Building Monday’s church

by Brian Medway

We are facing a long term problem in the church. We have the right doctrine, we have good preaching and teaching capabilities and we have access to every kind of resource we can name in order to do our job, but we are not doing our job.

Despite the succession of short term relationships we have had with the various renewal and refreshing movements that God’s grace has made available. We have looked to ministries, methods and models for help and still we have an ache in our heart that we do not seem to be gaining ground when it comes to the kingdom of God being established in our communities.

It’s not that nothing is happening. We are praying more and worshipping better. We have a better understanding of the gifts of the Spirit and there are all kinds of wonderful expressions of network relationships. We are seeing God raising up ministries like never before. We are able to affirm and support the gift and anointing in ministry that we ever have been. There is more unity and more trust. If you notice the things I have reeled off in this list, all of them have to do with activity INSIDE a line that we have drawn around something we have called, “the church.” It is almost exclusively so.

What has been happening is that we have been looking to internal experiences and internal changes in the hope that we would see our dreams and visions come to reality. If I were to slightly alter the old “moving the deck chairs on the Titanic” analogy, I would say that we ARE moving the deck chairs around, but the Titanic isn’t sinking in this case, it is simply drifting further and further away from its intended course – in this case, the church are becoming more and more sidelined by the society and the church people are separating themselves more and more from the people in the community they should be most committed to – the people who don’t come to church.

The GCF Mandate: BUILD THE CHURCH – BUT Which CHURCH? At Grace Christian Fellowship, we have taken three statements as the expression of the body of Christ that we are called to be: Loving Jesus Building the Church Reaching the Lost These three have a consecutive function. Any ministry goal can only ever be as good as our relationship with Jesus (cp. John 15:3). The more we love Jesus, the more we love what he loves. Jesus has two loves. He loves the church and is working to bring it to fullness (Ephesians 4). He loves the lost and has called the church to take responsibility for this task. There can be no effective ministry in building the church unless it flows out of the relationship we have with Jesus.

The church is not a leader with a vision… it is a community with a hundred visions. When we love Jesus we will want to join him in the task of building the church to become a full expression of his presence in the earth. The church we are building is not simply waiting to go to heaven; it is a task specific weapon. It is designed for smashing the gates of enemy strongholds (Matthew 16:18). It is purpose built to disciple nations (Matthew 28:18-20). It is the vehicle through which God displays his purposes to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 3:10) and it is called to testify in every generation to the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:12).

It was never designed to be a haven or a refuge. It was never designed to target self-fulfillment or self-indulgence. It was never designed to be a club. It can only operate effectively when the focus is external to itself. That function can only be achieved when the individual members have that focus. The church is not a leader with a vision it is a community with a hundred visions. The leader and leadership in general simply provides a framework of empowering and encouragement through which those hundred personal and collective visions can be fulfilled.

Spiritual Re-alignment: placing ourselves on the front line of the battle The following discussion may seem to be a rank criticism of all the great things that happen because we have Sunday church. It needs to be said from the outset that there is no argument with meeting together, nor with worship or preaching or the whole range of activities that are regular facets of church life. Its not what is THERE that is the real problem, it’s what is NOT THERE. What is not there is a genuine heart for lost people, a lost world and a community and national destiny that will only be embraced through major spiritual transformation. As usual the enemy is a set of faulty assumptions that lie behind good things that we spend a lot of time and money doing. I want to challenge the assumptions much more than challenge the validity of the activities.

I want to challenge attitudes and mindsets we have about the church. As usual I believe the fault lies in a jaundiced view of the church that has much more in common with an Old Testament model than it has to do with a New Testament one. We have re-invented the problem faced by the early church between the Judaizers and the attitudes preached and practice by Paul and those who were the original fruit of his ministry in Antioch, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece and Italy (and maybe even Spain for all we know).

