Too Many Churches?

Last weekend I went public with the news that we are heading to Durham to launch The CityWell. The response in our community and among friends around the country has been very encouraging, but amid the well-wishes and affirmation has been a question voiced by several people, "Don't we already have too many churches? Why one more?"

Well, I think we can respond to that question in a number of ways, but we must start with the heart of the matter; namely, church planting flows from the heart of God. Allow me to explain. God is perfect community, Father, Son and Holy Spirit eternally existing in complete self-giving, other-exalting and ultimately loving union. This is why the Bible can say, "God is love." Add to this that we are created in the image of this communal God and we start to understand why all of us so long for relational connectedness. Going a step further, the scripture clearly displays God as one who calls forth communities to participate in God's life and to bear witness to the world regarding God's beauty, goodness, power and purpose for creation. We see this with God's call of Israel to be a holy people and a royal priesthood. We see it in Jesus' calling together a community of disciples and then in His sending those disciples out to call forth new communities to partner in God's purposes. Throughout the book of Acts we find the emergence of new faith communities wherever the Gospel was proclaimed and received. Intriguingly, the narrative of Acts ends abruptly and seems to remain unfinished, as if to suggest that the mission of spreading the Gospel through the formation of new churches is not complete. The Church is called ever forward to establish new communities of faith who will live forth, and invite the nations to participate in, the Reign of God. So the short expression of this heart-of-God purpose is this: God is perfect community and always calls forth new worship communities; we are made in God's image to do the same thing. 

Here are a few more reasons (briefly stated):

• New churches see 3-4 times more people per attendee come to faith in Christ than do older churches.
  
• Churches that remain committed to birthing new congregations retain their external focus and evangelistic effectiveness far more than churches that exist only unto themselves. Church plants bring vitality to "parent" churches.
  
• As cultures change (and ours is in a decades-long whirlwind of change), new churches innovate ways of articulating the unchanging good news of Jesus in new and relevant ways.
  
• New churches are incubators for new leaders to raise up and discover their Kingdom calling and gifting.       

All this to say, in a context where only 17.5% of our population has any meaningful connection with a Christian church, I don't think we are anywhere close to having too many churches.

What do you think?

Start Digging!

Exciting news! As of last Tuesday the CityWell has an official commission. In late June my family will move to downtown Durham, NC, where we will begin putting legs to the CityWell dream. We are thrilled and scared out of our minds all at the same time. However, we are convinced that God laid this path before us, and we trust that God will lead us "to the land [he] will show [us]." 

The downtown Durham area is perfect for an experiment in being the church in new ways. Consider these reflections from a MissionInsight demographic analysis of the area within a 5-mile radius of central downtown: 

• Of the 270,000 people in Durham County, over 168,000 (62%) of them live within a five-mile radius of downtown, and this number is growing.
  
• The ethnic/racial diversity of the city is also growing. In 2010 43.6% of the population in the study area was Black, 32.4% White, 16.1% Hispanic/Latino, 3.7% Asian, and 1.6% other.
  
• The average age of the study area is 35 years. 11.3% of the population is college students or people new to the professional world. 43.6% of the population represents young families, families and empty nesters under 55 years of age. Less than 20% of the population is over the age of 55.
  
• 28% of the households in the study area live on less than $25,000 per year, with 16% of the population living at or under the federal poverty line. 40% of households live on less than $35,000 per year. 35% of the households generate between $35,000 and $75,000 annually. 25% of the households make more than $75,000. The number of higher wage earners is growing steadily and this growth is projected to continue.
  
• 41% of the adults in this study area have no college education. 36% have at least a bachelor’s degree, and the remaining 23% have an associate’s degree or some college. The area is growing in number of people with higher educational attainments.

The MissionInsight report reveals the significant racial, ethnic and socio-economic diversity of the downtown Durham area. This diversity must inform the mission of The CityWell, as God is calling us to this city and not merely to one demographic of the city. We must intentionally seek to embody the diversity of the city if we are to be a faithful sign and foretaste of the barrier-destroying Reign of God.

The demographic analysis also reveals that educational attainment in this area is very high, the percentage of people with at least a bachelor’s degree being 17% higher than the nation as a whole. Therefore, mission in this context will require presenting the Gospel in thoughtful, nuanced and intellectually rigorous ways. 

The population of the downtown area is young, which bears several implications. First, the younger the population the more saturated the worldview with the marks of post-modernism, prominent among which is a deep suspicion and aversion to institutional Christianity. In addition, much of the population in this mission field is biblically illiterate with virtually no understanding of the Gospel. However, being a southern city, there will be some vestiges of Christendom lingering, though this fact is significantly mitigated by the urban ethos and the heavy influence of Duke University in the city’s DNA. These factors suggest that a significant element of The CityWell mission will be helping people unlearn what they think they know about the Gospel and re-think church outside the Christendom box. 

