the pitt 17: just what the hell are we supposed to be doing, anyway?

One of the most difficult things about my own situation as a church-planter - and I'm sure there are plenty of others who've been in the same situation - is the waiting.

•  We've heard and responded to the call.
• We've been assessed.
• We've gathered some friends to join us.
• We've begun bonding in a "on-going, shared experience" (read: fellowship) kind-of-way.

Yet, we still have months before we actually move to Pittsburgh and join what the Father is doing there...

In a similar "waiting and preparation" situation, one church-planter I know asked: "Just what the hell are we supposed to be doing, anyway?"

Ugh, patience...whatever for that, right?  Yet in the waiting, God is moving deeply, almost secretly in us. There is a community being birthed here all ready...but it isn't community for its own sake, we have come together because of a calling.  So, at present, I'm wrestling with vision and essence - community and mission - and the balance between them.

The essence of a faith community is an important topic for us right now.  I believe as we wait together essence will be borne in this waiting...but what is essence?  Essence is important, so let's be specific and define it: at the bottom; absolutely essential; critical; crucial; the basic, real, and invariable nature of a thing; while we're at it, let's define Mission as well: an assigned or self-imposed duty or task; calling; vocation; a sending or being sent for some duty or purpose; act of sending and those sent;

As our little team wrestles with essence and vision in the waiting, the words of the wise Gordon Cosby - one of the principle founders of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC - ring true, “…The essence of church is not its mission statement. [The “vision statement” is not what its about.] It’s not a matter of a group, battling homelessness, or working with at-risk children or people who don’t have jobs or people who are addicted or working with issues of justice or peace…the soul of the church is a gathered people whose only reason for gathering is Jesus. The church is a people who gather because they want to know Jesus in a deeper way. The focus must not be on the vision first but on the relationship with the one who gives the vision. The vision will not ultimately sustain us, but the one who gives the vision will…”

Now, we'll mis-understand Gordon - and you'll mis-understand me because I line up with Gordon here - if you think we put mission aside or that mission is an add-on.  In fact, Gordon did away with "Small Groups" at Church of the Saviour years ago because he couldn't get them to be anything but inward and they never got around to doing mission.  Thus he lead his community into forming "Mission groups", where each group had a mission, but developed community in that shared mission, while leaders helped newcomers to understand their call and vocation through which they could see what Mission Group to enter and live out their calling. 

Surely, the essence of Church - the basic, real, and invariable nature of it - is Jesus...a Person, and as He was on His Mission, He gathered and formed a community.  We fall out of the radical middle if we make it all about community or we make it all about mission.  It can become the proverbial "chicken or the Egg" which comes first question.  But it's both, it's interdependent...Michael Frost moves toward the interaction of mission and community in a significant way:

 

So, to my thinking and based on my own limited experience, essence and vision are linked.  I have begun to think of it this way: incarnational community and missional initiative are linked, mainly because Incarnation and Mission come together in the person of Christ Jesus.  They interact and are interdependent.  Gordon Cosby points to the problem nowadays in many churches: vision engulfs and supplants essence.  Doing supplants being and we many end up burnt out.  Again, Cosby says it simply: "Vision is the destroyer of essence."  And he's right, we usually run to vision, so that we can do more and show a "return on investment" quicker.  Why is that?  Perhaps, just perhaps, we are being formed without realizing it. 

The basic structure of American church is the 501c3 corporation, which is a not-for-profit business enterprise.  Former Chaplain to the U.S. Senate Richard Halverson provocatively comments in this direction, ""Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise."  In America, the 501(c)(3) business is the essence of church and that status "forms" churches too often without much thought given to it: church becomes a business; run like a business with a board of directors and a CEO and a senior management staff that "manages" ministries, and the corporate "bottom-line" becomes our overwhelming (but understated) goal.  The benefits of the essence of church being a 501(c)(3) corporation can be an undermining issue if we don't discern our use of "corporate status well.  This isn't something new, for instance, Baron de Montesquieu once said:

“A more certain way to attack religion is by favor, by the comforts of life, by the hope of wealth; not by what reminds one of it, but by what makes one forget it; not by what makes one indignant, but by what makes men lukewarm, when other passions act on our souls, and those which religion inspires are silent. In the matter of changing religion, State favors are stronger than penalties.”

The Spirit of the Laws, Baron de Montesquieu (1748)

You see, discernment and wisdom in how we are engaged is really, really important; otherwise, we might just swallow the favors of the State hook, line and sinker.  And thus we must remember, the "form" we take equally "forms" our thinking - I know people who think that if this 'person' or this 'outreach program' or this 'mission activity' isn't participating in the activities sponsored by the 501c3, then they aren't part of the church.  But what if our essence comes back to Jesus and his paradigm?  Are they a member if they have lots of relationship with the church (church understood not as a 501c3, but as people)...and are they doing the stuff with the faith community, and not merely "sponsored" activities?

In a recent conversation with another would-be church-planter about experiencing God and inviting people to 501c3-sponsored activities, particularly the Sunday church services, I struggled with his questions, because I think Jesus definitely hangs out at church on Sunday morning and all, especially when we create space for Him to do what He's doing...and I believe there is a momentum-creating dynamic with hanging with the Jesus people gathering on Sunday morning, no doubt; yet I also feel like this begs a bigger question: why can't he (and anyone) experience God more "out there" as "in here"? Does it have to be Sunday-centric?  Can it be 'both/and' or is this 'either/or'?

  

In that conversation, Dave Schmelzer - senior pastor of the Boston Vineyard - with a nod to Scott Peck as a frame-of-reference, said: "Stage 2 folks require a church, if they're religious. But it seems to me that Stage 4 also requires an actual community, that it's just impossible to connect with God and others without it. That community can often be hard to find, to be sure...It strikes me that part of a conversion to Stage 4 is a conversion to community." This is where I am landing right now, although I would say conversion to community and mission...

[to be continued...]