Winning the World

Session 2 Defining Church Plant Movements

Every Generation of Christians Must Learn How to Biblically Define Church We may consider the blunt, prosaic injunction: “Let the church be the church.” Such a slogan implies that the church is not now fully the church. It implies that the true self-image is not at present the effectual image that it should be. But what is the church when it allows itself to become the church? Do we know? Yes. And no. We who stand within the church have allowed its true character to become obscured. Yet we know enough concerning God’s design for the church to be haunted by the accusation of the church’s lord: “I never knew you.” So there is much about the character of the church to which the church itself is blind. Our self-understanding is never complete, never uncorrupted, never deep enough, never wholly transparent. In every generation the use and re-use of the Biblical images has been one path by which the church has tried to learn what the church truly is, so that it could become what it is not. For evoking this kind of self-knowledge, images may be more effective than formal dogmatic assertions. This may well be one reason why the New Testament did not legislate any particular definition of the church and why Christian theology has never agreed upon any such definition.

~ Paul S. Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament , p. 25.

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I. The Church Defined in Terms of Revolutionary Spirituality sans [i.e., without] Church, Barna pp. 1-17.

[Both David and Michael] were born again Christians who had eliminated church life from their busy schedules, albeit with very different subsequent paths. . . . David and Michael thought of themselves as “deeply spiritual” people. Their irregular attendance at church services – each attended on occasion with their families, who remained more or less regulars at a nearby church – failed to dampen their enthusiasm for God. They believed that the Bible is God’s true and reliable Word for life. They each gave money generously to causes they felt were trustworthy and significantly helped people. They prayed before meals and had shared a number of stories with each other about how pastors and other Christians had chastised them for their failure to be involved in church life.

~ Barna, Revolution, pp. 2, 3.

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