I enjoyed spending some more time with our friends/co-workers at Reba Place Fellowship.  We are continuing to see how we can partner with them in following the Lord together and sharing the Gospel with new people groups around the city.  Allan Howe, one of the leaders of the fellowship met with us today, along with several from Good News Partners, an inner city homeless ministry.  As is usual when talking to those on the edge of Kingdom life, the question of “how will this be funded” floated to the surface.

This issue has been on my mind for quite some time now.  It seems that too many people have a desire or a vision for a radical work or ministry, but too few have the capacity to see it come to fruition.  Underfunding could stem from any number of reasons.  Whether its an issue with the skill of vision casting, or a dreamer’s desire to be so radical that it leaves him/her unaccountable to the larger body of Christ, or maybe its an issue of spiritual warfare, or its just that God’s timing for a ministry is not quite our own… It seems that ministries increasingly will have to pay attention to their funding if they are to remain sustainable in effective ministry.

Some have concluded that they cannot receive funding from congregations or missions organizations and instead feel called to “tentmaking.”  Tentmaking is just a fancy way of saying that you use your job to pay for your vocation, and that your business fuses organically with God’s mission.  The apostle Paul, Priscilla and Aquilla did that, and so have countless others.  Others believe that support from churches is where they need to be.  That’s cool too.  “A worker deserves his wages,” Jesus said, and spent time as a mason as well as receiving his living wage from women who had rich husbands (some of which were in business with Herod himself!).  Others still find a workable blend of both roads.

A few books that have shaped my thinking on this are Getting Sent: A Relational Approach to Support Raising, by Pete Sommer, No More Mondays, by Dan Miller, Missions and Money: Affluence as a Missionary Problem, by Jon Bonk, and Profit for the Lord: Economic Activities in the Moravian Missions and the Basel Mission Trading Company, by William Danker.

While I think that those called to a missionary must learn that the world does not revolve around them and their ministry (and that we must learn to become accountable to the larger body of Christ in relational and financial ways), I also think that each ministry must seek eventual self-sustainability.  In order to do this, we must allow the “creative starter” giftings of the missionary to encourage entrepreneurial capital ventures, but keep it from becoming a means of significant distraction from their real work of training leaders to plant churches.  It is not a bad thing for students training to be missionaries to take some key business classes to help them get their arms around economic enterprise.

At the same time, I would hope that financial ties to the rest of the Body of Christ would never be completely severed.  Much like a biological family - even after the children are grown, they help each other out when times get rough or share resources for special interest projects (like a family reunion, or supporting a needy member of the family).

Reba has found that when a group shares resources, more risks can be made - both in ministry and in business.  It’s easier to start a business when you instantly have nearly 100 people financially backing you!

Ultimately though, we work and sweat and prepare - and then we must wait for the Lord to provide.  Right now I work part time at a restaurant in the neighborhood.  I run around like crazy setting the place up in hopes that when we open the doors at 5:30, there will be people interested in eating there, receiving my work, and (mostly unbeknownst to them) supporting urban missions!  There’s an interesting passage in Isaiah 40 that says,

“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

“Waiting” on the Lord includes lots of work!  But their strength comes from the Lord, and from knowing that ultimately the Lord will be their resource.  When it comes to financial life and ministry today, not much has changed.

I look forward to the day when, like the apostles in Acts 6, I can hand off “waiting tables” to others.  For the time being however, I am learning in my job what it means to earn a living, and seeking humility as a server even as I reach out to those I work with as one who has found the Peace that changes lives.  I’m thankful that Jesus gave us flexibilty in this area of funding missions - and I learn so much from others who are much father into this experiment than I am.

As we have been living into this missional, simple Christ-lifestyle, interesting questions have begun to pop up…questions that one normally wouldn’t ask if “going to church” and being a decent member of society was all it took.

In Abilene, I am deeply connected with MRNA, a graduate program functions as a mission-sending agency. It trains students to think missionally, and prepares them for the post-Christian culture of North America. It helps them to ease into a new life with Christ, where he is the head to an organic body, a body that spreads right across the globe - spiritual families meeting in homes and in pubs, others functioning as new monastic communities, and others celebrating God through massive weekend festivals, and more.

So as this year progresses, the MRNA students have been encouraged to begin visiting some of the existing house churches in our city, to get a sense of what is going on citywide. This is where the question comes in:

Does “house church-hopping” make any sense whatsoever in this new paradigm?

