Reading through Chapter 4 (Three Stories) of Simple Church, they give examples of three simple churches. I may have to reread to be clear, but it seems at least that all three churches use their Sunday morning worship service as their Connecting to God element. Connecting to People is done at a different time and that time is given much advertisement on Sunday morning. One of those churches was Northpoint with Andy Stanley.
The processes are in stages. Stage one connects you with God, then you are encouraged to stage two. For many of these churches, stage two is growing. I suppose our stage two is connecting with people. So the question is "How do you connect with people?" Is it people in general? Do we want to connect people with their spouse?
And of these three churches, none mentioned have a commitment to connecting locally and globally.
From Northpoint's website: "Our mission is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. We do so by creating environments where people are encouraged and equipped to pursue intimacy with God, community with insiders, and influence with outsiders." I also noticed the pictures on the website -- three women and Andy Stanley. Not sure what that means unless women are their target.
Reggie Joiner is quoted "Many of our staff had previously been involved with churches that were program-heavy, and we know how quickly things could grow out of control. So we became tenacious about staying simple. In fact, you might be surprised at some of the things we do not do. For example, we don't have a Christian school, midweek services, men and women's ministries, a children's choir, adult Sunday school, Easter or Christmas Pageants, or a recreation ministry."
Going back to the fact that these churches see programs as steps toward their goals, and the circles get smaller and smaller. My hope for a process (and maybe this creates complexity) is that you can move in and out of all four areas, in fact involvement in one area should certainly move you toward another area (for instance Connecting with God may move you to Connect Globally or Connecting with People, perhaps international students, may move you to Connect Globally). But do the steps have to be in order? Does Connecting with God have to come first? No doubt, it has to come, but can we find people Connecting Locally and Connect them with God?
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Interesting review. In fact, we do often find that people connect with God because they connected to believers. So, no, the process is not necessarily sequential.
In fact, when Jesus said, "These are the greatest commandments," (loving God and loving people) he didn't place one over the other.
So, all three pursuits (of God, insiders, and outsiders) are part of what it means to be a disciple of Christ.
Sometimes, the influence with outsiders piece is something I'm doing on my own (with a neighbor, for example) and other times it is something I'm doing with my Community Group (like ministering downtown or across the globe). So, they are all pretty interwoven.
The important thing is that they are all equally credible checkpoints of maturity in Christ. You can't just be sitting in programs, acquiring knowledge, claiming to be "pursuing intimacy with God." There has to be a demonstration of that in how you love people (both insiders and outsiders).
I think the book is challenging many churches to reconsider their level of programming and ask some good, "Why-do-we-do-that?" questions.
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