Ministry Porn
January 11, 2010 · Print This Article
Most church staff teams attend conferences. When I (Gary) was a pastor, we’d attend various church conferences. These conferences were great at helping form deeper relationships within the staff team. They were also great at helping us disengage from the routine tasks of our local church, and place ourselves within an environment of change, growth, and spiritual/emotional nourishment. Finally, these conferences were great at giving us principles to help guide our ministries into the future.
But there was one thing that these conferences could never do. They could never fulfill on the church portrait they unknowingly painted. In other words, my church would never look like Rick Warren’s church. As a pastor, I could never have what Rick Warren has.
Ever.
Finally, someone far more visible than me is standing up and saying the same thing. Ed Stetzer calls this phenonemon “Ministry Pornography”. Check out what he’s saying, and post your thoughts.
I'm not sure I agree that the average church that hosts a conference and models a seeker sensitive movement is in a "cool" place. If you look at Life Church, Fellowship Church, Elevation Church, etc., the Saddleback Church would be the minority of the depicted group. The key is to be a church that is relevant to the YOUTH of America. They are tomorrow and church shouldnt be modeled after what churchy people want, but rather an inviting place that relates to culture while firmly standing on the principles of God's Word.
It is easy to see what someone else is doing in their ministry, get excited about it, and try to incorporate it into what your church is doing. This can be a source of revived passion and create almost a new enviroment for worship and learning, but you have to be careful of the marriage between your church and the new methodology. The experience created in one church is not often simply duplicated in another by repeating one process or another, or by teaching this way or that. The key factor is how the worship, the message , the video, or whatever was incorporated in that church experience connected with God's truth and allowed the Spirit to communicate that truth to the congregation. Then you can use your knowledge of your church enviroment to help recreate that connection in way that is sincere and not just a regurgitation of something someone saw at a conference.
Love this! I have spent time, money and hours to look like some other church. I realized (actually God showed me) that I was being lazy, I was trying to "cut and paste" my way to a "successful" church, which meant that I was going to have to do the hard task of asking him what He wanted, and how He wanted me to build His church in that community. Novel idea, but in the end the only one that is "successful". I am no longer chasing after the "best 50 ways to grow your church", and I actually have saved the money to buy things that are really beneficial for the ministry