(This is my paper submission to the Vineyard Scholars Forum)
“There is an almost universal quest for easy answers & half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.” Martin Luther King Jr.
During graduate school my theology was stretched & shaped. I had the privilege to sit under several outstanding scholars & practitioners who eagerly shared their wisdom with me. However, amongst this backdrop, certain ideas shaped me more than others.
One afternoon we were invited to participate in a President’s luncheon. We left our classroom & entered into the dining hall to join the President whom, for various reasons, I thought to be a fairly aloof man. Yet it was here that a man I had little concern for said something that challenged me to the core of my theology, especially my ecclesiology.
Throughout the lunch, & with a slight southern drawl, the President shared his thoughts on various subjects & about midway through the lunch he said, “One of the greatest errors I see happening within the current trends of the church is duplication. We so easily take what worked in one city, learn it, package it, replicate it, & believe it is destined to work in any city. Yet we misunderstand that God does things in one city that might not be for another; what worked is His gift to that city through that community. If only church leaders were willing to find out how God wants to use them in their particular city we might see greater fruitfulness.”
To say the least, this was a bullet to my soul. I was months out of planting a Vineyard church & instantly recognized that the majority of what I was setting out to do was in fact what the President just stated: Replicating what worked in one area & doing it somewhere else. I knew what he said was true, but as I embarked on my journey to start a church in the Bay Area I would find out just how true his statement was not only to me, but other church leaders as well.
This paper is a short attempt to reveal why we replicate few models, the implications of this replication on church leaders, & a few ideas of where we might take things.
Consumeranity
As we survey the landscape of churches within America one things stands out: A majority of them look very similar. In fact, I believe prevalent Christian culture & theology renders a very narrow group of church “models” the way & most others sadly fall into the “different” category.
The successful Evangelical church we are presented with generally looks like this: It is white; It is suburban; It has a large or growing attendance; It is profitable; It has beverages; It is economically & culturally mono-cultural—namely middle-class “Christian” culture; It has relevant & youthful worship; It has a energetic leader; It is primarily defined as a Sunday gathering.
Now to say any of these things is bad would be erroneous because these features in & of themselves aren’t. These attributes are in their context good. However, when you read church literature any number of these elements will be glaringly present as a descriptor of what a “successful” church is. This, I believe, is representative of our culture & it’s values.
Culture is a very powerful force. As Charles Kraft says, “The term culture is the label anthropologists give to the complex structuring of customs & the assumptions that underlie them in terms of which people govern their lives.” All cultures define certain things as normal & most, without any depth of thought, believe these things to be inherently ordinary; we are no different. Our cultural beliefs affect how we live & shape what we deem “normal,” which would include our theology of success. There are several cultural beliefs which shape our theology & to explore them all would require more space then I’m given, so I’ll expand upon one, which I believe has shaped how & why Evangelical churches look so glaringly similar: Industrialization.
The industrial revolution (18th-19th centuries) had a tremendous affect upon how we produce almost anything. As Europe discovered, replacing manual or animal labor with mechanized means greatly increased production of almost any product whether textiles, metal work, or food. In fact, there is little that wasn’t affected by this revolution. Needless to say the Western world adopted this new found means to financial success & industrialization became the method of production. Like most “modern” countries America adopted this production method lock, stock, & barrel.
One of the great examples of industrialization in our era is McDonald’s. Opened in 1940 this restaurant created a revolution, namely: Fast Food. By using simple industrial methods McDonalds plowed the way to consistent, inexpensive, accessible, tasty meals for the whole family. After perfecting their methods they franchised (another value of industrialization) their business philosophy & expanded out of Southern California, which allowed people from all over the world the opportunity share an almost identical experience as they enjoyed a Big Mac in L.A. or Egypt.
Industrialization, on a surface level, is genius: If we take the methods that worked in one location & reproduce them in another the results will almost always be the same. Countless franchises demonstrate that industrialization works. So it’s easy to ask: if one sector of our culture finds a great deal of success using industrialized methods, why not another? What if we combined Christianity with Industrialism?
Saddleback Community Church is one of the key churches to have revolutionized how a large portion of evangelical pastors perceive what church success is. More importantly, they were one of the front runners to create a template of how to reproduce their results in almost any given location as church historian Earle Cairns notes, describing both Saddleback & Willow Creek, “The church also reached out to other churches with “how to do it” leadership…” The methodology of Purpose-Driven was a success & was custom-ready to be reproduced in any city.
