featured article:'slow fizz' community church roundtable

We sat around the living room waiting to begin.  It was a cozy room with original art and a dog that wanted to nuzzle.  It was the kind of place that Ikeaâ and Pottery Barnâ try to mass-produce.  Anyway, so there we were when suddenly someone comments on the walls.  “These are almost the same colors we use in our sanctuary,” they say. Then another, “And they’re very near to those that are in my den.”  It seems our connections begin with aesthetics.

We came together from around the Great Lakes to dialog about the challenges and opportunities of being “slow fizz churches” (Ken Wilson’s words) which were intentional about community – both trying to be a community and doing so by living and serving in a particular community.  Each of us had some experience with this.  The goal was to learn from one another and identify some common threads so that we could then encourage others.  Along the way we managed to encourage each other, too, chiefly by realizing we weren’t alone.  No longer were we “strangers among friends.”  Our method was to each share our church’s journey, which inevitably involved sharing our personal journeys, and then to reflect back to one another the dominant themes we heard.  What a fruitful exercise! 

Let me mention one common thread right away.  All of us had formative experiences at large, flagship churches in the Vineyard.  We were all meaningfully mentored by the pastors of these churches.  And we’re thankful for it!  Not judgmental, not criticizing.  We all bless the churches we came from, even as they have blessed us and encourage our experimentation. 

That’s the second feature that wove us together: our openness to experimentation.  In some cases these experiments were born of necessity, but in every case we’ve embraced a culture of inventiveness, flexibility, and experimentation.  A great sense of freedom characterizes our church culture, especially as it relates to the forms our structures take. 

This sense of freedom seems to exist in dynamic tension with a third shared thread: long-term commitment.  But, in fact, I think a better way of saying it is this: the long-term commitment is what enables the experimentation.  The freedom to experiment rests on the bedrock foundation of long-term commitment.  This sense of commitment expresses itself in a variety of ways.

As pastors, we’re committed to our ministry over the long-haul.  We’re committed to not being among the 3 out of 4 pastors who no longer are in ministry after 20 years.  We’re willing to pursue the spiritual practices that are necessary to shaping this kind of life. 

We’re also committed to our neighborhoods over the long-haul.  Unlike many churches, which relocate to keep pace with the geography of their upwardly mobile congregants, we’re making commitments to settle into our neighborhoods and put down roots.  I think of the organic network of roots and soil and more that gives life to healthy sod.  These neighborhoods generally tend to be older, urban communities, the kind of places that developers are prone to target for gentrification. 

These two expressions of commitment have two corollaries. 

First, being bi-vocational is a big part of our ministry experience.  Many Vineyard pastors start bi-vocational, but we seem to have, on average, stayed that way longer.  Also, for some of us, we seem to sense a calling to remain bi-vocational over a much longer span of time.  This vocation to bi-vocation can sometimes conflict with our involvement in the typical Vineyard networks of relationship.  This reality needs more thought.

Second, it is the convergence of the above expressions of commitment that often puts the “slow” in “slow fizz.”  All of us experienced seasons of slow numerical growth in the formative years of our churches.  For some that rate of numerical growth has changed.  Yet for all of us, while numerical growth matters, it is not the only kind of growth we recognize.  Numerical growth doesn’t drive us, at least not in the same way as the desire to please God, meet God, be faithful, train disciples.   

Another characteristic thread that we share is our openness to other Christian traditions.  We embrace them and learn from them.  This means that we’ve all benefited from other churches.  Most practically it includes the sharing of facilities with established churches that have more space than money. 

It seems that a lot of these threads come together in the common fact that we’re having some success at effectively reaching young, artistic types.  They feel comfortable, safe, at home, in our churches.  They’re learning, together with us, what it means to follow Jesus.  

I subtitled this article, “Sustainable Mission in a High-Speed World.”  I could just have easily replaced “mission” with “life” or “faith” or “community.”  Yet, after our discussion, mission seemed the most natural.  This was something of a surprise.  I think most of us would have expected “community.”  Our conversation, however, opened for us how none of us are doing community for community’s sake.  We live in a community because we want to serve that community.  And we try to live in community because it is vital to that service.  This is what sustains us.