Jumping in with both feet

Recently Bob and a team member were going to take a look at a particular neighborhood and spend some time in prayer. They were considering a possible church planting project where God might be ready to do something. Bob asked this team member about his level of commitment to church planting. The man was initially taken aback by the question. Bob said, “The level of commitment is important. You have to be absolutely, totally convinced that God has called you to do this, because there will be times you will be discouraged and knocked down. At those times, it’s only being absolutely convinced that God has called you that will allow you to get back up.”

That turned out to be a prophetic word, as this team member met a challenge shortly after that conversation, and that challenge ultimately helped him consider and then strengthen his resolve and commitment to church planting. A timely reminder that if we’re involved in this kind of kingdom work, we will face opposition. Therefore, we need to reflect on God’s call and clarify our commitment.

Letting God be God

A woman in ViaCordis recently brought a concern to her coach (everyone in ViaCordis has a coach). She has been developing friendships with several of her neighbors in her apartment building. She has been engaging them in conversation in the hallways, inviting them in for coffee, has been present in their lives and allowed them to be present in hers. People have been surprised: no one in our building invites us in for coffee! She senses a loneliness and isolation, and this is her way of being a redemptive presence in the lives of those around her.

Yet this woman shared with her coach, “I feel like there needs to be more. This isn’t concrete enough. I’m not making disciples. I’m just showing kindness and hospitality.” She has shared the gospel in bits and pieces, but that has not been met with much receptivity. One woman in her building is a Muslim, and the woman from ViaCordis went over to her place when she accidentally locked herself out of the apartment. The Muslim woman invited her in, served coffee, and said, “You know what, I trust you more than I trust my own people.” This is a woman who wants nothing to do with Christianity, yet the sincerity with which a Christian has approached her has meant a lot.

Her coach said, “You don’t need to be doing anything more concrete other than being there and continuing to be in relationship with her and others. You sticking with her will speak more loudly into her life than anything you could share theologically. You’re being obedient, you’re listening to God, God is opening doors. Just continue to give and see where that leads you. Other people’s receptivity is not up to you. What’s up to you is how you love and serve others.”

Too often in western Christianity, we often devise our own systems of righteousness. We feel the need to intentionally invite someone to a Bible study when they’ve expressed no interest. Or we feel the need to press for spiritual conversation where there is no openness. When we meet the requirements of our own system, we feel good about ourselves, and climb our own ladders. Yet it doesn’t further the kingdom, and often sets it back. We don’t need to go down that road of setting up our own system of righteousness. We just need to be faithful, look for naturally-occurring opportunities to share Jesus, and let God be God.

Jesus and Crepes

We’re excited about two of our members’ work at the Salvation Army. They’ve been leading an anger management class at a women’s group home. They’ve recently been wondering about how they can help those women who are mothers with school supplies throughout the year and kids’ clothes for winter. ViaCordis is looking into gift certificates for the moms so they can take their kids shopping or buy items for them.

But even though the ViaCordis members haven’t shared those ideas with the women yet, they’ve been leading the anger management training as volunteers. Last week they brought crepes as a snack. The women were stunned. One of them said, “I can’t believe you’re doing this and are Christians.” The ViaCordis members responded in surprise: “How else would we be Christians? This is our understanding of what Jesus would do.” Truly, ministry is not a program. It’s just about being present in the world in ways that Jesus would.

Look again

We are again reminded that we must keep the vision in front of people. At ViaCordis, we’ve agreed in the past that our gatherings will consist of four parts: connection, worship, edification, and sending. Yet we find edification—teaching and engaging with scripture—dominating our time. We value edification, but our vision for ViaCordis requires that it not be at the expense of connection, worship, and sending. We wonder if this imbalance is part of the DNA we unintentionally bring with us from the traditional sermon-centric church. We need to remind ourselves constantly of the vision to be on the lookout for unintentional messages we may be carrying with us. Then we need to be intentional about changing those messages.

One practice we engaged in a couple of weeks ago was having the facilitator go around to each person and ask, “How are you doing? How have you sensed God this week? What do you sense him calling you to do? How can we pray for you?” Each person received a time of individual focus, and it was one of the more empowering times we’ve had together. Sometimes an exercise like this will take most of the gathering time, but we feel that as long as we balance the four elements we want to incorporate over the course of a month, we will be honoring our values. Our vision affects how we gather. We need to practice the way of community we want to pass on: not discounting any one of these four elements, but seeking to rebalance them as we follow the leading of the Spirit.

Sprouting

Recently a new "sprout" of the Church began to emerge in one of our homes. Some co-workers of my wife started gathering with us after work to share life together over a meal and to interact with the Scriptures. A few know who Jesus is, others don't, so during our time together we seek to understand and follow the Jesus revealed to us in the Scriptures (particularly the Gospels), which is captivating to us all. Our conversations are rich and the questions raised are deeply profound. The presence of God is almost tangible when we gather.

