Organic Community

It has been a long time since I last posted...my apologies.

This week we will be studying the concept of an "Organic Community" at Terra Nova. This term means a lot of things to a lot of people. I want to set out here my working definition of this term and get some feed back before Sunday.

An organic community fosters naturally occurring relationships and creates spaces for them to grow and flourish. An OC is focused on people as opposed to programs.

Some further explanation...

Naturally occurring relationships are those relationships that grow out of commonality (i.e. proximity, common interests, mutual friends, etc). In other words, an OC strives to create space for these relationships to be established and then grow rather than focusing on creating a program that forces people into relationships. An OC leverages what naturally happens and waters and feeds those relationships so that they can grow into healthy, thriving communities.

An OC might have programs (probably will!), but the focus is always on the people. The programs are only thereto help people grow in relationships. As soon as a program becomes more important than the people who run or for whom it was developed, it is scrapped.

Personally, I think the majority of churches in America today are far more programmatic than they are organic. That is pure opinion and I admit that. I hope Terra Nova can break that model and be a truly organic, connected community.

I guess time will tell.

Any feedback?

Under the Mercy,

Jason

Healthy Church

I just finished an interview with a consultant from LifeWay Church Resources. He was a really nice guy and I enjoyed my time with him. Apparently I took a survey a few weeks ago and Terra Nova ended up being in the top 10% of healthiest churches in America. I really don't know how they "scored" that, but I'll still take the compliment!

After the interview, I started thinking...

What is a "healthy" church? I think a healthy church is a church that is actively loving God and loving others. A healthy church will have times of expressing culturally relevant worship together as a community. They will have times of challenging each other from God's Word. They will have times of fun and relaxing together. A healthy church will make the community/city in which it lives a better place. A healthy church will make it clear to everyone how much God loves the people of that city. They will work together to build a taste of the Kingdom of God in their community.

While this is a nice vision, the pragmatist in me now asks: "HOW?" If you are still reading, here are a few thoughts:

• This kind of "Christianity" has to be taught and modeled from the pastor and staff. People should hear stories regularly of how the pastor and his/her family have been involved in loving God and loving people. The staff ought to be able to share stories about caring for others and authentically worshiping God (individually and corporately).
• People need opportunities or venues in which to learn to live this way. While it would be great to say your neighborhood is your mission field, let's face it, 90% of the people in a church are scared to death to share their faith with their neighbors. So part of the role of the leaders of the church is to create opportunities to model and then let people practicing this kind of "loving out loud."
• People need safe places to remember how good God is. This happens when small groups of people do life together. This happens on Sunday mornings when corporately we talk about God and how He is working in our lives. This happens via email and phone calls between people who are in authentic relationships with others in their community of faith.
• People need to be inspired. This world is full of depressing and dark news. People need to know that the God they love is bigger than this world. They need to know that life is more than an accident of nature, but it has meaning and significance.
• People need to be prayed for and cared for. Ezekiel 34 challenges the "shepherds of Israel" to start truly caring for their sheep. The prophetic call to shepherd needs to be sounded again. Pastors and leaders need to care for the people of their congregation...really love them! When you do, you will pray for them, you will invest in them, you will teach them, you will inspire them to be more than they ever dreamed they could be.

Terra Nova may have "scored" well on some survey, but in reality, our health boils down to our people learning how to love - God and others. So far, they are amazing at this. My prayer is that we continue to grow in this. I can honestly say that I love this church (and I don't mean the building!). I hope I get to pastor here until I die!

Under the Mercy,
Jason