Organic Church

For today’s Journey Team meeting Ed, Melanie and I went to the park to continue discussing the book So Beautiful by Leonard Sweet. I feel bad because for the entire last week I have been really swamped with busy work, and did not have the chance to read the chapter. I hate having to do all the tedious work that is sometimes required because I feel like did not actually accomplish anything. And yet, it keeps me from doing the important work of reading books, planning teachings, and studying the Bible.

So while Melanie and Ed talked about Sweet’s view of missional and we tried to wrap our heads around what exactly it means to be missional, I had to essentially sit there and not contribute much. However, at one point Ed made the comment that the local church is much like a tree, which got me thinking about it. If we consider the roots like all of the programs we run, and the leaves as the people, then we can get a decent understanding of how the local church should work.

First all of, we must realize that the tree does not exist to simply grow bigger and deeper roots. Instead the roots get bigger and deeper to support the continued growth of the tree itself. So the more leaves we get (or people) the bigger and deeper our root system (programs) must be simply so that we can support the continued growth of the tree as well as the reproduction of other trees.

I think too often we in the church have the desire to build bigger and deep root systems, so we go in search of people simply so that they can help support the roots. We want a young adult program, so we specifically go out and find young adults, not so that w can disciple them, but so that they can contribute to the size of the young adult program. Or we want a vibrant kid’s ministry, so we go out and recruit volunteers to help with the kid’s ministry.

Instead we need to be asking the question, who do we have around us? What programs are needed to support these people? Especially if we have the mentality that we are to pastor a community, not just a congregation, then that opens us put in a whole new way. What roots do we need to develop in order to support the single mother down the street? What roots can we create to help feed the four homeless people in our area?

If we change our attitude to become more like a tree, then we might just stop doing church for the sake of doing church. Maybe if we change our mentality we might just start acting like Jesus to the world around us.