Another excellent book on the church is An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God Had in Mind by Erwin McManus. Erwin is the Lead Pastor of Mosaic in Los Angeles. He one of the most creative and innovative thinkers and church leaders I have ever met.
Erwin shows us that God desires the church to be an unstoppable movement of people, not an institution or organisation. He calls us back to our origins.
"Origins finds the future in the beginning. To explore we must first excavate. To discover we must first recover. To re-frame we must first reflect. To imagine we must first examine. To move forward we must first step back. We need the compass of an ancient text. The maps will guide us to reflect a noble past but willing to decode the present context."
The church is to be active and engaged with its community. The church is a body not a business, a living organism not an organisation, a family not a machine or a company, a movement not an institution. It's time for that movement to begin again – "… defying tradition … strangely sacred yet sacrilegious … revolutionary … against all odds … unstoppable."
Inspiring and thought-provoking stuff!
Thank you Mark for your observations. Excellent book! Love reading Erwin’s material.
And I reckon it’s the “organisation” and “institution” part of the church that does the “hurting”. It’s in those things that we see the rules and law and the thinking that keeps God in a box. It’s the place where people’s hearts are “judged” according to how they measure up to how the “organisation and “institution” say things need to look when a person is “right with God”.
That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be organisation within a church…or orderly way of conducting business. I hope I got across what I was trying to say.
Mark I loved it when you spoke two weeks ago about not looking at the value of a church by it’s programs or it’s style. But that the important thing was where their hearts are. That we are all brothers and sisters in Christ all called to the same mission, but just doing it with different style.
A gathering of Christ Followers, empowered by the Spirit, to participate in God’s mission in the world today. And that can look so different and be done in so many wonderful and creative ways. God is an amazing and creative God….why shouldn’t we also reflect that… after all, we’re made in his image.
I love being a partner of CityLife and doing life with you all.
Hi Marija,
U seem to have some good opinions throughout the posts, good listening to you, keep it up!!!
Hi Claire,
Thank you for your kind encouraging words 🙂
Really appreciate Mark for graciously allowing us to have a voice on his blog.
That speaks volumes about a leader!
Shalom in Jashua HaMashiach.