WEB 2.0 TV: Alma Records_Michael Kaeshammer COMES LOVE

MOre of Victoria bc boy Michael kaeshammer....We love it!!!

Changes in delivering the message!

Erwin McManus continues to deliver a message of change that I for one believe is something all churches would be wise to check out. That is, if they wish to continue to progress with the reality of our world as we know it. With these changes, there is still the opportunity to deliver Gods message to the world. Just in a new way is all. We must develop the will amongst us, to be able to accept change.Easy to say,some however tend to be unbendable(if there is such a word).

His message is that there are no formulas that will enable a church to structurally meet every person’s needs. Currently, when a new believer joins a church they are plugged into the structure where the church needs them most. They are discipled and led in ways that make them all look the same. For people outside of the church, who inherently know (and cling to the fact that) we are all unique, the sameness of the church, and the structure that they are potentially being asked to fit into doesn’t work.
Erwin underlined the idea that in order for a church to meet the needs of such a diverse group it needs to give up being so structured around what a church “needs” to look like, or the programs it “ought” to have or the formulas that it “should” use.
Another thing he said really resonated with me. It concerns a world the church has been using quite often lately. It sounds like a good word (probably in the same way the world uses the word “peace” to mean different things that Jesus would mean) but ultimately implies things that we don’t really mean to mean. The word is relevant. Erwin said that the church tries too hard to be relevant. He expounded that the word in itself implies that someone else has already arrived or done something; that anyone thereafter must link or join to. Anyone after the first has to also find ways to add on some value to the foundation already built. He said that the church (who has all of the power of Christ, and inherently the ability to do anything in God’s will) should never try to be relevant. Instead the church should be setting the curve for the culture to follow. Wouldn’t it be great if the church was doing so many great things that the culture took notice and was in hot pursuit to add on to what we were doing?
Next he moved on to the thought that we only have churches that look like ourselves. Whomever we are, we only invite people to join in our lives that look, talk, act like us. One church sought Erwin out saying of their 5,000 all-white members; they didn’t know how they could start seeing diversity. He asked them if they had any friends who were of different races. From the blank stares he apparently got, I guessed the answer was no. He offered them the idea that if they only wanted to do church, and not LIFE with people of other races, then the church they were trying to build was a fake. If they weren’t willing to allow diversity into their lives, why would their church be any different?