Looking Back for the Future

"The further back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see." - Winston Churchill

Churchill was a big believer in how history can inform current decisions. Nowhere do I believe this is more true than the church. The start of the church is the best place to be informed on the future of her direction.

Unfortunately, it is common (and easy) to read our own traditions into the formation of the church in the early days, and assume we are doing what they did back in the day.

This never hit me until I read Wagner's Acts of the Apostles, and I was blown away by his different perspective. Not that I agree with all of Wagner, but how he saw different and beyond my presuppositions. It opened my eyes.

Here are a few things that are intriguing from then to now.

• There are no pastors in the book of Acts and yet this is our primary leadership structure.
• There are no women pastors (no pastors at all), but women play a key role - even as prophets (Acts 21)
  
• There is no systematic theology, or exegetical teaching.
• Miracles are common - even expected as the gospel moves forward in power.
• God speaks to people directly
• New believers got baptized fast - when they decided to follow.
• THE Apostles where not the only apostles (Acts 14).
  

There is more, but these are a few that I did not see because my tradition blinded me to what was really being said (btw - this is the same type of thing that got our boy Luther to post his 95 burs in the saddle on the door at Wittenburg).

Organic Church Conference - CA Style

Early registration is coming to a close so time to pony up and get out to the Organic Church Conference in beautiful Ontario CA (I am making that last part up). This should be a good time with Neil Cole, Alan & Deb Hirsch, Wolfgang Simson, Tony & Felicity Dale and a few other simple church hoodlums. The dates are February 8-10 . . . a great place to connect, learn and dream. Hope to see you there.

Rob Bell - Pay Attention

Time Magazine did a great little piece on Rob Bell - may his tribe increase. I am really quite unfamiliar with his stuff (to my shame), but I like everything I see.

Go Rob Go. Re-invent for us all.

Church Planting Movements

I took the opportunity to re-read David Garrison's Church Planting Movements booklet. Not only is this little booklet very inspirational, it also provides a simple guideline to rapidly reproductive church planting. You can download a pdf of the booklet at the link above.

David identifies ten key elements in a CPM:

• Prayer - the vitality of the missionaries personal life is key
• Abundant Sowing - cpms do not emerge where evangelism is rare or absent
• Intentionality - must be deliberately engaged in church planting
• Scriptural Authority - Bible (not training or men) must be the guiding source doctrine, church polity and life itself.
• Local Leadership - not the church planter, but the local leadership
• Lay Leadership - key leaders emerge from the people being reached. They reflect the same demographic
• Cell or House Churches - vast majority of the cpm churches are small. 10-30 meeting in homes or other locations not associated with traditional church.
• Churches Planting Churches - "members have to believe that reproduction is natural and that no external aids are needed to start a new church." (or movement I might add).
• Rapid reproduction - "When rapid reproduction is taking place, you can be assured that the churches are unencumbered by nonessential elements and the laity are fully empowered to participate."
• Healthy Churches - worship, missions, evangelism, fellowship, discipleship are all taking place.

So how does this transfer to 'movements everywhere' on university campuses in the US and abroad. It seems that we have a few of these key elements, but we may unintentionally prevent a few others. Prayer, scripture, health and decent sowing exist. We have a degree of planting intentionality, but more of our efforts seemed geared toward growing what currently exists. We struggle to see movements start new movements (in Campus Crusade language, a movement correlates with what David calls a church) and we do not rely on student leadership over our direction and coaching. We have very little expectation that we could plant a new student group and then come back to find that it has planted six more. In my experience, this is basically unheard of . . . but it does not seem that far fetched if we expect it to be so.

Walter Oetting on Church

"If you had asked, 'Where is the church?' in any important city of the ancient world where Christianity had penetrated in the first century, you would have been directed to a group of worshiping people gathered in a house. There was no special building or other tangible wealth with which to associate 'church', only people!"

Walter Oetting, The church of the catacombs: The introduction to the surging life of the early church from the apostles to A.D. 250, based on firsthand accounts

70% Dropout by age 23

70% of surveyed Protestants stopped attending church by age 23, according to a survey conducted by Ed Stetzer and LifeWay Research. Seven in 10 Protestants ages 18-30 (both evangelical and mainline) who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23. 34% said they had not returned, even sporadically, by age 30. This means about one in four Protestant young people have left the church. A phrase with 'No' and 'Sherlock' comes to mind at this point.