When well-intentioned believers want to get comfortable in any generation they always revert to Old Testament paradigms rather than straight perversions of New Testament ones. The “flesh” (actually the devil) knows that we will generally reject something that is obviously opposed to the life and purpose revealed in Jesus. He doesn’t come to the true believers and say that Jesus is no good. He comes and says that we need to “follow Jesus” within a Biblical framework that, while subtle, is actually an expression of a ‘spirituality’ that was operating before Jesus came. We won’t be able to expose this false paradigm unless we do a little hard work. What we need to do is to draw up a comparison between what we do and the principles underlying what the Old Testament people of God did. When we have drawn that comparison we can see how what we do falls so short of the ministry that Jesus came to establish

The bottom line of this focus is to shift our interest from what is happening on Sunday to what is (currently not but when we make the shift will be) happening on Monday. If I had the time and space, I would like to provide a historical rationale to explain how we came to be where we are. This is not going to happen in this presentation. All I am going to do is to point out what we seem to do now and how it seems to echo Old Testament principles rather than new ones.

The call will almost need another version of the letter to the Hebrews where the writer is appealing to people who love Old Testament ways to see how superior the “new and living Way” really is. As he appeals and warns with the same passion as Paul does to the Galatians, so I want to appeal to you. If we are not prepared to change our fundamental assumptions about the church, we will lose the battle. If we lose too many battles we will end up losing the war. Our communities are never a neutral demilitarized zone. They are active theatres of war. The enemy is at work day in and day out.

Even though we seem to be so far behind in this battle, my own view is that we have this amazing propensity to maintain weapons systems and strategies that have not worked for so long that I cannot understand why we have such a stubborn commitment to them. The only answer that gives me any satisfaction is to suggest that money and power/status are the culprits. If we mess with the status quo it may risk a temporary downturn in income for a church.

We may also find that the institutional power base or prestige base is challenged. Much or our financial and power base has been built around a set of measurements that are largely confined to the “four walls of the church building.” To illustrate this, take the Graham Cooke question: “What would it take for the people of this community to be thankful that the church exists?” In most cases the “people of the community” don’t lost any sleep over whether the church exists or not because to most of the community the church is irrelevant. In addition, whenever we do become noticed it is often for all the wrong reasons (moral failures, in-fighting over irrelevant issues or judgmental grand-standing). Considering that Jesus and the early church had no obligation to any of those issues and yet were both extremely relevant, we ought to ask why and how.

God has given us a mandate to BUILD THE CHURCH. In doing so we would offer all the ministries we have that seek to do that. There are quite a number and they are all doing good things. But they all build Sunday’s Church and focus around Sunday’s Church. Very few of them have anything to do with Monday’s Church. It is also true that we are involved as much as anyone in offering support to other churches through things like national networking, Crosslink Christian Network and the Canberra Christian Network. Once again all of these things are good and are doing work that is beneficial…but mostly for Sunday’s Church. We do very little to equip Monday’s Church through our connections with these many churches and church leaders.

This second strand of our primary vision statement takes on a prophetic function. In the midst of all of these considerations, I believe I heard the Spirit say these words to the church “Build up the church that functions on Monday and you will see the changes you desire on Sunday.”

Thus the idea of EQUIPPING MONDAY’S CHURCH!

“Build up the church that functions on Monday and you will see the changes you desire on Sunday.”

What’s Wrong with Sunday CHURCH?”

There are a whole lot of things that are right about Sunday Church. More than that, there are terrific things happening in Sunday Churches all over the nation. Just think of the great preachers and great preaching. There is terrific worship. There is more prayer than ever before. There is more unity. We understand more about the Holy Spirit and more about spiritual gifts. We have absorbed meetings after meetings and conferences after conferences that have given us an appetite for making people whole, getting refreshed in the Father’s love. I must stress that I am profoundly grateful to Jesus for every experience that has enhanced my relationship to Jesus, to my wife and family and to the members of the Body of Christ. I shudder when I remember what I used to think, say and do twenty-five years ago. Would you believe ten? How about five? Then what about three years and six months?

The power of all of this was in the profound truth that lay in many of the assumptions: people did need to repent and turn to Christ; they would go to heaven if they did so; the world is evil; The problem was the framework into which these truths were carefully fixed. The result is a church that preaches endless sermons, prints countless books, tapes and videos, runs endless seminars and conferences designed to motivate and equip them to be better disciples. All of these resources have not produced a church that has had any significant effect on the wider community. This is especially so in the west.

