I’m out traveling and leading seminars with pastors in Eastern Pennsylvania for a few days. Today I was traveling with Craig Weidman assistant to the District Superintendent in the C&MA East PA District. He was telling me a story out of his own ministry when he described an experience that sounded all too familiar at Life on the Vine. He said, “the numbers were going up but something didn’t feel right.” He was describing the changes that were happening at a prior church ministry when numbers started going up meanwhile the ethos of the gathering was changing. He asked what do you do with that?
We’ve been experiencing the same thing at Life on the Vine and we’re asking the same question. There’s a certain excitement being generated. People are hearing about the church. The liturgical shape of our services is beginning to make sense to people. A disposition is being formed in the gathering to receive the presence of Christ in our midst. Yet even with all this we sense a certain percentage of people are coming to watch, not participate (in Mission). There’s a larger group coming to see what’s going on with a limited commitment to community and Mission. The church has taken on an attractional element. “The numbers are going up but something doesn’t feel right.”
Solutions we’re discussing:
a.) Get ten people together, form a missional communal order and send them out of here. Start another church or two!
b.) Shut down the Sunday morning service once a month, and do everything we do at the big gathering in the homes, taking the spectacle element out of it, and forcing each other to be community and pray together for the neighborhood we are in. Any offerings taken are visibly discussed in ways we can bless and reach out to hurting souls in the neighborhood.
c.) Create some guidelines for coming to our church that strongly suggest, after a period of incubation, that one should commit to the Communal and Missional practices of our body or move to a place where one can. Incubation period? One year, 6 months?
Of course many folk would suggest that this could all be solved if we simply became a set of house churches. Yet I believe there are numerous ways incarnational presence in the communities can be made possible by larger church bodies (I’ll perhaps engage Frank Viola on this sometime in a future post). What do you think? Have you experienced “The numbers are going up but something doesn’t feel right”? What did you do?
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PS Here’s a reminder about the up-coming Ancient Evangelical Future Conference Oct 9,10-11. This year’s whole discussion is on “being the church,” the church as the continuation of God’s Story. This section of the AEF Call reads as follows:
We call Evangelicals to take seriously the visible character of the Church.
We call for a commitment to its mission in the world in fidelity to God’s mission (Missio Dei), and for an exploration of the ecumenical implications this has for the unity, holiness catholicity, and apostolicity of the Church. Thus, we call Evangelicals to turn away from an individualism that makes the Church a mere addendum to God’s redemptive plan. Individualistic Evangelicalism has contributed to the current problems of churchless Christianity, redefinitions of the Church according to business models, separatist ecclesiologies and judgmental attitudes toward the Church. Therefore, we call Evangelicals to recover their place in the community of the Church catholic.
D.H. Williams, Howard Snyder, Janell Paris, Rick Richardson, myself are all tackling this subject matter. They extended the “early bird” registration rate. Read about it here.
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I belieive there is a need for large churches withing Christendom, despite the talk you hear about the “fall of the mega church”.
I myself love the smaller communities but I also know that there are people who’s faith grows via methods/styles other than my own preferences.
Guess all this is to say thank you for your thoughts, especially the last paragraph!
I am so glad you are addressing this. We haven’t “formally” begun our gathering and already we are resisting this trend. I appreciate your ideas.
Peace,
Jamie
I love that you ask this question. Isn’t it one every church leader should be asking?
While I don’t think house churches are the answer for everyone (with apologies to Mr. Viola), I do believe small groups are the universal answer to this particular problem. Gathering together in small groups around the Word of God is, it seems to me, where the New Testament church really becomes the church. It is where genuine Spiritual transformation happens and it is where a believer actually personalizes the missional objective. I’m a believer in big churches (the one I attend is one), as long as there is a cultural expectation that every believer will be actively involved in a small group. Oddly, I even believe that genuine unity in the church is dependent upon appropriate small group ministry.
I appreciate this post.