With regards to religious practices in this mission field, there are many people with a deeply entrenched Christendom view of the Church and Christianity. However, more prominent in the religious attitudes of this mission field is the presence of a postmodern preference for an undefined and individual spirituality. These cultural contours will significantly impact the form of The CityWell’s mission, as well as how we contextualize the Gospel. In particular, we will seek to demonstrate that true spirituality is ultimately found in community and must be grounded in God’s revelation in Jesus. This mission will require a generous and affirming posture akin to Paul’s at the Areopagus in Acts 17, recognizing the God-given impulses relative to the imago Dei in all people. This culture calls for tour guide evangelism, in which we point to the ways God is already present and at work in people’s lives and provide an interpretive framework of scripture and biblical theology to direct people to a life-giving relationship with Jesus.

All of these factors call for a new expression of the Church, and I am really excited to see what God will do in our midst as we seek to know and follow Jesus in downtown Durham.

Please pray for us... and then pray some more!

Resisting The Homogeneous Unit Principle

In the last few decades of the 20th century the church growth movement was hailed as the potential plug to stop the catastrophic draining of people out of American churches. Central to this movement was an idea that came to be known as the Homogeneous Unit Principle. The basic idea is that people don't like to cross lines of race, class, politics in general, and are much more likely to come to faith in Jesus if coming to church doesn't force them to step too far out of their usual environments and comfort zones. This was a well-intentioned theory, but I fear misses one of the central callings of Christ - namely, that we are to be a people who manifest the reconciliation of God precisely by crossing lines others won't cross; and so Paul says that in Christ there is no Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female...

The Homogeneous Unit Principle demands that a church "target" a specific, narrowly defined demographic of the population. For instance, I could plant a church for white hipsters who only drink coffee from Starbucks. Who knows, it could work...

So, I'm struggling with this idea. On the one hand, I think it is probably a true theory; people are more likely to sign up for something if we minimize discomfort, and relationships that require crossing lines of race and class will inevitably be uncomfortable at points. Then again, people are also more likely to come to Christ if we drop the whole "repent of your sins" thing, too. So, planting a church for people that look like me, are educated like me, vote like me, and who just like me is probably a lot easier than kind of diverse congregations we are dreaming The CityWell will be. But, on the other hand, do we see these homogeneous churches in the Bible? Do we hear in the scripture a call to do whatever is expedient to grow the church? I don't think so.

I think the reason I'm struggling with this is that, while I can comfortably reject this philosophy, everyone I read and talk to seems to assume it. I read authors and hear speakers say all the time, "Know who your target audience is." Or they ask, "Who are you trying to reach?" These statements and questions are followed by exhortations to be very specific and to base your targeting on personal affinity. Being so utterly surrounded by this mentality makes me feel a little insecure about my convictions.

Honestly, I have a hard time answering the question, "Who are you trying to reach?" at least answering the way people seem to expect a smart church planter to. I want to say things like, "anyone who doesn't know Jesus is their Lord," or "whoever God puts in our path," but these answers don't seem to be adequate, and I feel a bit insecure, wondering if I am just really naive. However, beyond choosing a city, I don't see the great evangelists and apostles in the New Testament employing targeting strategies. I don't think Philip was trying to reach Ethiopian eunuchs; God just put him in the right place at the right time to share the Gospel with a person who did not yet know to celebrate the victory of Jesus. Was Peter working on his marketing scheme for Gentiles, or did God thrust him into relationship with Cornelius and family? And Paul seemed to proclaim the good news to anyone and everyone, just trusting that God would grant the gift of faith to some.

I really don't want to plant a church just for young, privileged, white people, or even more broadly, for the folks who inhabit the same social strata and have basically the same "family values." I don't want to adopt a philosophy of ministry based on utility and rigor reduction. I want to trust God for divine appointments, miraculous conversions, and to tear down dividing walls. I want The CityWell to look like the Kingdom, not a private school. I want to resist the Homogeneous Unit Principle and its attendant practices, but I confess that such resistance is difficult.

What are your thoughts about all of this? 

Living Out the Heart of God

This morning I was sitting in a coffee shop waiting for a friend and I found myself (once again) daydreaming about this church. Specifically, I was envisioning conversations with people who God might call to be a part of this one day, and I was wrestling with how to describe this vision. As I've been writing and talking to others (many of you) about the CityWell dream I have been frustrated trying to put labels on the vision God is giving me. For instance, as prior posts indicate, I think it important for a church to embody Gospel reconciliation by reflecting the racial, ethnic and class diversity of its community. So, am I to say "we are planting a multi-ethnic church?" That description just seems too narrow. Or, as I believe churches should exist for those not yet celebrating the reality that Jesus IS their Lord and Savior, should I say, "Yeah... we're planting a church to bring people to faith in Christ." Once again this doesn't capture all of why we should exist. My list of inadequate descriptions goes on, and so as I wrestled with articulation today this thought occurred to me: everything I describe when talking about The CityWell is secondary; all of these attributes, no matter how significant, are derivative of a greater, more encompassing calling. So, here's my latest attempt to put words to the vision:

The CityWell will be a faith community seeking to know and follow Jesus, that our hearts might come to beat and break with the heart of God.

