Most Americans have either never heard of him or know all about him.  He sort of designed it that way.

Bill was a up-and-coming stock trader in the 1920′s and was doing pretty well for himself.  He was a risk taker and the life of the party.  Over the years however he found that it took more and more alcohol to really enjoy himself, and before long, he was drinking just to “feel normal” again.  As the 1929 stock market crashed, he took to drinking heavily, and soon his entire life revolved around the bottle.  He scared his wife Lois and regularly promised sobriety only to let her down time and again.

He was ‘powerless’ in the face of his own addiction.

He was brought to the very bottom when his wife finally came to her senses and checked him into a ‘sanitarium’ – a kind of hospital and mental institution for substance abusers and the insane.  He was tied to his bed as he wallowed in his own shame.  This, from a man who was topping the charts on Wall Street only a few years earlier.  He better than any of knew the vicious poison…and luring potion of alcohol.

He found God in that sanitarium.  From that moment on he began to give himself over to a “Higher Power” – the same way he formerly gave himself over to alcohol.  His wife and friends were at first skeptical, then overjoyed!  But he was not out of the woods yet.  His temptations were still there.  He believed that part of his life now was to share the path to sobriety with other drunks – that somehow he needed to keep telling the story of his own redemption in order to hold on to the sobriety he sought out every day – one day at a time.

Bill’s returned to work – and on one occasion he was sent to Cincinnati, OH.  Far from his routines in New York City, he found himself tempted more than ever to finding the nearest lounge and no doubt falling off the wagon once again. In a last ditch effort he went out in search of a drunk who might listen to his tale.  He comes across Bob S., drunk and depressed as Bill had been in that sanitarium.

One movie script of their encounter has Bill sitting down with a skeptical Bob, Bob going on and on about how Bill was wasting his time trying to convince Bob to stop drinking.  ”Doctors, shrinks…they’ve all gave me their best, but nothing stuck,” Bob grunted to Bill, “What makes you think you can do anything for me?”  Bill leaned forward with a drunk’s desperation in his eyes and responded,

“I’m not here to do anything for you, I’m here for me.”

Thus began Alcoholics Anonymous.

Sharing the story of salvation from alcohol is the key to keeping your own sobriety.  “To keep it, you have to share it.”  It’s like breathing – if you want to keep your breath, you have to share it – breathing in and keeping it will only kill you!  You have to let it go to get it again.

 This is how it works on Wikipedia as well, if you want to set the record straight on the wingspan of a flying squirrel, you add your tidbit of knowledge to the flying squirrel Wiki page.  But simultaneously, you share it with the rest of the world.

It’s like our own salvation.  It’s like the mission of the church.  We are simultaneously “re-presenting” the Gospel to ourselves when we share it with others.  And when a church or a Christian fails to share the Gospel with others, they fail to experience it themselves, and they become more of a problem to the world than a beautiful response to the problems of the world!

So keep the sobriety of your salvation.  Follow the advice of Bill W., who understood more than most how desperately he needed to give it away, day after day…

To keep it, SHARE IT!

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.

“Let there be links…” (Gen 1:1-3)

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:  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…)  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:

• network worship gatherings (monthly, rotating leadership)
• teaching and vision casting (network blogs, mission wikis, network gatherings)
• social media outlets (Ning, Facebook)
• mission teams and network leadership (Missions Resource Teams)
• mission efforts, fund raising, social justice projects
• yearly festivals and commitment ceremonies (Planted Life Event)

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!

I read Godin’s book Tribes earlier this year, and found it enlightening.  This video is a quick summary of the book by the author, plus his theory on a process for those interested in changing the world.  He looks over countless organizations, and through history at movement leaders and then draws some conclusions.  Why is it that Ghandi was successful in bringing about liberation and true change in India?  How did Martin Luther King rally a battered and bitter people into a movement of civil rights?

It begins by telling a story.  Frederick Buechner is quoted saying,

To truly tell the story of anything well is to tell the story of everything.

If you want to change the world, tell an alternative story.