Small Groups or the Purpose Driven Church?

Specialized Christianity

This is a modern strategy of many churches to more efficiently reach out to the diversity of hurting people groups in the world. While this approach might prove to be more efficient, overall it is proving to be more divisive than helpful. Many of my experiences with churches that used this approach were that a kind of Cliquishness, Group Think and Fortress Mentality were present. The result being that while they might have helped some, they also alienated and harmed others that did not fit their narrow, specialized and cliquish standards. In my book it says, "How can we still hang onto our segregated and specialized fortress philosophies in light of who Christ is and what He did on the cross? It is ironic that Jesus Christ died on the cross to break down the barriers between Jew and Gentile and the subgroups. Then the modern church creates all kinds of programs, philosophies and strategies that divide and segregate these groups again." (One Nation Under God, Individual).

This is also expounded on in my book 'One Nation Under God, Individual.' A local pastor/author wrote a book quite a while back about unleashing Christians and churches into different ministries. His explanation of this strategy was quite exciting to me until I read a particular chapter in his book. This chapter spoke of a house ministry that I was living in at the time. When I read this I could tell that this pastor/author must have been taking the word of the man that actually ran the ministry. When preaching one Sunday this pastor/author gave the location of the house ministry that was completely inaccurate. When he asked the alleged leader of this ministry to come up front and describe this ministry to the congregation, it was also clear that even this leader did not really know or want to know what was going on in his own outreach. He spoke of a particular woman as his best example, we will call her Mary. A friend and I that actually lived at this house looked at each other in unbelief while he shared how this woman had changed so dramatically.

The pastor/author has truly been a great inspiration to me over the years. However, there was a MAJOR and MISSING link to his unleashing philosophy that MUST be addressed. It is the issue of accountability and communication and the interrelation of ministries. We are NOT Just talking about accountability to God and to the Leaders but the accountability of these leaders as well. How can these leaders expect anything but confusion and rebellion if they do not teach accountability and communication through example. The reason this pastor/author and the leader/loose cannon of this particular ministry did not want to talk too much about accountability is probably that they would then have to lead by example. The leader of this house ministry would come back from his coffeehouse/mission with whatever woman chose to help him for that night and would minister ALONE with some of these unstable women from the house until the wee hours of the morning. This prodigal coffehouse in the eighties was often run very loosely and in fact was chaotic. This leader would also bring girls into the back and 'minister' to them there. This showed me that accountability was not in his so called strategy and avoiding the appearance of evil was not too important to him either. Most of the marriages of the folks living in the house mentioned above ended in divorce. This house rather than being a center of a new beginning/Genesis was an end and should have been called Revelation Center.

The pastor/author he was allegedly accountable to was anything but Frank with his congregation until he was exposed several years later for having an adulterous affair with a woman for eight years and was defrocked with his picture and sad story in a local Christian Newspaper. This also in my opinion demonstrates an inherent weakness in segregated and specialized parachurch ministry. If a leader is not able or willing to actively and consistently encourage and insist on cross communication, interrelation and accountability from those he sends out into all these separate ministries, and is not willing to lead by example he can expect more confusion and alienation than he can fruit.

"For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (2 Timothy 3ff)

This Leader/loose Cannon decided to specialize and make this house, a ministry for only women in the end. The house ended in disaster, with women beating each other up.

Some of these women felt that this leader wasn't giving them as much attention as the others.

Then there are many Christians simply have missed the point concerning ministry.

Other Side Ministries

In the story about the Good Samaritan, the Priest and Levite pass by on the OTHER SIDE when they see a man beaten and laying by the road. Who knows where they were headed. They could have been going to their particular target ministry or it could have been after ministry hours.

The Specialist:

This approach can be even worse than the Priest and Levite approach. In the priest and Levite approach they pass by on the other side. In the Specialized approach the Christian runs roughshod over the wounded and hurting man on the way to his officially specialized ministry at church across town. This is missing the tree for the forest across town.