Sunday morning. The acrid taste of dread fills your mouth as you think: “I have to go to church.”
You want to go to church; just not your church. Your church is a 'good' church. The music is tolerable, the people are fine, the sermon is okay - mostly based on Scripture. But the whole experience slips over your soul like unflavored gelatin - tasteless and fluffy.
Sound familiar? And that's the experience of clergy and laity alike. In a world desperate for Truth, a good church just isn't good enough.
"It's a sin to be good if God has called us to be great," said Thom S. Rainer in his book BreakOut Churches (Zondervan). "Christians refer to Matthew 28:18-20 as the Great Commission not the Good Commission."
Rainer is the president of Church Central (www.churchcental.com), the founding dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the soon-to-be-named President of Lifeway Christian Resources.
Many factors separate the growing, effective church from the mediocre church-as-usual set. It is clear from Rainer's exhaustive research project studying thousands of American churches that too few churches and their leaders have the vision, passion, and commitment required to leap from good to great.
Or a focused desire to be great. Rainer said in a recent interview with Crosswalk that too many on both sides of the altar say, "I wish my church would... (fill in the blank).
"Leaders in breakout churches stop wishing and start asking, 'Lord, what would You have me do?' They individually become part of what God would have them to do. When God starts changing individuals, He starts changing the church."
Although Rainer and his research team found only 13(!) established churches that transitioned from run of the mill or good to great, he is optimistic that any church can make the jump, but not, he cautions, without great sacrifice or evangelistic fervor.
Said Rainer: "We did not do a screening of theology on the front end of our survey, but when we came out on the back end, it was with conservative evangelical leaders. None of the other types of leadership were even close. Quite frankly, it hard to do evangelism unless one holds to the exclusivity of salvation through Christ."
