The Church Is In Crisis #4: From Audience to Army

When your church has a building, it is tempting to think church is what happens in that building during a 2 hour block of time Sunday morning. And if you're really hard core, church also happens Wednesday evening and maybe even Sunday evening as well.

But what you'll also find is that the church is an audience. They act in much the same way as the group of people at the movie theater act. They attend, pay attention, want to get something out of it, critique it when it's over, and then splinter off back into their real lives.

Just because people are all together in the same room does not mean that they are united, productive, spiritual, or anything. All it really means is that they decided to show up in the same room.

Even if what brought them together unites them and that uniting thing is a good thing, such as, "It's good to be with brothers and sisters in Christ," or "This is a place where I can pour out my heart in worship..." Even if there are good reason for these people to come together, if that is it, then there is a certain degree of shallowness in the church.

That is church as audience, maybe some interaction, but predominantly audience.

Jesus Christ did not come to earth in human form, endure mistreatment, die and raise from the dead to gather an audience.

He wants more than that; He wants an army!

Jesus wants an active army of compassion mobilized to take love to the world like it has never seen before. Although there are some spectacular exceptions, the church is generally more interested in self-preservation, political action, and power.

American church structure has much to do with that. It too easy to believe that church happens in neat and confined segments of life. It's not solely the people's fault that they think this way either. It is tmore so the fault of church structure.

So, what's the structure solution?

I'd like to say small groups is the answer. Small groups need to be the core structure type of the church. I'm not saying do away with all buildings and large gatherings for worship. What I am saying is we need serious redirection on this matter. Large gatherings don't advance the kingdom like small groups can.

Small groups have the potential to be relational, personal, safe, spiritually forming, potent etc.

But here is the problem with small groups: When a church launches a small groups "program," those small groups are assimilated into the existing structure rather than actually making an real structural change. It's human nature to change as little as possible. So, rather than use small groups as they can be used, we just chalk them up as another great program.

Although your church probably has small groups of some kind, they have probably been an add on rather than a transformation in your church. They probably take the place of a Bible class or take the form of a Bible class. Or maybe they are social, but shallow. We try to make then neat and clean, but get frustrated with the children, cleaning the house, the one-more-thingism and so on. They need to be more than that.

We need a church structure that is not so much big event oriented, but regular small gatherings.

Small groups are small platoons of the armies of compassion. This is the place where service can get done on a personal level, connections can be made, family can be experienced, etc. When a small group moves its energy toward some goal of service, compassion, and love, LOOK OUT!!! Who is going to stop them? When small groups are freed to be the church without being saddled with "add on" or "one more thing" status, then the world is blessed by the church. That is the time when the church begins to resemble armies of comapssion and not a fat audience stuffing itself with churchstuff.