In short, The CityWell will exist to live out the heart of God. I am excited about this articulation because it encompasses and grounds all of the more particular elements I've been pointing toward, as it begs the question, "Well, for what does God's heart beat and break?" Now that is a question pregnant with implications! Here are a few quick examples:

1. The Father's heart beats for Jesus, and Jesus' heart beats for the Father (see John 17:1). Implication: because the Spirit includes us in the life of God, the church is to be a community of worship.
   
2. God's heart beats for all people, so the church must intentionally embody diversity.
   
3. God's heart breaks for the oppressed and hurting, so too the church must practice compassion and ministries of justice and mercy.
   
4. God's heart breaks for those who refuse His embrace (Luke 13:34-35, 19:41-44), and so must the church long to see people come to worship and exult in Christ. Evangelism flows from the heart of God.

We can go on and on (and I'd love you to add to this list). I think this pursuit of having hearts in rhythm with God's heart can govern all of a church's priorities, values and ministries. What do you think?

Whether or not this ends up being The CityWell's purpose/vision statement I pray it will be true, as I don't think we can go wrong having our hearts synced with God's!

How to Start a CityWell

I had a conversation with a new friend this week about the potential of CityWell churches and along with the philosophical, theological and biblical questions came this very pragmatic one: "So how will this start?" What a fine question!

As in other posts I feel compelled to remind myself and readers that I have never done this before, so at least part of my answer has to be, "I really don't know." However, that is not all I have to say. I think we have some great pointers in the scriptures, particularly the book of Acts, where we find several models of church planters in action. More than that, we find in Acts examples of intentionally multi-ethnic churches and the accounts of their beginnings. There are also many thriving multi-ethnic congregations around the country that serve as guides to those of us hoping to follow in their footsteps.

In Acts chapter 8 we find that persecution has broken out against the church and many of the followers of Jesus have scattered. In verses 4-5 we read: Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. Two very significant things strike me here. First, everyone preached the word. The scattering that occurred did not include the apostles; they stayed in Jerusalem. These preaching refugees were ordinary folks (these ordinary preachers are an example of what I am looking toward in the earlier post, Ordinary Leaders).

Second, and these verses are instructive for how a church like the CityWell must begin, Phillip decided to go to Samaria. He didn't accidentally end up there. Philip was a Jew (a Hellenist to be precise, but this just meant a Greek speaking Jew), and Jews never accidentally went to Samaria. He intentionally crossed lines of culture and race to share with these people the good news of Jesus. Likewise, CityWell churches will only be churches for all people if we are intentionally churches for all people. In our culture a multi-ethnic congregation can almost never happen without such intentionality. We will have to determinedly form relationships with people of varying backgrounds, races and cultures, and, like Philip, we will do so explicitly because of Jesus, who transgressed every social, cultural and religious boundary in his ministry of reconciliation.

The narrative continues: And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. Philip's impact in Samaria was a matter of word and deed. So it must be with the CityWell churches. First, Philip's message was unapologetically about Jesus; so will ours be. Second, in our calling to seek the welfare of the city (Jeremiah 29:7), we will begin and continue as servants of our city, whose deeds give credibility to our message. Notice two things about Philip's deeds: first they address people's spiritual and physical needs, and second, they are marked by the power of God. I believe the church can and must engage the city and it's needs in these same ways today.

So, the short answer to how we start is this: We will prayerfully and intentionally seek to build relationships across lines of class, race and culture, believing that God will bring together exactly the right people to begin the CityWell dream. As these relationships form, we will begin to share our lives together, seeking God's will and power to become the church we are called to be. We will pray like crazy. We will worship together and encourage one another. We will look for ways to serve the city in the name of Jesus. We will share our vision with anyone who will listen and trust God to draw people. All of this we will do long before we launch public worship services because we are talking about planting a church, not just a worship service. CityWell churches will not begin with a pre-fab, cookie-cutter model; beginning with a general vision to be a church for all people centered around the life, teaching and calling of Jesus, the details of our vision and plans will develop as we go, as we consider the intersections of our context, the people God brings to us, and the call of the scriptures. If these churches come to be, there will be no doubt that this is a movement of God! I pray that it will be!

Why Multi-Ethnic?

I have suggested in several of these posts (and in conversations with many of you) that CityWell churches will aspire to be intentionally multi-ethnic. Commonly the response to this hope is, "Why?" I have three primary reasons; congregational multi-ethnicity is a matter of:

1) Faithfulness to the Gospel vision

2) Effectiveness in our Gospel witness

3) Fullness of Gospel life

There is so much to say about this first reason, but for now I’ll be short and somewhat general. I believe that at the heart of the Gospel is earth-shattering, life-giving fact that God has reconciled the world to Himself in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:18-19), and that this means that in ways we can barely grasp the reality of (but it is nonetheless REALITY), in Christ’s body the dividing walls between God and humanity and between all peoples have been torn down (Ephesians 2:14-16).

