From: ejstarr@eos.ncsu.edu (ERIC JAMES STARR)
Subject: Open Church  - A New Strategy
Originator: ejstarr@c00054-100lez.eos.ncsu.edu
Reply-To: ejstarr@eos.ncsu.edu (ERIC JAMES STARR)
Organization: North Carolina State University, Project Eos
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 02:09:58 GMT





(This is the front, back cover and introduction of 57 page booklet.  If you
would like more info on how to get a copy of the entire booklet, an address is
provided at the end of this post.)

1700 YEARS is Long Enough

		By JAMES H. RUTZ



	A New Strategy to Finish the Reformation and Fulfill the

Great Commission



	THE MARKS OF AN OPEN CHURCH

PRIMARY

	I     Open Worship.  You are allowed to praise and worship God., speaking with 
your own words and leading the congregation's thoughts and hearts during a time designated 
for worship.  The priesthood of the believer has become a full reality at last.

	II Open Sharing. You are free to speak with the congregation on personal and 
spiritual matters during a "body life" period.  Modes of sharing might include confession, 
thanksgiving, statement of need, testimony, intercessory prayer and requests for same, reading 
of Scripture or literary nuggets, etc.  Loneliness has begun to vanish.

	III Open Ministry. You are encouraged to exercise your particular spiritual  
gifts at appropriate points in the service (as well as outside it).  The wide variety of ministries 
include speaking from the pulpit (often scheduled, and brief at first); singing,launching or re-
porting on special projects you've created;  appointing and sending missionaries; putting 	 
the congregation in contact with events, needs, and acts of God worldwide; and much more.  
Spiritual apartheid ends.





DERIVATIVE

	IV Spiritual Growth. You grow closer to God.  Becoming more Christlike is a 		
normative for all.  Increasing in wisdom and strength becomes a churchwide, never-ending mar-
vel.  Weak personalities are healed and empowered!

	V Spiritual Enfranchisement.  You develop a rich ministry--the great, lifetime 
work the Holy Spirit designed you for.  Layman status fades out as the 	body of Christ is dis-
cerned and each man's and woman's gifts and 	functions are recognized and integrated into the 
life of the congregation. (Gifts may be exercised through various groups.)

	VI Pastoral Freedom.  Your pastor is set free to spend the bulk of his time do-
ing what he wants to do and likely does best: equipping and helping you to do your spiritual 
work.  He is no longer the overworked hub of all church activity, but an empowering presence 
in your daily life.

	VII Less Busyness.  The church merry-go-round of activities slows down.  
Maintenance-style programs fade.  The packed schedules of the highly committed few loosen 
up, allowing them to grow and be more effective.

	VIII A New Teamwork.  Small groups begin to pop up in response to per-
ceived needs.  They may be of many types: task-centered groups, supportive fellowships, house 
sub-churches, therapeutic meetings, etc.  But few join more than one or two groups.

	IX Connectedness.  You become highly aware of--and plugged into--the great 
actions and movements of God throughout your region and globally as gifted members assume 
the burden of plugging in your church to the wider world in new ways.

	X Love and Outreach. As your people become more free to interact and know 
each other better and work together, they are knit together in love.  And with more of a sense of 
belonging and church mission, they are encouraged to tell others about the Lord Jesus Christ.




Introduction

		Ever Feel Like Quitting Church?



	If you've ever felt lonely and unimportant in church, there's a good reason: You are 
alone and unimportant.

	From 11 to 12 Sunday, you're just another pretty face in the crowd.

	Though surrounded by others, you're cut off.  Custom walls you off in your own 
space and silences your voice-except for song or responsive reading.

	Surrounded by an audience of trainee mutes, you can find it lonely as a solo trek 
across Antarctica.  After you've eaten all the sled dogs.

	The service would be exactly the same without you.  You know that.  Your impact 
on it is like an extra gallon of water going over Niagara Falls.



WHAT'S WRONG HERE?



	The heart of your church is the Sunday service, where the typical communication 
pattern is about as useful as a jello telephone.

	No matter what you have on your heart-the greatest joy or deepest sorrow-you are 
not allowed to share it during the service.  Ever.

	Fellowship is confined to the foyer afterward, please. (Unless you've figured a way 
to fellowship with the back of someone else's head.) Try to talk, and the ushers will ush you 
out. Post hastily.

	This, my friend, is not Biblical. St. Peter would have wept.

	In fact, many of the early churches almost demanded you share something every 
week.  They even expected you to sing for them (aaugh!) Even solos!

	But now you can't say anything longer than, "Hallelujah!"--if that.  As a result, 
you're often more of a spectator than a participant.

