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  Mark 12:19 pm on July 25, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Wolfgang Simpson   

  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)

  
   

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  Mark 8:05 am on June 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  Moving In, Moving On 

  When do you know its the right time to move on?  In developing healthy communities centered on Jesus, a “community developer” or “church planter” has an interesting relationship to the church he (or she) is planting.  He is both a part of the new community, and yet at the same time, he is very much different.  He is meant to move on – to take the risk that the fragile and humble group that has gathered around Jesus is ready to withstand the harshest of times, and whats more, to charge forward against the gates of hell.

  Many times the best thing a church planter can do for a church is to leave it – not out of anger, spite, or revenge for some past misdeed, but out of an interest to remove a sort of scaffolding to truly let the building be what it is to become.

  At times I’ve felt a little like a grandma (I know, weird.)  By this I mean that after a new couple has a child, often a grandparent will stay with the couple to help out around the house, teach a little bit of technique to sooth an infant’s cries, and simply be a loving presence.  However, there comes a day – when Grandma returns home – and that’s when the real adventure begins.

  The apostle Paul found this an extremely useful strategy for developing a faith community – to get out of the way!  For Paul, he was in and out in as little as 9 days, and as long as 3 years.  Similarly, Neil Cole describes in Organic Leadership that mentors and church planters should MAWL their proteges – MAWL stands for:

  • M – model
  • A - assist
  • W – watch, and finally…
  • L – leave.

  It is that last one I have the hardest time with.  Leaving.  I never fully trust that the group can survive without me.

  But as I write those words, what kind of perspective is that?  Why do I think its up to me to keep some flywheel spinning, once its been spun?  I’ll get my hand cut off trying!

  Maybe a little humility and bravery is needed.  Maybe part of what it means to see a vibrant family of Jesus in close reach of every person is not thinking that the family has to get it all right for years on end before the scaffolding can come off.  Could it be that things actually work better through strategic absence of a leader rather than persistent, suffocating presence?

  

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    Katrina 7:23 pm on June 1, 2011 Permalink

    Mark – nice post! When the human “leader” fades out, the true Leader appears…

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  Mark 9:26 am on May 5, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Exponential Conference ( 2 )   

  #Exponential // Handy churches 

  What could you learn from an illiterate Indian woman half a world away?

  At the recent Exponential Conference, (the world’s America’s largest gathering of church planters) we heard David Garrison author of Church Planting Movements and global research maven talk about something he picked up from Indian church planters.  He did by simply showing us his hand, and I don’t mean deck of cards.

  Holding up his hand, he gave us a simple acronym used to help Indian leaders reproduce leaders among the hundreds of thousands of churches being planted right now across that nation.  He learned it from others, and now I’ll pass it along to you.  (Who will you pass this on to?)

  Hold up your hand, and starting with your thumb, spell out the word P-O-U-C-H.  Imagine a little pouch in the palm of your hand.  This is the descriptive (not necessarily prescriptive) list of elements seen in viral house churches spreading like wildfire among the persecuted peoples of India:

  P- Participative Gatherings.

  We let the Holy Spirit lead, and we all contribute.  No one person sucks up all the oxygen when we gather.  Everyone has a moment to offer what they’re learning from God.  1 Cor 14:26 says, “Well, my brothers and sisters, let’s summarize. When you meet together, one will sing, another will teach, another will tell some special revelation God has given, one will speak in tongues, and another will interpret what is said. But everything that is done must strengthen all of you.”

  O - Obedience to Christ, radically

  There must be a serious, all-in commitment from each person in the group to commit their full lives to Jesus, and to each other.  Nothing short of that will be sustainable, or reproducible for long.  Francis Chan told a story of how he went to China, and spoke with some of the persecuted church there, and when he described what we call church in America (1 hour a week event, many creature comforts, apathy, etc) at first they LAUGHED OUT LOUD – then they asked, “How did you get that picture of church, from this?” (as they held up their Bible) For them, it would be impossible to conceive of apathy in the Chinese church – why give up everything including your safety for nominal beliefs?

  U – Unpaid Multiple Leaders

  Tithes do go to pay for one leader (1 Cor 9:11), or maybe two, but the goal is to ask the leader not to feel responsible for all the teaching, all the evangelism, all the leadership of the larger church.  This leads to burnout.  Instead, segment the tasks and pass them out to multiple, unpaid leaders – this also gives more people a chance a leadership development.  These are not a bunch of volunteers passing out bulletins, these are tomorrow’s church leaders, today!

  C – Cells of 20 Members or less

  Groups made up of 20 adults or less allow the group size to live in that space where everyone knows they’re a part of something bigger, but that it is small enough to ask each person to contribute, thus developing an active, rather than passive church.  This is not your typical “small group” (read Neil Cole’s recent post for more on this).  This is a place where growing disciples come to celebrate and encourage, not to be transformed by a flashy worship service.

  H – Home-centered

  This is more than just a strategy to save your church money on rent.  It drives your church to be the family it already is!  When you meet in homes, it will ruin the segmentation you have created between your church life and your family life – and transformation will happen!  Another way to say this is that the home is the family.  These Cells (MESOs as we call them) can meet anywhere – but its never about the event; its about the family.  There is the hospitality of the home wherever they go.  It is the family metaphors that the Biblical writers used throughout Scripture that make the most sense – a King and a Kingdom, a Father and his children… this is what God is giving birth to here on earth!

  Watching churches in India multiply like rabbits is a joy and it leads me to worship God, who is declaring his glory through these simple and ephemeral families of faith.