At a recent speaking engagement, Dan Kimball spoke with a girl, frustrated with her church:

"I got to talk with her after the formal event was over and she shared that it isn't the theology of the church as she isn't changing her theology.  But it is the vibe of the church and the traditions and styles which she cannot relate to. She wants to be part of a church that is more vibrant, outward and missionally focused, engages the arts, speaks to her more personally and encourages her to be the church, not go to church.

I sensed that this was somewhat a theme for many there.

A lot of denominational pastors were there and there is a growing tension between what the traditions of the denomination practice and do but it isn't speaking or connecting to the hearts of many younger people. During one of the Q and A times I made a comment how we must not put tradition ahead of mission. If we do that, it is death."

Somehow it's become enough that we meet once or twice a week. But that's like putting the cart before the horse. The weekly gathering should not be the focus. The focus MUST be on the mission, accomplishing the mission, mobilizing and deploying the body to achieve the mission.  The weekly gathering is there to recharge, organize, and lead the troops, but it is not an end in itself. Otherwise we are just going to church, but not being The Church.

We recently asked Dave Gibbons (author of the awesome book, The Monkey and the Fish) a question:

Dave, it seems like in our church culture that we ask a small percent of the members of the body to do all the work, while most of us give nothing more than money to the work of the Kingdom--so much gifting, skills, ideas, and possibly Billions of man-hours are sitting unused. What can US Churches do to empower the pew-warmers to use their gifts to contribute to the Church Universal and advance the Kingdom?

Dave's answer:
I think this is one of the fundamental challenges of the church today, namely, to stir a volunteer revolution where every one is truly a priest.

Here's a couple of best practices that would move the church forward:

1. Reassess our current Assessments! They're inadequate. Today we have a model of assessments that focus on the strengths, personalities and passions of our membership. What we need are assessments that look at the meta-narratives of pain, weaknesses and turbulence as well. Pain is often a better teacher and guide for most of humanity.

2. Develop Intuitive, listener/coaches who intersect the voice of our membership and the voice of God to come up with customized discipleship/growth journeys for our membership. These people are in our congregation today. This is a sacred journey not just an objective assessment.

3. Create an ethos where Pastors are seen as the "support team" and the congregation members as the "field team." Real application of this will shift everything you do.

4. Focus your resources (budget which includes time, money, focus) more on people development than weekend programs, facilities and professional staff. This changed my life as I always said Leadership development is my number one priority. But the reality of it was it wasn't reflected in my work week time schedule.

5. Let your congregation members be a part of the real strategy sessions not simply the focus groups.

6. Provide on-line and off-line resources to not just the people in our individual churches but to the body of Christ locally and globally. In today's world on-line and off-line is seen as one world. While many have a difficult time fathoming a world where you can also be developed on-line, the reality is that the next generation doesn't. While it's not the only way, it's growing more seamless with the off-line physically present processes we now have in place. Moreover, if we always have to visibly, physically be present for spiritual maturation we're cutting out the role of one who we don't often physically see. . .the Holy Spirit. We need both to fuel our people to be radical followers of Jesus.

7. Intentionally collaborate with other churches. Move beyond the "network" and "association." What would happen if we really did intentionally unlock the doors to our small groups, training materials, experiences, mentors, and experts to each of our churches. . . And actually planned our curriculum offerings together starting at least on a regional basis and eventually national and global? We're working on this with our new alliance but we need networks to start embracing this. We're still reinventing the wheel and wasting our resources.

Dave Gibbons, Lead Pastor of Newsong Global Alliance, Culture Consultant and Social Entrepreneur, Author of The Monkey and The Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third Culture Church.

Perry Noble did a blog series recently on 5 Leadership Styles that Always Lose. Here's a clip from #5 - The Fearful Leader

"When a leader allows fear to control him…the people he leads ALWAYS lose.

• Fear forces a leader to embrace the “way things are” rather than how they should be.
• Fear causes a leader to think more about what they have to lose rather than what the Kingdom has to gain.
• Fear makes a person depend on their power and ability rather than God’s.
• Fear leads to impulsive and unwise decisions rather than prayed through and processed ones."

Waterfront Community Church is a bunch of Crazies! They're giving away 100% of their weekend offering to help the poor and people in need! I can't believe they're doing this!! What about the Kingdom? How do they ever expect to grow? How do they get things done?

This is ridiculous, completely without precedent! (besides the books of Acts)

Watch the video from MSNBC:

Well, it's interesting anyway.

What do you think?