Over at the
Mars Hill blog, Pastor Mark talks about Mars Hill’s upcoming
Luke sermon series and explains how taking on this project goes against the advice of all the “experts.” Here’s an excerpt:
The Air War & Ignoring the “Experts”
Admittedly, a growing church of our size with plans for additional rapid expansion is not supposed to undertake a project of this magnitude. Nearly all of the “experts” in the areas of megachurch trends and church growth agree that if we want to plant dozens of Mars Hill Campuses, plant hundreds of Acts 29 churches, and baptize thousands of new converts in the next few years, the last thing we should do is tackle the longest book in the New Testament with sermons lasting an hour or more. Instead, to accommodate people’s short attention spans and consumer desires, we should do simple, short series with pithy self-help topics compacted into brief feel-good sermons.
But we are Mars Hill Church. We’ve always been far more about following the Holy Spirit than following the trends. Furthermore, we have always been a church that has opened the Bible to learn about Jesus. So, after a few years in prayer and listening to the Holy Spirit, I proposed to the Executive Elders that they permit me to undertake the longest and most daunting preaching task of my ministry career, roughly three times as many sermons as my previous high (Genesis). After prayer and consideration, they agreed.
We do not know everything that will happen during the few years that we will be studying Luke, but one thing is certain: every week we will gather as God’s people to open the Scriptures and learn about Jesus Christ as the beginning of all that we are and do. If our mission is to flourish, it must be for that reason and none other. We are far more concerned about faithfulness and fruitfulness than about fads.
Read the full post at the Mars Hill blog.
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