Teaching Churches
I sort of feel like I've been living Nehemiah 2:11-12 the last few weeks and months. Nehemiah has this dream of rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem, but he doesn't go public right away. It says, "I went to Jerusalem, and after staying there three days I set out during the night with a few others. I had not told anyone what God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem."
Nehemiah has a dream, but he hadn't verbalized it yet.
I feel like the Lord has given me some new dreams and new passions in the last few months, but I haven't verbalized them. I've been examining the walls. I'm still not ready to "go public" with some of them. But I wanted to blog about one of them.
About a year ago I felt really impressed that NCC was called to be what I'd call a "teaching church." Just as there are hospitals and teaching hospitals, I think there are churches and teaching churches. I think NCC is called to be a teaching church.
Teaching hospitals aren't better than hospitals. But they are intentional about training emerging doctors. I feel like we're called to train emerging pastors and emerging churches. In one sense, we've been doing that for the last couple of years. A week doesn't go by that I don't meet with a church planter or a pastor does reconnaissance at one of our services. But I think the time has come for us to become more strategic in the way we help other churches. To me it's a stewardship issue. We've got to be good stewards of our successes and mistakes.
I'm well aware of our defects and deficiencies. Every church has them. We probably have more than our fair share. But I think we're called to play to our strengths. And our strengths can help some other churches. Ironically, I think we're weak where lots of churches are strong. And we're strong where lots of churches are weak.
I think we're good at media and marketing. We're living out our conviction that the greatest message deserves the greatest marketing. I think we're good at creating culture. Nothing is more important or more difficult than creating culture! I think every church needs a pastor of culture (whether that's their official title or not). I think we're good at reaching emerging generations or as some church demographers call them--the missing generation. NCC is 80% twenty-something and 80% single. I think we're good at reaching unchurched and dechurched people. I think we're good at doing church in theaters, clubs, and hopefully the coffeehouse we're building on Capitol Hill. We're passionate about doing church in the middle of the marketplace. One of our convictions is that the church is called to compete in the marketplace of ideas. Too many churches have gotten comfortable existing in the Christian bubble or Christian ghetto. They are answering questions nobody is asking! And I think our irrelevance is irreverence!
Our goal is to create a network of churches that are trying to do church in new ways. We don't want to compete with existing networks. We can't compete with existing networks even if we wanted to. So what's our niche? I think it boils down to creativity.
One of my deepest convictions is that the church ought to be the most creative place on the planet. I think the words "church" and "creativity" ought to be synonyms! When people do a "word association" test, they ought to say "creativity" when they hear "church." I believe there are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet. Too many churches do ministry out of memory. I think we're called to do ministry out of imagination. If you think of the Kingdom of God as a corporation, then I think NCC would be in the Research & Development department (R & D). We're called to experiment. In fact, one of our core values is: everything is an experiment. For what it's worth, the New Testament doesn't prescribe a "church formula." The New Testament leaves 98% of how we do church up to us. The only ordinances are baptism and communion. That used to cause angst for me because I just wanted God to tell me exactly what to do. Then I realized the reason why He didn't do it that way. It would kill creativity. It would kill originality. Every church would look like every other church.
Too many churches are cloned. Thank God for Willowcreek, but we don't need another Willowcreek. Thank God for Saddleback, but we don't need another Saddleback. Thank God for Northpoint, but we don't need another Northpoint. Thank God for Fellowship Church, but we don't need another Fellowship. Fill in the blank with any church. We don't need to be like someone else. It comes down to one of our convictions: we need lots of different kinds of churches because there are lots of different kind of people.
I'm totally grateful for the teaching churches that have helped us and inspired us along the way. I'm totally grateful for the books and blogs and conferences that have made my synapses fire in new ways. And we're going to keep learning. But we're also going to start teaching.
Here's the funny thing. I have no idea what to call our "consulting arm." I think we have this thing 70% figured out. But sometimes we wait for God to part the Jordan river before we step in while God calls us to step into the Jordan river before He'll part the waters! Joshua 3:8 says, "Go and stand in the river." In other words, jump in with both feet. Get your feet wet. And Joshua 3:15 says, "As soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing." I'm not sure where this "current" will take us, but we're doing a swan dive into the river.
We're going to set up a booth at the Assemblies of God General Council in Denver, Colorado the first week of August and go from here.
Here are a few of our initials ideas:
We'll launch a blog that is exclusively for pastors and church planters. It'll be a way of systematically sharing what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we're doing it. I also want it to be an idea sharing venue. I'm hoping it's like a creativity IV that pumps God ideas right into pastors' veins.
We'll host our first conference in 2006. Two people may show up, but we're going to go for it. One of our assets is our coffeehouse on Capitol Hill. It gives us so much more flexibility! Plus Washington, DC is a great conference destination. We'll probably tag a spiritual heritage or monument tour onto the conference.
Eventually I'd like to see us create a network of church planters. I'd love to have a church planting school at some point as well.
I have no idea what to expect, but we're going to take a dive. So as the old saying goes: here goes nothing. And hopefully nothing will turn into something.
Nehemiah has a dream, but he hadn't verbalized it yet.