When Rick Warren published his how-to book at least 500,000 pastors & church leaders bought it; 500,000 eager church leaders who were ready to ride the Purpose-Driven wave. Looking out across the landscape of the Western Church we see a large group of people who adopted the “Purpose-Driven” template as their own. In fact, it is easy to say there are Saddleback copy cats in almost every city in the U.S. Saddleback did it, franchised it, & many bought it.
The Vineyard story is similar. When the Vineyard exploded in Southern California people were swept into its vision: Hawaiian shirts, sandals, signs & wonders, hippies, & contemporary worship were all an attractive part of the ethos. As the Vineyard started to gain popularity many cities wanted a Vineyard church. In fact, one of the prevailing church planting criteria was: Is there a group there who wants a Vineyard? What this meant was: Is there a group of people who want what’s working in SoCal in their city? We then exported the template & in essence created a Vineyard culture within reach for those who wanted it &, for a period of time, it worked. Indeed, this model is still working where the prevalent culture finds this type of church service new & exciting. (see Ohio)
But churches like Saddleback or the Vineyard aren’t the only answers to our “what should I do!?” questions. We are supplied with ready speed all the info we need to be: Seeker-Sensitive, Emerged, House to House, Bethel, Acts 29, etc. Really, as Westerners we have this compulsion to look for what’s working in one area & order it on Amazon as quickly as possible. However, by allowing so few churches to define success for so many, we’ve created a situation where a large amount of leaders aren’t truly discovering who God wants their community to be within their city. Church industry is now eerily similar to the car industry offering: “All the latest models.”
Yet there is a problem in replicating so few models; we’re really not reaching the unreached. The dominating contemporary church models do gather people, but who is attending? Generally those in attendance are Pre-Churched, De-Churched, or those who easily fit into the suburban cultural context we Evangelicals have come to, in many ways, represent. This is a problem Alan Hirsch expands upon, “…in Australia we have the somewhat farcical situation of 95% of the evangelical churches tussling with each other to reach 12% of the population. And this becomes a significant missional problem because it raises the question, “What about the vast majority of the population (in the U.S, about 65%) that report alienation from precisely that form of church.’” That’s a big problem when “that church” is the dominant “model” we seem to deem successful & the majority of leaders are being led to replicate.
Idle Worship
For the vast majority of us in church leadership, Saddleback, Anaheim Vineyard, Bethel Church, Willow Creek, IHOP,” or other “successful” ministries will not be our reality. No matter how hard we try, no matter who we hire for help, & no matter how many books or conferences we devour; the reality is: Most churches cannot replicate the churches we look to for inspiration & this unfortunately leads to a great deal of frustration.
I am regularly reminded as I speak with church leaders of a common theme: Many leaders are frustrated by their church size (or at least their overseers are). Actually, if we were honest, church size is probably the defining measurement used by ourselves & our colleagues to determine the effectiveness of our churches. The implicit formula is: Big church: Healthy, influential, anointed leadership, good programs, etc; Small Church: Small Vision, lack of good leadership, little effectiveness, mom & pop. This is a generalization; however, it is generally true, not biblically, but socially, & this social pressure has its ramifications on how the majority of those in church leadership view themselves, how they view the importance of their particular calling, & therefore determines how effective they believe they can be at representing God’s unique dream for their life.
There is a huge amount of power in what we believe about ourselves & our churches. If we believe we & our communities are important, valuable, worthy, & exactly who we were meant to be, then there is little doubt we will feel confident living out God’s plan for our lives. Yet the opposite is also true. When people believe they aren’t who God wants, they believe their lives & ministry consistently doesn’t measure up, there are powerful results as well.
All of us are struck by the story of the boy David. In 1 Samuel we are introduced to one of the least likely characters within Israel to defeat the giant Goliath. As people are introduced to the boy each of them shows disbelief at the one who claims ability to overpower the giant. Yet the boy remains unmoved to his estimation of his own strength. David exudes a confidence despite the social pressures placed upon him by others.
As has served as an illustration for many King Saul (who is confused by his own identity) puts his armor upon the boy, yet the armor doesn’t fit. We are presented with a powerful truth; armies are good, swords are preferred, armor is helpful, but God isn’t a God of formula. The truth is God determined it would be a boy with a sling & not an army with conventional tools of warfare to slay this giant. Thankfully, David was brave enough to be himself however different it was.
