Our Elder Board is reading and discussing together Gordon MacDonald’s book, Who Stole My Church. Below are some quotes from the book seen in chapters 4-6 which we discussed at our last Elder meeting. To truly understand the context of these quotes you have to read the book. These are the parts of the chapters that I highlighted as I read.
“Do most people have any awareness of how they either build or tear down another’s spirit by the way they say things? This is why leaders long for thicker skin.”
“Every time I passed by a church that seems to be dying, I wondered when Jesus might have walked out.”
“Christians have frequently been forced to reinvent the ways they do church life. Note I said, ‘Do church life,’ not reinforce their core values.”
“Down through two thousand years, you have only one unchanging thing in the church: the gospel of Jesus that calls people to forgiveness of sins and to participating in a community of people who want to serve each other and go forward to make a statement about God’s love in their worlds. But the ways in which people organize themselves to actualize this one unchanging thing is changing all the time.”
“Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, wrote somewhere, ‘When the rate of change inside an organization is slower than the rate of change outside an organization, the end [of that organization] is in sight.’”
“I’ve often wondered if radio and television haven’t contributed to a lot of the dissatisfaction that you see in church life. It’s hard for small churches to match the stuff people hear and see during the week on radio and TV.”
“Pastors and church leaders have to think harder about how things get done and not be afraid to try new things if we really want to reach new generations.”
“I know I’m speculating when I say this, but I firmly believe that the church of fifteen years from now, at least the church that works, will look totally different from the church we attend today.”
“None of us have any conception of how the Internet is going to impact the church.”
“We resist change in the church because it seems like the only safe place in this world where a ‘yesterday’ still exists when things seemed simpler and more manageable.”
“I think I’m beginning to understand why the younger guys prefer to start churches. I sometimes think that changing one is impossible.
“Do most people have any awareness of how they either build or tear down another’s spirit by the way they say things? This is why leaders long for thicker skin.”
“Every time I passed by a church that seems to be dying, I wondered when Jesus might have walked out.”
“Christians have frequently been forced to reinvent the ways they do church life. Note I said, ‘Do church life,’ not reinforce their core values.”
“Down through two thousand years, you have only one unchanging thing in the church: the gospel of Jesus that calls people to forgiveness of sins and to participating in a community of people who want to serve each other and go forward to make a statement about God’s love in their worlds. But the ways in which people organize themselves to actualize this one unchanging thing is changing all the time.”
“Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, wrote somewhere, ‘When the rate of change inside an organization is slower than the rate of change outside an organization, the end [of that organization] is in sight.’”
“I’ve often wondered if radio and television haven’t contributed to a lot of the dissatisfaction that you see in church life. It’s hard for small churches to match the stuff people hear and see during the week on radio and TV.”
“Pastors and church leaders have to think harder about how things get done and not be afraid to try new things if we really want to reach new generations.”
“I know I’m speculating when I say this, but I firmly believe that the church of fifteen years from now, at least the church that works, will look totally different from the church we attend today.”
“None of us have any conception of how the Internet is going to impact the church.”
“We resist change in the church because it seems like the only safe place in this world where a ‘yesterday’ still exists when things seemed simpler and more manageable.”
“I think I’m beginning to understand why the younger guys prefer to start churches. I sometimes think that changing one is impossible.
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