Can Church Be More Relevant?

How can the church be more relevant in today's America?

The church as it has been know for in the past has been replaced by so many other organizations and government entities.  This has caused the church to become a place of last resort or irrelevant all together in or day to day lives.  What can be done to bring the church back into focus in our regular everyday lives?  It use to be the church was the center of activity in a community from special events, gatherings, and weekly activities, the church was the place to be. This slowly became replaced with movie theaters, restaurants, event halls, schools, and other social facilities.

The church needs to become a part of the community again.  It needs to acknowledge the need to be where the people are instead of trying to create a desire in people to come to it.  It would be so much easier to engage in fellowship and be apart of a regular community of that community offered opportunities to engage in social activities.

Can we create an environment that creates this type of a space?  It needs to provide a place that entails engagement for the family, individuals, male, and female.  This center should offer benefits to interact, worship, and engage all.  A community center that provides a one stop facility for children activities from playing, to learning, to entertainment, shopping, and food.  Can the church create such an environment that can compete with the established organizations?  We need God to be a priority in our lives and by bring these activities under the umbrella of the church such an environment can be created.

The facility needs to take into consideration and overcome competition from surrounding opportunities.  This includes: schools, community centers, malls, etc.  (Could a mall be converted into one of these places?)  It also needs to over come the evolution of shopping to a virtual activity, how important is shopping?  This will require creating a space that takes into account many different element of our society and be able to adjust as those elements continue to shift.

The facility needs to take into account engaging the full spectrum of society.  Creating a makerspace is a start.  This also needs to be combined with sports facilities, activity rooms, food vendors, and assembly of large community gathers, and governmental activities.  Can this be accomplished?

This complex needs to have a financial enticement for vendors as well as consumers. This may be the most challenging part of this endeavor.  The financial discounts that a church facility could offer food vendors and activity outlets could create a finial benefit to those operators, but the church could be considered a for profit entity and forfeit tax except status unless they are not receiving revenue from those providers?

If possible, ideally, the Church would provide the facility with specific minimum requirements to bring biblical principles into their business operations and their interface with their customers.  In exchange they would receive free rent allowing them to have reduced pricing creating a competitive advantage over other facilities.  This type of arrangement also needs to be treated with transparentency to avoid the perception that the church is profiting from such an arrangement.

Sunday activities could be focused around worship, but also worship could be taking place throughout the week.  Bible study or worship time scheduled around children activities, tutoring, after school activities, sports practices, etc.  They need to offer convenience.

Can they supplement schools? Replace schools? Replace other secular facilities?

The investment for the church would be great, but the cost of not doing this will cause the church to slip into further decline.  This investment will require obtaining large amounts of space and creative solutions to optimize the impact for Christ, and maximize utilizing the resources of such a facility through transformable spaces, scheduling, and creating a paradigm shift in our thinking about such a space.

These spaces need to promote family, gathering, activities.  Can it combine activities?

Can it create sports teams that compete with other schools or secular teams vs. supplimenting schools or replacing schools.

Promotion of the individual to connect and have a relationship with God as the main objective.

Kingdom Disciples

Teachings from Tony Evens to make Kingdom Disciples.  Oh how the world has turned from Christ.  We are babies that speak without authority. Hebrews 5:12

We need to act out Jesus' great commission not to just go, but to also baptize and teach and do it with the authority of God. Matthew 28:19-20

We need to know the scriptures.  These are powerful tools that no one can challenge.  If you do not know them, then you cannot us them, yet this is what God has given us.  2 Timothy 3:16

Be a bold represetitive for Jesus.