-by Rev. Jeff Gannon, Senior Pastor

The 10 Things We Must Do to Realize our Redemptive Potential

  1. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
  2. Chapel Hill has a strong mission of welcoming all people to experience and share the extraordinary grace and love of Jesus Christ!
  3. The values cannot be forgotten.
  4. Chapel Hill must become more “Methodist” and Wesleyan without becoming more denominational.
  5. Infrastructure that will support growth
  6. Simple Church

 

This week, we explore what it means to practice, “simple church.” What is simple church? In the 21st Century, in an age of technology, and rapidly changing technology, people desire simple. Simple does not mean simplistic. Simple does not mean easy. In fact, an analogy I often use to describe simple church is a professional athlete.

Really gifted athletes make their sport look really easy. They are so focused at what they do, they act as if they don’t even think about what they do. Really good athletes don’t. That’s the essence of sports psychology. You learn to rely on muscle memory and stop thinking too much! Slumps are created when the fear of failure, rooted in thinking too much, takes over and muscle memory becomes latent.

What does this mean for Chapel Hill?

This is all about “focus.”

  • Narrow the focus.
  • Resist complexity and pursue simplicity
  • Choose what works best over what is presently working
  • Doing less to be more effective

21st Century churches figure out what it is they are naturally gifted at doing, and they stay focused there. Andy Stanley, son of Charles Stanley, the TV pastor from Atlanta, puts all of his energy and focus each week on Saturday/Sunday worship. The church purposefully does not do anything during the week. Craig Groeschel, pastor of the TV church out of Edmond, Oklahoma, with campuses all over the USA, spends 40 plus hours each week creating a top notch sermon. With over 500 churches in his network, he is the only preacher. That’s 21st Century Christianity. Focus, focus, focus.

Thomas Rainer, a researcher, is the author of Simple Church. His admonition to us as followers of Jesus, seeking to be faithful in reaching all persons with the Good News of Jesus Christ, is to begin with making the Sunday morning experience (worship and anything else we do) the best it can be.

Excellence, not an unhealthy perfectionism, but a commitment to doing the best with what we have, glorifies the God of all creativity, and blesses other people.

As a staff, we have been having conversation around these issues….

What are your thoughts?