I just heard of another church this morning that has changed its name so that it could in turn go “multi-site.” This church – in other words – intends to set up sites in various locations that gather people into large auditoriums to conduct the same liturgy for all sites (a 35 minutes set of music and some Scripture reading) and then turn everyone’s focus to a large video screen where the senior pastor delivers the one message. The church changed its name to a generic name with no designated locale. Instead of a name like say Barrington Christian Community, it will now be named ABC of Barrington and ABC of Palatine, and ABC of South Chicago. The name change enables it therefore to go “multi-site.” No designated locale = video-venue church. And so the multi-site phenomenon continues reminding us that the church is not local, it is a franchise spreading a certain product to Christians everywhere.
Now I define the Missional church as the church mobilized for incarnational (as opposed to attractional) ministry occupying the place of Christ’s humble servant presence in a locale (as opposed to a place of coercion and presumption) whereby we live (visibly) an entire way of life that witnesses to the salvation of God (His Kingdom) birthed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is natural, it is concrete, and it is above all local. In this witness, people are invited out of their lostness into a vital relationship with the Triune God and all He is doing to make the world right through Jesus Christ.
Accepting this definition of missional (admittedly this is assuming a lot. I don’t have space to unpack this definition here or defend it. I have done this elsewhere however in numerous blog posts and writings), my question is “can preaching within a multi-site venue strategy be missional?”
I think not for three reasons.... Read More
A single page version of this article is also online at SermonCentral.
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