Inefficient, disconnected leaders, blinders to the world around them, those are some of the words used to describe the upper echelon of leadership for GM and Chrysler, the one time American powerhouse corporations now all facing bankruptcy protection and embarrassment.

There was zeal, respect, attitude, leadership, prestige, vision, attributed with these companies, but their inability to innovate and recognize obvious cultural changes contributed to the demise of these once great companies.

Christian denominations (I was going to pick on evangelicals, but my sense this crosses denominational boundary) flush with cash today are a dying breed, and in a few years time they too will face, if they haven't already, the painful realization they are not only out of touch, but irrelevant to the culture around them.

What's the cause of the eventual or current decline? Taking a gospel message and translating it into a language only they can understand.

Conservative Christians are notorious for forgoing their own message of love and reconciliation to confront the lack of morality in society. It's been said the Trinity of Father-Son-Holy Spirit has been replaced with the new conservative right wing Trinity of Homosexuality-Abortion-Evolution. Furthermore, rather than worship of Jesus Christ as their model and hero, conservative have placed the Bible (confused with 'the Word') on an unhealthy pedestal.

Solution? There needs to be a literal about shift regarding the churches interaction with culture. Rather than creating parallel culture or reacting negatively to existing culture, we need to learn how to interpret a gospel message of redemption within a language those connected in our networks can understand.

That does not suggest we 'become like the world', but rather point people into the r eign of God. But the only way to accomplish this task is to simply draw into relationship first. The first interaction people in our post-Christendom world should have with God, Church, Jesus, whichever, is not the physical church building ("hooray they came to church on Sunday!"), but rather its community.

This isn't really news to anybody who's been in church for a while, but it does lend to the notion that it's more important to connect with our neighbors rather than forcing them to interpret our church community. To put it in another way, most churches are attractional, which means the point of the existence of the church is to get as many people into the building Sunday for service. Not only is this counter intuitive to the Great Commission, it also forces those who are not connected into anything church (the post-Christendom world which is ever growing around us) to interpret our culture within. We force new church visitors to do the cross-cultural work--and yes, it is very CROSS CULTURAL stepping foot into any church.

Time to see the err of our ways before it's too late. The fundamental posture of our popular church buildings/communities needs to change. No longer are people interested in sitting silently while listening to someone's exposition for 45 minutes. Today we commission people (not just pastors) to exist for the sake of God's mission to redeem humanity.

How that looks, it's up to your and based on your network/voice.

By the way, an attractional church CANNOT attempt to be missional without changing their posture. Meaning they can't on one hand (like I heard this past week at a church) exhort lazy people to get connected into God's mission and have 'spiritual discussions' (this is a pathetic stat to count but that's another discussion for another time), while on the other hand make a distinction between pastors and laity.

It will hurt, but a massive shift is required in order to connect with an emerging and dominant post-Christendom culture. The change is absolutely necessary not only because of Kingdom implications, but unlike GM or Chrysler, there is no second chance to recover from 'spiritual bankruptcy'. When you pull the plug on a dying and ineffective church nobody outside will shed a tear or take notice.

That means ineffective and blind leaders will cease to exist, replaced instead with more vibrant, perhaps smaller, and focused communities looking to journey with each other along God's redemption story for humanity.

[tags]missions, attractional, church, evangelicals[/tags]