In one of my emails this week I was directed to a book review and a short excerpt from a new book entitled "Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community" by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.
The book was trying to help blend two camps of thought. One is from the traditional church claiming that the emerging church movement is short on truth; and the emerging church stating that the traditional church is short on community. As I read intently I came across this; "We agree with the conservatives that the emerging church is too often soft on truth. But we do not think the answer is to be suspicious of community. Indeed, we think that conservatives often do not “do truth” well because they neglect community. Because people are not sharing their lives, truth is not applied and lived out."This really got my attention for a couple of reasons. First, our vision is to be real people with real truth. The second is my burden to see the people of The Grove experiencing true community.
My commitment has been to share the truth in contemporary ways with the use of music and media. I am conscious of the allegations from some in Christianity that we may have therefore adopted a decision to dispense "gospel light" to our people. I would challenge anyone to visit the Grove and tell us we are doing that. You can disagree with our style, but the TRUTH is spoken!
So I'm not concerned that we couldn't pass the scrutiny test of others in the truth argument. What I am concerned about, no actually baffled over, is the reluctance, and in some ways downright refusal, for people to participate in a life-growth group.
Over the years I've read everything I can get my hands on about building up your groups - the struggle of how busy everyone is - how skeptical we all are - this technique and that technique. We've shared testimonies from members whose lives have been powerfully effected by life-growth group involvement - and yet people still don't sign up.
Everyone who attends The Grove is aware that for the next 40 days (actually 38 now) we are participating in an all church spiritual growth campaign which strongly emphasizes enrollment in one of 6 groups that meet during the week. I've led two already and the third met just yesterday. The word back is that they are too short! People are truly enjoying the conversations that are emerging from the DVD lesson and the following discussion.
So what more can I do to help people see that; "Because people are not sharing their lives, truth is not applied and lived out"?
I will definitely pray for people to slow down, re-prioritize, and re-examine their refusal to get into a group - if not for themselves then for the impact they can have on the rest of the group.
I know lives are going to be changed and the end result of this campaign will be amazing, but I can't seem to let go of the fact that some will miss out, and that truly is a burden to me.
We will as Pastor Rick Warren suggests, invite people one more time this week, because it's not too late we've just begun. I just hope people will respond.
