Connected Community-Cultural Cure
Church
I’ve recently, over the past few years, been attending Community focused churches. Prior to this, I’ve attended what might be described as church-to-community churches. While both are focused on spreading the gospel and equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, they go about it in two different ways.
Church-to-Community
This model, (and I just made up the name because, well, I can’t think of what else to call them,) is focused on starting and ending with the church building. Most activities are focused or held at a central hub, in most cases the church building, and thus the focus of the body is to get others within the walls of the church.
While nothing is wrong with this model in a vacuum, it fails to take into account the modern culture which naturally mistrusts large institutions and does not have any preconceived notions of trust when it comes to previous pillars of truth. Therefore an organization that starts and ends big is almost at a disadvantage when it comes to creating community.
Community-to-Community
A community-to-community model is similar to, but not the same as, a house church model. Community models start in homes, or at the very least have home meetings as the central theme of their model. Unlike house church models, however, they do have one central hub or location which is used to facilitate connection, teaching, and worship...but little else.
Instead of creating special functions within the church building, community members are expected to spread out and participate in functions already occurring within the community as a way to impact the community with the gospel via connection, injection, and participation. It starts and ends with the community, is outward-facing
Consider the below drawings as an example. First, Community Focused…
Notice in my sad drawing, how the church is outward focused and facing...toward community. Now consider the church focused group…
Notice how in this group it is the community that is expected to come to the church?
So, is one superior to the other?
No, I don’t believe that at all. In fact, in some cases, the church focused model may be the best option. However, I would argue that in a general sense for today’s culture one is far more likely to create and maintain authentic relationships capable of gospel-level change utilizing a community-based model, where the main events are focused outside, not inside the church.
Next up?
Next up I will discuss how Genesis and separation from community were some of the first and longest-lasting consequences of sin.
