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Church: On Sticking to the Things That Matter

For about the past decade and a half I’ve tried to stay faithful to the idea that the best way to help a group of people “be the church” is to keep reminding myself what really matters.  It is so easy to get distracted by dreams, visions, plans, and goals.  It is equally easy to get distracted by theological debate, controversy, or political issues that mask themselves as signifiers of true versus false Christianity.  I humbly suggest that God’s desire is for Christians and their churches to become obsessed with how they can make the green grass that their feet walk on every day a better place to live.  It starts – and for the most part – ends there.  So along those lines, one of the questions I ask myself often is how our church can continue to stick to the things that matter, and stick with the people that matter, right around us.  

Sometimes it can be difficult to answer the question, “Where do you go to church?”  The other day I was thinking about how I usually answer that question (terribly…which is one of the many reasons why I wouldn’t make a great traditional pastor).  But this brilliant thought popped into my head…

We are not trying to be right, better, or different than everyone else. We are just trying to keep it real. 

So true.  Maybe that’s our vision statement.  I’m so tired of gimmicks or the next, great movement that will save western Christianity.  In fact, I’ve stopped keeping track of what’s new or next in the church.  I don’t want to save the church anymore; just give me real.  Life is busy.  People have jobs and families to care for.  I’m not going to ask them to join my program to save the world.  Toddlers cry and interrupt sermons.  Good people get into bad marriages.  Sickness happens.  Teenagers make bad choices.  Sometimes, you just want to pack a cooler, skip church, and hit the beach.  I don’t think that scares Jesus away.


But on the flip side, I have seen great beauty in the simplicity of love shared in community.  We need each other.  In the wisdom of AA, it only works if you work it.  Sometimes all you have to give is your presence, and that’s all you really need to bring anyway.  Just show up.  God does the rest.


So if our vision statement is to keep it real, then what follows must be our statement of faith and practice.  Yeah, I know, how low-church of me…

We are a family adopted by God. 

We trust that one day God will make all things new including us. 

We are trying to be in the present what we will be in the future. 

We don’t spend too much time dwelling on our mistakes, failures, or shortcomings. 

We forgive and forget because we have been forgiven much. 

We love parties because the kingdom of God is a party. 

We like inviting others to the party.

That’s about it.  Yep, I think we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.

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The Good Life

From Adam and Eve forward, humanity has been trying to answer the question, “How do we thrive?”  Another way to pose that question would be to ask, “What is the good life?”  There are a thousand ways to answer that question.  Whole societies have been built on certain answers like survival, freedom, conquest, the pursuit of wealth, power and control, even hatred for other societies.  America was built on answers like opportunity, adventure, exploration, religious freedom, and a healthy dose of individualism.  

But once a society is built and established, it gets steadily more difficult to maintain “the good life”.  The ideals that build a society, the over-arching Story that pioneers lived and died for, gets watered down. Pioneers are quickly replaced with settlers.  And settlers have a habit of forgetting the reasons why the society was built in the first place. 

To a settler, the good life means to have a good job, a good marriage, well-adjusted and healthy kids, a comfortable house, work out 3 times a week, drink in moderation, and only occasionally order 2 dozen crullers from the local gourmet donut shop.  Settlers – and let’s face it, all us are settlers – eventually lose touch with the powerful founding Story that motivated the pioneers to accomplish the amazing things they did. 

In the book of Joshua, it is recorded how the people of Israel occupied the land God gave them under the leadership and faithfulness of Joshua son of Nun.  It is the story of a generation of pioneers and warriors that believed with absolute conviction that nothing was going to stop them because God was with them and for them.  But eventually their time came to an end.  In Judges chapter 2, starting in verse 7 it says:

“…each of the tribes left to take possession of the land allotted to them.  And the Israelites served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and the leaders who outlived him—those who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel.  Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. They buried him in the land he had been allocated, at Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.”

But in verse 10 it says, “After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel.  The Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight and served the images of Baal. They abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They went after other gods, worshiping the gods of the people around them.”


So in one generation – one single generation – the Israelites went from the spoils of victory and the blessing of God to abandonment of God and utter failure.  Stunning.   

What is the Good Life?  How do settlers – those of us tasked with living in the in-between times, where no volcanic, society-creating activity is going on – stay faithful to the Story that got us here in the first place?  Well, just like the people of Israel, if we forget where we came from, how we got here, and who led us here, we are doomed for failure.   

