Welcome

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.

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 discussion.

Permission Granted...
Gary Goodell

Gary has been doing this ministry stuff for about forty years (Foursquare, Vineyard, and Third Day Churches). A father of two married children and grandfather of six. He has co-authored Permission Granted to Do Church Differently in the 21st Century with Graham Cooke, directs Permission Ministries, a mentoring system for planting Simple Churches, and helps lead the international network Third Day Churches.

Gary and his wife Jane live in San Diego, California with their dog, Zoe. When not traveling Gary spends time writing, coaching local leaders and learning life-lessons from the California Brown Pelicans on the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean.