Steve

One of the lines was, “A Church OF the Community, not a Church IN the Community.” That distinction, I understand. Like missionaries in a foreign land, it can take several years of relationship building before you’ve earned the right to speak into peoples’ lives at a deeper level. Even here in North America.

But then it becomes tricky, because you get into the debate about people “belonging before they believe,” vs. “believing before they belong.” One critic I know insists that this will, as happened with the mainline churches, contribute to a watering down of Evangelicalism, and our eventual downfall.

DF

To Jim Poole … you said “people outside don’t know enough to be entering into the church’s version of community in the first place… on their own accord… they need to be ‘attracted’ to it somehow. and , ohmigosh, you may need a ‘strategy’ to attract them into it” …I think you nailed the problem here. Thanks.

To Jim Van, I love what you’ve done with the “one another commands” in the NT … the study of these helps focus us well on the depth of community birthed out of Christ’s salvation. Thanks again!

To smokin Joe …I think you and I agree on alot, maybe 90%. I think the way you describe church planting as “Church planters should work in a team, practicing and modeling community within their own relationships” is basically where I’m going in all of this. So thanks!
Where you and I might have some work to flesh out is what I view as an over simplistic view of “No where does Christ tell us to “plant churches” or “build communities.”” And tho I agree Paul always worked within existing networks, primarily Hellenistic synnagogues or Gentile “god fearers”… he certainly intended to build ekklesia’s as the means of displaying the presense of Christ incarnationally. Here I follow Newbigin (Gospel for a Plurakist Society p.121ff). I think your point no. 2 is also over simplifying in the sense that it fails to realize in post Christendom how the cultural inhabitation of the gospel requires a people who live a way of life before the world and thereby are able to engage what God is doing in the world without becoming absorbed into it.
This is why I am arguing that community is in a sense (albeit in a Wittgensteinian sense) prior to Mission, ALTHOUGH AS I TRIED TO MAKE EXPLICIT, it is not theologically prior to Mission.
Hey, I hope I’ve clarified myself and really, smokin joe, thanks for ramping up the level of debate here. eh?
Blessings …

I think the Pauline model would be incarnational. Church planters should work in a team, practicing and modeling community within their own relationships (Paul, Silas and Timothy in Thessalonica for example) and should NOT attempt to build a community – but rather seek to influence the man or woman of peace in an already existing community (Lydia in Phillipii) and through that influencer bring the gospel of the kingdom into the existing community (oikos) and disciple it toward Christ.

Paul never settled in anywhere to start ‘attracting’ people into a community that he built. He reached existing community networks and disciple them to Christ.

This requires some fundamental rethinking of certain assumptions about community.

1) No where does Christ tell us to “plant churches” or “build communities.” Rather, we are told to “love one another” and “to go and make disciples.” On the contrary, the one time out of two or three that Jesus mentions the ecclesia, he says explicitly “I will build MY church.”
2) Apostolic types (church planters) have had it backwards. Instead of starting with a community (meetings, worship, etc), we should start by reaching lost people and finding their natural social network. The question then is not, “how can we get them to come to church?” but rather, “how can we help them learn to BE the church?” Once we have helped a social network turn to Christ and implement his teachings, the apostle/church planter needs to move on to other social networks in accordance with Matt. 10 and the record of Paul.

You will be in community.

-david