Yesterday I read a couple of concerning news stories. A Muslim woman risks losing her job over wearing a veil and a Christian woman is suspended from her job at BA for wearing a cross. It seems that there is a growing secularist agenda to quash any “public expressions of religion”, and it may be that certain freedoms that Christians have previously enjoyed will be curtailed in the future.

The good news is though, that the true mark of a Christian is not wearing a cross. In Galatians 5:22,23 Paul lists marks of a Spirit-filled person…

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

I have always thought that the phrase “against such things there is no law” is a little strange in this context. But it is true. No matter how repressive a government regime might be for Christians, they cannot pass a law against demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit. In fact we would be better off publicly expressing our faith using gentleness, kindness and patience than simply relying on crosses, fish stickers and WWJD wristbands.

I’ve added a new utility to my software page. It splits MIDI files up at their markers. If you don’t know what that means, you don’t need it.

But here’s the link for those you are interested: MIDI File Splitter.

I have had lots of very interesting conversations over recent weeks on the subject of large churches, mainly prompted by my two recent posts (part 1,part 2). This will be the penultimate one in a four part series, and today I want to think about how a large church can address some of the issues that proponents of small church warn against.

Lost in the Crowd

One issue with a huge church is that of simply not knowing everyone. People can find that they simply don’t know the people they are sitting next to in church, the people who are on the platform leading the meeting, the people who are teaching their children and so on. It can leave people feeling isolated and without a real sense of community.

Obviously a good cell group structure goes a long way to alleviating this problem. However, I also feel that there needs to be opportunities to gather in groups bigger than 10-20, but smaller than 1000s from time to time. Mark Stibbe at St Andrews Chorleywood is promoting the idea of mid-size communities where a subset of the entire church gather together for Sunday worship. The smaller size makes it easier to get to know a wider variety of people, and to develop and use your gifts in an appropriately sized context. I’ve arranged for my cell group to have a joint meeting with three other groups in December to try this idea out for myself.

Developing Gifts

This point follows on from the previous one. A huge church will (quite rightly) make use of their exceptionally gifted preachers and worship leaders for their Sunday gatherings. But this often means that their is no context in which novices can grow and develop their own gifts. Similarly, those growing in charismatic gifts may feel less intimidated by a meeting of 100 people than one of 1000. Again mid-sized communities may be an answer to this. Dave Bish reports that his church of 450 meets as four congregations of 100 which has enabled many more people to develop in a preaching gifting than would otherwise be possible.

Local Impact

Here’s another big issue that large churches must face, and Richard brought it up in his comments. If the church is out of town, or even in a town centre, then what happens to the Christian witness in the villages, council estates and suburbs around? Wouldn’t it be better for there to be a good church in walking distance for the people living in those places, even if it is smaller?

Many leaders of mega-churches have actually acknowledged that there is still a need for such local churches. But the big churches also need to get creative about how they can reach those local communities. This is more than just having a cell group in the area. Perhaps hiring the village hall or a school hall for regular events would be one way that the local residents can see the church as being genuinely interested in their community. My church runs a Kidz Klub in a school in a nearby estate, which has enabled us to build some bridges with that community. A bus also runs to our church from that estate, as many who live their do not have their own transport.

Logistics of Scale

Mega-churches often have the very big – their Sunday meeting, and the very small – their cell groups. But what about other ministries? How do you run a work with 200 teenagers? The dynamic is very different to a smaller church which might have say 30 teenagers. One answer is to take the cell group approach for all these areas. When the mothers and toddlers, or elderly people’s groups get too big, simply find more leaders and spit them. This allows them to retain a sense of community and avoids the lost in the crowd issue, although requires a lot of organisation. The opposite approach is to super-size it, and change the way you run those ministries to a much more front-led model with less one on one interaction from leaders to individuals. To be honest, both approaches have their benefits. I’m not sure one is better than the other, but churches need to carefully think this through to ensure that the quality of ministry is not watered down.

