Saturday, May 14, 2011

A Christ-Centered Church

In her article, Julia Kuhn Wallace discusses essential elements that distinguish a Christ-Centered Church as opposed to a church that is centered on the pastor or the church itself. This article struck a chord with me because of the church that I currently serve. During the initial interview and following, there have been comments made to the effect that the church has been able to run itself without a pastor. Another comment, when confronted with the fact that I will be in Israel for five weeks this summer is, “It’s okay, we have had to survive much longer than that without a pastor.” This could be devastating to a new pastor that is not Christ-Centered. What does this say about the church? Are they set in their ways? Do they really need your leadership? My approach has been very similar to the article Julia writes; it has involved a lot of praying and listening. The praying part is to seek God’s vision for the church. The listening part has been both listening to God for direction and listening to the needs of the church. My approach has been very clear, I have wanted to develop a Christ-Centered worship, by which those who attend connect with God. The importance here that I have been stressing is for a connection to be made to God and not me as their pastor. If we can create a Christ-Centered worship experience, then those who come and feel the connection to God will continue to come and ultimately connect with the church.

2 comments:

  1. Christopher, this is a really interesting perspective on leadership. I must say you show a whole heap of courage that isn’t typical for leaders to demonstrate. It would seem that in some senses you are dispensable. I mention this as a positive attribute of leadership. Recently, our church has been gearing up for a stewardship campaign that has essentially been boiled down to an effort to raise money to bump me from part-time to full-time, due to a bunch of unavoidable circumstances. Having experienced recently a swell of spiritual growth, much of the folks organizing this campaign have been mentioning things like, “without Dan, we will fall apart”, “without Dan, we will go back to the dismal ways we were before.” It has been my constant battle in all of this to remind the folks, “this isn’t about me!” I am not the Savior of this church, nor am I the hinge-pin that holds together their hopes of continued growth and development.
    Your leadership is taking a proactive role in establishing this same principle, though it does seem like your congregation is already a few leaps ahead of mine in that regard. We are not Heroes, let alone Saviors. We are simply leaders. And that means we are dispensable.

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