I read this report in USA Today and there is some good news listed in the report. No doubt this generation of dropouts will be the foundation for something new around the corner - probably something formatted quite differently from what we are seeing now. I doubt this generation will wait on religious leaders to figure this out for them. They are much more inclined to do something new and radical for themselves. Bring It!

You can read Ed Stezters blog here or check out LifeWay research here

Bar becomes Church

Ok, it did not become a church, but more of doubling as a place for people to be the church. Evidently more than 100 people turned up recently for the first night of Solace, a 'church in a bar', in Cardiff, Wales. There were no pews in sight, no talking heads, or three-hundred year old songs in archaic English - guests sat at round tables with drinks (fermented beverages?) in hand, chatting away as they listened to music.

Wendy Sanderson, one of the evangelists involved says, "Who in their right mind wants to give up their Sunday mornings to listen to some bloke ramble on for half an hour, telling everyone what to think, without providing any opportunity for argument or questions? We wanted to create a safe environment where people could meet, somewhere they are familiar with already, where they can have fun and learn about God. It's a way to make church relevant for people in the club scene. I think when church gets too religious, people on the outside are bound to remain on the outside because they can't find a way they understand in," she says.

And evidently this is not the only church in a bar in Cardiff.

It is always good to snag some news from JoelNews

Church becomes Mosque

NY Times - Britain may continue to regard itself as a Christian nation. But practicing Muslims are likely to outnumber church-attending Christians in several decades, according to a recent survey by Christian Research, a group that specializes in documenting the status of Christianity in Britain.
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Most of the time I am blogging about rapid expansion of Christianity - but every once in awhile you come across some chilling information - like this Methodist church in England becoming a mosque.

Not only is the decline of the church in the west quite eerie, but what is replacing it can be quite spooky as well. Situations like this are not as a result of large conversions of traditional Brits, but the massive growth of immigrant groups (in this case Pakistanis).

Fortunately this is a kind of 'adaptive challenge' that should re-ignite the church. And indeed this is happening in England in some reassuring ways. Only Jesus knows what forms this will take, but I hear of some exciting things happening on campuses - not a bad place to start.

StoryRunners

StoryRunners is a group using some innovative (ancient actually) means to move the gospel ahead in distant places. The plan is to use the power of spoken Bible stories to convey the gospel to people for whom stories are a foundational part of their lives. This storying approach uses heart language and common learning style to provide them with an oral set of the Scriptures. Jesus never wrote anything - he simply conveyed it through stories and practice.

Why this method? - according to their stats the current situation looks like this:

• 6,000 people groups totaling
• 3 billion people who have not heard His message.
  
• 4.5 billion of the world’s population can’t or won’t read.
• 1 billion people have no Scripture and
• millions of people do not have a written language of their own

In partnership with churches and mission agencies, StoryRunners trains teams of near-culture believers to live and work among unreached people groups so that they can:

• lay a foundation for the beginnings of an oral Bible,
• accelerate the spread of the gospel and
• sow the seeds of church planting movements (I really like this point).

This is an incredibly intriguing project that seems much more incarnational than many of our older (or less old) approaches. This seems to capitalize on how the gospel naturally spreads from people to people.

Rutz on "Christians in Diapers"

I loaned out (and apparantly lost) my copy of Megashift. Bummer - I will have to buy a new one. I copied this quote sometime in the fall of 2005. I think it is fitting (if not biting). (The comments in brackets are my additons).

Most people who are called Christians are spiritual babies. They can't even feed themselves. they have to be spoon-fed weekly by sitting passivley in a church service (weekly meeting). Trouble is, this only make the problem worse.

That is why improved sermons, bigger churches, and better trained pasotrs can't help. Quaker statesman Elton Trueblood once gave me a copy of his book The Company of the Committed, in which he lamented dumping all religious affairs onto the clergy (staff), this secularizing everybody else: "The basic trouble [with the traditional church] is that the propoesed cure has such a striking similarity to the disease."

I will be back on Alan Hirsch book and next steps in a day or so.

Expansion in Indonesia

From Joel News: In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, thousands of new charismatic churches have sprung up. Most of these have a young membership, and there is a growing acceptance of women as leaders.

