Inviting people to "church" is a common way to think about and practice evangelism, at least in its initial stages. And it’s okay as far as it goes, but I think in the missional church we need to re-think this emphasis.
Check out this image from Matt Stone’s blog (from a post last year):
As Matt elucidates on his blog, the way we normally think of it is that the church service is the "way in," and from there we attempt to "assimilate" people into community life: cell groups, etc. Because of this our services have needed to be very accessible to "seekers" and the like. Again, this is okay as it goes, but there is very little impetus for anyone to go from that place into the deeper realms of community, and often we’re left with churches that are a mile wide and an inch deep.
But what if it was the other way around? What if we thought of the church service as the "inner mysteries" of our faith, and the "way in" was through community events? The church service can then resume its traditional role as a formational practice for the Body of Christ: gathering not to attract outsiders, but simply to be formed as an authentic, missional expression of the gospel. Then the "way in" becomes the community that is engaged with the culture: small groups, parties, play-dates at the park, book clubs, brunches, "Alpha"-type classes, etc. From there, people can see a visible expression of what a gospel-shaped community looks like, and if they want to dive deeper, they can come to a worship service, where we are formed as a gospel-shaped people by gathering to adore God, hear his Word to us, respond in faith and prayer and obedience, receive his grace through the Eucharist, and be sent back out into culture with God’s mission and love burning in our hearts.
This is what we have been experimenting with at Christ Community. Honestly it’s a little frustrating because it is much slower work than simply waving a big flag and saying we have the coolest church service around. But it is good work, and we’re starting to see fruit being borne in our community (more maturity), and amongst the culture our community inhabits (openness, inquisitiveness to the gospel). Slow and steady wins the race nowadays, it would seem. Pray for us!
Hey Ben, Grace from Kingdom Grace sent me your way.
Nice questions. We were just having a discussion around this issue on The Margins – maybe you would enjoy the reading.
I struggle even with the chart drawn by Matt Stone. As Masaki on the the near-final post (http://erika.haub.net/to-what-end/05/) points out, there is a lot to be cautious about drawing nice little circles around saying who is in and who is out. We are constantly surprised in the biblical narrative by who the ‘insiders’ are and who is ‘outside’ the circle. Maybe we shouldn’t be drawing so many circles and spending more time focused on being a community that is as Christ-like as possible. Or maybe that is what you are trying to say. I wonder if the two models you describe here are not simply different ways of accomplishing the same thing: both are intended ultimately to ‘get people in’. What are we bringing them into? I’m not sure I can even answer that question for myself at this point. You do light on that a little, and I appreciate it, see below.
As a worship pastor, I also had a question about something very interesting you stated in this entry: “The church service can then resume its traditional role as a formational practice for the Body of Christ: gathering not to attract outsiders, but simply to be formed as an authentic, missional expression of the gospel.”
How, with the present definition of missional, even as I read it in this post, is the Sunday service an authentic, missional expression of the gospel if it is an inner mystery? I have been thinking about this a lot lately – the formational aspect of the weekly service, authentic how?, and what exactly are we practicing? does any one know? Are we really taking seriously the formation of a people? – and would love to hear about your experiments at Christ community.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Douglas.
What we’re trying out as Christ Community is seeing the church service as a formational practice for followers of Jesus. It does function missionally, in that it forms us for mission. This means it’s not a ‘seeker service’ – i.e. it isn’t geared to ‘get people in the door’ to hear the gospel. I’ve always thought that’s a bit of a bait and switch anyway.
The church service can be a missional expression of the gospel, though, in the sense that for people to be an embodied expression of the gospel, they need to be formed into that. Missional people don’t fall from trees, they have to be formed. We believe that formation happens as we gather together to put forth God’s praise, listen in community to His Word (the story that shapes us), respond in prayer and receiving the Eucharist, and then being sent back “out” into mission. We design services based on that criteria, not necessarily how many “seekers” were present, or how many video clips we used, etc. We are ultimately trying to form our community as a truly authentic expression of the gospel – and our regular Sunday gatherings are an important part of that.
I’m going to be continuing to share about what’s going on at Christ Community, of course, so I pray you’ll find some of it helpful.
Gods peace!
Thanks for sharing this…I’m glad to hear you’re doing church this way…and seeing fruit.
to me i see benefits to both, and opportunities in both plans…to me the essential is that there is community opportunities, whether the inner or outer ring.
a church with out community is hardly a church at all to me.