Follow the Money

Another criticism often leveled at big churches is their handling of money. It can be a real hinderance to witness when the local community notices that the church is spending vast amounts of money on its own property (or even its pastor’s birthday party). Large churches, because they have a bigger budget are perhaps more easily tempted into self-indulgent extravagance than a small church struggling to get by would be. In reality, there must be a “big picture” kingdom mentality from the leaders of a church, that desires to see God’s will be done outside their immediate local context if money is to be put to wise use.

The Great Omission?

Dallas Willard’s recent book The Great Omission” (I’ve not read it) asks whether the church has neglected Jesus’ command to make disciples, not just ‘converts’. This is perhaps one of the great dangers of the church growth movement’s emphasis on “evangelism”. It is all to easy for a large church to congratulate itself simply for being large, and having many new converts. But if there is no discipleship going on, then the spiritual health of the church will be extremely poor. It is a shame really, because large churches are usually better resourced than small to implement really good discipleship programs. It just needs someone to champion them, or else the “seeker sensitive” agenda can become the only agenda.

A couple of weeks back, I asked the question whether it is better to have lots of smaller churches or one huge church in a town. This is a controversial issue, and the well thought out responses I got represented both sides of the argument.

I’m planning probably two more posts on this issue, one considering what unique challenges a large church must face, and one on what unique opportunities a large church has. But today I want to consider the two most common arguments I have heard from proponents of the “mega church”. I actually think these are fairly weak arguments, and that those who want to defend big churches could do with improving their case.

1. The World Takes Notice of Big

This is of course true to a certain extent. The big sports clubs get the media coverage, the big companies get noticed by the consumers, the big name celebrities get to publicly air their views. And so the argument for big churches runs something like this – our society has written off the church because it is perceived as dying. If people saw that there were many growing churches then the national media would be forced to report that something amazing is happening.

My problem here is not with individuals taking notice of a vibrant local church that they have come into personal contact with, but the naive idea that the media will gushingly enthuse about churches simply because they are big. In fact, I would say that most of the media coverage of large churches is bad news for Christian witness. For example, possibly the biggest UK church was given a damning review by the charities commission over financial mismanagement. Other more sinister examples could be selected from the national news archives. When a big church is reported on not in the context of a scandal, even then the tone of coverage can be highly cynical. I remember reading a few less than glowing reports in the national press on Abundant Life Church in Bradford after one of its members, Gareth Gates, shot to prominence in the UK. When the church is reported on in the media, it is rare indeed for it to be portrayed in a positive light. A mega-church that seems to me to be quite a good one – Mars Hill Church in Seattle – recently found itself on the wrong end of some harsh criticism. Other mega-churches in the USA came under Time Magazine’s microscope recently and didn’t exactly get a glowing endorsement.

We are of course called to be a city set on a hill – a light in the darkness (Matt 5:14-16). But how are we to shine? By simply being big? I don’t think so. Jesus is himself the light of the world. We shine best be being more like him. In doing so we may not get praise from the media, in fact we may be slandered. But we will impact individual lives who are touched by our love in the same way that Jesus impacted the lives of those around him. Let your light so shine among men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. It is by living out the counter-cultural Sermon on the Mount way of life that we will be noticed in the way that Jesus wants us to be noticed.

2. The Early Church was Big

This is another argument for “mega-churches” I have heard a lot. It follows from counting up the numbers of people in Jerusalem mentioned as being saved and calculates that the Jerusalem church was a “mega-church”.

The problem is, we simply don’t have that much information on how exactly they managed these huge numbers. There is good reason to believe that many of their meetings were much smaller affairs in people’s homes. Verses such as Acts 2:46 and Acts 5:42 are sometimes used to argue that they had huge central gatherings of all the Christians in the temple, but they do not necessarily prove that the whole church gathered regularly in large meetings. In fact, they point to regular small gatherings in people’s homes or public places, possibly headed up by leaders who themselves were under the apostles.

Also our modern western idea of what a church looks like has been so shaped by technological advances such as PA equipment and bands, that we can too easily anachronistically read back our own way of doing things into the first century. Their “big meetings” simply could not function in the same style as some of our conference celebrations.

