Selling the church vs. lifting up Jesus

This post is from the defunct blog "Dying Church"

A throw-away comment by Reggie McNeal in The Present Future that's got me thinking about planting churches and more:

As a side note, I wonder about our marketing efforts in selling the church rather than lifting up Jesus. It seems in the New Testament that Paul's strategy was to preach the gospel. He formed a church as a result of harvest. His goal was converts; the church was the natural by-product.

Comments

[ed]

I honestly understand this - I even agree that's the best way. Having said that, I think the real issue as you start a church, is, whatever way we do it, how do we make sure it's about converts? What that does, is it opens up the door for more than one way to do something while keeping central the reason why - so that the Gospel interacts with people's lives. Honestly I think it's the issue of in the box, out of the box mentality. We can't forget that Paul didn't travel alone. He usually had a team of people with him. And occasionally, I wonder if not all the time, some of the people who started with him, ended up staying where they went. And were even circled around where they were needed. I think the issue isn't so much about how you should do it, and maybe recognizing that we've done it in not so good ways up until now, although there's enough examples of places who are doing it well. I think sometimes we're still caught up on "the way to do it - this and everything else in the Christian walk" - let's look for better ways, but just like maybe the best ways to do evangelism haven't even been though of yet, maybe the best ways to plant churches haven't even been thought of yet. I think the point we do have to start with isn't so much, "this is the way you should do it" but, "the way we're going about this is all wrong" therefore, can we rethink this, bring it back to the heart of God and let him use his Spirit at work in you in me in others to come up with what the new thing will look like. In the end, to plant churches for the sake of having more churches, no way, even just for the sake of doing things in a more comtemporary way, no way - the issue is bringing the good news to a lost and sick world. If that's is central, I would say, do it however you want, but get out there doing it! I know I can be pretty contumacious myself.

[George]

More on selling the church at http://www.larknews.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.larknews.com Geo