{"id":783,"date":"2015-05-01T13:39:17","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T20:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fountainvalleyumc.org\/church\/?p=783"},"modified":"2015-07-10T07:47:56","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T14:47:56","slug":"changing-our-paradigm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/2015\/05\/01\/changing-our-paradigm\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing Our Paradigm"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago I preached a sermon titled \u201cRevival or Survival\u201d in which I shared what I believe to be a critical change churches will need to make in order to serve God faithfully into the future. In fact, I said that if churches don\u2019t make this change, God\u2019s revival may pass them by. Strong language, to be sure, but important for us to prayerfully consider.<\/p>\n

The change I spoke about is from the \u201cattractional\u201d paradigm of church to the \u201cmissional\u201d paradigm.<\/p>\n

\"attrational<\/a>The \u201cattractional\u201d paradigm says this: if we make our church attractive to people (excellent programs, worship, preaching, facilities, etc.) they will come. It assumes that there are a significant number of people who are looking for a church and will take the initiative to brave the obstacles and show up one Sunday! This has been the primary way that \u201cmega-churches\u201d have experienced such phenomenal growth. Unfortunately, \u201cattractional\u201d growth comes overwhelmingly at the expense of other churches; the vast majority of people attending \u201cmega-churches\u201d are there by way of transfer from other churches.<\/p>\n

But what if we changed the way we think about church? What if we adopted a \u201cmissional\u201d paradigm where we don\u2019t wait for people to come to us, but rather we go out to them? The \u201cmissional\u201d paradigm posits \u201cchurch\u201d as a mission outpost, full of missionaries, going out into the community to serve, teach and demonstrate the Kingdom of God in a broken world. The main goal of a \u201cmissional\u201d church is to get people into the Kingdom of God and not, primarily, into the \u201cpews\u201d on Sunday morning. If they come, great! But our measure of success must be faithfulness to the Gospel, rather than numbers in the \u201cpews\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is not easy to change paradigms. For those of us who have been in the church most of our lives, it is hard to think in these terms. But people who have little or no exposure to \u201cchurch\u201d cannot fathom themselves getting involved in a church that doesn\u2019t go out into the community to effect good. So if we want to reach these new, pre-believers, we will need to change.<\/p>\n

In the coming months I will be casting this vision more and more, because I believe this is where God is calling us. Indeed, our new \u201cvision statement\u201d resonates with this. We are \u201cA Biblical Family of Joyful Servants, Sharing the Love of God in a Broken World.\u201d As God shapes and molds us into a likeness of this \u201cvision statement\u201d, I invite you to bathe your church in prayer and stay attentive to the Spirit\u2019s guidance.<\/p>\n

Faithfully,<\/p>\n

Pastor Glen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago I preached a sermon titled \u201cRevival or Survival\u201d in which I shared what I believe to be a critical change churches will need to make in order to serve God faithfully into the future. In fact, I said that if churches don\u2019t make this change, God\u2019s revival may pass them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":832,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,38,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-outreach","category-outreach","category-pastoral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":785,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions\/785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}