Justin Baeder’s asking some very interesting church structure questions and coming up with some great ideas. Basically, he’s proposing a “church” community where there’s not a central organization but Christians in an area meet in various forms, at various times, doing various things, without a central location and organization holding them all together. “Elders, pastors, deacons, and the like would all still have their roles, but without being split off into congregations.” The leadership would be active in the church community, but they would not be paid staff positions serving a single “congregation.”
My only complaint with his post is the title. “gathering-centered” to me evokes the idea of what many in the church already have, which is meeting-centered churches. I think he’s just saying spread-out gatherings that aren’t tied to a unique congregation, but I just don’t think the title does his concept justice.
I’ve been thinking lately about planting a church again. Well, planting of sorts. You see, when I lived in Covina and even Anaheim, I had a house church I was a part of. Many of you know it as The Offramp. While I am still emotionally connected to the group, I’ve moved and honestly haven’t made near the effort I should to stay in any sort of relationship with the church.
Also, it kind of defeats the purpose of a small intimate house church to drive 45 minutes to come to a meeting.
So, I’ve been considering just connecting with a couple people I know that live close who have expressed an interest in a simple church structure. The thing is, I don’t want to be a pastor again. At least not right now. I’ve been hesitant to take on a role I have no desire to fill, and I’m not sure a truly simple church structure would be beneficial without any type of pastoral leadership.
I would be interested, though, if there are people in Los Angeles who would be interested in embarking on a journey towards a church community like Justin describes. More specifically, the west side of the san fernando valley, west l.a., or Venice/Santa Monica (where my heart is and I hope to move back to very shortly).
Yeah, I wasn’t quite sure what to call that post.
I think we’ll see a shift away from isolated congregations and toward gatherings that have overlapping participation. Whether these are called churches or not doesn’t matter so much to me; I think it’s more accurate to say they are part of the church rather than that they are churches.
Anyway, thanks for link and thoughts.
Justin Baeder
December 2nd, 2007
Hi Alan,
I guess the other thing is to really make an effort to keep meeting with people, even if it’s not in a formal environment or called a church.
Justin Baeder
December 2nd, 2007
My pleasure to link to you, thanks for posting!
I’ve felt disconnected from the Church for about the past year. Basically since I moved away from the house church I’ve been part of.
I think I’m going to get something started soon, I just don’t want to be “the guy.”
Alan
December 2nd, 2007