerging" church. What the emerging church does so well comes from its ability to be liquid and changing. This liquid movement will keep the consumer attention as long as the church uses things to keep the public's attention. Such as using things like film, art, theatre, and music. Does it mean it has to be a big production like the mega church? No, it does not have to resemble that model at all. There are churches that can offer those resources, however, this model does not require a large budget to accomplish those things. In the book "The Shaping of Things to Come: innovation and mission for the 21st - century church." Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch pointed out that, "people want substance and things that deal with more serious topics." Emerging church goers are not looking for fluff. There is already enough of those churches to squelch religion and Christianity in America why add to it.

In order for the church of today to become the church of tomorrow church leaders need to recognize where the church is now, identify the challenges of relating to its cultural context, and determine what needs to change if the church is going to be successful moving into tomorrow. If the church is truly about changing and about doing Kingdom work people will notice the difference and desire the same for their life with out the church ever forcing down a pill society does not want to consume. We are wired and designed to serve more than ourselves. At some point in time, something will click, and people will come searching. The only hope is for the church to be ready and willing to accept them into its arms.