Ripples

God has been stirring in the hearts of our leaders the desire to connect with people within their spheres of influence. We’ve begun to pray and explore possibilities for gathering with people inside their networks. Many in our networks are not yet followers of Jesus and we feel it’s important to meet them in the shared, familiar places that we regularly encounter one another rather than invite them to a meeting in an unfamiliar setting. Our inherited, default mode of church is that we invite not-yet followers of Jesus to join us at a gathering—they come to us, to our place of comfort. Instead, we need to go to them as what Paul calls "ambassadors of Christ" and connect with people within their spheres of influence, in the places they most comfortably live their lives. Jesus is not pulling us out of the world; rather, he is inviting us into it.

One leader of the ViaCordis team has accepted Jesus' invitation by gathering students at the college where he teaches for spiritual conversation. We anticipate much transformation to occur as a result of those conversations. Perhaps the Church will emerge right there on campus!

Other leaders are cultivating relationships within their spheres of influence out of obedience to Jesus' commandment to make disciples of him as we go. The image we associate with this movement is of a drop of rain that falls into a still pond and sends ripples out from where it lands. While we gather together as followers of Jesus on Sunday mornings to encourage one another in our discipleship of Jesus, we also send one another into the world to make disciples in the places we work, play, and naturally live our lives. In this way, we become ripples of Jesus' way of life.

Beware of the Trap

We’ve been going through the beatitudes and sharing some rich discussions. And yet we’ve been sensing that something is missing regarding missional engagement with our community. It’s not for lack of effort—we’ve contacted the Salvation Army weekly trying to pursue that opportunity, but we’ve had several setbacks there. We’re now asking what I see as some very important questions: Do we keep pursing that possibility with the Salvation Army or do we look elsewhere? Or, do we even create our own opportunities for service within our neighborhoods?


That last question brings up all kinds of “what ifs.” What if my wife and I were to pass out invitations to our neighbors to come by for root beer floats in the front yard one evening? We’ve been having a heat wave. Would people come? If they did come, then what?


What we’re running into right now has been the ruin of many well-intentioned house churches: the holy huddle. It’s one of the biggest traps we could run into. What if we still have no new disciples participating in our community six months from now? We’ve never wanted to be all about us. We’ve wanted to be a church that raises leaders from the harvest for the harvest. So pray with us over these questions: God, how then do you want us to serve? Where can we serve? Who? In what capacity? We need to be taken beyond ourselves. And we need God’s leading to know where the next step lies.


As we move forward, we want to do so with wisdom and sensitivity. Many people are coming in with hurts and we desire to be a healing community as well as a missional community. We believe God can make us both.