The Goal of Serving Your Community

About a year ago I was really struggling. Someone I respected told me that the at-risk tutoring/mentoring ministry I led wasn't really effective unless it brought people into the church, or at least that's the way I understood it. I'm not sure he meant it quite as bluntly, but that's how I took it.

So, the time that we spent serving a need in that low income area, developing relationships with the families and students, and being the hands and feet of Jesus was a waste?

I think wanting to bring people into our church is a good goal, but as we know the "church" isn't necessarily a place many in our culture feel comfortable. I also think that finding ways we can interact with our culture and build relationships is a good and holy goal. I want to do so without feeling a sense of manipulation....that I want something from the people I'm serving. Is this just leaving them off the hook? Or enabling them to take advantage of you?

I still struggle with this, but a recent article I read from Relevant magazine gave me some hope.

Socks and Cigarettes
by Tim Berroth

The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality

After reading The Forgotten Ways, I shuffled through the bibliography (which took a few minutes since there were 87 sources) and picked out some books for further reading. I just completed the first of the ones I ordered and it was great. The book is called The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality by Alan Roxburgh. I know, catchy title.

There were some concepts in the book that I hadn't been exposed to before that were really helpful in my continuing pursuit of understanding where our culture stands and how the church can best engage that faithfully. Below are a few of my favorite quotes.

"This role [pastor] is based on the cultural assumption of a church in the center of a society where people come from their public lives for spiritual instruction."

"The church's understanding of its changed social location will determine its praxis."

"Throw up a thousand spires higher than the Sears Tower, but they no longer have the power to attract."

"One fears that in North America, rather than hearing this call of the Spirit to embrace and listen to the voice of God in a place of strangeness, the churches are continuing to work hard at rediscovering modes of existence and symbols of power that will move them back to an imaginary center."

The book is only 67 pages long and well worth reading. But if you can find it at a library I'd do it. Those 67 pages are $14.95!

The Priority of Prayer

Yesterday morning Jon Haley, a missionary in Spain, preached an amazing message called the Horizons of Life. It was out of 1 Peter 4, and what caught my attention most was Peter's call to be clear-minded and self-controlled (NIV) so that we can pray. As I have delved deeper into the missional paradigm of church I have enjoyed reading and interacting with people about all kinds of concepts and ways of thinking. I have made time for this reading and these conversations. I make time to write on this blog and to read others. Many times I do not make time to pray.

One of the things I have loved about the missional church conversation is the call to reliance on the Spirit of God. We take action but understand that it is not our strategies that will transform lives, ours or others. One of the logical outcomes of this should be a desire, even a need, to cry out to God and say "your kingdom come!" Yet lack of discipline in our lives can defeat the best of intentions. I came out of the sermon yesterday wanting to spend significant time calling out to God, but if I do not create the time for this to happen it will not happen.

I was talking with a friend this morning about where prayer should come from. By that I mean specifically, should we wait until we have a desire to pray and then do it, or should we discipline ourselves to pray and then hope our heart follows. We both spent much of our lives setting aside time to pray because we were supposed to and our hearts didn't follow. But I think it is also possible to have a heart that longs to pray but never do it because we are not disciplined. It seems to me that both of these elements are essential. We must seek God and be given a heart desire to be with him, but we also have to create time when this can happen. We must be both passionate and disciplined about prayer. Prayer reminds us that we are reliant on Him and that we will see greater things that we could imagine when it is His power and not ours at work.

What the Coffeeshop Teaches Us

As much as I like my once-a-week Starbucks gift to myself, I treasure those more sporadic stops at my local indy coffeeshop. It's easier to go there and stay there for hours. I often choose that coffeeshop when I have a friend I want to spend some quality time with. I meet more people there than I ever would at Starbucks.

I love this article that Leadership journal published about what the church can learn about the coffeeshop (also love it because this coffeeshop is MY coffeeshop and I know the author and his wife):

Coffeeshop Connections
What one pastor is learning, as a part-time barista, about relationship and discipleship.
by David Swanson

Here's my favorite excerpt:

If we believe the church community is the sum of its people, and if we believe that relationships are not something that can be programmed, then we do well to consider how to create margins in church life for spontaneous relational moments, similar to those that attract people to the coffeeshop.

Why Does the Church Exist?

In The Present Future by Reggie McNeal, he states that "The church was never intended to exist for itself." That's a pretty simple statement, but it's also the most difficult statement for many Christians today.

Think about what you often hear church people talk about (and I've definitely been more than guilty of this): I didn't like the music today. The sermon was boring. The children's program is not as good as it used to be. It's too seeker-sensitive; what about me? The color of the carpet is awful. I have a ministry to promote, but they won't let me. There's no one my age here.

We've forgotten why we exist. We need to get back to being God's redemptive instrument for the world. God invites us to join Him. And not just the pastors and other leaders in the church. You. Me. All of us.

As Bill Hybels says, "The church is the only hope of the world."

Networking Church

When you ask someone if they go to church, there are a number of things that most people will immediately associate with this question. Some of these are--1)Going to church involves showing up at a building at a certain time each week 2) The church has a pastor or pastors who are paid to run the programs and make sure "church" happens 3) There are specific ministries for groups such as children, youth, men, women, etc. A couple other questions people might ask to find out about a church are--1) What style of worship does it use? 2) How many people go there? (Usually measured by how many show up on a given Sunday morning). 3) What is its doctrinal statement?