Forever. 

Continually in the Scripture we are called to live according to the vision of all God has accomplished in Christ and will bring to completion on the Last Day. In Revelation 7:9 John sees “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” In Revelation 21:24-26 we find an image of the kings of the earth entering the New Jerusalem bringing the glory and honor of the nations to God in praise. This is where we are heading - a church of all peoples, undivided, united in praise, not squashing but celebrating the distinctiveness of the world’s cultures. The church triumphant will not be mono-ethnic, so why should the church on earth be? Jesus calls us to live concretely, here and now, according to all that is true in Him, in order that His kingdom would come on earth as in heaven. This is a Gospel vision and it is splendid! We must not be content to pursue anything less.

It is not coincidental that the churches we read about in the New Testament were made up of Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, male and female, slave and free. All of these would-be cultural fault-lines of division become bonding seams in the church because in Christ God created a new humanity, a third race, if you will. This is who we are to be, and I think we are impoverished in the experience of this reality insofar as our congregations are mono-ethnic. More than that (and this leads to the second reason to pursue multi-ethnicity), I fear that to the degree we do not pursue a corporate life that reflects the heart of the Gospel, we diminish our witness to the truth of the Gospel. Jesus prayed for the church’s unity in order that the world may believe that the Father sent Him (John 17:21). This inclines me to think there is a very significant correlation between our visible unity and the effectiveness of our witness.

In addition to this, the demographics of our country are changing radically and rapidly, and I think we are living in a historical moment where the racial and ethnic divisions in the church are more unpalatable to the unbelieving world than ever before. The fact of our Sunday morning segregation only makes the church appear more irrelevant in an increasingly multi-ethnic world. Conversely, powerful will be the witness of congregations who, through reconciliation to God in Jesus Christ, commit to the messy, difficult, but ultimately beautiful work of reconciliation across lines of race, culture and class.   

Finally, multi-ethnicity is a matter of fullness of Gospel life. In the midst of Jesus’ prayer for our unity he said, “these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” I believe that real-life, real-time reconciliation and shared worship and ministry is part of the “life to the full” that Jesus came to give the world (John 10:10). I have no doubt that God is doing mighty work and pouring our blessing in all kinds of congregations, whether mono or multi-ethnic, but the presence of God’s blessing should make us hungry for more, not complacent with the status quo. I hope CityWell churches will always yearn for everything God has in store for us in Christ, that we might taste the fullness of Gospel life.

Ultimately, only God can accomplish something so unlikely, and if the Lord does not build the house, the workers labor in vain! Please join me in prayer that God would do just such a work in our midst!

The MOST Important Question: A Foretaste

So, I'm operating under the conviction that the primary purpose of the church is to be a sign, a foretaste and an instrument of the Kingdom of God. In the last post we explored what it might mean to be a sign; in this post we'll consider what it means for the church to be a foretaste. I would suggest that a foretaste is something to be personally experienced (tasted to be precise), something to be shared with others, and something that creates a deep longing for more.

The church is to be a foretaste of all that God will one day bring to completion. So, if the Biblical picture of the new creation is one where forgiveness finds fullest expression then we are to be a community of people radically committed to forgiving one another and all who wrong us. If the Kingdom to come will be marked by justice and God's provision, then the church must be committed to meeting the needs of members and community. If the new heavens and earth is to be populated by people from "every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages..." and we are to join in one anthem, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9-10) then the church ought to reflect the full diversity of its city. If heaven is to be an eternity of joy and celebration, then the church must be a people of contagious joy, gratitude and hope! Jesus believed His followers could be just such a foretaste, and to that end taught us to pray, "Thy kingdom come ON EARTH as in heaven!"

I believe God has every intention that these things are to be personally experienced, at least in part, within the community of the church, here and now. This has significant implications as to what we are to expect in our participation in the life of the church, and why and how we invite others to join in. We all know that true forgiveness, justice, reconciliation, joy and celebration are rare in our world, and yet these are the things that can and must mark our lives as God's people, the church. Is that what we expect, or do we settle for something far less, something more facile and less demanding? Do we understand that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us and that by His power this life can take root and manifest in us (Romans 8:11)? This is not mere idealism, unless, of course, believing in the power of Christ's resurrection is the same! The church is called to embody these things, the church can embody these things, and thank God, sometimes the church does embody these things.

When we live together as a foretaste of the Kingdom of God, then we can say to our friends  and neighbors, with confidence and joy, "Hey, come taste this for yourself." An invitation like that trusts that God is actually present with and among us and working in tangible, observable ways. Such an invitation looks like Philip's to Nathaniel, "Come and see" (John 1:46), and rests on the hopeful, live-giving truth that following Jesus is a real-life, day to day adventure with a living God, and not just assent to a list of religious propositions. Might it be that the communal life of the church (and not some form of argumentation) is the primary evidence for the truth of the Gospel? Is this what Jesus meant when He prayed in John 17:20-21 that by our unity the world might come to believe that He is from the Father? I think so.