Still, one good thing about the very early church was that for all the differences they may have had amongst them, there was just one church in each town. With our modern multiplicity of denominations, it is very hard to imagine how we could get back to that.

Again I welcome your comments as I think through these things.

I have been pondering this question for a little while, and before I post up some reflections of my own, I thought I might fire it out for my readers to comment on. Here in the UK we are seeing the emergence of the “mega-church”, and many churches are eager to grow into the thousands in size. But of course this is not without controversy. For example, Eugene Peterson has resolved never to serve a church so large that he could not remember everyone’s names (from the introduction of “The Contemplative Pastor”).

So are large churches really that desirable? Would it be better to have more smaller churches? Here is the question I would like you to answer:

Is it preferable to have 10 churches of 300 or 1 church of 3000 in a town?

I chose 300 as a size for the “small” church as it seems to be a generally agreed on “nice size” for a church. It’s big enough to have the resources to do all of the things a church should be doing, and small enough for people to know the names and faces of everyone else in their church.

At the moment, my thinking is that there is potential for a large church to take advantage of its size to accomplish things that smaller churches cannot do, but this will not come automatically – the church must be deliberate about putting its 10 talents to good use. Also, the large church must find ways to ensure that there is real community amongst its members, even though many will not know each other.

There’s lots more that could be said, but I’ll hold back until I’ve had some feedback on this issue.

As some of you will know, I preached at my church last Sunday for the first time. Now preaching is something I have been passionate about for a long time, even though I don’t do much of it. I have a vast collection of sermon tapes and mp3s, and probably listen to 5 or 6 sermons a week. And my mind is usually full of ideas of what would be good things to preach about. But its one thing to think about it, and another to do it. So here’s a few random reflections on the process of preparing and preaching a sermon.

Advice
Apart from John Piper’s book which I reviewed recently, here’s a couple of bits of advice I found helpful…

• At a new wine seminar on preaching Paul Harcourt said that “you say things best if you have said them before”. It makes sense, and I’m glad I practiced making my key points. I did try to write a script as he suggested, but I find my writing style is not good for reading out loud.
• Have a goal. Someone said that you should be able to explain your sermon in one sentence. What I did was I had a list of a few things that I wanted to explain clearly during the course of the sermon. I found it helpful to decide which things were “in” or “out” when I was trying to cut out excess material.

Second thoughts

I had been fairly settled for some time on what I was going to preach on (the parable of the wise and foolish builders). It was going to include a section explaining what it means to become a Christian (basically an explanation of the gospel and atonement). One of the verses that prompted me to do this was 1 Cor 9:16 – “woe is me if I preach not the gospel” – Paul had a passion to preach the gospel, and even though his epistles cover a broad range of themes, there is a gospel thread running through them all. However, never before have I had such attacks of doubt about whether I should go with what I had prepared, or whether I should switch to a message more directly aimed at Christians. After all, most people in the church already knew all that I was going to tell them. It might have just been nerves, but I wonder whether it was spiritual attack. The devil doesn’t want the gospel preached.

I also agonised about whether to quote Matt 7:21-23, which is a severe warning that apparently strong Christians can actually be condemned in the judgement. I guess in our churches where we like to talk about grace all the time, verses like that really grate. And yet from both Matthew & Luke’s accounts of the parable, this warning against hypocrisy seems to be inextricably linked to the parable of the two builders. Even as I sat waiting to preach I was unsure whether I could bring myself to talk about this. In the end, I did read the verses, but rushed my explanation of it a bit.

Forgetfulness

You learn from your mistakes, and I made a few. Here’s what I forgot…

• I forgot to take my bottle of water with me when I went up to the platform. Not good, because my mouth was really dry.
• I forgot to look at the people on my left until nearly the end. The platform in our church is in the corner, so you need to look round more than you would in a conventional setup. Hope they didn’t think I was rude.
• I forgot to start my stopwatch. It meant that I had no idea of how long I was taking, and I ended up skipping an illustration that I didn’t need to.
• Although I had fairly detailed notes, I delivered the talk from memory, and missed out a few things I wanted to say. Thankfully, none of the main points were missed, but there were a few clarifications and transitional comments I forgot to include.
• My plan was to remind myself to slow down every few minutes. As it happens, I only remembered once.

