outposts of the kingdom -- life after church-as-we-know-it

Outposts Kingdom

of theOutposts

KingdomLife After Church-As-We-Know-It

Jim robbins

Jim Robbins is a former pastor who writes about organiccommunity, the life of the heart, and live-able towns andcities. In 1998, Jim was invited by Leonard Sweet toserve on a consulting team Sweet was forming. Jim lovesthe mountains of New England and its spectacularseasons. He is married to his wife Lynn, and they havetwo children, Olivia and Nate.

• What would happen if Christians lived their faith in small, organic fellowshipsright where they lived, worked, and played—without “going to church?”

• What if you could no longer use your car in order to get to church? What would you do?

• Are there some towns and cities where the Kingdom of God is more likely togrow than others —where developing relationships is easier and more natural?

Outposts of the Kingdom is about being the Church without going to church.

We are approaching a future where the local church, or church-as-we-know-it, willno longer be sustainable. The local church model of Christian activity, so revered forhundreds of years, is likely on its way out. Two powerful ‘storm systems’ are about toconverge upon the local church, leaving it limping at best.

Something new and revolutionary is taking the place of the conventional localchurch: organic Kingdom outposts. These smaller, yet powerful clusters of Jesus-followers are cropping up in homes, the marketplace, micro-ministries, coffeehouses,and any place where ‘two or three’ are gathered. They operate outside of the localchurch and are powerful Kingdom communities, being the church right wherepeople live and work —without the need to ‘go to church.’

Thankfully, simple, walkable towns and cities are cropping up in many placesand are providing the ideal soil for simple church. You won't need your car forendless errands; and you'll be able to develop community with others more easily.

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Jim Robbins

Outposts of the Kingdom: Life After Church-As-We-Know-It


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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii Introduction ix 1. What is an Organic Kingdom Outpost? 1 2. Storm One: A Post-Local Church World 5 3. Who Are These Organic Outposts? 21 4. Turning Organic Outposts into Institutions 39 5. Collision Point: When “Storm One” 61 Meets “Storm Two” 6. Storm Two: The Out-of-Gas Church 63 in an Out-of-Gas World 7. A Better Place to Live 77 8. Simple Church in Simple Places 93 9. What Are Your Options in an Out-of-Gas World? 109 10. How Do I Find an Organic Kingdom Outpost? 113 11. Further Up and 117 Further Into the Kingdom Resource Appendix 121


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Acknowledgements • The Heroic Trinity for removing the veil of religion from my eyes.

• John Eldredge and the Ransomed Heart Men’s Team, for giving me back the Gospel and therefore, my heart.

• Andy Havens, for our 38-year friendship, and your creative wisdom and design work on the book blog and book.

• Dan Burden (www.walkable.org) for the use of the pictures for the blog.

• Paul Fertitta, for your great editing work and helpful perspective on the book.

• James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, for writing so compellingly about the out-of-gas future – an impetus for this book.

• John Moorhead, for your sensitivity to God’s Spirit and your kingly friendship.

• Mike Boulware, for our many great talks, and for keeping the right question in front of me while I wrote.

• Elmer Colyer, for taking a young man under your wing years ago; and reaching both his heart and mind with your friendship.

• Tom Sine, for introducing me to organic forms of community like co-housing and new urban practices several years ago.

• My wife, Lynn, a beautiful and noble companion for the journey. You are my ‘Arwen.’ Thanks for lending your editing expertise on the project.

• My daughter, Olivia, my Princess. I love how you worship with your beauty.

• My son, Nate, my Tiger. I love your unfettered joy.


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Introduction ______________________________________ The World’s Worst Weather

Mount Washington, New Hampshire, is well-known for having the “world’s worst weather;” and one of the highest death rates for climbers of any mountain in the world, including mountains that are much higher. (Mount Washington only has an elevation of 6,288 feet. Everest has an elevation of 29, 029 feet.) The Mount Washington Observatory’s website indicates that this “is the combination of extreme cold, wet, high winds, icing conditions and low visibility consistently found atop Mount Washington which earns it the title ‘Home of the World’s Worst Weather.’”

The following is an account of some of the inhuman weather conditions the staff of Mount Washington Observatory at the summit often face:

When observers venture outside during high winds and storms, they need to be careful of several things. One is visibility. Visibility can be so limited, that if observers become disoriented, they may lose their bearings and have a difficult time finding their way back to the building, and safely inside. High winds can potentially hurl an observer into a wall, or onto the ground, so they must be aware of their balance, and be ready to catch themselves, or make a safe crash landing to the ground if necessary. The wind can also toss large objects around, such as ice chunks. A piece of ice weighing 80 pounds could cause serious, possibly fatal, injury. Observers must always be on their guard to avoid falling and flying missiles.

– From the FAQ’s page of Mt. Washington Observatory’s website: www.mountwashington.org


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What on earth could create such catastrophic conditions on a mountain that is easily dwarfed by other mountains like McKinley in Alaska, or Everest in the Himalayas? The problem is that the mountain sits at the confluence of multiple storm tracks. Sitting at this dangerous intersection, Mount Washington produces often deadly conditions hikers can face. Climbers have even died during the summer season on Mount Washington.

The Church’s Worst Weather

The Church is about to face its worst weather in a very long time. Like Mount Washington, the Church sits at the confluence of multiple storm tracks, two of which are the topic of this book. The victim this time is the local church, once the most powerful force in culture; and about to be hammered by two powerful storm systems.

Storm System One: A Post - Local Church World

Storm System Two: An Out- of -Gas World

When I say the “local church,” I mean the typically understood organization that meets in buildings on church campuses, with paid staff, and multiple programs. It’s a place you “go to” in order to worship and participate in religious activities. The “local church” model of Christian activity, so revered for hundreds of years, is likely on its way out – It is no longer a sustainable form of ministry in a world that views the Church as suspect, out of touch, and removed from where people live. People are increasingly cynical of institutions, including the local church.

Another indicator that the local church model may be on the road towards obsolescence is that the world is about to run out of gas.

When I talk about a “world out of gas,” I’m speaking of a time (perhaps within a decade) when you won’t likely be driving to church, or perhaps anywhere for that matter. The precious liquid that makes your SUV run is on a rapid decline towards scarcity – for good. We’ve reached what experts call, “World Peak Oil Production,” and there’s plenty of evidence that our hundred-year fossil fuel (oil, gas, coal) bonanza is about to dry up. What’s worse is that the alternative fuels proposed won’t be able to sustain the comfortable, high-octane level of


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living we’re used to. Those in the path of the post-oil storm will find themselves unprepared for what is about to take place in our lifetime. Suburbia will go into crash-mode, and the Church will be forced to reconfigure itself into more organic modes of ministry. Just because you’re a person of faith does not mean you will escape these on-rushing realities.

This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely-respected geologists, physicists, and investment bankers in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon known as global “Peak Oil.”

– from website: Life After the Oil Crash, www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net.

Something new and revolutionary is taking the place of the conventional local church –organic Kingdom outposts. These smaller, yet powerful clusters of Jesus-followers are cropping up in homes, the marketplace, micro-ministries, coffeehouses, and anyplace where ‘two or three’ are gathered. They operate outside of the local church: powerful kingdom communities being the church right where people live. In fact, many of these believers have left the institutional church (the ‘local church’) in order to rescue their faith.

Some of these outposts are not new and have been in existence for 10-20 years! And the number of organic faith outposts is growing. These Kingdom outposts will enable the Church (the organic and living Body of Christ) to not only weather the storms, but to powerfully advance the Kingdom of God in the decades to come. Organic ministry isn’t a passing fad: God is doing something, and it’s becoming obvious to those willing to see. As Wolfang Simpson indicates, “God is changing the church, and that, in turn, will change the world. Millions of Christians around the world are aware of an imminent reformation of global proportions. They are saying, in effect: ‘Church as we know it is preventing Church as God wants it.’ Amazingly, many are hearing God say the same thing to them.”


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Given our impending post-oil (post-commuting) and post-local church realities, we need sustainable modes of church within more livable cities and towns. This book addresses the question, “What happens when you have simple church in simple places?”

What’s different about this book?

Two things: First, there is very little in the Christian literature that talks about the coming post-oil (post-commuter) world, a reality that will prove to have highly disruptive affects upon local churches. Christians have a hard time taking these things seriously because it doesn’t sound like a ‘spiritual issue.’ This is because we have created a false dichotomy between spiritual and physical realities, living out some amorphous faith that is disconnected from the real world, as if Christians are a privileged lot that will avoid the hardships others must face.

Second, there is very little Christian literature being written about real communities – cities and towns that are designed to create better relationships between people; and how these sustainable places affect our spiritual habits. However, I see a growing interest in creating more sane places to live. This book is about simple church (organic faith outposts) in simple places (sane towns and cities).

Organic outposts to the rescue

Organic outposts of the Kingdom will rescue the Church from obscurity. This book is a resource for those interested in pursuing a more organic whole-life faith in Jesus. It provides some solutions for advancing the Kingdom in the coming decades of the Church’s worst weather: life after church-as-we-know-it.


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Chapter 1

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What is an organic Kingdom outpost?

I decided to start eating organic foods this year because I was sick one out of

every two days last year.: Sinus infections, colds, viruses, constant trips to the

doctor, and one 36-hour trip to the Emergency Room. Half the year was given

over to sickness and its consequences.

Disease costs money and depletes us of life.

However, if you open my refrigerator today, you’ll find organic milk, yogurt and

cheeses, bottles of organic juices, organic peanut butter, organic apples and

grapes, and a container of organic green super-food mix. The next phase will

be introducing more organic, grass-fed meats into my diet.

The advantage of eating organic foods is that they’ve not been tampered with,

as are many traditional foods − foods that are laced with growth hormones,

antibiotics fed to cattle, or pesticides. Organic foods are therefore in a more

natural state: their capacity to nourish the life of the body hasn’t been

compromised.

My interest in organic foods represents a larger desire of mine: I want to live

more simply, more organically in all areas of my life: truer to the way things

ought to be.

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What makes something ‘organic?’

When I say “organic,” I mean simple, basic, alive. Without additives. In its

natural form; not contrived. Organic church is a more simple, natural context in

which Kingdom life more easily flourishes.

In an interview with George Fox Journal, Leonard Sweet indicates that “organic”

means incarnational: He says that “Christianity does not go through time like

water in a straw. It passes through cultural prisms and historical periods, which

means that Christianity is organic.” The Word became Flesh and dwelt among

us … as one of us. Therefore, Jesus had a supremely organic ministry. (He still

does.)

Organic church structures stand in contrast to bureaucratic, highly organized

and staffed structures. Organic community is more of a movement than a

structure, more organism than organization. It’s not that there is no

organization at all: It’s that disciples (or ‘apprentices’ as Dallas Willard suggests)

walk with God, getting directives from him rather than allowing assumptions

and scripts to dominate.

Organic church is more grass-roots/ bottom-up, than officially-sanctioned/ top

down. It is about bringing the Kingdom right where people live, rather than

expecting them to go to a specialized, sacred place with holy people, a holy cast

of characters, and holy language. It is church in its natural environment.

What is a ‘Kingdom outpost?’

An outpost is an outlying or frontier settlement; a dispatched group setting up

camp in new territory. A Kingdom outpost is a missional launch point into the

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surrounding region. The outpost carries the authority of the Sender into the

new territory.

What do these organic Kingdom outposts look like?

• You’ll find organic kingdom activity when you see businessmen

and women meeting with coworkers for prayer and Scripture.

• Or when you see ordinary people gathering in homes with friends

and neighbors, enjoying a simple meal and conversation. In the

course of the evening, the friends pray and Jesus heals one person

of a wound they’ve been carrying for years; or a neighbor begins to

open their heart to Christ because of the love and power he sees

operating in ordinary people.

• Organic outposts meet wherever there are two or three, or small

clusters of Jesus-followers. You’ll find them gathering in homes,

coffeehouses, parks, businesses or just about anywhere. However,

the surprising thing is that these outpost activities are taking place

outside the walls and the authority of the local church (or church-

as-we-know-it). Yet, this activity is clearly taking place under the

authority of Jesus.

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Chapter 2

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Storm one: A post-local church world

I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you

downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? (Psalm 42: 4-5)

“God is changing the church, and that, in turn, will change the world. Millions of Christians around the world are aware of an imminent reformation of global

proportions. They are saying, in effect: ‘Church as we know it is preventing Church as God wants it.’ Amazingly, many are hearing God saying the

very same thing to them.” (Wolfgang Simson, Houses that Change the World)

“I’ve met some folks who say that I’m a dreamer, And I’ve no doubt there’s truth in what they say,

But sure a body’s bound to be a dreamer When all the things he loves are far away.

And precious things are dreams unto an exile.” (Lyrics from the Irish ballad The Isle of Innisfree, by Dick Farrelly)

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For the last 11 years, I’ve been an exile of the local church, even while on the

inside. Both as a pastor and worship leader, the message was clear: “You don’t

belong here. We really don’t want what you think you have to offer. What we

want is someone to take up the slack, plug the holes in the dam, and keep the

institution running. We have a scripted role for you; and if you don’t abide by

it, then there’s something wrong with you.”

I left the pastoral ministry – actually, I was asked not to come back. I was more

than agreeable to that. As wounding as that experience was, the Author of my

call used it as a redemptive and catalyzing event. I learned that you don’t need

an institution to legitimize your calling. Calling is an outflow of identity; and

identity can only be bestowed by a Father. Jesus received his identity from his

Father: “You are my Beloved Son with whom I am so pleased.” Organizations

can never bestow identity.

I have always been an outsider, even while on the inside of the local church.

I’ve never accepted the status quo for its own sake, nor have I ever wished to

conform to an institution’s pre-fabbed roles for me. That posture cost me my

place in “professional” pastoral ministry: I was asked not to come back. Not

everyone belongs in the local church. Yet everyone belongs in the Body of

Christ, the family of Jesus.

Lesson: You will suffer as a revolutionary. “He [Jesus] came to his own, and

his own did not receive him.” (John 1:11)

Lesson: You are needed. You’re not alone: There are always other

revolutionaries.

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Movement at the edges

Significant change, revolutionary change, most always comes from the fringes,

the edges. The original Christ-followers were a subversive movement, a

revolution. Revolutionaries are mistrusted and usually considered suspect by

the establishment. A pastor asked a friend of mine, “What’s with you para-

church guys?” − a remark that confirmed a misguided view of the Body of

Christ. Not only was anything not sanctioned by the “local church” considered

suspect; it wasn’t really considered to be real Kingdom activity. It’s called,

“para-church” − alongside of the local church, as if it’s not the real church.

That’s the problem with making any one model (in this case, the local church

model) the sole expression of Christian Community.

A word about church leaders

I am a former pastor. I grew up in the Church and have many good memories

of that time. I also know many good people serving in local church leadership.

These folks have good hearts and good intentions. However, powerful

leadership requires an acute awareness of one’s rapidly changing context, and a

readiness to respond. Therefore, the messege of this book is not an indictment

of local church leaders’ good hearts: it is an exposure of entrenched beliefs and

practices that are restricting God’s Kingdom activity. If leaders refuse to follow

God into the future, instead reassuring themselves of their faithfulness to His

purposes by continuing to do what they are already doing, then their reluctance

becomes, as Jim Kunstler calls group collective denial, a “self-reinforcing

feedback loop of delusion.”

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So, I don’t write to condemn persons. Faulty thinking is the culprit. I also

write to lead people to explore the alternatives. Each leader must walk this out

with God. Each Christ-apprentice must walk this out with God.

The revolution

Christian researcher and pollster George Barna is one of the most quoted

people in the Church today. He has been equipping church leaders with timely

and thought-provoking research for over 20 years. Though he is clearly not

anti-conventional church, Barna is drawing attention to a breed of believers he

calls, "revolutionaries." His new book is called, Revolution - Finding Vibrant Faith

Beyond the Walls of the Sanctuary.

There is a growing dissatisfaction in the ranks. The local church is becoming a place

of frustration and alienation for many devoted Christ-followers. As Barna indicates:

In fact, many Revolutionaries have been active in good churches that

have biblical preaching, people coming to Christ and being baptized, a

full roster of interesting classes and programs, and a congregation

packed with nice people. There is nothing overtly wrong with anything

taking place at such churches. But Revolutionaries innately realize that

it is just not enough to go with the flow. The experience provided

through their church, although better than average, still seems flat.

We must acknowledge that there are many who have found redemption,

belonging, and healing in the local church; and this must not be downplayed.

Having said that, we must look at some disturbing trends without disregarding

those many positive experiences.

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Is the local church (congregations that meet in facilities

with staff and programs) accomplishing what it hopes to?

Sadly, no. The dominant model for faith commitment and community simply

isn’t working. Of course there are always exceptions. However, the exceptions

don’t justify the norms: Barna’s research shows that only 9% of all Christian

adults have a biblical worldview. The other 91% have a hodge-podge of

spiritual views that rarely influence their daily decisions. If the Church isn’t

exerting any real influence on people, even its own, then who is? Barna

indicates that “The most significant influence on the choices of churched

believers is neither teachings from the pulpit nor advice gleaned from fellow

congregants; it is messages absorbed from the media, the law, and family

members.”

