I like the way you explain your intentionality. So much of my Baptist life has included “doing” church programs and stuff out of “habit.”

Our churches do seem very similar.

Our church would be considered contemporary by many, traditional by some.

We’re a 4 year old Purpose Driven Church…without much of the baggage associated with that term. Our lead pastor preaches straight through sections of Scripture (recent series James, Philippians, now the life of Elijah). He does not preach felt needs (How to be financially free, a good dad, and improve your golf score). He offers an invitation to respond every week, but we do not have “altar” calls every week. Most times the “altar” is used during praise and worship time.

To be honest, in practice, our church sounds a lot like Geoff’s. As I explained, we’re in a semi-rural area just outside of the suburban ring around St. Louis. We have a good mix of long time churched, previously un-churched, and previously de-churched believers in our congregation. Our economic demographic would probably be blue-clollar lower and middle class.

The only way I can differentiate the way we do church from other models is by the use of the word intentional.

We have to intentionally approach much of our ministry that other churches just assume is being done. I’ve been in small, large, and mega SBC churches throughout my life, so I’ve seen the different approaches to enabling ministry.

Discipleship and Fellowship (2 of the 5 purposes) have to be hit constantly. Our unchuched and dechurched have no “spiritual memory” (think muscle memory in golfers) to help them in these areas. We have to use individual mentors instead of classes, which, in reality is a good thing. Ironically, most of my struggle is with the long time churched who don’t view daily time with God as a priority. Unfortunately, I’ve seen that in every church model!

As I alluded before when I said I am an idealist, the reality is that we aren’t doing everything we want to do. But at least we know what we want to do!

I am still thinking about this whole thing, and I came across a quote I put on my blog a few weeks ago.

“If a church celebrates its methods, it becomes calcified and difficult to change. Celebrate mission over methods if you hope to build a culture of creativity that remains open to change.” (H. Dale Burke, “Even Healthy Churches Need To Change,” Leadership, Fall 2005, p.45)

That helps me think about this whole deal. Thinking about mission vs. method is easier for me to handle than thinking about traditional vs. contemporary, or christian vs. post-christian, or etc., etc.

You just hit on something that I was taught by Dr. David Sills at SBTS in our “Cross-Cultural Communication” class.

As we began our classes he would often make us recite this “mantra” about any given culture: “It’s not wrong, it’s not stupid, it’s just different.”

If we could just learn to apply that knowledge on our own continent!

Now drilldown a bit more…

I live in an outlying county from the metro area (Jefferson County). While the rest of the metro are thinks we are all a bunch of rednecks, this county is highly suburbanized in the north and east portions of the county. The majority of people living in these areas tend to work in St. Louis City or County. This area is becoming gentrified with subdivisions of big homes taking over land once used by mobile homes.

drill down a bit more…

I live just outside this ring of suburbs in the large chunk of the county that remains unincorporated (no towns). Nobody here wants local government. I think of it as the Wild West (ahem, since we’re in the western portion of the county…)

Bottom line: my portion of the county has a distinct culture than that of the pretty suburbs north and east. Sure, they have their issues too, but they are not the same life issues. In many ways, church going is not something that these people think about and reject; it’s something they never think of.

My wife and I both grew up in this area, moved away (to the pretty suburbs), then moved back. My wife once made the comment that she just felt like our area was in deep spiritual oppression with alcoholism and drug addiction. Those two curses spawn a whole new group of pathologies that just add to the oppression. We can’t “do church” like a predominantly middle class church in the next community.

That said, we’re no better, just different.

I’m not calling for any different “vocabulary” for making disciples. I’m just suggesting that, because of the diverse cultures in North America today, we need to use the SAME vocabulary and mindset that we employ on the international mission field. The people that we are trying to reach are not already Christians … they are “not like us” … and we need never forget that.

I was just thinking about your definitions of “movement” and “institution”, and the discussion of other terms here like “traditional,” “contemporary,” “current cultural,” etc. It just gives me the willies. I’m not entirely sure what the willies are, but I have them right now. It just seems like so much semantics.

It reminds me of my training in psychology, and perhaps that’s why I’m skeptical. I was trained to help people “reframe” their reality, and in reframing their reality they recovered from their crisis. Reframing was simply using other terms to define their reality.

I remember a case study when a parent came in and said she was powerless to parent her ten year old. The therapist told her she was not powerless, that she was simply frustrated. He told her she was the parent, and the child was the child, and she merely had to believe in her own abilities. She was then instructed to go home and “do something different,” relying on her inner resources as the parent.

The next week she came back jubilant, telling the therapist it worked. He asked what she did. She said, “I did something different.” He asked her what and she told him that when the child threw a fit, she sat on him (all 300 pounds of her). The therapist was shocked, asked if the boy was ok, and the mother said she didn’t think he was hurt. She was just happy he hadn’t thrown another fit.

Do we really have to do away with Biblical terminology to reach the lost, and if we do, then what do we do once we introduce them to Scripture? Is there so much difference between cultures in America, that we must use an entirely different vocabulary to make disciples? Is there any evidence that doing so makes that much difference? Is there truly a reviving movement sweeping our country, or is this just another anti-instutional movement that will one day be institutionalized itself?

I’m asking all this, not from any accusatory position. I really want to know, and no one has been able to show me more than anecdotal evidence that even in the same culture movements are more effective than instutitions.