Recently there was a series of articles published in the Christian Chronicle on church planting within Churches of Christ. (here here and here) Since I have roots that go pretty deep within that heritage, I read each of them, and was really encouraged to see that while church planting is becoming more recognized in the fellowship - even if its far from being a renewal…Churches of Christ are still way behind the population’s growth curve - seen in the figure below.

Still - there is cause for hope. Churches of Christ (and across denominational lines) are beginning to add “church planting” to their vocabulary - and all sorts of things are beginning to happen. For a denomination that grew out of a heritage that pushed “the priesthood of all believers” and strong evangelistic impulse, (to speak nothing of the church planting movement in the 1830-60’s that the Churches of Christ, Christian Church and Disciples of Christ were born from), church planting is certainly in our DNA.

What remains fascinating to me is the multiplicity of expressions of what church planting looks like for Church of Christ related church planters. When “order of worship” was what split the growing Stone-Campbell Movement in 1860’s and again in 1906 (of which Churches of Christ were born), it amazes me that church planters are so willing to break out of the mold. And I mean MOLD.

The past week at ACU’s Lectureship has been really encouraging to me. I spent a good portion of the sessions with church planters, listening to presentations and sharing stories. Networking and conversation filled the room as we heard the dreams of those who had traveled across the country to Abilene, TX in order to tell them. Passion and excitement were in their eyes. Could they really be that excited about planting more churches of Christ? (little “c”)

The fact is - this is DNA from our heritage’s past that has become reactivated as we boldly move into a new understanding of church. Simple worship, lay leadership, evangelistic impulse, and autonomous governance have always been core factors to a movement that had its beginnings in the backwoods of Kentucky and spread like wildfire across the US. Now that the Stone-Campbell dynamic “movement” has become a rigid “monument”, it is refreshing for many of its adherents to hear stories of others in their fellowship who are pioneering once again. Below is just a few of the people I’m in connection with in Church of Christ circles who are engaged in church planting:

Chadd Schroeder - educated at Sunset School of Preaching and ACU, Chadd has worked as a career missionary in Mexico. He has planted several churches of different types and models, but is focused on training Mexicans to become local leaders who can plant authentically Mexican models of churches, in taquerias, bars, and homes.

Ben Cheek, Jared Looney, and “Metro Soul” - connected in the Northeast from the Bronx to Jersey City, live in the world’s most diverse city, and are developing a organic network of churches and communities that is becoming just as diverse as their city. Their focus on discipleship and missional leadership is pioneering a vision of church planting for many others.

Phil McCollum - ministering to the poorest of the poor in East Hollywood (the side that no one talks about). Because he believes that Jesus “had friends in low places” he and his family have moved into the neighborhood, and are living with love for the people of that area.

Kester Smith - planted an emergent church in the alternative communities in Austin, TX. They experience true life together and offer real conversations among skeptics and seekers. Kester works on the edgy Sixth St at Book People, a sweet bookshop and a gathering place of ideas and people of all walks of life. The church they planted is Immanuel Fellowship, and I can’t think of a better name.

Steve and Chrissy Holt - are living incarnationally among people groups in Boston, MA. They have been praying about developing an intentional Christian community (see also, The New Monasticism) and living out practices of peace and restoration among the people in their lives.

Dillon Ross - having recently graduated from Harding University, Dillon has begun working with Chicago District Evangelistic Association to plant simple churches in the Chicago area.

Greg Scott - The Blessing Place network is planting simple churches in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, Greg and his wife Sam work intentionally with native Americans (she lived on a reservation with Rich Mullins!)

Benny and Niki Nowell - work with the homeless youth and basically bless the socks off anyone that comes in their path. They provide a summer experience called “Sabbath” for urban kids, and offer mentoring love and God’s Shalom to many of the brokenhearted in Denver, CO.

Miller Talbot - is preparing the soil of Abilene, TX and the working poor with prayer and incarnational love. His “church plant” looks more like a garden, and his “mission work” looks more like digging a hole in the ground…to find water for a dry and weary land. Check out his imaginative vision here.

