just beneath the surface (**or is it real?)...the messiness of a kingdom

I like things when they are organic. Without hype. Without show. Without any sense that I’m being sold anything. I wish there was some way to keep a church organic that still allows for growth in numbers at the same time. Maybe that is why the small group ministry is so effective when those small groups form out of their own will and desire to see God’s kingdom brought to earth. One small group starts up and then another group forms and then another, and then, all of a sudden, you begin to see this bigger picture of the kingdom of God being established on earth organically while growth is occurring. At some point, leaders may decide to interlink some of the small groups but it is only after they are firmly established with their own identity and their own passion that this decision takes place, which is what keeps it from turning manipulative or de-liberating. There is never a sense of trying to conjure up passion in the “attendees” because the passion is what draws them there in the first place.

Large administrative structures work best when a they were started and birthed out of a small group rather than small groups being birthed out of a larger administration (i.e. empty shell). Something that begun as organic will most likely never turn into something inorganic and formulaic, no matter how large it gets, it can only grow to resemble (though much more authentically) the purpose behind what the “right-off-the-bat” large administrative church is trying to do.

In the same way, something that was begun as inorganic and perfectly structured can never turn into something organic and spontaneous, it can only try to imitate it, and even then, this imitation is cheap.

I think that small groups birthed out of a larger church structure can work, as long as those within them choose to make them work but even then, this task would prove extremely difficult.

This approach to ministry allows a validity and a “real-ness”…an air of spontaneity and room for error. It allows honest, open deliberation. It allows misunderstanding, “working together” to solve the misunderstandings usually not found within a purposely large and administratively oriented church.

Maybe this is why large churches often seem like shells, where one goes and expects to find some sense of reality just beneath the big fake surface, yet finds none. (either because it was never there to begin with or it was lost in the process of getting “bigger and better” and “revamped”) Maybe this is why organic churches that somehow grow into larger things, yet still remain true to their roots are so refreshing. Because it is within this structure that one goes and finds the genuine-ness and openness and honesty right before their very eyes…so they don’t have to look for it “right beneath the surface.” It’s because these churches began with the pure desire of a few people to come together for a common goal and that desire has remained first priority.

A lot of “larger than life” churches fail because they make the aspiration to conjure up that desire in people more important than the desire itself and thus simplify it (and all its greatness) to a manipulative, in-the-box, clean, cut-and-dry ministry.

I think, at least for me, that it is out of this framework for the church that I sense the bigger things that God is doing in the world the most easily because the organic church was brought through the earth itself and not simply formed on top of it.