My mind is blown by the exponential growth of church planting movements around the globe.  David Watson reminds onlookers that it took 2 to 4 years in India, for example, to get to the point where existing social units surrendered to Christ and began multiplying disciples, leaders, groups and churches.  I think it will take longer in the U.S. given other obstacles we face here.  (David Watson has written a brief article on the myth of rapid reproduction on his blog.  To read it, click here.)

The church planting movements around the world give the appearance of rapid growth because of the exponential growth, not the reproduction.  Laying a foundation for such a movement means years of investment in the training of leaders.  Reproduction therefore is slow.  With the exception of divine accelerations, it is always slow.

“Who should the church pay to serve?”  This is the question Neil Cole is thoughtfully addressing from a biblical point of view in his current series of blog posts. If you are considering a career as a full-time paid minister or missionary, PLEASE take the 10 minutes to read this first!   Lives will be affected by your choice. 

To read Neil’s posts so far on this important topic, click below:

Who Should the Church Pay to Serve?

Who Should the Church Pay: The role of the apostle

Who Should the Church Pay: The true widow

Who Should the Church Pay: Double honor to the preachers and teachers

Who Should the Church Pay: What about pastors?

Who Should the Church Pay: Start with nothing but God!

Thoughts on strategy from a recent Way of Life Village gathering…

When we started out on this mission we told people why East Hollywood is a strategic place for us to share and demonstrate the message of Jesus Christ. People are closed to religion but open to spirituality.  Since so many people in E-Ho have relationships in other areas of the city and globe, as E-Ho residents discover the joys of surrendering to Christ they have the potential to share this new life with people in areas we could never touch ourselves.  For this reason, I still believe this place is “strategic.” (Only God knows what really will happen, though.)

But those of us in Way of Life Village also like to say that any place can become strategic as long as Christ’s followers are willing to arrange their lifestyles accordingly.

Does God call certain people to live and minister in certain cities and countries at certain times in history because “the fields are white for the harvest?”

If so, does that mean God has given up on the other places that aren’t “hot spots” right now in human opinion? 

Churches in the U.S. get excited about sending missionaries and church planters to foreign countries and our nations “inner city” neighborhoods. Yet many of these same churches lack zeal for missions done in their own communities where they could have the most influence.

God wants people to experience salvation in the United States and Asia. Outside the “10/40 Window” and inside it. In the bus stop of dusty Barstow (a small town in the California desert) and the urban ghettos of Los Angeles.

Paid missionaries and their sending churches and agencies will continue to ask themselves, “Is this a strategic place for us to be right now?” I support that thinking.

But I wish all Christians everywhere would ask themselves, “How are we living strategically in the place we’re in?”

The Great Commission as I understand it is not a divine order to send a few Christian missionaries away to a few “strategic places.” As I intrepret these words of Jesus, it is a call to live strategically and intentionally for the gospel, making disciples of all ethnic peoples as we go. Some of us will end up in other places of the world as we respond to this call. Others of us will stay right where we are. But for all of us, joining Jesus in mission will become a way of life.

[Minor editing to this article has occurred since it originally was posted.]

What we’re doing in LA is an experiment. Some churches don’t like to support experiments.  They want to invest in missionary approaches that are “proven” to work.

But really, what makes a ministry method proven?

So a guy named Rick Warren started a mega-church (photo above) that is now influencing the world, and he wrote a book about how it all happened. Some have argued Warren’s approach to church planting is ‘proven.’ Yet thousands of pastors have tried to imitate his model, only to be disappointed that their churches didn’t grow to be just as big or just as outward-focused. What happened?

Or let’s take one of my own sacred cows:  The story of David and Jan Watson, whose missionary approach my community of faith is attempting to adapt for a North American context. God’s Spirit used the Watson family and others to make disciples and train leaders in such a way that 40,000 churches were started in the last 15 years and more than 2 million people have been baptized in difficult-to-reach cities and countries around the world. One might argue the Watsons’ missionary methods are “proven.” Yet I would not be surprised if there are missionaries who have taken the same approach and their works were not nearly as explosive. In fact, reports from those who are implementing Watson’s approach in the U.S. indicate it may take longer to see church planting movements realized in the U.S. than in the places Watson’s people have served.  What’s going on?

