A New Church Vision

About a year or so ago, someone asked a blanket question that if we were to start a new church, what would it look like? My response was very cryptic but honest, “probably nothing like anything we would see now.” The response of the person back was “that tells me NOTHING!” True! Which was the point. I don’t think it would look like anything that exists now. At least not in the current United Methodist System.

What it would look like I don’t know still, but I think I have a better idea. Mostly I think I can define it by what it would not look like. It would not involve a building, at least not at first. Too many places including where I serve now, the church is defined as a building. But in reality, the church is the people gathered together, the ecclesia, so any new church would start with people. Buildings tend to get in the way and cause problems. When we begin to think of the church as the building, then we get sentimental, and attached, and we too often forsake the ministry of the church (the people) for the preservation of the building. Jesus himself, wasn’t too big on buildings or monuments. Instead he was about building the kingdom of God, which was and should be through building relationships with people. If eventually there arose a need for a building, the intention of the church would be that it is a tool for ministry, and not a thing to be worshipped. Then when the building has served it’s purpose and has lived out it’s usefulness, something new may be built or shared as a tool for ministry, so the church may thrive and succeed.

A new church would also not look like anything that is currently structured. One of the things that has happened in the church is we are more concerned with the structure than we are with what the structure is supposed to enable us to do. Go out and be in mission. It has been said by many that God so loved the world that he did not give it a committee. This becomes truer for me each and every day. Current church structures from Annual Conferences on down to local Congregations have fallen into a trap of meeting for the sake of meeting. We talk a lot, but don’t do a whole lot, yet we can convince ourselves that simply by meeting, we have done something. Meanwhile, the homeless have not been sheltered, the hungry have not been fed, the naked have not been clothed, because we just don’t know how we can squeeze that in, among all the meetings we have.

Committees when they are at their best are for enablement of ministry. At their worst, they are about getting together and arguing. Usually, they tend to fall into the middle of these two extremes, where we talk about ministry, yet we don’t know how to do it, and we talk about how we don’t know how to do it so much that we are convinced that we need another meeting to talk over these same issues of not knowing how again. We really do know how, we are just afraid to try for the most part.

A new church would also not be about styles of worship, in fact perhaps a new church would not have anything like a worship service, at least not in terms of current paradigms, either traditional, contemporary, modern etc. Perhaps these may evolve over time as a part of our life together, but no one-worship style should define a church. The work of Christ should define the church, and our worship should be about connecting with Christ for enablement to serve. Sometimes that may mean we will express it with organs, sometimes with piano’s sometimes with guitars, sometimes with no music at all. Too many churches think that by going to worship on Sunday morning, they have “done church.” No in fact all you have done, is listened to (but mostly ignored) the call that Jesus has on your life to be in ministry, that is issued in worship. Worship and liturgy, in whatever form it comes in, is about the work of the people. Therefore whatever we hear say and do together on Sunday, or Wednesday or whatever day it is, the primary focus cannot be on music, or even in what dialect one says the Lord’s prayer (i.e. King James English, modern English, using the word “trespasses” “sins” or “debts”) rather on how Jesus inspires, calls, and enables us to do the work of ministry which we have been called to do.