Simple Words About Simple Church
I promised a good friend of mine several weeks ago that I would blog about my family's search for a new faith family. But, alas, you all have been stuck looking at a (rare) political post for the last two weeks or so, every time you load my blog. Please don't get the wrong impression--I'm not that into politics! :-) Here's some relief... back to the Gospel stuff.
Most of you are unaware of the fact that (a) my wife, daughter, and I have been attending a mega church in the NW burbs of Chicago for the past 10 months, and (b) we are exploring other options at present. I have to admit up front that, as I'm sure many of you can relate to, this process has been fairly bittersweet thus far. OK... mostly bitter, to be honest...
Probably the hardest part is that my wife and I have different criteria when looking for a church family to plug into. One church we visited, Life on the Vine Christian Community in Lake Zurich (?), IL, was right up my alley, but much too liturgical for her. So liturgical's out.
Another new church we visited was much too small (like, no more than 20 people), and basically consisted of a few songs and a sermon. Next...
A good friend of ours is the Director of Adult Ministries at a satellite campus of the big church at which we're currently members, but we can't manage to get passed the fact that the preaching pastor lives over an hour away and his sermons are beamed in on the big screen. Missional? Incarnational? Not quite. Doing great things, no doubt... but just nowhere near a format in which we envision God using us in the near future.
Most recently, we've been looking southeast, toward the city. One church, meeting in a downtown Evanston movie theater, is a decent possibility, if I can crucify my musical worship inclinations (ouch). Still an open option, though, mostly because of the potential of involvement.
Next week, we plan on visiting a Vineyard church--a first for us. From the material on their website, they sound like they avoid some of the--shall we say--excesses of some strands of the Vineyard movement.
Aside from these, I haven't been made aware of any innovative churches in the north burbs of Chicago. For the most part, it's various flavors of old-school traditional/liturgical and mega church "empires", as my advisor likes to say. I was looking for local coffee shops in the yellow pages yesterday, and--I kid you not--90% of them were Starbucks, 8% were Caribou, and the other 2% were the various donut shops that managed to make the list. Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the empire of McDonaldization. Mass-produced, homogenous coffee--and church--to go, on our light-speed route to more worthwhile things than community and creativity. Just put your brain on the shelf and consume... ahhh yes... consume... feed it to me, baby.
So, about simple church... I checked out a new (?) resource this afternoon called Shapevine, which aims to facilitate the missional, simple church conversation via interaction with missional experts. Haven't yet experienced any of these interactions, but hope to at some point. They have some video clips that explain what they're about--interviews with various missional/simple church leaders, decrying the institutional church and calling for a lay-instituted, scaled-down church. Some of the ideas I was toying with a couple years ago. But I can't help but think that much of this talk has much more bark than bite.
I followed a link to the house2house website to see what "simple churches" existed in my area. Wanna take a guess? Zero... within at least 30, densely-packed miles of us. Oh yeah, simple church is the next big thing. Booonk, I honestly don't think so. I think people are trying it, even perhaps in statistically significant numbers. But they're going back... to "big church", that is. Because eventually, the experience of simple church exposes the inescapable complexity of the human spiritual journey. Theology (people's ubiquitously inherent quest for understanding and relating to a higher power or being) debunks simple church. While every church absolutely needs to facilitate an environment where spiritual inquiry is encouraged, asking the right questions is only the first step, after which some answers must be forthcoming. Not perfect answers, and not all answers. But more answers than untrained laity can provide. Simple church is a short-term bandaid for an interconnected myriad of ecclesial problems. It may work for a few people in particular phases of life, but it is not the be all, end all.
I've said it before, but I'll reaffirm it vigorously: the 'institutional' church cannot survive without becoming more missional, more centered around community, more holistic in focus; and simple church cannot survive without the leadership of biblically, theologically, and ministerially trained "professional clergy", as well as larger, corporate experiences of the Gospel. It's not either/or, folks. It's both/and. So cliche, but unavoidably true. Only time will tell... just wait and see.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Most of you are unaware of the fact that (a) my wife, daughter, and I have been attending a mega church in the NW burbs of Chicago for the past 10 months, and (b) we are exploring other options at present. I have to admit up front that, as I'm sure many of you can relate to, this process has been fairly bittersweet thus far. OK... mostly bitter, to be honest...