It is primarily for this reason, the baggage associated with the word "church" in the United States, that we have begun to refer to what we are doing as a network. We won't have a building that we own, when we do meet as a large group we will do things to make sure people know that it only one small part of who we are as a "church," we won't have specific programs for specific ages, and we won't determine the effectiveness of what we're doing based on how many come to a group gathering (to be more fair, many churches that measure this don't use it as their sole indicator of church health).

I believe that we will be a church, but I want to be careful how that word is used and what it might communicate. We are the church of Christ and so we will continue to be that even if we have to use some different terminology to describe it.

A House Church: To be or not to be?

I want to continue the discussion Cory brought up about house churches and whether we will be one or not. The answer to that question is yes--and no--it kind of depends on your perspective.

The primary place of connection and growth for people will be their cell group. These are groups that will often meet in homes, but will also meet in office buildings, bars, coffee shops, libraries, or wherever the group decides. That will largely be determined by the way the group approaches reaching out to people and out of which subculture the group is formed. For instance, if a group forms at a workplace it would make sense for them to meet at that workplace, at least for their regular meetings.

These groups will develop their own rhythm for what they do and when they do it (with the help of a leader and in accord with some core practices). They will determine what they study, how they will serve their communities, how to care for each other, to whom the will reach out and how, etc. The freedom each cell group will have would move it toward the house church category.

But these cell groups will maintain a consciousness of a larger affiliation. By having all the cell groups come together on a regular basis we will reinforce the vision of the network, its diversity, and visually remind people that God is up to something much larger than any of us.

The cell groups will also be guided and held accountable by the network leadership. But this won't be done in a "fill out this report and turn it in once a month" kind of way. We hope to do this in the way the apostles checked in on and encouraged the churches they started. To stay informed about what is going on and then encourage, guide, and challenge based on that, at the same time maintaining that the network leadership doesn't control a given cell group.

So this network will be a church of churches. The cell groups will share many characteristics with house churches, but they will move in the same direction as a larger movement rather than placing themselves on an island.

Can a Home Be a House of God?

Scot McKnight of Jesus Creed posted an article from a suburban Chicago newspaper about house churches in the area. Read that article here. It's pretty intriguing and brings up a lot of questions that I've wrestled with over the last few months.

Where's the accountability? How do you inspire tithing and giving? What about worship gatherings? Serving the community? Do they easily become closed to others when the group grows close? How do they multiply?

Don't get me wrong. I see alot of good in house churches compared to institutionalized church. These are just questions. What we're trying to do will have some aspects of a house church. I'd love to discuss some of these issues, or other issues you have. And, maybe Trevor can add more to this conversation as well.

Convenience vs. Relationship

One of the things I appreciate about the missional church conversation that's going on right now is the critique of materialism and consumerism in the West. It is especially disturbing how our culture functions in a way that places products over people.

One of the specific ways this is communicated is through chain stores. You can go to a Starbucks, or Gap, or Aldo (that reference is for you Cory) almost anywhere and know what you are getting in terms of quality, selection, and price. We tend to go to whichever of these chain outlets is closest at the moment because we can get the product we need without travelling to a specific location.

The problem with this is that it is impossible to develop relationships with workers or patrons of a store if you seldom go to the same location. We consume the product without a thought to how this impacts our ability to form relationships. In the past there were only one or two choices for where to purchase things and the same people worked at the same times so relationships were inevitable.

It is important for us to consider how our consumer choices will impact our ability to build relationship and thereby impact people for the Kingdom. Being consistent at certain locations, even when it's not convenient, is an important part of not marginalizing relationships.

What Is Missional?

Welcome to our blog! This is our experiment with a few goals: 1) to communicate with friends about the progress of the network we're hoping to create, 2) to try to explain in more detail what it is we are feeling led to do, 3) and, at least for me, to help make some sense out of what's going on with the church, with culture, and how we fit into it.

First question you may have: what's a missional church? Leadership journal's most recent issue is on the topic of "Going Missional." To read about some common practices and commitments of a missional church, all of which we hope to accomplish, read this great article:

Missional Buzz
Will the real church please stand up?
by Tim Conder

Please feel free to post your questions about what we're doing, and we'll see if we can answer them. And thanks for supporting us in what we hope will be a terrific ride.

Great Resource

Cory directed me to this website a couple days ago and it's really great. There are quite a few links to places where the conversation on the missional church is happening. It highlights the friendly and affirming disposition that is accompanying the discussion right now. Check out some of the links if you have time!

The Name

Cory and I spent some time trying to decide what to call this blog, and perhaps the network of cell groups (church) we will be working to start. What I realized in the process is that there is no perfect word to communicate everything you want to communicate. But I think infuse is pretty good. Here's a couple reasons for going with this name (at least for now).

I have been captured by the metaphors Jesus uses to describe his kingdom--yeast in particular. When it is added to bread dough it doesn't do anything right away, at least not anything we can see. But over time it causes tremendous changes in the dough to the point where its influence in unmistakable. "To infuse" something has a similar meaning. Two substances that do not mix quickly are left to "infuse" and over time their influence on the overall substance is unmistakable. While the type of church we want to pursue will not be immediately influential, we pray that over time it's influence will become so great that it will be impossible to miss. We hope this will happen by releasing people to follow the life-changing call of Christ to fulfill his mission in the world.

Another reason to like this word is that it could refer to the way we hope values are passed along. The goal is to create a movement with the DNA of Christ (for more on this concept see the book Decoding the Church) and then infuse this DNA into other people and other groups. Not to control externally, but to infuse DNA and then trust that to do its work.

There are other ways this word could be applied, but hopefully those will come through in future posts. Looking forward to this journey!