Our Micro is really blossoming in some wonderful and formative ways. Â (Read more on the Micro Layer.)
It began with going strictly by the LTG brochure you can read all about on CMA’s website, 25-30 chapters of God’s Word each week, 10 character-conversation questions (accountability) and praying for the “sojourners” in our lives. Â We then tossed in some material from CO2 (Church of 2), learning to tap into what is going on in “my heart, your heart, and God’s heart.” Â We found both of these structures helpful and we flow pretty seamlessly between both of them.
We read plenty of God’s Word. We use YouVersion.com‘s free, customizable Reading Plans to stay in sync with each other – each day reading the same Scriptures and dwelling in the Word – letting God speak to us as we cultivate a spirit of “listening prayer.”
We check in with each other…as close to daily as possible. At the end of our reading and journaling, we take 5 minutes to write an email to the group – writing what we thought about, prayed about and heard from God during our reading. Â It gives us a daily “check-in” opportunity, even when we are not meeting up with each other in the flesh. Â When we meet up once a week, we don’t have to spend all our time going over the minute details of our life because we already know! Â Instead, we check in spiritually -
“What are the deep issues of your heart, today?” “What are you hearing from God? Â What are you doing about it? Â How can we help you?”
We usually have more than enough to share with each other!
We confess sin to each other. Each week we ask, “Is there anything we need to confess today?” Â Sometimes its sin that is shared, other times its a testimony! Â When sin is confessed, the others listen closely to the one confessing, and when everything is said, they respond by saying,
“I hear what you are saying. Â You’re right – this is sin, and wrong…but God forgives you.”
Hearing these words is like salve to the soul…
We pray for harvest workers and for the lost in our city. We meet at 9:00am-10:30am each week – and at 10:02am our cell phone will chime reminding us to pray the pray we read in Luke 10:2 - “Pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest to cast out workers into his harvest field!” We take a few moments to thank God for what he is doing in Chicago, and to plead that God open up the hearts of those we know who are searching for truth.
After 9 months – this is what our Micro looks like.  It has embedded within it the seed of a faith community – and while our group may not look exactly like others that start, our rhythms can easily be passed on and re-molded in countless ways.  Have you thought of trying it?  It’s AWESOME!  More and more Micros are starting in our house church network all the time, and I believe it makes us healthier.
I wouldn’t give up my Micro for anything – it is a chance to be real.  It is a band of brothers.  It is the core and starting place of mission.  It is life transforming!
All organic, healthy things reproduce. In fact, in a sense, you are reproducing even as you read this! Your 10 trillion cells are “mitosis-ing” all over the place, and you might want to quietly ask them to find a room.
The Kingdom of God, like all living things, reproduces itself. Interestingly, this is done in stages developing from the smallest level to the largest.
So if churches, and disciples and even leaders are part of the Kingdom of God, why don’t we see more of them reproducing? Here’s a few reasons:
(1) They are trying to clone themselves. Ever see the movie Multiplicity? Michael Keaton makes a clone of himself to make life a little easier, but before long, his clone makes a clone, who makes another clone. And everyone knows what happens when you make a copy of a copy – its not quite as sharp as the original. (“I like pizza!”) That’s kind of what happens with franchised church plants. (Check out this 10 sec portion of the Multiplicity trailer to see what I mean!)
(2) In addition to scary clones, most churches are just not interested in multiplying! It’s too painful! It feels more like division than multiplication. It usually takes upwards of $250-$500,000 to plant a church in the first year. It is so difficult and complex its undeliverable!
And its difficult not just at the church level – discipleship is under attack from high-level curriculum and a culture that is religiously educated beyond their obedience, and leaders must now go through seminary for the better part of a decade…meanwhile we are only copying ourselves, we have forgotten its about reproducing Jesus.
Inorganic things may PRODUCE, but they can never reproduce. A coffeemaker may PRODUCE great coffee, but it can never make another coffeemaker.
Reproduction is FUN!
Imagine with me for a moment a world where reproduction was hard to hold back. Where you had to teach classes in school about abstinence and contraception. Not so hard to imagine, eh? People want to reproduce! Its fun!
