Mon 3 Jul 2006
I mentioned in a previous article that Mesilla Park Community Church (www.getrealchurch.org) is branching out by planting new churches in Las Cruces — and hopefully elsewhere soon. The problem we’re having is that MPCC is working on just the right way to label what we’re doing. How do you go about describing something new in your organization when none of the labels that are “out there” seem to fully or accurately convey what you’re really trying to do?
The problem is “House Churches” and “Video Venues.” Both are what MPCC is desiring to plant in the next year, but neither accurately describes the fundamental purpose and reason for these plants.
This post deals with the issue of what to call the “House Churches.” It is so much more than just getting a random group of folks together at somebody’s home and calling it a church. Even if that group has a leader who might or might not qualify to be a pastor, “House Church” is kind of a dumb label. It makes it sound like all it will ever be is a small group of isolated believers enjoying their inbred fellowship while the rest of the world disintegrates around them. If such a church met in a cave, would you call it a “cave church?” It doesn’t help that many “House Churches” in America are held in disdain by more “organized” churches for being just what was described. What MPCC truly wants to do is plant a new church. Period. It might take place in homes. Small groups may in fact be the primary vehicle through which the church accomplishes its goals and mission. But calling it a “House Church” is a lazy excuse for not doing the work to come up with a better description. This is because the vision for the new church plant is so much bigger than a few home groups scattered about town. This new church will be founded on Christ’s example to be both missional AND attractional to our culture and our community in Las Cruces.
Those in the emerging church crowd know what a missional church is. Simply, it is a church that is 100% engaged in mission — seeping through the culture like water through a pile of rocks — seeking relationships with people because you love them, not just because they need Jesus. A likely goal of a missional church might be to be small enough that nobody slips through the cracks. Jesus’ example of meeting the woman by the well ( John 4:4-26) and declaring to Zacchaeus the Tax Collector that he would stay at his house (Luke 19:1-10) show us a few of His missional methods. He met one-on-one with people, crossing social and religious taboos in the process. He used small gatherings to communicate things that couldn’t be communicated any other way.
However, Jesus also employed very effective attractional methods to spread his fame during his incarnation. There may in fact be a few churches today that could feed 15,000 to 20,000 people at once (from the 5000 men PLUS women and children – Luke 9:10-17). However, I doubt there are many churches that could do it without a P/A system or a cafeteria. The many healings that Jesus performed also attracted crowds. The new church will need to find a way to attract crowds in the City of Las Cruces. Feeding and healing are two obvious ways, but there are surely many more as well. One thing the new church will certainly do is meet periodically in large groups for worship and preaching — to exalt the glorified Christ so that all who are there can see, and to proclaim His word so that all who are there can hear. It doesn’t mean that everybody who comes will be happy about what is sung or taught — but the church will do it, anyway. Because Jesus did it.
Understand that the purpose of this post isn’t to bag the viable house church movements out there. It is simply to explain that THIS new church is more complex than that. I propose to just call it “This Year’s Church Plant from MPCC.” Next year there will be another church launched from MPCC — the difficulty with this one’s name will be the topic for a future post. But suffice to say that what you end up calling it will indeed matter as well.
You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house.
Acts 20:20 (NIV)
(Many thanks to Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church in Seattle (www.marshillchurch.org) for providing most of the insight for this post.)
July 12th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
In todays culture what you call something takes on even more problems in view of people having different definitions for words, based on their experience. What you call “church” might mean two different things to two different people. It is quite difficult to give something a name without bringing along the baggage of interpretation of that title by your audience.
On the other hand you must give it some name that really protrays what it is you are trying to create. In Biblical times names were given because of a significant event or meaning. Much the same should be true for such a church. For example a community of home churches (for lack of a better name) that exist in Columbus, OH refer to themselves as Xenos Fellowship, Xenos being the greek word for community. What is interesting about this is that the name of the group portrays a significant part of their purpose, fellowship and community as followers of Christ.