There are LOTS of church planting teams in formation, among which my wife and I are a part. To just get a glimpse at some of them, check out here, here and here.

Of course, this is only a slice of the pie. These are friends of mine that are (at different levels) connected to my religious heritage within Churches of Christ. I am proud to be in the family of Christ with them, and look forward to seeing how our paths cross in the future.

God continues to confound the wise and stupefy our best guesses. It is clear to me that God is actively pursuing people right around this world, and in many places (more than we will ever know) he is under the radar, supplying nutrients to grassroots, underground movements of God’s People. Joel News once again discovers yet another story to give Father praise for!

The ‘grassroots’ house church movement in Bangladesh is beating its ten thousands, reports German missions strategist Wolfgang Simson. “In 1996 I was in Bangladesh, the third-largest Muslim country in the world, with only 600,000 known and organized Christians then. Only a few Muslims were coming to Christ, and found it extremely difficult to be integrated into the traditional churches. I spoke to the majority of Christian leaders connected to the Evangelical Alliance there about the need to start underground networks of house churches, allowing whole Muslim families to be discipled and multiplied. Many leaders shook their heads: ‘Impossible; unheard of; unpractical; difficult; deadly; ridiculous, maybe in China or India, but not here’ were some of the responses I got. Crammed into my airplane seat back home I felt like such a looser. Was it worthwhile to speak about these things at all? Should we not leave everyone just alone and do their thing?”

“A few days ago in Zürich a few of us met with a man we call Brother Abdul from Bangladesh. He told us a story that made me cry - and maybe you, too. That very year I was in his land, he, as a 19 year old teenager then, started to do the very thing I was preaching. But he did not hear it from me, but from God. He started a movement to disciple Muslims through underground house churches we call ‘jamaats’, and it has now, in 2007, after only a few years, become the largest single movement bringing Muslims to Jesus in the world! Again and again people checked and rechecked the statistics; it is for fact that more than 500,000 Muslims have become disciples of Jesus through this house church movement, nearly overtaking the number of all other organized Christians in Bangladesh together.”

Source: Wolfgang Simson

Could this kind of “great awakening” have happened if traditional churches had simply figured out the right evangelistic strategy? Would there even be enough seats in the pews of the church buildings in Bangladesh to accomodate for such an amazing influx of church-goers? Thank God that his work is not confined to a church building’s retail space or conversion strategy.

Humans love putting labels on what God is doing. That isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just sorta funny to see it happen sometimes. The big phrase these days is “house church” and “church planting movements”. Neither of these terms are in the Bible, but similar ideas like “the church that meets in your house” and “a gracious outpouring of God’s Spirit” are all over the book of Acts describing similar phenomenon.

Below is an exciting video describing the realities of our world today. While the vocabulary words, music, and narration are kinda corny, I think it introduces people to the ideas that I’m wrestling with in my prayers and studies in just about a straightforward way as possible. In many ways, this video describes the kind of work of God that I am praying regularly about for the people of Abilene and Chicago. What would happen if a sweeping spirit of renewal hit our land? Only God knows.

Will you partner with me in praying for this? — Father, I pray that you will heal our land and bring your Spirit to every person, giving them the joy they need to live a life that matters. I pray for an unleashing of a tidal wave of workers that are sent out into your harvest, and for myriad churches to be planted and countless lives transformed by the Good News!

I love that I will not have to take charge of all that mission work! I love that people across the globe - regular, run-o-the-mill CHILDREN OF GOD have the capacity to join Father in such amazing ways! My job will/is like a “missions coordinator” simply helping along what is already taking place naturally…setting up the tee so they can take the drive. I want so badly to see God take back what is rightfully his, and this seems to be a major way he is doing that in our day.

