Leaving the Church (Building)

I am sometimes confronted with cloistered nature of the typical evangelical church.  Three examples: As pastor of church plant required to set up every Sunday, we sometimes run short of necessary supplies.  Not too long ago I ran to Home Depot at about 9:30 AM on a Sunday morning for some duct tape.  Never having been to Home Depot on a Sunday morning, I was at first simply glad they were open and didn’t expect much in the way of a crowd.  I was astonished to find a packed parking lot.  An employee I know casually later confirmed, “Yeah, Sunday is usually our busiest morning.”  When I mentioned this to a friend at church a week later, she puzzled over it a moment and then replied, “It’s hard to comprehend that the rest of the world just goes on doing its thing without us on Sundays.”

A single mom visited on Sunday.  From the parking lot of the school where we meet, I could hit her house with a softball and a good line-drive.  In conversation she mentioned that she never knew a church was meeting in the school until she ran into our street-corner Night in the Light table on Halloween night. (It took her 6 months to muster the courage to actually visit.) We’ve been in this location for 5 years.  We put out portable signs each week.  We’ve delivered invites door-to-door at least a half-dozen times.  But our presence was a mystery to a young lady for 260 Sundays until we invaded her territory.

            In the fall of 2010, our middle & high school youth group ventured out to find and then feed some of the homeless people who live in semi-hidden homeless camps around the city.  It was obvious the kids were afraid when I discovered some brought pepper spray and they began asking questions about knife attacks.  Camps were found and people were fed.  We all survived. When we returned home to debrief, the kids were ecstatic and begged to do it again.  (We’ve continued with monthly trips to the camps.)  That evening one kid told his parents, “That’s the first time I ever felt like I was doing something Jesus would do.”  Good news… except this particular child has been part of church since diaper days and it took this long for his real-life WWJD moment.

            This isn’t a new predicament for many church leaders.  We know, I think, that God modeled an incarnational ministry model.  We want to make a kingdom-difference in our communities.  But somehow mobilizing our churches to actually invade the neighborhood extends as far as the seven people on the Outreach Team.  Strategically, I’ve never found a better approach than to tell stories of other churches and then hope it’s contagious.  And, in truth, I think the desire to make a local impact is contagious.  But putting a working strategy into place has been much more difficult. 

            That’s changed.  At the recent Wesley Forum held at the Evangelical Theological Seminary, I heard Drew Williams reveal how ‘mission-shaped communities’ (MSC) have revolutionized his church (St. Andrews Church Chorleywood, England).  Something like 90% of the congregation is engaged in neighborhood-invading projects and ministries.  Drew is now repeating the process in Connecticut and freely admits to borrowing the concept from other churches in England.  The foundational concept is to organize the entire church round these mission-shaped communities (bigger than a small group, smaller than a congregation).  It’s brilliant, I think, and biblical as a bonus.

            Simply defined, a mission-shaped community has a defined purpose (say…feeding the homeless), it has a name, clear leadership, and a size-limit (no more than 50).  Congregants gravitate to MSCs that align with their particular passions and interests.  MSCs meet regularly outside of the church location in order to plan, worship, disciple, etc.  If a particular group in an MSC wants to branch out or develops a more specific interest (housing the homeless, for example, in addition to feeding them), a new MSC is formed.  In the book you’ll discover that some MSCs meet on their own three Sunday mornings out of four and participate in the larger congregation once per month.

            Drew and fellow pastor Mark Stibbe tell the story in the book, Breakout, which is fun reading.  Some of the nuts & bolts get lost in the telling so a companion book by Mike Breen, Launching Missional Communities, might be a good follow-up read.  However, once you get the story, the concept is pretty easy to understand.  I checked and you can’t get Breakout on Amazon so you’ll have to pursue the book through the UK distributor at the following link: http://www.authenticmedia.co.uk/search/product/productPowerSearch.jhtml?keywords=breakout  Or, Google ‘Authentic Media UK’ and you can find it.

            Frankly, the story and the concept have inspired in me one grand thought: There’s hope.