Deja Vu

I have not yet commented on the mini-retreat that I participated in at GCR last week. Most likely, I will not say too much. Most of the folks there will be processing it for quite a while. It was not the meeting many expected it to be.

Golf Course Road has hired Kevin Callahan of Callahan Studios to remodel their worship center. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Kevin does not approach a "re-dux" in the way most architectural firms do. He and his team like to learn all about the church culture before they make suggestions about remodeling.

But in that process, Kevin and his team challenge the church leaders as to what they really believe and why they believe that. I knew going in that this was going to be very different. One of the people on the creative team was Sally Morgenthaler. Sally wrote a ground shaking book in the late 90's entitled Worship Evangelism and she has become a dominant voice in the emerging church movement. I am fairly sure GCR had no idea who was coming to challenge them.

And boy howdy did she ever challenge them. 80% of the first day of talking consisted of Sally asking questions. She probed deeply into what GCR was about, what they wanted to be, what was holding them back, and what it would take to go to the next step. Most of the folks left that meeting in what I would call a mild state of shock.

I titled this entry "Deja Vu" because this vein of talking seemed so familiar. This is exactly what our church, Christ Family Fellowship, has been through over the past two years. We have challenged everything we do as to the reason behind it and the justification for continuing it. It was a highly painful process, one that resulted in many friends walking away. One that also resulted in a church comprised of 70% new believers.

It took us several years to work through these issues. Sally opened it all up in the space of 8 hours. No wonder they were in shock.

I'll tell you more about the meeting as time passes and the GCR leadership catches their collective breath.