Wolfgang Simson, who writes on church history and house churches, echoes

Barna’s perceptions of local church effectiveness: “An analysis of the western

church shows that the congregational model is almost totally ineffective at

changing basic values and lifestyles. Many Christians end up with the same

lifestyle of people around them, and therefore become indistinguishable from

society and lose their prophetic edge.”

The future of the local church?

The future of the local church as a viable model looks bleak says Barna:

By the year 2025, the spiritual profile of the nation will be dramatically

different. Specifically, I expect that only about one-third of the

population will rely upon a local congregation as the primary or

exclusive means for experiencing and expressing their faith; one-third

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will do so through alternative forms of a faith-based community; and

one-third will realize their faith through the media, the arts, and other

cultural institutions.

How Americans Experience and Express Their Faith

Local

Church

Alternative

Faith-based

Community Family

Media, Arts,

Culture

2000 70% 5% 5% 20%

2025 30-35% 30-35% 5% 30-35%

(-- chart from Revolution, by George Barna)

Note: These figures from Barna’s research do not account for the coming oil/gasoline

depletion and it’s consequences for commuting. The numbers of those able to drive to a

local church and therefore contributing to its work may be much lower. More on this later.

Reggie McNeal, author of The Present Future, cites David Barrett, author of the

World Christian Encyclopedia: “Barrett…estimates that there are about 112

million ‘churchless Christians’ worldwide … but he projects that number will

double in the next twenty years!”

What I’m not saying: I am not saying that the Church (Capital “C”) is about to

tank, or that the Body of Christ is on its last legs. The Kingdom of God and his

people are eternal and ever-prevailing. However, I am suggesting that church-

as-we-know-it (local congregations) is going to undergo a fierce struggle for

survival soon. Many won’t make it. However, there is great hope.

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Micro-church

Barna notes the current development of ‘spiritual mini-movements’ taking place

outside of the local church context that include: “ ‘simple church’ fellowships

(i.e. house churches), biblical worldview groups, various marketplace ministries,

several spiritual discipline networks, the Christian creative arts guilds, and

others.” I am calling these simple faith movements “outposts of the

Kingdom.” For those church leaders who resist or ignore this movement, the

consequences are inevitable. Barna indicates that:

For those congregations whose leaders choose either to ignore or fight

the Revolution, the consequences are predictable:

• A percentage of them will be seriously impaired by the exodus of

individuals…

• The United States will see a reduction in the number of churches,

as presently configured (i.e. congregational-formatted ministries).

• Church service attendance will decline as Christians devote their

time to a wider array of spiritual events.

• Donations to churches will drop because millions of believers will

invest their money in other ministry ventures.

• Churches’ already limited political and cultural influence will

diminish even further at the same time that Christians will exert

greater influence through more disparate mechanisms.

• Fewer church programs will be sustained in favor of more

communal experiences among Christians.

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• A declining number of professional clergy will receive a livable

salary from their churches. Denominations will go through

cutbacks, and executives will be relieved of their duties as their

boards attempt to understand and halt the hemorrhaging.

• To some, this will sound like the Great Fall of the Church. To

Revolutionaries, it will be the Great Awakening of the Church.

(-- from Revolution, by George Barna)

Later in the book, we will look at the shrinking of the local church because of

another frightening reason − an out-of-gas world. Literally.

Disillusioned yet hopeful

In interviewing people for her book, Jaded – Hope for Believers Who Have Given Up

on Church but Not on God, A. J. Kiesling found that “Many, many people were

sick and tired of church. Some were downright weary of it. But here was the

catch: These were not ‘backsliders,’ people who had let faith take a backseat in

their lives. These were men and women with a vibrant faith – God-seekers all,

but souls with a deep thirst for more than the institutional church was offering.”

She goes on to say that, “Revolutions, whether social or spiritual, are always

preceded by a collective restlessness, a heart-cry for something more. Could it

be that God is stirring a divine discontent within the heart of his people,

preparing them for much more than the staid, program-centered state of

Western Christianity?”

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The question we must ask is, “Is this ‘revolution’ simply the activity of a

disgruntled few, reacting out of their wounds and disillusionment?” Or, “Is

God up to something in the western world?” Because, if this is a move of

God, we’d better pay attention – and sooner rather than later.

In Houses that Change the World, Wolfgang Simson says that the Church is now

entering a Third Reformation. The First Reformation was a rebirth of theology

forged by Luther. The Second Reformation was one of spirituality and a

renewed intimacy with God in the Eighteenth Century. The current and Third

Reformation is one of structure, says Simson: “Now God is touching the

wineskins themselves ...”

Leavers: The Church’s back door

You won’t see these books on the Christian best-seller list, but there is a

growing interest in those who are leaving the local church:

• Exit Interviews: Revealing Stories of Why People are Leaving the Church,

William Hendricks

• The Sheep that Got Away: Why People Leave the Church, Michael

Fanstone

• Gone but Not Forgotten: Church Leaving and Returning, Richter &

Francis

• A Churchless Faith: Faith Journeys Beyond the Churches, Alan Jamieson

• Jaded – Hope for Believers Who Have Given Up On Church but Not on

God, A.J Kiesling

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Leaders are leaving

In a groundbreaking study with interviewees primarily in New Zealand but also

outside of that country, Alan Jamieson (A Churchless Faith) conducted extensive

personal interviews with 108 church leavers, 54 interviews with church leaders,

as well as conversations and discussions with over 500 others. The research

participants were all strongly committed members of EPC (Evangelical,

Pentecostal, or Charismatic) churches. Of these “leavers,” a majority of them

had served in key leadership roles in their churches:

• 54% were leaders

• 70% were home group leaders

• 94% held at least one key leadership position within their former

church

• 40% were either involved in full-time Christian work or study

Jamieson’s research challenged typical ‘back-slider’ stereotypes of leavers.

Jamieson indicates:

• The interviewees were not leaving ‘mainline’ or ‘traditional’

churches but were leaving EPC [Evangelical, Pentecostal, or

Charismatic] churches.

• The interviewees were not leaving in the process of entering

adulthood or even early adulthood but were predominantly leaving

between 30 and 45 years of age.

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• The interviewees were not on the fringe on the church, but formed

its very core.

• The interviewees were not involved in the church for short periods

of time. In fact the sample of interviewees involved in this

research had been adult participants in EPC churches for an

average of 15.8 years.

• These leavers are not moving to a position of apostasy (i.e. no

longer holding to the Christian faith, but… are retaining their faith

while leaving the church. They are also unlikely to return to an

EPC church.

The fallacy of incremental change

Is the Church better thought of as an aircraft carrier or a Coast Guard Cutter?

It depends upon your sense of urgency. I heard one ministry colleague declare

that the Church is like an aircraft carrier, able to change its course of direction

only slowly, in incremental degrees. This is o.k. if you minister within a culture

where people generally think well of the Church. We don’t live in such a

context. The aircraft carrier metaphor is also acceptable if you live in a neutral

world in which evil doesn’t exist. We don’t live in such a world.

As Aragorn says to reluctant King Theoden in The Lord of the Rings - The Two

Towers: “Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.” The

Church is not an aircraft carrier. It is an amphibious assault vehicle,

transporting Navy Seals ready to be dropped behind Enemy lines; or a Coast

Guard cutter, nimble and quick to respond when every second counts.

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In the movie Tears of the Sun, Bruce Willis plays a commander of an elite military

unit. Before being air-dropped into the jungle, he is reminded by his superior,

“Your presence on the ground will be considered hostile.” C.S. Lewis reminds

us that we were, “born into a world at war,” a clash of two kingdoms. We have

been dropped into the middle of an ongoing coup against the High King;

initiated when Lucifer mistrusted his King’s heart, launched a massive betrayal,

and was hurled down from the heavens. No, the Church is not a slow-turning

aircraft carrier. Incremental change will get you killed in battle. Or at the least,

render you obsolete. As Tom Peters says, “If you don’t like change, you’ll like

irrelevance even less.”

We need rapid-response teams, dispatched from Kingdom outposts, sent on

rescue missions behind enemy lines: Rescue squads who are small enough and

nimble enough to act quickly. By the way, we are the dangerous ones – though

most of us haven’t been told this. The Enemy fears you, for he knows who you

really are: He does not underestimate you. As John Eldredge reminds us, “The

only one who underestimates who you really are is you. God doesn’t, nor does

your Enemy.” Revolutionaries are always considered suspect. Unfettered,

heroic Christ-lovers are those who are most needed now. They are the “ones

we most need to lead in times of war,” says Erwin McManus.

The wrong question

The Church today is asking the wrong questions, suggests Reggie McNeal,

author of The Present Future. The wrong question says McNeal, is “How do we

do church better?” McNeal indicates the following problematic thinking:

A spate of program fixes have consistently overpromised and

underdelivered. The suggestions are plentiful: offer small groups,

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contemporize your worship, market your services, focus on customer

service, create a spiritual experience, become seeker-friendly, create a

high-expectation member culture, purify the church from bad doctrine,

return the church to the basics… Church activity is a poor substitute for

genuine spiritual vitality… None of this seems to be making much of a

difference.

Many church leaders and members alike find themselves disillusioned by the

loss of meaningful and enduring results.

Once again, there are always exceptions. Yet the problem occurs precisely

when we see apparent successes resulting from our attempts to improve church:

more people showing up at worship, more members circulating through our

discipleship programs, bigger budgets, and more Family Life Centers being

built. Our preoccupation with numerical successes is more an expectation of

consumerism than genuine spiritual potency. It makes us feel as if we’re doing

something right because we can quantify our results by how many we’re

attracting and matriculating. However, the life of the heart can never be

expressed through numerical indicators. That’s like trying to reduce the brilliant

mystery of a Van Gogh or a Monet to paint-by-numbers: Such reductions are

wholly inapplicable.

If you build it, they still won’t come.

As McNeal points out, “You can build the perfect church – and they

still won’t come.”

Simply tweaking the system, without questioning the system itself is a self-

defeating exercise. “The age in which institutional religion holds appeal is

passing away – and in a hurry,” says McNeal. He suggests that the right

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question for the Church is, “How do we deconvert from churchianity to

Christianity:” In other words, “disentangling” ourselves from the conventional

understanding of church, and embracing Jesus rather than converting people to

church. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life – not the church. In fact, those

outside the Church are incredibly open to the spiritual (though not in strictly

Christian categories) and are increasingly attracted to Jesus, and often do not

connect Jesus with the Church. They often have a positive impression of Jesus,

but not of his followers or the religious organizations they’re a part of. Our

mission is to connect people to Jesus, not a religious organization – no matter

how spectacular the product.

Building the Kingdom without buildings

In fact, the mission of Jesus doesn’t require a single building. As Howard

Snyder indicates:

Theologically, the church does not need temples. Church buildings are

not essential to the true nature of the church; for the meaning of the

tabernacle is God's habitation, and God already dwells within the human

community of Christian believers. The people are the temple and the

tabernacle... Thus, theologically church buildings are superfluous. They

are not needed for priestly functions because all believers are priests and

all have direct access, at whatever time and place, to the one great high

priest. A church building cannot properly be "the Lord's house" because

in the new covenant this title is reserved for the church as people (Eph.

2; 1 Tim. 3:15; Heb. 10:21). A church building cannot be a "holy place"

in any special sense, for holy places no longer exist. Christianity has no

holy places, only holy people.

(Howard A. Snyder, The Problem of Wineskins, Chapter 4)

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It wasn’t until the third century that buildings regrettably became a part of

church life. Until that time, the early church managed fine without formal

buildings.

Robert Banks, an authority on the early Church tells us that:

Whether we are considering the smaller gatherings of only some

Christians in a city, or the larger meetings involving the whole Christian

population, it is in the home of one of the members that the 'ekklesia' is

held for example in the 'upper room.' Not until the third century do we

have evidence of special buildings being constructed for Christian

gatherings.

(Robert Banks, Paul's Idea of Community)

An unhealthy dependence upon buildings

Ernest Loosley, author of When the Church Was Young, reminds us that the

Church doesn’t require buildings:

When the church was very young, it had no buildings. Let us begin with

that striking fact. That the church had no buildings is the most noticeable

of the points of difference between the church of the early days and the

church of today. In the minds of most people today, "church" means first

a building, probably something else second; but seldom does "the church"

stand for anything other than a building. Yet here is the fact with which

we start: the early church possessed no buildings and carried on its work

for a great many years without erecting any.

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Further digging…

• The Present Future – Six Tough Questions for the Church, Reggie McNeal

• Revolution, George Barna

• The Shape of Things to Come – Innovation and Mission for the 21st –

Century Church, Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch

• Jaded – Hope for Believers Who Have Given Up On Church but Not On

God, A. J. Kiesling

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Chapter 3

________________________________

Who are these organic outposts?

“God is Community in motion.” (Anonymous)

The imminent demise under discussion is the collapse of the unique culture in North America that has come to be called ‘church.’

(Reggie McNeal)

"Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Small is smart

As I watched the movie, The Patriot, with Mel Gibson, I was struck by how each side

in the Revolutionary War engaged the other in battle. The colonial militias of the

American Revolution were cunning. They were guerilla warriors, hiding behind

stone walls, tucked within tall reeds. They could move quickly and engage the

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enemy with covert effectiveness. The British regiments, on the other hand, refused

to get out of formation. They were sitting ducks for the colonial militia.

The British regiments allowed their rigid structure to control their purpose.

Refusing to re-think their formation led to their demise. Small and nimble won

the war.

Here's a quick table that contrasts organic Kingdom outposts with what much

of the Church today has become:

Organic Outposts Today's Church

Small bands of Jesus-followers

Larger-church mentality: growth by stuffing

Divides when group reaches 12-15 people

Attract more people, build bigger facilities

Not dependent upon buildings

Shackled by asset debt and maintenance. Ties up resources that could go directly to those in need.

Grass-roots/decentralized Denominational/centralized

Fluid, flexible, loosely structured Highly-structured, rigid

Led by non-professionals Led by professionals

Flat structure Hierarchical layers

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Rescued by an organic Kingdom outpost

One particular organic outpost has advanced my spiritual life more in the last 5

years than in the previous 35 years. This more rapid transformation is directly

linked to my participation in the ministry of this outpost.

Five years ago, after reading John Eldredge’s book, Wild at Heart, I went to one

of his “Wild at Heart Boot Camps” for men out in the wilderness of Colorado.

Designed to help a man get his heart back, these events are like nothing I’ve

ever experienced within the walls of the local church. What made them

different?

First, the message, though grounded in Scripture, is one most men rarely hear.

The Wild at Heart messege, based on the book, Wild at Heart, takes men on a

journey of the masculine heart. A redeemed man’s heart is good because it is

wholly new (Ezekiel 36). Therefore, because his heart is now good, a man can

rightly ask, “What makes my heart come alive?” At the Boot Camp and in the

book, Eldredge suggests that three core things make all men come alive by

design: an adventure to live, a battle to fight, and a beauty to fight for. Most

men are frankly bored to tears in church. If you offer men the journey to

pursue their heart in these three areas, they will come into a heroic identity they

never knew they had.

Secondly, the setting was different than local churches provide. Most churches,

as well as corporate spaces, suffocate men. You must get men outdoors, or at

least away from big box, closed in, and cloistered environs. In the wilderness of

Colorado, the ranch where we stayed was dwarfed by the 12,000 foot peaks of

the Collegiate Range. The “sanctuary” in which we met was constructed of log-

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style timbers, complete with two fully-preserved local residents flanking the

front sides: a mountain lion and a black bear.

However, the journey towards greater depth-of-heart didn’t stop there. As

Barna suggests, many of these “mini-movements” such as Ransomed Heart

Ministries (Eldredge and his team) offer narrow entry points such as a men’s

event or a women’s event. Some outpost ministries offer a conference on a

particular theme, or a worship gathering. However, these entry-point events

are often the door to a broader and more holistic spiritual offering. As the

participant continues the journey, he or she ends up receiving much more than

the initial offering.

For example, after entering the Wild at Heart door (the entry-point event) for

men, I read subsequent books written by Eldredge, then attended the Advanced

event for men. That event immersed me in the ministries of healing, spiritual

warfare, hearing the counsel of the Holy Spirit, and walking with God. Though

core aspects of Jesus’ own ministry, these life-giving practices were simply

ignored, understated, or mired in religious trappings in my local church

experiences.

Ransomed Heart Ministries also provides online resources such as books, audio

CD’s, and forums for continuing the journey of the heart – for men and

women.

Ransomed Heart’s goal is not to keep people dependent upon them, but rather

to send the participants back to their own communities, establishing their own

unique local outposts, right where they live.

Through immersion in the offerings of an organic kingdom outpost like

Ransomed Heart, I’m able to hear from God more, have a much more biblical

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perspective on reality, and have come into a strength that was dormant for most

of my life. And, I discovered that I’m not alone.

A Network of Allies

By participating in an outpost ministry’s gatherings, you may discover others

who have similar stories, or with whom you can develop significant friendships.

Because you’ve met them through that particular ministry outpost, there is an

assumed commonality and desire for similar things. You were looking for

similar things from life, Church, God – that’s why you went. God can use those

outpost gatherings to bring you allies.

