So, yeah, this sort of got out of hand. I got started and it was a slippery slope sort of deal.Nevertheless, I really found The Prodigal Church by Jared C. Wilson very helpful and informative. I like doing these "so-many Tweetable Quote" posts as a way to review a book. These posts also end being a resource for use in the future. And the issues Wilson raises in this book are worth pondering and re-pondering and re-re-pondering. So I hope you also find this helpful.
I am a pretty weak typist, and so there could be some errors; I'm also not great at pronouncing my words and since I used Dragon Dictation to do some of this work there may be more errors. I tried to catch them, but if they still exist than the fault is all mine. Enjoy.
- “…guilt can be a powerful motivator…But guilt is not a very enduring motivator.” (9)
- “This is not an argument for a more traditional church so much as it is an argument for a more biblical one.” (18)
- “…I invested in the attractional church because I shared its heart for the lost. I still have not rejected its primary aims.” (20)
- “How we “do church” shapes the way people see God and his Son and his ways in the world.” (21)
- “If we give either legalism or license an inch, they will take a mile.” (23)
- “What if the way we communicate Jesus actually works against people trusting him?” (24)
- “‘What if what we’re doing isn’t really what we’re supposed to be doing?’ We should ask that. All of us.” (24)
- “A definition of attractional…a way of ministry that derives from the primary purpose of making Christianity appealing.” (25)
- “…too often the message of Christ’s death has become assumed, the thing you build up to rather than focus on.” (27)
- “To hear a lengthy appeal to our abilities, culminating in an appeal to our utter inability, can cause spiritual whiplash.” (27)
- “…the idea that the attractional church is having its doors beaten down by lost people is a myth.” (35)
- “…the kind of growth the attractional church experiences the most of is in reality the kind of growth they often claim they don’t want… ‘transfer growth.’” (35)
- “The family has not been won to a church. They’ve been won to a menu of attractive goods and services.” (36)
- “God will use anything to bring people to him. But just because he is no snob, that doesn’t mean ‘anything’ is normative for our use.” (38)
- “The ends don’t justify the means.” (38)
- “It is a customary mantra of ministry that healthy things grow. And yet sometimes healthy things shrink.” (40)
- “‘Healthy things grow’ sounds right. But cancer grows too.” (40)
- “So it’s possible to look big, to look successful, and to not actually be big or successful in the ways that matter.” (40)
- “Sometimes unhealthy things grow.” (41)
- “It would see, actually, that for some churches, bigger inadvertently becomes the point …” (41)
- “”…in the attractional model, all too often members are not contributing to the life of their church body but to the church’s programming…” (45)
- “Shouldn’t we measure our models against the means and methods found in the Scriptures?” (46)
- The Bible is frustratingly vague on ‘how to do church.’” (47)”
- “…as we seek to do the good work of missionary contextualization, we have to make sure that we have not crossed lines into cultural accommodation…” (48)
- “Beneath the exercise of liberty in methodology is always a functional ideology driving our decisions.” (48)
- “A ‘functional ideology’ is the belief…in a church that…drives the methods and practices of the church.” (49)
- “In short, just because we think we can do something doesn’t mean we should.” (49)
- “I think the evangelical church in the West is particularly susceptible to two primary ideologies…pragmatism and consumerism.” (49)
- “…I think the attractional model is fundamentally built on these functional ideologies…pragmatism and consumerism.” (49)
- “We need to be careful, however, not to confuse pragmatism with simply being practical.” (50)
- “I would suggest that pragmatism runs counter to the functional ideology of Scripture.” (50)
- “It [pragmatism] assumes a method’s value is based on the demonstration of our desired results.” (50)
- “Those verses are instead a reminder that we can do our work but we cannot do God’s. Nor is his work contingent upon ours.” (51)
- “The sower [in Luke 8:5-8] appears to be scattering the seed somewhat indiscriminately.” (51)
- “In the pragmatic way of thinking, faithful church ministry always results in growth. And it does! But not always in the ways we expect and desire.” (52)
- “Pragmatism has a utilitarian ethos to it. It is by nature unspiritual.” (52)
- “Pragmatism is anti-gospel because it treats evangelism as a kind of pyramid scheme…” (53)
- “Pragmatism reasons that God’s ability to use anything means our freedom to use everything.” (53)
- “The way the church wins its people shapes its people.” (54)
- “…the most effective way to turn your church into a collection of consumers and customers is to treat them like that’s what they are.” (54)
