This morning, I preached at Highlands Fellowship in Abingdon, VA. I plan to write more about the church and its pastor, Jimmie Davidson, in the coming days. That post will deal with their remarkable global strategy.
First, in this post, a little about the church.
Highlands Fellowship was part of a study that LifeWay Research did last year called "Standout Churches."
In order to be in the "Standout Church" survey, a church had to have:
A minimum of 26 baptisms for 10 consecutive years (1996-2005)
A membership to baptism ratio of no more than 20 to 1 each of these ten years
A minimum of 5% growth in worship attendance overall (2005 compared to 1996)
Highlands Fellowship is one 22 (of 43,000 churches examined) that met the Standout Church criteria. Nineteen (of the 22 churches invited) participated in the study. You can read more about it here. The PowerPoint from the study is here.
You can listen to Jimmy in an interview about that study here.
The church is multisite so, late last night, I spoke to a camera in an empty room with 1000 seats. The "High Def" recording was then delivered to three locations (in Johnson City, Bristol, and Abingdon) early this morning. (And, no, I do not look any better in High Def.)
Then, this morning, I preached live at Abingdon and that message was "beamed" to several other venues with different worship styles.
Their web page listed their Abingdon venues as follows:
The church has about 3000 attendees on a weekend in all these different venues and locations.
Jimmy is a great guy with a remarkable gift for encouragement.
But, that is most remarkable is how they are mobilizing their church in a small town to be involved globally... more on that soon.
Comments (6)
brother Ed,
do you have any thoughts regarding Dr. Yarnell's new paper concerning Acts 17:16-34? there are a few excerpts over at sbctoday.com and I am curious as to your thoughts.
Posted by irreverend fox | March 10, 2008 5:29 PM
Posted on March 10, 2008 17:29
Ed --
Long time no blog, dude. :-)
You and I have tangentially chatted about this in the past, but I am still sort of puzzled by the implications of having a "country" church, a "praise" church, and a "coffee" church.
Doesn't having this level of cultural segmentation actually defeat that call of the Gospel to overcome the differences between races and nations and dividisons among men?
Don't get me wrong: I'm not against country-genre hymns or spiritual songs. However, I am concerned that if the Gospel cannot bring Cowboys and EMOs together, how can we trust it to bring Jew and Gentile together?
Thanks man -- you're always generous with your time. Hope your family is well.
Posted by Frank Turk | March 12, 2008 9:43 AM
Posted on March 12, 2008 09:43
Foxy, I have not published any thoughts about it, though Malcolm did graciously share it with me beforehand. I may later.
Posted by Ed Stetzer | March 12, 2008 3:13 PM
Posted on March 12, 2008 15:13
Frank,
"Doesn't having this level of cultural segmentation actually defeat that call of the Gospel to overcome the differences between races and nations and dividisons among men?"
A great question.
I have thought about writing some thoughts about that, but have not had a chance to write them out. I probably will soon.
Briefly, I think every church has to wrestle with how far we should segment. We would all probably segment people from different languages. But, how far is too far? For them, it is musical style. For that matter, thousands of churches are now dividing up in tradition vs. contemporary services.
And, if you do segment, how do you still build community? In other words, if all the old people go to the traditional service and all the young people to the contempoary, aren't you just adding to the problem?
I don't have the answers, but I do share the question. And, I don't know enough about Highlands to answer the question of how they handle it.
Ed
Posted by Ed Stetzer | March 12, 2008 3:19 PM
Posted on March 12, 2008 15:19
I am a member at Highlands Fellowship and I definately can not speak for Pastor Jimmie but I feel the reason we have separate venues is to reach people that are lost and would come to a Country Venue but may not come to another type of venue. Its also about making room for more people to come since the main area can only hold so many. Since we are making more room why not have different styles of venues! Its not about us but about reaching more for Christ!
Posted by M Yates | March 25, 2008 1:10 PM
Posted on March 25, 2008 13:10
first time post on any blog.
Ed, thank you for your balanced and gracious efforts in what can be and could become a very splintered world of church planting.
M Yates
There are still tensions. The gospel isn't about us, but it isn't about them either. If people only approach God because it can be done in a way that meets their preferences, that is more consumerism than contextualism. I don't have all the answers either, but as Willow Creek pointed out, there's a difference between "reaching people" and making disciples so it is important that all these groups learn and know what the true church is if they remain segregated in worship. Discernment is key to every context individually I think, we go too far to formulate everything too concretely. Anyway, thank you all for caring to ask the questions.
Posted by Mark | March 28, 2008 10:14 AM
Posted on March 28, 2008 10:14