Organisms reproduce.  Institutions get bloated.

That is a large difference between the MIROR, Missional church and others.

Reproduction is not copying you, it is creating something new.

Remember the movie Multiplicity? In the movie, Michael Keaton’s character, Doug Kinney, is a stressed-out family man who meets up with a scientist who has developed a successful means for cloning humans. The scientist allows Doug to make a clone of himself that can take over for him at work, while he tries to spend some quality time with his family. The clone, called “Two” (while having all the knowledge, memory and experience of Doug), turns out to be overly macho and easily irritated, suffering a residual personality quirk of the cloning process.

Eventually two more clones are made. “Three”, in sharp contrast to two, is extremely sensitive and thoughtful (”Two” considers him a ‘wuss’). “Four” is cloned from “Two”, and has the mentality of an overly-curious child. Unfortunately since he is a clone-of-a-clone, his IQ is considerably lower than that of his predecessors, since the personality defects are more pronounced when a clone is cloned (The analogy from the movie refers to how a copy of a copy may not be as ’sharp’ as the original). One night Doug leaves home for a business trip. While Doug is gone each of the clones run into Laura and each one sleeps with her. The next day “Two” comes down with a cold and can’t go to work, so he sends “Three”. As “Three” goes to work not knowing a thing about construction, an inspection on site is on that day. “Three” unimpresses the inspector which leads to him losing Doug’s job.

As the movie progresses, Doug’s wife becomes increasingly upset with her husband, not realizing that many times she is speaking to a clone. After she pours out her heart to “Four”, mentioning how he (Doug) has never kept his promise on fixing the house, she asks him what he wants and is unromantically told “I want pizza”. Upset, she takes the children to live with her parents. When Doug returns he learns that Laura and the kids have left. He also learns from the clones’ confessions that he has lost his job and each one of them have slept with Laura. Trying to figure out how to get Laura back, “Four” tells him about what she said to him on how he never fixed the house. With the help of the clones, Doug remodels the house and wins back the love of his wife. With their purposes served, the three clones leave and set up a pizza shop called “Three Men from Nowhere”. There “Two” becomes the business man of the shop, “Three” is the chef and “Four” is the delivery boy. (1)

Reproducing is not cloning; it is not going multi-campus.  Reproducing involves birthing something new and separate with its own DNA.

Reproducing requires sacrifices from the parent.

The parents of any organism sacrifice for the sake of the child. This could require the release of a number of your current church members as they participate in the birth of the new organism.  In our church, though we were a small church of 50-70, we released three families, eight people in all who felt God was leading them to our plant.  We encouraged our planter to build relationships knowing that we could have members released to him.  We lost almost 10% of our membership.  However, it really was not our church.  It was HIS church.

Reproduction expands the influence of the parenting church.

The child church will reach people the parenting church cannot.  The child church will be able to be contextual as it reaches people through the personality of the church in the context it resides.

So how do you go about reproducing?

1.  Spend some time with Bob Robert’s book The Multiplying Church: The New Math for Starting New Churches. It’s one of the best books on multiplication written.

2. Talk to denominational leadership or other church planting organizations. There are many church planting organizations out there, from Glocal.net to Acts 29 to Church Multiplication Associates.

3.  Develop a church planting process and system.

4.  Find areas in your community where there are large populations of unchurched.

5. Plant a church.

Notes:

(1) Wikipedia contributors, “Multiplicity (film),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Multiplicity_(film)&oldid=243283039 (accessed November 3, 2008).

Organic Leadership

One of the biggest hindrances to the spreading of the life of Christ is the staff-led church.  Wait, did I just say that?  I guess I did.  Why did I say that? Organic leadership is crucial in movements and incarnational ministry.

Organic Leadership is not Professional
Organic leadership consists of all the ministers and missionaries in the body. Staff-led churches create a specialist mentality.  The members of the body are not the ministers or missionaries.  They are the folks who do what the staff determines needs to be done.  They may provide some insight, but they know their place in the hierarchy.

Staff-led churches can be controlling.  Ok, that’s a bold statement I understand, but in most staff-led churches, the agenda is set and moving outside that agenda is not allowed.  So when someone senses God’s calling to minister in a particular way or through a particular ministry, if the staff doesn’t approve it that person must either squelch the call (disobedience) or move to another place where they can live out that calling.

In MIROR Churches, the leadership encompasses everyone.  God, through the Spirit, issues a calling on the life of a member of the body.  They are free to initiate, organize and develop that calling into a ministry.  They received support, resources, training, and encouragement from existing leadership.  But they are free to develop the ministry in their own unique way according to their own unique calling.

Finally, professional ministry takes people out of a missional ministry context.  They now get paid by the church, and are not in the community.   They lose relationships and connections outside of the body, where ministry should take place.

