The Externally Focused Quest by Eric Swanson and Rick Rusaw is another thought provoking book about changing paradigms for church and how we see it in North America. In their book The Externally Focused Church they asked the question, “If your church were to close its doors, would anyone in the community notice ?” In The Externally Focused Quest the deeper question is, “How can we be the best church FOR our community?” As opposed to the internal, competing for market share, religious goods and services approach of being the best church IN the community. Not that anyone of us church leaders would admit to this attitude or say it out loud, but our program driven, service oriented, competition driven economy has opened the door for this thinking in the church. A slight preposition change, can change our thinking drastically. The book is well-researched, offering real-life examples of churches making this shift and statistics about the changing culture around us. How do you make the shift in thinking?

1. Choose the window seat, not the aisle seat. Be an aisle seat church, focusing on what’s outside not just inside.
2. Practice weight training, not bodybuilding. Don’t just grow to show off your size and strength. Purpose to expand the potential for serving and transforming the community.
3. Live in the kingdom story, not A church story. The church doesn’t exist for itself, but to demonstrate the kingdom. Maybe the highlight of the book is the charts that compare church thinking with kingdom thinking.
4. The few send the many, not the many send the few. Sending the whole church, not just the staff or super Christians.
5. Build wells, not walls. Partnering and collaborating with other churches, ministries, and organizations for the good of many.
6. Create Paradigms, not programs. Programs begin and end. A paradigm is a pattern or model that create a movement.
7. Innovation, not replication. Seeing the opportunities, not being satisfied with the status quo, attempting difficult things leads to creativity and innovation.
8. It’s about the game, not the pre-game talk. What happens once the sermon is over is as important as the sermon itself.

A friend of mine sent me this book several months ago. It’s another refreshing look at church through the lens of simplicity. It is a call for the church to get back to its apostolic roots. I love seeing the word apostolic used in its biblical sense. McClung defines it well. It’s also a call for a discipleship revolution. If you want to be reminded of the potent power of Christ’s church, pick up a copy of You See Bones, I See An Army by Floyd McClung. We’ll worth reading. Here’s a few of my favorite quotes:

• we spend so much time and energy thinking of ways to make the sacred hour on Sunday more attractive to saved people, rather than equipping saved people to take the church to the world.
• the more complicated we do church, the more difficult it is to reproduce.
• The church in the book of Acts functioned as a vibrant community, not a weekly meeting. They were a dynamic movement of small communities, spontaneously breaking out all over the city.
• The church that does not carry a passion to reach the world isolates people behind walls of cultural irrelevance.
• Apostolic leadership is God’s mechanism for mobilizing his people.
• Apostolic leadership yearns for the not yet.
• Apostolic leaders encourage holy dissatisfaction, risk taking, questioning, and experimenting.
• Church is not for us. It is for God and for the lost.
• The purpose of the church is to glorify God by loving Jesus, loving those who love Jesus, and loving those who don’t know Jesus.
• We are called to invade the world, not escape from it.
• Church is people, ordinary people, living their lives for Jesus.
• the purpose of God for the church, to love as Jesus would if he were walking around in our bodies.
• Whatever the problem, whatever the need, God has placed within the church the resources necessary to respond.
• You can talk about being apostolic until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t plant and reproduce churches, you’re not apostolic.
• If being an apostle means doing what Jesus did, it involves loneliness, persecution, and ultimately death.
• To be dedicated to Jesus is not first of all about being a missionary or pastor, but being intentional and obedient in making disciples.
• Apostolic people take the church to the world; they don’t wait for the world to come to the church.
• While others see what’s been done and are grateful, apostolic people see what has not been done and long for more.
• it is not the famous but the faithful who will receive big crowns in heaven.
• Spiritual authority can never be separated from the ability to influence people in nonmanipulative ways.
• The only thing you can take to heaven besides your own heart is the people you influence for God.
• church is who we are, not where you go.
• The church was not placed on this planet to entertain people for one hour a week. The church was created by God to be the ongoing presence of his Son Jesus with skin on.
• Too many people want the same amount of fruit the apostle Paul enjoyed without paying the price that Paul paid.
• There are too many overfed, undermotivated Christians hiding behind the excuse that God has not spoken to them.
• We are created by God to reproduce after our own kind. If we are proud and arrogant, we will produce the same fruit in others, and if we are humble and transparent, we will reproduce that as well.
• Programs don’t disciple people, building don’t disciple people. People disciple people.
• programs and strategies don’t make disciples. Great ideas don’t make disciples. Disciples make disciples.

One good thing about conferences and especially Exponential is the sponsors and vendors. Many of them with merchandise 40-60% off. And of course at Exponential most of the merchandise is in the form of books. Here’s a few of the books that I picked up at Exponential that I will be reading over the next few months:

• Journey’s to Significance: Charting a Leadership Course From the Life of Paul by Neil Cole
• On the Verge: A Journey Into the Apostolic Future of the Church by Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson
• For the City: Proclaiming and Living Out the Gospel by Darrin Patrick and Matt Carter
• 6 Word Lessons to Discover Missional Living: 100 6-word Lessons to Align Every Believer With the Mission of Jesus by David Devries
• Truth That Sticks: How to Communicate Velcroe Truth in a Teflon World Avery Willis and Mar k Snowden.

File this one under books that make you think, excite you, and frustrate you (the last chapter’s first sentence is “It is entirely possible that this book has offended you”), but Neil Cole’s observations about church life and necessary adjustments in Church 3.0 is a great read for ministry and mission leaders in todays America. I recently discovered that in my region of the Bible belt, less than 5% of teenagers and 10% of adults are attending evangelical churches. What does this say about the next generation? Do we need to upgrade to a new operating system? Cole says yes.

