February 2003
Page 1 - The Process of Transition by Graham Cooke
Page 2 - The ARC Culture by Paul Anderson
Page 3 - "Nevertheless..." by Mary Ann Herzan
The ARC Culture
by Paul AndersonThe members of the Alliance of Renewal Churches (ARC) believe that the message of the gospel is true for every culture and in every age. Tampering with the truth of that message is out of bounds. But because culture receives that message through different lenses, we are continually evaluating the way that the truth is packaged.
For this reason, the ARC seeks to differentiate between the absolutes of the content and the relatives of the context. Those relatives include such variables as: music, architecture, clothes, worship style, language, and method of communication. ARC churches will take a wide variety of forms, because churches have different missions, target audiences, and giftings. We are called to unity, not uniformity. Unity, in fact, requires diversity, and we will have a high tolerance level for diversity in contextual and cultural issues, although we will have low tolerance for diversity in the message of the inerrant Word of God. We don't want to make absolutes out of relatives (style rather than substance) or make relatives out of absolutes. It is possible to fall off the horse on either side.
Because of our commitment to contextualizing the message, we are open to change "for the sake of the Gospel" (I Corinthians 9:23). We value tradition when it does not erode into traditionalism. Paul wrote, "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some" (I Corinthians 9:22). We encourage innovation over tradition when innovation will open the door to the Gospel. ARC churches seek to read the culture accurately so that they can present the universal Gospel in a timely and relevant manner. Not to do so is to misrepresent our missionary God and to distort the missionary enterprise of the Great Commission. We encourage ARC churches to do whatever it takes without compromising truth to get the message out. We favor entrepreneurial leadership.
And we expect that these strategies will arise from the local church and not from the leadership of the ARC. Each church must evaluate its cultural context and seek means to bridge it with the Gospel. We are decentralized in structure rather than centralized. Creativity will arise from the bottom up, not from the top down. So the initiative will come primarily at the local level, with encouragement and counsel coming from the Leadership Team of the ARC.
This is who we are in the ARC. This is our culture. I define culture here as the values and habits of a given people at a given time. It is our objective in the ARC to speak release and empowerment rather than to use power to control. The ARC favors innovators and early adapters, those who can catch a vision and communicate it in a way that marshals the troops. Because we will not have a boilerplate constitution or an assumption of how we are to do church, we will welcome a wide variety of styles.
We in the ARC are on a journey. That is the motif that best describes the process we are in. We know more where we have been than where we are going. We are moving into uncharted territory. We are kingdom-minded people, confident in the character of God and in the relationships that we have established with one another. Where relationships are strong, trust is a binding factor. We put trust in our relationships, because we are an organism, not just an organization. While we have taken much time to lay out as clearly as possible a ministry plan for the ARC, our primary trust in the ARC is in who we are, not how we function. Because we take relationships seriously, problems in relationships cannot be overlooked but must be confronted. Homogeneity as it relates to truth is far more important than diversity in a relation-based culture. And this kind of culture gives values and mission as strong a focus as theology. And, likewise, functional structures (how the relationships are played out in the organization) are highly important in a relation-based culture. Because our history tends to have favored the functional over the relational (the doing over the being), the ARC culture is in many ways a new way of doing church and a new way of relating together in an association. The job of the Leadership Team will not be to enforce a style but to empower congregations to seek the guidance of the Spirit in its proclamation to the world and to help give direction for this exciting journey we are on together.
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The ARC Culture |
Church Cultures - historically |
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Risk-taking |
Cautious |
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Innovative |
Traditional |
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Decentralized |
Centralized |
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Entrepreneurial |
Managerial |
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Relational |
Functional |
