The Intentional Church: Moving from Church Success to Community Transformation

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Introduction

WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO BE TRULY SUCCESSFUL?

You have picked up this book for reasons that are unknown to me. You may be looking for something that will energize your ministry. How many times have we looked for some fresh idea that might truly help us have greater success? Often our experience falls short of the success that others have experienced and we move to the next new program or product.

It is natural to want our ministries to succeed. However, as I have engaged in conversations with pastors and leaders in the church, I am struck with how many of them are weary from pursuing bigger budgets, building bigger staffs, and building bigger congregations. Certainly achieving these things reflects success to some degree, but I wonder if you are where I am—wondering whether these things measure the kind of success that truly transforms people, communities, or the world.

As I was growing up, my only experience with church was with those that played it safe and stayed away from controversy. These churches did not think in the realm of success or failure because they rarely strayed outside of their comfort zones. They did not expect much from the people within their fellowship beyond their own ministries within the church. I had never known a pastor I could admire as a man’s man. Indeed if I had met such a leader, I would have seriously questioned why he would give himself to such a feeble cause.

I have come to describe such churches as precautionary. That’s a word we don’t hear very often; it’s the adjective for the word precaution and means taking necessary measure against possible danger, harm or failure. Such bodies are lifeless, powerless, visionless … defeated.

But Jesus wants so much more for His church!

Eventually His Son proved more attractive to me than His would-be representatives in my early life, and I became a follower of Christ. Early in my spiritual pilgrimage as a new believer, I was introduced to churches that shattered my previous image of the bride of Christ. And I fell in love with God’s church.

In those churches I met people who saw themselves, not as a make-no-waves service organization, but as a wartime army engaged in battle. Within their often-ordinary lives they displayed a remarkable sense of purpose. They were serious about their faith—but not self-righteous. They were comfortable with spiritual warfare terminology—without casting themselves as heroes for Christ. Their singular passion was to follow the Lord. Their attitude was contagious! I wanted to be like them, lead like them, serve like them. In those early years these leaders modeled the value of having big visions, hard visions, and noble visions. I have seen our people at Perimeter respond time and time again to visions that other churches would have dismissed as just too big.

Originally published as The Prevailing Church, The Intentional Church has been updated to provide examples of how applying these principles has led to significant changes at Perimeter.

I have chosen to wait beyond my first quarter-century of pastoring a church before writing on this subject. The passage of time allows me to assess the effectiveness of rightly understanding and implementing the principles that I describe in this book. However, as I write I am somewhat tentative—not because I don’t feel strongly about these principles, but rather because I do feel so strongly.

Some of my tentativeness comes as I realize that much of what I say describes my individual experience and may not easily apply universally. I also know that some of what you will read in these pages will be misunderstood even though it represents what I believe to be an accurate description of biblical principles. It also breaks many long-accepted and seldom-questioned rules about God’s design for the church. I am convinced that the principles of the transformational church run contrary to the current measures of success such as attendance, budget, and staff size.

In writing this, I also live with the realization that some of what I am writing about will have changed by the time you read this. I tell you these things at the outset because although our church has thought long and hard about structure and design, in the final analysis so much of what we do is organic in nature. Our church grows, ages, changes, learns, adapts, and continually seeks to become more like what her Lord intends her to be. Yes, many of the details will have changed by the time you read these words, but the core will remain. The principles you are about to consider in these pages will look different when you begin to apply them in your church and in the community that God has called you to serve.

So it is with much humility that I share with you the story of my particular corner of God’s church, Perimeter Church in Atlanta, Georgia. We have learned some things in our journey as a fellowship that I believe might be helpful. You should not think of Perimeter as some model superchurch. I love Perimeter Church as none other, but like a parent with his or her children, I know better than anyone the flaws that exist.

Were you to move to Atlanta and join Perimeter, I would hope and expect that you would love her too. But only then would you see how flawed the ministry is, and how many opportunities we have to beautify this portion of Christ’s bride. I suppose that those opportunities are a big part of what has kept me pastoring this church these many years. Any success we have is due to being an intentional church, with a ministry plan adopted after much prayer, discussion, and significantly, the leading of the Holy Spirit.

It is not my desire to replicate little Perimeter-like churches all over the country. However, I would love to see God raise up churches all around the world who confidently understand God’s calling for their fellowship, declaring that they will not be precautionary. They choose instead to become churches influencing those parts of the world in which they serve.

If you share with me this sense of excitement about being involved in the unique ministry that God has designed for your church, let me encourage you to press on with determination and urgency. My desire for you is that you will become an intentional church that increases in influence. I must warn you, however, that as we begin this journey together the path will seem deceptively easy, and you will be tempted to underestimate the impact that these simple principles can have in your church. But I make this promise to you. If you diligently work through each of these principles with your leadership team, you will experience a transformation that will allow you to take your ministry to a new place, a place of transformational influence.

We must rethink success and not be too quick to accept the definitions employed by so many today. Wherever you are, whatever you are seeking for your church, I invite you to explore with me a vision of becoming a church that can be used to transform the lives of your people, your surrounding community, and even the world, for the glory of God.

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WHAT JESUS WANTS FROM HIS CHURCH

Imagine you have just moved into a new community and are looking for a church home. You ask around, call around, and drive around; you let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages—and the clicking through the Internet. You know that you will likely visit several churches before finding one that seems to fit. What single descriptive term would you choose to best describe your ideal church community?

Biblically and doctrinally sound? Vibrant and worshipful? Warm and caring? Growing and dynamic? Family oriented?

Or you may be a church leader, whether lay or professional, wrestling with a vision for your church. You’ve been to the conferences and read the literature. Purpose-driven … seeker-sensitive … postmodern … emergent … you’ve heard them all. And what you really long for is a church that matters, a church that influences and impacts her people and her community for the glory of God and His kingdom.

You long for a transformational church.

This is the church Jesus had in mind: a place where God’s power is demonstrated with such force in its people that the community it serves is marked with an indelible spiritual imprint, transforming the lives of worshipers and those whom they contact.

BUT WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?

The transformational church owes its vision to the words of its leader more than two thousand years ago. Jesus had taken His small band of followers into the district known as Caesarea Philippi. Perhaps while looking at the various shrines built on the nearby hillside to honor man-made gods, Jesus began to talk about public opinion. He may have first pointed to some of those idols and asked, What do people really think about these gods? That question would have certainly set the stage for what followed.

We join the discussion in time to hear Jesus ask the disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is? (Matthew 16:13). Interestingly, every name the men threw out was someone returned from the dead: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets (v. 14).

But Jesus was unconcerned with the buzz going around about His origins. He had no intention of building His church and ultimately conquering the world for His kingdom’s sake through ill-informed crowds. He would carry out His mission through men and women just like these twelve followers.

So Jesus served up the significant question: But who do you say that I am? (v. 15). Peter, the unofficial and self-appointed leader of the disciples, was quick, as usual, to respond: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God (v. 16). His impulsive exclamation could not have been more precise!

Jesus let Peter know how blessed he was to be so accurate, making sure he also knew that only God the Father deserved the credit for giving him such insight and understanding (v. 17). Peter was probably nodding his head in agreement when Jesus said something that caught him completely off guard: I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower [or prevail against] it (v. 18).

THE BRIDE HUNKERS DOWN

Every church today, from manicured megachurch campus to ramshackle urban storefront, from those bodies that affirm a classically Reformed confession to fellowships that espouse a freewheeling, Spirit-led approach—every church today can trace her roots back to Jesus’ declaration. The confession itself, those making the confession, and the Christ of that confession are all elements of a church that will be so potent that the gates of hades shall not prevail against it!

And yet … when we look at the church today, when we look around at our culture, we wonder. Who’s prevailing against what? What evidence of transformation in the lives of our people and our communities do we see as a result of the church?

Recently the West paused to pay tribute to the tens of thousands of young men who swarmed ashore at Omaha and Utah and Juno beaches in Normandy, France, more than sixty years ago. From farm and city, from factory and office and classroom, these citizen-soldiers trained and drilled and were equipped with the discipline—and the weapons—to become the most formidable invading force the world had ever seen. It would not be an exaggeration to say that their mission was to save that world from the advancing darkness of Nazism. And to do that, the Allies launched an offensive. They did not hole up on England’s south coast under enemy siege.

Neither does the church that Jesus described. He foresaw His church attacking and laying siege to Satan’s stronghold, much as an enemy battering ram assaults the gates protecting a city. He promised that He and His church would eventually breach the gates of hell itself.

So why is it that our teaching about the reality of spiritual warfare too often pictures the church hunkered down in a defensive posture rather than an army in full counterattack mode? As long as we accept that image of embattlement, we allow Satan to keep the gates of hades wide open and in full operation in this world!

We don’t have to go far to see the signs of those open gates—from same-sex marriages and anti-Christian bias in our schools and universities to the thousands of lives lost to abortion every year and the tolerance of divorce within our own fellowships. But the Enemy’s power has not increased; Christ’s church has simply failed to take her role seriously. Believers have left the field of battle in droves. Once we sang, with muscular confidence, Am I a Soldier of the Cross?, Lead On, O King Eternal, and Onward Christian Soldiers. Now we shrink from imposing our values on others. Live and let live. We have become precautionary rather than prevailing.

NO MORE CHURCH IN A BOX

In the last few years I have heard from a growing number of church leaders who are confused by and disillusioned with the proliferation of church in a box models that don’t transfer to their particular setting and culture, no matter how hard they try. Let me both warn and encourage you: The transformational church is neither a package nor a model. Instead of being a mold, she often breaks molds. The transformational church vision has more to do with the workmanship Jesus Christ wants to accomplish with His church in a specific place—that is, your church in your community with your people. Every transformational church is an original.

Yes, there are common underlying patterns and consistent structural elements in a church that is transformational. I expect that the church you call your spiritual home already exhibits many of these elements. Even more important, however, are intention and direction—so that a leadership team continually asks: Are we consciously seeking to be a transforming church?

