Simple Church Journal

One of the unintended consequences of conventional churches and their focus to grow is the subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, message that unreached people are targets that need to be “reached” and “brought in.”

I heard the atheist, Matt Caspar (Jim and Caspar Go to Church), speak at a conference and describe how he asked his new Christian friend, “Am I your friend or your project?”  His question reflects the way Christians have gone about relating to the world around them and the perception that unChristians have as a result.

On the one hand, there is the reality that the Father’s heart is broken for children who are separated from Him.  This is central to a Biblical worldview in which Jesus, who came to seek and save the lost, invites us to join Him in the missional adventure of taking His good news and compassion to a broken, truly-lost world.  God is not simply a God on a mission, He is a missional God at His very loving core.

However, when this message is coupled with an organized church’s “vision to grow”, it is so easy for our passion to love and bless people to take on a religious, weighty sense of performance that comes more out of “earning points” by counting conversions, baptisms, and pew sitters than simply desiring to see people (from a place of love) truly blessed and transformed.

I realize this may seem like splitting hairs, but I think the implications are enormous.  The fact is, Christians do want to love and bless people… genuinely.  There is something in all of us that enjoys the prospect of simply being people who care, love, give, help, bless, assist, and really make a difference in the lives of people around us.  We do not relish the idea of helping people for the sake of manipulating them or trying to get them to do something so that we can feel good about ourselves religiously.  We really do want to love and bless people!

I share this because, for me, moving out of an institutional mindset into more of an organic one has freed me to fully enjoy the missional adventure of loving people.  I am not feeling the pressure of “results” or feeling that institutional “shadow” lurking within me asking about specific, tangible outcomes.  I am finding great joy in seeking and discovering ways to just encourage and love people—no strings attached.

One might ask if that means I have lost my missional intentionality.  I would have to say, that insofar as mission is about truly loving someone and wanting what is best for them, then the answer is “no.”  I might even suggest that, by moving into the realm of real relationships (love, care, a desire to bless) I might even be more “effective” if one is looking at some kind of external indicator.   But that, again, misses the point.  More significant is the joy of being set free to naturally care about people and allowing God to work within that relationship super-naturally as He wills.

The bottom line is that one of the most significant aspects of simple/house church is a generation of believers who can step outside the walls and into the world with the mission of love on their hearts 24/7.

The following is from Kent Smith (emailed to me some time back by Mike Steele) on "A Lifestyle of Spirit-Led Leadership."  Kent is a missions professor at Abilene Christian University and has been involved in training leaders of simple churches:

The great soccer player Pele was quoted saying, "I have just three moves . . . but I do them very, very well."
 
That brought to mind one of my favorite quotes from Peter Drucker: "Effective people focus on a few areas where outstanding performance will produce outstanding results."
 
We want to be an expert at:
                        1) Loving, hearing and obeying Jesus.
                        2) Leading others to love, hear and obey Jesus.
                        3) Leading the leaders of others to love hear and obey Jesus.
 
If we do these things well, we believe we will fulfill the Lord's purpose for our relational family and the peoples and cities God calls us to bless and encourage around the world.
 
In light of this . . .
 
We don't assume that the challenge and task we face is first and foremost church planting. We assume rather that the focus must be to find those who are open to God's life and to train them to center their lives in Jesus.
 
We believe that both of these points of ministry will produce something that may be called a church—but only the second will produce a vibrant family of Jesus, that is to say, a healthy community where Jesus is actually embodied in a particular setting.
 
We further assume that mature apostles/missionaries will understand that their work will only be healthy and enduring if it:

1. is centered and built upon the foundation that is Jesus Christ. At a practical level this means the people involved are listening to Jesus and doing what he says.
2. embraces and calls forth the full spectrum of healthy functioning in the body, not merely, for example, the reproductive function. For a body to be healthy and mature all the parts must be free to do their work, including those with other equipping gifts.

The work of mature apostles/missionaries therefore is first and foremost a work of "eduction", of calling forth the latent grace of God in each person and community God calls them to serve.
 
This is a work of profound humility that steadily discovers and submits to the new thing Christ is doing in each person and place as he builds his Church.
 

