Saskatoon is a small city of 250,000.  One of the joys of life and ministry in Saskatoon is the fact that small things entertain us.  Recently one of the biggest events since Pentecost hit Saskatoon, Denny’s (the restaurant) came to town.  Despite the fact that it is only seven blocks away from my home, I had hoped to avoid it.  I am not a diner kind of guy.

Much to my dismay, my boss and pastor wanted to have a meeting of the minds at Denny’s and since I have been bumped off the schedule several times in the last week, I said sure.

What we wanted to talk about was the possibility of a church within a church.  I have been pounding home the idea for over a year while Dean has been opposing me for almost the same amount of time.  At a management meeting a couple of weeks ago, he blurted out, “I disagree with absolutely everything that you’ve just said!” while talking about some aspects of a church within a church.  During the discussion then and several since then, I learned a great deal about not only starting up new ministries but also some of the concerns of the modern church about postmodernism.

The arguments for and against a church within a church are not all black and white, nor are they without a certain degree of emotion (which is not a bad thing).  What I do know is that I have learned a lot about ministry and life in my conversations with Dean.  Some of those may be worth sharing here.

·       I know I am right (but not everyone else is so sure).  I have known deep down on many levels that what is published in Next-Wave, by Leon@rd.Sweet (the only name I know of that evolves with time), Stanley Grenz, and countless others is correct.  I have read a stack of books over five feet high on postmodernism and the church today.  I have processed through, obsessed over, digested, regurgitated, and prayed about it.  By the time that I suggested a “church within a church” to the management team, all I was looking for was some money, some permission, and some comments about how great it is to work with a visionary such as myself.  Life seldom works like that.  With the exception of a few friends and ministry colleagues, none of them had heard of postmodernism.  The meeting just kind of bogged down for a couple of weeks.  People needed to catch up.  They needed to read what I had read, think through what I had already done.  Postmodernism isn’t a minor adjustment to a hypermodern church, it is a huge shift.  While they trust my judgment, all of them are leaders and leaders don’t often follow blindly (doh!).  If I really am sure that this is the path that God wants me and the church to follow, I should be fine with opening the plan up to some scrutiny.

·       I needed to accept accountability.  I am becoming more and more aware of my ministry limitations (if I ever miss any, my ministry colleagues remind me).  A lot of thinkers, pastors, and heretics have been certain that they were right when they had gone astray.  The church was wise to stall me until I came to the point where even if I was sure I was on the right path, I would be humble enough to take correction or be stopped.  It isn’t about me, it is about building up the body.

·         I needed to move esoteric ideas to a vision and plan.  It is easy to toss around phrases such as glocal, chaordic, and ancient/future (if you have never dropped one of these phrases in a meeting, you are missing out).  A postmodern ministry needs more than cliches, goatees, and candles to reach people.  Everyone talks about Phil Jackson and his philosophy of basketball.  That may be a huge part of his success but the other side of it is his ability to design defenses that smother opposing teams and to call the right play at the right time (give it to Mike, he’ll figure it out).  The Chicago Bulls were more than some Zen thoughts.  The postmodern church is often long on philosophy but short on a lot of other things.  If I can’t communicate what I see as the future, we are dead in the water.

Lakeview’s leadership also has some concerns as well that needed to be addressed.  I hear these questions being asked in a lot of churches that are looking at church within churches.  Here are my thoughts on them.

Some of things that got brought up were “What happens to innovation within the rest of the church?”  “If postmodernism is going to be the epistemology of the future generations, doesn’t it make sense to transition the entire church?”

I think it does make sense to radically change but I know the church.  It takes a long time to change things.  From what we are seeing, it is only the larger churches that are planting “church within churches” as many are realizing that you can’t shift the thinking of 1000 people overnight.  It takes longer for these churches to change due to the increased cost (losing staff, people, and momentum).  What happens to those souls who are caught in the gap, regardless of being postmoderns who are not being met or moderns being left behind?  Many of the new church plants that are out there exist in part due to the emerging generation resisting the way the modern generation does church.  It is nonsensical to ask a modern thinker to enjoy a postmodern church if that is not who they really are.

I am generally not one to rush off into things, I like to think things through but there comes a time when we look at lot of people that risk not being reached if we aren’t willing to reach out to them.  Will Lakeview be this incredible postmodern, God glorifying church in 2010?  Maybe but there is a lot of time and souls in between then. 

Another question has been, “What happens to the a church within a church five years from now?”

I don’t know and I don’t care at this point (If I knew, I would be writing book after book).  Bill Gates book on the future (The Road Ahead) had to be revised after a year.  A major Canadian parachurch just completed their twenty-year strategic plan.  I could do the same but the simple truth remains that you have to come to a bridge before you can cross it.  We can plan or we can prepare.  I’ll choose the latter.  The church within a church could be a separate church plant or it could be killed and written off (maybe I wasn’t right after all).  The opportunity to reach out to a postmodern culture that is so prevalent in a university-dominated city such as Saskatoon that the opportunity is too great.  Five years ago, we never heard anyone talk about ancient-future anything and the Net was only for nerds. 

What is the relationship of the church within the church to the mothership?

When I originally heard this question it kind of chafed on me and I tried to outline as loose a relationship with Lakeview as possible.  All I could see was an oppressive mother church controlling me (I think I had some issues).  A second look at the question and the people asking it made me realize that it wasn’t Dean or Lakeview’s desire to control me (they don’t pay me enough to do that) but rather a question of how can we help.  They know my tendencies and weaknesses.  They realize that a future leadership team and I will need some help.  At the same time we will be branching out, Lakeview will still be the mothership.  It will be its seed money, equipment, staff, and name that are put on the line.  They deserve the right to know that it will be well used.

Someone told me that one of the keys to a “church within a church” is a good relationship with the leadership of the mother church.  One of the things that I learned from my breakfast at Denny’s is the once you get by all the philosophy, jargon, worship, and teaching, relationships are still central to growing the kingdom and once those are gone, we all lose.  I also learned that when you pastor in a city where a new Denny’s is the biggest news in town, it seems to change all the rules…