A Lot Less Church

Many of you know of or have read John Maxwell's books on leadership. He's a best-selling business and leadership author and runs an organization called Injoy that produces resources and does a lot of conferences, including the cutting edge Catalyst Conference for emerging young leaders and Maximum Impact conferences for business leaders. Rev! magazine this month has an interview with Maxwell who was a pastor for many years.

Rev!: What would you do differently if you were starting over today?

Maxwell: I'd have a lot less church; I'd have less programs; I'd have less services [I'm pretty certain he means extra services like Sunday night and Wednesday night]. I'd have a lot less of everything.

Rev!: Why?

Maxwell: ...If I'd have it over to do again, I'd have people doing a lot more ministry outside the church, in their workplace or in their community or in their volunteer organizations. I'd find out where they had the greatest influence and make their ministry where their greatest influence was, not confine it to a church. Huge mistake I made. And I didn't see it until I was out, but I was too inward. I had a lot of high-capacity people who were probably never "salt and light" like they could have been. I'd change that immediately if I went back to the the local church. I'd be much more into how we influenced the community and a lot less into "How can I get everybody on board with my church and my program?"

Abosolutes versus Absolutism

In his new book Lies that God Unchallenged in Popular Culture, Charles Colson calls attention to a distinction between absolutes and absolutism made by Art Lindsay of the C.S. Lewis Institute. Absolutism weaves in bigotry, arrogance, and close-mindedness. Christians can stand for absolutes without succumbing to absolutism. Christians also need to learn to speak about truth in ways that help others see the difference. Colson notes that we need to model the demeanor of Jesus who embodied absolute truth without becoming an absolutist.

Colson notes that those who argue that everything is relative (they argue it, but I don't think anyone really believes it) are often absolutists about it. I'm not sure that pointing that out to most of them usually advances any discussions, but it is extremely ironic, even frustrating at times.

You can read an free, extensive summary of this and many other books at Christian Book Summaries. You can also sign up for email updates of new summaries at that same site.