One of my favorite and regular stops on the web is the blog of author, Jim Palmer.  Jim wrote the book, Divine Nobodies, that had such a great impression on me.  He has a post up right now called "Allowance."  I highly recommend taking a look at it.  The discussion that has been forming in the comments section is quite refreshing and interesting as well (ehem... you'll see mine in there too).

Here's the link to the main page of Jim's blog for those of you interested in more from him: www.divinenobodies.com

"Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?" Amos 3:3, NKJV

Agreement must be an extremely difficult thing to get.  In my experience it has been.  I'm on the team of a church plant right now and getting on the same page has certainly been among our chief challenges.  In fact, sometimes I wonder if we are even reading from the same book - or maybe I'm the only one even looking at a book - or vice versa.  Working in any sort of team is an interesting thing.  I've been on some really, really good ones and some others that were a team in name only.  In every case, for better or worse, the whole ordeal seems to come down to agreement.  On the bad basketball teams I was on, it was because we had a few guys (or even just one guy) who thought the team should be serving his own personal desire to score the ball.  The rest of us were pretty sure that's not what we were going to do.

On the good teams, there is always clear direction and absolute agreement about going in that direction.  All differences were ironed out in light of that direction and agreement.  Jesus says, "Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.  For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:19-20, NKJV emphasis added).  Only two or three.

I did say that I'm in search of 120, and I am, but Jesus makes it far easier than that.  Two or three.  That's all we need to agree so we can get Jesus' presence.  And what can't we do if we have Jesus with us?  The only hard part seems to be getting three people to agree, especially for any length of time. 

Why is it such a rare thing to have agreement?  It's not easy to get in a marriage, where you have the highest possible motivation to make sacrifices and do whatever it takes to keep walking together.  How can we hope to have it among people who have far less entrenched motivation to stay together?  Could it be that our enemy knows how important it is to disrupt the unity of Jesus' kingdom and that most of our warfare should be directed to "keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace?" 

If the only way to get to the thousands is to have the 120 then the only way to get the 120 is to find the 3.

Every church planter I know connects their method with the early church.  I guess I'm no different.  We're in the middle of a plant now and everything I ponder on the subject revolves around how "they" did it.  Here's what sticks out to me right now:

All the books I've read about starting a new church put a great deal of emphasis on getting those Sunday morning worship services started.  After all, you are not really a church until you have a building so you can meet on Sunday morning and singing songs and taking offerings, right?  The books talk a lot about the early church.  They talk about the way the early church "organized" small, home groups and how they took offerings ("had all things in common").  My favorite chapters in the church planting books are the ones where they talk about Acts 6 - how this brand new church cared for the needs of the widows and then selected "deacons" so that the pastors could spend all their time preaching and praying.  Man!  I wish St. Luke knew how much this was going to annoy me.  I could almost do without the whole chapter after the way church leaders have been beat about the head and neck with it.

Basically, the point of the planting books is that you've got to get those Sunday morning crowds in there so you can do all this cool church stuff.  The philosophy seems to be, "Draw a crowd so that you can then start building up your core."  For those of you that did not go to Bible college, that's what they teach us was happening in Acts 6.  First, the disciples drew a crowd of thousands then they started selecting their "key leaders."  God, if you're reading this site, please allow a great fish to swallow me if I ever use the words, "key leaders!"

But have all the authors forgotten that before all this started, there were 120 sold-out, hardcore, we're-not-moving-an-inch-until-the-Holy-Spirit-comes disciples?!  Has it occured to any of the world's church planting gurus that these people were willing to burst onto the Jerusalem streets, speaking in tongues unkown to them?  Is it significant that these were people so bold and obedient to God's power that they grabbed a crippled guy by the hand and commanded him to be whole?

Of course I don't know it all either - I hope you know me well enough to laugh off my obnoxious tone in the previous paragraphs.  The only thing I do know is that there is no way to get to Acts 6 unless you do Acts 1-5.  There's a ton of excitement around the thousands that started showing up, but really, I'm in search of the 120. 

"Oh, so you mean just like cell groups!"  That was the comment from a good friend recently, as I was describing the community I envision and wrote about in "They'll Bloom On Their Own."  So I'm not very good at describing this yet, because if you read "cell groups" in that article... that's not what I meant.

There are probably some churches really using cell groups effectively.  Surely there must be or else the rest of us would never travel around the country to conferences and workshops to hear "how they do it."  But the concept smacks of all the way-too-much church that I'm specifically trying to get away from.  My point is that we cannot possibly have an close knit, loving, open and vulnerable community beyond a certain number of people.  But the answer is not to stay small by becoming exclusive and self-focused.

I'm also not talking about those sick little living room ordeals in which no one ever gets any healing or makes any changes.  They just like to come over, drink your coffee and talk about their latest crisis.  You've been in groups like that, right?  When no one opens up or shares anything authentic because the one person that does open up opens way up and scares off everyone that was looking for relationships, not psycho-therapy.  I am pulling my mental model from the life-changing experience of Easter Camp in South Africa.

