A new ecclesiogenesis is happening all around the Earth.  Radical and fresh patterns of church-community and missional life are springing up in all kinds of places. But where are you in this picture? Excited or Anxious? Active or Critical? Here are some stories from God’s mission field with which I have a personal connection…

EAST AFRICA

Some friends of mine went to East Africa as medics where they set up a number of health clinics in an impoverished urban sprawl. There they treat sick people, often saving lives from sicknesses which are not expensive to treat. In this way alone they are changing lives and making the love of God real. But they also teach the people about hygiene and diet. From the Bible they teach anyone interested in how to   follow Jesus’ teachings and know God. And any of the people are welcome to join with the workers in times together around the word, in prayer and praise.

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When they visited my local church the medics from the clinics mentioned in passing that more people are coming to Christ through the health clinics than through the local churches.

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LONDON (UK)

A group of young people from an Anabaptist fellowship obtained a lease on an uneconomic old pub and decided too run a short-time (dry) pub mission. Once a week the pub would open, packed with unchurchy looking young people and open to any comer. It was an overtly Christian environment with low-priced food and drink, with musical and spoken interludes through the evening. The program was similar to many short-term coffee-bar ventures. Young people from other churches caught the vision and joined in and a body of local “people of peace”, seekers and people in need began building up as part of the regular crowd. After the short term expired, the team felt they were only just beginning to make headway. So they decided to run with what was happening, indefinitely.

PENNSYLVANIA (USA)

A group of Christian students took out a lease on a large house to accommodate them through their years at university. As the years went by their understanding of community deepened and the line up of the house changed. Their practice of hospitality grew so that the house became like the Temple Courts in Jerusalem - a regular meeting place for believers and God-seekers. Conversations over dinner would be teaching, pastoral or evangelistic just as the need happened to be. And the prayer-life of the residents deepened into a prayerful household rhythm of life.  It was almost like an accidental re-invention of the first Benedictine houses in Italy back in the 500s A.D. When the time came for them to graduate they felt no call to disband the house, realising that for many of their friends it was their most productive and meaningful engagement with the body of Christ.

BRISTOL (UK)

A Christian care agency set up a mums+bubs support group in a booming estate. It matched an urgent need and was soon booming. After a while some of the workers ran a mums+bubs Alpha. Through it a number of mums came to faith. The new mums along with the workers ran an Alpha for the dads. Out of that flowed a Sunday morning Beta program. Ten years later it is still running!

NEW SOUTH WALES - AUSTRALIA

A worker in an Anglican parish has started up a fight club. No agenda other than that he loved to fight. I can’t remember whether it was wrestling or kick-boxing. Whatever it was it began to draw large numbers of edgy, disfranchised, energetic young men. God’s hand has been on this worker and before long guys began coming to Christ. Their culture is totally foreign to that of the local churches and so it is there that he has been leading them to Christ and discipling them. He is now at the point of needing to baptise his converts and share communion with them as part of their journey together. His denomination says “no” but he must run with what God is doing and reap that harvest.

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These are all examples of the kind of grassroots ecclesiogenesis (spontaneous eruption of new church life) happening around the world.  These are the kinds of initiatives I have been supporting through agencies like OIKOS Australia. There is a great leftwards shift of our ecclesiology which lies behind this widespread emergence of new expressions. Through it I hear God’s call to:

• Welcome these new God-blessed initiatives. History is littered with anointed moves of God which were not thrown out of the mainstream churches but were rather made so unwelcome that they were forced out. Let us not make that kind of mistake in the 21st century but bless what God is doing.

• Recognize these kinds of ventures as valid expressions of church. I see no Biblical reason to do otherwise. We may see aspects that need strengthening or elements that need adding, but there it would be tragic to fail to “discern the Lord’s body”.

• Serve what He is doing

If you are a pastor-teacher, or a mature Christian worker - an elder or a deacon; or if you are a denominational leader you may feel on the edge of these new expressions of the Kingdom. But consider what value you can add to the kind of ventures I have listed. If your contribution is to be given and accepted voluntarily and entirely open-handedly with mutual love and respect, then what might that contribution be? I ask this because the “older brothers” can often feel they are outside the new thing God is doing. And younger brothers can often be arrogant and over-confident. They don’t know what they don’t know! That’s why the seasoned maturity and depth of training of the pastor and the elder are potentially of great value to the health of new initiatives.

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If you are a younger brother/sister, let me encourage you to draw upon all the resources in the wider body. If you are an older brother/sister, what kind will you be?