Developing Culture vs. Technical Fixes

I often contemplate the difference between a purely organic approach and a mechanistic approach to church organization. I'm not really talking about simple/organic church here although I think that structure is helpful, and I'm not truly addressing program-driven churches though I, personally, am happy to work outside of a purely programmatic approach.

It is more a matter of a community's ethos. Sure one structure or another may facilitate more organic expressions more naturally than others, but that's not really what I've been wrestling with. For me, here's the tension. As I understand the current religious climate, what we have largely experienced in North American church growth are what Mark Love refers to as technical fixes (Peppedine Lectures 2006). I don't think that strategic thinking is bad if it means making anthropological & theological decisions based on a cultural context. However, our tendency is to create technical fixes in order to generate numerical results and/or organizational stability. I've been thoroughly trained in this approach, but I'm trying to unlearn and relearn something different.

What's the alternative? What if we committed ourselves to nurturing a culture instead of a growth technique? First, we must understand that not only does the church interact with culture but is also a culture within itself. With this realization, we focus on developing an ecclesial culture rather than a technique. In reality, this isn't very attractive to our American microwave mentality. Nurturing an eccesial culture requires developing theology, encouraging indigeneity, celebrating creativity, re-imagining church structures. Opting for this alternative, I believe, is more difficult. But since in reality our technical fixes and growth strategies also generate church culture -- whether intentionally or unintentionally -- it may be wise for us to focus our efforts in developing ecclesial cultures that are shaped by the Gospel.

This is true for presentation-style churches, cell-based churches, organic church networks, and for any number of various church expressions. Our ethos of technical fixes is too deeply engrained in our collective psyche for any one church expression in America to be immune. May we learn to develop ecclesial cultures that are shaped by the Good News of Christ and led by the power of the Holy Spirit.

a day at the park

What is missional community?

I suppose there are various ways to answer that, but at least today... it seems pretty clear. Gathering in a Bronx park, many from our Bronx/Westchester network met for a cookout. If you just walked by, you might just see a lot of people eating and having fun on a hot July day. This was the case, but it was so much more than that. There wasn't preaching or singing, but there was church and mission happening.

As participants in our house churches gathered in the park, we welcomed into our celebration a collection of people from a shelter, students from our summer conversational English initiative, and various other friends that we've met along the way. There were people that would be unlikely to ever enter a church building of any kind -- secular, muslim, buddhist, and souls deeply wounded by relationships, by religious legalism, by a fallen world.

What is missional community? It is when followers of The Way spend time, conversation, and recreation with others. As hospitality was a central tenet of the Christian faith at its beginning, we desire with all of our heart to capture that same spirit. Missional community takes place when a Bronx teenager walks up to thank one of us and says she can't believe that we would offer this to others so freely. It is when those of other faiths can come and be welcomed by followers of the Creator of the whole universe and feel safe. Outsiders will not be won to the cause of Christ by careful persuasion. We live in different (plurastic) times. They are introduced to Jesus when Christians love and embrace as Jesus did and through peaceful and hospitable dialogue.

Since arriving in the Bronx, we have probably made hundreds of blunders, and there are many things we are not so good at. But there are simply things that can't be measured quantitatively (besides, I seldom count!). The real question I am learning to ask is: When an outsider enters our midst, do they experience the body of Christ? That, my brothers & sisters, is missional community. And to know what to look for -- what that should look like -- is to ask: What was it like to be with Jesus?

There was a lot of mission happening today. It happened at picnic tables, playing volleyball, sitting on blankets, and through several conversations throughout the crowd. No one controlled it or engineered the interactions. There was no strategic planning. Just people following Jesus and opening their lives to others. That to me, is missional community.