What is Church 3.0? Church 1.0 would have been Jerusalem Church which needed a lot of patches and didn’t last very long (many leaders long for Jerusalem’s crowds without considering it’s eventual outcome). Antioch would have been 1.1. Reproduction and sending voluntarily and on purpose started there. Galatian churches would have been 1.3, Corinth 1.4, as Paul added patches and shifted with the Spirit along the way. Church 2.0 came with Constantine and the establishment of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church. 2.1 came with the Protestant Reformation, 2.2 with the Anabaptists and radical reformers. And now Cole says the shift is happening to Church 3.0.

What’s the upgrade?

From the Introduction: “The change to Church 3.0 is a shift from a program-driven and clergy-led institutionalized approach of church to one that is relational, simple, and viral in its spread. Instead of seeing church as something that serves its people, church becomes people who serve – God, one another, and a hurting world. Church is no longer a place to go, but a people to belong to. Church is no longer an event to be at, but a family to be a part of.”

The rest of the book answers questions about Church 3.0 and Organic Church.

A few of the questions:

• What about the Church’s mission? From Coming to Going
• What about Church growth? From incremental to Exponential
• What about Church models? From Congregations to Networks, From Centralized to Decentralized
• What about Gatherings? From One-Size-Fits-All to Tailored Groups for Effective Function
• What about Heresy? From Better-Trained Pastors to Better-Trained People
• What about Finances? From Ten Percent to the Whole Enchilada

Agree with Cole or not, you will be challenged to think about simplicity and mission. Here’s a few of my favorite quotes and ideas from the book that seem to have stuck with me:

• We must transition from seeing church as a once-a-week worship event to an ongoing spiritual family on mission together.
• it’s possible to do church but fail to demonstrate anything of the person and work of Christ in a neighborhood.
• One side effect of pursuing excellence in church production is that common Christians become spectators who can contribute a percentage of their income to keep things going, though little more. we have raised the bar so high on how church is done that few believe they could ever do it themselves.
• we have lowered the bar of what it means to be a Christian, such that simply showing up to the weekly one-hour event with some regularity and a checkbook is all it takes.
• I want to lower the bar of how church is done so that anyone can do it, and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple so that they will do it.
• three roadblocks to church multiplication: buildings, budgets, and big shots.
• Buildings are not bad or wrong; they are simply not alive and therefore cannot reproduce.
• People don’t mind being called a servant, they just don’t like being treated like one.
• we have made church about something that is less than the gospel itself and more about how the particular speaker makes us feel on Sunday morning.
• The Gospel is not an invitation to walk down an aisle or a sawdust trail; it is an invitation to the adventure of a lifetime!
• church has become a religious event that takes place once a week, rather than a spiritual family on a mission together.

Are you provoked yet? For good? Thoughts? Read the book. It will make you think.

The religious landscape of America is changing and with it the attitudes and beliefs of the next generation of Christians are changing. Without a doubt the church in the future will look much different. In the book, The Next Christians: The Good News About the End of Christian America, Gabe Lyons gives us a glimpse of what that church might look like as he describes the new generation of Christians. Using quotes from the book, here’s a list of questions to see if you fit into their number:

1. Do you wish to separate from or blend into the world; or thoughtfully engage?
2. Are you OFFENDED by the world, or PROVOKED to engage and transform?
3. Do you wish to run from the problems of the world or run to them as an agent of change?
4. Are you bent toward CRITICIZING and throwing rocks at people in the world, or CREATING a new cultures through transformation?
5. Are you CALLED or EMPLOYED? Do you separate your work from your identity as a Christian? Are you simply working a job, or serving in a vocation?
6. Are you easily DISTRACTED by the goods and gadgets in the world or are you GROUNDED and disciplined in a growing relationship with God as you engage the world?
7. Do you enjoy being ALONE and hiding from close relationships or are you defined by intentional relationships and COMMUNITY?
8. Do you hang out with your own kind or do you engage the diverse community around you?
9. Are you striving for RELEVANCE and popularity or to COUNTER the culture through transformed living?
10. Do you feel called to restore the brokenness of the world?

The Next Christians are not separatists but restorers and transformers, provoked to engage the problems in the world as change agents and creators of beauty. Their vocations serve as a launching pad for living out God’s calling on every Christian to make disicples. They don’t allow the world to distract them, but desire to be deeply GROUNDED in the faith and engaged in intentional COMMUNITY with others. They understand that relevance is not leadership, but countering culture with the values of Christ.

If you’re a Christian leader I encourage you to read this book and ask if you are seeing this in your current ministry context and how your church may need to adjust as a new generation moves into leadership roles. We know the numbers, 80% of teens leave home after high school, and leave the church. This book will help you understand how they are thinking about the world and how we may can provide a path for involvement for them.

Here’s a few more of my favorite quotes:

• when the faithful saturate their schedules with Christian events at Christian venues with Christian people, the world has a hard time believing we hold the rest of the world in high esteem.
• The Gospel is a radical call to a stark existence, not a shallow assimilation.
• Christ death and resurrection were not only meant to save people from something. He wanted to save Christians to something.
• Provoked Christians know that Christian faithfulness often means living dangerously on the front edges of pain in the world.
• Where your talents and your heart come together, this is where God has called you to be.
• Understanding Scripture is difficult. Passively watching television or quickly clicking through Internet links and Facebook updates is much easier.
• Serving others together is the key ingredient in creating community.
• the Christian has a calling and a responsibility to think, work, and live in terms of how the world ought to be…