I had coffee today with a friend who asked me the question: “How do you create a redemptive community that does the mission of God in the world?” I told him the answer, and we moved on. Not really. But what a great question- especially for anyone who has a passion for the church or church planting.

I shared some thoughts with him from Alan Hirsh, David Fitch, and others. Here are some creative ideas (mostly that I have stole from people smarter than myself). This is what such a community might look like and why:

1) Communal. I asked him if he enjoyed college… and why. He answered like everyone else I have asked this question to- yes, and because of the community (Being in relationships with people, day in and day out). If we are going to dream up a redemptive community, we must wrestle on how we can do relationships (life together) better. We must be creative in how we order our lives, use our time, choose our dwellings, etc. I have a strong feeling that this has to go way beyond gathering on Sunday mornings and small groups. We must seek to figure out how to be in community when life is hard, and ugly, and “church” does not “feel” good. We talked about time, and shared experiences (esp. doing service and missions together versus sitting around a living room trying to facilitate conversation), and trust. Can we create this sort of community?

2) Dreaming up new leadership structures. We talked about being bi-vocational (having leaders in the church supplementing their income through other jobs) and having communal leadership (3, 4, 5 pastors/leaders). See Hirsh and Frost’s “The Shaping of Things to Come” for more on this. We talked about how this fosters community, provides a fuller spectrum of gifts, keeps leaders plugged into “the world”, allows them to empathize with the struggles of their congregation, resists the draw of cultic personalities, makes room for the prophetic voice because the leaders’ income is not tied to the pockets of the congregation. We discussed how if the church grows, multiple leadership makes it easier to divide and multiply (cellular growth/planting more churches).

3) Missions, Listening, and Diversity. We talked about being the church as opposed to doing church. And that being the church ought to require us to be on the mission of God in the world. And that in order to do missions, we have to listen to the needs, suffering, injustices, etc of our larger communities. And then we discussed how different the churches ought to look as they each incarnate a certain neighborhood or community, with its unique culture, personality, sin, etc.

Sacrifice. We talked about a lot more, but at the end of our conversation we talked about sacrifice. And we came to the realization that there is so much possibility, but that all of this might hinge on sacrifice. Because when all this stuff becomes practical (versus theoretical)- stuff changes. Doing community requires sacrifice- maybe giving up having a nice secluded house in the suburbs, giving up time, or TV. Community requires proximity- and when you talk about the specifics of proximity, stuff changes- sacrifices have to be made.

Leadership. Being bi-vocational is harder (for most, esp. if you are of the typical protestant church mindset). It requires picking up a second skill set, working extra hours, and the loss of certain benefits of full-time ministry. I mean there is something nice about being paid 30, 40, 50 thousand dollars a year to be a full-time pastor. There is something assuring (or ego-boosting) to be the one on stage all the time- the cultic personality. Communal leadership requires humility, submission, repentance, and other things that often times do not come with senior pastor leadership (which can error on the side of control, power, and isolation).

And being missional can be disturbingly sacrificial. Because if we really listen to the needs, pain, and injustices of our towns, cities, and world- this can often times lead us to places we would not normally go. Do not get me wrong- there are huge needs in the suburbs (actually, there is more poverty in the suburbs than the cities now- for one example). But if we listen to the cries of our world, they often times take us to places American culture tells us to avoid (because we do not want to be like “they” are). I just really believe if we honestly listen to the suffering around us with the intent to respond, we will immediately understand the sacrifice of the response.

So in this slew of thoughts, remains this question of sacrifice. It is one thing to dream up what the church might be, how it can do and be so much more, how it can address suffering and the needs of the world, etc. But there remains the question of how much are we willing to sacrifice in order to make this dream a reality.

I have been wrestling with the issue of community within the church. Namely- are our relationships with our brothers and sisters in our local congregations deep, authentic, life-long, etc- or at least growing in that direction? Or, as my friend Paul has pointed out, do churches create an atmosphere of psuedo-community?

Pondering this question, there are so many issues that can (and need to) be addressed. For now, I simply wonder about “orthodoxy” and/or church agendas. Let me be clear, I believe in false teaching, beliefs that can be harmful to people, and scripture’s command to watch our doctrine. I also believe that the church is meant to be on a mission in the world and therefore must have a God-given “agenda”. In these ways, othodoxy and agendas are completely necessary for the church.

But often times, there remains a huge difference between my “church relationships” and my relationships with my closest friends. And I believe that it comes down to what we center these relationships on.