Hugh Halter and Matt Smay have written an interesting book on "Creating Incarnational Community."  It's a good read.  Following is not a book review, rather just some notes (and quotes) that I wrote after reading it:

Author Hugh Halter tells this story:

As I’m sitting at a Starbucks in the final week of editing this book, I just took a break to talk to a guy named Don.  Don grew up in a non-practicing Catholic home, watched his father convert to a Seventh-Day Adventist tradition, but only remembers the types of meat he couldn’t eat.  His wife hates the idea of God, and Don’s already expressed his disdain for organized church.  Since he seemed open to talk, I lobbed up this question: "If Christianity was only about finding a group of people to live life with, who shared openly their search for God and allowed anyone, regardless of behavior, to seek too, and who collectively lived by faith to make the world a little more like Heaven, would you be interested?”

“Hell yes!” was his reply.  He continued, “Are there churches like that?”

On belonging to those we are reaching:

In order for us to change the incorrect assumptions that people have about God and his followers… we’ve got to get to the point where they consider us one of them.

On becoming an advocate for people:

When your posture is correct, you’ll be perceived to be an advocate, a person who supports and speaks in favor of or pleads for another…  Instead of drawing a line in the sand and imploring them to ‘get right with God or get left behind,’ we step across from our religious side into their all-too real world and ask how we can help…  To be an advocate means that when people are in need, they know that we’ll be on their team, and that we’ll be there whenever they need us, for just about everything.

On inviting people to join you on your spiritual journey:

Share food… Share life… Listen to them… Share Scripture…

On intentionality around creating incarnational communities:

We put much emphasis on helping people create and participate in incarnational communities.  It’s not just an attempt to start a bunch of small groups all over the city.  We believe that unless people experience [this lifestyle]… and fight for this tangible Kingdom, they won’t grow as disciples of Christ, and Sojourners [the lost] won’t be moving toward God.

David Watson presented a one-day web seminar on church planting movements.  Notes and links to this webinar are below.

Many feel, as I do, that the movement toward simple/house churches has the potential of paving the way for the rapid multiplication of churches, by the hand of God, often referred to as church planting movements.  This wonderful move of God has been referred to as “the spontaneous expansion of the Church…  It asks for no elaborate organization, no large finances, no great numbers of paid missionaries (Roland Allen).”  Yet such a move has the potential of seeing regions and nations transformed.

David Garrison, in his groundbreaking book on church planting movements, offers this hope for such a move of God in North America: “A surprising number of [North American] Christian leaders are adopting a radical new vision that looks surprisingly like other [church planting] movements that we’ve witnessed around the world.”  Garrison closes his book with this encouragement:

It can’t happen here.  This is what they said in Vietnam until they saw it in Cambodia.  It’s what they said in Cambodia before they saw it in China.  It’s what they said in Central America before they saw it in Bogota.  It’s what they said in Sudan before they saw it in Ethiopia.  Perhaps it’s what they are saying where you live.

Some Key Points from David Watson’s Webinar on Church Planting Movements

“Focus on the few to reach the many,” and “Go slow to go fast.”  David’s experience on the mission field caused his organization to question his methods because, in his first few years on the field, he was not producing the numerical growth of other missionaries.  However, David was systematically reaching and discipling a handful of believers who then began to reproduce themselves.  Several years later the result was thousands of churches and reproducing disciples.

“Find the fight people to invest your life into.”  David’s criterion in working with someone is whether or not they are going to invest in others.

“Let the lost lead Bible studies,” and “It’s about discovery not preaching or teaching.”  David has experienced a great deal of success at showing pre-Christians how to do a discovery Bible study that lead them into a process of discipleship.  “Disciple to conversion” rather than “convert to make disciples.”

“Buildings kill church planting.”  Though David is not negative on the overall usefulness of “brick and mortar” churches, he merely reflects on the reality that when God is moving in reproducing disciples among a people group, nothing will slow this process down like building-type churches rather than simple-organic ones.

These sessions are filled with nuggets that are worthy of reflection:

Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4

A picture sent to us from our daughter-in-law:

The process of thinking about, practicing, re-thinking, re-imagining, and re-experimenting is exactly where the church needs to be today as it struggles to shed some irrelevant outer garments and seeks to uncover the shape it is morphing into.

