Jimmy Shaw somehow got Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution, to come to share his vision of the kingdom in Searcy on December 8. The event is free and open to all, and is not sponsored by Harding.

Read more on Jimmy’s site

Encouraged by the response to my last post, I feel I should flesh out what I see as the future of interaction between Christians in an area, from a post-congregational perspective.

In this model as I’m envisioning it, there would be no congregations. There would be tons of gatherings of Christians for various purposes, but they would have overlapping membership and leadership, and would be part of a fluid network across the region.

Elders, pastors, deacons, and the like would all still have their roles, but without being split off into congregations. People who are obviously wise and godly will naturally be looked to as leaders, even without formal power or titles or money.

My bias is, clearly, toward forms of church that do not require staff, buildings, or a great deal of overhead. Most of what Christians want and need to do to live out their faith can be done without all the spending that goes on in the name of church today. Let’s consider some examples:

• We continue to hold film & spirituality gatherings on alternating Saturdays
• Matt & Colleen have people over for dinner and fellowship on Wednesday nights
• Gary leads a bible study at his house on Tuesdays

These are real examples, and I think they represent some of the most powerful possibilities for the future of the church.

Some types of gatherings, though, require more overhead and are not sustainable without a more congregational approach. For example, a worship service that requires a large venue and staff is not possible without a gathered, committed group of people who are supporting it financially as well as through their involvement.

Or is it? What if we started to treat events such as worship services for what they are, and started paying for them by selling pay-what-you-can tickets that reflect their true cost? What if their expense was removed from church budgets, or better still, what if churches ceased to have budgets?

For a long time, I’ve believed that the model of pastors and laity is not the correct model for the church. It’s been easy to believe this, being in a church that did not have a pastor.

For a long time, I’ve believed that the church should be a low-overhead institution, not a huge, property-owning, salary-paying behemoth. It’s been easy for me to believe this, being in a church that has no budget and no assets.

For a long time, I’ve believed that churches should move beyond the worship service to other methods of communal and spiritual practice. It’s been easy for me to believe this, being in a church that doesn’t really have a worship service.

For a long time, I’ve believed that congregationalism - the idea that we’re one group of Christians and you over there are another church, a separate group - is wrong. It’s been hard for me to believe this, being in a church that is just such a separate group.

I much prefer, but have been unable to live out, the idea that the church is a network, an organization unlike a company or a nonprofit but much like a web of relationships. Now, no longer having a regular Sunday church to call my congregation, I need to start thinking seriously about what this network approach to being the people of God looks like.

Throw it all out. We’ve gotten it wrong in too many ways for too many years to bother any more.

Start fresh. Start with kingdom living. Start with theology. Start with relationships. Forget about meetings and structures and organizations and goods and services and just see what emerges.

That’s where I am. It’s 11 PM on a Saturday night, and I don’t want to “go to church” anywhere tomorrow morning. We did that for five years, and a month ago stopped, and while we’ve gone to two great churches since then on Sundays, I don’t want to continue. I don’t think that’s where the future lies, and I can’t continue doing something I don’t believe in any more.

I do believe in Jesus. I do believe in a God who created the world and everything in it. I do believe in a gospel message that teaches us the true path to life.

Let’s start there and see what emerges.

HU friends Brett & April Emerson are missionaries in Africa, and need a new truck.

In January, Brett, April, and Caden Emerson moved to Togo to join the mission team in Kara. Since then, they had been borrowing a truck and saving up for their own. A few months ago, they finally got it. A few weeks ago, they found a minor leak and gave it to a mechanic to fix. He fixed it, took it for a test drive, had a momentary lapse in judgement, started speeding, drove off a bridge, landed 40 feet away, completely totaling the Emerson’s brand new truck that took them 7 months to raise the money for. All I’m asking for is a dollar, but dollars add up pretty quickly. Let’s see what God can do…I don’t think it will take another 7 months for a new one. link to Facebook group

Brett explains on their blog:

We did not have comprehensive accident coverage because it costs about $10,000 per year, so we are going to have to salvage what we can and find the money for a new truck, around $40,000. The thought of fundraising again makes us sick to our stomachs, but it also gives us a chance to step aside and allow God to work, because there is NO WAY that we can do it on our own. We just don’t have the resources available to us. We know that God will provide, so stay tuned for a crazy and encouraging story about how He does it…

If you’d like to help, use the PayPal button in the sidebar here on RC or in the latest post on their blog.

I get emails from Josh Peck and celebrities all the time via the One Campaign. Most of the time, they’re asking me to write to some policymaker to request some anti-poverty action be taken.

Today, I got one that shared the results of a recent campaign - the effort to get Liberia’s debt canceled by the International Monetary Fund.

In short, it worked.

On October 26, ONE members sent emails to the International Monetary Fund asking them to make good on their promises and cancel Liberia’s debt. Each individual email might not seem like much, but all together we flooded IMF’s email system and it couldn’t handle them all.

And it worked. We did it. We put on the pressure, and they responded. But you don’t have to take my word for it.