- “But in my dad’s mind-in the world of logic and realism and fairness-the customer is sometimes pretty stupid.” (56)
- “No human’s desires are value-neutral.” (56)
- “We can and should address some felt needs, but not all felt needs are created equal.” (56)
- “…the attractional church model necessarily gives rise to competition among churches…” (57)
- “…the target audience of the ‘worship experience’ is not any mortal in the congregation. The target audience is God himself.” (58)
- “The purpose of the worship service is not what we get out of it but the God who has drawn us into it.” (59)
- “…the functional ideologies…of pragmatism and consumerism are disastrous, because they make the individual person the center of the religious universe.” (60)
- “The worship service, biblically, is never seen…as a place where individuals go to enjoy a particular experience nor as the central place of evangelism.” (62)
- “The worship service, biblically, is a gathering of Christians to enjoy God in communion with him and each other.” (62)
- “The attractional church follows a trajectory away from what makes the church the church.” (63)
- “The worship service must be conducted with the unbeliever in mind, but it doesn’t need to be conducted with the unbeliever in focus.” (63)
- “…in the biblical picture of the earliest church, we don’t get any indication that the worship gathering is meant to be an event oriented around the unbeliever’s presence.” (63)
- “…designing your service specifically for the [unbeliever] is neither biblical nor wise.” (65)
- “What the Bible seems to express is that unbelievers in the service are best served not by having their tastes catered to…” (66)
- “What you win them with is what you win them to.” (66)
- “What we do in church shapes us. It doesn’t just inform us or entertain us. It makes us who we are.” (67)
- “The worship service…doesn’t just cater to certain tastes; it develops certain tastes.” (67)
- “We will eventually become conformed to the pattern of our behaviors.” (67)
- “Habits come from character, but it works the other way too-character is shaped by habits.” (67)
- “The Bible’s ‘functional ideology’…is that ‘what works’ is the Holy Spirit through the message of the gospel of Jesus.” (70)
- “…neither the Spirit nor the gospel needs help from our production values.” (70)
- “The wider evangelical church is suffering terribly from theological bankruptcy.” (74)
- “We [evangelicals] have tended to favor the practical half truth rather than the impractical (allegedly) whole truth.” (74)
- “Our shepherds are increasingly hired for their…laboring in the increase in attendance rather than the increase of gospel proclamation.” (75)
- “The dilution of understanding of worship is a direct result of the dilution of theology in the church.” (75)
- “Fortune-Cookie preaching will make brittle, hollow, syrupy Christians.” (77)
- “We fill our buildings with scores and scores of people, but we’ve reduced the basic message to fit the size of an individualistic faith.” (77)
- “The typical application message tends to overemphasize our good works while a good proclamation message will emphasize God’s finished work.” (82)
- “The essential difference between applicational preaching and proclamational preaching ultimately depends on how much the preacher wishes to make of Jesus.” (83)
- “The applicational preacher either presupposes the gospel or relegates it to the conclusion of his message.” (83)
- “…just because you dress casually, play edgy music, and talk a lot about grace, it doesn’t mean you aren’t a legalist.” (84)
- “…it’s my belief that the self-professed ‘culturally relevant’ churches are the chief proponents of legalism in Christianity today.” (84)
- “But ‘do’ isn’t any less law-minded than ‘don’t.’” (84)
- “The gospel isn’t ‘don’t,’ but it also isn’t ‘do’; both are merely religion.” (84)
- “They [unbelievers] don’t need the church to act like good people, really; they need the church to point to Jesus as the only truly good person.” (84)
- “”Pharisaical legalism was just self-help without the cool clothes.” (84)
- “…we must never teach the practical points as the main points.” (85)
- “The [good] news is so much better than the instructions! It is better because the news actually saves us.” (86)
- “But what will really save the lost world? Let me tell you: none of our complaints against it.” (87)
- “It is possible, actually, that all of our emphasis on the practical has only served to make things impossible.” (87)
- “Preaching even a ‘positive’ practical message with no gospel-centrality amounts to preaching the law,” (88)
- “…when we preach ‘how to’ law sermons instead of the gospel, we may end up with a bunch of well-behaved spiritual corpses.” (89)
- “,,,what the Christian church needs today in its imperfect fumbling back to the beauty of gospel-centrality is a stubborn unmuddling of law and grace.” (90)
