How Did We Get Here?

by Josh Duncan

When it comes to the direction our church is headed, it's important for each person to realize how we've arrived at this point. At first glance, you may want to assume these shifts were the result of one person's decisions or something we just randomly decided to do a month ago.

(No, I didn't receive emails or comments that have prompted this blog post. I just felt it's important for you to get a picture of the decision making process, which ultimately began more than 2 years ago...)

It begins with God and His vision for this church. Over two years ago, God began to birth a vision within Jennifer and me. We then began to share that vision with others. From the beginning, it was a vision that called us to not see church as a building or all about Sundays, but as a way to live life. We knew God was calling this church to be a movement that wasn't restricted to a specific location and consisted of small communities all over the city.

We moved forward planning and preparing to see this vision become reality. We did this assuming we could cast a unique vision of church by packaging "church" differently (by different we meant contemporary on Sundays). So, we found ourselves talking about being the church and not seeing church as a Sunday event or building, yet a large majority of our planning, strategies, resources, etc were going into Sunday morning. Before long, I realized there was a disconnect between the vision we were casting and actions we were doing. While God was still touching people's lives, we weren't being true to the vision He gave us. We were way too focused on Sunday services. (For this, I apologize to those of you who were lost in the shuffle of us doing church. I apologize that we didn't prioritize helping you become the disciple of Jesus He wants you to be.) 

The truth is, God was convicting my heart for my actions. Ultimately, I was responsible for who we were becoming, which wasn't the church God wanted us to be. I had to come to grips with the reality that contemporary churches and traditional churches often share the exact same problem.... When making disciples isn't the focus, you create a consumer driven church that fails to give people Jesus and real relationships.

As we moved into the fall last year, I began to revisit this initial vision with Kyle (our worship pastor) and the men who hold us accountable (team of men and pastors who support our church from the outside). I knew for our church to take its next steps in line with the initial vision, we'd have to make some significant shifts. During this time, God was radically transforming my life as a disciple. This was essential if I was going to lead our church to make these shifts. I had to change what I cared about, and I had to give up the way of doing church that I had come to know. 

Kyle and I then began having conversations with dozens of people in our church who had already demonstrated and communicated a desire to "be" the church and to make disciples. We began talking about the shifts we'd need to make, and we began to gauge what the Spirit was leading us to do. Unless there was a clear leading of the Holy Spirit stirring within the people, we knew the shift couldn't happen. This process was more than 6 months leading up to May 6 when we began sharing our next steps to the whole church. You can read about those shifts in these two posts...

-This Changes Everything
-What's Exactly Changing?

It's important to note there were two types of decisions made in this process.

1) General/Big Picture Changes: This took months of prayer, discernment, and conversations to sense the leading of the Spirit within the people. It became clear that God had brought together a group of people who were ready to make this shift. This decision wasn't made by Kyle and me. It was done in response to how the Spirit was moving within our people. The decision wasn't what to do, but would we respond to what had become clear for us to do. Kyle and I felt we had no other option but to lead our church to obey what God was leading.

2) Practical changes: These would be the changes to the Sunday morning environment and how this vision would practically play out throughout our church. These decisions were to ultimately be made by Kyle and myself because we had the time to wrestle through all the options and variables. We knew what the people were feeling led to do generally, so it was up to us to research and evaluate what we're doing to help make the best transition. At the same time, we still received some feedback from people who were first connected to the big picture vision of the church. We listened to those people who were committed to and invested in the big picture shifts we were making.