Satire Suggests... House Church?

Found this editorial cartoon in the paper today which gives a window onto how the church is viewed:

Regardless of how fair you feel the critique is, it does suggest, to me at least, a different kind of message from heaven one might want to keep an ear open for.  Something along these lines:

Now, how's that again O Loving One?  I ask a handful of people to manage your money and use the edifice they already have to live a glorious life of joy and generosity that clearly has your name written all over it?  Then we plead for others to join us with their big bucks to live lives of simplicity and service, to show we're not faking it, and to demonstrate that your beneficence is not a ponzi scheme?  Say, this sounds pretty good!

Church Can Be Less Expensive

I just spent a couple days at Funding the Missional Church with a diverse group of church folks ranging from large conventional congregations to bi-vocational church plants.  Funding is a problem all around.  A lot of the funding problem is rooted in the assumptions we bring to church life  Assumptions that come with big price tags:

• The pastor must be full time.
• The pastor must be an academically trained professional and paid as such.
• You need excellent musicians.
• You have to have a building. and so on.

I noticed one assumption however that seems to keep escaping notice, and yet is a huge factor is setting the "cost structure" for a faith community:

• You have to gather the entire faith community for worship every week.

In my Lutheran Tribe, we like to talk (among the academically trained professional clergy, anyway) about the Freedom of a Christian. Well, what if we considered how we could serve the Kingdom if we explored the freedom we have from that fifth assumption?  Just as one example, what if the whole community gathered monthly on a Friday night, renting from an existing church, and home-sized groups gathered weekly, perhaps following the path described by Luther himself?  

Point is, church can be different, and it can be way less expensive.

Along these lines I am always glad to hear from my friends at Simple Church who are very big on keeping the Gospel as portable as possible.  So let me lift up a recent post from them on keeping things simple (which also tends to be less expensive) that begins with this wonderfully challenging quote from a Filipino church planter; "Never do anything in church that a one week old Christian would be unable to duplicate." 

Hyperbole?  Perhaps.  Worth reflecting on for people called to equip others?  Absolutely.

Ownership vs. Posession

I had occasion to give my personal perspective on stewardship recently at my church and it was videotaped so I though I would share it here. The key moment is when, after placing my wallet, mortgage, car title, marriage certificate etc. on the altar I simply ask God; "What do you want me to do with your stuff?"

The video starts with the distinction between ownership and possession, covers my personal family journey into tithing, and affirms percentage-based giving as a grace-filled approach. It specifically advocates a three step process: start where you are but look at your giving from the percentage perspective, set a goal, then make a plan to grow towards it.

Plus, you get to see me ask my friend Rick to hand over his wallet to me in front of the congregation.

Pastor Tim on Stewardship from Gethsemane on Vimeo.

Evangelism as Fundraising: Let's Not

I belong to the Emerging Leaders' Network (how's that for self-aggrandizing!) and a friend there started a discussion about the risk of doing outreach & evangelism as a fund raising strategy when the church is having a hard time making budget. I just had to offer my two bits on that and thought I'd share it here as well:

Here's a small step we're tying to make where I serve.

In our little brochure about membership and in conversation as it comes up, I always present membership this way: Everything of value that this Congregation has to offer, it provides free of charge to anyone who wants it: Baptism, Communion, Sunday School, Bible Studies, worship services, pastoral care and so on. So "membership" provides no additional benefit. Rather, becoming a member is what you do when you want to get on the "supply" side of the equation and join us in keeping all this stuff available to others for free, just like it was for you when you arrived. The only thing you "get" with membership is extra responsibility.

I compare it to enlisting in the Army or Peace Corp: a voluntary choice to join an organization that serves others, because you believe in its mission and want to take part in achieving it.

That also sets up a great point I love to share with prospective new members. When you "enlist" in an organization like that, then they have a responsibility to equip you for the work you will be doing - basic training, as it were. So we as a congregation have begun to provide "Equipping Workshops" for new members (open to everyone, of course) to fulfill our responsibility to them when they join.

On a completely different track, though, and with apologies if I'm being a gadfly, I can't read your post without thinking that there would be a lot less temptation to link evangelism and finance if we could break our dependence on buildings, programs and professional clergy (like me), as if that were the only or even a relatively effective way to be Church. I spend a lot of time thinking about the house church model, which you can easily imagine, would have a very different outlook on both evangelism and stewardship.

