Community - digg this
In an effort to develop a sense of community at church, we're dividing the city up into chunks based on where members/regular attendees live. These communities won't have any more than forty families/individual members in order to facilitate communication. Each one will have a community coordinator whose job it will be to communicate, organize, and identify leaders in that area. I think it's a really interesting idea. As churches get larger and more geographically spread out our challenge is to find a way to keep them feeling like family.
The project will take a couple of years to really flesh out, unless God has other plans. This includes identifying areas and training volunteers. They also want to raise up "shepherds", volunteers who will take up duties like going with elders to pray with folks in their homes and leading efforts to meet the community needs.
So what are your thoughts on doing this versus just having a bunch of smaller "home churches" as some do? Steve at Theological Musings who participates in a home or "simple" church has a link to house2house that goes into a bit more detail on that concept, which is in no way new.
I have no problem with either way of doing things as long as the teaching is sound and the Kingdom is advancing. I like the diversity that a larger church offers as long as it also has the community focus that Redeemer does. My reflex is to bring up the hobgoblin of error that a lack of training could bring into a simple church, but even mega churches are no stranger to cults of personality or theological problems. Bottom line, if you're gathering with other believers and are being encouraged to get out of the "big building" and spread the gospel then we're cool. If you're sitting at home/in a pew trying to be an island, we're not.
Also, listen to the Ezra 10 sermon on worldliness.