	How did we ever get into such a fix?  Well, around A.D. 300, the church made 
the worst blunder in her history.  We voluntarily decided to give up three key freedoms 
that powered the early church to success:

	-open worship

	-open sharing

	-open ministry

	Throughout Christendom in the fourth century, we professionalized the local church 
and turned over our Sunday services to the pros, leaving them to do almost everything while we 
sat and watched.

	Lay men found themselves stripped of initiative and power, like newly-captured 
slaves.  Lay women were quietly relieved of what little responsibility and leadership they had.  
(By about 450, even the congregational singing faded to zip, as we turned over the music to 
professional choirs of men and boys.)

	All the laity suddenly found Sunday worship to be more distant from their personal 
lives and daily concerns.  They fell into Spectator Christianity, where loneliness doesn't end at 
church--it starts there.

THE KEY MALADY

	Today, at the end of the second millennium, we're still fighting the fallout from that 
massive mistake. Do any of these sound familiar?

	1. apathy

	2. shallowness

	3. worldliness

	4. failure to tithe

	5. pastoral burnout

	6. teenage dropouts

	7. fear of evangelism

	8. flabby self-discipline

	9. maxed-out schedules

	10. a chronic shortage of strong men.

	I'm claiming that all of these maladies and more are caused mainly by one master 
malady: the closed church, in which laymen tend to be passive observers while ministers tend to 
be overworked insiders.

	The Reformation was a great start on fixing the church, but it fell way short in re-
gard to our structures.

	It succeeded marvelously in getting back to sound doctrine: sola Scriptura (placing 
the Bible above the Church), sola gratia (salvation by grace), and sola fide (through faith, not 
works).

	But it never got us back to the New Testament church pattern that we see in Paul's 
letters.  It simply exchanged the priest for a minister and put a sermon in place of the eucharist 
(communion).  And thus the reformers left behind a matched set of migraines that would give 
St. Paul the yips.

	The good news  in your hands in this booklet, though, is that today you can prob-
ably finish the Reformation in your church within a year or two--because the ten problems 
above don't have to be solved one by one.  They're like a massive log jam that needs only one 
well-placed explosion to unsnarl the whole mess.  By following the New Testament guidelines 
and opening the heart of your church to the rank and file, you can eventually:

	1 Convert those mild-mannered pew warmers into spiritual warriors with clear 		
	   goals and a total loyalty to your church

	2 Make your services so exciting no one wants to leave

	3 Help your church grow about twice as fast

	4 Double or triple the number of those who tithe--and put your church finance prob-	
	   lems in the past

	5 Bring back marginal believers who quit the church long ago out of frustration or 		
	   lack of interest

	6 Turn your teenagers into your best members (well, at least best in some ways!)

	7 Attract more men to your church

	8 Save your pastor from the tasks he hates and free him to concentrate on what he 		
	   likes

	9 Acquire a regional reputation as a rare church where one can find pure, uplifting 		
	   worship (as in Revelation 4 and 5) along with deep, lasting friendships

	10 Enable most of your members to be soul-winners

	11 End the rat race of unfocused church activities that saps the drive of your best 		
	     people

	12 Create a whole new feeling of love in the congregation

	This list probably strikes you as wishful thinking.  I bet I know why: because the 
last time a majority of our churches were successful in most of these twelve areas, Nero was 
burning Christians to light his garden at night.

	Actually, that's unfair.  There have been--and are now--many churches that have 
made most of these changes.  Often, however, they are overseas churches greatly purified by 
persecution.

	In any case, the world is now careening rapidly toward a whole new political, eco-
nomic, and spiritual order, and the fate of hundreds of millions of souls hangs on whether or not 
the church is able to gear up and capture the day.



78 LEAKING BUCKETS

	By last count, there are 78 plans for world evangelization created by existing 
churches (and parachurch organizations), each with a budget over $100 million dollars per dec-
ade.  Twenty-one of them expect to finish the job by the year 2000.

	That's not to sneeze at.  But to the best of my knowledge, all of them are designed 
to dump their new converts into the same old closed-church patterns and structures that 
perpetuate the same old leaky-bucket problems.  The plans themselves are quite good, but 
they don't take into account the basic problem: the basis of our operations, the church, is dy-
namically flawed and needs fixing. Still. After all these centuries.

	It's time to reopen our churches.  

                           Wouldn't you say 1700 years is long enough?


(The address is Open Church Ministries, 1284 Mica Lane, Colorado Springs,
Colorado, 80906.  The cost of the booklet is about $4.00 [I think this price
includes the shipping, handling, and tax].  I am in no way connected with this
ministry so, in other words, I get no profit by you buying this booklet.  A
friend gave me the copy I have.  I just thought this might interest some of
you.  I would be interested in seeing any comments that you have about this
post.              
               Thanks,
                       Eric Starr  ejstarr@eos.ncsu.edu                       )
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