Most of us want to answer “both” but I don’t think this very often true.  Churches are, for the most part, great at defense (teaching, pasturing, caring, and nurturing) and terrible at offense (going, evangelizing, and being apostolic).

Here is where the rubber meets the road for me.  Our house church started in part because a number of us wanted to “go deeper” in our relationships.  That’s more of a nurturing thing.

A few weeks back, at the Greenhouse training our house church attended, the challenge was to split up our group and not be “holy huddle;” to get out there and do outreach.  From my perspective, this is going wide rather than deep.

John 13:35 states, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  For me this means that we must live community out in front of those who are not Christians.  Like it or not, this is an attractional strategy. It calls us to invite others into our community.

Pragmatics is forcing the discussion. as much as anything else.  Our group now regularly gets to over thirty people.  We can’t go on meeting like this.  That’s a good thing.  And a bad thing.

So that’s our dilemma.  Deep or Wide?
 

Tweet This Post

Tweet This Post

As churches in the US begin to find out just what missionaries they fund are doing, I expect there will be a backlash; in fact, this has already begun.  In the past few months this debate has begun to gather steam.  Ergun Caner, President of Liberty Theological Seminary, has given a scathing interview about the Southern Baptist Convention’s use of the “Camel Method,” a strategy that uses the Quran to share Christ.  He later would have to recant the charge that IMB President Jerry Rankin was a liar!

FYI, I am C-4 proponent.  C-5 is, at best, a transitory phase of the development of the church.  It should not be a goal for missionaries to shoot for C-5 believers or churches.

Here are a few resources for you to educate yourself on this topic.  If you have more resources, please send them on through to me!

A Proponent Makes His Case
These articles are by John Travis, a pro-Insider Movement author.  From here you can find other resources that are quoted.

The Camel Method
Here is where you can buy the book yourself.  The author makes a defense in this article.

The IMB’s Statements on Contextualization
Here the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention outlines their position on contextualization.

St. Francis Magazine
This resource has carried a number of critical articles about the more extreme versions of contextualization.  This issue has lots of good info on both perspectives and tons of good links.  You can spend a couple hours on these resources and still be learning new things!  Highly recommended (you can download the whole issue and put it on your reading device!).

My experience with the Common Ground Movement
This is a critique from a CMB (Christian of Muslim Background) with a story
about how this strategy may be perceived as deceptive by a Muslim (a
conviction I share).

Note:  There is a difference between the Common Word movement and the Common Ground movement.  The former is more ecumenical/cooperative in nature while the latter is more about missionary strategy.  Sometimes I see them lumped together, but this isn’t really fair.  You can find the official site on the Common Word here, and this is a critique from John Piper.

Edit from original article…

I have been emailed about my lack of inclusion of the Common Path website. I didn’t know it existed. Here is the link for those that want to see what C-5/IM advocates have to say on the issue: Common Path Alliance

Tweet This Post

I agree with much of Ed’s viewpoint on this, but I think the problem is much deeper than he states.  The movement we know now as the “missional” movement was born in part because of a reaction against modernism in the church.  It is made up of many who think that post-modern expressions of the church speak to today’s culture in a more significant way.  At the same time, the approach to missions that is predominant among agencies comes from a thoroughly modern worldview.  This is also true of larger churches which are the the major influencers of how we see and know the church today.

“Missional” movements are predominately found in Western cultures.  The emerging church movement, for example, is strong in the UK and various urban centers of Europe and North America.  Those that attend missional churches tend to be younger and urban, with a “global-chic-youth-culture” feel about them.  These church thrive where there is a postmodern culture present in the society at large.  They are seldom found in third world cities, rural areas, or parts of the world which embrace Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism (I didn’t say “never” – I said “seldom”).

Meanwhile, the modern missionary movement has made those very populations (Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist) their primary areas of service.  The “unreached people group” movement (which really took off in the late 1970′s) was birthed at the height of modernity’s influence in the church.

I would argue that the cultures of the missional movement and the modern missionary movement are motivated by distinct worldviews.  These different beginning points make it difficult for each to “play” in others world.  Missional leaders see the Western society around them as needy.  Missionary leaders see this same Western society as resource rich.  Missional churches struggle to be relevant in their own local context.  Missionary agencies struggle to be relevant in a very cross-cultural context.