Probably the hardest part is that my wife and I have different criteria when looking for a church family to plug into. One church we visited, Life on the Vine Christian Community in Lake Zurich (?), IL, was right up my alley, but much too liturgical for her. So liturgical's out.
Another new church we visited was much too small (like, no more than 20 people), and basically consisted of a few songs and a sermon. Next...
A good friend of ours is the Director of Adult Ministries at a satellite campus of the big church at which we're currently members, but we can't manage to get passed the fact that the preaching pastor lives over an hour away and his sermons are beamed in on the big screen. Missional? Incarnational? Not quite. Doing great things, no doubt... but just nowhere near a format in which we envision God using us in the near future.
Most recently, we've been looking southeast, toward the city. One church, meeting in a downtown Evanston movie theater, is a decent possibility, if I can crucify my musical worship inclinations (ouch). Still an open option, though, mostly because of the potential of involvement.
Next week, we plan on visiting a Vineyard church--a first for us. From the material on their website, they sound like they avoid some of the--shall we say--excesses of some strands of the Vineyard movement.
Aside from these, I haven't been made aware of any innovative churches in the north burbs of Chicago. For the most part, it's various flavors of old-school traditional/liturgical and mega church "empires", as my advisor likes to say. I was looking for local coffee shops in the yellow pages yesterday, and--I kid you not--90% of them were Starbucks, 8% were Caribou, and the other 2% were the various donut shops that managed to make the list. Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the empire of McDonaldization. Mass-produced, homogenous coffee--and church--to go, on our light-speed route to more worthwhile things than community and creativity. Just put your brain on the shelf and consume... ahhh yes... consume... feed it to me, baby.
So, about simple church... I checked out a new (?) resource this afternoon called Shapevine, which aims to facilitate the missional, simple church conversation via interaction with missional experts. Haven't yet experienced any of these interactions, but hope to at some point. They have some video clips that explain what they're about--interviews with various missional/simple church leaders, decrying the institutional church and calling for a lay-instituted, scaled-down church. Some of the ideas I was toying with a couple years ago. But I can't help but think that much of this talk has much more bark than bite.
I followed a link to the house2house website to see what "simple churches" existed in my area. Wanna take a guess? Zero... within at least 30, densely-packed miles of us. Oh yeah, simple church is the next big thing. Booonk, I honestly don't think so. I think people are trying it, even perhaps in statistically significant numbers. But they're going back... to "big church", that is. Because eventually, the experience of simple church exposes the inescapable complexity of the human spiritual journey. Theology (people's ubiquitously inherent quest for understanding and relating to a higher power or being) debunks simple church. While every church absolutely needs to facilitate an environment where spiritual inquiry is encouraged, asking the right questions is only the first step, after which some answers must be forthcoming. Not perfect answers, and not all answers. But more answers than untrained laity can provide. Simple church is a short-term bandaid for an interconnected myriad of ecclesial problems. It may work for a few people in particular phases of life, but it is not the be all, end all.
I've said it before, but I'll reaffirm it vigorously: the 'institutional' church cannot survive without becoming more missional, more centered around community, more holistic in focus; and simple church cannot survive without the leadership of biblically, theologically, and ministerially trained "professional clergy", as well as larger, corporate experiences of the Gospel. It's not either/or, folks. It's both/and. So cliche, but unavoidably true. Only time will tell... just wait and see.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
My first question for you is why "no more than 20 people" is "much too small" for a church. I'm not challenging your conclusion, I'm just asking you to elaborate.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I do have a challenge. When you talk about your requirements for theologically trained "professional clergy" I have to wonder a little.
You seem to be assuming that people are trying out "simple church" and then going back to "big church" because the former is not addressing the true complexities of the human spiritual journey. As if the latter is!?! No... I'm pretty sure people are going back to big church because house church is too personal, or too hard, or they're tired of trying to integrate the kiddos, or they miss the entertainment, or the anonymity, or the ease of avoiding anyone who's not like you.
And if you require theologically trained clergy, can you be happy with those who have been trained by seminaries that you, yourself, have rejected? Because that's all but one. Is it better to be led by an informally trained, yet God-called, minister, or a minister trained at a dogmatic, lazy seminary that merely tows the party line? If you say "neither", you're seriously running out of options.
