I’m convinced that if Paul were here today, he’d opt for the synagogue style approach to reach the millennial blog generation, because with all their blogs, tweets and review posting, this generation is hardwired for interaction with the gospel.
I learned this in Europe when I planted a church in a Starbucks accidentally by hosting an open discussion group focused on The Da Vinci Code as a means of evangelizing the café where I worked as a barista. Today, in inner city Long Beach, California, we sit around benches, serve breakfast and gather in the open air, singing, listening to a message and discussing what we’ve heard. Everybody is involved, from the transgendered prostitute, to the guy who used to be on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.
4. There Is Only One Thing Needful
Jesus said there was one thing needful, but very few churches operate like that’s true. Churches that put on big productions can often run roughshod over people in their flurry to cook up a good meal for Jesus.
As Michael Cheshire once mused, “Church planters and money—so hard to get them in the same room.” Planters lack money, lights and flashy toys. Like Peter, silver and gold they have not, but what they do have is the supernatural power and presence of God. The presence of God becomes everything to the church planter because it’s everything he has.
The presence of God is powerfully linked to mission in the Great Commission. Jesus promises that if we go, he will come. Paul says that the supernatural presence of God, through the interaction of the gifts, will alert and alarm the visitor in our midst as they realize that “God is among you.” Can you put a price tag on that? No. And you can’t buy it either, thankfully, because that means church planters can afford it. The truth is, they can’t afford to be without it.
He is the one thing needful. It’s the only thing that matters in our gatherings, and yet it’s the only thing that can’t be bought, manufactured or counterfeited. With all the size, money and power of an established church, the sense of God’s presence and his working in our midst can be lost. A.W. Tozer once lamented, “If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”
So with church planting.
So fill up a canteen full of that, align your compass, finish the trek out, and be grateful I didn’t ask you to skin a goat with a stick.
Peyton Jones, a church planter and encourager of church planters, is the author of Church Zero: Raising 1st Century Churches Out of the Ashes of the 21st Century Church (David C. Cook, 2013).