Can the two be merged?  I think so.  However, it will take a change in worldviews (on both sides) to make it a fruitful endeavor.

Tweet This Post

To get the ball rolling I am going to give you a few basic assumptions and thoughts that I have about mega-churches.

All forms of the church are okay by me
First, I do not think that there is any one form of the church that is “biblical” or somehow more accurate scripturally than another. I would define a local church very simply:

• The people see themselves as a church and they meet together in some regular way
• They have recognized leadership
• They observe the sacraments (Communion and Baptism – you may include others)
• They do their best to follow Christ together

That, my friends, is a very broad definition. It also fits pretty much everywhere in the world I have seen the church at work.

You might have many other things to add to your definition. Whatever. That’s fine, but I don’t think you can substantiate too many more things. For example, some suggest that a local church “Practices discipline.” Well, if that’s true, there are many church in the US that aren’t churches.

There is a lot of sloppy ecclesiology out there
One of the tragedies of the English language is the word “church.” It’s like the word love, which means everything from sacrificial love given toward a son or a daughter to the act of sex. The word “church” means both the local representations of the body (what we call “local churches”) and the church universal. Most of the time that there is chest thumping about what rightly “belongs” to the church, people are talking about the local church. For example, a pastor recently said to me, “Parachurches aren’t the church!” What he meant, of course, was that they aren’t the local church. Of course they are a part of the body of Christ (the church universal). The fact is… most New Testament references to the church are not focused on single local churches. They more often refer to the Kingdom of God or the church universal (which, in my view, have great overlap but that’s for another blog post).

This point is important to me because I think that many local churches assume the role of the universal church. An outcome of this is the idea that the church is at the center of all God is doing. Well… yeah, but not YOUR LOCAL CHURCH. You are just one small slice of the pie.

Forms have consequences
If we like to have huge mega-churches with $38 million dollar buildings we can. But that will effect the end result of how we do ministry, how the world sees us, who is attracted, who is repelled, etc. The mega-church form has big implications for what the gospel representation in a community might look like.

Forms shape meaning. They are important.

The mega-churches are God’s churches
I remember a time when I was a young missionary recruit, fresh on the field. I was being critical of the few churches in the place where I was living. My mentor (and boss) said to me, “You had better be careful about criticizing the church. It’s the church that God has placed here.” Wow. That set me back a bit; and it was true.

What is happening in American evangelicalism is that the largest churches and the smallest churches seem to be where there is growth and vitality. The number of large churches is growing. This is a movement and significant change in how we do church in the United States. We must accept and recognize this movement as from the Lord.

Leadership counts
How we do leadership matters more than just about anything else in ecclesiology. As a missionary in a foreign country one of my primary jobs was to understand the leadership dynamic in that culture so that I could plant a church that would be effective in that culture. Of course, one can choose to change culture as well. It might be best to abrogate the cultural norms if they don’t reflect the Kingdom of God.

In a future post, I will flesh out what concerns me about the leadership paradigm of the mega-church movement. Let me “seed” the topic by asking you to reflect on this question: “How many people would it take to lead a spiritual movement in the United States that transforms our country of over 300 million people?”

Bigger is not always better
Many of us will agree this statement. However, our culture tells us that successful churches are big churches. When pastors meet, the first question that gets asked is, “How big is your church?” I think it is very difficult for us to separate size and success when it comes to churches.

An assumption we have is that a pastor of a large and growing church is a successful pastor. It is hard to escape the vortex that says, “a big church means ministry success.” I disagree with this. Perhaps large size is an indicator of something wrong in the “eccliosystem.”

Missionary work is about getting people to change their worldview from a non-Christian view, to a Christian one
The word “missions” means just about anything in the church today. For this discussion, I am going to agree with Rodney Stark’s view that missionaries are about getting people to become Christians. Feeding the poor is great, but it’s not missionary work. Doing community development is great, but it’s not missionary work. Supporting the local pro-life center is super, but it’s not missionary work. I could go on.

I know that Francis of Assisi has said, “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” I say bunk to that view of mission. When a church categorizes something as the responsibility of the missions team that doesn’t mean that it becomes missionary work. Missionaries are supposed to convert people.

Whew – that was a lot. Please give me your thoughts by commenting if you would like!