Organic Leadership is Developed
When we see transition from an organic, non-professional mindset, this requires us to be intentional about the identification and development of leaders.  This means that the pastor and other leadership will become mentors rather than administrators.  They will need to be macro, not micro, leaders.  This is a long and time-consuming process.  But pouring your life into others is the model of the Savior.  In fact, he was a missional leadership development specialist.

Organic Leadership Builds for the Kingdom
Developing ministers and missionaries as leaders from the body builds for the Kingdom.  It gives them the tools and perspective outside the context of the worship gathering.  It helps them see their role in the bigger reality:  the kingdom is more important than the church.

It also builds for the kingdom because the chance of these leaders moving is great.  Investing in leadership, especially with a kingdom perspective, allows the diaspora from your church to have the tools and experiences to incarnate Christ into whatever new context they find themselves.  Organic leadership anticipates the release and so it by nature builds in a reproductive mindset.

Developing Leadership
1.  Create a leadership development system. When future leaders are identified, have a system they can be integrated into that will challenge, teach, and expand them.  I have setup a 1-year leadership development process whereby leaders work through two books on theology, two books on leadership, and two books on practical ministry. In addition, they are discovering their giftedness, and a work through a timeline of how God has worked in their life. Finally, they get to experience a variety of ministries to help them see where God may have called them.

2.  Identify potential leaders, and be listening for the leaders God brings to you. Those are two different categories, by the way.  We need to be on the lookout for potential leaders.  However, at the same time, God will raise up leadership that comes to you.  You have to recognize both.

3. Hand off leadership within the body local. This is difficult.  However, people need to be empowered, not controlled.  You must let them do ministry according to their own giftedness.  You must let them do ministry differently than you would do ministry.

4.  Provide opportunities to expand horizons and experiences. Give people glocal opportunities.  Expand their horizons through conferences and trips.  Take them with you as you go to a conference.

Organic Churches

One of the most disturbing things I have heard was told to me by a professor who visited a small Christian community in Africa.  He told me that upon his arrival, these beautiful African people performed some of the most beautiful, indigenous music he had ever heard.  Their dress was simple, yet beautiful.  On Sunday morning, however, they put on their Western suits, walked into a Western-type building, and sang “Shine Jesus Shine” in their native tongue.  They put aside their own culture on Sundays and took on Western dress, Western music, and Western structures.

MIROR Churches are organic in nature.  Organic is a term from nature and carries with it the idea of natural.  No outside influences. Organic food is food that contains no pesticides (in the case of plants), manufactured treatments, or medicines (in the case of animals).

How are churches organic?

Organic are a reflection of the people and culture that make up this community of faith.  The seed of the gospel is planted in a community and the Spirit directs both its growth and form.

Most churches that are termed organic often have a structure more in line with house churches.  They organize organically and meet organically.  People develop a natural, relational affinity for one anther and a community of faith forms.  However, that is not to say that house churches are the only type of organic church.

Organic churches were the natural expression of the ekklesia in the Bible, and even through the first three to four centuries of Christianity.  Paul started some churches in the New Testament and yet some churches were organically created as people who embraced Christ at Pentecost left Jerusalem after the Passover season and headed home.  Some churches maintained their Jewish perspective while Gentile churches were different in practice.

Organic churches grow at their own pace.  In the Bible, you had the formation of the ekklesia at Pentecost where thousands embraced the work of Christ.  That was a God moment, planned from all eternity.  But you also see the organic church as being small within scripture.  In fact, what you don’t see outside of Pentecost is the growth of the church spoken of in numbers.  Growth was an expression of love and relationship with Christ, not the size of the building or numbers in attendance.  Growth comes when the marginal become transformed by the power of the Spirit.  The testimony of transformation and relationship is far greater than a new worship song.

Organic churches tend not to be clergy led.  In fact, for some people in the organic church movement, there is no such thing as clergy.  Organic churches do not see the separation between clergy and laity.  Everyone in the community of faith is a missionary.  No one comes, sits, and watches a production or show.  It is not a passive worship gathering; it is a participatory as everyone has the opportunity to be a part of the teaching and ministering of the church gathering.

The above are just a few characteristics of organic churches.  In a few follow-up posts, I will reflect on issues of theology and leadership in addition to consider more characteristics.  But for now, on to the important issue:

Why are organic churches important?

Organic churches are the key to movements.  Look at any church movement in Scripture, movements in the Chinese church, movements in the US in the early part of its history and you will see that it was the simple, organic expressions of Christ that was at the heart of the movement.  When the church institutionalizes, the movement slows.  It is happening even now in China.  If a fresh movement of Christ flows through USAmerica, the point of the arrow will be organic churches.

