Assimilation?

I have been a part of many churches and worked at more than a few.  In each of the "contemporary" church models we continued to ask ourselves this question:  How can we assimilate people into the life of the church?  We were so committed in some churches to answering this question that we even had an Assimilation Pastor.  Amid the jokes about the Borg and assimilation-enforcement, something underneath it all really never sat well with me.

Then I went to a church where the staff mission seemed to be different.  We were asking a very different question:  How can we assimilate the church into the lives of our people?  This question completely changed the way I approached ministry.  The question seemed to be the logical question coming from Ephesians 4, where Paul writes that "Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."

"Equipping his people for works of service" sounds a lot like "assimilating the church into the lives of our people" to my ears...and more importantly to my heart.  This resonates deeply within who God has wired me to be and the type of minister he has charged me to be.  As a pastor, my goal is to teach and train people to believe the way God wants us to believe, to do the things God wants us to do, so we may become all that God wants us to become.

Now most churches would tell you the same thing that I just said...or at least not disagree with the statement, but how we go about it differs dramatically.  At The Springs, our approach to this end result is to place more ministry into the hands of the people and less in the hands of the "clergy" (for an excellent post called Deconstructing the Clergy, read Cameron's blog from November 13).  It is not our responsibility to do the ministry, but to train others do do the ministry of the Church.

The Church will be more powerful, more attractive, more honoring to God if the people learn to assimilate the teachings and activity of the church into their daily lives.  This is why we employ an integrated teaching plan where every person on campus on a given Sunday is learning the same thing and asking how to apply it in their context.  This is why we send home tools for parents to work through that teaching with their kids.  That is why our website has a complete resource section designed to help you drink for yourself.  That is why we deemphasize the Sunday gathering and heavily emphasize Neighborhood Life.  We are committed to putting the church back into the lives of the people and not hiding it away in a building somewhere for people to come see once a week.

If I don't get to post again until after Thanksgiving, have a great holiday with your family and friends.  Cherish every moment as sacred because you just don't know when it will happen again.