Reggie McNeal
My co workers have been reading this book called the present future by Reggie Mcneal. We went to a 2 day seminar with him as the speaker and I enjoyed it. He paints a great picture of our church culture over the last 4 generations. He said the builders (born 1925-45) made the birthday cake. The boomers (1946-65) buys the cake. The Gen-X (1966-83) takes them to the cake. (meaning its all about the created enviroment, the experience. He explained this is why we will buy a $20 hard rock shirt to prove we where there with or without buying a $10 burger. Mcdonalds lead the "experience" way by building a playland at the restraunt with take home toys). Now we have the Millenials (offically unnamed group born 1983-00). The cake is digital. everything is digital.
Then from there he decontructed all the problems we have in church. This is the first time in history that we have 4 generations in church together and we wonder why our different cultures can't worship together. It was really intresting. I loved that our staff heard this because we are a "builders" church, a "church has to be this way because" church. They got rocked by this guy. We kind of serve the boomers, but forget gen-x and the millenals. The church we had this conference, their services where a boomers service (Contemporary worship) and a gen-x service (modern worship). They didn't even have a builders service or an organ! This rocked our little old lady worship team.
The other big thing we harped on was programs. How the church is all a bunch of pharasees starting more processes for people to jump thru so they can join our club. Once they are on the mother ship you never have to leave. Our stores are christian, we only go to christian concerts, we only use the christian yellow pages, we only watch christian entertainment, we only stay with other christians. This is what the pharasees did, not Jesus. We are Pharasees excluding the world from our exclusive world. And if we build the perfect building with the perfect programs we think they they will come. Programs are for club members! They are not going to come, in north american culture we have to go to them. Church is not going to look like a sancturary on sunday as much as it did before, it now looks like soccer fields on a saturday morning. Its moved from missionaries to missional.
anyway, I could go on and on...so get the book. its $20 and worth the read even if you don't agree on how to fix the problem because it nails WHAT the problem is on the head.
Then from there he decontructed all the problems we have in church. This is the first time in history that we have 4 generations in church together and we wonder why our different cultures can't worship together. It was really intresting. I loved that our staff heard this because we are a "builders" church, a "church has to be this way because" church. They got rocked by this guy. We kind of serve the boomers, but forget gen-x and the millenals. The church we had this conference, their services where a boomers service (Contemporary worship) and a gen-x service (modern worship). They didn't even have a builders service or an organ! This rocked our little old lady worship team.
The other big thing we harped on was programs. How the church is all a bunch of pharasees starting more processes for people to jump thru so they can join our club. Once they are on the mother ship you never have to leave. Our stores are christian, we only go to christian concerts, we only use the christian yellow pages, we only watch christian entertainment, we only stay with other christians. This is what the pharasees did, not Jesus. We are Pharasees excluding the world from our exclusive world. And if we build the perfect building with the perfect programs we think they they will come. Programs are for club members! They are not going to come, in north american culture we have to go to them. Church is not going to look like a sancturary on sunday as much as it did before, it now looks like soccer fields on a saturday morning. Its moved from missionaries to missional.
anyway, I could go on and on...so get the book. its $20 and worth the read even if you don't agree on how to fix the problem because it nails WHAT the problem is on the head.
posted by James at 8:01 AM
3 Comments:
very interesting! i'm gonna get it.
cool. interesting. i'll have to think about it today.
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