Indri Gautama, a former businesswoman of Chinese descent, is one of Indonesia's female church planters. She wants to see her nation transformed by Christ and says: "It seems like 60 percent of the disasters happening in the world are in Indonesia. God has allowed this so we will seek Him." Her 1,500-member Apostolic Generation Church that began in 2002, feeds hundreds of the city's poor every week, and it provided significant aid to victims of Jakarta's recent floods. Gautama believes her calling is to train a new generation of Christian leaders. "We have to be willing to take risks. We must adopt a kingdom attitude."

National prayer mobilizer Daniel Pandji says that more than 60,000 churches have been planted in Indonesia in recent years - so many that almost every hotel in Jakarta rents out meeting rooms to congregations that don't have their own buildings. Christians in 500 cities in the country have organized 'prayer altars' where believers are storming heaven for a national revival. "It used to be so hard to gather churches together," Pandji says. "But now we are in a season when churches want to come together for prayer."

Is It Really Like This?

More from Forgotten Ways: This is a research quote from Sally Morgenthaler,

Despite what we print in our own press releases, the numbers don't look good. According to 2003 actual attendance counts, adult church-going is at 18 percent nationally and dropping. Evangelical attendance (again, actual seat numbers, not telephone responses) accounts for 9% of the population, down from 9.2% in 1990. Of the 3,098 counties in the U.S., 2,303 declined in church attendance.

Is this true? My take on stats like this is similar to Winston Churchill's ("the only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself"). On campus are we experiencing this decline? or is it a 'church' thing only? Would you say, from your observations, that the church is in decline in the west? Or are we moving ahead and progressively getting better and better at reaching students (and people) in all categories?

Most of Alan's book does not focus on the gap, but on what happened to make phenomenal Jesus movements happen. His findings are truly amazing and should inform the expansion of the church for years to come. I put this in my must read category - especially for those who are leading toward the rapid expansion of the kingdom (you will love it).

If you don't own a copy get one here.

You can hook up with Alan and his thinking here.

NBC on Micro Church

Here is an interesting take on simple church (micro in the piece) from NBC news. It is interesting to note that the small house church they highlight is conducting a 'service' very similar to a large church. There is music and teaching from up front and it seems a bit formal compared to the stories I have heard (and my own, limited personal experience). Still, it is an interesting feature you can check out here.

Center for Missional Research

Ed Stetzer is Missiologist and Senior Director of NAMB's Center for Missional Research. Here is an excerpt from some of his recent findings. This article is from 12/06 and you can see the whole thing here.
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"Over the last several months, we commissioned Zogby International to survey more than 3,600 people (1200 interviews on three occasions) about several issues, but particularly about their involvement in spirituality and alternative expressions of church.

We asked, "Do you meet weekly with a group of 20 people or less to pray and study scriptures as your primary form of spiritual or religious gathering?"

• Remarkably, 26.3% of the 3600 Americans who were asked that question indicated that they did—as their primary form of spiritual or religious gathering.
• Comparatively, in one of the three surveys, we cross-tabbed the number to those who considered themselves "born again." In that case, 42.1 % of those who identified themselves as born-again Christians said that they met weekly with a group of 20 or less people as their primary form of spiritual or religious gathering.

It should be challenging, exciting, and concerning that one out of four Americans consider their small or house group / church / synagogue / mosque to be their primary source of spiritual training. However, most of those who consider their small community to be their primary place of spiritual encouragement still attend church at a significant rate. Only a smaller percentage of those who attend a small spiritual community do not also attend church—but that is still a large number.

When we cross-tabulated the "small group" question with the "church attendance" question, we found that 50 out of 3,600 adults attend both a group of 20 or less and "rarely" or "never" attend a place of worship. If extrapolated, this is almost 1.4 percent of the American population and may represent the purest measure of those who are not involved in an organized church, synagogue, or mosque but still are involved in some alternative faith community like, in the Christian faith, a house church. That is about four million people—not a small number. Barna's people have estimated that a million Americans are involved in the "house church," or the Christian expression of the above trend."

Five Developments WorldWide

Acccording to research from Joel News - here are 5 key things developing around the world.

1. An unprecedented growth of the prayer movement worldwide;
2. God's Spirit being poured out in many places, marked by conversion and miracles;
3. Many new partnerships and networks are being formed on a city-, nation- and even continental level, linking prayer, saturation church planting and frontline missions;
4. More and more Christians, churches and ministries are engaging in a transformational process to bring godly change to their societies;
5. Radically simple and innovative forms of church are springing up in many places, reaching the unreached.