Tweet This Post

I have also noticed the rising interest by the mega-church in the house church movement. Their version of the house church, however, might be considered a whole new entity altogether. It is what I am beginning to call the “Sling Church.”

Larger churches want to use technology to project their teaching into house churches. Typically, that technology is either a DVD series, a live streaming feed, or more recently, using “Sling Boxes” to send a teaching feed from point A to point B (point B, of course, being your television set).

A Sling box is a small device into which you plug a camera or other video feed. Then, using your personal computer, you can pick up the feed from across the Internet. For about $200 bucks one can have a global presence via video. The Sling box compresses the feed and manages the communication process in a very cost effective, no-frills-it-just-works, kind of way. There are other ways, of course, to do this, but the Sling box is an easy and cheap method that most church staffs can handle setting up and operating.

So, with the Sling box in operation, you can enjoy your favorite mega-pastor while sitting in a semi-circle in your own home. You are, in fact, enjoying “Sling Church.”

I am sure that there is a “market” for Sling churches, but, are they house churches? I don’t think so. The big idea behind the house church isn’t that it meets in a house. It’s that the leadership is home-based and the group is small. It a local brew, not a product of a large scale bottling and distribution company. House churches are more about the community and less about the teaching. The Sling Church is really an extension of the mega-pastor’s influence. It is an extension of the “mega.”

One of the beautiful things about the church is that there are many forms. When it comes to the mega-church, I am “all good” – I have no need to criticize it just because “it is.” Something does rub me the wrong way, though, as there seems to be an insatiable desire to spread the mega-churches influence into bigger and bigger spheres of influence.

Are these mega-chruches “local churches?” Technology is forcing us to rethink the church. It used to be that one could refer to the “local church” or the “church universal.” Not so anymore. I cannot help but think of them in a sort of “Walmart-ish way.”

That’s why I don’t like calling these efforts, “house church.” The thing that makes the house church unique, though, somehow seems to be getting lost in this newly emerging model.

Let’s call it something different so that we can more readily identify what it is.

It’s the Sling Church.

Tweet This Post

Check it out and let me know your thoughts: Jesus in China

Tweet This Post

Which church planter do you think is better prepared to start a church planting movement in their new culture? Jim or Wendy?

Jim was an experienced church planter from the sunny Southwest states. He had been on teams that had started 2 churches sent out from Grace Community, a large church of about 10,000 people. When they began their new churches, it had been with a startup group of 500 people. They were well-funded and they worked from a carefully crafted plan. The team they had put together was carefully selected based on gifting. Jim’s new challenge, however was radically different. Jim had moved to arctic Siberia to begin a church planting movement among nomadic, Eskimo-like people who live in the tundra, typically in government housing projects or as nomadic herders (or both!).

Wendy, Jim’s team mate, was from a house church in the Midwest. Her parents had started a couple of house churches when she was a teenager and after returning home from college it was only natural for her to get involved. Her church met on Monday evenings, shared a meal together, and then enjoyed a time of fellowship. There was virtually no program and hardly even a leader since all members of the group were encouraged to participate. When the group reached about 25 in size, they agreed to split up into new groups. Over the years, Wendy had seen a couple of dozen of these small churches birthed.

Could it be that the house church movement holds the best hope for raising up a generation of church planters? Some think so.

The House Church Movement

According to statistic compiled by pollster George Barna, the house church movement in American numbers anywhere from 5 million to 20 million people.(1) This wide range indicates that we don’t have a firm grasp on the size and scope of this movement. Another interesting fact is that most (66% to 78%) also attend a traditional church. So, even those involved aren’t exclusive in their application of the house church idea.

When the lens is widened past the United States to include the global church, a vastly different picture comes into focus. House churches dominate many Asian Christian movements, notably in China. From my travels to various missionary teams around the world, house churches are much more common goals for missionaries than the traditional model. Certainly in areas where persecution has forced the church underground a “house” model of church makes a great deal of sense.

House Churches Among the Unreached

When I was a missionary in Croatia I came back to the United States and brought a pastor with me to visit some churches who were potential partners in our forming church. As we walked into a large mega-church building to setup our room for that night’s presentation he was shaking his head. “Sto?”, or “What?” I asked him, and he replied, “This one classroom is larger than any meeting space we have in Croatia.” This large classroom was not something the pastor could project into his own context.