The growth and development of Christians is entirely measured with instruments that only have relevance inside the church. We have teaching programs that the church in China would suffer another two years in prison just to have access to. We have everything that opens and shuts when it comes to Sunday Church, but very little when it comes to Monday Church. The church in China is largely a Monday Church church. No buildings, few Bibles, no video projectors, no three year theological degree programs. It’s hard to find the church in China because it is almost totally Monday church. Everything we look for in church isn’t there. The same in Vietnam. In Australia all we have is Sunday Church.

This set of assumptions has locked the church up in itself. A combination of a false view of the church and the impact of western culture has created a church that is just as self interested and self indulgent as the world. Pastors run themselves ragged trying to indulge the “concerns” of a relatively small number of people whose interest is totally consumed with themselves. Keeping the average church member happy and indulged has become all too difficult for a growing percentage of people who set out to provide local church leadership. Ex-pastors and ministers have become as large a community as that of current pastors and ministers.

That’s not to say that the language has been lost. We still talk about evangelism and we still look forward to church growth. During the last decade of the twentieth century the church in North America spent over 60 billion dollars on church growth related activities and resources. During that time the church overall did not grow at all. Not only so, but the percentage of people who were basically unreached grew from 26% to 36%. No doubt the same would be true for Australia, since we have looked to America for most of our ministry models.

Ineffective Christian ministry has always developed from attitudes and lifestyles adopted from the non-Christian culture. Usually the self-centred, self-preservation and self-determining values that emerge from post Christian or non-Christian culture end up getting a theological jersey. It generally does this on the back of a misuse, perversion or distortion of a foundational truth. The Sunday church in Australia has adopted the comfort and convenience gospel preached by modern day Australian community culture and as such we have perverted the profound and powerful truths of godly comfort and spiritual satisfaction with person centred versions. For this reason we have people who gauge churches on the following basis

a. How much the pastor’s preaching agrees with my circumferential beliefs

b. How the church provides me with what I think I need

c. How convenient the service times are

d. How conveniently the church buildings are located

e. How comfortable the seats are

f. How few demands are made on their time.

Despite the injection of revival life, the church has tended to revert to a model that would have more in common with the tabernacle of the Old Testament than the “body” Jesus came to invent. The best and most effective church examples of our own day do have a heart for reaching lost people but tend to do that through a wonderful blend of professional program expertise and spiritual vitality and commitment. Once again the power of these principles is drawn from the fact that there are foundational truths in the midst of them. You can always say that God is pleased with excellence. To be tardy is to be ungodly. But while that is true, the fact remains that every truth that taken to an isolated extreme becomes a falsehood. If external excellence is isolated from heart excellence it becomes empty.

Before we get fall into useless wrangling over whether certain practices and strategies are good or bad we need to take a good look at the Bible to see what images and models it provides and against which we can make a more objective assessment As I look at church in Australia I see that we have defined “church” pretty much as a bunch of activities that gravitate around a set of buildings and facilities. Mostly when I visit someone’s church, they show me their buildings and tell me about their visions to extend those facilities.

What comes next are structures built around programs and events that profile various aspects of the buildings. Worship, evangelism, pastoral care and Bible studies all take place either in the buildings, or in their extensions – that is the homes of people. I keep on saying that there is nothing wrong with all of this, except that its focus is always on a line drawn around what is going on and “the world” is outside the line. It tends to generate a sense of exclusive importance on what is going on inside the line. There is no essential connection between inside the line and outside it. There is no real impact on anything much outside the line. What we have done is what Israel did throughout the Old Testament. The tabernacle was meant to be a house of prayer for all nations, and they made it an exclusive club for one nation.

Why “Monday’s Church?”

