I wanted to give some commentary on Jason’s much appreciated and understandable rant on David Olsons Press Enterprise article, but the more I thought about it the more aggravated I got at the article.
Cutting edge means leading the way. Nothing against Sandals but it looks like most churches in So Cal so I don’t really see what is cutting edge.
Let me define cutting edge for you.
In June of this year we decided we would no longer have two services. We will pack people in until we have to turn them away then we will just tell them to get there earlier next week.
We will no longer split our body for convenience or numbers sake especially considering the spiritual importance of edification in corporate worship.
We added 30 minutes to our already one hour and 15 minute services so we would have more time for prayer, preaching, singing, giving, scripture reading, and edification.
We promise our congregates that they will not be out in and out in about an hour and if the donuts are gone then come earlier next week.
We will do Lord’s Supper weekly and baptisms as often as needed (hopefully weekly).
The message you hear will probably make you want to repent of something and if not you weren’t listening.
The messages will not tell you how to live like a Christian and still be considered “cool” by your lost friends.
If you claim to be a Christian we will expect you to live like a Christian.
If hellfire and brimstone is part of the text being preached then we will preach on hellfire and brimstone.
The cross will be sung about and preached about and talked about until you begin to wonder if we ever really talk about anything else at our church.
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36 year old husband, father, pastor, singer, musician, reader, eater, rider, watcher,
Wow sounds good…can I come? I can’t remember the last time I took part of the Lord’s Supper. I am looking forward to learning more about the cross.
What you guys talk about sounds like something Paul would have asked of churches in the New Testament.
Keep up the good work.
Amen! To the post and the comments above.
It is God’s stated goal to save with a purpose-to conform us into the image of His Son our Lord Jesus Christ.
Repentance is to be a lifestyle for the Christian who is paying attention to the ministry of the Word, from his own personal studies and devotions, to the corporate expounding of scripture, to the encouragment and exhortations from his Christian brethren.
I once taught the verses that show God’s ultimate purpose in redeeming a people and setting aside the saints to some friends who attend a seeker sensitive church.
When confronted with the fact from scripture that God is using our lives and circumstances to conform us into the image of Christ, they said: Hmmm, we have never heard that before!
Wow.
If you are paying attention to how your performance is not up to your position in Christ, you will be repenting. A lot!
Get used to it.
Are you going to write a book about this? Or do a seminar to answer questions like:
Who is your target audience?
How to ride the wave of a One-Hour-and-Forty-Five-Minute service?
Will there be nutritional supplements?
You know, stuff like that…
Spot On. Especially the comment about teaching “Christians” to still look cool in front of their lost friends.
Amen, Scott. I’m glad that you dealt with the definition of “cutting edge.” When I hear someone is cutting edge I wonder, Cutting edge of what? Biblical ecclessiology? Missions?
Most of the time they are referring to “style” and “marketing.” Which means that the success is man-made which is not only useless in the Church but also harmful to all other churches.
Jonathan Walton, assistant prof of religious studies at UC Riverside, said “What’s going to work in the Mississippi delta or rural Alabama is not going to work in Southern California.” Well, prof., you are just dead wrong.
The prof. may attack our church. Matt Brown may say a church like ours is “lame.”** And people may attack me when I speak up against the verbal assaults against us. But I will not be silent. And our voices will be heard even here in So. Cal.
** I dare you to listen to Matt call the Church lame in his 2007 Easter sermon entitled “Inked” found at http://www.sandalschurch.com/media/video.asp
Jason,
I tried but could only get through 5:30.
The girl in the intro had some nice ink. I didn’t care for the one on her neck.
“In June of this year we decided we would no longer have two services. We will pack people in until we have to turn them away then we will just tell them to get there earlier next week.
So, no matter how many people God brings to your door, your ok with turning them away?
I cannot even begin to describe how wrong I think that is.
Dac,
Please describe.
Dude!
If ever we take a trip out west, and we’re in your area, my family is attending on Sunday. If there wasn’t one before, this is a deal-maker.
BTW, didn’t Spurgeon have to turn people away at the Metro Tab?
Dac,
I cannot even begin to describe how wrong I think that is.
People have to make choices. It sounds like the elders at Jason’s church made some choices.
