Previous Post – A Day with 100 Huntley Street
This year marks an interesting milestone for, in which I have spent more than half my life serving as a missionary, the last 10 years of which have been spent here in Winnipeg’s inner city West End. While all were good and formational, it has been the last three years of pastoring Little Flowers Community that have been most impacting in my life, both in its many joys, but also its painful realities. We dreamed of an alternative community that would share life and mission within the context of our neighbourhood. We stumbled through following Jesus in our brokenness and have been humbled, both by His grace for our weakness and the miracles He has worked among us. Never in my life have I been more sure of my vocation.
However, there is another truth that is abundantly clear: following this way of life is unusual, even in the church, creating many challenges and tensions that seem to threaten the sustainability of what we are doing. Please understand that I am not suggesting we are somehow special, better or more “Jesusy” than other Christians. Rather, the obedience to which we are called into is experimental, making our community more anomalous than expected. This has resulted in a somewhat challenging dynamic. On the one hand, we have so much support and encouragement from other communities and leaders, while on the other, our uniqueness makes it difficult for people to provide on-the-ground support/leadership, advice and adequate resourcing.
This has left me in a difficult place of late, made more pronounced by the (welcomed & amazing) demands of being a new dad. Again, I know that this is my calling, that it is the truest community I have ever participated in and that we are discovering beautiful, though demanding ways to live Christ together. I’m also in the unique position of being bi-vocational in such a way that I can still do full-time ministry. However, as it is, I am not sure how sustainable it is. Our community needs diversity in age and life experience, as the imbalance in our commonality is becoming a limitation. Further, rather than one full-time (though unpaid) pastor, we need 2 or 3 people working less hours, but together with a diversity of giftings. Typically, such a challenge could be resolved through funding, but such an option is not currently available to us.
Over the past 10 years, I have seen many amazing missional communities- ones that I still aspire to emulate in many ways- that did not last more than 3 or 4 years. Some can point to clear causes for the dissolution, while others wonder if some kind of intervention from the larger Body of Christ might have been necessary. As the same questions, challenges and limitation are now facing Little Flowers Community, I cannot help but become concerned. And so, as this internet community has always been incredibly supportive and creative, I am coming to you:
What do you say to our challenges? What might be some solutions?
Feel free to ask any question and be free to be frank with your comments. I look forward to hearing what you think.
Tags: Missional
I hope I have understood your situation adequately. It looks like you need a couple more people to join you in leadership in a voluntary capacity.
I would say the key is to seek God about who in your community are the best people to take on these roles and then approach them. What comes to mind is how Timothy was commissioned to appoint elders and deacons in the churches. From what you say I am guessing that they will need to be willing put in the time and effort voluntarily on top of their paid work commitments.
Though I think there is a place for seeking input from others with ministry gifts outside of your community I would think that what you are best asking for is for them to mentor you in God, help you in recognising these others and then mentoring you and these other guys in leadership.
There are of course many ways that your community could raise funds such as setting up a social enterprise but it sounds like to me what you need is to release more volunteers from amoung your community.
I trust that this comment is helpful.
David, thanks for your advice. In fact, this has been my approach for some time now, but we seem to lack people ready for such a commitment. That has been one of the biggest challenges. We’re working at it though.
Hey Jaimie, we’ve lived in this tension for the 10 years we’ve been developing a “House of Prayer/Urban Monastery” as well. It’s not easy, that’s for sure. For us one of the keys has been…wait for it…prayer.
) We’ve seen God sized interventions many times when we just should have closed our doors. We always live on the edge, and somehow we survive, and we have seen His faithfulness. One recent thing we did to “release” finances was to do an internal offering – which is a good YWAM thing to do, right? We didn’t gather a lot from our own resources, but we saw a release of resources come to us after we gave sacrificially ourselves.
I’m really inspired by Aaron White of the 614 Community in the Downtown East Side in Vancouver. He is full time, as is his wife, compliments of the Salvation Army, but his core team are all bi-vocational. The way they manage it? Many live in community – sharing housing. They have community dinners 6 nights a week. That keeps cost of living way down, so that most of his folks can live off 2 1/2 days of work a week, which frees up the rest of their time to be missional in their community. That totally inspires me, and i”m trying to summon the courage to call young men and women in our city to embrace those kinds of lifestyle changes….
We are set up like a YWAM base, systems and structures wise, so our staff all raise their own support. Some do it well, some not so well.
My husband and I have obtained a house that we are developing into a Community House here, and that keeps the rent really reasonable and takes financial pressure off.