Sure, some missionary methods are better than others. I’m not arguing with that. But I do argue that any given missionary method, no matter how many times it has seen big results in the past, is still an experiment. I don’t count any method as proven. The thing that is proven is God’s faithfulness.

God has proven himself throughout the generations to be the kind of God who wants all people to be saved (see 1 Timothy 2:3-5). He has proven that he cares about what’s happening to each of us in the here and now as well as after we die. He has proven that he is more than willing and fully capable of working with us imperfect humans to carry his message, deliver his people, and accomplish his purposes in this world. He does this repeatedly, despite our flawed ingenuity, mixed motives, and sinful nature. 

It’s hard for me to say this because I can get so attached to the ways we’re approaching our mission, but methods are not proven. God’s character and power are. 

Are you a missionary or “church planter”, or wanting to be one? Let’s use our God-given brains, of course, when strategizing.  Let’s be thinking missionaries.  But let’s also realize our missionary methods are always experimental and they come with risk.

Don’t be afraid of joining God in an experiment.

Are you responsible for a ministry in your church or a project at work? As you thoughtfully and prayerfully sit down at the drawing board and form your strategy, remember this: God may call you to do something that is ‘unproven’.  That’s okay.

God is not looking for provenness from you.  He is looking for faithfulness.

Are you serving on a board or missions committee that oversees a missionary work?  Go ahead and ask the question, “Where else has this approach been tried, and what were the results?” but don’t forget to also ask your missionary, “Is this the approach the Lord is directing you to take, and why do you feel certain about this?”

We can discuss methods.  But at the end of the day, let’s invest in the God behind the experiment.

The crowd is growing.  As more and more parents allow their children to be taught these virtues and values, the Bahá’í missionaries have multiplied in number.  Now, as three or four missionaries relate to the kids, one or two missionaries will talk about the Bahá’í Faith with the parents on front porch steps and read from a book containing Bahá’í scripture.  They even brought in a Spanish speaker to talk to Spanish-only parents.  One of the missionaries followed up with my own family by visiting us on another day of the week to drop off a gift for our oldest son with a handwritten note to us the parents, inviting us to come to the next Monday event.

It is so weird to witness this happening.  It’s like someone is holding up a mirror to me.  I’m watching my self when we did activities for the kids and followed up with the parents.  Only now I’m not the one going into someone else’s neighborhood. Others are coming to my neighborhood to evangelize me and my neighbors and convert us to their religion.  As I listen to parents’ mixed reactions to the Bahá’í people’s evangelistic tactics, I’m getting a new perspective on how people probably felt when we have done that sort of thing ourselves.  I don’t like having this mirror held up to me.  It stirs up uneasy feelings in me.

We also share it in spoken form.  Many people can’t read and even some educated people prefer not to read.  Oral tradition is alive and well in Los Angeles. 

This is one of the reasons I like to tell my kids stories about God from scripture (as well as from my own life) during breakfast and ask them to tell it back to me in their own words.  If they can tell it back to me, and in their own words, then they know it.  They also are more prepared to share their own stories of God with others.   

Looking back, Devon said his curiosity began when he took his sons trick-or-treating at our home.  Right away Ed, Katie, Meri and I invited them to come to our Halloween party where we were playing children’s games and serving popcorn and apple cider.  They knocked on many doors that night to trick-or-treat, but Devon got the feeling we are “good people to be around.”  From that simple interaction a mutual friendship began, in which we played and ate meals together, listened to each other’s stories, and introduced spiritual topics of conversation.  Meanwhile, we’ve been praying and fasting, and asking others to pray, too, for Devon and his household.  Then something mysterious and beyond our control began to happen in their hearts.  Now Devon has demonstrated a desire to expose himself and his family to the Word of God.     

Please keep Devon and his family in your prayers…

Why let money get in the way of supporting missions?  God doesn’t.  Let’s do missions in his image – by sending a person not money.  Maybe this is a good time for your church’s missions committee to consider something new (ancient?).  The next church that your congregation starts doesn’t have to cost you money.  Commission one or more of your own church members to start new churches in homes of their unbelieving friends and tell them not to leave their day jobs to do it!  