Amazingly, 75% of all churches within America are 150 or less & 95% of all churches are under 350, while only 0.11% of churches have in attendance 3,000 or more. Therefore, the largest group of believers within our faith are part of “smaller” churches. That said, in my modest estimation, the 0.11% supplies at least 90% of the teaching materials the 95% consumes & their definitions of “success” put pressure on the 95% who still want a “how to do it” template. This “worship of what works” then leads to idleness because many abdicate their vision for someone else’s & if & when it doesn’t work like the book said it would we start to see our churches are more of a problem than God’s unique gift, not only to us, but to our cities. Saul’s Armor makes us Idle.
When I moved to Santa Cruz I joined the Vineyard Area pastors group. As my planting team & I sat down with our Area Pastor he laid out his plan to help the churches in our area. I sat excited to learn how he planned on strengthening the area churches. He then explained how he was going to pair up the pastors in our area for church growth. How? He was going to take the 8 existing churches & pair them up according to attendance. He would pair the pastor with 300 people with the pastor who only had 200; the pastor with 170 with the pastor of 100, the pastor of 70 with the pastor of 30, etc. By doing this he hoped the smaller churches would learn how to increase their attendance & thus “grow.” But is it everyone’s vision to pastor a larger church?
I’m not advocating that large churches are bad & small churches are good. In fact, I’m not advocating that a particular size of church is advantageous at all. However, as believers who hold to the doctrine of sovereignty, we are often gifted to see His will through circumstances & circumstantially 95% of the churches within the U.S. are numerically smaller than 350 people & 75% are smaller than 150. Once again, this is the largest people group within Protestant Christianity. Nevertheless, even though the majority of us are found within this group our lack of size is more often than not the determining factor of our success, & this is a problem.
The majority of those in church leadership constantly endure this pressure. And I believe, instead of spurring our churches on to greater growth, which might include attendance, it renders too many idle at being who God wants them to be because they have been indoctrinated at seeing their communities through the lens of the industrialized Evangelical church growth machine. So, the 95% look at their churches through the lenses of the 0.11%. Looking at it this way, who wouldn’t see a problem! Consequently, instead of teaching smaller churches how to effectively be themselves, which might actually look different, we consistently present the 95% solutions to the identity problem their having; or is it the identity problem that’s being projected upon them?
Consumeranity, combined with the reality of our current circumstances creates, for lack of a better term an identity crisis, or what I’ve deemed: Idle worship. Because as long as we worship “what works” for one man’s calling we only replace who God wants us to be with another man’s (corporately & individually) vision. This worship then makes us idle because we consistently see ourselves as insufficient at being able to measure up, not to what God is calling us to, but to our neighbor. But what would happen if we shed the security of Saul’s armor for our distinct call within the Kingdom of God regardless of the insignificant social values placed upon us by others? My call might not be multi-sight, yield large numbers, or be “Christian” in culture, but who says it has to?
Let’s get Married
At this year’s Western Regional Conference Rich Nathan said, “We need to be married to John’s questions & not his conclusions.” I hope this was a fresh perspective toward new directions in church. We need to ask ourselves the questions that led John to push in the direction of starting the Vineyard. As we allow these questions to confront our current realities some of us might realize similar conclusions; at the same time, many of us will discover new conclusions to old questions.
In America we live in a melting pot of culture, ethnicities, socio-economic classes, & countless other cultural variations. As those who have been sent to represent the Kingdom of God within this melting pot our churches should also be representative of the cultures we find ourselves in. If not we are doing little more than the founders of the California Missions who came with a ready-made culture & the natives were required not only to receive Christ, but adopt “Christian Culture” as well. There should be churches where “every tribe tongue & nation,” worship one God.
We must learn how to approach our cities as missiologists. In this we attempt to create communities that have the least amount of cultural barriers so the unreached can access the Kingdom in a language environment they understand. As one great missiologist stated, “We need to learn to become all things to all people.” There is little doubt, in our century that what we view as popular church has mastered the “White, suburban, republican,” church. But that only speaks to a small portion of our country & that portion is shrinking.
We need to learn how to create churches where correct theology is demonstrated & spoken in the vernacular of the people. This is one of the major goals of missionaries: Learn the local dialect, learn the local traditions, see how Christ intersects into it, & build a community around Him. As Leslie Newbigin states, “1) the communication has to be in the language of the receptor culture. It has to be such that it accepts, at least provisionally, the way of understanding things that are embodied in that language; if it does not do so, it will simply be an unmeaning sound that cannot change anything.” I would go further & say, language must be accompanied by at least an attempt to replicate the culture from which is originates.
