TMC - Highlight #2 - Why Movements
posted May 6, 2008 by Bob Roberts Jr.
There are several things about movements I wrote–some obvious– some not:
1. It’s a Jesus movement - not a church planting movement.
2. Movements are highly personal and societal.
3. Jesus movements take time.
4. Jesus movements are led by disciples not church planters.
5. Historically only one Jesus movement per nation that involves everyone.
6. Jesus movements surge from the young.
You could list a lot of other things, but the reason I listed these was the first one is essential to understand what the movement is. The second should never be forgotten and Rodney Stark drives that home. The third is an observation I began to make as I read movements. It really opened my eyes to being patient and to value seed sowing–it goes against what I had thought or understood. The fourth is the movement can be viral. As long as it’s tied to the preacher, we can grow only as much as we have “religious professionals.” There is an unlimited amount of disciples, the question is what kind of disciples are we making. The fifth was depressing, but it winds up getting excited - there are many sub-movements, but only one national movement that sweeps a nation. The sixth–nothing new, but cannot be forgotten or we keep trying to reinvent yesteryear.
One side note, you can learn a lot from movements from studying the Civil Rights Movement, Woman’s Sufferage Movement, and others–both good and bad. Most have a leader with big vision, all have many evangelists, all are grassroots. All have hit a chord for a specific issue in time that people are ready to rally around.
Glocalization:
The La
Celebration o
The Divine Conspiracy
The Unshakable
The Prayer Saturate
Engaging God’s World
Worldview: The History of a Concept
Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft
The World Is Flat
The Pentagon’s New Map
Wikinomics
The Book That Transforms Nations
A Billion Bootstraps
My Husband Wants to be a Church Planter (multiple authors, including Niki Roberts, Bob’s wife!)
The Forgotten Ways
Breaking the Missional Code
Organic Church
May 6th, 2008 at 3:28 am
This may carry over from the comments from the first post, but I think it’ll tie in. We transitioned our church from a “traditional structure” to a house church network (originally made up of two, and now three, churches) nearly a year ago–both a frightening and exciting experience, and one that resulted, not from frustration, but from a desire to following God’s leading in making disciples, because our old structure wasn’t doing it.
I can certainly see several of these six things taking shape in our churches (some more clearly than others, and the ones I’m not seeing yet will hopefully emerge in the future). There’s certainly more of a focus on Jesus than church in our new structure–we’re intentionally looking to multiply churches so that people can become disciples of Jesus instead of focusing on “church” so much (which happened in our old structure).
Jesus movements certainly are led by disciples–and young ones at that. Our first “addition” (which will hopefully blossom to multiplication) took place six weeks ago. It is led by a guy in his late 20’s, a former meth addict who became a Christian at our church. Since challenging him and his wife to start a new church, they have really taken off. Seeing their already existing relationships as fertile ground for new disciples, they have three people who are now a part of this new church–and all of them would be considered (to use the church planting lingo) either “de-churched” or truly “unchurched.” Just 6 weeks in, this new church is already talking about how to make more disciples–even as they’re figuring out what that means form themselves. This guy is now mentoring other guys (one mentoring relationship has started, one will soon start). So we’re also starting to see the beginning of multiplied leadership and influence. Every bit of it is a God thing–it has to be (I’ve screwed up too many other things trying to do it on my own!).
As we’re removing those old layers, we’re starting to see that “metric” that Aaron Snow wrote about (which is REALLY cool). It’s slowly happening, but it has started.
The challenge for our churches is developing the “glocal” mindset… and I think it’s starting to happen as well.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:18 am
Aaron - I LOVE what you are doing. The reason I would presume that you are being effective is because there are people that are finding Jesus. An “unchurched” or “UnJesused” person who finds him gets so pumped about the life in Christ. The “glocal” thing could be key to reaching the lost. It ties people together to mission beyond the church. So - - - - who are the people nearest you that are hurting the most? Is it the poor? Is it the abused? Is it people who are destroying their families by materialism? Pick it and engage it. Pick a spot in the world and also work - we’ll get to that later. It’s essential for your DNA, not that you’ll make a massive difference at first.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Bob,
We’ve started to engage the world as well–”those who are hurting most.” The church I host has started working with the homeless in our area (it’s slow going, but it’s going). The second of our original two is having a few problems getting rolling, but they’re starting to at least think about it (and I talk about it constantly), so it’s developing with them. The new church is already thinking about ways to engage their neighborhood. With the original two churches, it’s taken time because of stripping the layers of the old structure away, but it’s happening quickly with the new church–no old structure to strip away!
Looking forward to the rest of this discussion. Thanks for doing it!
May 6th, 2008 at 8:38 am
May I tie together #2 & 3? I.e., movements are highly personal and societal and they take time. I am struggling through this personally - wanting to be transformed myself but frustrated with the slow process. So I’m asking myself (and God), what is slowing or hindering the transformation? There are many possible answers, but among the most significant seem to be: the busy-ness of life, responsibilities (e.g., family, work, etc.), comfort, and fear. For me, they fall in that order.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Randy I think they are all tied together - you’re right on - Bob