It is hard to say or to know what exactly matters in my line of work. Â The lines get so blurry. Â I wish sometimes I could lay my head on the pillow at the end of the day and have a sense of knowing for sure that the Kingdom made its way, even just one more inch, into the city of Chicago through something I did, something I participated in. Â But it doesn’t work like that.
More often than not, it is messy dance of back and forth. Â It is ambiguous victories mixed with incomplete failures. Â I don’t know half the time whose side I’m fighting for – and often it feels like my efforts are doing more harm for the Kingdom than good.
Why all this self-doubt? Â We’re getting toward the end of Lent, and I realize each year that no matter how much purging and confession and buffeting I do to hone myself closer to the Living God, there is simply no way to transcend the fact that I’m a person who will also be mixed with the spiritual warfare going on all around us. At times I pick up the flag of the enemy and run in the opposite direction, hell bent on destroying everything I desperately want to see accomplished in God’s work here in Chicago.
“What we do is very little. Â But it is like the little boy with a few loaves and fishes. Â Christ took that little and increased it. Â He will do the rest. Â What we do is so little that we may seem to be constantly failing. Â But so did he fail. Â He met with apparent failure on the Cross. Â But unless the seeds fall into the earth and die, there is no harvest.”
Being a missionary isn’t a neat and tidy job, but then again, Jesus had a fine time living in ambiguity and failure. Â That brings me peace.
“Let there be light…” God’s first words created an explosion of relationship – Light is essentially frequencies connecting particles that link together in pure, blinding energy.
When God created the world, he chose to be in relationship with that world, God’s light reaching and connecting and networking every thing he created to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. This is God’s “Great Connection.” Each connection in God’s creation to this day is another explosion of energy – the more links you live in, the more you live in light.
Unfortunately, it is stereotypical for the average house church (the Meso Layer) to stop at the Meso Layer. It’s a wonderful thing for a simple church to experience God’s family life, but asserting their autonomy effectively keeps them in the dark, away from the links of light. Isolation brings death, whereas inter-connectivity brings life.
This blog post is an exploration of the resilience of an interconnected family of faith in a city or region – the Macro Layer.
Something to ponder:Â There is no example of a “house church” in the New Testament – but there are plenty of church networks! (Romans 16, Acts 16:25-40, Revelation 1:4, just to name a few…)Â Beyond the household gatherings, the earliest church also clearly enjoyed worship, fellowship and mission with an extended network of believers.
Teaching, prayer and shared meals at the Meso Layer was the daily experience of First Century disciples – but it was also common for Christians to gather for prayers in the temple courts, to proclaim Christ in the Hall of Solomon, receive teaching from church leaders, and share in Communion at regional gatherings! (Acts 2:42-46)
This “gather-scatter” concept grew mainly out of the “prayer houses” and synagogues of the Jews during their exile from Israel several hundred years before Jesus. The Jews of course, hoped their Messiah would reestablish an earthly home for Jews, to call them home from exile and create a centralized place of worship and government (like in “the good ole’ days” of King David). However, Jesus called (and calls) his followers to venture out as “voluntary exiles,” seeking citizenship of no earthly nation, but of a heavenly Kingdom – yet connected like illegal immigrants here on earth. That’s gotta be a downer for your average Zionist!
Liquid Church
The Macro Layer takes seriously the liquid form of Christian Community – it does not have physical structures or an exoskeleton holding its size back – like water, it is contained only by its dynamic, inter-dependent correlation of relationships. The Macro Layer is the engagement of relationships beyond the family level – it is the local “extended family” that reaches from “eternity to here.”
In our paradigm of the Onion, the church takes on a “living system,” organic nature. Systems Theory seems to say that every organism is part of a larger, interconnected network. And even my very notion of self is not determined by myself alone, but by the web in which I’ve been woven. In this way, the church is more like an afghan than a building – it is knitted together, fully flexible, not easily broken.
Yeah, but what does it look like???
Of course, liquid is best enjoyed in a glass, not spilling all over the table – and similarly, liquid church at the Macro Layer contains internal structures to give focus to the regional church – funneling into infinite nodes of connectivity:
The important piece is not necessarily HOW you connect, or the structure of the nodes, but the process going on between them (the WINE is more important than the WINESKIN).
Fractals Rock
Fractals are everywhere. From the largest of galaxies to the smallest snowflake, fractals are the code of the universe.