It has been really helpful for us to have some champions in our city. We are presently working with http://www.truecity.ca and trying to be really intentional about how we as an urban monastery “add value” to the church in the city – how can we function as a “resource hub” for those who want to explore urban monastic ethos? How can we lean into the role that Monasteries have played in the past, settle into that, be who we are, and be intentional about the strength and blessing we can bring to local churches? That means doing the work of formalizing our connections with local churches and having frank conversations about how we can bless and benefit one another. We’re just at the front end of this, so I will have a better idea in a year or two how it works.
Hang in there! May God strengthen you with power in your inner being, and in the inner life of Little Flowers! Part of our weekly prayer rhythm is praying for other Houses of Prayer/Urban Monasteries, so we will pray for you!
Shalom,
Jill
Thanks Jill. Prayer has been a HUGE part of our emphasis. We have some real passionate pray-ers. The bi-vocational model is something I would love to see, but we have not seen the people to fill those roles yet. Through prayer, I keep coming back to the Macedonian Call- I believe God wants to call a couple of people into our community. We’ll keep praying!
Thanks for your prayers & encouragement.
Jamie,
We are in the process of of determining what the role of our Church should be in our community (Drexel Gardens, westside Indianapolis, IN), we in our hearts know that the only real alternative is to become a community church, a church that is a visible and viable part of our community. My position as a pastor has been that we need to be more intentional about developing relationships with the people that are here, it is and has been a very slow process, but one that we must remain faithful to.
We have seen some signs of our people getting it a little more than they once did, but we have a long way to go. You mentioned that ” Our community needs diversity in age and life experience, as the imbalance in our commonality is becoming a limitation.” We struggle with those same issues. The call to action through prayer is one that is really is our only option, but the problem I guess with that option for us, is having the faith that God will provide those to answer that call. Until then though I am reluctantly content with where we are.
Sustainablity is in God’s hands, we struggle along being faithful in the fact that God is faithful.
Still trying to figure all of this out, learning to rejoice in the moment that he presently provides.
Peace and prayers for the ongoing work of your community and ours, that God will provide both from with “in” and with “out”.
shalom,
Gary
Thanks Gary. It is interesting, as our church is very much a community church (we are in an inner city neighbourhood), but it is the more “typical” Christian we need to join us. That is part of the diversity. We have lots of unchurched or de-churched people, which can lend itself to certain strengths, but also certain weaknesses. I have been reluctantly content as well, but recent events have made it less sustainable for me and the community. Good challenges to have! Thanks again.
Jamie, I’m reluctantly weighing in on this, realising we are behind you in our journey to see incarnational expressions of church here in South African townships. We are in a uniquely religious (christian/animist) but un-Jesus context, so we have many people who seem to be able to talk the talk, but as ever Jesus seems to be working on the fringes amongst those long disillusioned with institutions for their own sakes.
The Lord is teaching us a lot about releasing a christian perfectionism in releasing people into ministry, we are trying to release people, despite an acknowledgement that there will be failure and it will be messy. Im increasingly convinced that walking with the Holy Spirit in raising up these leaders will result in so much more of an authentic community.
Maybe our context is much more cross cultural, with even the colour of our skin meaning that we exist mostly as outsider encouragers instead of forming the centre or head of these missional communities…maybe outsourcing is the right way. I know in working with local leaders there has been a level of releasing the desire to talk at a technical level about pastoral, apostolic and evangelistic work and enjoy engaging simplicity and leaving my ‘over-educated’ past behind.
As you can see, Im processing this as I write, I hope the right people and the right context comes around for little flowers, blessings,
Liam
Liam, this is very helpful. This is what we are endeavouring towards too. It is actually in this process that the challenges are coming up. Perhaps there is a better way for me to articulate it:
In some ways, our community can be characterized as orphans who’ve found community together. Deep in the process of discipleship, what has emerged again and again is the longing for mothers and fathers to make the journey with us. We want to be adopted, as it were. Of course, we receive this from our heavenly Father, but we also believe that He does this through His people as well.
Does that make more sense?
[...] Previous Post – Question on Missional Sustainability [...]
Jamie,
You wrote, “On the one hand, we have so much support and encouragement from other communities and leaders, while on the other, our uniqueness makes it difficult for people to provide on-the-ground support/leadership, advice and adequate resourcing.”
I am so with you. Have you every had any contact with Mission Increase? We just attended our first workshop with them and I found it very help as we have tried to deal with same challenge of connecting people to our work without destroying the work by over structuring it.
I got some ideas from the Mission Increase Foundation folks and I also know several missional folks who are using them in their development work. If you are interested I can send you a link to one of their books that I found very helpful.
Wendy, thanks for the tip. I’ll give them more of a look (I’ve been there a few times). Here’s the thing: We’ve found that the Canadian urban context is unique enough to make some of the material resources, etc. coming out of the US less applicable. And of course, they won’t fund north of the border.
I hope it doesn’t sound like I am making excuses. I appreciate all the advice, encouragement, etc.