Skinning the cat paths

So, if there are cat paths on the lawn, and those cat paths represent the different ways that groups come together, and if the art of church planting is to find how to develop rather than ignore the cat paths, were still left with a basic question:

How do we grow that leadership? 

 A church might have a very strong visionary leadership that doesn't gather the team very effectively.   It might have a team but no natural leadership; tending towards shared or corporate leadership that reverts to a friendship group.   Or the team might be difficult to define.

But how do you grow the leadership? 

One widely used method is the eldership board.    This holds the overall leader accountable, weighs direction, ensures funding and oversees the overseer. I have never had a particularly high view of this pattern, because I don't see it in the Bible.   The elders of the church, as far as I can see were more accountable to the Titus style apostolic representative than they were to a board of any kind.  I have often pilloried the idea of Anglican PCCs as leadership of any kind.

But here we are in the Antioch network with Anglican style upwards accountability.   And that means next to none.   No one to rebuke, challenge, to genuinely hold us accountable, who really understands the mistakes we make on the ground. Anglican bishops have long since become managers allocating resources and their archdeacons firefighters rather than a genuine accountability system. 

So do we need to look down? Do we need 'deacons' in the church? Do we need to appoint 'elders' in the network in the same way that New Frontiers do? What is certain is the 'leadership couple + 4' pattern that we used in TCC isn't what's happening so far, and perhaps has a limited Biblical basis.

So do downward accountability?  PCC anyone?

Busting platitudes

I've been reading a few different things on reaching the poor - a four simple steps email from someone in greater Manchester, Francis Chan's Letters to the Church and this rant (?)from the Bishop of Burnley.:   https://www.blackburn.anglican.org/storage/general-files/shares/Resources/Talks%20articles%20and%20sermons/Hope_for_the_Poor_-__P_article__Word_document_.pdf

All of them are, in their own way, fine.   But they aren't how to, they're what to books.

There's a critical lack of proper, informed material on what will help grown the church.  My urban ministry lecturer at college didn't have a model in mind, and came back the next week to suggest Eden in Manchester.  But for all the brilliant things they do, I wouldn't say Eden had got church planting right. Steve Timmis and Tim Chester wrote 'Total Church' by their own admission, too early, before they could really ground what they were saying in experience.  Inner city ministry groups tend to be academic theology seminars full of guilt, self-hatred and jargon.

That's we do a few things.

1) Be totally clear about what we're trying to do.   Plant small churches that plant small churches among the urban poor.

2) Learn.    New Frontiers podcasts are great.  These are grounded in observed reality.    But we need to keep learning what makes a difference for ourselves.  We need coaching, mentoring and thinking based on the Bible. . The battle for the hearts and minds of the inner city is intense. Read, reflect pray.

3) Communicate as clearly and succinctly as possible.   Repeatedly.

4) Be humble: don't listen to our own propaganda, be tough enough to take criticism. Follow Jesus wherever it goes.

Why do we do that?

When I first went to Mauritania I was briefed on the quarterly reports.   These were huge pieces of deep number crunching and narrative that our overstretched volunteer staff were sending to USAID.  And we were behind with them, and it was a stress.  And when's the deadline?  I asked.   Well, there wasn't one, technically.   We weren't obliged to send them in.   We never sent another quarterly report.

Janice and I have been reading Francis Chan's 'Letters to the Church'.   Here's really radical about asking 'what do we do on Sunday?'.   Read scripture aloud.   Spend as much time praying as you do preaching. Break bread more often.    It sounds like the Bible!


When we first went to TCC, we reviewed everything, including Sunday, with the team there.  We looked at the aims, and came up with something like: to teach the word of God,  to express the vision of who we are as a community,  to pray, to worship, to be a point of invitation.  TCC had borrowed patterns from Platt and we tried to think how we needed to be a little different.

We in Hope Church have maybe been borrowing patterns from TCC.   We've had great worship leading.  Good teaching.   People have grown in their gifts.   But how can we reach those aims in the paragraph above.   Are we missing something?   Or am I being too restless?  How can we tweak things to speak of the kingdom?

I know y'all don't comment too much on this, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this...............

Teach us to pray

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

What does it take for someone to go from unbelief into maturity, how do we go about helping them?

In a big church, you'll have a group of programmes, or a programme of groups, and you hope that people will connect with those groups and programmes and learn. Fair enough.

We're not a big church.   The disadvantages of this can be obvious.   But the advantage is that we can look out for one another, invest time into people, getting to know them and building friendships.  Our programmes won't be as good, but our relationships can be stronger.

Those relationships can, and often should, have an intention: to help our friends grow closer to God. And prayer is a key component of that.  In fact, if we don't put prayer into that friendship, we can accidentally end up communicating a Kingdom of talk without power.

It's really challenging, because most of think that our own prayer lives couldn't teach anyone anything.   So ask other people to help you pray, as this disciple did. And help others to pray, with whatever you've got, as Jesus (who admittedly had a LOT) did.

Ask yourself the question: who can help me pray?  And who can I help to pray?

Ends with famous Charles Spurgeon quote........."I would rather teach one man to pray than ten men to preach."