It just may be that my ranting for the past 20 years or more is finally paying off. Parts of the recent Rethink Church campaign of the UMC shows signs of a biblical understanding of the role of the church.
What I like about it are the words they use
- Their focus on the Great Commission
- sending us out to encounter the world
- Their use of taking the message from “Jerusalem, Judea, to Samaria and to the ends of the earth”
just to mention a few. All of these concepts were in my first book in 1990, The Church Growth Handbook.
I especially like the emphasis on the church being a verb rather than a noun.
This 20 million dollar campaign is a follow up to the Open Hearts; Open Minds; Open Doors campaign. I do have doubts about the effectiveness of generic advertizing. It is one thing to invite an unchurched person to hear a message series that hits them where they live and another for them to be invited by a generic ad that has nothing to do with their personal situation. We have to remember that very few unchurched people will look for a church to attend on their own anymore.
Still, I pray this campaign helps.
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