NeoZine - Full Article

Finding Xenos

I’ll never forget finding Xenos. Kathryn and I moved from Colorado Springs to Columbus in 1996 where Kathryn worked for Focus on the Family in the marketing department. A copy of “The Death of Truth” by Dennis McCallum, senior elder with Xenos, came across her desk. She was intrigued by the book and brought it home for me to read. The book struck a chord with me because of its philosophical bent. It agreed with much I had picked up as an undergraduate student of J. P. Moreland at Biola University. Once we moved to Columbus, despite the 45 minute drive from our apartment in Delaware, OH, we decided to check out Xenos.

The first day we strolled into the warehouse there a band was playing Steely Dan music. I was able to get a donut and coffee to eat during the service. I’d never seen a church with a snack bar! In addition, everyone was dressed like they were about to wash their car! But the best part occurred when Dennis got up to speak. I looked at Kathryn and said “this is our church.”

We were passive pew-sitters for a while but everyone kept talking about “getting incorporated” by checking out a home church. We decided to check out a home church and were referred to a home church in Upper Arlington led by Eric and Vicky Schroer and Anne Blackwell.

Leaving Xenos

Four event-filled years later we had to leave Xenos for Durham, NC. A computerized process had selected North Carolina as the place where I had to serve my one year internship required for my Ph.D. in clinical psychology. It was heart-breaking. We had taken several classes at Xenos and had become increasingly involved in ministry. We were very well-equipped. This church was practicing an ecclesiology that changed our lives - body life, accountability, discipleship. It was an incredible fellowship.

One of the things I could never comprehend was why there were no other churches like Xenos. I couldn’t believe that not everyone in Columbus came to Xenos. I still can’t believe it, but eventually I realized that some people just want a meaningless, institutional church life. They didn’t want to “wallow” in grace and love.

What Happened to Columbus?

After 3 years in Durham, God brought us to Stow, OH and NeoXenos. The story of how God brought us here is amazing but has to wait for another time. Suffice it to say that for months I walked around in a fog, astonished at the feeling of God’s providence in these events. I was fond of saying “it’s like God laid down rails, and so long as I moved forward at all I would end up here…it was the only destination.”

Fast forward 5 years. In the spring of 2008 we attended the Columbus Xenos Servant Team Retreat in Covington Kentucky. Xenos Columbus was struggling with their approach to church growth, and it wasn’t clear what answers were available. But Tom Dixon’s teaching did hold promise (see Keith’s article about Calvary)

Something struck me - maybe it was Tom, or maybe it was hearing about Cavalry Chapel and its success, but it was probably when Keith reminded me of a joke from the previous Servant Team Retreat: “Zona Xenos” we called it, a reference to sending a team of people to plant a new church in Arizona. The impetus was some people’s loathing of the northeastern Ohio climate.

Then it struck me. Why not send teams of people to places that they want to live like North Carolina or Arizona? What an impact Columbus Xenos could make, with 4500 people! Or consider NeoXenos: what could we lose by sendng 10 families or so to plant a Xenos church in a new state? We would immediately have 2 home churches, a youth group, and a CT. Boom! New church plant! I’ve had so many fantasies of planting other Xenos churches.

Solutions

No one outside Ohio has this treasure! I have never found any other church ever that comes close. I’m sure there are good churches out there, but nothing like Xenos. We had really tried in North Carolina with a church that, on paper, espouses Xenos principles. However, the way it played out was just another institution that ground to a halt a year or so after we left.

We were part of that leadership failure, and I learned something - don’t spit into the wind! In other words, you cannot reform an already-existing church. You have to start from scratch with a handful of strong, like-minded people. Start in your living room if that’s what it takes.

One of the things that had struck me at the Servant Team Retreat was the success of Cavalry Chapel in Costa Mesa, CA. They were very successful at reaching the lost by planting church after church after church. But I did find this odd.

