Forward
By
Dr. Roger Parrott, Ph.D.
President, Belhaven University
Former Chair, Forum for World Evangelization
Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization
Buckle
your seatbelt and hang on for a daring ride if you’re
going to study this Church growth curriculum by Dr. Wallace Henley.
You
won’t want to go into this evaluation lightly, because
Dr. Henley challenges us with the hard Truth of where the Church
in America is missing our calling – but also, comes with concrete
answers for returning to a biblical foundation of the Church’s
role.
What
I like most about Wallace, is that not only is he wise and insightful,
but he’s practical and proven. He is practicing what he preaches,
and God has honored his ministry.
As
you work through this curriculum you’ll see how the Church
has drifted away from our calling. Unfortunately, we tend to
follow the patterns of business, entertainment, and the political
world,
and then justify our actions with a spiritual tone. No wonder
the American Church is having so little impact, while in contrast
humble
gatherings of Christians in developing world churches are billowing
centers of transformation.
In
every turn of this study you’ll be challenged and find startling
insights. But section 4 alone is worth effort you’ll put into
this study, digging into foundational issues to examine the American
Church in a fresh light. “Transformation versus Revolution” is
just one of the core issues Dr. Henley addresses head on, challenging
to stop being “puppets for transitory, provincial political
movements rather than transformational agents of the Kingdom of God.” If
we took only this one step, we would see the American Church
take a gigantic step in returning to its place being used
by God to transform
the lives of families rather than, most often, being seen
as the political tail on the conservative dog.
We
have set the wrong measure of success for the Church, and Wallace
is grounding us again. Success in the Church
is not
measured on
an earthly scorecard, but in the realm of eternity. But
that is not
easy to do – and why we need this guiding curriculum.
At
one of my milestone moments as a University president I had to
fight hard to resist the temptation to create
a “score-card” for
the past years as is expected by those in my arena. It was one of
those anniversary years when presidents produce a magazine to showing
the alumni graphs of measureable higher education success. But I
didn’t do it because enrollment and endowments are not how
God measures success – He cares about lasting transformation.
I’m convinced that the Church has been duped into fostering
a generation of leaders, board members, employees, and constituencies
who value short-term gain over lasting transformation. Ministry leaders
believe it and act accordingly—hiring and rewarding
people who can promote Band-Aid fixes as monumental
solutions, creating
plans that promise the moon and always come up short,
raising funds from unrealistically compressed donor
relationships, and touting
to boards and constituencies those results that can
most easily be measured and applauded.
As
the apostle Paul challenged us in I Corinthians 13, it is time
to put away childish things in Christian
leadership
and
not be
wooed by the immediacy of appearing productive by
making meaningless sounds
like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. Rather than
our noisy
quarterly reports (or even milestone-year graphs),
our standard for how we
measure success as the Church, needs to be built
on enduring transformation.
This
curriculum from Dr. Henley will challenge you to reevaluate how
you measure success – and a whole bunch of other issues.
And using God’s plan, he will guide you back
to a biblical model of the Church that is wonderfully
freeing.
This
study asks the big tough questions, and from those issues, builds
a biblical pattern for the
Church. It
also reveals
the stark and
sometime ugly reality of how we’re missing it in the American
Church today. Wallace doesn’t leave us
in turmoil, but offers the hope of what the Church
can do when we are unshakable in our
God-given calling.
Pastors
and church leaders will not be the same after this study! I guarantee
it.