Moving Beyond Church Growth (Prisms)

MOVING BEYOND CHURCH GROWTH PRISMS - In this site isn`t the same as a solution manual you buy in a book store or download off the web. Our.
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We are neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic about our cultural influence, for we know that, as we walk in the steps of the One who laid down his life for his opponents, we will receive persecution even while having social impact 1 Peter 2: We believe that every expression of Christianity is necessarily and rightly contextualized, to some degree, to particular human culture; there is no such thing as a universal a—historical expression of Christianity. But we never want to be so affected by our culture that we compromise gospel truths.

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How then do we keep our balance? If we seek service rather than power, we may have significant cultural impact. But if we seek direct power and social control, we will, ironically, be assimilated into the very idolatries of wealth, status, and power we seek to change. The gospel itself holds the key to appropriate contextualization.

If we over—contextualize, it suggests that we want too much the approval of the receiving culture. This betrays a lack of confidence in the gospel. If we under—contextualize, it suggests that we want the trappings of our own sub—culture too much. This betrays a lack of gospel humility and a lack of love for our neighbor. This gospel fills Christians with humility and hope, meekness and boldness, in a unique way.

The biblical gospel differs markedly from traditional religions as well as from secularism. Religions operate on the principle: The gospel, however, humbles and affirms us at the same time, since, in Christ, each of us is simultaneously just, and a sinner still. At the same time, we are more flawed and sinful than we ever dared believe, yet we are more loved and accepted than we ever dared hope. Secularism tends to make people selfish and individualistic.

Religion and morality in general tend to make people tribal and self—righteous toward other groups since their salvation has, they think, been earned by their achievement. But the gospel of grace, centered on a man dying for us while we were his enemies, removes self—righteousness and selfishness and turns its members to serve others both for the temporal flourishing of all people, especially the poor, and for their salvation. It moves us to serve others irrespective of their merits, just as Christ served us Mark Secularism and religion conform people to behavioral norms through fear of consequences and pride a desire for self—aggrandizement.

The gospel moves people to holiness and service out of grateful joy for grace, and out of love of the glory of God for who he is in himself. The gospel changes our relationship with God from one of hostility or slavish compliance to one of intimacy and joy. The core dynamic of gospel—centered ministry is therefore worship and fervent prayer. At the heart of corporate worship is the ministry of the Word.

Preaching should be expository explaining the text of Scripture and Christ—centered expounding all biblical themes as climaxing in Christ and his work of salvation. Its ultimate goal, however, is not simply to teach but to lead the hearers to worship, individual and corporate, that strengthens their inner being to do the will of God. We have a vision for a church that sees conversions of rich and poor, highly educated and less educated, men and women, old and young, married and single, and all races.

We hope to draw highly secular and postmodern people, as well as reaching religious and traditional people. Because of the attractiveness of its community and the humility of its people, a gospel—centered church should find people in its midst who are exploring and trying to understand Christianity. It must welcome them in hundreds of ways. In addition to all this, gospel—centered churches will have a bias toward church planting as one of the most effective means of evangelism there is.

Because the gospel removes both fear and pride, people should get along inside the church who could never get along outside. Because it points us to a man who died for his enemies, the gospel creates relationships of service rather than of selfishness. Because the gospel calls us to holiness, the people of God live in loving bonds of mutual accountability and discipline.

Thus the gospel creates a human community radically different from any society around it. It is a community which so loves and cares practically for its members that biblical chastity makes sense. It teaches its members to conform their bodily being to the shape of the gospel—abstinence outside of heterosexual marriage and fidelity and joy within.

Regarding the family, the church should affirm the goodness of marriage between a man and a woman, calling them to serve God by reflecting his covenant love in life—long loyalty, and by teaching his ways to their children. But it also affirms the goodness of serving Christ as singles, whether for a time or for a life. The church should surround all persons suffering from the fallenness of our human sexuality with a compassionate community and family.

