Don’t Leave it to the Christians to Plant a Church…
Finding myself drinking coffee more and more these days. I’ve begun to call it my “liquid intelligence,” but I’m not sure if I like that. Journaling, coffee, prayer, and an active imagination are the things that usually fill my mornings. Also, I’ve been gravitating more and more to Pandora‘s rockin’ Trance station. Check out all my fave stations and rock out with me here. I love the digital age!
I’m finding more and more in the city and region who are experimenting with communal discipleship, organic church planting, and the like. Yesterday I traveled out to West Chicago and had spent most of the day at the Wyclife Bible Translation center with other church planter types. Joe Hernandez with CityTeam Ministries was there, leading the discussion.
I notice that in this whole church planting conversation, there are two emphases at least that fill the air. One group sees house churches as a means to develop more authentic community. Where you take the programs, clergy, and other obstacles out of the way and just have family life together. The problem I see with this approach is that these groups usually bring in many more Christians than those unsure of their relationship with God. And more often than not, these Christians have such baggage from their previous church experience that you spend all your time deconstructing and sometimes criticizing the “institutional church” (as if there is ever a “un-institutional church” – a fallacy) that little gets done in the way of loving neighbors, or transforming lives into the image of Christ.
Besides that issue, there’s LOTS more “authentic” expressions of church than just meeting in a home! If you want to see a good picture of deep, holistic Christian community, check out Reba Place Fellowship, or L’Arche Communities, or so many other intentional Christian communities. Why stop at just being “family” when you meet together for worship? I find that most Christians meeting in house churches either come to it expecting to become the superstar of their little group (thus defeating community), or they are just on the way to the next step of a more full-time intentional expression (like living in a house together, or sharing finances).
These are all awesome journeys to be on, and some days I wish I could have more than one life to do them all. But in this life I feel called to go the second path in church planting: the path that brings the profoundly lost into a transforming relationship with Jesus Christ. Joe Hernandez (like Neil Cole and many others) are focused specifically on this goal too.
I’ve seen it happen. Whole communities come to Christ because one person in their group found something amazing in Christ’s teaching. She found it because someone showed it to her. Someone planted the Gospel in her heart, then SHE plants the church in her own group of friends! This is where the organic church has something healthy to contribute to the emerging church landscape in America, and around the world. Plant the gospel deeply into multiple contexts, worldviews, and people groups (not holding it in just one, and not keeping it for the Christians weighted with baggage.) It has been almost 180 years since the last real explosion of church planting on this continent. It’s time to start praying for God’s power to flood our lands again.







millertalbot 9:09 am on August 30, 2008 Permalink
i wish you could’ve heard wolfe speak yesterday!
you’d have some out just jukin’
great post
Mark 9:40 am on August 30, 2008 Permalink
miller – good to hear from you! hope DFW is as pleasant weather wise as it is here!
do you mean wolfgang simpson?
what do you mean by “you’d have some out just jukin’”?
millertalbot 6:19 pm on August 30, 2008 Permalink
i meant you’d have come out of wolfgang’s talk all hyped up i think. it was pretty powerful stuff.
Mark 11:12 pm on August 30, 2008 Permalink
sweet! anyone with a cool accent talking about things that matter is cool in my books. can you give me a few of his major points?
millertalbot 9:14 am on August 31, 2008 Permalink
yeah, he really came down pretty hard on the democratization of western faith. how most of us have grown up knowing nothing about lining in a monarchy and therefore don’t really understand what life in the Kingdom is all about. he talked about the need to give Christ our complete loyalty… that we typically decide to do something and ask God to bless is when we should really be looking for what God is blessing and joining him there.
he also talked alot about the need to place our “isaacs” on the alter. he talked about the way we are accustomed to sacrificing the things we feel the need to get rid of, but we really need to sacrifice the things we are most proud of.
as usual, wolfe is hard to take! but i think he had some things that were right on target! i don’t think he’s talking about slavishness or returning to legalism in any way… i think he’s still talking about freedom, just a different kind than we know.
does any of that make sense?
Sean 11:40 am on September 1, 2008 Permalink
Dude I appreciate your post. You’ve given me some clarity on who I should talk to about church planting as of late. I love how your looking for the church planters that are looking for ways to increase the numbers in the kingdom inside North America. Please keep posting about your explorations on this topic. I could use the resources.