The reason we consider our gathering a sprout is because the body of Christ has not yet fully emerged. Could it become a gathering of the Church? Absolutely, and that is our desire. But we're not there yet.

What we hope will emerge out of this gathering is a community of disciples that regularly gathers together for at least four purposes: to celebrate God and his activity (including sacraments), to encourage one another (prayer), to grow in our knowledge of and obedience to Jesus (interaction with Scripture), and to pursue lives of service while proclaiming the gospel in both word and deed.

This way of being the Church may seem too simple, but perhaps that's because the standard way of doing church has become far too complicated by things that really don't matter all that much in God's Kingdom. Call our approach simple or organic or missional, or whatever. We're simply trying to follow Jesus as best we know how and we're discovering that his way of life is the best way to live.

Roots

We have been reminded recently in our gathering times that we need to continually cast vision for what we are about as a church. Because networks of missional house churches are so new--new as in "so old it's new"--very few of us have a clear idea of what they might look like.

Sometimes images can be helpful. The image shown here is of an aspen grove. The grove is actually the world’s largest organism as the entire grove shares one root system beneath the surface. Above the earth’s surface, the trees each appear separate, yet each tree contains the exact same DNA as the tree next to it, all because they share the same roots.

So what is the root system of missional churches? In the case of ViaCordis, the root system is made up of coaching relationships and monthly leadership community gatherings. That’s where the leaders grow and are challenged and nurtured. The root system is what keeps us connected. From there, we sprout above the ground in ways that each look a bit different, spreading out as sent people. Some may start small house church gatherings that engage in transformational initiatives (personal and community), others may begin by serving together in areas of need in hopes of seeing another "tree" (i.e. community of disciples) emerge in the grove. Each tree looks different—and separate—above the surface. But underneath they’re all connected and nourished by the same roots.

The nutrients that flow through the roots--those elements that we rely upon for our community life--are simply the commands and commission Jesus gave us: love God, love others, and make disciples as you go. Again, the expression of these elements in each tree will look different depending on the context, but the elements are the same.

Our goal has never been a large Sunday morning gathering. It’s never been a Sunday morning gathering at all. We deeply desire to serve as the hands and feet of Jesus throughout the week, at the odd times of day and night when we can best serve those in the world around us. As we serve and express the elements Jesus gave us, others will begin to know Jesus as well and new communities will form.

Right now there’s only one tree in the grove. But the roots are spreading and new sprouts are beginning to break through the top of the soil. A new grove is in the making.

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.

Being Home

A whole lot has been going on at ViaCordis this week. Here are two of the things God's been up to:

Bob was talking to one of our intercessors about a prayer letter we had sent out on our values. She noted that one value that seemed to be missing, yet permeated everything we do, was hospitality. In making that observation, she was pointing out the obvious, yet we needed it pointed out. Hospitality was an assumed value, but unstated. We hadn't put words to it. We move toward inviting: inviting people into our homes, into our lives, into relationship with Jesus. Thanks to this intercessor for pointing that out to us! We love our intercessors!

One leader's home is becoming a popular hangout for high school students. More and more of them are congregating in her home as they sense it is a safe place to be real with one another. Someone observed, "Maybe we could have a kids' church meeting in your house. Your daughter could be the leader." Now I'm not sure this leader has ever seen herself as a host, but she has always served as an incarnational missionary—opening her home so people can experience the presence of God there. We don't know where the network of relationships will go—nothing formal has been established—but we're excited about the possibilities.

While hospitality has emerged as one of our values, we understand that many do not have houses to which we can retreat for comfort and security. Rather than viewing hospitality as something that can only be done in a physical house, we desire to create a sense of hospitality in all of our regular gathering spaces (wine bars, basketball courts, classrooms, workspaces, etc.). And more than that, we want to become hospitable people--people who are approachable, trustworthy, and with whom others can be authentic. In this way, no matter where we gather with people, we will always be home.

Asking Good Questions

In an article titled, "A New Imagination for the Church" Dave Dunbar of Biblical Seminary introduces 3 sets of questions to help guide a church toward a missional engagement with their community:

• What means or activities in the history of our church have proven most effective in introducing non-Christians to the gospel? (This is not the same question as what activities have been most effective in adding members/attendees to the congregation.) What can we learn from this that might guide our present efforts?
• Jesus taught us to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.” If the kingdom were to come today, what things would be different in our neighborhood? How might the answers to this question guide the participation of our church in the mission of God?
• The Abrahamic covenant promises that Abraham’s descendants will be blessed in order that they may be a blessing (Gen. 12:2-3). How is our church a blessing to our community? How would our neighbors answer this question?

I think these questions are a good starting point for any church, new or old, who wants to be an agent of change in the next twenty years. I imagine our church will wrestle through these questions rather soon, and I encourage you and your church community to begin asking (and answering) these questions as well.

Peace!