I usually wait until I finish reading a book before I add it to my Resources page, write a commentary and then, if something really touches me, create a blog post about it. I had only finished reading the introduction of the book When the Church Was a Family by Joseph H. Hellerman when I came across a truly honest and inspirational few paragraphs which I want to share.
Is this book for you? The author states that his book is for the Traditional Church Leaders and what he defines as the Emerging Church Visionaries (House Church included). The paragraphs below are addressed to the Traditional Church Leaders.
A good portion of those who serve the institutional church sorely recognize the need for renewal and reform in the way we do ministry. Our programs are tired, our services have often become repetitive and nonengaging, and – most notably – we increasingly struggle to keep people connected with one another in ongoing networks of mutual support and accountability.
We tried for a season to play the consumer game by appealing to our people’s felt needs through programs such as “Three Keys to a Healthy Marriage” and “How to Find Success at Work.” You have surely heard the sermons, and you may very well have preached them yourself. The spiritual bankruptcy of consumer Christianity has become quite clear in retrospect. Indeed, it has completely backfired where the cultivation of community is concerned. The “let us meet your needs” approach to marketing the church, which became so popular among the baby boomers in the 1980’s and 1990’s, has only served further to socialize our people to “prefer a variety of church experiences, rather than getting the most out of all that a single church has to offer.” This hardly encourages lasting Christian community, so we continue to long for genuine renewal.
I trust that those of you who are attempting to revitalize an existing congregation’s values and structures will find this book a promising vision for church as God intended it. But I must caution you in advance to prepare yourself for an acute paradigm shift. A return to the community orientation of early Christianity requires much more than a slight course correction in our weekly programming or the addition of another line item to the church budget.
Contextualizing New Testament social values in our congregation requires us to significantly revise the way that we conceive of church. And there will inevitably be a cost to pay as leaders. For as is generally the case during seasons of renewal, those of us who have the most invested in “church as it is” will inevitably be called upon to sacrifice more than the others in order to liberate our people to experience “church as it was” during the New Testament era.