Something I’ve been thinking about lately, with the help of Aram DiGennaro and Christine Pohl, is the idea that programs meant to facilitate disciple-making might actually get in the way of the kind of practices entailed in living the Jesus Way. Right now I’m trying to deconstruct my embedded model of how to do local church. I think it might be interesting, and for an American Christian counterintuitive, to deconstruct our treasured programs in order to identify the kingdom value which gave them birth, and then brainstorm in the direction of alternative ways to embody that kingdom value apart from the structure of a formal program.
My friend Aram is involved in a house-church located in Columbus, OH. It seems that he’s given these issues far more thought than I have, and I’m finding him a compelling new voice speaking of how to live intentionally without being overly programmed, and how the local church can do ministry “grassroots” instead of “trickle-down” without being leaderless or visionless.
Take evangelism, for example. If you say the word I tend to think of a program where we make a plan, and then we staff it, and then train the staff – or we ask people to come “do our event” or knock on doors (which I despise) and then attend a meeting where something is supposed to happen. (This is admittedly, a rather negative straw man, but just bear with me for a moment.) But what if instead when you heard the word “evangelism,” you thought of someone who matters to you, and matters to God? What if instead of a program you were encouraged to brainstorm about ways you might express genuine love and concern to that person, and what if you were helped to foster and maintain practices in your life that embody evangelizing love in words and actions? What I’m saying is, we might have more energy (and space in our schedule) for evangelism as an improvisational yet intentional practice than we do for it as a program.
Yet my caution here is Dr. Tuttle: “If I said, ‘Evangelize this semester as you feel led,’ most of you wouldn’t feel led, so instead I say, ‘You will evangelize three times or you will fail the class.’” Can I get an “Amen”? Would I have done it otherwise?
This is a fair question to ponder. But actually, all three of my conversations came to me in the happenstance and opportunities of daily life and I found it extremely convenient that God provided natural open doors so that I didn’t have to walk up to strangers awkwardly at the mall and accost them. The issue here for me was less, “I will go out and evangelize,” and more, “Please Lord, open my eyes to see the white harvest fields. Help me see the opportunities you provide, and give me grace to walk through open conversational doors.” God seems to have honored that prayer.
My guess is that God gives us opportunities to participate with him in people’s lives, if we’re willing and open. And I’m just theorizing about my aforementioned, yet always withheld, disciple-making plan. I’m coming to the opinion that what is needed is not so much for the leader to spell out a plan, but to encourage us to see what it might mean to live the Jesus Way in our communal life. Then we can creatively interact with the divine interruptions in a way that embodies kingdom values.
Some structure is necessary, obviously—perhaps more among the leadership in their roles in serving the saints. But I’m afraid of organizing the saints into being really good at attending services rather than equipping them for works of service which God prepared for them in advance to be their way of life (Eph 2:10b NRSV).
May God shed more light on this…
