Tuesday in Iowa

The morning began with my first hearing of the teaching of Stuart Briscoe, pastor of the large Elmbrook Church which he pastored for over forty years. He has written over 40 books and is now heard on Telling the Truth Ministries's radio and internet broadcasts. Simply one of the best Bible teachers I've ever heard. His job was to each on the conference text Ephesians 4:16, which he did by pulling back to view it in the context of the whole book. He preached for over an hour, but no one knew it; he was compelling and had the congregation with him all the way. While there is so much to relate about this particular message, let me excerpt just a small section:

Ephesians 3:10—God’s intent is that the Church is to be an object lesson to the rulers and authorities in the heavenlies—the invisible realm of spiritual reality—there are all kinds of rulers and authorities and God is running a seminar for them—he’s saying, Look at the church, and if you look at the church you’ll see a living breathing, pulsating demonstration of my work.

So on a Sunday morning—let’s pause to remember that we are on the screen—we are case study number 1—have you ever thought of yourselves like that?—People might actually get there early for church!

The rulers and authorities think they are winning in this world of ours, but they are not. The biggest evidence of this is the church. God is using us not only to show the principalities that they’re not as powerful as they thought they were, but also to show rulers and authorities that their days are numbered and they’re on the losing side. –You principalities try to keep Jews and Gentiles at each other’s throats. But I brought them together.

Do you realize what it means to be part of the church? If God can’t bring disparate people together, how can it be that he will bring the cosmos together, all things together under the Lordship of Christ? This is what the local group of believers are called to be in the environment in which you are placed. We are a message to a fragmenting, fractious society . . . Church is often as fragmented and fractious as the society around it . . .

I've appreciated much of the music for the conference. Last night a jazz flautist from this city played with a superb jazz pianist (he and Aaron would have gotten along well together . . . ) .

But, before that, I drove out to see a little of the surrounding area and to go to a grocery store. While I did see a variety of store names interesting, new, and Iowan, I also ran into a Christian bookstore of the type I was used to in Pennsylvania. BIG, too. Same sort of trinkets and stuff you'd find anywhere, though.

The evening talk was by a Dr. David T. Colson, who lives "across the lake" from our conference minister, Steve Gammon. He has compiled many statistics and compared them in new ways, and asks some interesting questions of churches. At this point, I'm a little skeptical, but I bought the book and want to listen carefully when he speaks again tomorrow night. The morning was a sermon, scripture driven and defined; the evening, not so much. But, that was not its goal and it leaves intriguing questions.
Two charts compiling some of his study: The first shows growth in American churches, grouping them by when the church was started. We are among the oldest churches in our conference. But, the point is that older churches aren't growing.
The second shows growth by size. Dr. Olson believes he has isolated the cause of the interesting leaps at both ends of the chart. Churches between 1 and 49 (to the left) have growth, because they have "intimacy." And churches at the other end, the megachurches, grow because they provide services well. You'll note that we, and most of American churches, are in the middle, the churches that are not growing. He says that these are the two critical poles: intimacy and doing ministry well (he may mean by this programs--not clear yet) determines whether a church grows. This is not at all clear to me, and I wonder, having not read his book yet, whether he may have left out a lot of other variables in his selection. One hears so many "answers" for the church over the years, that one is tempted to be skeptical. He left us with two questions, from the last screen.
We have come to a time when the "easy pickings" are no longer there, people who are prepared by their culture to come to Christ. There needs to be a new way of thinking about evangelism. And that has set me to thinking.
Well, one of the best things about these conferences, as I have already said, is to pray and think and reflect while away from the immediate fires of ministry. A valuable and challenging and thoughtful time with pastors and people with whom I've stood for over 20 years.