Roadmap to Renewal

Rediscovering the Church's Mission—Revised Edition with Study Guide

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• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498297226
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Take a journey together with others from your local church--a road trip that will help you rediscover your true mission.This newly revised and updated edition of Roadmap to Renewal will serve as a vital resource enabling you to reconnect to your mission area. Use the step-by-step process in a small group to come up with a Ministry Action Plan for your community of faith. Know your community. Know your mission. Know your strengths and challenges. Know where you are going. Reach people with the good news of Jesus Christ!

1

Reality Check

When a church decides to embark on a journey of renewal, it needs to begin with a review of where it is now. It asks, “What is our current reality?”

A church needs to know the criteria by which congregational health is measured. Many denominations measure effectiveness by counting how many members they have, what the annual budget is, whether or not it can pay into the apportionment system, and how many are enrolled in Sunday School. While the “numbers game” may not take the most complete picture of effective ministry, it should not be dismissed either. Luke mentions the number of believers added to the followers of Jesus on several occasions in the Acts of the Apostles. “So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added” (Acts 2:41).

In the context of North American culture, it is difficult to measure effectiveness apart from counting heads and offering plate receipts. It is part of our current reality.

Another component of reality is to research where we were ten years ago and compare it with where we are now. Compare average worship attendance, membership, Sunday school enrollment and ability to pay into the apportionment system of the denomination then and now.

There are other ways to measure effectiveness in ministry. How many people have joined our church by profession of faith (as opposed to transfer)? How many persons are participating in mission programs? How many missionaries are we sending into the community to volunteer at soup kitchens, food pantries, or homeless shelters?

The leadership team should decide what scorecard it will use to measure effectiveness in ministry. A scorecard measures progress by agreed-upon benchmarks. When going to a baseball game, we use a scorecard to record hits, runs, and errors. At the end of the ballgame we see how each individual performed and we gain a picture of the overall performance of the team. Whether we call it a scorecard or not, each denomination uses a set of criteria to measure the effectiveness of a church.

The idea behind a “reality check” is to assess the current situation of the church. How healthy of a congregation are we today? There are several assessment tools a church could use to take an honest look at itself, such as the Natural Church Development survey or Readiness 360.2 I invite you to measure your church in light of the central focus of Jesus’ teaching: the reign of God. Ask your church how it aligns with being a sign, preview, and instrument of God’s reign.

God’s strategic plan for humankind is that the reign of God pervade the hearts and minds of the people of the earth. Jesus’ central message was to proclaim this reign of God and to invite hearers to enter it.

Georgia Harkness, a twentieth-century seminary professor and author of very readable books on theology and spirituality, defined the reign of God in this way: “It is the righteous, loving rule of God.”3 It is a realm where the love and justice of God prevail. It is something that is already here because of the ministry of Jesus and yet it is still to come because the whole world does not live the way Jesus would have us live.

The late James W. Fowler, who served as a professor at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia, describes the reign of God as “God’s universal commonwealth of love.”4 Others speak of it as “the blessed community of love” or “God’s new society.” The reign of God is a comprehensive new reality and vision where God’s rule, grace, justice, and mercy are practiced. We are invited to participate in this new reality. It is both a future reality that will come when God’s ultimate victory is consummated and a reality already among us that we have received as a gift.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the community of faith is to build the reign of God. We are invited to “see” it (Mark 9:1), or to “enter” it (John 3:5), to “receive” it (Mark 10:15), or “proclaim” it (Luke 9:2). We are never asked to build it. The distinction is important. If we were to build it, then it would be the work of our efforts, something we construct. The reign of God already exists. It is something we are invited to receive and live into.

E. Stanley Jones, a missionary to India in the twentieth century and author of twenty-nine books, including Is the Kingdom of God Realism?, described the reign of God as a “master conception which brings all life into integration and meaning.”5 Every aspect of life should be seen in light of the goal of living within the spiritual space of the reign of God. The reign of God should be the church’s strategy, but as Jones wrote, “We have forgotten our strategy . . . and hence we are fruitlessly dealing with tactics, tinkering here and tinkering there, but it is all a vicious circle, a dog following his own tail round and round, with no goal and no meaning.”6

The church is not to be equated with the reign of God. The reign of God is God’s perfect space that humans are invited to occupy. The church is a community of imperfect people, sinners, who come together through the grace of God. The church, when it faithfully fulfills its task, serves to call the world’s attention to God’s reign.

Stanley Hauerwas, the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law at Duke Divinity School, and William Willimon, a retired bishop who now serves as Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke, coauthored a book in 1989 that still resonates today. In Resident Aliens, they write, “The church was called to be a colony, an alternative community, a sign, a signal to the world that Christ has made possible a way of life together, unlike anything the world had seen.”7

The sign in front of First United Methodist Church in Englewood, New Jersey, is perpendicular to the road so that motorists can read it as they drive by. Clean, attractive, well-lit at night, the sign always announces the times of Sunday worship and includes an encouraging phrase for passersby to read. Phrases like “God’s Harvest: Forgiven People” always offer the public a word of hope grounded in Scripture.

A sign lets us know what is coming on the road ahead of us. It gives us information for our journey. A sign lets us know if we are headed in the right direction, if we are in danger, or how much longer we must travel. The church itself is called to be a “sign” of God’s coming reign. It points beyond itself to the God of all creation, the God who loves, forgives, heals, creates, and seeks justice.

The church points away from itself toward God. This should be especially evident when the church gathers for worship. Christian worship is a sign the church offers to the world: there is something beyond ourselves that inspires and leads us forward. More than the physical signboard in front of our buildings, the church at worship points to the God who stands above and before us, who fills us with hope and expectation, who loves us unconditionally and offers us the grace and forgiveness to live life fully.

The image of the church as Sign was articulated by the Roman Catholic Church during Vatican II. In that historic council, which changed so much of the direction of the Roman Catholic Church, there was a paradigm shift in the understanding of the church, from the image of “sanctuary” to that of “sign.”

Prior to Vatican II the Roman Catholic Church understood itself as a sanctuary—a sanctuary of salvation. The church was a place of refuge, protecting the faithful from the hostile environment of the world. As sanctuary, the church was a place of nurture. Vatican II preferred to speak of the church as a sign.

William Frazier, referring to this paradigm shift in 1968, likened the shift from a “sanctuary to sign” mentality as similar to shifting from an inward to an outward focus for a church. “Unlike a sanctuary,” wrote Frazier, “a sign is meant to point beyond itself and to have its impact outside itself.”8 When the church embraces the image of “sign” it is open to the world, taking on an outward orientation.

Frazier distinguished “Sanctuary thinking” from “Sign thinking” in understanding the essential mission of the church. He argued that understanding the church as sanctuary “turns the Church in upon itself and away from the world and its problems.”9 The church’s focus is inward, on retaining and indoctrinating members. The church emphasizes the conversion of the individual. It is the kind of emphasis that was present in Protestant churches in America, especially under the influence of its great evangelistic preachers from Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham. Individual salvation is the primary focus of the work of the church.

Frazier argues that a “sanctuary” church is preoccupi...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Welcome
• Introduction: Readiness
• Chapter 1: Reality Check
• Chapter 2: Reconnect
• Chapter 3: Rediscover the Landscape of Our Parish
• Chapter 4: Reassess Our Current Ministry
• Chapter 5: Road Break
• Chapter 6: Reaching Younger People
• Chapter 7: Roadmaps Start with Vision
• Chapter 8: Realign Mission, Goals, and Objectives
• Chapter 9: Roadmarkers on the Road to Renewal
• Study Guide
• Bibliography