Pillars are Just Crutches

There is a good article on small group myths that I think hits the nail on the head on why small groups don’t really work.  At the beginning however he gives some reasons why small groups in North America are easier said than done:

1. We have few role models, at least in our own culture.

2. The literature on the subject has promoted the idea without offering practical methods.

3. The American concept of home privacy causes such ministries to develop more slowly here than in some countries.

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Bob Hyatt has a blog about multi-site churches which use video to let one pastor talk in more than one venue at a time.  He notes that this is a sign of celebrity status that pastors are claiming.  And the reason for going the video route is usually that the pastor thinks there is no one else as good at teaching/preaching the word of God, and top give notoriety to new churches as most church plants fail.

Hyatt remarks

One of the main justifications for video venues is that upwards of 70 percent of church plants fail. Giving people a “brand name,” proven communicator makes more sense. But do church plants fail because of the planter? Or is it because of unreasonable expectations, unsustainable “big launch” methods in which thousands of dollars are pumped into new churches in an effort to make them big, fast… because of the consumer mindset of many who look at the big churches down the street with not a small amount of envy?

Ultimately, video venues strike me as a poor compromise. They may be necessary at times, but are certainly not a strategy to be pursued, even alongside traditional church plants. They focus entirely too much on the preaching gifts of one person, a trend even we small “emerging” types need to counter.

The celebrity church must die. And doing anything—like video venues—that prolongs its life, even in the name of the lost, runs counter to the best interests of the Church in all its expressions, big and small, and its mandate to see more people not only reached, but gifted, trained, and sent.

Christianity Today has an interesting article that I had a chance to read while I was sitting in the library waiting for a class to begin. It was about the slow decline that Christian bookstores have taken in the last couple years. And personally, I can understand why, I hate having to go into those places! I do it only on necessity, and lately, even when I’ve needed something overtly Christian it hasn’t helped.

A couple months ago I asked my wife what she wanted for her birthday and her reply was, ‘a Bible’. Great! At least that’s something I know something about. So I made the trek to the best place I knew to find a Bible … the Christian Bookstore … I should have known better.

Of course, I’m not looking for just any Bible this is the first birthday we’ve had as husband and wife, if I was going to get any purchase right it was this one.

So, I walk into the door and I’m immediately uncomfortable! I’m greeted with Joel Osteen’s smile and books on how I can live a “better” life. As well as books on obscure Biblical prayers and Christianized romance novels. To my right are religious trinkets, pictures, decorations and so on. None of which I would ever be caught dead with in my possession. To my left is a closed (down?) coffee shop. Everything that I see is overtly Christian and yet none these items actually contain the Gospel message. We’ve tailored our books to aim for the non-Christians and yet the bookstores are virtually sterile and whitewashed to the point that the gospel is whitewashed with it.

I proceed to the back corner of the building to look at the one wall of Bibles they have. Half the wall is either TNIV or NIV (which is ok, i guess … but none of which were wife birthday material) the other half is filled with miscellaneous translations.

Then I see it! It’s an ESV, and the inside formatting is perfect! – The cover however is the cheap, typical black cover that every other Bible has. An older lady tries to help me, but to no avail.

So, off to the internet … the very helpful ESV website shows me all the Bibles of that particular format available and there is one that is gorgeous! Perfect in every way! When I get back to the Christian book store I try to order it, and they can’t. They list off the four they can order. No good. Plus, the prices they give sound like the prices I would have paid if the Canadian dollar was still only .70 cents on the American.

In the end I went to Amazon and nearly saved enough money to buy 2 Bibles for the price of one from the Christian Bookstore.

Ouch.

But price isn’t everything.