Church Turned Inside Out

In their purposeful, insightful, and empowering book, Linda Bergquist and Allan Karr have given the call to church leaders to begin to craft a church that is designed, not programmed.

Bergquist and Karr, using the ideas of "designers, refiners, and re-aligners" flip church planning on its head and begin to discern how a church can be designed as a beautiful communitas and not programmed for maximum market potential as churches usually are.

Mission is the orientation of church growth, and Bergquist and Karr desire that church growth be seen, to take economic terminology, not as product but as throughput: that is, the church should not just produce "something" (whatever your church decides that something is).  Instead, the church, when designed inside out, permeates its whole locale and culture for the kingdom.  They write,

"Mission" in Western civilization needs to assume a posture of responsibility toward future generations.  This is a new idea for Christians, to ask ourselves how our present actions, activities, and decisions may affect future generations of Christians.  The word for this is "sustainability."  Consider  these words attributed to Aristotle: "A barbaric culture consumes all of its resources for the present; Whereas a civilized culture preserves them for later generations." What then, are the resources that the Church is consuming?

And follow with their desire for the future of church growth:

We need to imagine and take responsibility for stewarding our shared future, remembering that our own interwoven beauty pays tribut to God’s handiwork and not our own.

I recommend this book to all who desire to be in lay or paid leadership within the church, that we may all begin to dream what the design of our local church will be, and have the courage tochange it when necessary.

Church Turned Inside Out: A Guide for Designers, Refiners, and Re-Aligners
Linda Bergquist and Allan Karr
Jossey-Bass
$16.47 (Amazon)