Why We’re Taking Our Time

We’ve been meeting weekly with our launch team for the past few months to plan, pray and prepare for the Renew Community. We’ll continue to do this and hope to launch a public Sunday gathering some time in early to mid 2009 (but we’re not entirely sure the exactly date). It doesn’t mean that we don’t care. We care a great deal. It doesn’t mean that we don’t feel a sense of urgency. We feel this urgency every single day. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t being proactive, deliberate and intentional. The reason we are taking our time is to make sure that we can be deliberate and intentional!

Many have asked us, “What’s the wait? Why not launch a public gathering now?”
Here are a few reasons:

1. Listening: We want to listen to God’s Spirit. Rather than us coming up with plans and asking God to bless them, we would rather ask God what he wants from us in this faith community first and then be obedient in that direction. This is not our church. This is God’s. Therefore, we want to make this church about God’s agenda, not ours. Listening takes time and because we’re not always good at it, we have to slow the process down.

2. Unlearning: There’s a lot that we all need to unlearn as to what “church” is. Much of our understanding of church is cultural and sometimes we get confused and mixed up and forget that its not about a building that you go to once a week to sing and listen to some teaching and go home. Church in a biblical sense is a movement of people who are trying to pay attention to God and participate in what he is doing in the world seven days a week. We need to unlearn – and then relearn – what it means to be ambassadors and representatives of Jesus through the expression of a God-honoring faith community – and that takes time. We want to learn to honor God with our lives Monday-Saturday before we launch a public gathering on Sunday. If we get the Monday through Saturday thing right first, then Sunday will be a natural extention of are already existing mission.

3. Rhythm: Living in the ways of Jesus means having an intentional, God-honoring rhythm in our lives. The Christian life is a lifestyle, not just a mental ascent to a set of rules and regulations that we follow. It’s hard to honor God with a frenetic and frantic pace. We need to slow down. There are a lot of temptations to start a new faith community at a break-neck speed. When we do this, it’s easy for our souls to get lost in the process. It’s also easy for us to cut corners. Right now we feel as though Renew is like wet cement. We’d rather get it right the first time than lay some cement quickly and have to rip it up and start over again a little while later. Sure, we’re going to make mistakes. It’s not going to perfect (it already isn’t) and we don’t feel the pressure to have to have all the answers first. But we want to be intentional and deliberate rather than just throw something together.

4. Relationships: The Story of God and Man is all about relationships. When we slow things down and don’t focus solely on tasks we can get to know each other. Learn each other’s stories. Celebrate together. Create natural spaces for connection. Relationships can be messy and complex, but one thing is for sure: true, deep, lasting friendships take time. You cannot rush the process of relationships with others. When we slow things down we feel as we can develop authentic, deep-rooted friendships with one another – which makes serving that much more fun.

5. Community Engagement: We want to begin making an impact in our community right now, before we have a public service. We’ve begun to ask the question in our communities, “How can we help?” and are slowly able to listen to the answer of people and respond in small ways. Plus, we’d rather have the reputation of a community that loves well and serves – and meets – the needs of our communities and than a community of faith that puts on a good service on Sunday mornings. We want to build trust. We want to earn the right to open our mouths and proclaim what we believe – and this takes time.

6. House Churches: Nowhere in the New Testament is the chruch referred to as a physical building. In fact, for the first 300 years of the church’s existence, they met only in houses. The backbone of who we are and what we desire to become is focused on our house churches. They are not a part of Renew – they are Renew. Because of this, in a sense, we already have started (just not in the traditional sense that most people think of when they think of a church starting…which is part of the unlearning process for us). We desire for house churches to begin to take shape. Then when we have a public official gathering, it will be more about a bunch of house churches coming together to celebrate and worship than it will be “having a church service.”

7. Benchmarks of health: Our goal is not growth, but health. If an organism is healthy a byproduct of that health will be that it will grow. We do desire to grow (qualitatively and quantitatively) but that is not our primary concern. We’re more interested in health. Before we launch publicly, we desire to see evidence of health. Jesus describes our health as his followers by the evidence of the fruit we are producing (John 15). This is through our faithfulness, our generosity, our passion for people far from God, our willingness to serve others and if we are thinking, acting and living more in the ways of Jesus. We want to be able to ask questions like, “How are we growing in love?” “Where are we serving?” “How are we becoming more like Jesus?” “Are we caring for the poor, loving our neighbors, paying attention to God more?” “How are we fleshing out the values of Jesus in our house churches?” and “Are our house churches working towards multiplication?” These are benchmarks that will take time to occur.