Whether the issue is persecution, money or any number of pragmatic obstacles, the simple church model is naturally suited to the realities of cross-cultural church planting among the unreached—particularly in ‘closed’ nations.”

Church planters who have experience ministering in smaller settings and understand the dynamics of how the Holy Spirit leads in these contexts are equipped to reproduce this model worldwide. Those within the missions community have long known that entrepreneurs with humble expectations are oftentimes the workers who make things happen over the long haul.

Yet another factor to consider is how we fund and support the on-field missionary. Data found in the report, “The State of Church Giving through 2005” shows that charitable giving has grown along with per capita disposable income. Unfortunately, it also shows that the amount of that funding that goes toward “benevolence” (which includes missionary outreach) has not changed. (2) This leads to the conclusion that while we give more to church, the church gives less to the world. Consider this from a Time magazine article on the simple church:

Indeed, house churching in itself can be an economically beneficial proposition. Golden Gate Seminary’s [church planting professor D. Allan] Karr reckons that buildings and staff consume 75% of a standard church’s budget, with little left for good works. House churches can often dedicate up to 90% of their offerings. Karr notes that traditional church is fine “if you like buildings. But I think the reason house churches are becoming more popular is that their resources are going into something more meaningful.” (3)

House church members should not look on their congregational size as an indicator of small global impact. In the area of finances, small churches pack big potential.

Connecting the House Church to the Unreached

As most house church planters know, a church is not a building and one doesn’t “go” to church. In a parallel paradigm, missionary agencies should not be organizational institutions. Instead, we need to understand them as “apostolic networks” of church planters. If we make this leap, there is seamless integration with the nature and mission of the house church. There is one more element to add to this mix, however, and that is the nature of where the churches are planted.

When missionaries use the term “unreached” they are not talking about unsaved people nor are they referring to unchurched people. They are referring to entire cultures that have no access to gospel. The biblical paradigm of the ethne (greek for “nation” or “ethnic people group” is not within the scope of this article, but the church, including its manifestation of the house church, is commanded to engage across these cultural borders.

Apostolic teams of church planters benefit from a solid system of preparation and on-going support. There is also a connection with administration, employment and visa issues, member care, and a host of other issues that missionary agencies can provide. House church structures may benefit even more from these support systems than traditional churches.

Unfortunately, many house churches do not recognize their own potential to impact Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and Tribal societies. Much of the “emerging church” literature has been focused on outreach to post-modern societies. While there is much work to be done among the post-moderns, there are vast populations that live outside of the West that hunger for a relationship with the living God.

As an insider in missionary agency leadership circles, I have observed that some agencies have decided that it is more expedient to work with mega-churches because of their potential to fund large projects. However, for those agencies whose goal is to plant churches (like the one I work for, Pioneers), large-scale projects are often counter-productive. We benefit from missionaries who have lived and breathed the house church “air” as it makes the path to field success much shorter, and straighter.

House church leaders should be aware that some missionary agencies are very motivated to connect with them. Yet, the decentralized nature of the house church makes it difficult to develop a meaningful dialogue. We long for deeper relationships and the opportunity to be re-formed by house churches across North America. Help us to better understand and reach out to you.

Conclusion

In sharing my heart with you I hope that all expressions of Christ’s church have a place at the missionaries’ table, the house church included. I know that I speak for more than Pioneers. We look forward to seeing how we can join hands in a way that sends more missionaries into the most spiritually dark neighborhoods in the world.

We live in the era of history in which the church of Jesus Christ is experiencing its greatest growth (yes – I mean, even more than in the first century!). House churches can and should play a larger role in this. The truth is that house churches, outside of the West, already are! The question for the house church in North America is this: Will they join with God in raising up millions of new, simple, congregations?

1.  http://www.barna.org. Barna has a great number of statistic on the house church movement.
2. The State of Church Giving through 2005 Abolition of the Institutional Enslavement of Missions. 2007. Empty Tomb. p. 13.
3. Why Home Churches are Filling Up – TIME. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl… (Accessed March 4, 2008).

Tweet This Post

Matt Green sent me the above Youtube link that shows Ed Young, Jr., megachurch pastor from Fellowship Church in DFW, Texas, lamenting “Church Pirates.” According to pastor Ed, these Pirates join your staff and then have the audacity to go out and start their own churches after collecting a following within “his” church.

