The Simple Way Part II
As a student of Church Planting over the past decade or more, I’ve seen a lot of fads come and go. Systems that work well for one church in one location but fail miserably in another. I’ve seen God’s hand divinely placed on some churches while others struggle and eventually close. One thing that I can say with certainty is that there is no one right way to plant a church. What works for one may not work for another. What one pastor can pull off, another will fall flat on his face with. In the following, I’m NOT bashing anyone, just sharing where my heart is at.
A couple of observations:
- Many times church planters read a book or attend a boot camp and return to their hometown or the place that they have lived for a number of years. I think that this sometimes causes a loss of the missional focus of the gospel unless there is a strong DNA already there.
- The picture of what it looks like to plant a church in 2008 in the United States is not easily reproduced by everyone with a calling to plant a church. Elaborate sound systems, projectors, state of the art facilities…they all cost money. Not everybody has access to a ton of cash. Not everybody should plant this kind of church, anyway.
- The core of the the Great Commission is not planting new churches, but making disciples. We have gotten caught up in a wave of planting churches because it is the cool thing to do and not really gotten good at making disciples. We have the idea that if we have a great sermon on Sunday and having small groups throughout the week automatically makes disciples. I’ve read the Bible (okay, I’ll admit that I did skim over some of it…I’m sure that it is important who begot whom, but it is DRY!) and I haven’t found this formula anywhere. Jesus wasn’t interested in teaching the multitudes for a long time, he was interested in forming a band of 12 and then about 70 into dangerous Kingdom agents. Why is this not our strategy?
Being different for the sake of being different is dumb. Being different for the sake of the Gospel is not. I’ve been greatly influenced by a number of different speakers and authors, but in the past couple months I’ve been devouring everything that I can get may hands on regarding Simple Church or Organic Church. I’ve been greatly blessed by Neil Cole, who wrote Organic Church and a host of other stuff that most people haven’t even heard of. I heard Neil at the Exponential Conference back in April. He explained a bit about how discipleship is a lost art and that we are on a search and rescue mission. He explained about how Awakening Chapels, the organic church planting movement that he founded, does discipleship. Life Transformation Groups (known by many other names) are one of the primary vehicles that they have used in disciple making.
LTGs are groups of 2-3 people of the same sex who meet for one hour each week for Bible reading, accountability and prayer. The Bible reading is 30 chapters a week. Seems like a lot, but Neil explained that the goal isn’t simply to finish the reading, rather the goal is to not finish the reading. If the reading isn’t finished by one person, then the next week the same 30 chapters are to be read. This continues until everyone finishes the reading. There are a series of accountability questions that are asked and each person should answer truthfully. Finally, each person selects a couple of people in their lives to pray for. When God moves into the lives of those people that we have been praying for, new LTG groups are formed. The possibility for exponential growth is literally limitless.
Simple enough? You bet. Can anyone do it? Indeed. Can it be transferred to other cultures, time periods in history and survive trends in church planting? I think so.
So, LTGs are the simplest form of church that I have been able to find. The Bible promises us that where two or more are gathered in the name of Jesus, that he is there also.
Is that it? Is that where we want to stop? NOT A CHANCE!
Stay tuned for Part III — The Simple Way Church.
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