One More on Disciple Making
I was driving the other day when I noticed one of those church signs that have a mission statement or inviting saying on it. This one said: We Really Care About You. I wondered if those sings really make any difference or if they are really true. What do the non-churched people think about them? Are they really good disciple-making tools?

Well, of course not. Disciples are made after they get into the building, not by inviting them in. Disciples are made through a process of experience and education, nurture and training.

In his book, The Disciple-Making Church: From Dry Bones to Spiritual Vitality, Glenn McDonald has a lot to say about this process. Here is a great quote that puts some of the problems in persepctive.

Most churches are ABC churches- Attendance, Building, and Cash churches. They are “more preoccupied with structural issues than with spiritual vitality… Their goals are often far below the bar that is set in Scripture. It is disturbingly easy to make progress on the scales of attendance, building and cash even while failing to sustain significant conversation with God or enjoying redemptive relationships with people.

There’s a world of difference between structuring a church the right way and actually learning how to... cease being fixated with programs and initiatives and Sunday morning bulletins, and simply to surrender to the movement of the Spirit, who causes our hearts to dance in the presence of God. It’s the difference between the deadness of dry, institutional bones and authentic spiritual vitality.

All this is far more important than their institution’s survival.

How many times I have gotten into discussions about institutional survival. How many times I have heard people say we need to bring more people into the church if we are to stay alive. How many times! But the truth is that if those are the reasons for getting more people in the doors, it won't work.

Surrendering to the movement of the Spirit may not create institutional survival, but I have a hunch that a chruch that truly did it would find they wouldn't be worrying about survival in the first place.