This is what we’re doing in East Hollywood.  As a full-time guy, I’ve been hired to be a coordinator for a laity-driven ministry.  I’m not setting out to start and pastor a new church.  I’m attempting to raise up such workers from the harvest.  The future leaders of the churches in East Hollywood are not going to be seminary trained.  They are going to be ordinary people.  We are doing this for many, many reasons – most of which are more important than the bottom line – but I do think it is a wise investment of kingdom resources.

To set the example, joining Meredith and me in this effort are Ed and Katie, two lay people who are not employed by a church but simply are the church.  They are on mission with Jesus wherever they go in life.  And for this season of their life they are choosing to start new churches with us. 

When I asked Ed and Katie to join us in this effort, they wanted to know what the time commitment would be.  I told them, “Give to this missionary effort the same number of hours you would normally give to an established congregation as a highly involved member of that congregation.”  That is what they have done. 

Side note: We are noticing that we are not burning out like we used to when we were highly involved members of a traditional congregation.  No longer are we responsible for keeping a myriad of programs running or recruiting Christians to fill those slots.  No longer are we responsible for preparing and delivering sermons and planning a big, complex Sunday event.  We’ve been commissioned to take the hours we used to pour into making the Sunday event happen, and pouring that into engaging the community and making disciples.  In their wisdom, the churches we came from didn’t send us out to clone them, as healthy as these supporting churches are.  They sent us out to start new churches.  And new churches for new people are going to look different. 

When we talk about starting new churches, we’re not talking about buildings, worship services, and the like.  We’re actually talking about making new disciples of Jesus and training these ordinary people to hear from God and obey him.  As this happens, these disciples make new disciples and together they form and lead communities of faith, centered around loving and obeying Jesus and transforming their communities.  These churches gather anywhere and everywhere – in homes, parks and everyday places.  If at some point they decide to hire one of their own to be a paid minister, or they decide to purchase or rent a building (something we wouldn’t recommend for the sake of the church planting movement), that decision is up to them, not us.  The new leaders of the churches (who came from the harvest) will decide if that is something they want to do.  And if so, they will fund it themselves.  Our part is not to fund everything and create dependency on “outside” support.  Our role is to reproduce more churches (communities of faith).  Not church buildings and church staff.  Churches. 

While it is not bad to pay a “church planter”, there are all sorts of reasons not to.  The point is, you should not feel obligated to pay your next church planter.  Nor should you let a financial crunch stop your church from participating with God in his mission on this planet!  ”Lay leaders” are biblical.  Lay leaders are easily reproducible across cultural, economic and national borders.  Lay leaders, who have a regular job, don’t have to worry about giving an off-putting response to the question, “So what do you do for a living?”  I could go on. 

If you really want to pay someone with your Missions/Outreach budget, pay a person to train lay people to reproduce disciples, leaders and churches.  In the long run, that will greatly decrease your bottom line, and your church will have a long lasting and wide-reaching impact through a laity-driven movement. 

That paid person could help you start a lay movement, asking questions like: Who on your pew has a heart for being missionaries in their own backyard?  Then train them and send them out to start new churches.  Give them permission to stop doing church with you and be church as a way of life, as long as they will teach the new disciples they make to do the same. 

They don’t need to bring a large group of already Christians with them.  Tell them their task is to focus on loving and influencing people who lack the joys of a life surrendered to Jesus.  Most of these people won’t come to a traditional church anyway because they’re fed up with church and religion. 

Here’s a tip: When you commission your next church planter, make it your default setting not to pick one of your ministers or a seminary-trained person in your midst.  They’re more likely to mess it up.  Send members in your congregation who are ordinary Jesus-followers who have already demonstrated they are taking the church to the people and leading them to Jesus.  They don’t have to be young.  And they don’t have to be college-educated.  Just send who God anoints. 

Then include them as a legitimate line item on your Missions/Outreach budget… with a proud “$0.00″ next to it! 

—–

The next two Sunday nights, despite renewed invitations, no neighborhood women came to our small group.  We were very frustrated and sad.  Why did it fail if we had clearly felt from the Spirit that the time was right?

Well, upon further reflection as a team, prayer to the Giver of the increase, advice from our coaches and mentors, and discussion with the women themselves, we realized that like everything else in this place, small groups will look different here!!