Through the organic outpost called Ransomed Heart Ministries, I myself have

experienced more rapid growth and deeper spirituality than I had experienced in

the previous 35 years. Thousands of other men (and women) from across the

globe have also gotten their hearts back through this outpost. And the numbers

are growing. Ransomed Heart is just one of God’s thousands of outposts

across the country. (For more about Ransomed Heart’s work, see

www.ransomedheart.com.)

Connecting that brings life

I was sitting with my good friend, John, in a local breakfast place. John is an

ally, oddly enough, who has also attended the same men’s events I did, though a

couple years prior. On an airplane, John “happened” to be sitting next to a

man who had attended one of my events. That man gave John my contact

information and when John called me, I discovered he had also been to a Wild

at Heart Advanced event. God loves orchestrating such encounters. Here’s the

point: God will bring you allies.

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Many months later, John and I met at our favorite breakfast place. During

breakfast, I had been telling John about a heavy sense of discouragement and

hopelessness I was under. I was feeling stuck, immobilized; wanting a sense of

direction, but not getting any answers from God. I was wondering if I would

ever move into some things I had wanted to for the last five years.

As John and I were talking, the coffee I had been drinking all morning was

beginning to catch up with me. In the time it took me to go to the bathroom,

John had received an actual revelation from God. Now, you must know that

John is not a man who quickly says, “I have a word from God for you.” He is

careful and discerning in such matters. When I sat down again, he said, “Jim,

how stuck have you been feeling lately?” I was a little bewildered and answered,

“About 75 percent.” He said, “God gave me a vision for you:

I see Aslan.” [the Great Lion of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia].

Tears started coming. John continued, “He is in a cage, pacing. He is

losing patience. But the cage does not limit Aslan. He is still Aslan,

even in the cage.”

That did it. Tears. Relief. As God himself continued to unpack the meaning

of the vision, I realized he was saying, “I understand your restlessness. I don’t

condemn you for it. You are my ‘Aslan’ and the cage can place no limits on

your identity or strength, Jim.” Humbling and encouraging, to say the least.

All this happened because two allies, two spiritual friends, were meeting in a

local breakfast place, going deeper into their stories. Because John knew my

story and was sensitive to God’s voice, he was able to offer me exactly what was

needed that day.

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The Media is Taking Note

“There’s No Pulpit Like Home,” reads the article’s header from Time Magazine

(March 6, 2006). Covering the rapidly-growing house church movement, the

article describes a meeting of Christ-followers in a Denver home. One

participant, “two years ago abandoned a large congregation for the burgeoning

movement known in evangelical circles as ‘house churching,’ ‘home churching’

or ‘simple church.’” She says, “I’d never go back to a traditional church. I love

what we’re doing.”

House churches and other organic configurations don’t have a large percentage

of their combined resources tied up in building maintenance, staff salaries, and

program budgets. More funds are immediately available for ministry

opportunities to those beyond the group. Decisions can be made more quickly

and resources mobilized without a lot of red tape and internal politics.

Outpost Story: Uncommon Grounds Coffee House

Jacksonville, Florida

I decided to try a new coffee place today, called Uncommon Grounds. It was

clearly an alternative to …well, you know, S_ _ _b _ c k ’s. As I walked in, I

saw an eclectic mix of couches, tables, bookshelves, and wall hangings. There

was a guy in his 20’s playing acoustic guitar, seemingly for no one but himself.

An unlikely mix of books sat in the bookcase: Catcher in the Rye was nestled up

against Eugene Peterson’s The Message translation.

Uncommon Grounds uses predominantly organic, fair-trade coffees, locally roasted

– indicating a clear concern for environmental impact and wages for farmers; as

well as coffee-freshness. Their passion is coffee.

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While speaking with the young-thirties proprietor, the conversation eventually

turned to the “So what do you do?” question. I told him I was writing a book

about organic church in simple places. His response surprised me. I was

expecting a polite, but disinterested, “Oh, that sounds interesting.” Rather, he

said, “That is exactly what this place is trying to be.”

There’s nothing to suggest that the place is a “Christian” establishment: no

signs or Christian symbols; no Ichthus fish on their business card. That’s the

way they want it. In fact, the owners took a lot of flack from a local church

complaining that they weren’t calling it a “Christian” coffee house. What

makes something “Christian” anyway − the fact that you label it so? Surely that

can’t be an adequate indicator of Kingdom activity.

At Uncommon Grounds, they are reaching the community one conversation, “one

cup of coffee at a time.” Right where people live and work.

As I talked with Diane, Uncommon Ground’s owner, it became obvious how

seriously she took Jesus. He had made her free, and she was taking him at his

word. There wasn’t the usual sense that her Christianity was tied to good moral

behavior or doing the “right” things. Instead, there was a living, breathing

relationship.

How do you grow if you don’t ‘go to church?’

Contrary to the suspicions of many in conventional churches, those who leave

the local church model are not running from God. In fact, they are deeply

committed to Jesus and his Kingdom – often more so than their conventional

counterparts, as the research indicates. Many of them leave the four walls in

order to rescue their faith. These pioneers are also deeply committed to

gathering together with other Christ-followers – but not within the walls of the

29

local church. Instead, people like myself have developed a network of spiritual

allies – some of them are local, some not. In my case, through this small

network of allies, I have grown more, lived from my deep heart, and come alive

more in the last three years than in decades of “fellowship” or “small groups”

offered by the local church.

The simple fact is that many who attend local churches, or have been deeply

involved in them for years, are not growing as they hoped to. They know

there’s more: More to life, more to the Gospel, more to their own hearts. It

becomes deeply problematic when we assume that biblical, spiritual growth

must entail going “to church.”

Power Houses

It is quite essential that we commit ourselves to biblical community, to the

fellowship of Jesus’ followers. However, it is not essential that it look like

church-as-we-know it, conventional congregations and church programs. The

local church model is but one of any number of kingdom-life configurations.

For example, house churches (or church in the home) are a vital form of

Kingdom-community that is rising up in Western culture. The idea is as old as

the New Testament Church.

Home churches, for example, are fully-functioning Christ-communities that do

not require connections to local churches. House churches often connect with

each other into networks within a region, allowing for larger celebration

gatherings among those home churches.

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The following Kingdom communities in Scripture took place in homes:

• Acts 5:42: ‘Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to

house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news

that Jesus is the Christ.’

• Acts 20:20: ‘You know that I have not hesitated to preach

anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly

and from house to house.’

• Romans 16:5: ‘Greet also the church that meets at their house.’

• I Cor. 16:19: ‘The churches in the province of Asia send you

greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so

does the church that meets at their house.’

• Col 4:15: ‘Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to

Nympha and the church in her house.’

• Acts 2:2: ‘Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind

came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were

sitting.’ (Pentecost took place in a house.)

For more on house churches, see Houses that Change the World, by Wolfgang Simson.

What do house churches do?

1. Meals: Food is central to house church gatherings, as it was to the ministry

of Jesus. Table fellowship is critical to spiritual growth. Simson calls this

“meating.” He indicates:

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Typically, the teaching of Jesus was done right at the table, over a meal,

not just after a meal…The Hebrew tradition of eating was to break

bread first to start the meal, then have the main course, and then have a

toast of wine to end the meal.

The teaching was not a long sermon, but short and much more interactive, with

questions and answers, than today’s lecture-style sermons, Simson says. The

word that is often translated ‘preaching’ in the New Testament (dialogizomai)

indicates a dialogue between people, not a monologue.

2. Lead by elders: Elders are spiritual fathers and mothers. These leaders do

not have to be professional clergy or seminary grads. They do need to be more

mature in the faith, able to bring wisdom to the house church family. “No

where in the New Testament do we find references to a pastor leading a

congregation,” says Barney Coombes. Elders, with the combined giftedness of

those in the house church, support the life of the church. Typically, 15-20

people met in New Testament house churches. Once they grew beyond this,

another house church would be started in the area.

3. Sharing possessions: Here’s what early Christ-followers did, in contrast to

the “affluenza” − stricken culture of today: “There were no needy persons

among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold

them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it

was distributed to anyone as he had need.” (Acts 4:34-35) This common-pot

lifestyle can be most fully enjoyed when you can walk to your neighbor’s house.

Only then can you share lawn mowers, meals, babysitting, and financial

assistance among actual neighbors.

4. Prayer: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the

fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42) Walking with

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God means listening to what he has for our hearts, not simply requesting our

blessings. It is a mutual conversation in which intimacy grows.

5. No rigid agenda: We walk with God, not liturgies or agendas. As Simson

indicates, “So, if a house church did not know what to do next, they could

simply pray and prophesy [one of God’s means of talking to the community], so

that God might reveal what He wanted them to do next, or what He wanted

them to pray about next.” It is critical that we give up our scripts and not

assume we know what needs to be done or said. We ask God: “What do you

have for us tonight? Where would you take us, Father?”

6. Equipped not by professionals, but by a five-fold ministry team: This is

standard scriptural practice and not simply the way house-churches have

functioned. God “gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be

evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for

works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up…” (Ephesians

4:11-13) Note that pastors are not the sole or even dominant leaders. This

would take a lot of pressure off of pastors, allowing them to do what they love,

rather than covering an impossible variety of roles. Wolfgang Simson describes

the five members of the equipping ministry in the following ways:

Apostles: The apostle is a missionary at heart, founding new

communities of faith. They tend to move about as they see new fields

ripe for the harvest. Apostles, with prophets lay the foundations for the

Christian movement − church planting. They want to saturate whole

regions with Christian communities, not just one church. Apostles, with

prophets, are the glue of a city-wide house church network. The

apostles, along with the prophets are available to individual house

churches as they need them.

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Prophets: A prophet is likely to be misunderstood because he holds

more dearly the voice of God than the admiration of the people. He is

visionary, often seeing what others don’t. He hears from God and

questions everything, often discomforting others who like things the

way they are. The prophet often disrupts the status quo and wonders

why others aren’t ready to move forward … now! This is a biblical role

that brings needed tension to the community.

Pastors: He/she is a caring shepherd, not a CEO. He has a heart for

relationships more than anything. He is approachable and loves people,

and can create a family atmosphere. I would add that people feel safe

exposing their wounds to this shepherd.

Teachers: He loves teaching and invests himself more in the details

than in the big picture and is a defender of truth. He offers more than

information. He offers his heart.

Evangelists: Her heart is for those who don’t yet know Jesus, helping

to keep the church outwardly focused. She often spends time teaching

believers the gospel itself, and works with the apostles and prophets at

extending the church.

As we know, there are other gifts operating within the body of Christ. (Romans

12: 4-8; I Corinthians 12:1-30.) However, these five functions (apostles,

prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers) are the equipping functions of the

Body. They equip and apprentice others, rather than doing ministry for them.

These five ministries function together, not in opposition to each other. Each

of the five-fold ministries may or may not be operating in each house church.

Simson tells us that,

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Those [five-fold] ministries are equipping ministries, going beyond the

scope of a local house church, and function translocally, affecting the

whole area or, especially in the case of apostles and prophets, even

beyond that.

Deacons often assist elders of a house church, or the apostolic leaders of the

local churches; enabling them to carry out the functions of their ministries.

There is no stacked hierarchy of ministries. The Body of Christ is a flat, organic

family in which each gift is critical to the health of the body.

Outpost Story: Coffee Roasters

Jacksonville, Florida

Scott used to be “in the ministry.” It wasn’t enough for his heart. He also

used to run a local coffee house back in the early 1990’s and had a passion for

excellent, freshly-roasted coffee. After some time spent in professional college

ministry, Scott needed a change.

Like many others, he too felt he didn’t fit in the professional ministry context.

He’s missed rubbing shoulders with local citizens as he did while in the coffee

house business; so he’s started a new coffee house where he gets to be among

the people again.

Scott and his wife batch-roast their coffees on-site at the coffee house. After

sipping an extraordinary cup of freshly roasted coffee and receiving friendly

service, you’ll know that Scott is there to serve − It just doesn’t look like typical

church activity with sermons, programs and professional clergy. Rather, it looks

like the Kingdom of God spreading leaven into the community. One customer

at a time. One conversation at a time. Like other kingdom outposts, they

35

don’t call it a “Christian” coffee house. Rather, as Scott says, it’s a coffee house

run by Christians who want to serve their community.

Scott’s long-term vision is to develop a relationship with indigenous coffee

farmers, not only to help them develop sustainable coffee practices for their

families’ livelihood, but to affect the needs of their hearts with the restoring life

of Jesus.

Once again, an organic outpost like Coffee Roasters is moving the Church away

from holy meetings in holy buildings to where it has always belonged – among

the people. No longer should we expect the world to come to us. The

command is clear: “Go into all the world …” Jesus’ mission is a sending

ministry, a going-into mission, not a ‘ya’ll come’ expectation.

Scott simply wants his customers to feel the weight of his life as he lives it out

before them. He’s not offering them “church” – he’s offering them himself.

After all, when God offers us something, he simply gives himself. Scott’s

founding verse for the coffee house is “Let your light shine before men, that

they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew

5:16) Scott’s back where he belongs … among the people.

How do you stay “accountable” in an organic outpost?

There are those who would ask, “What about accountability and the likelihood

of straying from biblical doctrine when you’re not connected to a supervising

body?”

Let it be said that the possibility for these errors is just as likely in the local

church as in any other configuration, despite the fact that many pastors and

church leaders are connected to an ‘accountability’ structure within a

36

denomination or other oversight body! I hear unintentional heresy from

pulpits all the time, often affecting much larger groups of believers than you’d

find in a home church. (Nobody gets it right 100% of the time).

Let it also be said that ‘accountability,’ typically understood, is not a New

Covenant value. Conventional and mistaken ideas of accountability suggest that

the believer’s heart is bad, or at least a mixture of bad and good; and therefore

cannot be trusted. Scripture says quite the opposite. For the believer, his heart

is pure, circumcised, clean – as a direct result of conversion: “I will cleanse you

from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and

put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you

a heart of flesh.” (a living heart, energized by the life of Christ.)” See: Ezekiel

36: 25-26.

Sadly, a person that rejects Christ’s death and life also rejects the possibility of a

new heart, as tragic and irrational as that decision is. A Christ-follower’s new

heart is a direct result of the death and resurrection of Christ on our behalf, and

is often called “regeneration” or “new birth.”

A new way of relating

Therefore, a New Covenant (new way of relating) friendship is one in which

both parties focus obsessively on the other’s new heart; for that now, is the

deepest reality about them. As Larry Crabb says, the Gospel is not about fixing,

but releasing: Releasing and living from the new heart.

Do my good friends tell me things I sometimes don’t want to hear? Yes.

However, the manner in which that word is delivered assumes my heart is now

good, and no longer under condemnation. In essence, they “hold me

accountable” to my new heart!

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Having said this, I do believe that organic Kingdom outposts need to connect

with other outposts on a regular basis for celebration, coordinated outreach to

the community, and for a healthy “iron-sharpens-iron” exchange of ideas. The

possibility for theological error exists anywhere, and organic ministries aren’t

exempt. Because life flows out of belief, we need to rub shoulders enough with

others as a legitimate means of checks-and-balances. As Paul instructed

Timothy, “Watch your life and your doctrine closely. Persevere in them,

because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” (I Timothy

4:16) This is not an invitation to dogmatism and theological arrogance. It is an

invitation to humility and community.

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Chapter 4

_________________________________

Turning organic outposts into institutions

It’s possible to turn these fresh organic forms of Church into the same

institutional deathtraps you tried to leave behind. Here’s how to ruin a perfectly

good new wineskin:

By importing old wine (the old way of relating to God) into a new wineskin

(structure). The old wine was the Old Covenant code of proper behavior and

cannot bring about life, says Paul. More on this below.

By offering a partial gospel – i.e., the gospel reduced to “You’re forgiven and

get to go to heaven. “Now be good and try hard to be spiritual until you get

heaven.” The Gospel gets reduced to the Cross alone, without any real

experience of the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus on our behalf. The

resulting message deteriorates into exhortation without restoration; which

frankly is cruel. If a ship has run up against the rocks, it will suffer damage. If

the ship’s hull is full of holes, you don’t push it out into open waters. You

mend the holes and tend to its crew. Only then can you expect great sailing

again. Restoration must accompany forgiveness.

By importing tightly scheduled worship or other events into the new

wineskin that allow no room for the Holy Spirit to lead, speak, or heal.

40

By living in the small stories of Christian principles, tips, and techniques

(“Five steps to a better marriage, three ways to share your faith,” etc.). In

contrast, God offers a much more dangerous and breathtaking Story − an

ancient and unfolding heroic drama that He invites us up into. (Go to

www.epicreality.com to find out more.) For, as the movie trailer for Lord of the

Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring told us, "Fate has chosen him. A fellowship will

protect him. Evil will hunt him." Story and parable engage the heart in a way

that principles cannot. Story conveys truth because story is our native tongue.

By assuming you need professional clergy to lead the group. The Church

never started that way, nor did Jesus sanction it. Furthermore, positional

authority no longer guarantees influence or trust in a post-Christendom world.

By over-programming everything: − which assumes that the information-

dissemination model of discipleship is still effective. Thom Black reminded a

National House Church gathering (one of the groups he and Barna call

‘revolutionaries’): “You know that the death of what you’re doing is programs.

