Church (Plant) vs. Church Service

I had a recent realization that might help define some of what Nate and I are doing with this whole church plant thing.

We are planting a church, not a church service.

On any given day, Nate and I are the ones who need this reminder the most at this point. But let me unpack a bit of the difference between a church and a church service.

A church service is an event that you go to usually in a specific building. I used to help plan church services for years. It was my part of my job and something that brought out great passion yet also a slew of things like pressure, expectations, hopes, disappointments and so on. A church service is an event that is usually quite structured, with purposeful time for teaching, music (aka “worship”), prayer, giving of tithes and offerings, a “greeting time” (you know, say hello to people around you), and sometimes something special and different like celebrating the sacraments of baptism or communion, or perhaps a baby dedication.

At a church service there is almost always an unwritten code of behavioral expectations. Whether it is how to participate, when to do certain things, how long the service should take overall, how long the teaching or the music should be, how loud it should be, what words are acceptable or unacceptable, what clothes are acceptable or unacceptable, what qualifies as a “distraction” and how to deal with it, and so on and so on. Believe me, I am somewhat of an expert on evaluating a church service and all its nuances. (And no, I do not say this with pride.)

A church service is one way of gathering the church community together. There are other events like small groups, Bible studies, service projects, etc. that also draw people from the church community together. But the Sunday morning service is the big kahuna.  There are books written (good and helpful books that I have ardently agreed with!) about “The Hour on Sunday” and how important of a time it is for a church community. So to be clear, I’m in NO way arguing against the church gathering together, nor am I discrediting the efforts, energy and experiences that I have had and many others have in these kinds of church services.

If we were planting a church service, we probably would have things like a sound system, a worship team, a “teaching pastor”, a children’s ministry program, a bulletin, a budget and especially a team of people that are the “seed” or “core” group starting up the service with us. Basically a traditional church plant involves taking a chunk of money and a group of people and transplanting them into a new location to do a church service. And a lot of that money and effort and resources go into wooing new people to this church service.

So lately it is not uncommon for someone to ask us how our the church plant is going by asking how our Sunday mornings are going. Heck, we catch ourselves doing it on our way home from our gathering time on Sunday. It’s not a bad question or the wrong question, it just is not the only question and it is also not the most important question.

If we leave our perception of how planting a church is going to our evaluations of Sunday mornings, then we are grossly misrepresenting what Church is about and what God is doing and has asked us to do in our lives.

We’re not going the traditional route, and it’s not because that way is wrong, it’s just not how we are going about it. The simplest reason why? We believe God has called us to be more like cultural missionaries, sent to do something much different than put all of the emphasis and resources on creating a new church service. We very much want to help create community and space for people to gather, and part of that is that we gather together on Sunday mornings at the Fox Hole.

At this point we have met for three Sundays now. (And yes in some ways, we are just beginning.) We are still figuring things out and it probably wouldn’t even “qualify” as a church service according to some standards. We have not done any marketing and our programming is virtually non-existent. We sit on couches and around tables and our little baby crawls around at everyone’s feet while we talk. We share and read from the Bible. We pray. We drink coffee and have food. We talk and get to know new people. The kids have their own time of reading together from the Jesus Storybook Bible and I plan activities for them that aim to connect what we are all talking about that particular morning, too. And yes, we very much want new people who are not connected into a community (church or not) to come and share time together with the hopes of find a place of connectedness and friendship while getting to know Jesus a bit more.

But we are not putting our emphasis on the Sunday morning gathering only. Our time, energy and resources are not solely focused on the structure of a service and the efforts of wooing people there.

For Nate and I, our whole lives are in the process of being reordered, even replanted in a way. Obviously there are many things that are still very much the same, like where we live, where Nate works, some of the rhythms of our life as a family.  But many of the things that we would emphasize in the past about “doing” church or being part of a church community are being redefined. We have created a new gathering time on Sunday mornings, but it’s not the only thing we are doing in our lives to help bring Jesus’ love, truth and presence to people.

And let me say one last very important thing: the point of this post is not to discourage anyone from asking about our Sundays (or better yet, praying for our gatherings!) because they do matter deeply to us. But as we continue on this journey, don’t be surprised if you ever ask us how the church is going if our stories don’t consist only of how the church service or church gathering is going, as those couple of hours of our week are just one fraction of this new chapter in our lives.

