No perfect people allowed
‘Creating a come as you are culture in the church’
John Burke

“Why expect a secular society to act like a christian one?”

“Church attendance in England averages about 7% of the population and Europe as a whole runs a close race. In effect the Christian Church in Europe has gone the way of the dinasour, and the North American Church tracks close behind.”

“The postmodern experiment has spawned a generation of wounded, broken, spiritually hungry people. These people seek spiritually with an openness not seen in decades, and yet the church has completely gone off their radar.”

“The United States has more secular, unchurched people than moist nations of the world, yet many churches don’t seem to operate in light of this fact.”

“Are we raising up a generation of leaders ready to lay down their comfortable lives or are we just playing church? No longer can we afford to stand on the cliffs high above the cultural mudslide, chastising people for not climbing out of the mess. No longer can we feel content throwing out heroic lifelines of propositions intended to save. No longer can we idly sit by, bemoaning change and wishing to turn the clock back to nostalgic days gone by. No, it is time for Christian leaders, tethered to the lifeline of God’s Spirit and a community of faith, to gather up courage and plunge into the swirling mess of the cultural flow.”

“It’s not the visible but the invisible that nees attention. It’s not candles, but community, not art but attitude, not liturgy but love that makes the difference in our broken world.”

“The look and feel, the quality factor, the style of music, the way people speak and dress and interact publicly are very important. These elements signal to others what you are like, what to expect, and how to act. This public aspect of culture must be contextualised more than any other aspect to the tastes of the unchurched around you if you want to reach them.”

“The average person has a strong perception of what Christians are against, but little of what Christians are for.”

“We went out for a three-decade binge on seld, and niw our country is vomiting up the consequences uncontrollably.

“I see five main sociological struggles Christian leaders now face to reach emerging generations; struggles with Trust, Tolerance, Truth, Brokenness, and Aloneness.”

“In a generation raised on so much divorce and disagreement, they long for unity. They want to know, “can’t we just get along?” They’re tired of being torn apart and divided.”

“The attitude of the church culture will either convey the person of Christ and his attitude which was outrageously accepting of and attractive to the “sinners” of his day, or our attitudeals towards others will reinforce a stereotype that does a disservice to Jesus.”

“We live in a highly fragmented, relationally isolated society…This provides a tremendous opportunity for the church. No-one else in society can better meet this need. Emerging generations, like never before, crave this sense of community inside a spiritual family.”

“Many people come into church needing to fire the god in their head that they’ve associated with the God of Jesus,”

“I’m convinced this constitutes the central problem for Christians as well as seekers – we don’t trust God. We still feel the need to ‘do’ or ‘succeed’ or ‘prove’ somehow we are acceptable. We might not say this in words, but the absence of feeling deeply loved or truly at peace, or regularly feeling ambushed by joy betrays our true beliefs. We live stressed, worried, anxious, controlling, joyless lives because we do not yet trust that we are fully accepted ‘as is’ and God is ‘for us not against us’. When we truly live in grace, we find freedom.”

“If you saw a Rembrandt covered in mud, you wouldn’t focus on the mud, you’d be ecstatic to have something so valuable in your care. Do you see the mud or the masterpiece?”

“We have operated according to a modern model of church, where the church is seen primarily as an educational institution. And so we have raised up teachers, and seminaries to equip teachers to teach, but we have no model or path for raising up or equipping leaders. As a result, naturally gifted leaders have no vision for starting new churches.”

“Multiple movements of God’s Spirit seem to be developing in an effort to lay aside individual church fiefdoms to cooperate together across denominations and traditions in unprecedented ways. We all realise that emerging leaders are our only hope for turning the tide so that Christ’s church exerts a compelling influence once again. And we believe this is an effort that all existing churches can participate in to successfully breathe new life into
Churches for generations to come.l

“We believe the old paradigm for finding emerging church leaders is broken…In order to start new churches, leaders with an entrepreneurial spirit must be found…Existing church leaders must partner together to identify emerging leaders. Together we can accomplish something that no one of us can do alone. We must inspire successive generations of young leaders who understand the context of their culture.”

“What we need is a residency-style model of equipping. Where emerging leaders are equipped in the context of relationship with other leaders in the cultural setting closest to their future church.”

“If you fall into the emerging-leader category, I hope your heart has been beating fast as you’ve seen how God can use his church to reach our generation. When I looked at the most effective churches of previous generations, I noticed that many were started by leaders in their twenties.”
“It is time for a radical new paradigm of cross-denominational coordination to create a multiplying effort of churches starting church-planting churches. Not from a top-down, central controlling entity, but one of individual willigness to partner in a unified kingdom-building effort.”