You do not want to touch programs. There’s not a single one of you folks who

started this thing the first five years who had a script…You did it on the

strength of your gift.” To wean ourselves off of the ministry scripts, Thom

goes on to point out that when it’s time to worship, don’t assume you have to

go looking for your acoustic guitar, or that it requires a praise band. We’ve

become so addicted to the scripts that we’ve assumed the method is the gospel

itself. Even churches with contemporary worship can end up being tightly

scripted.

By engaging in excessive verbal flatulence when teaching or communicating

(in the past, we’ve called this ‘preaching.’) In other words, know when to stop

talking. Dialogue over monologue. This doesn’t mean teachers don’t teach. It

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simply means we must become conversational. It also means that our kerygma

(proclamation) can be fleshed out in multiple forms: art, film, guided dialogue,

beauty, nature. Anything God creates can ‘teach.’

By over-spiritualizing ‘religious’ activities (officially sanctioned events) and

assuming God can’t bring new life into the mundane (like meeting for coffee,

sharing table fellowship, bumping into neighbors, or taking a walk in the woods

with your spouse.)

By following biblical principles about God without actually walking with

God. (You know you’re being offered principles when you see fill-in-the-blank

outlines, and 3-point messages.) What happens when you get into a situation

where the principles don’t help? Or, your choice is between two good options?

You must walk with Someone who knows where the landmines are buried, and

sees the road ahead. How will you travel the dark lands of Middle Earth

without Stryder the Ranger? Or without Gandalf’s ancient wisdom? Or

Morpheaus’ training? The Church today has replaced apprenticeship under

Jesus (discipleship) with programs and principles about Him. John Eldredge

invites us to, “Approach the Scriptures not so much as a manual of Christian

principles but as the testimony of God’s friends on what it means to walk with

him through a thousand different episodes.”

One of the most powerful phrases in Scripture is, “So David inquired of the

Lord.” He didn’t assume what worked in one situation would work in another.

There was no formula, only his friendship with God. See how this operates in

the following situation:

The Philistines had gathered an army to come against King David, so

David asks the Lord how to approach the situation:

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… so David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I go and attack the Philistines?

Will you hand them over to me?”

The LORD answered him, “Go, for I will surely hand the Philistines

over to you.”

Once more the Philistines came up and spread out in the Valley of

Rephaim; so David inquired of the LORD, and he answered, “Do not

go straight up, but circle around behind them and attack them in front

of the balsam trees. As soon as you hear the sound of marching in the

tops of the balsam trees [angel armies approaching], move quickly,

because that will mean the LORD has gone out in front of you to strike

the Philistine army.”

(2 Samuel 5:18-24)

We walk with God, inquiring of him situation by situation, without assuming we

know the appropriate strategy for any given occasion. This doesn’t mean we

ask God whether we should mow the lawn on Tuesday rather than Saturday, or

approach God like over-analytical obsessive-compulsives. (I’m one of them.)

Often, when inquiring of the Lord, I’ve simply heard him say, “I trust you, Jim.

I know your heart. Step out.”

By emphasizing duty, to the exclusion of desire. (The Church today calls

this distortion “servanthood.”) In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters, the

arch-demon, Uncle Screwtape, gives his nephew and young demon,

Wormwood, the following counsel: “But do remember, Wormwood, that duty

comes before pleasure.” .

By over-emphasizing spirit over form, to the point where all ritual and

ceremony is considered suspect. My fear is that many well-meaning

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congregations have done this in their attempt to shake off meaningless and

institutionalized ritual. Surely we don’t desire empty religion. However, the

answer is not to leave behind all ritual or ceremony (‘Contemporary’ worship

has become ritualized in many senses already and left us bereft of mystery).

Rather, we must create fresh ritual and meaningful ceremony. The rituals are

never the point: the relationship is the point; yet all families need meaningful

traditions. The questions to ask are, “Which rituals and ceremonies best serve

our relationships?” “Which traditions express our rooted-ness in God’s

Community?”

What kind of wine are we serving?

"No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the

patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither

do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will

burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they

pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved."

(Matthew 9:16-17)

Much of what is offered in Christianity today is old wine − more specifically, the

Old Covenant that Jesus died to abolish. It is primarily a Gospel of behavior

and ‘sin management’ as Dallas Willard puts it; an attempt to rehabilitate the

believer’s flesh (old self) rather than release their new heart. Why tinker with

something that is dead (our old selves)? The old self has been crucified and

buried with Christ. God is interested in what is now alive.

Much of what we have today’s church is a religion of behavior modification.

The following is a revealing direct quote from one of my relatives: "The whole

New Testament, other than the four gospels, is about how you behave."

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Is that what you signed up for when you said ‘yes’ to Jesus? − to learn how to

behave? Is that the fullness of life you were looking for?!

What’s even worse is that the theology behind my relative’s perspective is

shared by many, many Christians. Why? Because they've been given a distorted

version of the gospel.

Most Christians believe that God is primarily interested in shaping them up.

It’s as if God is preoccupied with our good behavior: whether that’s to stop

doing something or to start doing something. Many believe that God’s top

priority is to get them to stop sinning. Too many Christian messages are about

making us good, moral, more spiritual, more committed, more … something. It

is a pressured spirituality. "You must be fixed," is the underlying false

assumption.

Here’s the problem: This kind of thinking is dangerous because it is only

partially true. God is interested in making us good like Christ, yet God’s way of

doing this is quite surprising. He is not interested in tinkering with our sinful

behavior in order to improve it. (You can’t get good fruit from a bad tree, Jesus

said. It’s impossible.) Dallas Willard calls this approach "sin management:" Get

people’s sin under control, is the thinking. Get them to stop behaving and

thinking badly. By the way, this is Old Covenant thinking, and much of the

Church is still living in an Old Covenant approach to spirituality. We are

keeping people in their grave clothes. Lazarus is out of the tomb, but he’s still

bound tightly in his burial cloths.

However, God does not try to fix anything about us. (Read that slowly.) It’s not

about fixing, as Larry Crabb suggests: It’s about releasing something.

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Let me explain. Most Christians believe that salvation = forgiveness; that Jesus

died primarily to forgive your sins. This is true, but it’s only part of the truth

Scripture presents. Jesus not only did something for you (forgave), he did

something to you:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove

from you your heart of stone [dead heart] and give you a heart of flesh

[alive, living heart]. - Ezekial 36:26

You have undergone radical heart surgery. Jesus has literally given you a new,

good heart, a heart that is fully alive. He has removed your diseased, corrupt

heart. Removed it (in other words, dethroned the bad heart or old self). That

new heart comes with new desires, new tendencies, and a new power from

Jesus. God is not interested in tinkering with your old nature (yes it’s still

present, but it is not the most central thing about you any longer). God is

desperately interested in releasing your new, good heart! It’s not about fixing,

it’s about releasing. It’s not about shaping up, it’s about releasing. God is not a

behavior-modification therapist. As Erwin McManus says, “It’s hard to imagine

that Jesus would endure the agony of the Cross just to keep us in line.”

You have been made good. Already.

Jesus has changed the model for spirituality: from pressure to be good, to

releasing a goodness already present (given at conversion). The Christian life is

about living out of that good, deep heart. Discipleship is about releasing your

new heart.

Why don’t we hear this truly good news much? It would set so many people

free who suffer from a religion of spiritual pressure and moralism. We don’t

need pressure to be good. We’ve already been made good. Now, our prayer

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is to ask Jesus to release that good heart he has given us. As Larry Crabb

points out, sin is not the deepest thing about you any longer: Your new heart is

the true you. Of course we still sin, yet that comes not from our new heart, but

from our old nature, which simply isn't the most important thing about us any

more. The old self has been dethroned, knocked out of center.

Five years ago, I decided to start listening again to the voice of Jesus,

and my life hasn’t been the same since. He has not been telling me what

to do, He has been telling me how much He loves me. He has not

corrected my behavior, He has been leading me into His arms.

- Mike Yaconelli, A Dangerous Wonder

The Suffocating spirit of religion

One of the most dangerous forces at work in the Church today is the Religious

Spirit. (Notice I didn't say a holy spirit.) It appears religious, appears holy; but

in fact, is not the Gospel. The religious spirit generates a confusing spiritual fog

that is heart-killing and suffocating. This spirit can enter an organic church

structure as much as it can seep into sanctuaries and Sunday School classes.

Note: Many good Christians (and Christian leaders) are only half aware of the

Gospel, or have a version of the gospel that has been perverted and altered by

the religious spirit.

Here's what the religious/suffocating spirit looks like and what the true Gospel

looks like in Scripture:

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The religious spirit The Gospel

Sees the Christian as a forgiven sinner. (Forgiven, but not essentially changed. The believer is still "prone to wander." )

Sees the Christian as a saint who happens to struggle with sin. The believer is no longer defined by his sin - his essential nature/heart has changed.

Focuses on exterior conduct and maintaining standards of righteousness.

Focuses on living from our new and good heart. (Ezekiel. 36:25-27)

Old Covenant (old way) of relating

New Covenant relating

Ignorance about what the New Covenant actually offers, causing one to remain under the law.

"For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law." -(Galatians 3:21)

"Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law." -(Galatians 3:25)

Right behavior Walking in the Spirit

Bondage Freedom ("If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed." - Jesus)

Considers morality and good behavior as the centerpiece of the Gospel.

Sees morality and good behavior as important, but not the core of the Gospel. Rather, they are after-effects of receiving a new heart.

The new heart/Christ in you/new creation are now defining realities. The Christ-follower is now good at the core.

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The religious spirit (cont…)

The Gospel (cont…)

Believes that discipleship is about good behavior and "right living." In practice, still believes that sin is the most powerful force at work in a person - even a Christian person; or at minimum, that sin is as strong a force as the new heart is in a believer.

Believes discipleship is about releasing something already present as a result of conversion - the new heart and its new desires and power.

Believes that the Christian person is a new creation − right now; that sin is no longer the deepest thing about a person. (Sin is a problem, but is no longer a person's deepest inclination.) --"From now on, we no longer regard anyone according to the flesh [old, sinful nature]..If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." -Paul

Pressured spirituality Resting in Christ

Joyless moral striving Allowing Jesus to live in me, as me: resting from spiritual striving.

Focus on becoming: Assumption is that you aren't the person you want to be, and must strive to get there.

Focus on releasing what's already present: Assumption: At conversion, you have been made good…already. We have [already] become the righteousness of Christ. That goodness simply needs to be released - not conjured.

Hyper-righteousness that's soul-killing

The offer is life: "I have come that you might have life." -Jesus

Preoccupation with controlling people's sin. (Dallas Willard calls this 'sin management.')

Preoccupied with creating an environment for releasing the actual life and resources of Christ already present within the believer.

Sees the Gospel as forgiveness of sins almost exclusively. Gives lip service to healing, freedom, and restoration.

Sees the Gospel as forgiveness, but so much more - including restoration, healing, freedom- and lives those realities.

False Gospel Gospel

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Further Resources:

• The Rest of the Gospel - When the Partial Gospel Has Worn You Out, by

Dan Stone & Greg Smith

• Revolution Within, by Dwight Edwards

• Waking the Dead, by John Eldredge

• Galatians; Ezekiel 36:25-27; Romans; Jesus' indictment of the

Pharisees

• Connecting, Larry Crabb

Offering an emaciated Gospel

The Church today is largely missing two-thirds of the Gospel – reducing the

good news to the Cross … only. What about the daily benefits of the

Resurrection and the substantial restoration of heart and life that it brings.

What about the Ascension of Christ to his throne and the resulting shared

authority Jesus has bestowed upon his followers?

As the book and movie, The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the

Wardrobe effectively point out, the children in the story were meant to rule:

restored to their full identity as kings (small ‘k’) and queens (small ‘q’), as John

Eldredge puts it. So it is true with us: “And they [we] will reign forever and

ever.” (Revelation 22:5)

When the King returns, we will be handed a kingdom (a domain) on a restored

New Earth. I, myself, hope to be handed a small part of the Northeast

“kingdom” with its Green Mountains, White Mountains, spectacular autumns,

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and quaint country roads. In the meantime, God is teaching us to rule – for

that is our divine appointment.

The “Gospel” being offered today is an anemic, partial gospel at best – a

sparkling grape juice substitute. How do you know when you’re seeing the real

thing? In vivid contrast to our consumerized version of pop Christianity, the

Scriptures offer this description of vital Christianity:

“Who through faith:

• conquered kingdoms,

• administered justice, and gained what was promised;

• who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames,

• and escaped the edge of the sword;

• whose weakness was turned to strength;

• and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.

• Women received back their dead, raised to life again.”

(Hebrews 11:33-35)

The events you have just read about describe normal Christianity. James Rutz,

in his book, Mega Shift, reminds us what normal Christianity looks like:

A leper is healed in the marketplace. A paralyzed man leaps from his

bed. A small bit of food feeds a large group. Storm clouds turn on a

dime. The gospel is preached in one language, but heard in another. The

sound of a mighty, rushing wind is heard during a meeting of believer

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… yet there is no wind. Withered limbs are restored. A girl is raised

from the dead. And Jesus appears in a vision to one of His chief

persecutors.

Rutz goes on to say that these events are “Great historic events by any measure.

And all have happened in the last twelve years.” Yes. You read that correctly.

I must admit, my initial reaction upon hearing of such events is fear. Not

disbelief, however. But fear. But why should we fear what the Scriptures

describe as normal? Don’t we secretly want God to operate in supernatural

ways on our behalf – or for those we love? Don’t we wish to experience the

power of God the way the disciples or early Church did?

Rutz’s exciting book, Mega Shift, documents God’s recent explosive and

subversive activity through ordinary people; indicating a “mega-shift” in power

from those who are professional clergy to those simply willing to obey the One

who cannot be tamed. Does this mean that God has dismissed current church

leaders and is no longer working through them? No. He may wish to redirect

their ministries or their gifts, though. However, God is changing the wineskins

and releasing everyday folks into extraordinary kingdom activity.

Preventing the institutionalization of new wineskins

As John Eldredge reminded the attendees at the 2004 National House Church

Conference, organic fellowships – whether house churches, or cell

multiplication movements, or other fresh forms – can easily become vehicles

for a false or distorted gospel. You can create an institutionalized house church

just as easily as you can institutionalize a local church congregation – simply

import old wine into the new wineskin.

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That is why it is critical to ask ourselves, “Why are we doing what we’re doing?

To do what?” Your new context for living out biblical community is useless if

you don’t understand the what. All you’d be doing is simply changing the box’s

packaging and not its contents.

The ‘what’ is answered in many passages throughout scripture. However, we’ve

largely forgotten the ministry of Jesus foretold in Isaiah 61:

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for

the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners…to comfort all

who mourn…to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the

oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a

spirit of despair.

Notice what Jesus does: He comes for our hearts – to heal them, set us free, to

restore. I used to think this passage referred only to society’s marginalized and

oppressed, the down-and-out. Yet the offer of Jesus is for everyone – because

he comes for everyone. There are places where our hearts are pinned down,

broken and despairing. It is for freedom that we have been set free.

The Church today, however, has focused almost exclusively on the pardoning

ministry of Jesus and largely forgotten the restoring ministry of Jesus. Though

the following passage refers to the restoration of physical places, the restoring

work of Jesus extends to hearts, minds and bodies:

They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long

devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have long been

devastated for generations. (Isaiah 61:4)

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Gary Barkalow, of Ransomed Heart Ministries, reminds us that Jesus’ ministry,

and therefore ours, is about rebuilding, restoring, and renewing lives– not

simply a ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation.

There are no neutral ministry structures:

Are some structures better than others for living as Jesus lived, for offering what

he offered? For rebuilding, renewing, and restoring? The answer, of course, is

yes. There’s no such thing as a neutral ministry context – as if the context or

structure had no shaping power upon those within it. There are some contexts

in which life naturally flourishes … and others that are an impediment to that life.

There are pro-biotic (life-giving) contexts and anti-biotic (destructive) structures.

(Antibiotics kill even healthy bacteria in your gut.)

Here’s the offer of Jesus:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is

freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory,

are being transformed into his likeness with an ever-increasing glory, which

comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

(Corinthians: 17-18)

If Christianity (and our ministry structures) doesn’t do that for people −

restoring them with ever-increasing radiance and splendor – then you have to

wonder whether it’s really Christianity at all.

In fact for over 30 years, I lived with a sense of guilt because I didn’t want to

share my faith. What the Gospel had become simply wasn’t breathtaking –

until I discovered that Jesus offers so much more than pardon (as glorious as

that is). As Paul says, we are saved by his life as much as by his death. “…

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how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life.”

(Romans 5:10) It is his life that restores us, and restores our wholeness. Saved

by his death … and his life.

Structural bondage

If a local church (as we typically understand them) offers this restoration of life

and heart, then it is being true to Jesus’ ministry. The sad truth is that the

research shows that most local churches are not. If the local church is the ‘hope

of the world,’ then we’re in trouble, Barna says. Actually, as Neal Cole reminds

us in Organic Church, Jesus alone is the hope of the world and he will use any

number of forms and structures to accomplish his purposes. We’ve

mistakenly identified a particular structure, the “local church,” with the Body of

Christ itself. We are in structural bondage, assuming that our structures and the

Gospel are the same thing.