MIROR: Indwelling and Incarnating

In this post, I want to expand on the “I” in MIROR, which is Incarnational.  The aspect of  the incarnation that we need to explore deeper is the concept of indwelling.  The idea of ‘living in’ or ‘indwelling’ is connected to Michael Polanyi’s ideas of tacit and focal awareness. (1)

Polanyi’s Tacit Knowledge

Almost two years ago I was faced with the prospect of reading Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy by Michael Polanyi.  Polanyi (1891-1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath whose thought and work extended across physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. (2) Len Sweet has every one of his doctoral students read Personal Knowledge either in the first or second semester.  It is the only book he requires to be read by every doctoral student.  It is a very difficult book to read and it felt like having a root canal without drugs.  It was so difficult that I had to read Lesslie Newbigin to understand just part of what Polanyi was saying.

Polanyi proposed the idea of Tacit Knowledge. With tacit knowledge, people are not often aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Tacit knowledge is considered more valuable because it provides context for people, places, ideas, and experiences. Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact and trust.

Tacit knowledge is not easily shared. One of Polanyi’s famous aphorisms is: “We know more than we can tell.” Tacit knowledge consists often of habits and culture that we do not recognize in ourselves. In the field of knowledge management, the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge which is only known by an individual and that is difficult to communicate to the rest of an organization. Knowledge that is easy to communicate is called explicit knowledge. The process of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge is known as codification or articulation. (3)

Two examples of tacit knowledge include:

1.  If I use my hands to feel something in the dark, I am only tacitly aware of my hands; I am focusing my attention on the surface I am exploring, not my hands.  I am aware of my hands only in the fact that they are instruments being used to feel what is in the darkness.

2.  The words we speak, the actions we take are not conscious for us.  They become conscious when someone or some thing shows us what we are doing.  As a result, we are only tacitly aware of our words and actions as we have indwelled our words and actions.  They are part of who we are.

Indwelling in Jesus

In John’s Gospel, Jesus defines for his followers what is to be their relationship to him.  They are to “dwell in” him, as he “dwells in” his father.  Jesus was not to be the subject of their observation, but the body of which they were a part.  By “indwelling” him in his body, they will both be led into a deeper understanding of the Truth and become the means by which God’s will is done in the world. (4)

The indwelling in the life of Jesus means that Jesus’ life becomes our life.  In doing so, Jesus’ life flows out of our own, so much so that people see our life as a reflection and expression of the life of Jesus. We are tacitly aware of what we say and do because we are focally aware of whom we encourage, love and minister.

Jesus was “in the father”, indwelling and incarnating the father, to such great depths, that people understood his words and actions as being God’s words and actions despite the fact that Jesus never explicitly stated for our western minds, “I am God”.  While Jesus understood his indwelling and incarnation, he expressed it tacitly; it just flowed from him.

Indwelling in the Church

As the Old Testament unfolds, we begin to see God’s undying love for Israel.  Yet, this love and commitment is to Israel the instrument of God’s love for the rest of the nations.  It becomes clear that to be God’s chosen people means not privilege but suffering, reproach, and humiliation.  Israel was called to embody or indwell in her own life God’s agony over an unbelieving, disobedient world.  In the New Testament, that manifestation was found in the one who would suffer the ultimate agony of death on a cross on behalf of all peoples. (5)

Where is the body of Christ is now found?  In the Church.  Therefore, the body of Christ is called to indwell or incarnate in its own life, both locally and universally, the love and agony of God for this unbelieving and disobedient world.

Unfortunately, we have distorted that privilege just as Israel did.  We have taken the love that we should be directing to the world and we have redirected it onto ourselves.  We have become the focal point of our awareness.  We have become primary, not the world for which God weeps.

So what must we do?

1.  Fall in love with the Godhead all over again.  In our churches, we are proclaiming principles, not relationship.  We preach practices, not relationship.
2.  We must retell the stories of Israel as they redirected the MIROR onto themselves instead of the world they were called to love.  We have done the same thing in USAmerican churches.

As Christ-followers, we have to live IN the Christian story in the living narrative of a living Jesus.  When we embody, incarnate and indwell Jesus, people begin to see not the church or the person by the Godhead behind the person.  And when people see Jesus for who he really is, like the woman at the well, they embrace him and run and tell all those that they know.

Notes

1. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 98.
2. Wikipedia contributors, “Michael Polanyi,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_Polanyi&oldid=243647741 (accessed October 17, 2008).
3. Wikipedia contributors, “Tacit knowledge,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tacit_knowledge&oldid=245462216 (accessed October 17, 2008).
4. Newbigin, 99.
5. Newbigin, 84.

