Thereare a lot of “diseases” afflicting the present day church. Some are terminal while others are easily treated!
Ethnikitis
Ethnikitis is fear or disregard for others of different ethnicity and/or races. This disease is caused by contextual factors, usually revolving around a static church (in-grown and non-growing) in an ethnically transitioning neighborhood.
Ghost-Town Disease
Another contextual illness, this illness is found in communities where old residents are moving out, and no one is moving in.
People-Blindness
This malady is directly related to a lack of understanding of the significant differences between diverse people groups within the community. It occurs when churches fail to consider how those differences may impede evangelism efforts.
Hyper-Cooperativism
Wagner says: “When everyoneis responsible for evangelism, no one is responsible for evangelism. Local-church evangelism is much more effective than city-wide cooperative efforts.”
This malady occurs when local congregations loose their distinct identity because the church is too committed to being part of something else. There is nothing wrong with partnering and cooperative ministries. But if the only ministry a church does is under the umbrella of others, and the church does not bring any distinct character to the joint-effort, it may be a sign that the church is not healthy.
The healthy alternative is not to forgo all partnerships and joint efforts, through isolationism or competition. Instead each church should develop its own distinct personality which it can then contribute to the community and cooperative efforts.
Koinonitis
Koinonia is the Greek word for fellowship. Koinonitis occurs when interpersonal relationships within the church become so deep and mutually absorbing that we ignore the needs of the community and world around us. When Koinonitis is present church programs tend to become centripetal rather than centrifugal; entirely attractional rather than missional and incarnational.
Sociological Strangulation
Wagner says: “This is a slowdown in the rate of church growth caused when the flow of people into a church begins to exceed the capacity of the facilities to accommodate it.”
In other words, this occurs when the building and sanctuary are too small to accomodate more people. The general rule here, in suburban communities is 80% capacity = FULL. In more rural communities, where people are used to having more elbow room, the rule may be as low as 50% = FULL.
Another aspect that George Barna deals with, more than Wagner, is when growth occurs at a rate too fast to effectively assimilate new people into an existing church community. Barna suggests that healthy churches grow at a rate of no morethan 10% – 15% anually. Thus, if Barna is correct, a church with a 6% or 7% growth rate may be healthier than a church that is growing at 20% rate over an extended period of time.
Tuesday, 23 June 2015
0 comments:
Post a Comment