I am extremely excited about writing this post – and I don’t even know exactly what I’m going to say!  I’ve been feeling I need to write it so I’m looking forward to what comes out….. Let’s go!

A few days ago I wrote a post about Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and very soon after, I got an idea about an Extreme Makeover: Church Edition. It would be awesome!!

Quick recap for anyone who hasn’t seen Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (EMHE): Ty Pennington and a team of expert designers find a deserving family somewhere in the USA and surprise them one day then, while the family is in DisneyWorld or somewhere, they knock down their house and build them a completely new one designed and furnished just for them. The family also gets showered with other gifts like new cars and money toward their mortgage and whatever people want to give them.

So I started thinking about the team of ‘designers’ I would pull together for Extreme Makeover: Church Edition (EMCE) and it would hopefully look something like this:

• Me (because it’s my idea and I want to join in on the fun)
• My brother in law Robert, because he’s my right hand man and is so much of a help to me in so many ways and has so many gifts and talents, I wouldn’t even consider doing it without him.
• John Wiley from the River Christian Fellowship. Man, that guy is incredible!
• Tom Wymore who is the Simple Church Coach for FourSquare. Tom has an ability to cut through everything with one sentence, one question. He’ll change your world if you give him 5 minutes!
• Dr John Amstutz. If you’ve met him, you’ll know why. If you haven’t – just trust me, he’d be a great asset to ANY team!
• Mike Ellis. Mike is a go-getter, a do-er who puts me to shame. We’d need him because he has so much to offer!
• Randy Calaway. The man has a gift of prophecy and no mistake!
• I’d probably like Charles Hill too but somehow I think he and John Wiley would cancel each other out. Maybe they could do alternate weeks.

I’d then rotate in a few other designers from week to week like AkaGaGa just depending on the church we were making over.

So it would go something like this… we’d turn up on a Sunday morning and get everyone out of the church building and tell them that their church was getting an extreme makeover and the makeover starts right now!

I’d leave them in suspense for a minute or two while they start dreaming of how great their building is going to look after we’ve done our makeover and how comfortable the new chairs are going to be.

Then we’d send them out right there and then with sack lunches and tell them to go find a homeless person somewhere in the city and give them the lunch – then they would have to ask that person’s name and commit to praying for them every day for at least a month.

As they came back to the church campus after finding their homeless person, we’d have them come into the sanctuary and get feedback from them. Depending on what they say, we’d start some teachings based on where they are spiritually. The lessons would be titled things like:

• What is the Church and what is it’s purpose aka who are the Church and what is YOUR purpose?
• Home fellowships – the life and soul of the Church
• 101 reasons why you should NOT come to church on a Sunday
• Missions 101 – the mission field is in your street
• Church buildings? Necessary or a hindrance?
• Stewardship – is it wise to store money for a rainy day while people starve in your town?
• Your pastor is not God – neither is he the only way for you to hear from God.
• You have two ears and one mouth for a reason – so you can spend twice as much time listening to God as you do talking to him
• etc etc etc

We’d have them all take a week or two off of work and would do an intensive course on what Christianity is really all about.

We’d introduce them to the Holy Spirit and work with them to discover and start developing their gifts.

We’d separate them into smaller groups of no more than around 15 people and teach them to live as a community supporting each other, getting together daily, loving each other reaching out together. We’d redistribute some of the wealth of the church giving each group a share of the financial resources of the church and encouraging them to find ways to use that money for good in their local communities.

… and we’d do much, much more.

OK, so we couldn’t do it all in a week, we’d have to stick around for a while but I believe that the Church has largely descended into apathy and we need to shake it up!

I would love to be able to go in and shake up one congregation at a time not leaving until they have been completely made over.

My church would be first. We only started 2 years ago but I know we already need a makeover. We’re already slipping into past practices instead of doing what God is teaching us. EMCE team, you’re needed here!

Try these questions to get you thinking:

Having a building is great but what are you using it for? What COULD you be using it for? what SHOULD you be using it for? How many people will shiver with cold trying to sleep rough outside in your town all night tonight while your church building remains warm and dry? Is that what Jesus taught us to do?

I find Jesus’ message to the Pharisee’s In Matthew 23:15 very convicting:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

Sons of hell? when new people come to our churches, what exactly is it that we are teaching them? Are we discipling them as Jesus taught or are we turning them into sons of hell too?

The Church needs a makeover and it starts…. right now!