There is nothing sacred about structures. Structures are something we invent to

carry out the mission. The local church as we’ve understood it with its church

campuses, paid staff, programs and worship events simply can’t be found in

Scripture as a universal mandate. The commands for worship, gathering

together, and mission are clear; but commands for any specific methodology are

a bit fuzzy in Scripture.

Even house churches aren’t sacred structures for ministry. Though the church

in Acts met in homes, they also gathered daily in the temple courts (Acts 2: 46-

47). However, they now had a radically new reason to gather at the temple –

the resurrection of Jesus, rather than the religion of Judaism, was now the

energizing force of their lives.

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Having said that, I’m convinced that house churches provide one of the best

organic contexts for ministry. There is a certain intimacy engendered when

someone invites you into their home, their private space. Additionally, a deeply

broken person will feel safer revealing their pain in someone’s living room

rather than in the middle of Starbuck’s. Meeting in homes also makes sense for

neighbors who live within easy walking distance of one another. Wolfgang

Simson, in his book Houses that Change the World, wants the Church to come

home: “Much of Christianity has fled the family, often as a place of its own

spiritual defeat, and then has organized artificial performances in sacred

buildings far from the atmosphere of real life.”

House churches vs. churches with small groups

Simson, an authority on house churches, indicates that house churches were the

backbone of the early church, with two other gatherings supporting it: a

celebratory gathering that took place in the temple courts, and governmental/

decision-making gatherings (councils) that consisted of apostles and elders.

So, what if a local church today provides both celebration events and small

groups for greater intimacy? Isn’t that the same thing? Yes and no. Though

the aspects of celebration, cell and governance are there in today’s local

churches, the structures themselves are often restrictive: requiring paid staff,

multiple programs, and facilities to be maintained. In contrast, houses are not

institutions (with paid staff, multiple programs and church campuses). In

today’s post-Christendom culture, institutions will appear suspect and out of

touch with daily life; whereas houses will always be situated quite literally where

we live. Everyone lives in some kind of home. It is basic and natural to us.

Going ‘to church’ (rather than being the church) requires us leaving everyday

life and entering a somewhat contrived environment with sacred buildings,

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sacred leaders, and sacred rituals – whether ‘contemporary’ or not. House

churches, on the other hand, are more natural to daily life, and more fluid in

mission responsiveness. (Large portions of offerings don’t need to go towards

building campaigns, and staff and program costs, and can more quickly be

offered for community needs and outreach.)

‘Why’ is more important than ‘where’ …

Though there are some contexts better than others for gathering and for

offering the restoring ministry of Jesus, any location can become fertile ground

for Kingdom activity. That Kingdom energy is none other than “Christ in you,

the hope of glory.” The Kingdom of God isn’t an abstraction. As Dallas

Willard points out, it quite literally saturates our world and the air around us is

thick with its reality. ( I do not take a panentheistic view of creation suggesting

that God lives in trees and is one substance with them. Rather, I want to

provide a corrective to a worldview that has long separated the presence of God

and his Kingdom from the realities of our world, somehow locating God “up

there,” away from earthly activity.)

As friends of Jesus, we help remove the veil for others so that they can see the

true Kingdom. In the truest sense of the word, the “local church” is any

gathering of Christ followers who live from the resurrection energy of Jesus on

a daily basis – regardless of where they gather. As Jesus indicated to the

Samaritan woman, where you worship isn’t as critical as worshipping in ‘spirit

and truth;’ and that can be done anywhere.

The local church, as a ministry context, simply hasn’t produced the

transformation it hoped to. It’s not because of bad hearts or poor intentions.

Method and structure are the culprits here. Many churched Christians don’t

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even have a biblical framework. We’re simply ‘doing church’ without producing

any significant fruit in people’s lives. (Again, there certainly are exceptions.)

By ‘fruit,’ I don’t simply mean good behavior. I mean a vibrancy only the

Gospel can bring. Jesus comes to offer “alive-ness.” Everything else, including

good character, is a byproduct of being truly alive. The Gospel is about the life

lived from a new heart (Ezek. 36:25-27) – not a manual on correct behavior or

principles for more faithful living – as important as those are. What we’re

finding, however, is that the small, revolutionary, organic fellowships God is

raising up are doing a better job of transforming lives than their ‘local church’

counterparts.

Maintaining the institution

A friend of ours told us today about a rather funny, yet telling series of events at

their local church. The church had an older interim pastor who fell ill and

needed surgery – essentially taken out of commission. Our friend’s husband,

the youth pastor there, had to fill in for preaching duties (while also trying to

complete his doctoral thesis.)

The church was able to find another interim to replace the former interim.

However, the interim-interim started having chest pains just 20 minutes prior to

last Sunday’s worship services. Once, again, our friend the youth pastor’s cell

phone rang, asking him to substitute preach that weekend. (He’s preached half

as much in the last two months as he has over his entire ministry.)

What a ridiculous state of affairs. No one ever asked the question, “Do we

need a sermon this Sunday?” No one ever imagined that they could have done

things differently; or even that you didn’t need a professional clergy person to

lead the congregation; or that there were other ways of being the Body of Christ

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together. It’s clear that a lot of sacred cows would have needed to be

slaughtered in order to entertain those possibilities.

The danger in this kind of ministry context is that it becomes all about keeping

the institution running. And, the institution is kept running by assumptions.

Organized religion has a lot of preconceived notions about “church” and what

it ought to look like: Our highly scripted, clergy-led, evangelical-subculture

worship is something we made up. As part of a speech that led to his death,

Stephen declared, “However, the Most High does not live in houses made my

men. As the prophet says: Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my

footstool.” (Acts 7:48-49) Today’s “local church” model sadly reflects a

rehashing of the Old Covenant Temple and synagogue model, not a living

organism called the Body of Christ. I can’t count the number of times I’ve

heard church leaders say, “Isn’t it great to be in God’s House today?”

As Barna points out in his book , Revolution, the commands to worship, to

gather together, receive the Body and Blood, and to receive Jesus’ and the

Apostles’ teaching are all clear in scripture. The forms or methods by which we

carry out the commands are not as clear. Perhaps the loss of definitive

methodological descriptions in Scripture are an indication … or better an

invitation … to live from the Holy Spirit and follow his creative lead.

Church - as outposts of incarnation:

Rather than centralized places where the faithful go to ‘do Church,’ Stanley

Hauerwas and William H. Willimon in their book, Resident Aliens, describe the

Church as “a colony … a beachhead, an outpost, an island of one culture in the

middle of another…”

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“Part of our problem …” says Tom sine, in his book, Mustard Seed v.s. Mcworld,

“is that we tend to see it [church] more as a place to which we go than as an

alien community of which we are a part.” The Church Community of the

Book of Acts was much “much more a living, breathing community that was

‘breaking bread from house to house,’ sharing life, sharing resources, all

centered in the worship of the living God,” says Sine.

Community outposts are not about hunker-and-bunker cocooning, a retreating

from reality; but rather a “doing church where life happens,” as Neil Cole says.

Sine goes on to point out that the Church is not primarily about evangelism or

social action, as important as those are; but primarily about incarnation –

community “fleshed out.” This gives the Church its legitimacy before a

watching world. Our problem today is that we have the Word without Flesh –

a disembodied Word. For those in organic neighborhood faith-outposts, doing

church and doing life is the same thing – because they occur in the same

context. There is no dichotomy of place or practice.

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Chapter 5

_________________________________

Collision point: when “Storm One” meets “Storm Two”

The Church is about to face its worst weather in a very long time. Like Mount

Washington, the Church sits at the confluence of hazardous storm tracks,

making conditions extremely dangerous. Not only does the local church face

obscurity in the face of Storm One (a post-institutional/ post-local church

world) the Church is about to be hammered by another powerful storm system:

An out-of-gas Church in an out-of-gas World

The results? Rather than a 1 + 1= 2 additive effect of “Storm One” plus

“Storm Two,” it may be more of a geometric progression, yielding a 1+1 = 4

effect. Because we have not yet lived through this coming confluence of

powerful storms, we can’t be sure exactly the toll they will take. Preparation will

be critical.

The organic kingdom outposts we’ve been speaking of are the way through the

storms. I am very hopeful that because of these outposts, the Church not only

will survive the storms, it will advance the Kingdom perhaps more powerfully

because of them!

Let’s take a look at the unnerving threat an out-of-gas world (and therefore a

Church out-of-gas) presents.

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Chapter 6

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Storm Two: The out-of-gas church in an out-of-gas world

“The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert, and artificial light in the middle of the day all have

something both demented and admirable about them: the mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go

out as was the hunter in his primitive night.” (Jean Baudrillard)

“There is no substitute for energy. The whole edifice of modern society is built upon it … It is not ‘just another commodity’ but the precondition of all

commodities …” (E.F. Schumacher)

“Sooner or later, we sit down to a banquet of consequences.” (Robert Louis Stevenson)

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Why you may not be driving to church…

or driving much at all

The world is about to run out of gas, literally. We have used up one-half the

world’s oil reserves. World oil production has peaked, and the remaining fossil

fuel reserves are going to be much more difficult to extract: It will take more

effort and cost to extract the remaining oil than the energy obtained from that

oil. It’s the law of diminishing returns and there isn’t an energy company on the

planet that can make a profit based upon that scenario. Though there may still

be oil left in the ground, extracting it will be physically impossible or financially

prohibitive. After peak (the high-point of production), oil production drops

and costs go up. Oil and gas are non-renewables: you simply can’t get anymore

out of the ground after a certain point.

The cheap oil glut over the last century, and the lifestyle it built for us, was a

one-time ride; an unusually prosperous blip on the world history timeline. The

Church, as we will see, has enjoyed this ride just like everyone else.

The ride is over.

This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse Bible

prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific

conclusion of the best paid, most widely-respected geologists, physicists,

and investment bankers in the world. These are rational, professional,

conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon

known as global “Peak Oil.”

–from website: Life After the Oil Crash, www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net.

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WORLD PEAK OIL SUPPLY

Why?

Because of population explosions (more and more people using oil), increasing

dependence on oil and other fossil fuels, and the increasing difficulty of

extracting remaining oil reserves, we are about to face a frightening new world.

World-wide demand for oil will soon outstrip world-wide production of oil

(natural gas is following a similar decline), causing prices to go through the roof

and oil-dependent societies to come to a screeching halt.

It only takes slight disruptions in supply to trigger economic avalanches. Matt

Savinar (Life After the Oil Crash.net) says it’s similar to dehydration of the

human body:

The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man

thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to

everything the human body does, the man doesn’t need to lose all 140

pounds of water weight before collapsing from dehydration. A loss of

as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

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A conservative estimate puts yearly oil production decline at 3%. Estimates of

8% to 10%-13% have been predicted. You’ll recall the 1970’s oil crisis? Oil

prices nearly quadrupled from a mere 5% decline in production. Andrew

Gould, CEO of the mammoth oil services firm Schlumberger, says that a yearly

production drop of 8% is not unreasonable. If a 5% decline caused a tripling of

prices during 1970’s crisis, what will an 8%, or 10% drop do to prices –

especially since world population and oil consumption has increased

significantly since the 1970’s. How we will be able to fill our car’s fuel tanks will

be only one of an entire package of concerns we will soon be facing.

What cheap oil has made possible:

• Sprawling suburban communities dependent upon automobile

commuting: driving to work, driving to school, driving to big-box

supermarkets, driving to church.

• Air travel.

• A generally stable economy. Energy and financial markets are

directly linked.

• Transportation and trucking industries that bring produce to

supermarket shelves.

• Online purchases brought to your doorstep. Amazon and FedEx

owe their existence to cheap and plentiful oil.

• Multiple daily car trips across town to shuttle kids and run errands.

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• Energy (electricity) to heat and cool homes and businesses-

electricity production is generated through oil and natural gas –

both declining.

Brutal realities about world oil supply:

(The following statistics are adapted from The Long Emergency, by James Howard

Kunstler:)

• We’ve already consumed one-half of the world’s liquid oil supply.

The other half is the hardest to extract and of lower quality. We

are at world “peak oil production” – the top of the bell curve –

and it’s all downhill from here. We are at the tipping point.

• We are at, or very near, peak oil capacity – right now. “The best

information we have is that we will have passed the point of world

peak oil production sometime between the years 2000 and 2008.”

• It is very unlikely that the full remaining half of oil reserves can be

extracted.

• The remaining oil supplies may be so hard to recover that the cost

of extracting them will be more than they can be sold for – making

recovery efforts financially untenable.

• More than 60% of the world’s remaining oil is in the Middle East.

Can you see the problem there? As nations struggle to obtain oil

for their citizens, oil wars may likely ignite an already volatile

situation. If you think world peace is fragile now, just wait. I don’t

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believe these dire changes signify the end of the world; however,

our world is about to change for the worse … dramatically so.

• After peak, oil supplies won’t meet demand. We’re simply used to

guzzling oil as if there was an endless supply.

Can’t we just speed up exploration

and look for other oil reserves?

That, too, is problematic. As Princeton professor and consultant for the

petroleum industry Kenneth Deffeyes indicates, “It takes a minimum of 10

years to go from a cold start on a new province to delivery of the first oil…

Nothing we initiate now will produce significant oil before the 2004-2008

shortage begins.” (Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage) Deffeyes, a

former oil-man himself, believes that world oil production will have peaked

before 2004.

The shrinking of everything we know…

and the end of suburbia

Suburbia doesn’t work without cheap oil. How will you operate your car

without cheap gas, or no gas, at some point? (We’ll talk about fuel alternatives

and their inadequacies later.) How will you get to work? You’ll have to live

much closer to your children’s schools – that is, if schools can afford to heat

and cool their cavern-ness buildings. If you’re used to driving to church, how

will that change? Remember the oil crises of the 1970’s? In our present-future,

the crisis won’t end; and in fact, will unravel our consumptive way of life as we

know it.

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We are about to enter a post-industrial age. As Richard Heinberg tells us in his

book, The Party’s Over, “Industrial civilization is based on the consumption of

energy resources that are inherently limited in quantity, and that are about to

become scarce. When they do, competition for what remains will trigger

dramatic economic and geopolitical events; in the end, it may be impossible for

even a single nation to sustain industrialism as we have known it during the

twentieth century.”

Jim Kunstler (The Long Emergency) reveals a soon-coming reality: “This [car-

crazed culture] will change radically. There will be far less motoring. The

future will be more about staying where you are than traveling incessantly from

place to place, as we do now.” Life will become increasingly hyper-local – lived

right where you are.

Much of suburbia won’t be live-able in the post-oil reality. Kunstler envisions a

bleak future for our sprawling suburban landscapes: “Instead, this suburban

real estate, including the chipboard vinyl McHouses, the strip malls, the office

parks, and all the other components, will enter a phase of rapid and cruel

devaluation. Many of the suburban subdivisions will become the slums of the

future.”

Oil allowed us to live in a dangerously short-lived fantasy: auto and plane

travel, heating oil, plastics, pharmaceuticals. “Our investment in an oil- addicted

way of life – specifically the American Dream of suburbia and all its trappings –

is now so inordinately large that it is too late to salvage all the national wealth

wasted on building it, or to continue that way of life more than a decade or so

into the future.” (Kunstler, The Long Emergency)

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Do you know how to farm?

Large supermarket chains, or any big box chains like Sam’s Club won’t survive.

They depend upon cheap oil to run their distribution fleets. And, we won’t be

able to get our coffee from Ethiopia any longer or bananas from across the

country: Who would be able to afford the prohibitive costs of transporting

them to us? As a result, most everything will have to be grown locally.

Prices for just about every consumer good will rise because companies will have

to charge higher prices to compensate for their rising fuel costs. It will send

tremors throughout the world: every country, every state, every city, every

company, every family. Do you really think the company you work for will be

able to give you adequate cost of living wage increases when their own backs are

up against the wall? Do you think they’ll even be able to keep you around at all?

(Self-employment will be an increasingly viable option in the future.)

Farming will be a critical ‘life-skill’ in the near future. Organic (without

pesticide, without growth hormones, and without antibiotic-laced cattle feed)

farming will be the best. It’s easier on an already decimated landscape, and far

healthier for consumption. We and our immediate neighbors will have to learn

to grow our own food. The Church will have to learn organic principles in

every sense. Rather than running from this new reality, small Christian outposts

and their networks could provide a valuable service to the community by being

prepared; by creating community farming co-ops in their neighborhood. Christ-

followers will become the new “Green” Berets.

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Why we will need our neighbors

In the decades to come, suburban housing will be the worst place to live, with

its requisite disconnectedness from local businesses, meaningful town centers,

and food sources. I actually recommend living in a walk-able town with a real

town center run by local businesses. (You’ll want to be able to walk everywhere

in the long energy emergency. See Appendix to learn more about walk-able

communities.)

We will have to increasingly rely upon our neighbors and do life cooperatively.

Perhaps your neighbor will know more about local farming. Perhaps you will

have skills in home-schooling you can share with your neighbors and their

children. Neighbors will be valued increasingly for the skills, craftsmanship or

insight they can bring to the community. This might be the best thing for

Christianity yet. The increasing opportunity for meaningful connection with

neighbors – as a way of life – will bring fresh Kingdom possibilities.