Yesterday, Masood Ahmed, Director of the IMF’s External Relations, posted an open letter on the IMF’s website announcing that they finally took the step necessary to move forward. Some key excerpts:

I am pleased to inform you that on November 12, 2007, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has secured adequate pledges from member countries for the cost of the IMF’s debt relief to Liberia
…
We have received a large volume of emails on this topic, so this letter is being posted because it is impossible to respond to each message individually.
…
I take this opportunity to also thank all those who have expressed their concerns about Liberia’s debt situation. Their strong support to the cause of debt relief contributed to the broad donor support that made this financing possible. link

Liberia’s debt is being canceled as part of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) from the International Monetary Fund. IMF explains:

How the HIPC Initiative works

To be considered for HIPC Initiative assistance, a country must: (1) be IDA-only and PRGF-eligible; (2) face an unsustainable debt burden, beyond traditionally available debt-relief mechanisms; (3) establish a track record of reform and sound policies through IMF- and IDA-supported programs; and (4) have developed a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) through a broad-based participatory process. Once a country has met or made sufficient progress in meeting these criteria, the Executive Boards of the IMF and IDA formally decide on its eligibility for debt relief, and the international community commits to reducing debt to the agreed sustainability threshold. This is called the decision point. Once a country reaches its decision point, it may immediately begin receiving interim relief on its debt service falling due. In order to receive the full and irrevocable reduction in debt available under the HIPC Initiative, however, the country must: (i) establish a further track record of good performance under IMF- and IDA-supported programs; (ii) implement satisfactorily key reforms agreed at the decision point, and (iii) adopt and implement the PRSP for at least one year. Once a country has met these criteria, it can reach its completion point, at which time lenders are expected to provide the full debt relief committed at decision point. link

It’s nice to hear that an email can make a difference. You can sign up to participate in things like this at one.org.

Our church has decided to stop meeting on Sundays, as I mentioned a few days ago. In the past week or so, I’ve been surprised at how there is a general sense among members that this also means the church is ceasing to exist, or that we have now failed in our efforts to plant a church.

We are continuing Film & Spirituality as well as our mid-week book discussion groups, which are currently focusing on How (Not) To Speak of God and The Great Divorce. So SMC is far from gone, and I consider it far from a failure.

However, I did underestimate how much it would feel like a failure to stop having our Sunday “service,” a term I despise because, well, I’m not a big fan of the idea of a weekly worship service. I never assumed we’d have a Sunday service for the long term, yet somehow we ended up with one.

Worship services are not easy for a small, leaderless group to pull off. For a long time, we didn’t really worry too much about the format, since we’re just a fairly small and informal group. A few months ago, though, when we had more people, we developed a liturgy to lend some consistency to our weekly gatherings.

More recently, without enough people to fill all the spots on the liturgy, it became difficult to sustain or see the value in this format, so we decided to stop doing it. While this has been deeply disturbing to our group, I think that’s a good thing, because it’s shaken us up and is forcing us to consider what it really means to be Christians in community. Here are some of my initial thoughts.

First, it’s time to stop doing things just because we always have. There’s no scriptural mandate to have a worship service, and if we’re bad at running it and not getting anything out of it, it’s time to find other ways to spend our time.

Second, it’s time to get beyond the idea of a church, a congregation, as a valid and discrete entity. There is only the church and groups that subdivide it. For too long, we’ve been subdivided but not connected to the other parts of the church in our area. We’ve taken Paul’s metaphor of the church as the body of Christ and shrunken it down so each congregation or gathering is the body, and everything outside that body is either a potential invader or an organ that’s been removed from the body.

If we’re to use Paul’s body metaphor correctly, we need to see the entire church as the body. Jesus’ messages to the seven churches in Revelation address the entire city as if it were one church, not many churches. I don’t know the congregational status of the Christians in these cities, but I’m guessing they didn’t all meet all at once, nor consider themselves separate, isolated congregations.

Third, we need to start seeing the church as a network of Christians in community and in relationship with each other. For the past five years, we’ve done very little networking or connecting with other Christians in our city. This past weekend at Off The Map Live, I got to see and catch up with several church planter friends, many of whom have left the church-planting business. As I spoke with people, I got the sense that, as Dwight Friesen said in a slightly different context, our best days are ahead of us. We’ve got a lot more thinking to do, and that thinking must include further development of trans-congregational ecclesiology.

As I said a few months back, it’s been a long while since I thought seriously about ecclesiology, probably because we’ve been spinning our wheels as a church and were getting to the point where we needed a shakeup. That shakeup as come, and now the thinking is coming fast and furious.

This past Sunday we had the pleasure of visiting The Ohana Project, a church started by some great people several years ago in a manner fairly similar to SMC. They meet in a community center and seem to be growing nicely, though they have observed that many people are not interested in coming every Sunday. Membership is much more fluid, and I think this reflects the network nature of the church as it is developing in Seattle.

I am eager to continue to think about these issues, visit with other Christians, and develop new ways for Seattle Metro Church to serve in our area. I also look forward to the ways we as a faith community and a group of friends can continue to enrich each other’s lives and faith.

The best is yet to come. Love to all.