Now imagine if disciple-making, like baby-makin’ – was just as fun. Imagine passing out “church planting contraceptives” or holding whole conferences on waiting to plant a church because people were so excited to get out there to do it! First, that’d be awesome! But I think that also gives us a picture of what I’m aiming for – where disciple-making, leadership development, and church planting becomes a veritable movement that cannot be stopped.
Mentoring
If Life Transformation Groups (LTG) as a part of the Micro Layer are the “wineskin” or infrastructure for reproducing Jesus-centered disciples, then mentoring helps reproduce Jesus-centered leaders, churches, and movements.
It’s important to remember NOT to put on the “mentoring hat” in an LTG. LTG’s are for peers – people who are mutually self-disclosing/confessing, etc. Mentoring should be done at another time, or risk the “priest/confessor” hierarchical relationship trap!
The two most central skills necessary to mentor well are: (Luke 2:46-47)
Active Listening
Asking Good Questions
If you simply spent the rest of your life working on these two skills, you’d be amazed at what would happen.
Through the lens of the above two skills, your mentoring style must be (1) Personalized to the person you’re mentoring, (2)Just-in-time (not “just-in-case”) — people don’t learn linearly like our good curriculum suggest. (3) It must also be “on-the-job” — people only learn to swim when they’re in the water, (4) and mentoring must be holistic – (a) skills — doing, (b) cognitive (knowing) — and (c) character (being). You can’t teach character – you’ll just get behavior modification. If you want to teach character, be a mirror and a model.
Men are looking for better methods, God is looking for better men. — E.M. Bounds
Also important to remember about mentoring is that the only way to really move forward in a mentoring relationship is through fruitfulness. If there is no fruit, then you are mentoring is a waste of time. This process of the bearing more fruit is a sign that the person being mentored is taking the mentoring seriously. While you cheer every person on, mentors invest in proveness, not potential.
Bifocal Vision
A mentor has the ability to see you both as you are today, and the person you are developing into. This allows her to view not only your personal development, but the influence you will have later on others. Not only is she mentoring your life, but she is considering the countless lives you will touch, the churches you will plant, and even the apprentices you will one day mentor. You know you’re a healthy mentor, not when you’ve successfully mentored someone into a godly life, but when they begin to mentor someone else in healthy ways.
A Simple Tool
So all this mentoring/coaching stuff is fine and dandy…but how do I actually DO it? Neil Cole and CMA put out a little tool that has been helpful for them in their mentoring sessions – a Mentoring 2 Multiply Guide. Its a simple sheet of NCR paper on which you would write your notes from your mentoring session. Then at the end of the meeting, tear off the copy and hand your notes to the apprentice. (But don’t make a copy of a copy! See above). The key to remember in a mentoring session is that you are educing not educating. You are not pouring your skills and expertise into a bucket — you are drawing out what is already planted in the one you are mentoring.
Acorns…not buckets… That will keep you from feeling “used up” and it will encourage the apprentice to reach his/her own potential rather than becoming your clone!
MAWL Them
M odel
A ssist
W atch
L eave
That’s a great “pathway” for the process of mentoring leaders, and assisting church plants…to see a movement take off. This is a process of cultivating a catalytic-style of leadership. I pray for the day when church leaders do not end up on the evening news for bad-behavior – or end up in the fetal position as they resign to cynicism from a church they could not drag behind them to fulfill their personal ambitions. I am anticipating and already seeing the green-shoots of organic leadership – where a catalysis of love will flood the earth – and each of us will participate in the unstoppable movement of God!
We ended the last Greenhouse post in the series by considering what it takes to be an “Organic Leader” – we made the analogy that it is much like working as an organic farmer. What is involved in tending the plants once they have begun to grow? Creating a “system of spiritual nurture” is essential to seeing vibrant families of Jesus in your context.
The organic church planter in most cases does not see him/herself as the pastor of a single house church being planted, (though each house church will be facilitated and nurtured by loving spiritual parents.
There is plenty of tending and nurturing language in the Scriptures to suggest it is a primary metaphor for God’s people.
