Rethinking Church
One All Nations church planter shares his own experience with simple church:
What might church look like, stripped of all political and cultural baggage? Maybe like two or three gathering in Jesus’ name, seeing Jesus show up (Matthew 18)? Maybe gathering in homes for teaching, eating, fellowship, and prayer (Acts 2)?
We moved to South Africa as a family because we want to see Jesus’ kingdom come and his will be done on earth. We came with a vision to rethink “church” and to explore and experiment with church in its most simple biblical form. We hope to see groups of local Africans loving God and others, and discovering Jesus together through the Bible. We’re already starting to see fruit!
When we first arrived in South Africa, we took two weeks to visit three local poor communities, seeking the Lord about which one he wanted us to serve. We felt God leading us to Masiphumelele (Masi). My wife and I are Caucasian, and Masi is a place where white-skinned people are not really welcome. But we prayed, and we entered the community. As we walked and looked for reasonably friendly people, we were also looking for those who are spiritually hungry and people of peace.
One of first people we met was Basta, along with five of his friends. Basta stood out as a leader in this warm-hearted group of guys. They sat on their favorite corner for many hours every weekend, enjoying the shade, beer, and each other’s laughter.
Their curiosity as to why we were in their neighborhood led to our first significant conversation. After half an hour of chatting and telling them our purpose, they seemed really interested and spiritually hungry. So we planned to meet them at the same corner at the same time the next weekend.
The next weekend, Basta and his friends were there waiting for us. We sat on the street corner and had church for an hour and a half. Laughter, fellowship, chips, soda, prayer, and Scripture. We modeled the Discovery Bible Studies for them and had an awesome time together.
We wanted to work through local people as “gatherers” – gathering their natural community of friends and family together. Our plan is to train a point person to lead inductive Bible studies, so that local people (rather than us) will lead. Basta and I met in the middle of the week and I coached him to lead for the coming weekend. And he led! It was even better than the week before, and even more people came.
Then, the third week, the multiple mother-languages present at Basta’s gathering were making communication a bit challenging. So we came up with another strategy: we introduced storying. We took a passage of Scripture five verses long, crafted it into a simple phrase with main ideas, and read it twice. Then, we took it phrase by phrase as we went around the circle, each acting it out with hand and body motions. By the time we were done with the passage, we had all heard the story about ten times.
The guys were alive with passion, interpreting and debating the passage. One cried out, “I just want Jesus to change my life!” It was amazing! Another man said, “I am a Muslim, but I felt something here today that I have never felt before. I will be back next week with more people.” Still another asked if we could do the passage in the form of a song; he wanted to sing the passage because he loves music. Remember, this is all with pre-Christians. When it was all said and done, they were so excited to act out another story that they weren’t sure they wanted to wait a week to meet again.
The guys continue to meet, and every week we see even more honesty and passion. This group will eventually be baptizing one another. We’re discipling one guy to lead the group, and another to reproduce this and start another church within the next three months.
In a very recent conversation with Basta, we realized that he is now a follower of Jesus. He confessed with his mouth, believes in his heart, and the fruit is following. This was the first time I ever watched someone stumble upon the realization that he was saved! We are excited about what we are seeing, and we believe this can happen all over the world – including in the United States. When we look at the biblical examples of church planting, we see that it is far simpler than most of us make it.
[This article first appeared in the July 2011 issue of Missionary Messenger, a publication of Eastern Mennonite Missions.]