I’ve been to Cavalry Chapel, and I have heard Chuck Smith preach. And it was no big deal. It is a boring, institutional, program-driven ecclesiology that is not compelling in the least for rebellious reformed fundies like me. Frankly, I remember very little about my visit to Calvary Chapel. It made almost no impression whatsoever. I’ve also visited about 100 other Southern California churches and they all seemed the same to me. In discussing this with Keith later, he said that Dennis should have landed hard on “planting” in his analysis of Calvary Chapel. Yes! That is the key…Keith was on to something.

It is now a couple of weeks after these revelations and Keith and I have continued to talk. Read these articles for a good eye-opener: Adopting Calvary Part 1/, Adopting Calvary Part 2/, Driscoll Part 1 and Driscoll Part 2.

Some day soon Keith will write about this dream he told me about. The instant I heard it I knew it was prophetic.

A Home Church Planting Movement!

So here’s the thing - we need to “get viral”. Uber-organic. We need to become a church that refuses to grow at one location beyond a certain minimum critical mass. Once we reach enough people to host a good baptism and a class worth driving to, we’ll start sending out church planters.

What plant in nature has the goal of growing huge and fat without sowing any seeds? Every tree, bush, and flower sends thousands of seed scattered by wind, gravity, or animal to start new growth.

How selfish it is for a church to grow to a thousand! Once you have a million dollar building and great children’s programs and a rockin’ band, what’s next? A bowling alley? But this should sound very familiar. This is the mega-church model. They grow to 10,000 or more on purpose! The goal is to build a campus, not merely a building. A campus of buildings with acres of parking creates a self-contained Christian subculture much like the many new “Planned Christian Communities” under construction all over Florida.

This is not the New Testament model of church. This is a scenario which does not depend on Body Life or discipleship, and church discipline is almost impractical with such crowds. Trying to protect themselves from the poison of the Kosmos, the poison of the Kosmos has infected the church instead.

This is when The Gospel starts to become stale, old news that you can’t give away. I see Mega-churches growing into Christian ghettos which probably the influence of “the bad people out there,” so those living inside feel safe from sin. But this is also the climate that grows “pew-sitters” and the “self-feeders” described by Hybels at Willow Creek¹

Bold Stewardship

What a tragic waste of resources. God commands us to “GO.” You don’t lose anything by sending 100 people a year from these churches to plant new churches.

But by the time the church becomes a self-contained suburb, people won’t go. We’re too lazy and comfortable. We don’t want to go back to sitting on metal folding chairs in the junior high cafeteria, hoping that maybe 50 people might show up. Singing along with the Christian “country-pop lounge band” is very cool (and I once played in a “Gospel Band” myself), but the singing doesn’t win anyone from the world. Likewise, the modern shift to produce “the show” has produced growth from people transferring from other, less-exciting churches. I’ve been there. I call it “Fundy Hell,” and everyone thinks, “Hell no, we won’t go!” (But never out loud, of course.) Well, we simply can’t go there.

The underground house-church movement in China is a much-better model to imitate. We started as a home church planting movement, and we need to go back there—but with a new vision for how it will work. This will require a change in our methods. We’ll stop emphasizing the home church split, and start sending out teams to plant new churches.

Splitting is slow and painful and is not actually modeled or discussed in the Bible anywhere. But sending is mentioned everywhere. We might go “multi-site,” where home churches can teleconference in for CT. (See Why Multi-Site? and Dave Browning - the Road Less-Traveled.)

Indestructible!

Think about it…a church you can’t kill. There is no building. There is no budget. There is no team of paid staff. All you need are 5 like-minded people and someone’s living room (or the dorm lounge!). It would be a church that spreads like a virus - person-to-person - like the flu. The aroma of the Body of Christ would, like the flu, enter every nostril for miles around.

Deacons are appointed to lead home churches. You band together a few home churches, and then you have a CT. You build a CT, and you appoint some elders as overseers of the new local body of Christ. Then you keep moving, and you plant again before you’re comfortable. Sound like the New Testament church?

We would not necessarily raise up local leadership to the point of our current standards for home church leadership. The elders would remain at the center of the hub and ordain so we can still do wedding and baptisms. The NeoXenos senior leadership would still be overseeing the web of churches that have fanned out across the state. NeoXenos would provide needed support, infrastructure, and resources such as leadership training.

