I’ve been thinking a lot lately about planting churches, mainly because Keith and I, and now maybe the kids, would like to plant a church. Is that a calling?
I would like to plant a church in the general Frankston Melbourne area but Keith fluctuates between wanting to go back to New Zealand and staying here to “do a work”. Hard to choose, for both of us seem to be unsure just where we should be, yet are agreed on this one thing: - We don’t want to do the same old, same old!
The Sunday focused service where people are squeezed into the positions that are available and the structure is in place for people to fit into doesn’t appeal at all. Having said that, we have no beef against your regular local church that is structured in this way or something similar. It works for those people who attend and they love it. Some of our dearest friends attend and enjoy these same churches, but for us we have, dare I say a yearning to do something different. Not just for difference sake or because we have a rebellious nature (though some people may argue that point mmmm...) but because we want something different because the other, just doesn’t satisfy.
We’ve read Houses That Change The World by Wolfgang Simpson and Future Church by Anthony Walton and Permission Granted to Do Church Differently by Graham Cooke and Gary Goodall Revolution by George Barna and a plethora of similar books all leading us in the general direction of some kind of home church but with regular cooperate meetings to satisfy the group worship hunger in us (I’m a old style worship leader still addicted to coming together to worship!) and allow all us muso freaks to get the God music out yeah!
We’ve done something similar before in Whitianga NZ where we left regular church to pursue evangelism and lacking somewhere to take the new sheep to (they were so in need of tidying up we had to sort them a bit first) we started a home style meeting for about 6 months to get them going. Discipled them and got them thinking about Gods word and able to feed themselves etc. There was about ½ a dozen adults plus kids and us meeting at home on Sundays till they pretty much got mature enough to go to “real” church. We moved into our mobile home at that stage and hit the road following Gods leading all over New Zealand, but not until we baptised them in the local river and slotted them into churches they felt they wanted to attend. Since then we’ve done a bunch of things including Pastored at an AOG with a regular structure like the ones described earlier. Like I said some of our dearest friends thrive in these sorts of structured churches.
But back to House/Home/Church/Abode/Habitat, who knows? I like the idea of the organic church that grows around people and their gifting and needs. Rather than slotting people in to a vacancy and making them fit. I lean towards allowing people to create a niche for themselves based on Gods moving in their lives and the “work of the ministry” he calls them to.
There are statistics that are mentioned in “Permission Granted...” that call to question the manner in which we impart Christian teaching and the direct correlation to the falling number of “church goers”. About 1 million a year according to George Barna.
Institutionalised church just doesn't cut the mustard with us any more and we want something more. But how to go about it is the question.........?
No comments:
Post a Comment