What will bring us together?

When I first started this series it may have looked like a "Church Health vs. Church Planting" series. As with many other areas I do not often like arguing either/or when it comes to such things. I am much more likely to argue both/and. As I spent time thinking about the issues I discovered that the heart of the matter lies more with church unity than anything else. This all stems from a deep conviction that God wants us to focus on cities more than campuses. When people say, "Our church is really seeing God move and growing", at some level that should include what God is doing in their city, not just their particular body. I first learned this from one of that pastors at a church that happens to be growing quickly. I asked him how he worked to stay humble and flexible before God in the face of such growth and success. He pointed me to the fact that even as fast as their church was growing they were not even keeping up with the people moving into their city, much less the people who already lived there.

The shift from Campus-Centered thinking to City-Centered thinking may be small as it affects the actions and planning of individual churches. But, it will be huge in how it affects our prayer and partnership.

The question then becomes, "How do we work towards a City-Centered view of church?" I am convinced that until we measure together we will not work together. It is said that you cannot manage what you do not measure, and if that is true then church unity will never be a practical reality until numerical unity is achieved.

"What does that look like?", you may ask. In its simplest form it would be a monthly report sent to each church in a city that lists every church's average worship attendance and total baptisms for the month. The report would provide a total attendance and baptisms for the city. Over time it would allow several unifying factors, such as:

1. Are we growing? When "we" is not just my campus but my city I am forced to look at the bigger picture. Things like "transfer growth" within a city are neatly done away with since it will have no impact on the bottom line. It would also allow a baseline to measure against things, like city population growth, to give a true measure for how the church is doing relative to larger demographic trends.
2. Recognize the sick as well as the healthy. It is not that hard to make a list of the "5 fastest growing churches" in a city. It is much harder to come up with a list of the "5 churches in most need of help before they slide into decline". If churches would agree to let their numbers be seen (a big if I know) instead of inputting them anonymously then you could measure strength and growth over time. This leads to a huge opportunity for ministry; the type of ministry God calls us to when he says that when one part of the body suffers, all suffer with it. We have attempted to bypass that reality by ignoring those churches that are dying in our city. It is too easy to ignore sick and dying churches right now. That is not a Biblical response. Sick churches should either be healed or removed... never ignored.
3. Hopefully City-Centered measurement will lead to City-Wide _________. The goal here is the God's Church in a city to get God's Heart for a city. Each church will operate in its own unique shape, but all for the same goal. Think of the possibilities if The Church in a city banded together and just adopted all of the orphans. Not a few churches offering courses on "how to adopt", but hundreds of churches just doing it in God's love.

God speaks to the church of the city in the New Testament. Some say that is because there was only one church in the city at the time. I believe it goes deeper then that; that cities have something like their own personality. God has a vision for our city, and for yours, and it goes far beyond any one church campus.