Chicago has more and more tables these days.

While reading the latest exposé from ABC News (a great read by the way) on organic churches multiplying around the country, I noticed that Randy Frazee, a pastor at Willow Creek Community Church has been finding new ways to make their 20,000 strong membership feel as if each member can participate and contribute in healthy ways. Boy, I would not want that job!

But Frazee seems to be taking a page from the house church movement sweeping across America and running with it. He has constructed “Neighborhood Life” a sprawling neighborhood ministry made available to anyone who can ring a doorbell or make a phone call. This is how Frazee plans to lead “an effort to restructure the church’s small group programs toward more holistic church experiences centered in homes“. Apparently, these are stand-alone churches of their own right, and yet they have an indirect connection with Willow Creek Church through the 21 area pastors who oversee the groups and provide occasional guidance.

In some ways, this kind of partnership between house churches and a megachurch is a wonderful example of how the two models can work together. The Tables’ vision for multiple pastor system spread over focused neighborhoods also gives us a glimpse into one kind of emerging leadership structure that is blossoming out of this new way of “doing church.” And people are responding. In fact, in the year and a half since this program has begun, there are already about 7,000 who attend an extension of this ministry throughout Chicagoland.

But there are a few major flaws as I read deeper into Frazee’s vision for Neighborhood Life and the “Tables” (house churches) that are being introduced. First, this is for Willowpeople, by Willowpeople. Willow Creek members can go to The Willow Neighborhood Life website and sign up to “Host a Table”. Once approved by the higher-ups, are then contacted by other church members who have noticed their presence on the Willow website and connect there. Sounds okay, right? …But when do we ever meet our own neighbors? When do we bump into lost people? This is a system designed to keep our garage doors closed and our backyard fences erected. When we have to “apply for community” on the internet, we are too afraid of each other.
Second, it is a monthly event, hosted by Willow Creek leaders focused on Willow Creek materials. What can a group of strangers do once a month? What sort of discipleship occurs in a two hour block once a month?! The curriculum for the evening’s conversation is given to approved Willowcreek leadership to be followed and completed each time they meet…

::I can already tell people are excited::

…in the end this comes down to keeping this Neighborhood “Life” firmly in the grips of Willowcreek, rather than in the hands of the people who chose to gather together that night.

Maybe this is just the first stage of something much bigger; maybe this is a good way to ease into learning to become the Church God has called his Bride to be.

Then again, maybe its like Martin Luther King’s fear of the northern white brothers who thought that the current compromise was good enough.

I am still thinking through all this. I want to commend Randy Frazee for working so diligently at dragging people off the pews and into the intimate setting of people’s homes. But is he doing them a disservice if he never gives them a vision that they are truly and fully capable of starting a new church with their neighbors down the street without Big-Brother-Willow-Creek’s consent? Will these Table groups forever have to fill-in-the-blanks of some workbook when all they want to do is hear what Jesus has been saying to each of them? My prayer is that of the 7,000 people involved, a few will catch a whiff of what God is doing worldwide:

He is giving the Church back to his people.

So I’m wondering: is it possible for a community to hold to both efficiency AND authenticity?

We see the virtue of efficiency running deep in everything Americans participate in. We want our food quicker, our PDA’s cheaper, and home appliances are there to make housework easier. We even have a timer for our lights - so we don’t have to get up to turn them on ourselves!)
We want our relationships more efficient too. We funnel into a niche online and find the person or two that meets our needs and focus in on them without having to worry about ever really meeting them in person. Teens today dodge the awkward stage of having to get to know people at their high school because they can go home at the end of the day and login as WARRIOR2122 and kick butt in a video game. We even have online SIMS, a virtual family with virtual neighbors, while our proximal neighbors sit at home alone; just as alone as we are.
As efficient as we’d like to be, there has been a major push among postmoderns (and people in general) to seek authenticity. We want organic food (real, no preservatives or steroids), we want the truth when purchasing a car (picture the “used car salesman” stereotype, and cringe). And of course we want authentic relationships. Much of our journey into “organic church” is a search for authentic relationships.

