Your Church is too small

Many years ago, there was a book titled Your God Is Too Small. I've been thinking about how churches are too small. The megachurches are especially too small.

You see, we tend to think of "our" church as simply the group we may gather with on Sundays. George Barna 'documents' millions who've 'left' the church. And we live and breath as if the churches we attend are "ours", though we mouth that they belong to Jesus.

But it's interesting that while there are 33 references to churches in the New Testament, there are 112 to "church". Most of those 33 references refer to churches across multiple cities. There is no clear example of referring to churches within a single city. This despite historical evidence that in many areas, churches met in homes. It seems to imply that groups meeting in different homes in the same city were considered a part of the same church.

We tend to think of a church, or at least practice church, as being a club we join. We talk of "placing membership" (a club mentality). Our churches add amenities, they offer programs, they approach ministry as being some centralized bureaucracy. To do anything for the club, you pretty much have to be a faithful attender, go through some screening of the church, et al. I'm increasingly seeing this as all such small thinking.

Acts tells us that the Lord added the first disciples to the church. The church is the body of Christ, not the bodies of Christ.

The book So You Don't Want To Go To Church Anymore presents an image of church that is so much larger. It shows it as a community of believers that live beyond the clubs we've formed. It is a beautiful picture in my mind.

We need to adopt a mentality that every disciple is a member of our church, and treat him as such. We need to get beyond our club mentality. It'll mean practicing more hospitality, being less programmatic and open about our ministries. It will mean that some of us don't attend the same "church" two Sundays in a row, or even the same one more than once per month. It may lead to the collapse of some churches. More meeting in homes.

You see, your church is every disciple around you. Every disciple you meet while working in a strange city away from home.

Such an approach to thinking is new to me. Something mouthed about church that I'm really beginning to digest. It undermines, I'm discovering, much of what I've previously written in this part of the blogosphere. Much to revisit about the thinking on "redemptive community". There's still a place, I believe, for walking with a "core", to having a community within this larger church.

I'd love responses. I'd love input. Write, comment, whichever.

Detoxing

Sorry that no one has posted here in awhile. At the beginning of May, I went to a "Advanced Boot Camp" held by Ransomed Heart Ministries. A lot to unpack for myself, some related to the themes of this blog site. After that, I've come across some books that I want to blog on as well as I've unpacked them.

I have much to say on this blog on some things that come to mind, as I finally organize it in my head and have time, but you may have noticed the only change to this site since the last blog (April 21), a link to an article on detoxing. I wanted to say a few words about it and thoughts it sparks. I have much more to say on this, and some of it will come out in future blogs --

As for myself, having read that article, I realize now that I continue to detox from the consumerism idol that has penetrated the church, though it is much more than consumerism. Ultimately it is about connecting to Jesus directly rather than through a proxy we call "church".

When I started what I recognize as the detox process, it was about leaving the IC for "something better". God frustrated that "something better". There are some guys who I talk with via e-mail and by phone on occasion who are going through the same process, or almost the same. We feel called to something more, and for some of us that means detoxing as a step, though maybe some of us may not realize that. Some have been on a journey much longer than me, some were or are considering something like "detoxing". Some are looking to "detox" from within "the walls of a church".

I actually met about half the group face to face (not all at once -- we couldn't corral them together) at Advanced about a month ago. About a half dozen of us were talking with Craig. Craig made some excellent points about what church is. Our mindset is so often about church being something we go to, something that has authority in our lives, it is hard to break from that kind of thinking. But church is what Jesus adds us to. It's the body. "church" can happen anywhere, anytime we are with other disciples. Really got me thinking about what church is in a new light.

God has led me through a journey since that time that has solidified much of it. I read So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore and The Shack. Conversations with people. My own conclusion is that the church is out there, but your church is too small if you think it is a gathering of people in a home, coffee shop or a building that holds thousands.

It is in humility now that I submit the question to God: how do you wish me to engage with the church?

I know that however I do it, it's about relationships. Maybe God will bring it to my neighborhood. Maybe I need to engage with some of these so called "churches" out there that have at least some disciples and not just attenders or followers of a senior pastor personality. Who knows? God. And I'm listening.

