I had the opportunity Monday night to visit with three churches considering ‘a restart’ in Huntington. They are working with Spiritual Leadership, Inc and coach Chuck Lord to discern exactly what they want to do. SLI’s definition of ‘restart’ is pretty bold:
A Restart is a church or churches who are committed to finding a new way to use their church(s) to do kingdom work and are willing to give up control in order to allow new leadership to form and grow. Restart churches literally leave behind their old paradigm and become a new church.
This is not a statement about worship style or culture; it is a statement of leadership and how a church listens. discerns, and responds to God’s direction.”
Chuck (pictured above) and the group, which included pastors and lay people from Faith, Highlawn, and Southside United Methodist churches in Huntington ate, shared stories about their lives, and worshiped together as their discernment process continued. I was a bystander, but it was easy to see the warmth and openness of this group.
One point that resonated with me from Chuck was that the church can learn from the secular world. To illustrate, he featured a slideshow set to Tim McGraw’s hit Live Like You Were Dyin’.
The point of the song isn’t new. For ages, the morality play has asked the same question: How differently would we act if we knew we were ’short – timers’ in mortal life? If we knew specifically when we would be gone.
Most of us would say what the song does. We’d do the things we hadn’t been but always wanted to. We’d make amends and reflect. We’d reach out beyond our comfort zone because losing or winning would seem far less important than we’d been believing. When we are pressed, human beings are capable of taking risk, of opening up and innovating when ‘the way we have always done it’ doesn’t do it anymore.
Thank God for those gifts to humanity.
This group is utilizing those gifts, and it was inspiring to watch on Monday night.
These folks in Huntington are some of the most courageous, pioneers I have ever met. They are going where few have dared to go and are blazing a trail for the rest of us. Leonard Sweet calls this kind of thinking “rebooting”. I can’t wait to see where God leads on this fantastic journey!
[...] Back in July, I went to Huntington to report on three churches who were figuring out their future. Like many churches, growth and ministry were not where they had been ‘back in the day’. What to do? Continue as they were – which likely meant decline. Or die so that they might live? [...]