Keith Giles recently hosted a roundtable discussion on his podcast. His guests included John Zens, Neil Cole, Herb Montgomery, and Kent Williamson. This discussion was so good that I’ve listened to it a handful of times already. I highly recommend you take time to listen to it as well. Here are some of the key points I took from the discussion:
- Focus on Jesus.
- Church has a DNA, three areas which should be balanced:
- Divine truth — Jesus (up / relationship with Christ)
- Nurturing relationships (in / community)
- Apostolic mission (out / outreach / service / evangelism)
- Seek Jesus’ guidance.
- The church is to be a spiritual family on a mission together.
- Listen to Jesus.
- Church meetings aren’t so much the place to receive connection to Christ as they are to the place to share the life of Christ the individual members have received through their own relationship with Jesus.
- Follow Jesus’ direction.
- The church should be a community manifesting the kingdom of God.
- Churches should meet with Jesus, not just about Jesus.
- Evangelism that is forced or done out of guilt or obligation is largely ineffective.
- Outreach should and will happen largely automatically when we’re connected to the life of Christ.
- Listen to Jesus.
- The church in the west has been devastated by the false gospel that we become holy by modifying our behavior, rather than gospel that Jesus transforms us from within which leads to our actions changing as a result.
- The previous error led fundamentalism to separate from the “world”. (It is a problem to effectively believe that the “world” is stronger than the life of God with us, and/or have the perception that non-Christian have something bad we might catch, rather than thinking we have something that they should want to catch from us.) The result is that many Christians don’t have any significant relationships with those who aren’t believers.
- It is generally more difficult to work with those who have been Christians for an extended period of time than it is to work with new believers. New believers typically have more passion for Christ, more connections with those who aren’t believers, and are less entrenched in a certain way of doing church.
- Follow Jesus’ direction.
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