As great as the American Dream is and as great as the pioneers were that founded this country, as followers of Jesus it is not our ultimate Story.  Phillipians 3:20 and 21 says, “But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior.  He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.”  Now this is not describing some otherworldly future where we will be floating on clouds and playing harps.  This is talking about God-shaped reality; life as God intended it from the beginning.  This is where heaven and earth come together.  This is resurrection and new life as citizens of God’s kingdom. 

Because this is our future, we live now with this image in full view.  As bad as the world gets, we know who comes out on top.  As messed up as people are, we know God is in the rescue and recovery business, the resurrection business. 

In 1 Corinthians 15:54-58, Paul tells us how this all fits together:

“Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:  

Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is your victory, O death, where is your sting?  

For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power.  But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.  So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable.  Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.” 

That is our story.  That is our promise.  Nothing you do for the Lord is useless.  No-thing.  So that brings us full circle.  What is the good life?  What does it mean to thrive?  Well, it starts as we follow Jesus together as a family.  It starts around the table, sharing a meal, singing, praying, interacting, remembering our history and imagining our future.  And then we go out from there, or more accurately, we get sent out.  And we become representatives of the kingdom that will have no end.  We work, we raise families, we love our neighbors, we pray, we heal, we suffer, and we laugh.  And all of those things, every-thing, matters to God.  Not just what we do in a church service.   

Truth be told, much of life is pretty ordinary and unglamorous.  It is the stuff of settlers.  Many churches try to pump up crowds with big ideas, big programs, and big visions – pioneer talk.  But what happens when you leave church and have to change a diaper?  Or wash the dishes?  Or do your homework?  In God’s economy, that is holy work, not just what is typically called ministry. 

So here is the truth.  Do you want to live the good life?  Then find some friends, some fellow settlers that have not forgotten the Story.  People that love God and love each other.  You don’t have to do anything fancy.  You don’t need smoke machines and a million dollar sound system.  Just be together, worship, pray, eat, laugh, and love.  Then go live.  And be a generation, like Joshua’s, that serves God for the rest of your lives.

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Resurrection Church- Who We Are

It has almost been a year since Amber and I began gathering a group of people who wanted to start a new community of faith in our home town, Jupiter, Florida.  Reflecting on the last several months, I have seen how much fruit can come from a small group of people that continue to yield to the Holy Spirit.  We are committed to nurturing what has popularly become known as “missional communities.”  Of course, like anything that has become popular, a little defining might be helpful.  Also, my hope is that our story continues to inspire others to dream about what this would look like in their town, suburb, city, or neighborhood.

A missional community is a group of 10-70 or so people who join together for worship, mutual support and encouragement, growth as disciples of Jesus, and to find simple ways to do good in the world.  We think this is the best environment to cultivate maturity in individuals, create authentic deep relationships, and actively join God’s mission.  Our belief is that missional communities are a way to compliment and balance larger traditional churches in a suburban area.  But a missional community is just the vessel.  We are most concerned about calling people back to the treasure of the Christian life.

There are four New Testament words that are important for us to understand and live out:

Love, Grace, Spirit, and Kingdom.

It all starts with God’s love.  If we start from a place of condemnation or failure as individuals, we miss the beauty of the Gospel.  “For God so LOVED the world…”  This is our trump card to the secular, consumer-driven society that we live in.  God’s love cannot be bought or sold.  From a humanistic point of view, his love makes no sense.  It is an offense to the religious, proud, and self-justified.  For the broken, God’s love is a treasure.


When we come to the place of receiving God’s love, we then understand how everything is a gift – it’s all grace.  Not just our salvation, but every breath.  Growing as a disciple of Jesus is growing in receiving grace and living grace.

Then we begin to understand the wonderful action of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  The Spirit fills us, directs us, empowers us, comforts us, and sustains us.  As we are joined together in community, we rely fully on the Holy Spirit to lead us and show us how we fit into one body.


It is at this point when we begin to understand our place in God’s kingdom – how we can experience the already of his kingdom and anticipate the kingdom to come.  God’s kingdom is where his will is done perfectly, where what he wants done is done (D. Willard).  That’s our goal as a missional community.  To live in his kingdom, be agents of his kingdom, and to pray for his kingdom to come in the world.

Our dream is to see thousands of these missional communities popping up all over the United States.  The beauty of what we have discovered is that they can be started and led by ordinary men and women.  There are a variety of organizations out there who exist to train and support missional communities.  Our heritage happens to be in the Vineyard movement which already has in place programs to help train people in most of the necessary gifts and theological foundation.  What is needed is continued support as new communities are started and multiply.

