A Church by Any Other Name

THE GREEK WORD CHURCH simply means “assembly.” That means a church can be anything from a small group of believers meeting in a home to a megachurch meeting in a zillion-dollar facility. In the New Testament, Ephesus was a huge church. Many others were just a handful of people.

Today, the bride of Christ takes on many manifestations. But at the core, all churches will all be judged by the same two questions: Do you love and obey Jesus? Are you living out the “one anothers” of Scripture?

At North Coast Church, I find it strange that we are often best known for being innovative—for things like our video venues and weekends of service. In reality, I don’t value innovation all that much. It’s simply a tool to help us fulfill our core calling: teaching God’s Word and living it out in life-on-life small groups.

Actually, we try to keep things very simple: worship and small groups. Everything else is ancillary. Everything else can come and go, judged by how well it helps us do worship and small groups.

For instance, our multi-campus, multiple-venue approach to ministry is simply our current attempt to live out
1 Corinthians 9:19-27. Just as we can’t reach Spanish-speaking families without a Spanish-speaking pastor, we can’t reach all the cultural subsets in our community unless we’re willing to meet them in their cultural context. So we offer everything from “Traditions” to the “Edge.” It’s not to be cool. It’s not to be big. It’s to help us do the core thing better.

That’s why I always advise leaders not to ask, “What’s hot?” or, “What will help us grow?” But simply, “What is our core?” Then, hold tightly to everything that helps you do that, and loosely to everything else.

Larry Osborne is one of the senior pastors at North Coast Church in Vista, Calif. And, no, wearing Tommy Bahama shirts when he preaches is not “being cool”; it’s just who he is.

THE PARADIGM I USE IS: We don’t go to church; we are the church. That’s what being missional is all about.

I like how Ed Stetzer has defined being missional: “a church acting like a missionary to the community around it while partnering with others to be a missionary around the world.”

We’re training our people to be missional in their everyday living. We often ask, “What are we doing as a church that hinders people from being missional in their local context? Are our people too busy in the church to be the church?”

Another paradigm I grew up with, and learned in seminary, was that pastors are teachers, expositors, preachers. Without a doubt, that’s important and critical. But as society has changed—as we are living in a missionary culture rather than a churched culture friendly toward the gospel—pastors now need to be teachers and equippers of people. Each needs to ask, “What is my role? How can I equip people to be missionaries?”

The most important part of equipping is to set the example. Last year, I took a job at a retail computer store one day a week. One point I was trying to make was simply that we need to be intentional about placing ourselves in contact with unchurched people.

Ray Chang is senior pastor of Ambassador Church (EFC) and lives in Brea, Calif. He is excited about three things: family, church planting and using technology to advance the gospel (which means anything Apple—iPhone, MacBook, etc.).

WHEN I FIRST STARTED church planting, we were a Wednesday-night Bible study and often asked, “When can we call ourselves a church?” We knew there were many valid qualifications, but one response came strongly to mind: when we’re willing to minister to anybody who comes through the door. For us, it really wasn’t about elders or deacons; it was when we were willing and ready to take whomever God brought.

At the beginning, we had flat-out said, “We are a Hispanic church.” I tell you what, I had to back away from that, because I realized it was racism in reverse. Again, what we came back to was, “Whosoever God brings, we will love and minister to.”

That flies in the face of some Christian leaders, who say chose your target and go after it. What happens when the majority keeps choosing the same target, when the majority doesn’t intentionally go after “whosoever”? Too often, the church chooses the same target—people like them. How are we ever going to reach “all people” if we always choose that same divining rod?

I don’t see that when I look at the Book of Acts; I don’t see that in the deacons that the Jewish elders chose. They chose Gentiles. Hebrews choosing Gentiles—that was an intentional choice of diversity, so that things would not be overlooked.

Having people who are different from us helps us see God and elements of the Bible that we would otherwise miss totally.

Alex Mandes is director of EFCA Hispanic Ministries. He gets excited hearing about churches that are getting rid of the “sacred cows” of how they do ministry, to get back to what matters most.

IF YOU WANT TO DEVELOP sound ecclesiology, go back to the Scriptures and ask, “What was the movement that Jesus launched?” It’s clear from the Book of Acts: The church Jesus launched was a united group of faith-filled followers who mimicked Him in preaching the gospel to reach a lost and dying world.

Things added to that—professional clergy/laity division, education, buildings, etc.—are not necessarily wrong and may be effective in strategy, but they are not the kernel of the movement that Jesus launched.

The early church clearly had a gathered/scattered rhythm to its ministry. In the West, we tend to focus on the gathered: preaching the Word, developing elders, etc. It’s not bad. But at best, it’s only half the job. The other half is training men and women to become fishers of men.

When I attended Dallas Theological Seminary, I was eager to become effective at preaching the Word. And the natural tendencies out of that are to center on the Sunday-morning event or events. To have them centered on me.

I was very much caught up in that emphasis. I don’t think I would have been rescued from it without the opportunity I had to go overseas and see a church-planting movement that looks a lot like what happened in the New Testament.

To me, there are only three essentials to the church: focused mission (becoming a church-planting movement), the rhythms of gathered/scattered (always equipping people for the harvest) and spiritual formation (seeing actual transformation in people’s lives).

Ves Sheely is superintendent of the New England District. He’s passionate about church planting, if you can’t tell.