Life Groups: Resource Management
January 29th, 2010 by David Dansker
Members Recast: Judas Iscariots and No-Talents
Most Life Groups are not Christian fellowships. They are groups of people managed for their resources by church leadership teams. The unsaved are often encouraged to join these groups where salvation is secondary, if it is that high on the list at all. The membership drives are conducted for any and all so long as they’ll be manageable for resources. That is the impetus behind community outreach projects, and the reason an emphasis is on the surrounding community instead of focusing on the body of Christ, the Church, as a separate entity. That sort of divisiveness would preclude growth as defined in corporate business models.
The upcoming Radicalis conference scheduled to take place at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, February 9-12, will include speakers Rick Warren, his ministry team, and what is shaping up to be a line-up of, well, the usual suspects for apostasy. One headliner is Brad Powell, Senior Pastor, Northridge Church. Powell is slated to discuss his process of successfully transitioning congregations “from static to dynamic,” and to go from “irrelevance to relevance.”1 It is important to understand that in the nomenclature of compromise the term irrelevance means small, but faithful congregation; and the term relevance means applying marketing schemes to attract more dues-paying customers by employing sensual lures in the areas of church lighting, music, and entertainment.