The Shaping of Things to Come (part IV)

"The heart of the problem [with modern church planting] is that we have been planting churches that are (smaller) carbon copies of the already beleaguered, failing Christendom-style church. The Christendom virus is passed on... In fact, it's more often than not been the case that Sunday services are planted rather than missional Jesus communities... The overly reproduced Christendom-mode church has at its core a number of fundamental flaws. These flaws occur in the model's very DNA. The way forward is not to tinker with its external features, but to rebirth a new movement on different ground."
-page 18

This is a very condensed quote from 2 amazing paragraphs, which then goes on to address three main flaws in the modern, Christendom, church: it is attractional, dualistic, and hierarchical. Although I'd like to talk about those three areas of concern, I will instead focus just on the above paragraph because it speaks very deeply to me.

The Sunday service plant; why is it that we think we can just take a model of "doing church," move it to a new location, and think that is the best way to form a new community of believers? One of my strongest convictions is that the shape of a church's gatherings has to come from the shape of the community itself. I'm learning that this is the path to being a true church. But it is harder. It is so much easier to just draw-up a church plan and fall into the routine of doing it every week: 5 songs, announcements, sermon, 1 song, go home. Too often I've seen church employees (specifically mega-church) sitting around a table talking about how they can "be creative," and deciding they could throw a song in the middle of the sermon and really throw everything off with their creativity. Wow.

Worse than all of that, when a new church is planted it typically takes with it not only the problem of focusing solely on Sunday mornings and the only way of doing them, but it takes the shape of the entire church structure with it. What is this structure? It is the hierarchical structure where the senior pastor is elevated to a point of reverence. When people talk about the church they "attend," they talk about how great his sermons are, and when he doesn't preach one weekend, attendance and financial giving go down that week.

What Frost and Hirsch are advocating is an organic church. It is a church body that rises up as believers meet together, praying and dreaming over what could happen to their neighborhood as the Spirit moves within it. It is more about them praying together, doing life together, than forming a church service and a congregational hierarchy. Sooner or later the meetings breed a sort of form of their own that continues to change, shift and move as members grow in faith and new ones join the family.

When Luther left the Catholic church, he kept a lot of baggage. This isn't surprising considering he never wanted to fully leave it. So we kept much of the Catholic way of being a church within the Protestant way. I think it's time to try to drop-off our Christendom baggage and go the path of the minority of churches who are taking risks and getting rid of church models, curriculum, etc and just trying to really be the church together. That sounds a lot healthier to me.

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.