Every living thing or dynamic system takes a fractal form. Fractals are based on simple mathematical equations that contain unending diversity. The patterns are determined by a simple rule in a series of repetitions that feed back on itself new information. Starting with a simple building block (a human cell, a coordinates in a computer) these repetitions unleash a creative potential for infinite complexity.
The genetic code of a seed gives the crucial information needed for the fractal equation found in cell multiplication to help catalyze the growth of a tree. The DNA of this seed will grow an oak tree, and not a dogwood or a squirrel. There are boundaries for fractals, and yet, when watching the process, it can only be described as beautifully chaotic.
The Church is built on the trillion cells of local churches and Christians scattered throughout time and space. The Church then, is the Fractal of Jesus Christ in the world. Self-similar, yet wildly diverse – each point of light on a fractal is connected to every other point of light throughout the system.
This is a blog series on the Layers of Christian Community – the Onion of the Church. The onion is a beautiful example of a fractal – layers upon layers of “similar difference.”
A Tribe to Belong To
It is interesting that as we explore the levels of the Onion, we are learning that each of these layers are also core desires of all humanity. Everyone desires a personal connection with the Divine; everyone desires one or two others who get them through thick and thin; those who have come from broken families still desire an expression of family — and we all desire to be a part of a dynamic tribe.
A tribe is a group of people, connected to one another, and to a shared story. This postmodern age has brought an explosion of tribes, covens, meetups, making each of us part of multiple tribes. Our embrace of the tribe is our rejection of the factory — the place of passive production and impersonal sausage-making.
JESUS’ TRIBE:::>> So far in this series, we’ve explored Jesus’ community – here’s what we’ve found: (Mono) Jesus was “one with the Father,” (Micro) and his heart-to-hearts were with his core team of Peter, James, and John. (Meso) Jesus’ 12 disciples were his daily community – his family-on-a-mission. But who was Jesus’ “Macro Layer of Church?”
Jesus taught and fed the crowds, that much is sure – but beyond the masses, Jesus specifically cast vision and trained 72 disciples. (Luke 10) This was Jesus’ TRIBE. The people who were following “the Way,” sent into every town and village in the area to declare the Good News of the Kingdom. Through this Kingdom Tribe, Jesus was forging a sneeze of relationships right across the Empire that remained connected to each other through Love and through a dangerous Story – that God’s Kingdom was near!
Tribal development comes through a linking through a common story, and living into that story together to make dramatic change. From the contemporary Tea Party Movement or Obama’s Grassroots Campaign, from Geronimo’s Apache Tribe harassing and impeding the Spanish conquistadors, to the First Century Church decrying Cesar as a mere man, and a murdered, resurrected Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords… the tribe is consistently the social layer for monumental change.
The Tribe you choose to join is of utmost importance.
The social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube make a veritable Youniverse that puts you right at the center of your own “social-black-hole.” You can now be the leader of your own private Tribe. Recent studies have even said that Facebook and mobile computing has brought about the demise of the church. Now that we have our own network – we no longer need to be a part of God’s local Tribes.
From the beginning, humans have had to choose between being king of their own dark kingdom, or a citizen in God’s Kingdom of Light. It is either “My Kingdom Come” or “Thy Kingdom Come.” And choosing God’s Kingdom means we choose to be connected to God’s Tribe – a inter-connected network that is glocal in influence.
A Family Reunion
These network gatherings and other nodes of connectivity will feel more like a family reunion than a United Nations Summit. It is essential for Christians to remember that they are primarily citizens of the same universal Kingdom of God, rather than constituents of individual house churches.
Certainly, there is leadership, but unlike a hierarchy (static leading from the top down) and more like a v-formation flock of birds – sharing and rotating the front position to go farther together. Maybe each month the Macro Layer (say, 10 house churches) meet together for worship, and each month, a different community organizes the event and leads worship in their way. This promotes diversity in the Body of Christ, and a reminder that God is creating a Family from every tongue, tribe, and nation. (Rev 7:9)
A bohemian, post-modern group might choose to fill a rented club with ambient music and allow God’s presence to surround the worshippers as they pray or participate with God in apophatic practices and incense. Another group might bring a recent convert to give his/her testimony to the rest of the network. The important principle to be communicated at every monthly network gathering is a theme of unity in diversity. Each church that plans worship should put the needs and interests of other groups they are in relationship with above their own desires to control the experience.