The problem with alternative fuels

There are of course, energy alternatives to oil, gas, and coal – options like

nuclear power; and renewables such as solar, biomass (plant material, including

ethanol), geothermal, hydroelectric, and wind. However, there is no magic

bullet, no cure-all for our situation:

Based on everything we know right now, no combination of so-called

alternative fuels or energy procedures will allow us to maintain daily life

in the United States the way we have been accustomed to running it

under the regime of oil. No combination of alternative fuels will even

permit us to operate a substantial fraction of the systems we currently

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run – in everything from food production and manufacturing to electric

power generation, to skyscraper cities, to the ordinary business of

running a household by making multiple car trips per day, to the

operation of giant centralized schools with their fleets of yellow buses.

We are in trouble. (Kunstler, The Long Emergency)

Our collective hubris as Americans deludes us into assuming we can easily

transition into whatever is next; that somehow we’ll find a way to make life as

we know it continue… and without much difficulty. Contrary to this fantasy,

the transition into whatever is next will be one of upheaval and strife. Our

indulgent way of life will not continue as we know it.

And, Richard Heinberg (The Party’s Over) reaffirms Kunstler’s concern with

alternative fuels: “… the inability of alternatives to fully substitute for the

concentrated, convenient energy source that fossil fuels [oil, natural gas, coal]

provide.”

As Heinberg indicates, the best option is for the nations of the world to work

cooperatively and move quickly towards conservation and alternative renewable

energy sources. However, I’m not confident the nations of the world are

capable of working cooperatively, especially at the level required to pull this

transition off. Have they thus far? Have we seen global kindness and mutual

accountability? Not by a long shot. We might well see more territorialism and

increased hostilities over resources rather than cooperation.

Bottom line, the transition into whatever is next will be messy and chaotic.

“…We should not delude ourselves,” says Heinberg. “Any strategy of

transition will be costly – in terms of dollars, energy, and/or our standard of

living.” Heinberg sites Odum and Odum to confirm this reality: “… None [of

the solutions] in sight now have the quantity and quality to substitute for the

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rich fossil fuels to support the high levels of structure and process of our

current civilization.” What’s more, says Heinberg, decades will be required to

transition from fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal) to renewables − and we don’t

have decades before we’re out of gas.

Some renewables are good for generating electricity, but not for transportation

or for growing food. And, switching to alternatives will require a complete

overhaul of modern society. “The result?” says Heinberg, − an energy-

conserving society that is less mobile, more localized, and more materially

modest.” This assumes we are successful at implementing those alternatives. A

more simple world would be a welcomed alternative to our fractured, hyper-

paced consumer culture. However, the changes will be unwelcome for many;

and painful.

What about renewables like wind and solar?

As one example of alternative energy, let’s take solar and wind power: “There is

a set of erroneous popular notions to the effect that renewable energy systems

such as solar power, wind power, and the like are available as freestanding

replacements for our fossil-fuel-based system, that they are pollution-free and

problem-free – that renewables represent something akin to perpetual motion, a

gift from the sun.” (Kunstler, The Long Emergency). This naiveté will cost us.

Kunstler points out that even an alternative such as solar-electric systems

require fossil fuels for manufacturing the solar system’s component parts – even

though that kind of system doesn’t run on fossil fuels themselves: “The

batteries, the panels, the electronics, the wires, and the plastics all require mining

operations and factories using fossil fuels… This gets back to the question as to

whether these systems could exist without the platform of an oil or coal

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economy to produce them.” (Kunstler, The Long Emergeny) The same thing

could be said of wind power. You need an adequate supply of oil to make the

wind turbines and run the factories to build them, and the trucks to transport

them. Do you see the degree to which our entire infrastructure for daily living

has been inextricably linked to petroleum supplies?

Another commonly-touted solution to the energy problem is ethanol, a fuel-

grade alcohol produced typically by fermenting corn. However, according to

analyses conducted by Cornell University’s David Pimentel, “the fuel cost more

energy to produce than it eventually delivered to society.” (a 29% net loss of

energy)

Also problematic is the amount of farm land required to sustain our current

levels of transportation use. According to Heinburg, “500 million acres of

farmland would be needed to provide fuel for the American fleet – or 25

percent more farmland than currently exists” in the U.S. The U.S. is already a

net food importer. Can we afford to give up any more available farmland on

which to produce corn or other crops primarily for ethanol?

To convert to alternative energy structures would take time, and we don’t have

much time. (You’d essentially be overhauling the structural DNA of an entire

nation.) Could we possibly accomplish this Herculean task before the oil and

natural gas run out for good? *

Bottom line: we have to find a way of driving less and living more

simply– not simply re-fueling our auto-addicted lifestyles.

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The hyper-local church

Local churches (with their buildings, staff, and program budgets), whether they

live by faith or not, will suffer like the rest of the world in a post-oil world.

What will happen when people will no longer drive to church – especially if they

don’t live within easy walking distance? Here are some very real possibilities:

• Many people may choose not to ‘go to’ church (seeing “church” as

something you ‘go to’ is a problem in itself.)

• Church budgets will be affected by lack of participation.

• Staff will be cut.

• Programs will be cut.

• Church buildings will go into foreclosure because of grossly

inflated heating costs and dwindling budgets.

• Church in this form, in this context, won’t be sustainable.

Church will have to become as hyper-local as everything else. In other words,

biblical community will have to be lived out right where people live; in their

homes, businesses, and gathering places. People will become much more

reluctant to “attend” a church they have to drive to when oil supplies become

scarce and prices skyrocket. They’ll have to stay put. This is why organic

church is the way into the future:

Organic church means you can still be the Church when you can no

longer drive to church.

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The disruption of just about everything

Whatever you believe about the options for the future and possible alternatives

doesn’t alter the fact that these changes will take time, and will be highly

disruptive. The assumption that human ingenuity and technological innovation

will automatically and seamlessly take us into the next phase is hubris and

deceptive.

There will be no smooth transition into whatever is next.

* For in-depth discussions of the alternatives to fossil fuels, look at Richard Heinberg’s book,

The Party’s Over – Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies; or James Howard

Kunstler’s, The Long Emergency.

Websites on peak oil:

• http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ (Excellent website that

answers common questions about the oil supply)

• http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/ (A 90-minute movie)

• http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/feature5

/ (National Geographic article on Peak Oil)

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Chapter 7

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A better place to live

They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated;

they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.

(Isaiah 61:4)

“While there are many ways to reduce oil consumption – from turning out lights to installing solar panels on the roof – the best way to save oil is to use

less gasoline – which can be accomplished by driving smaller cars, switching to hybrid cars, and moving to a walkable city and riding trains and bicycles. New Urbanism, Transit Oriented Development, and rail transportation are all major

solutions to this crisis.” (from the New Urbanism website, www.newurbanism.org. )

“The living arrangements Americans now think of as normal are bankrupting us economically, socially, ecologically and spiritually.”

(James Howard Kunstler, author of Home From Nowhere)

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Our suburban landscapes have been stripped of their beauty and livability.

Urban and suburban sprawl has blighted our living spaces. Strip malls, big box

megastores with their asphalt parking corrals, cloned and uninterested housing

tracts, and miles of car-choked highways have made our spaces anything but

livable. Yet, we tolerate them.

Elusive Community

Why is community, meaningful and consistent community, so elusive? Deep,

consistent community seems nearly impossible to create. What is working

against us? Do you have meaningful face-to-face contact with your friends as

often as you’d like? Do relationships seem secondary to your pace of life, even

if you want to make a change?

I am aware of a lingering hunger for more, and am consistently frustrated with

my current level of community. I have a small handful of friends locally, few

with whom I can go deep. Because we’re not neighbors, connecting in person

is complex. Schedules and distances present barriers that require great

intentionality to overcome. One of those great allies lives on the other side of

the country – a five hour plane trip away. We talk every week or so. It’s not

enough. How could it be? Our souls require more.

So what’s the problem?

If you only saw your spouse or children once or twice a week at best, would you

consider that healthy? Clearly not. That seems obvious. Yet, this is the norm

with many of our friendships, even our deepest friendships. (This lack of

frequency is also a shortcoming of most small group experiences.) Much of

what happens in the Kingdom happens “on the way,” in-between destinations,

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as Randy Frazee suggests. Without neighborhood-based fellowships, there are

no such opportunities.

The underlying obstacle we face is proximity. We don’t live close enough to

each other to connect more frequently. Geography affects relationships. We

cannot offer each other the gift of our presence from a distance. Because I

can't walk to your house, we're forced to "set up a time to get together".

Schedules permitting.

This puts a cap on our relationship. Now, proximity is clearly not a guarantee

for deep connecting: the divorce rate is proof of that. Yet without proximity,

frequency of contact, especially spontaneous contact, gets much harder to pull

off. Do we really want all our relationships to be scheduled?

The culprit Please know that this isn’t entirely our fault. There is a culprit working against

us, and its name is "sprawl." Our neighborhoods and cities are built in such a

way that we are forced to drive everywhere we need to go. We drive our cars

from strip mall to strip mall, fight congestion on bloated highway systems,

commute to church and commute to work. We are auto-dependent. Because

we drive rather than walk, we simply don’t bump into each other, allowing for

spontaneous conversation. We’re forced to schedule relationships! I can’t

imagine Jesus doing that, can you? Therefore, potentially divine moments

between friends are limited by our calendars.

Real places

Prior to WWII, most homes had front porches close to the sidewalk, allowing

for spontaneous conversation with neighbors walking by. We could walk to the

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town square for work, shopping, or relaxation − allowing for more interaction

with our neighbors who were doing the same thing. The physical layout of

those communities fostered relationships. Today’s automobile-centric suburban

sprawl prevents frequent interaction with neighbors. You see them in the

morning when you’re leaving for work and when you pull back into your

driveway at the end of a hectic day… maybe.

Under the radar, however, God has been using town architects and new urban

planners to provide an answer to the post-oil, out-of-gas trauma that is soon

coming. Call them New Urban communities, ranging from urban infill projects

to TND’s (Traditional Neighborhood Developments) or walkable towns.

These developments provide a more sane and sustainable way of living: one

that puts people and relationships before cars and chaotic lifestyles. These

more livable places are giving shape to community – literally. (To view an

online slide show of livable communities, go to The Congress for New

Urbanism’s website: www.cnu.org. See the section, “About New Urbanism.”

You’ll see pictures of real towns that stand in stark contrast to typical suburban

sprawl.)

When you can no longer afford to drive your gasoline-gorged SUV, you’ll want

to live in one of these pedestrian-focused communities. (Many of them have

been around since before WWII, and new towns are being built). Though many

of the newer towns are relatively more expensive than sprawl subdivisions

(because it costs more to change antiquated zoning codes), there are more and

more of these places being built all the time. On the other hand, remember

what percentage of your monthly budget currently gets spent on gasoline and

auto maintenance for multiple car trips a day – not to mention a healthier

lifestyle that would result from walking.

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You won’t even need your car for most of your daily needs: you’ll be able to

walk to the store easily, walk your children to school (large gas- guzzling yellow

school bus fleets won’t likely survive the post-oil challenges), and walk to the

doctors or drycleaners. You can bump into with your neighbors who are

walking to the same places you are every day. Typical suburban subdivisions

place goods and services out of walking distance from homes, so that walking to

these services is neither a pleasure nor practical. These walkable, smarter

communities are designed to create community between neighbors. (It’s

difficult to build relationships with neighbors who are constantly cocooned in

their automobiles, running around like rats through a maze of asphalt and strip

malls.) But what qualifies a community as “walkable?”

The website, Walkable Communities, Inc. (www.walkable.org) provides the

following qualifications for a walkable community:

1. Intact town centers – a main street that includes a variety of stores

and amenities you would require on a daily or weekly basis including

hardware store, druggist, clothing, grocery, library: all located within a

five-minute walk of the absolute center of town. There must be a

discernable town center, and a defined town edge. Typical

urban/suburban sprawl, of course, doesn’t provide either.

2. Residential densities, mixed income, mixed use – neighborhoods

where people have the option to walk rather than drive. Houses of

various incomes occupy the same neighborhoods and are integrated

with local retail, business, and public spaces. You can truly live, work,

and play in the same community. Most current zoning codes prohibit

mixed-use, separating retail and business areas from housing. This used

to be a good idea when you didn’t want a smog-bellowing factory built

outside your front door, but is prohibitive to creating communities

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where residents can easily walk to non-polluting retail destinations. The

New Urbanism’s website (www.newurbanism.org) points out that many

smart towns are building garages behind homes, with rear-lane access,

putting the car back in it’s rightful place – rather than making the garage

the focal point of a home’s street-face.

3. Public space – parks, gathering spaces for play, conversation and

other functions; preferably within 1/8 miles of every home.

4. Universal design – the community becomes accessible to everyone,

regardless of ability or age; and includes appropriate ramps, sidewalks,

benches, shade and other amenities that are focused on people.

5. Key streets are speed controlled – streets are designed to slow

traffic down for the sake of pedestrians; are often tree-lined, creating an

attractive barrier between walkers and traffic; and may offer on-street

parking.

6. Streets, trails are well linked – streets are connected, often in a grid

pattern, allowing for multiple ways to get to a destination, thus more

evenly distributing traffic flow. Cul-de-sacs are no longer valid, or are

re-engineered to connect with other streets by paths.

7. Design is properly scaled – “Scaled to 1/8th, 1/4 and 1/2 mile

radius segments. From most homes it is possible to get to most services

in ¼ mile (actual walked distance). Neighborhood elementary schools

are within a ¼ mile walking radius of most homes, while high schools

are accessible to most children (1 mile radius). Most important features

(parks) are within 1/8th mile, and a good, well designed place to wait for

a high frequency (10-20 minutes) bus [or rail transit] is within ¼ to ½

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mile.” Higher density makes this possible, placing houses closer

together (much of suburbia is wasted space), and placing retail and

services within easy walking distance. Land is used more wisely.

8. The town is designed for people – People are more important than

cars. Street corners are designed with a slow-turning radius. On-street

parking is available rather than having to park one’s car in a huge

parking lot and walking to retail or other destinations. Readily accessible

parks and walkways indicate the primacy of pedestrians over autos.

Many meaningless, soul-less strip malls and shopping places are now

being torn down in order to create more dense, mixed-use, mixed-

income communities for residents.

9. The town is thinking small – Big-box retails are discouraged; and in

their place are smaller, more neighborhood friendly groceries and

pharmacies that blend with the architecture around them. Caps are

placed on square footage to insure that the scale is appropriate to the

neighborhood.

10. Many people are walking – Beautiful landscaping doesn’t

guarantee that people will walk. Residents need meaningful

destinations to walk to. They also require a sense of safety as

they’re walking. In truly walkable communities, you will see many

different people walking, with drivers exercising courtesy and

caution with pedestrians or bicyclists.

11. The town and neighborhoods have a vision – well-designed

master plans are in place that encourage community input

(ownership) and set aside funds for neighborhoods, trails,

sidewalks, and parks. (The website for New Urbanism,

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www.newurbanism.org, points out that the best of these places

create a minimal impact on the landscape and ecosystems; and

value energy efficiency.)

12. Decision makers are visionary, communicative, and

forward thinking – In these places, there is a large core of

community leaders who understand how to create a sustainable,

enjoyable community. Community participation is encouraged.

Building practices and codes are reworked to support a vital town

center and to disinvest in suburban sprawl.

Walk, don’t run…

Eric Jacobsen, in his book, Sidewalks in the Kingdom, reminds us of the difference

between communities based upon walking and those catering to the automobile:

The result of the auto-oriented culture we have built for ourselves is that

our days feel fragmented into disjointed elements, and we are forced

into the role of harried tour directors who must create complicated

itineraries for ourselves and our families … When every element of our

being human and functioning in a human environment requires a

separate trip in the car, it is no wonder that even the most laid-back

personalities complain of life’s frantic pace.

On the other hand, in the mixed-use neighborhood [where housing

space is integrated with businesses and public greens, affording the

opportunity to walk rather than drive] a simple trip walking to the store

can meet multiple goals. It is primarily an errand to purchase food for

the family. But it is also exercise and an opportunity to get some fresh

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air … It can be a social occasion if you happen to meet a neighbor on

your way to the store.

Jacobsen points out that walking is a biblical activity:

• Walking builds relationships because the opportunity to bump into

a neighbor and start a conversion is greater than if the two of you

are driving past one another in your gas-eating metal cocoons.

• Much of Jesus ministry happened as he was walking on the road:

“As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers…”

• We use terms like, “walking with God” or “walking in the light” as

a way of describing discipleship; and “he who walks with the wise

grows wise.”

• Jesus meets two disciples on the road to Emmaus, turning that

mystical encounter into an awakening.

We’ve forgotten that there is a physicality to our spirituality. The act of walking

can be a portal to spiritual activity.

Billy Crockett, a guitarist and songwriter who has refused to succumb to the

Christian music industry machine, penned these lyrics about the myth of

suburban “community:”

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41 Lawnmowers

Find a good ol’ neighborhood – a square block of the U.S.A. Stake your claim, claim your space; sink your roots and live your days Build a fence, close it in. Raise a lawn and grow some kids. Make a name, name your friends; that’s the American way to live. In forty-one houses, only one street Forty-one yards, eighty-two trees. Forty-one mowers all sittin’ in sheds, Forty-one families in over their heads … And everybody’s got their own everything.

