What’s the Point of the Church Anyway? w/ Tim Soerens S4.E2
“If we put the church at the center as the why, as the purpose, then it’s actually just about us. The purpose of the church is not us. The purpose of the church is about God and what God’s doing.”
A podcast for Pastors, Leaders, and Re-Thinkers of the Jesus way. Please subscribe, comment, and share. Music compliments of Aaron Strumpel.
[0:00] Welcome to the Quiet Reformation
[0:54] Introducing Tim Soerens
[7:00] “We just might be in the early days of a reformation that will one day be written about in history books.”
[7:32] The good news of church decline is that we’re beginning to ask different types of questions.
[9:30] “What is the church FOR” is the question we need to pay attention to.
[10:28] Simon Sinek - Start With Why
[12:05] The purpose of the church is about shalom, about the reconciliation of everything
[13:40] You, on your own, even if you are a “super Christian” are not the church; none of us are.
[15:40] The world is crying out for people who are pointing themselves at the common good of a particular place, who have a narrative, a story that say: forgive each other 70x7, bear one another’s burdens, by all means possible stay put and be shaped by that place even as you are seeking to shape it.
[17:15] I wanted to be a rock-star pastor.
[18:05] A gift of the “seeker-sensitive” movement, was trying to create a hospitable space for the other.
[19:00] When there is not a pastoral imagination to aspire to, we’re in a different kind of hurt than the celebrity pastor idol. We do need people to look up to in a healthy way.
[20:15] Australian missiologists: Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost
[22:22] Rather than get people to come into the church in order to go out, look for whole disciples who are out there living the Jesus was in the neighborhood and use the gathering to be encouraging, celebrating, lamenting that Kingdom Life happening together.
[24:01] The Holy Spirit is the “how” to God’s Dream. We need to trust the Holy Spirit in us and out ahead of us. We join the Spirit’s work as opposed to delivering the Holy Spirit.
[25:20] Without the Spirit, the outcome is either shame or pride.
[27:35] “The divisions of the Church are a public denial of the sufficiency of the atonement.” - Lesslie Newbigin
[30:20] Appreciative Inquiry
[33:18] If the heart of God’s mission is reconciliation and renewal, and if the church is neither reconciled nor one, then Christian mission requires the pursuit of church unity.
[35:55] Disasters reveal things. Social capital, the trust between people, gets revealed, not when things go good, but when things go bad.
[40:45] God holds all things. We aren’t, nor need to be, the heroes of the story. Rest in that reality regardless of your success or failure in this moment.
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