Even 18 is too many
Some of the challenges that our community has experienced recently have been the logistical ones associated with the degree of relationship required in order for the value of the community to be experienced and realized by all. As I wrote in “deep community as disaster and injustice prevention” below, in my opinion that value has the potential to be very high. But there just seems no way around the size question as it relates to being able to coexist at a desirable depth.
On a (somewhat humorously) related note, Barna just announced a new study and book that types people in small faith communities/house churches as “Christian Revolutionaries” who are “less interested in attending church than in being the church” and that predicts that “by 2025 the local church will lose roughly half of its current ‘market share’ and that alternative forms of faith experience and expression will pick up the slack.”
How will local churches adapt to stem the headcount and tithing bleeding? Malcolm Gladwell thinks they should turn to Rick Warren, a disciple of Peter Drucker whose decisions to organize Saddleback (the mega-mega-church) into cell groups seem to have gone quite, um, well. Rick and his team have created a line of products designed to help the local pastor steer the ship in this direction.
If George Barna is right that we are only on the cusp of a “Third Great Awakening,” there seem to be some huge consulting opportunities here for people like him and Rick. But I would actually be interested in seeing what would happen if Barna and Saddleback didn’t write, didn’t publish any books – just let people invent and build what they needed themselves. Perhaps I am naively optimistic about people, but what we’re coming up with without any “guide” is pretty darn authentic and thus, I believe, powerful.