- “It seemed as though authenticity was a style we were going for, which is, surely, the exact opposite of authenticity.” (93)
- “…emotionalism is dangerous.” (94)
- “The danger in this [emotionalism] is that we end up craving the emotions associated with emotional worship, not necessarily the spirit of worship itself.” (94)
- “It’s not the charismata that are offensive to me; it is the complete lunacy that claims Spiritual authenticity.” (95)
- “We are in very real danger of divorcing our styles and preferences from our object.” (95)
- “Worship must really be worship, which is to say worship of God, the triune God.” (96)
- “The problem in these emotionalistic, faddish, trendy times is that worship becomes more about us than God.” (96)
- “The danger we face when we worship is coming into the experience assuming we are summoning God.” (97)
- “If you worship God in a less-than-clear or in a doctrine-less sense, you end up worshipping another god.” (99)
- “When we divorce theology from worship…we compromise our worship. It may look great but it is hollow and shallow.” (99)
- “The center of worship is the perfect and eternal God…not the achievements of the created.” (99)
- “Self-celebratory worship music is the result of self-celebratory teaching and discipleship.” (100)
- “Worship is a way of life, a quality of the believing heart.” (100)
- “Modern church worship is characterized by an exaltation of the self, but authentic worship is marked by an emptying of ourselves.” (101)
- “Authentic worship doesn’t just focus on the fullness of who God is, but it glories in the beauty of what God has done.” (102)
- “It [real worship] is basking in the warm glow of eternity.” (102)
- “The gospel is a blinding light interrupting our minding our own business on a lonely road.” (102)
- “When we gather, are gathering a watchers or as beholders?” (103)
- “When we gather…Are we gathering to see a performance or to see the passing by of the glory of God?” (103)
- “The gospel must be central because nothing else even comes close to filling the eternal gap.” (104)
- “The way the attractional church worships produces the kind of worshipper it gets.” (111)
- “I’m only saying that we should use these things after asking deeper questions about them than ‘Will this work?’” (112)
- “But the uncritical use of media and technology can stunt our church's spiritual growth, even if in the short-term it entertains and pleases the people.” (112)
- “The uncritical co-opting of the cultures need for media might actually feed inside the church the negative qualities they feed outside the church... ” (113)
- “All churches should be seeker sensitive in the best sense of the phrase…” (116)
- “At what point do we look at cultural trends not as things to mirror and copy but as things to challenge and subvert?” (116)
- “I am afraid many churches have moved from leveraging technology to merely co-opting whatever they think the world finds appealing or slick.” (116)
- “We cannot expect our people to grow in God's glory if we do not put God's glory for their faces.” (119)
- “We cannot settle for success. Our people need real glory, and only the gospel "of first importance" reveals it. ” (120)
- “In other words, the bigger and the attractional church becomes, the more programs and ministries it thinks it must offer.” (121)
- “The drive to provide an array of goods and services prevents a church from exercising missional nimbleness.” (122)
- “Churches passionate about simplicity will pursue a simple vision.” (128)
- “The attractional of church often reasons according to available resources, not according to actual spiritual value.” (128)
- “But it isn't more entrepreneurial visionaries we really need more cross-focused visionaries.” (131)
- “If the church is people, then the organizational machine and a local congregation should be considered expendable.” (132)
- “When an attractional church multiplies, the results more resemble franchises then church plants.” (133)
- “As the attractional church accumulates more complexity, it becomes more rigid, despite all its claims to innovation and cultural relevance.” (133)
- “… the simple church adopts an approach to church growth that is more reflective of farming, of cultivation.” (134)
- “… the simple church focuses simply on the long-term investments in growth and trusts the “Spirit produce growth in his time.” (134)
- “The simple church follows the direction not of the shifting winds of the culture but the surprising currents of the Spirit.” (134)
- “The simple churches mission waiting much more nimble than the attraction church. (134)
- “Similarly, the church needs to stick to what the Bible actually tells us to do, and what the Bible actually tells us to do is not very complicated.” (134)
- “Over programming create an illusion of fruitfulness just be busyness.” (134)
- “Here's a good test: take a look at a typical over-programmed church's calendar and see how many of the activities resemble things seen New Testament.” (136)