But can this journey be an efficient one? Last September I heard George Barna speak about leaders in the “revolution” he sees spreading across the North American church scene. More and more people are moving toward “authentic” expressions of faith in community.

But one thing he said struck me funny. He said that leaders of this “revolution” were not “efficient”. “Not efficient?” I asked myself, “how can this be any kind of revolution without efficient change?” It took me until just a few days ago to put it together. Every single revolutionary in history fled from the “efficient” path, but took instead the radical path that was filled with twists, u-turns, and challenging hurdles.

Living as a revolutionary on a quest for an authentic faith and authentic relationships is scary, because we must give up one of the central virtues of the American lifestyle: efficiency. In our house church this past year, we’ve found our gatherings to be fairly “inefficient”. Sometimes we leave wondering if anything happened at all. Other times we feel like we’ve been on a long journey with each other and we leave exhausted. It’s confusing, we make wrong turns, but on our best moments we feel like we’re a part of the revolution.

So is it possible? Can we be efficiently authentic?

Wow! What a world wind tour we’ve just returned from! That’s probably going down as record for the all-time longest Christmas travels this family has ever made! We went up to Chicago, down to Indy, up to St. Paul and back to Chicago all in a week and a half! Below is a report on the God-sightings on our trip:

Thursday 12/21 - We leave Texas! The biggest step is always the hardest, and most important! It was fun trying to pack as much as we could into one tiny little suitcase. Good memories with Katrina there. Once we got on the road however, we got to talking about the strange relationship America has with the words “authenticity” and “efficiency”. It’s almost as if these two words are the oaths we swear by, and yet to have one you must inevitably sacrifice the other. I’ll probably write more on this topic in the posts to come.

Thursday evening we flew out of DFW airport and made it safely into Chicago around 12:30am. We were completely exhausted (we had made it out of travel easier that the folks in Denver to be sure!) and stumbled towards a cab. We were staying at the Super 8 near O’Hare (never again) and basically zonked out the moment we hit the pillows.

Friday 12/22 - was a full day of TRAVELING THE CTA (Chicago Transit Authority), we hopped on the El (Elevated Train) and made it to Hyde Park, our first destination in the city. Hyde Park is an interesting neighborhood just south of the Loop, in that it holds an orb of luxury and intellectualism (the University of Chicago) amidst extreme poverty and crime. I was surprised to find out that the drug dealers and the police have a sort of “agreement” in that the police will not arrest people for doing or dealing drugs as long as it is within certain sectors in a neighborhood. So we spent a little time at U of Chicago and then hitched a ride up Lake Shore Drive (my favorite street in Chicago, for the view!) up to Evanston, one of the more northern neighborhoods and oldest “suburb” in Chicago. It holds Northwestern University, Katrina’s other graduate school interest. We had fun exploring all the shops and cafes Evanston had to offer, all the while keeping each other close on a cold and blustery day!

Saturday 12/23 - Friday night we spent in a home out in Plainfield, IL and the next morning had breakfast there with some leaders from a local simple church network called the Blessing Place. We had some great conversations about everything from life in the “organic” Kingdom of God, to how to raise leaders in this new (old) kind of church? We prayed over these new friends of ours and headed out for Indianapolis.

Sunday 12/24 - Sunday morning bright and early we headed to Southeastern Church of Christ in what would be our first time to “go to church” in several months. I had placed membership there as a senior in High School and my mom still attends there regularly. There are many people there that I love very dearly, and enjoyed seeing and talking with many of them that morning. Katrina and I held a presentation together on our dreams of mission in Chicago starting in 2008, and I think things went over fairly well. It was tough to give them all the details they wanted, simply because we are still figuring them all out. However, many came up afterwards with fire in their eyes and a smile on their lips as they said, “I share your dream.” It was so cool…

Monday…CHRISTMAS! - WOOHOO! Tons of time with the family! Tons of time to relax! Tons of FOOD! and unfortunately, NOT TONS of snow!