Tim

Twin Peaks: Resource Allocation and Effectiveness in Promoting Spiritual Growth in Conventional Congregations

Dontcha just love that title? It's just like the stuff I used to write back when I was a molecular biologist.

I have an observation.

In conventional congregations, the larger a gathering is, the more resources are invested in it. For example, the typical Sunday morning worship service consumes the vast amount of the resources available. This is true I believe in terms of staff time, funds and physical space. (It's probably true of member time investment as well, to the extent that they invest their time in their spiritual life.)

Here's how that looks:


(You'll notice that I drew that on a napkin to underscore the sophistication of this analysis.)

Thus far, I've restated the obvious.

I also have a hypothesis: The smaller a group is, the more effective it is in promoting spiritual growth (to the extent that the group focuses on spiritual life).

So on one extreme you have spiritual friendships, marriages, mentoring relationships and "two or three are gathered" accountability groups. Next up come the familiar "small groups" and Bible studies. At the other extreme is, well, Sunday morning worship.

Here's how that looks:


The obvious question here is; "What's wrong with this picture?" To which I would respond; "Well, it looks to me as if resource investment in conventional congregations is 180 degrees out of alignment with the strategies that are most effective in promoting spiritual growth."

But here's a more interesting question: "What would congregational life look like if we realigned our resource investment to reflect this?"

Thoughts?

The Magic Purse

So, shameless sell-promotion is okay when you're not selling anything, right? I mean, what's a blog for?

I wrote a short story a while back called The Magic Purse. It's a little fable about scarcity and abundance. Over the years a number of people have downloaded it from a collection of stewardship resources hosted by Luther Seminary and told me that it was helpful to them in their congregations. Cool!

For the last couple of weeks I've been having some more fun with it at my current church. I've used it as the basis for a contest for kids, inviting them to write alternate endings and to create illustrations. It's been fun to see their work! I've created a little website in support of that where you can read the story and the alternate endings and see the illustrations. So if that's intriguing to you, or you're looking for a stewardship resource to use in a creative way, check it out. I think you'll like it.

Money Talk Church

I think about house churches a lot, talk about them frequently, and write about them occasionally. Yet for all of that I've never really been a part of one much less led or planted one, though I have visited a few. It's frustrating and not just a little embarrassing. And it leaves me with persistent, nagging doubts about just how realistic all this thinking is. So naturally I'm thrilled whenever I meet someone who is in a house church. That's always a great encouragement. But I read something in the paper on Monday that really convinced me that this can work. It was an article about the Smart Cookies - a group of women who banded together to help each other get out of debt. Here are some excerpts from the article:

In 2006, these five young professionals living in Vancouver, B.C., formed a "money club," a sort of financial-health support group. After two years, they reduced their collective debt from $55,000 to $10,000. All either own their own homes or are on the way there, and are regularly making deposits in IRAs and savings accounts.

They accomplished this impressive feat by setting individual spending limits at weekly meetings, then holding the overspenders accountable -- over a bottle of wine -- at the next meeting. They shared clothes, low-cost recipes, advice and encouragement. Each week, one member researched a topic to share with the group, such as how to calculate credit-card interest.

"The first meeting was really scary, laying out all our checking and Visa statements for everyone to see. A bottle of wine was definitely involved, which we recommend."

"We'd all tried on our own, read all these financial books, but it had no effect on our lifestyle. Knowing you have to share your saving and spending record for the week helps you resist temptation."

That's not a house church, but it absolutely could be.

Just look at the themes that are in play:

• Small group
• Frequent, regular gatherings
• Self-organizing
• Openness based on trust rooted in mutual acceptance
• Real-life relevance and goal-focused
  
• Accountability (sought, not imposed)
• Joy and celebration

What really amazes me is that the very topic we struggle to get people to engage seriously in church - namely money - is the topic they are most eager to focus on!

These days when people are so anxious about money as they watch Congress try to respond to the hosing/credit/banking crisis and the market teeters it really makes you wonder... couldn't we start churches with a mission to help people put their financial houses in order like these women did?

Of course, there would be suspicion. We're talking about money of course. People would wonder if this is just a front to get them to contribute to some denomination or pay the salary of the "evangelist." They'll be watching for the catch and wanting to read the fine print.

But what if the church planter/evangelist took no salary? What if he or she had independent support from other churches that wanted to bless the new congregations, or maybe worked a regular job as well on the side... like making tents or something?

Nah. It'd never work.

Too bad though. I'd love to give it a try.