Home-brewed Leadership
Regular local leadership gatherings allow those involved to pass along insights and resources to other organic church leaders in the network. It serves as a bridge between leaders and a limitless array of links to resources and fresh connections. A “home-brewed seminary,” of sorts. This never ending journey of learning and serving other communities is an “opt-in” learning community of practitioners – no one in the church network Macro Layer is excluded from leadership gatherings, but only those who are interested in developing Meso Layers seem to stick around!
Monthly leadership gatherings bring cohesion and training to each house church leader – part book club, part coaching session, part training in various pastoral tools (like conflict management, or church multiplication…etc).
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As best as I can, I’ve tried to describe the “congregation” as a Macro Layer – not as a building or institution, but as an organism or movement. Through a lifestyle of worship and fellowship with a dozen or so house churches, the Macro Layer can offer Christians a sense that “they are not alone” in this family of God. Through God’s grace, these communities will slowly transform into an ecumenical Body of Christ in your city. The underground church network is one such Macro Layer beginning to emerge in our context here in Chicago. Much like a Fractal, it displays the DNA of Jesus, and yet the possibilities in the fractal of Christ are limitless!
you said…”no example of a house church in the New Testament”. You even reference Romans 16…but in Romans 16:5 Paul says to “Greet also the church that meets at their house..” 1 Cor. 16:19 “Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the LORD, and so does the church that meets at their house…” Col. 4:15 “Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house…”
although I appreciate the value of being a part of relational church networks, I think it’s quite clear from Scripture that the main gathering of God’s people in a local context was done within houses. What I DO find hard to see in the New Testament is the church assembling formally in public places such as coffee shops, public parks or restaurants. In these places they seemed to hold evangelistic meetings of public preaching, deliverance and prayer, but it seems to me the normal church meeting was exclusive to believers only with the occasional unbeliever or ungifted person present.
Rusty – Maybe I put too strong a point on it. My intention was not to say that there was no example of a house church in the New Testament – it would be hard to argue such an obvious point! But my point was that there was no example of a house church that did not exist within in a larger church network.
By house church network – I DON’T mean what we are seeing emerging today – with names and brands…essentially a mega-church OF small groups, rather than with small groups. While that is how I understand the Underground Church Network of which I am a part, I don’t think that’s exactly how the MACRO layer works in the New Testament.
The MACRO Layer to me is the web of Christ-centered social relationships that exist beyond the local house church. They are all the churches that meet in Rome, and I point out Romans 16 to display that there were multiple house churches that all seemed to know each other spread across the city. They weren’t in isolation – they were connected.
I’d say the major threat to the health of the house church movement in America is that we are unwilling to trust ourselves to a network of house churches. My hope is that folks can live into the MACRO layer – connecting to 8-12 house churches they consider their “extended family” – that’s what we’d like the Underground to be. We’re praying about that….
thanks for clarifying…i didn’t think that was what you meant, but wanted to make sure. I’m with you on churches being connected to each other for sure. That is our goal and purpose as well. Large task ahead, but a dream in God’s heart.
Been a maddeningly busy week, and even crazier this weekend. Been doing some training on an upcoming project that could prove to be really exciting…we’ll see how it pans out.
Today Katrina and I met up with leaders from others from house church networks all over the region. We met very close to O’Hare and chatted about the upcoming Greenhouse Conference with Neil Cole and others. This is a weekend intensive conference that brings in some great speakers from around the country to share some of their insights into the wild, emerging conversation of viral discipleship and organic church planting. Its the perfect conference whether you just want to learn about it all from a 30,000ft perspective or you’re ready to dive in head first, OR you’ve been at it for years and need help with the complex issues of leadership and networking.
Wanna learn more about the event? Check out our new starter website for all organic networks in Chicago. If you are in a network or know of another one, please contact me and we’ll get ya added! Want to attend the Greenhouse Conference? Soon we’ll have a Registration site – but for now you can check all the details for it here. If ya just can’t wait – click “contact us” on my blog’s side bar.
My hope is to get a few more posts up this week – I’ve been missing you blog!
Travis Akins are discussing. 
Travis Akins 1:45 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink
Mark-thanks for sharing honestly and openly. HUGE encouragement. I have the same worries/struggles in my ministry. Thanks for the re-focus.
Mark W 4:36 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink
It always helps to remember that all our “castles” we build in life are SANDcastles – and every so often its sort of refreshing to kick a few over!