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Found this interesting post on the Leadership Network blog about how some Pastors are using Starbucks marketing plan as their roadmap to Church growth.
Seven multi-site churches are highlighted for their international satellite campus locations in Wall Street Journal’s recent article, Inspired by Starbucks: Charismatic Pastors Grow New Flocks Overseas, Using Satellites, DVDs and Franchise Marketing To Spread Their Own Brand of Religion. The article highlights multi-site churches in the U.S. that are going international:
Mr. Gramling’s Flamingo Road Church, which has a weekly attendance of 8,000, is based in Broward County, Fla. … Mr. Gramling says he tried to copy the success of Starbucks by assembling a creative team to hone "the look, the feel, the branding idea, of what Flamingo Road is." Like Starbucks, Mr. Gramling is thinking big. His goal is 50 churches world-wide, 100,000 members and a $150 million-a-year budget.
At least half a dozen U.S. mega-churches have opened international branches in recent years, and plans are in the works for many more. "If Starbucks can start four stores a day, why can’t churches?" says John Bishop, the pastor at Living Hope Church. His congregation in Vancouver, Wash., which has a weekly attendance of 6,000, has 23 satellite churches, including new sites in New Zealand, India, Mexico and the Philippines. The Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, La., has eight U.S. branches, and in the past year opened churches in Mozambique and Swaziland. Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Fla., with 10,000 members, recently launched branches in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and Atiquipa, Peru.
I’ve been working really hard to relieve myself of the obligation of having to have an opinion about everything…but I did find this comment very interesting.
"The religious market is saturated in the U.S.," says Manuel Vasquez, co-author of "Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas." "There is a sense now that you have to go international to expand your reach if you want to be a player." By 2025, seven of 10 Christians will live in Africa, Latin America and Asia, according to Philip Jenkins, author of "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity." In Africa, Christians make up nearly half of the continent’s population, up from about 10% in 1900.
photo by ifmuth
I was reading through John chapter 5 when I noticed this…
Joh 5:5-10 ESV
(5) One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
(6) When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?"
(7) The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me."
(8) Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk."
(9) And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.
(10) So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed."
The religious leaders didn’t really care that a man who had been crippled for 38 years had just been made whole and could now walk! Their only concern was with their interpretation of the rules.
You may been an angry preacher if your more interested in maintaining the necessary standard than meeting the needs of people.
Joh 5:13-15 ESV
(13) Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.
(14) Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, "See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you."
(15) The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.
Of all the bad things a preacher can be accused of doing I’m thinking that actually healing somebody wouldn’t be on the top of the list, but this act seemed to drive them into a murderous rage.
You may be an angry preacher if God touching people lives and meeting their needs in a way that may be different than the way you would do it makes you mad.
Joh 5:16-20 ESV
(16) And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.
(17) But Jesus answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I am working."
(18) This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
(19) So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.
(20) For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.
The final straw was when Jesus claimed to have a personal intimate relationship with God.
You may be an angry preacher if you resent peoples claims of an intimate relationship with God when it’s different from your own relationship with God.
The really sad part about the whole situation described in John chapter 5 is that these men who had dedicated their lives to serving God actually missed the greatest move of God because of offence. They couldn’t get pass the personality and methods of Jesus to see who He really was…
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While watching the clip this scripture came to mind…
Luk 14:28-30 ESV
(28) For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?
(29) Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,
(30) saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
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