ACU students are famous for sampling any number of congregations without ever really placing membership somewhere. And even if they cast their lot with one group, that’s not to say that they don’t have at least two or three other churches where they regularly attend services. In a paradigm that puts the individual first, where spiritual consumerism is top priority, church hopping as a reality makes perfect sense. But when “church” means “family of natural relationships” is there any way someone should even consider sampling from the buffet of choices?

One lady in an organic church here in town told her group that she didn’t feel like her needs were getting met and decided to move to another fellowship. As if severing ties with her family were as simple as showing up for dinner at someone else’s house. In reality this broke the hearts of those in her faith family, and through that conversation they discovered that if her needs weren’t being met, it wasn’t because the church had a problem, but because for one reason or another, this lady couldn’t find the “well spring” inside herself that Jesus promises all those who accept his invitation to abundant life. Through that conversation, life erupted.
First thoughts: Church hopping in organic churches is an echo from a past life. We are still feeling the ripple effects of the “me first” mentality that comes from many traditional churches. In High School, it was impossible for me to skip around between lunch tables looking for who could give me the best lunch and conversation.  I would have been seen as shallow and greedy.  When we begin to see our spiritual families as the organic relationships of our lives, bouncing from one table to the next for spiritual goods and services doesn’t make much sense.

Thoughts?

Some major shakedowns happening in our little LTG (Life Transformation Group).  For almost 7 months now two or three of us have gotten together each week intentionally to build relationships with each other and to raise our awareness of what God is doing in each of our lives.  It has been so amazing to sit across the table from two men I have come to love dearly these past few months, remain completely transparent with them about my life, share in the story of God’s Word each week, and regularly pray for the other and for those lost in each others’ lives.

In the last week, something has changed.  I am under the pressure of the semester’s finals and papers, unfortunately pushing most of my time spent with these friends to the periphery.  Another has found a new lovely lady in his life, and the mix of a busy schedule at work and giving needed attention to this gift in his life has left him at his wits end.  Our third brother is facing a crazy work schedule, and besides that he has a new baby boy and family to look after.  This may be God calling us to take a break for awhile.

Or could it be something even bigger than that?  Could it be that we are finding our specific schedules are no longer compatible because the Lord is ready to start several more LTG’s/similar accountability groups?  Sometimes the death of something old, gives way to a new life.  Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “Unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone.  But its death will produce many new kernels - a plentiful harvest of new lives.”  How frightening to be that kernel of wheat!

If we are serious about “seeing a vibrant family of Jesus in close reach of every person in our city, we have to be willing to allow things we have cherished to die when they need to.  I never feel ready to say goodbye to something that has meant so much to me, but to think of what it might be like to see the three of us starting brand new LTG’s with other friends makes it all worthwhile.  And I’d like to think that as we work with new groups, the three of us would occasionally meet up again to discuss the joys and struggles we face in our little communities.

God’s people are the kernel of wheat.  Everytime a church dies, we mourn its death.  But if that death gives way to a new church (or multiple churches) we can totally see that as a blessing from God!  We keep the KINGDOM at the forefront, and let the LTG’s, churches, networks, etc follow in line.

I’m scared of what might happen - but I keep thinking about the image of the seed.  You’ll never have anything more than a seed as long as its gripped firmly in the palm of your hand.  Let it go.  Let it die.  See what God is waiting to do in his resurrection power!

Some great LTG (Life Transformation Group) news!

Several great things happened last Friday afternoon when Will and I finally got together for our time of prayer, accountability and reflection on God’s Word. He and I had just about had enough of this bouncing around from one time to another time each and every week, so right then and there he and I decided on Saturday’s at 9:30am, which was a BIG relief to both of us. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time meeting with him, but sometimes schedules between two very different people can make meeting VERY difficult.

Also! Our friend Trey is planning to join us each week, making it a full-blown 3-person LTG! There are already about 3 more people on our “sights” for inviting in the near future, which means there could possibly be two LTG’s happening before the end of the year! Exciting!

More exciting news: Will has been talking to his wife about starting an LTG with some of her very close friends (some are followers of Christ, some not). It was such a blessing for me to hear Will explain what LTG’s are and what they have meant to him over the past 3 months. It is SO awesome to hear him catch the vision. I pray regularly now that God will make him the leader of an LTG, and then someday a simple church!

I was supposed to be somewhere else right now. Will and I have been meeting once a week at various times (depending on his work schedule), for prayer, bible study and confession. In the last few days, Will and his family moved again (they are apartment hopping till they find something more secure), so this afternoon I made my way out to see their new place.