Recently the Lord opened the door for me, Diana, and our best friends the Brooks to return home to our own home church and combine forces with the rest of our kin: the Hughes/Schoofs Home Church. This is extraordinarily exciting to me because God has been giving us a burden and vision to fight along these brothers and sisters. I want to discuss the motivation for this change and the vision God has been showing us for these churches.
Motivation
These brothers and sisters are truly our kin and our people and most importantly our friends – and we’ve been gone too long. I love these guys to death and we need their fellowship. We’re all entering into a new phase of life and I do not want to do that at a distance. I want to join the fight together! The changes we’re talking about sound superficially like double rainbow, but one of the key differences this time is that we want to come back for good. So this is not temporary, we don’t have some whiz-bang grow-it-now strategy, and we’re not replacing the current leadership. We want to join in the fight as comrades and friends.
These are some awesome churches, and the existing leaders are awesome, and I have the greatest respect for them. Except Leon. (Jk.) Just this past year they pulled off creative outreach initiatives like meet-up groups, they showed radical compassion by serving in things like Townhall II, they completely turned around in LTC, and saw at least 20 first timers between the two churches last year. By any measure, these are tremendous strides forward, and these churches are on a good track this year.
But I’m concerned too. As strong of a year as this has been, both home churches have experienced a slow decline over the last three years. So slow that it’s almost flat and probably hard to detect at the meeting.
But moreover, I’m concerned we’re losing our primary vision as the church: “to seek and save that which is lost.” and along with it our burning passion for lost people. Everything else we do, whether it’s serving the poor, or counseling a broken marriage, is secondary and done in support of this primary vision.
I’d like to share some insights mostly lifted from Christine Caine. I encourage you to check out this teaching, which I found out from Keith’s blog.[1] I’ll summarize her teaching here.
Who the Church Is
It’s easy to start “doing church” instead of being the church. It’s easy to go through the motions, doing our meetings and teachings, but in the process lose our vision and passion for what God wants to do through us as the church. We’ve got to believe again in the power of the local church to the change the world. In fact, this is God’s strategy for rescuing the world: it’s through us. So the key to our vision and passion is remembering who we are as the church.
Our primary mission as the local church is to “seek and save that which is lost”. John 3:16 says that God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son…” The world is a mess, and it needs the church to care. The world needs us to make a difference. Our non-Christian friends are starting families and doing a lot of the same things we are. And as distracted and busy as they may be, they need us to care and give them a chance to meet Jesus, and have the same joy, purpose, and coherency that we do in Christ.
So God’s passion is for the lost people of this world, and that has to be our passion too. But how do you know if you still have that passion? We know we have it when we minister because we WANT to, not because we have to. When home church or outreach is a chore–we’ve lost our passion.
When I was first courting Diana, I used to walk her home from school, which was the opposite direction of my house. I had a car, but she wasn’t allowed to ride with me (which was a good thing.) But I had no problem walking her home and then turning right around and walking back to school, just to get in my car and drive home. And I did a hundred other things like that. I did all that because I was so passionate about her. I didn’t have to think twice. Now she can’t get me to walk in the kitchen and take out the trash for her. Jk.
But this question of passion is absolutely critical to the rejoining of our home churches. Because for this to work – for us to recapture that exciting, New Testament Style ethos – we’ve got to come together on this. We’ve all got to work our outreach. We’ve all got to come to the meetings with something to contribute. We’ve got to OWN our ministry and our generation. It’s time for us to step up and do this together and build something that will last and provide a fellowship for our children. And to do that, you’ve got to have passion. And that’s between you and Christ. No one can make you read your bible or pray or work to reach the lost. So this has got to be a vision and a passion that we seek and own together. The leaders are only here to facilitate this work.
Matthew 22:37 says we are to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ Proverbs 4:23 says “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” Accepting Christ is not like joining a club or doing something to augment what I’m already doing. It’s a revolution of the heart. God works from the inside out, and he starts with a transformed heart and passion.
I was blown away recently by Ted Howell’s testimony at CT. He described himself as a busy, arrogant grad student, who was bleeding underneath a thin veneer of self-confidence. In fact, that veneer was so thin, not only did he come to a meeting when he was invited, he accepted Christ at the very first meeting! I bet that meeting was hot! And then Ted was faced with a dilemma: continue on with his plans to attend a prestigious grad school, or scrap that to invest in his new relationship with Jesus Christ. He chose the later and thank God he did! God has used him powerfully, as a pillar of the church ever since.
Ted made a radical, shocking, decision to follow Christ. But it wasn’t something that was forced; it was a natural by-product of a heart aflame for Christ. Do you remember the revolution He sparked in your heart? Do you remember how it’s been in the past, to see new people coming to Christ, switching schools and that sort of thing because they were so excited? That’s the normal Christian life. Yeah we got some poop smeared on us (literally and metaphorically) but it was totally worth it.
Jesus warns the church at Ephesus: ‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance… But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” (Rev 2:2–4) They had worked hard, they had a lot of good people and a lot of good stuff going on. But they had lost their first love – that vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ that spills over into a vibrant love for his people. Is it possible we have lost our first love, like that church 2,000 years ago? If that’s the case, we can get it back.
Jesus is exceedingly clear that God’s heart is for reaching lost people. Using unprecedented emphasis, He tells 3 consecutive parables in Luke 15 underscoring this fact. He describes the lost sheep: “what man among you does not leave the 99 to go after the one which is lost”, the lost coin: “what woman does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it” and finally the parable of the prodigal son: “for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”
Based on these parables, think about how these people got lost in the first place. It’s usually not that they just hate God and are irreconcilable. Sheep get separated from the flock because they get all preoccupied with eating grass. They get distracted until later they look up and are like “I’m lost!” People we meet are preoccupied, too. And understandably so: it’s hard to navigate life without Jesus. People are trying to pay their bills, fix their marriages, provide for their kids, all without knowing how or why they do what they do!
