By now, it should be common knowledge to all of us in CMC that our mission is to “mature and multiply churches locally and globally.” I, for one, as a CMC pastor, am grateful to have this guiding vision from our leadership and this unifying purpose among our sister churches. Personally, I have found this to be a compelling vision and was positively challenged by it during this year’s Pastors Conference and the Rosedale International Missions Consultation that followed.
Of course, receiving a compelling challenge is just the beginning. A challenge holds little significance if it does not move us to action. To be honest, I am still discerning what course of action to take within my own context in response to our mission. And while I don’t yet have any great answers or well-developed action plans, especially in the new normal that is COVID-19, I (like many of you I’m sure) am exploring models that are helping me to put potential handles on this mission as I seek the Lord’s leading.
However, before I get into that, I wonder if you are familiar with the Meserete Kristos Church (MKC) of Ethiopia. MKC is a sister denomination in Mennonite World Conference. Long story short —“In January 1982, the Marxist government confiscated all of Meserete Kristos’ offices, worship buildings, bank accounts and physical property” and imprisoned a number of their leaders. “Church members took it upon themselves to hold church services in private….[They] organized a network of ‘cells’ in which members would meet at each other’s houses in groups of five.…This cell organization allowed the underground MKC to flourish as people intimately shared their personal faith in small groups of trusted friends.” [1]
Eventually changes in their government allowed the MKC to obtain some of its lost property and to re-emerge from hiding. When they did so, they realized that during those 10 years of being underground and unable to meet in church buildings or large groups, the church membership did not diminish but rather grew from 5,000 to 34,000 members. You can learn more about this here.
This testimony of God’s ability to grow the church while the people were mostly separated from one another and undergoing difficult circumstances, gives me hope in our context today. Now to be fair, while there are churches in the world still experiencing persecution like MKC did, we are not one of them. The cause of our circumstances is VERY different from that of the MKC. And yet, we are in a sense “underground” these days. At least when it comes to meeting in person or in church buildings, we are “underground.”
What will the church look like when we re-emerge from our social isolation?
With laws related to social distancing and COVID-19, gathering for worship services is illegal for most of us, especially in the large numbers in which we are accustomed to gathering. And so, I find myself wondering, “What will the church look like when we re-emerge from our social isolation?” I wonder, if by the power of the Holy Spirit and through creative approaches, we, too, might be able to partner with God to grow his kingdom during these days. I wonder if we, too, might emerge spiritually larger and stronger than before, like MKC did.
Now to be clear, I do not know details about what MKC did to disciple believers while underground; but it is obvious that they certainly did mature and multiply during that time. It seems to me that they did this in part through a combination of intentionality and the use of a simple, reproducible model. Their model was one that made disciples who made disciples who made disciples…
So with our vision to “mature and multiply churches locally and globally” and an example like MKC to consider, what might it look like for us in these days to be intentional with a simple, reproducible model of discipleship? And how could we possibly mature and multiply our local churches in these times, let alone the global church, when most of us cannot even leave our county much less our country? Well, one option that I have begun sharing with my congregation is the Impact Group model that Rosedale International has shared with CMC in the past.
I first became acquainted with this model through reading books by Neil Cole. Cole has done significant work with this approach to disciple-making/church planting which he calls Life Transformation Groups. In Chapter 8 of his book Cultivating a Life for God, Cole gives a good summary of this format. The groups focus on three components: Accountability through community, Scripture reading that becomes the basis for corporate learning, and Prayer with a focus on the harvest.
The groups consist of two to three people of the same gender that meet on a weekly basis for about an hour. Once the group adds in their fourth member, they are “pregnant” and prepare to divide into two groups with each pair adding in a third member to fill out the groups. As they do so, both groups keep their sights on each adding a fourth member and repeating the multiplying process. This bare bones explanation of the model gives a basic understanding of how it works.
This model has intrigued me in both its intentionality and its simple, reproducible structure. Additionally, at its core this approach is designed not only to mature believers, but also to keep multiplication at the forefront. The format keeps these two sides of the discipleship coin together rather than favoring one side or the other as so many of us often tend toward. What is more, this approach is low in cost and high in participation. Many of our church planting models require a particular church planting leader and significant financial resources. While these models can certainly be effective, they also come with certain inherent limitations.
Perhaps this all makes a lot of sense to you in the midst of “normal life,” but what about in our present circumstances? How could this possibly be helpful when we are not supposed to be closer than six feet from one another and our typical gathering spots, even outside of church buildings, are off limits? Actually, it seems to me that the Impact Group model is very viable in our current “social distanced” reality, albeit through virtual mediums such as Zoom.
A group of two to three people can easily do their weekly scripture reading on their own (something that many of us have more time for these days) and then rather than meeting in person for their weekly check-in, they can meet online. In that virtual space, they are able to offer accountability, reflect together on the scripture read, and pray for others who need Jesus. They do this with the hope that those for whom they pray may ultimately become the fourth group member that will lead them to reproduce once again and re-form into two separate online groups from the original one.
In this way, geographical boundaries and barriers fade away. We suddenly all have the potential to be global missionaries without ever leaving our homes. Each one of us could be doing the work of planting seeds that may take root, grow, produce fruit, and bear more seeds in places we have never visited and will likely never go to in person. In other words, this means that we have a whole new opportunity to mature and multiply churches not only locally where we are, but also globally to where ever virtual space extends our reach.
Now just to be clear, I do not share this as an expert on this model. Nor do I share this as a practitioner who has done this myself. Our youth have already adopted this as their new Sunday school structure, and we are currently exploring this as a church-wide possibility. Perhaps this global pandemic will be the impetus that launches us into “church planting” in ways that we would not previously even have considered. Perhaps through this pandemic God will surprise us by answering our prayer.
After all, many of us have been praying at 10:02 each day as Jesus instructed in Luke 10:2. “…Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Who are these workers if not us and those who are yet to be harvested? In his book Organic Church, in the chapter entitled “The How-to of Spreading the Epidemic,” (a rather fitting analogy for evangelism these days), Cole describes his daily practice of praying at 10:02 AM for the laborers. He also suggests that “All the resources needed for a great harvest are already found in the harvest itself – finances, facilities, future leaders. All we need to do is get out there and reap.” (Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens, pg. 180). Perhaps it is in the midst of this pandemic that we will pick up a new sickle and reap.
[1] https://anabaptistwiki.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Meserete_Kristos_Church,_Ethiopia. Compiled by Jacob Swartzentruber, working through the Maple Scholars Program at Goshen College in Goshen, IN.
2 Responses
Dave, thank you so much for this timely article. I love your thinking and your challenge to embrace models that are simple and reproducable — a very timely message for the current environment.
It’s great to see you highlighting MKC and their cell groups during the season they were closed. I went to Ethiopia in 1949 with my parents Chester and Sara Jane Wenger, some of the cp team that helped to found MKC. I recently told our pastor about the example of MKC.