“Come, change the world with us”
In his video for The Nines, Rick Warren talks about the need for a process of discipleship in a lot of the churches he is aware of. The question a lot of church leaders are asking is ‘how do we move people along from a needy attitude towards faith to a more committed “what can I give?” attitude?’
Is the problem that this is the wrong question? Instead, perhaps we should be asking questions about the way we market our faith in the first place?
So we have this common problem of bridging the gap between “needy” or “new” Christians who are looking for God/church to be the answer to their questions and to deal with their problems, and mature, fully-developed “giving” or self-sacrificing Christians.
Rick Warren defines these two groups by the message which we give to them. Early on the Christian message is “Come and see” – that classic line from the gospels – but then later needs to develop to “Come and die” (or I would say “Go and die”). A transition into a faith which is much more about action, sacrifice and lifestyle.
I don’t think this is a problem which is unique to the church – I think it’s an issue within youth work, social work and even society as a whole. We can identify two types of communities or groups:
- Needy groups which are usually in the early stages of their development
- Giving groups in which the members are interdependent and actively giving outwards to the society around them.
Within youth work and community work we often find this same issue when engaging with community groups or groups of young people. Most often groups are formed around an attractive principle where there is something the group can achieve for each prospective member. Groups which form around this principle often work really well and grow quickly within their early development, but then often hit a brick wall before being able to reach this second, fulfilled stage of becoming a giving group.
Another way of referring to these two groups, or two types of Christians in particular, could be consumer Christians and consumed Christians.
So how do we bridge the gap? Often groups achieve this, however there are many, many stories of groups which just haven’t reached this point – relying on the input of a professional or team of professionals rather than reaching a level of participation.
Perhaps the reason is that this process is not actually supposed to take place. Transitioning into an interdependent, consumed way of functioning goes totally against the culture within which the group formed itself.
If a group forms under the principle that it members can gain something – then it goes totally against the newly developed culture of the group to then require the members to give something.
This is why books like The Missional Leader provide a process for engineering a culture shift within your church – to become “missional” means to go completely against this initially founding principle of “Come and receive”.
So here’s my thought: perhaps then its not the process which we haven’t managed to figure out yet – but instead the original marketing strategy of the group itself. Perhaps rather than marketing Christianity or church as a way of achieving something or gaining something, we should instead be marketing them as a way of giving something. The problem is that when we look at the mass-marketing around us – this idea of anti-marketing our product (“Here’s what you can give”, rather than “Here’s what you can get”) is totally counter-cultural.
Is this why when the Rich Young Ruler approaches Jesus, Jesus presents with the worst investment opportunity ever. I’m not sure that our initial impression of the Kingdom of God is ever supposed to look like a good investment opportunity.
So, what if we instead marketed our faith as a dynamic, giving movement to change the world?
What if our initial invitation wasn’t “Come, consume with us”, but “Come, be consumed with us”?
What if our invitation to people was “Come, change the world with us!”.
Perhaps rather than having to engineer a culture shift within our churches and community groups, instead we’d find ourselves with groups that function well, are interdependent and participatory.
But would anyone want to join us?
[Photo Credit: Wonderlane]
-
Bob
