Somewhere between troubled and amused

Every college, I guess, has professors that every student there has heard of. Jerry Root is one of those professors at Wheaton. My roommate took his Intro to Christian Education class last semester and raved about him. I was curious about him, and in part because I needed a quad class and in part because I try to take classes based on who's teaching them, I tried to sign up for that Intro to CE class. It was full, so I ended up registering for his Intro to Evangelism course.

I am, for various reasons, generally glad that I took that class. I don't quite know what to think of Dr. Root, though I love him as a brother in Christ. His zeal for the gospel and genuine love for humanity - including each and every student in his class - is abundantly obvious, but his charisma and smooth speech make me wary of him. I dunno.

Dr. Root has been all over - including at College Church - and he's currently at Bill Hybel's Willow Creek Church. Those are pretty different extremes. (Do I mean extremes? I'm not sure.) Maybe it's my own bias, but that makes me a bit uncomfortable. Is there "right and wrong" in ministry styles, if you will, or just "effective and ineffective", "poor, good, and better?" I know no way is the perfect way. It's all so confusing. But I'm okay with being puzzled - I'm skeptical of freshmen who think they have everything figured out.

I do feel that, at the very least, I should be challenged to think about these issues, develop my opinions, and learn when I need to see beyond doctrinal or practical differences. Right?

So many jumbled thoughts. I don't even know how to form them into coherent questions.

This was a lengthy introduction to what I first intended to write about. I had to read a book for the class called Prepare Your Church for the Future, by Carl F. George. The book was originally published in 1991. It's now on its thirteenth printing, most recently in 2001. In it he propounds the "meta-church" as the ideal church for the 21st century. For everyone. Period.

The idea is of a church of tens of thousands of members, made up of many "small, home-based groups" called cell-groups. Among other things, proponents of the meta-church emphasize lay leadership and involving everyone in ministry so that pastors don't become over-burdened and burned-out. This makes sense to me, in light of the passage we studied in Bible study this week: "And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastor and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. . . " (Ephesians 4:11-12)

I know that small groups would be of utmost importance in a church of that size. (I'm so grateful for the small group I'm part of at College Church which isn't nearly so large.) But I wonder, in their effort to stress the importance of Christian community and nurturing and so on, if they've lost sight of other things that are important, such as Biblical instruction. Or if not lost sight of it, than at least given it too low a precedence.

Some of the general ideas expressed in the book make sense to me. Other things are troubling, and still other things are absurd. Here are a few choice quotes. I'm sorry if the picture I'm giving of the meta-church is incomplete. I could write more but I'm rushing to get this done before I run off swing-dancing!!!

Acronyms and abbreviations and color coding and jargon abound. Reading the book is like reading some sort of manual. In parts it's barely intelligible. The meta-church is led by "CEOs, Ds, DAs, Cs, CAs, Ls, LAs, Xs, XAs, and Ls". "Zones" of the church are identified by colors: purple for governance, gray for finances, red for "celebration activities" (this refers to the Sunday morning worship service), green for nurturing, and so on. There's an especially great passage in the book that describes how these different groups can be identified by their color-coded plaid table cloths when they meet during the "huddle" session of their VHS meetings. (VHS stands for "vision, huddle, skill." I really can't explain more.)

Here is a quote unfortunately typical of the book:

How about yellow zones? As with the orange, church strategists can create intentional migration patterns whose ultimate destination is the green zone.

For example, remember the golf foursomes noted earlier in this chapter as "plusses" in the yellow zone? Those icons for foursomes will be colored green. The implication is that new prospects will be referred to cells in the green zone. Or some of the yellow-zone plusses from the family-life seminar could be coded blue. This color would indicate that attenders will be encouraged to join a blue-zone support and recovery group until they're ready to be part of a green-zone nurture cell.

Or upon reflecting about a certain congregation-size group, a pastor may conclude: "This yellow group has no acquaintance-making place (AMP) plus mark. That means that people may not be moving beyond the drinking-coffee-together stage. We need to add an AMP component. This change will help the small-group leaders who attend meet new people by taking part in a round-robin get-acquainted time."

Any discussion about these AMP plus-sign mixers will begin to probe the deeper issue of Affinity Facilitation Structures (AFS). Much has been written, especially by Lyman Coleman, on how to get people to open up by using skillfully crafted self-disclosure questions. It takes skill to help people get to know each other.

And another one, even more disturbing to me:

What does the future look like in terms of the spiritual formation of children? . . . [Some churches] will experiment with off-premises neighborhood meetings, combining ideas like Boy and Girl Scouts with Child Evangelism Fellowship's backyard Bible clubs (green zone). When children do come to church on Sunday, they might, as one big group, watch a Christian version of "Sesame Street," performed by crack teams of talented artists (shadow events in the red zone). Occasional retreats to which guests are invited might look like Scouting Jamborees, so could be considered in the yellow zone.

I laughed out loud when I read this:

Planning teams of staff and lay leaders who attend Fuller Evangelistic Association Meta-Church Cluster Consultations learn to shove activities across borders, manipulate the colors, and do whatever else is helpful to visualize: How could this ministry better represent what God wants our church to accomplish?

This troubled me:

The life of Christ in a loving cell group may be presented so attractively and powerfully that conversions may occur even without formal soul-winning skills on the part of the leader! Someone may join a cell and four months later report, "I met God this week." Everyone asks, "How? Nobody here explained the plan of salvation." The person answers, "In desperation, I got on my knees and said, 'O God, help!' I've always felt accepted by this group; now I sense an acceptance by God." There was an experience of conversion! Now the group must help the new believer put a theological form around his or her experience.

Carl George himself says that the participants in the cell groups are to "study the written Word of God and apply its teaching to their lives. They experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit as they build up and encourage one another." How can that be happening if the gospel isn't being preached?!

This also troubles me:

One pastor says, "I consider my twenty- to thirty minute opportunities for vision casting to be my central speaking engagement - more important, even, than my Sunday-morning preaching!"

Especially troubling to me is the fact that missions is barely mentioned in the book, except to fit it into the "orange zone" which is, by George's own description, a "catchall zone".

I don't have time to write more. What are your reactions?