The experience Amber and I have had as pioneers for the past 12 years has given us a unique perspective on the suburban church and how to help ordinary people grow into passionate, authentic followers of Jesus.  We certainly do not have all the answers and are learning new things every day.  But we believe we have built on an excellent foundation with the right materials.  

Our challenge, frankly, is finding people with the courage to step outside the comfort of a traditional church setting where pastoral leaders and staff do 80% or more of the ministry.  Honestly, we don’t need superstars.  We are looking for people who simply want more and want to grow.  The less capable you are in traditional ministry, the better.  There are very few transferrable skills from a typical evangelical / charismatic church into a missional community setting.  We have no parking attendants, greeters, band, sound engineer, ushers, childcare workers, or counseling team.  Our budget strives to be 80% mission and 20% internal, which is the complete opposite of the average church.  We actually encourage you to spend more time with your family, in your neighborhood, and actively a part of your community, than doing church activities.

In fact, our mission together is primarily aimed at connecting the people around us with, well, us.  We don’t try to get people to come to a church service.  We want people to experience God through actions like community meals, serving the poor and broken, healing the sick, and just having fun.  Eventually we will invite them to worship with us, but only when they’re ready. 

We actually enjoy being around each other, for the most part.  Occasionally we’ll butt heads and have conflict.  That’s normal.  What’s not normal or good is ignoring the conflict or letting it fester.  We practice reconciliation as a part of our worship.  We work things out because God worked things out with us.  Anything less is just being religious and fake.

So we are looking for a few good men and women.  We need both to lead, because the New Testament is very clear that both men and women are meant to lead.  We need apostles (fire-starters), prophets (God-reminders), evangelists (Gospel-tellers), pastors (community-builders), and teachers (kingdom-instructors).  The Holy Spirit gives us these people in all shapes and sizes, and they aren’t all leaders!  

But leadership is very important, especially when you are pioneering something new.  Not all leaders are pastors.  Sometimes they are just people willing to do something no one else is willing to do.  Leaders can be trained and given room to grow.  That’s the kind of environment we want to have.  

Some organizations out there are working really hard to make this missional community idea work.  You can pay them money, go to a few conferences, and they’ll coach you on how to do this.  That may work for some people and I don’t doubt it is a perfectly valid thing to do.  But in my humble opinion, there is nothing like experiencing something first hand.  To me, there is no substitute for planting your feet in the soil of an actual community and learning as you go.  Conferences, books, and outside coaching are beneficial to some degree. But I would never trade the last 12 years of working this out among friends in the paradise of Jupiter, Florida.

If you’ve read this far, you deserve a prize and a hearty congratulations.  But you may also consider joining us.  God didn’t call us to the inner city, a trendy part of town, or to the beautiful countryside.  We live in ground zero of modern, consumeristic America.  People are busy, self-absorbed, mildly religious, some conservative, some liberal, and totally American.  On the outside, they have it all. Great weather, nice homes, good jobs, active fun lives.  On the inside, it’s a wasteland of loneliness, anger, failed marriages, financial ruin, and shame.  Middle America is crying out for the Gospel while it consumes the latest self-medicating diversion.  Unfortunately, the church has been all too willing to provide it’s own diversions in order to maintain the status-quo of church attendance as the only true measure of success.

We know there is so much more.  Let’s end the self-medication.  Let’s move on to something real; something that points us towards the kingdom of God. 

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10 Things I Wish I’d Have Known Before Starting a Missional Church

Here are 10 things that I wish someone would have told me when my wife and I packed up our worldly belongings and trucked down to South Florida with barely a whisper of knowing what we were doing.  I can honestly say that if I would have known these things, it would not have deterred me from moving.  It just might have been made a few parts of the past 10 years a bit more relaxing.  And I like relaxing.

10 MORE THINGS I WISH SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TOLD ME ABOUT STARTING A MISSIONAL CHURCH:

1.  HAVING A CAREER, STARTING A FAMILY, AND STARTING A CHURCH IS A LOT OF WORK.

About every six months I make a frantic call to my friend and missional church therapist, Chris Marshall.  Chris and I talk all the time, but these are special calls…the “I’m going to quit” calls.  They usually happen when I am in the midst of some deadline at work, money is tight, the kids are going through some stage, and the community is in crisis, all at the same time.  The calls go both ways.  I whine, and then he says, “I know Mike…I know.”  That’s usually enough.

Coming to the realization that this is normal was very helpful.  What we are trying to do here is counter-cultural in so many ways, we are bound to run up against “tension”.  (Tension is a nice way of saying, HOLY CRAP I’M GOING TO DIE.)

