We’ve had an interesting time over the past couple of months. We had plans to do something new with the coffee shop, the connections with people over the internet are starting to happen, and it really seemed that we knew the direction we were heading as a ministry. Then, almost like a deer jumping out in front of your car (see:”The Evolution of the Deer” online somewhere…..) everything changes. The coffee shop no longer exists, we’ve moved the church into our house, and everything that we planned before is suddenly under speculation. It doesn’t take long for the world to flip upside down, does it?
Now, all of this doesn’t mean that things are bad. Things are really good, as I see it! The Net has made the transition to the new place and amazing things are already starting to happen. People are even saying that the discussion times now are better than they ever were before. People are still growing and God is working in the lives of those who allow him to. I see so many good things!
Then why do so many people keep giving me that “Oh, I’m sorry!!” look when they ask me about NETChurch???
I’ve had alot of conversations with people over the past month or so where they were asking me what we were going to do now that the coffee shop closed. I guess they were expecting me to say “Well, God has provided us this great building that used to be a KMart and everything worked out perfectly!” I’m pretty sure I know what their reaction would have been if that HAD been the case! But that’s not the reaction I get most of the time. When I tell them that we are re-evaluating and have moved things into our house I seem to be getting…………….I don’t know………………it’s like……………
Sympathy!!!
Now, I know that the usual church goes into a building as quickly as possible and sees growth as needing to move into a larger facility, but that’s not NETChurch. As soon as I say we are meeting at our home people tend to get this uncomfortable feeling and a look that they don’t know how to tell us that they feel sorry for us. No one seems to understand why a church would go this direction. They figure that there are only a couple of people coming if it’s at our house. (You would think that if they had come to our house they would understand that size isn’t an issue, but that still doesn’t change it.) Or maybe the feeling is that we’ve become one of those “weird house churches” that don’t want to conform. I don’t know for sure. It’s as if we were ok as long as we were “doing the coffee shop/church thing” but now we’ve stepped backwards and that eventually means that we’re dying.
Strange. The doctors didn’t inform me that we were on life support……………
All of this comes from a conflicted and very damaging idea that has run through the church for ages: Perception of what a “church” really is. People associate a building so closely with the church itself that if the building is not there then it must not really be a church. A church either has a big sanctuary, fellowship hall, and a steeple or it’s one of those cool, contemporary buildings with all the amenities of the mall. It’s all about location and possessions than it is people. If it HAS this and it HAS that then it must be a church. Don’t worry about what is being taught, just accept that if the appearance is right then everything is ok.
Ahhh, the dangerous perceptions of the consumer mentality……
There is a desperate need to change and rethink our whole idea of what “church” actually is. We had this discussion our first week at our house. “What is church, really?” I think this is something that we need to dig into more often in “the church” so that we don’t fall into the same traps over and over again. Hearts can totally be in the right place, but if we think that God really cares about the stain glass, steeples, coffee bars, children’s extravaganzas, or Christmas/Easter cantatas then we are most likely sadly mistaken. We do those things because they make us look “in place”, not out. We talk about changing and being cutting edge, but we usually just recycle what’s being done so that it doesn’t upset people. Holding on to bodies and not scaring them (or sometimes the opposite of scaring them INTO heaven) becomes more important than seeing them grow.
I almost here the cry “NETChurch is dead!! Long live NETChurch” rising up within some conversations. It’s not true, though. NETChurch is alive and well. Better than it ever has been. There are so many people here that need to be a part of the conversation and there are thousands upon thousands that are sitting out there on the internet that want to be a part of it. We just need to reach out and include them. Change is such an amazing thing. To some it is living. To others it is death. I always want to see it as living out loud!
Does the idea of “church” need to change? Definitely. We’ve all become too stringent in our ideas. We need to challenge our own ideas of what a church is, how it meets, what it is supposed to be. Through those conversations we can give up our own agendas and start to realize God’s. That’s what it’s all about.
Don’t be surprised if tomorrow it all looks totally different. I know I won’t:)
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