I pray that in CityWell churches we will expect more than an entertaining experience, inspiring worship and good programs for our kids. I pray that we will expect God to do more than we ask or imagine, to make us mighty in service and witness to Him. I pray that we will experience deep reconciliation with the Lord that breaks out into deep reconciliation with each other across dividing lines of every kind. I pray that we will personally taste and see that the Lord is GOOD! And when we do two things will happen: We will invite others to share in this life of Christ with us, and we will long for more, for the consummation of God's Kingdom. This is what the church, as a foretaste, does... it offers a taste of ultimate reality to be personally experienced and shared with others, and it breeds longing for the fulfillment of all God's promises. May it be so among us!

The MOST Important Question: A Sign

What are the primary reasons for the church's existence, and, by extension, why should there be CityWell churches?

These are first order questions, the answers to which will determine the answers to pretty much every other question. So, here is my first response: The church exists, and hopefully CityWell churches will exist, to be a sign, a foretaste and an instrument of the Kingdom of God. I'll address each of these elements in successive posts.

To say that the church is a sign of God's Kingdom presupposes something about the world, as well as something about God's intentions for the world and strategy to realize those intentions; namely, the world exists, from creation unto eternity, to be the theater of God's life-giving love, the stage where divine dance constantly creates and invites the creation to joyful participation. That’s why we’re here, you know – to join in the dance, to share life with God, to enjoy the Lord forever!

Well, obviously things in our world don’t always resemble a divine dance; we often experience destruction rather than creation, and our lives are as often marked by brokenness as by joy. Yet however far astray from God’s intentions we have fallen, God remains determined to reclaim all that is lost, to make everything sad come untrue (thank you Jason Grey for that phrase), to make all things new, to bring His kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven!

So what does that have to do with the church, and in particular with CityWell churches? In short, everything! The church is to be a sign of this coming Kingdom of God; our whole identity, our mission, our very existence is determined by God’s prerogative to bring about a new creation. To say that we are to be a sign of the kingdom is to suggest something both exalts and humbles the church.

First, the church is exalted in God’s grand scheme to route evil and reconcile all things to Himself, as God has designed that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known (Eph. 3:10). There is no escaping the fact that, for reasons only God knows, the church is at the center of God’s strategy to right the world again.

Second, though, the church is humbled by it’s role as a sign, for a properly functioning sign also points beyond itself. Being a sign, means to always bear in mind that this isn’t about us; this is all about GOD and His Kingdom. The church must assume the posture of John the Baptist, who seeing Jesus said, “I must become less, that He might become more” (my paraphrase of John 3:30).

So, CityWell churches will have to continually ask of themselves: Do we recognize the magnitude and significance of what God is calling us to? Are we trifling with religious consumerism or are we engaged on the front lines of the invading Kingdom? Are we aware that this is not all about us, and that we can easily be distracted from a Kingdom focus by seemingly more pressing concerns such as attendance, budgets and our own institutional survival? Is our ministry geared more toward the church or more toward the world into which the church is sent as a sign? When people who do not know Jesus come into contact with us, will they see us lifting up ourselves, our interests and our programs, or will it be clear that we are about Jesus’ agenda for the world? When people look at our life together will they see a dance? Will they see joy and creation and beauty? Will they see the signs that God is in fact busy making all things new?

I pray that CityWell churches will be signs - hopeful, joyful, life-giving signs that God has indeed inaugurated His kingdom through Jesus, and that this kingdom is coming to completion!   

The 10:2b Virus

About six months ago author Neil Cole (Organic Church, Organic Leaders) infected me with a contagious virus known as 10:2b. If you're not totally opposed, I'd like to pass the virus on to you.

At the beginning of Luke 10 Jesus is sending out 72 of his followers to be His forerunners in all the towns to which He was planning to go. He grants them all the authority to heal the sick and to proclaim the Kingdom of God (which is a pretty amazing investment of power and responsibility), but in verse 2 He also gives them a command: And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." The command, of course, is to pray, which is not merely preparation for the work of ministry; it is the work itself!

Jesus situates His command in an observation that is both hopeful and heavy at the same time: The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. This is the reality of the church's environment in every time and place, and Jesus' words remind us of the necessity of our complete dependence upon our Lord if we are to see this situation as hopeful (The harvest is plentiful!) rather than heavy (ughhh... where are the laborers?). In view of the awesome harvest God calls us to, we must cry out to the Lord that HE might raise up the laborers for HIS harvest field. We will not succeed in this work on our own, for like the Psalmist says in Psalm 127:1 - Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. 

As I dream about the harvest CityWell churches may be a part of, I know this work cannot be accomplished except by the power of Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us. I do not want to labor in vain, so I have volunteered to be infected with the 10:2b virus. Every day at 10:02 am the alarm on my phone goes off and I stop whatever I am doing to pray the second part of Luke 10:2 (thus the "b"): "Father, you alone are the Lord of the harvest, and I beg that you would raise up laborers for Your harvest field, that the CityWell churches may be houses built by Your hands." To this base, I add specific prayers for people to be prepared even now for the ministries God will call them to in these churches. This has been a great discipline of intentional dependence, which could also be called a practice of living in reality.