2.  MOST PEOPLE WILL NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO DO.

I remember one particularly irksome anonymous commenter a few years ago that kept trying to pin me to the wall so he could argue with me.  So, you’re Emergent, right?  What about House Church?  Oh…you’re a Missional guy.  Finally, after about twelve deflections, he said, “You seem to be above reproach.”  I’d never had anyone accuse me of that before.  Kind of made me feel special.

The founder of the Vineyard, John Wimber, spent most of his ministry life dealing with severe criticism from almost every angle.  Most of the time he didn’t respond, sometimes he did.  What I learned from his example was that most people (well, pretty much all people) aren’t inside your head.  They don’t understand what motivates you, what makes you tick.  When your goal is to understand and live into the full revelation of Jesus and his kingdom, that makes labels tricky.  I’ve learned that the average Christian loves to categorize.  But what we are doing defies category in so many ways that it can be frustrating for everyone.  Frankly, there’s no easy answer.  Just lots of patience, deflection, and every once in a while…just don’t respond.

3.  NOTHING OF SIGNIFICANCE WILL HAPPEN FOR TEN YEARS.

Someone actually did tell me this when we first started.  Maybe I didn’t want to believe him, or perhaps I thought we might be different.  But he was right, ten years is about enough time to till ground, grow roots, and see the first buds of Spring begin to bloom.  Of course, “significance” is not really accurate.  Everything that happens during that time is significant – anchoring yourself in a place, developing new relationships, asking questions about what it means to be the church, dreaming dreams about what should be.  All these things matter deeply, it’s just that the church planting regime doesn’t buy it and won’t support you.  But you need this time…covet it and don’t let anyone dissuade you of its importance.

4.  YOU WILL HAVE FEW FAITHFUL FRIENDS AND EVEN FEWER CO-LABORERS.

It would have been shocking to have foresight ten years ago into how our relationships would change over the years.  It would have rocked me to the core.  But after the shock wore off, I would be able to walk forward with a little understanding, a buffer.  This is where the most pain and wounds are collected.  I really thought that being the church in this way would protect us from some of this.  But alas, people are people.  Even though the invitation is always open to deep community – where maturity is an outworking of brothers and sisters working through conflict in love – the broad road is so easily chosen.

There is also the truth that more will love you as a person than will love your dream.  Get used to that.

5.  AFFIRMATION WILL COME FROM UNEXPECTED SOURCES.

You would expect your parents, if they are of the God-fearing, supportive ilk, to be your biggest fans.  Mine single-handedly sold a copy of my book to half the people in their church.  Their support and affirmation has been essential.  But it’s the unexpected sources that seem to carry that extra prophetic punch.  There were the responses to my first blog back in 2002, some as far away as New Zealand.  There are our friends from Gainesville we meet with every Thanksgiving who pray, listen, and understand our heart.  And sometimes God affirms without using anyone at all.  Those are my favorite.

I spent the first six or seven years of our experience looking for affirmation from sources that were not capable of giving it the way I needed.  Sadly, those sources are often the ones who justify their existence to help people like me.  Coming to terms with this was extremely painful, but also deeply foundational.  Let the Holy Spirit be your affirmation.  He’s pretty good at correction as well.

Note: So I guess by now you’ve realized that I’m not going to be as playful with this list.  For those who have ears to hear, the delivery won’t matter.  If you’ve read this far, you’ll understand that nothing I am writing here is theoretical.  I’m not sure if that’s important to anyone anymore, but it is to me.  So with that firmly established, on to the rest of the list.

6.  LEADERSHIP IS NOT BAD.

One of my mentors, Bishop Todd Hunter (who was just regular Todd Hunter when I first met him…he just wanted to be like me and have Bishop in his name) said to a group of us one time, “The answer to bad leadership isn’t no leadership, it’s good leadership.”  I struggled with that one.  Empowering the whole Body of Christ to action was such a deep desire of mine that I felt the best thing I could do was just get out of the way.  But at some point, I forgot that empowering = equipping.  And equipping does not have to come from a place of control and manipulation.

In fact, I discovered that the Apostle Paul was a fantastic model of “good leadership”.  We have this idea of Paul as this big-shot apostle, with everyone bowing and scraping, hanging on every word.  The facts are, he constantly had to defend his right to speak authoritatively into the churches that he himself planted.  Paul spent himself to see people come to maturity in Christ, even if they kicked and screamed the entire way.  He lead from a foundation of love. That should be where we lead from as well.