Good things
It wasn’t all bad though. There were lots of positives I took away from this experience…

• I didn’t fluff my lines. Though I forgot some, the ones I did say mostly came out the way I meant to say them.
• People I have never spoken to before introduced themselves and thanked me – preaching is a great way to meet new people. (my friends were also very encouraging, but they are such nice people that I imagine they would congratulate me if I had simply spoken in tongues for 20 minutes).
• My main outline was decided many weeks in advance, which meant that many of the the sermons I heard, along with books and websites I read during those weeks were able to give me inspiration to fine tune and adjust the sermon. Beginning preparation as early as possible is definitely a good idea.
• I hit my target time. No one likes a preacher who goes on too long. In fact, I was a little too quick if anything.
• Being nervous makes you pray. Confidence isn’t a bad thing, but over-confidence can mean you forget to pray.

Anyone else got any advice on preaching to share? …

OK, I had a crazy idea this week. After enjoying listening to some podcasts from other Christian bloggers, I thought I would have a go myself (although I’ve gone one better and made a vodcast)!

Its about 15 minutes long, and its actually quite boring. I’m really sorry about that. If I do another one I will plan more carefully what I want to say before I record myself.

Anyway, let me know if you have any technical issues watching it. My wife listened to it and says it doesn’t get interesting until about half way through.

And I would love to know… am I the first Christian blogger to vodcast (churches excluded)? Or have I been beaten to it?

I don’t normally do movie reviews on my blog, but I thought I’d recommend this one, which I rented this week. Its basically the life of Martin Luther, and it was really well produced. I must confess I am not an expert on the life story of Luther, so I am not in a position to comment on how historically accurate it was. Doubtless they had to simplify and condense the story to fit it into a feature film format, but the characterisation is believable – its not just a film about the “goodies” versus the “baddies”. Luther came across as a man of courage and conviction, but also as a real person with struggles, who was the leader but not always in control of the movement he had started. It inspires you to think about what are the real issues worth standing up for in the church, and what are the secondary matters.

Well worth watching if you haven’t seen it. Makes me want to read a biography of his life. Anyone recommend one? (preferably not an exhaustive one – I’ve got a lot on my reading list at the moment).

You can read more about it on IMDB, or Amazon.

OK, this is my final report on a talk from my day visit to Together on a Mission, unless I decide to write about what I hear in some of the teaching CDs I bought. I have actually found typing up my sermon notes a valuable excercise for myself, irrespective of whether any of my readers found it interesting.

I have already mentioned that Adrian Warnock has given us some excellent coverage of the conference. My friend Dan has now returned and got busy himself writing reports – there are five posts already on his blog.

The Thursday afternoon session was P J Smyth speaking on “Penetrating Leadership”, based on the story of Jonathan and his armour bearer attacking the Philistines. I’ll actually refer you to Adrian Warnock’s summary for the list of points, as the structure of three main points each with three sub-points is clearly outlined there.

The passage was treated as a lesson in leadership, with special focus on the type of risk-taking faith needed for church planting ventures. Killing Philistines was a metaphor for taking territory for the kingdom (no hand-wringing apologies for the nasty, mean and unkind bits of the Old Testament here!). He took time to specifically pray for prophets and preachers, and remind them of the need to be bold in proclamation. Overall it was more of an inspirational rather than informational message. The commitment to church planting cannot just be mentally assented to, it requires leaders to get out there and take bold steps of faith.

Having recently read his book critiquing churches such as those in newfrontiers, I wonder if Ian Stackhouse would have taken issue with last year’s message from P J which called for the building of some mega-churches (“juggernauts”). And maybe he would have considered this year’s message too ‘militant’. But I think that it was a timely call at what was after all a leaders conference, not to sit back and congratulate ourselves for the progress already made, but to be willing to take risks of faith to see the kingdom extended.