Week 26 - the tension of church growth and church health.

Week 26.
Just read these words in one of my summer reads (see my list of books over on my daily blog - although make sure you grab Hunter's book - ouch!):

"We have substituted a gospel of church growth for a gospel of reconciliation."

John Perkins wrote that back in 1982.

But of course we all want growth.
Warren was right back when he wrote The Purpose Driven Church (1995), the evidence of church health is not simply faithfulness but fruitfulness....and that has to include more people coming to faith in Christ.

But somewhere in the messiness of leadership church growth and church health get confused.

Neither is exclusive, both are required ...its more a question of priority, or aiming, or focus.

Week 26 in my desire to be an intentional leader - figure out, in my context, what growth looks within our desire to have health.

I have a feeling the paradigm is about to shift - considerably.

A few weeks of reading, learning, listening, asking ......watch this space.

Excuse my absence for a couple of weeks .....got that reading, learning, listening and asking to do!

Week 25 - a must read for summer.

Week 25.

Leadership idea of the summer.

Read.

Especially read - To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, And Possibility Of Christianity In The Late Modern World @ James Davison Hunter, Oxford University Press, 2010.

Read it.

Make it a summer read goal.

Brilliant insight.

Week 24 - when a Senior Pastor changes his position!

Week 24 and for all your 'Baptists' out there ....have a read of this one and confirm my heretic status! It's a copy of my daily blog over at http://scottishpastormusings.blogspot.com

Day 163 and yesterday we saw 52 people baptized.
It was our first Wash Over Me Baptism Ceremony and a great Saturday afternoon.

There was one other baptism not in that 52, a 53rd - my own.

Strange.

When I was 13 years old I was baptized. With a mixture of 'the right thing to do', being obedient and wanting people to know that I was a Christian.
All good, all real to where I was and what I was feeling.

But over the past few years my views on baptism have begun to shift.
It's more centrally become sacramental.
But this year something bigger happened - its moved from being a fidecentric emblem to a Christocentric emblem.
This is for me a significant movement, and a movement that required me to do more than appropriate this into the baptism I had many years ago, to do the whole thing again.

Probably best that I speak into this odd site of the church's Senior Pastor being baptised by the church's staff.......

For years I've held to the idea that baptism is a result of my faith. I've come to believe in who Christ is; I've received by faith His salvation and I then take this further step in demonstrating my faith for others to see.
This is the classic believers' (converts) baptism.

Of course Christianity is divided between two types of baptism - believers' baptism or infant baptism. The more theological terms are credobaptism or paedobaptism.

I grew up credobaptist.

But in the past few years I've been restless with not so much with what is attached to credobaptism, more I've been restless with what's missing from credobaptism.
Initially I felt it minimized the Divine movement as a sacrament. Everything seemed to revolve around my movement. It was me who was moving to show my faith; it was me who was stepping in the waters and displaying my devotion; it was me identifying with Christ.
This seemed to wrestle baptism away from being sacramental. As a sacrament the movement is always from God. This is the case in every sacrament. God descends to meet us in the sacrament.

But in the past few months my restless has intensified.

Is it really all about my faith?
Is it not all about Christ?

And this began me re-reading the paedobaptist position.
[Thank you Sinclair Ferguson and your excellent defense/summary of infant baptism in Baptism: Three Views edited by David F. Wright.]

For me the issue I'm revising is not whether it is believers or infants that get baptised - for me it is what movement is happening and where does it start.

This returns us to the fidecentric emblem or Christocentric emblem.

Fidoecentric says it is my faith that is being outworked in baptism.
Christocentric does not minimize the role of faith but stressed that what is symbolized in baptism is not faith but the Christ in whom faith rests.

This is a defining difference.
This pushes it to being a sign and a seal rather than a symbol or testimony.
This pushes it away from faith towards grace......towards what God does, not what I'm doing.

This is a major part of the paedobaptist argument.
Maybe I'm exploring a third way, a way that takes the truth of believers' baptism but embraces some of the excellent theology behind the paedobaptist position.

Who says there's only two views.
maybe its bigger than we've previously known.

Yesterday .....quietly at the end of the ceremony as people headed for food.... staff and one pastor decided to experiment with a third way.