Can a Milkshake lead to Ministry?

Programs or People?  Attracting or Going?  The typical way of ministry is to bring people to church.  The untypical way of ministry is going to the people.  This means, however, that people will have to risk relationships to do ministry.  It means that people must be empowered and released to do ministry.  While this may reduce control and oversight, it enables ministry born out of the character and nature of a Triune God.

By Nature God is Relational

God is Perichoretic by nature.  Perichoresis in theology, “refers to the mutual inter-penetration and indwelling of the Father and the Son. The doctrine is based on John’s Gospel (17:21) that ‘the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father.’”

“The relationship of the Triune God is intensified by the relationship of perichoresis. This indwelling expresses and realizes fellowship between the Father and the Son. It is intimacy. Jesus compares the oneness of this indwelling to the oneness of the fellowship of his church from this indwelling.”
Wikipedia contributors, “Perichoresis,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Perichoresis&oldid=233713884 (accessed September 17, 2008).

The idea is one of fellowship and relationship.  There is a fellowship and relationship within the Father and Son and the Spirit.  A genuine personal relationship exists within them.  Because we are formed in the image of God, we are perichoretic by nature.

God Initiated Relationships with Humanity

As you read the scriptures, you find that God was not formulaic or programmatic in his dealings with humanity.  He was relational. In the garden, he walked and talked with Adam and Eve.  He was not far off; he was personal.  In addition, he initiated the relationship.

He was personal as dealt with individuals before and after the formation of Israel as his people, which implies relationship.  When he met with the Israelites at Sinai, he wanted to speak directly with them, but they were afraid and wanted an intermediary.  He wanted relationship; they wanted an intermediary.

The metaphors used to speak of God’s love for his people are metaphors of relationship.  Even the “knowing” of God is not intellectual or propositional, but relational and experiential.

Jesus was not attractional; he was relational.  Out of his relationships, he drew a crowd.  He did not get relational after he was attractional.  It was his healings and ministry of touch that brought the crowds.

God Initiated a Salvific Relationship

The incarnation was an expression of relationship.  It was the second member of the Trinity taking on flesh, coming to be the new Adam, the Christus Victor, the Redeemer, the Substitution.  Initiated by God and his love for the world, Christ died so that we might be in relationship with the Godhead directly.

God did not choose to bring salvation to the world by attracting them to an event.  He gave that a trial run in Genesis.  They were not attracted to the Ark despite the best preaching of Noah.  Therefore, Jesus put on flesh, stepped out of heaven, and touched humanity where they were.

How do we begin to cultivate a relational mentality in our churches?

1.  Move ministry away from the church campus.

Really?  Yes.  Not your entire ministry, just parts of your ministry for now. Let people “sponsor” the ministry, do not make it a church event.  This empowers people to be organic with their friends and neighbors, not programmatic in execution.  It also helps the church think of ways to use their own training, gifts, and passions to do ministry. We have to begin emphasizing that ministry does not always have to take place on the campus and in worship gatherings.  Most ministry should take place outside of the building.

Another idea would be to use the buildings of your church for something other than the worship gathering.  Ask yourself, “How can we offer our buildings and facilities to the community as a gesture of love?”  Go to city leaders and ask them what you can do.

Do you have a gym?  Offer it to the city for a basketball league or to the schools for plays or concerts.  And do it free of charge.  Host family-friendly concerts - they don’t have to be exclusively Christian - or movies and provide child-care so parents in the community can have a cheap date night.  Do a dinner and movie - again, not explicitly Christian and without an explicit gospel presentation at the end.  In tough economic times, a free meal or an inexpensive, but healthy meal for families would be a great ministry to the community.  Find ways to use your building more than once or twice a week!

2.  Help people see that a dinner party to build relationships is evangelism.

You mean we do not have share the Roman Road or the Four Spiritual Laws or F.A.I.T.H to do evangelism?  Well, did Jesus?  Not at all.  Read the New Testament and see how often all Jesus did was invite himself to dinner or accept a dinner invitation.  Evangelism can be done through dinner, vacations, or a gift card to someone sitting in a coffee shop.

There are a myriad of ways that families can build relationships with the unchurched, de-churched, and I-don’t-want-to-go-to-church.  However, churches have to emphasize that.  It has to be talked about in the gatherings, in the sermons, and in the small groups.

3.  Celebrate publicly families who cultivate relationships

What gets celebrated gets repeated.  When you celebrate how people have developed relationships and used those relationships to SHOW the love of God, people will be more inclined to integrate that behavior into their own lives.

When this relational nature is encoded into the DNA of the church, the institutional church does not then have to have many large, attractional events.  The church organic is drawing people because of the relationship.

How can your church start being more relational in ministry?