The Journey Behind the Book

I have ministered in a variety of demographical settings in the United States—metropolitan, suburban, rural, and in Native American communities. In each of these settings, I met a significant number of individuals and families that were essentially unreachable by conventional methods of evangelism and church life. They were not interested in what Christianity and the established church had to offer. In each ministry context, however, there was an emphasis, focus, concern, and priority on getting people into a building for the purpose of ministry and for propagating the gospel. Even the success and failure of my ministry on reservations and in other Native American communities rose or fell to the degree people responded to the gospel by attending church services and activities.

I quickly discovered a resistance to doing church the “white man’s way” among many Native Americans. The white man’s way was understood as going to a building to pray at a specific time and day of the week—a spirituality foreign to a native perspective that encompasses life as a whole. This compartmentalizing of life into definable segments is an integral part of Western thinking. It was in the context of being a home missionary among Native American people that I learned that ministry, and being a follower of Jesus, fell largely between Sundays. It was much more than attending meetings and designating a few hours a week toward religious activity. I began to see that designated church buildings were not necessary because of the “white church culture” associated with them. My eyes were opened to the idea that spirituality was more of a way of life than it was a life trying to be religious at an appointed time. Spirituality—especially Christian spirituality—was intended to be relational rather than institutional.

Similarly, I discovered an alarming percentage of people who were dissatisfied with the status quo of church life in traditional “white” ministry settings where I had served. They were somehow troubled by the definition given them as to what it meant to be a “good Christian.” From countless hours of counseling and discussion with church members, it became apparent that a growing number of Christians were comparing what they had experienced in church life to the experience of the early church they had read about in the New Testament, and they saw a huge disparity between the two. And those who could not identify or articulate this disparity expressed to me an inner longing for something more. Something was acutely missing in their church experience and personal faith.

I also found among colleagues in ministry this same dissatisfaction with church-as-usual, and a growing awareness of a discrepancy between personal experience and the biblical testimony. I heard similar stories from my peers as they described their personal struggles and frustrations in ministry—a sense of being over-worked and on the edge of burnout, a fear of getting bogged down and lost in the mechanism of an institutionalized church, and the desire for more simplicity in ministry and in their personal experience with God. These were all common themes that began to affirm my own experience and confirm that I was not alone, that I was not “going crazy” in questioning the status quo of church life and the pop-cultural form of consumer Christianity. Something was amiss, and I was not the only one coming to that conclusion.

My own experience echoed many of the questions and longings expressed by those to whom I ministered and with whom I co-labored for the cause of Christ. As a teenager, my faith in Christ was nurtured in an atmosphere of “body life,” a popular term in the early 1970s taken from the title of a book written by Ray Stedman [1]. That experience instilled in me a taste for intimate Christian community and shared ministry. From that time forward, I have valued simplicity in church life and have been on a quest to see the “normal” Christian enter into a functional experience of the priesthood of all believers [2]. In the late 1980s and 1990s, I came into contact with authors Gene Edwards and Frank Viola, both outspoken (and controversial at the time) voices in what might be called the “radical wing” of the house church movement [3]. Their voices resonated with the longing of my heart and with the conclusions I had made as a church leader to see a more genuine and transformational expression of church life. I also discovered the cell-based church movement that was beginning to appear on the church growth radar and was finding acceptance in the United States in the mid-1990s—and read everything in sight by Ralph Neighbor of Touch Outreach and Larry Kreider of DOVE International.

These pioneers of the house church movement and the cell-based church encouraged me to seek a simpler form of church life. Over the course of nearly ten years, I embarked on several ministry journeys that included service as a pastor of cell ministries in a rapidly growing congregation, a stint as church planter utilizing a cell-based model, and involvement with house church networks.

I was disappointed to find even these expressions of church life sometimes insufficient at the end of the day. In fact, many of the voices championing these kinds of churches were either prescribing churches that resembled reactionary house churches or cell-based churches with heavy top-down chain of command structures.  Many house churches were reactionary with an “us versus them” mentality: “us” against “the institutional church.” It felt divisive in spirit. This did not appear to be much of a change. For some, it was merely a change in the furniture, literally—exchanging pews for sofas and pulpits for coffee tables. At first glance, cell-based churches appeared to have found an answer I was looking for. But I quickly discovered that in most cases, they were based on a top-down hierarchical structure.

These experiences, along with reflection upon more recent critiques concerning postmodernity and the emerging church, have come to form and fuel my present search to find a pathway for traditional churches to embark on ministry to an emerging culture. Not unlike traditional Native Americans who have an aversion to the “white man’s way” of prayer and worship, many people within the emerging culture also find objectionable the beliefs and methods of organized religion.

At the same time, I have a deep appreciation for the traditional church, though a superficial examination of my thesis might lead one to believe otherwise. The traditional church is the faith community that brought me to Christ. Though some may claim that its days are numbered, it is unacceptable to raise our hands in despair and assume that many of our established churches are destined to die a slow death. I resist the suggestion by some that the sooner we accept this fact, the better off we will be.

There remain in North America people that comprise a church culture who are still open to the witness and ministry of established traditional churches. They believe that traditional churches are necessary institutions. Therefore, I am not calling for a liquidation sale of these properties and ministries. Many of these churches offer viable ministry to this segment of the population that is familiar with evangelical or mainline church culture. But at the same time, it behooves us to ask this question: Is there a way for traditional churches, thriving or otherwise, to be involved in reaching a rapidly changing culture?

I believe there is a way. It is a way that does not require the established traditional church to drastically change its present ecclesiastical structure, a change that would be nearly impossible to fulfill for most congregations. Fortunately, there is a way that requires something most congregations already possess in their DNA as a community of faith. I have observed over my lifetime in the traditional church a strong and steadfast commitment to cross-cultural missions, particularly overseas. Many congregations make missions a priority and a central tenet for their existence as a church. Financial and prayerful resources are expended for the sake of supporting missionaries and their efforts to share the gospel with people of different cultures.

So, I put forth these questions to traditional churches: Why not harness this existing commitment to foreign missions for the purpose of reaching an emerging culture and disenfranchised Christians? What about reaching a rapidly changing society and diverse culture right outside your church doors in USAmerica and Canada? Would you commit to supporting and sending missionaries to a foreign emerging mission field that is as close as the coffee shop down the street, the house next door, or a chat room in cyberspace? If we will embark on this course, not only will we find a practical way to support ministry to a postmodern world, but we might also uncover elements of church life hidden from view long ago—shelved away as something antiquated and replaced by the latest church growth fads and formulas. Such unearthing of the past might be exactly what is needed for established congregations. It might bring a new sense of purpose and experience for congregants who have been quietly digging in search of vital church life that not only deepens their own lives, but also touches the lives of people in their neighborhood and surrounding community.

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[1] Ray C. Stedman, Body Life (Glendale, CA: G/L Regal Books, 1972).

[2] Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Church Life, Rev. ed. (Washington DC: International Students Press, 1962).

[3] In the late 1980s Gene Edwards was the first significant author I read voraciously about the house church movement and about recovering a New Testament approach to church life. Viola came later and was influenced by Edwards and published his first two books in the late 1990s. For example, see Gene Edwards, Revolution: The Story of the Early Church (Auburn, ME: Christian Books, 1974); idem, Overlooked Christianity (Sargent, GA: SeedSowers, 1997). See also Frank Viola, Rethinking the Wineskin: The Practice of the New Testament Church (Brandon, FL: Present Testimony Ministry, 1998).