Transformation or Getting Better...

Last post from the quotes of C. Kirk Hadaway's book, Behold I do a New Thing: Transforming Communities of faith....

"Since culture treats the church as an outlet for religious goods, the obvious commercial reaction is to make our product better.  We make our worship services more professional and powerful, we add new ministries to attract more people and keep them involved, and we even try to make God more responsive to our needs.  In order to draw crowds, churches provide more God and more Mammon."

So what do we do?  "Our business is to transform people, to wake them up; it is not to satisfy them with quality worship and engaging programs.  As with any system, our primary focus should be on the transformational processes that produce our product.  If the processes are in place, the output will be good.  And if the output is exceptional, it will be easy to attract the resources that will help us to produce even more.  People are our products.  Our product is not exciting worship, fun outings, craft classes, faith-based football or professional programming.  People receive benefits and enjoyment from a transformational system, of course.  The worship, preaching education, ministry action and opportunities for spiritual practice that make up the system cannot be objectively bad, boring, or old-fashioned.  If they were, they would not contribute to the cycle of transformation.  People would not be changed.... the primary benefit we get is the capacity to deal with our problems.

"We create a transformational vessel with the capacity to create humans who joyfully participate in the creative unfolding of God's realm - people who know how to live fully.  What we gain is not comfort, although the support we feel from others and form our connection to God will make us feel better.  What we gain is not control over our lives, although we tend o lose the sense that everything is out of control.  What we gain primarily is the ability to see the world as God sees it and the invitation to live in that newly-realized world."

Some very important things to consider for us at Community of Joy as we stand at a crossroads and prepare to join God in moving forward!