From Emerging Evangelism:
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Backyard Missionary Hamo says:

the incarnational approach to mission is refreshingly simple. It requires us to live amongst the people in our communities, love them, share the good news of the kingdom both in action and in speech and then as people become followers of Christ to form up indigenous communities of faith that reflect the specific context.

This is the challenge we are facing in our church plant. Our main gathering is getting too big for one living room, so it’s numerically time to start a new group, but we don’t want to just duplicate our existing gathering. We want to reach missionally into the city around us.

I see our primary “target audience” (though I don’t like the term) as being people who at some level believe in God and Jesus, but don’t see themselves attending a church service. More than likely, these people think churches are full of hypocrites, a waste of time, and not necessary for their lives.

How do you go about forming a community of such people, and helping them to become a church? What would church look like for such people? This is where the contextualization question becomes essential. If we let ecclesiology flow out of missiology, we don’t decide what the church will look like before we have the people who will constitute it.

So what would such a group of people be doing if not attending a church-like gathering? Stuart Robinson’s warnings from his experience with a night club-style “church” are to be heeded here. He says in his article “I Killed a ‘Church’”:

As the night rolls on, the host introduces the theme of ‘spirituality’ and the person Jesus. He speaks (no notes) and people interact. The closest equivalent is ‘stand-up’ comedy. To be honest, its a free-for-all. Everyone has an opinion. And they express it. Loudly.
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My aim was to move people from this ill defined gathering into more intentional ‘process-evangelism’ type groups. The ‘congregation’ (!) had other ideas. They simply wanted to hang out…to have the freedom to turn up or stay at home.

The people who had been showing up for the night club-style gathering were not at all interested in bible study or discussion groups. His ecclesiology was not contextualized (beyond the initial gathering), and people ran.

You might be surprised where I’m heading with this: neo-monastic orders. In the middle ages, monastic orders were for “advanced” Christians who took special vows and entered a rigorous way of life in pursuit of deeper faith. In the postmodern world, I submit that we will see an inversion of the role of monastic orders - people will commit to a way of life in community with others before committing to the Christian faith and publicly self-identifying as a Christian.

Weird, I know. But I think it just might work. What might such a neo-monastic order look like? What would it emphasize?

• Spiritual formation / spiritual growth / spirituality (obviously)
• Care for the earth / environment
• Creativity (individual and/or communal)

This idea is still in the formative stages, of course, so I’d appreciate your feedback.
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