When a church truly adopts Community Transformation as its primary focus then how the church is run and the full time positions of the leaders will look quite different.One such church which is seeking to go down this road is Lighthouse in Wollongong, an hour south of Sydney. It was very interesting to observe close up last month what it means to truly embrace this new model of church.One significant difference that I observed was that all paid staff were required to give 20 % of their time to serving the local community as part of their paid work. This took various forms – from being the chaplain to the local basketball team, to schools work and running a community kitchen for those on the bread line. No longer are pastors out of touch with the community they serve, but are truly immersed and have a presence in their local community.
This church community are also seeking to adopt different expressions of ‘gathering’ in order to be relevant to those who would not usually enter a church on Sunday. The message hasn’t changed, but the model may need to.
Whilst on holiday I randomly talked to two men who lived in Wollongong. When I mentioned ‘Lighthouse’ instead of drawing a blank expression, (which is quite normal when mentioning a church) they began to speak favourably about the church and what it is doing in the community. Shouldn’t this be the norm?
Churches no longer primarily focussed on themselves, but desiring to make disciples and be a light in their towns and cities. Paul Bartlett the senior leader has written a book called ‘Thank God it’s Monday’. If you are interested in checking it out or buying it, please clink on the photo below:
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