– If you ever want to read a fantastic book that talks about some more of this kind of stuff and has been really helpful for us as it has put words and confirmations to some of our seemingly random thoughts and ideas, we totally recommend the book, “AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church” by Smay & Halter. –

Some pictures of “Church” at the Fox Hole

The first time we took the boys down to the Fox Hole to see where we would be gathering, E’s reaction was fantastic: “COOL! We can play foosball at church!?! We can play ping pong at church!?! And we can have a dance party on that stage!!!” And then he turned and saw the big screen TV and multiple gaming consoles and he looked at me and said, “Can we even play video games at church?” I said yes… to everything but the video games, of course. And we may or may not have had a dance party that very morning.

We love the Fox Hole. It’s comfortable, open, and welcoming with old couches and round tables and plenty of space where we envision great conversations happening with great people. There’s room for playing, for sharing, for music and for coffee. (All important things in my mind at least.) It’s lived in and just grimy enough when you really stop to look around. I like that. That feels real. And there are even treasures like old wobbly lamps and lonely socks and rolls of toilet paper under the coffee table.

So right now, “church” looks like conversations, coffee and cinnamon rolls, playing, families, getting comfortable on old nappy couches, sitting around round tables, being together, prayer. We’ve heard that planting a church is “creating church where it doesn’t exist.” So obviously this is much more than simply the room, and especially more than the routines or rituals that are perhaps expected with the standard weekly church *service* rhythm. It is the formation of community preceding the typical look of doing church.

Fantastic.

One Sunday with some dreaming and planning. Oh and BYO Dutch Bros.

Yes, he's part of the package. Maybe even the best part.

The room for the dance party/church gathering.

C & O playing chess. Yep, this is how we roll at "church"

 

 

 

“Lets go do stuff”

We had the privilege of listening to Bob Goff share some stories today at George Fox University. In the course of “what, it’s over already?” kind of 45 minutes, I think I heard variations of “Lets go do stuff” about a dozen times. I told Nate afterward that I want to figure out how to pipe Bob’s enthusiasm, laugh and motivation into my brain every day. Maybe he could be morning wake up call: “Get up. Lets go do stuff.”

His version of going and doing stuff is pretty incredible. That’s why there’s a link to his blog because I think you should read about it for yourself. What you miss out by just reading his words though is his awesome, “can you believe this is happening?” kinda laugh that is truly infectious.

So here were a few great takeaways from today:

- No one dreams of becoming typical… live into who you are made to be. Seriously, stop and read that again. LIVE. INTO. WHO. YOU. ARE. MADE. TO BE. You are made to be something right now, not a future version of yourself, and you may just have to “live” into it…not study or think or prepare or plan or just dream… live it. Today. I hear that to be about a present tense and purpose that often gets pushed aside by procrastination, fear and misplaced priorities if I’m really being honest with myself.

- He gave up going to “Bible Studies” because he wants to be a “Bible doer” – so he reads and thinks about what Jesus talks about while he flies to Uganda to go do some stuff that he thinks is the kind of stuff that matters to Jesus, like bringing hope, justice and love. He said he believes great things happen (seriously, have you read any of his blog yet?) because he knows what Jesus loves AND he (Bob and other people in his life) decided to just show up and try to do some stuff.

- “I don’t know all the steps but I know the next step.” – I couldn’t help but smile as I heard this because this is so much of what Nate and I have been saying to each other almost daily recently. Our version of it has been “lets just show up and see what happens…” and for the perfectionists, planners, low-risk takers that we are, this is a s t r e t c h. We’ve been saying this about our Sunday gatherings and we’ve been saying this about the other six days of the week, too. It’s pretty much every day that we are realizing that we need to just show up and be present, to be available, to be there for someone or something or some unplanned conversation. And at the end of the day we end up saying, “Wow, that was pretty serendipitous, like God orchestrated it!” (Yes, sometimes we are slow to catch on.)

It was affirming, encouraging and inspiring to hear it from someone who has, by many accounts, done a lot of stuff…like build a high school in Northern Uganda out of literally nothing but mud, or authored books, or speak at conferences all over the country, or has been to the White House, or who has helped put witch-doctors who mutate children in jail, and the stories really do go on and on.

Yet it would be really easy to evaluate someone who has done these kinds of world-changing, life-altering things, as someone who has some fast track to getting something done that is so far beyond me that it’s too far beyond me. Especially as I sit here during my boys nap time with piles of laundry in baskets at my feet, dinner to make, and a life that does not include world politicians, global flights, and a law degree.