From the Bronx to Hollywood, Montreal to Mexico The fever grows to go for gold Gain the world, and lose your soul … Push and shove; don’t look back Absolute success attack Insulate … cul-de sac Proves that universal fact that:

In forty-one houses, only one street Forty-one yards, eighty-two trees. Forty-one mowers all sittin’ in sheds, Forty-one families in over their heads … Forty-one neighbors with nothing to say Building their lives the American way …. And everybody’s got their own everything.

(Lyrics from: “41 Lawn Mowers,” Billy Crockett, In These Days – Live)

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Suburbia is not good for your health

From USA Today we read, “People living in sprawling American neighborhoods

walk less, weigh more and are more likely to be hit by a car if they do venture

out on foot or bicycle,” according to studies. “The studies are among the first

reports to link shopping centers, a lack of sidewalks and bike trails and other

features of suburban sprawl to deadly health problems … One report also

shows that people living in sprawling suburban areas were more likely to suffer

from obesity, which can put people at higher risk of cancer, diabetes and a host

of other diseases.”

Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, suggests that for every ten minutes we

spend commuting, we suffer a ten percent loss in “social capital.” I recently

tallied the hours I spend in the car weekly, and by conservative estimates, I am

cloistered in my automobile for 12 1/2 hours a week (I’m sure other commuters

top this easily.) Therefore, according to Putnam’s formula, I’m suffering a

750% loss in social capital each week!

Television and suburban kids

In their book, Suburban Nation, respected new-urbanist community designers

Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck (of DPZ & Co.), pose a question to parents

who think life in the suburbs is best for their families:

In considering a move to suburbia, parents must ask themselves such

fundamental questions as how much television they want their children

to watch. A study comparing ten-year-olds in suburban California and

small-town Vermont found that the Vermont children had three times

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the mobility – independent access to desired destinations – while the

Orange County children watched four times as much television.

(from Peter Calthorpe, The Next American Metropolis, 9)

Benefits to residents of new urban communities:

(from www.newurbanism.org)

• Less traffic congestion, less need to drive

• Closer proximity to shopping and services

• Closer proximity to parks and trails

• More pedestrian-friendly

• More opportunities to get to know others in the neighborhood and

town

• Friendlier town

• Local business owners are involved in the community

• More unique and varied small businesses and shops from which to

choose

• Saving money by driving less

• More unique, local architecture rather than franchised sameness

• Better sense of place and community identity

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So, what can we do about it?

Be prepared - the solutions are radical for suburbanites and require significant

choices, ones my family and I are seriously considering. Here are some options:

Become neighbors - literally. Move closer to your friends, within easy walking

distance. Or move to a true town – the kind your grandparents grew up in, with

front porches close to the sidewalks, allowing for conversation with neighbors

walking by; and real town squares where residents mingle and enjoy a

meaningful sense of place.

You’ll enjoy more frequent contact, spontaneous conversation, and the option

to share lawn equipment and child care duties. In this close-proximity context,

we can offer each other our presence more often.

There are two viable options in addition to moving into the same

neighborhood: They are co-housing clusters (does not mean you live in the

same house with other families), and TNDs (Traditional Neighborhood

Developments):

Co-housing is when like-minded families might build their homes around a

central courtyard or other cluster configuration (or adjacent to one another

along a street), allowing families to share a common courtyard area and perhaps

a common eating facility. The families work with the architect to design this

housing cluster and its facilities to suit their needs. Families, each with their

own residence, can share meals together in a common dining or recreation

facility several times a week, and share lawn equipment and other tools. They

can share babysitting more easily, allowing weary moms and dads a break from

the routine.

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TNDs (Traditional Neighborhood Developments/walkable towns), as

indicated above are well-designed, walkable towns that allow for pedestrian-

scale community: short walking distances between homes, local businesses,

schools, and recreation areas. It’s the opposite of suburban sprawl, which

forces people to live auto-addicted, socially fragmented lives. The best of these

communities build houses with front porches closer to the sidewalk, so that

residents can casually interact with passers-by. The porch becomes a first-step

gathering place for neighbors (an outdoor living room of sorts); rather than the

deck on the back of the house that keeps neighbors isolated.

These options create proximity and frequency − two elements strong

relationships require. The following links explain these community types:

Explore further:

• Explore a new model for suburbia. National Geographic put this

fun, interactive site together:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/earthpulse/sprawl/ind

ex_flash.html

• Learn more about Traditional Neighborhood Design - (including

photos) http://www.tndtownpaper.com/neighborhoods.htm

• Visit an excellent co-housing website: www.cohousing.org

• Learn more about walkable towns and see a list of walkable towns

by state: www.walkable.org

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• Learn more about creating more sane places to live:

www.newurbanism.org.

• Randy Frazee's book, The Connecting Church, was helpful here for

understanding neighborhood-based church structures for semi-

conventional churches.

• For a more in-depth study of sprawl vs. sustainable living places,

Duany/Plater-Zyberk, and Speck have written a great book with

many illustrations called, Suburban Nation – The Rise of Sprawl and the

Decline of the American Dream.

What if you don’t want to relocate?

How can you help change your town or city to make it more livable? There are

resources for those who want to make a difference:

• Smart Growth America has published a guidebook for citizens

called, Choosing Our Community’s Future – A Citizen’s Guide to Getting

the Most Out of New Development. This guidebook includes a state-by-

state listing of smart growth contacts, as well as internet resources.

Go to www.smartgrowthamerica.org for resources.

• Smart Growth America also provides a free multimedia CD-rom

called, Smart Growth Shareware – A Library of Smart Growth Resources

for Everyone Interested in Creating Livable, Well-Planned Communities.

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• Some agencies, such as www.walkable.org provide walking tours

that help communities evaluate and improve communities, making

them more livable and walkable. It also lists walkable towns by

state.

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Chapter 8

_________________________________

Simple church in simple places

"If you, like most people I know, are worn out from a lifestyle of accumulation, then an invitation to a lifestyle of conversation and community is welcome."

(Randy Frazee)

“…the environment of the suburbs weathers one’s soul peculiarly. That is, there are environmental variables, mostly invisible, that oxidize the human

spirit, like what happens to the metal of an ungaraged car. I think my suburb, as safe and religiously coated as it is, keeps me from Jesus. Or at least, my suburb (and the religion of the suburbs) obscures the real Jesus. The living patterns of

the good life affect me more than I know.” (Dave Goetz, Death by Suburb; www.deathbysuburb.net.)

"The spiritual life cannot be made suburban. It is always frontier; and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed."

(Howard Macey)

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For some time now, I’ve wondered what would happen if you combine simple,

organic fellowships with simple and walkable (rather than sprawling), towns and

communities. Fusing simple church with simple places would bring together

the spiritual and physical/spatial aspects of community; both being essential for

regular, meaningful and sustainable relationship. It’s the fusing of the

supernatural with the natural – a far more accurate version of the Kingdom

than the disembodied spirituality we’ve become accustomed to.

The Church is likely to give thought only to the ‘spiritual’ aspects of

community. We’ve always done this – elevating the spiritual and largely

ignoring the physical. (Remember the ancient Docetic heresies the early Church

faced that assumed the material world was evil?) We forget that we live an

embodied faith, an incarnational spirituality. We give little thought to how our

physical environments (our buildings, our streetscapes, and landscapes) shape

us. As Kenneth Jackson writes in Crabgrass Frontier, “The space around us – the

physical organization of neighborhoods, roads, yards, houses, and apartments –

sets up living patterns that condition our behavior.”

Remember, God is interested in restoring the physical world (all creation groans

until the redemption …) as well as spiritual realities. Don’t we believe that

Jesus’ resurrection, and therefore ours, was a physical restoration of his body as

well as a conquering of sin, the devil, and death? Ours is a physical spirituality.

Though complete restoration of the landscape and its natural resources is not

possible in this life, substantial and meaningful restoration is possible; especially

where the built-environment (buildings and structures humans create) has

stripped the surrounding landscape of livability and beauty. Christ-followers

are called into stewardship of all things; because once you become a Christian,

all of life is a spiritual issue. Because of Adam’s and Eve’s tragic choice, a long

and enduring “disharmony with creation itself” began, as Brian McLaren points

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out. This destructive relationship with the created order has continued to the

present.

The melting planet

In an April 3, 2006 Special Report, Time magazine told us that the Earth has

passed its tipping point. Our planet home is “fighting a fever” and global

warming is no longer a theory of the eco-obsessed: “The debate over whether

Earth is warming up is over. Now we’re learning that climate disruptions feed

off one another in accelerating spirals of destruction… Never mind what you’ve

heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take

decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.” Polar

bears are drowning in the Arctic because warmer waters are melting the ice

flows they live and hunt on, causing the bears to drown as they try to cross an

ever-widening gap between ice flows.

Drought-seared lands have more than doubled since the 1970’s. Time sites a

study by Science magazine suggesting that “by the end of the century, the world

could be locked in to an eventual rise in sea levels of as much as 20 ft.” What

will this rise in sea level mean for coastal communities, especially as hurricanes

and tsunamis continue to batter these beach fronts? Again, I ask, what sort of

world will our children and grandchildren inhabit?

Ecogelicals

The evangelical community, not known for being eco-friendly, is coming

forward and demanding action. Several well known evangelical leaders

(including Rick Warren) are taking note and demanding action. As Time

indicates (Christianity Today magazine also did a story on this) “in February

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[2006] … 86 Christian leaders formed the Evangelical Climate Initiative,

demanding that Congress regulate greenhouse gases.”

God brings beauty from ashes: As residents of his Earth, humans often operate

the other way around. What kind of world are we leaving our children and

grandchildren?

The problem is, even if most Christians agree with the idea of creation

stewardship, they believe the physical restoration of the world occurs only at the

return of Christ, that the earth will be destroyed upon his return; and therefore,

how we live on this planet really doesn’t matter. But should we go on sinning

because grace abounds? We are gouging God’s handiwork. We need to

remember that “rule and subdue” does not mean ruin and deplete.

“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live

in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the

waters.” (Psalm 24: 1-2)

God fashioned this planet and its provisions to be uniquely suited for us. There

is no other. Even at the end of the age, earth will still be our home. It will

undergo thorough reconstruction but will still remain our home … forever.

(Revelation 21:1-2). A restored earth is also where God himself will make his

home … forever: “Now the dwelling place of God is with people, and he will

live with them.” Through the surprising creativity of God, the former earth

(that is the shadowlands) will disappear and the true earth will be unveiled: a

world where you can run and run and not be out of breath, where “every rock

and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more,” describes C.S. Lewis.

Here is a most brilliant portrait of the New Heaven and New Earth:

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It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land [the new world] was different

from the Old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that

country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this.

You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked

out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among

mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there

may have been a looking glass. And as you turned away from the

window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over

again, in the looking-glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the

mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same

time they [the real ones]were somehow different – deeper, more

wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard

but very much want to know. .. the new one was a deeper country:

every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more.

(C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle)

In the meantime, we live as if that’s true; allowing the future to break into the

present. Why? Because the Kingdom is at hand. Even now. The Kingdom

of God is near you…the Kingdom of God is within and among you. (Luke

10:9; 17:21).

Though not everyone has yet found their lives within the reign of our Father,

his Kingdom is substantially present now. Therefore, we live in partnership

with the rest of his Creation – royal stewards over an earthly kingdom.

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A hunger for beauty

The “Body of Christ” is not a metaphor. We are a physically-embodied spiritual

organism, and our physical habitat shapes our spiritual habits. This is why we

have such a hunger for beauty in all its varieties. Intuitively, we know that

beauty and design affects our souls. The cold concrete structures of big-box

churches and their asphalt parking corrals betray the God of autumn maples

and alpine meadows.

In the past few decades, local churches have increasingly looked like Walmart

and Costco. Big box sanctuaries, surrounded by seas of glistening asphalt car

corrals (we call them parking lots), offer multiple “shopping” options (we call

them “programs”) for the spiritual seeker. We offer a variety of programs

rather than apprenticeship. (‘disciple’ means ‘apprentice,’ as Dallas Willard

points out.)

The churches, meanwhile, sought to benefit from the same economies

of scale as those enjoyed by the giant retail chains. Increasingly, the

churches were organized on a mass basis and housed in buildings that

looked like Walmart with gigantic parking facilities. In fact, evangelical

churches were renowned for taking over the leases of dead chain stores

in dying malls because the rents were so cheap. (The Long Emergency,

James Howard Kunstler)

While constructing buildings for maximum space and flexibility, we’ve forgotten

that building aesthetics also affect our spirituality. We’ve built some impressive,

but ugly structures in which to warehouse believers. I am increasingly aware of

my own desperate need for beauty in multiple forms. Beauty is food for the

heart, and draws us to God as the artist’s work draws one into the heart of the

Artist himself.

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Natural, organic, surroundings have always inspired people. It doesn’t take

much to enter into grateful worship while standing in a grove of old pines as

shafts of early morning sunlight penetrate the canopy roof, turning the pine

needles under your feet a honey amber.

There’s a little spot in Acadia National Park, on the coastline of Maine called

Ship Harbor. Birches, spruce, and fir trees stand where no chainsaws are

allowed. There’s a footpath that runs along the edge of a quite cove where you

can smell the seaweed at low tide and the salt air in your nostrils, and feel the

stillness. A canopy of quiet evergreens shelters your steps, allowing shafts of

feathered light to pass through its old-growth limbs. It all provides a prelude to

worship. The following song lyrics reveal the natural splendor of God’s

organic sanctuary. Try reading the following out-loud and see what it releases in

you:

Church in the Field

The sky was one vast ceiling

That vaulted out and on

Down to starry stain-glass windows

Of sunsets and of dawns

An out-of-doors cathedral

Day by day revealed

I remember church in the field


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The rain fell like a sacrament

On the alter of the soil

And mixed with sweat that fell from hands

Content with honest toil

The faith of spring saw harvest

That seeds and earth would yield



There were blazing colors

There were lovely smells

I encountered passions my poetry can’t tell

Mere religion hadn’t tamed me yet –

My reverence was all real


I prayed there without thinking

I worshipped from no cue

At flashing summer thunderstorms

And wild roses fresh with dew

And to mysteries and music

Always just concealed


I remember church in the field (written by Phil McHugh, sung by Bruce Carroll.

1989 River Oaks Music Co. BMI)

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Why has contemporary Christianity settled for industrialized, soul-less spaces?

We even call them church “campuses,” suggesting an institutionalized

educational model for discipleship.

Franchised Christianity

What we tend to offer in many big box churches is a franchised faith, a widely

distributed sameness. We proliferate franchised models of ministry without

thinking twice about our specific local context; never asking the question: “Is

this right for our ministry context?” It’s easier to mimic than it is to be

incarnational and original. Once again, we mistakenly walk with assumptions,

models, and formulas, rather than with God himself. The early Celtic Christians

called God the “Wild Goose,” inferring his inability to be tamed or reduced to

formula. Yet He can be followed.

The Church has become a cesspool of consumerism. A.J. Keisling, author of

Jaded-Hope for Believers Who Have Given Up on Church but not on God, points us to a

remark made by United Methodist pastor Benjamin S. Sharpe who writes:

“In western culture, the Church is becoming ‘McDonaldized’ in order to

retain parishioners who are enslaved to consumerism. We try to offer

what McDonald’s does: We provide lots of menu choices designed to

please the appetites and personal tastes of many individuals…

[As Christian Consumers we:]

Want lots of choices from a menu of programs that appeal to our

personal tastes and preference.

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Believe the reason for the church’s existence is to meet our felt needs,

providing a product or service.

Base our loyalty on whether our felt needs are met.”

Standing in the gaps that local churches create, there are Christian

revolutionaries who think beyond the formulas and clichéd offerings of church

culture today. They are meeting in coffeehouses, homes, parks, office buildings,

and other organic surroundings – being the Church rather than doing Church.

They are not bound by formula or tired programs. These pioneers are rejecting

the bloated churches, budgets, staff, and programs of consumer Christianity.

Their desire is to follow the Wild Goose rather than mimic franchised McFaith.

These revolutionaries are wholly committed to Christ and his mission, and are

advancing the Kingdom outside the confines of the established local church.

How can we pursue a more organic faith and better places in which to live? In

other words, creating organic spiritual community, as well as more livable

physical communities?

How a real town can become fertile soil for the Kingdom

In contrast to the ugly degradation sprawl creates, how would living in a

walk-able, well-planned town or city affect you spiritually? What if you

could walk to the church that meets at your neighbor’s house? Or, start one

in your own home, or at the local park? What if you bumped into a

neighbor on your walk the local grocer, and your neighbor needed prayer

that moment? You could walk over to a park bench and listen or pray

together. You couldn’t do that while stopped in your car at a congested

intersection. (In that frenzied context, you probably wouldn’t even know

much about the interior world of your neighbor.)

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Relational depth requires frequency, and proximity provides frequent

opportunities to connect. If you have to drive to your friend’s, then you’ll

probably have to schedule the visit. On the other hand, if you could have

multiple daily encounters with your neighbors in town, or at the park or the

local coffee shop, you can build meaningful relationships more quickly.