So what do you say? Care to catch the virus? I would love your partnership in these prayers. 
 

The MOST Important Question

What are the primary purposes for the church's existence? Implication question: Why should there be CityWell churches?

These are first-line questions that must be answered compellingly for every church. I'd love to know what you think. Feel free to offer thoughts on one or both of these questions. To submit comments I think you need a google account, which you can open with whatever existing email address you already use. So, make a comment, choose "google account" under "comment as" and hit "submit." You'll be guided through the simple google account initiation.

I look forward to your thoughts!

Ordinary Leaders

PsychoDoc - fantastic questions on my post, The Plural Church! Thank you for pressing on these things. I should begin by reminding readers that I'm on the "dreaming" side of this, so my thoughts are largely theoretical at present, though I think based upon Biblical precedent and contemporary study / observation.

First, I think the vast majority of new churches begin as small groups of people gathered around a vision of and sense of calling toward what God is doing in a particular place at a particular time. Think, for instance, of the Philippian church that began Lydia, a jailor and his family. With the exception of the mass conversion in Acts 2, this seems to be the pattern of new church development in the NT. This also corresponds to current NCD practices in which most new plants begin with a small but highly committed core team.

These small groups grow into larger churches when they are passionate about forming communities that demonstrate the Kingdom on earth, in our present lives, as in heaven. Such communities, if they are to be faithful to Jesus’ calling, are to live in obedience to Jesus’ teaching and imitation of His life, which means they are to be missionary by nature. In John 20:21 Jesus said to His followers: As the father sent me, so I am sending you. To be so sent and to have this Kingdom passion inevitably means a being deeply committed to sharing the Gospel with anyone and everyone we meet who is not yet a follower of Jesus. This sharing is always an invitation to faith, which necessarily means becoming a part of a Kingdom community, a partner with God as one of “the sent ones,” and a proclaimer of the Gospel of Jesus. Faithfulness to the teaching and example of Jesus means the church is always poised for growth since it is always poised to share its faith and invite participation from those not yet “in the family.” I wonder if the strangeness of the idea of rapidly replicating churches in our culture is due to our loss of this primary missionary posture.

So what about leaders? What are the requisite credentials for leadership? Where is the accountability to doctrinal integrity? These are areas of concern that we find both in the New Testament and in modern Christian institutions. However, I would suggest that our current approaches to authenticating church leaders are a far stretch from what we see in the Bible. I can’t think of a Biblical equivalent to our practice of requiring four years of undergraduate study and at least three years of graduate/seminary work before a person can fulfill their calling to ministry. Jesus had a tendency of empowering unlikely ministers that would drive most boards of ordained ministry nowadays insane. Jesus commissioned the Samaritan woman of ill-repute, the crazy Gerasene demoniac, and a rag-tag band of Torah school drop-outs to be His witnesses. Early in His ministry Jesus sent his disciples out to do everything He did: proclaim the kingdom, heal the sick and drive out demons. What were the credentials that made these people adequate leaders in the Kingdom? I would suggest that the fundamental prerequisites are a calling from the Lord, the empowerment of His Spirit, and a posture of obedience. Everyone Jesus chose and empowered fit Paul’s description from 2 Corinthians 4:7 – they were treasure bearing jars of clay whose very ordinariness put on display the all-surpassing power of God. I wonder if our contemporary ordination practices not only hinder the birthrate of new churches but limit what the Spirit of God desires to do through ordinary church folk.

Now, the scriptures talk a lot about the gifts of the Spirit, and whereas ALL followers of Jesus are gifted for ministry, we are not all gifted for the same ministries. I believe the first line of discernment as to who a community’s leaders will be is the community itself. Note the way leaders were chosen in the book of Acts: people of demonstrable faith and wisdom were called forth from the various communities to be leaders. Wherever Paul established a church he appointed elders from among them to lead. There is a faith-commitment in this practice: wherever God calls forth a church, God provides the necessary leadership within that church. Such a practice requires the community’s discernment of gifts within its members and the empowerment of people to live into those gifts.

Since the CityWell churches will be in the United Methodist connection we have the great fortune of taking advantage of one of our equipping and deploying structures, the Local Pastor Licensing School. This school is an annual two week gathering of lay ministers who have felt called to pastoral leadership and had that call confirmed by both their local congregation and District leadership. This course will allow us to credential leaders who our communities have set apart for pastoral ministry without having to first send them to seminary. The UMC connection also entails extensive ongoing education opportunities for such pastors and accountability to doctrinal integrity that will be practiced rigorously within the network of CityWell churches and leaders.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am anything but anti-intellectual. In fact I find it very significant that Jesus calls us to love the Lord our God with our minds. Theology is HUGELY important. I believe every follower of Jesus (particularly leaders) must be continually committed to the disciplines of theology and study of scripture. However, I think we tend to operate with a mythical and destructive idea that good theology and pastoral effectiveness only come through the academy. Some of the most effective ministers I have ever known never went to seminary, and the most effective seminary trained ministers I know were effective before they went to school. Seminary can be helpful or hurtful, and, in either case, is not the place of call and gifting. At its best, a seminary is a place where gifts are honed and calls are followed. We need to remember that in Acts 4 the leaders of the Sanhedrin noted of Peter and John that “they were unschooled, ordinary men…” but that “they had been with Jesus.”