And for anyone who reads this you may think, but I’m not out to change the world… Sure, maybe you aren’t the way Bob Goff has. But maybe if you were honest, like even uncomfortably honest with yourself and you thought about something that you think maybe you could do, or God has maybe even nudged you to do, with your passions, skills, interests or dreams… are you doing it?

The story of my life, which is written daily, could go two ways. It could either be lived out as someone who did some stuff, who took some next steps to actually do some things, whatever they may be (because I really don’t think God cares about how big my steps of obedience or faith are compared to anyone else’s)… Or I can read and study, prepare and plan as I sit on the sidelines just cheering people like Bob Goff on.

I do cheer you on Bob, but I heard you today cheering me on as well. Thanks for that.

Yes, lets go do stuff.

- kim

“Good News”

“If your gospel is just for people like you, that is not good news.” 

Last week I saw this quote via Twitter and I knew I needed to write down. I also knew that it was going to challenge me if I let myself really think about it. It’s the kind of thing that can either influence your actions and help define why you do what you do, or… it could just be a good quote that is too uncomfortable so it would be easier to “forget” it. I also had the inclination that it might do the same thing for other people.

That means of course, that it’s worth sharing, it is worth talking about and it’s worth getting uncomfortable over.

I better think and act before I speak or write on this much more.

- kim

Tags: christianity, church plant, church planting, faith, Quotes

A Win and A Loss

So what does the Rose Bowl and Rwanda and Church all have in common? As I’m processing this week, I see a thread weaving through those things, so this blog space gets some of my processing.

This week some of our very dearest friends moved to Kigali, Rwanda to serve as missionaries. While I sit and edit this is when their plane is actually descending into Kigali. It’s surreal and been a process of grieving, rejoicing, remembering and trying to be forward thinking.

On Monday we had to say goodbye (for now) as they will be in Kigali for the next two years. Monday was a day of loss of sorts for some of us. Yet Monday was also a win, in many ways, as I know that the community in Kigali just scored a major win in having the Edingers join them.

But the win on Monday came also in a very technical sense for me. My most favorite team, the Oregon Ducks football team, won the Rose Bowl. I love my Ducks. I wasn’t able to fully “feel” the win because the goodbyes to my friends and their kids came a couple of short hours after the game ended. At some point in the very early hours of the morning on Tuesday, I thought: “Oh my gosh, the Ducks won the Rose Bowl! But I just had to say goodbye and my boys just had to say goodbye to some of our best friends. Yahoo! But I’m crying!”

Here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about. My love for my friends and my love for the Ducks intersect quite profoundly. It’s not that it’s just because their eight-year-old Sam was who gave me the first high five after the Rose Bowl victory. It’s not that I would just make a list of things I love and say that the Edinger family and the Ducks are both on the list.

It’s much more than that, and as I have been reflecting I realized that the win and the loss and “church” all come together somehow.

See, I especially love football because of the game, but it’s also because of the team. Not necessarily the people on the team (although I usually do like most of the guys…from what we can see from the outside) but the functioning of team. I really love watching talented people live in roles and responsibilities to work together to make something great happen. I love that in football there is a coach who has to lead yet most importantly empower other leaders; who has to take risks and make tough calls and who has to be willing to live with the calls that he made; and I love that even when the calls get made he has to step back and let the team execute them.

I happen to really like the Ducks coach Chip Kelly, because he is an enigma full of fantastic quotes and philosophies that are succinct and often sarcastic, so the guy usually makes me laugh and think simultaneously. You will often hear Chip say something to the effect of, “We have success because these players have bought into and believe in our system.” It’s sports talk for explaining how Chip and fellow coaches have strategies and a mindset that they expect to be executed to be part of the team. But isn’t football just football? You have the same positions and the same goal (score and win) no matter whether you are playing Pop Warner, College or NFL. So why does Chip repeat himself and talk about “buying into a system” instead of just playing good football? For one thing, because I think that the Ducks system is founded on being a team. Any given player on any given day can be the MVP. Yes they have national award winning, stellar players, but there is not one person on offense or defense who only gets the spotlight week in and week out. And if you dig a little deeper, you see the “stars” doing a lot of work to let the other guys do the work that may get the glory. For instance, DeAnthony Thomas’ record setting 91 yard run for a touchdown in the Rose Bowl was made possible by a key block from LaMichael James that left him leveled on the ground watching his younger teammate run for the score. LaMichael was a Heisman-award candidate… blocking so that someone else can carry the ball and put the points on the board for their team.

