Micro-churches

In the future, the Christian community will return to its apostolic roots. These roots are spiritual, incarnational, missional, and relational.  The church will not build multi-million dollar campuses to serve the religious needs of insatiable consumers.  The church will not consist of a program staff doing ministry for haappy church-goers.  The church will not be held hostage by power players who follow human traditions while abandoning the justice and joy of Jesus. The church will not abandon its mission to serve the poor, the outcast, the sinner, and the refugee. The church will not neglect its responsibility to serve and protect the earth.  The church will bring hope and healing and reconciliation to people whose lives have been diminished and broken by those who claim authority over others for their own selfish benefit.  Perpetuating broken systems of injustice will not be the ministry of religious institutions calling themselves "Christian".    

 After a long captivity, people of faith are beginning to reimagine the hope and promise of Christian community.  The church is an organic reality, like a small plant emerging from the soil.  We are being planted once again.
A church is now emerging that values hospitality, grace, and humility over self-righteousness, exclusion, and tyrannical moralism.  This church is not mega. It is not the fastest growing anything.  It is not seeker-sensitive, though all people are welcome to belong.  It is not relevant or hip.  It is ancient, small, subtle, but powerful.  It is the micro-church.
Cell churches and house church movements have been emerging since the 1970s.  They have even deeper historic roots.  But the future of the church is not based on cultural trends.  The future church belongs to God and is a spiritual movement to restore the most natural expression of ecclesia, as it was imagined and embodied by Jesus and His first followers.   What is a micro-church and how does it operate?  read more after the jump...

Micro-churches will become the way the message of Jesus is lived, taught, and publicly expressed.
What is a micro-church? A micro-church is a small community of disciples, a group of believers who are seeking to learn and live the grace and compassion of Jesus. A micro-church is an incarnational, missional group.  That is, they are a group of people who share a contextual identity, some affinity to a location, and some calling to share and embody the values of the gospel.  These micro-churches meet in homes, in coffee houses, in pubs, in restaurants.  They may meet at halfway houses, prisons, and drug rehab facilities too.
These micro-churches do not live unto themselves.  They live intentionally for their neighbors as evangelical servants.  They are also organically connected to other micro-churches by virtue of their adherence to the way of Jesus.  Micro-churches gather together monthly for the celebration of the Eucharist, for a public demonstration of Christian unity, for holy baptism, for missional training, and for relationship-building among the small groups.
Each micro-church consists of as many as 12 adults or six family groups.  Each micro-church practices prayer and weekly devotion to God's Word.  They gather for conversation around food and drinks.  Conversation may include a video, a scripture reading, a book, a movie, a piece of art, or a personal case study in discipleship practices. (Each micro-church will have an equipped leader to implement the weekly gathering experience).  The micro-churches will be overseen by a mission director, who serves as spiritual guide, equipper of leaders, and a public leader of the spirit-driven missional movement.  The director helps each group develop their contextual mission which emerges out of their conversations and their engagement with the needs of their neighbors.  
I will break down the components of micro-church in upcoming posts.