Tuesday, June 9, 2009

A Church Going Deep:

I just returned to San Diego after spending 5 days with Peninsula Covenant Church in Redwood City, CA. I was out there (*with my family) for a variety of reasons - but my reason for posting this on the blog is simply to identify and celebrate a church that is in the midst of profound change, asking hard questions, taking risks, and wrestling with new realities in ways that encourage my heart.

It's easy for me to become cynical about church and culture. There are so many examples of church communities lost in themselves, blind to the urgent needs of their surrounding communities, and/or so culturally foreign to their surrounding demographics that gathering for church is akin to learning a foreign language. As a worship arts leader I've often felt like "cruise ship entertainment" in these settings....where the prophetic voice of God is limited by the liturgy and church culture instead of being set free and unleashed. And while it is true that several churches are "flirting" with missional thinking and practice - in my experience it has been rare to find church communities with 50+ years of history willing to dive deep and allow missional thinking to soak into its very DNA, reforming it from the inside out.

This is what I see happening at PCC - this is why I'm encouraged. They are not simply tagging "missional" onto some local or global ministries - but are wrestling with how their very role and function in their city changes in light of missional theology and values. Here are a few bullets that represent the profound level of change and dialog happening at PCC as I type this:
  1. how do we spend our money?
  2. how (and why) do we gather for worship?
  3. how do we "change the scorecard" - so our metrics measure what we value and care about (which needs to be more than butts in seats and dollars)
  4. how does a "whole church bring a whole gospel to a whole city?"
  5. how do we change the congregation's expectations and assumptions of why the church and staff exist? Moving from institutional attractionalism to missional empowerment. Moving form doing church (or going to church) to being the church.
  6. how do those who know Jesus begin to intentionally invest time and relationship into the lives of those who DO NOT know Jesus - not because we have an agenda, but because God has sent us into our world to be with people that do AND DO NOT know Him like we do.
I was with PCC for 5 days in a worship and arts capacity and these were the questions we wrestled with....even more than "how can the worship music be better" or "how can your song choice complement the message." Not that those aren't valid important questions....they are....and I love those challenges.....BUT - those questions MUST be asked in context of the larger questions listed above. I suppose what I'm really saying is this....

Check out PCC. www.peninsulacovenant.org Their compass is pointed in the right direction and even though they see a storm in front of them...they're moving forward. They are demonstrating courage of conviction, have a center of gravity, and are wrestling with the new thing God is doing in their hearts and lives. They are on the move.... and the entire Peninsula Area they inhabit is better because of this church.

This video is just a small piece of what I'm talking about....