Here are three "scenes" from the life of real churches:
Scene 1: Two gals walk into a church service 5 minutes early and sit down waiting for the service to start.
One says to the other, "I hope the senior pastor is preaching. He's the best."
The other girl says to her friend, "If he's not preaching let's leave and go out to breakfast."
Scene 2: A very large church is opening a second location to accommodate growth. They choose a venue and set a date months in the future to begin. They have an "open house" at the new venue to get to know people there. The senior pastor reports back to his congregation, "We met so many new people! The question that every person had was, 'Will YOU be preaching at this location?'"
Scene 3: A very successful pastor is removed from his position and starts a new church in the same city. The first church loses more than 50% of its attenders in the first month after the pastor is gone.
If you are a regular church attender the odds are that you get yourself out of bed on Sunday morning and go to a worship service in large part to hear a guy (it's usually men) preach a good sermon. And if the guy is not there you are not there either.
Late in his life, Vincent van Gogh was living in the south of France. He depicted a church in Auvers (see photo). It looks weary, sagging, and unattractive. It was his take on the state of the Church in Europe in his lifetime, and how that Church had hurt him over time.
I wonder how van Gogh would capture the 21st Century Church in the West?
Scene 1: Two gals walk into a church service 5 minutes early and sit down waiting for the service to start.
One says to the other, "I hope the senior pastor is preaching. He's the best."
The other girl says to her friend, "If he's not preaching let's leave and go out to breakfast."
Scene 2: A very large church is opening a second location to accommodate growth. They choose a venue and set a date months in the future to begin. They have an "open house" at the new venue to get to know people there. The senior pastor reports back to his congregation, "We met so many new people! The question that every person had was, 'Will YOU be preaching at this location?'"
Scene 3: A very successful pastor is removed from his position and starts a new church in the same city. The first church loses more than 50% of its attenders in the first month after the pastor is gone.
If you are a regular church attender the odds are that you get yourself out of bed on Sunday morning and go to a worship service in large part to hear a guy (it's usually men) preach a good sermon. And if the guy is not there you are not there either.
I wonder how van Gogh would capture the 21st Century Church in the West?
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