The Death and Revival of the Church

The Death and Revival of the Church

(aka Launching Weapons of Mass Compassion)

1. Beautiful Day has exceeded our expectations and moved beyond an annual event that we ramp up to participate in. It seems to be a vehicle for WestGate on multiple levels to impact our church and our surrounding community, as well as the church of Santa Clara County, the Bay Area, California, and beyond. Beautiful Day has also moved beyond churches becoming more compassionate… it has moved churches toward becoming more missional (taking Christ’s redemptive transformational love to the communities surrounding them in active forms of service). However, in my studies, conversations, and evaluation of the church in these post-modern times is that unless there is a significant shift towards becoming missional, churches will grow old, lose members, and die within the next 10 years through out the valley and across the US. Churches are currently looking for the next fad or church growth technique to increase attendance or simply sustain the numbers they currently hold. A quick look at the change in landscape of churches through out this valley over the last 10 years should be enough evidence of to illustrate the declining attendance and lack of community impact. Simply put… WestGates growth rate is no indication of the overall growth rate or statistics of churched people in this valley. We must not be fooled into thinking that because WestGate has experienced substantial growth that the kingdom of God is advancing in the valley… its not. The valley is losing the fight, and kingdom of God and the influence of the church in our valley is diminishing.
   
   Simply put… we are losing.

To me the best answer to the issue is not to “look at the WestGate model” or “join the Beautiful Day network” or anything like that.
The best answer for any church that wants to make a kingdom impact is, in fact, to always point them to the Jesus-model, that is, “I did not come to be served, but to serve.”

While WestGate does have things to offer, it is far better for us to lead them to “become” a missional church in their community context rather than “replicate” our missional church in their community context.

This is where Beautiful Day comes into play. The concept of Beautiful Day landed in our laps as a fresh way to reconnect ourselves and other churches to the ancient characteristic of compassion found in the nature of God. Beautiful Day became an active form of Christ’s love, expressed in innovative service, and wrapped up with a cool name and logo.

Beautiful Day became organic… in that creative service ideas could be dreamed of and discovered within any cultural context. It is not a set program, but rather an “always changing, ever-growing” means to meet needs.


Beautiful Day became everybody’s and nobodys. While WestGate fostered the name and the collaborative idea in San Jose, we recognize that a mind-set of compassion cannot be bought and sold by anyone. The mind-set of Beautiful Day… to serve others… belongs to everyone. “Owning it” will extinguish it… while “giving it away” only fans the flame.

Beautiful Day became a catalyst for unity. Finding unity among the many diverse churches in the valley is difficult. Schedules, doctrinal differences, philosophy of ministry variations, and numerous barriers have kept THE church of San Jose from rarely doing anything together, thus rendering it impotent and useless collectively. Compassion, in its simplist form, has served as a banner to draw us together. The organic nature of Beautiful Day allows churches of all shapes and sizes to work together and collaborate for the kingdom’s sake.

Beautiful Day became a strong partnership bridge between the church… and businesses, organizations, and government. The more churches served as the center point to address real needs and issues within their particular community, the more outside organizations sought that strategic partnership. This partnership also serves cross purposes in building relationships with outside groups with the intention to extend Christ’s love.

Beautiful Day is helping churches become the influential hub within their communities. It is not enough for the church to exist in a community, it must re-establish itself using actions and not words. Beautiful Day was used to represent the church “in-force, in-love, and in-action” in a community.

As it stands right now, WestGate has been handed an opportunity to make a significant dent in the planet through the God-given role of humbly leading churches in the Bay Area back to Christ’s mission and reviving the universal church of Jesus Christ. Our role can no longer be limited to what WestGate is doing to impact its community, but what WestGate is doing to impact churches who desire to impact their own communities.

This has become our God-given time to articulate to our staff, our board, our ministry teams, and our church family that our strategic ministry initiatives are changing. Our thinking must shift from “winning the battle” mode to “winning the war” and in order to do this we must use the philosophy of Beautiful Day as a catalyst to launch weapons of mass compassion. The philosophy of becoming a missional church probably involves more than just creatively serving communities, and there are probably many forms of compassion and service models that are out there… however, Beautiful Day is ours… it works, its proven, it has brand-recognition, and WestGates reputation preceeds itself (through Steve and the board) that we are not about ourselves… we are about serving others and building the kingdom.

With that being said… putting the concept of Beautiful Day in the hands of as many churches within our capability to help them become missional (and do our part in their survival) is not only ideal, it’s imperative.

In my humble opinion I believe that God has handed us the ball… and we must decide to either run with it, or punt!

Thoughts on Beautiful Day going forward…

-Qualify almost all WG local Compassion ministry as Beautiful Day (i.e. Beautiful Day HUNT, Beautiful Day Car Clinic, Beautiful Day adopt-a-family) for branding purposes for local network of churches.

-WG diversify the Beautiful Day calendar (not so concentrated in November), to lead by example that a missional church is not seasonally compassionate.

-Our traditional dates for Beautiful Day (the weekend before Thanksgiving) becomes spoken of and known as Beautiful Day Weekend. Beautiful Day Weekend becomes a concerted effort to unify churches under the banner of Compassion and a jump start for move towards the missional model.

-WestGate works towards a dual role… 1.) continue to motivate our people to be compassionate and missional in their personal lives, in their community groups, and in the church at large. 2.) to facilitate kingdom work through serving other churches who want to move towards a missional model. This includes Steve’s investment in lead pastors, WestGate hosting (and co-hosting) missional church-type seminars for churches and leaders. Pastoral staff becomes more resource-available to other churches in the valley.