i AM leading a rebellion.
i’ve decided that leading a 20’s ministry within a local church is a terrible idea even if you have a lot of people showing up to your worship gathering. i’m still in shock about why it took me so long to see how wrong i was.
what our church first deemed to be a shift within an age demographic we now see as a larger cultural shift. one that can and should be experienced by any age group who identifies with some of the following characteristics…creativity/experiential/social justice/narrative theology/friendships/spirit-led/holistically generous/team leadership/spiritual diversity/compelling environments/gender equality/etc
the challenge has been trying to find language that identifies who we want to be as a community that doesn’t unintentionally communicate what our larger church is not.
after my meeting with the elders of our church this week the best imagery i could come up with was to ask them if we could become an intergenerational “indie label” under the umbrella of our larger church structure. where relationship and wisdom bind us together. this will only work as long as we believe that we are better together. what works in our favor is that discovery church is already a multi-site church. this will now allow us to become an intergeneration community with a new flavor in the family of discovery church campuses.
all of our current locations have been planted as a centralized and controlled model from our main campus. STATUS will now seek to be an example of decentralized campus planting to many of the cities that are represented in our worship gatherings.
the elders are excited about the potential of what this will mean for our church. my hope has always been that a multi-site church might become learning laboratories for one another rather than carbon copies of the main hub.
many people would label STATUS under the emergent movement. i’m not fond of the term simply because i bristle at being labeled and boxed under any catagory. however there are many themes of the emergent movement that we at STATUS do resemble and reflect when we gather. my hope and faith are continuing to expand on the foundation that most churches that are contemporary in style have become the arch nemesis to the emergent movement. i’m moved by the idea that we might be able to function under the banner of the same mission, eldership, budget, etc for the purpose of telling a new story about how we as a church are seeking to build the kingdom of God.
thoughts?