Such sharing also promotes a radically generous commitment of time, money, relationships, and living space to social justice and the needs of the poor, the oppressed, the immigrant, and the economically and physically weak.

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Regarding power, it is visibly committed to power—sharing and relationship—building among races, classes, and generations that are alienated outside of the Body of Christ. The practical evidence of this is that our local churches increasingly welcome and embrace people of all races and cultures. Each church should seek to reflect the diversity of its local geographical community, both in the congregation at large and in its leadership. The integration of faith and work.

The good news of the Bible is not only individual forgiveness but the renewal of the whole creation. God put humanity in the garden to cultivate the material world for his own glory and for the flourishing of nature and the human community. The Spirit of God not only converts individuals e.

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Too many Christians have learned to seal off their faith—beliefs from the way they work in their vocation. The gospel is seen as a means of finding individual peace and not as the foundation of a worldview—a comprehensive interpretation of reality affecting all that we do. But we have a vision for a church that equips its people to think out the implications of the gospel on how we do carpentry, plumbing, data—entry, nursing, art, business, government, journalism, entertainment, and scholarship.

Bringing Christian joy, hope, and truth to embodiment in the arts is also part of this work. We do all of this because the gospel of God leads us to it, even while we recognize that the ultimate restoration of all things awaits the personal and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ CS—[13]. The doing of justice and mercy.

God created both soul and body, and the resurrection of Jesus shows that he is going to redeem both the spiritual and the material. Therefore God is concerned not only for the salvation of souls but also for the relief of poverty, hunger, and injustice. The gospel opens our eyes to the fact that all our wealth even wealth for which we worked hard is ultimately an unmerited gift from God. Therefore the person who does not generously give away his or her wealth to others is not merely lacking in compassion, but is unjust.

Christ wins our salvation through losing, achieves power through weakness and service, and comes to wealth through giving all away. Those who receive his salvation are not the strong and accomplished but those who admit they are weak and lost. We cannot look at the poor and the oppressed and callously call them to pull themselves out of their own difficulty. Jesus did not treat us that way. The gospel replaces superiority toward the poor with mercy and compassion.

Christian churches must work for justice and peace in their neighborhoods through service even as they call individuals to conversion and the new birth. We must work for the eternal and common good and show our neighbors we love them sacrificially whether they believe as we do or not. Indifference to the poor and disadvantaged means there has not been a true grasp of our salvation by sheer grace.


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There are many seeker—driven churches that help many people find Christ. There are many churches seeking to engage the culture through political activism. There is a fast—growing charismatic movement with emphasis on glorious, passionate, corporate worship. There are many congregations with strong concern for doctrinal rigor and purity and who work very hard to keep themselves separate from the world. There are many churches with a radical commitment to the poor and marginalized. We do not, however, see enough individual churches that embody the full, integrative gospel balance we have outlined here.

We believe such a balance will produce churches with winsome and theologically substantial preaching, dynamic evangelism and apologetics, and church growth and church planting. They will emphasize repentance, personal renewal, and holiness of life. At the same time, and in the same congregations, there will be engagement with the social structures of ordinary people, and cultural engagement with art, business, scholarship, and government. The Yellow River Mission was the most closely associated with the present church.

After becoming a circuit-rider station in the Wesley tradition, the church shared ministers with Madison, Monroe, Mount Pleasant and other congregations. The earliest site for a permanent building was on lot 15, facing Church Street and bounded by South and Elm. Behind the church was a cemetery where many of the weary migrants from other Georgia counties and states beyond found their final resting place.

The Church owned the cemetery until when it was sold to the city, and combined with the Citizen's Cemetery City of Covington Cemetery which had spread behind it.

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This original site was outgrown by when the Board of Trustees purchased a lot on the corner of Washington and Lee Streets and built a wooden church structure there. In the following prosperous years prior to the civil war, the community and church continued to grow, and by the current location on Conyers Street was secured. Greek Revival opulence, often associated with the South, flourished in Covington, and the present structure was built and completed around The church building of was moved to it's present location on Dried Indian Creek and today houses the congregation of Bethelehem Baptist Church.

