Remove the Queen
This thought isn’t original to me but I want to share it because it’s at the heart of what ExponentialChurch.tv is going to be all about. My passion and expertise is in creating exciting, relevant, life-changing Experiences on Sunday’s. At my last church we saw hundreds make first time professions of faith in Jesus and we did it all in some pretty cool ways. People were not ashamed to invite their friends to church and we saw some pretty awesome life-change occurring.
At Exponential we will be offering just as relevant Experiences but God has also given me the vision to work just as hard “being” the church in the community Monday-Saturday as we do pulling off excellent worship Experiences. In theological circles this is argued as are you an “Attractional Church” (come and see) or are you a “Missional Church” (go and tell). I feel strongly that God is calling us to be both and so that’s one of the reasons that we hired Chad Chute. He’s as passionate about the missional side as I am about the attractional side.
However, I’m still wanting to learn to be more missional myself and the following illustration has helped me in my thinking. If you’ve ever played chess, you quickly realize that the Queen is the most powerful piece on the board. Chess masters recommend to new players to remove the Queen when first learning how to play so that you don’t become overly dependent on her and so that you’ll better learn strategy with the other pieces. So how doe this apply churches and what I’ve been thinking about recently? Well imagine if a church didn’t have Sunday morning worship Services/Experiences? In other words what if we learned how to be the church without our most strategic piece? That’s what Chad’s focus will be on but I’m as equally excited about it as well. Primarily I’m excited for what this will mean for the people of Harrisburg, as we stop just “going to church” and we start “being the church”.
Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that without a strong Sunday experience the rest will suffer, but until October 17th we have no Queen. My prayer is that this summer the people of Harrisburg are already starting to feel the impact of who we are and what we’re going to be and that when Sunday morning worship Experiences get added it will just be the icing on the cake. If you’re interested in helping us “be the church”, let us know. We are looking not only for people that want to be a part of Exponential long-term but also people from other churches that want to serve as short-term missionaries for 1-10 days. E-mail either myself or Chad know and we’ll get you started.
Gilbert Thurston 