Of course I realize that a mountain top experience like camp is not "normal" over the long haul.  I wouldn't try to hold on to the mountain top, but there are some principles around which it was arranged that I think can work as the backbone for a permanent spiritual community.  Imagine the set-up with me:  We were camping in a large, rectangle-shaped field.  The entire perimeter was divided into individual campsites.  Those sites were then occupied by the various "house churches" of the host church, Fountain Vineyard.  So if you look at the scene from a helicopter it looks like 500 people all camping together, but on the ground we are actually living life in much small groups.  Life is lived in smaller groups!

Each campsite was a little community of its own.  People showed up to their vacant space of grass and built it together.  In my little community, people did breakfast at their leisure, but we all ate lunch and dinner together.  Other communities did it differently.  We worked together, cleaning the bathroom facilities around the camp (that was our job - other communities had other jobs).  We sat together and talked and laughed and prayed for people and made fun of each other and listened to one another and argued with one another and everything people do while living in community.  People would wander over from other communities and talk about what we had that they didn't or what they had that we were missing.

Then, periodically, an announcement would be made: "We're playing cricket in 20 minutes for anyone that wants to join." "There is a bicycle race for the kids in half an hour."  "The snack shop will be open after the evening meeting for those that want to hang out."  "Some people are going to pray together 1 hour before the morning meeting if you're interested..."  Are you getting the idea?  Not rules - not forced - not administrated - not obligated.  Invited.  Then there were the morning and evening worship meetings for everyone.  We sang together and prayed together and there was teaching and everything else that happens at church.  But life was lived in the community.  We all went back "home" and applied all that stuff to real, natural, life.

When we begin to feel oppressed and burdened by life and seek out church as our refuge and hiding place from life, we're doing something wrong.  Church is not designed to function as a defensive fortress.  Sanctuary?  Yes.  Hiding from real life?  No.  But this is long enough... more on that in the next one. 

I've been thinking a lot about my amazing Easter 2007.  Jesus started so many stories by saying, “The kingdom of God is like…”  Last Easter, I took a trip to South Africa that turned out to be an invitation to take part in one of those stories.  I wrote about the experience while I was still over there and you can check out those entries here.

Nothing could have prepared me for Easter Camp in South Africa. What I mean to say is that no one could have described the sense of love, acceptance, belonging and community that I enjoyed last Easter. In fact, I wonder if it is even possible to understand until experienced… I felt as though I were literally living in the kingdom of Heaven. There were no walls, no barriers, no hindrances – nothing to stand in the way of connecting with people – nothing to keep us from loving one another and being loved in return.

I’m a regular at a neighborhood coffee shop, and every morning I see the same group of seniors sitting together and having coffee.  Everyone knows them, maybe not by name, but they are well known.  There are eight in the group and every day, they seem to be having the greatest time with one another.  They laugh for the whole two hours they sit together.  How can they get together every day and still have so many funny stories to tell?  How do they keep generating new experiences to share with one another?  I have tried to sit close enough to overhear and steal some jokes, but I haven’t been able to yet.  I’m intrigued because these “old folks” seem to have captured the magic I experienced for 5 days in Africa and I want in.

But that’s the problem.  Although we all “know” them, no one else gets in.  This is their circle and a ninth person, an outsider, would break the mojo.  As soon as I interjected myself, crickets chirping and people uncomfortably clearing their throats would replace the laughter.  Unfortunately, this is likely to happen to the masses of people who will dare to make their yearly pilgrimage back to church for Easter Sunday.  They will sense the magic of a loving community, but they will know it does not belong to them.

I wish for everyone to experience the thrill of belonging to a community like I see these seniors enjoying and like I had the privilege of visiting in Africa.  I had the same sort of magic with my college basketball team.  It's like the Psalms come alive and we know that, "How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity," is far more than a casual observance.  It's real. powerful. stuff.

I used to think that churches had to keep themselves Teflon-free by allowing for the entry of new people into the big circle.  I'm sure that is true to a degree - we do not want an exclusive, insiders-only culture in our churches.  That's very destructive.  But I don't think the goal is becoming the "ninth member" of the circle of eight.  Instead, I think we should be helping people to find and connect with their own circles.  Who are your people?  What do you like to do together?  So church wouldn't be a big circle of hundreds of people all enjoying great fellowship and relationship; it would be lots of smaller circles.  We don't see Jesus inviting the 13th disciple on board in Mark chapter 8, or something like that do we?

Of course this has been tried - this is the philosophy behind cell groups.  But I'm thinking today that it cannot be forced or administrated.  We just create the atmosphere in which relationships can grow - we provide them the right conditions and enough resources to bloom on their own.  Then we leave them alone!  Because they do not belong to us - they are God's.