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February 09, 2009
Life : Church Sabbatical Over
As long-time readers of this blog will know, the church which Anne and I had been attending (and serving as leaders in) for the past several years had been on sabbatical for the past year – we all took the year off and went together to another local church which offered to host us so that everyone who has served in the church could get a much needed rest.
Well, last weekend marked the end of the sabbatical. At that meeting the pastor announced that he does not feel God is leading him to restart the old church, and that we are all therefore free of our commitments to that church and that he was no longer our pastor. Instead, God seems to be leading our old pastor to start a new ministry – an organic/simple/house church of the kind that I have been talking about in this blog – as soon as he finds himself a non-ministry job. People who were involved in the old church will be welcome to join that new group when it starts; but are also free to go elsewhere as God leads them.
On face value, this is a half surprise. It was well known that our old pastor supported the ideas of the organic church movement, and in fact he was the one who recommended Neil Cole’s book “Organic Church” to the leadership team to read. He clearly viewed the kind of churches I have been talking about as a legitimate alternative to more institutional churches (although he did have some concerns about them as well). On the other hand, I always had the sense that he himself was fairly committed to the institutional model and to being a part of a church or ministry staff, so his decision to go that direction was a bit of a surprise. I actually did think this was the direction God had intended for that group; but I thought it might take longer for people to be ready for it. Perhaps the year away from doing institutional ministry was exactly what was needed.
So, where does all that leave Anne and me?
In San Francisco.
Seriously, while we are supportive of our old pastor’s plans, we continue to think that God wants us to get involved in church up here.
The first church we had been “comfortable” with is now out of consideration. After going there a few more times, we were still finding it hard to connect with people, and I started to get concerned that the Sunday messages were always a “lite” form of the gospel – focused on getting along with each other and not so much on “getting along with God.” Actually, having stepped away from them, I think those two factors are connected – I think the kinds of “soft” sermons that are being preached have encouraged a rather self-absorbed congregation who isn’t that interested in who is sitting next to them in church.
So we are now checking out a second church where we have already had some really great conversations with people before and after service and there are indications that we may be able to get together with some people outside of church. On top of that, all of the sermons we have heard have actually been quite strong. In January there was a series on spiritual disciplines (prayer, bible study, meditation, fasting, etc.) and this week he started a series talking about the “Seven Deadly Sins (and their complimentary virtues)” While, the presentation is fairly cool (he often uses film clips to illustrate points), the pastor does not hesitate to say the hard stuff. This week Anne and I are going to check out one of the home groups.
On top of that, our old pastor has been feeding us contacts from the organic/simple/house church movement. Turns out there’s another Vineyard pastor who left his institutional church to start a house church network and is trying to get the denomination to formally support this as an alternative model. Our pastor made introductions for us as well, and I have started following this guy’s blog. What’s more, this other pastor was able to put Anne and me in contact with another (non-Vineyard) simple church leader in our area, and he was able to introduce us to 4 other people in San Francisco who want to start an organic/simple/house church network here. We all plan to meet in a couple weeks to start to get to know one another. So it is quite possible that we may be starting something like that by the end of the year.
Posted by Steven at February 9, 2009 05:00 AM