I have seen the benefits of moving away from more traditional structures and into church forms that are simpler:

• Small, so that community and family can be experienced
• Participatory, so that every person’s gift is valued and developed
• Non-positional in leadership status, so that submission is mutual and leadership is situational and gift-based
• Non-programmatic, so that mission, discipleship, and leadership training is relationally-oriented
• Simple, so that it supports a 24/7, Jesus-following way of life

Yet, I have also noted the many downsides of working with simple/house churches:

• Community/family life in small groups is challenging.
• Despite good intentions, the consumer attitude of “what’s in it for me” can still be the prevailing attitude.
• We can talk a lot about a 24/7, Jesus-following lifestyle, but the reality is often that the only real change is that we gather in a small, participatory gathering rather than a large, stage-oriented one.
• Participatory gatherings, that seek to have the Holy Spirit lead, often fall short of such an ideal.
• Simple/house churches can become a place for Christians who are done with traditional church, for whatever reason, but who are not really ready to move forward into something truly, substantively different in terms of lifestyle.

Does this mean that I am ready to abandon simple/house churches?  Not at all.

But re-think?  Always.  I believe that God is on the move at this time like no other season I have been through in a long time, and the challenge is to keep moving with Him.

“Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.”
(Bob Dylan—whew… where did he come from?)

Keeping First Things First: How Hard It Is

I have spoken and written about the following statement over and over in many different ways:

“Simple church is not about ‘doing church differently,’ rather it’s about a way of life, the Jesus way of life, and supporting that way of life through simple, organic gatherings.”

In other words, the “way of life” really is the primary focus while the structure, format, or type of gathering is completely secondary.  Our communities/gatherings must consist of people who are living or learning to live dynamic, purposeful, intimate, prophetic, missional Christian lifestyles rather than just being house-sized containers for passive Christians to gather in.

Tom Sine, in The New Conspirators, comments: “We are concerned that fewer than 10 percent of the believers we work with in North America have any time outside of home and church to work in ministry with others.”

I am concerned that meeting simply and in houses has not actually changed this.  We are spending less time in church meetings and programs, but has this really translated into more ministry outside the walls?  Has our way of life changed?

I am concerned that we fall into the “downsides of working with simple/house churches” (mentioned above) precisely because we sink into the habit, once again, of just “doing church” rather than living out the type of ministry and lifestyle that Jesus modeled.

My confession is that I fall into this far more often than I choose to admit.  My intentions for living as a radical, whole-life disciple dissipate into a few weekly Christian activities.  I begin just “doing church.”  I begin to look at my Christian friends and the church communities I gather with as though they are the problem when, in fact…

• I am the one who is no longer purposefully engaging with God in His intentions to bring His Kingdom to earth all around me and through me.
• I am the one who is trying to replace a lifestyle of listening and following Jesus’ voice and footsteps with a pre-formatted, Christian routine and a simple/small gathering.
• I am the one who is hesitant to fully explore with God what it means to lay down my life in order to allow His compassionate, missional heart to beat in me and change the way I live.

Re-Imagining Church With a Whole-Life, Missional Ethos

So, I am once again seeking to re-imagine what “church” can be.  Or rather, what it means to be the church in a way that actually reflects who Jesus is.  It is certainly about pursuing a constant intimacy with Jesus developed through practices, both personal and corporate, which nurture and develop that relationship with Him.  It is certainly about doing life with others in community which, for me, means small, participatory, shared-life communities.

However, I also see the need for a clear missional ethos that actually challenges my comfortable, North American lifestyle and propels me more often into the world of people’s hurt, pain, need, and lost-ness that Jesus engaged daily.

The Praxis Church offers the following as a partial definition of their church family: “As a Missional Church we value the time you spend in the world and so instead of filling your life with a variety of church events we would rather send you into the culture equipped with the Gospel.”

This type of statement is a good start.  However, I also sense the need to bring this type of ethos into the discipleship process so that I am being discipled into a radical, missional, Jesus-following life and discipling others in the same vein.  I believe a healthy, fathering/mentoring discipleship chain is essential to Christians living full-of-life, dynamic, intentional, intimate, purposeful, kingdom lives that propel us out of our cultural sloth. 