I pray that CityWell churches will raise up and empower such ordinary leaders marked by having been with Jesus, by the empowerment of His Spirit, by the authentication of the church body (local and connectional), by a love for the scripture and a hunger to learn, and by a passion to lead people in a growing life of discipleship to Jesus. Whether or not they have seminary training, is really not the central question in my mind.

Nothing.

The guys who first followed Jesus around must have gotten used to having their egos deflated on a pretty regular basis. I think I'm a pretty normal guy, and so I'm guessing at least a few of those first disciples thought like I do, which is to say that every once in a while they might have thought themselves to be a bit better than they were. This is a dangerous tendency for anyone, but especially if you're trying to follow Jesus. He has this way (often not so subtle) of helping us to form more sober estimations of ourselves. Just think about John 15:5 - Apart from me you can do nothing.

Nothing.  

Really, Jesus? Nothing?

Nothing.

So, what are we to do with that? Well, there is certainly a literal truth to the statement. After all Jesus is the one through whom all things were made and in whom all things hold together, so even our breathing happens within the grip of his grace. But beyond that are we to be suspicious of any confidence we are inclined to have in any area of our lives? Are we to be insecure people lacking self-assurance? Are we to beat ourselves up and take Jesus' statement as a mantra of self-deprecation: "I am nothing. I'm ugly and my momma dresses me funny. Sigh. Slump. Tear." Surely this is not the point of Jesus' statement. Might there be a life-giving paradox in Jesus' assertion? I think so.

Rather than destroying our confidence or view of ourselves, I believe Jesus makes this stark declaration of our incapacity in order to establish our confidence and lift our self-understanding. Jesus has tremendous confidence in us. He believes in us. He wants us to succeed and thinks we can... just not alone. But herein lies the good news, the gospel; we are not alone! Remember the context of Jesus' statement. Jesus is preparing His followers for ministry after His death, resurrection and ascension. He has already told them that they will do the works He does and even greater things than those (14:12); he has promised them that they will receive the Holy Spirit and that they will never be left orphaned (14:15-18); and just before the whole "nothing" thing he promises that we will bear much fruit if we abide in Him (15:5a).  Jesus doesn't want us to expect less of ourselves; He wants us to expect more. He isn't taking shots at our sense of identity; He is elevating our identity in tandem with His!

So, why the "nothing" bit? I think Jesus reminds us our our incapacity so that we will depend on his capacity - fully available and freely offered to us. We are not to settle for what we can accomplish on our own, but are to dream toward and expect far more than that. Like Psalm 127:1 says: Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. But for those who build with the Lord all things are possible.

All things.

I pray that the Lord will build the CityWells, that we will continually remember that apart from Jesus' power, presence, vision and provision we can do nothing. Only when we embrace nothing will we begin to experience the all things Jesus has in mind for us. Can you even imagine what all this might be?

The Plural Church

Today a good friend of mine read this blog and asked me, "Are you talking about a church or a bunch of small groups?" Good question. Here is my response:

I sense that you may be surprised by the plural language I'm using in this blog, so let me try to explain. CityWells, as I see them are churches, not small groups, though they may begin as small groups. I have been very compelled by a statement I read recently - something to the tune of "If you really want to impact the world for Christ quit thinking about planting trees and start thinking about orchards." Working from that, one of the core strands of DNA I hope to instill in the first CityWell is an absolute commitment to replication. I hope we will be a church that exists, in part, to start other churches which will in turn start other churches.

There are several motivating factors to this ambition. Foremost is the fact that there is no more effective way of bringing people into a disciple relationship with Christ than through new churches. All of the studies I've read (and I've read too many!) indicate the same thing: in the first ten years of a church's life evangelistic fervor and fruit is exponentially greater than in the remaining life of the church. Secondly, churches who have a regular, disciplined commitment to "parenting" new churches maintain their outward focus and evangelistic effectiveness at rates that far surpass churches that exist only unto themselves. Thirdly, a commitment to ongoing planting will require and ensure robust and continual leadership development and deployment that I hope will have tremendous kingdom impact. I have a friend who has planted five churches out of his first (of which he is still the pastor), and each of those has also parented new churches... all in the same city! He has become  a mass producer of effective pastors. That idea excites me!

So, from day one I hope the CityWell will understand itself to be a plural church.

What is a CityWell?

At present I am inclined to call the church (or network of churches) I am called to plant CityWells. This name comes from two passages of scripture that are foundational for what I believe the church is to be; one concerns the city; the other is about a well.