There needs to be new categories of orthodox Christ-Centered churches which better represent the people groups & religious views of the American landscape. Can we imagine a Muslim Vineyard; A New-Age Vineyard; A Buddhist Vineyard; A Bohemian Vineyard; or a real urban Vineyard? The Vineyard is in a great position to accommodate these people groups; yet one thing remains clear: The Vineyard is a white suburban church both ethnically & economically. We might say it’s because it started out in the white suburbs, but I believe the culture, language, & model of the current popular “successful” church is designed by white suburbanites for white suburbanites.
New Wineskins
God called my wife, myself, & a team of five people to Santa Cruz California to start a Vineyard church. We had our plan & were ready to start something new within a city that was rumored to be amongst the hardest to start a church in. Our plan seemed airtight & destined to succeed & we started with an off colored generic model. In fact, we really didn’t set out to do much different except keep discipleship as a key value & live together. That said, & four years later, we find ourselves humbled by the city where before we arrived there hadn’t been a new church started in over ten years. Amazingly, in context of the Bay Area, we aren’t doing poorly. However, as we’ve started to move from the safety of what “church” is, we find ourselves standing on the precipice of something beyond our thoughts or expectations.
If the Bay Area were a knife called post-Christian than Santa Cruz would be its cutting edge. Santa Cruz is one of, if not the most liberal, educated, free thinking cities in the U.S. Amongst other things we boast one of the largest lesbian populations (per capita), anyone can freely smoke pot downtown, & we are considered one of the Mecca’s of New Age. What’s more, Christianity isn’t a benign philosophical belief here; it is clearly seen as one of the key problems in our country. If ever there was a run at creating a humanistic utopia, Santa Cruz would be a willing contestant.
Santa Cruz is where God has called us. However, the popular version of church isn’t going to reach the 93% of this county who won’t go to an Evangelical church. Furthermore, for those who want this style of church, there already exists a wide variety of congregations who do a much better job than us! So we find ourselves asking pointed questions: What does a church look like that reflects the 93% of our county who will never go to an Evangelical Christian Church? What does a church look like that reaches the largest religious group within our county: New Age? Who do they worship? What do their worship services look like: décor, smells, language, seating, etc.? How do they worship? There are many more questions too.
One of the main questions we hold dear as a movement is this: “Do what you see the Father doing.” What type of church will reach the wide variety of people, both ethnically & economically, within our country? It is a ridiculous conclusion to believe a small variety of “models” will be able to demonstrate the Kingdom to such a wide variety of people living in the U.S. The Father is doing various things in the various cities we are called to & someone is more than likely already doing the Purpose-Driven church in most of them. Would we be willing to ask the questions that led Rick to his conclusions? As we do we should see as many varieties of church as there are people groups!
I had to remove a section because it is private. Sorry if this doesn't make sense, etc.
God created His church to fulfill His mission, which is to “seek & save the lost.” Sadly, the unreached are continually bombarded with churches whose culture, language, worship, & lifestyle are “Christian” & therefore have little relevance or appeal to them, even if they’re interested in Christ. And for many this might be a new concept, but the unreached aren’t Christian. How long will we keep presenting them with the same replicated models hoping we’ll get different results? In this regard we would do well to follow the example of another incredible missionary: Jesus. Jesus isn’t a 1st century Jew; however, He was for a specific period of time to communicate a very important message to Jews within the 1st century. We too have the ability to create churches that personify the cultures we are surrounded by. Missionaries call this: contexualization.
We are poised to see a vast variety of models as we send out planters to unique places where, as the President stated, they might become “His gift to that city through their community.” Will we have the maturity to celebrate the church in all its possible forms as it performs the functions God has assigned to it? Can we create new categories of success, growth, & fruitfulness as we reach out to those who are culturally beyond the grasp of the 0.11% who seemingly dictate how these categories are defined? Will we risk being ourselves even at the price of looking different? Will we be bold enough to be ourselves? These are questions I’m wrestling with right now.
Yet one thing is certain to me: God didn’t send John Wimber, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Bill Johnson, Rich Nathan, Rob Bell, Francis Chan, Timothy Keller, or any other incredible pastor to my city; He sent me because I’m the expression of His Kingdom He desired here. Likewise, He’s sent a huge group of no-names to create communities that are His gift to the cities they were called to. Hopefully, we’ll all have the courage to be ourselves & “do what we see the Father doing.”
