Organic Church.what if it works?

February 13th, 2008 ·

This last week, I led a workshop at a national organic church conference. Most of the leaders had been, or were committed to house church forms. The increasing disinterest away from traditional or contemporary ways of church has given thousands of US leaders enough curiosity to look for alternative ways to worship, do church, and engage the world. As Missio has been focusing on incarnational ways of church, we’ve seen an increasing number of people ask us, “what do you think about this trend toward house church or simple church?”

To be honest, we’ve reserved the right to make any judgments at this point. We hold our tongue for several reasons. One, if there’s ever a time to experiment, deconstruct, and reconstruct, it’s NOW! When you know your cruise liner is taking on water, it doesn’t make much sense to judge those who are strapping on their life preservers and hopping in the little dinghy’s! To those who blindly disregard this new direction, we would ask, “on what grounds does the attractional church have to judge any other form of church at this point in our history?” When we’re losing approximately 2% of our present churched population every year, and we’re not reclaiming much new conversion growth, I believe the responsibility to prove or defend certain methods of ministry fall not on the experimenters or research and developers, but on the present forms to prove “why they should get to keep doing the same thing, if it’s not working.”

Yet, to those who blindly accept new forms as the next great thing…BEWARE. It’s not as easy or “simple” as they say, and it is causing as much tension in the lives of these leaders as we see in the lives of existing church pastors.

A New Kind of Church Planting Checklist

Hugh Halter, Author The Tangible Kingdom

In the past, the Christendom report cards measured numbers in attendance, number of salvations, number of small groups, number of new churches, or budget numbers. Essentially “numbers.” Even though we all felt as though this can’t be God’s measurements, we found it hard to break free and find other thing to look at to see if we were being good leaders for God.

Without getting into too much detail, let me throw out a few ways we evaluate our faithfulness to God’s call. Because most of us are dysfunctional westerns who can’t count movement, I’ll guise it in the idea of numbers. These will be in no particular order of importance.

1) Number of new relationships formed where I know their names and they know mine.
2) Number of people who have been uniquely blessed by me and my community.
3) Number of people who invite me to be with their friends who don’t follow Christ.
4) Number of ways, my street, neighborhood, or community are more livable because of my influence.
5) Number of Christians that are actively confronting their consumerism and making adjustments at the life level.
6) Number of Christians that I ask or persuade NOT to go on mission with us.
7) Number of incarnational communities that commit to form around benevolent action instead of just a bible study.
8) How long people remain at our weekly gathering after the formalities are over.
9) Number of community-based initiatives our people are supporting with their time or money.
10) Number of young leaders we’re intentionally developing.
11) Number of people baptized: Still is a great guide to judge a persons commitment to follow Christ with the community.
12) Number of Bibles purchased because someone asked for one.

There are twelve quickies that work well for us. You’ll notice we don’t count “professions of faith,” church attendance, church budget, or number of churches started. We don’t think they historically measure anything real or transformative.