Listen to Mark Driscoll. The biblical model of extra-local leadership (e.g., Paul) is explained well. All the home churches are within driving distance, so senior leaders can be called in at any time to deal with problems.

In Xenos it means that CT’s without enough resources are the “multi-sites” for awhile and teleconference along with the main campus CT. Already, big events are staged several times per year (baptisms, summer institutes, FST retreat, DMT retreat, Servant Team Retreat) to bring all the home churches together for mutual support. The home churches close enough to one another to provide mutual support, and the “mother ship” is situated on a major thoroughfare to ease transportation times to classes or other events.

First targets for NeoXenos might be Canton, Youngstown, Wooster, Sandusky. CT at NeoXenos could be on Route 8, so it’s easy to get to from anywhere. In a strange sense, Stow or Cuyahoga Falls is the center of gravity for NE Ohio…best place to commute to for a class, retreat, or conference.

When do we start?

How big do you think NeoXenos needs to be to do this? 500? 300? Actually, no. We can start now. We can plant locally before we move to Canton, Lakewood, Medina, Youngstown, and beyond. We need to notify the home churches that splitting is off the table. Instead, they should expect to lose their leadership to a new plant.

This forces the issue of leadership development and personal sanctification. Those who have been following will now have opportunities to lead, carry on the ministry, serve each other, and reach out to the lost. Sounds like the NT, right?

Leaders can start today by handing off their cell groups to their disciples in order to plan new bush-groups that become home churches. We need to begin by building a strong consensus with smaller teams.

FEBA

The Hughes home church is beginning this right away with a FEBA Team. FEBA stands for “Forward Edge of the Battle Area.” The writers of the New Testament sometimes used such military language, and it’s a helpful way to illustrate the idea of moving forward.

In the military, it is not unusual for special reconnaissance assets to operate significantly forward of FEBA. They often operate deep behind enemy lines, but not always in uniform.

Our DMT is assembling its own FEBA Team to launch a bush group at KSU this fall. The team includes Joel, Kathryn, Dar, Kyle, Kate, and Jeff. There was a delay launching a new college group and ministry house among the incoming freshmen at KSU and UA. Apparently they’re planning to live at home, save money, get hungry, pass classes, and serve in WORD. It will probably grow very unpleasant to remain in a high school group during their first year of college, but we’re building a launchpad by sending our most available workers and leaders into the campus to reach people now.

This “Bush Group” may only be a small beginning, but reinforcements will soon arrive in 1/2009 with Keith and the others. In the meanwhile, let’s leverage our existing opportunities to begin planting yet another home church!

First, however, the leaders of “The Falls Project” (Joel, Dar, and Kat) need to pass along responsibilities to their current cell groups. Our home church plant has come to fruition, since there are plenty of young professionals, couples, and soon-to-be families to sustain home church growth for decades. People are settling down, getting houses and trying to have babies, but we can never lose focus of the need for authentic Body Life and discipleship-ministry. Outreach may become more difficult, but new leaders see new ways to overcome obstacles. Most exciting of all, nobody is consigned to sitting “on the sidelines” as spectators while others get all the exciting spiritual opportunities.Everyone can be a starter.

Foreshadowing

In 20 years, what will NeoXenos be? According to this vision, not a mega-church. The days of trying to grow big are over. Instead we will attain a minimum critical mass and then spread thin across Northeast Ohio and Eastern Pennsylvania. I hope there’ll never be a campus or any such monolithic venue capable of seating 1000s. There might not ever be a building.

But there will be home churches practicing authentic Body Life all around the state. There will be a few baptisms (i.e., new believers) from most home churches every year. There will be a high proportion of ministers in this decentralized church. Everyone gets to play in the game. No one has to ride the bench. And combined, the NeoXenos home churches will add up to thousands, with hundreds of baptisms every year.

Now that’s a home church planting movement.

1. See the section “The Business-Leader Model” in the NeoZine article, “The Real Xenos Model” for an interesting description of Willow Creek building “self-feeders”. [⇑]

Tags: church growth, ecclesiology, methods, str2008, xenos

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