The Four Biggest “Issues”
It seems that the four most asked questions in tending organic churches are:
Organizing organic churches
Children in organic churches
Finances in organic churches
Sound doctrine in organic churches
Each of these questions deserve their own blog posts and have been answered by others elsewhere. Suffice it to say that usually the questions we ask regarding these issues are focused wrongly, and end up confusing us further. For instance, with regards to children, the question is not, “What do we do with the kids?” A better question might be, “What is our responsibility as a church family to responsibly disciple our children and listen to God as HE forms them as radical agents in the Kingdom?” /// We need better questions.
The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.                    —- Albert Einstein
Did you know that your brain PHYSICALLY creates ruts that make it easier to remain in your mindset rather than considering and accepting new irregular information and paradigms?
“Wikicclesia” and Truth Quest
Often, to arrive at these better questions (and ultimately, solutions to complex issues) you need a “community of informed judgment.“ This is a group of diverse experts from various arena coming around a particular issue or question and collaborating to arrive at a matured, multi-faceted solution. Bring in the architect, the plumber, the farmer and the theologian and ask them “how would YOU take the wisdom of your field of expertise to appropriately organize organic churches (or approach the other issues listed above)?”
CMA Resources introduces the idea of “Truth Quest,” which is a simple theological learning system for proven leaders in an organic church network. The scope of such a study is systematic theology applied in holistic life. It would happen one Saturday each month for a year (9am-5pm). Each learner (8 per year) has two textbooks from two points of view, with no duplicate books among learners. Each learner prepares in order to (impromptu) teach on their materials. The rest of the time is spent in dialogue with learners prayerfully considering the material to tease out fresh theological insights as well as goals for living out their beliefs in their faith communities and in their mission field.
I see this as another form of a “Wikicclesia” forming in many organic church conversations, and its a great alternative to the disappointing dichotomies of either having (1) untrained church leaders, or (2) demanding that leaders go to a seminary for a decade separating “them” from “us” and condemning them to live in debt to Sallie Mae for the rest of their life!
A New Kind of Leader
The big shift for church leadership is to think of itself as not being monolithic. Not all are to be pastors and teachers. Apostles, evangelists, et cetera in the New Testament did their work at a regional level, helping to tend the systems of the church in that region.
Not necessarily doing all the teaching yourself, but equipping leaders with healthy teaching methods and shaping learning communities where people can learn together.
Where you are not the “pastor” but you are nurturing environments where people care about one another and healing happens.
Organic church planters keep churches linked to one another through:
Content: Biblical teaching that is consistent from church to church.
Connections: Relational interdependence that allows for time together.
Collaboration: Mission efforts that allow resources to be maximized for a greater harvest!
The Microscope and the Telescope
Where you start makes all the difference. Take the simplest organism and multiply it enough and it quickly becomes complex (just look in the mirror for an example). But under the microscope, your complexity is really just simple cells reproducing at the smallest level.
Reduce the church to its smallest, most basic unit — the Micro Layer. It is essential that the smallest unit of kingdom life be infused with the whole DNA of a healthy church, then the whole church at large will be healthy, strong, and able to reproduce. Truly, it is our sinful nature that gets in the way of God’s healthy DNA he puts in us with his Holy Spirit when we accept him. So infusing healthy DNA is really about removing our own mutations and living deeply into what God has already instilled in us!
Take your current goals and multiply them by 100,000. If you do not have a system that can take you to those kind of numbers, then you don’t have a system that can catalyze a spontaneous church multiplication movement.
What are some signs of a reproducible system? CMA suggests your tools/strategies/methods be…
Received Personally — it has a profound effect on your own life.
Repeated Easily: you can pass it on to others after just a brief encounter.
Reproduced Strategically: it transfers to other cultures and languages.
These 3 simple principles can be extrapolated out from the “Micro” to all layers of the Onion, attending to the natural span of relational care. Use the word “chaordic” to describe such systems – they are both thoughtful and intentional, yet out of control of any person or organization.
“The more I considered Christianity, the more I have found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”                 — G.K. Chesterton
Let the DNA of Christ permeate every conversation, every worship gathering, every act of social justice. Let it baptize every layer of your church’s community. As Ed Wakenwas quoted saying at the conference — “What if discipleship was nothing more than the lifelong balance of the DNA in your life and in the lives of others in your circle of influence?”
See above). The key to remember in a mentoring session is that you are 
I promise not to tell Ed Tufte about the infographics.