1. The term Monday Church is used here to refer to everything that individual believers or groups of believers do in the wider community when they are not engaged in Sunday Church activities. It doesn’t refer to Bible Study groups and other meetings where the focus is on the church members. It doesn’t necessarily mean that will do them on our own. We may do this ministry with others from Grace Christian Fellowship. More to the point we should be doing church with people from other Sunday Churches who belong to the same Monday Church as you (i.e. where you work, where you engage in community activities and where you live). It heralds a new expression of church that needs to be validated. It must only exist for one reason and that is to see the kingdom of God come to the respective spheres and to see every part of that sphere coming under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

2. Monday Church refers to intentional kingdom of God activity designed to bring all aspects of a particular sphere of the community under the rule of God. Home Extended family Neighbourhood Workplace Community groups (hobby, sport or other) Intentional targeted groups Groups of friends or acquaintances

3. Monday Church is about kingdom ministry influence not institutional structure If you mention church to most people they will think of one or more of the following: A physical building, often with a gothic architectural design located on some street corner in the community A meeting of people on a Sunday morning in a church building The various meetings and activities in which members of Christian group are involved (prayer meetings, business meetings, home cell meetings etc.) A group of people identified by a particular denominational or movement name; often the movement will identify some historical event or a theological focus (Reformed, Baptist, Presbyterian); often it will be identified by the name of a nation or ethnic group (Anglican; Chinese). A group of believers identified by a range of communal activities. Whatever the designation, the image is almost always collective and represents activities that are designed for people who are already members of the community. In this respect the word “church” has become almost synonymous with “club.” Just as a club seeks to have activities that please its members, so the church. The growth philosophy usually is that if the church can provide good facilities and make its members happy they will invites their friends and they will also become members of the club. The strong point to make here is that the emphasis is on programs and activities that are directed toward the needs of the already members and the accent is on gatherings and events and programs. There are unlimited numbers of them and endless varieties of them.

Monday’s Church is about the presence of Jesus forcefully advancing against every work of the enemy in any sphere of influence in the community. When Jesus was around demons lost their grip and had to depart, sickness lost its power to dwell in people’s bodies, ungodly values and structures were confronted and began to lose their influence on the lives of ordinary people, the oppressed and downtrodden people began to feel valued, guilt and shame were destroyed. All this and more because of the presence of the body of Jesus Christ. So Monday Church is the influence of Jesus through the presence of one or more of his committed followers.

4. Monday Church is every believer everywhere anytime. Jerry Cook is one person who has greatly stimulated this discussion in his series of teaching notes on thinking about the church as a FIELD or as a FORCE. He recalls a well-known pastor visiting the Bible College where Jerry was a student. A student who was going to be visiting New York in the near future asked him: “Where is your church?” The visiting pastor replied, “Well, its now 10:30 am Tuesday. My church is in the United Nations building, in over eighty different company offices scattered around the city. My church is in five Boeing airliners in the skies across the United States and around the world. My church is in numerous Federal Government department buildings. It is in too many high schools and colleges to mention. Right now it is in even more households and neighbourhoods around the city.” And so he went on. He added, “If you want to know where the church will be this coming Sunday, about two thirds of it will be in a building on… street.

What he was referring to of course was the fact that the members of his church were not just people in the world trying to be good and wait till Jesus comes. They were active agents for the kingdom of God living and working in strategic locations throughout the community. He uses a wonderful term in the series of messages. He talks about God’s people being “open for business,” referring to their willingness to actively express the presence of Jesus wherever they are and to whoever they meet. In this way they do reflect the very mode of Jesus himself. If you take a close look at the New Testament you will see that while Jesus had an overall goal he did not have a advance programmed agenda. He followed after his Father from day to day and circumstances presented opportunities a-plenty to do “kingdom business.”

5. Monday church simply refers to the people of God in the “world” or the community who have an intention of being the tangible expression of God’s redemptive presence and plan.

Normally we have thought of this expression as a church in hiding. This is an invisible church and mostly a church that has little or no influence on its sphere of influence. If you take the world view of many churches of previous times, the idea for a Christian was to survive the “evil world” and in order to survive we created Sunday meetings and mid week Bible studies and cell groups and Wednesday night prayer meetings and the like. Outside of that the church members would be advised to simply stay holy against the powerful pressure of the sinful world.