Story telling

I remember hearing Dan Allendar teach on story at a conference in April of 2006. Wonderful conference. At one point, he was illustrating a point about story by telling a part of his own story. A Christian was trying to teach him, and Dan confronted him with "tell me a story, not facts". Allendar has found that understanding comes from stories, not a list of facts.

Story has been described as the language of the heart. I know that some of my greatest growth as a Christian has not come from purely "knowledge" studies, but rather from hearing the stories of others. The Bible itself is mostly a collection of stories -- I believe I heard an estimate of 70% of it being story. I think that's low.

Story sharing should be more a part of our gatherings. As it is, most weeks the only one who can tell a story is the guy controlling the monologue sermon, if that is the type of church you go to (the majority of them). Some have "testimonal time", but we need to be much broader -- though the word "share a testimony" is used, when done in corporate settings it is more often "tell your testimony" not share.

When story sharing is incorporated into our gathering, we come to realize that our stories are an extension of what we read in scripture. And scripture becomes the backdrop of our stories. Rather than some artificially arrived at "six steps to a better marriage" derived from scripture (or contrived from), we see God's story continuing into our lives. We become encouraged and are spurred on by such a perspective.

I don't know how this is done for gatherings of 25 or more. Love to hear ideas of how to have a free flow sharing of stories of our lives in larger gatherings, as that is the way most churches are constructed. Sometimes our stories are unfolding as we share them. How's this done in large settings?

Maybe it can't. Maybe our central gatherings need to be what is advocated on these pages -- small gatherings of a handful.

The medium is the message (perhaps Part 1)

Though when I started this blog site and invited others to blog with me around the thoughts of redemptive community, I did have some preconceived notions of what it would look like. I had even written a "manifesto" describing a kind of structure and operation.

No more on those preconceptions though. Some reading of Neil Cole, Alan Hirsch, and Michael Frost, and now some Leonard Sweet, has me thinking in the two lines as I approach this:
1) contextualizing the church to a culture -- this requires understanding what are the core purposes and values of what a church should be, and understanding a culture.
2) understanding the medium is the message. Simplified a bit, this means actions speak louder than words.

I spoke before on this last one, where I visited a church meeting of 25, where we spent 45 minutes in song before a guy spoke on how this was a family. The medium -- sitting in chairs, facing the back of the head of person's in front of us, singing then hearing a monologue sermon, spoke much louder than his words.

So what do our standard mediums speak about our message? Some examples that run us into trouble --
1) Peter wrote that we are a priesthood of all believers. The Hebrew writer wrote that Jesus is our high priest to whom we can approach directly. Yet a very common practice is to make a "clergy class" between us and Jesus. This clergy class is very much like a priesthood that stands between us and God. Paul wrote that apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (all to commonly lumped together and called just "pastors" as a group nowadays) are for equipping the church. They are authorities in the sense that they with God help us become who we are meant to be, not "lord it over" us.
2) all our life is to be worship, yet we create distinct times of the week to call worship, and create separate spaces as "sacred".
3) Jesus called us to be active worshipers, participants, and contributers. Paul wrote about "orderly" assemblies in I Corinthians 14. Yet we've seen "orderly" changed to "ordered" to the point of having a script for our gatherings. We are called in assemblying together to encourage one another, admonish one another, to spur one another on to love and good deeds. But the custom has grown to be centered along a scripted service that runs somewhere from 60 to 120 minutes, where most show up no more than 5 minutes before and those who linger do so no more than 15 minutes and talk about the weather or the immediate past sporting events or the one coming up that afternoon or other trivia.
4) A typical church's "small groups" program consist of people gathering and studying some curriculum for six weeks to 12 weeks. And the small group "script" must be followed and a 12 week study must be completed in 12 weeks. What does this medium teach? That knowledge is more important than loving others. Spending time of a session with someone in need is not allowed under this format. I fear that the message of the medium to many is that knowledge of God is more important that loving and knowing God.

IF our gatherings and discipleship approaches are to speak of the Christ, what would they look like?

Security

I've had a number of posts I have wanted to do, all reasonably long so I have to find a chunk of time to do them. But this one is one of those that if I don't do it soon, I'll lose the thoughts ...

