As many of you know, I am interested in church planting. I am currently attending a relatively new church plant in Arlington, TX, and hope to be involved in more church planting efforts in the future. Some of my favorite conferences and favorite books are related to church planting.
Many of you who read my blog are also interested in church planting, and so I want to introduce you to a friend of mine, Nathan Laughlin (and his wife Amy), who is heading to Vancouver, BC next year to plant a network of churches called “Open Circle.” What they are doing is so simple anybody can do it, so innovative it is exciting to think about the possibilities, and so missional it could change the face of church planting.
Go check out out his site at opencirclevillage.org, listen to his podcast, read the blog. Who knows? Maybe you can start an Open Circle in your own neighborhood!
Jeremy,
When you were with GES you wrote some articles that I thought were excellent and very helpful. I talked with you once on the phone about ordering some materials from GES and you were kind and gracious. You are obviously the sort of person who takes his faith seriously, but what I’m hearing you say now in this public forum really concerns me. You seem to be equating the “Open Circle” with the New Testament concept of “church”. While I share your concerns and disillusionment with much of what is practiced (or not practiced) in “traditional churches”, you don’t seriously believe that the “Open Circle” concept is the solution do you? I just visited the website you suggested and read it and listened to one of the podcasts. I really don’t mean to be unkind, but the podcast was only about 30 min. of empty, meaningless babble between an atheist and the host about some extremely significant passages from chap. 2 and 3 from the Gospel of John. About the only thing that was accomplished, from what I could tell, was a half hour of empty chatter and post-modern obscurantism. I also noticed this statement: ” You don’t have to believe in anything in particular to be one of us. In fact, this community exists for those who are discovering, not for those who think they have it all figured out. The only belief that unites us is that we need each other to change the world and make it a better place.” While John Lennon and Oprah Winfrey would surely love this “statement of faith”, isn’t it somewhat disingenuous for someone with your theological education to suggest that this could in any way be considered a New Testament church or that starting an “Open Circle” is “church planting”? A radical shift has obviously taken place in your beliefs since you left GES for you to now be promoting such an unbiblical idea as this. While it is true that God commands believers to engage in loving interaction and dialogue with unbelievers for the purpose of persuading them that Jesus is indeed the Christ, the primary purpose of the church is for the equipping of believers, not unbelievers, for this work of service in the world. I believe that you are a very gifted person who God wants to use in meeting a desperate need in a perishing world—telling people how they can have the free gift of resurrection and eternal life thru simple faith in the promise of Jesus Christ. It just saddens me that you seem to have gotten sidetracked in a vain quest to “change the world” thru planting “churches” that are not in fact churches—-at least not if you still accept the authority of the scriptures and it’s definition of what constitutes the Body of Christ, both universally and locally. As I said before, you have been a blessing to me in the past, and I know you have been thru some difficult times in recent months both emotionally and spiritually. I just hope you will re-examine t the direction you now seem to be taking. May God bless you always.
I thought you had given up on the church planting thing.
Gary,
I understand your concerns. They are concerns I myself would have had a year ago. But it’s been quite a year…
The basic conviction I came to about 10 months ago is that certain aspects of my theology were causing me to cut myself off from people that Jesus would love to hang out with.
I realized I was a Pharisee.
Following that startling realization, I asked myself the following questions, and invite you to ask these of yourself as well:
How many genuine friendships do I have with people who are not “Free Grace Christians”? In other words, do I hang out with people who do not believe the same way I do just as much (if not more) as with people who agree with me?
I am convinced that the primary thing we are supposed to be doing on earth is “making disciples.” I also believe that “Open Circle” style church will do a better job of making disciples than will the typical “Sunday Service Stage Show.”
Bullet,
Yes and no. I am still trying to sort all this out myself. Here is what I do know: If I “plant a church” it probably won’t be what most people would traditionally consider “church.”
Gary, Jeremy, and anyone else reading:
When I heard there was a deserter, I imaged the typical religious forum trolling that I’ve seen before, but Gary’s misgivings are understandable. I want to commend you, Gary, for taking the time to view the site and listen before posting here. I’ll try to explain where the discrepancies lie.
Jeremy heard of our idea in the context of church planting, and so he presented it in that way. But open circles, as they were first conceived, were groups that could, at best, become churches. They were groups designed to foster the kind of service and conversation that could provide a path of faith for people who would not be interested in joining a church. I am not under the impression that they are churches, that is “God’s own” “called out ones”. And in fact, I am in the process of reworking the concept as well as the site. You’ll have to wait and see what we come up with.
As for the idea of anyone being a part of us regardless of their beliefs, this is something Mosaic communities are often indicted for. I think the confusion is in what it means to be one of us. We mean that you do not have to be a follower of Jesus to spend time with us and join in activities. No promises are being made about anyone’s status at the resurrection. Nor would anyone outside the Christian tradition hear any such promises.
Finally, concerning the podcast… well what can I say it’s my first. We’ve recorded 7 episodes, but I’m doing all the audio editing myself so it’s slow going. (If you think we rambled a lot in 30 minutes, I should tell we we talked for well over an hour!) And the one you heard was not our best, at least not mine… It was the first time that Liz had ever read any of those Scriptures, so I thought we would have enough to talk about just confronting the content of the story, but it was actually kind of slow. I also made the mistake of reading The Message, which has built in problems when it comes to any real analysis.
The only correction I’m making to anything that Jeremy wrote is to point out that we are not claiming that circles are churches. Otherwise, right on…
Nathan:
Thank you for your clarification. That changes my whole perspective on Open Circles. With the understanding that these are not “churches”, I agree with you and Jeremy that this might be a great idea. I was obviously premature and wrong in expressing my opinion the way I did. I can only ask you, Jeremy and Liz to forgive me for that. With all the things that are going on in churches these days, I sometimes feel exasperated. I admire your efforts in trying to develop an effective method of outreach. I also rejoice that you have decided not to use The Message. May God bless you in your work.
Gary