This week we have the second installment of what I'm calling our "Conversations with the Director" series. In this conversation he talks about some of the first house churches he planted. There's good news and bad news, and I'll start with the good: he planted seven house churches in a year. The bad news? Six of them died.
There's a few things that I want to point out from this conversation.
First, this is another great example of the way that experimentation is deeply engrained in the LK10 DNA. And more specifically, the process of learning through failure. It took two years of trying the same thing, and six out of seven house churches dying, for John to try something different here. This also reminds me of the patient faithfulness that we talked about last week. Maybe experimentation and patient faithfulness need to go hand in hand. We need experimentation so that we can grow and adapt, but patient faithfulness so that we can follow through with our experimentation long enough to actually see what works.
Second, I'm always struck by the easy way that John talks about his failures. We don't spend a lot of time talking about confession around here. I imagine some folks get the heebie-jeebies from that word, whether from bad past experiences in churches that practice hierarchical confession or because of a distrust of those churches. But if we're truly being honest with ourselves and each other in our times of checking in together, that's going to lead to some pretty serious confession at times. We all screw up. But if we want to be able to talk about our screw ups as easily as John does, I have a hunch that it starts with radical honesty in our closest relationships.
Third, this is one more great example of why our leader groups (and the Leader 101 curriculum) are so important. Here in the LK10 Community, we're a bunch of people who believe that church has to be more than just a Sunday morning thing. We believe it has to be a whole life thing. But when church is a whole life thing, even those of us leading house churches can't hide the parts of our lives that we'd rather keep secret. Those issues that we've never quite dealt with have a habit of showing up when we really let people into our lives and our hearts. And then we have a choice. We either deal with our stuff and become more whole, more useful, or we stuff it back down and pretend like it's not there.
If you're recognizing that you don't have it all together, that you need help growing up, that you want to do some hard work to grow into the spiritual parent that you know God wants you to become, then I sincerely hope you'll give one of our leader groups a shot. You're obviously welcome to engage with us as deeply as you want, and so if that means you mostly just want to receive these updates, that's okay. But if you aren't diving in and engaging with one of these groups at a deep level, you're missing out. As always, let us know if you decide you want to try something new, to dive into this great experiment with us.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar