Small Church Conference: Rick Talbott, "The Small Church Playing a Large Role in the 21st Century"

My summary/notes of Rick’s presentation at the Southern California Coalition of Community-Based Christian Churches. Rick is the minister at First Christian Church in San Fernando and an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at California State University – Northridge.

There are a lot of reasons people come to church, but the church grows through the gospel only. The primary issue is not how to make our small churches large or larger, but to be faithful and see our small churches playing a large role in southern California. The priority remains the gospel, and our churches are not transforming our culture with the gospel.

According to Steve Bruce, 75% of evangelical growth is coming from our own children, and the other 25% is coming from those leaving mainline churches. He gleefully predicts that Christianity is in for a real struggle in the 21st century, because we are so out-of-touch with the culture.

Rick offers three suggestions:

Restore Credibility to the Church

Modern Christianity, particularly evangelicalism and fundamentalism, has a bad reputation in our culture. We need to ask what our critics are saying that is true of us. While much is hogwash, propaganda, false accusations, or misinformation, we still need to know why we have lost our credibility. Ignoring valid criticisms has created the environment for unfounded lies about Christianity and made our critics heroes.

Two major criticisms we must deal with to restore our credibility:

1. We have not seriously addressed our sins. We have a reputation of self-righteously pointing our fingers at the culture while minimizing our own capital sins. We need to repent to our culture, especially for the sins of division, exclusivity, racism, and many others.
2. Our critics say we are divided by race. Studies have shown this to be true — local churches tend to reflect the racial makeup of our neighborhoods. The church is modeled after secular culture, and not after the gospel. It is not OK for churches to mirror the racial makeup of our neighborhoods. Steve Bruce claims that evangelical churches thrive in large part because of racialization. This does not reflect the radical racial reconciliation which is central to the gospel.

Restore the Truth of the Gospel

From Galatians 2:11-14, where Paul labels Cephas as a hypocrite for the way that he was acting. Not acting according to "the truth of the Gospel." The issue at hand was Peter not eating with the Gentiles. Circumcision was a racial issue, not just a religious one.

The gospel was more than just a creed to be believed, but a social reality to be experienced. It was seen in Jews eating with Gentiles in Jesus’ name — cultural and racial reconciliation with the two most unexpected groups in the ancient world. This is what the church is supposed to be, but largely fails to do in north America. Our culture needs to see this lived out in the church.

Restore the Lord’s Supper

Specifically, we need to restore Paul’s version of the Lord’s Supper — the leadership of the church intentionally including people of other races and ethnicities in the meal.

Under this model, hiring a Spanish-speaking pastor to start a separate congregation is not living out the gospel. Hire someone to preach and teach in Spanish, but come together in the Lord’s Supper as a model and example of racial and cultural unity resulting from our transformation in Christ.

Appreciate and learn from each other’s cultures, but Christ comes first.

How does this compare to the "gospel" of multi-culturalism, especially within the secular university?

Many good things that we, as followers of Jesus, can affirm. The university does want to serve and save the world, but it has rejected the gospel of Jesus. Tolerance is a good thing, but it is not the gospel of reconciliation.

The Small Church Conference: Rick Talbott, "The Small Church Playing a Large Role in the 21st Century" by Church Planting Journey, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.