Tuesday, 12/26 and Wed 12/27 - After spending the morning with my family in Indy, we hopped in a car and drove up to St. Paul, MN to meet Katrina’s best friend Pam and her husband Billy. We spent most of the day on Wednesday hanging out at the Mall of America, which I was at first amazed at how huge it was, and then was quickly repulsed at the surge of materialism that ran through my veins (and through the veins of many others who were there). The consumerism was simply was too much for me - may the shock value of greed never wear off!
In any case, we had a wonderful time hanging out with two very wonderful people, and as we told them about our dreams for living in line with God’s story, their eyes lit up. We are praying for further conversation with them, and if God allows, them to join us someday!

Thursday, 12/28 - meant driving back to Chicago and dropping our stuff off at a hotel before heading out to town to celebrate our TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY! We chowed down to some delicious sushi, and walked the (now slightly warmer) streets, enjoying each other’s company. A great day to bond as a team (who also happen to be maddeningly in love).

Friday, 12/29 - We headed out to the Art Institute of Chicago and spent a good portion of the day there, enjoying the locals and some good art. Afterward we headed back to Hyde Park where we met up with Trevor, a minister at a local church who is working on a degree at U of Chicago. All throughout the trip Trina and I had been amazed at the incredible hospitality of those we had stayed with, or even met on the streets or buses (an Indian man tried to give us all his money to help us afford the train trip into town!), and Trevor and his wife Alana were no exception. They got us Chicago-style pizza *drool* and just let us shoot the breeze with them for an entire evening. We also bumped into Brandon and Amanda, who are former classmates of Trina’s, which was a bonus surprise! The whole night we talked about the obstacles of urban ministry in Chicago with some of brightest and most involved urban ministers I know.

Saturday 12/30 - Our last day in the City of Big Shoulders. We hung out awhile more with Trevor and Alana before hopping on the El up near Uptown, where we learned a couple hundred schizophrenics were let loose after Geraldo Rivera did an expose on some of the conditions of the asylums in the city and had them all shut down. Now they run loose! Thank Geraldo! We met up with a couple who moved to Chicago from Searcy, Arkansas (what a switch!). Dillon is from the Caribbean Islands and his wife Irene is from Russia. What a combo! They were a delight to talk to and what an interesting story they have to tell! They are working with a church planting resource organization called CDEA. I’d like to get in touch with them to learn more.

Before we knew it, we were flying out of O’Hare and back in Abilene. The trip went by too quickly, and of course even with such a long post there was SO much I had to leave out. We were fully “blessed by the best” (as a Chicago bus driver hollered back to us one afternoon), and are anxiously awaiting next steps with some of the new friends we met last week. It’s the beginning of a new journey!

Look at the Flickr bar near this post to see some of the pictures we took on our trip!

We’ve made it back safely to the Lone Star State.  And as this year comes to a close, we look back on some of the big shifts that have taken place in our life over the past 365 days:

1. We traveled to several cities including Denver, Austin TX, St. Paul MN, Indy, Chicago, and more.

2. We committed to living as missionaries in Chicago IL.

3. We moved in with another couple to see what “communal living” was like.

4. We quit going to church.

5. We started trying to BE the church.  We’ve failed, we’ve pressed on.

6. We’ve gotten hooked on the TV show “Lost”.

7. We’ve started buying as much “organic” food as we can.  We’re hippies.
8. We went to our first air show.

9. We joined a bluegrass group.

10. Our friends had a baby.  We are now old.

11.  We planted a church.

12. We kept our plant alive, and threw another one away.

13. I read too many books.

14. Trina held an art show displaying the conflict in Northern Africa.

To name a few things anyway…