- “Always ask 'should we?' before you ask 'Can we?'” (137)
- “Somewhere between the poles of attachment to church programs and 'self-feeding' lies the real stuff of covenant community.” (143)
- “Systems may aid the discipleship process, but discipleship is not a system.” (144)
- “Underneath our felt needs is an entire industry of idols emerging from the foundation of sin and longing for glory.” (144)
- “Are we trusting our programs, or are we trusting God?” (145)
- “Whatever our programs, our churches' leaders need to take seriously the command of Christ – in as many ways as possible – to feed his sheep.” (145)
- “But if we want to Christ–exalting, Christ–loving, Christ–following people, we have to get more personal and go deeper.” (145)
- “Pragmatism, on the other hand, is the mind-set that says that whatever "works" can and should be used.” (147)
- “A pragmatic mind-set treats spiritual matters along the lines of mathematics.” (147)
- "We must remember that pastoral ministry, like Christianity itself, is not a matter of formulas but of faith.” (147)
- “Or maybe we've taken the biblical sheep metaphor a bit too far, and we're looking at how best to herd the sheep instead of how to best feed them.” (148)
- “But when all is said and done, we are not managers of spiritual enterprises: we are shepherds.” (148)
- “Jesus neither sulks nor sighs about us. He ministers to us willingly, eagerly. ” (149)
- “Therefore, personal presence is so important. And I'd say you're not really a pastor if you're not present. ” (149)
- “Only the Gospel goes deep enough to effect real hard change. Everything else is just behavior modification. ” (150)
- “But in order to reveal someone's functional ideology… we have to employ the only tool adequate for that job, and that is the gospel of Jesus…” (150)
- “The way we are typically programmed to measure the success of our ministries sets us up for hollow victory in desperate failure.” (151)
- “It is only to say that what we measure and how we measure shows where our confidence lies.” (151)
- “Clearly, accumulating numbers cannot be our primary measure of success.” (151)
- “… in the attractional church, growth in numbers is often seen just as a measure of success but as a justification for any methodology used to get them.” (151)
- “Biblical credibility is not found in big stats.” (152)
- “… We are responsible mainly for the care of the souls, not the accumulation of them. ” (152)
- “When we pastors cling to the gospel ourselves, it will shape us, giving us the mind and heart of Christ for our people.” (153)
- “The central idea of the church should be the Gospel.” (156)
- “Numbers don't account for everything. In some cases, they don't account for anything. ” (157)
- “What God will require of us is not ministry quantity but ministry quality.” (157)
- “...but in a church centered on the gospel, things like inspiration and good feelings are seen as byproducts of the experiences, not the aim of the experience. ” (158)
- “What is emphasized and valued the churches media correlates to what the church is measuring success.” (159)
- “The attractional church, which places a huge emphasis on numbers, science, and raw data, highly prices statistics.” (159)
- “The gospel-centered church highly prizes stories. Rather than prizing bigness, it prizes relationality. ” (159)
- “The gospel is not made more powerful by a dynamic preacher or a rockin' band… The gospel cannot be improved. ” (163)
- “You cannot program salvation.” (165)
- “The Spirit doesn't where the church’s wristwatch. You cannot control him." (166)
- “That's what prayer is, essentially: acknowledged helplessness.” (166)
- “But we do not worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ingenuity.” (167)
- “Everything good and valuable must come from the Spirit's sovereign working, not from our ministerial machinations.” (167)
- “The Evangelical church's search for the magic bullet is insatiable.” (169)
- “The nurturing of your congregation's desire for experiential community begins with you.” (169)
- “Reject the tyranny of results.” (172)
- “Preach hard on the importance of discipleship, on the call to community…” (173)
- “… the church does not exist to facilitate all our good ideas.” (176)
- “Good intentions and strong giftedness do not baptize on biblical methods.” (176)
- “If all of life is repentance, then all of ministry is too.” (184)
- “The very nature of Grace throws off all measurements of balance.” (185)
- “In reality, both irreligion and religion are fundamentally self-salvation projects.” (185)
- “… in the New Testament, you never find application on exhortation disconnected from gospel proclamation.” (187)
- “It’s about letting the gospel direct the methods.” (199)
- “If you treat your church like a business, you will see other churches as your competition.” (219)
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