I am re-imagining simple church that places a whole-life, missional, counter-cultural, Jesus-following ethos at the very center of its gathering and intentional discipleship processes.

There is, obviously, much more to explore together so consider this an invitation to think, re-think, and re-imagine with me.

I just want to mention a few books of interest.

Pagan Christianity, by Frank Viola and George Barna.  This is an update of Viola’s former book that is receiving mainline attention despite its hard-hitting message of God’s original design and intention for his church.  The thesis: “Most of what present-day Christians do in church each Sunday is rooted, not in the New Testament, but in pagan culture and rituals developed long after the death of the apostles.”  A must read because of its well-documented message and broad circulation.

The New Conspirators, by Tom Sine.  Sine takes a look at what he calls “a new generation of conspirators that won’t be satisfied with anything less than an authentic faith that makes a real difference in the lives of others…”  He gives many examples of people (mostly young) who are re-imagining the form and shape of today’s church dividing them into four categories: emerging, missional, mosaic, and monastic.  Sine challenges us to become creative in “giving imaginative expression to God’s new creation in the here and now.”

UnChristian, by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons.  This book looks at the negative perceptions that are commonly held of Christians.  “The primary reason outsiders feel hostile toward Christians… is not because of any specific theological perspective.  What they react negatively to is our ‘swagger,’ how we go about things and the sense of self-importance we project.”  The authors document the most common perceptions of present-day Christianity: judgmental, old-fashioned, too involved in politics, insensitive, boring, confusing, and more.  This book is an excellent mirror for anyone who wants to engage our culture in a way that allows people to see the real Jesus.

In case you have not heard from some other source, we are involved in a group effort to bring relief to some of the victims of the violence in Kenya that broke out two months ago.

My wife and I were there 9 weeks ago, so the tragedies have been very personal and upfront, involving several of our friends.

If you have not done so, please take a look at the following website set up to bring the latest reports and to coordinate giving that is going directly to Kenyan leaders who are ministering to critical needs.

www.simplechurchescare.com

Dave Wainscott has put together some excellent quotes around the topic of “Worship is not Music.”

“It would be true to say that during the last twenty-five years or so amongst those churches which would own the label ‘evangelical’, a significant change in understanding has taken place over the meaning of the word ‘worship’. If a few decades ago the person leading the service had said, ‘We are now going to have a time of worship’, most people would have looked on in utter bewilderment. Now everyone would know exactly what to expect: a lengthy time of contemporary Christian songs, maybe interspersed with a few prayers and exhortations, perhaps with hands held up in the air and a far-away look in the eyes.”

We have, first of all, limited the concept of worship to an event that takes place for twenty minutes rather than a life that is devoted in love and surrender to a compelling God.

Even worse, we have reduced corporate worship to times in which music must be present.  Further, we have become so dependent on great-sounding music to drive the worship times that very little true heart-worship is needed.  In fact, some would say, the result is a steep decline in actual corporate “worship” and an increase of music-moved emotion.

I share this only because simple/organic churches have the opportunity to re-capture the heart of worship.  We want to re-affirm that the Christian life of worship is one that is not segmented into times of worship and times of non-worship.  Every day, and every gathering (whether at home, or with friends, or with nonChristians, or with community) is an opportunity for worship of many different kinds.

AND, when we do gather together and find ourselves expressing love-sick worship toward God with our hands, lips, body, soul, and spirit… we can recover heart-driven worship.  We can learn the wonder of a small group of believers who have developed the daily discipline of turning their hearts toward God in adoration coming together to do the same corporately.  In that time, music can be good but it is not essential.  Spoken praise works, psalms read works, silence works, spontaneous non-professional singing works, poetry works.  When our hearts are driving worship the external forms become far less important than the inner longings that truly do usher in a deep conscious sense of God’s presence.

I love worship.  And I love music.  But I long to see our gatherings re-capture the numinous awe of God simply around the fact that a group of Jesus-lovers have gathered who are in awe of Him.

When the music fades / All is stripped away / And I simply come / Longing just to bring / Something that’s of worth / That will bless Your heart
I bring You more than a song / For a song in itself / Is not what You have required
You search much deeper within / Through the way things appear / You’re looking into my heart
I’m coming back to the heart of worship / And it’s all about You / It’s all about You, Jesus