During that time they were to witness to Jesus. At best they were taught or cajoled into seeking to bring their friends to the sanctuary so that they could be saved and have the same ticket to heaven that the club members had. The emphasis was on surviving the effects of the world rather than changing it – sphere by sphere. Discipling was only something that went on after a person had become a member of the club, not before.

6.The expression “Monday Church” is deliberately chosen to highlight the fact that “church” doesn’t mean Sunday or Wednesday night or a building, but a strategic ministry of the kingdom of God carried our intentionally by people who call on his name – wherever they may be. 6. Monday Church is an expression of the church in a given community sphere of influence.

The church in Australia occupies up or down from 5% of the community. When I think of church I think of a 5% influence. When I think of the rest of the community I think of 95% influence. Using United Nations terminology we could call this the church the “5% world” and the community at large, the “95% world.” When we get away from Sunday Church we have only a few terms to use in the current situation. One of them is the term “chaplain.” This worldview then calls ministry in the community “chaplaincy.” We have prison chaplains and hospital chaplains and sporting team chaplains and industrial chaplains. They represent a ministry. They are generally there “on behalf of the church. Some of them are doing a terrific job, Usually their mandate is safely locked up in an idea that they are there to provide emotional support to the team members or the people who work in large companies. At best they are membership scouts for one church “club” or another.

The idea is that through their influence some of the people in the workplace or sporting team would be influence to come to the club and if they liked the experience, they might join. Once again the thrust is away from and out of the community “into” the safe haven of the “church.” Monday church is where an individual would seek to involve other believers in a particular sphere to develop a ministry that would seek to establish a “church” in that sphere. Obviously we are talking about a different kind of church. We tend to think of church in vertical terms and we think of church as a kind of “home.” While this is wonderful and carries the function of church some distance, we need to think of expressions of ministry presence in a workplace or neighbourhood that goes beyond an individual “witnessing” to their friends and neighbours and trying to get them to come to “church” (meaning the Sunday meetings or other “club” meetings).

7. Monday church is the process of taking church to where the unchurched people are, not trying to get the unchurched people to where the “(Sunday) church” is. The fact is that there is not a ministry that is found in Sunday church that cannot be adapted and reproduced in a community environment. Just think of the things that often happen in a Sunday Church environment: worship, prayer, healing and deliverance, the exercise of spiritual gifts, Bible studies and the list goes on. All these things come into their own in Monday Church. Not one of them is inappropriate. In fact, whereas they are often adornments to the Sunday Church, they are tools and weapons in a Monday Church situation. We can actually live without them in Sunday Church (just think how easily we do without some of the spiritual gifts and don’t even notice it), but in Monday Church you need them desperately in order the break through into the lives of needy future members of God’s heavenly family.

8. Monday Church is a weapon designed to see the rule of Jesus implemented Monday Church is based on the fact that the gospel of the kingdom is to influence every part of the sphere of influence, not just to rescue a few people who are going to hell so that they can go to heaven. If you make anything like a thorough application of the following references by Jesus to the nature of the kingdom of God you will see how the idea of getting a few people saved seems pallid by comparison:

a. Like yeast in a lump of flour – radically changes the essential nature of the whole loaf. The perspective of the yeast is to totally take over without asking permission.

b. A seed becoming a large dominating tree – this is a wonderful picture of something growing that provides a dominating influence in the garden.

c. The church as the purpose built gate crashing weapon against enemy strongholds (Matthew 16:18). Jesus said the church was designed for one purpose and one purpose alone: to destroy the gates of hell. We should therefore recognize when church is being the church and when it isn’t. When its focus is on self-preservation and self-indulgence it is not being the church. When it has chosen to provide a haven for people to survive in the “world” it is not being the church. When it decides to enter into a détente relationship with the kingdom of this world it is not being the church. When it takes up at attack and destroy posture it is being the church. Churches should be doing what they were designed for: search and destroy gates of enemy strongholds.

Brian Medway is a pastor from Canberra Australia and is the leader of a national network of churches called CrossLink