The first passage is Jeremiah 29:1-7. In these verses we find God's encouragement and command to His people who find themselves as exiles in Babylon. Jeremiah writes a letter to the leaders of the exiled community and tells them God's desires. We might expect God to tell the people to insulate themselves against evils of the pagan city and the prevailing culture, but we find something quite different. The Lord simply tells His people to live well in the midst of the city. God instructs them to do the things normal people do: build homes, plant gardens, get married, have kids, and build community. However, the people of God are not simply to do these things for themselves, as if God's goal is just to make us happy people. No, from the beginning God has always blessed people in order that they become a blessing to others. So, true to form, God calls his people to "seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."

Live well. Bless the city.

The second passage is John 4:1-42 - the classic Jesus story about the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well. Several things in this passage strike me as incredible and as central to God's calling for me to be a church planter. First, if the church is to remotely resemble Jesus, then we must be a radically inclusive people! At the well we see massive cultural barriers being torn down: male/female, Jew/Samaritan, God/sinner. I dream of churches that follow suit, where people of varying races, cultures and social classes come together by the unifying, line-crossing power of Jesus.

Second, I love that this woman is free to engage Jesus with all of her questions... though, like most of us, she wasn't necessarily asking the right questions. I dream of churches where people are free to discover the love of God through honest wrestling with hard questions, where no one feels like they have to check their brain at the door or suppress their doubts. 

Third, a well is a place where people go to find life-sustaining water. At this particular well the Samaritan woman discovers Jesus, the only source of living water! I dream of planting churches where we continually discover Jesus, grow in relationship with Him and learn to live with and for Him. These churches must be absolutely committed to sharing the good news of Jesus with anyone and everyone who does not yet know Him.

Fourth, this well is a place where Jesus radically empowers the most unlikely of persons to become His ambassador in her community. This marginalized woman becomes the herald of God's salvation for many in her village who came to trust in Jesus. I dream of planting churches where the common dichotomy between clergy and laity are dismantled and every follower of Jesus is empowered for ministry in their community.

Taking cues from these passages, I dream of CityWell churches where we live well, bless the city, tear down dividing walls, question honestly, discover Jesus, and become His agents of community transformation. That's the CityWell Dream!

Is Less Church More Church?

Is less church more church? Is one of the greatest drawbacks to church-as-we-know-it that it can consume our schedules in such a way as to cripple our ability to actually be the church, the presence of Christ in the world. Have we promoted the myth that serving God means volunteering at the church - ushering, teaching, chaperoning, or sitting in committee meetings? Have you ever felt guilty about not being "involved" enough at the church? I wonder if being the church means something more than volunteering at the church. What might it look like for churches to invite their people to fewer meetings and fewer programs while encouraging them to invest more time in their neighborhoods, in their schools, with their friends, in the community? What impact might we have if we understood that time to be sacred and our role to be missionary? What might it do to our perception and practice of what it means to follow Jesus if we believed that we don't have to extract ourselves from the "normal" places of our daily lives (work, neighborhood, teams, gym, coffee shop, bar, restaurants, etc...) in order to serve God? What if God has actually placed us strategically to live into and manifest His kingdom right where we are? Could churches be about our gathering to celebrate what God is doing daily in and and through our lives and then scattering to discover more and join in where God is at work around us? What if churches trained us to see ourselves as we are, missionaries of everyday life? Could CityWell churches follow the pattern of God's calling of Abraham who was blessed to be a blessing? Could we understand ourselves as gathered to be scattered?  

Big Scary Dreams

Often when I read the accounts of the earliest followers of Jesus I am struck by the enormity of the tasks they were called to, and by the fact that they did them! Imagine, your sitting around the fire with Jesus one day and He says to you and your friends, "Ok, so tomorrow I'm going to take a little sabbatical; you go out and proclaim the kingdom, heal the sick and cast out any demons your run across. Just do what I do." Simple, right? Just do what Jesus does. Or, imagine being Peter in the boat with the disciples watching Jesus  walk on water. Of course Jesus invites you to the easy things.... "Come on out here, big boy! It's just a little water." No problem, right?

So, I'm thinking, might Jesus still call us to the seemingly impossible? As I dream toward the new churches God is calling me to plant, I am praying for BIG SCARY DREAMS... visions that absolutely terrify me. I want to be like the disciples, who could never mistake the power of their ministry as being of themselves, who could never take credit for their successes and were able to rejoice in their apparent failures because they knew they were about God's business. I want to be out on the water where only Jesus can make us walk and where He alone is praised!

Might the CityWell churches be impossible communities formed in the name and power of Jesus? Communities that defy the cultural prescriptions of what the church can be? Communities where dividing walls of class and race are torn down? Communities where every follower of Jesus is radically empowered to do what He does? Communities where thousands and thousands of people discover the salvation won for them by Jesus? Communities born pregnant and passionate about birthing more churches? Now that is BIG SCARY DREAM because we can never do these things by ourselves! The good news is that we are not by ourselves, and nothing is impossible with our God!