SimpleChurch Journal aka House Church Blog

Are We Too Disconnected?

The issue of people, as in Christians, being disconnected seems to be a hot one.

Barna, in his book Revolution, has caused many to worry that he was encouraging people to disconnect from "the church" or from meaningful community altogether.

I recently received an email from someone who is seeking consistent community with others but finds that many of her young friends just want to get together from time to time over coffee or a meal to talk about the Lord.  She finds this to be insufficient in meeting her own needs for spiritual community.

Andrew Jones, in his exploration of current trends, suggests that in many western, post-christian countries "about half or more than half of the believers DO NOT attend a church service on Sunday."  The fact is, the majority of these people are probably not connecting with what we might call a consistent spiritual community.  Jones says, "Their most significant communal rhythms happen through a number of separate events and occasions in homes, coffee shops, clubs, festivals, etc. And in the past 7 years, the internet has become another of those places where spiritual gifts are shared and the accountability of relationship is maintained despite physical distance."

I think there is clearly a trend toward disconnection and dis-affiliation.  I think it would be very easy to react to this and say, "It's important to be connected to one another... in a real way... in a committed way.  That's part of being in the body of Christ.  So... find a spiritual community to be part of, i.e. a house church network, or something!"

However... that's not where I am coming from.  Personally, I think the disconnect that is taking place is important and helpful.  It's part of the positive chaos that is a prerequisite to a needed re-organizing of structures, networks, and healthy connectivity.  We have been, for so long, connected to structures, programs, and hierarchies in unhealthy ways that there will be, and (I think) must be, a swing toward a radical disconnect in order to find the type of connectivity that supports, heals, nurtures, and renews.  This "swing toward the disconnect" does not frighten me.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I, personally, need to be connected.  That's just me.  I have been through periods of disconnect and I need connection.  I need to continually find healthy, supportive ways to be connected to spiritual community and family.  I do not need to be under someone's positional "spiritual authority."  However, I do need to have mentors and fathers in my life whom I am relationally connected to and listening to.  I do not need to attend a weekly event or "service."  However, I do need to belong to a spiritual community that I participate in life and mission with on a regular basis.  I do not need to be preached at, or given a ministry assignment, or told how to live my life.  However, I do need spiritual brothers and sisters who know me, whom I can be open with, and who are walking beside me, truly, in my journey.

In short, I personally need healthy, spiritual (truly spiritual) connectedness.

The PROBLEM IS... how to get there!  This is no easy task.  The answer is not to simply say: join a house church, or start a simple church yourself, or whatever, whatever!  We can do this and still find ourselves in the type of connections that we ran from in the beginning.  So, it's just not that simple.  Granted, I think it's a good thing to experiment with a variety of ways to support healthy missional-community lifestyles.  Granted, I personally am enjoying tinkering with simple/relational church networks structures to try to provide a framework for the type of healhty connectedness we are looking for.  BUT, the fact is, we are not there yet.  We are just scratching the surface of finding ways to support healthy spiritual life and community.  It is all very experimental and we are all in a learning process.

And that is why I suggest that the disconnection, overall, is a good thing.  We need to fully disengage from everything that is not supporting healthy spiritual/community life before we can find new ways to engage.  We are still in this process of finding new ways.  We will continue to learn and explore together.  But it is those who have, or are, disengaging (disconnecting) that are most able to be creative, to try new things, and to be part of the renewal of the body of Christ that I believe is taking place.  We have so far to go in discovering the support structures that will facilitate the ongoing movement of God's Spirit today.

So... will the disconnection that is taking place result in the oblivion of the church if we don't do something about it?  Probably not.  Probably the church is in a healthy process that God himself is in charge of.  I think we can go with it and trust the process to him.

New Science and the Emerging Church

Rhonda Servine sent me a paper she wrote for Fuller Seminary on Wheatley's book Leadership and the New Science.  I posted a couple of times on this book here and here.

Rhonda was kind enough to allow me to post her paper here as downloads (see below).  The paper is worth the read.  Here is a brief quote:

Organizations have long been structured like a machine, divided into multiple parts which have varying functions, and ignoring the human beings which compose it. The church has also followed this form. But now the key determinant in our world is being recognized by scientists as relationship, and the consequences of this are influencing our whole society...

In the new science, the structure of processes and potential relationships is what is central to being.  Relationships determine who we are, how we think, what we become. We are not isolated machines but are interconnected and influenced by all with whom we come in contact.  The Church as ‘friendship’ and ‘relational conversation’ fits well with this concept; deep relationships are centered in love, which changes the individual and then the world.

Thanks, Rhonda, for sharing!

