PastorPete

This will be a brief response as my son really wants me to play NFS with him.

We are trying to find ways to mix things up a bit.  That said, we are still a fairly typical announcements-music-offering-sermon-music service.  We are making a concerted effort to become more liturgical/conteplative, but we are taking baby steps.

Here are some of the things I/we have tried:

1) breaking the sermon up into smaller sections which are interspersed with congregational singing, multimedia, etc. 

http://www.cornerstonecc.us/sermons/2003/2004-07-18.mp3

2) using a somewhat more dramatized-narrative approach

http://www.cornerstonecc.us/sermons/2003/2003-06-08.mp3

http://www.cornerstonecc.us/sermons/2003/2004-08-22.mp3

3) co-preaching a sermon — where two or more share a sermon

http://www.cornerstonecc.us/Sermons/2003/2005-02-13B.mp3

http://www.cornerstonecc.us/Sermons/2003/2005-04-10.mp3

4) I recently had a person that I thought read scripture well join me up front to read verses from the passage we were considering during the sermon.  He would read a few verses and then I would interact with them.  This sort of allowed Scripture its own voice.

http://www.cornerstonecc.us/Sermons/2003/2006-03-12.mp3

5) we are currently looking at the "parable of the prodigal son / parable of the loving father" in a sermon series that is being preached by a different person each week.  Not only are we each approaching the passage from a different perspective, but our own experiences, gifting, etc. causes us each to look at this passage in unique ways.  It seems to be working pretty well.

We are constantly looking for new ways to do things.  The point isn’t to be different or cutting-edge.  The point is that we want to find whatever way we can to connect with people and where they are at.  I am particularly excited about looking at a passage from four different perspectives with four different preachers over four weeks (any number greater than one would probably have a similar effect).  There are things I can say (or God can say through me?) that others can’t say (or that God chooses not to say through others?). 

All that said, we still consume 50% of our time together on a Sunday morning preaching/listening to a sermon.  It seems to me that maybe that is a little high of a percentage (not necessarily wrong, though).  As we haven’t been able to trim our sermons much below 30 minutes, and they tend to average closer to 40, I think, we have gradually started to have longer services.  60 min, 65 min, 70 min, 75 min … Who knows, maybe someday we will go for 90!  (I grew up in Latin America where services often were closer to 120 min … and most people I know are really happy to sit through a 2hr movie …)

We are also trying to take the focus off of the "Sunday Event" itself.  I’m sure this topic has received attention elsewhere on these boards.  We are intentionally trying to create opportunities for our people to experience church life throughout the rest of the week.  The risk in doing this is that we become program-driven — which we really want to avoid.  While much of what we are doing to this end is still based in the church facility, we are trying to create opportunity for folks to experience church life (life in the kingdom?) outside of the church building.  This includes Neighborhood Groups (akin to cell or small groups, but we think a little different); Service Saturdays (community action sort-of stuff); Wednesday Night dinners (a gathering of everyone from the church and their friends and anyone else who wants to show up); a Bible Study Forum (like a typical Bible Study with maybe a tad more interaction); a Worship Forum (where whoever wants to show up and have input into the week’s sermon and music can do so); a Teen Ministry which isn’t geared towards entertaining them but rather towards equipping them for ministry; etc.  Again, we have a long way to go on this and we have found that our Core Value of "Organizational Flexibility" is very important!

In any case, I certainly would like to hear what others are doing on this/these front(s) as well.

Ummm … not so brief I guess, my son just finished his 9th lap as he waits patiently …

I work on the teaching team in a church that most would probably call emerging… I don't know if it's post-modern, as we are many working within an evangelical theological context, but tweaking the theology a little, and the format a lot.

Anyway, our church doesn't have a building, so three Sundays out of the week, there are four groups which meet in different locations around the city of Brussels, two in homes, and two in restaurant-bars (on the fourth sunday we all meet together at a large rented venue). Each group has about twenty to twenty five or so regular members, but they aren't all there usually, so it comes to somewhere in the vicinity of 17 people per group per night. Less in the summer and holidays, more in the boring months.

Anyway, the staff set a theme for every month. It's always a one word theme. This year some themes have been Freedom, Grace, Broken, Whole, Neighbor, and Play. Once the staff figure out what the theme is, they get some people researching biblical content around it. Eventually this gets boiled down into an abstract. Each of the three weeks, supposably, is to explore how the them is related to one of three aspects: First week, how does this relate to us personally? Second week, how does this relate to our immediate community? Third week, how does the theme relate to our mission in the world?

This is, obviously, a little arbitrary. It's not my system, it's just what I'm working with. Anyway, this is pretty flexible, and each month, we seem to be getting a little bit farther away from this pattern. But in the end, the content team makes a basic road map for the direction they want the teaching to go for each for each of the weeks, along with some suggested scriptures and other stuff to help put the lesson together.

Then the content abstract goes to the leadership teams for each group (which are all open; anyone who attends the meetings is on the team). Usually myself (in the midst of getting my BDiv.) and another guy (a PhD. Candidate at Regent College) take two of the three weeks, although sometimes one or both of us don't, depending on schedules and what-have-you. The weeks that we don't take usually end up with people teaching in teams. We often have one of our more 'core members' team up with someone who isn't so involved yet to put something together.

When it comes to the individual teachings, we don't actually have to follow the content at all if we don't want. The PhD-candidate-guy and I very often end up switching the passages, but sticking to the same topic. The people who don't have any formal training usually stick closer to the outlines.

Generally, the teaching is somewhere between 15 to 25 minutes of monologue, but that's just the beginning. The teaching itself is usually more related to the original meaning and principles of the text we're using. Then, either after or at various places within the teaching, there are questions related to application. These questions are discussed in one of two ways. Either we have round table discussions, if the group is small enough (which I prefer); or each table talks about it amongst themselves (tables, not pews, because were in bar), and at the end people share various insights that were brought up within the group relating to application.

This seems to work well. I, personally, would be happier if we went strait through entire books of the bible as a church, which I've suggested, but it's not my decision in the end, and this way is also okay.

On the fourth Sunday, when we all meet together, we usually do or present something arty-farty related to the theme. I can barely stomach that stuff, but some people are into, so whatever.

I also teach a Bible study on Luke with this church. Originally, people were supposed to read the portion of scripture that was assigned for the next meeting throughout the week, and try to think about it and make some observations so we would all participate in the interpretive process together. However, no one ever actually reads beforehand, let alone thinks about it, so it's basically just me going exegetically through the text (with a focus on a narrative interpretation), answering questions, or sometimes asking them.

It goes fairly well, and people are challenged and do some thinking, but I really wish I could get them to seriously engage the text with me. I guess things don't go our way all the time.

Oh, and interestingly, we never call anything 'preaching.' It sounds so preachy. We call everything teaching.

Aaron Christianson