The important thing is that we do talk. If we have much to discuss then that is a good thing that we should not shy away from..but engage.

Yes. Lets look at the results. Its see if the current direction of churches is what God wants or not. I’m very interested to look at the results.

What is this New Reformation of the Church? Is it fundamentalism movement? Lets keep in mind throughout the ages there have always been leaders, authors, and speakers that speak out against the church. This is nothing new. I wonder if this time they have anything valid to say and any practical solutions to offer. Please…do share abut the New Reformation of the Church.

Cornerstone is a mega-church. You reffered to it as seperate from a mega church, but it is a mega church that I think is being wiser with its resources.

I see your points about the building, I disagree, but it’s too much to discuss.

Your last question:
I am looking for another church to attend.

I don’t hate church, or mega church, or 12Stone. I don’t blame church for being the way it is. But, because it is this way and there is tons of momentum in the traditional direction, people have a hard time seeing outside of the current paradigm – it’s the water the fish is swimming in – but I believe that a sincere look at the texts, a look at our culture and the outsiders, a look at the insides of church staff and decision making, a look at “results” will show that the current direction is not what God intends and is not working awesomely – as many authors, leaders and speakers are now pointing out.

I point with them in the New Reformation of the Church.

It’s too large to respond to, however. I think we disagree on some stuff. I would love to talk about some things individually, sorry for my previously large responses.

I wish there were an easier way to discuss this.

Cornerstone seems to be doing wonderful. Helping the poor/widows, and engaging the community. Yet, why aren’t we recognizing that mega-churches do the same thing? Why don’t we recognize what mega-churches have and are doing for their respective communities. Willow Creek, North Point, and 12Stone. Why can’t a mega-church have just as much influence and influence than Cornerstone? There is no reason why they can’t, and it is our negative/narrow Christian perspective that limits what we can imagination.

Now more to the point. You said that Cornerstone strategy is to spend less on a “castle” and make their space more inviting to a community. Cornerstone decides to make a “castle” horizontal (park) as opposed to vertical (building). A building can just be as inviting as a park. As you said its a matter of strategy and a park may work better in some areas as opposed to a building and vice versa. For instance what if there is already two parks in the surrounding area?

The meat of your argument to me seems to rest on the assumption that the more one gives their money away the better they are helping the poor/needy/widow. Yet, is it not possible that a church like Widow Creek (30,000 attendants) should be able to give more money and support programs that support the needy/poor? Why is it we automatically assume that if a church does not immediately give a lot of money to the poor that it is not actually helping them. In fact, mega-churches have the unique ability to raise millions of dollars that less size churches can. They can support a lot more groups and organizations with the money they raise. How? Because they can support and host more people. Simple economics.

Now I understand Paul and your concern. I understand that a mega-church has a lot of power and influence and a mega-church could mis-managed their resources and not do what God called them to. But no more than any church could. Cornerstone could easily become prideful and boast how much money they are giving away, or decide to mis-manged their funds as well. Again this only shows that we have a natural basis/fear against large churches and that somehow smaller is more biblical.

As to your criticism of the strategy I will attend to them briefly.

1) Mega-churches spend more not less on helping the poor and needy. Its the mega-churches that hosts/sponsors the events that help the poor and needy. Its the MEGA in mega-church that allows that church to gather the people necessary to raise the money.
2) Non-Christians are not turned off by church because we don’t help the needy. In fact I have not met one person who criticized the church for not helping the poor around the world. The facts simply won’t allow it. What the Church does get criticized for is being judgmental and hating homosexuals. That is not a mega-church problem but a CHURCH problem. All churches.
3) What is this slick presentation? Taking the time to incorporate lights, music, power point, video is how presentations are done now in this age. In fact, it shows how much dedication and skill one is willing to invest. Again, we have a natural basis against using technology (and using it well). Granted not everything rests on the preacher but preaching a sermon is an effective way of saving people. I mean asks your friends how they were saved. How were you saved?
4) A castle does attract people. That is what one of the functions of a castle. A castle is a safe house for people. It symbolizes protection, warmth, and home. Could it be that the building is used infrequently through the week because people are meeting in homes? Or maybe the members are at a soup kitchen or hanging out with the elderly. The very thing that you ask for!!!! After all a Christian is supposed to be living their life outside of the church not only on Sundays. So what if the church isn’t filled every day of the week. Does that make it wrong? Lets not forget the staff work there throughout the week.

Maybe Cornerstone wont be criticized about not helping the poor. Maybe they can do this without having a building. But Cornerstone can still be criticized for not doing enough. I mean seriously… how well does a park really serve the poor and widows? Couldn’t building homes for these people and building their church around these people make more sense?

I would encourage you to look at finances of actual mega churches (12Stone) and investigate how much money actually goes to help people. Actually goes towards food banks and widow care. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

By the way. Why is it that you continue to go to a mega-church? Why haven’t you found a church that is actually doing what you want it to do? If a mega-churches necessarily miss manage their resources why do you continue to attend?

Neither of us suggest that people need to build parks, that’s pretty ridiculous – rather it’s a mindset or priority.