Our coach encouraged Phil that most missionaries try 20 different angles before they get 2 or 3 small groups going.  He also challenged us to redefine small groups for our context, and stop trying to force them to fit into our middle class/suburban box.

For instance, we realized that planning a weekly get-together might be a step that happens AFTER the small group is already meeting and the fire is kindled in the hearts of these ladies for the Lord.  How, you might ask, can you have a small group without a weekly meeting? 

Well, that’s where our definition of small groups needs to be tweaked a little.  A small group should be defined by the purpose, which is to grow people in faith in Christ.  The success of this does not depend on regular planned weekly meetings.

We already know that most people in our neighborhood don’t plan their schedules more than a few days in advance, if that.  In general, we receive invitations to parties a few days before they happen.  A friend’s child was baptized: party Saturday, invite Wednesday.  Last week another kid had a birthday: party Sunday, invite Thursday.  This week we’ll be going to another birthday party on Saturday and just received the invite yesterday (Wednesday). 

When I pull out my palm pilot at parent council meetings, everyone stares wide-eyed as I write in dates and times.  I know part of that is because it’s an expensive and unknown piece of technology (I’ve actually “given it up” for a pocket calendar).  However, I’ve noticed no one else there is writing any dates down!  Ever!  As President of the council, I realized fast that if I wanted anyone to be at the meetings, I had to call them all to remind them, not a week before, or a day before, but that very morning, an hour or so before the meeting.

When I asked one of my friends to come to the first small group on Sunday it was Wednesday of that same week.  She said, “Meri, I have no idea what I’ll be doing that day.  You know I don’t plan things that far ahead.”  All the other ladies who said they were free and would be coming (three of them) just forgot, or had “something come up” that night.  We are very used to making plans with people, having them say yes, and then having them not show up or cancel at the last minute.  It is a very regular occurance here.  There are a myriad of reasons why this is the case, and I don’t have time to go into all of them right now.  In fact, I don’t know all of them anyway! 

It is obvious to see that people in our neighborhood seem to do better with the spontaneous, rather than the planned.  Ed and Katie had been trying for months to plan a get together with one particular family next door to eat dinner together and hang out.  They kept cancelling, then Ed and Katie had to cancel.  It seemed as though it would never happen!  Then one evening the two couples were pulling in their driveways at the same time around supper.  They quickly decided to go together to a restaurant to eat, on the spot!  And another different family who was pulling in too, decided to join them.  Three families, all with kids, eating together on the spurr of the moment, after months of planning had not succeeded.

Drop-in visits are completely acceptable and even welcome here.  Phil and I dropped by one family’s apartment last Saturday night after dinner out (our dear friend had the boys) and asked them to borrow a DVD.  We ended up going in, hanging out for an hour or so, looking at photo albums and swapping stories about our families.  Their place was a mess, the t.v. was going, and food stilll out on the table, but we were welcome to stay and talk! 

I dropped by my hairdresser’s apartment a few days ago and sat for an hour while she cut hair and talked to her and the 5 or 6 clients who funneled through…the topic woven throughout – the Bible! 

Phil just stopped by a friend’s apartment the other afternoon and was welcomed in, even though the friend had been asleep!  He stayed and talked about all kinds of things with that young man and his brother.  The topics ranged from tagging crews to Church and the meaning of Christianity. 

When I walked up to another friend’s place for a brief moment the other day she was in the dirty, tiny, hot laundry room doing her wash.  We stood and talked for 45 minutes about her autistic son and the heartbreak she and her husband suffered as they navigated life with him.  We prayed together and I left. 

The grandmother who lives downstairs from us is teaching me how to crochet on Saturday mornings.  We talk about prayer, God in struggle, passages from the Bible, and other things. 

Our coach has been challenging us to view these all as small group moments!  Upon reflection, we are actually feeling confident that the three Sundays of no-shows is not a sign that we mis-heard the Holy Spirit as much as misunderstood the M.O. of our own people in this neighborhood. 

A couple with whom we’ve been studying the Bible used to cancel so many times on us that we felt like throwing in the towel.  And only in the last four weeks, after six months of Bible studies, meals together, hanging out time, did they begin to value the worship time on Sunday mornings enough to show up at all (they’d only come once before that).  But when they decided to do that, they haven’t missed a one in four weeks!  They even took a roll in planning things for this Sunday morning’s gathering as we are out of town.  Praise God! 

