Four Key Movements for the Suburban Church

This post was originally posted on Todd’s blog but we added some thoughts, fixed his poor spelling (at least we tried) and thought it would help further the conversation here.

At The Well, we’ve been studying the book of Acts. Its been a very, very formative and challenging book for us to work through. For me, there have been four ways that my life, and I think our life together, has been challenged so far.

Here are four movements that I’ve seen:

From Individual to Communal
As individuals we are important. We are very, very important. We need to continually celebrate the individual, but we must do it within the context of community. Our world is so individualized that we’ve lost a sense that there is something greater than ourselves. In our culture, this is a challenge because we are so good at isolating ourselves and disconnecting ourselves from the rest of the world. Our priorities can easily become very selfish and insulated.  This doesn’t mean we lose our individuality but that we lose our individualism.  In the words of Mr. Rogers, we are all special.  We are all unique individuals with a special place in the Kingdom.  I think our suburban world gets rid of our individuality with mass consumerism and replaces it with individualism.

From Consumptive to Collaborative
When you live in a world that holds individualism as a god you naturally going to find that consuming is a higher priority than being collaborative. If the most important thing is me, than I am going to do my best to take care of me. But, if the most important thing is a family that I am a part of than we can start thinking about collaboration together for a common goal and a common purpose.

Event to Family
Basically, we need to rethink our definition of “church.” This isn’t really anything new but it’s worth saying again.  When we come to “church” as an individual who is primarily a consumer we begin to view church as an “event” where we can consume spirituality or religion to meet our own personal needs. The alternative here is to move from church as event to church as family. When we approach “church” as individuals in a community where we are cooperating together for a common goal its almost impossible to think of church as an event. Instead a better metaphor for church, as we have talked about at The Well a lot recently, is “family.” A family cooperating together to care together for individuals inside and outside the family.

From Sucking in to Sending out
The idea of a common goal then leads us to the final movement. The challenge of the family metaphor in the church setting is to not become all cliquish and even worse cultish. But, when you take a group of individuals, who are here to consume and think of the “church” as a event, you end up with a “church” that is sucking in rather than sending out. What ends up happening is that we are all drawn into a Sunday event and leave behind our primary mission field. But, when we view the “church” as a community that is dependent on each other and cooperates together, it is not naturally seen as something that sucks in but instead sends out. Basically, churches shouldn’t suck.

Reread Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

This is the mission that drives the early church (and should drive our churches as well!).

This cannot be done if the church is an random collection of individuals who are coming to an event to consume christianity. But, this mission can be accomplished if “church is defined as a family that cooperates together for a greater purpose.

Note: We’d be honored if you took a few minutes to fill out our survey on the challenges and opportunities of the suburban church. You can find it here.