Regarding the park – perhaps it’s not the least expensive thing they could do, but I think you don’t understand that they’re using it to engage their community – they’re getting people to interact with the church, in a positive way. The cost is relatively low for the ROI of 1) giving to the community in a tangible way 2) loving on them, and sending positive vibes for Jesus.

Cornerstone is doing other things to help orphans and widows as well. They’re building offices for Feed the Hungry or something like that, on their property, plus they give like 50% of their income to an organization to help children in Africa or something.

This, to me, is a huge difference from a mono-lithic mega church that is like a castle, with moat, that sits mostly dormant on the week days. It’s not really engaging outsiders, except perhaps on Sundays. Cornerstone’s strategy is to spend less on the castle, and making their space more inviting to the community, and spending more on helping others.

I guess it’s really about the balance between how much to spend on your show and programs vs how much to spend outward on helping people.

It’s a strategy difference. The strategy for spending on the building is this: make an awesome building, excellent music, lights, fog machine, screens, visuals = more non-Christians coming = more ppl getting saved.

I’d argue that this strategy is flawed – in a several ways.
1) God told us to take care of the orphans and widows and etc, and when we spend more on the show, we spend less on helping which isn’t what God said to do.
2) when we don’t help the needy – that’s a turn-off to outsiders, we are super criticized (and rightly so) for not caring about people and not doing much to help those in need, even though we do do it, just not as much as we could
3) outsiders don’t like the slick presentation, nowadays – they distrust it. Perhaps not all outsiders. But it’s not as effective at winning ppl to Christ as the authentic presentation – of course we may disagree on this.
4) the castle with the moat doesn’t engage outsiders. 12Stone building is used pathetically little during the week – I know b/c I’m there. I have a meeting there on Tues, and Thurs. And used to do Mon. – basically no one else is there. And two of these meetings could be done in a home – Tues is switching back to a home b/c it’s better.

But Cornerstone will be used a ton during the week. And non-Christians, people who dislike church, will begin to engage the church on their terms, not have to sit in a concert singing worshippy stuff that they despise. And the outsiders won’t be able to criticize the church as hypocrites b/c they’re helping others so much. Whereas outsiders can legitimately claim that a lot of mega churches don’t care about the poor or people, because they don’t really help them that much.

I agree that a church message to a community should be “we’re crazy”. I mean why on earth would people come together and give their first and finest to a God they can not see or hear (audible). Why spend millions of dollars for the sake of the people that are not in the church. The church is the only place where as soon as you join it, it is not about you. Its about the people who are not insiders, built by people who are insiders. With that being said, I have said before that we have a natural basis for mega-churches and big buildings, and we tend to favor “smaller buildings” because it looks more biblical (which as I have said people mean this to say correct). We go to such extremes that we often discredit large churches because they “strip ourselves of the truth”.

In reality, spending money on something is a risk. Its a risk because it does not guarantee any outcome. Whether you decide to spend 5, 10, 20, 50 million on something that is a lot of money. To determine how much money depends on many factors. Size of the surrounding population, God vision, outreach, number of members, expected members, technology, etc. Again I think what Cornerstone is doing is cool. Good for them for honoring their specific God lead. Other churches who decide to build mega-churches may very well be honoring God leads. Good for them. I think it would be helpful for you to allow the possibility that perhaps building a mega-church could in fact take better care of the poor/widow/gentile then a “cheaper” solution could. That perhaps it would be reckless not to build a mega-church. I think if you opened your view just a little bit you might be willing to grant that the size of a building is not of really important, and to de-spiritualize church buildings.

By the way there are instances of God siding with the Gentiles and Egyptians over the Jews. Why? Because their hospitality was greater then the Jews. I say this to say that what we expect to find is sometimes not at all what we thought. I think mega-churches would surprise you. In their impact in their communities and their stewardship of resources.

I really appreciate your second question a lot. I feel the exact same way. I mean as I mentioned, I worked in the community creating business for years (in many ways I still do). I also feel the programmatic small group model is far from satisfactory. The word ‘community’ has been thrown around so much it doesn’t really mean anything. I use it all the time and i hate it, but I’m not creative enough to make up another word to communicate the same thing. But, in direct answer to your question is community all it’s cracked up to be? In a word, ‘yes’. Community is the gospel; it is Jesus coming down in human form and entering into personal relationships with humanity. This is a piece of the good news not quite as important as the cross, perhaps, but so wonderfully important we do a disservice to Gospel when we leave it out. When we do lives as though the God of the universe is creating a Bride for his son, and this bride is this nation of people from the ends of the earth who form his church, we miss the point of the redemptive process. Jesus took community very seriously. John 13:35 “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you love one another” He isn’t talking about love amongst strangers , but love in deep community. Or John 17:20-21 “I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.” Jesus is saying that if we have true ‘community’ with each other, people will believe He was sent by God. The implications to that are huge. So, yeah, if we mean community to be obedience to those two verses(and many others), then community is the solution to living a redeemed life. After all if the author and perfecter of our faith was this passionate about it, it must be important.