Just for reference, I haven’t spoken about this to any of the people mentioned in this article so please do not associate them with this (unless they want you to), they are just my dream team!

I’m learning what it means to be an outsider, outcast, second-class Christian.

I don’t have the money to buy the latest and greatest book. It’s a struggle to just pay the bills.

Since we have arrived in this position it has become clear to me how much of the Christian world revolves around money and how such a large portion of us are excluded because of finances.

There’s always something: Buy this book, go on this retreat or conference, go to this breakfast meeting, buy a CD copy of today’s sermon for the bargain price of 10 times as much as it cost to make  etc etc.

I have been amazed at how we are constantly bombarded by a call to buy things to further our Christian walk.

Is that really what the Church is supposed to be about? Are we really supposed to be developing two communities, one for those who have spare cash an one for those who don’t? Are we really supposed to be creating a little sub culture which looks no different from secular modern culture filled with consumerism and a constant stream of ‘must have’ products to buy?

I think that now I have tasted and seen what it is like to not have and disposable income,  if I had $19.99 to spend on the latest book by Mr-big-shot-pastor I’d now rather spend that money on buying a meal for a homeless person or two or give it to someone to help them pay their electricity bill.

What do you think? Am I out of line? Or is there just too much commercialism in the Church?

A long time ago (almost 18 months ago), I was looking into what Web 2.0 is and I found this video which gave me some concerns. I started blogging about it but never finished writing the post because I just couldn’t put into words how I felt.

However, Web 2.0 does have some things to teach us about the Church and… well, let me explain (with a huge over simplification):

Web 2.0 is the next generation of web usage. It’s not an entirely new Internet rather it is a new way of using the Internet to communicate.

Look at any website and you are seeing two things (hopefully):

1. Design
2. Content

There is a distinct difference between the two. 

• Design is aesthetics, visual appearance, it’s all about looks.
• Content is information you are trying to communicate.

Until now, most of the web has been taken up by sites which define both the design and the content. People spend a lot of time and effort on making the site look good, in fact the design can be almost as important as the content.

With Web 2.0 however, content and design are largely separated and although you will still find the content on designed sites, you will also now be able to access it completely free of any design.

Take this blog for example. You may be reading it at http://blog.hafchurch.org/peter whereby you are seeing both my design and my content. However, I know that quite a few people read this through a feed reader and rarely ever view my site. These people are reading the same content as you but are viewing it on a screen which has a design of their choosing. Different people use different feed readers, which each display the text in a different way. Some people may even be seeing this content displayed on another website which has been designed by someone else.

Design and content are separated. You are free to read the content without the restraints of my design. I am quite happy with this. It’s not the look that is important, it’s what I say, the content which is important.

As I have been thinking about this, I have been thinking about different church fellowships, different expressions of the church.

You can walk in to our home church and get the same message about the need for salvation as you would get if you walked into the Hanford YMCA where The Oasis meet or into the old electricity office in Rosamond now called The Praise Inn or into one of thousands of other church fellowships around the world.

You see, the design of the expression of the Church is different but the basic content is the same.

I think God is more of a Web 2.0 kind of guy. God is very concerned about the content, He has given us the bible which tells us what to teach… but how we teach it, well, that’s more flexible.

God is inspiring people to ‘do church’ differently. That means that one way is right for some people while other ways are right for other people.

Of course, there are always things we need to modify, things we need to tweak, no church fellowship is perfect but I think it always comes down to this… content is more important that design. 

What are you more concerned with? The content of your church fellowship or the design?

Debbie was talking in Church the other day about what she is thankful for.

We took the opportunity to discuss what we are all thankful for and Debbie told us that she is thankful for fruit.

Frankly, fruit is yummy. At least, the yummy fruit is yummy, some fruit is definitely not yummy but on the whole, fruit is pretty amazing! It’s healthy and it is in such plentiful supply in this country, I think most of us can agree that we’re thankful for fruit.

Psalm 104:14 reminds us that God…. 

makes grass grow for the cattle, 
and plants for man to cultivate—
bringing forth food from the earth

It’s harvest time so we thought that we’d thank God for the harvest and for all the good gifts He gives us by making some fruit baskets and delivering them to people on our street. It’s amazing what response you get from people even when you do something as simple as giving them a basket of fruit.

I am convinced that there will be a harvest of people in our street and in our town and I thank God for that even more than for the wonderful fruit He gives us.

What are you thankful for? What can you do to say “thank you” to God this harvest time?