The first half of the book Megashift by James Rutz highlights miracles and supernatural happenings around the world. It’s exciting reading and the author encourages us to get ready for more. The second half highlights the importance of relational gatherings and gives advice on how to start and sustain them. Written in 2005, James’ predictions for Western society was unfortunately overly optimistic, but let’s continue to be true to this vision. I would recommend this book because it contains some great insight into relational gatherings. An excerpt from the book is below.
The Holy Spirit is rapidly revising Christianity.
He is putting at the core of His new church small groups that are interactive, informal, exciting, and geared to rapid multiplication.
This is the beginning of the end for Spectator Christianity. Suddenly, it’s out of style to be a pew potato, doing little for the kingdom except sitting in a row on Sundays, looking at the back of someone’s head, and wondering if your team will win the afternoon game on TV.
For centuries, the main way to express your Christian identity has been by “going to church.” There, a lone, overworked pastor exhorted you to be holy, love your neighbor, be salt and light, and do great stuff for God.
But before you got a chance to actually do any of that, you got a benediction and a hearty handshake at the door…after which you were supposed to go home and improvise your own lifestyle of state-of-the-art sainthood. And a week later, there you were in the pew again, looking at the back of someone’s head.
Both laymen and pastors are starting to figure out what was wrong in that routine: It was like having the hockey team listen to the coach’s pep talk for an hour, and calling that “the game.”
So now we’re changing the whole shebang. Around the world, we’re rapidly drafting Christians into ministry teams-and the players are loving it. The bleachers are beginning to empty as 707 million action-oriented Christians start to pour out onto the playing field and discover the joy and challenge of every-member ministry.
The church’s “fighting force” is thus being multiplied-up to 100 times-as God redeploys large, passive audiences into small, power-filled teams where every person has an important function-plus a chance to widen his or her ministry by reaching out to help more and more people while pursuing the higher gifts.
Instead of one pastor doing the heavy lifting while 100 laymen watch (and often criticize), you may now have 100 “team Christians” sharing the work of ministry while various people with pastoral gifts coach and equip from the sidelines. This megashift to EMPOWERMENT is at the core of the new Christianity.
Being part of a small group takes effort. It requires thinking, whether you’re in a house church or cell church meeting-or some other group with a name like microchurch, heart church, Alpha group, metachurch mouse cell, organic church, Serendipity team, simple church, life transformation group, community of care, jacuzzi fellowship, or just a plain old open church meeting in a pub.
But it’s worth the work. Whereas traditional churches tend to produce spiritual babies, small groups tend to produce maturity. (BABIES is my acronym for Born Again But Is Enjoying Siesta.)
Nobody snoozes in small groups. The body life of the group will buff up your character, soothe your sorrows, sprout your gifts, heal your wounds, lift your spirit, teach your mind, disciple your soul, and bring you face to face with God again and again. You should understand that if you’re serious, an open fellowship looms large in your future. Two generations ago, eminent Christian spokesman A.W. Tozer thundered,
The fact is that we are not producing saints. We are making converts to an effete type of Christianity that bears little resemblance to that of the New Testament. The average so-called Bible Christian in our times is but a wretched parody of true sainthood. Yet we put millions of dollars behind movements to perpetuate this degenerate form of religion and attack the man who dares to challenge the wisdom of it.