For suburbanites, and middle-class America, it is accepted that showing up at a regularly scheduled small group is a sign of a seeker’s heart.  Here, a seeker’s heart is found every day in small conversations, time spent in a laundry room or a living room with a beauty shop chair, play time in the concrete “back yard”, an hour of crocheting, or sitting on the stoop to get out of the stuffy apartment.  We’ve got the venue already, and it’s our way of life!  We don’t need to issue invitations, THEY are inviting US! 

One thing is for sure, we are not letting go of our goal.  Now I am more determined to bring a Bible with me, with a verse or two I feel God calling me to share with someone…I will know from those times who is receptive and which “small groups”, like the couple I referenced above, will grow into a commitment to regularly scheduled things.  I have so many ideas of where these small groups might spring up and am excited to see which ones will become regular and growing.  I’m going to start with my laundry room friend.  Her husband and brother-in-law are already getting to know Phil.  Also, my crocheting partner.  We invited her to our small group and she declined.  She confessed to me later that it was because she was hoping her daughter (who’s a very troubled young woman) might go, but her daughter had said she wouldn’t if my friend went too.  Maybe these will be our next small groups… completely unplanned by us and completely granted by God’s grace.

We’ll let you know what our 20 or so attempts look like, and how the Spirit brings these “groups” together! 

—–

Wow!  What a challenging road these last three weeks have been for Katie and me as we navigate the world of small groups in a very different context than we’ve ever experienced before. 

The Holy Spirit had been prompting us to begin a group for women in the neighborhood.  We’d spent lots of time getting to know these particular ladies, praying for them, and having many “God” conversations on all different levels.  In our hearts, we knew it was time to get them into a formal study of the word…it was time to start a small group!  We decided since one of the women spoke only English, and since two ladies from the Hollywood Church of Christ were helping us and they did not speak Spanish, we would only invite the women who were bilingual.  Then we’d start a Spanish-speaking small group next month! 

So we prayed and brainstormed, talked with other urban missionaries with more experience, and came up with a game plan.  We decided to have some desserts and coffee, spend time talking and sharing, aswering some questions we’d have ready like, “How have you seen God working in your life this week?”.  Then we’d spend time in prayer for each other and others in the neighborhood.  Finally we’d watch a short scene from the “The Gospel of John” DVD (first week: the story of the woman at the well).  We’d issue verbal invitations to seven women, then written ones, and finally a quick reminder call or drop-by on the day of the event.  We even wrote a little “script” to help us use just the right words to explain the purpose of the group – not too pushy or churchy, but also forthwright and excited about the fellowship, prayer, and Bible componants of each Sunday evening! 

The day we were to do the inviting, our whole team prayed and fasted for these women.  It was a wonderful day for us as we felt God’s peace.  Overall, the invites were well received, although it was tough to read the responses…were they just being polite or were they really interested enough to come?   

Well, when 7:00 p.m. Sunday came, we were very disappointed when no one appeared at Katie’s door.  We waited for about 15 minutes and even called some of the ladies to see if they’d just forgotten.  Most weren’t home, one said she was too busy getting her granddaughter ready for school, and one said she’d see if she could come by later.  We were so disheartened!  We were drowning our sorrows in brownies and hot cocoa when Katie reminded us of the story that Jesus tells in Luke 14 where the Master invites people to his banquet but they are all too busy and no one comes.  Then he tells his servant to go out into the streets and invite all they see, even the undesirables.  After that, the Master sends him out yet again for more saying, “Make them come in!”

So, we went out.  We prayed as we walked and went to women that had not been invited.  That evening we had three women and one girl come to the “small group”.  It didn’t look aything like what we had envisioned.  We spoke Spanish, so it was difficult to come up with translations for our well-thought-out questions on the turn of a dime.  The sound on the movie wouldn’t work and we couldn’t get the Spanish subtitles to play anyway.  People had to leave because we started and ended so late, and we weren’t even sure if the ladies really enjoyed the time or not, although they said they’d all like to come again.

—

In part two I will share what happened the next week, and what we are learning from this experience.