Importance of Grounding

Excerpts from Dan Kimball post:  "It's Over!" - Trends in Churchland

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I wonder in land the church we can get caught up in forms of "It's Over!"....

Generally out of good intentions, we are looking out for new forms of ministry that will effectively see people come to faith and grow as followers of Jesus. But then as innovation and exciting becomes the standard, can we then feel "It's Over" and then want to move on?

In being 100% honest, I remember being challenged and even told how wrong I was about implementing forms of worship and art etc. by a church. But then 10 years later I was at that church and seeing them using the same thing in worship they fought against us doing and said was silly. My bad-Dan side of me was thinking "It's Over!" if they are now doing this we better then stop. And then I had to realize how dumb and self-centered that thinking was and quickly repented.

At conferences there sometimes can be a "What's the newest thing?!" feeling out there. Again, out of good heart and intentions. We want to be serving God on mission and learning what is happening out there. But we also need to discern when our interest and heart/mind moves to more concerns of personal experience or the cool factor or keeping up on things in the evangelical world.

One day will we be saying "Multi-Site Video Venues?" - "It's Over!" ...... "Missional?" - "It's Over!"...... If we look back, I can name several things I think we have done the "It's Over!" with in churchland.

Maybe someone will do a mock video of this one with Christians at conferences doing this about the various trends we have gone into for a while and then shifted later as it becomes "It's Over" and move to another.

But outside of methodology, I have sensed from some even due to bad experiences we looked at the evangelical world or some theology and said "It's Over!" due to some of the things that happened to us personally or as we understand there was too much focus on the reductionist form of the gospel as a ticket to heaven, lack of orthopraxy, right-wing political definition that developed etc. And then we can become like in the video the guy who rejects evangelicalism as "It's Over!" by seeing maybe who claims to be evangelical or what some turned it into. Can sometimes even our theology fall into "It's Over!". Not that we won't grow in our theology, but can we unconsciously reject or change it because of reasons other than theological but more personal or cultural?

I am finding that we must, must, must of course be scanning the horizon for what is new and what God is doing. I don't see it as trendy, but if it is effective on mission and doesn't compromise Scripture then I think we should be using it if appropriate in our context of mission. If I shift from a normal cell phone to a smart-phone, I don't see that as trendy. I see it as having an effective form of communication. I believe the church naturally should be doing the same with how we go about our mission.

But with the quickness of change that happens in just normal life and also in the church (as church is normal life really) I am finding myself more immersed in Scripture and theology and truth which is our bedrock. What we know about Jesus comes from Scripture etc. So our anchor, our understanding of Jesus - is from Scripture primarily. And our theology isn't trendy (or shouldn't be). Cultures do change and forms of what we do will change. That is why being grounded in Scripture is so incredibly important. So whether normal cell phones, or smart cell phones or normal church meetings or multi-site meetings - our bedrock and truths we hold are not "It's Over!" if a new cell phone is designed.

At the same time, I have met and talked with church leaders who put tradition and not changing at such a high value and they would totally be looking at this video of "It's Over!" and using it for their argument of claiming we all jump on trends and we should just stick with tradition. And as I have now said many times "If tradition gets in the way of mission, it is sin". If what we do gets in the way of people coming to know Jesus and growing in their faith etc. So just because one doesn't have an "It's Over!" experience because they are traditional, does not mean they aren't trendy. They just stuck with a trend from a certain time in history and then chose not to move from it and when you trace origins of most things we do in church as "tradition" it did actually come from the trend of that time period. So the question is, in those churches (or any church) are we seeing new life, growth, followers of Jesus making a difference in the world etc.?

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