7.  BIGGER MEETINGS ARE OKAY TOO.

I used to have the attitude that if a community gathering took anything more than 15 minutes to setup for, then it was too much work and not sustainable. Consequently, most of our gatherings have taken place in homes, or at the beach, or in public buildings. Of course, that smallness and simplicity keeps with our ethos of family. It is true that volunteerism has trumped charism in the church. Most churches operate on the backs of good-hearted people who say, “Yes,
I’ll help.” I didn’t want that to happen.

But then we started an art and music coop a few years ago, and we did an art show and concert. There were maybe ten of us who helped plan and set up. Over 100 people showed up to the event and it was a blast. That’s when I realized that there is a way to do a big thing once in a while that doesn’t kill everyone involved.

Jesus drew crowds. There is a dynamic in the kingdom that happens when people respond in numbers. There are pitfalls of course. Crowds on the whole do not produce disciples. But it is a venue for the message, for the Good News to be proclaimed in word and deed. I’m down with that.

8.  KEEP BEING CREATIVE IN WORSHIP.

I’ve lead worship music for church gatherings in some form or fashion for fifteen years.  My Vineyard background has left me a strong foundation in worship with contemporary music, for good or ill.  I’ve tried at times to escape, but it’s part of of who I am.  The truth is, there is something that happens when a group of Christians sing.  You may think the lyrics are cheesy or music tired, but God somehow fills it with his presence.  It’s good for our souls.

But on a deeper level, there is connection between creativity and worship that cannot be understated.  This is perhaps the greatest disservice contemporary worship music has done.  We have had the creative call usurped by the Christian marketing machine.  We need to take that calling back and create home-grown liturgy, music, art, and prayers that help us connect with what God is doing locally.

9.  FIND WAYS TO BE WITH THE FORGOTTEN AND LONELY.

In our new neighborhood, there is a large migrant Guatemalan community that lives down the street.  The men ride their bicycles every morning and evening down our street to the day laborer center.  The women push their strollers and walk down to the small, latino grocery store.  We’ve gotten to know one of the families.  Their son comes and plays video games with our boys and Amber tries out her broken Spanish with the mom.  They have an incredibly hard and lonely life, gripped with fear that they will be deported.  We just try to give them a friendly respite at our little house.

We need not look very far in 21st century America to find people who have been kicked to the curb by society.  Chances are, they may not look like you or have your same interests.  But, if you get to know them, you might just see the face of Jesus looking back at you.  This is not a methodology to build a big church or otherwise be successful in ministry.  But there is no greater joy than to see the lonely find family, to see the forgotten find hope.

10.  THE COMMUNITY WILL BE A BETTER PASTOR THAN YOU.

I went through a deep identity crisis about a year after starting our church.  The idea of “pastor” just didn’t make any sense anymore.  With all the normal pastoral expectations stripped away, I was left fumbling around with skills I didn’t really have and totally confused on how to actually be helpful to anyone.  It seemed like the more things I tried, the less helpful I was, and the more frustrated I got.

A few years later, I fired myself from pastoral ministry.  I determined to be something else in our community.  I began reading more and started working on my book.  Then we sent out a new group that our family would later join.  For the first time in a long time, I was a part of something that I did not start.  It was weird at first, but slowly things began to shift.  People began to pastor one another and I was free to be what I was good at.  It appeared that I had acquired some new skills.  I was pretty good at pastoring too.

There is so much about life in Christian community that requires us to relax.  It’s supposed to be fun.  It’s supposed to be playful and healing.  Sure there is conflict, but that is just evidence of the Holy Spirit working among us.  Embrace it.  Embrace the reality that this whole thing called church is just so much bigger than you.  It’s all good.

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The Side Effects of Community

Recently I’ve noticed that our faith community is beginning to impact people who are not necessarily ‘full-timers’. In other words, there are people on the periphery who hang out for friendship or something to do. They also are not afraid to ask for help when they have a need, and we are not afraid to oblige. The interesting thing is that these people often attend other churches and in some cases might not even like our gatherings. But, just the nature of our relationship and our ‘life together’ is in some way encouraging or helpful to them. While talking to a friend about this today I mentioned that I think this is part of our calling – to be an underground blessing to the Church and others.

I ran across this related quote today from Jean Vanier’s book Community and Growth:
“We shouldn’t seek the idealcommunity. It is a question of loving those whom God has set beside us today.They are signs of God. We might have chosen different people, people who weremore cheerful and intelligent. But these are the ones God has given us, the oneshe has chosen for us. It is with them that we are called to create unity andlive a covenant. We choose our own friends; but in our families, we do notchoose our brothers and sisters; they are given to us. So it is in communitylife.” – Jean Vanier
Good stuff.