by Word-centred Church is a ministry-model book by Jonathan Leeman.
It’s one of those books I started underlining right from the foreword (which is written by Matt Chandler).
Leeman in this book boldly pushes the idea that God’s word is enough to create, sustain, save, empower, encourage, rebuke, change and grow a church.
It’s a book meant to restore confidence in the power in God’s word and to restore the ministry of the word in our pulpits, our evangelism, our music, our prayers, our home cell groups, our parenting etc.
Leeman advances the conviction that it’s not bright lights, dynamic music, hospitality and liturgy that make and build and grow a church but God’s word working through God’s spirit. God sustains all things by his word. (Hebrews 1:3)
Notables:
The aroma of Christ will smell like death to some, regardless of how it’s presented. Yet there is no way around it: to introduce people to a saving knowledge of Christ, you must speak words and you must speak what are sometimes offensive words.
People will both accept and reject God’s word inspite of anything else that we might do in our ministry… You will will never be able to make Jesus cool enough for everyone to love and worship him.
God’s word needs to be massaged through the life of the church like yeast through dough. The ministry of the word doesn’t stop with preaching; it continues throughout the church — the discipling ministry, the youth ministry, the missions, the worship ministry, the friendships and families… All this operates on the same page of being word-oriented and Christ-centered.
The church building should open and God’s words should echo out the doors, down the street and into members’ homes and workplaces… It should reverberate in dining rooms, kitchens, children’s bedrooms, off cubicle dividers, inside city bus windows, through emails and texts.
God’s word is what grows the church. Yet we are inclined to want to rely on market research, personal charisma, good music or other natural devices to attract people to church, keep them there and grow the church. We are inclined towards attractional ministry.
On the flip, trusting God’s word to build our churches is an act of faith. It is trusting in the supernatural rather than the natural. The power of God’s word is a faith proposition.
God speaks through human preachers and human words. We must ask for faith to believe that:
– encountering the Bible is encountering God.
– God acts efficaciously through his word by his spirit.
– God puts his power to work when Christians speak.
The pronouncement of God’s word effectively draws a line in the sand between two groups of people – those who accept god’s word and those who reject it. The work of the evangelist is to invite people to cross the line.You build a church from scratch through the evangelist.
God’ dividing word
God’s people are those who listen to his voice. Those who are not his sheep don’t listen or believe. God’s word therefore divides. It divides the Christian from the non-Christian, and divides the Christian in half, separating the old man and the new man. People will either accept us or reject us depending on whether or not they are His.
Because God’s word divides, the temptation is to unite people around something other than God’s word, like music style or acts of service. Or we will be tempted to water down the word, soften it.
An individual heart is freed and given life exclusively through the word. The the priority of the local church must be the Word ministry — sharing the word, preaching the word, singing the word, reading the word and praying the word. Everything else should be a platform to share the word.
We should optimize our natural resources to platform the word. Charisma, financial resources, community, acts of service, hospitality, music, eloquence, humour, church buildings… all are platforms and fall under the realm of prudence. Are they helping or distracting from the main job? Everything else is supporting cast.
The church is to be united along the gospel of Christ, not around ethnicity, socioeconomic class, partisan politics, age, style or anything else. Attractional ministry works to build churches on something natural, not supernatural. It produces mostly white/black churches, and mostly college educated, mostly millennial churches…. A church that lives by the power of sociology and attraction and culture will die by the power of sociology and attraction and culture. Lowering walls for one group raises them for another. You target the youth and lock out the old. You target urban hip and lock out another group.
Practically
In the second half of the book Leeman discusses what the Word looks like in the church, especially in the sermons, in what the church sings, how the church prays, and how we disciple. His argument is that for you to be a healthy eater, you need to know what healthy food looks like.
Scripture must be invited to come make a house in the church’s music. Singing god’s word is how a congregation tunes it’s heart together across the whole range of biblically driven affections. There is something wonderful about the heart-reprogramming work of music is that it easily travels home with us, echoing out of the church into our lives together.
On prayer he says : Christians should pray according to scriptural priorities and patterns. Let the words and agenda of the Bible inform your individual and corporate prayer life.