I’m no expert, but I don’t believe that “what works” is always the best. I guess I don’t see the need for larger churches.
We need to get away from passive, impersonal church attendance. It seems to me that nobody should be driving across town to worship.
I think missional believers should establish churches in their geographic communities, so I like the idea of meeting in homes to make church more personal. Maybe a combination of options 1 and 2 that you mention.
Get ten people together, form a missional communal order and send them out of here. Start another church or two!
Why form a missional communal order if all they are going to do is start a church? (Or were these two separate ideas?)
There used to be a great blog that dealt with these kinds of questions better than almost anyone out there. It was brilliant and I pinched a lot of ideas from there when I was fortunate enough to have to wrestle with questions like this in my last church experience. Anyway, there archives are chock-full of interesting articles, thoughts, and the best graphs and illustrations. Perhaps browsing that will fund your thinking and fuel your ecclesial dreams. You can find the old archives at http://headrush.typepad.com/
Peace,
James
I always found it fascinating that as the crowds grew that followed Jesus, the stronger commitment he demanded of his followers ( ie. the whole eat my flesh and drink my blood thing.) It seemed that his focus was never on the crowd, but always the twelve. There are successful large and small communities. I think it all depends on what God has in store for your context and the gifts and abilities of your leaders.
“Create some guidelines for coming to our church that strongly suggest, after a period of incubation, that one should commit to the Communal and Missional practices of our body or move to a place where one can.”
This is the approach we’ve taken. This flows from our belief that it is God’s will for every Christian to be committed to a local body of believers, that in fact, that’s the whole point of the Gospel. Since, like Richard Hays says, the church is to be a “concrete social manifestation of the righteousness of God,” to not move in the direction of progressive commitment to Christ, His people, and His work is to abandon the Gospel. So, if we’re not the body God is calling you to commit to, then who is? Find them and unite yourself to them. This is a non-negotiable Christian imperative.
The problem is that a lot of Christians don’t believe this. Our Gospel is the American dream with a Jesus overlay (as Tom Sine says). Taking serious liability for other believers and entering into a binding covenant with them just doesn’t fit into that picture. So when you suggest that “one should commit to the Communal and Missional practices of our body or move to a place where one can” you look as if you’re suggesting some outrageous fringe concept. Still, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, it just means you need to be prepared for small numbers and lots of misunderstanding. But if the allure of nickels and noses is too strong, this isn’t the way to go.
David,
It’s interesting to me to see the tension between the themes in this post and your previous post.
The problem when the numbers go up, but it doesn’t feel right is that the gospel is somehow being reduced to a “come and see” experience. You and the other leadership are saying, “But the gospel is big!”
But then in your previous post (and especially your CT article that you link to), you emphasize the need for the missional church to retain the idea of conversion and to be accessible to new comers.
Sounds to me like Life on the Vine is experiencing some of the balance between those two, but the tension is a little unsettling. My church doesn’t have the “problem” of numbers going up yet, so I’ve got no personal solutions.
On Matt’s comment on “experiencing some of the balance between those two” is what I too think is going on. In order to keep the gospel big yet engaging and accessible … I think the community has to maintain its ethos, and this means that when it gets bigger (even a little bigger like Life on the Vine – from 80-150) … we must be able to sense and discern what is happening.
I find it interesting that some of the comments imply this to be an attack against “mega church.” Where’s that coming from?
A few weeks ago some of us visited with Hugh Halter (The Tangible Kingdom). They are pretty straight with people after a few weeks that there are no pew warmers in God’s kingdom. But they are also respectful and offer the names and locations of churches where the spectator sport is allowed..
Hey David.
Such a gutsy thing to address. I love it. We’re “not there yet”, but I’ll be following your “progress”…
You might want to check out Frank Viola’s new book-it’s called “Reimagining Church”. It explores the organic community life you’re speaking of, even within the context of a “church building”. You can read a sample chapter at
http://www.ReimaginingChurch.org
It’s also available on Amazon.com.