With the exception of a few, most of the people I consider my closest friends are believers. What strikes me about these friendships, is how love, grace, and the person always come first. When this is true, there is room to struggle, to fail, to sin and confess, to think, and at times to be a heretic. In the midst of all this struggle, sin, and unorthodox conversation, we all love each other deeply and are truly trying to encourage each other in our faith. It is not that belief, or lifestyle, or discipleship is unimportant- far from it! It is extremely important to me that my closest friends and family grow into their faith and the life God has called them to. It is just that the relationship comes before any sort of agenda or doctrine.

I do not always find this to be true in the church. I have found myself in many conversations that have centered around “right belief” or some sort of agenda. It is not that I think these conversations are unimportant- they are. It is just that I feel if I would have said the wrong thing, or admitted that I am working through a certain issue, or especially if I landed at a different conclusion (than the person I was talking with)- the relationship would be lost, or severely fragmented. Even when there is grace in these conversations and room for me to struggle and/or ask questions, often times I feel that there is only room to struggle so long as eventually come to the “orthodox” conclusion.

My question is, can Christ-centered community happen when we put belief or agenda before relationships? And is this a problem for church communities? Consider what Jesus does in Luke 6: 6-11.

I find that I have to repent a lot in my life. It is not always the most fun, but I am okay with it. I am passionate about trying to follow Jesus, about being and leading the church, challenging others to do the same, and loving and serving a broken and hurting world. But I get it wrong- sometimes often. Most of the time, I learn of my mistakes or narrow-mindedness through others- my brothers and sisters in the faith. They remind me that I am not always filled with grace, or that I can be overly critical, or that the ways in which I have been living out my faith might be with many errors. Again, these times of repentence are not always the the most fun, but I need them- If I ever hope to grow into who God created me to be and do the things God calls me to do- I need them desperately!

I think people like Stanley Hauerwas and Allen Verhey have a lot to teach me- teach us- in this area of living out our faith and being the church. Among many things, they say that we need to read scripture in “community” and “over and against ourselves”.

Community: What I have been learning over the last few years is how I need community- It is community, other people, that shape me, sharpen me, and help me work out my faith. I need others- christians and non-christians, kids and my elders, professors and people that don’t even know what seminary is- to teach me, rebuke me, and help me figure out what it means to follow Jesus.

Over and Against Myself: By identifying myself as a Christian, being part of of church, etc., I am making some claim that I understand what it means to follow Christ and that I am living my life in that way. This is entirely true, necessary, and possible. The danger is that as I journey down this path, one day I will find myself (consciously or unconsciously) believing that I have a corner on the market. In my experience this is the great danger for Christians- especially churches and church leaders. We can end up reading the bible to critique culture, teach people, or lead the church. But the shadow of these good things, is that in the process, we can use scripture (especially our understanding of it) to justify our lives, churches, ministries, etc. And maybe we do not take seriously enough, the possibility that scripture does not support these things, but rather calls us to repentence.

I think I gravitate towards these two things because of my struggle and frustration with “hyper-confidence”. In my experience, being in community and reading scripture over and against myself is a constant source of learning, growing, and being made aware of my need to repent.

Thoughts?

When you hear the word “ministry” what comes to your mind? For me, I typically think of a few pastors, elders, small group leaders, trying to minister to their congregation. My experience has been that most ministry is focused on the people that are already in “church”. And ministry is the activity done by a select group of staff/leaders/etc. for the benefit of church atendees. Therefore the vast majority of church activity rarely extends beyond the borders of the congregation. Furthermore, to increase the growth of the ministry, the goal becomes getting more people “in the doors”- mainly on Sundays. Let me be clear- all of this is good and and has been effective in transforming many peoples’ lives.

However, I am becoming more and more convinced that the people most in need of God will never walk through the doors of a church. Okay, so this is not old news. But is this concept reflected in the way we “do” church? If 99% (my exaggerated number, maybe) of people who need the ministry of the church will never set foot inside a church door, why is the majority of our church activity centered around the people already in the doors? Surely I have been in the church long enough to understand that people inside the doors need the ministry of the church. But my tension remains. The mission and ministry of the church, in my opinion, lies primarily outside the walls of the church (or borders of the congregation). And for the church that is overwhelmed by the needs within the congregation, at some point we must get healthy enough to understand that ministry cannot be a few pastors/elders/leaders ministering to the congregation. We must be the church (as a whole) ministering to our neighbors, co-workers, cities, and the world. Thoughts?