H.B.log: Mission & Church Planting

How do we do church?
Until recently church in America was fairly simple: a congregation that met on Sundays under the leadership of pastors or elders, often with at least one full-time, paid pastor. Sometimes the church was quite elaborate - full time youth pastors, a worship leader for each key on the keyboard, basketball leagues, workout rooms, bookstores, cafes, recovery ministries, concerts, and drama troupes. Other times, the church was quite simple - Brother Bob visits the hospital, counsels the newlyweds, preaches a sermon, and teaches a Sunday school class. At the end of the day, he leaves the church office and walks across the parking lot to a small parsonage last updated in 1972. Either way, the core model was the same - a defined congregation gathering on Sundays under defined leadership.

But today, many are re-thinking the traditional model. This movement goes by many names - organic church, simple church, and house church. These folks are eschewing "institutionalism" in favor of something more earthy. They usually meet exclusively in homes or small groups, don't have paid pastors, and are loosely organized. This movement is growing in America, though the numbers are hard to pinpoint.

So, what do we make of this? Here's a couple of my thoughts:
1. The house/simple/organic church movement is understandable. It is primarily a reaction against the staleness that many have experienced in bigger churches. Many Christians can sympathize with these concerns.

2. House/simple/organic churches can be a bit squirrely on particulars that Jesus and the Apostles laid out for church. (George Barna even makes this statement: "The Bible does not rigidly define the corporate practices, rituals, or structures that must be embraced in order to have a proper church" - Revloution, 37. Has George ever read the Pastoral Epistles?). BUT, they're not necessarily unbiblical. A house church can meet all of the New Testament descriptions of a church, and they often do.

3. However, I'm not sure this movement holds much hope for advancing the gospel in America. My concern here has more to do with what missionaries call "contextualization." Contextualization asks this question: what cultural forms will best translate the gospel in a way that's accessible to non-Christians? In China, where Christianity is an underground movement, the house church is perfectly contextualized because it meets a need for secrecy. But is it right for the American context? I'm not convinced for this reason: many non-Christians tend to be suspicious of something that meets only in homes and always in small groups; it looks a bit cultish to them, and the intense intimacy is threatening. In my anecdotal experience, the people joining house churches are disgruntled longtime Christians, NOT new Christians. So, I'm not convinced that house church is a real advance movement as much as it is a reaction against something else. The movement will continue to grow as it draws people from one form of church to another. But will it grow through mission?

4. Another movement is beginning to flower that I believe holds more promise. I'll call it "attractional-missional" churches. These churches, most of which have been planted in the last 10 years, are "missional" because they view themselves as missionaries to a post-Christian culture rather than sellers of spiritual goods to a Christianized culture. They even adopt many organic-church practices such as discussion forums in bars and coffee shops, film screenings, and workplace discussion groups (Neil Cole's Organic Church describes many of these practices). However, they remain "attractional" because they are not afraid of visible events, especially large Sunday worship gatherings.

So to summarize: this attractional-missional movement shares many of the concerns of the simple/organic/house folks, but is better contextualized for America because it adopts organic practices without eschewing all things "attractional" (which is almost a swear-word in some circles). Congregations such as Mars Hill in Seattle, Redeemer Presbyterian in New York, The Journey in St. Louis, and Mars Hill in Grand Rapids are pacesetters in this movement and have managed to reach many unchurched people, grow them up in Jesus, and remain spiritually vital while still looking like churches.

A few weeks ago, I posted a review of Richard Florida's article "Where the Brains Are" in the October Atlantic Monthly (the entire article is now available here on Florida's website). While they are fruitful and multiplying, America's college grads are not filling the earth. Instead, they are meeting up in relatively few "means metros" in order to ply their trades and realize their full economic potential.

So what does this means migration mean for mission and church planting? It has already been well-argued that America itself is a huge mission-field, and we need an urban-focused strategy to meet the challenge. In this post, I'd like to think about the next step: Assuming Christians go to the cities, what will our evangelism and discipleship need to look like? Here are two initial thoughts:

An emphasis on worldviews. Means metros, according to Florida are composed of "people of diverse talents, lifestyles, and social circles (as opposed to a few tight connections within homogenous groups). They are socially tolerant and open to new ways of thinking." Mixing it up in this milieu causes people to ask deeper questions than, "How can I have a more intimate personal relationship with Jesus?" Instead, they ask things like, "Is there one true way of looking at the world or just many different ways? Are the sexual ethics I was taught growing up rooted in anything deeper than my parents' outdated traditions?" Effective evangelism and teaching will have to address these questions.

This need for worldview discipleship was highlighted recently when I was talking to a lady who wanted to give a "good Christian book" to a friend living in New York. She thought he would like John Eldredge's Wild at Heart. Perhaps, I said, but having been educated at a liberal arts college and now living in NYC, he might benefit more from something like Francis Shaeffer's Trilogy or Nancy Pearcey's Total Truth. Suburban evangelicalism has been much better at producing stuff like Wild at Heart that deals with private piety and therapy. In addition to this, urban Christians need a worldview that can compete in a pluralistic age.

An emphasis on stewardship. The high earning potential of these urban dwellers is obvious enough, but Florida's insight is actually more nuanced: "Young graduates are flocking in ever-greater numbers to these 'means metros' where they often live in penury until either making it or being forced out by the high cots of living." In other words, they don't start off wealthy; many start off making very little. In Denver the progression goes like this: College grad moves to the city and rents a flat in Cap Hill or a house in Wash Park that she splits with 3 other people in the same situation. In a few years, she makes enough money to buy a small condo. She gets married in her early 30's to a guy with a good job and they pool their home equity to buy a bungalow in Wash Park or Congress Park or Park Hill or the Highlands. In the decade between age 25 to 35, many of these means-metroers will go from barely paying 1/4 of the rent to making lots of money. They go from needing help to being able to give it. A Christian church will have to both help these young grads get settled in the city and help them steward their growing income.

Another area of stewardship concerns the poor. Gentrification is a fact-of-life as more upwardly mobile types move into traditionally inner-city neighborhoods and fill the streets with their big-wheeled baby jogging strollers. How to "remember the poor" will be crucial to Christian credibility in these cities.