I’m very proud of the way they handled it on the ministry end and respect them for it! Check out the article or just read the section below!

What do you think?

“JMM has been committed to helping hurting people for more than 20 years, and is proud to point out that in 2006, 82% of its total expenses were used for outreach and program services directed toward reaching people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as attested by independent accounting firm Stanfield & O’Dell, LLP.

JMM provided more than 11 million meals in 2006, and built nearly 200 freshwater wells and churches in underdeveloped countries. The ministry fully funds and operates more than 50 orphanages around the world, and presents the Gospel to a potential audience of 3 billion people every day via its television program.”

Check out this Leadership Journal article that talks about the 5 different types of “Christians” in today’s world.

While between 70 and 80 percent of people in the United States identify themselves as Christian according to a number of studies, what those people mean by the term varies widely. Respondents to our new survey were almost evenly divided among five categories:

* Liturgical Christians (16%): High level of spiritual activity; regular churchgoers, recognizing the authority of the church; predominantly Catholic and Lutheran.

    * Private Christians (24%): Largest and youngest segment; believe in God and have spiritual interest, but not within the church context; only one-third attend church at all, almost none are church leaders.

    * Cultural Christians (21%): God aware, but do not view Jesus as essential to salvation; affirm many ways to God; express little outward religious behavior.

Now that you know, what will you do about it?

Hmm. It’s an interesting time when outspoken Christian leaders find themselves under investigation for financial things. I’m not sure how to feel about this. I don’t think there is anything wrong with being well off, but where do we draw the line in the sand and say driving a Bentley, as a pastor, is too much?

You look at churches such as Imago Dei, in Portland Oregon, that are leading the way in the church movement saying we understand and see a real value in stewarding the physical world around us.

By offering alternatives to the community in organic foods and other environmentally friendly ministries, they are creating a culture within their church that is far different from most.

The tendency of most church leaders is to say that as Pastors and leaders we have no right getting our noses involved in something that really has nothing to do with our purpose of sharing the gospel with those around us.

I couldn’t disagree more. The truth is that as church leaders we are to be committed to sharing the message of Jesus Christ with every person we come in contact with. That is our purpose and strategy. However that does not belittle the value of taking care the world we live in.

I think it is time for the church to step up and become serious about stewarding the world that we live in.

Will it be easy? No. People will accuse the church of causing change simply for the purpose of attracting a new crowd of people. Great!

Let’s attract them, let’s see God impact them and lead them to salvation, let’s see them discipled into reproducing believers, but at the same time lets take care of this world we’ve been given.

It’s not liberal, it’s not conservative, it’s biblical.

For me this concept and way of thinking has developed out of much thought and debate on a topic that is very progressive in our lives as people, and even more progressive in the church leadership arena.

After hearing a podcast, in which George Barna speak very freely about his book Revolution, I was left in a place of digesting and thinking about what he said.

Barna believes that in the next 20 years, churches will shift from a place of establishment into a place of intimate home relationships (HOME CHURCHES). When asked if he thought that any real “CHURCHES” would continue to exist he said that they would only if they were truly meeting the needs of the people around them.

What I took away from Barna was that people have a real, physical, emotional, spiritual need for relationship and that need for true fellowship is not being met in the midst of the worlds many churches today.

That is interesting to me when I look at the very nature of the body of Christ and the call for KOINONIA, a true intimate fellowship. I guess when I really stop and back away from the scope of the ministry in which many of us are involved; I see that need that so often goes unmet.

I spoke this week with a very highly credentialed seminary professor that acknowledged that many churches that he has attended look at a time during their services and in that time, which is normally found during the drawl of announcements, they ask their audience to shake someone’s hand and fellowship.

He said that all to often that is the extent of “KOINONIA” and in that we are missing the target of true fellowship.

To often the church tenderly wraps their arm around the shoulder of the young person in need and ask them how they are, to which they answer “fine” without telling us the truth that for the last five years they have been raped by their father.

After all, if we were to be told the horrific truths of the things that take place in the lives of the people around us how would we as the evangelical church of America respond?

It seems that the place in which we are able to experience a trust relationship with one another is not often accomplished within the arena of the four walls of the church.

And in this conclusion I come to a place where I discover the truth that it may be quite possible for the end of the established church to be drawing near.

It may be possible that the church of the future will be a place where small groups of people are gathering around the world worshiping together, growing daily as they are discipled in that small church, and they are truly experiencing “KOINONIA” fellowship in such a way that they are transformed thru truth and accountability with others and the people around them are drawn to God because of these relationships.

As church leaders we must be intentional in developing plans and strategies that call people to a deeper place of intimacy with one another. However we do it we’ve got to create places for these KOINONIA relationships to be formed.

thoughts?