Learning Party

Previous Post – Surviving Missional

There has been much discussion of late about the nature of missional churches- about leadership & discipleship, about sustainability and survival.  David Fitch responded to some of these themes yesterday in his excellent post “Death of a Church Plant – Reflections & Hope…”, which (along with the comments that follow) is well worth your time to read.  Thanks, David.

These topics, especially the challenges of finding a sustainable way to continue to build a truly missional church, have been central on my mind for well over a year now.  While I do not have “the” (and I doubt there is such an easy, singular solution), I have been increasingly come to believe that there is one dynamic that been given its due attention and credit.  I believe that the sustainability, maturity and quality of any missional endeavor is the formation of genuine, true community.  At first, this claim seems as though it is a given.  However, “community” (much like “missional”) is a word that is all too casually thrown around by some, resulting in a diminishing of its meaning and confusion as to its nature.  One blog post is inadequate to explore the depth and complexity of what makes true community, so I may do more in the weeks to come.

An all too common comment I hear from church leaders- be they missional or otherwise- is how easily many people move on.  Even those committed to leadership seem to (in my opinion) too easily give reasons to reducing their commitment or even completely leaving.  On one hand, church planting (especially those committed to the missional-incarnational) is hard and therefore it is to be expected.  On the other hand, I genuinely believe that, next to marriage and family devotion, commitment to a community of faith should be something that is taken incredibly seriously.  That something is difficult and costly is not a good enough reason to leave.  In fact, the most difficult relationships are most often the ones we value the most.

So why is devotion/loyalty to our faith communities so weak?  There are many reasons, not the least of which is that we have been discipled into a consumer-mentality to church, which gave rise to an unprecedented sense of entitlement (spurred on by the unhealthy “self-esteem” movement of the 80’s-90’s).  Further, the increasing likelihood of people having unhealthy & unhappy family dynamic makes it unsurprising that a sense of familial commitment is foreign or even threatening to many.

Yet this is the very thing that is critical- a sense of devoted loyalty based on relational intimacy, tough-love honesty, genuine vulnerability and covenanted commitment (with a sacramental sense of the seriousness of such commitments).  Such community cuts through the pretense of our “posed-wholeness”, exposing out naked brokenness before God & each other.  It is difficult, inefficient and raw.  It is also absolutely essential and completely possible.

While Little Flowers Community by no means has it all together, we have been committed to pursuing this kind of community.  It has not eliminated the problems mentioned above (or in the previous post)- in fact, in some ways it makes them that much more painful.  However, it has also been an unparalleled blessing to many of us.  The depth and honesty of many of our relationships is unlike anything I have experienced before.  From it emerges dynamics that are beginning to reflect the early church community- where ownership is blurred, where what we have is easily shared- not as noble charity, but natural mutuality.  It is really beautiful, especially in our inner city context.

This kind of community is incredibly attractive, especially to those who have experienced (and continue to experience) the brokenness of poverty, addiction, abuse, racism, sexism, etc.- dynamics all too common in our inner city neighbourhood.  And people come and share life with us.  It sounds beautiful- and it is!- but it is also incredibly costly, taxing our time, energy and resources, making 15 hours a week, 20 hours a week or even 30 hours a week, largely inadequate. (As an aside, David Fitch helped me hugely last year when he told me that the 15 hour a week ideal would not work in contexts like ours).

So, yes, leadership development and discipleship are important.  Of course, it will take time and be measured by different measures in our post-Christendom context.  However, such communities among the poor (like Little Flowers) need people to choose to share life with us.  This is what happens when Matthew 9:37 is confronted with Matthew 7:24.  We need each other, but making this happen will be costly.

True community is not a “good aspect of healthy church life”, but rather an essential and demanding fruit of the disruptive Gospel of Jesus Christ drawing us together as one Body, reflecting the unity of the Triune God, in Whose image we are created together.