Welcome to
the Third Day!
Take
a close look at today's culture and today's church. On several
occasions, history has provided the needed critical mass and the
synergistic inertia to thrust the church into breaking out of its' box
and becoming the force in culture and society that God intended it to
be.
Today, the church, in the 21st Century, has once again
reached this "critical mass." It is something so big and so obvious
that the winds of change demand we look hard at our traditional forms
and face the reality that a different church must provide a different
response to a postmodern age.
This Third Millennium ("a
day is
as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day," II Peter 3:8;
Psalm 90:4), or this "Third Day" requires a "Third Way" of
doing and
being the church, (See Article: Wikipedia
On The Third Day).
Christian
Schwartz, the German church-growth researcher suggests that we are in
the era of a third Reformation. The first Reformation took place in the
sixteenth century when Martin Luther rediscovered the core of the
gospel: salvation by faith, the centrality of grace and of Scripture.
It was seen as a reformation of theology.
A second Reformation
occurred in the eighteenth century when personal intimacy with Christ
was rediscovered. It was, according to Schwartz, a reformation of
spirituality. But when it was all said and done, we were still trying
to pour new wine into old wineskins. The third Reformation is now upon
us. It is a reformation of structure of how we actually "do" church.
For
too many years, our current forms, structures and traditions have led
the way, with these practices remaining painfully predictable from
generation to generation, ever diminishing in their effectiveness. It
is now time for change! The forms of the "first day church" must be
reevaluated, and those lifeless programs and traditions be allowed to
die in the "second day church" so that the resurrected "third day
church" can be released.
In its "ripple" effect, there now
exists a growing fraternity of leaders, ministries, even creative
businesses who are ready to obey the wind of the Spirit. They are ready
to inhale the breath of change and welcome an experimentation of new
and creative ways of "doing" and "being" the church in the third
millennium. Many are already experimenting with new relationally-based
models that release the priesthood potential of all believers in a
given group, area or region.
Our continued purpose in these
critical times is to give lots of permission and to empower a large
army of ordinary people to be innately creative as they lead.
At
the end of the day Third Day Churches is not more meetings, or just
more tweaking of the forms. It is ongoing and growing conversation
moving towards an ever-increasing radical community lifestyle.
Welcome to the journey. Feel free to join the discussion.
Gary
Goodell
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About Gary
Goodell: More information about Third Day's founder: 