#5 is particularly intriguing. The simpler church gets, the easier it is to multiply churches. Nothing has more radical implications on movements everywhere than a simple and rapidly expanding form of church. I look forward to watching developments in this area.

OC Movement Quick Report

I returned from the Organic Church Movement Conference excited, connected and sobered. The best part of the time was the people - this group represents a great collection of humble mission focused leaders - and some great new friends.

Big time thanks to Neil for hosting this event. It was nice to connect with Alan Hirsch and a number of other key leaders. Alan puts into words what many of us are experiencing in our gut.

Some observations from the time in Long Beach:

1. Pulling this off in the west (church planting movements) is still not an exact science, but there is movement. I appreciate Neil, Alan, Carol Davis, George Patterson, Wolfgang Simson and others who are informing my thinking.
2. Raise the bar of discipleship . . . .this is the most solid aspect of the OC Movement. I came away with a greater desire to follow the teachings of Jesus.
3. The best results seem to come from the parts of our culture that gave up on church a long time ago. Effective simple church movements start best when initiated in the hearts of the recent converts.
4. Mileage varies on starting OC movements in traditional settings - there seems to be a lot of frustration here.
5. Nothing screams of movements everywhere like this stuff. It is simple, free, and replicable. I look forward to the future.

OC Movement Conference

Later today I will show up at the main session of the Organic Church Movement conference in Long Beach, CA (sponsored by CMAResources). I have logged the last 24 hours with some of the leadership of this movement and it has been fantastic.

I am here as a human sponge . . . and I look forward to hearing from:

• Neil Cole (author of Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens and Cultivating a Life for God) will speak on: "Why didn't I take the Blue Pill: speaking candidly about the darkside of Organic Church"
• Reggie McNeal (author of Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church, Revolution in Leadership: Training Apostles for Tomorrows Church, A Work of the Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders, and Practicing Greatness: 7 Disciplines of Extraorginary Spiritual Leaders, will speak about: "Qualities of a Missional Leader)
• Alan Hirsch (co-author of The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church, and author of the newly released Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church) will speak on: "Forgotten Ways: Apostolic Church Planting Movements"
• Ori Brafman (co-author of The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations) "Starfish Organizations: the unstoppable power of decentralized movements)
• Felicity Dale (author of An Army of Ordinary People, Getting Started, and co-author of Simply Church) will speak on: "Mobilizing the other half of the army: Women in leadership roles"
• Wolfgang Simson (author of Houses That Change the World) will speak on: "Thinking prophetically and acting apostolically"

The workshops will be good as well.

• Neil Cole: Breakinig Free from the Institutional Mindset
• Carol Davis: The GlobaLocal Church Having an impact on the world from the very start
• Dezi Baker: Transformation of a town: a case study of organic, incarnational impact on an entire town
• Tony Dale: How to hear and discern real prophecy
• Wolfgang Simson: Organic Church Finances, Part One
• Panel Discussion: Transitioning conventional churches to organic churches (four models)
• Richard Flemming: Marketplace Movements
• Eric Herron: Organic church worship
• Alan Hirsch: Acting your way into a new way of thinking: Leadership and action-oriented learning processes
• Jaeson Ma: Campus Organic Church Movements
• Panel discussion on Organic Church in the Black community
• Wolfgang Simison: Organic Church Finances, Part Two
• Brad Fieldhouse and Eric Swanson: Transforming Cities from the grass roots
• Debra HIrsch: Organic church and the tough questions of ministry in the gay community.

Should be fun.

Three Changes

I think if we made these three changes in the US Campus Ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, it would greatly increase our effectiveness. Ready . . . hang on.

1. Allow local leaders to hire their whomever they want.
2. Allow a team to go anywhere in the context of the mission (in other words, anywhere there are students).
3. Allow a team leader to be anyone who can get two others to follow them (recognized vs. assigned leadership).

I have a few more additions, but I will hold off. A few things will happen with these changes. We will reduce our dependency on HR systems, we will free young leaders to move to open space and we be freed from any bureaucratic formations that hold us back.

