Unite

I am 23 years old, which means that I'm half the age of half the people making decisions for our local churches, but it also means that I'm postmodern, not by choice, but because I've grown up in it.  I work at a North Texas church-planting mission organization and I have seen churches come up with more buzzwords than many businesses: missional, emergent, seeker-sensitive, communal, relevant....and I'm not against any of that; these church models are great and they reach different people.  But that's just it: no church can reach everybody - that goes against everything that business marketing experts have known for years and churches are slow to catch on.  Therefore, my idea is that churches would partner together for the sake of the Kingdom.  They need to do what they do, then come together and be collaborative for the sake of the city.  I believe that church leaders should be regularly gathering with other local church leaders, from other denominations too, to get on their knees with their faces in the rug asking God for wisdom and power to carry out His work.  Out of that gathering will come ideas for new directions to outreach and new plans for being the Church in that city.

Here in Dallas, we have some of the biggest churches around.  It seems that the bigger a church gets, the more self-sufficient it gets, and the less it feels like it needs anybody else.  This is counter to the work of the Kingdom.  I had an interesting thought one night: what if God is waiting to bring revival to our land until our local churches are first willing to do what it takes and second capable of discipling the huge numbers that would be coming: young and old, wealthy and poor, the corporate moguls and the drug dealers.  We have to all do our own different ministries, then we have to collaborate together.  That is my idea.