Making Room II

Church Planting Series, Part twenty-nine

Is there room for a new generation of leaders in the church? Will we welcome younger leaders with their fresh voices and inexperience? Will we help shape, mentor, and form them in a way that allows them to have a meaningful voice in Christ’s mission?

But what about current leaders? What about experienced voices?

We are living in an in-between time. Technology is changing rapidly, but not everyone has e-mail. Social networking is sweeping the world, but you can’t reach everyone through Facebook. The outcry is, “Let’s do away with paper and go all electronic!” Yet, reams of paper keep coming our way.

It’s an in-between time.

It’s an in-between time for churches. But we’re designed to be really good at this.

As the times started changing in the first century, believers were led by the Holy Spirit to realize that there is room for both old and new—-as long as God was being served and glorified. God gave Peter visions to show him the way. Finally, he was able to say, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right” (Acts 10:34-35). In Acts 15 the Jerusalem Council made the declaration: “We should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.” The council then instructed the Gentiles in some key teachings of Moses that would help lift up the Jewish believers and create unity in the church.

The Church has always been about bringing old and new together, living lives of reconciliation, doing change well, and harnessing everything for the mission of the Gospel.

This remarkable self-sacrifice is rooted in the remarkable action of Jesus, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:6-7a).

As redeemed people, this is what we do—-joyfully and willingly, founded on the unchanging Word, for the sake of reaching out with the Good News of eternal life.

Are you willing to make extra sacrifices and expend extra effort in order to reach out during these in-between times? What will it mean?

• Flexibility in communication methods
• Flexibility in how people are involved in church
• Flexibility in mission outreach
• Flexibility in accepting “outsiders”
• Flexibility in listening to and honoring “insiders”
• Flexibility in governance style
• Flexibility in worship methods and tools

You get the idea. As the Church, we have the opportunity during these in-between times to live out the self-sacrifice of Jesus. When everyone gives, everyone will receive. Founded on the truth of God’s Word, how do you need to be flexible to make room for effective ministry?