…considering the spiritual importance of edification in corporate worship.
…more time for prayer, preaching, singing, giving, scripture reading, and edification.
…Lord’s Supper weekly and baptisms as often as needed (hopefully weekly).
To be honest, these changes sound refreshing. Reminds me of Acts 2:42, They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. “Growth” isn’t everything. Consider the effect of steroids on some bodybuilders. They grew, but they lost a lot in the process. It sounds like Jason’s church decided to focus on New Testament methodology rather than on church growth statistics. Good for them.
Let me ask you, if God brings to (his) door people 24 hours a day seven days a week for the next year, would you have Jason preaching around the clock until he dropped dead? I’m pretty confident that if that were to happen, Jason’s church might actually plant several new churches in So Cal.
Rock on, bro.
If God were to send us more people than we currently can hold we would just find a bigger place to meet. Until that happened it wouldn’t bother me to tell people we have no more room. If they want to stand outside our giant sliding doors I guess that would be ok too.
Dog Boys -
Other than your love for all things LSU, I usually like you guys. But I am always stunned by this concept of limiting church size. Usually I hear it from people who have some non biblically based notion that there is some perfect church size, or tied to that once you grow to a certain size the senior pastor really cannot know all the members of his congregation.
When the crowds got to big for the disciples, did they turn them away? No, they created deacons so as to provide for all the believers that came.
When Jesus was preaching to thousands, did God provide enough food for just some of them?
In what world would it ever be appropriate to bar the doors of a bible preaching church and send people away with the the words don’t let the door hit you on the way out?
Next time I teach sunday school, first 15 in, after that, too bad, I bar the door – your out of luck for not coming early enough ? No, we are going to rearrange classes, split classes, encourage people to consider other services – what ever it takes so we can preach the risen christ to everyone who comes to our door.
Dac,
I read your blog and appreciate your excellent articles. I especially like the fact that you linked the 9Marks series on “Living as the Church.” Let me quote from Lesson #12 in that series: “…there is something special about gathering publicly with the entire church and praising God together.” We agree with this statement.
Our ecclessiology causes us to want to do everything to promote unity in the church — especially in corporate worship. We do not want to do anything to divide, split or cause the membership of our church to miss the power of a unified corporate worship service with all the Body present! We would rather build or buy bigger venues to in which to meet on Sunday mornings than divide our congregation. We would rather open the door and windows of our church, or meet in an outdoor venue, or any such thing than to ever divide our congregation during corporate worship again!
Sadly, you, without any knowledge of what is going on at MVC, attacked the collective wisdom of the elders. You said: “I am always stunned by this concept of limiting church size.” Dac, please give me a quote where Scott or I said we believe in “limiting church size.” You can’t. That was a foolish charge, Dac. You said that you’ve heard some say that once you grow to a certain size the senior pastor really cannot know all the members of his congregation — AS IF we believe that. Another foolish charge, Dac. Of course there is truth in the fact that churches can grow too big for a pastor to properly execute his duties. THAT IS WHY I FIRMLY BELIEVE IN ELDERSHIP. MVC started with THREE pastors and no members in 2001. Now it has FIVE pastors in its eldership so that together we may biblically shepherd MVC.
Nevertheless, Dac, you continued with false descriptions of our church practices with this outrageous statement: “In what world would it ever be appropriate to bar the doors of a bible preaching church and send people away with the the words don’t let the door hit you on the way out?” Are you saying that Scott said that? You definitely insinuated it — and that is not only ridiculous but scandalous. It presented Scott and the elders of MVC in an incredibly horrible way. Why in the world would you do this? What possibly would cause you to say such a thing?
It is perfectly clear in Scott’s statement that MVC is not barring the doors of the church but, in fact, doing the very opposite!
Scott said in the post above, “We will pack people in until we have to turn them away then we will just tell them to get there earlier next week.” You think that is appalling. Why? I don’t know what time your church meets on Sunday, but when it does lets just suppose for a moment that so many people come this Sunday to your service or services that after getting as many of those people into the services as you can what will you do with the rest? According to your comments you would go inside the building, ask half of the people to come outside and wait until later in the day and be part of a new service with the crowd that could not fit in to the current service. Hmmm. No, surely you wouldn’t do that.
