In successful city churches, people
share common vision, UMs told

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A former director for the Office of Urban Advance for World Vision International, Linthicum said he had visited hundreds of effective and troubled congregations all over the nation in the years he’s worked in urban transformations.
“Many of the most effective and successful congregations were churches that didn’t seem to have much going for them,” Linthicum said. “I soon began to discover that success had nothing to do with the quality of the building, the centrality of the location or the training or articulateness of the pastor.”
In every successful church he visited, Linthicum said, pastors could tell him the church’s ultimate mission. What struck him, though, was that the people at Sunday worship services, those standing around in the Narthex or gathering for coffee, could tell him, too.
“They would respond with the same articulation of mission, the primary mission focus of the church,” Linthicum said. “The reason they could do that is they were all involved in determining that mission focus. It was not the vision of the pastor or the leadership. It was the vision of the entire congregation.
“Rather than the church trying to do all things equally well and trying to be all things to all people, each effective congregation concentrated on a single primary mission focus.”
Successful congregations reached beyond their walls as well, he said.
Churches defined outreach differently, Linthicum said. Some said it meant each member sharing faith and focusing on evangelism. Others understood it as working for social justice, providing social services or transforming the surrounding city.
“The effective urban churches saw their church as existing not for itself but for the world,” he said. “That was their perceived reason for existence.”
Perhaps most important of all, Linthicum said, was that effective churches had devised concrete, specific strategies to discover church members’ gifts and empower them to “carry out a unique and particular ministry.”
“The primary task of the church is to enable its members to discover and live into that ministry to which God has called each one of them,” Linthicum said. “All that laypeople want is the…sure and certain call of God upon their lives.”
Linthicum began his talk with a story about a church that had turned its focus drastically inward to try to preserve its life. Its actions destroyed the congregation further.
He pointed to Jesus’ famous statement about those who lose their lives for his sake saving them but those who tried to save their lives losing them. Linthicum said Jesus’ statement applies to the church today.
“(Jesus) was saying something very profound about the body of Christ,” Linthicum said. “If the church is caught up in trying to preserve an institution, if all its energies are invested in trying to preserve itself, then preservation and continuance is exactly what is going to slip out of its grasp.
“This is simply the way life is. If you really want to preserve the church, the way you preserve your church is not to preserve it. Instead, give your church’s life away in service to the world.”
Linthicum said the story of the church that turned inward had a happy ending—because the church stopped trying to preserve what it had been for 50 years.
He said he believes that’s the way to preserve a church.
“When your congregation centers itself on loosening the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free, breaking every yoke,” he said, “when your congregation becomes repairer of the breach and restorer of the streets, then God will act to make your congregation like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail.
“And the Lord will guide your congregation continually, satisfy your people’s needs in parched places and make your church’s bones strong. For it is in losing yourself and your church in compassionate outreach and commitment to justice in your city that you will find your life and your congregation’s life made secure.
“How can I say that with such assurance? Because, my brothers and sisters, that is the word of the Lord.”
Holy Boldness Urban Ministry Academy is sponsored by the Office of New Church Development and Transformation. The two-year academy’s second session is scheduled for Jan. 18-20 at Travis Park. Additional classes are scheduled for March 28-30, fall 2008 and spring 2009.