Missional/ Incarnational Starts with PROXIMITY
One of our biggest challenges in moving toward a missional and incarnational expression of church life is proximity. Most Christian activity (it is unfortunate that we can segment our lives this way), occurs only within the confines of our religious establishments. While we all understand that every moment of life is sacred, and that every encounter and relationship is a place that God wants to visit, we have established a sub-culture approach to church life. This “attractional” model, suggests that all life transformation and God-encounter occurs when people “come to our meeting.” We don’t really trust the average Joe and Josephine in the pew to do the job of evangelism and discipleship, and the statistics bear out our fears–for a church of one hundreds that is more than 5 years old, less than 3 people will come to Christ in a given year. So we encapsulate all Christian life expression inside of our buildings and church activities. And as the American Church, we are stuck in this mode. We disciple people in this manner, they don’t see or experience the New Testament alternative, and the process goes on. And many leaders are both frustrated and saddened by this reality. The problem is we cannot show the love of Christ, model the Christian experience if it never occurs IN PROXIMITY to those who are on the outside.
“In proximity” means that we have to live it out in front of them. The early Christians didn’t really have a choice, they only had public forums and small homes to meet in. Their preaching and singing and fellowship were always public. The Apostle Paul did his church business right in the marketplace–sell a tent, write an epistle, repair a tent, counsel a pastor, etc.
We are making good progress by placing new churches in proximity to the people groups that need a new expression of Christian life. The work of Externally Focussed churches takes this to a new level– churches that serve and interact in the community as lifestyle.
What if we combine the two? New churches, placed in proximity to the people that need them, who have a lifestyle of community engagement and service. What if we start these new churches with an intentional DNA of mission, they start with a needs assessment– lots of listening and connecting with people (the whole church plant team, not just the planter), and then we spend the pre-launch period serving in the areas that we discover. This path will lead us to plant churches that have a real DNA of Proximity, and who live out their Christian life in a transparent public way.
Proximity doesn’t resolve all the challenges; we still have to disciple and re-disciple those that we lead into a missional lifestyle, and break down the barriers of fear and habit. But getting ourselves in the right places is a very good start.
Check out the new needs assessment kit http://www.compassionbydesign.org/church-planting.html