IMAGINE

This is from Stefani’s journal on October 25, 2009. It recaps our story so well, I feel it worthy of posting here…

At some point yesterday, I wondered if I had climbed a mountain – my feet were tired, my muscles ached, I was tired from head to toe. Yes, I had climbed a mountain. Today, I have spent time remembering what led to the climb. Here are some snapshots from my memories…

It was some time in 1998 – we were returning from a church leadership conference, Bill Hybles was speaking – Ron asked that scary question, “Did God say anything to you tonight?” I wanted to answer, but I wanted to hear from him first, “Yeah, but what did he say to you?” He wouldn’t go, I wouldn’t go, finally we both said, “God told me that one of these days, we’re going to start one of those churches that becomes the ‘Hope of the World’.” Looking at each other with bewilderment, we had no idea what that meant or when that time would come. Together we shared ideas of what that would look like – a church beyond walls, in the community, uniting people in generosity, sharing the extravagant love of God.

Flash forward to October 2006 – we were standing on a mountain in the Eastern Sierra – a beautiful place, full of majesty and splendor, focusing on the awesome creation of God. I looked at Ron and said, “God’s about to do something different with us, isn’t He.” We both knew – we just had no idea what ‘it’ was. Standing on the top of that mountain we knew there was a bigger one ahead of us – one we would climb – one we would probably have no trail map for –one that would require big steps out of our little feet.

Flash forward to August 2007 – we were again on top of a hill somewhere in TN that we had never heard of, somewhere that we never thought we would be – getting ready to go through the ringer at the Church Planting Assessment Center. Could this be the time that God had forecast so many years ago? Were we ready for this mountain? A resounding yes – in the form of affirmation from so many, including those who head CPAC. Only one question remained, “where?”

Flash forward to January 2008 – a moving van makes its way south along the I-95 corridor from PA to Northern Virginia. A place not known, A people not familiar with, A mountain with no map, A job with no income…

Who knew that the next 20 months would involve so many big steps – in raising funds, in building relationships, in establishing credibility, in unleashing generosity. Who knew that time could move so quickly.

October 25, 2009 Restore Community Church held the Grand Opening Celebration for Sunday Morning Services. And yet, the Church began long before that. And while most people see Church as this Sunday Morning thing, Restore is so much more – lived out daily in the community, as one person invests in another, as generosity is extended, as the extravagant love of Jesus is shared. Something tells me that the biggest steps are yet to be taken.

Doug Foltz goes over goes over the top in articulating our conversation on missional verses attractional churches. Let’s start living a “both / and” model of church.

Here is Doug’s blog. It says it all.

I love all the chatter in the blog world about missional churches and attractional churches.  A good healthy debate is always fun.  My opinion is it takes both to reach different types of people.  But what would happen if a missional church and an attractional church came together and started having kids (planting churches).  I had a conversation with Ron Klabunde a couple of weeks ago that birthed this idea.

1.  Small groups would become house churches.  Small groups would become more than just home group bible studies.  They would evolve into missional communities.  These missional communities would live the Christian life together and would focus spreading the gospel of Christ by serving their neighbors and living their faith out loud where they live.  Missional church gatherings would be the core experience of the church rather than large group corporate worship on Sundays.

2.  There would still be large group worship on Sundays.  The attractional DNA would kick in to recognize that the best way to engage pre-Christians is through the Sunday morning worship experience.  This large group gathering would be a non-threatening place to bring your friends to church.  After all its a bit awkward to invite your pre-Christian friends to your home church.  Seems a little intimidating to culture at large.  Those who called the church home would come to serve on Sunday.  The target audience of the Sunday corporate gathering would be pre-Christians and those not yet connected to a missional community.  Thus as the church grows, it is completely feasible to be a church of 2000 connected in missional communities with only 200-300 in attendance at weekend services.  It would also be likely that once a month or so the entire church would gather for a large corporate gathering of all the believers where the focus of the service was on Christians.

3.  Less building and staff would be needed to run this church, thus allowing the church to unleash more people and money on serving community needs, planting more churches and worldwide missions.

I walked away from this conversation thinking that maybe missional and attractional churches should stop debate each other and begin starting churches together.  I could get really excited about that.  How about you?