The Church Doctor Report

The British context, and much of continental Europe, is approximately ten years more secularized than the United States and Canada. What God began there, in terms of revival, is now just beginning here on North American soil. There is no question in my mind that revival is coming not only to this continent, but, very likely, on a wide scale across the world. As a pastor or church leader, job #1 is to prepare your church for the coming revival. In my perception, you have about three to five years. You will put a major stake in the ground to reposture your church for what God is doing or, if you do nothing, by default, you will miss the window of opportunity, and your church, though probably benefitting a little from what is coming, will miss the greatest opportunity for the most significant spiritual harvest we will experience in this lifetime.

CHRISTIANITY VERSION 5.0

The door is closing on your father's church. If that old style-present style-way of doing Christianity continues, it may still exist by 2050, or it may not. For those churches that do make it through the transition, they will go through a long process of modification. However, for those churches that look to see what God is doing and want to be a part of that, they will be prepared and God will use them as a harvest mechanism for the revival that is coming. The vast majority of church leaders could not prepare their churches without intervention help. There are a few pioneers. They work with churches and understand the movement that is now being experienced in England and on the continent of Europe, and to a lesser degree somewhat in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and, just in the incubation stage, in North America. In my perception, the two pioneering ministries that can help churches are CMA resources (www.cmaresources.org) and Church Doctor Ministries (www.churchdoctor.org). It is important to remember that to retool your church, you can't do this alone-nobody can. This movement is too new, too different, and too complex. It would take you five to ten years to learn the nuances that would direct your leadership influence to reinvent the culture of your congregation. By then, it would probably be too late. As a leader at this time in history, you are a gatekeeper for your church with unique historical responsibility.

This is the fifth time in the history of Christianity that leaders like you have had this responsibility. The first were those Jesus gathered. They were those who were willing to learn that new wine required a new wineskin. Not everybody bought it. Not everybody could get it. Those who did were used by God to launch the Christian Movement of the New Covenant. In this sense, the key to preparing your church is to lead and influence in such a way that you softly, tenderly, and persistently develop a new culture. To say it another way, it is to resurrect a New Testament culture.

The second time this happened was around the year 500. This was the birth of the Roman Catholic Church. It brought a focus on order (reflected in the liturgy in worship) and, for the first time ever, trained leaders (clergy). Christianity version 3.0 happened around the year 1000. This was the era of what is often called the Great Schism. Following the fall of the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic pope, Gregory the Great, cleaned up much of the mess of the church. He also started the Monastic Movement, which would be the cohesive force for mission until the Reformation. It was also the time of the Council of Chalcedon, which determined that Jesus was not a son of God, but the Son of God, with both human and divine nature.

Version 4.0 of the church occurred 500 years ago, the Protestant Reformation. The protestant reformers' new wineskin for Christianity provided the environment for an extraordinary expansion of the Christian Movement. 500 years later is NOW. To read more about this, see Phyllis Tickle's excellent book The Great Emergence.

If you trace history, about every 500 years, Christianity has what Phyllis Tickle calls a great rummage sale. Christians offload all the cultural baggage accumulated during the previous 500 years (with exception of the New Testament era, which reengineered thousands of years of preparation of God's Messiah). So what does it look like today?

RUMMAGE SALE VERSION 5.0

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was an explosion of contemporary music. This began in churches, along with a proliferation of Christian radio stations. This was the first sign of offloading cultural baggage, old language. It spilled over into the redesign of new worship forms, thoughts, and expressions for biblical theology that never changes.

Another earlier sign of this hinge point in history, Version 5.0, was a deterioration of denominations. Denominational wineskins were primarily a product and result of the Protestant Reformation. While they served many good purposes for hundreds of years, there was-and still is-an increasing awareness that this may not be the way God connects Christians in the most useful way forever. The early signs of this change of wineskins began with movements, like the Calvary Chapel Movement, the Vineyard Movement, Independent Churches, apostolic churches, networks, and fellowships.

Christians began to intersect with other Christians beyond their own denominations. Efforts like Promise Keepers, Women of Faith, and Bible Study Fellowship exploded across the landscape. Christians felt a new freshness in operating in wider circles while, in most cases, not abandoning their doctrinal distinctives.

Parachurch organizations began to multiply and flourish as people sensed the need for mission and outreach to be expressed through structures that were uniquely designed to provide a specific ministry task. Many of these people did not necessarily leave their denominational connections, but stepped with one foot into another world of cooperative efforts. This was a task-oriented, mission-directed effort that was willing to "agree to disagree" (on nonessentials) for the sake of the cause.

The rise of megachurches became a new way of thinking about how Christians are organized together. These megachurches operate with the influence of denominations. Many of them provided conferences to train church leaders, a direct challenge to traditional Bible colleges and seminaries. Many of these churches developed their own publishing arms providing resources that challenged Version 4.0 denominational publishing companies. Many church leaders became part of something new they often didn't understand. These were the first steps into the world of Christianity, Version 5.0, sometimes called the Emergent Church.