Photograph by Richard Wong
Hi from the States. The trip is going very well. We had five days in Los Angeles and are now in Atlanta. The broken leg is fine – just a bit uncomfortable and tiring. Glen says “Hi” and we both thank you for praying for us and for our families.
So far there are two churches that stand out to me. One is Church Multiplication Associates (CMA). This is a movement passionate about leading people to Christ, making disciples and planting churches. They started by visiting a local coffee shop and doing three things:
- Drinking coffee
- Playing games (chess etc – whatever people enjoyed)
- Listening.
In the process many people came to Christ. In fact so many that they decided to move to a different coffee shop which was darker (people here were into Satanism and a witches coven met regularly at the coffee shop) in order to win more people to Christ. One great quote is “bad people make good soil; there is a lot of fertilizer in their life”.
CMA does church in people’s homes, coffee shops – wherever. Once the church reaches 12 people it multiplies and a new church is started. As a consequence there are now literally thousands of churches that are part of this movement, with a 25% conversion growth rate.
The key to the movement however lies in their Life Transformation Groups (LTG). This is a group of three people of the same gender who meet each week. Each week the members read one book of the bible and share about it when they meet. If one person has not finished the reading, all re-read the book until eventually all three people have read it. This repetitious immersion in the bible is the key to health. The LTG also have accountability questions they answer with each other. And the third component is that they pray strategically for pre-Christian people. Once someone comes to faith in Christ the LTG’s divide and two LTG’s now meet. There is never more than three people in an LTG. It is actually the LTG’s that carry the DNA of the movement and are the key to ensuring disciples, churches and the movement itself grows in health.
The second is “The Dream Center”. This church began 15 years ago led by a 19 year old, very new pastor – Matthew Barnett. Matthew thought he would grow a church on great preaching and worship but discovered the needs and poverty in downtown Los Angeles were so great he had to take a different approach. He chose to “find a need and fill it; find a hurt and heal it” and this continues to be the mission statement of the church. From very small beginnings The Dream Center now uses an old Catholic hospital as its base and serves over 40 000 people every month. This involves food vans, a mobile free health clinic, working with people on skid row (the area of LA where homeless sleep on the street); one section of the ex-hospital is a live-in discipleship centre for people from the streets or prison; another for families who are homeless, another for women at risk and so on. Along with serving there is a clear passion for people to discover the transforming power of Jesus.
We attended the Sunday worship service which was very contemporary with dance music and fantastic technology; but people we spoke with were clear, “this is not church – church is Monday to Saturday – this is when we celebrate.”
The key learning from these growing, active, transformative churches (and also from some that aren’t doing so well) is the importance of a clear understanding of who God has called a particular church to be. This involves very clear DNA (purpose and values/culture). Those that are continuing to be used powerfully by God do not stray from this clear DNA (no matter how big they grow or how many activities they undertake) and every person is expected to live it out. As one leader put it “if disciples don’t carry the DNA, your church doesn’t.”
At Logan Uniting we have a clear purpose: “Drawing people into a life-transforming relationship with Jesus Christ” through a culture of Fun, Friendship and Faith. This means every person who is part of LUC must be praying for, serving, sharing faith with pre-Christian people and also participating in biblical community (Faith Life Groups and/or Intentional Faith-Filled Friendships) – this for us is what church is about. For us also, corporate worship is not church, but a chance to celebrate God and all He is doing, as church.
Yours in Christ
Rev Graham Keech
Senior Minister
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