"Will All Our Visitors Please Stand?"

“Will all our visitors please stand?” If someone finally is brave enough to walk through the doors of your church, the last thing they want is to be singled out. They probably don’t know the songs you’re singing or the prayers or responsive readings you’re reading. Depending on the translation of the Bible you use, the scripture may not make much sense, and they probably have no idea where the bathroom is. So why add to the discomfort by making them stand so everyone can stare at them? Also, calling someone a visitor already implies they are simply passing through, that they’re not a part of things. Instead of “visitor” or “guest,” try something less loaded like “newcomer.” Better yet, walk up to them, introduce yourself and learn their name.  from Christian Piatt's "Ten Cliches Christians Should Never Use."

Ah, my research on new congregations for FGC's New Meetings Project says this over ... and over... and over again.  Now, with every head bowed and every eye closed ....

-- Brent

Quakers and Church Planting -- Two Reviews

As part of my work for FGC's New Meetings Project, I've gathered a stack of books about how to start new churches.  I blogged a bit about some premises gathered from Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by New Church Starts by Jim Griffith and Bill Easum.  After reading that book, I moved on to The House Church Book: Rediscover the Dynamic, Organic, Relational, Viral Community Jesus Started by Wolfgang Simson.

I had great hopes for this book.  After all, I have had some experience in helping to start a "house church" (Friends in Fellowship that meets at Ploughshares Farm) and I think the house church model may be helpful to Quakers as we think about ways of seeding new meetings and worship groups.  That idea seems to me to be very much in keeping with how the early Friends did their "church planting" work. 

So I opened this book with great anticipation -- only to find that it's just horrid and unhelpful. Its scope is as small as its premise -- and is far from "dynamic, organic, relational, viral" and "Jesus" (to quote the cover). There's a mean-spirit about this book -- criticising and dismissive of all other expressions of what it means to be church. Disdainful that God might be at work in other forms.  And the author's "biblical" premises for his positions seem to me as if he's reading some other Bible than mine. I finally put it down in disgust without finishing it.  It will be one of the few books that gets literally recycled -- I don't want anybody I know to read it.  Or anybody I don't know -- so it's not going to Goodwill or Friends of the Library.

In some ways I feel I should have known better than to expect good things from this book.  It's forward is by George Barna and the book is published by his company.  I've long had a negative bias  against his church research (after all, I do hang around with social scientists of religion and American congregations and was once a member myself of the Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion) and my friends do not tend to have a high regard for his methodology.  Plus he always seems to have something to "sell" -- both figuratively and literally.  I should have avoided this book and I recommend you do, too.

Reading Finding Organic Church: A Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Sustaining Authentic Christian Communities by Frank Viola was time much better spent (at least I didn't find myself throwing the book down in disgust!). 

Viola offers a number of helpful thoughts (including practical arrangements for starting a new group -- where to meet, time, etc.), an detailed view of what he considers "apostolic" church planting based on his reading of the New Testament, and the idea that "organic" is the way to go. The organic, as he describes it, method of church planting seems to me to have much to commend it and indeed reminded me of early Quakers establishment of meetings and the way our meetings today (at their best) conduct worship (fully participatory by those attending) and business (striving toward a sense of the meeting -- though Viola used the term consensus, which is something close, but not equal to the sense of the meeting). Some of Viola's s suggestions could come straight from a "Quaker church playbook" were there such a thing. But, he seems not to have heard (or at least, studied) us at all.

Some things about this book were off-putting. The main one is his use of the male pronoun -- "he" this, "him" that. He says in the preface that he "has no problem with the idea that women can engage in apostolic work" but that "it's simpler to write 'he' than "he or she." Lame -- both as an excuse and for lazy writing.  So I think women who read this will find it tough going. 

Another thing is what I consider his tortured reading of the New Testament to make it conform to his "apostolic" method. I think that he makes a lot of assumptions about what scripture says and infers that are not laid out as clearly in the Bible as he implies they are.  Many of them are good thoughts -- it's just that it's more eisegesis than exegesis. 

Viola's also a bit repetitive -- especially when giving the biblical basis for his model, which he contends begins with how the Trinity interacts. A bit of a stretch there, too, I think.

Still, there's a good deal of helpful material here, much of which I hope to adapt for use by the New Meetings Project.  If you can read past his seeming gender and Biblical biases, I think you'll find it worth the read -- at the very least it will help you think about issues surrounding starting new Quaker groups (and maybe revitalizing some older ones) today.

-- Brent

Quakers and ... um... the "E" Word

I must admit I feel just delighted to be in my new position as coordinator of Friends General Conference's New Meetings Project.  The projects goals are something I believe in and have written about for a number of years -- most recently on posts here and some other blogs.

As part of this position, I've been doing a lot of reading and research.  And I'll be sharing that reading and research here and (hopefully!) elsewhere.  On my shelf (in place of my usual stack of novels and short-story collections) are titles such as Planting Missional Churches, The House Church Book, Organic Church,  Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by New Church Starts and more.  Many of these have at least some information helpful to Friends -- especially if we're willing to wade past some assumptions (you can decide what they are) and look for the nuggets that are helpful.

While I do think that a Quaker model of starting new congregations and/or worship groups will vary in methodology and practice from most other denominational models (I mean, if we want to be true to our Friend-ly roots and theological understandings of congregations as being comprised of people of faith called and led by the Spirit to do God's work together and not organized and/or presided over by ordained clergy*), there are some things we can learn from others' efforts.  And one struck me this evening whilst reading Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by by New Church Starts.  The authors say:
Our experience has confirmed that over 80 percent of those who visit a church and return to that church and gradually become enfolded into that faith community do so on the elbow already connected to that church.  So work on making your your church the most loving and inviting place in the area so when people do show up they are loved.

Hmmmm.  Two thoughts occur to me.  If 80% of those who visit, return, and become involved do so because someone has brought/invited them, then perhaps we had best shed a bit of our Quaker reticence to let others know that we are Friends, and friendly, and would welcome them.  Yikes! Invite a friend to Friends?  Well, yes.  In a Friend-ly sorta way, of course -- a mere invitation would suffice.  Either personally ("Um... err... I'm a Quaker.  You wouldn't want to come to Meeting me with me, would you?" probably isn't the best approach, though) or corporately through Facebook or Google ads or the like.

The second is that "loving and inviting" line.  What I noticed when I read that is the lack of of specific theological position mandate.  Evangelical.  Liberal. Programmed.  Unprogammed. Middle of the road.  Nope, the theological mandate is love.  Reminds me of something I read in a certain pretty important book -- "the greatest of these is love." 

Loving, inviting Meetings, filled with people of Spirit.  Perhaps that's a sort of Quaker E- E- E- En-vitation we can embrace.

-- Brent