THRIVING CHURCHES | PART 6 | THE RIGHT CHURCH SHAPE

Q 5 | DOES OUR SHAPE AND STRUCTURE REFLECT OUR VISION AND VALUES?

It is vital to have an organisational structure (and constitution and policies) that best supports the mission-field, vision and people. Sometimes it can be assumed that there is only one traditional ‘shape’ for a church or an agency, namely a Board; a Minister; and the Congregation with an AGM. Some churches think that the labels: deacons; elders and pastors define the only ways to organise, but often they can cause confusion because of the conflicting ways different Christians understand them.

In fact there are many ways to organise. One can make up a chocolate cake recipe but choose to bake it as small cookies, medium size cup-cakes, a large birthday cake, or we could freeze it in ice-cream as cookie mix!
One recipe but different shapes!

The mission-field culture, theology and vision or the church should determine the shape or structure. Over the years and as a congregation changes in size or emphasis, differing shapes will be needed to maintain effectiveness.

In an era where the nature of neighbourhood is changing, our traditional shapes of church may need modifying if we are to build mission teams to gain access to people groups on our very doorsteps. ~70% of Australians do not respond to the “Sunday worship plus programmes” church- shape.

Once a traditional church-shape grows much past about 120 people, the proportion of ‘passengers’ increases and power becomes vested in a decreasingly smaller executive and professional ministry team.

Mike Breen from the 3DM network talks about creating alternative shapes. In Mike’s case, the shape was what he calls ‘Missional Communities’. Mike was for many years the vicar of St Thomas Sheffield in the UK, where he pioneered what he calls missional communities, that is, mid-sized groups of 20-50 people on mission together. 
He talks about early British church history. In the early 5^th century, Romans returned as missionaries. The first archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine, built the great Canterbury cathedral. Roman philosophy was attractional: “If you build it they will come.” But the Celtic missionaries, who came a little later, took a different view: “If you go you will reach them.” They got into their coracles and sailed out across North Sea, to northern Europe and beyond.

Later as Roman and Celtic philosophies collided – they evolved into the ‘Minster’ movement – which transformed Europe. They melded together the ideas of large monastic or support centres for healing and formation, BUT these centres then send out missionary teams. Like strawberry runners they contextually infiltrated the villages and towns for Christ. Attractional and incarnational melded together.

At a church planting conference I attended recently, several speakers spoke about the vitality of small-groups, house-churches and intentional missional communities of 30-50. These are mobile, highly relational and highly adaptive teams that can infiltrate the many new neighbourhoods and fluid networks that mark our 21^st century world. My sense is that our larger churches are going to need to learn to become ‘minsters’ that send and sustain a score of smaller and varied ‘parish-teams’.  Our smaller churches are going to need to ensure structures that keep our members serving locally into their neighbourhoods. How will we learn and adapt in our context?

This next step is about creatively researching and brainstorming the shape that best fits.

Some tips:

- Keep it flexible in the early days

-  A larger informal leadership community around the elected officers can be better than a small closed group. A leadership community with discussion, training and honest dialogue is vital, even if for legal reasons there are attendees that can’t formally vote.

-  Consider forming what Alan Roxburgh calls M.A.T groups (Missional Action Teams), that is self-managing ministry teams who are empowered to creatively tackle some area of mission or ministry, discover a way forward and then manage it. It trains and empowers ‘ordinary’ members.

-   Consider structuring your small groups so they are ‘micro-churches’ with freedom to become small holistic communities within or at the margins of the church. Some may permeate demographic groups who will never attend Sunday morning – but who will grow in faith in a house church of some sort.