Here’s what Chip said after the game:

 “I think this kind of validates what we stand for,” Kelly said. “This team is fearless. They’re resilient. And they’ve got faith… They really stick together and believe in the guy to the right of them and to the left of them because they see what they do every day in practice.”

When I read this, my eyes were still puffy with fresh tears from saying goodbye to some of the people who have been “the guy to the right” of me for years now.

Sticking together and believing, or trusting, each other comes from seeing what we all do every day in real life. Scott and Natasha are the type of people who give whatever they are doing everything they have: as parents (even when it’s exhausting); as teachers; when Natasha would compete in her triathlons or lead people as a gym instructor; when Scott would teach on a Sunday morning, or when he would show up daily to truly pastor and be available to the community at our church. The list goes on and on. We met the Edingers through church and being in small groups together. They were kind and took a risk inviting us to their home and into their lives and part of the loss I am grieving lately is the loss of them as my daily community, my daily teammates.

So when I read this quote about the Ducks being fearless, resilient, having faith, sticking together and believing in the people around you as you prepare and face battles together, it really reminded me of the heart of doing life together and especially doing life together as part of the body of Christ.

I want to be part of a church where team and community is that the core of everything. It is the philosophy that gets executed, not just talked about. I want to be part of a team that lives our lives together, both in and out of the trenches, growing in our trust and admiration of the guys on the right and on the left of us. I want to be part of a team and in a church community where I can throw the perfectly timed block for someone else to be able to carry the ball for a touchdown.

I think there are a lot of ways to play a winning game of football. There are a lot of ways to “do” church. With a new church, the pages are blank and could easily be filled with a hundred different strategies or mission statements or bullet points of ideals on “how” and “what” to do.

For now, I’m thinking about doing life together. Having intentional times together that include eating cinnamon rolls on Sunday morning, drinking coffee, listening, learning, enjoying each other, praying together, encouraging each other. I’m thinking about what it means to be a teammate in people’s lives. Especially people that may not have a team around them right now.

It’s about being present. Taking the risk of community, of engaging and showing up every day with what we all have to offer. Throwing some metaphorical blocks so someone else can gain some yardage in life. And hopefully at the end of the day, having a victory outshine the losses.

I also happen to think the Ducks uniforms are spectacular, but I’ll go ahead and leave that out of the analogy for now.

- kim

The Who & The How

(by Nate)

As I’ve thought of this whole concept of “church planting” one thing that has stuck in the front of my mind is the importance of focusing on the “who” instead of the “how.” It would be really easy for us to try and create the utopian church experience for us and our friends. In fact that is very tempting. But I’m confident that is not what God is calling us to do. (And yet…could it be possible that our current definition of “utopian church experience” will be wonderfully redefined and expanded by doing what God is calling us to do? I wouldn’t be surprised. – kim) 

Kim has mentioned the term “cultural missionaries” in her posts and I think that really describes what we feel like God is calling us to be. We really feel like He is leading us to reach out to those that are missing from church. By that we mean both non-Christians and Christians who may have soured on the idea of church for one reason or another. More specifically, we feel led to reach young people in those two groups. Many of you may have heard the research about how people ages 18-35(ish) are leaving church and, more tragically, are losing their faith in Christ. We want to be a part of helping them come back to a place of understanding the depth of God’s love for them and help introduce new people to His love as well.

If you were to move to some foreign country to be a missionary, you wouldn’t necessarily start by trying to connect with and reach people in that country the way you would the people in your own community. Instead, you’d get to know the people in your mission field, their culture, their nuances, ways to communicate and understand and connect with them. I think I know this instinctively, but when I really think about it, I’m quite convicted with how few people I truly know in our “mission field.” I realize it is going to be a challenge for me to get outside my well established comfort zone and meet some new people and learn about them. In fact, at times I find myself asking God things like, “why wouldn’t you ask someone who already has more friends in this mission field to do this?”  I’m not sure, but I still feel called and so I’m going to follow.

I think it is easy to think of church as a place for us Christians to be fed, and I think it certainly can be. But how limiting is that?!? I’m learning two significant things that have stretched me recently. In a nutshell, one is how that mentality (“the church is there to feed me…”) can be an excuse for us to not take responsibility for our own spiritual development and two, that God has designed the Church (His body) to be a place that reaches out and is sent into the world. I once heard a pastor say, “if you’re not being fed, put on an apron and start serving.” I believe that this is one of the most significant means of where and how spiritual growth happens. And of course, “serving” can look a lot of different ways.

