This morning, as a part of a small study/prayer group, I was again looking at Rick Warren's book, The Purpose-Driven Church. I occurred to me that this book is ultimately about a discipline, a church-leader discipline. The book challenges the church leader to adopt the five purposes, then order every aspect of the congregation's life around them, from the largest goals to the smallest details. The initial impetus of the book is easily appreciated--it is easy to get excited about a purpose-driven church as opposed to a tradition-driven or budget-driven church. Church-leaders easily maintain enthusiasm while striving for an effective and pointed mission statement. But it seems that somewhere after the construction of a mission statement excitement quickly evaporates and is replaced by boredom. Because now we are down to bedrock of sheer discipline. Every program, ministry, decision needs to be filtered through the five purposes as focused by the mission statement. This gets tedious and demands dedication to the discipline. It is not just a dedication to the purposes of the church as the Bible teaches, but a secondary dedication the discipline of organizing a congregation around said purposes.
Discipline is painful. This past year I have yet again been confronted by my own inability to achieve discipline. I have come to see a strong link between faith and discipline in my personal struggle to grow in Christ. I have painfully recognized that my maturity is not reflected by the loftiness of the thoughts that run through my mind, but rather by the quality of the discipline that characterizes my day-to-day existence. That is why I am ranting so much about time and money. The function of time and money in my life provide a clear window into my soul (especially time). My inability to master my time, finding a way to do the things I have purposed to do, demonstrate vividly my weakness and degree of hypocrisy.
A goal of mine for the coming year is to focus less on the superficial aspects of walking with Christ and strive intently for godly discipline, a discipline that reveals a true transformation has occurred in my life. Of course, this can only happen by the gracious power of God at work in me.
Rick Warren states that the goal of a purpose-driven church is to turn the audience into an army. The image of an army implies that you and I are soldiers, that we are in a war, and within that war we have a mission. All of this requires discipline.
Check out the quote from N.T. Wright on PreacherMike.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Audience to Army
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I like the idea of the audience (congregation) turning into an army. That is an exciting mind picture!
Jennifer
If the congregation has the mentality of an army, then that would put the onus on us to pick up the cross and follow. It is too easy to sit in church and let the leaders of the church be religious for us. They (the leaders) can take the responsibility and we can reap the benefits. At least that is the mentality that I sometimes observe and that I fall into as well.
As you said in an early post, there needs to be more to my and our christianity than being nice people who act like good christians. I have not read this book, but I think it is essentially getting down that we have to be active and take responsibilty and not be just passive observers. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty.
Aaron
Post a Comment