I am very hesitant to criticize any pastor. I believe that they have a very difficult job and are very often held up to standards that are not very fair. I have to make an exception in this case, however, as it reveals a confirmation of a stereotype that I have heard about megachurch pastors, namely, that they see the church as a business. I should also mention that pastor Ed invites blog comments. So…

I had a bad attitude welling up in my heart as I listened to this snippet as he is so negative about a person doing church planting without…. without…. without what? His blessing? The last time I checked I didn’t see any biblical injunction to avoid church planting because _____ (fill in the blank) didn’t bless it.

He (repeatedly) makes the statement, “You cannot do this in the corporate world…” as if starting a church in the shadow of a megachurch somehow breaks an unwritten monopoly rule. He goes much further and mocks the church planting “Pirate” for saying it was from the leading of the Holy Spirit. That’s a pretty mean spirited accusation.

He leans heavily on the word “loyalty.” That should be a scary word. Loyalty should be something given, not demanded. When pastors start demanding loyalty it’s an indication to me that they have already lost it. Do people belong to a church? Or… does the church belong to the people? This is a theologically challenging question to answer. I would not be as quick as Ed is to assume that the sheep belong to anybody but the Shepherd, regardless of where one worships.

I admit that I fear the megachurch pastor. When a pastor becomes so influential that they command a substantial following they begin to eclipse the priesthood of the believer. I know that there are great megachurch pastors out there. I am not philosophically or theologically opposed to the concept of the megachurch. However, my shepherd is Jesus.

If my pastor spoke like this (thankfully, he doesn’t) I would definitely be looking for the next pirate ship out of the cove.

Tweet This Post

- Ted

1. Personally “adopt” a country or people group

• Be an expert on one country or people group
• Prepare a one-page overview of this country for others to pray through
• Discover mission agencies, if any, that are working there – pray for them
• Share your burden for this country or people group with others

2. Read books about missionaries and missionary efforts

• “Peace Child” by Don Richardson
• “Lords of the Earth” by Don Richardson
• “Shadow of the Almighty” by Jim Elliot
• “Bruchko” by Bruce Olsen

3. Befriend Internationals

• If you are a student, meet them on campus
• Invite an international to Christmas,
• Thanksgiving, or some other holiday
• Help settle an immigrant to Canada
• Invite a foreign student to live with you

4. Become active in your church’s missionary programs

• Learn the names of your church’s missionaries
• Host a missionary family who is visiting (for dinner or longer!)
• Request newsletter from your church’s missionaries – pray!
• Join the missions committee

5. Keep the world in front of you day to day

• Put a world map up at your workplace
• Tape another one to your bathroom mirror
• Tape a small map into your Bible
• Put a small globe on your desk at work. Be creative!

6. Study the world

• Study the Bible looking for God’s heart for the world’s people Genesis 12:1-3
• Can you name the countries of the world? How about their capitols?
• What is the country known for?
• What is the spiritual condition of each country?

7. Become a consumer of World News

• Read it on the internet
• Watch it on TV
• Listen to it on the radio
• Decipher the “story behind the story” for the Kingdom of God –
• Start a prayer list from headlines

8. Systematically pray for the world

• Get Operation World and pray for one country a day
• Get on one email list which highlights global prayer needs
• • Find someone who will hold you accountable
• Cover the world in prayer—Block out a country with a highlighter each time you pray for it

9. Personally adopt a missionary

• Learn all you can about their country and people group
• Write them regularly – even if they don’t respond
• Remember their birthdays and anniversaries, send a care package
• Pray for them daily

10. Give

• Give regularly
• Give sacrificially
• Give with a plan
• Give strategically

11. Go short term

• Don’t make excuses—make plans: virtually everybody can go at least once in their lifetime
• Don’t go where there are many Christians: go to the unreached
• Don’t go alone: visit a team who can follow-up on your efforts
• Don’t go as a tourist: go as a learner—adapt to their culture

12. Go long term

• Make yourself available for God to open or close the door
• Take the course “Perspectives on the World Christian Movement”
• Contact missions agencies and ask about opportunities
• Tell your pastor about your desire

Tweet This Post