He shared a story of a young woman who called him on the carpet for being impatient and touchy with someone on the telephone. He suggested that, done respectfully, this kind of “church discipline” should be normative in churches. Moreover, he argued that, if this church discipline method was normative, bigger church discipline issues could more easily be avoided. Provided that this is a gospel-centered phenomenon, I see some merit in it; however, I’m not quite ready to jettison church membership. Are you? Why or why not?

For more see the recent 9 Marks interview with Steve.

In order to cultivate steady-state, gospel-centered missional community, just about everything in a church has to be reconfigured. Traditional paradigms and practices wont work; they are bent around a different ecclesiology. So, in order to think things through, I recently sat down with my friend Mark Moore at Total Church conference in San Diego and fired away with a list of questions. Here are a few of the insights (framed by the Q&A, not verbatim):

The Crowded House advocates a non-membership, community-centered, consensus decision making governance. You still have membership. Why and how do you develop members?

Man, we’ve got to take what Crowded House (CH) is doing and contextualize it. In America, well at least down South, especially in the Bible-belt, there is still a paradigm for church membership. It’s jacked up and needs to be tweaked, but people still come to church expecting some kind of membership, no matter how bad it is. So, we can work with that. What we (Providence Community) do is hold a six week class that goes through Gospel, Community, and end with a session on Church Planting. Then, what we tell them at the end of the class that your participation in this class doesn’t make you a member. What makes you a member is being in a missional communty.

How do you reinforce that the church is not a Sunday morning service?

One of the things we do is spotlight a missional community every week. For about five minutes someone comes up and shares something, typically about mission, from their missional community. That way, everyone coming to the service gets to hear what they are missing, to hear from the church about the church. [I asked, "Do you script this or go over it with them beforehand?"] No, and, man, sometimes people say something that doesn’t really make sense, but that is just an opportunity for us to be a real community, and if it’s really bad I can transition making some editorial comments.

How do you view yourself, as a pastor/elder, in steady state community?

My role is a shepherd, my identity is a sheep. So I try to relate to them as a fellow sheep not just as some inaccessible professional pastor. I also make sure that when I meet a dude or someone on Sunday morning that I get them connected to their missional community leader that morning, if possible. They need to know that the pastor of their missional community is the best person for them to relate to.

Austin City Life has incorporated all of this at various levels of participation and church life. Mark’s comments spurred me to spotlight our City Groups every week and not just on occassion. Our leadership has soaked up the steady state community idea, and we are working on implementing it. What a privilege!

Check it out.

HT:SM

Not everyone can think on their feet. Some people are simply not good at speaking to strangers and forming new friendships. One of the practical benefits of the three-strand model of evangelism is that it gives a role to all of God’s people. By making evangelism a community project, it also takes seriously the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit in distributing a variety of gifts among his people.

Applied three-strand evangelism includes forming authentic relationships with others, inviting them into your community through dinners, movies, hearing bands, parties and so on, allowing them to witness the power and presence of God in people who aren’t afraid of culture and genuinely love others.

We all dream of a better world – a world of security, plenty and friendship. Christians believe that God promises just such a new world. The Bible is the story of God making that promise and keeping it. The World We All Want is for people who are interested in the message of the Bible. Developed by the Crowded House, The World We All Want is an evangelistic Bible overview.

One of the key points that Tim has emphasized is beginning our gospel “presentations” with new creation, not with sin. I the Austin context, this is pretty crucial. Beginning with sin smacks of legalism and self-righteousness, but beginning with what we all long for—and what God promises—a world put to rights, full of joy and justice connects with the longing of every human heart. It mines the seed of religion in the heart of man and graciously leads him to repentance over looking to lesser things for fulfillment of this longing.

I just ordered the accompanying book, so more to come. Tim has also graciously posted the pdfs of the session summaries for Alpha course like presentations.