!viva la revolution!

I have learned from Yoda today. No, really. Yoda is a 5'5'' member of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary's faculty named Randy Milwood, and he is amazing (and really, he looks like Yoda). Today, with my pastor, I attended a round-table discussion of small groups as the direction that the church needs to go. I felt like I was among giants. Having just come from a two-day prayer conference for new church plants in Baltimore, I was so excited to sit and listen to a bunch of church planters, pastors, and missionaries speak their heart on the condition of the modern church and how things need to be changed. Small groups are a philosophy stemming from the NT church where they "met in their homes, and broke bread together", putting emphasis on the community of God's people over corperate worship. This is revolutionary! This destroys years upon years of programs, Sunday School promotions, and evangelism training sessions, favoring relational evangelism and living in community with each other over meetings and sessions. The church I'm at now has 3 real leadership meetings a YEAR. Yet they are fostering new believers who are excited about learning about God and teaching others, in an amazing way. All this, while in the south I see churches having to press for more people through Sunday school promotions and leadership training courses. I'm not saying I haven't seen peoples lives changed through these church programs, but I'm beginning to question the validity of them. Why is it hard to get people who have gone to church their entire lives to reach out with the joy they supposedly have in Christ, while people who are slowly coming to Christ, with no religous background whatsoever, can be so passionate about living by Christ's example? Have we in the Bible belt forgotten how it feels to be lost so much that we have placed an immense gap between ourselves and the lost guy across the street? I don't know what this philosophy means for mega-churches (where I'm working at now, that means 300+), but I think that it will have drastic rammifications as churches, even in the Bible belt, realize that they are more and more simply creating clones, devoid of true passion and approachablilty, caring more about their own posessions and position in life than about their lost friends coming to Christ. Hmm...clones? A mega-church empire? Rebellion? Not as far from Yoda as I thought...