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My First Book:
Momentum in the Local Church
Posted in: Uncategorized by DannyTice on February 25, 2010
When a church has momentum everything is easy; when a church doesn’t have momentum everything is hard. Momentum brings excitement and fruitfulness. Lack of momentum produces drudgery and boredom. In 30 years of ministry I have experienced momentum and have experienced no momentum; momentum is better. When you have momentum the church board wants your autograph. When you have no “mo” (short for momentum) they want your head on a platter. The early church in the book of Acts had momentum. People were getting saved and healed. The first century church was like a steam roller rolling through the ancient world. Everyone was talking about the apostles and this new movement. The government and archaic religious leaders were threatened by the people of the way. I can’t read the book of Acts without wanting to be there. When my devotions bring me to the book of Acts I am sooo… excited (not the same feeling I get when I am coming up on the book of Leviticus). I think we all need to dream more about being a church like the early church – not so much in form but in spirit. There are two schools of thought on momentum – the mystical school and the practical school. The mystical school says we cannot do anything about momentum. It is a thing of the Spirit and when revival comes every 300 years if we are standing in the right spot in history we will get a rise of “mo” from the Holy Spirit. True indeed – we need the Spirit to breath upon the dark chaos of our ministries but can’t we rub some sticks together to get a little fire going? God blesses people that try new things for him. Momentum comes from climbing out of a perfectly good boat to try to walk on the water with Jesus. Leaders that say – what new thing can we do that would bring freshness to our ministries will discover momentum. Leaders and churches that hum the song, “I shall not be moved,” will experience the spiritual doldrums. Momentum always follows steps of faith. Some examples of steps of faith are: a new satellite campus – redoing the stage in a different color – changing up the order of service or hiring a new exciting staff member. All of these are new things that we can do to produces momentum. The world of marketing understands this and slaps a new and improved label on their products. People grab the cereal they have eaten for years with new gusto because it is “new and improved.” Well you say, “The church isn’t a business and has nothing to do with marketing.” It is not about marketing it is about letting the Spirit lead us into uncomfortable places to do fresh and new things. Doing church the same way every Sunday will cause all momentum to evaporate. Being willing to dream of doing things in a new way is the secret to momentum. All Sundays shouldn’t be the same and every series needs to come from a new angle. After all, the early church was doing everything different from the religious movements before them. No movement had ever done some of the things they were doing. Their movement had momentum because their movement was led by leaders who embraced the new and improved Kingdom of God.