I feel like the Lord has given me some new dreams and new passions in the last few months, but I haven't verbalized them. I've been examining the walls. I'm still not ready to "go public" with some of them. But I wanted to blog about one of them.
About a year ago I felt really impressed that NCC was called to be what I'd call a "teaching church." Just as there are hospitals and teaching hospitals, I think there are churches and teaching churches. I think NCC is called to be a teaching church.
Teaching hospitals aren't better than hospitals. But they are intentional about training emerging doctors. I feel like we're called to train emerging pastors and emerging churches. In one sense, we've been doing that for the last couple of years. A week doesn't go by that I don't meet with a church planter or a pastor does reconnaissance at one of our services. But I think the time has come for us to become more strategic in the way we help other churches. To me it's a stewardship issue. We've got to be good stewards of our successes and mistakes.
I'm well aware of our defects and deficiencies. Every church has them. We probably have more than our fair share. But I think we're called to play to our strengths. And our strengths can help some other churches. Ironically, I think we're weak where lots of churches are strong. And we're strong where lots of churches are weak.
I think we're good at media and marketing. We're living out our conviction that the greatest message deserves the greatest marketing. I think we're good at creating culture. Nothing is more important or more difficult than creating culture! I think every church needs a pastor of culture (whether that's their official title or not). I think we're good at reaching emerging generations or as some church demographers call them--the missing generation. NCC is 80% twenty-something and 80% single. I think we're good at reaching unchurched and dechurched people. I think we're good at doing church in theaters, clubs, and hopefully the coffeehouse we're building on Capitol Hill. We're passionate about doing church in the middle of the marketplace. One of our convictions is that the church is called to compete in the marketplace of ideas. Too many churches have gotten comfortable existing in the Christian bubble or Christian ghetto. They are answering questions nobody is asking! And I think our irrelevance is irreverence!
Our goal is to create a network of churches that are trying to do church in new ways. We don't want to compete with existing networks. We can't compete with existing networks even if we wanted to. So what's our niche? I think it boils down to creativity.
One of my deepest convictions is that the church ought to be the most creative place on the planet. I think the words "church" and "creativity" ought to be synonyms! When people do a "word association" test, they ought to say "creativity" when they hear "church." I believe there are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet. Too many churches do ministry out of memory. I think we're called to do ministry out of imagination. If you think of the Kingdom of God as a corporation, then I think NCC would be in the Research & Development department (R & D). We're called to experiment. In fact, one of our core values is: everything is an experiment. For what it's worth, the New Testament doesn't prescribe a "church formula." The New Testament leaves 98% of how we do church up to us. The only ordinances are baptism and communion. That used to cause angst for me because I just wanted God to tell me exactly what to do. Then I realized the reason why He didn't do it that way. It would kill creativity. It would kill originality. Every church would look like every other church.
Too many churches are cloned. Thank God for Willowcreek, but we don't need another Willowcreek. Thank God for Saddleback, but we don't need another Saddleback. Thank God for Northpoint, but we don't need another Northpoint. Thank God for Fellowship Church, but we don't need another Fellowship. Fill in the blank with any church. We don't need to be like someone else. It comes down to one of our convictions: we need lots of different kinds of churches because there are lots of different kind of people.
I'm totally grateful for the teaching churches that have helped us and inspired us along the way. I'm totally grateful for the books and blogs and conferences that have made my synapses fire in new ways. And we're going to keep learning. But we're also going to start teaching.
Here's the funny thing. I have no idea what to call our "consulting arm." I think we have this thing 70% figured out. But sometimes we wait for God to part the Jordan river before we step in while God calls us to step into the Jordan river before He'll part the waters! Joshua 3:8 says, "Go and stand in the river." In other words, jump in with both feet. Get your feet wet. And Joshua 3:15 says, "As soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing." I'm not sure where this "current" will take us, but we're doing a swan dive into the river.
We're going to set up a booth at the Assemblies of God General Council in Denver, Colorado the first week of August and go from here.
Here are a few of our initials ideas:
We'll launch a blog that is exclusively for pastors and church planters. It'll be a way of systematically sharing what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we're doing it. I also want it to be an idea sharing venue. I'm hoping it's like a creativity IV that pumps God ideas right into pastors' veins.
We'll host our first conference in 2006. Two people may show up, but we're going to go for it. One of our assets is our coffeehouse on Capitol Hill. It gives us so much more flexibility! Plus Washington, DC is a great conference destination. We'll probably tag a spiritual heritage or monument tour onto the conference.
Eventually I'd like to see us create a network of church planters. I'd love to have a church planting school at some point as well.
I have no idea what to expect, but we're going to take a dive. So as the old saying goes: here goes nothing. And hopefully nothing will turn into something.
1 Comments:
PM
Maybe the 'teaching church' is synonymous with the 'sending church' at Antioch? Are you applying the both/and concept to teaching and sending? I'm sure you have already given this some thought...
I completely agree with you about church and creativity as long as the creativity does not go outside of the guardrails of His Word. Of course, 'Everything is an Experiment' so sometimes we unintentionally test His Word, but I am confident that an all merciful and grace-full God will bring us back into realignment if we stray to far from Him.
JJ
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