Scott is telling you that we would invite everyone who could not meet with us this Sunday to come back next Sunday and we will have a bigger venue. That is an act of faith on our part and is consistent with our ecclessiology. Maybe you don’t understand why our doctrine would press us to unite the membership for corporate worship, maybe you don’t care. No, for now I am going to just assume that you just emotionally reacted without knowledge. But feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
In June of this year we decided we would no longer have two services. We will pack people in until we have to turn them away then we will just tell them to get there earlier next week.
My understanding of that:
We had two services, we went to one.
If too many people show up, to bad, we won’t go back to two services – show up earlier if it really matters to you.
If in some way that means something different, than I misunderstood your statement.
Dac,
Your non-apology is accepted.
Stephen,
You asked about Spurgeon turning people away on Sundays. According to Theologians of the Baptist Tradition: “Charles Spurgeon received a call to pastor the legendary New Park Street Baptist Church in London at the young age of nineteen (119). This church had been previously pastored by such luminaries as John Rippon, Benjamin Keach, and John Gill (119). Spurgeon preached his first sermon beginning a ministry of nearly forty years to a congregation of about eighty. Within six months, two thousand people were hearing him preach, with another thousand being turned away at the door. As a result of the tremendous crowd, the six thousand seat Metropolitan Tabernacle was built which was filled to capacity each Sunday.”
Notice that Spurgeon did not go to 3 Sunday morning services, with fewer songs, shorter sermons, less time to practice the sacraments, etc. Instead, within six months he build a building to allow the Body of Christ in his church to meet together!
Dac,
Quit trippin’.
Read what Jason and Scott are writing. That should resolve it for you.
If you don’t want to take them at their word, why bother commenting?
Sarcasm alert!
I do have one question for you that has been in my mind all day…
Why aren’t you out evangelizing the world or something instead of reading blogs anyway?
You’re sitting at your computer when you should be out there doing the work of an evangelist.
I cannot even begin to describe how wrong I think that is.
Jason,
Thanks for that, I thought I had read just that somewhere. Now I need to go mark up and highlight the relevant portion of that book.
Dac,
After Jesus fed the crowd, what did he do? He intentionally turned away pretty much everyone but the disciples.
Stan,
I just got off work (it’s 5:30 am on the East Coast) and no one’s awake to be evangelized. That good enough?
Stephen,
Your off the hook for now.
I’ll be checking up on you this afternoon.
Like your website. Incredibly cute kid.
Jason
I apologize for not seeking clarification – I should of not assumed what I did, and should of paid more attention to Scott’s correction to his original statement. I was responding to your question earlier and his post somehow did not reach my brain in connection to your question. I was seeing your statement through the eyes of having arguements with some uber hyper calvinists who argue against witnessing (God will bring to our church his elect). I know you are not of that persuasion and I should of been more charitable in my initial response.
Having said that….
Are you saying that in order to build up the church body, including developing unity, that you should only have one service? While I don’t have a problem with the joel osteen model
I would disagree that in someway one service does a better job than two or more in doing so.
Stan:
You mean fault finding is not a ministry activity?
I don’t understand the question.
Dac,
Not fret it. I really believed that you misunderstood what was going on. I have mistakenly done the same before and know how much I hate it when that happens.
Concerning your other question:
First of all, I am not informed as to “Joel Osteen’s Model.” But I can guarantee you that all one service churches are NOT the same.
Our purposes stem from our ecclessiology. I do not have time right now to explain it sufficiently. I must leave the computer. But I will explain it soon. Or maybe Scott will check this comment thread soon and share his wisdom on this. Scott is one of our pastors and his primary responsibility (among all pastoral duties) is to constantly be correcting everything in our church to come in line with biblical ecclessiology.
His insights are refreshing.
I love this part:
“The message you hear will probably make you want to repent of something and if not you weren’t listening.
The messages will not tell you how to live like a Christian and still be considered “cool” by your lost friends.”
Right on!
MRJ
Usher: Hey Deak, we gotta hang out here
Deacon: Why?
Usher: Cause with all that hell fire and brimstone, there’s bound to be a lot more roadkill