Download servine_new_science.doc

Download servine_cover.doc

Structures that Fit the Moment

I will attempt to share some additional-- insights garnered from Margaret Wheatley's book, Leadership and the New Science.  She does a wonderful job of describing how living systems--and their structures--require a constant cycle of disintegration in order to move into the natural process of growth and self-renewal.

Our tendency, looking at the world from a mechanistic view, is to try to build systems into a place of equilibrium and then do our best to protect that state.

But why has equilibrium become such a prized goal in adult life?  Why do we seek so earnestly after balance?  Is change so fearsome that we'll do anything to avoid it?

In contrast to our attempts to sustain and protect equilibrium, living systems use disequilibrium (chaos) in order to produce positive change and growth.  In fact, "disequilibrium is the necessary condition for a sytems's growth."  Living systems "dissipate or give up their form in order to recreate themselves into new forms."

While we have learned to control organizations in order to preseve a sense of stability, nature teaches us that there is a divine connectedness and order that is present even within the cycle of equilibrium - disequilibrium - renewal.  We can trust that this process is at work and that appropriate forms will emerge.

Having grasped this, we can begin to appreciate what Wheatley describes as "structures that fit the moment."  I believe this hits the nail on the head.  It is impossible to be involved in life, or ministry, or service without structure.  However, structure must always support life, not itself.  For this to happen, structure must be able to constantly reinvent itself to fit the need of the moment.  This is the reality of how structure works in living systems.  And, this is exactly, in my opinion, the church structure that we see in the New Testament--a structure that supports the living organism of Christ's body.  It is constantly renewing itself in order to effectively serve the life and vitality of that body.  This is why we will never nail down "the absolutely right way to do church."  To try to describe church as a static structural form completely misses the point.  The structure, just as in all living systems, is created and then re-created to fit the need of the moment for Jesus' followers to effectively care for one another and reach out to a world in need.

Wheatley calls these type of structures process structures because they are constantly "reorganizing into different forms in order to maintain their identity."  Thus, it is normal, natural, and inevitable that structures themselves will move from equilibrium to disequilibrium so that they can renew into forms that meet the need of the life--the spiritual vitality--that they are meant to support.

I have said many times, on this "house church blog," that the "house church" form is not the answer nor the end-all.  We want to re-capture the life, the lifestyle of living every moment in Christ--in His presence and power.  Forms are needed to support community life and missional life.  I see great value in simple, unencumbered forms because they can easily change and reinvent themselves without difficulty.  Nevertheless, they must be "structures that fit the moment."  We can become just as protective of our small, simple structures and begin serving the forms.  In doing so, though we may be in a house church, we have missed the point.  We are meant to pursue the life--the spiritually dynamic, vital life of the believer--and constantly allow the forms to creatively renew in ways that support that life.

Not only can we do this, we are meant to do this.  This is the life of faith.  Trusting that in the constant cycle from equilibrium to disequilibrium in our structures (even our simple ones) we will see God bring forth renewal after renewal as we embrace the process, the ever ongoing process of spiritual growth supported by ever-renewing wineskins.

Church Planting "Keys"

There's a fun article (at Next-Wave Ezine) that takes off from a typical list of "10 Keys to Effective Church Planting."  Here are a few excerpts starting with #4 of the 10 keys:

4. Determine your target audience.

I guess on this one I would just say- Look in the mirror. Expect that the people who will be part of your community will largely look like you. Expect that, but pray for different.

And quit targeting people. I think it freaks them out.

5. It takes big money to plant a church.

Okay...

If you'll excuse my language, that's a load of shite. And a dangerous lie to tell to church planters. I wish to God (literally) that people would stop saying this. Is it easier to plant with "big money"? In some ways... And I'm really glad for churches that are able to start with a lot of support. Seriously. The fact that someone is willing to put up that kind of money on a venture that statistically has an 80% or more chance of failure is amazing in the best sense of the word...

So why not start simple? Let it grow organically...

6. If you build it they still might not come.

Amen, brother. So... focus less on building and more on being. Be the kind of community (whether you are 10 people or 100) that others will find loving and welcoming, where they can find God and themselves be found. People will show up for that. You can figure out the bells and whistles later. I say, quit being a builder. Try being a gardener...

7. Clarify the “win”.

Yeeeeahhh... got no idea what this means. I know about setting quantifiable goals and all that. But we're talking people's souls, not numbers. We're talking about community, not benchmarks.

Do your people love God?

Win!

Do they love each other?

Win!

Do they love others outside of your little thing?

Win!