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ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out some of the areas I left ambiguous. My comment on the one church being "much too small" was really that it was much too small for us. I could get into all kinds of pragmatics of why churches need to have a certain capacity to maintain viability and achieve kingdom momentum, but numbers are always a slippery thing, so I will not. I can say that a typical house church is "much too small" to be a substantially impactful facilitator of kingdom growth, and that most mega churches are much too big to accomplish the same. House churches can accomplish things that a corporate worship service cannot, but then again we're not comparing apples to apples, which is one of my basic points in this post.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that I put "professional clergy" in quotes ought to say something of the looseness with which I hold both those terms. I do not mean that they must be paid (though I think they ought to be, in most instances), nor that they must have attended an accredited theological school per se. All these things are matters of degree of desirability, and I prefer leaving things on a continuum rather than defaulting to polarized alternatives.
Your point that most "big churches" aren't sufficiently addressing spiritual complexities is well taken, without a doubt. But I would argue that this is a phenomenon of the last 100 years or so, not inherent in institutionalism but in the prevailing anti-intellectual, anti-theological mood of 20th and 21st century evangelicalism. I believe we are on the rebound, but far from having arrived. Some reactionaries are vehemently rebelling against this phenomenon by becoming even more anti-intellectual. Others are trying to strongarm people into their weakly substantiated dogmas. And still others are trying to restore theological rigor to the evangelical church, while keeping spiritual, experiential vitality and interdenominational dialogue.
And something certainly needs to be said of the pragmatics that make home church less glamorous than missiologists make it out to be. It IS hard, and those that bail because of its difficulties do so because they are unconvinced that the benefits outweigh the challenges. Far be it from me to argue against the kind of community that is fostered by home churches (or as they might be called within a larger church context, home groups). I continue to assert that it is fundamental to the Christian experience.
Where I diverge from the "home church is the prototypical model of church" camp is that people will be more committed to their home group if they have sat under the preaching and teaching of pastors who are sold out on its necessity for the health of the church. In the both/and model I am proposing, you maintain the momentum and synergy that is only possible within a larger corporate context, while empowering people to live out the gospel in the context of localized, committed community, both in the home group setting and in the day-to-day endeavors of life. The fact that home churches have just as active a revolving door as ineffective larger churches (there are effective ones) strongly supports this. Put simply, "big church" (done right) is the platform for making "small church" happen. It is a catalyst, not an end in itself--a view still significantly removed from the mindsets of the vast majority of "big" churches.
I'm surprised by the dichotomy you painted with regard to seminaries and clergy. Usually you're the one debunking my false dichotomies! I suppose I can offer you the same grace. ;-) Really, the answer to your question is that theological training is a very personal experience. One school may be perfectly right for someone else, though not the best for me. My decision to attend TEDS does not predicate that all other schools are worthless, or even of lesser quality. I firmly believe that great things are happening in even denominationally affiliated schools. Erwin McManus and Louie Giglio both attended Southwestern Baptist TS, for example, and couldn't be further from denominational puppets.
By your statement, you seem to imply that all seminaries are lazy and inappropriately dogmatic (all theological training is, in its literal sense, dogmatic to a degree). It's either the foul product of these wretched institutions or the God-called layman! If you mean instead that the exceptions to this dichotomy are few and far between, I still think this is grossly arrogant and misguided. Are many, perhaps most, churches suffering from weaknesses of leadership? Absolutely. Are their seminaries to some extent responsible for this? Almost certainly. But I sincerely and strongly believe that, as I mentioned previously, things are on the upswing. Old school dogmatism and quenching the spirit are on their way out, and we are on the verge of a heart-mind-soul awakening.
Going back to the issue of calling, here's some serious food for thought: not every pastor receives his calling via an undeniable, explicit, divine message. In fact, most don't. To claim that you or I have superiority over them because of this is pure arrogance, not to mention just plain wrong. Calling, for most pastors, is much more of a process than an event.
I appreciate your answers to my questions. I only have time to respond a little bit, but here it is:
ReplyDelete1) I understand about the "critical mass" of a church, but keep in mind that there may be 100 people that have come and gone from that little church, and all said "nope... too small." If you have other reasons for rejecting it (and it sounds like you might) then fine.
2) I am not actually creating a dichotomy between a God-called lay minister and a worthless professional. I was setting up those two scenarios based on the question before it, about the prevalance of unsatisfactory seminaries. I think I was building my argument too high on too many assumptions.
But the "dichotomy" was really just a scenario, wondering which you would pick if given the choice. I appreciate your answer, but still worry about your insistence on formal training.