So how do you assess your church? Let’s go back to Jesus and the Twelve at Caesarea Philippi. Here we find Christ’s desires for a intentional, transformational church.

THE TRANSFORMING CHURCH: LIVING OUT THE CONFESSION THAT CHRIST IS LORD

First, the transforming church is composed of people who live out the confession that Christ is Lord. It should come as no surprise that Jesus continued in the same context and setting of Peter’s confession and His own self-revelation by introducing the requirements for being His disciple. In Matthew 16:24–25 (NASB 1977), we read: Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it.’

The standards upon which Jesus decided to build His church have never had any room for selective obedience. But you wouldn’t arrive at that conclusion looking at many Christians today. A professing follower of Christ is asked if he steals. Absolutely not. When asked, Why? his response is, I’m a Christian, and God says not to steal. He is then asked, Have you ever taken someone’s life? Once again, for the same reason he says, Never. But when asked, as a single thirty-year-old, if he observes sexual abstinence, his response is often a slow and sheepish, Well, I guess not as much as I should.

Does God’s Word equally forbid sexual promiscuity as it does stealing or murder? Absolutely, but today it seems to be in vogue among many Christians to observe a mutated form of Christianity whose central belief turns out to be what I call selective obedience.

I fully realize that such specific challenges are often met with the concern that Christians must not be legalistic. We are certainly not to select a list of standards we can use to point out the flaws in other Christians’ lives. My response to the concern over legalism is to point out that our alternative has almost eliminated our capacity to clearly represent Christ in the world. Whether we look at divorce statistics or other behavioral factors, those who claim to be Christians are looking more and more like the world instead of being salt or light. Yes, Christians fail. But I have far more hope for the effectiveness of a Christian who fails while genuinely trying to be wholeheartedly obedient to Christ than for the Christian who selects a few ways in which he or she will exhibit obedience (and often ends up failing at even those). Christianity with low or no expectations is the Christianity of the precautionary church.

Such thinking was certainly not part of our Lord’s prescription for the believers who would constitute the transforming church. He fully and clearly expected His followers to be people who would deny themselves and take up their cross (die to their own desires and pleasures) and follow Him (His example and the teaching of His written Word; see Luke 9:23). That is why Jesus elsewhere (Luke 14:25–35) actually discouraged eager people from becoming disciples until they had seriously counted the cost that would be involved in following Him!

One of the central roles of the church is to be a safe home (the other being an effective mission) where the people of God are equipped with an understanding of God’s design and plans for our lives. It is in this safe home environment of the church that our people are provided with the following:

Vital worship that demonstrates the presence and power of God

True fellowship founded in significant and meaningful relationships

Biblical instruction and discipleship training grounded in biblical theology

Pastoral care and shepherding directed toward the needs of the whole person

Equipping and empowering to do the work of ministry

So the first characteristic of the transformational church is that it is composed of people who are equipped in a safe home to faithfully live out their confession that Christ is Lord, particularly in the areas of obedience that may be under assault at any moment in history. To this first descriptive statement we must add further clarifying statements.

THE TRANSFORMING CHURCH: LIVING OUT THE CONFESSION WITHIN THE SHADOWS OF HADES

Second, the transforming church is composed of people who live out their confession within the shadows of the gates of hades. Jesus lived among people chaffing under Roman occupation. Jesus continually pointed out that His purposes, though falling into the category of warfare, had little or nothing to do with the Roman powers. People expected the Messiah to overthrow the current earthly enemy; Jesus intended to defeat their spiritual foe. The Jews wanted to prevail against Rome; Jesus wanted His followers to prevail against the gates of hades.

In ancient Eastern cultures, the meeting place for the community’s authority or ruling body was often at the front gates of the city. Long before city halls, there were city gates. These gates were much more than passages. They represented access, safety, defense, and vulnerability. A fortified city was only as strong as its gates. The term hades means literally not to see. It refers to the unseen, or spiritual world. When Jesus used the phrase gates of Hades in Matthew 16:18, He was describing the spiritual stronghold from which Satan and his legions storm out into the world with the assignment and intention of deceiving the lost, destroying the witness of the church, and controlling society.

HOW THE CHURCH SEES HERSELF AFFECTS HOW SHE ACTS IN THE WORLD

Notice, however, the picture Jesus actually presented in His statement. The gates are a fixed place. They withstand or splinter under the pounding of the battering ram. Jesus was describing a city under assault. He foresaw His church attacking and laying siege to Satan’s stronghold. He promised that He and His church would eventually breach the gates of hades. So why is it that our teaching about the reality of spiritual warfare too often pictures the church under siege rather than the church arrayed and battering down the defenses of Satan? Why do we see ourselves in a defensive posture, holding out under attack rather than an army in full counterattack mode?

As long as we accept that precarious, hunkered-down-behind-the-walls description of the church, we allow Satan to keep the gates of hades wide open and in full operation in this world!

Mental imagery makes a difference. How the church sees herself affects how she acts