resonate: shifting paradigms

As many of you know, Calvary Church has three distinctives: missional, relational, transformational. resonate embraces all of these - it's a part of our DNA.

But in order to embrace these distinctives and, at the same time, live out our distinctive expressions in a postmodern context we have to shift our thinking. We have to experience some paradigm shifts.

Each one of these paradigm shifts could be an entire blog post, but for the sake of brevity I'll just liste them here and allow us to chew on them later.

Here are just a few:

(1) We have to move from being SPECTATORS ('I go to church') to PARTICIPANTS ('I am the Church.')

(2) In the words of Brian McLaren, we have to allow people to BELONG BEFORE THEY BELIEVE rather than BELIEVE BEFORE YOU CAN BELONG.

(3) We have to change our thinking with evangelism and the lost from THEY COME TO US to WE GO TO THEM.

(4) We have to view our worship gatherings not as a SPIRITUAL FILLING STATION but as a CATALYTIC 'SENDING OUT' INTO THE WEEK AHEAD.

(5) On Sunday nights when resonate is finished we do not think 'MY WORSHIP HAS JUST ENDED' but instead think, 'MY WORSHIP IS JUST BEGINNING.'

(6) We change our programming approach from EXCELLENCE WILL ATTRACT PEOPLE to BROKENNESS AND AUTHENTICITY WILL UNITE PEOPLE.

(7) We shift our understanding of our role as a follower of Jesus from WHEN I DIE I WILL TAKE EARTH TO HEAVEN to WHEN I MAKE UP THIS MORNING I WILL TAKE HEAVEN TO EARTH.

(8) We shift from thinking that WE NEED A NEW DEFINITION OF HOW CHURCH SHOULD BE DONE to WE NEED A NEW DEMONSTRATION OF WHAT GOD WANTS THE CHURCH TO BE.