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Engel’s Strategy Classic: The Adaptive Strategy and the Local Church
By chris | February 12, 2008
From the 1975 classic “WHAT’S GONE WRONG WITH THE HARVEST” by James Engel
The Adaptive Strategy and the Local Church
We have now explored the implications of the Great Corn-mission in a twentieth-century world and have seen that a successful ministry of proclamation, persuasion, and cultivation requires careful spirit-led analysis, planning, strategy, and measurement. This will go far toward the objective of restoring the missing cutting blades. But one all-important consideration yet remains — will the Church be characterized by resistance to change or by renaissance?
There is no question that the Church is God’s only means for accomplishing His work on earth.’ Other organizations such as evangelistic movements, broadcasters, publishing agents, and mission societies are best considered “parachurch structures,” which exist alongside of and parallel to the community of God’s people. 2 Although they are helpful in carrying out its purposes, they are not the Church. There is nothing in their mandate that imparts a divine guarantee of permanent existence to them. In fact, one can make the case that these groups could diminish both in size and importance if they are succeeding in stimulating and assisting the Church in performing the functions that, by divine decree, belong solely to it.
Unfortunately, the church in most quarters today is in an effectiveness crisis. Of course, we acknowledge the many exceptions to this generalization, but this does not negate the fact that First Church of Rollingwood is all too typical of those churches that characterize themselves as evangelical. Churches in the liberal camp that deny the basic historic fundamentals of the Christian religion have deteriorated even further to the point of an effectiveness calamity. The 1974 Yearbook of Churches documents the slide of some of these close to oblivion.
Church history also reveals some sobering lessons. When the Church retrenches into a static policy of resistance to change, it becomes a mere empty shell. The exterior trappings may appear adequate, hut the interior vitality has long since expired. This, of course, is typical of a church in effectiveness crisis — going on, business as usual. But then a renaissance occurs — a breakthrough of the Holy Spirit, a new birth of relevance! All too often this new wine cannot be contained in the old wineskins and a new fellowship must be formed. At other times, the new life has infected the “empty” shell itself, reversed the effectiveness slide, and restored the body to its true function.
There is no point in talking about fulfillment of God’s mission if the Church is entombed in resistance. The answer does not lie in renewal of old forms, because that often is an attempt only to place band-aids on the exterior wounds of the old shell. The key is renaissance — a rebirth in the Body of Christ, locally and worldwide.
The key, we feel, lies in the discovery of the principles of New Testament church organization and function. The particular expression of these principles in the first century, however, should be viewed only as a historical record of those forms appropriate to that environment. It makes little sense to impose this cultural expression on the Church today, because that is just another form of program orientation. Fortunately, God has led many to search for these principles and to apply them creatively.
Topics: Engel's Strategy Classic |