i've been watching small, beautiful, organic growth in my own church community. unplanned, unkempt, unforced. and i also found myself recently writing a new friend about my suspicion of growth or "multiplication" in church circles in general. here's a few fragments and artifacts from my brain and my emails with him. in no particular order:
+ organic growth is different from the last few decades' "church growth" strategies. I’m not one to prooftext very often, but to me this verse in Mark’s gospel account (emphasis added) speaks of growth and multiplication in an un-planned, God-centric, wild, organic way:
"God's kingdom is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it. The seed sprouts and grows — he has no idea how it happens." (Mark 4:26-27)
this stands in contrast to the man who “knows exactly how it happens” — the end (growth) is still present, but the control, the planning, the endless training programs we’ve concocted is what leaves me and many of my ilk circumspect :)
+ Way back in 2003 Vineyard guy Jon Reid said:
“Churches press through … to plant other churches. How? By making it a clear priority from the beginning. … This simply needs to be made the genetic code … of micro-churches: it's not about being comfortable, it's about the kingdom of God. It's hard, but it's fun and worth it. Keeping all the good stuff to ourselves is selfish … everything that happens in the kingdom of God happens relationally.”
+ there's a severe mistrust of numbers-centric approaches found in the hyper-modern church-growth movement, and in ‘multiplication’ strategies, etc. Basically it is a healthy, postmodern Christian mistrust of numbers and control and power: (for more on the topic, listen to and read The 19 Theses of Walter Brueggeman…
+ Many are very much “done” with ‘contemporary services’ and all their trappings (lighting trusses, fog machines, worship leaders front-and-center, CDs sold after the service) and seeking a simpler, contemplative alternative; many are the so-called walking wounded from these type-A machines. The neo-monastic movements appeal to these folks, and there is a definite tension between emergent church types and their CCM church counterparts…
+ And I blogged earlier (maybe a little melodramatically) on the general topic:
"…the illusion of getting it "right" [we're] giving up. because that kind of mindset only leads to a performance-based metrics, which uplifts technique as an idol. i'm not saying we don't bring quality gifts (cain, abel, hold that thought boys), nor that we should dumb down our worship. i'm saying neither. [we've] been influenced by evangelical-on-the- canterbury-trail robert e webber in that regard, but [we've] also been influenced by a generation licking their "church-growth movement" wounds, coughing and cutting through the fog-machine thicket with machete arms, squinting past the stage lighting, tripping off risers, eschewing entertainment-as-church and tossing their timekeeping, nursery-pager sunday mornings for something with either more majesty and mystery, or more organic simplicity, or an eclectic hybrid of both, the latter of which being where we find ourselves."
+ Apparently this book which I have not read, does a good job of dispelling the idea of the Emergent Movement as a “church growth” strategy or a new niche branch of Christianity…
+ I return to: “The only ultimate hermeneutic for the gospel is a believing community” (Newbigin).It's good to have that on the top-of-mind, and to scotch-tape the following to the end as a safeguard: Kevin Rains wrote in an Allelon article, "When we sacrifice mission by clinging at all costs to community we've maligned both community and mission."
Last night I went to a talk that was sort of about this. The way we talk about "growth" of the church, or "world evangelization" reveals a lot about our theology. It's common today to hear the language of business--"job", "task", "strategy", etc--in the way we assess "progress" in the sharing of the gospel. But in fact, the church (the body of Christ) is more like a tree than it is like a building. Dealing with numbers and all of that can be dangerous if we forget that the heart of everything is relationship.
Posted by: pamela | Thursday, March 09, 2006 at 10:58 AM
This is good thinking and writing, Paul!
Posted by: gdwill | Sunday, March 12, 2006 at 10:50 PM
My soymilk is organic. My church should be, too.
Posted by: Call Me Ishmael | Tuesday, March 14, 2006 at 07:31 PM