Now, many will say we don't have the problem of people not being able to go where they want. To a degree this is true - in fact, if a young leader asked for a new role it would be considered (I asked to go to Duke, but that blasted Rick Hove scooped me). However, the system does not encourage this activity, but makes it a bit of an anomoly and somewhat presumptious. So then our systems and structures limit the types of leaders who desire freedom to succeed or fail on grand terms. If you want to be assigned something, then we are a great place to be. If you want to go crazy and take some insane turf, you had better get in line somewhere (is that to harsh?). Why did East Asia gather so many good leaders? Successful turf and wide open spaces. Leaders gravitate to the vacuum baby!

The above rules (and many others) are what the church at large operates off of. If you, me and someone's dog want to plant a church . . . . who is stopping us? We can do it in the back of some grocery store, a cigar shop or a brothel. The rules are gone and we gather who we need to gather to get er done. This is why you can drive from Orlando to LA on the back roads and never go through a town that does not have a church. It may not be a great church, but the open system allows them to form anywhere anyway and anyhow with anywho.

Wouldn't it be fun to capitalize on this power!?

For more thinking on this open system thinking read The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman & Rod Beckstrom

Men and Church

Giles makes a great point about why men are absent from church in droves. Click here.

Radical faith in action plays a key part in moving men toward faith. If faith becomes about being morally good, taking care of your family and being safe, then men will rapidly vacate the premises. What we need is the reintroduction of raw abrasive bare-knuckled Christianity. That would be fun to be a part of.

Freedom and Leadership

A few months ago I read an old article (interview actually) from Rick Warren. For the first time he said something that really rubbed me wrong (as for me, I am happy to have Warren as the new protestant pope – he is winsome in many categories – gotta love it). What he said was:

I think a fourth trend that you might be interested in as journalists is the move – the shift in power – in evangelicalism from what's called para-church organizations to local churches. In the last 50 years, most of what was new and innovative that's been done in Christianity was done by para-church organizations, not actual congregations. Things like World Vision, World Relief, Campus Crusade for Christ, Wycliffe Bible Translators, Billy Graham Organization and on and on. And America in its entrepreneurship has started thousands of these para-church organizations since the 1950s. And in the '70s and the '80s particularly, all of the bright minds were not going into local churches. They were all going into these para-church organizations.

But all the smart people I know are now working in local churches. They're moving there and the power is moving back to the local congregations. Regardless of size, they just happen to be there.

When I first saw that, it rubbed me wrong (for I myself work with a para . . . .which most of us ‘para’ people never liked that distinction in the first place – it almost sounds like choosing to play JV). But ner the less, it rubbed me wrong.

But as I began to think about it, I totally agree – and here is why. Freedom.

In the 40s & 50s the para was so new and young that a ton of white space existed. Bill Bright, Billy Graham and their contemporaries were doing something that had not really been done and leaders gravitated to the vacuum. At the same time, the church was ruttted –deeply. You had a handful of major denominations that were mostly declining. In 1950, if you, me and someone’s brother-in-law got together to start a church . . . . .well, we would have been considered a bit strange and possibly even apostate. You just did not do that kind of stuff. If Bill headed over to UCLA to start a campus church (and him with no degree and the church with no building) it would have looked a bit scandalous. Even Henrietta Mears may have frowned. The timing was not right – thus para was a good option.

But now, the freedom is in the church. No one would bat an eye if me and two guys from some bar started a church - people would scarcely pay any attention. “Good luck and if you invent something cool, put it on your website.” Since 1950, the church has lurched back toward spontaneity (a bit). There are other factors, but big time thanks to Chuck Smith (I should say Lonnie Frisbee) and the Jesus people of the 70s – the reformation mentality has continued a slow expansion. The priesthood of all believers careening toward some very natural conclusions.

So now, the para has become stiff and the church has become an open world of chaos of all kinds (and I mean this as a good thing – a really really good thing). So, if I am local pastor I can preach like a want, hire who I want, go where I want, minister to whom I am called and generally create a future out of the freedom I have.

At the same time, most directors within the context of para-church are much more constrained. These groups who initially organized around a mission have become large corporate structures. To move quickly is not an option.

In some ways I see this as the natural melding of the para and the church. Bag the para! We are all the church is various forms and functions. The kingdom expands as godly men and women wage war in the battle for souls. For our part (the para), we must get back to freedom at a very high level. It is this freedom that built us and it is the by the lack of freedom that we will cease to serve our purpose before God. Freedom!! (a little William Wallace comes to mind here) - this is where we need to be.