I subscribe to a online newsletter called Joel News and they had some interesting things to say about the growing trend of people meeting to worship in their homes etc, rather than in traditional building structures.  Below is a selection from the newsletter and some (even more accurate) research giving some of the numbers of this movement in our culture:

—————-
There is a rapid growth of participation in house churches across the
United States. Whereas most people continue to think of ‘going to church’
as attending a service at one of the many church buildings located
throughout their community, a new study from pollster The Barna Group shows
that millions of adults are trying out new forms of spiritual community and
worship, with many abandoning the traditional forms altogether.

The new study, based on interviews with more than 5,000 randomly selected
adults from across the nation, found that 9 percent of adults attend a
house church during a typical week. That is remarkable growth in the past
decade, shooting up from just 1 percent to near double-digit involvement.
In total, one out of five adults attends a house church at least once a
month. Projecting these figures to the national population gives an
estimate of more than 70 million adults who have at least experimented with
house church participation. In a typical week roughly 20 million adults
attend a house church gathering. Over the course of a typical month, that
number doubles to about 43 million adults.

While many religious professionals say they are unaware of such activity,
it might be because the house church is in its ‘ramp up’ phase in the U.S.,
says Barna. One consequence is that millions of Americans are
intermittently engaged in a house church, alternating back and forth
between house church and conventional church. For clarity, the survey
distinguished between involvement in a house church and participation in a
small group that is associated with a conventional church.

The study also discovered that church attendance patterns are being
reshaped. The people most likely to attend a house church but not a
conventional church were men, home-school families, residents of the West,
and non-whites. Barna estimates that this trend will continue over the next
two decades, substantially reducing the share of adults who call a
conventional church their primary spiritual community.

“The house church now appears to have reached ‘critical mass’ in the United
States,” commented Barna. “Analysts typically find that once a new tool or
institution reaches 15% market penetration, and has evidenced a consistent
or growing level of affirmation for at least six years, that entity shifts
from fad to trend status. At that point, it becomes a permanent fixture in
our society. We anticipate house church attendance during any given week to
double in the coming decade, and a growing proportion of house church
attenders to adopt the house church as their primary faith community.”

Full report: www.barna.org

————-

Thoughts?

Some cool words from Joel News:

“In North American there is a growing movement of simple churches, home-based small groups focused on Jesus and doing what He says. House church coach John White shared about what he calls ‘the Luke 10:2b leadership solution’ - a daily prayer for laborers in the harvest. Since he started praying this, and teaching this organic principle to other believers, God sent people on his way, one after the other, asking advice on how to plant churches, and he could simply coach them in doing that. In this way, the simple church networks in the United States are growing exponentially. More than 6,000 churches have been planted in the last 5 years. While they intended to train 530 church planters in 2005, they saw 1,000 church planters trained in the first two months of 2006 alone. With this kind exponential growth (the current growth rate is
70%) they might reach their target of 4 million simple churches in North America (in 400,000 networks, and with 40,000 network coaches, and 4,000 lead coaches) by the year 2018.”

Is this just a fad, or is it something God intends to take and multiply into a movement totally uncontrollable by humans? It’s amazing to read reports about what and how God is doing things in our own country – not to mention the literally MILLIONS of churches planted in other continents! It’s a little like when you start flying down a really steep hill on a sled. At first it seems like you’ll never pick up speed, but then you see what’s coming; you see the drop off. Your mind races, you brace yourself…and you make a choice. Either you dig your heels into the snow and keep control of the descent, or lean back, and just hope you make it all the way down, enjoying the ride the whole way. Veteran sledders know that on the biggest hills, even your best attempts at slowing or steering will only cause your sled to fishtail and you’ll end up with a bloody nose and a red hill.

We’re on the apex of a mountain, and we’re just picking up speed. If we dig our heels into ground and try to control the momentum, it’ll look like another church-fad to the world. Let’s let Christ just blow this away. Let’s focus on Him, not on the church – he’s the one guiding us down the hill, giving us the ride of our life!

My wife and I want to be remembered for our passion for Christ, not for simple church. It’s easy for us to get confused, since I come from three generations of preachers, on both sides of the family – all of which push the importance of “doing church right”. My intention is not to put “doing church” first, but to proclaim Christ, and secondly how we are to be his body in the world today.