One of my new ventures is in the area of church planting. Here in Iowa, we have a lot of rural communities that are low population density, but have a lot of corn or soybeans or a combination of both. The question then arises, how do we plant a church where there are more cows than people and little land that isn’t used for farming? Doesn’t seem real practical to buy land and build a building. Once I started thinking about it, who’s idea is the “buy and land and build a building” model anyway?
Now don’t hear what I am not saying (cause that never happens). There is a TON of value in the brick and mortar church, and I think they should happen and continue to happen, but sometimes they are not practical. The problem as I see it is that we have become so building dependent that it’s hard to get anyone out of the mind set. After all, if we are going to go to church every time the doors are open, we have to have a church with doors, right?
Perhaps we have created a “Church Culture” that may be counter-productive to doing anything except what we have always done. We have created a “Sunday Go to Church” culture and perhaps this culture is one of the things that will hinder us in the future. As people continue to get more and more busy, perhaps a Saturday night or even Thursday night church would be better, but we have made Sunday the only day to do church. We have created a building based culture that has caused the home church to struggle really catching momentum. Maybe the culture of the American Christian church is hurting us when it comes to the Church that Jesus built.
I don’t have the answer, I wish I did. Maybe it’s best this way, causes us to have to focus more on relationship. We need to change our strategy to focus more on relationships because we live in a Un-churched society in was is now a post-Christian nation. Maybe the answer shifts from how and when we do church to how we relate with those who we wish to do church with. What do you think?