Church function, even its survival, needs more than just a change in metaphors. We are beginning to ask some very fundamental questions.
Do we need to own a building that is used 10% of the week for a 60 to 90-minute teaching service?
Does it make sense in this environmental, carbon-footprint world to drive and listen to a non-interactional presentation, especially when people can capture that teaching while they’re out exercising or driving to work?
It’s clear that people still want commonality and community. Those two aspects of church are staying strong, but what happens in the middle is what holds it all together. It seems we may be witnessing another fundamental shift in church culture; from a teaching community to a cause community.
In a cause community, the weekly focus shifts from the teaching-based Sunday morning to a multiple-day throughout the week involvement with the community around a cause. Just as Jesus says “come follow me,” rather than “stay and hear me out."
What does the idea of a cause community look like in reality? Simply, it answers the question, “How can we love our neighbor?”
One beautiful thing the church has always had is people who are committed to finding ways to love each other and others around them. In this way, we are resource-rich. If church shifted its purpose to utilizing these resources, a church might look like a mobile barbershop or a community garden, a tutoring program or serving in a senior Alzheimer’s center.
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