Or, take the coin. It didn’t do anything to get lost. It got lost because of the woman’s carelessness. Maybe you know what it’s like when someone else is careless with your life and didn’t protect you when they should have. Christine Caine’s testimony is heart-wrenching in this regard. These people need rescued!
The prodigal son made a fatal miscalculation. Somewhere along the line he figured that life without God would work better. And many of our peers are doing the same as they sell out to the kosmos. We need to rescue them before it’s too late.
So again, God’s passion is for seeking and saving that which was lost. And that needs to be our passion too. In Matthew 4:19, Jesus did NOT say:
“follow me and I’ll make you successful.”
“follow me and I’ll make your life easier.”
“follow me and I’ll make you a great father [or mother].”
These are fine things, but they are not the thing. Jesus said of course: “follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men.” That’s our calling. And it’s not only for some special, elite troops. It will take all of us individually getting that burden back. Jesus said in John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Satan and his kingdom are intent on destroying people, abusing them, robbing of them of their dignity and identity. Jesus came to give that all back, brand new and restored. It’s a beautiful thing and we are the messengers.
Post-College Myths
So let’s consider what clouds such a vision for us. I’m concerned that we, the “post-college” generation here in NEO Xenos, have bought into some subtle myths about our ability to do ministry with our peers. These are things I think we’ve all struggled with and need to call out and dismantle once and for all.
1) “It’s not possible to grow a church as an adult”. OK, this isn’t college anymore, and we’ve been warned it’s harder. Our friends are busy with getting married, and starting careers and families, and seem too distracted to care. So maybe we should just serve the church through other areas like finances or youth ministry. However, this is not biblical nor does it match what other churches are seeing. We are called primarily to be “fishers of men” and to “do the work of an evangelist” (Matt 4:19, 2 Tim 4:5) Also, our own sister church, Xenos Columbus, is seeing 11% average growth in its 27-35 year old home churches. This is such an encouraging fact: 2 hours away, people our own age are doing ministry just like us and are growing significantly. This is not a closed field!
2) “God’s called me to ministry other than reaching the lost.” This is a tempting thought, especially when you’ve experienced frustration in outreach, but it’s not right. We were given the Great Commission and not the Great Suggestion! Sometimes evangelism feels like kicking the side of a building in order to knock it down. It hurts your foot and doesn’t work. So we feel frustrated and assume that I’m not gifted and try to find some other way to serve. But I think the thing we’re missing in that illustration is reliance on the Holy Spirit. Instead of going over and kicking the building, we just need to speak and watch the Holy Spirit WHOOOOOOOSH! Take that building down! Remember, Jesus commissions His disciples with this promise: “you will receive power with then Holy Spirit has come upon you”.
3) “We’re just too busy as adults to do effective ministry”. We are busier than ever. But the real danger here is getting on the kosmos rat-race. Take career. It’s great to have a career and strong work ethic, but the kosmos encourages people to work long, long hours, travel often, and move all over the country, which is extremely dislodging to families and long term relationships. Watch yourself: the devil is running a system here that wants to chew you up & spit you out. It has no regard for your long-term well-being, or for what kind of life and legacy you build. You are, to them, a short-term unit of production, measured by your efficiency. Don’t forget that.
We can get pretty busy and wrapped up with our kids too. It’s popular right now to push kids hard academically and drag them around to every possible sporting activity. And it’s tempting to join in because you don’t want your kids to miss out and fall behind. (The rat race starts early…) But here’s where we’ve got to decide what we want for our kids – what’s really important. It’s not that they get the best job or scholarship. The whole goal is that they grow up to love Jesus Christ and serve him with everything thing they’ve got. Period. And they will catch that or not catch that vision by watching us.
Bottom Line
My main burden for us is that we get our passion and thereby our boldness back as a church. To do that, we want to start by promoting our unity and quality of our home church. Dennis McCallum & Gary DeLashmutt did an awesome teaching at Columbus Xenos’ State of the Church meeting recently. I strongly encourage you to check it out. They did some extensive analysis of their home church growth, which I’ll try & summarize. Remember, ALL OF THESE FACTS ARE FOR POST-COLLEGE HOME CHURCHES!
- Home church attendance: bigger home churches grew in attendance, while smaller home churches declined.
- Leadership teams: Home churches with larger leadership teams tended to grow, while those with smaller leadership teams declined.
- Meeting frequency: Home churches that meet every week grew, while those that meet every other week declined.
- Discipleship: Home churches were most people were discipling or being discipled grew, those where most people were not involved in discipleship declined.
Really, none of this sounds very surprising when you read it like this. It’s body life 101. But I think it’s fascinating set of correlations which all resonate with the Bible’s insistence on high quality body life (ala Acts 2). In this data we have objective evidence that it’s possible to grow in this field!
So, that’s what we want to do – try this stuff out. For the bigger home church, we’ll recombine! For bigger leader’s meeting, we’ll recombine! (and bring us back). For every week – let’s meet every week! And we’ll figure out the discipleship thing too. At this point, we don’t see a need to subtract from the current leader’s meeting and no need to change cells. But we want to put our heads together and get a vision for our church. It’s going to take all of us throwing down and getting excited! So we’re asking everyone to pray, seriously pray, about this!!
[1] : http://keithmccallum.net/inside/2265. Direct link is http://www.newspring.cc/series/identitytheft/, click on “What the Church Is”. You’ll need to skip 30 minutes or so into it to get the teaching.