WiBo Speaker #3

Hey Element Church! Installment #3 of the Whiteboard sessions overview.

Tim Stevens: Tim is the executive pastor at Granger Community Church. He just recently released a book called Pop Goes the Church, that is receiving quite a bit of buzz around the church world from those who agree AND disagree. Here are some thoughts I took away from what Tim shared. (The non quotes are my spin)

"Most churches aren't impacting their communities."

"Many churches are getting in the way of the Gospel..." instead of advancing it. WOW!

"Spiritual interest is rapidly growing in our culture..." yet we are doing a great job of continuing to reach the "churched" and not the "un-churched" or "de-churched".

"As a church, we're answering questions no one is asking!" He talked greatly about how we do not allow a culture of questions in our churches AND how we are giving answers to questions no one is asking. People come questioning real life issues and many times we skirt them for our "greater" answers on theology.

He shared John 1:14 from The Message Bible. Cool way to word what Jesus did. It's what our churches should be doing. "14 The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood." Moving into the neighborhood. IMPACT!

"We need to be using culture to raise the questions and use the Bible to answer them." If we watch culture (what movies, music, media) is saying, we will find the questions people are asking. We can then address them through Scripture.

He talked A LOT about using media (movie clips, music, tv) etc. in our services to raise the questions. I appreciated his honesty on being careful to find the line of what is "just using a clip" and "what legitimately raises a question" that we can answer through Scripture. Using things that people are familiar with (ie. movies, tv, music). This is NOT a new idea by the way. What IS new I believe is the intentionality of using pop culture to help us find the questions that need to be answered. The cry of the culture. Thought it was good stuff.

Spoke on Acts 17 where Paul used popular lyrics from a poet and philosopher of his time, as well as the statue of "the unknown" god to answer his cultures questions. Leveraging culture, increasing impact.

"We need to leverage the culture (to our benefit) or risk losing your impact."

"What do people think about our churches. Can they ask questions or do they just get answers?"

This session REALLY challenged me to know more about what the culture is asking. What are the heartbeats of our culture. What are people struggling with? Wrestling with? How can we leverage our culture to maximize our impact? Are people allowed to question? Without questions there are no answers.

Questioning,

Jeff