I’ve Never Done This Before
This last Sunday night, I did something I’ve never done before.
I’ve had plenty of experiences in my life related to ministry and my chosen pastoral vocation. I’ve started and led small groups, designed outreach events for thousands of people, led groups on home and foreign missions trips, designed and run week long summer camps, preached to groups ranging from dozens to thousands, helped start new churches, etc etc etc. That might sound great, but believe me, any list of my failures and screw-ups would break this blog with it’s length! The point here, is that I’ve done a lot of what has been expected of me, having chosen ministry as my vocation. But I’ve never done this.
The chairs were put out, the food was on the table, the playlist was playing and people were starting to arrive in our living room. I was ready to run. I was secretly hoping that every last person who said they were coming would suddenly have some sort of last minute emergency, their dog threw up, a flat tire, they suddenly had to go get a mole removed, anything that would keep my living room empty and free me from being forced into this thing that I myself started!
But here they were, a dozen set of eyes staring at me, waiting for me to speak up and explain myself. I had never done this before. I had never sat eye to eye with a group of people who knew me, good and bad, and invited them to participate in a complete re-working of how we define, organize, and operate as a church in Seattle. I had never set before a small group of people, knowing that I did not have all the answers, and ask them to trust Jesus with me as we set out on this journey.
I had invited a group of friends together to share my thoughts on what a new church might look like in Seattle, and ask them to consider participating in this new community. I have presented ideas and vision plenty of times, to plenty of groups, but somehow, this was different. I knew that I would be inviting this group of people to reconsider most everything we know about what a church is and how it operates, and dive with me into the deep end of the unknown of forming new disciples and planting neighborhood based missional communities and churches on every block, in every neighborhood, in all of Seattle. I wasn’t just asking them to be a part of a cool new church with cool new fonts and graphics, targeted at a cool, young demographic. I was asking them to abandon most of our pursuits in previous church life, and re-align our lives with a few simple practices to make disciples and form missional communities. They would either laugh me out of the room, or begin to awaken to Jesus’ redemptive mission here in Seattle.
I have good friends. None of them laughed.
Some of them teared up. Most of them asked intriguing questions. All of them agreed to consider participating in this thing.
Overall, I think the evening went really well. After a few days of reflection, I have just a few thoughts, and maybe a couple of best practices, for myself and for anybody else who might be attempting to initiate a similar movement in other cities.
I need to grow in looking to Jesus as my source of confidence. It takes a little while for me to feel confident about what I’m talking about in front of a group of people. If there is some initial positive reaction or engagement from folks, my confidence increases and I feel more comfortable with what I am presenting. The approval of people is an idol in my life that needs to be replaced by Jesus’ grace.
Many people have thought the same thoughts as I about church, but don’t know how to implement new practices and forms in their lives. Over and over, I hear from people that the idea of simplifying our form of church and increasing the expectations on every disciple making new disciples is something they have long been thinking, and are looking for people and opportunities to do that with.
Stay focused on Jesus. There were lots of great questions during the evening, and almost all of them could be answered by looking together at what Jesus said about His people. When in doubt, find out what Jesus says.
“I don’t know” is the only answer sometimes. There were other questions that were simply unknowable at this point. Yes, I could have BS’d my way through them and made it look like I knew 100% what I was talking about, but six years of marriage have taught me that’s a bad idea. In reality, there are lots of things that we will just need to find out together as we form this first missional community. I think I would have lost credibility if I pretended to know every answer. In addition, it would have sent the message that one person in our community has all the answers, and that completely defeats much of what we’re setting out to do.
Clarify expectations early. It would be easy to communicate what we’re doing as a simple, stripped down version of church and allow people to think that that means that there will be less expected of them along the way. I was clear to communicate that the purpose of stripping away the peripherals of church life is to lay the responsibilities of disciple life at all of our feet. As we navigate what this looks like, many of us will need to make major changes in our life to facilitate new practices and ways of life that so that all of life is lived with gospel intentionality. This will be the most exhilarating and the most difficult thing we will likely ever do. If it is easy, we are not doing it right.
We all have a lot of unlearning to do. We began to laugh at ourselves a bit during our conversation, because we recognized that so many of our questions were centered on how to do the weekly meetings; completely missing the point of whole life gospel intentionality. We demonstrated to each other that we have been deeply indoctrinated with religious trappings of church life, instead of renewed by the person and work of Jesus.
After our night, I wrote down all of the questions that were asked, and I’ll publish a post that lists all of the questions soon. We had answers to many of them, but not to all of them. And I think the questions that are asked at this stage give us insight into how Jesus wants to work among us in this first missional community. There are a couple of dozen other people that I would like to have over for a similar night, so we’ll do one or two more of these gatherings before gaining commitment from 10-15 people to participate in this first community.
If you’re interested, first reconsider. Then, get a hold of me; I’d love to talk!
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