Frequent encounters can build trust. Walk-able communities make this

possible. These well-designed communities provide a town layout with homes,

businesses, green spaces and recreation built around a vital town center.

Everything is within walking distance from everything else, providing

opportunities for spontaneous encounters with neighbors. Thus, the physical

layout of the community gives opportunity for spiritual connections:

Christianity is fundamentally relational. “The gospel is all about the formation

of community,” Len Sweet reminds us. It’s not a benefits package for

members of the institution, he points out. The Gospel is bound to community;

because it is bound to the Trinity. “Let us…” is the starting place for all

Christian activity. Real towns and cities are relational networks for Kingdom

advancement.

To visit a true small city’s website, see Keene, New Hampshire’s website: http://www.ci.keene.nh.us/

The following are principles for building a better place to live. From The Smart

Growth Network’s document, “Getting to Smart Growth:”)

Smart growth principles:

1. Mix land uses

2. Take advantage of compact building design

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3. Create a range of housing opportunities and choices

4. Create walkable neighborhoods

5. Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong

sense of place

6. Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical

environmental areas

7. Strengthen and direct development towards existing

communities

8. Provide a variety of transportation choices

9. Make development decisions predictable, fair and cost

effective

10. Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in

development decisions

What if your house church wanted to network with other house churches in

your community in order to sponsor a community wide service project?

Gaining credibility might be easier in the context of a true town or city because

you’ve been building relationships with its citizens all along. People know you.

They trust you.

Working in a real community

Consider what your work would look like in a real community. What if you

could walk to work at your business loft in the town square; then walk

downstairs to street level and enjoy lunch at the local café? Your wife and

children could easily join you for lunch in the square because it’s only a five-

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minute or so walk to the town center from residential areas. The kids are on

summer vacation join your wife on the brief walk into town.

While enjoying lunch with your family, you run into your next door neighbor

who is shopping at the small health food market across the street. By her body

language, you sense something’s bothering her. She reveals to you that her

husband just lost his job. Because you’ve earned a level of trust with your

neighbor, you have the following options: Your wife can go with your friend to

the town park at the end of the square, where they can pray together; or you can

invite your neighbor to the small house-church gathering that meets in your

home tomorrow evening where neighbors connect, eat a meal, and pray.

While your wife is a short distance away at the park bringing Jesus to your

neighbor, you strike up a conversation with some other businessmen sitting at

the adjacent table and discover that one of them can help you develop a website

for your business.

Meanwhile, your two children have discovered that some of their school friends

are playing over at the park at the end of the square, and they ask you if they

can go join their friends. You say ‘yes’ because you feel comfortable allowing

them to go, because this community feels more friendly to children than the

suburban housing tract where you used to live. After all, in typical suburbia,

your children couldn’t easily walk to the tot lot in your former subdivision; so

you were reluctant to let the young ones go by themselves. In suburbia, the kids

couldn’t walk to the ice cream shop, or go bowling or take a trip to the hobby

store without asking you to drive them. It just wasn’t possible to walk to those

destinations.

But now, while you’re enjoying lunch, your children can run off to the park,

allowing you a moment to soak in the sun and enjoy God’s friendship.

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You notice the smell of fresh-baked sourdough coming from the bakery across

the square. You watch the relaxed conversations taking place at the outdoor

cafés lining the sidewalk. And God simply says to you, “I love your company.”

Such are the possibilities in a true, walkable community.

Discovering nature again

What if you wanted to take a short hike and detox, find some solititude? That’s

pretty tough in suburbia. You’d have to drive to get there. Yet, if you lived in

a true community, you could have easy access to park trails not far from the

center of town. Or, you would have the option to hold your fellowship

gathering outdoors, next to a stream or in an aspen grove. What if nature were

more accessible to you? In compact, walkable, ‘smart’ communities you could

do that. However, to do that in modern suburbia would be next to impossible.

Because of separate zoning requirements, suburban tract communities don’t

often have accessible park spaces or woodlands accessible to housing areas.

Suburban neighborhoods that do have parks often use those green spaces for

tot lots. (Great for children, but not for true solitude). Where do you go if you

want to get away from suburbia? You have to drive, sometimes great distances.

Notice again our dependency on cars.

Making spiritual community … physical

Smart growth communities (also known as new urban communities, traditional

neighborhoods, walkable places) are designed to build social capital. They give

residents a sense of place where relationships matter more than unbridled

sprawling development. People are looking for a meaningful sense of place

where varieties of relationships can be formed. Organic kingdom outposts such

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as house churches, coffee houses, and marketplace ministries are a perfect fit

for walkable communities. Much of Jesus’ own ministry took place while

walking from here to there, from house to house, from field to town.

Kingdom activity often happens “on the way.” Rather than being cocooned in

our cars, stressed out in traffic, we can now spend more time simple living and

relating. Because of the rise of new urban/ walkable communities, this kind of

in-between connecting with others is possible for us as well.

And remember, after the oil becomes scarce we’ll have to walk or bicycle almost

everywhere. Organic outposts that meet in walkable towns and cities offer us a

great solution: Organic church means you can still be the Church when you can

no longer drive to church. You simply walk to the Body of Christ that gathers

at your neighbor’s house, or the local park, coffee shop, or local business.

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Chapter 9

____________________________

What are your options in an out-of-gas world?

Preparing for the storm

Climbers on Mount Washington who aren’t thoroughly prepared for all possible

scenarios risk unnecessary death if a storm comes up. Smart climbers assess the

weather conditions and the terrain they’ll encounter. Nature is an unforgiving

teacher. You take the right gear and you plan well.

Here’s an assessment to help you live well (not simply survive) through the

coming storms.

Pre-storm assessment

• Do you live in an area where you can easily walk to daily and

weekly needs: a community in which you don’t have to use your

car all the time? Or are you forced to drive to all your activities and

services? Is there public transit nearby?

• Do you have a neighborhood fellowship you can comfortably walk

to? − The fellowship may meet in a home, coffee house, park, etc.

As we’ve seen, the ‘where’ is not as important as the ‘why.’

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This fellowship would serve as more than a weekly small group

experience. Because of the close proximity, you would be able to share

life together: spontaneous conversation and prayer, meals, chores,

tools − much as the early Church did. You’ll need allies close-by when

the storms hit full force.

Pre-storm preparations

• Move to a real city or town where you can walk to most everything.

Go to the website: www.walkable.org. They offer a list of true

towns and small cities by state, places they’ve personally visited and

enjoyed.

• Advocate change where you are if you don’t want to move.

• Walk with God in this. Ask God, “How do you want my family,

my faith community to walk through these coming changes?”

• Start conserving energy now. Get used to living on less. Find ways

to conserve energy around your home or business. Much of our

electricity is generated by coal and natural gas (both are non-

renewable fossil fuels like oil) – both of which are either

problematic or in diminishing supply. So don’t count on

uninterrupted electric services.

• Start driving less, now. Doing this will help lessen the shock later

when you are no longer able to fill your tank, either because the

cost for fuel has gone through the ceiling, or later, when there

simply is no fuel available.)

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• Consolidate lawn equipment with neighbors, sharing lawn

equipment and tools so that every neighbor doesn’t have to own

and maintain one of everything. You might want to invest in some

hand tools and non-electric/non-gas lawn equipment. Remember,

we’ve gotten used to the luxuries cheap fuel has provided. It

wasn’t always this way. Somehow, people managed.

• Start learning small-batch, organic farming. Remember, the large

chain supermarkets won’t survive in the post-oil economy. They

rely on large distribution networks and trucks to get the food to the

store: This requires large, endless quantities of cheap fuel. Chain

grocers also rely on huge industrial farming plants that will struggle

to survive: Their heavy-duty industrial equipment is run on

gasoline or diesel fuel.

I remember having a small garden in the backyard when I was a kid.

It’s rewarding to be able to grow your own food, and you won’t even

need to leave your backyard in order to get it! I know very little about

organic gardening, but I expect I’ll need to know in the near future.

There are resources on the internet as well as books on organic

gardening.

• Ask neighbors to join you in forming a community vegetable/fruit

garden. Share the labor and costs. The Kingdom of God is about

community.

• Become as healthy as you can. Remember, every business will be

affected by the oil shutdown, even the medical profession. Eating

organic foods, including meats, is healthier because they are not

processed with pesticides or growth hormones and antibiotics.

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• Get out of debt. The last thing you need is financial stress in a

time of disruptive change and stress.

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Chapter 10

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How do I find an organic Kingdom outpost?

Though there are seasons in which we must walk alone with God, this is not

God’s preferred journey for us. He wants to bring us friends and allies. We’re

not meant to walk alone. How do you find others who share your desires for a

more organic approach to church?

A different kind of journey

First, it is critical to remember that the journey of a revolutionary looks

different than those who have chosen a more conventional path. In some ways,

it’s more difficult because there are no scripts, no formulas. Unlike church-as-

we-know-it, it’s not always obvious where organic outposts gather. (They don’t

meet in churches.) But they’re out there.

However, the journey of a revolutionary or an exile is often more exciting

precisely because there are no scripts. You get to walk it out with God. You

get to be surprised by his intervention. So, how do you get started?

Pioneers have something better than formulas. We have God, who is a

seasoned guide for wilderness travel. Ask him, “Father, lead me into

relationships with others who want what I’m looking for.” If the answer

doesn’t come immediately (It often doesn’t), remember that faith is a journey,

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not an event. God is fighting for you when you are least aware of it. He may

have to set some other things in place before giving you your answer.

Start where you are

Secondly, start where you are. Unlike “church,” the Kingdom isn’t something

you “go to.” It literally permeates the air around us. You have the special

calling to advance the Kingdom of God right where you live. Ask God, “Show

me how I can develop relationships right here, where I live and work. Do you

want me to start a house church among my neighbors?” (Remember: don’t

turn your house church into another institution. There is no set agenda or

script. Simply live life as a Jesus-apprentice. Ask him how to proceed.)

You might ask God, “Do you want me to start by inviting my neighbors over

for simple meals, or wine and cheese, or cigars?” For me, many a good

conversation has taken place over a favorite cigar. It’s about the community.

(No one likes to smoke alone, right?) Though I certainly enjoy a good smoke, it

also lets people know I’m not about being “religious.”

Getting Connected

Lastly, go to events where you’re likely to intersect with others who want what

you’re looking for. Here are some portals, possible entry points:

• www.house2house.net: House to House − (house church

resources and gatherings). Offers an online magazine and a

directory of house churches.

• www.hccentral.com/directory/: House Church Central (find

or list a house church in your area)

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• www.housechurch.org: House church topics and resources.

World-wide house-church directory (Can search by state and city).

Well-done website.

• www.cmaresources.org: Church Multiplication Associates.

Organic church planting

• www.ransomedheart.com: Ransomed Heart Ministries (“Wild

at Heart” events for men; “Captivating” events for women.

Ransomed Heart also provides online resources, books, audio.)

God has used this ministry in profound ways to bring healing and

restoration to thousands of men and women, including the author

if this book.

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Chapter 11

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Further up and further into the Kingdom

“[Aslan] turned swiftly around, crouched lower, lashed himself with his tail and shot away like a golden arrow.

‘Come further in! Come further up!’ he shouted over his shoulder.”

“And now, friends, in the name of Aslan let us go forward.”

(The Chronicles of Narnia - The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis)

Whenever visitors to Narnia heard the phrase “Further up and further in,” it

was an invitation to adventure. In the strange new world of Narnia, accepting

that invitation involved a good deal of risk … and trust. But the children had to

know that Aslan had not only gone ahead of them; he also planned to make

them his allies in that strange and wonderful world.

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Narnia isn’t always a safe world: also inhabiting Narnia is the White Witch,

under whose tyranny it is always winter and never Christmas. Or the

neighboring tribes of warring Calormenes, who served a foreign and wicked

god. Or the dwarfs, whose allegiance was only to themselves. Giants, talking

beasts, the Wild Lands of the North. But it was into Narnia that Aslan led

them. It was necessary, for in that strange new place is where they would

discover their true and regal identities. It was where they would learn to reign

… and learn to trust a Lion who was not tame, but most certainly good.

This was also true for Frodo, Sam and their friends. Much of the adventure

awaited them outside the safety of the Shire. Frodo fulfills the mission only he

could bear. Outside the Shire he discovers a depth of friendship with Sam that

only shared-risk can provide. The little hobbits discover an unlikely fellowship

that will rescue them time and again; and find a noble and trustworthy guide,

named Aragorn – a warrior with the heart of a king. All this, because they left

the safety of the Shire. Glory follows risk.

Dorothy must leave Kansas.

Cinderella must come up from the cellar and soot.

Neo must leave the illusion behind.

Jesus must leave Nazareth.

And so it is with us. We are about to enter a very strange new world, where

cars will remain parked in driveways – remaining idle for perhaps years; where

highways will become increasingly empty and desolate; and where community

with neighbors will matter more than ever.

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We already live in a world where organized and franchised faith is becoming

increasingly suspect; where the Kingdom will need to grow organically in

homes, neighborhoods, towns and cities. Our invitation is “further up and

further in.” We follow Aslan into this strange world, because that is where he

lives. That is where he is moving.

“And now, friends, in the name of Aslan let us go forward.”

You can read Jim’s blog about Outposts of the Kingdom at:

www.OutpostsoftheKingdom.com.

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Resource Appendix

Websites on the coming world oil shortage:

• www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net: Excellent website that answers

common questions about the oil supply.

• www.oilcrashmovie.com: (A 90-minute movie)

• http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/feature5

/ National Geographic article on Peak Oil.

• http://whatwouldjesusdrive.org/ (Why what we drive is a

spiritual issue.)

Websites on walkable towns and cities/new urbanism:

• www.newurbanism.org: New Urbanism’s website

• www.cnu.org: The Congress for New Urbanism’s website

• www.walkable.org: Walkable Communities, Inc. – lists walkable

towns and cities by state

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• www.nationalgeographic.com/earthpulse/sprawl/index_flas

h.html: Explore a new model for suburbia. National Geographic

put this fun, interactive site together.

• www.tndtownpaper.com/neighborhoods.htm: Learn more

about Traditional Neighborhood Design (including photos)

• www.cohousing.org: Visit an excellent co-housing website.

• www.smartgrowthamerica.org: Smart Growth America’s

website

• www.ci.keene.nh.us: To visit a true small city’s website, see

Keene, New Hampshire’s website.

Websites on organic/simple church:

• www.house2house.net: House to House (House church

resources and gatherings). Offers an online magazine and a

directory of house churches.

• www.hccentral.com/directory: House Church Central (find or

list a house church in your area)

• www.housechurch.org: House church topics and resources.

World-wide house-church directory (Can search by state and city).

Well-done website.

• www.cmaresources.org: Church Multiplication Associates.

Organic church planting

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Websites for living from the heart:

• www.ransomedheart.com

• www.epicreality.com

• www.servegodsavetheplanet.org

Books on organic/simple church:

• Houses that Change the World, by Wolfgang Simson

• Mega Shift, by James Rutz

• Organic Church – Growing Faith Where Life Happens, by Neil Cole

• Mustard Seed Versus McWorld – Reinventing Life and Faith for the Future,

by Tom Sine

• Revolution – Finding Vibrant Faith Beyond the Walls of the Sanctuary, by

George Barna

Books on Church in a Post-Institutional Church/Culture:

• The Present Future – Six Tough Questions for the Church, by Reggie

McNeal

• Post-Modern Pilgrims, by Leonard Sweet

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• The Shaping of Things to Come – Innovation and Mission for the 21st

Century Church, by Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch

• A Churchless Faith – Faith Journeys Beyond the Churches, by Alam

Jamieson

• Jaded – Hope for Believers Who Have Given Up on Church But not on God,

by A. J. Kiesling

• Mega Shift, by James Rutz

Books on the coming oil catastrophe:

• The Long Emergency – Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-

First Century, by James Howard Kunstler

• The Party’s Over – Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, by

Richard Heinberg

Books on New Urban/Walkable Places:

• Suburban Nation – The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American

Dream, by Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck

• Sidewalks in the Kingdom – New Urbanism and the Christian Faith, by

Eric O. Jacobsen

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Books on living from the new heart:

• Waking the Dead, by John Eldredge

• Wild at Heart [for men], by John Eldredge

• Captivating [for women], by John Eldredge

• Connecting, by Larry Crabb

• Revolution Within, by Dwight Edwards

• The Rest of the Gospel - When the Partial Gospel Has Worn You Out, by

Dan Stone & Greg Smith

• The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis

Other media:

• Fellowships of the Heart – from the National House Church

Conference, 2004 – Featuring John Eldredge & Craig McConnell,

Neil Cole, Curtis Sergeant, Tony Dale − (audio CD’s) Available at

www.house2house.net.

• Revolutions & The Danger of Secrets − from the National House

Church Conference, 2005. Featuring Thom Black (audio CD)

Available at www.house2house.net.

• The Four Streams [Waking with God, Receiving the Counsel of the

Holy Spirit, Spiritual Warfare, Deep Restoration], by John Eldredge

– (audio CD) Available at www.ransomedheart.com.

outposts of the kingdom -- life after church-as-we-know-it

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