So, if you’re reading this as a Christian and are considering being a part of this group, I want to say I’m so honored and grateful. But I also want to challenge you to join us in the journey of trying to reach beyond ourselves into areas that may be uncomfortable. Yes, it will be a place of community and a place for us to worship and grow, but we plan to keep our focus on those who we feel God has called us to reach. That will inform how we do things, both in our gathering times and our other activities. We have ideas of how this might look, yet we’re also going into this as open-handed as possible, knowing we’ll need to be flexible and willing to change. So I invite you to prayerfully consider if the Lord may be calling you to join us in this endeavor. I’m confident that as we pray and build relationships with those who He leads us to, that the “how” will be rewarding, inspiring and life changing for all of us.

- Nate

Can We Use a Ladder?

The other day I was talking again with the boys about this “starting a new church” thing. Talking about it with a seven year old and three year old is easily one of the best ways to learn how to communicate what it is all about in a simple way.

After we talked again about how God has been asking us to do this as a way to help share His love for people, I asked them a couple of questions: 1) do they want to be a part of it, and 2) would they pray and ask God for ideas about what they can do and how they can help start a new church. They immediately said yes, they want to be a part of it. (Whew. We’re still good there.)

Seven-year-old Eli asked what he should do to help. I told him that God would probably give him some good ideas. After a few moments he said, “I could help build it.” I said “Of course you can!” and yet I knew that he was not thinking about the Scripture passages that share the conversation between Peter and Jesus where Jesus asks Peter to build His church. I knew he was thinking quite literally about building a new building.

Which made for the perfect opportunity for three-year-old Calum to chime in, “I could use a ladder!”

I gave them a minute to get all excited about tools and climbing ladders and didn’t want to completely squelch the very understandable boy enthusiasm for the awesome and fun project they had quickly imagined.

I waited and then said, “boys let me tell you a couple of more things about this new church. First, I love that you want to help make a building because I can see how you would like that project and it makes a lot of sense.  But here’s something awesome: God answered our prayers and instead of us needing to spend a lot of money and build a whole new building, we have found a really cool room at George Fox that we will use to gather and spend time with people, since that will be one part of having a new church.” I then went on to tell them how much I think they will like it and the bonus is that there are some fun things like a foosball table in there. Automatic win for the Fox Hole Church in their eyes.

Then I said that the next thing I needed to tell them is even more important. (And this is where explaining Church to small children is such a good challenge.) I told them that one of the things that God is going to show us all by doing this is that “church” is much, much more than the room or the building that we meet in. It is more than the actual time we will be at the Fox Hole; it is more than what we even do in that room.  I then actually had to pause and think about what else I might say about being the Body of Christ, about it being more than gathering together but all the things we do every day of the week, and… by that point my response was sufficient enough of an explanation for them.

So Eli said, “Maybe I can teach Sunday school with the other kids.”

And I said, “Yes. That sounds just right.”

My boys’ immediate response is not very far off from the response of other grown adults who are quite familiar with church. We are in a small town with a lot of well established churches and people who are familiar with the traditions and the routines of going and being part of a church. So it is not unusual that there are questions such as “why does Newberg need another church?” or “isn’t that more like a Bible study or something rather than ‘church’?” and all these correlations to what is supposed to happen or not happen that can come flooding in.

And let me say that we have plenty of moments of being those very people with questions and expectations. We have been part of a well-established church for the past decade. Our kids have grown up with pews and a stage and a nursery and a fellowship hall. I worked for years there, investing a lot of time and energy in doing church and church services in a very familiar way. We have wondered if what we are dreaming and being led to do actually fits in a town that is small and so therefore something untraditional feels a little… uncomfortable? Like it’s not really church?

There is much to be unpacked about what it is and what it isn’t, but for now, I know that we don’t need ladders. My heart as a mom was full of thanks and joy that my kids are so pliable and eager to follow Jesus that to them, if we don’t need a ladder or hammers to “build” a new church then that is great and still church. They are quick to think of what else might be part of “doing church” together, like teaching Sunday school with their friends. Or simply put, talking with their peers about what happened in the Bible and how that matters today in our lives. And most likely playing with some play dough and having some snacks, too.

Sounds good to me.

- kim

Tags: christian culture, christianity, church planting, faith