If there is one thing I notice the church realizes and is trying to work on is information overload. Americans get too much info. Yahoo is my homepage. I look down over the homepage, read the head lines and that's where I get most of my news. Sometimes I click on an article and read half of it- sometimes not. And I probably remember none of it. Sometimes I'll watch t.v. while looking on the internet- I wonder how much information I've been given in a 30 minute time span. I think the church sees there's a problem.
We can either A. Compete and try to put more info out there. Or B. Find a different approach.
Dallas Willard said, "We have counted on preaching, teaching, and knowledge or information to form faith in the hearer and have counted on faith to form the inner life and outward behavior of the Christian." He notes that we've used the concept of give people info and they'll go do it as our mode of spiritual transformation in the church. He doesn't think that's working, especially in our world of info overload today.
Another book I'm reading called, "The Big Idea," talks a lot about how we need to simplify what we tell people. The author talks of one pastor in South America who preaches the same sermon over and over until he feels his people put it into action. The author's church come up with one big idea for a sermon series and then every part of the church works around that idea- small groups, kids stuff, worship, etc.
Simplicity is in. Another book called, Simple Church talks about how church needs to simplify down to be as basic as possible. I think that instead of the church competing for our attention, maybe we do need to streamline and try to make everything more simple. Give every sermon one clear point- find ways to make it easily applicable. Make the church easily accessible for anyone. I'm not quite sure all the ways to do this, but I know that when you have a contemplative theologian like Dallas Willard and a cool church on the edge guy like the author of "Big Idea" and "Simple Church" saying the same thing, you need to listen.
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3 comments:
As Common Ground moves to adjust the style of small group they use to a multiplication model rather than the elective model that had been adopted two years ago, this very issue has floated to the forefront of everything. Are we overloading people? If yes, what impact is that having not just on CG, but on the Kingdom as a whole. My gut reaction to over stimulation is to withdraw.
I love the idea of a church revolving around a single idea. Practically, I recognize that this may require more time from me and the other leaders tasked with laying the groundwork for this. I'm okay with that. One of the goals of the church is to turn believers into leaders, and a consequence of leadership is more ownership and more sacrifice.
I want to be a church like this that doesn't seek to dump more and more information on people and instead makes sure they are soaking in the information they are given. I am excited that Kevin at CG has taken up this banner along with the other leaders of CG.
I am excited that when I go to plant a church, I will have this in my head.
My homepage, by the by, is Google.com simply because it has no information on it, and if I want information, I have to seek it.
I'd be interested in alternating between a sermon series that had a corresponding small group question series, and a sermon series separate from the small group. I would wonder if you choose only certain sermon series, you could use it to be a catalyst for people in your church to check out a small group for the first time. If you do the small group/ sermon series combo all the time, I wonder if it would get boring? I don't know- maybe not. Maybe you could still choose small group series that talk about certain aspects that are closer to the sermon series, than two subject matters that are totally different.
The church that uses the Big Idea said that not every church is totally incorporated like them. In fact it took them a long time to try to incorporate their kids program into this model. But, if you could, it could be cool.
I'm not totally sold, but I think there are cool things about it.
Agreed.
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