The following article was published April 5, 2012 on the Associated Baptist Press web site. Our Executive Director David Crocker is featured.
Missional congregations seek to ‘relearn what it means to be church’By Jeff Brumley WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (ABP) — Traditional churches must wake up and reinvent themselves if they are to remain — or become — relevant, some Christian leaders say.  Larry Hovis Thinking like missionaries is necessary to relevantly preach the gospel in an age when small missional church starts are drawing more and more people, Hovis said.“We have to think the way missionaries think,” said Larry Hovis, executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina. Hovis and others have gotten the message after years of watching the growth of the missional church movement across the nation and in other parts of the world. Led often by small, scrappy church planters with subtle or no denominational affiliation, the movement emphasizes hyper-local community and social activism in the neighborhoods where they are located. Those churches have proven successful to luring Americans generally craving fellowship but disaffected by organized Christianity.  David Crocker But by no means is the steeple church out of the game, said David Crocker, executive director of Operation Inasmuch, a Knoxville-based ministry that trains churches to adopt outward-focused programs. Crocker said he’s working with 1,600 churches mostly in North Carolina, the Southeast and other parts of the nation to reinvent their mission and equip their members to serve outside the four walls. Those churches include CBF, Southern Baptist, United Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran and other denominations. “Leaders and rank-and-file believers are awakening to the reality of what was there all along: What it means to be a follower of Jesus,” said Crocker, a former pastor. How that looks often varies from congregation to congregation, but the common denominator is a shift in priorities, allocation of resources and programming, Crocker said. Which accounts for a growing interest in the missional way of being a church. CBF of North Carolina has responded with two conferences and a third, “Impacting Tomorrow: A Missional Event for Churches,” scheduled May 18-19 in Charlotte. “We want to focus less on worship and the building and more on how do we use those to push us into the community,” Hovis said. Hovis said he also doesn’t buy the claim by some that traditional church buildings are doomed. It’s just a matter of perspective. “It’s not that we’re going to blow up our buildings or stop having services,” Hovis said. “We’re just having to relearn what it means to be church.” Jeff Brumley is assistant editor of Associated Baptist Press. |
David Crocker in the News: Inasmuch Churches Are Missional
How to Change a Homeless Man’s Life (Part 2)
I recently read Same Kind of Different as Me, a true story that chronicles the lives of two improbable friends – art dealer Ron Hall and homeless Denver Moore. The book touched me in many ways while also teaching me several lessons about how to serve our neighbors in need.
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the first lesson I learned from this book – that it takes time and a relationship to have any impact on the life of a homeless man.
I learned something else, too: it’s never a one-way street.
Compassionate community ministry is not about the privileged doing all the giving and the underprivileged doing all the receiving.
It’s about a relationship between two people made in the image of God, two people who each have something to offer. Ron Hall and Denver Moore both taught me this lesson.
At one point, Ron asks Denver if they might be friends. Denver took a week to respond to the proposal (partly because he wasn’t sure Ron would stick to the friendship…). Apparently Denver never considered that Ron was condescending to help, but he weighed the offer in terms of mutuality:
… I got to thinkin about [Ron] some more and thought maybe we might have somethin to offer each other. I could be his friend in a different way then he could be my friend. I knowed he wanted to help the homeless and I could take him places he couldn’t go by hisself. I didn’t know what I might find in his circle or even that I had any business bein there, but I knowed he could help me find out whatever was down that road.
The way I looked at it, a fair exchange ain’t no robbery, and an even swap ain’t no swindle. He was gon’ protect me in the country club, and I was gon’ protect him in the hood. Even swap, straight down the line. (p. 108)
On the other hand, early on in his relationship with Denver, Ron thought of himself “as some sort of Henry Higgins to the homeless” (p. 209), but that prideful point of view was dismantled as he got to know Denver. In fact, Ron reports that when he and his wife Debbie had their own great needs, the serving tables were turned:
For nineteen months, [Denver] prayed through the night until dawn and delivered the word of God to our door like a kind of heavenly paperboy.
I was embarrassed that I once thought myself superior to him, stooping to sprinkle my wealth and wisdom into his lowly life. (p. 183)
Indeed, as I read the last half of the book, Denver’s words of Godly, Biblical wisdom ministered to my heart over and over. As my spiritual superior, Denver lead me closer to Jesus.
The second lesson Ron and Denver taught me? It’s not about the haves reaching “down” to help the have-nots. We won’t have an impact on the homeless and the hungry unless we serve with humility.
It’s true that Jesus referred to those in need as “the least of these,” but Jesus also said that “the last shall become first and the first shall become last.”
According Jesus’ logic, then, the needy in our communities are truly “the greatest of these.”
Lorraine Kalal Director, Marketing and Development