A few years ago, David Murrow wrote a book called Why Men Hate Going to Church. Decent book, which in my opinion only has a partial diagnosis and is woefully short on prognosis and solutions. Part of the diagnosis is that the church focuses on a few points that ends up chasing men away. One of these is "security". The modern church is big on providing a secure environment. Just how far this has gone has become painfully clear recently.

I live about a mile north of New Life Church in Colorado Springs. A few months back, a gunman came on their campus on a Sunday, and ended up shot to death by an armed security guard. With this being a church of thousands, I have no problem with that. Actually doesn't surprise me -- years ago I volunteered with a church's benevolence program, and we had a female cop with us as one volunteer. Came to find out in time that she had been encouraged to always bring her gun (concealed of course) with her while attending church and volunteering -- something I was glad about the night we were assigned together to interview a woman who came looking for help who was clearly schizophrenic and we worried she might be a danger.

But now the news comes out that the senior pastor of New Life has been talking about security at pastors' conferences and consulting on the issue of security. He is encouraging churches to have armed security forces. Apparently he is even encouraging churches to consider having metal detectors and handbag searches at the doors.

What we must realize though, is that the medium is the message. What do armed security forces visibly patrolling properties say? It reinforces a fortress mentality of churches. It says to the world this is an us vs you situation. It sends so many wrong messages.

And to me, it reinforces the message that churches are selling security in the first place. I believe an unspoken, implied message of so much of what passes as church is selling security. Come to church somewhat approximating weekly, tithe, etc and feel secure in your eternal destination. Now, I know what is said, but the medium is the message, or in older terms, actions speak louder than words. When membership "covenants" or however expectations are spelled out occur, the message ends up being eternal security in exchange for being a good member, despite our words about grace vs works.

Truthfully, though, the walk of a follower is about having eternal life now. There are no promises about security and safety. In the U.S. we get a false image of things -- worldwide, by some estimates, 1 in 200 who profess to be Christian will die a martyr's death. When you take out of those numbers the Americans and others who don't live in countries where Christians are physically threatened, those numbers get frightening. And even in the U.S., being a follower of Christ can threaten one's economic security in certain career fields -- Hollywood, politics (in certain states), fields with high percentages of homosexuality among those in the field, higher education, etc. Traditional churches will not readily appeal to those in some industries, nor the way the culture is going, it will not appeal to future generations. What is needed, whether we realize it or not, is something resembling the underground churches of China and India.

While this is not a reason to pursue redemptive communities, which should be pursued for their own merits, it is a benefit evangelically. Small communities provide a better medium for the message than the megachurches, and are more likely to survive the future than the megastructures.

Is the business world discovering the truth? Redux

Related: http://redemptivecommunities.blogspot.com/2008/01/is-business-discovering-right-model.html

Came across some reading on leadership styles within business, and some modern theories basically say there needs to be a mix of five styles of leadership with different balances needed during different phases of a business's life cycle.

1) The entrepreneur, the groundbreaker and strategist who initiates
2) The questioner, who disturbs the status quo and challenges a business to move differently
3) The recruiter, who takes the organization's message to the outside and sells it.
4) The humanizer, who cares for those inside the organization
5) The systemizer, who articulates the structure and company policies etc to those inside the organization.

Interestingly, the apostle Paul wrote about five roles of those equipping the church, which could be defined as:
1) The apostle, who pioneers new missions and oversees their initial development
2) The prophet, who discerns the spiritual reality of a situation and communicates them in a timely fashion to prompt needed change
3) The evangelist, who communicates the gospel message in a way to prompt response
4) The pastor, who cares for those in the church.
5) The teacher, who communicates the teachings of Christ.

In both cases and in many ways, these are functions more than offices or roles, and some may contribute to more than one function at times.

Interesting the obvious parallels?

Most traditional churches in the West, however, seem to have suppressed the apostle, prophet, and evangelist roles in favor of the pastor and teacher roles. Many of the APE roles are to be found functioning, it seems though, outside the church, in parachurch ministries.

Businesses that don't have the balance of leadership appropriate for their phase of the life cycle are typically ones in trouble. ...

Walking with God part deux

I ask all the readers of this blog/note to visit this website and prayerfully consider attending either a live event, or the yet to be announced (as I write this) simulcast.

http://www.ransomedheart.com/ministry/walkingwithgodtour.aspx