A response, not a reaction

Hey, I said in answering Jeff's question (see the 'book recommendation' post) that I'd blog something about church not being a reaction but a response. It's a view that I think I've articulated for a couple of years now and has been shaped by seeing church-planting that has been quite odd in its outlook, in a number of places.

In Luton less than one percent of 18-30 year olds go to church. That's about 330 people, in a city of 185,000. At the same time, we struggle to engage with this group through meaningful and fruitful evangelism. That's not a criticism - I know that it's hard! In my job, I see the difficulty of this task every day. This is the situation, and the situation is bad. There is considerably more going on with almost every other age-group church wise, than this one.

I think the challenge to us is to engage with this situation, and I term this the 'response'. How do we turn around those statistics? How do we make evangelism amongst young adults a priority? I think the answer is long and multi-faceted, but for me, it seems crazy that one of those responses will not be church planting. That is a responsable engagement with the issues leading to a respectable part of the solution. This is good, healthy, and at the end of the day, sustainable.

The other root of church planting is the 'reaction'. Churches become defined by what they are not; planted by people who are fed-up with existing models of church or the leaders in those churches, or the seeming unwillingness in those churches to listen to their agendas.

Church planting as a reaction to other churches sucks. Not just in the ultimate sense, but for the people they are reacting against, for the people actually planting them and the people they come into contact with. Many of these are to a lesser or greater extent churches planted in rebellion. And I don't think that is sustainable. When you hit the dificult stuff, the answer to 'Why are we doing this?' ends up being, because all the other churches are crap. That is not a good place to find yourself!

When we inevitably hit trouble I want us to answer the question very differently. For starters I don't think the other churches are crap. I think we have some valueable stuff to bring to the party. I don't think every church should have the same agenda as ours. I think that our agenda is valid.

I don't want to plant something that is a reaction to the present church scene, taking every insecurity we have as a group and projecting it on something as prescious as the church. I want to see a situation where more people have been on a 'club18-30' holiday than a church in the past year transformed - and that's why planting needs to be a response not a reaction.

Of frozen ponds and half-eaten rolls

Six of us spent a saturday in Luton a couple of weeks ago. Though sadly bereft of Ruth who was at 'the Junction' (passim.) we had a spiffing time.

We arrived just after midday, five came from Cambridge in a car, one from London on the train. After meeting at the station the more lazy amongst us (?) took a ride straight up to Jude's house, Laura, Mark and I began to walk that way.

It was a cold bright day, while Laura and Mark talked I became distracted by a long, frozen pond which I decided to throw stones into. At the round-about near the cricket ground we found some thick patches of ice that still hadn't been touched by the sun, so we played the sliding game - Mark outdoing us both by performing a skid on his hands.

We were picked up by Gav further up the hill and found that, while he had bought lunch at Tesco's, Fiona and Liz were having fun too - Fiona throwing herself on the floor in a field and getting her new pink gloves dirty. Piling in the car, with a great deal of complaint from the smallest and most anxious of our group, we drove on to Jude's house 2 minutes away.

What a great place to be, a lot of forming time has already been spent there by most of the people on the team, and to sit in the big sofas drinking tea and eating biscuits (kindly supplied by Laura, or maybe Jude,) gave me a strange perspective on the journey we've been on over the last two, three, four years.

We had come to spend some time in Luton and talk about how we saw relationships and their values in the context of church. We did a bit of meditation about some Bible narratives and then started chatting around a few themes. What was said I think is for somebody else to relate, but the afternoon was punctuated by lunch, a notable event of which was Mark selecting a sandwich from a plate, taking a bite and replacing it on the plate deciding he didn't like it. This behavior he termed 'acceptable'.

After talking further, and seeing the house's owner briefly as she came in and went out, we set off to do some prayer walking. Splitting into two groups we decided to meet down at The Moathouse where we would eat £4.95 carvery, mmm. Mark, Laura and I said we would tough it out again and walked there, while Gav, Fiona and Liz drove to the area and did some walking around.

The three of us chatted most of the way, arrived early and went out again to do some slightly more explicit praying. By the close of play I was cold and hungry, keen to hurry Laura and Mark to the pub where Liz, Fiona, Gav and three kinds of roast meat awaited us. Fiona caught the coach home, the rest of us were driven by Gav and we picked her up again at Drummer Street in Cambridge.

I quite forgot: I took the picture on the way to the The Moathouse. Luton you are beautiful.

Book recommendation

As unlikely as it seems, (me recommending a book that is) I have been reading one that will be very interesting to anyone with an interest in church planting or emerging churches. It's called, rather disappointingly, 'Emerging Churches' and is published in the UK by SPCK. The authors are Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger and I got my copy off Amazon.

What I like about this book is it takes a sociological set of skills to the question of what the emerging church really is. Most books I have read on this topic are from an inspirational or prophetic viewpoint - in other words, lots of hyperbole and not much substance. The authors of this book interviewed about 50 church leaders in both the US and the UK to try and understand what is common in the so called 'emerging church'. It's also fun to spot quotes from people we know.

Without spoiling the ending like I did the other day with the Sixth Sense, Gibbs and Bolger argue:

- that the emerging church is not the same as 'gen-x' church, or 'seeker friendly' church, or 'house' church
- emerging churches are trying to create missional community in postmodern culture
- that modern churches can't house post-modern expressions in the same structure

And that emerging churches all share:

- an emphasis on the 'kingdom' (in other words where modern churches are mainly interested in Jesus' death and resurection, emerging churches realise that we can learn much from the way Jeus lived before he died)
- a tearing down of secular and sacred space (modern churches seek to bring people into a sacred space while emerging churches seek to make all secular spaces sacred by bringing God into them)
- a desire to live as community (church isn't a service but a community)

For most of us this is not earth shattering, but it is really interesting to read about ourselves, if you know what I mean. Gibbs and Bolger extend these themes and offer stories and illustrations that give a clearer handle on the movement and what has caused church to move in this direction. Worth the £10 cover price for the discription of the Nine O'Clock Service alone, this book comes highly recommended.

Bruce Willis was dead from the start.