Why does church attendance enhance a relationship? Church also facilitates the making of shared friends. Church further enhances happy marriages by encouraging couples to pray together. Interestingly enough, it should be noted that couples where the man attends church, but his wife does not, are also happier than both couples where neither partner attends, and where just the woman attends. Kids who regularly attend church have higher GPAs, complete more years of schooling, do better in college, are less likely to use drugs or alcohol, commit a crime, or get in trouble at school, and go on to have lower rates of divorce in adulthood.


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The effect of church attendance can be seen when tracked solely within low-income communities, and becomes more positive the more the poverty level rises. As mentioned above, going to church builds discipline, and this is no less true for kids than adults. Children need to get dressed up and out the door, sit reverently during the service, and endure a little boredom.

Church teachings typically reinforce moral principles, and often encourage kids to work hard, stay out of trouble, cultivate healthy habits, look to the future optimistically, and think about the kind of people they want to be when they grow up. Children are commonly asked to make commitments that help develop self-control and the capacity for delayed gratification.

Access to positive role models likely also plays a role in why church attendance helps shape well-rounded kids. Singing together used to be fairly common; people would gather around the piano in a parlor and belt out some tunes simply as a way to pass the time. Which is a shame. And the vibrations you send out, reverberate back, producing an effect that brings harmony to your health. Singing with others releases pleasure-producing endorphins as well oxytocin, which lower stress and ward off anxiety and depression.


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    6. Singing with others also bonds you together with others in a unique way — quite literally as it turns out; studies show that the heartbeats of those signing together sync up with the music and with each other. The oxytocin released further increases these feelings of connection and trust, which is why group signing has been shown to lessen feelings of loneliness. The people they rub shoulders with all share the same race, age, socio-economic status, and beliefs.

    It might seem that churches would actually exacerbate this trend, rather than mitigate it. After all, Martin Luther King Jr. Many congregations select for income too; there are churches almost entirely attended by the middle and upper classes, and those almost entirely composed of those from the lower classes.

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    Plenty of churches still attract folks from a wide range of places and stages in life: I honestly encounter a greater diversity of people and opinions at my church than in any other area of my life; its members are a motley crew — folks of different ages, socio-economic backgrounds, political beliefs, and disabilities — who truly help keep me from getting lost inside the echo chamber of my social media feeds and self-selected peer groups. This may seem like another contradiction: Partly for solidarity with an attending spouse and partly out of the desire for community, but also because, rather than seeing attendance as contrary to their scientific identity, they saw going as part of it.

    The rise of secularism was supposed to pacify the culture wars. Issues of race, nation, and social justice are today being forwarded with the kind of single-minded, absolutist zeal once reserved for the principles of faith, a trend that has deepened bitter partisanship and made increasingly impossible the kind of consensus building and compromise necessary for a democracy to function. Perhaps this is because, as discussed above, church keeps people in touch with folks from different walks of life, and promotes a message of universal brotherhood that mitigates the acrimony that arises between different segments of society.

    For all groups, the decline in church attendance has eroded a shared language of love, charity, mercy, and forgiveness that formerly built bridges between those on opposite sides of the aisle. The civil rights movement, for example, grew out of black churches, and the fact that leaders like MLK employed the shared language of Christianity to promote the cause of black Americans, helped its message to breach the walls of whites. Without the common touchstone of church attendance, Americans have lost part of their shared language, and seem destined to continue to talk past each other.

    For certain, there are non-church attending folks who are self-motivated and find ways to tirelessly serve in their communities. Reams of research bear this fact out. While the religious might see this as a reason to crow about the fruits of their faith, Putnam and his co-author, David E.

    Campbell, found that this greater motivation to serve was not a result of doctrines preached from the pulpit. The more friends someone has within a religious congregation, the more likely that person is to give time, money, or both, to charitable causes.