A fresh vision for the church
Ron Walborn is a friend. He comes to AIM and teaches our missionaries how to hear the voice of the Lord and engage other cultures with the true Gospel. He’s also the head of the Pastoral Ministries Department at Nyack College in New York. Here’s a correspondence between him and a student:
Student: As far as your opinion goes, how does a Christian let go of the traditions of men and hold on to the commands of God?
Ron: OK, here’s the problem in a few concise points:
First: We are in need of Structural renewal in the Church. We use what I call an Attractional Model of evangelism instead of an Incarnational model. We ask, “How can we put on a good show so non-Christians will come to our church?” Not only is that a bad model, but most churches can’t compete with the “shows” the public is already getting on TV, Movies, Internet, Sporting events etc… The Incarnational model asks, “How can we get our people into their community more often and more effectively so the Jesus can be seen and experienced?” Again, the problem is that most US Christians & pastors have been so thoroughly trained in the Attractional model that the Incarnational model is not even a possibility.
Second: We are in need of Spiritual renewal in the CMA. Most of our rules about Holiness and “Christian behavior”are simply rules made by men. The initial passion, joy and unconditional love of encountering a God who loves us and a Spirit who empowers us through Jesus has been lost. At this point most non-Christians don’t really want what we are selling.
Here is a conclusion I have come to recently:
True Holiness is not about “cleaning up your act” and looking good. True Holiness is recognizing your complete inability to “clean up your act” forcing you to come to Jesus on a daily if not moment by moment basis in complete brokenness.
Until the church gets a fresh vision of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus I am not sure I have much hope in our evangelistic outreaches. In fact, sometimes I find myself praying against some churches effectively reaching the lost. Why? Because I am afraid that what they will be converted to is not Biblical Christianity, but instead a distorted, western, conservative religion that will make them twice the children of hell as they were before.
Sorry for the bad news. We have a lot to pray for! Don’t give up! I see the light more now than when I started this journey 20 years ago! God is ABLE to renew and revive His Church. He has done it before and He will do it again!
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Wow. We, my husband and I and our three kids, were just talking about this. In fact we are beginning a family study of the New Testament church compared to church today and what “church” really means.
When we attend a physical church we go to a very large CMA churchand have been feeling exactly the problem he is talking about. Last year the Lord laid on my heart the need for revival within our particular church which would then spread through the area we live in. I prayed and prayed over it and finally, at His command, communicated this need to our head pastor. For a while all of the pastors began to focus on this need for revival and refocus and then suddenly switched gears back to building bigger and better buildings and having better “programs” (right after having a church “survey” pointing out all the flaws in the church.) My heart aches.
I agree that most churches today, whether following the Attractional Model or whether being stuck in the traditioanl way or whether clinging on to church of some time frame, whether it be the 50s, or 60s or so on, either ignore the concept of Holiness all together or see it as something attained by human effort or deny the truth of our identification with Christ and see Holiness as not atainable in earthly terms. However, I don’t see the the Attractional Model as the problem. While some have taken the model and made it the end all and forgatten that revival comes from God working through the brokenness of His people, this is equally true of churches stuck in some other model. The basic concepts of the Attractional Model are based upon such truths as being all things to all people, doing the things we do with excellence, and showing true Christianity by our love. Thus, I don’t see the Incarnational Model and Attractional Model as mutually exclusive and in fact see our goal as attaining all of these truths.