Leader Perspective
Times change. Tools change.
I am a product of the 60s, that wild era when the world teetered on the edge; when we reached for the moon and left footprints on its surface; when the United States and Russia stared each other down with poised nuclear weapons across a ninety mile channel of water; a time when we reeled from the assassinations of our leaders: John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King; a decade when friends drew lots over who would be sent to the jungles of Vietnam. We listened to the Beatles, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel, Sonny & Cher.
We had different tools in those days. When I won a regional high school science fair award, I received a slide rule for a prize. Today slide rules are consigned to attics, basements or museums and only appear in trivia games (such as the Apollo 13 crew calculating re-entry problems). My teenage world was a world of payphones and phone booths, (convenient changing rooms for Superman). We were literal “shade tree mechanics” able to overhaul the engines in our 55 Chevys with a few wrenches, screwdrivers and pliers. The tools that worked in my youth are inadequate for today.
I became pastor of a small church in 1966. Once I learned the basic principles of Sunday School growth (Flake Formula – five laws for Sunday School growth) we were off and running. Baptist churches used the same bulletins, followed the same order of worship at the same time and sang the same songs from the same hymnal. Like slide rules, payphones and simple auto mechanics, the tools that work for the church in the twenty-first century have changed.
Today’s world is global. Every church is connected to the ends of the earth. Cities and neighborhoods are multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual. Contemporary is not this century, this decade, this year or last week. Contemporary is today. Change is not only constant, it is constantly accelerating.
The world in which the church is called to live out her relationship with Jesus Christ as His instrument for redemption and transformation requires new “contemporary” tools. Every church is different. Every church is unique. In this issue of The Insider, we introduce a few tools that churches are finding helpful to discover their kingdom uniqueness for strategic engagement. There are many more. If you would like more information on tools that could work for you in this changing world, contact our Activation Team at WorldconneX by writing or .
by Bill Tinsley