QSQ – A pathway to Movement
We in the West are becoming obsessed with people movements… You see this in church conferences too. ”Church Planting Movements” are all the rage, and they rightly should be! But it sometimes causes me to smile – My wonderful wife was in a crowd when the speaker asked the question, “What will it take to see a church planting movement in the United States?” At which point she leaned over to me and said, “Church planting FIBER!” I love it.
It is fascinating to read through the pages of the MONDO Layer of the Church (God’s eternal Church, throughout time and space) to see how others have tried to respond to the movement of the Spirit. What about our actions could partner with or negatively subvert the workings of the Holy Spirit?
I have seen movements of God absolutely squelched because:
- Someone wanted to take credit for it,
- I have seen other movements maligned because a mutation of unhealthy discipleship began manipulating people,
- Other movements take on distorted views of Jesus Christ,
- Still others began paying teachers and preachers exorbitant amounts to pacify the rest of the movement into consumers…whoops – that one might have hit too close to home.
But the question remains – What is the pathway to a church planting movement covering the face the globe, one in which people from every tongue, tribe and nation are able to see a Jesus-centered community close enough to them that they feel as if Jesus himself has “moved into the neighborhood”?
QSQ – a Pathway to Movement*
Quality
The deep shifts that move us away from “church plant engineering” and “multiplication expectations” and “performance anxiety” among the organic churches is to invite people into a life of QUALITY. Invite people not into a stifling, dead, or manipulative community, but into a rich, dynamic open community full of the metaphors of family. Point them to the Gospels and to Acts – and all the ways in which God’s in-breaking Kingdom of God will transform their life and their neighborhood. Go deep with them, and stay there – don’t let them think you’re in it for more church numbers…because you’re not. You’re in this community with them for the same reason their in it with you - to discover Jesus Christ together.
Structure
As you live out your “abundant life” in community with an expectancy for growth (but without expectation), there is the practical and healthy need for STRUCTURE. The one house church cannot become 2, then 3, then 6, then 12…and so on without a structure to support the same kind of healthy, dynamic God-centered friendship that you experienced at a MESO Level. So many organic churches don’t get this, to their peril – they think that no structure is the way to stay healthy and vibrant, only to find that the lack of managing a spiritually nurturing system will always be managing them. The converse is also true – so many program-based, building-based churches rely on an oppressive structure that squelched the life out of them years ago. We need to find healthy “internal” structures and keep the external structures from stifling the life of a multiplying community.
Quantity
As QUALITY and STRUCTURE co-mingle, we watch QUANTITY happen naturally. It is not an explicitly stated outcome – it merely happens. We want quantity, yes, but to strive for it will ultimately kill the quality, or unnecessarily burden the structures you’ve developed. Like watching a strawberry plant – it begins as one single plant, you carefully nurture it to maturity, and it will bear rich, delicious fruit – and in time you cultivate a structure around it that promotes and encourages multiplication – and soon the plant is sending out feeders in all directions – using the soil, the sun, the trellis…anything you’ve put in its path to multiply like crazy!
If we live out of these principles: Quality, then Structure, then Quantity — and if the Holy Spirit sees our desire for partnership (regardless of who gets the credit!) then we may just see that often spoken-of but much elusive “church planting movement”…but more importantly, we will see a Holy Spirit movement, even here in the Secular West!
*read more on QSQ: Wolfgang Simpson’s House Church Book (aka Houses that Change the World)
