A Few Questions to Ponder…

Quote from yesterday: “The entire system we have built our lives around has been turned upside down.”

— Seth Godin – Linchpin – page vii (contents)

What does this mean long term for the labor force in America?

I think Seth gives the answer to that so eloquently and blatantly throughout the book: Be Remarkable! It is no longer okay for us to drift toward the status quo. Plain vanilla loses in the next generation. Be Remarkable, or go home.

What does this mean for the church world?

I think the broader implication for the church is that we must wake up to the reality that the church world has changed as well. For years, so many churches with pockets of unhealth or unhealthy leaders could fly beneath the radar and be okay. Unhealthy churches were able to maintain and keep on existing because the positive economy gave off the impression of health even when a life-giving way of doing ministry had departed.

I think we must allow this economic thing to push us off of complacency in the church. The status quo — doing the same-old, same-old and merely existing to exist — won’t get the job done in our new world. We must begin to push out beyond our old limits and begin to pursue Being Remarkable in Some Way!!!

In my book, The Up the Middle Church, I use radio as the illustration. 50 or 60 years ago, AM radio was the deal. Every car had AM radio and everyone thought it was amazing. Then came FM radio. I grew up listening to Charlie and Tony on WMEE, 97.3 FM, on the school bus everyday. Today there is XM Satellite radio. The world has changed.

We, in the church world, must not live in a false-reality where we believe being AM or even FM gives us much relevance to the world around us anymore. The world has changed, so must we. We need God to give us a fresh vision of how we make our churches remarkable again.