During a session titled "Dealing with Opposition," Mr. Clyde [a leader of Church Traditions, Inc., a Saddleback-affiliated ministry] recommended that the pastor speak to critical members, then help them leave if they don't stop objecting. Then when those congregants join a new church, Mr. Clyde instructed, pastors should call their new minister and suggest that the congregants be barred from any leadership role.I'm guessing these folks aren't big fans of David Wells' books.
"There are moments when you've got to play hardball," said the Rev. Dan Southerland, Church Transitions' president, in an interview. "You cannot transition a church...and placate every whiny Christian along the way."
Mr. Warren acknowledges that splits occur in congregations that adopt his ideas, though he says he opposes efforts to expel church members. "There is no growth without change and there is no change without loss and there is no loss without pain," he says. "Probably 10% of all churches are in conflict at any given point, regardless of what they're doing." That, he contends, "is not just symptomatic of changing to purpose-driven. It would be symptomatic in changing to anything."
"We will never save civilisation as long as civilisation is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more." —C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
WSJ on Purpose Driven® Church Splits
Driving off church members is just the price of progress.
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