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Three steps to healthier emerging generation churches by Tobin Perry |
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LAKE FOREST. Calif. (PD)--To reach the emerging generation, your church must be healthy. Unfortunately, many so-called emerging churches are choosing methods that ultimately will lead to health problems, said Bil Cornelius, founding pastor of Bay Ridge Fellowship, a seven-year-old emerging church in Corpus Christi, Texas, during the 2005 Purpose Driven Church Conference at Saddleback Church.
In an application seminar designed to help participants make the Purpose Driven paradigm work in an emerging church context, Cornelius told church leaders to be careful of what they read about building an emerging church. Many books on the subject do not figure in the need for church growth.
"If you are reading books from pastors of churches that have less than 200 people, they are going to -- whether they want to or not -- give you small church principles because there is a small church philosophy within their mentality," Cornelius said. "If you go with a small church philosophy in your church, you'll get a small church. I'm interesting in reaching thousands upon thousands of emerging generation people. If you are going to do that, you can't do it with a small church mentality."
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If you missed this year's conference, you can still bring to your church the ground-breaking seminar that has trained over 400,000 pastors and lay pastors worldwide how to grow healthy churches. In this previously recorded set, Rick Warren and other Saddleback pastors teach the Purpose Driven paradigm for church growth that has changed the way thousands of churches reach the lost through evangelism, train its members, mature its believers, develop ministries, and live a life of worship. |
Cornelius, whose church has grown to more than 4,000 people in weekly attendance over the past seven years, explained that this inattention to church growth makes for unhealthy congregations. He then centered his message on three healthy choices churches can make to avoid this trap.
The emerging church must begin with a burden to reach the unchurched of the next generation.
To be a healthy church reaching the emerging generation, a congregation must begin with a strong God-given understanding of the lostness of the generation, Cornelius explained. Without this, churches will never be able to continue in emerging generation ministry when times get difficult.
"We always have to begin with that passion," Cornelius said. "If you do not pound the table or cry your eyes out when you talk about the next generation, you are not ready. You don't feel it to the point it is going to take for actions to take place."
Past generations were mostly motivated by "calling," but Cornelius believes many in his generation are confused by the term, assuming it to mean some sort of miraculous event.
"Really, I didn't get a call like that," Cornelius said. "I got a burden. I simply got tired of seeing all the guys I went to high school and college with partying their brains out in desperate in need of God, and there was no church that could communicate to them in a relevant way."
Prioritize the purposes evenly.
Many emerging generation churches mistakenly center their ministry around worship and fellowship at the expense of other purposes like evangelism. According to Cornelius, they believe that focusing on evangelism weakens the other purposes.
Cornelius told the audience that emerging generation churches must continue to build their church around the five eternal purposes found in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission (worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and evangelism). Without that balance, churches cannot be healthy.
"If there is anything Saddleback has shown us, it is that you can have true worship and evangelism at the same time," Cornelius said. "This is even truer for the generation coming of age now. They want to experience God before they accept him, but they want to experience him in short doses. They want to experience worship, but not for an hour and a half."
Cornelius suggests that people in the church who ask for longer periods of worship usually only do so because they haven't brought anyone else to the service.
At Bay Ridge Fellowship, Cornelius has started a monthly Wednesday evening service that focuses completely on worship. When church members ask for more worship on the weekends, Cornelius points them to that service.
"I've literally read in emerging church books that 'We are all about community, so we don't care about evangelism," Cornelius said. "This is what we are teaching? As long as we feel good in our own little group, everyone else can just go to hell?"
Structure your church for effective leadership.
Because of the constant barrage of negative news about leaders in government, business, and elsewhere, many in the emerging generation have developed a bad attitude about those in authority, Cornelius said.
This authority-challenging culture has crept into churches as well, making it difficult for pastors to effectively lead emerging congregations because their every decision is questioned, according to Cornelius.
Because this often leads to major leadership vacuums, Cornelius suggests not having a lay leadership team for your emerging congregation. He believes lay leadership teams often confuse emerging congregations about who leads the church. Instead, Cornelius would like to see churches led by pastors, who are held accountable by godly older men in other congregations.
Cornelius has led a team of pastor-elders at his church since Bay Ridge Fellowship started seven years ago. He believes the simple structure has helped the church make quicker decisions and allowed for more growth.
"I'm cool with paid elders or lay elders," Cornelius said. "Just keep it simple. You want a very few, future-orientated, vision-driven, biblical, godly, integrity-filled people in charge."
Cornelius' seminar, "Making Purpose Driven work in the Emerging Church," was one of a variety of application seminars available at the 2005 Purpose Driven Church Conference. Other seminars touched on topics such as Purpose Driven small groups, pastoral care, HIV/AIDS, Purpose Driven for the African-American church and more.
The next Purpose Driven Church Conference is May 16-19, 2006, at Saddleback Church.
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