Are you together figuring out how that all works together in community? What that looks like for you as a unique group of Christ followers? Are you feeding people who need food, clothing people who need clothes and generally being Jesus to those God brings in contact with you/your community?

Win, win, win!

Don't have your five-year plan together? No mission statement? No idea what comes next?

Join the club.

And don't sweat it.

Do the things Jesus is telling your community to do, love people and trust God to build His church and...

You'll know the win when you see it.

The whole article, written by Bob Hyatt, can be found here.

A Book on Leadership?

I gave up reading books on leadership ages ago.  But... I made a new friend who is studying missions at Azusa and reading a book for a course there that he assured me would be interesting: Leadership and the New Science.  He was right.  This is not even close to your typical "develop your leadership" bluster.

The author, Margaret Wheatley, describes the inability of our ancient "Newtonian" science concepts to properly describe our universe.  The "old" science views creation as a machine that can be understood by taking apart each piece and examining it.  This view of life has caused us, for centuries, to put together control-systems that will organize mechanical systems for the desired result.  She suggests that our understanding of organizational and leadership models is a direct result of our old way of studying the universe.  The new science, on the other hand, describes a universe that is not so easily defined or controlled.  At the core of the universe is not some basic "building block" but rather unseen connections between "entities" that change and are, themselves, fluid.  Thus, Wheatley sees our new understanding of the universe pointing us toward "living sytems" that use "fluid and organic structures" that possess the "same capacity to adapt and grow that is common to all of life."

Whoa... this is a bit "heady".  I know!  But I am intrigued nevertheless.  There is no question that we have trained ourselves in the "scienitific model" which influences so much of how we approach life, ministry, leadership, and everything else.

I remember being asked, in elementary school, to participate in a special class in which "select students" were trained to think and reason according to the scientific model as a way to think and understand our universe.  Yet here we are, however many years later, and the scientists are saying that these models of linear scientific reasoning do not explain the reality of the world as we now know it to be.  The world is not a machine, it is a living breathing organism that cannot be defined nor fully dissected nor controlled.  It is a dynamic, changing, God-inspired process that is as much mystery as it is order.  The structures literally change, like a river that becomes a lake, then a marsh, then a waterfall, yet the systems maintain their mission and intent (the water continues to run downhill to the ocean).

Wheatley does an excellent job (far better than me) of describing how our old way of thinking has impacted our man-made development of organizations:

We seem hypnotized by structures, and we build them strong and complex because... this is a universe, we feel, that cannot be trusted with its own process for growth and rejuvenation... By sheer force of will, because we are the planet's intelligence, we will make the world work...

If people are machines, seeking to control us makes sense.  But if we live with the same forces intrinsic to all other life, then seeking to impose control through rigid structures is suicide.

It is easy to see how easily it is to carry this thinking into our "church work" without even thinking about it.  We simply, naturally assume that our organizational structures are essential for holding the world together and even God's work within that world.  We adopt postures of control and structures that are rigid because they fit naturally within the context of the way we view our world.

In contrast, when we understand ourselves to be "living stones" intimately connected to the source of life, and when we realize that this is simply a reflection of how God created all of life, then we can begin to trust in the Creator's ability to bring forth a natural order within structures that are fluid and constantly changing.

Wheatley writes, in this "secular" book on leadership:

I want to trust in this universe so much that I give up playing God.  I want to stop struggling to hold things together.  I want to experience such security that the concept of "allowing"--trusting that the appropriate forms will emerge--ceases to be scary.

If I can simplify this dialogue, I just want to say, that if I can give up playing God... just follow after Him for the sake of learning to live life-with-God every moment... I can trust that the appropriate forms will emerge.  What we tend to call "church" are just the forms that emerge.  If the forms are supporting the simple flow of life in Christians, then they are useful forms for a season.  When the life-we-live-with-God needs to be supported by other forms, then let them shift and change--because that is what living things do.  We grow and the forms that support that life-growth, if they are serving us well, will shift.

Rather than control life with organizational methods, we allow the values and vision that is within the DNA of every child of God to bring forth an orderliness that will serve God, life, and others.  That order will be simple, reproducible, and constantly fluid.  It will be His order and therefore it will "work."  We can, I believe, trust in the process of life that is in us and the process of the Spirit that has been birthed into the life of every believer.

Will there be chaos at times?  Yes... in fact... this is a primary thesis of Wheatey's book that I will address, perhaps, later.  Chaos and the life-giving, natural re-organizing that arises out of chaos is part of the process.

Are there leaders?  Yes, again... another future topic.  But it is leadership that arises out of the context and out of its ability to actually support life and not provide "control functions."

More to come on this...  If I haven't lost you with this lengthy post.