Brian McLaren on Church Planting
“We need thousands of leaders to help lead existing churches through the current paradigm shift. AND we need thousands of leaders to help plant new faith communities. Both are essential, and progress in one helps the other. Among church planters, we need folks who will start churches to help alienated churchgoers … people who will drop out of church unless somebody forms a more open space where they can survive and thrive spiritually. But no less important — more important, in my opinion — we need church planters who will go much farther than most alienated churchgoers would want to go — to meet the ‘spiritual but not religious’ where they are and form faith communities among them, forming authentic disciples or followers of Jesus without needless religious baggage. So I just wanted to say to you and anyone else feeling this call … you’re needed. Fan the flame. Go for it. Don’t let anyone discourage you!”
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Brian,
I am one of those you mention: a church planter willing “to meet the ‘spiritual but not religious’ where they are and form faith communities among them, forming authentic disciples or followers of Jesus without needless religious baggage.”
Long story made very short, I was a pastor in a large denomination for a number of years. Through God’s release of a new vision for a new kind of ministry in my soul, four and a half years ago I moved with my wife and three teenagers, without a job or a place to live, to a city I wasn’t from, to try to do ministry I didn’t yet know how to do with people I didn’t yet know how to meet. I have every confidence I will not be asked to teach strategic planning at Harvard Business anytime soon, so that frees up part of my future calendar.
What I have gotten to be a part of is the emergence of a community of people comprising a dynamic mix of relatively traditional believers, many skeptics and agnostics, and some even of other world religions, bound together in a Kingdom kind of living that is giving hope and a reason to believe to us all. This community embodies the gospel in such a way that those previously disconnected, disappointed, disillusioned and disenfranchised are finding their place in a missional ecology that precedes but leads to a deep faith. It is powerful and beautiful.
When I was in seminary, I had a favorite professor. He taught advanced Hebrew courses and Old Testament. I had him for both. I loved calling his office phone when he wasn’t in, for his voicemail message went something like this: “Hello. You’ve reached the disembodied voice of Dr. So and So.” Leave your name and number, and I’ll call you back when the rest of me returns.” I thought it was hilarious.
I realized about a year ago that that message was a perfect way to describe what the Church has become in North America:
a disembodied voice. A lot of words and too little life. A proposition without a prototype. And we all are begging for an incarnation.
In Toledo these days, there is a little, but growing group of people learning to live together in a Kingdom kind of way. The deepest skeptic joins with the most devout believer in loving neighbor and risking the impact of trying to live out the teachings of Jesus. Together, we work for justice, and see to it that nobody has to try to make it alone. Belonging precedes believing, and lots of people are learning how to belong and finding out they already do.
For me and my family, it has been hard and very costly in many ways that I won’t describe here. I felt at the time that something really important in me would die if I didn’t try. I’m so glad I did.
Steve North