It’s here……….
MadChurchDisease.com is live!
How can you help fight Mad Church Disease?
1. Take a survey here.
2. Email all your friends, your staff, your small group, the people you volunteer with, and have them take the survey.
3. Fight by spreading the CURE! Post a link to the survey on your blog, and keep an image link in your sidebar (images here)
I can’t WAIT to see how God uses this! Thank you for all your support and prayers over the past week! I am so lucky to have such awesome friends (even if you do just lurk and I have no idea who you are…you still rock, baby!)
A special thank you to the group of about 100 people who signed up to be “Trailblazers” — these people tested the site, promised to post content today, committed to emailing over 4000 people combined, and are from over 25 states and six countries! Words can’t express how grateful I am!
Comments
17 responses to “FIGHT MAD CHURCH DISEASE!”
I emailed my church staff and 15 of my friends and family that are/have been ministers that have experienced this. I also made a blog post and added a logo and banner to my blog. I also plan to take a survey tomorrow. I want this issue known just as much as you do and I am willing to help in any way possible.
hundreds of emails, blog, myspace, facebook, virb and i even went old school and posted on my xanga. :)
love you, friend.
Got it up on my blog. Looking forward to the book!
Sweet! :)
I put it up on my blog. My wife and I talked openly about sex and sexual brokenness on Sunday. It was AWESOME! I love that you are writing this book.
It is up on my blog and I have emailed my teams.
Anne, I’ve posted on my blog, emailed some ministry friends and posted a banner. In addition, I laid hands on your site, but I’m not sure if that worked, as it’s possible that my monitor got the blessing instead. It was unusually bright this morning.
God bless. Seriously.
Just posted on my blog. Headed now to myspace, virb, and xanga!
Anne, I am very much looking forward to the book. Please try to stay sane while you write it…getting burned out while writing a book on church burnout would be ironic, but sad!
I posted on my blog this morning some concrete things we have done at our church to build a culture that allows for rest and margin. Your work has encouraged me today.
You will be our primary topic at our Monday Morning Starbucks Staff Meeting!
I’m so excited! Just posted it on my blog and plan to email some people today! This must be super exciting for you :)
blogged / emailed / etc.
i tried laying hands on my monitor like todd said. i got all tingly but i think that was just the static electricity.
Anne,
This moring, I sent out 482 emails to those that are a part of our Loving God Fellowship church plant here in Salem, Oregon and our internet church at http://www.LGFinternetChurch.org . I also posted an entry on my blog.
I’m excited about the book and look forward to reading the finished product.
In our day, may church leadership encourage people to submit to the Lordship of Christ instead of volunteering all of their time to church activity! There is no burnout when we yoke ourselves up with Christ. His burden is light and His yoke is easy! We have planted Loving God Fellowship on that principle.
Know that you are loved,
gaj
Anne,
I visited the web site via Ragamuffin soul and took the survey. I am eager to get this book as I am a Minister’s wife and going through some tough times.
Thank you for what you’ve already shared. I enjoyed reading about you on the madchurchdisease web site.
I plan to check back in on you often.
Tracey
Posted and emailed! I am very excited for you. Your writing always challenges or encourages discussion. I love reading your blog posts and I know that the book will be great.Thanks for being inspiring by stepping out!
I own several anger management eudcation center in Los Angeles and have facilitated anger management seminars in local churches in the area. I have come across several people in church leadership who have become verbally or physically aggressive dut to church burn out. The aggression is not always exhibited within a church setting but at home where people tend to let down there gaurd. After the holiday I’ll definitely write a blog about your book.
God Bless
Shannon Munford M.A. MFT, CAMF
Daybreak Counseling Service
http://www.daybreakservices.com/blog
http://www.daybreakservices.com
“Failure to see [the vital quality of spiritual receptivity] is the very cause of a very serious breakdown in modern evangelicalism. The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast-flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meetings or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.
“The tragic results of this spirit are all about us: shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit. These and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul.”
-A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)
In reading this earlier this week, you upcoming book was immediately brought to mind. It was interesting to me that Tozer even referred to this as a disease, and I can sense his agreement and hearty “amen” to the desire and goal you hope to fulfill through your writing.
Personally, often as I feel the pull of obligation to do ministry, my personal relationship with God will become grouped among those obligations, robbing me of all joy and desire to spend time with Him. It’s harder to say no or to slow down in an environment where it’s easy to believe that constantly going is what you’re “supposed” to be doing.
Our eyes are ripped away from the face of Christ as we get caught-up in vision-casting, planning, and trying to make things work for “His glory.” We try to do more in order to find Him, when what He really wants for us is to stop and be still. For some, that means leaving ministry; but so often it is the basis and foundation of one’s identity and faith. Ministry and relationship with God can be so intertwined that a person can feel as though they are leaving God to leave ministry.
For others, so much of the problem could be aided by a surrendering to the Spirit so that receptivity to God is reawakened–that we would experience longing for Christ, and then go and do something about it, like Tozer says earlier in his book. To stop, give up control, sit before the throne of God, and in quiet peace revere His name is, in my eyes, the beginning of a cure.
Hey Anne,
I just wanted to let you know that I added the link to my blog. I know I’m a little behind…I fade in and out of blogging. But I wanted to help with your endeavor.
Take care.