Pillars are Just Crutches

I want to talk about ‘church’ in the next couple of months.  Both my wife and I have a desire and passion to church plant in the next couple years and I think blogging about ideas, concepts, community, theology and methodology (amongst other things) will help solidify what I think about church, what I think a healthy church looks like, where church is headed in the next 5, 10, 25, 50 years, and more importantly, what church is for.  A question, I think, that hasn’t been asked enough while making church decisions and that has been lost in the crowd of loud preachers and loud music (don’t get me wrong, I LOVE loud music!).

So I hope you stay tuned, and give your input in the next couple of months because this is one of those topics that thrives on discussions, debates and differing points of view.

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.