In regards to the "small church" we went to, our decision not to stick around was based more, I believe, on the perceived cause of its smallness rather than the smallness itself. They'd been "launched" for 8 months. Half of them were TEDS students. There was no vision, nothing extraordinary. The worship team was good, but seemed to pretend that the 500 seat sanctuary was full. They were very friendly to us, no doubt.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to pastoral training, some training is a must. You, for example, have had some training, and I'm no one to judge whether it is or isn't enough. Neither of the last two senior pastors of the church Melissa and I attended throughout college had any sort of academic training (at least one of them did not even have a college degree). And when our first senior pastor left the church to accept the presidency of the MO Baptist Convention, at least a third of the membership left the church. You see, the only untrained pastors who keep from flopping, right out of the gate, are those who are charismatic enough to get people to listen. And that leads to cultic churches.
I want to encourage you not to read yourself into my comments about trained pastors. You have more training than I had when we were partnering, and still more than I have now. So just trust that I don't have you in mind when I'm making this argument (even though I would delight to see you pursue further training). If nothing else, I'm simply offering an apologetic for the viability of seminary as an option for those who, like me in many ways, want to stick it to The Man. We ought not, as many of the prominent "missional" voices imply, overlook the "professional ministry" simply for the sake of keeping things simple and easily reproducible (and I would argue that, in America, the house church movement has a totally different dynamic than in the Eastern world, making it next to impossible to duplicate their results).
Harvest never made any sense to me as a church until I got involved in a strong small group. We liked the teaching, but we kept asking ourselves, "Is this really CHURCH?" Once we plugged into a small group, it all came together. We had the strong worship and preaching on the weekend, and intimate community and opportunity to serve others in practical ways during the week.
ReplyDeleteM,
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing you're just passing through, but in case you check back in, I wanted to briefly respond to your comment. It's been a month since writing this post, and God has done a lot in our hearts (mine needed it the most) to change our attitude toward our church situation. As of Monday, we decided to plug in at the Niles campus (see yesterday's blog post, "One down..."), for one reason primarily--relationships. We are close to one of the pastors there and his wife (she watches our daughter while I'm at school). And there are LOTS of things about Harvest that we think are exemplary, from which we will without a doubt glean loads of insight valuable to us in future church planting endeavors.
Regarding small groups, they certainly add the "smallness" factor and help you find a "family" to be intimately connected with. But ours just wasn't what we needed. We're still great friends with the leaders, but spiritual growth never happened. It was really no different than a typical "Sunday school" class in a home setting. Some groups, no doubt, really facilitate discipleship, and finding the right group is the key to finding success at Harvest.
Thanks for the reply and update... I just ran across the blog and really have enjoyed reading it, so I plan to stop back regularly.
ReplyDeleteWe had a bit of the same experience with our initial Harvest small group (which I find hard to believe now after taking group leadership courses at Harvest and seeing the template for group meetings). Then a couple with a strong counseling and accountability background joined the group and shook it up. That seemed to spark things in a few people. We began taking meals to sick members, helping co-workers of members and those outside the group move as an act of service, intentionally promoting contact between members for support outside of the group meetings.
We saw some great personal growth in the members, then in the numbers, and we multiplied into three groups, one of which my wife and I lead.
While we are just getting started and no doubt have a lot of work to do, we've reached out to some students at Trinity (Palos Heights) who attend Harvest and yet have little contact with the church family. Harvest is a bit top-down in terms of how they direct the groups (especially curriculum), but they still allow for as much creativity and variety as we've been able to take advantage of so far.
Anyway, sorry to ramble... hope you find your place at the Niles campus, and there's a small group option for you in Elmhurst anytime you'd like!
Hey, that's really encouraging news. Sounds like you all have had a great experience overall. Thanks so much for sharing about it! I've got to be honest that part of me wondered if all the small group talk was just talk, and that the really effective small group was the exception rather than the norm.
ReplyDeleteWe have every intention of plugging in ASAP at Niles, both in a small group and I also will be doing a Field Ed there this semester. We are SO looking forward to being a part of a spiritual family again. And I'm seriously looking forward to serving somewhere again. It's been a year since I've been involved in ANY Christian service outside of e-ministry, which is almost sickening considering my calling to FT pastoral ministry...heck, considering that I've been bought by the blood of the Son of God! Praise God that that's about to change.
Thanks again for your thoughts. I look forward to your involvement on future posts! :-)